Rossiyskaya Gazeta: Interview of a 100-year-old NKVD Officer Boris Gudz Who Knew the 'Iron Felix'

On February 5, 2020, the Russian state-owned newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by a well-known journalist and intelligence historian Nikolay Dolgopolov in which Dolgopolov described his meetings with Boris Gudz (1902-2006), the oldest living Chekist at the time. Gudz told Dolgopolov several anecdotes about the early activities of the OGPU/NKVD in which he took part personally, including the famous Operation Trust. Below is my translation available only on this blog.

Nikolay Dolgopolov: Boris Gudz – The Oldest of the Mohicans

Rossiyskaya Gazeta February 5, 2020

We met two days before he turned 100. He entered the Cheka [OGPU] in 1923. He participated in the famous Operation Trust in which the Chekists set up a non-existent underground organization of monarchists and deceived their fierce enemies from the Russian emigration for seven years, effectively paralyzing all sabotage work against the USSR.

Under the last name Gintse, Gudz headed the legal intelligence station in Tokyo. After his return home, he coordinated the work of [Richard] Sorge-Ramsay’s network in Japan. He was fired from the Cheka [NKVD] in 1938 for having ties with the “enemies of the state,” and it was a miracle that he was not arrested. He got a job as an ordinary bus driver. He was not spared, he was simply forgotten. Only at the end of 1970 was he remembered and his nonexistent sins were forgiven. To begin with, he was hired as a consultant for the very popular film Operation Trust in which he also played a small role - the young Chekist Boris Gudz [himself]. Then he began to be invited to the Lubyanka frequently. Foreign intelligence service [PGU] even gave him an assistant, and he became the final arbiter of internal disputes over the historical events of long ago, the  participants of which were almost all executed by Yezhov or died without a trace. 

When he was over 100 years old, he got married for the third time. At 103, he went skiing and asked me whether to take his own, high-speed skis to the sanatorium or rent the ones they had there.

I worked with him - he preferred to meet in late evenings - for four years. We did a lot, but plenty of things remained unfinished. We began a book about [Vyacheslav] Menzhinsky, Dzerzhinsky’s successor, but…

Only ten people attended his funeral at the very end of December 2006. But we all heard the farewell salvo by the military guards in honor of this former brigade commissar.

Without changing the manner in which Gudz narrated the events of his life, I will present a few events he openly talked out, which I deciphered from my notes in January 2020.

How the Famous Terrorist Boris Savinkov Died

We lured Boris Savinkov to the Soviet Union in August 1924 and arrested him in Minsk. The Supreme Court sentenced him to death, but the sentence was later commuted to ten years in prison. And then Savinkov committed suicide. It all happened on the fifth floor, in the office of the deputy chief of the counterintelligence department, [Roman] Pilyar. My room on the third floor overlooked the Lubyanka Square, and Pilyar’s office looked into the courtyard, into the interior. At an earlier time, the office had a door to the balcony. Later, the door was closed up and replaced with a low windowsill. I’d say it was about eighty centimeters above the ground.

I know what actually took place. Grisha [Grigory Syroezhkin] and I shared an office, our tables were next to one another, and the next day, twisting his face, he told me how it all happened. Savinkov kept walking up and down the office in a nervous state. He went to the window, looked down, and climbed up. Grisha was sitting in a chair next to him. He immediately jumped to stop him. Syroezhkin was a former professional wrestler and one of his arms was weak because he got hurt in a fight. He should have grabbed Savinkov with his good arm. But it didn’t work out that way. They shouted to him: “Grishka, you yourself will go down with him.” However, he held on to Savinkov, but Savinkov slipped out. Syroezhkin couldn’t hold him anymore. Otherwise, he would have fallen to his death as well.

However, there were two death certificates. In the first, the detection of alcohol in Savinkov’s blood was mentioned. And in the second, there was nothing about alcohol. The first death certificate was kept under the wraps. Of course, Savinkov was a bit tipsy. During the autopsy, they found almost a liter of alcohol in his body. Before the tragic event, they took him – and this was not the first time - to a restaurant, where they all ate and drank. All officers immediately learned about Savinkov’s suicide. It could not have been covered up.

Under [Nikolay] Yezhov, Syroezhkin was imprisoned and a testimony was forced out of him that he had pushed Savinkov out of the window into the courtyard. That’s not credible! And he signed that he deliberately threw Savinkov out. I read his statement and grabbed my head in my hands. That was horrific! Syroezhkin was executed. And he fought in Spain and received a medal for it.

... and the Famous Spy Sydney Reilly

Sydney Reilly was deceived by the head of the fictitious organization “Trust” Alexander Alexandrovich Yakushev. Reilly was an experienced intelligence officer, a genuine fox, and the former state councilor Yakushev was just a beginner in the spying game. But he got an important assignment: to lure Reilly to the USSR.

Reilly was in Vyborg [the territory of Finland at the time]. And exactly at the same time, Yakushev arrived in Vyborg and arranged the meeting with Reilly on September 25 [1925]. Reilly was pleased: the head of a large underground anti-Soviet organization came to meet him. He was very much flattered. Certain issues of extreme importance were discussed. Reilly offered some suggestions which were taken very seriously. But Yakushev at times delicately made it clear that not all of them, though coming from a professional of Reilly’s stature, were applicable on the Bolshevik soil because Russia had changed considerably since Reilly was there last time. And he invited Reilly to meet with the people who were fighting the Bolsheviks under very difficult conditions. Sydney Reilly honestly admitted that he would very much like to do so, but that he must go to America.

Then Yakushev pulled out his trump card: “Tell me, Mr. Reilly, how much time do you have?” Reilly was frank: on September 30, just a few days later, his ship was leaving the French port of Cherbourg. Alexander Alexandrovich paused, reflected a bit, as if he had remembered something: “You can be back in four days: from here, from Vyborg, through our “open window” at the border, you could get to St. Petersburg, and then to Moscow, and come back the same way. And everything will work out. Here’s what we can do: today is the 25^th, on the 26^th, we can cross the border, on the 27^th, we’ll be in St. Petersburg and on the 28^th, in Moscow. You’ll be back in Vyborg on the 29^th. Considering the guarantees we can provide you with, why miss the opportunity to take a look at everything we have done with your own eyes? The subtext was clear: “What, are you afraid?” And Reilly fell for it: “Agreed, he said, I’ll go with you.” A great job was done by Yakushev! He lured him in, put ideas into his head, made him believe in them, and that was it – the job was done. That’s how well the former state councilor learned to play the game.

Reilly was arrested at a private apartment in Moscow. Before that they went to a dacha, which was fully equipped as a safe house. They met with the members of the “Trust.” There was Yakushev, our associate, who played the host at the dacha, and two to four other officers. Genuine counterrevolutionaries were not invited. Everybody there was on the same side.

They had a banquet. And then when he relaxed a bit, the “guest” presented his terrorist program. He claimed that using acts of terrorism was the only remaining option for fighting the Bolsheviks: “We must be like People’s Will, only in the opposite direction [anti-socialist]. They also killed the governors to attract the oppressed and raise their spirits. They wanted to bring the situation to the boiling point. And we must do the same. We will strike Russia from the inside, and Europe will then treat us differently. Let the degree of security and stability in Russia come down to zero.”

They returned from the dacha to Moscow. Reilly had to leave by express train for St. Petersburg at about midnight. He was completely calm, he trusted his hosts. In the Soviet Union, hardly anyone knew how he looked like: he was not back since 1918. On the way from the dacha, he even wrote a postcard and threw it into the mailbox: “I’m in Moscow. Sydney.”

They arrived at an apartment on Maroseyka Street to rest a bit and have a snack before going to the train station. And then the spy was told: “You are under arrest.” Reilly had no weapons. This was taken care of earlier. After the arrest, Reilly made threats: “The high circles in England will find out about my arrest. Better not to fool around with me.” He had no idea that our service already planted the story of a shootout at the border to hide what was really going on. They showed him the newspaper: “Look here - you are already dead. Read - ‘Sydney Reilly was identified and killed while crossing the border illegally.’ You don’t exist anymore.”

Already in 1918, Reilly was sentenced to death by the [Bolshevik] court. But he escaped. And when he turned up on our territory, the sentence had to be carried out. The court decision had to be enforced, meaning he had to be shot. Several times he was taken out to the forest in Sokolniki for walks. And he was shot there. I know who carried out the sentence. Grigory Syroezhkin [Gudz’s friend] was in this group. Reilly didn’t expect to be shot. The final verdict was not read to him, they tried not to frighten him, or to drag him somewhere, it seemed more humane that way. He was shot in the back suddenly.

His body was buried in the courtyard of the Lubyanka. I don’t know where his remains ended up. During the perestroika, a lot of construction was going on there, almost everything has been rebuilt.

Now about Reilly’s nationality. Many believe that he was a Jew from Odessa. Though I believe that he was, very possibly, a Jew, he was not from Odessa. There are many tall tales about this, they even claim that his real last name was Rosenblum. During the interrogation, he claimed that his father was an Englishman and that his mother was Russian.

Reilly’s wife made a real scandal. She wrote a letter to the British Prime Minister in very harsh tones. She accused him of sending her husband to the Soviet Union and she demanded an apology from the British government. And she got a response. On behalf of the prime minister, signed by his secretary, the response stated that they had not sent anyone anywhere, that Mr. Reilly went to a foreign country voluntarily, and that therefore they were not obliged to render any assistance to his family.

Lenin’s Embarrassment and how Dzerzhinsky Kissed a Lady’s Hand

I was not Dzerzhinsky’s assistant. But I saw him at party meetings and met him many times when entering or exiting the building, because we all entered through the same entrance. Once I rode with him in the elevator – his office was on the third floor, and mine was on the fifth [Earlier Gudz stated that his office was on the third floor]. His demeanor was modest. I greeted him, and, he responded as usual, looking directly into my eyes.

Here’s one situation I remember well. I went up to the third floor where his office was located. And a very dignified-looking lady who was in the elevator with me was also getting off. From her appearance, I could see that she came from abroad. And he went out to meet her by the elevator. He bent over, took her hand, lifted it slightly, and kissed it. Then he accompanied the lady down the hall. She was a representative of the Polish Red Cross, Madame Simpalowska, who, under [Józef] Pilsudski, helped to take care of the Communists arrested in Poland. And we had Yekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova. She oversaw the cases of the Poles arrested in the Soviet Union. She had an official certificate, which gave her the right to visit prisoners at any time and provide them with material assistance, if needed. The principle of reciprocity. And Dzerzhinsky talked to [Simpalowska]: she provided the assistance to the Communists.

I also saw Lenin in person. He spoke at the First All-Russian Congress on Extracurricular Education. This Congress was organized by [Nadezhda] Krupskaya, and, in fact, by my father, who was Nadezhda Konstantinovna’s assistant and consultant on extracurricular affairs. His job was to eliminate illiteracy in Russia. And my father told me the day before the Congress: “Boris, come with me. Vladimir Ilyich will give a speech.” I went to the Unions’ House, took a seat in the 5^th or 6^th row, and waited. Many Congresses took place there. The doors to the foyer, which runs parallel to the hall, were open. To enter the hall, one had to climb the stairs and go further along the foyer, past the doors at the main entrance. One could enter the stage, where the speakers sat, through a small room.

Lunacharsky spoke first. He was a great speaker. Suddenly I could hear the clapping that did not have anything to do with the speech of the People’s Commissar of Education [Lunacharsky]. It turned out that the people in the hall saw that Lenin had come in through the open door. They started to get up and applaud. Lunacharsky widened his eyes and asked: “What’s the matter?” They told him: “Anatoly Vasilyevich, Ilyich has arrived.” Lunacharsky turned around, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin entered from the other side, his cap in hand, and stepped on the stage. I was sitting in the 5^th row and I could see Lenin, who seemed not to understand who the applause was for - Lunacharsky or him. So, he didn’t sit behind the table on the stage, but on the steps. Lunacharsky understood what was going on, quickly went up to Lenin, helped him get up, and invited him on the podium. And Lenin had such an embarrassed expression on his face because he interrupted Lunacharsky’s speech. Then there was more applause, everyone stood up, and Lenin began his speech. Lenin spoke well. But Lunacharsky was a real performer. Lenin’s speech was simple, coming from the heart. He needed no papers to rely on.

Not An Informer on [Varlam] Shalamov

A painful question for me. The writer Varlam Shalamov was convinced and even wrote down that I “reported him to the Chekists.” But how could I have done that? My sister was married to him. And in those days, if your close or even distant relatives got arrested, you were in trouble. Well, would I want my own sister to be arrested? When they arrested Shalamov, Galya [Gudz’s sister] was also arrested and exiled to Chardzhou [Turkmenabad], where she, poor woman, led a miserable life until 1946. And shortly after my brother-in-law’s arrest, I was expelled from the Communist party and expelled from the Cheka [NKVD]. Well, think, would I really want to ruin my own life and that of my siblings? The only truth is that I never had or could have any special affection for Shalamov.

 

The longest living Chekists:

I will note only the best known:

Boris Ignatievich Gudz - 104 years (died in 2006).

Alexey Nikolaevich Botyan - Hero of Russia – 103 years (died in 2020).

Mikhail Isaakovich Mukasey – illegal intelligence officer - 101 years (died in 2008).

Ivan Georgiyevich Starinov – Hitler’s personal enemy - 100 years (died 2000).

 

Gudz’s Advice on How to Live Long

This advice was written down when Gudz was 102.

- I didn’t drink and didn’t smoke. Only a glass of red wine on the New Year’s Eve and on the Day of the Chekist [December 20]. What I ate was simple: oatmeal, rolled oats. I rode my bike until I was 80, and I drove until 90. I’m now over a hundred, but I still go skiing. [Advice] Do not get mad for nothing and destroy your own mental balance by yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

Moskovskaya Pravda: Interview of Yury Drozdov, Legendary Chief of KGB Illegals Program

On September 4, 2020, the City of Moscow daily newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda published yet another chapter from the upcoming book on the Soviet intelligence officers by journalist Ilona Yegiazarova. This chapter is based on an interview of Yury Drozdov (1925-2017), the KGB station chief in China and the U.S. (based in New York City) and the head of KGB Illegal Intelligence Department “S” from 1979 until 1991. Below is my translation available only on this blog.

Ilona Yegiazarova: Yury Drozdov. A Life Story like A Fiction Novel in which ‘Invention is Excluded’ [The Title of Drozdov’s Memoir]

Moskovskaya Pravda September 4, 2020

On September 19, Yury Ivanovich Drozdov would have turned 95. He has left us three years ago, but people who knew him will certainly raise a glass in his memory, remembering his unique analytical abilities and rare human qualities. Let us also do the same.

He took part in the seizure of Berlin at the end of the Great Patriotic War. He participated in the operation to exchange the Soviet intelligence officer [Rudolf] Abel for the American pilot [Francis Gary] Powers. During the Cold War, he worked as a KGB station chief in New York and Beijing. For more than 10 years, he headed the Illegal Intelligence Department of the KGB’s First Main Directorate (PGU). He created the special forces unit “Vympel.” He planned and organized the covert operation to capture the presidential palace in Afghanistan...

I saw Yury Ivanovich only a couple of times in my life. When he entered the room, those who knew him would respectfully make space for him: Major General Drozdov was respected by everyone – his colleagues, his subordinates, [even] his opponents... Though already in his 90s, the legend of Russian foreign intelligence continued to work every day. He directed the Namakon analytical center and produced very accurate forecasts about the future of Russia and the world. Like many illegal intelligence officers, he did not like giving interviews, and yet one day he agreed to talk to me.

The Beginning

First of all, of course, I was interested in the story of his origins - where do people like him come from…

- The only memory I have of my father is that of a military man, always in uniform - said Drozdov. [My father] Ivan Dmitrievich came from a wealthy family. A combatant in the First World War, awarded the St. George Cross for bravery, he greeted the Bolshevik revolution with enthusiasm. In those days, even the members of the same family sometimes had different views on Russia’s political future. Our family was no exception: my father, a tsarist officer, took the side of the Bolsheviks and went to fight in [Vasily] Chapayev’s brigade, while his brother fought on the other side of the barricades – we had a civil war within the family! My father fought in different regions - in Siberia, in Belarus, and he ended up settling down in the region of Borisov [in Belarus]. My mother - Anastasia Kuzminichna - also had an interesting biography. She grew up in the family of a guard of the landowner’s estate. The landowner enrolled her in high school together with his daughter. Then he got her a job as a typist at an English-owned factory in Pereslavl-Zalessky [Yaroslav Region, Russia]. My mother returned to her father’s place with a great profession and got a job as a typist in the NKVD.

My first conscious memories come from the time when we moved to Minsk. My father worked in the personnel department at a local university and sometimes spoke on the radio. The military officers were encouraged to do so.

My parents did not employ any particular system in my upbringing. I grew up a sickly child and would easily catch all kinds of diseases. If it was out there, I had it.  My father got tired of this, and he made a wise decision to send me to a military units’ camp near Minsk every year at the beginning of spring. I spent every summer in a tent and I got much stronger.

The father also influenced the young Yura’s choice of profession. From Minsk, Ivan Dmitrievich was transferred to Kharkov, to the central school of OSOAVIAKHIM [a voluntary defense organization which trained civilians for defense tasks] - to work in their personnel department. In the period from 1935 to 1937, the specialized artillery and aviation schools were created in several cities of the Soviet Union. They were the quasi-military types of institutions.

- Well, my father sent me, the fourteen-year-old boy, to one of these artillery schools. Both the teachers and the young boys wore military uniforms, and this, of course, created the atmosphere of military-type discipline. In this school, I had to learn Ukrainian language. In the first dictation exercise, I made 39 mistakes on a single page! This upset me so much that I began to study the subject very seriously. The knowledge that I gained turned out to be very useful to me in my future intelligence activities.

Yury Ivanovich’s talent for languages ​​turned out to be exceptional. Years later, German language he learned to perfection enabled him to work in Germany as a local clerk! The Germans thought he was a resident of Leipzig.

But let’s go back to his youth.

- Is it true that you were almost expelled from the Komsomol?

- When the war began, I was 15 years old - recalled Yury Ivanovich. We were evacuated to Kazakhstan, to Aktyubinsk. We travelled by a steamer through Stalingrad, the Germans did not bomb it yet, but they were already conducting aerial reconnaissance. My comrades and I took the fascist attack on the city as a personal challenge: we had stayed there for two days, we got to know some people there and received letters from them. I persuaded two of my school friends to go with me to Stalingrad to fight the Germans. For this we were almost expelled from the Komsomol. The director gathered the class, everyone discussed our action and passed a unanimous verdict: we should finish our studies first... But soon the military situation worsened, the school was transferred to Tashkent, and in 1943, we entered the artillery school in the town of Engels.

I must say that the schools and colleges at that time still generally resembled the pre-revolutionary models, but the war made them introduce certain modifications. When we graduated, we already had knowledge of many modern artillery pieces invented by experienced military men.

Sometimes it is said that the government did not take care of people during the war, that they pushed them into fighting and treated them like cannon fodder... Well, my comrades and I stayed at the [artillery] school for a year and a half instead of nine months. They were in no hurry to send us to the front, they took care of us, taught us many different things... We had a teacher from the famous Benois family - a former colonel of the tsarist army. He dealt with equestrian training and vaulting.

War

It turned out that both Drozdov the father and Drozdov the son ended up at the front.

- My father went to the front at the age of 47 and became the head of the chemical service in an artillery regiment. In one of the battles near Staraya Russ, he was wounded - a sniper bullet tore out his right lung.

 - Already the first letter from the front informed my mother and me that my father was in the hospital. It took him a long time to recover, the wound was serious, he had a big hole in his back... His recovery was, apparently, slowed down by his concern for his family. At that time, I was already a sergeant, I was eager to go to the front, but then the director of the school called me and said that he had received a letter from my father, who asked him to leave me in Engels as a platoon commander so that my mother would not be left alone. This made me very upset.

I entered the war in the last six months and did not accomplish any great deeds. My unit was a part of the 1^st Belorussian Front. We were parachuted in the borderlands of Poland in early January 1945. The 3^rd Shock Army, 57^th Anti-Tank Brigade. I was the platoon commander of an artillery unit and had the command of ten men and two machine guns. My military experience began with the capture of Warsaw. When I told the Polish ambassador many years later in New York City that we took Warsaw not on January 17, as is commonly believed, but three days earlier, he was amazed. Indeed, the Soviet troops were in the city already on the 14^th.

Then we entered Pomerania, merged with the 2^nd Belorussian Front, and moved toward the Baltic Sea. From there we were quickly transferred to the area of ​​the Seelower Heights, where we prepared for the crossing of the Oder.

“He didn’t accomplish any great deeds,” our hero regrets, forgetting about the enemy artillery destroyed by his unit in the battle of Berlin and the award he received for this - the Order of the Red Star. And Yury was only 20 years old at that time.

Love

While at the front, Drozdov met the love of his life.

- Lyudmila spent the whole war on the frontlines. We met in Poland, where I ended up in a hospital with eczema. My wife has had very difficult youth. She was not even 16 years old, when the Germans occupied her hometown of Nelidovo. She and her mother were able to get on an evacuation train and ended up in some remote village. Soon our sanitary units appeared there and set up a hospital where Lyudmila began to work as a nurse. She was a smart girl, and they began to use her as a special courier. She crossed the front line several times, and she never had any problems, although she was very cute. (Laughs.) So, she went all the way to Berlin with this military hospital and left the inscription “I was here!” on the wall of the Reichstag.

We got married in Berlin, she got married under her mother’s last name - Kachalovskaya, her father’s last name was Yudenich. And if someone found out that I had married a girl with such a last name [Yudenich was the last name of one of the commanders of the White Army], I’d never get a job in the state security service.

I have in my hands a photograph from 1946, taken in a German town, and I love looking at it: young Yury is smelling a small flower, held out by Lyudmila, and they both laugh. There is so much tenderness, lightness, and hope for a new, peaceful life in this photo...

While Yury Ivanovich and I are talking, he phones his wife several times and asks her how she is feeling: “I try to devote all my free time to her.”

Lyudmila Aleksandrovna shared the difficult life path of her husband - 35 years devoted to secret intelligence service, frequent separations, stress, moving from place to place... Yury Ivanovich said that his wife learned to recognize his mood by the sound of the engine of his car.

In 1966, in one of the countries where they were based, he couldn’t go to service the dead drop because of constant surveillance. His wife stepped in. When she returned, she gave him a container of photographic films with the words: “Now I know why you all get heart attacks.”

I ask Drozdov what he thinks the secret of family happiness is.

- Who knows? We quarreled and were sometimes bored with each other, but the family is important. When you have children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, you understand that you live for someone else.

Operational Assignments

- In 1945, we were all so carried away by our victorious advances. And not only us [the soldiers], but also our whole country was so inspired by the victory, and then by the reconstruction of the economy, that we missed to notice some very important things. Only years later, after reading the materials concerning the last months of the war and the U.S. reports from that time, I realized that our “allies” never stopped their activities against the USSR.

There are some very interesting documents from various time periods. For example, we got our hands on the correspondence of a British intelligence officer who helped the Americans create their National Security Agency. Churchill wrote to him in 1940: “We are going through a difficult time in Europe, could you ask Roosevelt to ask Hitler to suspend the advancement in the Balkans and speed up the events in Russia?” “Speed ​​up!” This means that the decision to attack the USSR was made much earlier, and that our allies - the United States and Britain – not only knew about it, but were also vitally interested in it taking place... I’ll tell you even more: what we are experiencing right now was planned in the last months of the war.

All Drozdov’s post-war activities were aimed at ensuring the security of our country and opposing the plans of rival intelligence services.

In 1956, after graduating from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, he began his operational career in the office of the KGB representative at the Ministry of State Security of the GDR in Berlin. From 1957 to 1962, he took part in the preparation of the operation to exchange the Soviet illegal intelligence officer Rudolf Abel for the American spy pilot [Francis Gary] Powers. He played the role of Abel’s German cousin, the clerk Jurgen Drews. He met Abel on that famous Berlin bridge and recalled that, unlike Powers, who was dressed in a coat and a fur hat given to him by our state security and looked very healthy, Abel looked emaciated and was released from American captivity in a prison robe.

I ask Yury Ivanovich whether he was good in his role as “a cousin.”

- Every intelligence officer should, undoubtedly, develop his acting talents. While studying at the artillery school in Kharkov, I also took part in the drama club, the head of which was Viktor Khokhryakov, who later left for Moscow and became a state-renowned actor. Under his leadership, we staged the play “The Little Muck,” and I must say that the skills I gained then turned out to be very useful to me later.

Once in order to complete the assignment of recruiting a West German intelligence officer, Drozdov had to play the role of ... a member of the neo-Nazi party, a former SS officer.

  - Weren’t you uncomfortable or disgusted?

- In the role of this officer embedded in the neo-Nazi party, I even swore an oath of allegiance to the Fuhrer - laughs Yuri Ivanovich. - That was what the job required, one of the “lives” I invented. There were others. For example, when I recruited a female employee of the West German embassy in Vienna, I used both my artistic and psychological talents. There are no gray and faceless intelligence officers. Even if an officer seems like that, in fact he is simply putting on a “being invisible” disguise.

After Germany, Drozdov was sent to Beijing as a station chief of KGB foreign intelligence. The situation was far from simple - the peak of the Cultural Revolution, and on our border with China, there was a distinct “fog of war” ... On his return, Yury Ivanovich was personally received by Yury Andropov and the meeting lasted four hours.

I can’t help asking:

- Can the Chinese be regarded as reliable partners today? Aren’t we brought together by our “friendship against America”?

- This is something that people don’t talk about, Drozdov replies, but we have been living for almost 400 years without a peace treaty with China. And we’ll hardly ever sign it.

 - Is it true that, while being a KGB station chief in the United States, you received a congratulatory letter from Mao Zedong on your birthday, in which your “personal, invaluable” contribution to the development of Soviet-Chinese relations was noted?

(Laughs.) - This was a prank performed by a wonderful intelligence officer, Genka Serebryakov. When he found out that my birthday was approaching, he concocted a teletype letter with congratulations from Mao Zedong and gave it to me. And for many years, people have been repeating this myth - everything was done so skillfully, so realistically.

Drozdov did not like to talk about the “American period” in his life. He worked in NYC under the cover of Soviet Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN (while in fact heading the KGB station) for more than four years. And it so happened that during this period, there was a big scandal: UN Deputy Secretary General for Political Affairs and for UN Security Council Affairs Arkady Shevchenko refused to return to the USSR from the U.S. He became the first Soviet defector-diplomat of such a high level. But Drozdov was suspicious of Shevchenko’s behavior even before that.

- We informed the foreign intelligence leadership of our suspicions and asked the Soviet Foreign Ministry to recall him to Moscow in order to avoid undesirable consequences.

However, Shevchenko was not recalled, which, according to Drozdov, was explained by the diplomat’s family ties with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko.

After this betrayal, it was very difficult to continue working in the United States, the FBI monitored his every step, and even resorted to light-sport airplanes.

Soon Drozdov returned home. And in November 1979, he was put in charge of the illegal intelligence department of the PGU (First Main Directorate, Directorate “S”), which he headed for 12 years. One of the most difficult challenges of his work was perhaps Afghanistan.

The Assault on [Hafizullah] Amin’s Presidential Palace

I interviewed several people who participated in this operation, and all of them spoke of Drozdov as a brilliant organizer: he was one of the planners of the storming of the presidential palace. According to my interlocutors, he deserved the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. They said that he gave it up in favor of the active participant in the operation, the future first commander of “Vympel,” Evald Grigorievich Kozlov. After all, the number of decorations was limited. For this unique operation, only four Hero’s titles were awarded...

But in addition to the presidential palace, our special forces took control of nine more objects in Kabul. This was preceded by many months of preparation: obtaining information, analyzing the situation, visual reconnaissance of objects, recruiting sources of information in the Tajbeg Palace itself, in the Afghan General Staff.

The veterans of the operation recall that before the assault, after the final briefing was over, there was a heavy silence in the room. The group understood that a battle would begin in a few minutes and that, perhaps, some of them would lose their lives. Drozdov broke the tension with one sentence: “Well, guys, now let’s fool around a bit!”

In general, everyone who knew him speaks of Yury Ivanovich’s human qualities in the same way: he was kind and fair. He visited the wounded and assisted the families of the dead. He lobbied for them to get decorations and awards. In particular, he lobbied for the legendary Gevork Andreyevich Vartanyan who was not even certified as an intelligence officer. Thanks to Drozdov, Vartanyan received the rank of colonel and the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for his work.

I cannot help asking Yury Ivanovich, was the Afghan adventure worth it?

- Yes, it was! The U.S. observation posts were already in northern Afghanistan, near our borders! The Americans conducted joint operations there with the Chinese, with whom we then also had tense relations. Pressured by the Americans, we missed the opportunity to monitor in depth what the Chinese were doing. In general, we had to keep being active in many directions at once.

Almost immediately after the Afghan operation, but long before the rise of international terrorism, Drozdov thought about creating a special unit capable of resisting the terrorist threat and able to perform top-secret and highly complex assignments abroad, near our borders. Yury Ivanovich was able to convince the chairman of the KGB Yury Andropov and, through him, the members of the Central Committee of the Politburo of the need to create a “sophisticated special force.” The group was supposed to be a kind of a mini-KGB, incorporating the skills of various units. The members had to have the skills of operational and illegal intelligence, which means that they had to be able to collect information while “remaining invisible,” or, conversely, to work undercover, carefully thinking over their cover stories, to know languages and be excellent psychologists while, at the same time, having airborne, underwater, mountain-climbing, radio communication and hand-to-hand combat skills and knowing how to use all types of weapons and explosives.

And so, on Drozdov’s initiative, the legendary “Vympel” was founded in 1981. The unit performed the most difficult military and intelligence assignments in Mozambique, Cuba, Vietnam, Angola, Nicaragua, Laos, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan... However, it all ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1993, the unit refused to storm the Parliament building. President [Boris] Yeltsin did not forgive them this: by special decree, he put “Vympel” under the control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Out of 660 “Vympel” members, only 49 agreed to the transfer.

At that time, Yury Drozdov had already been in retirement for two years.

Epilogue

He suffered greatly at the collapse of the once great country. I was told how hard he fought, how he prepared analytical reports - in particular, that there were nuclear plants on the territory of the USSR, including the Chernobyl nuclear plant, which operated the old-style nuclear reactors with a dangerous flaw in the reactor cooling system. The country’s leadership preferred to trust the estimates of scientists. And then, on April 26, 1986, the nuclear reaction in Chernobyl exploded.

Voluntarily leaving the post of the head of illegal intelligence, a month before the events of August 19, 1991, he proposed to the KGB chairman, Vladimir Kryuchkov, his plan to save the integrity of the Soviet state. But they did not listen to him again, and he could not do anything by himself.

- Were you not offended that the government ignored the information you obtained? - I ask Drozdov.

 - I never allowed myself to be disappointed by the decisions of the leadership. That is how I was brought up. In general, I think that intelligence officers have the right to speak only about the enemy, and even that, only if allowed by the service. In all other cases, it is better to keep quiet.

Yury Ivanovich not only devoted his life to the interests of Homeland, but also he raised two sons to do the same:

- I didn’t have much time to spend with them because I was very busy, the hero of our story is being modest again, so I turned to the KGB leadership with a request to enroll my eldest son in the Higher School of the KGB. He studied Urdu and went to India for practical training. Later, he became a station chief in Pakistan. As for the younger one, he had his practical training in Afghanistan. He spent four years there during the most dangerous period of the war. He was in charge of the Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul. After the KGB was broken up, he retired and got a job at a factory. And now he works in Bulgaria. Both of my sons are colonels. One of them is a great specialist for intelligence operations using modern technologies.

Finally, I asked him whether it was possible to educate such patriots in today’s Russia.

-My generation never had a desire to appropriate a single penny of government funds or get rich by stealing. We lived by our ideals. I really want to believe that the interests of our Homeland are important and meaningful for today’s generation. It is important to remember that Russia never had friends and probably never will. We are all responsible for our country.

 

 

Rossiyskaya Gazeta: Interview of Mikhail Vasenkov aka Juan Lazaro, Veteran KGB/SVR Illegal Intelligence Officer

On March 29, 2020, the Russian state-owned newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an interview with Mikhail Vasenkov (aka Juan Lazaro), a KGB/SVR illegal intelligence officer arrested in the FBI counterintelligence operation codenamed Ghost Stories in June 2010 and later exchanged. The interview was conducted by Nikolay Dolgopolov, a well-known journalist and intelligence history author whom I called “the storyteller of Soviet intelligence history” in my recently published article in Intelligence and National Security. Below is my translation of the interview available only on this blog.

Nikolay Dolgopolov: Interview of Mikhail Vasenkov

Rossiyskaya Gazeta March 29, 2020

Introducing My Interviewee

Mikhail Anatolyevich Vasenkov was born in 1942. He began working as an illegal intelligence officer in the second half of the 1970s. According to his cover story, Juan Jose Lazaro Fuentes was a citizen of one of the countries in Latin America. Then he received the citizenship of Peru and married the local journalist Vicky Pelaez. He also adopted her son from her first marriage. Then the couple had another son, and the whole family moved to New York in the mid-1980s. He worked as a photographer and made extensive connections. Then he taught at a university [Baruch College in NYC]. His work in the field was so successful that he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for courage and heroism displayed in the line of duty by a secret decree dated January 12, 1990.

Having been betrayed [to the FBI] by Colonel [Alexander] Poteyev, Vasenkov was arrested at his home in NYC in 2010. Together with a group of our other illegal intelligence officers [arrested at the same time], he was exchanged for American spies arrested in Moscow and taken by plane to Russia.

Clarification

In some publications, Colonel Vasenkov is described as a major general. However, the authorities confirmed to me: Mikhail Vasenkov is a retired colonel.

The Real Latino from Kuntsevo

He is of medium height. Lean. Of athletic build. It was not for nothing that our mutual friend Valery told me that, while studying at the intelligence school, Mikhail was a champion both in long-distance running and in swimming. When he was sent abroad, he became interested in martial arts and attained a great deal of success.

The decades of living in foreign lands did their part. Vasenkov does not look like a Russian boy born in the Moscow district of Kuntsevo. He looks Spanish or Hispanic. In other words, a typical Latino.

He limps. He apologizes right away: doctors forbade him to stand on his feet for any extended period of time: “Let’s sit down. It’ll be okay soon. I will soon get this over with and walk again without limping.”

- Mikhail Anatolyevich, what’s wrong with your leg?

- Nothing. It’s a trifle. I had a surgery and now I have to walk with a crutch. Don’t think that the Americans broke my leg in 2010! They are not stupid. They immediately saw that I was a professional of the old school. The interrogation was relatively correct. They did not try to recruit me.

- But what really happened in 2010?

- We were betrayed. If it were not for that, I would not have been arrested. Nobody knew who I was. Like Kozlov (Alexey Mikhailovich Kozlov, Hero of Russia, was arrested after being betrayed by the traitor [Oleg] Gordievsky and spent two years on death row in South Africa in the 1980s. South Africa and the USSR had no diplomatic relations at the time. - ND), I communicated with no other operative. I worked on my own all the time.

[Vladimir] Kryuchkov sent me. (During that period, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov was the head of the First Main Directorate of the KGB – the Soviet foreign intelligence. - ND) Do you know how it was at that time? They would send officers for a very long time, sometimes forever, for life. And Kryuchkov told me: “Keep in mind that perhaps you will never come back home.” And I knew that. And it seemed that this would be the case with me. Yes, I was not supposed to come back.

I have never seen, or heard of, any of those people arrested in the United States with whom I sat on the court bench. And they didn’t know me - they never saw me. I was the tenth person and completely unknown to them. But the Americans knew who I was.

- How come?

- In 1991, a lot of outsiders infiltrated all areas of our life [in Russia], they infiltrated everything. They pushed, they imposed their agenda, they took up places [in the government]. Some of them are still there. And these outsiders betrayed us.

- Such as [Oleg] Kalugin?

- No, I’m not really talking about people like him. These moles, these traitors were sitting right here [in Moscow]. And, I think, they were in the intelligence service, too. If it hadn’t been for [Yevgeny] Primakov (the first director of the SVR. - ND), our intelligence service would have been destroyed, many wanted to be in charge of it. But Primakov saved it. And yet, some traitors stayed on, too. They betrayed us. One of these people betrayed me. I figured it out in the jail cell. A man came to my cell and ask me to confess that I was a spy. He showed me a file folder with my name on it. And in addition to that, he told me his real name, but said that he did not intend to say anything else. When you are shown your photograph taken in Moscow, everything becomes clear. I didn’t want to speak to that person. It was disgusting. I admitted: yes, that was me. And that was the end of it.

- How did you manage to settle down abroad?

- It took a long time and it would take a long time to describe it. I had great identity papers. My Spanish was good. I lived in Latin America. I was constantly learning something new. Both in my youth and when I became a university professor which was relatively recently. By the way, I taught at a very prestigious school.

- But you were also a photographer?

- Yes, I was a photographer as well. And I was close to the president of the country in which I was based. I traveled around the world. And I was suspected by no one.

- How did you send information to the Center? And how did you recruit?

- Now, that’s something different. Over the years, recruitment became less and less relevant. I knew a lot myself and did not need sources. That was how far I was able to get. Still, that wasn’t the top. I kept moving and climbed even higher. I was well known even beyond Latin America.

- Did your wife assist you?

- I tell you firmly: my wife did not know anything about it. And yet she was accused of [being an accomplice]. They wanted to imprison her. But she didn’t do anything. She is a good journalist and writes articles even at this time which expose all their deals over there. You know, it’s not easy for me to answer your questions.

- I heard that one of your sons is a musician?

- Yes. A great one, he graduated from the Juilliard School. But I am not his real father. That made no difference to me and I adopted him when I got married. He was very young, and I consider him my son. And my younger son is in Moscow and works as an architect.

The Spanish Sadness

Mikhail Anatolyevich speaks Russian with a Spanish accent. It seems as if he thinks in Spanish and then translates it into Russian. From several Spanish synonyms, he chooses one necessary Russian word with some difficulty. Sometimes he switches to English. His French is also not bad.

Sometimes I noticed this loss of our native tongue among his other comrades in this rarest branch of the intelligence profession [i.e. illegal officers]. It does not seem surprising for somebody like Vasenkov who lived outside Russia for decades.

His conversation includes a lot of references to the Spanish classics, which he knows perfectly and constantly quotes. I am not a specialist in Spanish literature, and I told him that right away. He almost seemed offended:

- Why not?

- Well, it so happened.

He has an affinity for philosophy. I noticed this in many people in his unique profession. Probably in one’s isolation that is the only way out: to think. Because thinking will definitely not give you away. According to Vasenkov, the essence of his profession is loyalty to one’s Homeland. It doesn’t matter where you live. Homeland is still the same. It’s yours. And it is for its sake that you chose this kind of life path.

He addresses me in an informal manner - you, Nikolay. He is not being rude. It is easier for him to use informal address because he does not make so many mistakes. It was the same with the American, later decorated as Hero of Russia, Morris Cohen (aka Peter Kroger), whom I also met.

Vasenkov told me: “You wrote well about [Rudolf] Abel, I read it. You did it with a lot of respect. But I didn’t like your book on [Gevork] Vartanyan.” This was so because I wrote in detail about his final days and his death. According to Mikhail Anatolyevich, to discuss such matters in print is to cross the line.

Then we remembered our mutual friend Valera K. He had told me about the early years of his friend Mikhail. They graduated from the intelligence school together. He had told me that Mikhail was an athletic guy and that he was a runner and a swimmer. And when he realized that some other guys were faster than him, he trained so hard and with such a determination that soon nobody could keep up with him, either in cross-country running or in the pool.