70 years ago, on March 9, 1944, in the village of Boratyn, Lviv region, a sabotage group of the legendary Soviet intelligence officer Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov died. She was captured by UPA militants. Kuznetsov blew himself up with a grenade, and his companions were shot.
Shortly before the start of the Great Patriotic War Nikolai Kuznetsov began preparing to work abroad from illegal positions. However, the outbreak of war made adjustments to this preparation. In the first days of Nazi Germany’s attack on our country, Nikolai Kuznetsov submitted a report with a request to be used in “an active struggle against German fascism at the front or in the rear of the German troops invading our land.” In the summer of 1942, having undergone special training, he was enlisted in the special purpose detachment “Winners,” commanded by D.N. Medvedev. 
In accordance with the withdrawal plan, Kuznetsov was parachuted deep behind enemy lines - in the Sarny forests of the Rivne region.
In the city of Rivne, turned by the Germans into the “capital” of temporarily occupied Ukraine, Nikolai Kuznetsov appeared under the name of Chief Lieutenant Paul Wilhelm Siebert, holder of two Iron Crosses. Good professional intelligence training, brilliant knowledge German language, amazing will and courage were the basis for his performance of the most complex reconnaissance and sabotage missions.
Acting under the guise of a German officer, Nikolai Kuznetsov carried out the people's sentence in the center of the city of Rivne - he destroyed the imperial adviser to the Reichskommissariat of Ukraine Gell and his secretary Winter. A month later, in the same place, he mortally wounded Deputy Reich Commissioner General Dargel. Together with his comrades, he kidnapped and took from Rovno the commander of the punitive troops in Ukraine, General von Ilgen, and his personal driver E. Koch Granau. Soon after this, in the courthouse he destroyed the cruel executioner, the president of the supreme court in occupied Ukraine A. Funk. 
Conspiracy meeting between Kuznetsov (left) and the secretary of the Slovak Embassy Krno, an agent of German intelligence. 1940, operational filming with a hidden camera.
An interesting episode was the liquidation of the commander of the special forces, General Ilgen. Kuznetsov proposed a plan not just to liquidate the general, but to capture him and deliver him to the detachment. The implementation of this plan, in addition to Kuznetsov, was entrusted to Strutinsky, Kaminsky and Valya Dovger.
General von Ilgen occupied a substantial house in Rovno, which had a permanent sentry. The moment for the operation to capture Ilgen was chosen well. Four German soldiers, who constantly lived in the general’s house and served as his guard, were sent to Berlin, where the general sent suitcases with looted goods with them. The house was guarded by local police.
On the scheduled day, Valya went to Ilgen’s house with a package in her hands. The orderly suggested that Valya wait for the general, but she said that she would come back later. It became clear that von Ilgen was not at home. Soon Kuznetsov, Strutinsky and Kaminsky appeared there. They quickly eliminated the guards, and the chief lieutenant explained to the orderly that if he wants to live, he must help them. The orderly agreed.
Nikolai Ivanovich and Strutinsky selected documents of interest from von Ilgen’s office, folded them and packed them together with the weapons they found in a bundle. About forty minutes later von Ilgen drove up to the house. When he took off his overcoat, Kuznetsov came out of the next room and said that there were Soviet partisans in front of him. 
The general was forty-two years old, healthy and strong, he did not want to obey the intelligence officer’s commands. I had to tinker with him. When they managed to “pack” the general, it turned out that officers were coming to the house. Nikolai Ivanovich came out to meet them. There were four of them. The scout's mind worked feverishly: what to do with them? Interrupt? Can. But there will be noise. And then Kuznetsov remembered the Gestapo badge that he had been given back in Moscow. He had never used it before.
Nikolai Ivanovich took out a badge and, showing it to the German officers, said that a bandit in a German uniform had been detained here and therefore asked to see documents. Having carefully examined them, he asked three to follow their path, and invited the fourth to enter the house as a witness. He turned out to be Erich Koch's personal driver.
So, along with General von Ilgen, Officer Granau, the Gauleiter’s personal driver, was also brought into the detachment. 
The merit of Nikolai Kuznetsov was that he simultaneously purposefully collected intelligence information important for the Center. So in the spring of 1943, he managed to obtain extremely valuable intelligence information about the enemy’s preparation of a major offensive operation in the Kursk area using the new Tiger and Panther tanks. He also became aware of the exact location of Hitler’s field headquarters near Vinnitsa, codenamed “Werewolf.” Kuznetsov was the first to report on the preparation of an assassination attempt on the heads of government of the Big Three, who were gathering for a historic meeting in Tehran. His task also included collecting information about movement military units, about the plans and intentions of the Gestapo and SD services, about the trips of high officials of the Reich, which were successfully used in the fight against the enemy. 
From left to right: Nikolai Kuznetsov, commissar of the partisan detachment Stekhov, Nikolai Strutinsky
At the end of December 1943, N.I. Kuznetsov received a new task - to expand intelligence work in the city of Lvov. Carrying out acts of retaliation, he carried out the verdict of the people and destroyed the Vice-Governor of Galicia, Otto Bauer, and Lieutenant Colonel Peters. The situation in Galicia became extremely complicated after this. Kuznetsov and his two comrades - Yan Kaminsky and Ivan Belov - managed to escape from Lvov. It was decided to make our way to the front line. However, on the night of March 8-9, 1944, they were ambushed in the village of Boratin, Lviv region and died in an unequal battle with Ukrainian nationalists; Kuznetsov blew himself up with a grenade, and his companions were shot. 
Monument to Nikolai Kuznetsov in Tyumen.
On November 5, 1944, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was published on conferring the title of Hero Soviet Union employees of special forces of the NKGB of the USSR operating behind enemy lines. In the list of those awarded, along with the name of D.N. Medvedev, there was also the name of Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov - posthumously.
In 1990-1991 A number of protests by members of the Ukrainian nationalist underground against perpetuating the memory of Kuznetsov appeared in the Lviv media. Monuments to Kuznetsov in Lviv and Rivne were dismantled in 1992. In November 1992, with the assistance of Strutinsky, the Lviv monument was taken to Talitsa.
Vandals have repeatedly tried to desecrate the grave of Nikolai Kuznetsov. By 2007, activists of the initiative group in Yekaterinburg had carried out all the preparatory work necessary to move Kuznetsov’s remains to the Urals.
The case of Nikolai Kuznetsov is kept in the archives Federal service security Russian Federation and will be declassified no earlier than 2025.
The history of modern military intelligence in Russia begins on November 5, 1918, when by order of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic the Registration Directorate of the Field Headquarters of the Red Army (RUPSHKA) was established, the successor of which is now the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia (GRU GSH).
About the fate of the most famous military intelligence officers of our country. Richard Sorge
Certificate issued to Richard Sorge by the OGPU for the right to carry and store a Mauser pistol.
One of the outstanding intelligence officers of the 20th century was born in 1895 near Baku in a large family of German engineer Gustav Wilhelm Richard Sorge and Russian citizen Nina Kobeleva. A few years after Richard's birth, the family moved to Germany, where he grew up. Sorge took part in the First World War on both the western and eastern fronts and was wounded several times. The horrors of the war affected not only his health, but also contributed to a radical change in his worldview. From an enthusiastic German patriot, Sorge turned into a convinced Marxist. In the mid-1920s, after the ban of the German Communist Party, he moved to the USSR, where, after getting married and receiving Soviet citizenship, he began working in the apparatus of the Comintern.
In 1929, Richard moved to the Fourth Directorate of the Red Army Headquarters (military intelligence). In the 1930s, he was sent first to China (Shanghai) and then to Japan, where he arrived as a German correspondent.It was Sorge's Japanese period that made him famous. It is generally accepted that in his numerous coded messages he warned Moscow about an imminent German attack on the USSR, and then he told Stalin that Japan would remain neutral towards our country. This allowed the Soviet Union to transfer new Siberian divisions to Moscow at a critical moment.
However, Sorge himself was exposed and captured by the Japanese police in October 1941. The investigation into his case lasted almost three years. On November 7, 1944, the Soviet intelligence officer was hanged in Tokyo's Sugamo prison, and 20 years later, on November 5, 1964, Richard Sorge was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Nikolay Kuznetsov
Nikanor (original name) Kuznetsov was born in 1911 into a large peasant family in the Urals. After studying to become an agronomist in Tyumen, he returned home in the late 1920s. Kuznetsov showed extraordinary linguistic abilities early on; he almost independently learned six dialects of the German language. Then he worked in logging, was expelled from the Komsomol twice, then took an active part in collectivization, after which, apparently, he came to the attention of the state security authorities. Since 1938, after spending several months in a Sverdlovsk prison, Kuznetsov became an investigator of the central apparatus of the NKVD. Under the guise of a German engineer at one of the Moscow aircraft factories, he unsuccessfully tried to infiltrate the diplomatic environment of Moscow.
Nikolai Kuznetsov in the uniform of a German officer.
After the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War in January 1942, Kuznetsov was enlisted in the 4th Directorate of the NKVD, which, under the leadership of Pavel Sudoplatov, was engaged in reconnaissance and sabotage work behind the front line in the rear of German troops. Since October 1942, Kuznetsov, under the name of the German officer Paul Siebert, with the documents of an employee of the German secret police, conducted intelligence activities in Western Ukraine, in particular, in the city of Rivne, the administrative center of the Reichskommissariat.
The intelligence officer regularly communicated with officers of the Wehrmacht, intelligence services, and senior officials of the occupation authorities and sent the necessary information to partisan detachment. Over the course of a year and a half, Kuznetsov personally destroyed 11 generals and high-ranking officials of the occupation administration of Nazi Germany, but, despite repeated attempts, he failed to eliminate the Reich Commissioner of Ukraine, Erich Koch, known for his cruelty.
In March 1944, while trying to cross the front line near the village of Boratin, Lviv region, Kuznetsov’s group came across soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). During a battle with Ukrainian nationalists, Kuznetsov was killed (according to one version, he blew himself up with a grenade). Buried in Lvov on memorial cemetery"Hill of Glory"
Ian Chernyak
Yankel (original name) Chernyak was born in Chernivtsi in 1909, then still on the territory of Austria-Hungary. His father was a poor Jewish merchant, and his mother was Hungarian. During the First World War, his entire family died in Jewish pogroms, and Yankel was brought up in an orphanage. He studied very well, while still at school he mastered German, Romanian, Hungarian, English, Spanish, Czech and French languages, which by the age of twenty he spoke without any accent. After studying in Prague and Berlin, Chernyak received an engineering degree. In 1930, at the height of the economic crisis, he joined the German Communist Party, where he was recruited by Soviet intelligence, which operated under the guise of the Comintern. When Chernyak was drafted into the army, he was assigned as a clerk to an artillery regiment stationed in Romania.At first he handed over to the Soviet military intelligence information about the weapons systems of European armies, and four years later became the main Soviet resident in this country. After the failure, he was evacuated to Moscow, where he entered the intelligence school of the Fourth (Intelligence) Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army. Only then did he learn Russian. Since 1935, Chernyak traveled to Switzerland as a TASS correspondent (operational pseudonym “Jen”). Regularly visiting Nazi Germany, in the second half of the 1930s he managed to deploy a powerful intelligence network there, codenamed “Krona”. Subsequently, German counterintelligence failed to uncover a single agent. And now, out of 35 of its members, only two names are known (and there are still disputes about this) - Hitler’s favorite actress Olga Chekhova (wife of the nephew of the writer Anton Chekhov) and Goebbels’ mistress, star of the film “The Girl of My Dreams”, Marika Reck .
Ian Chernyak.
Chernyak's agents managed to obtain a copy of the Barbarossa plan in 1941, and in 1943, an operational plan for the German offensive near Kursk. Chernyak transmitted valuable technical information to the USSR about the latest weapons of the German army. Since 1942, he also sent information on atomic research in England to Moscow, and in the spring of 1945 he was transferred to America, where he was planned to be included in work on the US atomic project, but due to the betrayal of the cryptographer, Chernyak had to urgently return to the USSR. After that, he was almost not involved in operational work; he received the position of assistant at the GRU General Staff, and then as a translator at TASS. Then he was transferred to teaching, and in 1969 he was quietly retired and forgotten.
Only in 1994, by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation, “for the courage and heroism shown during the performance of a special task,” Chernyak was awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation. The decree was passed while the intelligence officer was in a coma in the hospital, and the award was presented to his wife. Two months later, on February 19, 1995, he died, never knowing that the Motherland remembered him.
Anatoly Gurevich
One of the future leaders of the Red Chapel was born into the family of a Kharkov pharmacist in 1913. Ten years later, Gurevich's family moved to Petrograd. After studying at school, Anatoly entered the Znamya Truda No. 2 plant as a metal marking apprentice, where he soon rose to become the head of the plant's civil defense.
Then he entered the Intourist Institute and began to intensively study foreign languages. When civil war began in Spain in 1936, Gurevich went there as a volunteer, where he served as a translator for senior Soviet adviser Grigory Stern.
In Spain he was given documents in the name of Republican Navy Lieutenant Antonio Gonzalez. After returning to the USSR, Gurevich was sent to study at an intelligence school, after which, as a Uruguayan citizen, Vincent Sierra was sent to Brussels under the command of GRU resident Leopold Trepper.
Anatoly Gurevich. Photo: from the family archive
Soon, Trepper, due to his pronounced Jewish appearance, had to urgently leave Brussels, and the intelligence network - the “Red Chapel” - was headed by Anatoly Gurevich, who was given the pseudonym “Kent”. In March 1940, he reported to Moscow about the impending attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union. In November 1942, the Germans arrested “Kent” and he was personally interrogated by Gestapo chief Müller. He was not tortured or beaten during interrogations. Gurevich was offered to participate in a radio game, and he agreed because he knew how to communicate that his encryption was under control. But the security officers were so unprofessional that they did not even notice the conventional signals. Gurevich did not betray anyone; the Gestapo did not even know his real name. In 1945, immediately after arriving from Europe, Gurevich was arrested by SMERSH. At Lubyanka he was tortured and interrogated for 16 months. The head of SMERSH, General Abakumov, also participated in torture and interrogation. A special meeting at the USSR Ministry of State Security “for treason to the Motherland” sentenced Gurevich to 20 years in prison. His family was informed that he “went missing under circumstances that did not give him the right to benefits.” Only in 1948 did Gurevich's father learn that his son was alive. “Kent” spent the next 10 years of his life in the Vorkuta and Mordovian camps.After his release, despite many years of appeals from Gurevich, he was regularly denied a review of the case and restoration of his good name. He lived in poverty in a small Leningrad apartment, and spent his tiny pension mainly on medicine. In July 1991, justice triumphed - the slandered and forgotten Soviet intelligence officer was completely rehabilitated. Gurevich died in St. Petersburg in January 2009.
Most of the information about this person’s activities is kept secret to this day. His collection of surnames, code names, operational pseudonyms and illegal covers would be the envy of any intelligence officer and spy. More than once he put his life in danger at the fronts, in battles with saboteurs and spies. But he survived, one might say miraculously, having gone through repressions, endless battles, purges and arrests, and 12 years of imprisonment. More than anything else, he despised cowardice and betrayal of the oath and his homeland.
On December 6, 1899, Naum Isaakovich Eitingon was born in Mogilev. Naum spent his childhood in the provincial town of Shklov. After graduating from school, he went to study at the Mogilev Commercial School, but he failed to graduate. There was a revolution in the country; in 1917, young Eitingon took an active part in the work of the Socialist Revolutionary Party for some time.
But the romance of terror did not captivate Eitingon, and after October 1917 he left the Socialist Revolutionary Party and got a job as an employee of the local Council, in the department of pensions for the families of those killed in the war. Until 1920, he managed to change several jobs, take part in the defense of the city of Gomel from the White Guards and join the RCP (b).
Eitingon's Chekist activities began in 1920, in the position of commissioner of the Gomel fortified area, and since 1921, commissioner for military affairs of the special department of the Gomel Gubernia Cheka. During these years, he participated in the liquidation of Savinkovsky terrorist groups in the Gomel region (undercover case Mole). In the fall of 1921, in a battle with saboteurs, he was seriously wounded; the memory of this wound will remain with Naum for the rest of his life (Eitingon had a slight limp).
After graduation civil war, in the summer of 1922, he participated in the liquidation of nationalist gangs in Bashkiria. After the successful completion of this task, in 1923 Eitingon was recalled to Moscow, to the Lubyanka.
Until mid-1925, he worked in the central office of the OGPU as an assistant to the head of the department, under the supervision of the famous Jan Khristoforovich Peters. Eitingon combines his work with studies at the Military Academy of the General Staff, at the Eastern Faculty, after which he is enrolled in the INO (foreign department) of the OGPU. From this moment on, the entire future life of Naum Isaakovich will be connected with Soviet intelligence.
In the fall of 1925, under “deep” cover, he went to China to carry out his first overseas reconnaissance mission.
The details of those operations in China are little known and classified to this day. In China, Eitingon hones his intelligence skills, gradually becoming a good analyst and developer of complex multi-move operational combinations. Until the spring of 1929 he worked in Shanghai, Beijing, and as a resident in Harbin. His agents penetrate local authorities, the circles of White Guard emigration and foreign intelligence residencies. Here he meets the legendary intelligence officers: the German Richard Sorge, the Bulgarian Ivan Vinarov, Grigory Salnin from the RU, who became his friends and comrades in combat work for many years. In the spring of 1929, after a Chinese police raid on the USSR consulate in Harbin, Eitingon was recalled to Moscow.
Soon he finds himself in Turkey under the legal roof of a diplomatic worker, here he replaces Yakov Blumkin, who was recalled to Moscow after contact with Trotsky. He works here for a short time, and after restoring his residency in Greece, he again finds himself in Moscow.
In Moscow, Eitingon works for a short time as deputy head of the Special Group of Yakov Serebryansky (Uncle Yasha’s group), then for two years as a resident in France and Belgium and for three years he heads the entire illegal intelligence of the OGPU.
Period from 1933 to 1935 when Eitingon led illegal intelligence is the most mysterious period of his service. According to available data, during this period of time he managed to go on several business trips to China, Iran, the USA and Germany. After the transformation of the OGPU into the NKVD and the change of leadership, intelligence was given a number of new tasks to obtain scientific, technical and economic information, but it was not possible to immediately begin to solve new problems; the war began in Spain.
In Spain he was known as GB Major L.I. Kotov, Deputy Advisor to the Republican Government. Future Heroes of the Soviet Union Rabtsevich, Vaupshasov, Prokopyuk, Maurice Cohen fought under his command. The head of the NKVD station in Spain at that time was A. Orlov, he also led all operations to eliminate the leaders of the Spanish Trotskyists and was the main security adviser to the Spanish Republicans.
In July 1938, Orlov fled to France, taking with him the station's cash register, Eitingon was approved as chief resident, by that time a turning point had come in the war. In the fall, the Francoists, with the support of parts of the German Condor Legion, occupy the Republican stronghold of Barcelona. It is noteworthy that, along with the Francoists, one of the first to enter captured Barcelona was the war correspondent of The Times, Harold Philby. He is also the Legendary Kim Philby, a member of the “Cambridge Five”, whom Eitingon contacted through Guy Burges in August 1938, after Orlov’s treacherous flight.
In addition to maintaining the “Cambridge Five”, Eitingon in Spain also managed to gain good leadership experience partisan movement, the organization of reconnaissance and sabotage groups, which came in handy just two years later in the fight against German fascism. Some of the participants in the war in Spain, members of international brigades, would later take direct part in operations Soviet intelligence. For example, David Alfaro Siqueiros, a Mexican painter, will take part in the operation against Trotsky in 1940. Many members of the international brigade will form the backbone of the legendary special forces OMSBON, under the leadership of General P. Sudoplatov. These are also the Spanish merits of Eitingon.
OMSBON (separate motorized rifle brigade for special purposes) was formed in the first days of the war with Nazi Germany. In 1942, the formation became part of the 4th Directorate of the People's Commissariat. From first to last day During the war, this special service was led by General P. Sudoplatov, and his deputy was Eitingon.
Of all the Soviet intelligence officers, only Eitingon and Sudoplatov were awarded the Order of Suvorov, which was awarded to military leaders for military leadership merits. The operations “Monastery” and “Berezino” developed and successfully carried out by them were included in textbooks on military intelligence and became its classics.
The experience gained during the war was used by Soviet intelligence throughout the many years of the Cold War. Back in 1942, while in Turkey, Etingon organized a wide network of agents there, which was actively used after the war to penetrate militant organizations in Palestine. The data obtained by Eitingon in 1943, when he was on a business trip in northwestern China, helped Moscow and Beijing neutralize sabotage groups, operating in this strategically important area of China under the leadership of British intelligence.
Until October 1951, Eitingon worked as deputy of Sudoplatov, head of the MGB sabotage and intelligence service (since 1950 - Bureau for Sabotage Work Abroad). In addition to this work, he also led anti-terrorist operations on the territory of the USSR. On October 28, 1951, having returned from Lithuania, where he participated in the liquidation of gangs of forest brothers, General Eitingon was arrested on charges of “MGB conspiracy.” On March 20, 1953, after Stalin's death, he was released, and four months later, on August 21, he was arrested again, this time in the Beria case.
For 11 long years, Eitingon turned from a “Stalinist intelligence officer” into a “Khrushchev political prisoner.” Naum Eitingon was released on March 20, 1964. In prison, he underwent a major operation, and doctors managed to save him. Before the operation, he wrote a personal letter to Khrushchev, in which he briefly described his life, years of service and years spent in prison. In a message to Khrushchev, he noted that while in prison he lost his health and his last strength, although he could have worked all this time and brought benefit to the country. He asked Khrushchev the question: “Why was I convicted?” At the conclusion of his letter, he called on the party leader to release Pavel Sudoplatov, sentenced to 15 years, ending the message with the words: “Long live communism! Farewell!".
After his release, Eitingon worked as an editor and translator at the publishing house " International relationships" The famous intelligence officer died in 1981 and only ten years after his death, in 1991, he was completely rehabilitated, posthumously.
