"To his last day, he was full of spirit and plans. He was a charismatic, well-educated and intelligent man with a sharp sense of humor and interest in life and people, and it was hard to believe he was a century old - so shining were his eyes and so profound was his thinking," read an obituary compiled by the FSB and the society for the history of the Russian secret services, which Gudz joined in his retirement years.

The FSB said the funeral ceremony would take place in Moscow Saturday.

Gudz was born in Ufa, the Urals, where his parents moved following a revolutionary movement in Ukraine. In 1923, the future agent began his career in the national security agency.

He took part in the well-known counter-intelligence Operation Trest when agents passed themselves off as an anti-Bolshevik organization in a bid to lure and arrest the remaining enemies of the Bolshevik Revolution, scattered across the country and overseas after the White Army's surrender.

In 1924, Gudz began his swift climb in the hierarchy of OGPU, a forerunner of the KGB, where he took part in operations to disarm gangs in Chechnya and Daghestan in southern Russia. Simultaneously, he studied philosophy at the Institute of Red Professors.

In 1932, Gudz was appointed head of the OGPU intelligence and counterintelligence department in East Siberia where he masterminded a series of successful operations against Japan and an operation to seize a prominent Cossack leader, Topkhayev. In 1934-36, Gudz was an OGPU resident in Japan.

Upon his return home, Gudz coordinated the activities of the group led by legendary Soviet spy Richard Zorge.

Zorge later provided Moscow with key intelligence information during the Battle for Moscow in 1941 that Japan would not enter the war against the Soviet Union, thereby freeing critically needed armies for a counteroffensive that stopped the Nazi advance.

After his sister was arrested in Stalin's purges in April 1937, Gudz was expelled from the Communist Party and dismissed from the Red Army.

The former agent then took up work as a bus driver in Moscow but was soon restored to the Party and promoted to become head of a large road transport company.

Following his retirement, Gudz engaged in social activities, studied the history of the Bolshevik Revolution, and shared his intelligence experience with secret service officers. In the late 1960s, he gave consultations to writers and film directors dealing with the history of the OGPU, and cooperated with the film crew working on the Operation Trest series.

Gudz was the holder of numerous awards, including a third category insignia from the FSB for service in counterintelligence.

MOSCOW, December 29 (RIA Novosti)