Russian Weekly AiF: Interview of Mikhail Lyubimov, Spy Novelist and Veteran KGB Intelligence Officer

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 85^th 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.

Nikolay Dolgopolov: The Story of Mikhail and Elizabeth Mukasey, Veteran KGB Illegal Intelligence Officers

Veteran journalist Nikolay Dolgopolov, now deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Russian state-owned daily newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, is one of the most popular writers on intelligence history in contemporary Russia. He has written the biographies of Kim Philby, Rudolf Abel (Viliam Fisher), Nadezhda Troyan, and Gevork Vartanyan. In early 2020, he published his memoir From Dolgopolov’s Notebook: From Francoise Sagan to Rudolf Abel.

Nikolay Dolgopolov’s text was published in the November 22, 2017 issue of the joint Russia-Belarus weekly newspaper Soyuz. Belarus-Rossiya. Below is my English translation available only on this website.

Nikolay Dolgopolov: The People With A Cover Story

Soyuz. Belarus-Rossiya November 22, 2017

On various assignments for 22 years, illegal intelligence officers [codenamed] “Elsa” and “Zephyr” have never been exposed

Illegal intelligence officers, the husband and wife Mikhail (1907-2008) and Elizabeth Mukasey (1912-2009) worked for 22 years in the “special conditions” in Western Europe. "Elsa” and “Zephyr" - their operational pseudonyms - lived a long, happy life together and were never exposed.

Now, after their deaths, it is possible to say more about the extraordinary lives of Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel Mukasey. But, then, are there any illegal intelligence officers whose life one can call ordinary? I would never have met them if it were not for their family members. The son, cameraman Anatoly Mukasey and his wife, film actress and director Svetlana Druzhinina, who were greatly proud of them, suggested that the leadership of the Foreign Intelligence Service [SVR] reveal their identities.

In Mikhail’s native village of Zamostye, there were 350 houses.  He was the son, the nephew, and the grandson of blacksmiths and from the time he was 10 years old, he assisted his elders in the forge. Then he went to St. Petersburg [Leningrad]. He dreamed of studying at the university and was hoping he would get admitted. He cleaned steamboat boilers – a hellish occupation, but then he enrolled at the workers’ university and became an engineer. He was soon recruited by the state security [NKVD]. In the late 1930s, nobody could turn that down.

After the war, the Mukaseys became illegal intelligence officers. They worked under false names in different countries. How did they get into Western Europe? Mukasey invented, as intelligence officers say, a cover story himself.

“That cover story was really difficult,” Mikhail Isaakovich told me. – I don’t want to brag, but I’ll say that not even every experienced intelligence officer could live it. In my [assumed] family, more than 30 people were killed during the Nazi occupation. There were very few people who survived, you could count them on your fingers. I was in that village, I knew it, I saw it. And before I started using that cover story, I found a man [from there]. He really went through hell. With his permission, I used his biography as my own. And with my help and the assistance of the authorities, he left for Israel. His father went there, too. But that’s all I can say.

Under this cover story, Michael and Elizabeth Mukasey, now called Michael and Betsy, settled in one of the countries of the Socialist bloc. And from there, they moved into Western Europe. They went through a lot. But the resident “Zephyr” and the radio operator “Elsa” coped well. They looked for illegal intelligence officers who suddenly stopped contacting the Center. They transmitted the information about the secret plans of NATO. They had Western European passports and used them to travel to nearly one hundred countries. They very often visited the countries with which the USSR did not have diplomatic relations. Yes, this could have been deadly, but was often done time and again. In the event of exposure, Michael and Betsy could hardly count on any help from their own.

And I would like to describe one of the episodes, which, in the language of intelligence professionals, would be called operational. A comparatively young illegal intelligence officer K., who had established himself in Paris, stopped all contact. And the Center ordered the Mukaseys: find out what happened by any means necessary.

This was one of Mikhail’s first trips from a new country of residence [in the Socialist bloc] to another country. A rather risky trip from Bern to Paris, where the traces of an unmarried - according to the KGB cover story - illegal intelligence officer K. were lost. And the discovery of a tragic explanation for the absence. The owner of a small store [the officer K.] had died. It was later that Mukasey learned that when K. went on a [long-awaited] vacation to the USSR, he was recommended to undergo a surgery. But because he had so many things waiting for him to do [in France], he did not follow through. Not without difficulty, Michael found his apartment and learned that Mr. K. had become ill and was taken to the hospital where he died.

No one could have imagined such a premature departure. And here Mukasey showed not just official, but also humane interest and care. He found out all the circumstances of the death of the officer who was completely unknown to him. The nurse at the Catholic hospital said: “Your friend died completely alone and fully conscious. He called the priest, kissed the Catholic cross, and before he died, a pure, dew-like tear rolled down from his eye, and [then] he fell silent forever."

Mukasey felt grief for his colleague. Even on his deathbed, he did not betray himself, and took away the secrets of his homeland to the grave. Until his last breath, he held firm to his cover story. Well, whoever remains faithful to the state oath can never fail, even when he is dead. The Russian man was buried under a foreign [Catholic] rite, having done everything to depart with dignity. Mikhail Isaakovich found his grave. It was in the place where the homeless and the dogs were buried. And Mukasey got the body to be re-buried in a different place.

In Paris, K. lived as a lonely man, but, in his homeland, in Moscow, he had a wife and two daughters. Close relatives and friends remember him. But the simple Russian family name of this illegal intelligence officer as well as his accomplishments are still classified under the stamp “top secret.”

In the memory of his deceased colleague in illegal intelligence, Mukasey erected a marble headstone on his grave. And, for more than 20 years that he lived on the other side of the “curtain,” he has taken care of the grave. On the headstone, there was a portrait of K. with his year of birth, according to the cover story, and the real year of death.

However, even in death, K. was of service to the Motherland. His grave served as a secret meeting place of other intelligence officers, both legal and illegal, and as a dead drop for secret documents. Doesn’t this sound like a plot for a spy thriller? And for many years after the couple returned to their homeland, someone – it’s no secret who - brought flowers to the grave with a false name on the headstone. What is its condition now? Did the headstone remain in its place or, as is often the case in France, was it already turned into the grave of another person? I do not know...

What is the most important to an intelligence officer? Glory? But glory, if it comes, is a result of exposure. So maybe the best reward is obscurity?