The real name and surname of our "hero" is Vladimir Golubenko, but he has gone down in history forever as Valentin Petrovich Purgin. This swindler has largely bypassed the famous book hero and favorite of millions of readers, Ostap Bender. The biography of Vladimir Golubenko can be safely filmed or a full-fledged novel based on these events can be written. A swindler and a recidivist thief, he drove the NKVD by the nose for several years and managed to build a simply fabulous career in the pre-war USSR, officially getting a job as a military journalist at Komsomolskaya Pravda.
Neither before nor after has not a single person been able to repeat what Vladimir Golubenko managed to do. This man managed to twist around his finger the system in which the state security authorities controlled every screw. The swindler was ruined by excessive greed and belief in his absolute impunity. Under the name of Valentin Purgin, our hero managed to get himself the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, for which he ultimately paid dearly.
How Vladimir Golubenko became Valentin Purgin
Vladimir Golubenko was born in 1914 in the family of an ordinary worker and cleaner in the Urals. The worker-peasant origin did not in any way affect the fate of the young man in the new state under construction. Already at the age of 19, in 1933, Golubenko was first convicted of theft, and in 1937 he was convicted again. This time the crimes were more serious. Golubenko was accused of theft, forgery and fraud. To serve the sentence of a recidivist, they were sent to the Dmitrovskiy forced labor camp.
At that time, Dmitrovlag was the largest camp association within the OGPU-NKVD, which was created to carry out work on the construction of the Moscow-Volga canal, which bore the name of Stalin. The canal was an important strategic project of those years and was intended to provide the capital of the Soviet Union with drinking water. The second, no less important task was to raise the water level in the Volga and the Moscow River to ensure free passage of ships. For the construction of the canal, prison labor was actively and massively involved. But instead of building a canal, Golubenko decided to run away. The most amazing thing is that he somehow succeeded.
Having escaped from Dmitrovlag, Vladimir Golubenko boarded a passenger train, where he again put his skills into practice (according to other sources, he escaped from the train while being transported to the camp). The first time Golubenko was convicted of stealing a wallet on a tram, this time our hero stole a passport from a random fellow traveler. Now the theft was successful, and the stolen document, which belonged to Valentin Petrovich Purgin, gave Vladimir Golubenko a new life. Getting off at the nearest station with a new passport, Golubenko changed the document in a week, pasting his photo there. At the same time, according to new documents, he became five years older.
Later, the story took the most unpredictable turn. Many "normal thieves" who managed to escape from the camp would simply hide and behave quieter than water, below the grass, but our hero was not one of those. Either he really wanted to surpass the great schemer, who knew 400 relatively honest ways of taking money from the population, or he simply dreamed of a beautiful life, but in any case, the newly made Valentin Purgin was not going to hide and hide from the world. On the contrary, Purgin decided to break into the people and build a career as a successful Soviet citizen and worker.
How a swindler made himself a career as a journalist
With a new passport, the fugitive recidivist got to Sverdlovsk, where, having forged documents on graduation from the Military Transport Academy, he was able to get a job as a correspondent for the local newspaper Putyovka. It was a departmental railway publication. How Purgin worked in the newspaper is not very clear, since according to some sources he did not even have a completed secondary education. However, the lack of education did not prevent the swindler from skillfully forging documents and achieving his goals. It is believed that Purgin himself was engaged in forging documents, approaching this process very responsibly, paying attention to even the smallest details. For example, he artificially aged sheets of those documents that could have been stored in the archives for years.
The swindler soon moved from Sverdlovsk to Moscow. Valentin Purgin did not come to the capital empty-handed. In addition to the stolen passport, he issued himself a fake high school diploma, a letter of recommendation signed by the head of the Military Transport Academy located in Sverdlovsk, and an excellent description from the place of study. With this set of forged documents, the swindler easily got a job in the newspaper "Gudok", continuing his career in the railway publications.
True, the man who took the surname Purgin wanted more. In 1938 he managed to get a job at Komsomolskaya Pravda, which was one of the most prestigious newspapers in the Soviet Union. In many ways, this was helped by Purgin's connections, which he quickly established in the capital. Apparently, he was a sociable person, not devoid of charm. Valentin Purgin easily got to know people and easily established trusting and friendly relations with them. In Moscow, he met the journalists of "Komsomolskaya Pravda" Donat Mogilevsky and Ilya Agranovsky, who, in turn, brought the swindler to the position of the editor-in-chief of the publication, Arkady Poletaev. This is how Purgin managed to get a job in a prestigious publication: Poletaev, too, became a victim of his natural charisma.
Purgin made his career very quickly at Komsomolskaya Pravda. Already in March 1939 he became deputy head of the military department of the editorial board. According to the recollections of colleagues, in the editorial office Valentin Purgin created an aura of mystery around himself and in every possible way hinted that he was somehow connected with the NKVD. On some days, the swindler appeared at work with a real Order of the Red Banner. When asked questions about what he was awarded for, Purgin avoided answering, often mysteriously becoming silent or translating the conversation.
Naturally, Purgin was never awarded any orders, but it will become clear much later, already during the investigation. The award was stolen by the mother of the swindler, who worked as a night cleaner in the building of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. She stole the Order of the Red Banner and the order books from Mikhail Kalinin's office, after which she gave it to her son. To counterfeit orders and order books, Purgin turned to the services of an engraver. Later, both the mother and the engraver will be arrested, the cleaning lady will be given five years in prison, but during interrogations she did not confess to whom she had stolen the awards.
"Military missions" and the Golden Star of the Hero
In July 1939, the war correspondent for Komsomolskaya Pravda, Valentin Purgin, was sent to the Far East, where another conflict between the USSR and Japan flared up. In the fall, the editorial office received a letter stating that Purgin was being treated in a hospital in Irkutsk, and he was allegedly wounded during a battle on the Khalkhin-Gol River. Purgin came from a Far Eastern business trip with another award, this time with the Order of Lenin.
At the same time, the presentation of the award was made on the letterhead of the military unit, which was stationed in Grodno. Later, investigators will find out that the letter about undergoing treatment in the hospital and the idea of being awarded the Order of Lenin were written on the letterheads of the 39th Special Forces Division, which was stationed in Grodno on the territory of Belarus. In December 1939, Purgin wrote a short essay about this unit, simultaneously snatching a number of forms from the division headquarters.
In the winter of 1940, Purgin was sent on another military assignment, this time to the Soviet-Finnish front. However, the swindler was not going to endanger his life. At the end of January 1940, a letter came to the editorial office of the newspaper in Moscow stating that Purgin had been sent to Leningrad to carry out a secret mission. The letter also indicated that in the event of a prolonged absence of the correspondent, it should be considered that he temporarily left for the necessary further training. Some believe that Purgin was already preparing for himself the path of a possible retreat and was going to really go to the bottom. One way or another, all this time he did not even leave the capital. Purgin not only did not reach the front, but did not even come to Leningrad, spending all the time in Moscow at his friend's apartment. At the same time, he managed to skip travel money in the capital's restaurants.
After the end of the Soviet-Finnish war, Purgin decided to try his luck again. This time, against the backdrop of massive awards, the wave of which began after the end of the conflict. On a form stolen in Grodno, Valentin Purgin sent to the award department of the People's Commissariat of the Navy the idea of rewarding himself. At the same time, in the sent documents, he also entered data on the orders allegedly received by him earlier. Once again, the swindler was lucky. With the connivance of the employees of the People's Commissariat, the award documents were satisfied, and on April 21, 1940, Valentin Purgin was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The corresponding decree was published the next day on the pages of the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. In fairness, it can be noted that the award commission did not recheck the submission, since Purgin had previously been awarded the highest military awards, and was also an employee of the central press organ of the Central Committee of the Komsomol.
After that, the fame and fame of Purgin as a journalist soared even higher in the editorial office. In Komsomolskaya Pravda, he was considered a recognized authority. The news of the awarding found the swindler in Sochi, where he was resting with his young wife, an aspiring journalist for Komsomolskaya Pravda, Lidia Bokashova. A month later, on May 22, the newspaper published a detailed sketch describing in all colors the exploits of Valentin Purgin. This essay was prepared by Purgin's friend Agranovsky, who really was a master of the pen.
It was this essay, which was accompanied by a photograph of the hero, that brought down the entire legend of Purgin. The feats described in the essay would be enough for several people. In particular, Agranovsky wrote that Valentin Purgin managed to distinguish himself in battles on the Far Eastern border at the age of 18, and received his first wound there. Then the Motherland appreciated his exploits, presenting him to the Order of the Red Banner. This was followed by a series of completely fictional episodes, including fictional events involving Purgin on Khalkhin Gol and the Finnish border. But this text, perhaps, would have gone unnoticed by many if not for the photo of the hero. The article was crowned with a smiling and happy life Valentin Purgin with orders on his chest.
The photograph became fatal, and a large number of people who ran into Vladimir Golubenko were able to identify him. Starting from the employees of the NKVD and ending with his former cellmates. All this time, Golubenko was on the all-Union wanted list. Soon the swindler was arrested and all his adventures were revealed. This story literally shook the entire editorial board of Komsomolskaya Pravda, many of whose members were demoted and reprimanded, and Valentin Purgin's friends Mogilevsky and Agranovsky, who knew about his scams, received real prison sentences.
The "hero" himself in August 1940 was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and stripped of all orders and awards, which he fraudulently appropriated. The verdict was carried out on November 5 of the same year. Golubenko's petition for clemency was ignored.
Valentin Purgin, aka Vladimir Golubenko, entered history forever as the only person who fraudulently achieved the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. He also became the first person who was officially deprived of this title on the basis of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of July 20, 1940.
