Unsolved secrets: What the secret departments of the KGB were doing. All books about: “KGB stories erotica

Today, with the restructuring of the state security service, many papers from secret archives are becoming publicly available. Of course, no one is going to naively believe that people are shown documents in their original form: almost certainly all the most important things remain under the veil of secrecy.
However, even from scraps of information one can get approximate ideas about the affairs that were going on under the roof of the State Security Committee.

Portable nuclear weapons

Back in 1997, General Alexander Lebed, in one of his rather chaotic interviews, let it slip that the intelligence services possess about a hundred portable nuclear devices, each with a power of one kiloton. Literally two days later, Lebed retracted his words, chalking it all up to fatigue and a slip of the tongue. However, physics professor Alexey Yablokov confirmed the existence of such devices. According to information received from him, in the mid-70s, the top leadership of the KGB ordered the development of nuclear charges for carrying out terrorist operations. Moreover, there was information about the availability of similar devices in the United States.

Operation Flute

Blue folder

The town of Ostrov in the Pskov region has never been particularly calm. Despite the small population, regional police officers in the 50s of the 20th century had to go to the populated area almost every week. However, one of the already routine crimes ended in disaster.

The robbers not only took the entire cash register from the store, but were also able to kill two law enforcement officers. The third, captain Yuri Sirotin, was then seriously wounded. Already in the hospital, strange events began to happen to him. At night, as if delirious, the Soviet policeman suddenly shouted phrases in German. How did the Russian captain know a language alien to him and why in his dreams did he quote phrases from Mephistopheles from Johann Goethe’s Faust? To understand the matter, KGB officer Ivan Mitin came to Ostrov. It would be better if he stayed at home.

About all the secrets and mystical events that the security officer Mitin encountered - see in the series “The Cry of an Owl” on the MIR TV channel on June 10 from 10.45. In the meantime, we will tell you about five other, no less mysterious cases that the KGB has encountered.

The case of Zinaida Reich

The popular actress, the first wife of Sergei Yesenin, the wife of Vsevolod Meyerhold died in July 1939. This happened not in a distant forest or a house near Moscow, but in an elite area of ​​the capital, in the apartment of Zinaida Reich. 17 stab wounds were found on her body. Despite the fact that her window and the windows of the neighboring apartments were open all night, no one heard a single scream or sound of struggle. Except for the housekeeper, who received a non-threatening injury and also chose to remain silent for the rest of her days.

Who and why killed Reich is unknown. Then the NKVD did not even open a case, so no evidence was preserved. Most likely, the criminals entered the apartment through the balcony - the actress lived on the second floor. They then stabbed the victim several times and fled the way they came. It seems that it is even known that there were two killers. But all this remained only at the level of rumors.

Of course, there are no official versions. Various historians in books and articles retell events according to their own reasons. Either the national question is woven into the matter - Reich was German, or they say that the actress too actively opposed the arrest of her husband Meyerhold, which occurred several months before. We only know that the motive was not monetary: nothing was taken out of the apartment and nothing was broken. There’s just one thing that still haunts conspiracy theorists to this day. Just a few months later, Vardo Maximilishvili moved into the deceased’s apartment. NKVD officer and, as they say, the passion of Lavrentiy Beria.

The case will most likely never be solved by official authorities: all statutes of limitations have expired, and witnesses with possible evidence have long since “floated away.” The death of Zinaida Reich will remain one of the unsolved pages of history.

They say that Wolf Messing was originally a project of the Soviet secret services. 20th-century Nostradamus predicted the fall of the Third Reich and the failure of Adolf Hitler, and also actively read minds and displayed other skills unimaginable to the average person. And all this, they say, was at the behest of Joseph Stalin.

True, there is nothing like this in the KGB archives. No descriptions of miracles, no real contribution of Messing to the victory in World War II, no alleged meeting with the leader of the USSR. But the profile of Ninel Kulagina, who in the 60s became famous as a telekineticist, is accurately documented. Intelligence agencies even tested the abilities of a woman who claimed that she could move small objects with the power of her thoughts.

It was not the Soviet, but the Bulgarian special services that worked with Vanga - this is also a confirmed fact. The woman’s incredible “superpower” lay in the fact that her assistants, including security officers, told her all the secret information about the guest - and Vanga passed it off as “reading fate and thoughts.” In addition, when a woman made a mistake, the security forces insistently asked not to disclose it. How can you refuse?

Believers in the Bulgarian telepath came to her and told her all the important information, which the woman’s assistants then passed on to the special services.

Murder of Lena Zakotnova

The murder of a girl from the city of Shakhty, in the Rostov region, led to the death of three more people, guilty and innocent. On December 22, 1978, near the river, townspeople discovered the body of a second-grader. She died from strangulation.

The valiant Soviet police could not leave such a high-profile case unsolved and quickly identified the culprit. On the day of the murder, local resident Alexander Kravchenko, who was already in prison, was detained. At first, the man was released thanks to an ironclad alibi, but after just a month, for unknown reasons, he decides to commit theft. Moreover, it is so obvious that it is revealed in a matter of minutes, arrested and the question of him as Lena’s killer is again raised.

Kravchenko was shot. Another suspect, who confessed to the crime while intoxicated, committed suicide. Finally, they wanted to pin the case on serial maniac Andrei Chikatilo. But even here, despite the admitted murders of 52 other people, he still did not touch Zakotnova. That's what the court decided.

It is still unknown who killed second-grader Lena; the case has been postponed and no investigation is underway.

"Blue Pack"

In America, there is a legend about the real-life “Area 51” in Nevada. Allegedly, they collect all the information about contacts with aliens, dissect Martians and dismantle flying saucers. The Soviet Union was not left behind. Only the scale there is more modest. You can’t hide an entire test site in the basements of Lubyanka, but the “blue package” can easily be hidden.

According to legend, for decades all evidence of the existence of aliens was collected in this folder of documents. Reports, reports, notes. No city crazy people - only handwritten messages from employees of the KGB, Armed Forces or Ministry of Internal Affairs. True, they are no different from the usual messages of ufologists: luminous disks in the sky, moving at high speed. To believe it or not - everyone decides for himself.

In the mid-2000s, most of the reports were published in the public domain. However, supporters of conspiracy theories still claim that the security officers have revealed to us only part of the truth, the tip of the iceberg. It is not possible to prove or disprove this.

Watch the solution to at least one riddle from our list on June 10 at 10.45 - the series “The Cry of an Owl” on the MIR TV channel.

© Mlechin L. M., 2017

© Artistic design, Tsentrpoligraf, 2017

© "Tsentrpoligraf", 2017

From the author

1991 changed the fate of Russia. This period of history, memorable to all of us, included many dramatic and tragic events.

On August 19, 1991, the country woke up and learned that USSR President Gorbachev had been removed from office, and everything was controlled by the State Committee for the State of Emergency. As the years pass, the August putsch seems ridiculous and absurd, a palace intrigue, a Kremlin operetta. Some have difficulty remembering that Mikhail Sergeevich seemed to be locked up in his summer residence in Foros, others are sure that he himself, not wanting to give up sea bathing, sent others with an iron hand to restore order in the country, and then for some reason took offense at them and ordered to arrest...

Of course, even recent history is quickly forgotten. But those who observed the events from outside, who were in Moscow at that time, remember that there was no time for jokes.

Why was the coup started on August 19? The date was not chosen by chance. A day later it would be too late. On August 20, a new Union Treaty was to be signed, which would preserve the unified state in an updated form. The State Emergency Committee lasted only three days. But these three days destroyed our country. Immediately after the coup, Ukraine, the second most important Soviet republic after the Russian Federation, declared its independence. And if not for the putsch, Ukraine would have signed a new Union Treaty on August 20... So in December in Belovezhskaya Pushcha they only formalized what had already happened.

Not only the August putsch, but also many other things that happened in 1991, are still fraught with many secrets and mysteries. The State Security Committee played a key role in these dramatic events, which will be discussed in this book.

In Soviet times, a group of friends riskily joked that the building on Lubyanka was the tallest in the capital: from its windows Magadan was visible. The windows of the spacious office No. 517 in the old building of the State Security Committee overlooked Myasnitskaya Street. Office No. 517 was occupied by General Viktor Valentinovich Ivanenko.

General Ivanenko is the first and last chairman of the KGB of the RSFSR. The first and last director of the Federal Security Agency of the Russian Federation. At forty-three he found himself at the pinnacle of power. For seven decisive months in 1991, the head of the Russian security officers was one of those who tried to influence events in a country that found itself at a crossroads in history.

On that famous December day in 1991, when the fate of Russia was being decided far from the capital, the owner of the office did not admire the view of old Moscow. In fact, he had just become the head of the most powerful special service: the USSR ceased to exist, and with it the allied KGB. All state security structures on the territory of the Russian Federation were now subordinate to General Ivanenko. Colleagues could only dream of such a position.

But the owner of the office did not order to uncork a bottle of champagne and celebrate with his subordinates a significant event in the professional career of a security officer who served in the KGB for two decades and began as an ordinary operative in the Siberian outback. The news coming from Belarus was not at all encouraging. On the contrary, the owner of the office was in anxiety.

Professional duty required immediate action from him. He looked at the bank of ivory telephones with crests on the dial, lined up on a side table.

The operational communications apparatus of the KGB of the USSR is for official conversations with colleagues, but the signalmen warned: the level of protection is low.

PM apparatus - government long-distance communications (formerly called HF communications) - for negotiations with local bodies of the State Security Committee or big bosses in all regions of the vast country.

ATS-2 – colloquially “Kremlevka”, or the second turntable – was installed in the offices of mid-level nomenclature, at the level of deputy minister.

ATS-1 - the first turntable - was relied upon by the highest echelon of power. The officials switched the second turntable to the secretary. According to hardware rules, we were supposed to pick up the handset first ourselves.

Nearby was a stack of compact telephone books in a dark brown leather cover with a list of subscribers. Without indicating the position held. Only last name, first name, patronymic. Place of work - if there are namesakes. But General Ivanenko, even without prompting, knew who was who in the highest nomenklatura, who was privy to the main secrets of the country and would understand why he was sounding the alarm.

But which one should I call? People making key political decisions in Russia are far from Moscow. Of course, you can connect with them via HF. The telephone operator, who is in the service of the newly formed Government Communications Committee under the President, will definitely find the right subscriber. HF communication devices have a powerful membrane - they will hear it if they hear it. But we are talking about the highest secret of the state. Even this phone cannot be trusted. And we can’t wait for the bosses to return to Moscow either.

On General Ivanenko’s desk there was a note marked “Top Secret”, demanding immediate action. So it’s up to him to make the decision himself?

December 8, 1991 in Viskuli (Belovezhskaya Pushcha) President of the Russian Federation Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin and Secretary of State of the RSFSR Gennady Eduardovich Burbulis, President of Ukraine Leonid Makarovich Kravchuk and Prime Minister Vitold Pavlovich Fokin, Chairman of the Supreme Council of Belarus Stanislav Stanislavovich Shushkevich and Chairman of the Council of Ministers Vyacheslav Frantsevich Kebich signed an agreement that stated: “The USSR as a subject of international law and geopolitical reality ceases to exist... The High Contracting Parties form the Commonwealth of Independent States.”

The news that came from Viskuli was so stunning that few people thought at that moment that life had become more dangerous. Four nuclear powers appeared on the world stage at once. And each with a rich arsenal.

For example, the head of independent Kazakhstan, Nursultan Abishevich Nazarbayev, turned out to be the owner of 1216 nuclear warheads for intercontinental ballistic missiles and heavy bombers. The arsenal of independent Kazakhstan, which had just emerged on the political map, exceeded the nuclear weapons of England, France or China.

Secretary of State of the RSFSR Gennady Burbulis argued that Russia is the only republic that can and should become the legal successor of the Soviet Union and all its structures. And this idea will be accepted by the world community. Russian diplomacy insisted that Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus immediately announce their renunciation of their nuclear status.

But the three republics were in no hurry to part with their suddenly acquired wealth. Various ideas arose that were flattering to the heads of the new states. Let's say this: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine jointly own nuclear weapons. Since the leaders of all four states have established a special connection, they make the decision to use weapons unanimously.

One of the first to learn that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist was the head of the Russian state security department, General Ivanenko. He had to deal with the fate of nuclear weapons remaining outside Russia. His subordinates from the units ensuring the safety of nuclear facilities turned to physicists. And they reported to General Ivanenko: there is an opportunity to make the world a little safer - to quickly disable the control circuits for nuclear charges, which are now beyond Russian control...

Approval from senior management is required. But it was precisely during these days that General Ivanenko himself was cut off from the President of Russia. He already knew that Boris Nikolaevich had decided to liquidate state security as an independent department. They stopped connecting the general with the president even by telephone. An unthinkable situation: it is necessary to act, we are talking about the security of the country, but the head of state is unavailable. And yet we must somehow obtain Yeltsin’s consent.

New Year's Eve

On the eve of the new year, 1991, in a traditional address to the Soviet people, USSR President Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev warned his fellow citizens:

– Next year is special. The decision on the fate of our multinational state falls on him. For all of us, Soviet people, there is no more sacred cause than the preservation and renewal of the Union, in which all peoples would live freely and well. The peoples of the country have lived together for centuries. They are united by the values ​​accumulated during the Soviet years and are connected by the memory of Victory in the most destructive war. We now, perhaps more than ever, feel acutely that we cannot live, isolating ourselves from each other. And we can only get out of the crisis, get back on our feet, and firmly follow the path of renewal only together. It is in the Union, its preservation and renewal, that the key to solving the enormous, fateful tasks facing us in 1991 lies.

But everything will go differently.

The Soviet president was the most informed person in the country. But no one can know his future.

I asked some of the characters in this book, mostly senior state security officers, if they remembered how they celebrated January 1, 1991? Did you assume that incredible changes awaited the country and themselves in the new year?

General Viktor Valentinovich Ivanenko:

– I met him at home, with his wife and children. One of my friends came to visit. There were no special events that marked that New Year in my memory. I certainly had no idea what would happen next.

General Sergei Vadimovich Stepashin:

– On January 1, 1991, I was in Leningrad. I had family there. We went to see friends with whom I taught at school and fought together in the internal troops. I didn’t have a car; we got there on a crowded bus. As I remember now, the cake was crushed in the crush. It never occurred to me that fate could change so dramatically.

General Evgeny Vadimovich Savostyanov:

– I celebrated the New Year at home. Where else? With friends, in ordinary company. As for the upcoming changes... It was obvious to me that the ninety-first year was the year when the CPSU would collapse. But I understood that the task of overthrowing communism is not the most difficult of the tasks facing us, we will somehow cope with it. It is much more difficult to overcome the centuries-old tradition of unfreedom of the people. After all, I was stewing at that time in the mess of democratic movements - with Latvians and Lithuanians, with Tajiks and Armenians, with Georgians and Azerbaijanis - and saw that the Soviet Union was ending. It was pretty obvious.

General Valery Borisovich Yampolsky:

– I celebrated the New Year with my family. There was such a rise! After the start of perestroika, we, already experienced people who had come a long way in the security agencies, rejoiced. I’ll tell you for sure: how happy the children were. We understood that there had to be changes, and we were glad that they came. But we did not imagine that they would turn in a completely different direction. I don't think anyone would have guessed it.

General Sergei Nikolaevich Almazov:

– I just arrived in Moscow, I didn’t have a wide circle of friends yet, so I met him in a close family circle. And, of course, an alarming year was coming. Working in the KGB Inspectorate made it possible to obtain a significant amount of information, essentially flowing from all over the Soviet Union. I worked in the department that oversaw the territorial bodies of the Russian Federation, so there were no dark spots for us regarding what was happening in Russia. They understood that this seething situation would not just end like that. It will turn into something. But in what form and what place will we be given...

The last head of the KGB of Checheno-Ingushetia, Colonel Akhmet Tsutsaevich Khataev:

– People close to me, friends gathered. For me, the New Year smoothly flows into my birthday; I was born on January 9th. My younger brother arrived, he is a diplomat. On the New Year, nothing foreshadowed subsequent events. There was absolutely no feeling that such cataclysms could occur in the life of the republic. But the internal tension was felt. And the grounds for social tension to arise do not develop in a minute.

Russian Secretary of State Gennady Eduardovich Burbulis:

– We all lived then in Arkhangelsk, a dacha settlement of the Russian government. We have a reform commune there. We started celebrating at our small dacha, then we went to the neighbors... Someone made some good dumplings - we went there. Someone made homemade liqueur, or my parents sent me something... Of course, we did not imagine that everything would happen like this. But they were prepared for hard work. If you undertake to replace old orders with new ones, you will face indifference from those for whom these new orders are intended, and cruel resistance from those to whom the old orders are dear.

Kryuchkov's secret note

On March 17, 1991, a referendum took place. Residents of the country were asked: do they want to preserve the Soviet Union as a renewed federation of equal and sovereign republics? Three-quarters of those surveyed were in favor of preserving the Union, which was already falling apart. It seems that those who in reality longed to gain independence also voted “for”.

Gorbachev told his aides that if the people voted against the Union, he would have to leave. But the outcome of the vote gave Mikhail Sergeevich a chance. He used it by putting forward an unexpected idea: to adopt a new Union Treaty that would weaken the power of the center and give more powers to the republics.

Nine of the fifteen republics that were part of the USSR accepted Gorbachev’s proposal. Six – Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Armenia and Georgia – refused.

For the Chairman of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR, Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin, Gorbachev's initiative was a complete surprise. But he supported this idea.

In a few years, everyone will begin to curse Yeltsin for the Belovezhskaya Accords. But at the end of the Soviet era, many people of various views were not at all opposed to separating Russia from the Soviet Union, freeing it from the need to care about other republics and giving it the opportunity to develop independently. This option seemed reasonable and practical.

Assistant to the President of the USSR Anatoly Sergeevich Chernyaev, a front-line soldier who went through the entire war, wrote in his diary: “The multinational problem of the Union can only be solved through the Russian question. Let Russia leave the USSR, and let the rest do as they want. True, if Ukraine also leaves, we will temporarily cease to be a great power. So what? We will survive and regain this title through the revival of Russia.”

Thoughts characteristic of that time.

On April 23, 1991, the leaders of nine republics met with Gorbachev in Novo-Ogarevo. This is an old estate in a pine forest on the banks of the Moscow River. There is a two-story reception house there. On the second floor, work was underway on the draft of the new Union Treaty.

“For some time, the 9+1 agreement was a source of a kind of euphoria,” recalled assistant to the USSR President Georgy Khosroevich Shakhnazarov. – As if at the moment when two armies were ready to meet in a fierce hand-to-hand combat, their leaders heeded the voice of the people and agreed to live in harmony. We even celebrated this event with a glass of champagne. As Mikhail Sergeevich later said, at dinner he and Boris Nikolaevich, clinking glasses, drank to each other’s health.”

The dispute was mainly between Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Boris Nikolaevich, as a rule, did not retreat from his position. So the discussions usually ended in his favor.

These two people watched each other jealously. Gorbachev still had formal power over the entire country and global recognition. Yeltsin has an unclear position as the Russian leader and popular support. Yeltsin was jealous of Gorbachev, who was already president and who had everything in his hands. Gorbachev was jealous of Yeltsin, for whom ordinary people voted and in whose support huge rallies gathered.

Two and a half months earlier, on February 7, 1991, the Supreme Soviet of Russia decided, simultaneously with the Union one, to hold a republican referendum with the question: “Do you consider it necessary to introduce the post of President of the RSFSR, elected by popular vote?”

Gennady Burbulis:

– The Supreme Council blocked the idea of ​​the presidency for us. And then the union leadership came up with a referendum. And Russia received an unexpected gift, because we brought up the issue of popular approval of the idea of ​​the presidency for discussion.

Many chairmen of the Supreme Soviets of the republics have already rushed to rename themselves presidents. Yeltsin wanted to follow their example. He, like Gorbachev before, was irritated by the need to sit through meetings of the Supreme Council day after day.

A year earlier, Gorbachev had found a way to get rid of this exhausting work. In March 1990, at the Third Congress of People's Deputies, he was elected president of the Soviet Union. Ballots were counted all night long. The voting results were announced in the morning. Gorbachev was notified in advance that he had been elected. Mikhail Sergeevich took the oath of office and became the first Soviet president. And the last one, but then, of course, no one knew about it.

He proposed instead Anatoly Ivanovich Lukyanov as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, whom he considered a close ally. In the role of president, Mikhail Sergeevich felt more confident.

The decision of the Russian parliament to hold a referendum was reported by all media. But only a few people in the country knew that on the same day, February 7, 1991, the Chairman of the USSR KGB, Army General Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov, presented a secret note to President Gorbachev: “On the political situation in the country.”

In principle, twice a day the KGB chairman sent the head of state special, top-secret intelligence and counterintelligence materials. Special messages were delivered in sealed envelopes. Even the president's trusted assistants had no right to open or read them. And almost every day the chairman of the committee appeared in Gorbachev’s office with a folder. The most important materials were reported one on one, without witnesses.

But notes of a political nature, in which the KGB chairman proposed to essentially change the course of the country, were rare. In a February note, Kryuchkov openly named the main opponent of the current government: Yeltsin “together with certain forces, shadow business circles.” He warned Gorbachev: “The policy of appeasement of the aggressive wing of the ‘democratic movements’ allows pseudo-democrats to freely implement their plans to seize power.”

The KGB chairman proposed strengthening state control over the media. Otherwise, they will fall into the hands of anti-communists: “one propaganda organ after another is conquered, and when this fails, new ones are created. Only in the last month in Russia, in particular in Moscow, four new major publications began to be published and two radio stations began broadcasting.”

Kryuchkov called on Gorbachev to completely change his policy and abandon the main achievements of perestroika - glasnost and democratization. And create a mechanism for suppressing political opponents: “We cannot exclude the possibility of the formation at the appropriate moment of temporary structures as part of the implementation of emergency measures provided to the President by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.”

In other words, the ideas of creating a State Committee for Emergency Situations (GKChP) not provided for by the Constitution and forceful suppression of political opponents matured long before August 1991. Top officials felt that power was slipping out of their hands and were ready to maintain it by any means necessary.

Gorbachev did not respond to the note, realizing that its author would like to return the state to the situation that existed before April 1985. But Mikhail Sergeevich in February 1991, apparently, did not realize - he could not even imagine this! - that those dissatisfied with what is happening will want to remove him too.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of people in the country pinned their hopes on Yeltsin. The struggle for social justice was often demagogic in nature, but in the mouth of Boris Nikolayevich all these slogans sounded very convincing.

Appeal to Russian autonomies: “Take as much sovereignty as you can swallow!” – was also a strong move, which immediately attracted many republics to Yeltsin’s side. Then, when the Soviet Union collapses, it will begin to have troubles with the autonomies. But that is another topic.

Boris Nikolayevich and his entourage persistently convinced people that the introduction of the post of president was the only way to save Russia from all problems. The aspirations of the democrats coincided with the slogans of the nationalists, who insisted that Russians were being wronged and Russia should not pay for everyone.

In the referendum on March 17, the introduction of the presidential post in Russia was supported by 70.88 percent of voters. On April 24, the Supreme Council of the Republic adopted the laws “On the President of the RSFSR” and “On the Election of the President of the RSFSR”, according to which the head of state was elected for a term of five years. The elections of the first president of the Russian Federation were scheduled for June 12, 1991.

On March 13, 1954, the security officers were removed from the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, and a new department was formed: the State Security Committee of the CCCP - KGB.

The new structure was in charge of intelligence, operational search activities and state border protection. In addition, the task of the KGB was to provide the CPSU Central Committee with information affecting state security.

The concept is broad, to be sure: it includes the personal life of dissidents and the study of unidentified flying objects.

Separating truth from fiction and recognizing disinformation intended for “controlled leakage” is now almost impossible. So, to believe or not to believe in the truth of the declassified secrets and mysteries of the KGB archives is everyone’s personal right.

The current security officers who worked in the structure during its heyday, some with a smile, some with irritation, brush it off: no secret developments were carried out, nothing paranormal was studied. But, like any other closed organization that has influence on people’s destinies, the KGB could not avoid being a hoax.

The activities of the committee are overgrown with rumors and legends, and even partial declassification of the archives cannot dispel them. Moreover, the archives of the former KGB were seriously cleaned in the mid-50s. In addition, the wave of declassification that began in 1991-1992 quickly subsided, and now the release of data is proceeding at an almost imperceptible pace.

Hitler: dead or saved?

Disputes about the circumstances of Hitler's death have not subsided since May 1945. Did he commit suicide or was the body of a double found in the bunker? What happened to the remains of the Fuhrer?

In February 1962, captured documents from World War II were transferred to the TsGAOR of the USSR (the modern State Archives of the Russian Federation) for storage. And along with them - fragments of a skull and a sofa armrest with traces of blood.

As Vasily Khristoforov, head of the registration and archival collections department of the FSB, told Interfax, the remains were found during an investigation into the circumstances of the disappearance of the former Reich President of Germany in 1946. A forensic examination identified the partially charred remains found as fragments of the parietal bones and occipital bone of an adult. The act dated May 8, 1945 states: the discovered pieces of the skull “may have fallen from the corpse taken from the pit on May 5, 1945.”

“Documentary materials with the results of the repeated investigation were combined into a case with the symbolic name “Myth.” The materials of the said case, as well as the materials of the investigation into the circumstances of the Fuhrer’s death for 1945, stored in the Central Archive of the FSB of Russia, were declassified in the 90s of the last century and became available to the general public,” the agency’s interlocutor said.

What remained of the top of the Nazi elite and did not end up in the KGB archives did not immediately find rest: the bones were repeatedly reburied, and on March 13, 1970, Andropov ordered the removal and destruction of the remains of Hitler, Braun and the Goebbels couple. This is how the plan for the secret event “Archive” appeared, carried out by the forces of the operational group of the Special Department of the KGB of the 3rd Army of the GSVG. Two acts were drawn up. The latter states: “The destruction of the remains was carried out by burning them at the stake in a vacant lot near the city of Schönebeck, 11 kilometers from Magdeburg. The remains were burned out, crushed into ash along with coal, collected and thrown into the Biederitz River.”

It is difficult to say what Andropov was guided by when giving such an order. Most likely, he feared - and not without reason - that even after a while the fascist regime would have followers, and the burial place of the ideologist of the dictatorship would become a place of pilgrimage.

By the way, in 2002, the Americans announced that they had X-rays that were kept by the dentist, SS Oberführer Hugo Blaschke. Reconciliation with fragments available in the archives of the Russian Federation once again confirmed the authenticity of parts of Hitler’s jaw.

But despite the seemingly indisputable evidence, the version that the Fuhrer managed to leave Germany, occupied by Soviet troops, does not leave modern researchers alone. They usually look for it in Patagonia. Indeed, Argentina after World War II gave shelter to many Nazis who tried to escape justice. There were even witnesses that Hitler, along with other fugitives, appeared here in 1947. It’s hard to believe: even the official radio of Nazi Germany on that memorable day announced the death of the Fuhrer in the unequal struggle against Bolshevism.

Marshal Georgy Zhukov was the first to question the fact of Hitler's suicide. A month after the victory, he said: “The situation is very mysterious. We did not find Hitler’s identified corpse. I cannot say anything affirmative about Hitler’s fate. At the very last minute he could have flown out of Berlin, since the runways allowed this.” It was June 10th. And the body was found on May 5, the autopsy report was dated May 8... Why did the question of the authenticity of the Fuhrer’s body arise only a month later?

The official version of Soviet historians is as follows: on April 30, 1945, Hitler and his wife Eva Braun committed suicide by taking potassium cyanide. At the same time, according to eyewitnesses, the Fuhrer shot himself. By the way, during the autopsy, glass was found in the oral cavity, which speaks in favor of the version with poison.

Unidentified flying objects

Anton Pervushin, in his author’s investigation, cites one illustrative story characterizing the KGB’s attitude to the phenomenon. The writer and assistant to the chairman of the committee, Igor Sinitsyn, who worked for Yuri Andropov from 1973 to 1979, once loved to tell this story.

“Once, while looking through the foreign press, I came across a series of articles about unidentified flying objects - UFOs... I dictated a summary of them to the stenographer in Russian and took them to the chairman along with the magazines.... He quickly leafed through the materials. After thinking a little, he "I suddenly took out a thin folder from my desk drawer. The folder contained a report from one of the officers of the 3rd Directorate, that is, military counterintelligence," Sinitsyn recalled.

The information conveyed to Andropov could easily become the plot of a science fiction film: the officer, while on a night fishing trip with his friends, watched as one of the stars approached the Earth and took the form of an aircraft. The navigator estimated the size and location of the object by eye: diameter - about 50 meters, height - approximately five hundred meters above sea level.

"He saw two bright rays emerge from the center of the UFO. One of the rays stood vertically to the surface of the water and rested on it. The other ray, like a searchlight, searched the expanse of water around the boat. Suddenly it stopped, illuminating the boat. Shining several more on it seconds, the beam went out. Along with it, the second, vertical beam went out,” Sinitsyn quoted the counterintelligence report as saying.

According to his own testimony, these materials later came to Kirilenko and over time seem to have been lost in the archives. This is roughly what skeptics reduce the KGB's probable interest in the UFO problem to: pretending that it is interesting, but in reality burying the materials in the archives as potentially insignificant.

In November 1969, almost 60 years after the fall of the Tunguska meteorite (which, according to some researchers, was not a fragment of a celestial body, but a crashed spaceship), there was a report of another fall of an unidentified object on the territory of the Soviet Union. Not far from the village of Berezovsky in the Sverdlovsk region, several luminous balls were seen in the sky, one of which began to lose altitude, fell, and was then followed by a strong explosion. In the late 1990s, a number of media outlets obtained a film that supposedly captured the work of investigators and scientists at the site of an alleged UFO crash in the Urals. The work was supervised by “a man who looked like a KGB officer.”

“Our family lived in Sverdlovsk at that time, and my relatives even worked in the regional party committee. However, even there, almost no one knew the whole truth about the incident. In Berezovsky, where our friends lived, everyone accepted the legend about the exploded granary "Those who saw the UFO chose not to spread the word. The disk was taken out, presumably, in the dark, in order to avoid unnecessary witnesses," contemporaries of the events recalled.

It is noteworthy that even ufologists themselves, people initially inclined to believe in stories about UFOs, criticized these videos: the uniform of Russian soldiers, their manner of holding weapons, cars flashing in the frame - all this did not inspire confidence even among susceptible people. True, the denial of one particular video does not mean that adherents of the belief in UFOs are abandoning their beliefs.

Vladimir Azhazha, a ufologist and acoustic engineer by training, said this: “Does the state hide any information about UFOs from the public, we must assume that yes. On what basis? Based on the list of information that constitutes state and military secrets. Indeed, in "In 1993, the State Security Committee of the Russian Federation, at the written request of the then president of the UFO Association of Pilot-Cosmonaut Pavel Popovich, handed over to the UFO Center, which I headed, about 1,300 documents related to UFOs. These were reports from official bodies, commanders of military units, messages from private individuals."

Occult interests

In the 1920-30s, a prominent figure in the Cheka/OGPU/NKVD (predecessor of the KGB) Gleb Bokiy, the same one who created laboratories for the development of drugs to influence the consciousness of those arrested, became interested in studying extrasensory perception and even searched for the legendary Shambhala.

After his execution in 1937, folders with the results of the experiments allegedly ended up in the secret archives of the KGB. After Stalin's death, some of the documents were irretrievably lost, the rest ended up in the committee's basements. Under Khrushchev, work continued: America was worried about rumors periodically coming from overseas about the invention of biogenerators, mechanisms that control thinking.

Separately, it is worth mentioning another object of close attention of the Soviet security forces - the famous mentalist Wolf Messing. Despite the fact that he himself, and later his biographers, willingly shared intriguing stories about the outstanding abilities of the hypnotist, the KGB archives did not preserve any documentary evidence of the “miracles” performed by Messing. In particular, neither Soviet nor German documents contain information that Messing fled Germany after he predicted the fall of fascism, and Hitler placed a bounty on his head. It is also impossible to confirm or deny the data that Messing personally met with Stalin and he tested his outstanding abilities, forcing him to perform certain tasks.

On the other hand, information about Ninel Kulagina, who in 1968 attracted the attention of law enforcement agencies with her extraordinary abilities, has been preserved. This woman’s abilities (or lack thereof?) are still controversial: among lovers of the supernatural she is revered as a pioneer, and among the scientific fraternity her achievements cause at least an ironic grin.

Meanwhile, video chronicles of those years recorded how Kulagina, without the help of her hand or any devices, rotates the compass needle and moves small objects, such as a matchbox. During the experiments, the woman complained of back pain, and her pulse was 180 beats per minute. Its secret was supposedly that the energy field of the hands, thanks to the superconcentration of the subject, could move objects falling within its zone of influence.

It is also known that after the end of World War II, a unique device made on Hitler’s personal order came to the Soviet Union as a trophy: it was used for astrological predictions of a military-political nature. The device was faulty, but Soviet engineers restored it, and it was transferred to the astronomical station near Kislovodsk.

Knowledgeable people said that FSB Major General Georgy Rogozin (in 1992-1996, the former first deputy head of the presidential security service and who received the nickname “Nostradamus in uniform” for his studies on astrology and telekinesis) used captured SS archives concerning occult sciences in his research.

Tags:

The book by K. Andrew and O. Gordievsky provides a broad retrospective of Soviet foreign intelligence operations from its founding in 1917 until the collapse of the USSR. The book is based on extensive factual and historical material obtained by the authors and testimonies of eyewitnesses and participants in these operations. And the personal experience of Oleg Gordievsky, who served for 23 years in the KGB’s foreign intelligence service, and the knowledge of Professor Christopher Andrew, a leading researcher of intelligence history in the West, gives this book even greater significance. The Russian edition is supplemented by historical facts that became known at the time of publication in Russia.

Secrets of Lubyanka: a view from Britain 1

Preface to Russian edition 2

Evolution of the KGB 3

List of abbreviations 3

Introduction 4

Chapter I - Roots (1565-1917) 8

Chapter II - the Cheka, counter-revolution and the “Lockhart conspiracy” (1917-1921) 13

Chapter III - Foreign intelligence and "active actions". The era of Dzerzhinsky (1919-1927) 21

Chapter IV - Stalin and spy mania (1926-1938) 33

Chapter V - "Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-1940) 44

Chapter VI - Radio Intercept Service, Agent Infiltration and the "Fabulous Five" from Cambridge (1930-1939) 51

Chapter VII - World War II (1939-1941) 67

Chapter VIII - The Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) 78

Chapter X - Cold War. Stalin's stage (1945-1953) 102

Chapter XI - Cold War after Stalin (1953-1963) 116

Chapter XII - The era of Brezhnev. East, Third World and West (1964-1972/73) 132

Chapter XIII - Decline and collapse of détente (1972-1984) 148

Chapter XIV - Under Gorbachev (1985-1991) 168

Application: 179

Bibliography 179

Oleg Gordievsky, Christopher Andrew
KGB

Secrets of Lubyanka: a view from Britain

Oleg Gordievsky is a spy. Or, to put it more elegantly, an agent of foreign intelligence. In this case, the English one, which he served faithfully for more than a decade.

Gordievsky is not the first KGB officer to commit an act of treason against his homeland: in the Kryukov KGB, at least half a dozen security officers were caught red-handed while carrying out espionage operations in favor of other states. He managed to escape the networks of counterintelligence and is now enjoying the fruits of freedom with his family somewhere in a well-fed English province.

No matter how we judge the actions of our compatriots who changed the geography of their place of residence, fled or emigrated from the country of developed socialism, the attitude towards spies is always unambiguous. And not only here. Kim Philby, John Walker, Heinz Felfe, hundreds of other people who in the past connected their lives with Soviet intelligence and sometimes worked for it with the most noble motives, are criminals in the eyes of the people they betrayed. They will remain so in the history of different peoples, no matter what clothes they dressed themselves in during their lifetime.

What has been said does not mean at all that spies are inveterate scoundrels and untalented creatures who cannot or do not want to earn their daily bread in a righteous way. Rather, on the contrary: living a double life for many years, constantly walking on the edge of a knife, wearing the guise of a loyal citizen and a respectable family man, carefully following the instructions of one superior and then secretly running with a report to another is not an easy task, requiring not only good mental health, but also extraordinary acting abilities, the gift of transformation, in which masterly deception crowns all the player’s efforts.

Oleg Gordievsky probably belonged to this category of spies. He can easily be put on the same level as Penkovsky, a colonel of Soviet military intelligence who collaborated with the British in the 60s. Unlike Penkovsky, who ended his life on death row, Gordievsky was lucky: he not only escaped a well-deserved punishment, but also wrote, in collaboration with Christopher Andrew, a book: “The KGB. The History of Foreign Policy Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev.” This book was published for the first time in England in 1990 and is now becoming available to the Russian public.

I will say without mincing words: a more thorough and reliable study on Soviet intelligence has not yet been published by anyone or anywhere.

Of course, even before 1990, the Western book market offered the reader in abundance memoirs of former KGB and GRU employees (Orlov, Deryabin, Khokhlov, Golitsyn, Levchenko, Suvorov), works of numerous Sovietologists devoted to the activities of the Soviet state security agencies (Conquest, Dallin, Epstein, Hanson , Hingley, etc.) But perhaps the most noisy success was the book about the KGB by John Barron, published in several editions after the scandal with Soviet “diplomats” in London in 1971. Unfortunately, this bestseller contains a lot of fabrications, gossip, distortions and inaccuracies. It can rather be classified as a fascinating read than as a detailed and verified story about the all-powerful Soviet department.

Gordievsky's book compares favorably with all previous publications on this topic with a full-fledged retrospective analysis of the formation and development of intelligence structures in Russia and the USSR. It contains rich material previously inaccessible to the average citizen and the press, and clearly reveals the mechanism of functioning of the most closed system of a totalitarian state. Giving credit to Gordievsky himself as the author, I cannot help but say that a significant part of the book came from the pen of Christopher Andrew. This concerns, first of all, episodes from the activities of Soviet intelligence, which Gordievsky, due to his official position, could not have known about. Thus, the case of the murder of the Bulgarian writer, emigrant G. Markov was known to a very limited circle of people, and Gordievsky did not have access to it. Many pages devoted to the work of Soviet intelligence in the United States were apparently written by Christopher Andrew based on materials from American intelligence agencies and the testimony of defectors from among the former KGB officers. However, this is the advantage of the book: it covers broad layers and gives a global vision of problems.

The reader will probably want to gallop through the first hundred pages, which describes the history of the emergence of the Russian political police and its direct successor, the Cheka, and plunge into modern times with its twisted plots and many familiar names. Do not hurry. To understand the roots and origins of our present-day troubles, it is necessary to know how and where it all began. But to know not from the “Short Course” and textbooks of the Ministry of Education, not from slick and sterile historical monographs, but from unbiased, objective sources, which this book can serve as. The role of Lenin and Dzerzhinsky in organizing mass terror, the “Lockhart conspiracy” and the figure of the British spy Sidney Reilly, the activities of the Comintern and the “successes” of the Cheka-GPU on the domestic front will be seen in a new way. An entire chapter is devoted to Stalin and his relationship with law enforcement agencies. The history of the preparation for the murder of Trotsky is described in detail. Sorge, Philby, Maclean, Burgess, Blunt - names that once filled the headlines of all newspapers in the world, except Soviet ones, now, thanks to this book, are depicted in portraits and, undoubtedly, will become closer and more understandable to those for whom they made enormous sacrifices .

The activities of Soviet agents in the United States during World War II are clearly presented. Stalin's state security, taking advantage of the friendly disposition of the Roosevelt administration towards its ally in the East, managed to weave a very effective spy network in Washington. However, Gordievsky is in vain throwing shade at the president's closest adviser, Harry Hopkins. In those years, sympathy for the warring Russia was so strong in American society that any official could be classified as an agent by unscrupulous security officers only because of his willingness to share information and treat favorably the requests of Soviet representatives.

The problems of the post-war system in Eastern Europe, the rule of the party and police mafia there, the vile role of the then Soviet Ambassador to Hungary Yu. Andropov, who lured the leaders of the Hungarian revolution into a trap and then handed them over to the KGB, are covered in detail.

Soviet intelligence is presented most impressively in the book. Its history essentially began with the arrival of Alexander Sakharovsky at PSU in 1956, who did a lot to turn intelligence into a powerful, well-functioning bureaucratic mechanism. Having inherited an extensive intelligence network from his predecessors, Sakharovsky was able at first not only to consolidate, but also to expand the scale of foreign operations. This was greatly facilitated by the aggressiveness of the KGB counterintelligence apparatus, which shamelessly seduced or coerced foreign citizens in Moscow, be they ambassadors, military attaches, clerks or embassy guards, into cooperation with the KGB. They did not disdain tourists and businessmen, who were rare in those years.