Mikhail Lyubimov is
one of the best-known former KGB officers in the West. He was based in the KGB
stations (rezidenturas) in Great Britain and Denmark in the 1960s and the
1970s. After retiring from the KGB in 1980, he turned to writing spy fiction.
Lyubimov gave this interview on the occasion of his 85th birthday while on vacation in
Scotland. The interview was conducted by his son Alexander, a well-known TV
journalist, and published in the May 27, 2019 issue of the pro-regime weekly newspaper Argumenty
i Fakty (AiF). Below is my English translation available only on this blog.
Alexander Lyubimov: Interview of Mikhail Lyubimov
Argumenty i Fakty May
27, 2019
Alexander Lyubimov:
Welcome to Scotland. When was the last time you were here in Edinburgh?
Mikhail Lyubimov: Last
time I was here in 1962, just after you were born. The situation was very
unpleasant. Our famous agent George Blake, a British intelligence officer, was
exposed. He was arrested. Konon Molody, an illegal intelligence officer, was exposed
and his two radio operators as well (much later they all received the title of
Hero of Russia). And two agents, who were at the naval base in Portland, were
also exposed.
-And you came here
when all this was going on?
- Yes, in the middle
of it. And our [Soviet] positions at that time were rather weak. Our main goal
was to make connections. And the head of our station sent me to Edinburgh. Though,
frankly, I asked for it myself.
- So, you left mom and
me and went to Edinburgh?
- Yes, I left you, my
poor baby. And I went to Edinburgh for two days. At that time, Dmitry
Shostakovich and his son Maxim as well as [Galina] Vishnevskaya and [Mstislav] Rostropovich
arrived to participate in the famous Edinburgh Music Festival. I remember that at
the hotel, in the morning, they had an orchestra playing especially for
Shostakovich. But he wasn’t able to eat his breakfast because of that music.
- He didn’t like the
way the orchestra played?
- No. They really
wanted to please Shostakovich. But he couldn’t stand it and went to his room. I
talked mainly with Rostropovich who was a very energetic and pleasant person.
He immediately asked me to call him Slava. My goal was to obtain all kinds of
information with the assistance of these people. To talk with everybody, as
journalists and diplomats do, about the political situation in the country,
about its relations with the U.S., about the meetings of NATO. We expected that
at the Edinburgh Festival among these music lovers and similar types, there
would also be people of operational interest to us.
- What do you feel now
when you are in the country against which you operated?
- I'm an Anglophile. I
do not know a single [Soviet] intelligence officer who was based in Britain and
did not like the country. This, of course, does not refer to politics, but to
the British culture, literature, music, architecture.
- What are your
feelings today after the Soviet Union - the country you loved – was defeated in
the Cold War by the West?
- Nonsense. The
Americans came up with the claim that we lost the Cold War. The Cold War ended
because the Soviet Union wanted it to end. Because the Communist system has
become obsolete. Gorbachev and his entourage tried to build socialism with a
human face. But nothing came of it.
- Now, under capitalism,
you don’t like, for example, that there are the rich and the poor. And when the
Soviet Union existed, you didn’t like that everyone was poor.
- In the Soviet Union,
I didn’t like two things - a constant shortage of goods (although I myself did
not need anything). And the second thing that I didn’t like was the idiotic
restriction of freedom. Unless you write [or behave] the way you are told, you
can’t go abroad.
- There is much less
restriction on freedom now. You can travel abroad freely. The shortage problem
has been solved. But you still don't like Russian capitalism. Why?
- I don’t like Russian
capitalism because in our country there are so many poor people. This upsets me
and makes me angry.
- That is, there should
be equality?
- A true equality is
unrealistic. But, in any case, there shouldn’t be such a huge gap - when some have
yachts and real estate around the world, and others don’t have enough to eat.
- In the 1990s, there
were people who took risks, participated in politics, privatized enterprises.
There was no financial liquidity in the country, but the workers had to be paid.
They risked it all because, in 1996, Yeltsin could have lost, and the
Communists would have returned to power. Do you think that these people earned
money dishonestly and then bought yachts and planes with it? And how do you
feel about the bribe that was seized from the head of the banking section of
the FSB Department “K,” Colonel Kirill Cherkalin which amounted to 12 billion
rubles [170 million dollars]? This is three billion rubles more than was
discovered in the possession of the former Ministry of Internal Affairs official
Dmitry Zakharchenko.
- People like
Zakharchenko and Cherkalin need to be shot. It is a pity that we have abolished
the death penalty.
- Are you being
facetious now?
- No. Russia must have
the death penalty. In America, there is a death penalty, in China, too.
- I am surprised that
you turned out to be such a bloodthirsty person! I went abroad with you, and
you opened up from such an unexpected direction. In Moscow, you don’t say such
things.
- I say it in Moscow
as well. People committing such serious crimes must be shot.
- What are true human
values, in your opinion?
- Serving the
Fatherland. I like writers [and] scientists. I hate speculators who are now
called businessmen. We have a great many of them.
- Our conversation is
acquiring a childish tone. You fell into a kind of primitivism, as if you were
a child.
- I am an old man. A retiree.
- And what is better -
speculation or deficit? If there is no speculation, then there is deficit.
- There are countries
where the economy is not based on speculation. Britain, for example.
- Do you think that
people in Britain are not engaged in speculation, that no one is deceiving
anyone, that there is no corruption?
- Everything you
mentioned is present in Britain, too. But the question is that of the size. I
don’t see in Britain such rampant corruption as in our country.
- I don’t know about Britain,
but when I fly to Berlin and see the airport that is being built for more than
20 years in which more than a billion euros have already been invested (and it
looks like some of our provincial airports in the 1970s), there is only one question
in my mind: where did the money go? As an ordinary Russian person, you are
concerned about the problems of your country. So, it seems to you that it’s
only us who are corrupt.
- There is corruption
in all countries. But the scope is not as wide as in our country. There is
nowhere such a gap between the rich and the poor. It's really a shame - in
Russia as rich as it is, 20 million people live below the poverty line.
- As an intelligence
officer, you've been dealing with traitors all your life. You yourself recruited
people who betrayed their countries…
- In general, it is
incorrect to imagine intelligence work in such a primitive way: running around,
recruiting, and killing people. My job consisted of getting information. And I
had a chance to recruit very infrequently.
- Nevertheless, people
gave you secret information.
- The information was not
always secret. We often collected it through the official channels, for
example, during meetings with the members of Parliament.
- And people who
betray their country in the interests of Russia, who are they for you?
Traitors?
- I don’t think that
they are traitors. If you take people like Kim Philby, they were the ideological
activists of the Comintern, Communists who wanted to change the political
system in Britain. What traitors are they?
- And Snowden?
- And Snowden is also
a normal person who opposes universal wiretapping and American [global]
hegemony. I met a ton of people like Snowden. There was a whole anti-capitalist
movement [in Britain]. And it exists now as well. It is very weak, but it still
exists. Those people helped our agent George Blake, who was sentenced to 42
years, to escape from a British prison.
- Snowden says that
all our actions are under surveillance by intelligence agencies, that even [Angela]
Merkel was wiretapped. What can the war between intelligence agencies lead to?
- I don’t know about
the current state of affairs in the intelligence world. I resigned in 1980. But
I know one thing: it is now very difficult to hide from the eyes of
counterintelligence. There are cameras [and] drones everywhere. It used to be
much harder to do surveillance. Today, technology has come to the aid of
intelligence officers.
- My grandfather, your
father was an employee of the OGPU and SMERSH. How do you feel about this?
- I feel positive. He
was a man of his time. He was of peasant origin and supported the revolution.
He came from the provinces and was hired by the Cheka. He participated in the
suppression of the opposition [and] searched Trotsky’s apartment. And Trotsky’s
wife shouted: “Who are you searching? Leader of the revolution!” Then [during the
late 1930s purges] my father was imprisoned. When he was released, he received
an official document stating that he was a victim of state repression. He fought
in the war from the beginning. He specialized in catching various German
saboteurs. Is this a crime? I believe that SMERSH was one of the main instruments
to fight against fascism and protect the Red Army.
- Here I agree with
you. What is your favorite time or favorite era?
- My favorite time is
the years of perestroika.
- 1985-1990?
- Yes. Then we had
high hopes. I am convinced that Gorbachev didn’t want the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the corrupt privatization that took place during those years. He didn’t
want the American advisers to implement their privatization schemes.
- And how did you feel
about the [TV news program] “Vzglyad” [Alexander Lyubimov was one of the main presenters]?
- “Vzglyad” began as
an idealistic program. At first, you did not call for people to get rich. You called
for freedom and democracy. And then all the same you slipped into the
propaganda of wealth. You started out differently, but then you became the
children of your time. I remember how you and Ivan Demidov discussed on air
where in Moscow you can exchange $10. At that time, foreign currency exchange
was still not allowed. And that was a problem. At first, you were idealists.
Therefore, the program was popular. You are still remembered as one of the
presenters and authors of “Vzglyad,” and not as the head of a TV company that
makes a lot of money.
- Is that a crime? True,
it is a money-making business to make TV programs, TV series and then sell them
to TV channels. But what is so shameful about that? Am I a speculator? Because
I sell programs for more money than I spend making them?
- I don’t understand
anything in those matters. For me, a speculator is someone who buys, for
example, apples in Armenia, passes them off as Chilean, and then sells them for
the price that is four times higher.
- And what if I pay
for the work of screenwriters, directors, actors, [and] cameramen, and I put it
all together in some kind of a TV program and sell it for more money. Is that
OK?
- Yes, that’s OK. You are
entitled to some surplus value.
- See, we can still
see eye to eye. What do you think about the Skripal case?
- I think that Petrov
and Bashirov are indeed GRU officers. I doubt very much that they went to
admire the cathedral in Salisbury, which is not all that interesting. It’s just
that the British authorities played up this story so much, promoted it in so
many ways, and ended up making something reminiscent of a play of the absurd. We
may never know what really happened there. The case of Litvinenko’s polonium
poisoning still leaves so many questions open. Why polonium? How did it end up
there? In an earlier era, the world was shaken by the arrests of intelligence agents.
And now we see some kind of idiotic information war. It turns out, let’s say,
that if I work in the U.S. [as a Russian], I can’t meet with a member of the
U.S. Senate. They could send me to jail for this like Maria Butina.
- What do you consider
your main achievement?
- I have no
achievements. Though I worked in intelligence for 25 years and I didn’t just
sit around all day, I worked hard and did not care to accumulate any wealth.
- I believe that your novel
The Life and Adventures of Alex Wilkie, the Spy is a great achievement.
-That’s the other part
of my life. I have published 15 books. But, is that an achievement? Now nobody
reads books. I actively work as a journalist, I write articles. So what? There
are many like me. At 85, I feel the absurdity of life. I studied so much, I
know so much. And all this I will soon take to the grave.
