Shtirlitsa's name was Yankel Vladimir Levin

[Детектив-Молдова]

Shtirlitsa's name was Yankel Vladimir Levin

He had neither a military rank, nor awards, nor even a decent retirement pension. Therefore, after many years of wandering around the world, he was forced to work as a translator in order to somehow make ends meet. He lived in a one-room apartment far from the center of Moscow and went to work by metro.

And the work was just in the center, on Tversky Boulevard, and then on Ogarev Street, in a huge building, above which there was a globe hanging over the entrance - a symbol that “we are everywhere”.

We called this building the "mass grave of unknown journalists." It was self-irony. Because these people were well known in professional circles. The office was officially called the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS). This was the Ministry of Truth, which spread throughout the country and flew towards the sea, where no one needed it anymore. A huge number of people worked there, in which journalists simply drowned - referents, consultants, bosses, translators in all conceivable and inconceivable languages, and people whose names are better not to know. And it was not recommended to know. They got used to the image of a journalist. TASS General Director was ex officio a member of the Central Committee, a celestial, and one of the many deputies was certainly Major General of the Deep Drilling Office. When I was, it was General Kevorkov. Not a retired general, as in the Writers' Union, but acting and in charge. However, KGB generals never resign. This is natural, because the correspondent offices of the Office were even where the leg of the Foreign Ministry official had not stepped. And where this foot stepped, there were several of them, and they were called the “TASS bureau”.

That was thirty years ago, but I don’t know how now. The "Ministry of Truth" produced products separately for members of the Politburo (no more than six pages, they could no longer overpower). For them, this was done by a special person, a bitter drunkard who consumed the thermonuclear wine “Agdam”. Once he was fired and put on this business by a young careerist who decided to change the messenger for members of the PB. The Kremlin elders were so indignant that they demanded that they immediately bring everything back to their original state and return to work the one to whose style and style they were accustomed. He was returned with an apology, and the editor-in-chief was wandering around Moscow in search of the vanishing Agdam. There was a “blue TASS” for the first secretaries of the Central Committee of the republics, regional and regional committees, there was a special newsletter for the central newspapers of the social countries and products for “general use”.

I also floundered in that mass grave. And among us there was a short and outwardly inconspicuous elderly man who translated texts from seven languages and from Russian into seven languages. He was respectfully called Jan Petrovich.

Clarity is a form of total fog.

He was dying very hard and painfully. Next to him, in a hospital bed, was constantly a wife with whom they had lived together for fifty years. And on December 14, 1994, heavy armored vehicles were driven to the hospital. Of them, in full parade with many stars on the shoulder straps, important generals came out. These were the then Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army, Army General Mikhail Kolesnikov, and the Chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU), Colonel General Fedor Ladygin. They read President Yeltsin’s decree on assigning Yankel Pinhusovich Chernyak the title of Hero of Russia and presented the Golden Star and the letter of the Hero ... to his wife. Because it is unlikely that the hero himself heard them and understood what was happening. He was in a coma. Ten days later he passed away. At the funeral, Army General Kolesnikov told reporters that Yankel Pinhusovich Chernyak was the same legendary Maxim Isaev, that is, Stirlitz, about whom the film “Seventeen Moments of Spring” was created, that he met with the author of the book and script about Stirlitz Julian Semenov, and although this film is feature film, in its main character features and the work of Chernyak, whose activities were strictly classified almost until the death of the hero, are revealed.

In the role of Stirlitz, Vyacheslav Tikhonov, beloved by the people.

Pushkin was right, who wrote about Russian people: they know how to love only the dead. Shtirlitsa was loved as a great legend, opposed to the British James Bond. And who will love Yankel Chernyak?

When there was a movie about Stirlitz, the cities seemed to die out. Police officers testified that in those evenings no crimes were committed - everyone was sitting at the TVs.

I do not consider myself to be fans of the work of Julian Semenov (his real name is Lyandres). But the film according to his book was really talented, and the director of Tatyana Mikhailovna Lioznova and a whole galaxy of wonderful artists - Vyacheslav Tikhonov, Efim Kopelyan (he didn’t appear on the screen, only his unique voice sounded), Leonid Bronevoy, Rostislav Plyatt .. By the way, all the creators of the film were awarded, and Vyacheslav Tikhonov, on the instructions of Brezhnev, was awarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor. How: Stirlitz is not a hero ?!

And the prototype at that time vegetated in complete obscurity. He worked as a translator. By the way, Julian Semenov was also not awarded anything. He was very upset about this. But there was an extensive literature about Maxim Maximovich Isaev .. He is Vsevolod Vladimirovich Vladimirov, aka Max Otto von Stirlitz. This is all the character of myths and fairy tales about the scouts of Julian Semenov - detectives “Diamonds for the dictatorship of the proletariat”, “Expansion-2”, “TASS authorized to declare”, “Major Whirlwind”, “Ordered to survive” and other detective, excuse me, crap, thirteen stories and one story whose main character is Stirlitz. Half of them are filmed. Shchekopery from literature even deduced Shtirlits's pedigree: father - Russian, mother - Ukrainian, grandfather - Ostap Prokopchuk, uncle - Taras Prokopchuk, cousin - Ganna Tarasovna, naturally, Prokopchuk. He even had a son, Alexander, and the wife of Alexander Gavrilin. Here's what a true Aryan looked like: his character is Nordic, persistent, his relations with his workmates are good, impeccably fulfills his official duty, merciless to the enemies of the Reich, an employee of the SS brigadenfuhrer Walter Schellenberg, Standartenfuhrer SS von Stirlitz. Athlete, tennis champion of Berlin. He still excelled in the battles near Stalingrad, showed himself in Spain under enemy shelling. And although the SS brigadefuhrer Heinrich Müller (Leonid Broneva played his role perfectly) in April1945 nevertheless exposed him, Stirlitz turned around - at that time it was not up to him. Having completed the personal task of Comrade Stalin, caressed by the Führer himself, who patted him on the cheek, he deftly frustrated Heinrich Himmler’s separate negotiations with the Western intelligence services and went off somewhere to Argentina, like some Eichmann.

Still, simple-minded readers believed in this nonsense. They did not know that any fiction about the activities of Soviet intelligence could come out only with the approval of the all-powerful Office, otherwise the book would not have passed through Glavlit (censorship): the methods of intelligence could be revealed in fiction. Therefore, it was necessary to endorse even fiction. And one more condition - certainly written and shot should cause patriotism. Like these days.

However, the KGB had nothing to do with the real Stirlitz. He was a military intelligence officer. And this is not the KGB, but the GRU. But what really happened?

Yankel Pinhusovoch Chernyak was a resident of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff of the Red Army. He alone did as much for the Victory as all the Soviet spies, the whole Comintern with their agents, the KGB residents, whom the Gestapo and Abwehr had successfully calculated, could not do. (A-201 top-secret agent Willy Lehman, who worked in the Gestapo on instructions from the KGB, was exposed and secretly shot back in 1942). And Yankel Chernyak worked for a long time. And the Motherland, of course, thanked him with dignity: she buried him with military honors.

In books and films about reconnaissance heroes, little of the historical truth. In one of the rare interviews, Yan Petrovich Chernyak said about himself as follows:

- I did not violate the requirements of conspiracy. I always remembered how the meeting with counterintelligence could end for me, and therefore did not visit brothels, sports competitions, theaters, where raids and document checks were often held, did not violate local laws so as not to attract any attention to me. This is what his assistants taught. But? among other things, the scout still needs ordinary luck. I was lucky. "

- Chernyak was so classified that when he began to receive a meager pension from 1969, not a single photograph remained: the appearance of a scout (spy) becomes known only in two cases - if he failed or was betrayed, or after death. They are even buried under the surnames of others. Let us take as a basis the image of Stirlitz, which was talentedly played by Vyacheslav Tikhonov. And the jokes that tumbled into the people after this film. They did not need to be invented, they are from the script:

- You know too much: you will be buried with honors after a car accident;
- And you, Stirlitz, stay ...
- A small lie gives rise to great distrust;
- Parhaty Bolshevik Cossacks;
- Now no one can be trusted. Even myself. I can!
- What two know, the pig knows;
“Clarity is a form of complete fog.”

Let us go through the fate of a bright person and forget about what is piled up in a popular film. Yankel Chernyak also watched this film, in which his fate was allegedly told and shown, and spoke of him like this: "Absolute fantasy." Let this movie remain artistic, and we will go through the realities.

How it was

Yankel Pinhusovich Chernyak was born in 1909 in Chernivtsi. This city, like the whole of Bukovina, was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which broke up as a result of the First World War. At that terrible time, his entire large family perished from the pogroms. He was left completely alone. He was brought up in an orphanage. He studied very well. He also mastered German, Romanian, Hungarian, English, Spanish, Czech and French at school. By the age of 20, he spoke them without any emphasis. He studied at the Prague Technical School, where he was the best student. Then he worked at an electrical plant. When the economic crisis erupted, he lost his job and decided to continue his education at the Berlin Polytechnic College, where he received an engineering degree. In 1930 he joined the German Communist Party. He was a convinced communist and firmly believed in Marxist-Leninist ideas. Then he was recruited by Soviet intelligence, which worked under the guise of the Comintern.

Drafted into the army, he became the clerk of the artillery regiment with the rank of sergeant. This regiment was in Romania, and Yankel had access to classified documents, the contents of which immediately became the property of Soviet military intelligence. He conveyed information about all weapons systems of the European armies. Since 1934 he headed the Soviet residency in Romania. And soon he “fell under the hood”: a traitor was wound up. It was decided to hastily evacuate Chernyak to Moscow. Here he studied at the intelligence school for a year under the guidance of A.Kh. Artuzov, who was appointed by Stalin the deputy chief of the Fourth (intelligence) Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army. Long conversations had with him the chief of intelligence of the Red Army army commissar of the second rank, Jan Berzin. A year of intensive study of espionage and skill, meetings with agents of the Comintern, who worked throughout Europe. It was in the intelligence school that Yankel Chernyak mastered the Russian language, which he did not know before.

At the end of 1936 he was appointed TASS correspondent in Switzerland. And as a scout, he has the operational pseudonym "Jen." He recruited his agents in Switzerland and Germany personally. Subsequently, Hitler’s counterintelligence failed to reveal a single agent from the Krona group, which worked under the leadership of Chernyak. The names of only two out of 35 are declassified today. This is the artist Olga Chekhova and Goebbels lover Marika Ryokk. Remember the trophy movie "Girl of My Dreams"? So, Marika Ryokk played in him the role of the main character, the very girl who was not a sin to dream about. These Goebbels darlings obtained information of exceptional importance. The rest could not be revealed even to the author of the book "Declassified Fates" by Alexander Averbukh, who specializes in the search for scouts. Only their positions in the hierarchy of the Third Reich are known: secretary of the Reich Minister, officers of the Abwehr, Wehrmacht, Gestapo, officer directly working at Hitler’s Headquarters, head of the research department of the aircraft building company, large banker, senior officer of the General Staff, daughter of the head of a large tank design bureau - people who revolved in the upper circles of the Reich and obtained information of exceptional importance, which was personally reported to Stalin. Only 35 agents. Their names are still classified, since they worked for the USSR after the war in Germany, USA, Italy ...

On June 12, 1941, even before the messages of Richard Sorge and Leopold Trepper, Chernyak handed over to Moscow the secret order of the Commander-in-Chief of the German Ground Forces on the timing, goals and signals of the invasion of the USSR, on the launch of the Barbarossa plan. Stalin did not believe and ordered these intelligence to be sent away.

Krona has been working in Germany for 11 years. And if about the “Red Chapel” of Trepper-Gurevich and the “Red Three” of Sandor Rado, German counterintelligence found out everything and eliminated the “Chapel” back in 1942, and the “Three” in 1944, then she could only guess from the work of Krone from radiograms that could not be decrypted. In Moscow, Chernyak learned about the German air defense system, anti-submarine defense, about the latest aircraft construction systems, communication devices, the state of the defense industry, and about FAU-1. About Hitler's Allies.
Remember, the film “Seventeen Moments of Spring” shows how Stirlitz relaxes in his mansion on the outskirts of Berlin and sips Armenian cognac. He did not have a mansion. He never lived permanently in one place. And did not drink. I spent the night with friends and rarely twice in the same place. And he didn’t visit Berlin often, either in Switzerland, then in Paris, or somewhere else in Europe.

Yankel Pinhusovich possessed exceptional abilities. From the first reading, he memorized word for word of 10 pages of text in any of the seven languages and the arrangement of seventy objects in the room - at a glance. Not only that - he possessed the gift of a hypnotist and with high accuracy could unravel the intentions of the interlocutor, he predicted events like Wolf Messing. In addition, he was not the tennis champion of Berlin, as stated in the film, but was considered a master of hand-to-hand combat, although he participated in competitions only in his youth. . And his hands were golden. He could make presses and stamps from improvised means, he could fake any handwriting. Nobody could decipher his reports, because if microfilms fell into the wrong hands, they would immediately be lit. He made himself several passports, including an Australian one. And never his documents were in doubt at the border crossing. And he had to ride a lot. He traveled under the guise of a lecturer-engineer, telling about the achievements of engineering, or a salesman, and in each country he kept himself so as not to attract attention. He changed names and legends, stayed not in hotels, but with reliable people. He managed to compile a list of accounts in various banks in Europe, on which lay the assets of employees of the German special services and the Nazi party bosses. He bribed small officials, as bribes in Russia are now bribed - with bribes and gifts.

Intelligent intelligence is more than a division

Intelligence has existed since ancient times. Each state has it. The intelligence officer’s task is to obtain classified information of military, economic and political importance, in other words, technological secrets that the hostile state possesses. This was what Yankel Chernyak was doing, but since he was still a well-educated engineer, he could analyze the information obtained and deliver the most important thing to the Center.

And what was the main achievement in his work?

- The fact that none of the agents of Krona, acting not only in Germany, but throughout Europe, was not revealed and caught. Moscow received a top secret plan for Barbarossa and accurate information on the dates of its implementation.

- Chernyak actually saved Moscow from Hitler's aviation: he managed to steal documentation for the production of radars and even deliver a sample of such a radar.

- Iconoscopes - that was the name of the first radars. Moscow received the technology and method of their production. Here is how the academician, vice admiral, creator of Soviet radio electronics, deputy defense minister Axel Berg evaluated this work: “Your materials meet the urgent needs of our institutes, they help in the development of new, ultra-sensitive television transmitters. Your information helps us save literally millions of foreign currency rubles. ”

During the war, Moscow received data on German reserves of nickel, tungsten, tin, the number of combat aircraft and the routes of their transfer to the front. Information came from Chernyak about additives to steel alloys, from which the Germans made gun barrels. He sent tactical and technical data about the Tiger tank and the Panther self-propelled gun.

Chernyak also obtained a complete plan of the Germans' operation on the Kursk ledge, which made it possible to take measures and still win at the cost of heavy losses. Do not be in the hands of the Stalinist command of this plan, everything in the war could have ended not so.

Without morse code and radio operator Kat

Remember in the film the radio operator Kat, who transmitted the Stirlitz encryption? Beautiful, fantastic, but funny. During the war, the main problem is communication. In one of the army regulations, I remember the phrase: “Communication is the nerve of battle”. So, the radio operator Kat could not solve this problem in any way: scientific and technical information is not encrypted and transmitted by telegraphic key - these are tens and hundreds of sheets of technical text, diagrams, drawings, samples. How did the Yankel pass them? With the help of cakes. Academician Berg wrote a report to the GRU on July 11, 1944: "The materials received from you on 1,082 sheets and 26 samples should be considered a major and valuable help to the cause." December 30, 1944: “I received from you 475 foreign written materials and 102 samples of equipment. The selection of materials has been done so skillfully that leaves nothing to be desired. ” A little later: “I received from you 811 foreign information materials, including 96 drawings, descriptions and instructions of the latest radar tools. The Radar Council of the State Committee of Defense is ready to support the presentation of your employees to government awards and bonuses. ”

A few words about Academician Axel Berg: even in imperial times, he was the commander of a submarine. In 1937, a professor at the Naval Academy, Berg, was arrested for "anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation." He spent three years in the Kolyma camps. On the eve of the war, he was released and rehabilitated, appointed head of the Radar Council of the State Defense Committee, whose leader was Stalin. He was an intellectual of the old sourdough, the largest specialist in radar, he was called the "father of the Soviet radar." And evaluating the activities of a scout by such a specialist is expensive.

Altogether Chernyak transferred 12,500 sheets of technical documentation, 102 samples of equipment, documents related to radar, the electronics industry, ship and aircraft weapons, and metallurgy. And Yankel Pinhusovich Chernyak was then introduced to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. But Stalin did not sign this submission. The war is not over yet.
Do you remember the last shots of “Seventeen Moments of Spring”? Stirlitz returns to Berlin and travels into the foggy distance. This distance was indeed very foggy. From Switzerland he moves to London.

Nuclear project

And there, in London, he is trying to reveal the secrets of the English nuclear project, on which Britain worked in parallel with the Americans. But how to get this out? And he found a way to the employee of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, Secretary of the British and Cambridge branches of the National Executive Committee of the Association of British Scientists, Professor Allan Nunn May. The professor worked in the British nuclear program The Elloys and was friendly with another scientist recruited by Soviet intelligence, Donald McLean, who had the operational name Homer. Jan Chernyak recruited May, who received the nickname "Alec." He handed over to Chernyak documents on the main directions of nuclear research in England, in particular, at the Cambridge laboratory. These were drawings of a uranium boiler and a description of the principles of its operation - 130 sheets of top-secret documentation. Later, Professor Allan Nunn May mentioned it this way: “This whole story caused me great pain, and I did it only because I considered it my feasible contribution to the security of mankind.”

At the end of the war, Mei was transferred to the Montreal Laboratory of the National Research Council of Canada. She worked for the US Manhattan nuclear project. Just at that time, the American military attaché, Colonel Nikolai Zabotin, was exposed as a spy by American counterintelligence. Zabotin was expelled from Canada with shame. The Kremlin even had to apologize “for the diplomat’s personal initiative.” But this was far from a personal initiative. Here is Jan Chernyak and replaced Nikolai Zabotin, heading the Soviet residency in the USA and Canada.

He created new sources of information and soon sent to Moscow a Fermi report, a list of nuclear research facilities in the USA and Canada, as well as samples of uranium-235 received from Professor May. They were sealed in a candy wrapper in the form of oxide on a platinum foil. Only 162 milligrams.

Chernyak's group worked successfully. But it was betrayed by a traitor. It turned out to be a cryptographer Igor Guzenko, who worked at the Soviet embassy in Canada. He asked the Canadians for political asylum and came to them not empty-handed, but taking secret documents. The names of 19 Soviet agents became known to Canadian counterintelligence. Nine of them were arrested and convicted. The intelligence team working on the atomic project was bloodless. But the traitor Guzenko did not know the name of the group leader. The British Scotland Yard and the MI-5 intelligence service took up the matter. They figured out the identity of Alec, and soon Professor May was arrested. During the investigation and trial, he admitted that he was recruited by Moscow. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but was soon released for good behavior, after which he moved to Ghana, where he became a professor of physics at a local university. He was arrested and a valuable agent of the GRU "Mulat" - Zalman Litvin, who worked as a professor at the University of Southern California.

Moscow decided to withdraw Jan Chernyak and his entire team from the game. For this, a Soviet warship went on a goodwill visit to the American port. At night, he took on board nine people dressed in the uniform of sailors, pretty out on a walk in the nightclubs of New York. They were delivered to Sevastopol. So Yankel Pinhusovich Chernyak ended up in the USSR. Occasionally he was involved in operational work, and then he was “forgotten” for a long time. Almost forever.

Gratitude of the Motherland

He was lucky. It could be worse. My uncle, the mother’s brother, was not at all lucky. He was an employee of the Comintern, that is, a scout in the Netherlands and Belgium. When Stalin was informed that the war would begin on June 22, 1941, he said to the chief of intelligence of the General Staff: "Send your scouts to w ..". My uncle Boris was urgently recalled and shot two days before the start of the war as a “traitor to the motherland”. It was impossible to talk about him in the house, there were not even photos left. Were afraid. There were two suits left from him, which my mother didn’t sell or exchange during the hungry times. I wore them in my student years - beautiful jackets with a sparkle, and in my upper pocket there was such a cool mirror, swaddled in a beautiful rag of very soft fabric. I was in this cliff like a real dude. Mom said: "How do you look like Borka - a real diplomat!".

But the famous "Kent" - Anatoly Markovich Gurevich, about whom dozens of books were published in the West and hundreds of articles were written, were much less fortunate. They did not know anything about him at home. And he was rehabilitated only in 1991. The son of a Kharkov pharmacist, having learned the language of Cervantes, was "promoted" to lieutenant of the Spanish fleet and sent to Belgium with phony documents, which even contained spelling errors, which caused serious punctures. He gave the taxi driver the address of the hotel, and it turned out to be a brothel. I had to get out on my own: he turned into a rich Uruguayan Vincent Sierro, attended a dance school. The leader of the intelligence group was Leopold Trepper, who led the Red Chapel before the Nazis occupied Belgium. Trepper had to urgently leave Brussels, because he had a pronounced Jewish appearance, and the “Chapel” was headed by Anatoly Gurevich - “Kent”. He met and charmed the blonde millionaire Margaret from the Singer family. They had lavish parties, which were attended by people of high society and German officers. Gurevich created the successful commercial company Simesco with millions of revenues, which received orders from the German army - to produce one and a half million aluminum spoons and special fabrics so that it would be comfortable for soldiers in Africa. So Gurevich calculated the number of prisoners captured in the first days (spoons were intended for them), and that Rommel’s operation was being prepared in Africa. In 1942, he informed the Center about the plans of the Nazis to seize the oil-producing regions of the Caucasus. The Red Army regrouped and closed the Caucasus. "Kent" was declared personal thanks to Stalin.

The Red Chapel is not just a reconnaissance group, it is a huge spy network that was thrown over Europe and spanned it from Spain to Norway. My uncle Boris worked in it. She acted until 1942: the Gestapo arrested "Kent" -Gurevich and Margaret. He was personally questioned by the head of the Gestapo Mueller. He was not tortured, not beaten. Kent was invited to participate in a radio game, and he agreed, because he knew how to report that his encryption was under control. But the Chekists were so unprofessional that they did not even notice the conditional signals. Gurevich did not extradite anyone; the Gestapo did not even know his real name. In 1946 he flew to Moscow, and it seemed to him that the plane was flying too slowly. He was taken from the airport to the Soviet Gestapo - to SMERSH. It was there that he received in full both torture, and bullying, and humiliation. Anatoly Markovich Gurevich - “Kent” was tortured for 16 months. The head of SMERSHA General Abakumov also participated in torture and interrogations. A special meeting at the Ministry of State Security of the USSR “for treason” sentenced Gurevich to 20 years in prison. He spent more time in Vorkuta and Mordovia camps than he worked "in the cold." And all his life, slandered and enriched, he was considered a traitor, which was the worst of all. He was released and was acquitted only in 1991. He lived in a St. Petersburg slum, and spent a miserable pension mainly on drugs. He died in January 2009 at the age of 96, and in 2003, his son Margaret, Michel Barga, died in Spain. And few knew that the famous "Kent", Vincent Sierra, Antonio Gonzalez - this is Anatoly Markovich Gurevich.

It is amazing that Leo Manevich, Yankel Chernyak, Leopold Trepper, Sandor Rado, Anatoly Gurevich, the collective image of which was embodied in the mythical Stirlitz - these distinguished Jews in all respects - worked for the Stalinist anti-Semitic regime and in fact gave their bright lives to him. Why? Because smart people make mistakes no less than fools. Lev Manevich - “Colonel Starostin” - managed to transmit information from the death camp to the Center and died on May 9, 1945. Anatoly Gurevich spent most of his life in the Gulag, Leopold Trepper also served his life and after rehabilitation ended up in Poland, then in France, and ultimately in Israel. Sandor Rado lived in Budapest.

The motherland generously fed all of us with birch porridge, and its heroes remained in prison longer than thieves and murderers. Such is sel-aviv, as one very smart friend of mine used to say.

Source: [DLMURL] https://isralove.org/load/13-1-0-29 [/ DLMURL]

 

[Плотников Юрий Михайлович]

Thanks, informative!

 

[secrets]

Cool article! Thank!

 

[Матушкин Андрей Николаевич]

Very interesting!
THANK!!!

 

[Хагани]

thank you very much .. interesting ...

 

[Николай Николаевич]

Really curious!