A great success of Soviet intelligence in the early 1920s was the return to Russia of a large figure of the White emigration, General Slashchev [1].
This story was overgrown with many rumors and conjectures during the life of its protagonist. Its official version, presented by the President of the Society for the Study of the History of Russian Special Services A. A. Zdanovich in the book "Ours and Foes - Intelligence Intrigues", looks like this: "Slashchev's fight against Wrangel's entourage and directly with the Baron (Wrangel [2]. - PG) split the defeated, but not completely broken White Army, which fully corresponded to the interests of the Cheka and the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army in Constantinople. Therefore, without refusing to work with other generals and officers, the Soviet special services concentrated their efforts … on Slashchev and the officers who shared his views.
It was deemed necessary to send a responsible officer to Turkey, with the instruction of direct contacts with the general …
Ya. P. Tenenbaum. His candidacy was proposed by the future deputy chairman of the Cheka I. S. Unschlicht [3]”[4] as a person personally known to him from his joint work on the Western Front, where Tenenbaum, under his leadership, was successfully engaged in the decomposition of the Polish army. “In addition, Tenenbaum had a rich experience of underground work, knew French well, which in Constantinople could come in handy given the activity of the French counterintelligence” [5]. Tenenbaum, who received the pseudonym "Yelsky" [6], was personally instructed by the chairman of the RVSR [7] Trotsky [8] and Unshlikht.
“The first contacts of the authorized Cheka with Slashchev took place in February 1921. They were rather exploratory in nature: the positions of the parties were clarified, and possible joint actions in Constantinople were determined. Yelsky did not then have the authority to offer Slashchev to return to Russia … In turn, Slashchev could not help but experience serious hesitation in making the decision to leave for Soviet Russia.
Yelsky had to arrange meetings with Slashchev, observing the strictest secrecy. He used all of his old underground skills to keep himself and the officers in contact with him safe from failure early on. After all, at least three official counterintelligence services operated in Constantinople. [9] All of them were well paid and could recruit numerous agents to reveal the underground work of the Bolsheviks”[10].
Slashchev made the decision to return to his homeland in May 1921. This was stated in a letter from Constantinople to Simferopol, intercepted by the Chekists, and this gave them decisiveness in their actions. Starting the operation to return Slashchev, the Chekists allowed "amateur performance", since the Soviet political leadership had not yet made a final decision on this issue by that time. Under the circumstances, the operation began in mid-October, since at the beginning of the same month the Politburo received a report from Dashevsky, an officer of the Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian and Crimean troops, with a proposal to transfer Slashchev and several officers from Turkey to Soviet territory.
In the end, “Slashchev and his associates managed to leave the dacha on the shores of the Bosphorus unnoticed, get into the port and board the steamer“Jean”.
French counterintelligence, through agents from among Russian emigrants, quickly found out that together with Slashchev, the former assistant to the Minister of War of the Crimean regional government, Major General A. S., had secretly left. Milkovsky, commandant of Simferopol, Colonel E. P. Gilbikh, head of Slashchev's personal convoy, Colonel M. V. Mezernitsky, as well as Slashchev's wife with her brother.
A day later the steamer “Jean” moored to the pier in the Sevastopol bay. His passengers at the pier were met by employees of the Cheka, and Dzerzhinsky's personal train was waiting at the station. The head of the Cheka interrupted his vacation and, together with Slashchev and his group, left for Moscow”[11].
The Izvestia newspaper of November 23, 1921, published a government message on the arrival of General Slashchev in Soviet Russia with a group of military men. Upon their return to their homeland, they signed an appeal to the officers who remained in a foreign land, urging them to return to Russia. The transition of General Slashchev to the side of Soviet power prompted many members of the white movement to return from emigration. [12]
However, the official version is questioned by the information from the essays "The work of the Comintern and the GPU in Turkey", written in Paris in 1931 and remained unpublished, the former deputy trade representative in Turkey I. M. Ibragimov [13], in which he says: “The same Mirny [14] told me that General Slashchev did not voluntarily return to the USSR: but they just negotiated with him, lured him to some restaurant, gave him a lot of alcohol, and since he was a drug addict, they pumped him with cocaine or opium and took him to a Soviet steamer, and he supposedly woke up only in Sevastopol, and then he had no choice but to sign the famous appeal prepared for him to the officers (I leave all responsibility in truthfulness story on Mirny)”[15].
