Baltic Shipyard
Sakarovsky was born to a working family in Kostroma Oblast, on 3 September 1909. His family moved to Leningrad when he was a child, and he began his career as a plater at the Baltic Shipyard. He was drafted into the Red Army in 1931 and by 1939 was working for the Leningrad NKVD recruiting foreign seamen to work as intelligence agents. During the Second World War he rose to the rank of Major, responsible primarily for counter-espionage against Nazi Germany in the Leningrad region.