In 1938, he was ordered to return to Moscow "for new work". In preparation for his defection, Lyushkov arranged for his Jewish wife, Inna, to leave the country with his eleven-year-old daughter, for the daughter to receive medical treatment in
Poland. The plan was for Inna to embed a secret codeword into a
telegram, which would signal to Lyushkov that it was safe for him to leave the
Soviet Union. His defection was initially kept a state secret by Japan, but the revelation of his defection was judged to have a high propaganda value, so the decision was made to release the news to the world. A press conference was arranged at a Tokyo hotel on 13 July, a month after Lyushkov had defected. He "categorically denied Moscow's allegation that he was an imposter" but some news agencies, such as the
New York Times wondered if he was telling the truth. During subsequent interviews and interactions with Japanese military personnel, Lyushkov adopted an anti-
Stalinist position. However, his professed political views remained
socialistic in nature according to the recollections of some Japanese intelligence officers, with Lyushkov calling himself a
Trotskyite, but some Japanese officers believed that he had later become a
liberal communist. Though Lyushkov was anti-Stalinist, he was resistant to the idea of creating a new regime led by Russian
émigrés. He was, however, willing to include them in a proposed plan for assassination of Stalin. A resistance group of Russian emigrants would travel across the Turkish-Soviet border when Stalin would travel south to a resort in
Sochi, which he had visited previously to swim in the
Matsesta River. Lyushkov's intimate knowledge of NKVD procedures and the way Stalin's guard detail would be organised encouraged the Japanese to support the plan. However, a Soviet agent had infiltrated the group of Russian exiles and foiled the plan, which was considered the only serious attempt to assassinate Stalin. Lyushkov was able to detail the strength of the
Red Army in the
Far East,
Siberia and
Ukraine, simultaneously providing Soviet military radio codes. He was considered highly intelligent and dedicated, producing great volumes of written material, but there was some uncertainty about his ability to provide useful information specific to military operations. As he spent more time in Japan, his hard work impressed the Japanese intelligence officers with whom he had been assigned to work. The staff of the
Imperial Japanese Army had concerns, however, about his psychological state, especially pertaining to the status of his wife and daughter, about whom he had heard no news since his defection. After a failed search by Japanese intelligence agents for his family, a plan to both pacify and "domesticate" Lyushkov was decided upon: he would be paired with a woman, both to distract him from the question of his family's status and to keep him rooted in Japan. An eventual match was found after Lyushkov refused several
White émigré women. At some point, he began to make plans to travel to the United States and contacted an American publisher about a possible autobiography that he would write. He had concerns that he might be prevented from leaving Japan and went as far as to negotiate a written safe-conduct guarantee. == Disappearance and death ==