Isn't it a shame to deal with us
“For so long with a hat, a beard, Ruslana entrusting destinies?
Having fought a fierce battle with Rogdai, He drove through a dense forest;
A wide valley opened before him
In the blaze of the morning skies.
The knight trembles against his will:
He sees the old battlefield …"
(A. S. Pushkin. Ruslan and Lyudmila)
There was no epigraph for the previous materials. But here he simply asks, since we left our hero seriously and for a long time, and it is known that many VO readers were waiting and waiting for the continuation of the "theme" of this extraordinary person in all respects. It doesn't matter good or bad in this case, the main thing is extraordinary.
This painting by Roerich has a telling name, isn't it?
And then the time came to notice that Blumkin, apparently, had a clear interest in the mysticism of the East (by the way, it often very strongly affects weak minds), read the relevant literature and considered himself a specialist in the field of occultism. But "work with magicians" was interrupted by an emergency trip.
Meanwhile, Blumkin had to change his place of work. He was transferred to the People's Commissariat of Trade, where, however, he immediately took up twelve posts. Do not be surprised, that was the time then. After all, Lenin wrote that the salary of a soviet servant, as they said at the time, should not be higher than the salary of an average worker. And the rates were set from above, so that such a simple solution helped to achieve “inequality” under these equal conditions for all. Professors lectured at three universities at once and everywhere worked on a payroll, that is, they had three rates at once, plus an hourly pay, but specialists like Blumkin even combined a dozen positions and … somehow managed to do everything everywhere.
It was then that the OGPU decided to send him on a secret mission to China. And the task was set to him extremely unusual: together with the expedition of Nicholas Roerich to get into the legendary country of Shambhala in Tibet. Well, and, of course, it was supposed to spy there against the British. After all, they were also "called" by Tibet and "called" very loudly. It is not for nothing that R. Kipling has Russian spies (or rather one Russian and one French spy) as opponents of the British since the pre-war period in his famous novel "Kim".
Moreover, the expedition to Tibet was personally supervised by Dzerzhinsky, and the OGPU allocated an astronomical amount of 600 thousand dollars for it. True, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Chicherin, and besides him, the immediate deputies of the "iron Felix" Trilisser and Yagoda opposed the sending of the expedition, and it was postponed until a certain time. However, Blumkin himself still ended up in Tibet and ended up in Roerich's expedition, and he pretended to be … a Buddhist lama. That is, he introduced himself to Roerich just like that, but then he spoke in Russian, and he wrote in his diary: "… our lama … even knows many of our friends." Although there are facts that Roerich knew him under the pseudonym "Vladimirov", and maybe knew about him and a lot more. Although there is also such a point of view that Blumkin was not in Tibet and had nothing to do with Roerich. The dispute goes on, both sides put forward their arguments, but the truth is still somewhere out there and is hidden in the respective archives.
Here, by the way, one interesting question arises: why did the Bolsheviks surrender this Shambhala at all? And at first they showed interest in it, then the German fascists … What was there for all of them "smeared with honey"? Why did they rush there so stubbornly?
On the other hand, it is not surprising that the OGPU "assigned its own man" to Roerich. In this regard, he was an ideal cover, since everyone knew that during the Civil War he became one of the leaders of the "Scandinavian Society for Aid to the Russian Warrior", which financed … the troops of General N. N. Yudenich, and after the defeat of the latter became a member of the émigré organization "Russian-British 1917 Brotherhood".
So, in September 1925, their joint adventures began in the Himalayas, but what was really there and whether it was at all, is still unknown, although there is the Roerich Society, and its archive, and intelligence documents, both ours and British, who had been following Roerich for a long time as a potential Soviet agent!
However, everything in the world passes. The Tibetan episode of Blumkin's biography ended and he, like the hero of A. S. Pushkin, also finally returned to Moscow for his twelve jobs.
But he was not allowed to partake of a peaceful life for a long time. In 1926, the OGPU sent a request to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to send Blumkin at the disposal of the "authorities", and they, in turn, sent him not somewhere, but to Mongolia, where he was supposed to work as the chief instructor of the state internal security of the young Mongolian republic - that is, the local Mongolian Cheka. At the same time, he was also supposed to lead the activities of Soviet intelligence in both North China and Tibet, and, as far as possible, oppose the intelligence of the British there.
However, this episode of Blumkin's biography can hardly be attributed to his success. The fact is that he stayed there for only six months, after which the Central Committee of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party and the Mongolian Council of Ministers demanded that he be recalled back to Moscow. The reason is more than solid: having received great power in his hands, Blumkin began to shoot both the right and the wrong. But even this he would be forgiven if he informed the "Mongol comrades" about this. And he didn't. That is, he showed them his disrespect, and in the East this is not possible, even if there is Bolshevik Russia behind your back.
In general, Blumkin was removed from Mongolia and sent to Paris to kill a certain defector who dared to denounce Stalin himself. And again, some believe that there was a "business trip", while others that it was not. In any case, Blumkin continued to be considered a "terrorist" and in this capacity could well have been used.
Meanwhile, important events were brewing in the USSR. At the end of 1927, the situation within the party worsened due to Stalin's struggle with the Trotskyite-Zinoviev opposition. Moreover, the so-called "old Bolsheviks", well aware of the affairs in the party and remembering Lenin's "Letter to the Congress", for the most part opposed Stalin. They came out and … paid for it! Not two, not three, not ten, but at once seventy-seven prominent and seemingly influential oppositionists to Stalin's course, Bolsheviks with a long, often pre-revolutionary experience, were simply not simply expelled from the ranks of the CPSU (b). It is clear that among them were such people as Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Pyatakov, Radek, but also many others … Of course, personal relations also played a role here. After all, Stalin was not alone in exile in the Turukhansk region. His behavior there, well, let's say, was different from the behavior of other exiles and did not cause them special approval. And then … a person they know suddenly begins to “do the wrong thing,” and in addition, he pretends to be a leader. Radek, for example, generally became famous for his anti-Stalinist anecdotes, and it is unlikely that the "leader" who was gaining strength liked this.
How did Blumkin behave in this situation? In general, it is rather strange, as if "I have lost my scent." Without fear of anything, he was engaged in openly meeting with the opposition, and did not even try to hide his sympathies for Trotsky. It is believed that the oppositionists, in turn, advised Blumkin to hide their attitude to the opposition in order to be able to provide it with all sorts of "services", including warning of arrests. However, double play is always fraught with danger. And Blumkin should have remembered how he was shot at in Kiev and almost killed by the Left SRs loyal to him. And what in this case took place here? Did he get closer to the opposition on the instructions of the OGPU or did he act on his own initiative and at his own peril and risk?
However, so far no one has paid attention to these "acquaintances" of his in the appropriate places. More Blumkin was again needed as an agent in the East, since there was another deterioration in Soviet-British relations and the air clearly smelled of war. And after this aggravation, an idea, as old as the world, was immediately born: to destabilize the enemy's rear, for which it was necessary to incite the same Arabs, Jews and Indians on the British, so that they would cause them more trouble, and most importantly, would not allow them to be transferred to war with The USSR has its own colonial troops.
And Blumkin becomes a merchant named Sultan-Zadeh and goes to the Arabs and Kurds to raise them to revolt against "British colonialism."
However, he stayed "in the East" for a relatively short time and in the summer of 1929 he returned to Moscow, where he reported on the "Middle East work" done to the members of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b). And I must say that Blumkin's report made an impression on them and they approved it. His work was also approved by the head of the OGPU V. Menzhinsky, and his affection for Blumkin was so great that he even invited him to dine with him at home - an honor that only a few of his staff were awarded. Another party purge, and at that time they were going literally one after another, it was also successful. And it is not surprising, given Trilisser, the head of the INO OGPU, given to him. Both the party committee of the OGPU and the head of the purges, Abram Solts, all called Blumkin a "trusted comrade." Of course, among revolutionaries (as well as in a criminal environment, by the way!) Such praises are inexpensive - today "proven", and tomorrow "traitor and renegade", which also happened very often, but people usually do not think about bad things, but hope only for the good. So Blumkin … also hoped for "good", not realizing that the sword of Damocles of an ill-fated and inexorable fate was already hanging over him!
The end follows …
