On March 5, 2020, the
Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti published an interview of Vladimir Antonov, a former KGB officer and historian. After retiring from
active service at the rank of colonel, Antonov became one of the most prolific
official SVR historians. He was the author of the book-length biographies of
“legendary” Soviet intelligence officers, such as Pavel Sudoplatov, Neum
Eytingon, Yakov Serebryansky, Konon Molody, and the “Cambridge Five.” Antonov
died in May 2020 at the age of 76. Below is my English translation available only on this blog.
SVR Historian Vladimir
Antonov: The Female Radio Operator Kät Had a Real-Life
Prototype
RIA Novosti March 5, 2020
Women and intelligence - the place of the fairer sex in this difficult profession is a topic that will probably always attract the attention of both specialists and ordinary people. This year the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) will celebrate its centenary. In the annals of the SVR, the names of many female intelligence officers are inscribed in golden letters. In difficult conditions, often risking their lives, they protected the security and interests of their homeland. The heroic pages in the history of intelligence tell of the participation of women in the operations that helped bring closer the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Why women are sometimes indispensable in intelligence, what specific abilities give them the advantage over men and who was the prototype of the female radio operator Kät in the famous [Soviet] TV series “Seventeen Moments of Spring” are among the questions answered by a leading expert from the SVR History Hall [Museum], retired colonel Vladimir Antonov,
- Vladimir Sergeyevich,
the discussions about the role of women in intelligence have been going on for
a long time. It is understandable: the fairer half of humanity and intelligence
services, the combination of mystery and secrecy with the female qualities -
this [theme] is unlikely to become boring any time soon. So, can intelligence be
woman’s business?
- There is no reason
to hide that most ordinary people, far removed from intelligence business,
believe that this is not an occupation for women, that intelligence is a male-only
profession requiring self-control, courage, willingness to take risks, and even
to sacrifice oneself in order to achieve a goal.
But in such a unique
area of human activity as intelligence, women are in no way inferior to men,
and in some ways even surpass them. As the history of the world’s intelligence
services testifies, the fairer sex copes with its demands perfectly, being a
worthy and, sometimes, even a formidable rival of men in terms of the extraction
of other people’s secrets.
- And yet - a
formidable rival - no more and no less?
“Female intelligence
officers are the most dangerous adversaries and they are the most difficult to
expose,” said one of the leading American counterintelligence officials Charles
Rossel in his lecture nearly a century ago.
- Well, that’s the
assessment of an American. But what is the opinion of Russian intelligence
officers on this score?
- They perceive the
expression “intelligence officers are not born, they are made” as a truth that
does not require any proof. The fact is that intelligence, due to the nature of
its tasks, requires a unique person with the necessary personal and professional
qualities and life experiences who can be trusted to do the job in a particular
region of the world.
Of course, various
paths lead women to intelligence profession. However, choosing them as
operatives or agents is certainly not accidental. This is especially true in
illegal intelligence. It is not enough to be fluent in foreign languages and in
the basics of the art of intelligence. An illegal must be a kind of an artist,
so that one day, for example, he can impersonate somebody from the aristocratic
circles, and the next day, say, a minister or a priest. Needless to say, more
women are capable of this kind of transformation than men.
Those female
intelligence officers who worked abroad as illegals always had to deal with the
increased demands on their physical and psychological endurance. In addition, they
may not always have had the opportunity to work only with the people they liked.
Often, the situation was exactly the opposite, and therefore they had to be
able to keep their feelings under control.
Here is what the
remarkable Soviet illegal intelligence officer Galina Ivanovna Fyodorova, who
has worked abroad for more than twenty years, said: “Some believe that
intelligence is not the most suitable activity for a woman. In contrast to the
stronger sex, a woman is more sensitive, fragile, more easily vulnerable, more
closely tied to the family and the home, more prone to nostalgia. By nature,
she is destined to be a mother, so the absence of children or the long
separation from them is especially difficult for her. All this is true, but these
same little weaknesses give a woman powerful leverage and influence in the
sphere of human relationships.”
- What are the main
character traits of women which make their work in intelligence productive?
- Experts agree that a
woman is more observant than a man, and, also, her intuition is more developed.
Representatives of the fairer sex love to delve into details - well, as you
know, the devil himself is hidden in them. In addition, women are more
methodical, assiduous, and patient than men.
Moreover, female
intelligence officers are entrusted with organizing meetings with agents when
the appearance of men happens to be undesirable.
And, if you add their
physical appearance to all this, then any skeptic will have to admit that women
rightfully occupy a worthy place in the ranks of the intelligence service of
any country and are its genuine amplifier.
-But from the non-professionals,
you can often hear that if beautiful women are used in intelligence, it’s only
as “honey traps” for the carriers of the secrets which are sought after. Here,
the famous Mata Hari is usually considered the standard. What do you say to
that?
- In general, in addition to Mata Hari, Marthe
Richard, the star of the French military intelligence during the First World
War, is also well-known in this respect. She was the mistress of the German
naval attaché in Spain, Major von Krohn, and was able not only to find out the important
secrets of German military intelligence, but also to paralyze the work of the
agent network von Krohn created in the country.
Yet, this exotic
method of using women in intelligence is the exception rather than the rule.
However, the intelligence services of some countries, primarily Israel and the
United States, are actively using this approach to obtain classified
information. But such things are typically used by the counterintelligence
services of these states rather than their intelligence services.
- Vladimir Sergeyevich,
you spoke about special feminine qualities that are invaluable from the point
of view of intelligence. In what way can they help when a woman and a man work
together in the field?
- Of course, the
combination of the best psychological qualities of both men and women,
especially those working in illegal intelligence positions, represents the strong
point in any intelligence service. And, in reality, such intelligence tandems
as Goar and Gevork Vartanyan, Anna and Mikhail Filonenko, Leontina and Morris
Cohen, Elizaveta and Mikhail Mukasey, Galina and Mikhail Fyodorov and many
others, are inscribed in golden letters in the history of Russian foreign
intelligence.
- More recently, the
names of the spouses, prominent illegal intelligence agents Lyudmila and Vitaly
Nuykin, as well as Tamara and Vitaly Netyksa, have also been declassified.
- Yes. In general, the
history of the intelligence service of our country was written by thousands of
its officers, and many of them can be called not just very good, but
exceptional. In the Hall [Museum] of Foreign Intelligence History at the SVR
headquarters, there is a memorial plaque on which the names of many of the SVR officers
are inscribed - the best of the best among the
intelligence officers in more than a century of its activity. And the
most prominent place among them is occupied by female intelligence officers.
- If you conduct a
survey on which woman is considered a symbol not just of a female intelligence
officer, but also of female fortitude in this profession, then surely and deservedly
the first place will be taken by the fictional radio operator Kät from the [Soviet]
TV series “Seventeen Moments of Spring.” It is known that the director Tatiana
Lioznova imported a lot of lyrical details into the series. The dramatic scene
of Katya Kozlova - Kät’s giving birth was originally in the book by Yulian Semenov,
and he, as is well known, used materials from the Soviet intelligence services
for his novels. Therefore, the question arises - was there a real-life
prototype of the radio operator Kät?
- I will answer in the
affirmative. The prototype of Kät was the Soviet intelligence officer Anna Fyodorovna
Kamayeva. And Vyacheslav Tikhonov, who played the role of Stierlitz [the
series’ main character], in turn, learned a lot from her husband, also an
illegal intelligence officer Mikhail Ivanovich Filonenko. They were good friends
until the death of the couple.
Anna Kamayeva came into
the intelligence service in the late thirties. From the first days of the Great
Patriotic War, she was included in the Special Group under the People’s
Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR (NKVD). It was a top secret group,
directly subordinated to the head of the NKVD, Lavrenty Beria, and, in fact, dealt
with foreign intelligence, parallel with the intelligence department of the
NKVD. Later, on the basis of this group, the 4th Directorate of the NKVD was
created, which was engaged in collecting intelligence and performing the acts
of sabotage behind the enemy lines.
- What did the Special
Group do?
- The officers of the
Special Group were trained to wage a secret war on our own territory. They
began to prepare and implement a sabotage plan in the case of the capture of
Moscow by Nazi troops. Where could Hitler and his associates arrange the celebrations
to mark the fall of the Soviet capital? There were very few options - either in
the Kremlin or in the Bolshoy Theater. Therefore, the NKVD decided that it was
necessary to prepare the sabotage of these objects. At the same time, the
leadership of the NKVD proceeded from the fact that Hitler and other leaders of
the Third Reich would definitely take a personal part in the planned
celebrations.
Anna Kamayeva was
assigned a crucial role - to attempt to assassinate Hitler. Various scenarios
for completing this task were being worked out, but all of them clearly indicated:
the assassin had no chance of surviving. Giving such a task, the leadership of
the NKVD knew that they were sending the girl to certain death, but they were
sure that Anna would carry out the order successfully.
Fortunately, the whole
plan remained on paper. Moscow withstood the offensive of the Nazis. The troops
of the Western Front, commanded by General of the Army Georgy Zhukov managed to
stop and then push the Wehrmacht troops away from the capital.
Later, it was in
Zhukov’s reception room, having arrived there to receive a medal for the
participation in the large-scale sabotage actions against the Nazis, that Anna
Kamayeva met her future husband Mikhail. He, in turn, received an order from
Zhukov to head a reconnaissance and sabotage detachment, which [later] carried
out an unprecedented raid on the enemy’s rear in the Moscow region.
- And ever since then
they have worked together?
- No, their paths
immediately parted, and for many months. Anna continued her service as a radio
operator in one of the partisan detachments operating in the Moscow region, and
Mikhail was appointed a commissar in a partisan detachment that fought deep behind
the Nazi lines.
Mikhail Ivanovich
fought in Ukraine. In the Nazi-occupied Kiev, he led a reconnaissance and
sabotage group of the special section “Olymp” of the 4th Directorate of the
NKVD. Later, while performing a sabotage operation in Poland, Mikhail was
seriously wounded. Doctors were able to save his life, but he became
permanently disabled. Mikhail Ivanovich left the hospital with a cane, which he
never parted with for the rest of his life. He met with Anna again only after
the war.
- And what did Anna
Fyodorovna do after the defeat of the Germans in the Moscow region?
- When the immediate
threat of the capture of the capital passed, she was recalled to Moscow and she
began to work again in the central office of the 4th Directorate. Then she was
sent to foreign language courses at the Higher School of the NKVD. She improved
her knowledge of Spanish and studied Portuguese and Czech languages. The
intelligence leadership planned to send her to do illegal intelligence work
abroad.
- After the war, Anna
and Mikhail got married. Soon their son was born. But they could hardly enjoy a
quiet family life. They went through intense training for illegal intelligence work
in Latin America. At the same time, their young son also studied Czech and
Spanish. The leadership decided that he also had to go with his parents in
order to provide a confirmation for one of the points of the cover story which
was developed for them.
The trial run of the Filonenkos
as illegal intelligence officers before they were sent on a long-term mission
took place in difficult conditions. To start with, they had to pose as refugees
from Czechoslovakia and attain legal status in Shanghai, China where many
Europeans settled after the war. The Filonenkos, together with their little
son, crossed the Soviet-Chinese border through an “opening” specially prepared
for them, at night, in a blizzard and in snow that was waist-deep.
Moreover, Anna Fyodorovna
was then pregnant again. However, they made it safely to Harbin, where the
first and most dangerous stage of their legalization took place. Their daughter
was born in Harbin. According to legend, the “refugees from Czechoslovakia”
were zealous Catholics, therefore, in accordance with European traditions, the
newborn was baptized in a local Catholic cathedral.
- Well, did Anna
Fyodorovna scream in Russian like the radio operator Kät when she gave birth
abroad?
- No, she didn’t. But,
in all other respects, Anna Kamayeva is the prototype of the female radio
operator from “Seventeen Moments of Spring.”
- How did the
Filonenkos' work proceed from there?
- The journey to Latin
America took them several years. Once they settled there, they began to carry
out the intelligence assignments of the Center. Their main task was to identify
the plans of the United States, primarily dealing with the military and political
matters in relation to the Soviet Union. Such information was easier to obtain
in Latin America than in the United States. The fact is that the Americans
shared their plans with their Latin American partners because they counted on
them in a potential future war against the USSR.
- Very soon we will
all celebrate the 75th anniversary of the [Allied] Victory in Europe. How did
the intelligence officers help the Victory, what important information did they
gain?
- Female intelligence
officers who were active in Europe on the eve of the war, and on the territory
of the Soviet Union temporarily occupied by Nazi Germany, wrote glorious pages
in the chronicle of the heroic achievements of Soviet foreign intelligence. The
war years have proven that women are no less capable than men of carrying out important
intelligence missions.
Already on the eve of
World War II, a Russian emigrant, the famous opera singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya,
whose singing was admired by Fyodor Shalyapin, Alexander Vertinsky and Leonid
Sobinov, was actively working for Soviet intelligence in Paris.
Together with her
husband, General of the White Army, the commander of the Kornilov division,
Nikolay Skoblin, Plevitskaya helped expose the anti-Soviet work of the Russian
All-Military Union (ROVS), which carried out terrorist attacks against Soviet
Russia. Thanks to the information received from these Russian patriots, the
Soviet counterintelligence arrested over a dozen agents of the ROVS operating
in the USSR and discovered the safe houses for terrorists in Moscow, Leningrad,
and the Caucasus region.
Moreover, thanks to
these efforts, including those by Plevitskaya and Skoblin, the foreign
intelligence of the USSR was able to disorganize the activities of the ROVS in
the pre-war years, thereby depriving Hitler of the opportunity to actively use
over 20 thousand members of this organization in the war against the USSR.
The pre-war period and
the Second World War radically changed the approach to intelligence in general
and to the role of the female intelligence officers in particular. The people
of goodwill in Europe, Asia and America were acutely aware of the danger that
Nazism posed to all mankind. And so, during the war, hundreds of these people
from different countries voluntarily offered their services to Soviet foreign
intelligence, carrying out its assignments in different regions of the world.
For example, on the eve
of the war, Fyodor Parparov, a resident [station chief] of the Soviet illegal
intelligence service in Berlin, maintained operational contact with the source
codenamed “Marta” - the wife of a prominent German diplomat. She regularly
received information about the negotiations of the German Foreign Office with the
diplomatic representatives of England and France. From these documents, it
appeared that London and Paris were more concerned about the fight against
communism than about the establishment of the system of collective security in
Europe and the joint pushback against the fascist aggression.
“Marta” was also able to
obtain information about a German intelligence agent in the General Staff of
Czechoslovakia who regularly sent to Berlin top secret materials about the
state and combat readiness of the Czechoslovak army. Thanks to this
information, Soviet intelligence took measures to expose this German agent and get
him arrested by the Czech counterintelligence.
In addition to
Parparov, other Soviet intelligence officers also operated in Berlin before the
war. Among them was the [Soviet] military intelligence agent Ilse Stöbe
(operational codename “Alta”), a journalist whose contact was the German
diplomat Rudolf von Sheliha (“Aryan”). He sent important materials to Moscow
with warnings about the impending German attack on the USSR.
Already in February
1941, “Alta” reported the formation of three army groups of the German
Wehrmacht and the direction of their main attacks on Moscow, Leningrad and
Kiev. In early 1943, “Alta” and “Aryan” were arrested by the Gestapo and
executed [They were arrested and executed in the fall of 1942].
Zoya Rybkina, who
later became widely known as the children’s literature writer Zoya
Voskresenskaya, Elizaveta Zarubina, Elena Modrzhinskaya, Leontina Cohen, Kitty
Harris, all worked for Soviet intelligence on the eve and during the war. They did
their work often risking their lives. But they were all driven by a sense of
duty and true patriotism, the desire to protect the world from the Nazi
aggression.
- But the most
important information during the war did not come only from abroad?
- Indeed, it
constantly came from the numerous reconnaissance and sabotage groups of the
NKVD, operating near or far from the front lines in the temporarily occupied
Soviet territory.
Without exaggeration, the
female intelligence officers from the special-purpose detachment “Pobediteli”
[Victors], as well as many other combat units of the 4th Directorate
of the NKVD, who obtained very important information during the war years, made
an indelible mark in the history of our country’s intelligence service.
The intelligence
officer of the “Pobediteli” detachment, Lydia Lisovskaya, was the closest
assistant of our legendary intelligence officer Nikolay Ivanovich Kuznetsov,
who operated in the Nazi-occupied territory under the name of the German
officer Paul Siebert. While working as a casino waitress at the headquarters of
the occupation forces in Ukraine, she helped Kuznetsov make acquaintances with
German officers and collect information about the high-ranking fascist
officials in the city of Rovno in western Ukraine.
Lisovskaya recruited
her first cousin Maria Mikota to work for Soviet intelligence. On the instructions
of the Center, Mikota became an agent of the Gestapo and subsequently informed
the partisans about all the punitive raids of the Nazis. It was through Mikota
that Nikolay Kuznetsov met SS officer Ulrich von Ortel, who was a member of the
group of the German commando Otto Skorzeny. From Ortel, Kuznetsov first
received information that the Nazis were preparing an attempt on the life of
the leaders of the USSR, the U.S. and Great Britain Stalin, Roosevelt and
Churchill during their meeting in Tehran in the fall of 1943.
Also, in 1943, on an
assignment from Kuznetsov, Lisovskaya was able to get a job as a housekeeper
for the commander of the Special Forces in the East, Major General Max Ilgen.
With the direct participation of Lisovskaya, Ilgen was kidnapped in Rovno.
[Let’s also note] the
legendary Africa de las Heras, a native of Spain, who began cooperating with
Soviet foreign intelligence in 1937 during the civil war in her homeland. To
this day, [many] operations in which she took part are classified. In 1942,
Africa was sent to the “Pobediteli” detachment as a radio operator, but more
than once she had to participate in the combat operations during which she
demonstrated a great deal of courage and bravely performed command assignments.
In the summer of 1944,
Africa returned to Moscow, where she was offered a position in the illegal
intelligence section. She accepted it and, after the war, worked abroad for
almost twenty years. Returning to the USSR, she took part in the education of
the younger generation of illegal intelligence officers and passed on to them
her truly invaluable experiences.
- Just recently in an
interview [English translation provided here], our declassified illegal intelligence
officer Tamara Ivanovna Netyksa very fondly recalled “Marya Pavlovna” - Africa
de las Heras. She considered her second mother who taught Spanish to her and her
husband Vitaly.
- The name of colonel
Africa is immortalized in gold letters on the memorial plaque of the SVR. But many
of her intelligence colleagues will remember her forever under her operational
pseudonym “Patria” - which translated from Spanish means “Homeland.” And she
did not choose this pseudonym by chance - after all, to her the Soviet Union
really became the second homeland.
Africa de las Heras
was on the forefront of intelligence combat for over 45 years. And, of course,
to accomplish even a small part of that which she had done in illegal
intelligence work is possible only if one serves the highest ideals. Sergey
Yesenin once wrote the following lines: "I envy those who spent their
lives in battle, who defended a great idea." These lines fit very well
with Patria’s personality.
- In 1945, the war
ended, but for Soviet foreign intelligence, including its female officers, the
battle continued even after the Victory?
- Yes. The war years
gave way to the long years of the Cold War. The United States of America did
not hide its imperial plans and aspirations to destroy the Soviet Union with
the help of atomic weapons. But in order to make the right decisions, the
leadership of the Soviet Union needed reliable information about the real plans
of the Americans. Female intelligence officers played an important role in
obtaining the classified Pentagon documents. Among them are Anna Kamayeva-Filonenko,
Irina Alimova, Galina Fyodorova, Elena Kosova, Elena Cheburashkina, and many
others.
- The situation in the
world now is also, unfortunately, far from calm and therefore new tasks arise for
the Russian intelligence. Do you think that women will play a key role in their
completion?
- I’ll put it this
way. The century-long history of our foreign intelligence service has proven
the importance of women’s participation in its work. And, therefore, of course,
they will make a worthy contribution to protecting the security and interests
of Russia in the future.
