Lieutenant Sidney George Reilly (March 24, 1873/1874 - November 5, 1925) was a Jewish or Ukrainian adventurer. As a secret agent, he was active for the United Kingdom for Scotland Yard, the Secret Service Bureau and later for the Secret Intelligence Service. Reilly would have spied for at least four countries and modeled Ian Fleming's character James Bond.
Reilly became known to the general public by being interpreted by Sam Neill in the English television series Reilly: Ace of Spies in 1983. This series preceded the music from "Romance of the Gadfly 'of Sjostakovich and was popularly popular. The television series, written by Troy Kennedy-Martin and based on the book Ace of Spies by Robin Bruce Lockhart, was awarded the BAFTA TV award in 1984.
Sydney George Reilly was born under the name of Georgi Rosenblum on March 24, 1874 in Odessa (Ukraine). Presumably, he was recruited by Agent Superintendent William Melville of the Secret Intelligence Service at an early age and became secret agent for the Secret Service Bureau. He worked under the hiding name 'Pedro' among others in Brazil for a group called 'Friends of Enlightenment'. He managed to save the lives of members of this group when they were attacked by angry immigrants. For this performance, he received from the British agent Major Fothergill an amount of 1500 pounds, a trip to England, and a British passport. Once in England he took the name of Sidney Rosenblum. He was a very intelligent man who spoke fluently seven languages. Working for the secret service, he got the hiding name Sidney Reilly.
At the outbreak of World War I, he served as a volunteer at the Royal Flying Corps in Canada, in which position he was dressed in German uniform, attending a meeting of the higher German army (Reilly received it in 1919 Military Cross). He seduced the wife of a Russian Minister and thus gained information about German gun shipments to Russia, and spied at a German branch of Krupp's arms factories. Reilly was sent to Moscow in 1918. There he made various attempts to rule the Bolshevik government and even to kill Vladimir Lenin. Lenin escaped the attack and Reilly quickly returned to England.
In 1925, Reilly was sent again to Russia to spy within the Russian government. Secret agents of the OGPU, the political police of the then Bolshevik intelligence service Tsjeka, knew with a list of Reilly to lure to Bolshevik Russia where he was arrested at the border. After his arrest, he was brought to the infamous Loebjanka prison and questioned. It is unclear whether Reilly as a prisoner of the OGPU is tortured there too. Reilly held his cloak as a British citizen, born in Irish Clonmel and, as far as is known, did not pass any information. On November 5, 1925, Reilly was executed in a forest near Moscow. After the execution, Reilly's body was photographed by the OGPU's agents; The photos were sent to the British secret service.
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