On March 7, 2018, the
Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti published an interview of Lyudmila
Nuykina, a former KGB illegal intelligence officer who, together with her
husband Vitaly, worked in more than a dozen countries until their return to the USSR in
1986. Her name was officially declassified by the SVR in 2017. Below is my English translation available only on
this blog.
Former Illegal Intelligence Officer Lyudmila Nuykina: We Secretly Celebrated March 8 with Pelmeni
RIA Novosti March 7, 2018
The name of Russian [Soviet] illegal intelligence officer
Lyudmila Nuykina was recently declassified. But what she and her husband, also
an illegal intelligence officer, did while working abroad remains classified.
However, a number of things can be disclosed. For example, in what way is the
wife able to help her husband in this kind of work and even do things he can’t;
how women abroad put their dresses on, and whether the attention of other men
can affect the work of a female intelligence officer? On the eve of
International Women’s Day, this is what the veteran of the Russian Foreign
Intelligence Service (SVR) Lyudmila Nuykina told RIA Novosti in an interview.
- Lyudmila Ivanovna, it is believed that intelligence,
especially illegal intelligence, is man’s business. But what does it mean to be
a female illegal intelligence officer, which character traits are needed?
- It is not only man’s business. Yes, it’s very hard. You
have to live the life of another person. And not only to pretend. Illegal
intelligence is not a theater stage: you go out for a couple of hours, play a
role, and return home. And it isn’t just any job - we served the Fatherland,
and therefore, first of all, we had to be patriots and love our Homeland. But a
woman working in illegal intelligence needs a special kind of courage if she
has children. When my husband and I went abroad, we had to leave our little son
Yura behind. It was a very difficult decision for me, especially since I was
brought up among the [Russian Orthodox] Old Believers, who had a very strict
attitude towards the family. But both my husband and the Center explained to me
that if we didn’t do it, then who would? I went through WWII as a child. And I
understood how important our job was. So, I made up my mind to do it.
- What was the specifically female part of your work?
- I went through the same training as my husband. And we were
interchangeable. When we were, as they say, in the field and he went somewhere
on a business trip, then I could completely substitute for him, I did the same
work, and I kept in touch with the Center. Of course, it was much easier to do
it together from the point of view of security. For example, when we met with other
people at receptions and dinners, he would quietly watch me and I would watch
him to see how others behaved around us because if I missed something, he could
see it, or vice versa. Let’s say some person came up to one of us more than
once and kept doing it again and again. That meant that he was looking for a
meeting, that he was expressing some special interest. My husband and I
developed a special language in which we communicated such information to each
other, which we used to warn each other.
[But] there were things that only I could do. We needed to be
a part of the community which included those who had the necessary information.
And the wives of such people would meet in the women’s clubs - for example, the
clubs that taught the ikebana skills.
So, I became a member of this club. The instructors came
directly from Japan. And after class, we would go to lunch. Women showed off their
outfits there and talked about their vacations. They would then start to brag
about whose husband was doing better. Naturally, I made friends with these women,
because my acquaintance with them would lead to the acquaintance with their
husbands. This was very convenient in those cases when my husband could not
directly approach the person of interest.
- Have you forgotten those [ikebana] skills? Could you create
a flower arrangement now?
- Sometimes I try at home, but I need to have a special kind
of material. In general, ikebana is an interesting skill. And useful: it can
also act as a kind of cover - you learn how to do it, look around a bit, and [then]
open your own little club where you can invite people you are interested in.
- How long did it take you and your husband to feel that you have
finally become the people you had to be to complete your assignment
successfully?
- Strictly speaking, probably two years. For some reason, I
always had difficulties when switching not from Russian to a foreign language,
but, on the contrary, from a foreign language to Russian. Probably because, God
forgive me, I made it my enemy for so long. This was necessary from the point
of view of self-preservation.
- As they say, my tongue is my enemy…
- Because even if you don’t speak Russian, but only think in
it, it can still break through somewhere before you [consciously] notice it.
- So, you had to think in the language of the host country?
- Yes, of course! I even still have dreams in which I speak
it.
- And when you wake up, how do you feel?
- I feel pleasure that I was speaking it. And I want to speak
it again. And I quickly find the words I need.
- While you worked abroad, did you hear Russian spoken near
you?
- Soviet athletes and artists came [to the country we were
based in]. For example, I wanted to cheer for our athletes, but [obviously]
that was impossible. Once on the street we passed some elderly women who spoke
Russian, they were probably [first generation] immigrants. And one of them said:
“I would like to visit Russia so much, at least for a second to see what is
going on there…”
In the beginning, our biggest difficulty came from the Soviet
upbringing. Everything was different. For instance, how do our women put on a
dress? Over the head. And there - only from below. And you needed to know all
these little things. I even did one very stupid thing in the beginning... When
we settled down in one place abroad, we went to the store. And there I immediately
got a lot of toilet paper rolls. We remembered how bad it was at home with that.
- But there, it turns out, there was never any shortage?
- Of course not! But I mechanically got it for storage. Then
my husband came up to me and said quietly: “Hey, what are you doing?!” I had to
put everything back on the shelf before anyone noticed. My husband wasn’t
pleased; he said - be more careful next time. That is why it was so important
to keep an eye on each other, to warn the other if he is doing something wrong.
- Did your husband unwittingly make any mistakes?
- We were trained to save money. And one day, preparing for a
business trip for the company in which he worked, my husband bought a plane ticket
in the economy class. His boss then called him to his office and said: “Why are
you doing this? There will be rumors that our company is going bankrupt! Don’t
do that again.”
All the old habits, the things that we learned at home, had
to be forgotten.
- But homesickness stays with you... In the legendary TV
series Seventeen Moments of Spring, there is an episode where Stierlitz [the
main protagonist, Soviet illegal intelligence officer] once allows himself to
relax - in his apartment on February 23 [Defender of the Fatherland Day], he
bakes potatoes in the fireplace.
- Of course, you miss your homeland. Even if you don't have
children, you may have parents who are still living. Indeed, sometimes I’d feel
such melancholy, I really wanted to go home... I wanted that piece of black
bread with herring. And my husband would say, let’s find it here. There was
herring, but it wasn’t like the one at home. And the black bread was in jars. It
was also very different. [But] we celebrated all our holidays.
- I am curious, what did you prepare for March 8?
- I made dumplings [pelmeni]. I would make just a few, boiled
them, and we quickly ate them. If I wanted borsch, I also made it.
- But what about the food aromas that came from the kitchen?
What if someone smelled uncommon food dishes? Wouldn’t this be a factor in your
exposure?
- We were saved by the fact that we lived above a Chinese
restaurant, which was on the first floor of our building. The smell of garlic coming
from there permeated everything. So [food smells] could not give us away. And
we had our chats quietly, in the evening. Once my husband was on a business
trip and I received a radiogram from Moscow that he was awarded another medal.
I told him about this on the phone in our special language, put a new
tablecloth on the edge of the table, filled two glasses – one for him and the
other for myself, clinked glasses with “him” for his medal, drank, put
everything away, and went to bed. And when he returned, we had a celebration
together.
- Were you sometimes allowed to come to the Soviet Union?
- Yes. The Center allowed us to do so, but rarely. At first,
we had no children [according to the cover story], and this was the reason I would
give for leaving the country where we worked, allegedly to seek treatment.
- Did you see the older son at home [in Moscow]?
- Yes, of course. But it was impossible to take his
photograph back with me, so I had to tell my husband all the details probably a
hundred times. He wanted to know, for example, how Yura’s hairstyle looked like.
The Center told us how Yura was doing. Once they told us that
he began the lessons of ballroom dancing. And Yura lived with his grandmothers
and aunts, and they, of course, did everything to make him eat a lot. So, he
was plump. And now he was learning ballroom dancing, can you imagine? And so,
probably for about six months, my husband and I went out somewhere to a
secluded place and discussed and imagined how that would look like. These reports
were like oxygen to us, they gave us life.
Then we had a second child abroad. We wanted a girl. And when
I went into labor, the husbands of other women giving birth at the same
hospital told my husband: “What, you really want a girl?!” All fathers want a
boy. The husband laughed it off in the sense that one first needs to have a
nanny [a girl] and then a doll [a boy, so that the girl takes care of him]. [A
Russian saying]
For some reason, many girls were born that day, but we had a
boy - Andrey, or Andre. How he screamed in a real Siberian bass!
- Here again I recall Seventeen Moments of Spring,
where the radio operator Kat, giving birth, shouted in Russian and thus betrayed
her real identity. Did you fear such a risk?
- No, because I already made Russian language into an enemy.
And my husband was next to me in the hospital. But at some point he became ill
and the doctor said: “Take him away, I don't know which one of the two to help
first!” When we had Andrey, we were no longer so homesick as before because we
had someone dear next to us. And in general, when you are a family, counterintelligence
pays less attention to you. And if you have children, then the family is complete.
And there is more trust.
The child can even help you do the intelligence assignment in
certain situations. Let’s say you need to leave a prearranged signal. It’s very
simple - you go out with a stroller. Who will pay attention to a woman with a
stroller, to what she will do? And you can hold the stroller with one hand and leave
the signal with the other. Or you can drop a toy and you stop exactly where you
need to. But, at a certain point, we had to send Andrey home, too. You know,
when we had to leave our second son behind in the Soviet Union, for the first
and the last time, I had a dream that my husband and I were arrested. Although
we never thought of that and never reflected on it so as not to bring on bad
luck. But, at that time, I had such a dream. I told my husband and he said: “Don't
worry, since Andrey is no longer with us, they won’t get anything from me.”
Because what can they use to put pressure on you? Your child.
- Have you ever experienced a feeling of fear?
- There was no such feeling. There was a sense of danger, but
it was a feeling that mobilized for action. At such moments, you are like a
taut muscle. I even became more brazen in a good way. Everything is boiling
inside, but outwardly you show nothing. This, by the way, is one of the main
challenges of our work: no matter what happens to you, you must always smile -
everything is fine, everything is OK!
There was a situation once in a cafe, which may have been operated
by local counterintelligence. My husband and I were sitting at the bar, and
suddenly some stranger came up to him and said: “You are Russian!” Maybe he
wanted to see my husband’s reaction. And here it was necessary to behave like
an actor. My husband very calmly replied: “And I say that you are Russian!”
Well, that guy had nothing to hide [he was Russian]. Then everyone started
laughing and [someone] said: “We are all Russians here!” No damage was done.
Although we never thought about it, my husband once drove past
a building and said: “Here, make your acquaintance, this is a local prison.”
But I replied that I didn’t like those “apartments” at all.
- Why did you and your husband have to return home after so many
years?
- A person betrayed us. His last name is Gordievsky. He once
served as an acting station chief in London. So much effort was invested in us
[by the Center], it took a long time to get settled abroad and acquire all the
necessary connections. And everything was destroyed because of this man. If he
had come across my path, I would have scratched his eyes out! I do not envy
traitors. They don’t like people like that over there [in the West], because if
you betray once, you can betray again. That’s what they are afraid of.
I was on vacation in Kazakhstan, in the village where our
house was located. And suddenly a message came from the Center. I ran to the
village council building with the thought that my husband was arrested. But I
was immediately reassured - he was with us, he was successfully evacuated. How
relieved I was... Then it became clear that it was all over for us.
- By the end of your assignment, did you have a feeling that
the things were getting hot?
- Yes, we did. For instance, there was this unpleasant
episode. A couple moved in next to us. And I think they started to monitor us
on the sly. Once they invited us for dinner. We arrived at the appointed time,
and they said, excuse us, we need to step out for a minute, allegedly to change
clothes. We began to look at the paintings that they had on the walls. And then
suddenly I noticed a book on the coffee table: Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina.
In Russian.
How to react to that? I went up to my husband and said
quietly: “Have you seen it?” He replied, also quietly: “Focus on the paintings.”
We made no reaction whatsoever.
- And, all the while, they were observing you?
- Yes. But in order to arrest us, they had to have a cause.
But we didn’t give it to them.
- After you returned to the Soviet Union, you must have been perceived
as foreigners.
- Yes, especially because Andrey didn’t know Russian at all,
and I had to communicate with him in another language. We even used it to our
advantage a little because they would let us get ahead in the queues for
groceries.
- Did your family know about your profession?
- At first, they thought that we were working at the Foreign
Ministry and did not take our first child with us because of the climate. But then
they began to guess the truth, especially after Seventeen Moments of Spring
came out [in 1973].
- You have been abroad for a long time and you have met many
people. Who are the most beautiful women in the world?
- Russian women. Though each country has its share of
beauties.
- I’ll hardly be mistaken if I say that many men found you
attractive. Did it affect your work in the field in any way?
- For this reason, I did not like to go anywhere by myself. Once
an Italian wanted to detain me [on the airport] when I was supposed to fly
alone. As a result, my luggage left without me… I made such a scandal and they
put me on the next flight. And once in the hotel elevator, I rode with several
of our soccer players who came to play the match. They began to discuss me,
thinking that I did not understand anything. How they wanted to punch them in
the face! Although I did not consider myself a beauty. But when I was with my
husband, I felt protected in the literal sense. With my husband, I felt like being
behind a stone wall.
- Without getting into any details, how significant is the
information you have obtained?
- We helped our country a lot.
- What medals were you awarded?
- I have the Order of the Red Star and the medal “For Bravery.”
- Lyudmila Ivanovna, what would you wish women on the eve of
March 8?
- I want to congratulate them all and appeal to young women -
do not be afraid to pursue jobs in intelligence. You will help our men in very
difficult, responsible, but manageable work, because men will feel bad without
you - just like you will, without them.
