Юрий Щекочихин. Рабы ГБ

Instead of a Conclusion Mouse Work

Moscow, May 2000

Oh Lord! What they got up to! The things they got up to!

When the KGB archives were declassified in the autumn of 1991, those who discovered the reports of secret agents were confronted with a phantasmagorical picture.

From reports and accounts for 1983:

“A delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church headed by Patriarch Pimen went to the People’s Republic of Bulgaria for the jubilee celebrations marking the anniversary of the patriarchate of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The delegation includes KGB agents ‘Ostrovsky’, ‘Nikolsky’, ‘Ognev’, ‘Sergeyev’ and an operational officer of the active reserve under appropriate cover as an employee of the patriarchate.”

“From ‘LVN’ information has been received about certain negative remarks made by USSR Writers’ Union member Yu. Koryakin during a lecture on Dostoevsky’s work at the Literary Institute.”

“Agent ‘Yakovlev’ was sent to Finland as part of a basketball team.”

And this is 1984:

“In accordance with the plan approved by the USSR KGB leadership, work was carried out to include 16 KGB agents in the USSR Olympic delegation travelling to Sarajevo to perform assigned tasks.”

“From agent ‘Sinyagin’ 2 reports were received describing the situation in the Shestokovich family.”

“Recruited as a USSR KGB agent was ‘Alik’ – head of a department at INION of the USSR Academy of Sciences.”

“In connection with the completion of postgraduate studies at IMRD of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the personal file of agent ‘Natasha’ was sent to the KGB Directorate for the Kirov Region in order to re-establish contact with her.”

“In connection with the recent interest shown by certain anti-social elements in the philosophical works of the artist N. Roerich, agent ‘Sergeeva’ has provided analytical materials revealing the true nature of the artist’s worldview and demonstrating the fallacy of his views.”

“Agent ‘Yakovlev’ was sent to Finland as part of a basketball team.”

They prayed before icons, and stood under the basketball backboard…

Once at some Moscow party, a guest of the host whose home I was visiting came up to me, drew me aside, and said:

I’ve long wanted to meet you and tell you honestly what irreparable harm you have done to the fight against crime.
What do you mean? – I asked in genuine surprise.
By trying to eliminate the secret agent network! How else, in your opinion, can one fight bandits! Ninety per cent of solved crimes are the merit of agents! – said this man didactically, introducing himself as an FSB colonel.

But that’s not what I’m about! Not those! What have robbers and bandits to do with it?! And those who infiltrate gangs and groups, risking their own necks, and those whose information helps to find a murderer – it’s not about that, not about those.

About others, about something else!

I recall how Yaroslav Vasilyevich Karpovich, the first KGB officer to openly declare what phantasmagorical nonsense he had been engaged in within his own agency, told me:

As soon as Brezhnev made another historic speech, we were immediately ordered: “record” the reaction of the Soviet people. Usually everyone made everything up out of their heads: engineer K. was delighted, locksmith L. wept with happiness, and at the end of the report you’d tack on some illiterate old woman who, as usual, was unhappy about prices. And the agents in those days were beside themselves! The devil knows what they were up to!

They didn’t hide the fact that “the devil knows what they were up to” either, other employees of the Fifth, Ideological Directorate. So, one of them, Lieutenant Colonel D., told me back in 1990:

Every operative is given a plan: to recruit seven people for cooperation per year – after all, we had a planned economy too! Well, you find someone, persuade – or force – them to sign an agreement to cooperate. And what next? You regularly meet with your agents: you have nothing to ask them, and they have nothing to tell. You meet, drink coffee, chat about this and that, tell each other the latest jokes, then you go back to your office and write a report on the “work done” which, unwanted by anyone, will gather dust on shelves…

Yes, that’s how it all was, just like that…

That’s precisely why, when meeting with state security agents, reading their confessions, spending days and evenings in archives, trying to understand who, how, why and what for – I did not for a second feel any guilt over destroying the established system of fighting crime.

Oh no, no need…

After all, it’s clear what I’m talking about.

Agent Buturlin

“As a rule, the KGB provides information about the processes taking place in society on the basis of denunciations from secret informants. From the long practice of working in the state security organs, I know that many informants, recruited through compromising material or who have voluntarily expressed a desire to become a squealer-informer, get used to Judas money. Seeking to please the operative, they give the information he needs, often an outright fabrication. The careerist operative, in order to climb the career ladder and stay afloat, accepts this fabrication. A kind of symbiosis is created in which they mutually profit from each other,” wrote I. Ya. Prisyazhnyak to me, himself, as I understand, a former state security officer.

My correspondent from Yekaterinburg, who signed with his first operational pseudonym – “Buturlin”, was recruited into the KGB’s agent apparatus as a young university lecturer, as he himself writes, on a so-called “ideological-patriotic” basis:

“I was driven by lofty thoughts about patriotism, high duty and ensuring state security. After some time, I myself became a career operational worker. And all the time – both as an agent and as a career officer – I engaged in political surveillance through the line of the Fifth, Ideological Department of the KGB.

At that time, the agent network was massively infiltrating the milieu of students and informal youth (hippies, punks, etc.) and circles of the creative intelligentsia. And this whole agent fist was aimed at identifying persons distributing samizdat. Who was considered the enemy? The works of Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, Brodsky…

It is shameful now to recall this. Shameful, but necessary as a lesson to other young men ‘pondering their life’. And it is painful to remember how many fates were ruined of young people, students, creative workers, who read samizdat and already then understood the utter rottenness of the era of stagnation.”

“Then the entire Chekist apparatus of the country was programmed for one goal — support for Brezhnev and his clique.”

This is a view from inside the System. And — yet another — a whole plot for a tragic melodrama.

Oleg P.

In the late sixties, Oleg P. served as a platoon commander in the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. He served normally, got along with both his superiors and subordinates, and could not imagine how abruptly and suddenly his fate would change.

It all started when one day the operative officer of the special department called him in:

“From this conversation of ours, I realized that he knows everything about me. Even that I prefer to read adventure literature, especially books about intelligence officers. He recommended that I join the CPSU.”

A few days later, Oleg P. was informed that the KGB had decided to send him to study at a special KGB school. He gladly agreed, confident that he would be able to contribute to the fight against spies, and especially against the infiltration of the BND (West German intelligence) into the territory of the GDR.

But he was not sent back to the GDR. After graduating from the Minsk special school, he was sent to Brest. As he was blessing him, the head of the district’s special department said: “Considering your excellent knowledge and discipline, we are sending you to one of the most prestigious garrisons.” Oleg P. was pleased with the assignment, because Brest, a city with many military installations and many foreigners, was an ideal place of service for a man dreaming of catching spies.

And he set out for his new duty station. “The head of the department was Lieutenant Colonel Rumyantsev, who had joined the security organs back in 1939. He instructed me, saying that my main task was the recruitment of new secret collaborators, with whose help important sites could be protected from spies and saboteurs. But primarily ideological saboteurs.

At first the chief trained me, recruiting people in my presence, but he only completed the recruitment — put the final touches — while I did all the preparatory work for the recruitment myself.

I marveled at his skill: it seemed that the candidate agent was already ready to say, ‘No,’ — but the chief turned the whole conversation around so that instead of the word ‘no,’ the candidate would take a pen and paper, obediently write a pledge of cooperation, and choose a pseudonym, that is, become a secret informer.“

Soon Oleg P. himself felt like a master of recruitment. Only once, a lieutenant who had been drafted into the army for two years after graduating from the Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School, at the first hint of cooperation with the special department, looked at him with contempt. And then, by Oleg P.’s own admission, he first thought about the goals of his work: instead of fighting spies, he was engaged in entirely different work.

The secret informers he recruited, at first, would give two or three reports about which of their fellow soldiers listened to Western voices, that someone was not a Komsomol member and did not intend to become one, that someone was planning to leave the country after service — but later they tried to avoid him. Perhaps, he thought, their conscience began to torment them.

“If I did not bring the chief at least one report in the morning, he would lose his temper, glare at me like a beast, and pound his fist on the table: our department had a good reputation, and I, with my inactivity, was spoiling the rosy picture and undermining my chief’s authority. And the chief held tightly to his position. Why should he retire on 160 rubles when in service he had a decent salary, a personal car that drove him daily if not fishing, then to special stores.

In the morning, about two hours before, he would receive all the operative workers in turn, give them a dressing-down, sign papers, and then drive off in his Volga to who knows where. He would return only at the end of the working day to check if everyone was in place.“ What assignments did Oleg P. receive from his chief? Identify all persons among the workers and employees of the Soviet Army who had been previously convicted for participation in Bandera gangs, and force unit commanders to find a reason to dismiss them; under no circumstances allow the cutter from the military tailor shop to go to Poland to her relatives because she is a Jew, and other, in Oleg P.’s opinion, similar nonsense.

“There were tasks of another kind as well. For instance, a re-enlisted sergeant major on a motorcycle ran into an old woman and broke her arm. I had to make sure the sergeant major was found not guilty (this incident would have hindered the unit commander—a friend of my chief—from advancing in his career). In addition, I had to provide leisure for the higher-ups who inspected the department’s work, that is, organize fishing, fish soup, sauna for them…”

The further his service went, the more doubt overwhelmed Oleg P. about the correctness of what he was doing. Was this the kind of work he dreamed of when he agreed to join state security? And what relation did such work have to the security of the state?

And then a scandal erupted, which the young Special Department officer himself initiated.

“One day I brought a report on an officer — about his dubious connections and affairs. But the chief, after reading this report, told me instructively: ‘We gave you the opportunity to serve in the regional center, to get an apartment in the city center, and what are you doing? Devil knows what! What have you brought me? About whom? After all, this officer is the deputy secretary of the party committee of the unit, a member of the party commission of the political department! We are an organ of the party, how can we touch party cadres?’”

But Oleg, despite the prohibition, continued surveillance of this officer and hid all the collected documents in his safe, under his pistol. And — one day the chief discovered them.

“What I went through after that! First, the chief tore into me, then my wife unexpectedly wrote a statement to the party bureau saying that I came home late and with the smell of alcohol. I was called on the carpet and, for starters, received a reprimand. I start trying to find out why my relations with my wife suddenly deteriorated? It turns out she acted on the instructions of the secretary of our party bureau.

Then my wife wrote a second statement saying that I not only started drinking but also had a mistress whom I supported… A party investigation began, which ended with me being put in the guardhouse. And then I really did hit the bottle.“

When firing Oleg P. from the KGB, the chief said to him in parting:

“Now try to find a job. You’ll weep…”

Only a year and a half later was he hired as an unskilled laborer at the mine.

That’s a sad story. He’s like something out of Gogol’s Captain Kopeikin.

I know his surname and his current address. But Oleg asked me to keep all that secret: he’s still convinced that “the KGB has long arms,” no matter how many times the organization gets renamed.

But what particularly interested me was how the agents themselves regarded those who burst unexpectedly into their lives and shattered them.

Confessions of KGB Agents

“My chief’s name was Mikhail Aleksandrovich,” recalls V. V. Shirmakher. “Sometimes he came in hungover and reeked of alcohol. I never did learn what rank this no longer young man held. At first he asked for, and then began demanding, fuller reports, and when there wasn’t enough material he would beef it up himself, suggesting what and how I should correct. At one meeting in a safe house he asked me to write down information about my close relatives: surname, place of work, address. That’s when I started to protest. ‘It’s necessary!’ he said, adding that nothing threatened them. I felt that I was tangled up, that I was doing something vile, but I just couldn’t get untangled… Meetings were scheduled sometimes in a park, sometimes at bus stops… I had the feeling that my chief knew more about me than he should. That meant someone had been tailing me as well. It was dreadful…”

The opinion of agent “Arkanov”:

“Meetings with the handlers were irregular. When there were no specific assignments, we just had ordinary conversations, looked over search briefings, and so on; there were never any questions about my friends. Sometimes they asked about colleagues, but I always gave them only positive references, which mostly corresponded to reality. Only once did I slip up, and I regretted it for a very long time afterward: in response to a very nasty jab aimed at me, I reported that the man had told an anti-Soviet joke. But, fortunately, my denunciation had no consequences.”

“Alik” from Khabarovsk, whose job often involved short business trips abroad on the foreign-trade circuit, became, by his own account, a tasty morsel for KGB recruitment. Here is how he assesses his handlers:

“They love to praise and flatter. I see right through them, but I still don’t like it. Who are they? I won’t write that, because it’s low for an informant to expose his recruiters: what fault is it of the two nice fellows, a captain and a major, that I deal with? They honestly earn their pay; they didn’t invent the system of surveillance, and I, as best I can, bring them tangible benefit.

I take the money with pleasure: in our times it’s a supplement to one’s salary.

By the way, a tip for other agents: never, ever work for free; these guys love to get something for nothing. And if you want to break with them, pay them a large sum – I assure you they are badly off when it comes to finances.

From time to time I needle them: I say they pay too little, that I’ll switch to other services. They get deeply offended by that: they have this laughable and astonishing rivalry among the different services within the same agency.“

Agent “Valentin” sent me a regular manifesto:

“Know this, operations officers, that 95 percent of the agents you recruit – I’m sure of it – hate you and take revenge however they can… They just ‘feed you disinformation,’ and that’s all. You instruct us: when gathering information, pay attention to what ideas the subject expresses, whom he represents. Well, let me tell you, I can invent as many ‘sponsors’ for the subject as I want, including the president of the United States! And you’ll gobble it all up, because you’re afraid that your own superiors will dress you down for poor work with your agent network. After all, the main thing is to have papers with reports, no matter what they say…

They are completely incapable of subtle work. Cowards, scoundrels, gossipmongers, whiners – over these years so many types have passed through my hands! One cries about not being sent abroad, while his section head travels almost every year to UN sessions. Another is obsessed with ferreting out troublemakers and tries to plumb the mysteries of dissident psychology. A third, a product of the Komsomol apparatus, even in counterintelligence tries to play the role of a backslapping, life-of-the-party sing-along leader. A fourth, a ‘lom,’ advises: ‘Just get him (the person under development) to go somewhere, and we’ll search his apartment.’ The fifth – ‘the elite’ – is all decked out in imported clothes, sleek, glossy, travels to the West and holds forth on the causes of our crises. It’s a theater of the absurd, pure and simple.“

According to “Valentin,” he has four hundred ways to “feed disinformation” to his chiefs: “Why do so many informants feed disinformation? Because only an infant fails to see that all their chiefs’ work is a complete bluff, itself a kind of disinformation, an imitation of work. Their staffs are enormous, and what would you have hundreds, thousands of well-fed, trained, brainwashed lads do?! Believe me, all they do is rewrite all that nonsense we give them, forwarding it from office to office – with zero effect.

And how they ‘work’ international congresses! Let foreigners know that at all congresses, in hotels next to your scholars live our operations officers, who hunt for potential sources of information and recruitment, who make sure (at least, this was the case back in the late eighties) that people don’t mingle with foreigners. And wherever the sessions are held, there’s always a closed room into which, looking around furtively, the heirs of Iron Felix slip, where they bring informants to elicit from them, while memory is fresh, their impressions of the subjects under development, their portraits, and identifying details. And the funniest thing is they also give assignments on our own participants. Their entire work – chaotic and senseless – is built on such crackpot schemes.“

I was especially interested in the assignments the agents received.

Agent “Armanov” specialized exclusively on the foreign front:

“I befriended foreign specialists and emigrants. I tried to persuade one of the specialists to pass on technical secrets, but without success. On a fabricated pretext and for a purpose unknown to me, I visited one of the foreign embassies. There was an idea to plant me as a double agent for one of the foreign intelligence services, but nothing came of that, either. The number of such operations was small – just a little more than the fingers on one hand.”

Andrei Filimonov, a teacher from Tataria, in 1988 went to the Bukharin Club—oh, what first perestroika revelations those were! The KGB officer who tried to recruit him said that “since the KGB is interested in the success of perestroika, and the ‘Bukharinites’ go abroad and meet with foreign entrepreneurs, perhaps he could report on these meetings, thereby contributing to the development of… cooperation in the USSR.”

V. V. Shirmakher, recruited in 1956, was first asked to show all the letters he received from abroad. Then they pointed out several colleagues, asking him to find out whom they associated with, and to ask about their attitude toward the authorities, the collective farms, etc.

“But I simply could not see enemies in those people,” he recalls. “‘Wow, how they disguise themselves,’ my KGB boss would say, seizing on some unknown thread and advising me to observe the person closely.”

Once he was sent on a tourist trip to Germany. He was given a task—to watch a group of students and report to a comrade named Misha, who was officially traveling as some factory worker. “He would always gather tourists around him and tell all sorts of amusing things (as it later turned out, he was a career KGB officer). After returning from the trip, I had to write a report. I wrote it—and got a major scolding because I hadn’t written about everyone: who went where and who talked to whom. Someone, I realized, had also been carefully watching me.”

Mikhail from Odessa was introduced to certain people whom, without pushing them away, he was to gain the trust of, and then, at a meeting, describe the content of their conversations to his handlers. “But that organization was overwhelmed by a wave of red tape,” Mikhail thinks. “When I realized I’d made a mistake, I began to console myself that it was still better me than someone else, perhaps a less decent person.”

The agent “Alik” from Khabarovsk, already mentioned, tells of his method of denunciations:

“I supply quite useful information, doing it almost professionally, having read a lot of spy novels, but sometimes I like to have a little fun: I invent non-existent characters of a menacing spying cast, tell about alleged attempts to get me drunk or plant a prostitute on me. They adore such stories and devour them avidly: why not give people that pleasure?”

They took from him a written pledge not to disclose the details of his collaboration. He could only write to me that “by penetrating agents into various informal organizations, the KGB watches their work and does its best to undermine them.” In Ukraine that was, above all, the “Rukh” movement.

Sergei Petrovsky

And here are the tasks they tried—without success, according to him—to saddle Sergei Petrovsky from St. Petersburg with when he was serving in the army:

“My meeting with the operative officer of the Special Section, Captain N., occurred on December 24, 1974, in Moscow. In the army I kept a diary and could not help recording this event. I do not remember the captain’s surname: in the regiment he was known by the nickname ‘Hush-Hush.’

His office was on our floor, at the end of the corridor. I knocked and entered. The officer invited me to sit down and ‘relax.’ Then he clarified some details of my biography.

At that time I was an active Komsomol member, had been conducting political information sessions since the 6th grade, and was one hundred percent brainwashed by communist propaganda.

The special officer suddenly asked: ‘Do you know what employees of special sections do?’ I jokingly replied: ‘Catching spies.’ The captain began patiently explaining to me that the main task of special sections was to identify and neutralize their own, ‘internal enemies of Soviet power.’

Our Special Officer was interested in:

Those who criticized the CPSU and the Soviet government.
Those who listened to Western ‘voices.’
Those who had contacts with foreigners.
Those who read books and brochures published abroad or illegally in the USSR (for example, ‘The Gulag Archipelago’)…”

Vladimir Zabrodin

But there were also tasks of a different kind. Here is another aspect of working for the KGB, which was communicated to me by V. Yu. Zabrodin, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, who considers himself not a stool pigeon but a voluntary helper of the KGB.

From 1981 to 1983 he headed the geological-mineralogical museum in Khabarovsk, which was very often visited by foreigners. His KGB handler asked him, after those visits, to write reports on what the foreign visitors were interested in and what questions they asked. He saw nothing special in those requests, as his predecessors had done the same. And everyone else, probably.

But in 1993 the handler approached him with a request for more serious help: it was about the economy.

The era of Andropov and the fight against corruption was dawning.

“From conversations with friends,” writes V. Yu. Zabrodin, “I learned that KGB officers had played a decisive role in fighting the mafia in Krasnodar and other places.”

His handler told him that a special department to combat economic crimes had been created in the KGB: the police had turned out to be highly corrupt.

“I asked him, what could I myself do to help in this fight? He replied: ‘We would like to get from you an independent expert opinion—in the form of your personal view—on various matters of interest to us.’ As usual, he appealed to my civic duty, to conscientiousness, and so on. I saw no particular reason to refuse such a form of cooperation and gave the appropriate written pledge, choosing for myself, as is their custom, a conspiratorial surname.”

He agreed, gave a pledge, chose a pseudonym—and that was that?

“Doubts began to gnaw at me: would they try to extract information from me about people of interest to the KGB? Distrust of this organization (at least that part of it which performs the functions of political police) is in the blood of most of us, and in my case my grandfather had been repressed. So I did not rule out that if I refused to supply the KGB with the information they wanted, they would deliberately spread word that I was a snitch, and this, naturally, would lead to a break in relations with many of my Friends, especially those close to dissident circles.”

What did he do upon hearing such an offer? The only thing one can do in such a situation—he informed all his friends about this offer, not only in his own city but in various cities across the country:

“Of course, I violated the terms stipulated in the cooperation agreement, but I saw no other way out. My friends took note of it all.”

Well, and what happened next?

Two or three times the KGB tried to get information from V. Yu. Zabrodin about people close to him, but he categorically refused to discuss those topics. And his handler stopped bringing up those personal subjects.

“What did the KGB actually get from me? First, they asked me to write what types of raw materials from the Far East might be of interest to neighboring states—China, Japan, Korea. When I said that I am a specialist in the economics of mineral raw materials, they told me that this did not matter, because such assessments are given by several unrelated experts and only then compiled and reported to the leadership:

I doubt that I provided any substantial assistance to the state and the KGB in its counterintelligence work in this matter.

The second set of questions concerned the materials I received from abroad. I am a full member of the International Association of Planetology, and therefore for many years I have received a specialized journal and various types of information from the Institute of Lunar and Planetary Research (USA) 3–4 times a year. They asked me to write an assessment—whether or not it was worth translating and publishing them in Russian. To tell the truth, I never did see a single work published in Russian, despite the fact that my reviews were positive.

Finally, the third set of questions was of great personal interest to me. It included my thoughts on the state of science in the country, and in particular in the Far East. I spent a lot of time writing memos on these topics, because I hoped that if my ideas reached the country’s leadership through the KGB, they would be heeded. But it all came to nothing: my memos had no impact whatsoever.

My conviction grew stronger that the KGB needed my cooperation only as a formality, and my memos, at best, are stored in some dusty folders, since no improvements occurred either in the organization of scientific work or in the organization of the geological service.”

And I want to quote the last lines of Vladimir Yuryevich Zabrodin’s letter:

“I am 54 years old. I am a convinced non-party person with respect to all existing parties in the country. Cooperation with the KGB brought me no benefits. I was not offered money or gifts. True, my handler tried three times to get me to take part in international symposiums here and abroad, but for obvious reasons I refused. Undoubtedly, this had a certain negative impact on my scientific work, but I view this negative result as the price for my cooperation with the KGB and I blame only myself.”

I understand Vladimir Yuryevich’s feelings.

No, he did nothing wrong, and his conscience is clear. But why, why even now, when time has passed and he can openly talk about his essentially harmless cooperation with the KGB, does such a bitter residue remain in his soul?

And again I keep coming back to the same thing, the same thing…

No, it is not the history of informing in Russia that I am writing about after all.

Yes, when I was digging through the archives, when I read letters from them, when I finally met informers face to face, I thought: yes, the book will be about this, and only this.

But the further I wrote, the more I realized: no, brother, it’s not about the signed agreements and not even about the KGB. The Zone is a broader concept than this or that professional activity. The Zone runs somewhere in the middle of the human soul, and it does not even depend on time—whether a person crosses that thin boundary, proudly refuses to cross it, or freezes in fright on the border.

I will present two documents from two different times: the one, terrible, when to act otherwise was unusual for many, and ours, today’s, when you yourself—and only yourself—decide for yourself: is it permitted? is it not?

The 1937 Denunciation of Leventsov

“… On the evening of the said date, February 17, Karpov came into the hotel room, where I was entirely alone, and started a conversation with me like this: ’I have, and not only I but also a comrade named Boyarinov has, an interesting book by Stalin himself called On the Opposition. It’s interestingly written – even all of Comrade Lenin’s testaments about Comrade Stalin are written there. Lenin says: “Stalin is rude,” that the matter of the General Secretary of the Central Committee plenum should be discussed, and Comrade Stalin himself talks about it in this book. Have you read this book?“ – Karpov asked me, Leventsov. I, Leventsov, replied to him, Karpov, that I had not read it, and that this sort of judgment is nothing other than Trotskyite slander long coming from the lips of the fascist Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and other scum who slid into counter-revolution, and these vile spies got, as we know, what they deserved. Additionally, he, Karpov, said: “It is written in the book that Lenin is a professional exploiter.” I answered him after that: now I am convinced you are a Trotskyite, and if you, Karpov, now interpret it that way and cite passages that are inappropriate for us, it smacks of unhealthy reasoning, reasoning alien to a Bolshevik. To this Karpov replied: I am not defending the Trotskyites; I’m telling you about Stalin’s book, and it is recorded there – go read it.

I have known Karpov for a long time from work in Sevsk, though I have not been to his apartment, but regarding the matter at hand, on the 24th of this month, having returned from a business trip on February 21, I went to Karpov to get that book from him; however, he only showed it to me but did not give it to me; he again confirmed that the same book is with Boyarinov. The book: Stalin on the Opposition, Articles and Speeches 1921–1927, State Publishing House.

I consider it necessary to report the above to the district committee of the VKP(b).

In addition to the above, I consider it my duty, with all Bolshevik sincerity, to inform the district committee of the VKP(b) about my un-Bolshevik act in the following matter. One February evening after work at the MTM, around 12 o’clock at night, in the buffet of the Spasdeminsk station, in the presence of Party member Comrade Litvinov, I got myself supper, since all the canteens in town were closed, and took a quarter-liter of wine (port), drank half a glass, and treated Karpov, who had come in to me. Herewith…“

Signature, date…

Yes, Leventsov was no great shakes at grammar (I haven’t changed a thing in this text and deliberately haven’t put any punctuation marks – am I a schoolteacher, or what?), and it seems he wasn’t averse to a drink either.

But that’s how the times were – they were only just transitioning to universal literacy.

The Terrorist Raduyev and the Filmmaker Govorukhin

Yet something kindred, familiar reached me quite recently, in 1997 – a full sixty years later – from the lips of a man whose literacy and culture can hardly be called into question.

Bombings thundered through the railway stations in Pyatigorsk and MinVody. Official Chechnya officially declared that no Chechen had anything to do with these explosions. “And Raduyev?” I asked Ruslan Kutaev, former Deputy Prime Minister of Chechnya. “And Raduyev,” he replied.

Then I asked Ruslan to have Raduyev contact me and confirm that personally.

It was Saturday. I sat at my dacha, waiting for Raduyev’s call. People kept calling me back: “They’re looking for Raduyev…”, “They’re bringing him a satellite phone”, “He’ll be found soon…”

Time passed, but he didn’t call.

I told my colleagues at Novaya Gazeta to hold the space anyway (Saturday is when we sign off on the issue for printing) – just in case he did call after all.

Raduyev called me at about four in the afternoon.

It was a difficult and heavy conversation that lasted some forty minutes.

Raduyev took responsibility for those bombings, but most importantly, he declared: bombings were planned at the railway stations of Voronezh and St. Petersburg.

And our entire conversation was only about one thing; or rather, it was about one thing that I kept begging this terrorist: don’t blow them up, don’t blow them up…

On Monday, the paper came out, in which I quoted the fragments of our conversation that I considered most important.

Yes, the paper came out on Monday. Yet the very next day, the chairman of a State Duma committee, respected filmmaker Stanislav Govorukhin, held a press conference at which he read out a transcript of my private conversation with Raduyev, which I had conducted from my private home telephone – that is, he broadcast an illegal “wiretap” (to use professional language) carried out by one of the special services. It turned out that one State Duma deputy was allowed to listen to the conversation of another State Duma deputy, and he, without a shadow of a doubt, aired it at a press conference held by him in the State Duma building.

A few days later, when I obtained the official transcript of S. Govorukhin’s statement, I immediately remembered Leventsov’s declaration, which I had discovered in the Hoover Archives.

What’s time got to do with it? Those sixty years separating us from 1937 mean nothing to us. To put S. Govorukhin on equal terms with the unknown Leventsov, I also decided not to play schoolteacher: I did not correct errors or insert commas.

“I’ll give some excerpts. ‘I warned them, wait just one more week, and two more stations will blow up’ – ‘Salman, you’ve just killed me. Now I have a completely different opinion about you’ – ‘Don’t form an opinion. You’ll form an opinion before the world. We’ll bring the world to its knees’ – well, and so on.

Does Raduyev seem like a madman?

’ – Soon Voronezh will be next. Then Russia will come to its senses. We’ll wipe the whole city off the face of the earth.’

Then, further.

’ – I haven’t met or spoken with anyone. The last month I was receiving treatment abroad after the assassination attempt on April 8. I’m not disavowing anything. They are just putting that out on their own. I am speaking now and I am ready, before the whole world and before Allah, to take responsibility for those who died. I am very glad that my orders are being carried out. On one hand, I regret that there are many casualties. I expressed my condolences to those who died. And I express my condolences to those who will yet die. Because this is war. War doesn’t come without casualties… Why should we yield? Russia should yield to us. Yeltsin must get down on his knees. Must ask the Chechen nation for forgiveness for the attempt on Dudayev’s life. I am Dudayev’s soldier, and for the rest of my life I will avenge him.’“

And what if I, as a State Duma deputy, ask for forgiveness on behalf of the President?..
No need! You, as a State Duma deputy, you speak well there, give us Yeltsin, Chernomyrdin, the prime minister. They are criminals. Kulikov, that scumbag who rose to minister and became a general on Chechen blood. Believe me, we’ll show those ‘Kulikovs’ yet.
I fully agree with that. But you say there will be an explosion in Voronezh soon. There are children, women there.
Let them leave immediately. I’m warning you. Evacuate all women and children. In case of anything, chemical weapons may be used. Everything happens by the will of Allah. We are only little people carrying out His will. Allah commands us: we must finish off this Russian empire.
Forgive me, brother… (there’s a break in the recording here). You just made a risky statement…’”

So, from this conversation I see how journalist Shchekochikhin, there’s a case, well, a sincere question, a bit stunned by Raduyev’s confession. He is bewildered, it’s clear he previously thought differently. But on the 5th, an article by Shchekochikhin appears in the same newspaper (in “Novaya Gazeta”. — Yu. Shch.}, where he says that the special services are preparing all these terrorist acts (but I didn’t say that in the article — I cited Ruslan Idigov’s opinion in the paper. — Yu. Shch.). But if this had happened after the conversation with Raduyev, that is, before the conversation with Raduyev, I understand he had such an opinion, but here I see how genuinely shocked he is, how he cares about Russia, about those who will soon perish, and most importantly, that this article was published after he spoke with Raduyev. In that same newspaper, as I’ve already told you, an excerpt from the conversation with Raduyev is printed, albeit a falsification of that conversation. But you can take the newspaper and read it. There’s nothing similar to what was read there.

What is this? But I understand perfectly. I am ready to forgive him for addressing the terrorist as ‘brother.’ After all, Shchekochikhin is engaged in rescuing our captured soldiers, and that’s a matter of his conscience, his tactics, to address a terrorist, a bandit, a murderer — that’s his business. But in principle, I don’t understand, if after this conversation he writes that it was still the Russian special services who prepared it (“Well, there you go again” — I wanted, reading this transcript, to become indignant again, but then I caught myself, as if I were justifying myself before a troika! That’s genes for you, that’s the ZONE! — Yu. Shch.), then he is tying their hands and preventing them from preparing to avert the next terrorist attacks…”

I can only guess what became then, in ’37, of that poor fellow Karpov, who told a certain Leventsev about Lenin’s testament. After 60 years, I no longer feel any fear, and what consequences could there have been? Only ‘MK’ reported on this press conference by Govorukhin, and even then with surprise: how did the chairman of the Culture Committee come to possess a document that has a very specific relation to culture?

But the more I thought, the more I realized — the point is not at all in those analogies. No, it’s something far more essential.

Starting this research, I thought I would have to write more about history and its strange grimaces, about people who became victims of the historical process, about that parallel GULAG in which millions and millions of souls languished. Then I realized: no, no — that’s not enough. The Zone passes through the soul, inside the person, in the eternal confrontation between good and evil, between loyalty and betrayal. But then — even further, further… Yes, the KGB machine, which for many decades did God knows what and turned people into slaves of the System, is broken (at least now they control not thoughts, but are trying to do the job that any special service in any country should do).

But I am more and more convinced: no, everything has remained! Everything is the same! Everything as it was then! Only instead of one giant there are dozens: from seven special services to countless security departments of banks and firms.

The Zone continues to draw in more and more new people, continuing and extending that historical era from which we have nowhere to escape as yet.

In mid-1998, during a search of a large St. Petersburg firm that I and my newspaper colleagues had been dealing with recently, a detailed dossier on me was found: my habits, attachments, friends, women, pressure points. And there also — methods of influence, techniques of compromising, and — even a price list: payments to journalists who would write articles against me.

Oh, Lord, I thought then! So, someone was brought closer, with someone I sat at the same table, and someone perhaps even visited me at home.

I immediately caught myself wanting to know, who? Well, who? Just like once in my youth, like once in a completely different era and a different time…

Then I thought and thought and decided: I don’t want to know about it! I don’t want to, and I won’t.

After all, someone refused. Surely, refused.

KGB Denunciations

From a 1984 report:

“From agent ‘Alekseev’ a signal was received that poet A. Yeremenko submitted a manuscript to the ‘Soviet Writer’ publishing house for possible publication.”

“In connection with election to party bodies, agent ‘Mishin’ was expelled from the agent network. Personal and work files destroyed.”

From a 1985 report:

“From agent ‘Klarina’ information was received about ideologically immature aspects in the work of pop playwrights M. Zhvanetsky and A. Gorodnitsky. Materials sent to the 5th service of the KGB Directorate for Moscow and Moscow Oblast.”

“From agent ‘Sasha’ information was received about a trip through the USSR Union of Writers to the USA together with the object of interest of the KGB Directorate for Irkutsk Oblast, writer V. Rasputin,”

“From agent ‘Klarina’ a review was received of the transcript of an unofficial concert of politically immature content by M. Zadornov. Materials are used in the preparation of preventative measures regarding M. Zadornov.”

“Preparatory materials for the Soviet delegation to the 13th International Congress of Political Sciences (Paris, 1986, July 16–20) have been finalized. Eleven agents and seven trusted contacts have been re-established and briefed for counterintelligence purposes. Those about whom compromising material existed were removed from the foreign travel list well in advance.”

“During preparations for the work of the literary workshop at the XII World Festival of Youth and Students… the following agents have been inserted into the workshop: ‘Belikov,’ ‘Sorge,’ ‘Somov,’ ‘Solovyov,’ ‘Kreuer,’ and 4 sources, who have been linked up with local branches.”

“Agent ‘Naumov’ of the KGB USSR for Kemerovo Region has provided characterizing information on the chief conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre, Yu. Simonov, who is an object of our operational interest.”

“In respect to B. Okudzhava, member of the USSR Writers’ Union, who had been subjected to prophylactic measures by the Moscow writers’ organization on the basis of our materials concerning his transport of ideologically harmful literature, measures were taken to study him during his official trip to Italy. The study was conducted through the residency’s capabilities and through agent ‘Alexandrov,’ who traveled with B. Okudzhava as an escort. At our request, the KGB of the BSSR for Brest Region organized a thorough customs inspection of B. O. The results of the said measures have been factored into the ongoing check.”

From the 1986 report:

“Agents ‘Klimov’ and ‘Remizov’ were sent to Canada with the USSR national ice hockey team with a mission to provide counterintelligence support to that collective. Data have been obtained on the adversary’s hostile intentions toward certain Soviet hockey players and on attempts to induce them not to return to the homeland.”

“Agents ‘Moskovsky,’ ‘Fedorov,’ and ‘Alfimov’ have provided additional information on the ideologically unhealthy atmosphere in the sector of problems of ideological struggle and critique of non-Marxist theories at the Institute of the International Working-Class Movement of the USSR Academy of Sciences.”

“In connection with the forthcoming 5th Congress of Cinematographers of the USSR, agents ‘Moskva,’ ‘Nora,’ ‘Nikolaev,’ ‘Polyansky,’ ‘Stepanov,’ and ‘Yezersky’ have reported on the situation among cinematographers and on certain negative manifestations during the election-reporting meetings in the Moscow sections. The reports have been submitted to the directorate management.”

“Agent ‘Solovyov’ signaled a leak of official information from the Council for Religious Affairs under the USSR Council of Ministers.”

From the 1987 report:

“Trusted contact ‘GAI’ provided information on contacts made by the chief choreographer of the USSR State Academic Bolshoi Theatre, Yu. Grigorovich, with the renegades Baryshnikov and Makarova, with a view to inviting them to take part in an International Forum of Cultural Figures.”

“Agent ‘Svetlov’ reported that the director and actor of the Satire Theatre, A. Mironov, attempted to project the events in the play ‘Shadows’ based on Saltykov-Shchedrin’s work onto the events of today’s reality. The information was reported to the management.”

“Agent ‘Svetlov’ provided information on the negative conduct and remarks of the playwright and secretary of the USSR Theatre Union (STD), M. Shatrov. The information was reported to the KGB leadership.”

From the 1988 report:

“Through agent ‘Alexandrov,’ measures are being taken to induce Yu. Moritz, a member of the USSR Writers’ Union who is part of a Soviet writers’ delegation in the USA, to publish critical comments in the Soviet press about the life and activities of renegades in the West.”

“Actress of the ‘Sovremennik‑2’ Theatre, ‘Evgenia Ryumina,’ and art historian and employee of the USSR Art Fund ‘Ponomareva,’ have been recruited as agents of the KGB of the USSR.”

“An agent has been inserted into the Moscow Committee on Karabakh.”

“From trusted contact ‘SAG,’ information about the moods, plans, and intentions of Academician D. S. Likhachev was received and reported to the directorate management.”

“Through agent ‘Ryazansky,’ a letter was prepared in the name of believers condemning the object’s behavior. The letter was distributed in G. Yakunin’s circle.”

“Based on an analysis of the operational situation among the scholarly intelligentsia, the directorate management was informed in a memorandum of available possibilities to compromise certain individuals among the so‑called ‘leaders of perestroika in the social sciences.’ On this basis, agent ‘Historik’ prepared critical material on Yu. N. Afanasyev’s publication in ‘Literaturnaya Gazeta’ of June 17, 1988.”

From the 1989 report:

“Agent ‘Andrey’ provided a tape recording of speeches by the leaders of the so‑called ‘Moscow Tribune,’ which are antisocial in character. The recording was passed to the 9th Department of the Directorate for use in operational work where possible.”

“Through agent ‘Rodin,’ the journal ‘Nash Sovremennik’ No. 5 published material on the émigré writer L. Kopelev (object ‘Kanallya’), exposing his links with anti‑Soviet centers in the West.”

And what about the reports for ’90? ’91? ’92? ’93? ’94? ’95? ’96? ’97? ’98?

And will the reports for ’99 ever be made public? And what about the year two-thousand?…

“Now, at the last stage of life, I remember the spring of ’35 and the mocking professor who, in his own apartment, at his own table, among his own, raised a glass and laughed: ‘Heil Hitler!’

I informed on him. And so did someone else.

I recall it as if in a heavy dream.

Was I right? Was I wrong?

I am bearing my repentance.”

The woman who sent me this short letter signed it “Chernysheva, pensioner, Dnepropetrovsk.” I do not dare change her name.

I am finishing this manuscript at the beginning of 1999, the last year of the twentieth century.

So we say farewell.

Yes, I would like to feel that I am a son of the nineteenth century.

But I feel that I am a son of the twentieth.

Long ago, in my youth, the twenty-first century seemed to me something astonishingly distant and almost fantastic. What will it be like? What? Will I live to see it?

But trains run at express speed.

And now—here is the threshold.

Yes, when one leaves, one looks back at the threshold.

So I have looked back.

Yuri Shchekochikhin (1950–2003)
Moscow, May 2000

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