To the 100th anniversary of Lieutenant General Boris Semyonovich Ivanov
One of the most important components of national security is state security, whose tasks include identifying and eliminating external and internal threats to the state, countering their sources, protecting state secrets, territorial inviolability and independence of the country.
Foreign intelligence, as part of the state security system, is aimed at obtaining intelligence information about the enemy in order to identify external threats to the state and implement measures that prevent damage to the national interests of the country, including with the use of undercover and operational-search activities. This invisible struggle against a real enemy, on the successes and failures of which the viability of the country, the state and society as a whole depends, is being waged without stopping day or night all over the world - both by legal and illegal methods and means.
For many years, Lieutenant General Boris Ivanov was in charge of this complex intelligence organism. To this day, the personality of this person, his life path and professional activity are hidden by vultures, covered with a fog of secrets and guesses. Involuntarily glancing over the second floor. XX century, we see him at meetings with the leaders of the USSR and at negotiations with the presidents of foreign states, on the slopes of the Andes and in the Asian jungle, during friendly conversations in Havana and tough confrontations in Kabul, heated debates in the UN Security Council and on the quiet streets of the world capitals.
Boris Semyonovich Ivanov also worked in counterintelligence - in the Second Main Directorate of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR, then moving to intelligence, was a resident in the United States of America, including during the Cuban missile crisis. After returning from there - deputy, first deputy head of the First Main Directorate (foreign intelligence) of the KGB of the USSR.
Left to right: US President Gerald Ford, Leonid Brezhnev, Boris Ivanov, Andrei Gromyko. Helsinki, 1975
Oleg Grinevsky, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USSR, head of the USSR delegation to the Stockholm Conference on Security and Disarmament in Europe, recalling his meetings with Boris Semyonovich, writes: "He did not tell anything about himself … He was silent, apparently an iron man."
Boris Semyonovich Ivanov was born on July 24, 1916 in Petrograd and was the firstborn in a large family. After the revolution, the family moved to Cherepovets. Boris graduated with honors from secondary school No. 1 named after Maxim Gorky and entered the Leningrad Institute of Civil Air Fleet Engineers (LIIGVF). Like many of his peers, aeronautics and aircraft construction completely captured him, taking away all his free time.
On August 10, 1935, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR signed order No. 00306 "On the organization and recruitment of 1 set of 10 inter-regional schools for the preparation of the operational staff of the UGB." The order ordered the formation of special educational institutions for the preparation of operational personnel for the planned replenishment of the organs of the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) of the NKVD of the USSR.
In 1937, Boris Ivanov was invited to the district committee of the Komsomol and sent to the personnel commission of the NKVD, where he was offered to link his life with state security. The training program at the Leningrad inter-regional school of the NKVD was compressed - one year. It included special (KGB), agent, military training, mastering the program of secondary legal education, learning a foreign language. In addition to lectures, practical exercises were conducted in combat training conditions, tasks were solved, examples from the practice of KGB operations were analyzed.
In the same year, another event took place that largely influenced the fate of the young Chekist. On September 23, 1937, by the decree of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR "On the division of the Northern region into the Vologda and Arkhangelsk regions", the Vologda region was formed. It was to work in the newly created Directorate of the NKVD for the Vologda Region that Boris Ivanov was sent in 1938.
The head of the UNKVD in the Vologda region was State Security Captain Pyotr Kondakov. Subsequently, he worked as the head of the UNKVD in the Yaroslavl Region, Smolensk Region, the Minister of State Security of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (1948-1951), a member of the Collegium and Deputy Minister of State Security of the USSR. His deputy (and since February 26, 1941 - the head of the UNKVD in the Vologda region) was the 30-year-old captain of the state security Lev Galkin, a hereditary worker from the Moscow region, an energetic, strong-willed and sociable person. In 1945, Lev Fedorovich became the Minister of State Security of the Turkmen SSR, and ended his life in 1961 with the rank of Major General as head of the USSR KGB Directorate for the Khabarovsk Territory.
Vologda is famous for more than one Vologda oil. In 1565, it was this city that became the capital of the famous oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible - the first emergency commission in Russian history ("oprich" means "except"), designed to break the resistance of the nobility, oligarchy and other classes opposing the strengthening of a single centralized state. In form, the oprichnina guard was a monastic order, which was headed by the abbot - the king himself. The guardsmen wore black clothes, similar to those of a monk, attached a dog's head to the horse's neck, and a broom for a whip to the saddle. This meant that they first bite like dogs and then sweep everything out of the country.
Oprichnina Tsar Ivan the Terrible responded not only to the Kiev era in the face of its relic of Novgorod, but also to the Horde. In 1570 "independent" Novgorod was defeated, the case of "Novgorod treason" was investigated in Moscow. At the same time, the oprichnina was a response to the pressure of the West: economic, military-political and, no less important, spiritual.
In the capital of the oprichnina, the tsar ordered the construction of a stone Vologda Kremlin, which was to be twice as large as the Moscow one. Construction work was carried out under the personal supervision of the king. However, in 1571 Ivan the Terrible suddenly stopped them and left Vologda forever. The reasons for this are hidden deep secrets.
After the founding of St. Petersburg, the importance of Vologda began to decline. But it sharply increased again in the 19th century in connection with the opening of navigation on the Severo-Dvinsky waterway, and then thanks to the construction of a railway line connecting Vologda with Yaroslavl and Moscow (1872), with Arkhangelsk (1898), with St. Petersburg and Vyatka (1905) …
Occupying a key transport position in the North-West of Russia, Vologda could not help but be at the center of the special services' activities. In August 1918, Western diplomats organized a conspiracy to overthrow Soviet power (the "Ambassadors' Conspiracy"). The head of the British mission Robert Lockhart and the British intelligence resident Sydney Reilly (Solomon Rosenblum), with the participation of French Ambassador Joseph Noulens and US Ambassador David Francis, tried to bribe the Latvian riflemen guarding the Kremlin in order to arrest the All-Russian Central Executive Committee meeting together with Lenin, denounce the Brest Treaty and restore the Eastern Front against Germany … Two regiments of Latvians, to whom the British, in addition to 5-6 million rubles, promised assistance in the recognition of Latvia's independence, were to go to Vologda to unite there with the British troops that had landed in Arkhangelsk and help their advance towards Moscow.
On August 30, 1918, an attempt was made on the life of Vladimir Lenin and the murder on the same day of the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Moisei Uritsky. In response, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee declared the Red Terror.
The Chekists, who had their informant in the Latvian division, stormed the British embassy in Petrograd and arrested the conspirators, killing the British naval attaché Francis Cromie, who opened fire. On the night of September 1, Robert Lockhart was arrested at his apartment in Moscow.
The counterrevolutionary rebellion, which had drawn Vologda into its orbit, was suppressed.
In the 1930s, the importance of Vologda as a major railway junction connecting Arkhangelsk, Leningrad, Moscow and the Urals continued to grow. Ensuring his safety fell on the shoulders of the Chekists. The team was well-chosen - young, but thoughtful and competent guys, all excellent athletes who enjoyed spending their free time on the volleyball court or ski track. At one of these competitions, Boris met his first love in his life and his future wife. Antonina Ivanova (Sizova), just like him, was born in 1916 and worked in the UNKVD-UNKGB in the Vologda region.
NKVD in the Vologda region, volleyball competition, 1938. Standing: Boris Ivanov (seventh from the left), Antonina Sizova (sixth from the right)
The Second World War was approaching. On November 26, 1939, the government of the USSR sent a note of protest to the government of Finland and made it responsible for the outbreak of hostilities. Immediately after that, volunteers from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Hungary, Estonia, USA and Great Britain began to arrive in Finland - a total of 12 thousand people.
Boris Ivanov before being sent to the Finnish War (first from the left), Antonina Ivanova, third from the left
One of the features of the Finnish campaign should be called the conduct of hostilities in separate areas and the presence of significant gaps between them, reaching 200 km or more. An important measure to cover the gaps between operational directions was active and continuous reconnaissance in order to detect the enemy, determine its composition, state and intentions. For this, consolidated detachments of the NKVD were formed, sent to a distance of 35-40 km from units and subunits. The task of these detachments, in the ranks of which the 23-year-old state security sergeant Boris Ivanov fought, included not only reconnaissance of the enemy, but also the defeat of his reconnaissance and sabotage groups, the destruction of bases, especially in areas where the troops of the Red Army were not fighting or were fighting. with limited purposes.
State Security Lieutenant Boris Semyonovich Ivanov, 1940
On the very first day of the Great Patriotic War, the Vologda Oblast was declared martial law. In the fall of 1941, the situation became more complicated. Part of the Vytegorsky region (formerly Oshta region) was occupied by Finnish troops. On September 20, the head of the department, Lev Galkin, reported on the high frequency to the commander of the Arkhangelsk military district, Lieutenant General Vladimir Romanovsky:
“In the Voznesensky District of the Leningrad Region, a group of enemy forces of 350-400 men appeared with two medium tanks and six tankettes attached to it … In the area of Voznesenya, Oshta and Vytegra there are no rifle infantry units. There is a training squadron of the Air Force, maintenance personnel of military warehouses, workshops and two rifle battalions, but no weapons. If the enemy occupies Ascension, Oshta and Vytegra, a threatening situation is created for Petrozavodsk."
On October 11, 1941, the head of the Vytegorsk regional department of the NKVD reported to Galkin:
“There is information that the enemy is concentrating forces … Today, 180 people from the number of convalescents and units of the supply station located in Vytegra were sent from Vytegra to the unit of Colonel Boyarinov. Armament - only rifles. Ascension is burning."
On October 19, 1941, as a result of the actions of units of the Red Army and fighter battalions, the situation in the Oshta sector of the front stabilized. The threat of an enemy breakthrough deep into Soviet territory was eliminated.
At the same time, Colonel-General Franz Halder, Chief of Staff of the High Command of the Wehrmacht Ground Forces, wrote in his service diary: “Tasks for the future (1942) … Capturing Vologda - Gorky. The deadline is by the end of May. " According to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of Finland, Field Marshal Gustav Mannerheim, the capture of Murmansk, Kandalaksha, Belomorsk and Vologda "was of decisive importance on the entire front of Northern Russia."
Therefore, the special services were actively involved in the struggle. Particular importance was attached to the main interchanges of the Northern Railway, which fed the Leningrad Front. Abwehrkommando-104 (call sign "Mars") was created under Army Group North. It was headed by Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Gemprich (aka Peterhof). The agents were recruited in POW camps in Königsberg, Suwalki, Kaunas and Riga. In-depth individual training of agents was carried out for their subsequent work in the regions of Vologda, Rybinsk and Cherepovets. The transfer was carried out by aircraft from the Pskov, Smolensk and Riga airfields. To return, the agents were given the oral passwords "Peterhof" and "Florida".
Since the summer of 1942, Soviet counterintelligence officer Melentiy Malyshev worked in Abwehrkommando-104, who infiltrated there under the guise of a defector. It was thanks to him that the most valuable operational information about the intelligence school in the Estonian city of Valga and the saboteurs being thrown into the Soviet rear became known to the Soviet security officers.
In January 1942, in the Demyansk region, Soviet troops launched an offensive and surrounded the main forces of the 2nd Army Corps of the 16th German Army of Army Group North (the so-called Demyansk Cauldron).
The Soviet Information Bureau hastened to announce a major victory. However, in March 1942, a new intelligence agency, Unternehmen Zeppelin, was formed in the structure of the foreign intelligence of the security service (SD-Ausland - VI Division of the RSHA) to destabilize the Soviet rear. The chief of the SD, SS Brigadefuehrer Walter Schellenberg, wrote in his memoirs about this organization:
“Here we violated the usual rules for the use of agents - the main focus was on the mass scale. In the camps for prisoners of war, thousands of Russians were selected, who, after training, were thrown by parachute deep into Russian territory. Their main task, along with the transmission of current information, was the corruption of the population and sabotage."
One of the training centers "Zeppelin" was located near Warsaw and another - near Pskov.
As a result of the actions of "Zeppelin", the Soviet operation to eliminate the German group in the "Demyansk pot" failed. The fact is that the Germans, from their agents who penetrated the rear of the Soviet troops, received information about their numbers and the intended direction of the main attack. At the same time on the territory of the Novgorod region "Zeppelin" threw 200 saboteurs. They put out of action the railway lines Bologoye - Toropets and Bologoye - Staraya Russa. As a result, echelons with replenishment for Soviet troops and ammunition were detained. In April 1942, the Germans broke through the encirclement …
On February 27, 1942, at 22 o'clock, Heinkel-88 took off from the airfield in occupied Pskov and headed east. At high altitude, the plane crossed the front line. Having reached the Babaevsky district of the Vologda region, it decreased, making several circles over the blackening forest massif, and turned to the west. Three parachutists descended into a forest clearing. Having buried the parachutes, all three like a wolf, trail after trail, walked through the deep snow towards the railway …
The head of the Vologda department of the NKVD, Lev Fedorovich Galkin, used to work until 5 in the morning. But on this day I wanted to leave early - after all, March 8, a holiday. I just turned off the light - the phone rang. The head of the transport department reported that a German paratrooper was detained at the Babaevo station while checking documents. Soon, the protocols of his interrogation were brought to Galkin. Lev Fedorovich invited the head of the KRO (counterintelligence department) Alexander Sokolov. As a result, all three were caught: Nikolai Alekseenko (pseudonym Orlov), Nikolay Diev (Krestsov) and Ivan Likhogrud (Malinovsky). Of these, only Alekseenko was recognized as fit for work as a "double agent". The rest of the Chekists did not inspire confidence, and on June 25, 1942, by the verdict of the Special Meeting, they were shot.
As Alekseenko showed, he had to transmit spy information to the Germans using a specially determined slogan cipher, having for this purpose a key, his callsign ("LAI" without Y) and German radio stations ("VAS"), working hours - 12 hours and 20 minutes. and 16 hours 20 minutes, as well as the wavelength.
These events began the radio game "Boss", now recognized as a classic of "operational games". Boris Ivanov, an employee of the Vologda Directorate, the future head of Soviet intelligence, took part in this and a number of other games.
The information Orlov transmitted to the German intelligence center in Pskov was varied and looked reliable. In one of the radio messages, for example, there is a message about a certain headquarters officer of the 457th Infantry Division Senior Lieutenant Sergei Apolonov - a big chatterbox and a drinker. The other contains a hint of the revival of the insurrectionary movement: the Ukrainians deported to the Vozhegodsky district "speak openly against the Soviet regime and for the revival of Ukraine."
On July 8, Orlov broadcast the most important disinformation: “From July 1 to July 3, 68 echelons passed through Vologda to Arkhangelsk, of which 46–48 with troops, 13–15 with artillery and tanks. Infantry and tanks are being transferred to Tikhvin. 32 trains have passed in 3 days”.
“This means that it is unreasonable to withdraw troops from our sector of the front for an offensive in the south,” concluded Lieutenant Colonel Gemprich, chief of Abwehrkommando-104. “The Russians are concentrating their strike fist here,” and he circled a circle northeast of Leningrad on the map. - Immediately inform the command of Army Group "North" and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris so that he report this to the Fuehrer's headquarters …"
By the end of 1942, the main task - to misinform the enemy about the manning and movement of troops along the Northern Railway - was completed. Gemprikh got a message that in Vologda, at the time of checking the documents, the members of the group allegedly almost got caught, and one of them was wounded. It is dangerous to stay in the city, so it was decided to leave for the Urals.
The Vologda Chekists managed to quite plausibly take Alekseenko out of the game. In June 1944, he was sentenced by a special meeting to 8 years in forced labor camps. However, Colonel Galkin was able to achieve a revision of the sentence: Alekseenko's sentence was reduced to three years. In 1946 he lived in Vologda on Kirov Street … Nothing is known about the further fate of this man.
By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of September 21, 1943, Lev Fedorovich Galkin and the head of the KRO Alexander Dmitrievich Sokolov were awarded the Order of the Red Star "for completing the assignment to ensure state security in wartime", and the head of the 1st department of the KRO, Dmitry Danilovich Khodan, was promoted. Boris Semyonovich Ivanov is also listed in this decree - he was awarded the medal "For Courage", and a little later - the badge "Honored Worker of the NKVD".
Employees of the UNKVD-UNKGB in the Vologda Region (from left to right). In the 1st row: Boris Korchemkin, Lev Galkin, in the 2nd row: Boris Ivanov, Boris Esikov (far right)
The continuation of the radio game "Boss" was the operation "Demolitionists", carried out by the SMERSH GUKR and employees of the Vologda Directorate against the German intelligence agency "Zeppelin" in 1943-1944. The intentions of the Germans to throw a significant number of saboteurs of the SMERSH GUKR onto the Vologda-Arkhangelsk railway line became known on September 20, 1943 from the interception of an encrypted radio message sent from the Pskov region to Berlin:
“Kurreku. Regarding the northern rail operation. We plan to carry out a sabotage operation in the operational zone "W" in the 10th of October. 50 saboteurs will participate in this operation. Kraus ".
SS Sturmbannführer Walter Kurrek was responsible for training agents at the Zeppelin headquarters in Berlin, and SS Sturmbannführer Otto Kraus was the head of the Zeppelin main command in the northern sector of the front.
Honored Worker of the NKVD Major Boris Ivanov (center)
On the night of October 16, 1943, a group of five agents-saboteurs was dropped on the border of the Kharovsky and Vozhegodsky districts of the Vologda Oblast with the task of picking up a landing site for the main group, and then starting to carry out acts of sabotage on the Northern Railroad and organizing insurgent detachments from an anti-Soviet element. The head of the group, Grigory Aulin, confessed, and the radio station confiscated from him was turned on in a radio game, as a result of which 17 saboteurs of "Zeppelin" were summoned and arrested to our side. Soviet counterintelligence officers then misled both the fascist command and its intelligence services for a long time.
Boris Semyonovich Ivanov with his wife Antonina Gennadievna
On a dank autumn night in 1946, the windows of the Lubyanka went out well after midnight, when the officer on duty at the USSR Ministry of State Security received a call from the Kremlin: "The owner has departed." But one window flickered until late dawn. The head of the Soviet counterintelligence service, 31-year-old Major General of State Security Yevgeny Pitovranov, says in his book “Foreign Intelligence. Special Operations Department”(2006), Major General Alexander Kiselyov, made it a rule to invite employees of territorial directorates to Moscow from time to time. That night he received a group from Vologda. Saying goodbye to them, he asked Major Boris Ivanov to stay.
They met in the winter of 1941 in the Vologda forests, which the Germans flooded with their agents. Pitovranov, as a representative of the task force under the General Staff of the Defense of Moscow, specially arrived at the scene in order to better get acquainted with the situation, because from here it was a stone's throw from Moscow. They found something to talk about:
- Do you remember, Boris Semyonovich, how they chased Murza? He was a cheater, a scoundrel … And his documents were in perfect order.
- I remember how they took the Blind, - continued the conversation Ivanov. - Several guys were put in then, and that bastard …
- Is that the one who fired at you during interrogation? Only from what, - asked Pitovranov.
- There was a removable bolt in his prosthesis, he asked to loosen it - well, he shied away. I dodged … But how he then "threshed" under our dictation! Through it we pulled twenty souls to our side.
- Didn't it work well? There is something to remember! - summed up the general.
From memories, they gradually moved on to current affairs. At the end of the conversation, Major Ivanov accepted the offer of the head of the Second Main Directorate, General Pitovranov, to move to the central state security apparatus and lead the work against the "main enemy."
Foreign intelligence resident in New York Boris Ivanov (far right), assistant to the Permanent Representative of the USSR to the UN Leonid Zamyatin (far left). New York, summer 1955
Boris Semyonovich himself recalled:
“Several years of hard work against the Americans in Moscow made it possible to understand the peculiarities of their handwriting, to clearly present their strengths and weaknesses as objective components of the national character, that is, to“feel”them both in specific operational situations and in life in general. And for me, already in intelligence, this experience turned out to be invaluable."
On October 27, 1951, Yevgeny Petrovich Pitovranov was arrested in connection with the Abakumov case. After his release at the beginning of 1953, he was appointed head of the PGU (foreign intelligence) of the USSR Ministry of State Security. Since that time, the American intelligence line was headed by Boris Semyonovich Ivanov.
Lieutenant General Boris Ivanov, First Deputy Head of the USSR KGB PGU
In early 1973, Lieutenant General Boris Semyonovich Ivanov invited Colonel Alexander Viktorovich Kiselyov to his office and invited him, as his assistant, to head a new service subordinate personally to the chairman of the USSR KGB Yuri Andropov. It was about a special department in the structure of illegal intelligence - the functions of this unit are still secret. In any case, his goal was to penetrate into the highest financial and political circles of the world under the guise of the USSR Chamber of Commerce and Industry, whose deputy chairman (and then chairman) was … Yevgeny Petrovich Pitovranov.
"Do not think down on seconds …" - the operational head of the Soviet foreign intelligence Boris Semyonovich Ivanov
Thus, Boris Semyonovich Ivanov became one of the most informed people in the world, which, apparently, did not suit everyone. On May 12, 1973, at the age of 57, his wife and faithful companion Antonina Gennadievna dies on the operating table. And the special operations department of the PSU will be disbanded already in 1985, immediately after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power …
Be that as it may, Boris Semyonovich largely influenced our history and created it based on the KGB traditions and his own ideas about justice and duty. Perhaps future generations will be in some way better, in some way more humane. But they will not experience the burden of many years of struggle that constantly put pressure on him, when tough pragmatists who went through the harsh school of the Great Patriotic War came to the leadership of Soviet intelligence, whose professional development was forged in a mortal battle with the best intelligence services of Nazi Germany.
