About the execution of Minister of State Security Vsevolod Merkulov, who was arrested as an accomplice of Lavrenty Beria, his family learned only from newspapers. The most educated executioner Merkulov Rem Vsevolodovich biography

Vsevolod Nikolaevich Merkulov(1895-1953) was born in the village of Zagatali - Azerbaijan, in the family of a nobleman. Russian.

In 1913 he graduated with honors from the gymnasium in Tiflis, and entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University.
In 1916, he was drafted into the army, served in Orenburg in a reserve regiment, was promoted to warrant officer, and until March 1918 fought on the Southwestern Front.
He joined the Bolshevik Party late - in 1920, when it finally became clear that they would win. So, his choice was not ideological.

In the Cheka - since 1921: Assistant Commissioner, then - Commissioner of the Economic Department of the GPU of Georgia. In 1927-1929. - Head of the Department of Information, Agitation and Political Control of the GPU of the Georgian SSR, in 1929-1931. - Head of the Secret-Political Department of the GPU of the Adjara ASSR, and at the same time - Deputy Chairman of the GPU of Adjara.
In 1931, he headed the secret political department of the GPU of the Transcaucasian SFSR, but after a few months he resigned. Since that time, the closest collaborator of L.P. Beria, who nominated him first for the position of head of the sector of trade, and then - of transport and industry of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia. Did a lot for economic development this region.
In November 1938, Merkulov was appointed deputy head of the GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR. Soon he headed this department, and until February 1941 he was L. Beria's deputy at the post of people's commissar.
In 1940, V. Merkulov was part of a group of persons responsible for the destruction of captured Polish officers, as well as other persons interned in Eastern Poland in 1939. It is noteworthy that later, in 1943-1944, Merkulov headed a government commission USSR for the "investigation" of this case (at that time attributed to the Germans).
Merkulov is also responsible for the repressions in the Baltic States in 1940-1941, where mass arrests and deportations of the population to Siberia were carried out.
From February to July 1941, and then in 1943-1946. - People's Commissar of State Security of the USSR. In June 1941, he ordered the "cleansing" of places of deprivation of liberty in Western Ukraine, as a result of which about 10 thousand people were shot.
In 1946-1950. V. Merkulov works in the Main Directorate of Soviet Property Abroad under the Government of the USSR. In 1950-1953 - Minister of State Control of the USSR.
After Stalin's death, he was on leave "for health reasons", then went abroad (to the GDR) "on vacation", from where he was arrested on September 18, 1953. During the investigation, Merkulov was offered to give detailed testimony against L. Beria, V Abakumov and others, but he refused, and was shot on December 23, 1953, as "an English and American spy."
Not rehabilitated.
was engaged literary activity(Wrote plays under the pseudonym V. Rokk).

VSEVOLOD NIKOLAEVICH MERKULOV

In 1941, in the city of Krasnodar, at the height of the war, a playwright with a magnificent name, Vsevolod Rokk, completed a play with the simple title "Engineer Sergeyev." He did not have to beat the theater thresholds for a long time, like his colleagues in the creative workshop, and persuade the zavlits and directors. There has always been a hunger for modern dramaturgy, and already in 1942 the play began to be staged in one theater or another.

"Engineer Sergeev" was staged in Tbilisi (in Russian and Georgian), in Baku and Yerevan, in Riga (after the liberation of Latvia), in Ulan-Ude, Yakutsk, Vologda, Syzran, Arkhangelsk, Kostroma. Every year the number of productions grew. In February 1944, the play was also staged at the Maly Theatre.

It was noted by the entire Soviet press.

Theater critics, who were often sharply critical of the weaknesses of modern playwrights, greeted the play with a bang.

Laudatory reviews were in Pravda, and in Izvestia, and in the then official propaganda department of the Central Committee "Literature and Art".

In Literature and Art, the performance of the Maly Theater was especially extolled: “It is a big task to play the image of a patriotic engineer who devoted himself entirely to the service of the party and the people. The play by Vsevolod Rokk, staged at the branch of the Maly Theater, provides rich and grateful material for the manifestation of acting skills ... Selflessly devoted to the cause of his people, soviet man boldly looks into the eyes of death and fulfills the task of the Motherland, sacrificing life.

Perhaps the reviewers really liked the play. Or maybe they just knew who was hiding under the pseudonym Vsevolod Rokk. Vsevolod Nikolaevich Merkulov was an amateur playwright. When the Maly Theater turned to his work, Merkulov served as People's Commissar of State Security of the USSR.

"WE WILL SHOT YOU"

Merkulov, who spent half his life working as a Chekist, was fond of literary creativity. He wrote plays. "Engineer Sergeev" was the most successful. Merkulov told about what was close to him.

The action of the play takes place in July - September 1941. The plot is simple: the Soviet troops are retreating, and the director of the power plant, Sergeev, must blow up his offspring - the plant, which he himself built. The Germans are trying to stop him - they need a power plant - and send their agents to him: the son of a kulak, who was dispossessed and thrown into prison, where he died, and an engineer with pre-revolutionary experience, who agreed to work for the Germans back in 1918, when they were in Ukraine.

One agent is caught by the NKVD, another engineer Sergeev hits the head twice with a sledgehammer. He falls dead, as the author's remark says.

The German officers in the play also speak Russian. One of them is from Riga: his father owned an estate in the Tula province, and the general recalls how every morning he went to inspect the barnyard, the kennel and the mill ...

The author also brought out in the play a colleague - the head of the NKVD district department, senior lieutenant of state security. He tells the protagonist that the German agents are spreading rumors, and ours foolishly pick them up.

As a result, a completely different Soviet person becomes, in fact, an unwitting enemy, sowing panic and uncertainty. Quite often such talkers are brought to my department.

Of course, things are not without curiosities.

In the sense that they grab those who could still be held at large.

But mostly real enemies come across:

Let's plant, figure it out, you look - a German agent. Bastards!

Here Merkulov is accurate in details, he knows his colleagues: first they imprison, then they begin to figure it out, and here very few people do not admit that they are a spy.

Along the way, a senior lieutenant of state security detains a suspicious person named Soikin, but there is no evidence of his guilt. Chekist himself says:

Our district prosecutor kept pestering me: release Soikin, you don't have sufficient grounds to keep him under arrest. So I sent him to the disposal of the regional administration, to the city. I would like to win time ... I feel in my gut that he has unclean affairs.

Of course, the senior lieutenant of state security turns out to be right: he caught a traitor who had defected to the Germans. But the ideas of those years about how and who can be arrested are accurately conveyed ...

The hero of the play, engineer Sergeev, despite the fact that he feels sorry for the power plant he built, blows it up together with the German occupiers and at the same time dies himself.

The newspaper “Literature and Art” wrote: “Sergeev is ready to sacrifice, if necessary for the Motherland, his life, children. He did not immediately understand why it was necessary in the name of the Motherland to destroy such a magnificent structure as its hydroelectric power station so that the enemy would not get it. But in the first, most difficult moment, when the thought of the possibility of destruction first entered his consciousness, he says in thought: “If necessary, we will blow it up.”

Merkulov knew more than just how state security works. He knew how power plants, factories and oil rigs exploded during the retreat.

Nikolai Konstantinovich Baibakov, who for many years headed the State Planning Commission, and at the beginning of the war was the authorized representative of the State Defense Committee for the destruction of oil wells and oil refineries in the Caucasus region, described how he received this kind of assignment.

Stalin summoned him:

Comrade Baibakov, Hitler is rushing to the Caucasus. Everything must be done so that not a single drop of oil goes to the Germans.

Keep in mind, if you leave even one ton of oil to the Germans, we will shoot you.

But if you destroy the industries prematurely, and the Germans do not capture them and we are left without fuel, we will also shoot you.

It is amazing that even half a century later, Baibakov recalls Stalin's eerie words with admiration.

Chekist Merkulov came to Baibakov's aid. He even brought British specialists to Baibakov, who shared their experience of destroying wells on the island of Borneo so that the Japanese would not get the oil. English methods Baibakov rejected it, our experts came up with their own.

Baibakov was not frightened by German agents. If he was afraid of anything, it was not following Stalin's order. Indeed, in this case, he would have entered the disposal of Merkulov, but not the playwright, but at that moment Beria's first deputy for the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Therefore, Baibakov recalls, they blew up oil fields and power plants when the Germans were already nearby and machine gun fire was heard.

NARCOM THEORETIC

Vsevolod Nikolaevich Merkulov was four years older than Beria, but in their relationship Lavrenty Pavlovich was always older. And not only by position. Merkulov lacked the decisiveness and ruthlessness of Beria, and his organizational talents too.

Merkulov was born in 1895 in the small town of Zagatala in Azerbaijan. His father served in the tsarist army, after retiring, he became a teacher. Vsevolod Nikolaevich graduated from the men's gymnasium in Tiflis and, unlike Beria and his entourage, continued his education. He went to the capital and in 1913 entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University. So he was the most educated in Beria's entourage, if not in the entire leadership of state security.

Merkulov stood out among the illiterate comrades. Viktor Semenovich Abakumov, who replaced him as Minister of State Security, graduated from the fourth grade. But Merkulov joined the party later than others - only in 1925.

He managed to serve in the tsarist army - in October 1916 he was drafted into a student battalion in Petrograd and almost immediately sent to the Orenburg ensign school. He served in the 331st Orsky Regiment, and in January 1918, due to illness, he was sent home to Tiflis. For several months he was unemployed, then he got a job as a teacher in a school for the blind.

In October 1921, he was taken to the Georgian Cheka as an assistant commissioner. He worked in this department for ten years. He headed the economic department, was the head of the department of information, agitation and political control of the GPU of Georgia, the chairman of the GPU of Adzharia, the head of the secret political department of the GPU of Transcaucasia.

In November 1931, Beria, who was elected second secretary of the Transcaucasian regional committee and first secretary of the Central Committee of Georgia, transferred Merkulov to his assistant, then put him in charge of a special sector.

Beria liked Merkulov not only for his education and diligence. Merkulov wrote a pamphlet about Beria called "The Faithful Son of the Lenin-Stalin Party."

In 1937, Merkulov became the head of the industrial and transport department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia. The following year, Beria took him with him to Moscow and entrusted him with the most important post. Myself? Lavrenty Pavlovich, still in the role of the first deputy people's commissar, also headed the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD. And Merkulov made his deputy. He was immediately given high rank commissioner of state security of the third rank: in the army hierarchy - this is a lieutenant general.

After Beria was appointed People's Commissar on December 17, 1938, Merkulov became the first deputy people's commissar and head of the Main Directorate of State Security. Intelligence, counterintelligence, and the protection of the Politburo were subordinate to him.

At the time of the annexation of the Baltic States, Merkulov secretly came to Riga to lead the process of Sovietization of Latvia.

After the partition of Poland in the fall of 1939, Merkulov went to Lviv and personally led the operation to identify and isolate hostile elements, in other words, he carried out a massive purge of Western Ukraine. In the spring of 1940, the intelligent commissar of the third rank, Merkulov, was directly involved in preparing the execution of captured Polish officers in Katyn, approved and signed all the execution lists, and personally supervised the liquidation.

With the outbreak of war, a new stream of prisoners poured into the camps. A special meeting, for example, gave ten years for failure to comply with a government decree on the surrender of personal radios, which had to be taken to the district executive committee. Another wave of prisoners are the spreaders of "false rumors" about the German offensive and German victories, as well as those arrested for "praising German technology."

By decision of the State Defense Committee, a special meeting was now given the right to determine any measure of punishment, up to and including execution.

At the same time, Merkulov was not the worst in his circle. He was polite, spoke calmly, without shouting. And he tried to be reasonable, if it did not run counter to his official duties.

Academician Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov recalls that when Beria was arrested, party members were given a closed letter from the CPSU PC to read. Sakharov, although he was not a party member, got to know him. There, among other things, it was said that Beria forced his subordinates to beat the arrested with his own hands. One Merkulov flatly refused. Beria mocked him: a theoretician!

Merkulov could at least be convinced of something. When the future academician and laureate was arrested Nobel Prize the brilliant physicist Lev Davidovich Landau, Academician Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa rushed to rescue him. Merkulov accepted him and showed Kapitsa the investigation file. Landau was accused of all anti-Soviet sins.

I guarantee that Landau will no longer engage in counter-revolutionary activities, Kapitsa said.

Is he a very big scientist? Merkulov asked.

Yes, on a global scale, - Kapitsa answered with conviction. Landau was released.

On February 3, 1941, the day the NKVD was divided into two people's commissariats, Merkulov was appointed People's Commissar of State Security. Ivan Alexandrovich Serov became his first deputy. Merkulov got intelligence and counterintelligence, the secret political department, and the investigative unit. Beria was left with the police, firefighters, border guards, the Gulag and all the work in industry.

Six months later, on July 20, when the war began, the NKVD and the NKGB were hastily merged into one people's commissariat. Merkulov again became Beria's first deputy. In February 1943, he received the rank of Commissar of State Security of the first rank (general of the army). And two months later, on April 14, 1943, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs was again divided, and Merkulov again headed the People's Commissariat of State Security.

DID STIRLITZ WORK FOR MERKULOV?

Perhaps this is just a legend, a myth, a beautiful fairy tale, but many even very competent people believe in it and consider it true.

It was told to me by a famous Germanist, professor, doctor historical sciences Vsevolod Dmitrievich Yezhov:

Somewhere on the shores of the Gulf of Riga, in Jurmala, not far from the capital of Latvia, until recently there lived a Soviet intelligence officer who was hiding not only from strangers, but also from his own. In the 1920s, it was introduced into Nazi party. He made a great career, participated in everything that the SS did. At the end of the war, the Americans arrested him and were going to try him as a war criminal, and ours scratched him out with difficulty.

The story of this man seems to have formed the basis of the famous novel by Yulian Semenov "Seventeen Moments of Spring", based on which an even more famous film was staged.

In any case, this beautiful legend is told by the chief scientific consultant of the film, Professor Yezhov. And the main consultant of the film was a certain Colonel General S. K. Mishin. In fact, this is the pseudonym of the first deputy chairman of the KGB of the USSR, Semyon Kuzmich Tsvigun, a person very close to Brezhnev. In the presence of Tsvigun, Yuri Andropov himself did not feel very confident.

So was Stirlitz?

The late Yulian Semenovich Semenov, whom I knew and loved well, wrote a series of novels about the Soviet intelligence officer Stirlitz - Isaev. Semenov wrote so convincingly that Stirlitz is perceived by many almost as a real figure.

Yulian Semenov himself said that one of the prototypes of Stirlitz was the famous intelligence officer Norman Borodin, the son of Mikhail Markovich Borodin, who in the 1920s was the main political adviser in China.

Lieutenant General Sergei Alexandrovich Kondratov, who worked all his life in the German direction, believes that the creator of illegal intelligence Alexander Mikhailovich Korotkov was the prototype.

So was Stirlitz in reality? Or rather, did this literary and film hero have a prototype? Did you work in Nazi Germany in a high position, a Soviet intelligence officer, a Russian man, one of the subordinates of the First Rank Commissar of State Security Vsevolod Merkulov?

The opinion of experts is unequivocal: Stirlitz did not exist and could not exist. A Russian person or a Russified German could, of course, try to impersonate a native German, but for a very short time and before the first check: the Germans also had personnel departments, and no less vigilant. Hero of the Soviet Union Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov acted quite successfully in the German rear, but he was not so much a scout as a saboteur. He appeared in different places, took the Germans, as they say, on the arap and disappeared before they had time to become interested.

A scout from Soviet citizens could not take a prominent place in Nazi Germany, because he would inevitably be exposed. This was not what intelligence was looking for. The task was different: to recruit Germans who were ready to work for the Soviet Union.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Germany hosted one of the largest Soviet intelligence residencies with large quantity agents. Why, then, was the Soviet Union taken by surprise on June 22, 1941?

In 1936, a massive purge of Soviet intelligence began. Intelligence officers who worked abroad were summoned to Moscow, arrested and either shot or sent to camps. The same thing happened in military intelligence.

In December 1938, the leadership of the Army Intelligence Directorate, writes historian Valery Yakovlevich Kochik, reported to the People's Commissar of Defense: “The Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army was actually left without intelligence. The illegal network of agents, which is the basis of intelligence, has been almost completely eliminated.”

Major General Vitaly Nikolsky, who on the eve of the war served in the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army, told me:

The repressions that unfolded after the “Tukhachevsky case” dealt the army such a blow from which it did not have time to recover by the beginning of the war. By 1940, not a single experienced employee remained in the central apparatus of military intelligence. All were destroyed. Our chiefs were hastily mobilized nominees, who in turn changed, as in a kaleidoscope.

When an officer of the central apparatus was arrested in Moscow, the intelligence officers who closed in on him - legal and illegal - automatically fell under suspicion. At first, their information was no longer trusted. Then they were recalled to Moscow and destroyed.

It happened that our intelligence officer was recalled so quickly that he did not have time to transfer his agents to the replacement ...

Thus, the main damage to intelligence was not caused by enemy counterintelligence, but by their own superiors.

We were better aware of the plans of the leaders of the European countries than of the intentions of our own government, said General Nikolsky. - The conclusion of the pact with Germany, the entry of Soviet troops into the territory of Poland was a surprise for military intelligence. We did not have time to relocate further to the West all the agents from eastern regions Poland, and all our valuable informants during the rapid advance of the Red Army to the Bug were in Soviet captivity. It was a big loss for undercover intelligence on the eve of a terrible war.

We started the war with very low technical equipment, - continued General Nikolsky. - The radio stations were stationary, heavy, they could only be used by agents constantly working in some area. And the route workers - agents who, under a plausible pretext, were moving along a route of interest to intelligence - were deprived of operational radio communications. However, this saved them from inevitable failure.

After the outbreak of the war, so much information was required from permanent agents that they had to sit on the key for hours. As a result, they were spotted by direction finders, and they became the prey of counterintelligence ...

In February 1941, there was a meeting in the intelligence department in Moscow, at which officers from the districts spoke frankly: the country was on the verge of war, and the intelligence service was completely unprepared for it. There are no radio stations, no parachutes, no automatic weapons suitable for sabotage and reconnaissance groups. In the first months of the war, groups were sent to the rear of the enemy, armed only with pistols: there were no machine guns.

The summer retreat of the first year of the war was disastrous for intelligence. All reconnaissance points, personnel of scouts, radio operators were lost. In a word, everything had to be created anew: to look for people, to train radio operators.

At first, we didn’t even know how to find the owners of this scarce specialty: before the war, such registration did not exist, ”Nikolsky recalled. - They train a radio operator for four months, and we had to send groups to the German rear every day. There were no records of those who knew German. They searched all over the country for amateur radio operators, graduates of the philological and pedagogical faculties who studied German.

The reconnaissance also did not have its own aviation, adapted for the deployment of reconnaissance and sabotage groups. 105th squadron; created only in 1943. And before that, groups were dropped from the first aircraft that came across. There were many failures and tragedies. Paratroopers were destroyed right in the air.

Nevertheless, how do you generally assess the activities of military intelligence in the first period of the war? I asked General Nikolsky.

We coped with our task because we were able to take advantage of the confusion and turmoil among the Germans. The occupation command has not yet had time to introduce population registration, to create a local police. But we still acted on our own land. Our agent in the occupied territory in nine cases out of ten could count on the help of any person from the locals. Already a piece of bread was always given, if they had it, of course. It became difficult to work when the German field gendarmerie and the Gestapo deployed in the occupied territories, when the police created by the Germans appeared and repressions began for helping the partisans.

The losses of the reconnaissance groups were so great that questions inevitably arise: are these losses justified? Was the information brought by army intelligence worth the fact that for its sake people were sent almost to certain death?

Worth it. Otherwise, we would not be able to fight. Sometimes the means to achieve the goal were terrible, but you can’t win a battle without intelligence ...

During these decisive years, Stalin constantly changed the structure of the special services. The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs was either divided into two institutions, one of which became an independent People's Commissariat of State Security, then again recreated as a single organization.

Army counterintelligence was subordinate either to the People's Commissariat of Defense, then to the NKVD, then again to the People's Commissariat of Defense. The reorganization did not bypass military intelligence either.

In October 1942, Stalin signed an order to reorganize military intelligence:

"one. Separate the GRU from the General Staff of the Red Army, subordinating it to the People's Commissar of Defense.

2. To entrust the GRU of the Red Army with conducting undercover intelligence of foreign armies both abroad and on the territory of the USSR temporarily occupied by the enemy.

3. Remove military intelligence from the GRU.

4. To direct and organize the work of military intelligence, create a military intelligence department as part of the General Staff, subordinating the intelligence departments of the fronts and armies to it.

This order fragmented and actually paralyzed military intelligence. But the worst thing was that Stalin ordered: to disband operational undercover intelligence in the “army-front” link, since it is clogged with “doubles”, provocateurs and is led by illiterate commanders. All scouts - to transfer to the NKVD. Junior officers - to send to replenish the troops.

The order found me in Stalingrad, where a new front had been created, for which we had just set up a reconnaissance apparatus with great effort, ”Nikolsky recalled. - And then it turns out that all our work is in vain. The commanders of the armies and fronts wrote whole petitions to Stalin with a request to restore intelligence. In the end, an order was issued to restore military intelligence and create an intelligence department of the general staff ...

The consequences of the blow that was inflicted on intelligence in the autumn of 1942 were felt for a long time. Professionals sent to the troops have already died in battle. While new officers were gaining experience, agents were dying, the army did not receive vital information.

But Stalin loved intelligence, and at the same time, Yezhov's hands almost completely destroyed it. In 1938, only three employees remained in the Berlin residency. One of them did not speak German.

The Berlin residency began to recover only in 1939, when the Main Directorate of State Security was headed by Merkulov, but the new generation of intelligence officers could no longer achieve the same success.

An extensive network of agents was formed, but the agents were of a low level. Such an agent knows only what is happening in the department in which he serves. But he is unable to penetrate the thoughts and intentions of the leaders of the government, and in fact this is all that matters.

Soviet agents did not have first-hand information from Hitler's entourage. Moscow did not know what the leaders of Germany were really thinking and saying. They made assumptions and were wrong.

In addition, Amayak Zakharovich Kobulov, who had no intelligence experience, was appointed the head of the residency in Berlin - the brother of Bogdan Kobulov, Merkulov's deputy in the People's Commissariat of State Security.

According to Valentin Berezhkov, if the elder Kobulov was repulsively ugly, short, fat, then Amayak was tall, slender, handsome, with a mustache, courteous and charming, the soul of society and a wonderful toastmaster. But these were the merits of Amayak Kobulov.

Neither German language, the resident Kobulov, who started his career as a cashier-accountant in Borjomi, did not know the situation in Germany. He grew up in the Chekist department thanks to his older brother. Before being appointed to Berlin, he was First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.

German counterintelligence successfully slipped Russian-speaking double agents to Amayak Kobulov, who actually worked for the Imperial Security Main Directorate. Kobulov easily swallowed the bait. Hitler was in this big game. He himself looked through the information intended for Kobulov.

Through him, the Germans slipped comforting information to Stalin: Germany was not going to attack the Soviet Union. And in Moscow, Merkulov reported Kobulov's encryption to Stalin.

On May 25, 1941, Merkulov sent a note addressed to Stalin, Molotov and Beria, built on the reports of a Soviet intelligence agent in Berlin, a native of Latvia, Orestes Berlings, who in reality was a German counterintelligence agent named Peter. But Amayak Kobulov believed him.

So Merkulov’s note said: “War between the Soviet Union and Germany is unlikely ... The German military forces assembled on the border should show Soviet Union the determination to act if forced to do so. Hitler hopes that Stalin will become more accommodating and stop all intrigues against Germany, and most importantly, give more goods, especially oil.

Many agents of the Soviet intelligence were people of leftist convictions, anti-fascists who considered the Soviet Union an ally in the fight against Hitler. Others asked for money for information. The work is piecemeal - the more you bring, the more you get. And it turned out that they paid more for disinformation.

Another problem was that the information received in Moscow could not be properly understood. Stalin did not trust the analytical abilities of his Chekists, preferred to draw conclusions himself and demanded that Merkulov put the original intelligence reports on his table. Therefore, Merkulov did not need to create an information and analytical service in intelligence. This service appeared only in 1943.

The film "Seventeen Moments of Spring" paints a funny picture: scouts tell politicians what to do. In the real world, everything is different: politicians make decisions, and intelligence officers look for justification for these decisions.

Until June 22, 1941, Stalin and his entourage believed in the possibility of long-term cooperation with Hitler. Therefore, in the special intelligence reports that Merkulov brought, Stalin saw only what he wanted to see.

A few years ago, the Foreign Intelligence Service suddenly reported that the real prototype of Stirlitz was a German named Willy Lehman, a Gestapo officer who, since 1929, under the pseudonym Breitenbach, worked for Soviet intelligence. It was as if Yulian Semyonov was given the Breitenbach case, but advised to turn the German into a Russian.

This is not true. In those days, the Breitenbach case was classified, it was only recently revealed. Yulian Semyonov had no idea about Breitenbach.

Gestapo officer Willy Lehman, operational pseudonym Breitenbach, was indeed the highest-ranking Soviet agent. His fate is tragic. In 1938, when the Soviet residency in Germany was destroyed by Stalin, communication with Willy Lehmann ceased.

For two years he could do nothing to help the Soviet Union, because no one came to him. Communication was restored at the beginning of 1941 and was interrupted with the German attack on the Soviet Union.

In 1942, either out of desperation or through stupidity, Willy Lehman was killed. The password to contact him was given to an inept and unprepared paratrooper, who was thrown across the front line. The Gestapo immediately caught him. He betrayed Willy Lehmann, whom fate deprived of luck, which invariably accompanied Standartenführer Stirlitz ...

By the start of the war, the Soviet Union had an extensive intelligence network in Germany, including agents in the air force, the foreign ministry, the economy ministry, the Gestapo, and defense enterprises.

The People's Commissariat of State Security had a powerful illegal organization in Berlin, which was led by the anti-fascists Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid Harnack, who later became famous. Possessing wide connections, they supplied Moscow with full-fledged information, which Merkulov could be proud of.

Military intelligence had illegal groups in Belgium, Holland and France.

Soviet agents gave a lot of information, especially in the first months of the war. But they quickly began to be caught, quite often due to the errors of the center, which the Gestapo took advantage of.

The People's Commissariat of State Security, as well as the intelligence department of the Red Army, demanded the latest information, and immediately. But the connection was a weak point. The radio operators sat on the air for hours, the radios were detected, and the scouts were arrested one by one.

The Gestapo was headed by the same Heinrich Muller, who was brilliantly played by Leonid Bronevoi in the film Seventeen Moments of Spring. In life, Muller was not such a bright and interesting person. He was just a qualified policeman who acted methodically and thoroughly.

In Berlin, I walked along the street where Standartenführer Stirlitz allegedly worked.

There was little left of the building of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security in the German capital - only a destroyed bunker in which SS guards were sitting. The building itself was razed to the ground and set up there as a museum dedicated to the victims of the Gestapo, with underground cells and many horror-inspiring photographs.

It is even hard to imagine now that German counterintelligence was once located here, which acted very effectively, despite the fact that the German state secret police was not numerous - especially in comparison with the gigantic apparatus of the NKVD, NKGB and SMERSH military counterintelligence.

In 1944, the Gestapo had 32,000 employees. Before the war, there were even fewer Gestapo men. For example, in 1937 in Düsseldorf, a city with a population of four million, 291 people served in the local branch of the Gestapo. In the city of Essen, which had a population of about a million people, there were 43 Gestapo men.

The Gestapo did not have too many informants: usually in a big city there were several dozen people. There were, of course, voluntary assistants who, with the help of denunciations to the Gestapo, settled personal scores with enemies and flattered their pride.

The strength of the Gestapo lay not in the number of people in black uniforms, but in the frightening sense of their omnipotence and omnipresence. The Germans were convinced that no one and nothing could hide from the eyes of the Gestapo.

As in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany had military intelligence (Abwehr), counterintelligence (Gestapo) and political intelligence, which was part of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security. The Abwehr was headed by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, political intelligence was led by the young SS General Walter Schellenberg, who is played by Oleg Tabakov in the film Seventeen Moments of Spring. There is even an outward resemblance between Schellenberg and Tabakov...

The apparatuses of military and political intelligence in Germany were much smaller than in the Soviet Union. German intelligence could not boast of much success both in the pre-war years and during the war years. The Germans had almost no agents on the territory of the Soviet Union. The Germans tried to compensate for this by dropping paratroopers, but to no avail: they were caught almost immediately.

Counterintelligence in this war turned out to be stronger than intelligence, and only by the end of the war did the situation equalize. The Gestapo tracked down all the illegal Soviet intelligence residencies, and the intelligence network in Germany was lost. But Soviet intelligence continued to provide valuable information: the people of Merkulov, who in April 1943 again headed the People's Commissariat for State Security, elicited it not from the enemy, but from the allies.

For that matter, Stirlitz was neither German nor Russian, but rather an Englishman. Moreover, there were many English Stirlitz. The most skillful and successful were five. The name of one of them is known to all - this is Kim Philby.

For a long time it was believed that three more worked for Soviet intelligence with Philby: his friends Donald MacLean and Guy Burgess, who, after being exposed in 1951, fled to the Soviet Union, and Anthony Blunt, who nevertheless decided to stay in England. Here they are all together and replaced the never-existing Stirlitz.

Colonel of foreign intelligence Yuri Ivanovich Modin told me about the collective Stirlitz. He himself worked in intelligence for forty-five years. He was taken to intelligence in the war, having learned that he knew a little English. He spent a total of about ten years in England: from 1947 to 1953 and from 1955 to 1958.

I worked with Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess, says Modine. - Less with Philby: during my business trip he was not in London. All of them were highly qualified politicians. Without our or my instructions, they knew what was relevant and what was not, which foreign policy problem required additional coverage and which did not. My intervention was sometimes even harmful...

One day an order was received from the center to provide information on some question of Anglo-French relations. Burgess told Modin that the case was complicated, and it would be better if he wrote a brief and understandable summary himself. Modin refused and asked to bring all the documents. Burgess did it.

Neither Modin nor the experts at the center were able to figure it out and ultimately had to ask Burgess to clarify the situation and clarify ...

During the war years, the flow of information from Soviet agents in England was so great that the residency did not have time to process it. Secret documents were brought literally in suitcases. And then in Moscow they made a decision: the materials received from the five most valuable agents should be processed in the first place. And so the famous five appeared.

And all the same, due to lack of time, the residency was not able to master them all, whole piles of papers remained unsorted.

The security system was good, if a mass of classified materials- I said to Yuri Ivanovich Modin.

In England, they trust their officials, and in principle, in my opinion, they are doing the right thing, - he replied. - The fact that the five worked for us is a historical accident. Trust is the key to effective work...

Philby, Burgess, McLean, Blunt agreed to work not for Soviet intelligence, but to take part in the fight against fascism. In the 1930s they looked at Russia as an outpost of the world revolution. They came from aristocratic families, but studied with teachers known for their Marxist views. Then it was considered fashionable.

Philby was a leftist socialist. A university teacher brought him into contact with the communists.

Burgess was open about his affiliation with the Communist Party and studied Marx. He, according to Modin, brilliantly knew the history of the CPSU.

Blunt did not advertise his leftist views, but came to Marxism through his subject - the history of art. He believed that art in our era is dying due to the lack of patrons, which existed in the Renaissance. Market relations - death to art. Only subsidies from the socialist state can save him...

MacLean, the son of a minister in a British government, came to communism through a complex combination of sensory perceptions of the plight of Scottish workers, nationalism, and a personal proclivity for preaching and charitable work.

Before the war, they helped Russia because they believed that our country was the only bulwark against fascism. When the war began, they considered it their duty to help us. At the same time, they were by no means delighted with what was happening in the Soviet Union, in particular, they considered our foreign policy to be completely unsuitable.

Philby had the ability to accurately analyze any problem and offer the only correct solution, Yuri Modin said. By doing this, he made himself a career in intelligence: no matter what business he is entrusted with, everything works out.

I think, says Colonel Modine, Philby has never made a single mistake in his entire life. He was actually caught and still wriggled out!

Why did the five fail?

The Americans managed to decipher the telegrams of the Soviet intelligence. Analyzing them, they established the identity of the Soviet agent. It was Donald McLean, head of the American department of the British Foreign Office, and before that an employee of the British Embassy in Washington, who was also involved in Anglo-American cooperation in the creation of the atomic bomb ...

How did the Americans manage to decipher the Soviet radio telegrams?

In 1944, the US Office of Strategic Services purchased a half-burned Soviet cipher book from the Finns, which they picked up on the battlefield. United States Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, who considered it impossible to spy against the Allies, ordered the cipher book to be returned to the Russians, but American intelligence officers naturally copied it. People's Commissar of State Security Merkulov did not even suspect what blow would soon be inflicted on his department.

After the war, this book helped to decipher the telegrams exchanged between the people's commissariat of state security and residencies in Washington and New York. It is believed that the Soviet residency in New York, in turn, made an unforgivable mistake by using one-time encryption tables twice. One way or another, the decoding of the telegrams soon led to resounding failures.

The first to be exposed was Donald McLean, who was very successful in his line of work. He was appointed head of a department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In London, he was well treated, because his father was once a minister.

And what happened? I asked Yuri Modin.

Philby, who at that moment was in the United States in his role as a CIA liaison officer, by virtue of his official position, learned about this and sent Burgess to London to warn both the Soviet station and Donald McLean of the failure.

And then it was decided to take McLean to the Soviet Union?

McLean immediately warned Burgess: "If I get arrested, I will split." McLean was affected nervous tension. He was forced to undergo treatment for alcoholism. So, McLean had to be taken out. But they did not dare to send him alone. He had to pass through Paris. With this city he had the most romantic memories. They were afraid that if he got to Paris, he would get drunk. And if he gets drunk, he will be caught. In a word, Burgess went with him.

But the disappearance of the unruly and extravagant Burgess and the unstable and suffering McLean ruined Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt. Everyone knew that they were close friends, and the first thing they were also suspected of espionage.

Philby was forced to leave intelligence, but he remained in England for several more years. Blunt refused to flee to Moscow. He admitted to the authorities that he worked for Soviet intelligence, but did not reveal the details until after the death of Burgess, whom he loved very much.

And how did the puritanical Moscow react to Burgess with his homosexual inclinations?

They explained to him that we have strict laws on this matter and they will have to be followed. Nevertheless, he somehow got out of the situation. But in fact he could only live in London. He desperately needed in the evening, at seven o'clock, to go to the pub. Burgess - he was a groovy, bully. I remember that in Ireland, while on vacation, he crushed a man to death. But he got out: he had a lot of friends everywhere, he opened any door with his foot. In England, he was forgiven everything. No, he couldn't live in Moscow...

The names of Donald McLean and Guy Burgess, who fled to Moscow in 1951, were the first to be named in the Soviet press by the Novoye Vremya magazine.

In No. 40 of 1953, an anonymous article published in the magazine under the heading "Against disinformation and slander" branded "knights of the Cold War" and swindlers of the capitalist press, who had the audacity to claim that some Burgess and McLean had moved to Moscow and that Donald McLean was even followed by his wife Melinda.

This report, Novoye Vremya wrote, "caused a cheerful revival in our editorial office, where Burgess and McLean are known only from the shrill stories of the Western press."

In England, they decided that the Soviet leadership staged another propaganda game, wondered what its meaning was, and were mistaken. The article about Burgess and McLean was the initiative of the editors: after all, no one in the magazine had any idea who they were talking about. The habit of rebuffing the West on every occasion failed the journalists this time. The day after the publication of the magazine, the editor-in-chief received a phone call from an angry Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, who had been returned to the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs after Stalin's death:

Who ordered you to make such statements?

It was only in 1956 that Moscow officially recognized that Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean had received asylum in the Soviet Union, but for a long time denied their work for Soviet intelligence.

Guy Burgess was the most unfortunate of the best Soviet intelligence agents in the British Isles. In Moscow, he received a passport in the name of Jim Andreevich Eliot. Soviet life he could not stand it and asked the KGB for permission to return to England, but no one wanted this. He did not live long in Moscow and died, one might say, from longing.

Donald Donaldovich McLean, more calm by nature, did not turn to the leadership of the KGB with such naive requests. He worked at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Academy of Sciences until his death, wrote books and quietly resented socialist reality.

Harold (Kim) Philby was a born scout. From 1939 he served in British intelligence, making a successful career. Unlike his comrades, he was not homosexual and hid his communist beliefs if he had any. He undoubtedly enjoyed the role of a man who leads the world's largest intelligence agencies (British and American) by the nose, and cherished the praise given to him by the KGB.

He reached the pinnacle of his career in 1945 as head of the British Secret Service department working against the Soviet Union. Philby transmitted to Moscow the names of all the agents whom in those years, with the knowledge of British intelligence, they tried to send to the socialist countries. Probably, we are talking about hundreds of people who were caught and shot. When Philby talked about it, he casually brushed it off: in the war as in the war.

However, he knew that he himself did not face the death penalty even if exposed: in peacetime, spies are not executed in England.

For the first time, a real threat to him arose at the moment when Konstantin Volkov, a member of the Soviet residency in Turkey, met with the British consul and asked for political asylum, promising in return to name three high-ranking Soviet agents, two of whom work in the British Foreign Office, and the third in intelligence.

The sluggish and dependent consul sent a request to London: what should he do?

A telegram from Istanbul landed on Kim Philby's desk, and he reported it to his Soviet contact. The KGB immediately took Volkov to Moscow. You can imagine his fate.

The British government, loyal to its countrymen, even after the escape of Burgess and MacLean, maintained Philby's innocence. In the special services, of course, they understood that Philby was a spy, but counterintelligence officers did not find evidence of his work for Soviet intelligence. And without evidence in England do not judge.

Courage, composure, mind and professional talents of Philby inspire respect. But it is curious that he refused to serve a country where the rights of the individual are so respected, and all his life he served the country where they were shot, without bothering to search for evidence of guilt.

After a lengthy investigation in the autumn of 1955, Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan, a true gentleman, told the House of Commons that Philby had performed his duties conscientiously and skillfully and there was no evidence that he had betrayed the interests of England.

Philby was allowed to leave as a correspondent in Lebanon. And in 1962, when counterintelligence again became interested in him, he nevertheless fled to Moscow. Here he was well received, awarded orders, but not allowed to do real business. His dream of sitting at the headquarters of the Soviet intelligence and being the chief consultant went up in smoke. Like all defectors, no one needed him anymore. In addition, not everyone in Lubyanka trusted him: especially vigilant Chekists believed that he was deceiving the KGB and was loyal to England.

In any case, his every step was monitored, listening equipment was installed in his apartment. Idleness, the inability to play his favorite spy games were the most difficult test for Philby. In a fit of desperation, he tried to commit suicide.

Only in last years they found a case for him: he began to study with students of the intelligence school who were preparing to work in England. In 1977, he was allowed to come to the headquarters of Soviet intelligence in Yasenevo so that he could speak at a solemn meeting of the apparatus of the First Main Directorate of the KGB.

His third wife, Eleanor, who followed him to Moscow, wrote in her memoirs that Philby drank heavily and "recaptured his wife from Donald MacLean, who suffered from impotence." Philby also broke up with Eleanor and remarried. This, the fourth in a row, marriage was successful and brightened up his last years of life.

The fourth Soviet agent - Anthony Blunt, one of the most famous British art historians, curator of the Royal Gallery, arranged his life a little better. He agreed to cooperate with the British counterintelligence, told a lot, thanks to which he remained at home and retained his freedom.

“It gave me great pleasure to tell the Russians the name of every employee of the British counterintelligence,” admitted Anthony Blunt. Since 1940, he served in counterintelligence and at one time was a communications officer at the headquarters of the combined forces of the allies. In 1945, in defeated Germany, he performed a special task for the royal family, after which he became the curator of the Royal Gallery.

Anthony Blunt was elegant, charming and supremely an educated person. He knew five languages. He was engaged not only in art - he received his first scientific degree at Cambridge in mathematics.

May 29, 2000
Live on the radio station "Echo of Moscow" the plaintiff in the case of the rehabilitation of L. Beria and his associates, the son of the former Minister of State Control of the USSR Rem Merkulov.
The air is hosted by Marina Starostina and Anton Dolin.

M. STAROSTINA - I welcome Rem Merkulov to our studio. He is the son of Vsevolod Merkulov, Minister of State Control of the USSR. As you know, the Supreme Court of Russia today considered the issue of the rehabilitation of Lavrentiy Beria and Vsevolod Merkulov, as well as Bogdan Kobulov, Sergei Gaglidze, and upheld the death sentence he passed back in 1953. Rem Vsevolodovich, what happened today was expected?
R. MERKULOV - In general, yes, because about a year ago I talked with the military colonel who was involved in this case. And, judging by what he told me, it is useless to wait for some positive decision. I didn't even speak today. There is only an accusation in the case, there is no defense. There was not a single word about the fact that all these actions, which were carried out in particular by my father, were orders from a superior Stalin, Molotov and all those who were at that time. And here only he appeared: “performed”, etc. For example, there was a case about May Runovsky's laboratory, which was involved in testing poisons on detainees. It was indicated that this was under the leadership of Beria and Merkulov. But it's not. An order has been received. I remember my mother told me that my father came, I could not sleep for several nights. He said: "Stalin instructed me to do such an inhuman thing." But in the file it appears that all this was done here. And then, it's useless. I didn't even speak here. Two people spoke here: from Dekanozov, from Meshik. I didn't even speak at this meeting, because it's a useless thing. Always, if such matters are considered, there must be protection. That is, there must be two sides, and here only the accusation. Pay attention to the fact that there was not a single word about under whose order all this was carried out. All this was carried out on the orders of the country's leadership: Stalin, Molotov, Mikoyan, Kaganovich and others. Naturally, as a military man (just like me, who served for 30 years, if I am ordered to do something, I must comply), all these instructions were carried out there. Moreover, my father has not worked with Beria for the past 10 years. He was in the Ministry of State Control. And just before his arrest, he had two heart attacks. That is, there was no talk of any conspiracy to seize power. If you look at the history books, they don't talk about Beria's conspiracy, but about Khrushchev's conspiracy against Beria. Which, in fact, was. So I think that, of course, the court could not establish otherwise, because it is impossible to focus only on the materials of the investigation or the court that was once. By the way, he was without protection, all this took place within one day. That is, all this was at one time clearly undemocratic.
A. DOLIN - If we talk about some kind of human justice, about whether it has been restored today or not, this, of course, is a very controversial issue. But if we talk about historical justice, which you are talking about now, how, in your opinion, is it possible to restore it at all if the court makes such a decision quickly enough? Moreover, you say that you were sure in advance that this decision would be just that. How is it possible, if not to rewrite history, then to insert some missing pages into it?
R. MERKULOV - The fact is that at that time many had children who were once arrested. All the children were either arrested, or deported, or done in some other way. I was the only one left in the army, rose to the rank of colonel, was the head of the department at the university. That is, I thought that this was not even for the sake of my abilities, but simply so that people knew that all this was nonsense, that it just happened that it was necessary to remove the people who were next to Beria. How can all this be fixed? Perhaps the Duma should resolve these issues, because where there are civilians, where you can discuss both for and against ... If you read the literature, a large number of books have recently been published where a lot is said about my father. There was not a single bad word anywhere. Everyone talked about the calm, thoughtful, intelligent person. He wrote plays that went throughout the Soviet Union. I even remember such a case. He wrote another play during the war, it was supposed to go on stage. But at one of the receptions (my father was standing near Stalin), some actress came up and said: “You know, your minister writes wonderful plays.” Stalin turned towards his father and said that the minister should deal with spies, enemies Soviet power rather than writing plays. This marked the end of my father's career as a writer. After such a statement by Stalin, he could no longer deal with these issues.
M. STAROSTINA - Rem Vsevolodovich, do you still consider all the accusations against your father unfounded? Do you fully justify it?
R. MERKULOV - I justify it, because I know all this work well. I myself worked in the state security agencies, I was a little involved in this matter, and I know that anyone can be blamed. Any thing out there can be considered what is right, what is wrong. And if you look at those who were allegedly accused on behalf of the father, they also agreed in everything, just as the father agreed. It is known how these explanations and answers were obtained. Either they beat you, or they say: "Don't talk about Khrushchev or anyone else, because then we will mitigate your fate."
A. DOLIN - Rem Vsevolodovich, tell me when you originally filed this application and generally began to stir up this matter, probably, for some time before that it seemed generally unbelievable, but, nevertheless, you were counting on an attempt to restore historical justice Or, say, some kind of compensation from the state? Let me remind you that today three more associates of Beria were partially rehabilitated. That is, it was recognized that these accusations were not entirely unfair, and there should have been no execution, but 25 years. And also the confiscation of property was, as it were, canceled post factum. And now, theoretically, they can try to claim this property through various instances. No such decision was made regarding your father. Tell me, did you initially somehow count on this?
R. MERKULOV - Absolutely not, because, firstly, we had nothing at all, no property. My wife even says that she even always altered collars for my father, which were torn. There were two or three shirts and a couple of suits. They lived poorly, in fact, there was nothing. There was no mention of any compensation. It was simply about restoring the name of the person. Those who worked, unfortunately, no one. There was our great great scout, Vasilevsky. He did a lot, in particular atomic (his father led the extraction of atomic secrets). He died 10 years ago. And he told me all the time: "The time has come, come on, apply, we will support." Everyone who knew my father (unfortunately, there are practically no such people now) believed that he was innocent.
M. STAROSTINA - Rem Vsevolodovich, did the plaintiffs (these are several people) somehow try to contact Beria's son?
R. MERKULOV - I knew him well enough, I just don't need to get in touch with him, because I didn't come across him. He works elsewhere, in Kyiv. My good old friend is his ex-wife - Marfa Peshkova, Peshkov's granddaughter, whom I often meet. I have known her for 60-70 years, I keep this connection. She herself divorced her son Beria. I read his book “I am the son of Lavrenty Beria”. Half of it is written like Munchausen. We worked with him in Sverdlovsk in 1942. And according to the book, at that time he was thrown behind enemy lines and was engaged in reconnaissance activities there. I don't want to talk about him. If he wants to lie like that, that's his business.
M. STAROSTINA - The Supreme Court has said its word today. Are you going to do something further?
R. MERKULOV - This is not the Supreme Court. This is the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court. There are also various other instances, but this is not the point. Sooner or later What am I? I won't gain anything from this. Just I would like the name of a person I have my own life, I work and worked. Despite my age, I actually work around the clock.
On the air of the radio station "Echo of Moscow" was the plaintiff in the case of the rehabilitation of L. Beria and his associates, the son of the former Minister of State Control of the USSR Rem Merkulov.

Educated at the Orenburg School of Ensigns (1917). In 1916 he was drafted into the army. Member of the 1st World War, ensign. In Sept. 1917 served in the 331st Infantry Orsk Regiment. From March 1918 he lived in Tiflis, unemployed. From Aug. 1918 clerk and teacher at a school for the blind. In Sept. 1921 was accepted into the service of the Cheka, worked in the apparatus of the Transcaucasian and Georgian Cheka (then the GPU), from Feb. 1929 - in the GPU of the Adjara ASSR, since May 1931 - in the GPU of the ZSFSR. In 1925 he joined the CPSU(b). Since 1931 - at party work. In 1931-34 pom. Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, who at that time was L.P. Beria, became his closest assistant and confidant, later always enjoyed the patronage of Beria. Wrote a pamphlet about Beria "The Faithful Son of the Lenin-Stalin Party". In 1934-37 head. Soviet trade department of the regional committee. In 1937-50 he was a member of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In 1937-38 head. Industrial and Transport Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Georgia. Participated in the organization mass repression. In Aug. 1938 summoned by Beria to Moscow and 1/9/1938 appointed deputy. early Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) of the NKVD of the USSR. From 12/15/1938 1st deputy. People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR and the beginning. GUGB. Supervised the cleaning of the apparatus from N.I. Yezhov, continued the policy of arrests and repressions. He was considered one of the most cruel investigators of the NKVD, he personally supervised the torture of those under investigation. In 1939-52 a member, since 1952 a candidate member of the Central Committee of the party. Consistently defended the complete independence (including from prosecutorial supervision) of the GUGB. In the autumn of 1939, he led an operation to "identify and isolate" harmful elements in Poland, and then a mass purge in Western Ukraine. In 1940 he was a member of the "troika", which was engaged in the preparation and approval of the execution lists of captured Polish officers, and carried out the main leadership of the operation. When on February 3, 1941, the People's Commissariat of State Security of the USSR was separated from the NKVD, Merkulov became the people's commissar. On July 20, 1941, the NKGB and the NKVD were again merged, and Merkulov again became the 1st deputy. Beria, and he was instructed to lead the 2nd (counterintelligence) and 3rd (secret political) departments, the office of the commandant of the Moscow Kremlin, the 3rd special department (searches, arrests, surveillance), 1st department (government security) and Mobilization part. Author of the play "Engineer Sergeev" about Soviet patriotism and the fight against "fascist henchmen" (under the pseudonym Vsevolod Rokk). On April 14, 1943, the NKGB of the USSR again became an independent department, headed by Merkulov. On May 4, 1946, he was removed from his post and replaced by B.C. Abakumov. This was one of the defeats of Beria, who was at odds with Abakumov. Commission of the Central Committee chaired by A.A. Kuznetsova considered Merkulov's mistakes and accused him of stopping the persecution of Trotskyists during the war. For almost a year, Merkulov was out of work, and only on April 25, 1947 he was appointed to the beginning. Main Directorate of Soviet Property Abroad under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. 10/27/1950 was appointed Minister of State Control of the USSR. Shortly after the arrest of Beria, Merkulov was also arrested on September 18, 1953, and on December 16, 1953 he was officially removed from his post as minister "due to the fact that the USSR Prosecutor's Office revealed the criminal, anti-state Actions of Merkulov during his work in the bodies of the MGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR." By a special judicial presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR, together with Beria and others, he was sentenced to death on 12/23/1953. Shot.

Vsevolod Nikolaevich Merkulov(November 7 (October 25), 1895, Zagatala, Zagatala district (Transcaucasia) Russian Empire, now the territory of Azerbaijan - December 23, 1953, shot) - Soviet state and political figure, General of the Army (07/09/1945).

Head of the GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR (1938-1941), People's Commissar (Minister) of State Security of the USSR (1941, 1943-1946), Minister of State Control of the USSR (1950-1953).

Entered the immediate area L. P. Beria, worked with him from the beginning of the 1920s, enjoyed his personal trust.

Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st and 2nd convocations. Member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1939-1946, candidate 1946-1953).

Biography

Born in the family of a hereditary nobleman, captain of the tsarist army. Mother Ketovan Nikolaevna, nee Tsinamzgvarishvili, a noblewoman - a native of princely blood of the Georgian family.

According to Nikita Petrov, Merkulov's father, "a nobleman, a military man with the rank of captain, served as the head of the section of the Zakatalsky district": "In 1899 or 1900, Merkulov's father was convicted of embezzling money in the amount of 100 rubles, he spent 8 months in prison in Tiflis, he applied for pardon, considering himself a victim of slander ... In 1908, his father died.

From childhood he was fond of literary creativity.

In 1913 he graduated from the Tiflis Third Men's Gymnasium with a gold medal. In the humanitarian gymnasium, he became so interested in electrical engineering that his articles were published in Odessa in a special magazine. He continued his studies by entering the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University. There he began to write and publish stories about student life: "Even while studying at the university, he wrote several romantic stories that were published in literary magazines and received positive reviews"- recalled his son. From September 1913 to October 1916 he gave private lessons.

• In October 1916, after completing the 3rd year, he was drafted into the army. In 1916-1917. service in the imperial army (He did not participate in hostilities.):
  • October - November 1916 - private student battalion, Petrograd.
  • November 1916 - March 1917 - cadet of the Orenburg ensign school, graduated from it.
  • April 1917 - August 1917 - ensign of the reserve regiment, Novocherkassk.
  • September 1917 - October 1917 - ensign of a marching company, Rivne.
  • October 1917 - January 1918 - Ensign of the 331st Orsky Regiment of the 83rd Infantry Division of the 16th Army Corps of the 4th Army of the Southwestern Front. The regiment was located in the Lutsk direction, in the area of ​​​​the Stohod River. Merkulov did not participate in hostilities.
  • In January 1918, due to illness, he was evacuated to Tiflis to live with relatives.
  • Demobilized in March 1918.
• Living with his sister, he published a handwritten magazine, printing copies on a shapirograph, and selling them for 3 rubles.

In July 1918 he married Lydia Dmitrievna Yakhontova and moved to live with her.

• From September 1918 to September 1921 he was a clerk, then a teacher at the Tiflis School for the Blind, where his mother was the director.
• In 1919 he joined the Sokol society, where he did gymnastics, participated in evenings, amateur performances.

In the organs of the OGPU

In contrast to the version of Merkulov's voluntary, on his own initiative, entering the service in the Cheka, there is also information indicating that he began work there by being forced by the Chekists (as an officer) to be an informant for white officers.

• From September 1921 to May 1923 - Assistant to the Commissioner, Commissioner, Senior Commissioner of the Economic Department of the Cheka under the Council of People's Commissars of the SSR of Georgia.

“I must say (now, 30 years later, I suppose I can do it without the risk of being accused of self-praise) that at that time, despite my 27 years, I was a naive, very modest and very shy person, somewhat reserved and silent. I did not make speeches, and I never learned how to make them until now. My tongue was as if bound by something, and I could not do anything with it. The pen is another matter. I knew how to deal with him. Nor was I ever a sycophant, nor a sycophant or an upstart, but I always behaved modestly and, I think, with self-respect. This is how I appeared before Beria when he then summoned me. It was not necessary to be particularly insightful to understand all this, and I think that Beria guessed my character at first sight. He saw the possibility of using my abilities for his own purposes without the risk of having an opponent or something like that, ”Merkulov later recalled.

• • Being an employee of the Cheka, Merkulov twice, in 1922 and 1923, applied to the CPSU (b). Only for the second time, in May 1923, he was accepted as a candidate with a two-year probationary period. In 1925, he applied for admission to the party, it was as if he was accepted, but the party card was never issued. Only the intervention of Beria saved the situation. In 1927, Merkulov was given a party card of a member of the CPSU (b) indicating the party experience since 1925.
• From 1923 to January 23, 1925 - Head of the 1st Department of the Economic Department of the Plenipotentiary Representation of the OGPU for the ZSFSR - Cheka under the Council of People's Commissars of the ZSFSR.
• In 1925, he was the head of the Information and Intelligence Department of the Plenipotentiary Representation of the OGPU for the ZSFSR - the Cheka under the Council of People's Commissars of the ZSFSR.
• In 1925-1926. - Head of the Economic Department of the Cheka - GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the SSR of Georgia.
• In 1926-1927. - Head of the economic department of the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the SSR of Georgia.
• In 1927-1929. - Head of the Department of Information, Agitation and Political Control of the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the SSR of Georgia.
• In 1929-1931. - Head of the Secret Operational Unit and Deputy Chairman of the GPU of the Adjara ASSR. May 4 to July 1930 and about. head of the Adjara regional department of the GPU.
• From May 1931 to January 29, 1932 - Head of the Secret Political Department of the Plenipotentiary Representation of the OGPU for the ZSFSR and the GPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the ZSFSR.

At party work

• From November 12, 1931 to February 1934 - Assistant Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Georgia.
• In March 1934 - November 1936 - Head of the Department of Soviet Trade of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
• Until November 1936 - Head of the Special Sector of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks
• From November 11, 1936 to September 9, 1937 - head of the Special Sector of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia.
• From July 22, 1937 to October 1938 - head of the Industrial and Transport Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia.
• Since November 23, 1937 - a member of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia.

In the NKVD and NKGB

In September 1938 he returned to work in the state security agencies. Merkulov recalled: “The first month after arriving in Moscow, Beria forced me to sit in his office every day from morning until evening and watch how he, Beria, works.”

On September 11, 1938, he was awarded the special rank of Commissar of State Security of the 3rd rank (on the same day, Beria was awarded the special rank of Commissar of State Security of the 1st rank).

With the appointment of Beria as head of the GUGB, Merkulov is appointed to the post of his deputy.

• From September 29 to December 17, 1938 - Deputy Head of the GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR.
• From October 26 to December 17, 1938 - head of the III department of the GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR.
• From December 17, 1938 to February 3, 1941 - First Deputy People's Commissar of the NKVD - Head of the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB).

“Although at the end of 1938, when Beria became People's Commissar, he forced the USSR instead of Yezhov and, despite my requests not to do this, nominated me as his first deputy, he nevertheless relied mainly on Kobulov in operational work. Now it is quite clear to me that Beria nominated me for this position mainly because I was the only Russian from his entourage. He understood that he could not appoint Kobulov or Dekanozov as the first deputy. Such nominations will not be accepted. There was only one candidate left. I think that Beria understood, at least internally, that I was not suited by nature for this position, but apparently he had no other choice, ”Merkulov recalled.

• From March 21, 1939 to August 23, 1946, he was a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Transferred from members to candidate members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks by a plenum on August 21-23, 1946 by poll.

“From the act of acceptance and delivery of cases of the Ministry of State Security, it is established that the KGB work in the Ministry was conducted unsatisfactorily, that the former Minister of State Security Comrade Merkulov V.N. concealed from the Central Committee the facts about the major shortcomings in the work of the Ministry and that in a number of foreign states the work of the Ministry turned out to be a failure. In view of this, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decides: Withdraw comrade. Merkulova V.N. from members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and transferred to candidates for members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of August 23, 1946

According to the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940, Merkulov headed the "troika" of the NKVD, which was to decide on the death sentences for internees Polish officers and citizens (Katyn massacre).

In November 1940, Merkulov, as part of a delegation headed by Molotov, went to Berlin for negotiations with leaders German Empire. He attended a breakfast hosted by Hitler in the Imperial Chancellery on November 13, 1940 in honor of the Soviet delegation. And in the evening of the same day, Molotov gave a return dinner at the Soviet embassy in Berlin, to which, in addition to Ribbentrop, SS Reichsfuehrer Himmler also arrived.

In the period from February 3, 1941 to July 20, 1941 and from April 14, 1943 to May 7, 1946 - People's Commissar(since March 1946 - Minister) of State Security of the USSR.

“Having deftly used the well-known provocative Shakhurin case against me, Abakumov became the Minister of State Security of the USSR in May 1946,” Merkulov believed.

As the son of Vsevolod Merkulov recalled: “According to his father, he was dismissed from the post of minister because of his softness. After the war, when a new wave of repressions began, Stalin needed a tough and straightforward person in this position. Therefore, after his father, Abakumov headed the MGB ... ".

Signed a decree on cleaning the prisons of Western Ukraine from "enemies of the people", as a result of which more than 10,000 people were shot in Lviv, Rivne and other regions.

• From July 31, 1941 to April 16, 1943 - First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs.
• From November 17, 1942 to April 14, 1943 - head of the 1st department of the NKVD of the USSR.
• On February 4, 1943, he was awarded the special rank of Commissar of State Security of the 1st rank. The special rank was abolished by the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 6, 1945.

In 1943-1944. - headed the "Commission for the preliminary investigation of the so-called Katyn case."

From August 23, 1946 to November 18, 1953 - candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks - the CPSU. Withdrawn from the list of candidates for membership in the Central Committee of the CPSU by poll.

In the Main Directorate of Soviet Property Abroad I was then appointed deputy head of the Glavsovzagranimushchestvo and went abroad. This appointment took place on the initiative of Comrade Stalin. I regarded it as an expression of confidence on the part of Comrade Stalin, given that I was sent abroad, despite being released from such a post as Minister of State Security of the USSR.

• From February 1947 to April 25, 1947 - Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of Soviet Property Abroad under the USSR Ministry of Foreign Trade.
• From April 25, 1947 to October 27, 1950 - Head of the Main Directorate of Soviet Property Abroad under the Council of Ministers of the USSR for Austria.

At the Ministry of State Control “In 1950, it was Comrade Stalin who named me as a candidate for the post of Minister of State Control of the USSR ... I felt almost rehabilitated after being released from work in the MGB in 1946,” Merkulov recalled.

• From October 27, 1950 to December 16, 1953 - Minister of State Control of the USSR.

Merkulov began to have health problems. In 1952, he had his first heart attack, and four months later, a second. He was in the hospital for a long time. On May 22, 1953, by decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Merkulov was granted leave for four months for health reasons.

Arrest and death

He noted that some time after Stalin's death "I considered it my duty to offer Beria my services for work in the Ministry of Internal Affairs ... However, Beria rejected my offer, obviously, as I now believe, believing that I would not be useful for the purposes that he intended then, taking the Ministry of Internal Affairs into my own hands. That day I saw Beria for the last time. "

• On September 18, 1953, he was arrested in connection with the Beria case. He was in solitary confinement in Butyrka.

• On December 16, 1953, he was officially removed from the post of minister "due to the fact that the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR revealed the criminal, anti-state Actions of Merkulov during his work in the bodies of the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR."

• On December 23, 1953, together with Beria and others, he was sentenced to the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR under Art. 58-1 "b", 58-7, 58-8, 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR to capital punishment - the death penalty and on the same day he was shot at 21:20. He was buried at the Donskoy cemetery.

By the definition of the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation No. bn-00164/2000 dated May 29, 2002, Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich and Merkulov Vsevolod Nikolaevich were recognized as not subject to rehabilitation.

Literary activity

V. N. Merkulov wrote 2 plays. The first play was written in 1927 about the struggle of the American revolutionaries. The second, "Engineer Sergeev", in 1941 under the pseudonym Vsevolod Rokk, about the feat of a worker who went to the front. The play was shown in many theatres.

He recalled how, at the end of the war, a reception was held in the Kremlin, which was attended by Stalin, members of the Politburo, the military, writers, and artists. As the head of state security, my father tried to be close to Joseph Vissarionovich. At some point, Stalin approached a group of artists and started a conversation with them. And then one actress exclaimed with admiration, they say, what wonderful plays your minister writes (by that time the People's Commissariat for State Security had been renamed the ministry). The leader was very surprised: he really did not know that his father wrote plays that were shown in theaters. However, Stalin was not delighted with such a discovery. On the contrary, turning to his father, he said sternly: "The Minister of State Security should do his job - to catch spies, and not write plays." Since then, dad never wrote: like no one else, he knew that the words of Joseph Vissarionovich were not discussed. Rem Vsevolodovich Merkulov

• Merkulov participated in the editing of the report “On the Question of the History of Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia”, with which L.P. Beria spoke in 1935.
• Merkulov prepared for "Malaya Soviet encyclopedia» article about L.P. Beria.
• “The Faithful Son of the Lenin-Stalin Party” (a biographical essay on L.P. Beria with a volume of 64 pages and a circulation of 15 thousand copies), 1940.

Family

• Father - Nikolai Merkulov, served as the head of the section of the Zakatala district, was the captain of the tsarist army, a hereditary nobleman (died in 1903).
• Mother - Ketovana Nikolaevna, from the respected Georgian princely family of Tsinamzgvarishvili.
• Wife - Lidia Dmitrievna Yakhontova(marriage registered in July 1918). Lydia Dmitrievna had an uncle, Viktor Alexandrovich Yakhontov, who was a major general in the tsarist army, in 1917 he was a deputy minister of war in the government of Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky, and since 1919 he lived in the United States of America, in the city of New York.
• Son - Rem Vsevolodovich Merkulov(b. 1924), professor, Ph.D., deputy. head department of the Moscow State technical university"MAMI".

MERKULOV VSEVOLOD NIKOLAEVICH

(1895 , Zagatala Caucasian governorship - 23.12.1953 ). Born in the family of a captain in the tsarist army. Russian. In CP with 09.25 . Member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (18th congress). 08.46 promoted to candidate. Candidate for Central Committee of the CPSU 23.08.46-18.11.53 . Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR 1-2 convocations.

Education: 3 male gymnasium, Tiflis 1913 ; Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, Petrograd University 09.13-10.16 ; Orenburg ensign school 11.16-03.17 .

Gave private lessons 09.13-10.16 .

In the army: private student battalion, Petrograd 10.16-11.16 ; lieutenant of the reserve infantry regiment, Novocherkassk 04.17-08.17 ; ensign of the marching company, Rovno 09.17-10.17 ; Ensign of the 331st Orsk Regiment 10.17-01.18 ; evacuated to Tiflis due to illness 01.18 .

Unemployed, Tiflis 03.18-08.18 ; clerk, teacher at a school for the blind, Tiflis 09.18-09.21 .

In the bodies of the Cheka-OGPU: pom. full Georgian Cheka 09.21-1921 ; full IVF Georgian Cheka 1921-? ; Art. full IVF Georgian Cheka ?-05.23 ; early 1 department of IVF PP OGPU for the ZSFSR-Transcaucasian Cheka ?-23.01.25 ; early INFAGO PP OGPU for the ZSFSR-Transcaucasian Cheka 23.01.25-1925 ; early IVF Georgian Cheka 1925-20.07.26 ; early ECO GPU Georgian SSR 20.07.26-1927 ; early INFAGO and PC GPU of the Georgian SSR 1927-02.29 ; deputy prev. GPU of the Adjara ASSR, beg. SOCH 02.29-05.31 ; wreed prev. GPU of the Adjara ASSR 04.05.30-07.30 ; early SPO PP OGPU for ZSFSR and GPU ZSFSR 05.31-29.01.32 .

Pom. Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee and 1 Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia 12.11.31-02.34 ; head otd. owls. Trade of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks 03.34-11.36 ; head special sector of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the CPSU (b) ?-11.36 ; head special sector of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia 11.11.36-09.09.37 ; head industrial transport otd. Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Georgia 22.07.37-10.38 .

In the bodies of the NKVD-NKGB-MGB: deputy early GUGB NKVD USSR 29.09.38-17.12.38 ; early 3 sec. GUGB NKVD USSR 26.10.38-17.12.38 17.12.38-03.02.41 ; early GUGB NKVD USSR 17.12.38-03.02.41 ; People's Commissar of State Security of the USSR 03.02.41-20.07.41 ; 1 deputy commissar of internal affairs of the USSR 31.07.41-14.04.43 ; early 1 sec. NKVD USSR 17.11.42-14.04.43 ; People's Commissar Minister of State Security of the USSR 14.04.43-04.05.46 .

Deputy early GUSIMZ under the Ministry of Foreign Trade of the USSR 02.47-25.04.47 ; early GUSIMZ under the Council of Ministers of the USSR 25.04.47-27.10.50 ; Minister of State Control of the USSR 27.10.50-17.09.53 .

Arrested 18.09.53 ; sentenced by the Special Judicial Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR 23.12.53 to VMN. Shot.

Not rehabilitated.

Ranks: Commissar GB 3rd rank 11.09.38 ; Commissioner of State Security 1st rank 04.02.43 ; army General 09.07.45 .

Awards: badge "Honorary worker of the Cheka-GPU (V)" No. 649 1931 ; Order of Lenin No. 5837 26.04.40 ; Order of the Republic of Tuva No. 134 18.08.43 ; Order of Kutuzov 1st class No. 160 08.03.44 ; Order of the Red Banner No. 142627 03.11.44 ; 9 medals.

Note: He switched to party work in November 1931.

From book: N.V. Petrov, K.V. Skorkin
"Who led the NKVD. 1934-1941"