Moskovskaya Pravda: The Story of Africa de las Heras, A Spanish-Born KGB Illegal Intelligence Officer

On September 18, 2020, the City of Moscow daily newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda published a chapter from the upcoming book on the Soviet intelligence officers by journalist Ilona Yegiazarova. The chapter describes the life and work of Africa de las Heras (1909-1988), a Spanish-born Soviet intelligence officer active both during the World War Two and the early Cold War. In her later life, de las Heras was active in training the new generations of Soviet illegal intelligence officers. Below is my translation available only on this blog.

Ilona Yegiazarova: Colonel Africa

Moskovskaya Pravda September 18, 2020

Moscow. The Red Square. Dawn is about to break. The square is unusually deserted and there is a certain mystique in that: it seems as if the shadows of the historical figures will emerge from behind the red bricks, come to life, and begin to reveal the secrets of the past. But instead of the ghosts, a beautiful gray-haired woman appears on the square carrying a bouquet of blood-red carnations and walks sadly to the Kremlin wall...

I witnessed this episode several years ago: the SVR Press Bureau invited me to the set of the docudrama about the legendary Soviet intelligence officer Africa de las Heras entitled “Patria. The Woman Classified ‘Top Secret’.”  The director of the film, our former compatriot and half Basque, Algis Arlauskas, came from Spain and brought a group of Spanish actors with him to Moscow. The SVR consultants were also present on the set, and from their detailed comments and the conversations with the director and actors, who were themselves immersed in the material, the image of this amazing woman began to form in my head.

Usually, when working on biographical docudramas, the scriptwriters and directors complain about the lack of “catchy” details from the lives of their heroes. However, in this case, they were faced with the opposite extreme: they had to pare down and cut so much and leave out a lot of very interesting facts. Indeed, the real biography of our heroine is amazing.

The Sultry Girl

She was born in the city of Ceuta (Spanish Morocco) in 1909, where her father, an officer who was critical of the ruling regime of Miguel Primo de Rivera, worked in the military archive. And although Zoilo de las Heras Jimenez was the brother of the famous Spanish general Manuel de las Heras, working in Morocco was for him essentially an exile. (Remember the uncle who was the general; we will come back to him later in our story). The father gave his daughter an unusual name – Africa - in gratitude to the African continent which has sheltered him and his family. After some time, they returned to Spain where Zoilo died suddenly in 1933. Africa and her older sister Virtudes found themselves on their own.

Our heroine got married early; she barely turned 19 and her husband was an officer, of course. He was a supporter of Francisco Franco, but at that time Africa did not attach any significance to that. Then the couple had a child, and, with all the passion of her nature, she plunged into the joys of motherhood. But the baby died.

This was the traumatic turning point that changed her life. The unhappy woman looked for an outlet for her emotions; she did not know where to direct her unspent energy... Her husband seemed not to understand what was going on and they divorced. Then Africa turned to the parties of the Left.

In mid-1933, she worked in a textile factory in Madrid and joined the Communist Party. Soon, she took part in the preparations for the miners’ uprising in the province of Asturias. She carried out the most dangerous assignments: she distributed weapons and acted as a liaison between the various detachments of the rebels all the while using the cover of being the famous general’s niece.

She ended up in jail a couple times and then hid from the authorities for the whole year.

When the Spanish Civil War broke out, “Afrikita” enthusiastically joined the fight against the Franco regime. It was then that she was recruited by the Soviet foreign intelligence in Madrid. On its behalf, she began taking dangerous trips to neighboring countries. She took on the operational pseudonym “Patria” which she used in her reports to the Center for the rest of her life.

Leon Trotsky, Ramon Mercader, and Nikolay Kuznetsov

Our heroine has faithfully served in the Soviet foreign intelligence service for more than 45 years. It is breathtaking just to try to count the roles she played and the missions she was involved in. However, the truth and the legend are difficult to keep apart in this respect. Her full biography is still classified and there are gaps that many have filled with invented tales.

The most intriguing chapter in her life is perhaps her acquaintance with Leon Trotsky. It is said that she was assigned to him in the role of a translator and a secretary. It is also said that she was a friend of Ramon Mercader and helped him prepare the assassination of the “demon of the revolution” on Stalin’s orders. She was active in the circle of [Mexican] artists, Frida Kahlo and David Siqueiros. However, she was urgently recalled to the USSR in 1939 when the Soviet intelligence chief in Madrid Alexander Orlov, frightened by the purge in the intelligence service, defected to the West. The Center feared that he would expose Africa and recalled her to Moscow. Here our heroine received the Soviet citizenship and got a job in the textile factory. Many Spaniards arrived in the USSR at that time and no one even suspected who this dark, fragile beauty really was. And Orlov never exposed his former subordinate...

When the Great Patriotic War began, Africa made every effort to be sent to the frontline. She enlisted in the Special Medical Unit of the OMSBON (Independent Motorized Brigade for Special Operations) of the NKVD, then she attended the accelerated courses for radio operators. After graduating with honors, she was sent to the newly formed reconnaissance and sabotage unit “Victors” under the command of the future Hero of the Soviet Union Dmitry Medvedev. In her memoirs, she wrote:

“Sometime later, I took the oath of a radio operator. I solemnly swore that I would never surrender to the enemy alive and would blow up with grenades the transmitter, the quartz mechanism, and the ciphers. I was handed two grenades, a pistol, a curved [Finnish] knife. From that moment on, I constantly carried with me all of that...”

From a partisan detachment, deep behind enemy lines, she fearlessly sent to Moscow secret information obtained by intelligence officer Nikolay Kuznetsov who operated undercover as the officer of the German secret police Paul Siebert. In order to send his encrypted messages to the Center, three radio operators, accompanied by guards, would go out of the camp into the forest. Two radio operators would broadcast disinformation, and only Africa – because she was the best – was chosen to transmit accurate information to Moscow. This was done to deceive the potential German interceptors. Nikolay Kuznetsov called her his favorite radio operator.

She steadfastly endured all the hardships of partisan life: “We received telegrams from about thirty partisan units. We handled encryption, transmission, reception, decryption... We had almost no time left for sleep.” The Russian winter caused physical suffering in this woman from the South: she felt cold all the time. Once Kuznetsov got three short fur coats for his radio operators and he also gave Africa a beautiful woolen shawl. For the rest of her life, she remembered him fondly.

Was there something romantic in the relationship between Kuznetsov and Africa? Nobody can answer that now. But if the movie were made about it, no doubt a full-fledged love story could be constructed on the fact of his giving her the shawl.

For the successful performance of combat missions and active participation in the partisan movement during the war years, Africa was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 2^nd  degree and the Order of the Red Star, as well as the medals “For Courage” and “Partisan of the Patriotic War” of the 1^st  degree.

She Got Married on the Orders of the Center

By the way, in the docudrama on the set of which I was present, there was a lot of focus on the love themes. The filmmakers suggested that romantic feelings were shared by Africa and Ramon Mercader, who eventually killed Trotsky. There was even a short episode that depicted them, after having met each other again decades later in the 1970s, piece together a single photograph, the two halves of which they carried their whole lives. Film director Arlauskas told me: “Both of our heroes were rebels in Spain at the same time, they were both good-looking and professed the principle of free love. Why not bring them together? After all, I see my main task as creating the image of a living person.”

And she really was vivacious, passionate, amorous. She got married four times. But the family was never her priority, the main thing for her was her work. And she did plenty of it.

In the first year after the war, Africa settled in Paris. Then she was transferred to one of the countries in Latin America. Her cover was that of the owner of a fashion studio and later of an antiquarian shop. And you know, she had some brilliant successes. Elegant, with a lot expertise in art, a painter herself, she easily made friends with the upper society ladies. Through them, she met their high-ranking husbands and obtained valuable information. She spent 22 years in Latin America. There was a lot of work to do. After eight years of solo work, in 1956, the Center sent her a husband!

She obeyed without a protest and did not ask a single question. Her husband, the station chief Giovanni Antonio Bertoni was an Italian by birth and worked for the USSR since 1936. He was Africa’s supervisor and a friend. Was there any romantic love between them? When, after eight years of marriage, he died suddenly, she was crushed with grief.

The Center highly valued the results of their work as family illegals. They attained legal status and established themselves in the country of assignment, set up a two-way radio communication, and provided a reliable safehouse. Africa was also engaged in covert missions linked to the Cuban missile crisis and the struggle against the American atomic program. Although she could have retired after the death of her husband, “Patria” wanted to remain working. The country where she was based seemed to be on the verge of a military coup, and she remained there for another three years to collect and transmit important information.

Afterword

She returned to the USSR in the 1970s. She trained young intelligence officers and shared her experiences with them. She did not have any children of her own and her maternal care and tenderness found an outlet in her relations with her students. She would give her jewelry as presents to her students and often recalled “that very shawl” given to her by Kuznetsov, which, she, alas, was not able to preserve over the years. She loved good music and liked to sing. She talked about  passionately dancing during the moments of rare calm at the front. Of course, she longed for her family members left behind in Spain, whom she had not seen since 1939. Once she heard on the radio how the Spanish Red Cross was looking for the lost loved ones. The list of endless names included her sister Virtudes who was looking for her. Her heart sank, but she could not reply because of her intelligence work. That’s the kind of life she led: she was completely devoted to the ideals of peace and security.

Was she happy? The actress Estrella Salatero, who played the role of Africa in the docudrama that started our story, correctly noted: “The loss of the first homeland, the lack of the second, the unrealized maternal instinct... All this made her into a warrior. Her ideals were more important to her than any particular man or family. And you know, she was happy in her struggle. She remained faithful to her ideals all throughout her life, she had a wholesome personality and although she was constantly freezing in your country, she was hot in her soul.”

Africa de las Heras died at the age of 78, on an important day - March 8, 1988. On an international women’s holiday, on a date with three eights, which symbolize infinity. The infinity of her life, continuing in her accomplishments and in her students’ work. The docudrama about her was eventually shown on Channel One. But I think the story of this heroine will receive many more screen adaptations in the future.

 

 

RIA Novosti: Interview of Vyacheslav Trubnikov, Former SVR Director

On April 25, 2019, Russia’s state-owned news agency RIA Novosti published an interview of Vyacheslav Trubnikov, a veteran KGB officer and SVR director from January 1996 to May 2000. In 2000, Trubnikov was appointed to the position of a deputy foreign minister and in 2004, he became Russia’s ambassador to India, the post he held until his retirement from government service in 2009. The occasion for the interview was Trubnikov’s 75^th birthday. Below is my translation available only on this blog.

Vyacheslav Trubnikov: I Am Proud that SVR Helped Turn Around Russian Foreign Policy

RIA Novosti April 25, 2019

- Vyacheslav Ivanovich, could you please explain the following puzzling fact from your biography? You graduated from the physics and mathematics oriented high school with a gold medal. And then, suddenly, you enrolled at the MGIMO [Moscow State Institute of International Relations], our main university for diplomats. How did this seemingly illogical turn come about?

- Here I immediately have to make a correction. Someone made an inaccurate statement in the past and I have to correct it every time. I graduated from the high school No. 87 in the Krasnopresnensky district of Moscow with a gold medal. What is called the physics and mathematics orientation was only relevant in the ninth or tenth grade and it was an elective course in the evenings. In other words, my gold medal had nothing to do with it.

- But, in any case, you had an affinity for the exact sciences.

- Not just an affinity, I was very fond of them. I planned to follow in the footsteps of my first cousin and enroll in the Dzerzhinsky Higher Naval Engineering School in Leningrad. I had already sent my documents there. But, suddenly, I got a call from the high school director – “Slava, tomorrow morning you need to go the district committee of the Komsomol!” I had no idea why. And then, the window of opportunity opened up. The Komsomol was making the selection of high school graduates for the MGIMO.

- They were making the selection? Wasn’t the decision where to enroll voluntary?

- Let me explain. That was in 1961. That year a large number of servicemen were demobilized from our armed forces - one million two hundred thousand people, including officers. And the doors of all universities were open for them. This included even the most prestigious universities. The universities allocated up to 80% of all open spots for the former military people, and it was enough for them just to pass the entrance exams. The grades they received were irrelevant. But for the high school students who were admitted for the remaining spots, it was necessary to pass all the exams with the highest grades. In particular, to get into the MGIMO, you had to score 25 points out of 25.

In addition to that, the selection was based on one’s social origin. They tried to take high school students from the working-class families, the families like mine - my father was an assembly fitter. Those who were smart and who wanted to study. So that is what happened.

However, I wanted to get out of all that and I said to the “old men,” the members of the commission of the district committee of the Komsomol: “My documents are already on their way to the Higher Naval School in Leningrad.” But they replied: “That is not a problem. The documents can be returned easily. The entrance exams must be taken now, after your high school graduation. And if it does not work out, you will have plenty of time in August to take entrance exams for any other place you want.”

- However, everything worked out and you enrolled at the MGIMO.

- Yes. I applied for the study of Arabic language. The Middle East was popular then. Especially Egypt with its president Gamal Abdel Nasser. He was considered the leader of the Arab world. Later he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

- Exactly. But when in August I came to the institute to take a look at the posted lists of those who were admitted, I immediately saw that I was not in the Arabic language study group. I went to the dean’s office and explained what I did and where I applied and that I was not on the list. Then, the head of the program - a man in riding breeches and boots, who at an earlier time worked in the NKVD – said: “How so? It can’t be that you were not on the list. Let’s take a look again.” He flipped through the lists and exclaimed: “Well, here you are - Hindi, English.” I asked, “Why Hindi?” He replied: “Well, do you think that only idiots should study Hindi? You will study Hindi.” And that’s how I ended up on the path to my later much beloved India.

- In other words, you had no special affinities for India back then?

- Absolutely not. Of course, I knew that there was such a country. The old German film “The Indian Tomb” was shown in the local movie theater. Although the film was in black and white, it still conveyed the Indian charm. However, that charm was far from seducing me at that time.

- In the 1950s, the Indian national soccer team came to Moscow. They say that it left a memorable impression on the locals not because of their play, but because of another detail.

- They played barefoot.

- Yes.

- I did not see it with my own eyes, I was still a small child. But in my neighborhood in the Presnya district, that’s all they talked about, how they played without soccer boots. I remembered that.

- When did you go to India for the first time?

- In 1966. I was still a student and I went for a 6-month pre-graduation training.

- What impressed you the most?

- That India is a country of absolutely colossal contrasts!

- And yet, any country, in principle, can be called a country of contrasts.

- Not really. Because not in every country will you see in the center of the capital city the poor kids lying in the mud, begging from the passers-by, against the backdrop of a gorgeous villa with a luxurious palm garden. And that was how it was then in Delhi.

At that time, after descending from the plane, a European was immediately surrounded by a whole group of such kids. And it was really difficult to get away from them. 

By the way, they immediately picked out the Russians – they knew we were sentimental. They would not accost an Englishman. An Englishman would instantly hit them with a stick on the hands or on the head. And a Russian would give them money, though he himself may not have known whether it was too little or too much.

- And what about the sacred animals, the cows? They are also considered one of the symbols of India.

- At that time, the streets were full of cows. They were present everywhere, including in the diplomatic enclave. They were miserable, skinny animals with protruding ribs, chewing cigarette boxes or newspapers - in general, everything that had any cellulose in it.

And here’s a story involving animals. When I flew to India in 1967, our TU-114 plane, huge and beautiful like a crane, was forced to land in Karachi. We stayed at the airport hotel there. While I sat in a chair in the lobby, I suddenly noticed with horror a huge shadow of a crocodile on the ceiling. What was that?! It turned out it was just a small lizard called gecko, but it reflected the light in such a way that it seemed as if the crocodile was crawling. I still remember that quite well.  

In India, you never stop being surprised. If you really pay attention, you can discover something new every day. And the longer you live there, the more you come to understand that it is impossible to get to know it completely. I had a friend there, an American journalist, and he once told me: “Slava, don’t you think that a tourist who comes to India for a week or two will definitely write a book about it? And a person who lives here for a year will only write a newspaper article. But those who have lived here for more than a year won’t write anything at all, because they realize that they really don’t know anything.”

India is really a separate civilization with its own philosophy. Moreover, it is an extremely innovative civilization. The game of chess came from India. Also, the concept of zero was invented there, a key concept for mathematics, which also made physics possible. Craniotomy surgeries were carried out there even before the new era. Starting with Ayurveda and ending with surgery, medicine was put on the modern path of development in India two or three thousand years ago.

One can’t be neutral toward India. You either really love it completely or not at all. But those who fall in love with India are completely mesmerized.

When my friends and I get together, beside raising one toast to our Homeland, we also raise a toast to Bharat Mata - Mother India. Because it brought us all together, it introduced us to each other. We lived there according to our laws but were enriched with the Indian views of the world.

I worked in India with great pleasure. It has never been a burden for me. And later, when I left the foreign intelligence service [SVR] and entered the Foreign Ministry and was offered to choose from a list of countries where to work as an ambassador, as soon as I heard “Delhi,” I had no dilemma whatsoever.

- And when you returned as an ambassador, how did India look to you? Did you see any changes?

- I saw a great deal of progress! I remember one place in particular, a suburb of Delhi. When I was in India decades ago, I ran over many snakes there. Towards the nightfall, snakes would creep out of the “jungle” to warm themselves on the highway, which had absorbed the heat of the day. You would drive and suddenly something would make a creaking sound – that meant that the snake got under the wheel. Now there are malls there, a complex of buildings four kilometers long where all the world’s major firms are represented. This whole complex is air-conditioned. There are cars of all brands [on the parking lot], it’s no worse than in Russia.

The pace of development in India is striking. It is also striking that all the changes in the political leadership and the coming to power of the opposition happened in a democratic way. Even when the voting process from the standpoint of – let’s say – “European” political culture seems like some kind of a circus. For instance, since illiterate people also take part in the voting, they are brought to the polling stations in [open] trucks and mark the ballot with their fingerprint in the place of a signature.

The modernization of the country is proceeding very quickly. The industry that the Soviet Union helped build is still going strong. The plant in Bhilai, the first steel plant in India, which was built with the participation of our [Soviet] specialists and with the loan from our government, is now producing alloy steel for export.

- By the way, that plant is also the main producer of structural steel and steel rails in India.

- Yes. But we shouldn’t assume that we were doing charity work in India, as some journalists used to claim. It wasn’t like that at all. True, we built these things with our government loans, but India paid us back with traditional goods - tea, jute, spices, and so on. And those are the goods sold on the world market for hard currency. In other words, this was a mutually beneficial collaboration.

In addition, India is the largest software exporter in the world. What does this mean?

- It means that the country has a high level of education.

- And not only education. They also produce the computer chips themselves. They are not importing them from somewhere else.

I want to highlight the sector in which the desire of Indians to produce on their own territory is especially clear. When our defense industry was practically on its deathbed in the 1990s, it was brought back to life by the military-technical cooperation with China and India. But what was the qualitative difference in their approaches? The Chinese bought our weapons and technological equipment in massive quantities. They bought everything we had. On the other hand, the Indians wanted only the latest technology. And now they have made their requirements even stricter.

We used to say to them: “You buy from us, because you take into account the ratio of the price and the quality, and yes, you demand extra-quality, but we give you a better price than we do to other countries.” But the Indians have been telling us lately: “This ratio is not really what we care about. We are ready to pay you as much as you ask, but only for the things we really want to have.” Moreover, they do not want to buy the newest items, which, perhaps, we don’t even have in our own military yet. The Indians say to us - we do not want to be your “guinea pigs,” we want to buy what you already have in your military, but it has to be the most advanced. 

- In addition, our atomic industry was saved at the turn of the century by the contract for the Kudankulam nuclear power plant, along with the orders for the construction of nuclear power plants in China and Iran.

- That’s true. I have been to the Kudankulam plant many times. I saw with my own eyes how the plant was being constructed. In that case, too, India got something based on the utilization of the most advanced technologies.

- The program for the development of the Indian national atomic industry has a certain local peculiarity: India has very few uranium reserves, but there is a lot of thorium, which can be used for nuclear fuel. And this is the focus of Indian nuclear research.

- Yes, they are working on that, but it is no easy task. But, potentially, India can have its own raw materials for nuclear fuel. This also shows their creativity.

I want to say that we must stop considering India a kind of country that has yet to attain “its maturity,” as some may still think in a condescending manner. This is not the case at all.

At this time, under the policy of “Make in India,” they are seeking partners to create joint venture investment projects on Indian territory. “We will buy a certain number of planes from you, but you need to give us a license to manufacture a certain number by ourselves, [in other words] give us the technology and we will make them ourselves” - this principle, the desire of Indians to produce what they need by themselves, is not always taken into account by us. And, as a result, in some areas we have, let’s call it, friction. After all, how many years have we been talking about a joint program to construct the fifth-generation jet fighters? And then, excuse me, why do we offer them only the option of purchasing our Su-57? Doesn’t this immediately cancel the entire joint venture? And, besides, it doesn’t enable the Indians to take part in the manufacturing of the Su-57. It brings them no new jobs. So, I repeat, we must talk to India on equal terms.

- What is your opinion regarding the Indian caste system?

- I specifically studied this social phenomenon. You open the main Indian newspapers on Sunday and you see marriage proposals, the announcements of the wish to marry a daughter or a son. And in every case the last name indicates the belonging to one caste or another. But this is the case only with the elite. In the hinterland, the caste system persists in a more severe form.

Of course, due to the fact that the lower castes are at the margins of society, their basic needs are far from being satisfied. Children are malnourished. And how can a growing child’s brain develop without nutrients? The Indian state makes a lot of effort to eliminate poverty. In India, there are the so-called “fair price stores,” something that is not found anywhere else in the world. If there is a large family but its income is below a certain level, then the state allows this family to buy the foodstuffs at subsidized prices and sustain its basic diet.

- This is probably something that other countries can learn from India.

- In fact, the whole world can do so. In India, social problems do not remain on the sidelines and are at the center of the government attention.

And, to go back the caste system, oddly enough, it seems that the Indian state itself now perpetuates it in a certain way. For instance, in the entrance examinations for the civil, diplomatic or other state jobs, a certain percentage of spots are reserved for the representatives of the lower castes and tribes.

- But there can be very gifted individuals among the lower castes. And it is beneficial for the country to let them develop their talents.

- That’s true. The caste system is not an obstacle to the advancement in the fields of politics and science. Jagjivan Ram was a very talented minister of defense in India in the 1970s. And he was from the caste of the “untouchables.”

What is very, very important is that when you look at the presidents of India, all castes were represented, starting with the highest caste of Brahmins. And this is done intentionally. The Indian National Congress has always followed this policy. At the head of the country, there is a Muslim for one term, then a Hindu, then a Buddhist, then a Sikh, etc.

- This is a democracy in the Indian way?

- Yes. It is a regulated democracy, not an ochlocracy [a government by the masses]. And this is its strength since the system is based on democratic voting. The internal structure of India is much more flexible than the internal structure of China. And although today’s China is firmly ruled by the Communist Party, with the further deepening of the market economy and foreign trade relations, the role of the CCP will decrease.

As for the Indian castes, over time they will be disappear as the result of India’s rapid technological and socio-economic progress. But, at the same time, this progress will cause a lot of challenges in the country from the perspective of environmental protection. We are already seeing massive deforestation to provide for arable land. And this leads to environmental imbalances.

As an intelligence officer, I generally see environmental problems as the main real threat to humanity. Nuclear weapons? They are a threat, but people have taken steps to reduce the threat coming from them.  

- And yet, the United States withdrew from the INF Treaty.

- That’s reckless and it is a worrying development, but there will be new agreements in the future. I am much more concerned about the relations between India and Pakistan, where, for instance, cutting off the water supply to Pakistan might have a lot of destructive potential. It would have an effect of several atomic bombs dropped on the Pakistani province of Baluchistan.

I was once interviewed by a lady from the American RAND Corporation. She asked me: “Mr. General, what do you think is the most terrible threat to the world?” And I replied: the disappearance of humanity as the result of an ecological catastrophe. So, I was glad when our President Vladimir Putin announced at the recent Arctic Forum that we will develop the Arctic, but that this must be approached very carefully and delicately. That is the correct approach. We must not disrupt the “immune system” of that region; there is a good reason why the Arctic is called the “weather kitchen” for the whole world. We must look far ahead. If we focus only on the short-term threats, we might overlook the most terrible threat, the extinction of humanity, when nature gets so disrupted that people simply can’t survive.

- Vyacheslav Ivanovich, what can you say about the U.S. attempts to influence India and make it a counterweight to the cooperation between Russia and China?

- The Americans are doing this, and very actively. The United States is relying on India as the main counterweight to China. They need the framework of ​​the Indo-Pacific region - not just the Asia-Pacific region, but wider - in order to engage India in constructing “a fence” around China. Washington proceeds from the assumption that India and China are, objectively speaking, geopolitical rivals.

At the moment, I am thinking about what kinds of new security structures can arise in our changing world. And it is absolutely clear to me that China wants to lead the construction of the security architecture in Asia by actively promoting the “One Belt, One Road” project, including both those who are near and those who are more distant. This is why, for example, it has built transport corridors to the Pakistani ports of Karachi and Gwadar.

We [Russia] strive to build a security architecture by developing the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) as its economic basis. But, as the economic ties become stronger, the joint tasks such as the fight against terrorism also come into existence. And it is from this position [of collaboration] that one can more confidently face new challenges and threats.

The Americans, on the other hand, construct the security architecture based on the U.S.-Japan-Australia-India rhombus (diamond). However, India doesn’t really want to be a part of it. And, in its attempts to acquire new technologies from the Americans, India is going to move carefully in order not to become dependent on the United States, while, at the same time, taking what it needs from them.

I don’t mean to say that India’s politics is egoistic. It is pragmatic. And I am personally convinced that the current leadership of India understands very well what it means to be dependent on the United States. This is why we see something which seems like a multi-vector approach in the Indian foreign policy. So far, India has been successful in pursuing it. But it’s a very difficult balance.

In my opinion, it would be much more interesting if there existed a non-aligned movement headed by Russia and India. And this is not only my opinion. Many experts believe that if the world turns towards bipolarity, toward the U.S.-China confrontation, then it would be beneficial for us and India to be, as the Chinese would say, in the position of a monkey sitting on a mountain and watching how two tigers fight each other.

- Vyacheslav Ivanovich, if we now turn to your work in the intelligence field – you worked under the cover of a journalist and not just for any newspaper, but for the [Soviet] Novosti Press Agency - the forerunner of RIA Novosti. Since that time, you have been a member of the Journalists’ Union. Did you have an area specialization or you wrote on all kinds of subjects?

- I wrote about everything. And I did it with pleasure. I have always done a lot of research on the topics I was writing about. I even wrote for the Soviet “Medical Newspaper.”

I remember very well how the famous ophthalmologist Svyatoslav Fyodorov came to India and performed surgical demonstrations. I went to his hotel room, and he yelled from the shower – “Make yourself comfortable, I’ll be out right away!” And then, the man came out was without a leg. For me, that was a shocking surprise. I didn’t know anything about his personal tragedy. He later told me how he had dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot and how he studied at a special school. But, jumping off the tram one day, he slipped and his foot fell under the tram. Fedorov admitted that he wanted to die [after being injured] but over time became fascinated by the art of medicine. And, in his gratitude to medicine, he managed to transform his pre-existing technical knowledge into an absolutely unprecedented thing, into making [surgical] cuts on the lens with a razor blade to change the eye’s focal length. Now such surgeries are commonplace.

- He was certainly an outstanding person. And another outstanding person was Yevgeny Maksimovich Primakov who became the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service [SVR] in 1991. In his memoirs, he recalled the manner in which the decision was made to appoint him the director of the SVR, and how President Boris Yeltsin came to the “Forest,” to the headquarters of the service at Yasenevo. Moreover, Primakov wrote that he noticed the existence of different points of view among the intelligence leadership regarding his appointment. How do you remember that time and the attitude of the intelligence collective toward the new director? Although Primakov was a brilliant scholar of the Middle East, he was still a civilian, after all.

- Of course, there were different views. That was also a period when the service was undergoing major changes, I would say, at the level of the morale and the ideology. But the decision to make the intelligence service nonpartisan was absolutely correct. The credits go Leonid Vladimirovich Shebarshin, the former head of the First Main Directorate of the KGB.

- After the events of August 1991, he served as the chairman of the KGB for two days only. But, in one of his books, he wrote that he signed the order banning the activities of party organizations in the state security services.

- Yes. And that was absolutely the right decision to make. We are working not for any political party, but for the state, for the security of the country and its people. I myself have always been guided by that principle. And that’s not a mere slogan.

Back then, in 1991, there was a period of confusion and vacillation. After Shebarshin, Vadim Bakatin was appointed the chairman of the KGB. Bakatin apparently did not understand what he was doing when he handed over to the wiretapping scheme of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to the Americans. They even got scared - why did he do that? They thought that there was something else behind this, for which a price had been paid in advance. It seems to me that Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was short-sighted in these matters. As were many others. They destroyed the KGB without thinking about who would guarantee the security of the country.

- What kind of director was Yevgeny Maksimovich? What new things did he bring to the foreign intelligence service?

- First of all, [he brought] the elements of real democracy in the quasi-military organization in which there is a strict chain of command. It may sound a bit strange, but everyone got the right to express their point of view and not to be punished or fired for it. Of course, the final decision was still made by the director. And Yevgeny Maksimovich taught us to do this.

Yevgeny Maksimovich also wanted to live and work closely with the intelligence collective, to get to know its problems, and do everything in his power to resolve them. For example, during this period of time, he was able to keep the housing units controlled by the service in order to offer them to the personnel. After all, the people who came from the other regions of Russia had nowhere to live.

Also, during the most difficult period, we acquired two trucks and would go to one of the regions to get the meat. That was a great deal both for that farm and for us. In our cafeteria, the meal prices were so low that our guests often joked – “This is impossible. You must be kidding!” And when Yevgeny Maksimovich transferred to the Foreign Ministry, the first thing he did was to improve the work of the cafeteria in which, in the earlier period, they even had cases of food poisoning.

Then, we set up our own bakery. We made our own dumplings [pelmeni]. The women who worked at the bakery had to cross the highway to get from the metro to the entrance to the headquarters. He also took care of that. 

This is a small indication that Primakov was not just a mere director. Due to his colossal political experience and expertise, he was able to establish rapport with everybody. And he was respected for it!

Yevgeny Maksimovich had a unique quality: he not only knew how to listen, but also how to really hear the interlocutor. And he was willing to change his mind.

At first, however, there was some skepticism as to whether Yevgeny Maksimovich could successfully direct the operative personnel of the service. But he made a very wise decision. He appointed me as his deputy and we divided the responsibilities: the operative matters were in my hands, and he concerned himself with the status of the intelligence service, the reports to the country’s leadership, and the external contacts. This division of labor turned out to be very successful. We helped each other. He became more of an operative, and I became more of a politician. It was a mutually enriching experience.

Yevgeny Maksimovich was very successful in strengthening the foreign intelligence service so that it survived and proved its usefulness. He made the service open to a certain extent, so that the taxpayers could see that our service was not taking their money for nothing. He created the Bureau for Public Relations. Essays on the History of the Foreign Intelligence Service were published - a unique collection of several volumes. Later, the British intelligence service MI6 published a book about its history, but with a lot of fictional additions, whereas we provided the narrative based on documentary evidence. I was the editor of one of the volumes of Essays.

We all as a collective performed the tasks set by Yevgeny Maksimovich, compensating for the blunders in the foreign policy of our country in the first half of the 1990s.

- The symbol of the turn of Russian diplomacy towards our national interests is often represented by the turning of the plane of then Prime Minister Primakov in the skies over the Atlantic in March 1999 when NATO forces began bombing Yugoslavia.

- That reversal was already a consequence of the changes that Yevgeny Maksimovich brought to our foreign policy when he became Foreign Minister in January 1996. And all the time, while he headed the Foreign Ministry, and then worked as Prime Minister, we - and I was the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service - worked in close cooperation and contributed to the U-turn of our foreign policy.

Therefore, I am proud of Yevgeny Maksimovich. And when he took the reins of the government after a terrible economic collapse, he was able to do something in a short period of time that no other prime minister had ever thought possible. The situation in the economy improved dramatically. That was his doing.

For me, Yevgeny Maksimovich will always remain a mentor and a comrade. And a real presence in our lives. People of that caliber are born, probably, only once in a hundred years.

- In January 1996, you succeeded him as the director of the SVR. This probably did not come as a surprise to you?

- Yes, it did. But Yevgeny Maksimovich supported my candidacy for the post of the director, and he told me that it was necessary to say yes.

But what was very difficult for me and even to a certain degree unpleasant was that I had to become a public person. That is to say, it was announced publicly that I was an intelligence officer. And I thought about the fate of the people who were my contacts abroad. I was very worried that they would be exposed.

- What situation do you consider the most difficult during those years that you headed the SVR?

- I will say that being the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service is always difficult. And it is difficult to identify any particular situations. There were a lot of cases when one had to report directly to the president.

One example. February 1994. Aldrich Ames was arrested in the United States as a Russian agent in the CIA. It’s nighttime in Moscow. A call came from the U.S. Yevgeny Maksimovich was then on a business trip abroad. I was woken up in the middle of the night. I lived in the government dacha in Yasenevo, and, five minutes later, I was on the phone. They told me what happened. But without mentioning the name of Ames. And for me, that message was like a cold shower! At that time, I didn’t know who Ames was because that was above my pay grade! The sources like are known only by the director.

The representatives of the CIA immediately flew to Moscow. They came to Yasenevo, and, among them was their Moscow station chief, James Morris. They made demands. They said that our station chief in Washington, Alexander Lysenko, must leave the United States. At that moment, it was not possible to reach Yevgeny Maksimovich, but a quick decision had to be made. And I made it. I said: “As sorry as we may be, Mr. Morris, but you and I will also have to part company.” They were stunned! They said: “How can you make such a decision? Such a decision can only be made by your president!” I replied: “The President will approve of my decision! And Yevgeny Maksimovich even more so.” I called Boris Nikolayevich [Yeltsin] and reported what I had said and done. And the President said: “Great job!”

And when Yevgeny Maksimovich returned, he asked me: “How did you endure all that? Perhaps I would have lost it. And you so tactfully put them in their place.” And that’s the end of the story.

That period was very difficult for me. It was even harder than the period of NATO’s strikes against Yugoslavia.

- Vyacheslav Ivanovich, what do you think led to the arrest of Ames?

- It seems to me that what happened was the following. Ames exposed the intelligence network that the Americans had created on our territory. And the KGB counterintelligence began to capture these agents one by one and quite quickly. This not only drew the attention of the CIA and the FBI, but they also at some point realized that there was a source leaking information. The circle around Ames was slowly getting tighter and tighter. And, in the end, they got him.

- Was it possible to arrest some of the identified American agents less quickly? Of course, the damage they did could not be undone, but perhaps they could have been covertly denied access to the classified information, a certain pause could have been made, and then they could have been taken off the list?

- Probably, but at the time we [USSR] tried to show everybody how strong we were and how good we were at uncovering spies. And yet, the sources of information must be protected like the apple of one’s eye.

- In your opinion, how did you contribute to the development of our foreign intelligence service when you were the director?

- Among many other things, I spent a lot of time on strengthening the morale of the service and on enabling the evaluation of its work by the public. In any case, the first Heroes of Russia in the history of the service were selected during my tenure - the husband and wife Morris and Leontine Cohen, Leonid Kvasnikov, Vladimir Barkovsky, Alexander Feklisov, Anatoly Yatskov. Our legendary intelligence officers who acquired atomic bomb materials. That was a big deal.

- A little later, Alexey Kozlov, an illegal who obtained information about the existence of nuclear weapons in South Africa, also became the Hero of Russia.

- Yes. Moreover, I learned about Alexey Mikhailovich from the head of South African intelligence service, who, for the first time took a foreigner, that is, me, to their service’s museum. There was the equipment, the things that Kozlov used in his work. He was a professional of the highest class. But he was awarded the title when I was already in the process of retirement from the service.

- Vyacheslav Ivanovich, since then, you also became the Hero of Russia. Can you tell us why you were awarded the title?

- This star of the Hero was awarded to the entire intelligence service. The director is not awarded as an individual, but as a representative of the entire service. I am proud that the service has grown and that many young people joined the ranks. There have been certain intelligence operations that I am proud of. And I am also proud that I did my part in the resolution of some important issues for our country.