The failed "lord of Russia"
Rosenblum
Considerable books and articles abroad and in Russia, several films were made about the life of a British agent and special operations connected with him and his colleagues. However, it is still a mystery man. Apparently, we will never learn much from his life (as we know, the Anglo-Saxon special services do not like to give out their secrets, even the old ones). His activities and motives still have geopolitical significance. Reilly and his ilk were at the forefront of the struggle of the West against Russian civilization.
Even the exact place and time of his birth is unknown, there are only assumptions. Reilly himself claimed that he was born in Ireland, and if he recognized his birth in Russia, he often claimed that he was the son of a nobleman. According to the generally accepted version, Reilly was born under the name of Solomon Rosenblum in Odessa in 1874. He was also known under the names of Simon, Georgy and Zygmund. His father is a Jew, the broker is Mark Rosenblum, his mother is nee Massino. There are fragmentary data that the Rosenblyum family then lived on Aleksandrovsky Avenue, in the center of the city, that a few years after Solomon’s birth, he separated from his father, and his stepfather insulted and beat up a little boy. He may have graduated from the Odessa gymnasium and studied for several semesters at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Novorossiysk.
According to Reilly, he took part in the youth revolutionary movement, was arrested. After a break with his family, George Solomon leaves for Germany, where he studies at the philosophical faculty of the University of Heidelberg, and only then moves to Britain. According to another version, he first went to South America, and from there came to England. In England, he marries Irish Margaret Reilly-Kellegren (Reilly-Callaghan) and takes her maiden name. Hence the version of Irish-born Reilly, which he himself launched. Newly elected Sydney Reilly accepted Catholicism, achieved British citizenship and graduated from the University of London with a degree in chemistry. Reilly himself talked about studying at the prestigious University of Oxford, but this is doubtful. He simply did not have the money to study in this prestigious institution.
In 1897, his first expedition took place as a novice scout in the wilds of the Amazon. Although the future superspy started as a simple cook. He liked the major of the British special services Frezerdzhil, and he helped him. Some researchers believe that Reilly graduated from the Devonshire spy school.
He had several masks - an antiquary, a collector, a businessman, a pilot, an assistant naval attache of Great Britain, etc. His passion was women, with the help of them he solved two tasks at once - he received money and information. Even at the beginning of his espionage path, he married the rich widow Margaret. According to one version, he even eliminated her elderly husband. With the money of his wife and (obviously) British intelligence from Reilly, an international businessman with extensive geographic and complicated financial affairs turned out.
Enemy of Russia
At the end of the XIX century, he worked for some time in the English Embassy in St. Petersburg. Established ties with foreign Russian revolutionaries. At the beginning of the 20th century, Reilly appears in the strategic, oil district of Baku with a vague mission - either a scout, or a researcher of oil deposits.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Reilly couple lived in Persia, then in China. On the eve of the Russo-Japanese War, Reilly is already operating in Port Arthur, where the Russian naval base was located. Under the guise of a major timber merchant, Reilly manages to penetrate the highest Russian military society of Port Arthur and steal plans of military fortifications and ciphers, which he sold to the Japanese command for big money. Despite suspicion of espionage, Reilly returned safely to Russia, and from 1905 until the beginning of World War I, he worked as an assistant military attache.
Reilly also worked in the naval concern Mandrochovich and Shubarsky - Mandro. Reilly linked the Russian firm with the German shipyards, on which ships for the Russian were built fleet. As a result, all the information about Russian-German trade relations, about new types of Russian weapons, Railay sent to London. Reilly was another passion and cover aviation. He became a member of the St. Petersburg Flight Club and was one of the organizers of the flight from St. Petersburg to Moscow. In Britain, Sydney Reilly joined the Royal Air Force as a lieutenant. All this allowed Reilly to create a wide range of ties in Russia. Over a long period of stay in Russia, Reilly managed to become “his” in various circles, which will be very useful to him in the future. After the outbreak of World War I, Reilly mediates in the supply of English and American to Russia. weapons. Visits Japan as a representative of the Russian-Asian Bank.
Revolution and struggle with Soviet Russia
I must say that Reilly was different devilish self-conceit. His idol was Napoleon. He even collected things related to Napoleon. "The Corsican artillery lieutenant extinguished the flames of the French Revolution," said Sydney Reilly. “Why should the agent of British intelligence, with so many favorable data, not become the master of Moscow?” Later, after the failure of the “ambassadors’ conspiracy, ”Reilly said:“ I was a millimeter from becoming the sovereign of Russia. ”
At the same time, Reilly, like many small-town Jewish revolutionaries like him, was a real Russophobe and hater of Russia. He was one of Winston Churchill's advisers on the Russian problem and headed the organization of the struggle with the Soviet authorities. Reilly wrote that the Bolsheviks are a cancer that affects the foundations of civilization, “archivists of the human race” and even “the power of anti-christ”. “At all costs, this abomination, born in Russia, must be eliminated ... There is only one enemy. Humanity must unite against this midnight horror. ” Thus, the idea that the Northern (Russian) empire is “Mordor”, and the Russians “archivists of the human race”, “Orcs”, has long roots.
In December 1917, Reilly returned to Russia. According to him, he had to restore the network of British residency, to establish relations with the French and introduce agents to the main Soviet institutions, and in the future to overthrow Lenin and return Russia to the Entente camp. It must be said that there is an opinion that Reilly most often acted as an impostor, adventurer, skillfully imagined himself stories“Without any rights to that, because Ernest Beuys was the main resident of British intelligence in Russia.
Reilly was in Russia, leaving the English ship in Murmansk. He "seduced" the chairman of the Murmansk Council of Deputies A. Yuriev. Murmansk was of great importance in the plans of London and was to become the mainstay of the British intervention in Russia. In January, 1918, through Arkhangelsk, Sydney Reilly made his way to Petrograd under the guise of the Turkish merchant Massino (mother's maiden name). Reilly has developed a boisterous activity on the organization of an agent network. He settled down well in Soviet Russia, was a regular guest in state institutions, had patrons in the highest echelons of power. Had several girlfriends and mistresses. He easily recruited Soviet employees, receiving the necessary documents, had access to the Kremlin, having received a genuine certificate addressed to the employee of the Petrograd Cheka, Sydney Georgievich Rellinsky.
In February, 1918, Lieutenant Reilly, visits her native Odessa as part of the British mission, Colonel Boyle. This mission was sent to the Black Sea Coast official for the purpose of exchanging prisoners of war and their evacuation and tried to provide mediation services in peace talks between Romania and representatives of the Soviet government. The mission also monitored the situation in the south of the collapsed Russian empire, created a spy network and looked for "footholds" that could be used to fight the Bolsheviks.
In May, 1918, under the guise of a Serbian officer, Reilly transports from the rebel Don across the central Russia to the polar Murmansk Alexander Kerensky. So, the British saved the "favorite of the revolution" from imminent reprisal from the hands of both the red and the white. The former head of the Provisional Government, a freemason who made a great contribution to the destruction of Russia, quietly left for London and lived a long life. For some time in 1918, Reilly lived in provincial Vologda, working in the British vice-consulate and establishing contacts with the Social Revolutionaries.
A conspiracy of ambassadors
The pinnacle of Reilly's activity was an attempt to organize a coup d'etat in Soviet Russia. The plot was prepared by diplomatic representatives and intelligence agencies of Great Britain, France and the United States. Therefore, he received the name "conspiracy of three ambassadors" or "Affairs Locke". The head of the conspiracy in Russia was considered the head of a special British mission, Robert Lockhart. They planned to arrest Lenin and Trotsky and expel them to Arkhangelsk, from where they could be taken away by British ships. The liquidation of Vladimir Lenin, who was considered the main threat to the interests of the Entente in Russia, was considered admissible. This should have led to the collapse of the Soviet regime in Russia. According to another version, foreigners wanted to eliminate only Lenin, so that Trotsky could transfer all the power.
The main striking force of the coup in Soviet Russia was to be soldiers from the division of Latvian riflemen who guarded the Kremlin. Naturally, they were not free of charge, they had to effect a violent change of power in Russia. Reilly gave 1,2 million rubles to one of the commanders of Latvian riflemen Eduard Petrovich Berzin (he promised 5-6 million rubles in total). Berzin played a convinced conspirator, ready for a “historical act”, for the sake of the independence of “beloved Latvia” before the British. The plan of Reilly included the immediate seizure of the State Bank, the Central Telegraph and the telephone and other important institutions of the capital. However, the idea failed. The commander of the Latvian riflemen, Berzin, immediately transferred the money and all the information to the commissioner of the Latvian division, Peterson, and that to Sverdlov and Dzerzhinsky.
As a result, the conspiracy failed miserably. In the midst of the preparation of the uprising in Moscow and Petrograd, 30 August 1918, there were reports of the assassination of the head of the Petrograd Cheka, M. Uritzky, and the assassination attempt on Lenin. This story is dark, there is an opinion about the involvement in this case of Trotsky and Sverlov, who wanted to eliminate Lenin and seize power in Russia into their own hands. This led to the intensification of the Soviet special services. On August 31, the KGB cordoned off the British Embassy in Petrograd. But the British refused to surrender and resisted. The embassy was taken by storm and subjected to defeat. Attache Cromie died. In Moscow, a diplomat Lockhart and a resident intelligence Boyce were arrested. Lockhart sent. Reilly miraculously escaped execution. He was sentenced to death in absentia "at the first detection of them within the territory of Russia." Disguised as a priest, Reilly flees to Riga occupied by the Germans, and from there, on a false German passport, leaves for Holland and then to England.
Thus, foreign powers failed to continue the chain of “revolutions” (permanently according to Trotsky) in Russia, so that it was easier to catch fish in muddy water.
Further adventures of a British agent. Operation "Trust"
In England, Sydney did not linger. Having stayed in England for only a month and a half, Sydney Reilly again arrived in Russia seized by the Civil War. In December 1918, he and the military representatives of England and France meet in Ekaterinodar with volunteer officers. Reilly is involved in condemning the issue of the future "post-imperial space." Later he visited the Crimea and the Don. In February - March, 1919, Reilly is in French-White Guard Odessa, where secret talks were held between Petlyura agents and the French command about a possible alliance between France and the UNR. The scout met with the governor of Odessa, the White Guard General Grishin-Almazov, with assorted Russian and Ukrainian politicians.
Reilly managed to hold in Odessa the “Evening of the meeting of the former portarturovtsy”, to establish some secret communications, as well as relations with the “Council of the State Association of Russia” and with the Ukrainian “Union of grain-growers”. At the same time, the intelligence officer, like other foreigners, did not forget to “make money”. In those days, huge capital, gold, diamonds and various artistic values of Russia are being taken abroad, and representatives of foreign intelligence services actively participated in the process in Odessa and other “walk-through” cities of Russia. True, Reilly did not make a lot of capital, although he tried. In his native Odessa, he was pushed aside by more nimble comrades in the "cloak and dagger" workshop.
Since 1918, Reilly has worked closely with Boris Savinkov. Later he noted: “... I spent whole days with Savinkov, right up to his departure to the Soviet border. I enjoyed his full confidence, and his plans were worked out with me. ” Reilly sought to finance Savinkov’s adventures from the British, French, Polish, and Czechoslovak governments, and sometimes he financed it himself. With his help, during the Soviet-Polish war 1920 of the year, an "army" was organized in Poland under the leadership of Stanislav Bulak-Balakhovich. Savinkov’s unofficial circles behind Reilly were seriously considered in 1924 year as the future dictator of Russia.
In April 1919, Reilly was evacuated from Odessa to Constantinople along with the French. Returned to London, participated in the work of the Paris Peace Conference. Apparently, as early as 1920, Reilly was excluded from intelligence operations against Russia. His eccentricity began to annoy the authorities. Reilly is increasingly losing touch with reality. He sometimes considers himself a “savior of civilization” and a new prophet, trying to impose his opinion on the government. Reilly clearly suffered from a mental disorder.
Reilly, at his own peril and risk, continues to fight the "archivists of the human race." He traveled around the United States with anti-Soviet lectures, urging emigrant circles to fight against the "red danger". Forms a branch of the International Anti-Bolshevik League in the USA. Reilly manages to get some sums to fight the USSR from the Ford Foundation. At the same time, Reilly made a number of successful speculations and became rich. He entered the highest circles of English society, talked with Churchill.
Lenin's death inspired Raleigh. Through his contacts in Russia, he knew that the opposition was revived. Among the Bolsheviks themselves there were major disagreements. Reilly returns to the idea of establishing a dictatorship in Russia, which will rely on various military and political elements, strong peasants (kulaks). In the role of dictator, Reilly saw Savinkov. He believed that in Russia it was necessary to create a regime that would be similar to the Italian one headed by Mussolini. For this, he hoped to organize an uprising in Russia. According to his plan, Britain and France declared the Soviet regime “criminal and illegal” (the Libyan and Syrian scenarios are not unique, they already had analogies in the past, Western intelligence services are polishing the old methods). At the same time, external intervention was to begin: attacks by White Guard units from Yugoslavia and Romania, the advance of the Polish army against Kiev, and the Finnish army against Petrograd. In the Caucasus, the Georgians were supposed to raise an uprising. In the future, the Caucasus was going to create an “independent” Caucasian Federation under the British-French protectorate, and transfer the oil fields to foreign companies. The ideas of Sydney Reilly were supported by Russophobes and anti-Soviet in Finland, Poland and Romania. Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini also supported these plans. According to Reilly, "a grand counter-revolutionary conspiracy was nearing realization." However, the Soviet security officers thwarted and this grand adventure. Savinkov was lured into Soviet territory and arrested.
Not surprisingly, Moscow wanted to eliminate the overly active anti-Soviet. Back in August 1924, Dzerzhinsky ordered the British to be lured into the USSR and arrested. The plan of operation was prepared by Heinrich Yagoda. The arrest of Reilly was to complete a multi-figured combination called “The Trust”. The operation took place in 1921 — 1926. In its course, the fake organization of the anti-Bolshevik underground, the Monarchist Association of Central Russia (MACR), was created, with the help of which the KGB caught ardent enemies of the USSR, monarchists and anti-Bolsheviks. Among those arrested was Savinkov.
To capture Reilly in their networks, the Chekists used the agent of British intelligence in Estonia Hill, who worked with Reilly in Russia, and also was an adviser to Trotsky. It was a double agent who worked simultaneously on Soviet and British intelligence. In 1925, Hill summoned Reilly to meet with the leadership of the alleged anti-Soviet underground in the USSR. Sydney accepted an invitation that killed him. The Soviet secret services, in order to misinform the British, reported in the press that two smugglers were killed while attempting to violate the border, and hinted that Agent Reilly was among those killed.
In fact, Reilly was still alive. He was “led” for some time, in September 1925 of the year he arrived in Moscow. Reilly organized a meeting with an imaginary underground, to which he handed over a large sum of money and promised more, and only then arrested. After Reilly told everyone he knew about British and American espionage and Soviet political emigration, 5 in November 1925 was shot. Thus ended the life of one of the most famous adventurers of the XX century.
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