Not that Suvorov and that same Ivashutin
Two portraits for the Day of Military Scout
After the October coup of 1917, all the military attache of the tsarist army refused to cooperate with the new government. 5 November 1918 of the year as part of the newly baked Field Headquarters, by order of the Revolutionary Military Council, the Registration Authority was formed, which was charged with obtaining information about the enemy. From this day and leads his history the current Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU).
The GRU is a self-sufficient organization, which includes the agent's strategic, space, electronic and military intelligence, has its own illegal immigrants, its own research institutes and laboratories, educational institutions and special forces brigades. Special purpose units listen to the air of the whole world in all frequency bands, the management manages the military attaches at the embassies of Russia. There is no other such special service in the world. In the US, for example, all these functions are scattered around the top ten organizations.
The silence of the "Aquarium"
All intelligence is little talkative, but the GRU is one of the most silent and closed organizations. Almost every second veteran of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has written a book of memoirs. In the military intelligence there are three or four people, and even then their memoirs have gone through so many filters that one cannot hope for revelation.
At one time I managed to work in the GRU special archive. I was a correspondent for Red Star, I wore epaulets, I had access to secret documents on form No. 1, and they also believed me. Without this belief in intelligence, it is impossible to work, because it is often unrealistic to check a person.
In one of the offices of the "Aquarium" (9-storey building of the headquarters of the GRU of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, predominantly with glass walls in the area of the old Khodynka), an elegantly and at the same time simply dressed person who identified himself as Vasily Vladimirovich asked me I wanted to know about a certain person. “All,” I reply. “This is impossible and not necessary,” says Vasily Vladimirovich, without letting go of the zipper bag. Then he names the date before the occurrence of which the documents are not subject to declassification. It would take a very long time to wait. And then I start asking questions. A well-trained professional officer who has visited more than one long overseas business trip, my interlocutor responds, I think, with pleasure. But rounded, streamlined, literary phrases stop all my inquiries at a certain turn, further stirring up my curiosity.
Receiving stingy explanations “not for print”, I involuntarily accept such a manner of conversation and already myself begin to fear that my interlocutor would express something extra.
Vladimir silently peeps typed case materials. Finding the right one, it makes bookmarks and turns a thick volume towards me, showing in such a way that it is possible to read and what is not. Sometimes he puts standard sheets of paper on a case page, leaving one or two paragraphs to read. If I, being carried away, try to go further, his hand gently falls on the sheet: “It’s better not to know - you will sleep better”.
The GRU is known to the general public by few names. I will dwell on two. I met with Army General Peter Ivashutin shortly before his death. I communicate with the writer Viktor Suvorov even now, though by telephone only.
Strong analyst, weak operative
Our acquaintance with the traitor writer Viktor Suvorov (aka Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun) took place after the publication in the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper of my interview with the then head of the GRU, Colonel-General Yevgeny Timokhin. In it, we with the general “walked” on Suvorov as the author of the acclaimed book “Aquarium”.
The next day, Rezun called me from Bristol. I think, among other reasons for this call, there was also gratitude for the advertising on my part that was involuntary in a newspaper that was published in large circulation at that time. Since two decades already, he will certainly congratulate me by phone on his birthday and I answer the same. In a copy of his book presented to me, he wrote: “To my honest opponent”. This makes it easy for me to answer the puzzled questions of familiar peelers, which “connects with this ...”
Captain Rezun and his family fled to England with the help of MI-6 from Geneva, where he worked under the cover of a diplomat at the UN headquarters. He ran, as he claims, in order to write the truth: World War II was not started by Hitler, but by Stalin.
Since then, his books - "Icebreaker", "Day" M "," Control "," Choice "come out in huge editions. Around the world is full and supporters and opponents of this man.
In the Intelligence Service, I was told that Rezun was a strong analyst, but a useless operative — he was shaking like an aspen leaf on caches. “They call me enemies with all sorts of bad words,” he responds with excitement to his opponents, “but they do not overstep the limits of normative vocabulary. And you guys, do not hesitate ... He left the Soviet Union, changed the Soviet Motherland, violated the sacred oath. The only thing that is incomprehensible to me: you, the rest of them in the amount of three hundred million, why did they follow me? ”
After the revelations of the former intelligence officer Rezun, there were quite a few unexpected versions connected with our recent history. They started talking about what was previously silently hushed up. For example, about an attempt to return to the USSR the Armenian lands, rejected by Turkey. That Truman decided to drop atomic bombs on Japan after three Soviet armies advanced to the border with Turkey in the Tabriz area. And allegedly Stalin after the atomic bombing said: “The march to Istanbul is canceled.” Or there are either versions or revealed facts: as if Hitler's Germany was developing the mineral resources of Antarctica, having the base number 211 there. Or the statement that Israel won in the Arab-Israeli war 1949 of the year because the USSR was on its side (with its state anti-Semitism!).
Suvorov's "Aquarium" begins with the scene of burning in a furnace on the territory of the GRU, a colonel of Soviet military intelligence, convicted of treason. During the interview with the head of the GRU, I could not help asking him what was true in this scene and what was fiction. The owner of the office led me to the window and pointed out the only pipe towering over the territory. Then he called the officer and ordered him to escort me to the “crematorium”. It turned out that the furnace was designed to burn documents and its mouth was so narrow that no even the most slender colonel, and even more so attached to the stretcher, as Rezun writes, would not have climbed into it.
Autumn of the patriarch on the former state dacha
Several years ago, on the eve of the Day of the Military Intelligence Officer at the Troekurovsky Cemetery, at the tomb of Pyotr Ivanovich Ivashutin, Hero of the Soviet Union, army general, former chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, a monument was opened. Present exclusively their own - the leadership of the GRU, veterans, relatives. Of the journalists - only your humble servant.
Ivashutin led the GRU for nearly a quarter of a century, outlived three general secretaries. Only Edgar Hoover, who headed the US Federal Bureau of Investigation for nearly half a century, can compete with him as a long-time head of a powerful intelligence service. However, if you add on for about a quarter of a century of service Ivashutin in the Soviet counterintelligence, including in Smersho, Hoover takes second place.
After the revelation of Oleg Penkovsky, the head of the GRU, Army General Ivan Serov, was removed from his post, demoted to a major general and deprived of the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Ivashutin, as his adjutant Igor Popov told me, asked for the GRU himself. In 1962, Pyotr Ivanovich traveled to Novocherkassk as part of a government commission headed by Anastas Mikoyan - to quench the unrest of workers of an electric locomotive factory. We extinguished shooting. Ivashutin offered other, more humane measures to influence the instigators and organizers of the riots, but at the top they preferred harsh reprisals. Less than a year after the events in Novocherkassk, Peter Ivashutin asked for a transfer.
It was under Ivashutin that the GRU acquired the power, diversity, and deaf secrecy that it has today. When he was in November 1963 of the year in Cuba, in the town of Lourdes, a special electronic intelligence group "Reed" was created, in 1969-m the first reconnaissance ship "Crimea" went on a military campaign, and then built the "Caucasus", "Primorye" and "Transbaikalia" ". When Ivashutin created and automated military intelligence system under the code name "Dozor", in one of the regions of North Korea appeared a complex of electronic intelligence "Ramona". The years of command of Peter Ivanovich in the GRU are called the “era of Ivashutin.”
On the eve of the 90 anniversary of the patriarch of military intelligence, I, accompanied by two GRU officers, went to the hero of the day to the hero of the day. Panel, a very modest house, built in the Khrushchev years. In 1992, the officials set a condition for the landlord: either buy out the state dacha or move out. They demanded, as Peter Ivanovich said, an inconceivable sum for those times. On the passbook he did not accumulate a tenth of the required. He sold his guns, added fur coats of his wife and daughter to them - bought them.
For Pyotr Ivanovich, this was the first meeting with a journalist as such. He communicated with writers: with Vasily Ardamatsky, Julian Semenov, Vadim Kozhevnikov, but he did not give an interview to anyone. I was the first and the last.
The original of this interview was agreed at the GRU for a long time, after which I was informed of the decision: “Prematurely.” I podosadovav, removed the cassette in a "long box" and now returned to the record, bypassing the delicate moments.
By the time of our conversation, Pyotr Ivanovich was already almost blind, scolding ophthalmologists for an unsuccessful operation. He spoke slowly, for a long time, in detail describing any episode. I will dwell on some.
Retired Kings and Diamond Traitors
In 1945, Ivashutin was most directly related to the removal of the Romanian king, Mihai, from power. “The 26-year-old pilot, a katernik, a favorite of the maid of honor, about a dozen of whom he carried with him, Mihai did not really think about power,” said Peter Ivanovich. - But his mother Elizabeth was a woman clever and sly. More politician than himself. The task of the special services was to make the leader of the Communist Party of Romania Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Deja famous, popular and put at the head of the state. For this, the name of the front commander Fyodor Ivanovich Tolbukhin was played (although in reality there was nothing of the kind), Mihai was invited to the celebration, he was awarded the Order of Victory, the elegant yacht hijacked from Constanza to Odessa was returned to him, and a draft decree was slipped to him for good food about awarding Gheorghiu-Deja with the highest Romanian order. All the newspapers reported this. Mihai was told that he could not lead the new communist power, and he could not take the royal title off of himself either. Mihai loaded the property into the wagons, went first to Switzerland, then moved to Belgium. ”
Or a memory of Ivashutin. In post-war Germany, the commander of the Soviet grouping of troops, General Vasiliy Chuikov, almost stole a six-year-old son. And his housekeeper from repat ryantok. The fact is that this woman in the western sector of Berlin had a daughter under arrest. The occupation authorities have set a condition: you bring the son of the commander - you get your daughter. Troop security situation overslept. A woman with a knot of things and a boy was noticed by a subordinate of Ivashutin, a security officer who lived in the next house. Ivashutin phoned Chuikov, he rushed in, personally interrogated the thief, and even, unable to restrain himself, hit her in the face.
Some well-known stories sounded in the interpretation of Peter Ivanovich somewhat differently than in the official versions. For example, the case of a tunnel under the Berlin Wall and joining our communications communications, as reported by Soviet intelligence, George Blake. It is believed that the Soviet side pretended that nothing had happened, and for quite a long time drove misinformation to the other side. As Ivashutin told, his subordinates-Smerzens actually reached the wall, found a pattern (equipped tunnel), through which, slightly stooping, a man could pass. Indeed, they wanted to start a combination with a deuce or walk along the pattern to the station and blow it up. But the German colleagues, led by the Minister of Security, undertook an operation on themselves: the cable was cut off, and the pattern was blown up.
Ivashutin can also be considered the guardian of the so-called Muslim battalion (500 is a man of soldiers and officers of three nationalities - Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmen), who, in fact, took the beautifully fortified palace of Hafizullah Amin. The battalion laid the brunt of the operation. The “Alpha” group, to which the newspaper reporters gave all the glory, only cleaned the palace from the inside.
Under the watchful eye of the patriarch of military intelligence, the dolphin reconnaissance and sabotage formation was created in 1971, the scope of which was underwater. When not far from the Soviet Kamran base in Vietnam during a survey of an American aircraft carrier, two combat swimmers died after meeting with specially trained dolphins, Peter Ivanovich insisted on creating a similar nursery on the Black Sea.
Ivashutin told me about how our failed intelligence officers were pulled out of prisons, in how many states were the GRU residencies in the best years, how did the revolutionary movements support them, transferring large sums of money to them through exploration, how did the documents on which the leaders of these movements came to Moscow in order to be trained, the newest American 105-mm gun was taken out, the wife and son of the famous physicist Bruno Pontecorvo were dragged out in the USSR.
The topic of betrayal was not spared, including the high-profile case of General Dmitry Polyakov. Back in 1962, while on a business trip to the United States, he offered his services to the FBI. For a quarter of a century, Polyakov worked for the American special services — first for the FBI and then for the CIA; he served as a GRU resident. Tophat, Bourbon, Donald are just some of the operational pseudonyms of this clever, intelligent, cool, and cynical professional. Polyakov gave 19 illegal immigrants, more than one and a half hundred agents from among foreigners and revealed belonging to the Soviet military intelligence about 1500 people. Behind these figures are broken human fates, often death. The then CIA chief, Wolsey, called the traitor general a "diamond."
From the first meeting, Ivashutin had an intuitive distrust of this “diamond”: “He sits, not raising his head, does not turn in my direction. I never let him go abroad anymore. ”
The head of the GRU personnel department, Izotov, a former employee of the Central Committee, took Polyakov to his civilian recruitment department. Ivashutin ordered Polyakov to be transferred to military intelligence, where there are no agents and therefore fewer secrets. Polyakov worked there for about seven years. And during one of the missions of the GRU chief, Polyakov, he was seconded to India by a military attache. The order was signed by Deputy Ivashutin Meshcheryakov. In India, Polyakova and revealed.
Pyotr Ivanovich called the Englishman Thomas Lawrence a role model and a great intelligence agent: “In his memoirs he wrote: a man who has wrinkled his fingers in reconnaissance will not die with his death. Exaggerated, of course. "
By the end of our four-hour conversation, Ivashutin's wife, Maria Alekseevna, brought a cake to tea. The once omnipotent man, who was known and feared by all the intelligence of the world, reached for a piece and, hitting his fingers in a multicolored cream, embarrassed. And I felt sorry for the blind old man before my grief.
Book Truths and Golden Letters
With Igor Alexandrovich Popov, Ivashutin's adjutant, we met when we went to see Pyotr Ivanovich.
Igor came to the GRU together with Ivashutin, served with the general in the KGB and clearly missed his patron after his death. In the memoirs was frank. “Residents, military attaches, ambassadors after business trips, military leaders came to see Pyotr Ivanovich,” says Igor. - Once Vasily Stalin came to the reception. This was just before his reference to Kazan. He was in his tunic without shoulder straps and with shining gold buttons with the image of Joseph Stalin. I have never seen such buttons before or after anyone. It even seemed to me that they were really golden. I did not order the pass to Vasily. He apparently brought someone from the manual. Stalin looked extremely tired, dejected, although he was sober, which then rarely happened to him. ”
When I started talking about Polyakov, Igor Alexandrovich led me to two half-meter-high figures of English colonial soldiers in India, skillfully carved from wood of an expensive breed, hanging on the wall. “His gift,” explained Popov. - Apparently, he was carrying Peter Ivanovich, but he was away. “Okay,” he says, “this is for you.” When it was discovered that Polyakov was a traitor, I was going to burn it. I thought, suddenly there is some "bug" for the eavesdropping set. I tapped the figures, looked around - everything is clean. The wife says: “Somehow it's a pity to throw it away, they got accustomed here.” So left. And then it seemed to me that the radio microphone hidden in the depths of the colonial soldiers transmits our conversation to an unknown spy center. ”
I asked about Rezun-Suvorov, about whether he had been with Peter Ivanovich. “Of course,” answered Igor, “he has been. The daughter of Peter Ivanovich, Irina, was married to a diplomat and worked in Geneva, where the future writer Viktor Suvorov worked under the “roof” of the Soviet representation at the UN. Rezun transported a parcel from his father to Irina Petrovna. The standard set is black bread, herring, sausage, a bottle of vodka, and so on. He would come to the reception room and patter, helpfully and even ingeniously say: “Igorechek, I will give everything, of course, I will tell, I will do everything”. Two or three times he drove these parcels. Peter Ivanovich did not communicate with him. Then, when Rezun fled to England in 1978, Peter Ivanovich said indignantly: "This figure (the strongest curse of the chief) did not run much, so he also wrote a book where he turned everything around." I noticed that Rezun should be thanked to say that he did not write in this book how he carried parcels to the daughter of the GRU chief in Switzerland. “Actually, yes,” agreed Peter Ivanovich. Of course, he is a parasite, but on you ... Perhaps he did not blab out of respect for Peter Ivanovich. ”
As for the further history of the "Aquarium", after visiting the GRU in November 2002, Vladimir Putin allocated money to repair the building. The facade and lobby are much prettier. For the first time in the history, the name of the organization was laid out in gold letters on the building. They lasted exactly a day, and then were ruthlessly shot down. Tradition.
After the October coup of 1917, all the military attache of the tsarist army refused to cooperate with the new government. 5 November 1918 of the year as part of the newly baked Field Headquarters, by order of the Revolutionary Military Council, the Registration Authority was formed, which was charged with obtaining information about the enemy. From this day and leads his history the current Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU).
The GRU is a self-sufficient organization, which includes the agent's strategic, space, electronic and military intelligence, has its own illegal immigrants, its own research institutes and laboratories, educational institutions and special forces brigades. Special purpose units listen to the air of the whole world in all frequency bands, the management manages the military attaches at the embassies of Russia. There is no other such special service in the world. In the US, for example, all these functions are scattered around the top ten organizations.
The silence of the "Aquarium"
All intelligence is little talkative, but the GRU is one of the most silent and closed organizations. Almost every second veteran of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has written a book of memoirs. In the military intelligence there are three or four people, and even then their memoirs have gone through so many filters that one cannot hope for revelation.
At one time I managed to work in the GRU special archive. I was a correspondent for Red Star, I wore epaulets, I had access to secret documents on form No. 1, and they also believed me. Without this belief in intelligence, it is impossible to work, because it is often unrealistic to check a person.In one of the offices of the "Aquarium" (9-storey building of the headquarters of the GRU of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, predominantly with glass walls in the area of the old Khodynka), an elegantly and at the same time simply dressed person who identified himself as Vasily Vladimirovich asked me I wanted to know about a certain person. “All,” I reply. “This is impossible and not necessary,” says Vasily Vladimirovich, without letting go of the zipper bag. Then he names the date before the occurrence of which the documents are not subject to declassification. It would take a very long time to wait. And then I start asking questions. A well-trained professional officer who has visited more than one long overseas business trip, my interlocutor responds, I think, with pleasure. But rounded, streamlined, literary phrases stop all my inquiries at a certain turn, further stirring up my curiosity.
Receiving stingy explanations “not for print”, I involuntarily accept such a manner of conversation and already myself begin to fear that my interlocutor would express something extra.
Vladimir silently peeps typed case materials. Finding the right one, it makes bookmarks and turns a thick volume towards me, showing in such a way that it is possible to read and what is not. Sometimes he puts standard sheets of paper on a case page, leaving one or two paragraphs to read. If I, being carried away, try to go further, his hand gently falls on the sheet: “It’s better not to know - you will sleep better”.
The GRU is known to the general public by few names. I will dwell on two. I met with Army General Peter Ivashutin shortly before his death. I communicate with the writer Viktor Suvorov even now, though by telephone only.
Strong analyst, weak operative
Our acquaintance with the traitor writer Viktor Suvorov (aka Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun) took place after the publication in the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper of my interview with the then head of the GRU, Colonel-General Yevgeny Timokhin. In it, we with the general “walked” on Suvorov as the author of the acclaimed book “Aquarium”.
The next day, Rezun called me from Bristol. I think, among other reasons for this call, there was also gratitude for the advertising on my part that was involuntary in a newspaper that was published in large circulation at that time. Since two decades already, he will certainly congratulate me by phone on his birthday and I answer the same. In a copy of his book presented to me, he wrote: “To my honest opponent”. This makes it easy for me to answer the puzzled questions of familiar peelers, which “connects with this ...”
Captain Rezun and his family fled to England with the help of MI-6 from Geneva, where he worked under the cover of a diplomat at the UN headquarters. He ran, as he claims, in order to write the truth: World War II was not started by Hitler, but by Stalin.
Since then, his books - "Icebreaker", "Day" M "," Control "," Choice "come out in huge editions. Around the world is full and supporters and opponents of this man.
In the Intelligence Service, I was told that Rezun was a strong analyst, but a useless operative — he was shaking like an aspen leaf on caches. “They call me enemies with all sorts of bad words,” he responds with excitement to his opponents, “but they do not overstep the limits of normative vocabulary. And you guys, do not hesitate ... He left the Soviet Union, changed the Soviet Motherland, violated the sacred oath. The only thing that is incomprehensible to me: you, the rest of them in the amount of three hundred million, why did they follow me? ”
After the revelations of the former intelligence officer Rezun, there were quite a few unexpected versions connected with our recent history. They started talking about what was previously silently hushed up. For example, about an attempt to return to the USSR the Armenian lands, rejected by Turkey. That Truman decided to drop atomic bombs on Japan after three Soviet armies advanced to the border with Turkey in the Tabriz area. And allegedly Stalin after the atomic bombing said: “The march to Istanbul is canceled.” Or there are either versions or revealed facts: as if Hitler's Germany was developing the mineral resources of Antarctica, having the base number 211 there. Or the statement that Israel won in the Arab-Israeli war 1949 of the year because the USSR was on its side (with its state anti-Semitism!).
Suvorov's "Aquarium" begins with the scene of burning in a furnace on the territory of the GRU, a colonel of Soviet military intelligence, convicted of treason. During the interview with the head of the GRU, I could not help asking him what was true in this scene and what was fiction. The owner of the office led me to the window and pointed out the only pipe towering over the territory. Then he called the officer and ordered him to escort me to the “crematorium”. It turned out that the furnace was designed to burn documents and its mouth was so narrow that no even the most slender colonel, and even more so attached to the stretcher, as Rezun writes, would not have climbed into it.
Autumn of the patriarch on the former state dacha
Several years ago, on the eve of the Day of the Military Intelligence Officer at the Troekurovsky Cemetery, at the tomb of Pyotr Ivanovich Ivashutin, Hero of the Soviet Union, army general, former chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, a monument was opened. Present exclusively their own - the leadership of the GRU, veterans, relatives. Of the journalists - only your humble servant.
Ivashutin led the GRU for nearly a quarter of a century, outlived three general secretaries. Only Edgar Hoover, who headed the US Federal Bureau of Investigation for nearly half a century, can compete with him as a long-time head of a powerful intelligence service. However, if you add on for about a quarter of a century of service Ivashutin in the Soviet counterintelligence, including in Smersho, Hoover takes second place.
After the revelation of Oleg Penkovsky, the head of the GRU, Army General Ivan Serov, was removed from his post, demoted to a major general and deprived of the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Ivashutin, as his adjutant Igor Popov told me, asked for the GRU himself. In 1962, Pyotr Ivanovich traveled to Novocherkassk as part of a government commission headed by Anastas Mikoyan - to quench the unrest of workers of an electric locomotive factory. We extinguished shooting. Ivashutin offered other, more humane measures to influence the instigators and organizers of the riots, but at the top they preferred harsh reprisals. Less than a year after the events in Novocherkassk, Peter Ivashutin asked for a transfer.
It was under Ivashutin that the GRU acquired the power, diversity, and deaf secrecy that it has today. When he was in November 1963 of the year in Cuba, in the town of Lourdes, a special electronic intelligence group "Reed" was created, in 1969-m the first reconnaissance ship "Crimea" went on a military campaign, and then built the "Caucasus", "Primorye" and "Transbaikalia" ". When Ivashutin created and automated military intelligence system under the code name "Dozor", in one of the regions of North Korea appeared a complex of electronic intelligence "Ramona". The years of command of Peter Ivanovich in the GRU are called the “era of Ivashutin.”
On the eve of the 90 anniversary of the patriarch of military intelligence, I, accompanied by two GRU officers, went to the hero of the day to the hero of the day. Panel, a very modest house, built in the Khrushchev years. In 1992, the officials set a condition for the landlord: either buy out the state dacha or move out. They demanded, as Peter Ivanovich said, an inconceivable sum for those times. On the passbook he did not accumulate a tenth of the required. He sold his guns, added fur coats of his wife and daughter to them - bought them.
For Pyotr Ivanovich, this was the first meeting with a journalist as such. He communicated with writers: with Vasily Ardamatsky, Julian Semenov, Vadim Kozhevnikov, but he did not give an interview to anyone. I was the first and the last.
The original of this interview was agreed at the GRU for a long time, after which I was informed of the decision: “Prematurely.” I podosadovav, removed the cassette in a "long box" and now returned to the record, bypassing the delicate moments.
By the time of our conversation, Pyotr Ivanovich was already almost blind, scolding ophthalmologists for an unsuccessful operation. He spoke slowly, for a long time, in detail describing any episode. I will dwell on some.
Retired Kings and Diamond Traitors
In 1945, Ivashutin was most directly related to the removal of the Romanian king, Mihai, from power. “The 26-year-old pilot, a katernik, a favorite of the maid of honor, about a dozen of whom he carried with him, Mihai did not really think about power,” said Peter Ivanovich. - But his mother Elizabeth was a woman clever and sly. More politician than himself. The task of the special services was to make the leader of the Communist Party of Romania Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Deja famous, popular and put at the head of the state. For this, the name of the front commander Fyodor Ivanovich Tolbukhin was played (although in reality there was nothing of the kind), Mihai was invited to the celebration, he was awarded the Order of Victory, the elegant yacht hijacked from Constanza to Odessa was returned to him, and a draft decree was slipped to him for good food about awarding Gheorghiu-Deja with the highest Romanian order. All the newspapers reported this. Mihai was told that he could not lead the new communist power, and he could not take the royal title off of himself either. Mihai loaded the property into the wagons, went first to Switzerland, then moved to Belgium. ”
Or a memory of Ivashutin. In post-war Germany, the commander of the Soviet grouping of troops, General Vasiliy Chuikov, almost stole a six-year-old son. And his housekeeper from repat ryantok. The fact is that this woman in the western sector of Berlin had a daughter under arrest. The occupation authorities have set a condition: you bring the son of the commander - you get your daughter. Troop security situation overslept. A woman with a knot of things and a boy was noticed by a subordinate of Ivashutin, a security officer who lived in the next house. Ivashutin phoned Chuikov, he rushed in, personally interrogated the thief, and even, unable to restrain himself, hit her in the face.
Some well-known stories sounded in the interpretation of Peter Ivanovich somewhat differently than in the official versions. For example, the case of a tunnel under the Berlin Wall and joining our communications communications, as reported by Soviet intelligence, George Blake. It is believed that the Soviet side pretended that nothing had happened, and for quite a long time drove misinformation to the other side. As Ivashutin told, his subordinates-Smerzens actually reached the wall, found a pattern (equipped tunnel), through which, slightly stooping, a man could pass. Indeed, they wanted to start a combination with a deuce or walk along the pattern to the station and blow it up. But the German colleagues, led by the Minister of Security, undertook an operation on themselves: the cable was cut off, and the pattern was blown up.
Ivashutin can also be considered the guardian of the so-called Muslim battalion (500 is a man of soldiers and officers of three nationalities - Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmen), who, in fact, took the beautifully fortified palace of Hafizullah Amin. The battalion laid the brunt of the operation. The “Alpha” group, to which the newspaper reporters gave all the glory, only cleaned the palace from the inside.
Under the watchful eye of the patriarch of military intelligence, the dolphin reconnaissance and sabotage formation was created in 1971, the scope of which was underwater. When not far from the Soviet Kamran base in Vietnam during a survey of an American aircraft carrier, two combat swimmers died after meeting with specially trained dolphins, Peter Ivanovich insisted on creating a similar nursery on the Black Sea.
Ivashutin told me about how our failed intelligence officers were pulled out of prisons, in how many states were the GRU residencies in the best years, how did the revolutionary movements support them, transferring large sums of money to them through exploration, how did the documents on which the leaders of these movements came to Moscow in order to be trained, the newest American 105-mm gun was taken out, the wife and son of the famous physicist Bruno Pontecorvo were dragged out in the USSR.
The topic of betrayal was not spared, including the high-profile case of General Dmitry Polyakov. Back in 1962, while on a business trip to the United States, he offered his services to the FBI. For a quarter of a century, Polyakov worked for the American special services — first for the FBI and then for the CIA; he served as a GRU resident. Tophat, Bourbon, Donald are just some of the operational pseudonyms of this clever, intelligent, cool, and cynical professional. Polyakov gave 19 illegal immigrants, more than one and a half hundred agents from among foreigners and revealed belonging to the Soviet military intelligence about 1500 people. Behind these figures are broken human fates, often death. The then CIA chief, Wolsey, called the traitor general a "diamond."
From the first meeting, Ivashutin had an intuitive distrust of this “diamond”: “He sits, not raising his head, does not turn in my direction. I never let him go abroad anymore. ”
The head of the GRU personnel department, Izotov, a former employee of the Central Committee, took Polyakov to his civilian recruitment department. Ivashutin ordered Polyakov to be transferred to military intelligence, where there are no agents and therefore fewer secrets. Polyakov worked there for about seven years. And during one of the missions of the GRU chief, Polyakov, he was seconded to India by a military attache. The order was signed by Deputy Ivashutin Meshcheryakov. In India, Polyakova and revealed.
Pyotr Ivanovich called the Englishman Thomas Lawrence a role model and a great intelligence agent: “In his memoirs he wrote: a man who has wrinkled his fingers in reconnaissance will not die with his death. Exaggerated, of course. "
By the end of our four-hour conversation, Ivashutin's wife, Maria Alekseevna, brought a cake to tea. The once omnipotent man, who was known and feared by all the intelligence of the world, reached for a piece and, hitting his fingers in a multicolored cream, embarrassed. And I felt sorry for the blind old man before my grief.
Book Truths and Golden Letters
With Igor Alexandrovich Popov, Ivashutin's adjutant, we met when we went to see Pyotr Ivanovich.
Igor came to the GRU together with Ivashutin, served with the general in the KGB and clearly missed his patron after his death. In the memoirs was frank. “Residents, military attaches, ambassadors after business trips, military leaders came to see Pyotr Ivanovich,” says Igor. - Once Vasily Stalin came to the reception. This was just before his reference to Kazan. He was in his tunic without shoulder straps and with shining gold buttons with the image of Joseph Stalin. I have never seen such buttons before or after anyone. It even seemed to me that they were really golden. I did not order the pass to Vasily. He apparently brought someone from the manual. Stalin looked extremely tired, dejected, although he was sober, which then rarely happened to him. ”
When I started talking about Polyakov, Igor Alexandrovich led me to two half-meter-high figures of English colonial soldiers in India, skillfully carved from wood of an expensive breed, hanging on the wall. “His gift,” explained Popov. - Apparently, he was carrying Peter Ivanovich, but he was away. “Okay,” he says, “this is for you.” When it was discovered that Polyakov was a traitor, I was going to burn it. I thought, suddenly there is some "bug" for the eavesdropping set. I tapped the figures, looked around - everything is clean. The wife says: “Somehow it's a pity to throw it away, they got accustomed here.” So left. And then it seemed to me that the radio microphone hidden in the depths of the colonial soldiers transmits our conversation to an unknown spy center. ”
I asked about Rezun-Suvorov, about whether he had been with Peter Ivanovich. “Of course,” answered Igor, “he has been. The daughter of Peter Ivanovich, Irina, was married to a diplomat and worked in Geneva, where the future writer Viktor Suvorov worked under the “roof” of the Soviet representation at the UN. Rezun transported a parcel from his father to Irina Petrovna. The standard set is black bread, herring, sausage, a bottle of vodka, and so on. He would come to the reception room and patter, helpfully and even ingeniously say: “Igorechek, I will give everything, of course, I will tell, I will do everything”. Two or three times he drove these parcels. Peter Ivanovich did not communicate with him. Then, when Rezun fled to England in 1978, Peter Ivanovich said indignantly: "This figure (the strongest curse of the chief) did not run much, so he also wrote a book where he turned everything around." I noticed that Rezun should be thanked to say that he did not write in this book how he carried parcels to the daughter of the GRU chief in Switzerland. “Actually, yes,” agreed Peter Ivanovich. Of course, he is a parasite, but on you ... Perhaps he did not blab out of respect for Peter Ivanovich. ”
As for the further history of the "Aquarium", after visiting the GRU in November 2002, Vladimir Putin allocated money to repair the building. The facade and lobby are much prettier. For the first time in the history, the name of the organization was laid out in gold letters on the building. They lasted exactly a day, and then were ruthlessly shot down. Tradition.
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