Mikhail Vasenkov Dies at 79; His Spy Ring Inspired ‘The Americans’

The company’s announcement listed the medals and different commendations that Mr. Vasenkov had been awarded and characterised him as “a hardworking, sincere and modest worker” who had been “liable to work related to threat” and had proven “will, braveness and resourcefulness.”

The couple’s son, Juan Lazaro Jr., who was 17 on the time of their arrest and already an achieved pianist, declined to accompany them again to Russia. He was ending his research at Fiorello H. LaGuardia Excessive College of Music and Artwork and Performing Arts in Manhattan on the time. Based on a résumé, he later graduated from the Juilliard College and studied on the Mannes College of Music in Manhattan, a part of the New College, and nonetheless lives in New York.

Ms. Pelaez’s stepson from a earlier relationship, Waldo Mariscal, an architect who was 38 on the time, additionally remained in america. He now lives in Peru along with his mom, in response to her lawyer, Carlos Moreno. She and her sons are amongst Mr. Vasenkov’s survivors, Mr. Moreno stated.

Mikhail Anatolyevich Vasenkov was born on Oct. 9, 1942, into what his obituary described as a household of employees in Kuntsevo, a city outdoors Moscow. (Stalin had a dacha there.) The household moved to Siberia a while after the German invasion throughout World Battle II.

Mikhail graduated from the Moscow Increased Mixed Arms Command College. Skilled in English and Spanish, he flew from Madrid to Lima in 1976 on a Uruguayan passport underneath the title of Juan Jose Lazaro Fuentes, an identification he had stolen from a Uruguayan who had died of respiratory failure in 1947 on the age of three.

Described as a contract information photographer with a black belt in karate, he was granted Peruvian citizenship in 1979. In 1983, “with the sanction” of the spy service, in response to the Russian safety service, he married Ms. Pelaez, a tv reporter.

Two years later, they emigrated to america, the place she went to work as journalist for the Spanish-language each day newspaper El Diario/La Prensa.