Preobrazhenskiy graduated from the Institute of Asian and African countries of the
Moscow State University in 1976 and started working in the Foreign Intelligence department of the KGB. He was an advisor on China, Japan and Korea to Leonid Zaitsev, the Head of the Scientific and Technical Intelligence (Directorate “T”), in the
First Chief Directorate. In 1980–85, Preobrazhenskiy worked under cover as a
TASS correspondent at the KGB station in Tokyo. He recruited Chinese scholars for the Soviet Scientific and Technical Intelligence. In July 1985, the Japanese police arrested him at a meeting with his Chinese agent, and he was transferred back to Moscow. He described these events in book “The Spy Who Loved Japan” published in 1994. ==Writer and journalist==