“A slave threw himself at the feet of a certain nobleman. He told that he had met Death at the bazaar, who threatened him with a finger, and began to beg the master to give him a horse. The slave decided to escape from Death by escaping to the city of Samarra. The nobleman gave the slave a horse, and he ran away, and the next day he went to the market and, meeting Death, asked: "Why did you frighten my slave? Why did you threaten him with a finger?" - "I did not frighten him, - answered Death. - I was just very surprised to meet him in this city, because that same evening I was to meet with him in Samarra."
(R. Sheckley. "Mind Exchange")
"Whoever is between the living, there is still hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion."
(Ecclesiastes 9, v. 4)
Everything was like in a banal spy novel. Night, the border and a Soviet officer with the rank of lieutenant general, who announced to the head of the border post accompanying him that he was going to a meeting with an important agent. So, on the night of June 14, 1938, a man endowed with the special confidence of the party, the government and personally Comrade Stalin, the 3rd rank State Security Commissioner Genrikh Lyushkov, crossed the Soviet-Manchu border to the "other side". Well, and finding himself among the former enemies, he immediately asked them for political asylum and began to actively cooperate with Japanese intelligence. In the history of the Soviet special services, he turned out to be the only traitor of this rank - after all, a lieutenant general of the NKVD.
Heinrich Lyushkov
Not so long ago, several articles about the executed Soviet commanders - Blucher, Rychagov, Dybenko - appeared on the VO website at once. And this is what cannot but catch the eye. All of them were so stupid or blinded … it is not clear what that, as if they did not see what was happening around them. They hoped for something … And at first they themselves sat in the execution courts, and then appeared before the eyes of the same prosecutors, but only as accused. Obviously, they believed that this would not affect them …
But … there were those who at least shot themselves without waiting for torture in the basements. True, not enough. There were even fewer of those who decided to escape and even fewer of those who succeeded. That is why the more interesting the fate of one of the "most loyal" - Lieutenant General of the NKVD Genrikh Lyushkov.
The son of a Jewish cutter …
How many Jews came to the workers 'and peasants' revolution in Russia need not be reminded. In it, they rightly saw an opportunity to make a career. And rightly so! Why didn't they take advantage of the new opportunities? Here is the son of a cutter from Odessa Samuil Lyushkov by the name of Henry (born in 1900) graduated from college, but did not go to tailors, but got a job as a seller in a store where they sold spare parts for cars - he realized that they were the future and decided to a promising business to be closer. As in the case of V. I. Lenin, the young Henry also had an older revolutionary brother. And it was from him that he got "new ideas", took up underground work with him, and then at the age of 17 he became a member of the RSDLP. And as soon as the "revolution" was completed, the young party member found himself at work in the Cheka. And then the "social lift" carried him higher and higher, because he was a competent, dedicated and executive person.
Therefore, it is hardly surprising that at the age of 19 he became the commissar of the 14th Separate Shock Army. At the age of 20, he was already the deputy head of the Cheka in Tiraspol, and in 1924 he became the head of the secret-political department in the central republican apparatus of the GPU in Kharkov. There he worked for seven years and, apparently, coped with his duties so well that he was taken to Moscow, where in the OGPU under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR he began to conduct the most notorious political affairs of that time.
More than a successful career …
In the Stalinist USSR, many people got out, as they say, "out of the rags, but into riches", became commanders, famous pilots … So Lyushkov went up the career ladder very quickly. By 1937, through his efforts, so many people had already been repressed that for these "merits" he was given the Order of Lenin. He was a member of the notorious extrajudicial "triplets", when three people, who usually did not have any legal education, for literally one minute, in absentia and without any lawyers, condemned people, looking only at the case materials that they represented them the organs of the NKVD. A minimum of time, a minimum of interest in the fate of a person. The main thing was the plan, launched on this or that area from above, or even the desire to overfulfill it! Planning - it was generally the basis of Soviet society in everything …
And Genrikh Lyushkov, as the faithful son of the party and the working people, proved himself in this field so well that Stalin himself noticed him and even invited him to the Kremlin, and for 15 minutes he had a conversation with him. And, apparently, Comrade Stalin liked Lyushkov, he knew how, so to speak, "to select personnel," because after this conversation he made him the head of the NKVD throughout the Far East. It is clear that they needed an energetic person, capable of the most ruthless way to destroy kulaks, priests, all kinds of former White Guards, and at the same time criminals, and, of course, their own Chekists. Well, those who have already done their job and whose services the party no longer needed.
And here Lyushkov again proved himself to be the best possible. Apparently he was strongly influenced by the inspiring look of the leader. Having in his hands directive No. 00447 "On the operation to repress former kulaks, criminals and other anti-Soviet elements," Genrikh Samuilovich began by finding and neutralizing 40 security officers - that is, practically all the previous leadership of the local NKVD administration, together with its leader, the old Bolshevik Terenty Deribas. Moreover, Lyushkov was not stopped for a moment by the fact that Deribas was the 1st rank state security commissar, that is, he was an army general. At the same time, on the "recommendation" of Lyushkov, the head of "Dalstroy" (such was the "trust" in the GULAG system), the honored Chekist Eduard Berzin, was also shot. Well … he was a spy and did not work well, of course … Thousands of people were repressed in the Far East through the efforts of Lyushkov - in fact, the entire old party and KGB elite, who arranged a "Far East Trotskyist conspiracy" there. One thing the failed tailor did not understand was that he himself, Genrikh Lyushkov, would be next in line for execution.
System intrigues
Meanwhile, for his successes in eradicating the enemies of the people, the faithful Stalinist Chekist was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet. But, only for some reason, when he arrived in the capital for a meeting, it turned out that he was being watched and he noticed this surveillance. I noticed, but did not know yet, that "the carriage is already rolling" along the tried and tested track. Meanwhile, the KGB officers who were arrested at that time had already been demanded to stipulate Lyushkov before the execution, and it is clear that they did it. Why spare him? Today we are dying, so die you too, at least tomorrow! And the first who realized that the general, in fact, was already dead, was his colleague in the organs and the deputy mandate, commander of the 1st rank Mikhail Frinovsky, to whom Genrikh Samuilovich just complained about the surveillance he had noticed.
And then it was Frinovsky who was sent to the Far East a year later - for a new cleaning of the NKVD apparatus, border troops and in order to "restore order" after Lyushkov himself. In the spring of 1938, his deputies, the generals of the NKVD M. A. Kagan and I. M. Leplevsky, who surrendered their boss for a minute immediately. And then Marshal Blucher, who had not yet been arrested, although he was standing in line, also threw down his weighty word. And already here, of course, after such an "authoritative signal" the failed tailor was immediately summoned to Moscow, at the same time being dismissed from his post. True, it seems only to be appointed to a new post in the NKVD of the USSR. But from the telegram of Yezhov, who was his direct leader, Lyushkov learned that there was no position for him in the central apparatus of the NKVD and was not expected. This could mean only one thing: imminent arrest upon arrival in the capital. Lyushkov immediately understood everything and made an attempt to organize his family's escape abroad. But it didn't work out. His wife was arrested and then sent to a camp, and his stepdaughter was taken to be raised by relatives. That is, they did not manage to get abroad. But on the other hand, now Lyushkov and even more so had nothing to lose, except for his "successful KGB past." Therefore, in early June, he went to Posiet, where he crossed the border, surrendering to the Japanese, who at that time had already occupied all of Manchuria. I decided, apparently, that it is better to become a "live dog" than to play the role of another "dead lion". More than a week before the message from Japan arrived, Lyushkov was considered missing, believing that he might have been kidnapped or killed by the Japanese.
Purely Japanese gratitude …
For almost seven whole years, Lyushkov worked first in the intelligence department of the General Staff of the Imperial Army (Bureau for the Study of East Asia), and after that in the headquarters of the Kwantung Army. To begin with, he gave the Japanese the entire Soviet spy network in the Far East, thereby condemning a lot of people to wild torment and death, reported all the radio codes of the points of contact and told about all the operational plans of the Red Army in case of war, including not only Siberia, but also Ukraine. He also drew detailed maps and diagrams of all border fortified areas for the Japanese and gave the most detailed information, which they would not have received from hundreds of spies, about the locations of Soviet troops in the Far East, including their numbers and all data on their weapons. But life is an amusing thing! Richard Sorge managed to access his report and photographed the most important pages. When the film reached Moscow, they were horrified: Lyushkov gave out everything he knew. True, after learning all this, and then also checking, the Japanese saw that the forces of the Red Army were many times greater than their own in this area, and as a result did not dare to start military operations against the USSR. In addition, knowing the security system of Stalin's dacha in the Crimea, which he himself organized at one time, he proposed the most realistic project of an attempt on Stalin's life. Its development was started, but this plan failed due to the actions of the Soviet counterintelligence. That is, Lyushkov worked for the Japanese not for fear, but for conscience, although it is still not known for sure whether he told them everything and whether there was a certain amount of misinformation in his messages. In any case, the Japanese "thanked" Lyushkov in a purely samurai way: in August 1945 he was killed by them in Dairen, so that in case of something he would not fall into the hands of the Russians or Americans, since he knew too much. Thus, by his betrayal, he won seven years of life and nothing more. But, on the other hand, before his death, at least they did not beat him with rubber truncheons …
Effects
Finding himself behind the "iron curtain", Lyushkov told a lot of interesting things about "life in the USSR". So, on July 13, 1938, in an interview with the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, he stated:
Lyushkov said that sensational confessions of espionage and sabotage were actually knocked out of the convicts by cruel torture and threats of new torture. In confirmation of the correctness of his words, he published a suicide letter he had taken with him to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the former assistant to the commander of the Separate Red Banner Far Eastern Army for the Air Force A. Ya. Lapin, who committed suicide in the Khabarovsk prison. Having revealed the secrets of the Stalinist terror to the whole world, Lyushkov did not hide his own active participation in these bloody deeds …
Naturally, in 1939 in the USSR, Lyushkov was sentenced to death in absentia in the USSR, and his escape also affected the career of the People's Commissar of the NKVD Yezhov … Well, all the employees appointed to their places by the fled Lyushkov were immediately arrested and shot.
