“I won’t forget how they beat her.” Stories of female intelligence officers who died during the war

Soviet foreign intelligence agent Margarita Konenkova lived in the United States from 1924 to 1945. She was a beauty and Albert Einstein admired her. Taking advantage of the special favor of the scientist, whom she met in 1935 in New York, she skillfully used this location to contact Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of the American atomic bomb

An exhibition dedicated to women employees of the Russian state security agencies opened in the Northern capital at the Gorokhovaya 2 branch of the State Museum of Political History of Russia.

“The 19th – early 20th centuries were a time of rapid development and complexity of social relations in the Russian Empire,” museum director Lyudmila Mikhailova told an NG correspondent. – This led to the formation of a system of political control. During this period, the Third Department of His Imperial Majesty's own Chancellery, a separate corps of gendarmes, the police department and its units, etc. were created. One of the most important means of political police is the use of secret agents in social and revolutionary movements. The emergence of parties, trade unions, and various public associations led to an increase and intensification of agent activity. At the beginning of the twentieth century, surveillance agents appeared. Studying archival materials related to the history of state security agencies, no matter what they are called: the Third Department, the Cheka or the KGB, we certainly come across the names of extraordinary women.”

The exhibition “Sepaulettes of a Chekist on Women's Shoulders” introduces the fates of thirty female intelligence officers, whose lives are worthy of being described in detective stories and romance novels. Women were helped to reach certain heights in intelligence by such qualities as charm, unconventional logic, cunning and a penchant for intrigue. The creators of the exhibition consider Princess Dorothea Lieven, the sister of the famous chief of gendarmes Alexander Benckendorff, to be one of the first Russian ladies to become famous in this field. She was educated at the Smolny Institute, was a maid of honor to Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna, who became the wife of Paul I. She married the Minister of War, Count Christopher Lieven and was in close relations with the reigning family. In 1809, Christopher Lieven was ambassador to Berlin, and in 1812 - to London. There his wife began her intelligence career.

The princess opened a brilliant social salon in London, then, after the death of her husband, in Paris, where politicians and diplomats of interest to the Russian state visited. Dorothea Lieven had a constant correspondence on Russian foreign policy issues with Count Karl Nesselrode, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It is known that the data collected by agent Lieven helped Emperor Alexander I correctly formulate the Russian position at the Congress of Vienna in 1814.

Dorothea's life resembles a fascinating adventure novel, and, involuntarily drawing an analogy with the fates of the heroines of Ian Fleming and Graham Greene, you understand: indeed, when women undress, men tell everything. Dorothea Lieven was not distinguished by classical beauty, but her sharp mind and some kind of magical “charm” attracted men. For ten years, Princess Lieven was the mistress of Clemens Metternich, Foreign Minister and de facto head of the Austrian government. And all this time, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Imperial Court received the most valuable information from Dorothea. The secret Lieven-Metternich channel - as a rule, encrypted messages enclosed in as many as four envelopes - was controlled not only by the minister, but also by Tsar Alexander himself, who discussed foreign policy issues with the countess and personally instructed her. Then, on behalf of the sovereign, he had to forget Metternich and start a new romance - now with the British Foreign Minister George Canning, a key figure in the political arena of the early 19th century. The romance dragged on for a decade. And Dorothea’s “swan song” was Francois Guizot, the Prime Minister of France.

“Dorothea Lieven became an agent solely out of a sense of patriotism,” says Lyudmila Mikhailova. “She had more than enough money and jewelry. The princess did not need anything. Being an ambitious woman, Dorothea Lieven sought to make her own contribution to strengthening Russia’s position on the world stage.”

Soviet foreign intelligence agent Margarita Konenkova lived in the United States from 1924 to 1945. She was a beauty and Albert Einstein admired her. Taking advantage of the special favor of the scientist, whom she met in 1935 in New York, she skillfully used this location to contact Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of the American atomic bomb. The agent managed to charm not only Einstein, but also Oppenheimer’s inner circle, which included prominent US nuclear scientists. Konenkova died in Moscow in 1980 at the age of 84.

Zoya Voskresenskaya (Rybkina) - colonel, foreign intelligence officer, honored employee of the NKVD - carried out intelligence missions in Harbin, Germany, Istanbul, Finland. The history of our intelligence included her dance with the German Ambassador to the USSR, Count Werner von Schulenburg. In May 1941, Zoya Voskresenskaya attended a reception with the ambassador in honor of the Berlin Opera ballet dancers who were then touring in Moscow. She danced a waltz with Count Schulenburg. While dancing with the ambassador, Zoya Voskresenskaya noticed that on the walls of the rooms adjacent to the hall, light square stains were visible, apparently from removed paintings. Opposite the slightly open door were piles of suitcases. The intelligence officer was also concerned about other subtle details noted in her conversation with German diplomats. The young woman concluded that the evening, so carefully planned by the German embassy, ​​was started as a diversion to refute rumors of a war allegedly being prepared against the USSR and to demonstrate commitment to the Non-Aggression Pact of 1939. This was reported to the leadership of Soviet intelligence a few hours later.

During the Second World War, Zoya Voskresenskaya was involved in the selection and deployment of reconnaissance and sabotage groups behind enemy lines; she is one of the creators of the first partisan detachment. She became the author of a unique invention for transmitting secret information. One day Zoya Voskresenskaya took a piece of the finest white chiffon and glued the ends of the airy material to a sheet of paper, inserted this combined layer into a typewriter and typed a code on it, the procedure for using it and the operating conditions of the radio station. Then I cut pieces of chiffon and removed it from the paper. The printed text turned out to be completely invisible - it could only be read by laying the chiffon on a white sheet of paper. Then the woman bought two exactly identical ties, ripped open one of them and cut out from its inside a piece of flannel that fits the neck. It was this that she replaced with chiffon folded eight times with text printed on a typewriter.

Among the exhibits are photographs, documents, samples of uniforms and such rare things as the dress of a wartime cryptographer or letters from “prevention” students of the 60s, when “prevention” was one of the methods of combating dissidents. The authors of the exhibition avoid political assessments and do not seek to evaluate the system.

“The security agencies, no matter what they were called - the Third Section, the Cheka or the FSB - ensured the stability and security of the state and, first of all, collected information so that the emperor, the Central Committee or the president could understand how to regulate the socio-economic processes occurring in the country ,” Lyudmila Mikhailova told an NG correspondent. “Political control exists in every state; it is impossible to do without it.”

Intelligence officers and GRU residents Kochik Valery

Women - scouts

Women - scouts

On March 8, 1929, the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper wrote: “The woman rendered a great service to the Red Army in the intelligence service, delivering information about the enemy and maintaining communications across the enemy front. Many women have laid down their courage in this hard work.”

Simultaneously with Dmitry Kiselev and Boris Melnikov, Vera Berdnikova and Zoya Mosina worked in Siberia and China, associated with the Registration, later the Intelligence Department of the 5th Army and the Intelligence Department of the NRA of the Far Eastern Republic.

Vera Vasilievna was born in 1901. She studied at a women's gymnasium in Novonikolaevsk (Novosibirsk), studied revolutionary literature. In 1917, under the influence of her older sister Augustine, she dropped out of school and joined the Bolsheviks. On behalf of the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies, she worked in the village of New Kayak, opening a Sunday school and a reading hut there. To the best of her ability, she provided medical assistance to the residents (before the trip, Vera completed a two-week paramedic course).

In December 1917, Berdnikova was accepted into the RSDLP (b), and in 1918 she was already working underground, organizing medical care for prisoners in White Guard prisons. In September 1918 - December 1919, after the arrest of the Whites by counterintelligence, Vera herself was imprisoned in Novonikolaevsk and Tomsk. She was released from prison by units of the Red Army and returned home. She worked in the Novonikolaevsk city committee of the RCP (b), in charge of public education.

In 1920, Vera Brednikova began working in military intelligence. The presentation for the award describes in detail Vera Vasilievna’s first steps in her new career.

“In September 1920, Comrade Vera BERDNIKOVA was sent by the party committee to the disposal of the Register Department of the 5th Red Banner Army in Irkutsk. The head of the Register Department of Comrade LIPIS (Ezeretis) gave her the task of crossing the front of Ataman Semenov’s troops, getting into the city of Chita, the residence of the Headquarters of the Semenov Army, establishing contact with the Chita Military Radio Station, recruiting one of its employees and connecting the Radio Station with the Register Department of the 5th Army , in order for the latter to obtain the necessary information directly from Chita.

In early September. 1920, equipped with a code and belts in which the royal money was sewn, Comrade BERDNIKOVA moved to the front of the People's Revolutionary Army, which was located behind the station. "Mozgon" Trans-Baikal railway. roads.

To the station “Sokholda”, located in the neutral zone (frontier), Comrade BERDNIKOVA reached on horseback, from there at dawn she moved on foot through the forest and hills in the direction of the city of Chita, along the path indicated to her by a peasant who sympathized with the Soviet power. Not knowing the area at all, when she first came to Transbaikalia, Comrade BERDNIKOVA had to walk close to the railroad line. On the way to the station Yablonova, she came across Buryats - shepherds, well-known supporters of Ataman Semenov. The Buryats immediately caught up with her, surrounded her and began to inquire where she was going and why. At this time, a cart with a Cossack and his family, returning from the forest, drove out of the forest. I had to come up with a version about being late for the train at one of the stations and returning back to Chita, stopping a Cossack with a request for a ride, just to escape from the Buryats, whom it was not possible to convince of anything. Without talking, they would have taken him to the first military unit, where during a search money, etc., would have been discovered.

The Cossack believed this version and took him to the village of Yablonovaya. Still afraid of suspicion and surveillance, Comrade BERDNIKOVA had to go further into the hills and spend part of the night there, without lighting a fire. However, the cold drove him out of the forest and forced him to go. In the darkness she again reached the railway line. The noise of the approaching train forced her to hide and it was just in time, because... the train coming towards us turned out to be a Semyonov armored car, known as the dungeon of the Semyonov counter-intelligence. Late at night, exhausted from a long walk, she reached the station. “Kuka”, where a woman was indicated to her - a peasant woman, an acquaintance of the peasant who from Art. “Sokholda” showed Comrade Vera BERDNIKOVA the way to Chita. With great difficulty, we managed to persuade this peasant woman to let her spend the night at such an alarming and late time. With the help of her contacts, I managed to get a job in the morning on an empty car leaving for Chita. One of the conductors accompanying this train was very suspicious of one woman’s trip at such an alarming time and began asking where, why and to whom she was going. The answers given to him still did not quell his suspicions.

When in the car where Comrade BERDNIKOVA was traveling, at the station. Chernovskaya (where the Cossack detachment was located) several Cossacks burst in and demanded to see documents, this conductor appeared and began to express his assumptions. The moment was decisive. Only self-control could maintain external calm, get rid of the conductor and, by playing a simple peasant woman, elude the Cossack suspicions that the conductor had sowed in them.

The underground party committee that existed in Chita was terrorized by the arrests that had just taken place. With great difficulty we managed to establish a connection with him and get one comrade to help.

Living in an illegal situation, Comrade BERDNIKOVA began work on the assignment given to her. Under the conditions of the regime created by Semenovskaya counter-intelligence, exposed to hourly danger, Comrade BERDNIKOVA completed the task given to her.”

It should be added that Vera Vasilievna stayed in Chita for three weeks.

Then new tasks followed. “During 1921, 1922 to 1923 - January until the moment of demobilization, Comrade BERDNIKOVA carried out a number of important secret assignments of the Intelligence Department in the CER exclusion zone.” In Manchuria, she passed herself off as the daughter of wealthy parents who emigrated from Russia. But even there she was almost captured by counterintelligence. This is not a rare case in intelligence - she was recognized by an acquaintance from her previous life. Nevertheless, her work was apparently quite successful, since the former chief of staff of the NRA DDA B.M. Feldman, the former heads of the Intelligence Department of the NRA DDA, and then the 5th Army S.S. Zaslavsky and A. spoke in favor of awarding Vera Vasilievna. K. Randmer, Head of the Intelligence Department of the Red Army Headquarters Y. K. Berzin (RGVA. F.37837. Op.1. D.1014. L.2-4ob.). On February 23, 1928, V.V. Berdnikova was awarded the Order of the Red Banner “for military distinctions and services rendered during the Civil War.”

Later, Vera Vasilyevna completed courses for political education of workers, and worked in the very outback of Siberia in public education authorities. In Chita, she met Mark Pavlovich Shneiderman, a participant in the civil war in Siberia and the Far East, an employee of the political department of the very 5th Army, where she was also listed in the intelligence department. When they met, Shneiderman was the head of the propaganda department of the Political Directorate of the Siberian Military District. They soon got married and moved to Leningrad, where Mark Pavlovich was transferred to work as a teacher at the Naval Academy. And Vera Vasilievna graduated from the Leningrad Oriental Institute and became a historian and economist.

In 1934, she and her husband were invited to work at the Intelligence Department of the Red Army Headquarters; a year later they graduated from the Intelligence Department School and entered the service of the Directorate. Perhaps Brednikova worked with her husband, who visited Europe, Japan, China, and the USA. But this is not known for sure. In 1936, she was awarded the military rank of captain, and he was given the rank of brigade commissar (After approximately 1940, this corresponded to the rank of colonel; sometimes brigade commissars were awarded the rank of major general.).

In November 1937, Mark Pavlovich was recalled from abroad and arrested on December 15. From December 1937 to September 1938, he was in Butyrka prison, and then he was released due to the “lack of evidence of guilt.” In April of the same year, Vera Vasilievna was transferred to the reserve of the Red Army.

Shneiderman was arrested for the second time in the spring of 1939. At a special meeting of the NKVD of the USSR, he was sentenced to 8 years in prison. He served time in Kolyma, first in general work, then as a paramedic. Released in 1947. Mark Pavlovich was rehabilitated on December 22, 1956, posthumously. He died on May 17, 1948 in the village of Tomilino, where he and Vera Vasilievna lived.

Times changed and in 1967, Vera Vasilievna Berdnikova, a veteran of the party and military intelligence, was awarded the Order of Lenin. She died in 1996.

Much less is known about Zoya Vasilievna Mosina.

She was born in 1898. She graduated from 8 classes of gymnasium and 2 years of medical faculty. She was accepted as a member of the RSDLP(b) in 1917, like Berdnikova. Since July 1918, Mosina served in the Red Army, which she joined voluntarily in Irkutsk. She served as a nurse at the front for 8 months, was wounded and captured by the White Czechs. Then she worked in the Siberian party underground.

In 1920, Zoya Vasilievna was sent by the Register Department of the 5th Army to China for intelligence work, where she worked until 1921. Then she served in the central apparatus of the Intelligence Department of the Red Army Headquarters - as secretary to the head of the 2nd (agent) department and as a translator for the press bureau of the Information Department. From April 1922 she worked in public education in Irkutsk, and in August 1924 she graduated from the eastern department of the Military Academy of the Red Army and was assigned to the NKID. After the internship, Mosina was sent in the fall of 1924 to the disposal of the USSR Embassy in China.

Among the Soviet military advisers in China was Maria (Mirra) Filippovna Flerova (by her husband Sakhnovskaya), who worked there under the name Maria Chubareva. She was born in Vilno (Vilnius) in 1897. In January 1918, she was accepted as a member of the RCP(b), and in March, when the Germans were advancing on Petrograd, she voluntarily joined the Red Army. At the front she was a nurse and a fighter.

From April 1918 to January 1919 she was in civilian work, and then returned to the Red Army. She was the military commissar of a machine gun company in a special group of troops in the Yekaterinoslav direction led by P.E. Dybenko, military commissar of a separate battalion and assistant military commissar of the 7th Sumy Regiment of the 2nd Ukrainian Division.

The division fought with the Petliurists, liberated Kharkov, then liberated Poltava, Lebedin, Akhtyrka, Kremenchug, Uman, and fought in the Korosten and Zhytomyr directions.

As part of the 2nd Plastun (132nd) brigade of the 44th division, Flerova fought against Denikin’s troops, participated in the liberation of Chernigov and Nezhin, Kyiv, Bila Tserkva, Vasilkov, Uman, Vinnitsa. In 1920, part of the division fought with Polish troops in the area of ​​​​the cities of Mozyr, Korosten, Ovruch, and Kyiv.

In June 1920, Flerova went to serve in the 1st Cavalry Army, - commissar of the field medical unit, then military commissar of the army's automobile administration, and manager of the RVS of the 1st Cavalry. In July - August, Flerova took part in the battle near the city of Lvov, which could not be taken; she was surrounded in the Zamosc region, where the army broke through the front and left the encirclement on August 31. In October - November she took part in the battles during the capture of Crimea.

In March 1921, Maria Filippovna was present as a guest at the 10th Party Congress when the Kronstadt rebellion broke out. Together with other delegates of the congress, she arrived in Petrograd and was appointed commissioner at the medical unit of the Southern Group of Forces. On March 23, Mirra Flerova was awarded the Order of the Red Banner among those who “participating in the assault on the forts and the Kronstadt Fortress, inspired the Red fighters with personal courage and example.”

In the same year, the headquarters of the North Caucasus Military District sent her to the Military Academy of the Red Army, where she studied with her husband Rafail Natanovich Sakhnovsky. Both successfully graduated from the main department of the academy in July 1924. He receives an appointment to the troops - assistant chief of staff of the 45th division, and she is sent to the post of assistant department head of the Directorate of Military Educational Institutions of the Red Army.

However, they never began to fulfill these duties. The Sakhnovsky spouses were transferred to the disposal of the Intelligence Department of the Red Army Headquarters and from there they were sent to China as military advisers. They were part of the Guangzhou group and taught at the Whampoa military school. Mirra was also the chief of staff of the South China Group of Advisors, where she also dealt with intelligence issues. This is how V.V. Vishnyakova, a participant in those events, recalled her: “A man’s profession, the habit of wearing men’s clothing left an indelible imprint on her. She spoke in a low voice, smoked a lot, walked with long steps, the woman's dress fit her somehow, and it was clear that she was annoyed that she was forced to wear it. Upon returning to Moscow, she again returned to her usual tunic, riding breeches and boots, which, it must be admitted, suited her tall, lean figure much better. She had her hair cut into a brace and had voluminous curly hair of a golden hue. With her rare smile, it was clear that she was missing many teeth. In response to my question, she once told me that during the Civil War her teeth often hurt, and she had no time to treat them, so she simply pulled them out. Everyone who knew her at the front said that at that time she was remarkably pretty, but she treated with the greatest contempt everything that painted her as a woman. This was not uncommon then... Comrades good-naturedly made fun of Sakhnovskaya when, on the eve of maternity leave, in all the characteristic features of her position, she gave lectures at the Whampoa Academy, which, perhaps, really looked unusual, but the listeners saw in this only further evidence of women's equality in the Soviet Union. Sakhnovskaya was a very tender mother of two children. Only she had no time to express all her love to them...” (Vishnyakova - Akimova V.V. Two years in rebellious China, 1925-1927. M., 1980. P. 148.).

On June 8, 1926, the Sakhnovskys returned from China and were placed at the disposal of the IV Directorate of the Red Army Headquarters. However, already in October, R. N. Sakhnovsky was sent for an internship to the troops, as the chief of staff of the 43rd Infantry Division, as befits an academy graduate. In November 1927 - January 1928, he was again at the disposal of the Intelligence Department, and then was... dismissed on long-term leave “due to the impossibility of appropriate use.” First he worked in Moscow, then he was the head of the inspection under the head of the construction of the Baikal-Amur Railway in the city of Svobodny.

Maria Filippovna served as the head of the sector of the 2nd (intelligence) department, assistant to the head of the 4th (external relations) department, at the disposal of the IV Directorate of the Red Army Headquarters.

In December 1927, the personnel of the Intelligence Department, like other central departments, were checked by a top secret commission headed by Y. K. Berzin. The commission included representatives of both the Command Directorate and the Special Department of the OGPU. The Sakhnov Commission decided to replace it, noting that it was “expelled from the CPSU(b) in 1927.” and that she is “an ardent Trotskyist who did not dissociate herself even after the XV Party Congress” (RGVA. F.4. Op.2. D.282. L.39, 77.).

After that, she served on especially important assignments of the 1st category in the Scientific and Statutory Department of the Red Army Headquarters until December 1928, when she was arrested. A special meeting at the OGPU board sentenced Sakhnovskaya on January 5

On December 23, 1929, the JCO decision was overturned. Returning to Moscow, Sakhnovskaya commanded the educational department of the Evening Military-Technical Academy. On August 10, 1932, probably not without the assistance of Y. K. Berzin, she again began working in military intelligence. And she is entrusted with a very important task. She becomes the head of the unit in charge of “active” intelligence, i.e. reconnaissance and sabotage activities.

The future “god of sabotage” I. G. Starinov in June - August 1933 worked under her leadership and taught at military courses at the Executive Committee of the Comintern, which were headed by military intelligence officer Karol Swierchevsky. The courses were located in Moscow on Pyatnitskaya Street and at the Bakovka station near Moscow. Many years later, Starinov recalled: “... In the capital, I suddenly discovered that preparations for the future partisan struggle were not expanding, but were gradually being mothballed. Attempts to talk about this topic with Sakhnovskaya led nowhere. She put me down, declaring that the essence of the matter was now not in training partisan personnel, that there were already enough of them, but in the organizational consolidation of the work done (later I learned that she was more acutely worried about the shortcomings in our work than I was. All her proposals were rejected somewhere at the top ). There really have been a lot of unresolved organizational issues. But they were not resolved by our management. The future legendary hero of Republican Spain, Karol Świerczewski, reassured us: from above, they say, we know best. I also believed in this” (Starinov I.G. Notes of a saboteur. M., 1997. P.40-41.).

In the spring of 1933, Sakhanovsky was arrested in a fictitious case about the so-called “Counter-revolutionary Trotskyist group of Smirnov I.N. and others” and sentenced to 3 years in prison. In March 1934, Sakhnovskaya was placed at the disposal of the Main Directorate of the Red Army and assigned to the Moscow Proletarian Rifle Division. But in March - June 1935, Maria Filippovna again served in the Intelligence Service, then she was sent to Crimea, where she worked as the head of the sanatorium department of the Simferopol military hospital in Kichkine, the head of the Kichkine sanatorium of the Kyiv Military District.

In 1936, her husband was arrested in Tobolsk. And on April 15, 1937, Mirra Sakhnovskaya was arrested, on July 31 she was sentenced to capital punishment and shot on the same day. Sakhnovskaya was rehabilitated on October 29, 1959. On September 19, 1937, the UNKVD troika for Dalstroy sentenced Rafail Natanovich to capital punishment on charges of counter-revolutionary activities. He was shot on October 29 of the same year, and rehabilitated on November 23, 1956.

In China, over the years, Ekaterina Ivanovna Smolentseva (Markevich) and Raisa Moiseevna Mamaeva acted through military intelligence.

Ekaterina Ivanovna Markevich (after her husband Smolentsev) was born on December 1, 1896 in Smolensk into a peasant family. She graduated from a trade school in Smolensk and three courses at the Moscow Conservatory. Since 1919 she served in the Red Army. She spoke English. In June 1921 - September 1922 she was a census taker in the political section of the Military Academy of the Red Army. Since 1923, it was at the disposal of the Intelligence Department of the Red Army Headquarters.

She worked in China from 1923-1925, then for three years in the USA. Upon returning home, she served in the information and statistical department of the central office, then “for assignments”, as an assistant to the head of the sector. Since 1933, she studied at the Military Faculty of the Engineering and Technical Academy of Communications named after. V. N. Podbelsky (then Moscow Institute of Communications Engineers).

In April 1939, the MIIS certification commission recommended that she be dismissed from the Red Army and “used in the People’s Commissariat of Communications system as a laboratory engineer” since her “brother, a former lieutenant, was arrested by the NKVD in 1937. Until 1936, she corresponded with a white emigrant who was in America."

However, this did not prevent Smolentseva from graduating from the institute in April 1940; upon completion of the course, she was awarded the rank of military engineer 3rd rank (corresponding to the rank of major for combatant commanders.).

Raisa Moiseevna Mamaeva was born in Kaluga on January 28, 1900, into a working-class family. She worked in China through the Comintern in 1920-1923, then served in the Red Army, studied at. Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies named after. N.K. Narimanov, who graduated in 1929. After graduation, she taught at military educational institutions. She joined the CPSU(b) in 1931.

Mamaeva came to serve in military intelligence in 1933 and was at the disposal of the Intelligence Department until 1938, being a researcher at the International Agrarian Institute. In 1935, Raisa Moiseevna was sent to China legally. The “roof” for her was the position of deputy head of the Shanghai branch of TASS. In 1936-1937, military intelligence resident Lev Borovich was a correspondent in this department.

In 1937, Mamaeva was recalled from China and relieved of her post due to illness. On January 31, 1938, a 2nd rank quartermaster technician (corresponding to the rank of lieutenant for combatant commanders.) Mamaeva was dismissed from service in the Red Army due to her arrest by the NKVD.

After rehabilitation, Raisa Moiseevna worked in the TASS branch in China until 1943, served as a consultant at the USSR Ministry of Cinematography, and as an employee at the Foreign Commission of the USSR Writers Union. For many years she was engaged in scientific work in the field of Oriental studies and wrote over 40 scientific papers.

In the thirties, work on China continued, as before, military advisers came there. At that time, the Danish Georg Laursen, the Bulgarian Hristo Boev, the Tatar Adi Malikov, the Armenian Garegin Tsaturov and the Russian Konstantin Batmanov were active in the country.

Georg Laursen was born on September 18, 1889 in Denmark in the city of Svenborg into a working-class family. From Svenborg the Laursen family moved to Aarhus, where Georg graduated from public school and became a decorative artist. In 1908, several important events happened for him at once: he graduated from painting school, joined the artists' union and the Social Democratic Party. His active nature did not give him the opportunity to sit in one place. In February 1909, Georg left Denmark and went to Germany, where he visited Kiel, Stuttgart and other cities, then visited France, Switzerland, and Algeria. In all these countries he participated in the revolutionary movement and was a member of the Social Democratic parties in Germany and Switzerland.

In May 1912, Laursen settled in Zurich and became a member of the board of the local artists' union. Four years later, Laursen was elected chairman of the Swiss Union of Artists; along the party line, he became part of the left faction of the Social Democratic Party. During the First World War, Georg carried out secret assignments for V.I. Lenin in Europe. Thanks to his Danish passport, he was able to move freely around the war-torn continent. The orders of the leader of the Russian Bolsheviks brought him, in particular, to Germany, where he met with Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

Georg Laursen remained to play a leading role in the powerful general strike of November 1918, which became one of the key moments in the history of the Swiss labor movement. His active revolutionary activities overflowed the patience of the Swiss authorities. In February 1919, he was arrested by local police and expelled from the country by court decision. Through Germany, Georg Laursen returned to his homeland.

In Denmark, Georg was first arrested, and then called up for military service for a short time, and in December 1919 he returned to Aarhus. A month earlier, the Danish Communist Party had been founded, and Georg Laursen became the very first leader of the DKP branch in Aarhus. But he did not forget his profession as an artist, he continued to paint, and soon he was elected to the board of the artists’ trade union.

In the summer of 1921, Laursen visited Moscow at the 3rd Congress of the Comintern as a delegate from Denmark. Then his cooperation with this international communist organization begins. At the party congress in Aarhus on February 11-12, 1923, Laursen was elected chairman of the Danish Communist Party. His candidacy was recommended by the Comintern envoy M.V. Kobetsky, later in 1924-1933 the first Soviet plenipotentiary representative in Denmark.

In the summer of 1925, Laursen was unexpectedly summoned to Moscow; his conspiratorial abilities, which he had shown even as Lenin’s secret courier, were needed there. Moreover, his data was immediately assessed by two organizations that accepted Laursen into their ranks - the International Communications Department (ICC) of the ICCI and the Foreign Department of the OGPU.

A few months after his arrival, in January 1926, Laursen was sent to work illegally in Germany, but already in February he was arrested in Leipzig with a suitcase filled with secret German documents. The investigation into his case ended in March 1927, and Laursen was put on trial on charges of a number of crimes, including theft and forgery of documents.

He was threatened with severe punishment, but he escaped with a relatively short term of imprisonment - 2.5 years in a fortress and a fine of 500 gold marks. The reason for such incomprehensible at first glance leniency towards a spy caught red-handed was simple. Back in October 1924, three students from Germany were arrested in the USSR, who arrived in the country with recommendations from the Communist Party of Germany. They were suspected of intending to commit terrorist acts against Soviet leaders. After lengthy negotiations, an exchange of prisoners took place at the end of 1927, which allowed not only Georg Laursen to return to the Soviet Union, but also the resident of the Intelligence Agency, one of the leaders of the military organization of the KKE, Voldemar Rose (aka Pyotr Skoblevsky, Gorev, Volodko, etc.).

After the incident in Leipzig, when his name became known to foreign intelligence services not only in Germany, but also in other countries, in the USSR Georg was granted citizenship and given a new name: Georg Franzevich Moltke. On March 5, 1928, Comrade Moltke was accepted as a member of the CPSU(b).

Georg Moltke participated in the 6th Congress of the Comintern (July - September 1928), worked at the ECCI. That same year, he married a German woman, Elfriede Markhinski, whom he met in Germany. The details of their meeting are not known, but in any case, they came to Moscow together, and there, in 1929, their daughter Sonya was born.

From the Comintern, Georg went to serve in the Intelligence Department of the Red Army Headquarters and in January 1930 went to work illegally in China, where, with a false passport, he was engaged in intelligence under the guise of trading activities. In his first year of work, Moltke collaborated with Richard Sorge. Moltke was repeatedly awarded and encouraged for his success in intelligence activities. He returned to the USSR from China in 1939.

In the capital, Moltke was again called to serve in the Comintern, where he worked in the personnel department, keeping a file cabinet of all the leaders of the communist parties of the world. When Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the institutions and units of the ECCI were evacuated to Ufa and its environs. There, Georg Moltke worked as political editor of the Press and Broadcasting Department and broadcast in Danish on the Comintern radio station. On May 22, 1943, he informed his listeners that the Comintern was dissolved and the sections (that is, the Communist Parties that were part of it) were released “from the duties arising from the Charter and decisions of the congresses of the Comintern.”

The department in which Georg Moltke continued to work was transformed into Scientific Research Institute No. 205 of the Department of International Information (OMI) of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. The former Comintern radio station was also included in the research institute and continued to broadcast illegally to various countries around the world until mid-1945.

After the war, Georg worked at Moscow radio, was deputy head of the Scandinavian department of the Radio Broadcasting Committee and at the same time collaborated with the OMI of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (B), which the Politburo instructed to concentrate “all the communications that CI had.” At OMI, Georg Moltke prepared various types of information for the Soviet party leadership about the situation in Denmark and the situation in the DKP.

In September 1949, Georg Moltke was expelled from the CPSU(b), followed by arrest by the USSR MGB. By a special meeting (OSO) at the USSR MGB, Georg was sentenced on March 1, 1950 to 5 years of deportation from Moscow as a socially dangerous element and exiled to Siberia. On October 20, 1951, the OSO reduced the period of deportation to that already served and allowed Moltke to return to the capital. Since August 1952, he worked as a stamper in the Moscow Watchmaker artel. During a difficult period for Georg, his old friend, the Danish writer and communist Martin Andersen Nexø, helped him financially.

On December 23, 1953, the judicial panel for criminal cases of the Supreme Court of the USSR issued a ruling in the case of G. F. Moltke. He was rehabilitated because the only material for his conviction was unverified intelligence reports from 1933, which stated that he - Moltke - was an agent of foreign intelligence. On March 19, 1954, the Party Control Committee of the CPSU Central Committee reinstated him in the party, with experience since 1928.

As long as his health allowed him, Georg Moltke worked in the Danish editorial office of Radio Moscow, then retired from active work. He visited Denmark twice: for the first time since 1925 in 1958 and in 1969, when the 50th anniversary of the founding of the DKP was celebrated.

Georg Moltke died on May 2, 1977 in Moscow, was cremated, and the ashes were sent to Denmark. Elfrida and Sonya died a year later.

Moltke was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, the medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War,” and the badge “Honorary Security Officer.”

Hristo Boev (Hristo Boev Petashev) was born on December 25, 1895 in Bulgaria in the village. Oderne near Plevna in the family of an employee. After graduating from the Aprelevskaya gymnasium in Gabrovo, he taught in his native village and already at that time became interested in socialist ideas. In 1914 he joined the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party (close socialists), which in 1919 was renamed the Bulgarian Communist Party.

From October 1914, Hristo served in the Bulgarian army. In 1915, he graduated from the school for reserve officers in Sofia, where there was a circle of “close socialists” and Boev had the opportunity to improve his party education. Then he fought on the fronts of the First World War and rose to the rank of captain and the position of company commander of the 57th regiment of the 9th division.

Meanwhile, events in Russia also affected the Balkans. Boev wrote:

“In the spring and summer of 1918, there was a strong conviction that the guns should be turned against the government, everything should be like in Russia.”

In September, the Soldiers' Uprising broke out again, and Christo led his battalion as a military unit of the rebels. In two days, he brought other scattered units into order and became the commander of the second echelon of the rebels, who moved towards Sofia. But on the way they were met by military units and German troops loyal to the tsar. After several days of heavy fighting in the vicinity of Gorna Banya, Knyazhevo and Vladaya, the rebels were defeated. But the Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand I nevertheless abdicated the throne and left the country, and his son Boris III ascended the throne.

Sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment in a maximum security prison, Boev was forced to flee the country to Romania, where he was arrested by border guards and sent to prison. However, the Romanian Social Democratic Party stood up for him and with its help he left for Odessa in November as a Russian prisoner of war. From Odessa in early December he reached Moscow.

After completing a six-week course at Sverdlovsk University, he came to work at the Central Committee of the RCP(b), where he became secretary of the Bulgarian group in the Bureau of Foreign Communists, then of the Central Bureau of Bulgarian Communist Groups under the Central Committee of the RCP(b). Boev carries out important tasks of the Comintern in Bulgaria, and also establishes connections between the Central Committee of the RCP (b) and the Central Committee of the BRSDP (t.s.). As a delegate, he participated in the 1st Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party.

In 1920-1921, Boev studied at the Academy of the General Staff under the name Dmitriev, but he was not listed among the graduates, since for secret reasons he was transferred at the end of his studies to the Agricultural Academy. In his autobiography, Christo wrote in 1925:

“In August 1921, he went to work at the Intelligence Directorate of the Headquarters of the R.K.K.A. and was sent as a resident to Bulgaria, where he worked until the end of June 1923, after which he was forced to emigrate to Austria. In February 1924 he left for Yugoslavia for the same job. In November he was placed at the disposal of V.B. He was expelled from Yugoslavia in January 1925 and continued to work along the same line from Austria. From June 1925 he again transferred to Intelligence. Ex. R.K.K.A. where I am in the service - overseas - at the present time" (RGASPI. F.17. Op.98. D.968. L.1.).

From the above text one may get the impression that Boev’s intelligence work was interrupted, however, this is not the case. According to documents, there was no break in his activities as a Soviet military intelligence officer during that period.

On January 10, 1922, he married his wife Josefa Kolb (Engelberg) in her homeland in the Austrian city of Graz, but they had previously lived together in Bulgaria.

Josefa was born on February 17, 1897 in Innsbruck. She was a member of the German Spartak Union, the predecessor of the German Communist Party. Arrived in Odessa as part of the International Red Cross Mission. In 1920, she was assigned to work in the medical service of the IKKI, where she later met Boev. In Bulgaria, she photographs the materials obtained by the station, makes false documents for the needs of the organization, does encryption and decryption work, meets with agents, and collects the necessary information herself.

Upon returning to the USSR, on September 18, 1925, Boev was accepted as a member of the CPSU (b). In the Soviet Union he was called Hristo Boevich Petashev or Fyodor Ivanovich Rusev. And his wife became Josefa Petrovna Ruseva.

Since June 1925, Christo was at the disposal of the IV Directorate of the Headquarters of the Red Army; he was sent as a resident to Czechoslovakia, under the “roof” of the vice-consul named Kh. I. Dymov. After the failure in November 1926, Boev returned to the USSR and was soon appointed head of sector 2 (agent) department of the IV Directorate.

Since February 1928, Boev has been working illegally in Turkey. Christo came to the country with his wife as an Austrian businessman representing a company with branches in various countries of the world. Having traveled to many cities in Turkey on “trade” business, he eventually settled in Istanbul, where his daughter was born. His trade (and not only it) is expanding, the company’s turnover is growing. In 1931, the family of an “Austrian merchant” leaves Turkey on a Turkish ship and lands in Venice. From there, having visited Vienna, Warsaw and Berlin, they return home safely. The Soviet military intelligence officer L.A. Anulov (“Kostya”), who knew Christ well, recalled:

“At one of the party meetings, our “Old Man,” the legendary Soviet intelligence officer General Berzin, directly said that he considered Fyodor Ivanovich Rusev a first-class personnel worker...”

In May 1932 - February 1935, Boev was a student at the military-industrial faculty of the Military Academy of Mechanization and Motorization named after. I.V. Stalin and although he was removed from his studies early, he was considered to have graduated from the academy. After appropriate preparation, Boev left for China, and not by the shortest route. First of all, the Rusev family went to Berlin, where, with the help of one of the Nazi intelligence officers, they received documents according to which the head of the family, “Julius Bergman,” was a representative of a large American company trading with the Far East. Then, in January - February 1936 in Paris, a well-known lawyer helped them draw up all the documents for the company's office in China. At this point, the preliminary legalization process ended, and the now Bergman family sailed from Marseille to their destination. Meanwhile, in Moscow, Kh. B. Rusev-Petashev, who is at the disposal of the RKKA Intelligence Department, was awarded the rank of military engineer 2nd rank (corresponded (very approximately) to the rank of major for combatant commanders.).

In China, Julius Bergman works in Tianjin, Kalgan and Shanghai. He makes many useful contacts, meets with other Soviet intelligence officers and agents. Receives and transmits to Moscow information about Japanese activities that led to events in the area of ​​Lake Khasan and the Khalkhin Gol River. In December 1938, the “Bergman” family left Shanghai and, having traveled a long way across Asia and Europe, arrived in the USSR.

When Boev was still in China with his wife and daughter, he was fired from the Red Army by order No. 00365 of July 17, 1938, along with such intelligence officers as V.I. Lerer, G.A. Abramov, S.A. Skarbek, Ya.K Lunder and others. He works as a military translator, translating literature from German, English and French. Participates in the creation of secret directories on Germany. Gives lectures on current military issues. In the very first month of the Great Patriotic War, he was included in the Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade for Special Purposes, which was created jointly by the NKVD of the General Staff and the Comintern. He trains underground fighters for work in Bulgaria (among them the famous “submariners” and “paratroopers”), and serves in the Intelligence Department of the Black Sea Fleet headquarters.

Since February 1943, Boev worked as an editor at the Foreign Literature Publishing House and received a military pension for 25 years of service in the Red Army. But he didn’t break ties with intelligence either. Performed individual seret assignments. Hristo Boev returned to Bulgaria with his family in June 1945. He held a number of responsible positions: head of the office of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Belarus Georgiy Dmitrov, head of the cultural and educational department of the People's Militia Directorate, deputy director of State Security, adviser to the Bulgarian Embassy in London, director of the State Security of Bulgaria, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, Ambassador of the People's Republic of Belarus to the GDR, in Poland and Japan. Boev participated in the preparation of the trial against Traicho Kostov. After Kostov’s rehabilitation, he was temporarily prohibited from “holding leadership positions in the party and state.”

In 1962, the plenum of the Central Committee of the BCP decided: “To remove comrade from responsible party and state work. Hristo Boev for gross violations of socialist legality." After this, Hristo Boev became a personal pensioner, a retired major general. On April 5, 1966, his wife died, and on October 1, 1968, Hristo Boev also died. Before his death, he was awarded the Order of Lenin in connection with the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution.

Adi Karimovich Malikov was born into a peasant family on February 9, 1897 in the village. Malye Klyary, Tetyushsky district, Kazan province, now the Republic of Tatarstan. He completed a full course at the Kazan Trade School and worked as an accountant. He was called up for military service on December 3, 1915 and sent to the 2nd Kazan School of Ensigns, and graduated a year later. Malikov fought on the Romanian Front as a company commander of the 56th Zhitomir Regiment.

In May 1917 he joined the RSDLP(b). After demobilization, he was deputy chairman of the Tetyushsky district council of the Tatar Republic, and studied at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University for three months.

On March 1, 1918, Malikov volunteered to join the Red Army, served as military commissar of the consolidated guards regiment, secretary of the military department of the Central Muslim Commissariat, and member of the Muslim Military Collegium under the People's Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs. In December he was relieved of this position and sent to the Academy of the General Staff. In April 1919, together with other students, he was recalled from his studies and sent to the Eastern Front. Malikov serves as assistant chief of staff of the Kazan fortified area for the reconnaissance unit, then chief of staff of the 2nd Separate Tatar Rifle Brigade, which fought against the Denikinites and took part in eliminating the “kulak rebellions.” In October 1920, Adi Karimovich returned to the AGSH, where he remained a student until May 1921.

In May 1921, Malikov began his service in military intelligence, first as secretary of the military representative of the RSFSR to the Turkish government. Then, after studying for seven months at the Military Academy of the Red Army, he took up his previous position - secretary of the military representative of the RSFSR in Turkey and his assistant. The then ambassador to Turkey, S. I. Aralov, noted in his memoirs A. K. Malikov, who stood out for his “excellent knowledge of the Turkish language and country.”

From Ankara, Malikov came to Moscow to complete his academic course. He graduated from the Academy in July 1924 and was immediately appointed head of the Intelligence Department of the headquarters of the Caucasian Red Banner Army. N.A. Ravich, recalling that time, wrote that the head of the 4th department of the KKA headquarters knows Turkey perfectly, speaks, reads and writes Turkish completely freely and, without looking at the map, remembers every crevice on the border. In November 1927, Adi Karimovich was summoned to Moscow and appointed military attaché at the USSR Embassy in Persia (Iran), from where he returned only in March 1931.

Having served two years in the army as a commander and military commissar of the 190th Infantry Regiment and the 1st Tatar Infantry Regiment (apparently as an internship as an academy graduate), Malikov again works in intelligence: head of a sector, assistant head of the 2nd (intelligence) department. Then he is appointed the main Soviet military adviser in Xinjiang, a region of China bordering the USSR, whose population has long been at odds with the country’s central authorities.

Before leaving, the group, which also included P. S. Rybalko (Future Marshal of the Armored Forces, twice Hero of the Soviet Union.), I. F. Kuts, V. T. Obukhov and M. M. Shaimuratov, was received by intelligence chief Ya. K. Berzin. About the tasks facing the group of advisers, he, according to the memoirs of I. F. Kuts, said the following:

“To thoroughly and honestly advise, convince, prove and, if it happens, do not be afraid to admit the convincingness of the arguments that reject your proposals... There is a war going on, and the situation is truly kaleidoscopic, the devil himself will break his leg. You need to figure everything out on the spot... Your task is to help the new, progressive government of Xinjiang - an integral part of China - in carrying out its program, strengthen the army, and pacify the country. Achieve a stop to sabotage raids on our border settlements. In short, it is important to ensure calm and security of our borders with Xinjiang.”

The importance of their mission is confirmed by the order of the People's Commissar of Defense dated August 19, 1935, No. 0064, which states: “The leadership of the military instructional staff of the group, Comrade. MALIKOV (in the army of the Xinjiang province) I subordinate to myself through the Head of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army comrade. URITSKY. Head of the Red Army RU Comrade. URITSKY to check the personnel of the military instruction group and provide me with ideas about staffing it with qualified commanders and specialists of the Red Army.”

Malikov returned from this trip in 1936 with the rank of colonel. For exactly a year, Adi Karimovich served as deputy head of the 5th department of the Red Army Intelligence Department, the department oversaw the work of intelligence agencies of military districts and fleets.

In July 1937, Malikov was placed at the disposal of the Command Staff Directorate of the Red Army “due to the impossibility of being used through the RU as he voted for the Trotskyist resolution in 1923,” then he was appointed senior leader of tactics at the Ryazan Infantry School.

On June 3, 1938, Malikov was fired from the Red Army; apparently at that moment he had already been arrested. He was held in prisons in Moscow, Kazan, Kuibyshev.

On September 28, 1940, he was sentenced by a Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR to 8 years of labor camp, which he served in the camps of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

On April 19, 1949, he was re-arrested “for anti-Soviet Trotskyist activities and involvement in foreign intelligence agents,” and on May 28 of the same year he was sentenced by a Special Meeting at the USSR Ministry of State Security to exile in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. On August 10, 1954, he was released, rehabilitated the same year, and in 1956 he came to Moscow. During his service in the army, Adi Karimovich Malikov was awarded two Orders of the Red Banner.

He died in January 1973.

Garegen Mosesovich Tsaturov was born in 1892 in the village. Khinzirak, Zangezur district, Elisavetpol province, in a working-class family. Until the age of 10, Tsaturov lived dependent on his father, who worked in the Baku oil fields, and after his death he spent three years in an orphanage. Since 1905, he worked as a mechanic in workshops, in oil fields in Baku, at “oil prospecting” work in Baku and the Trans-Caspian region (Turkmenistan), and at the mill of the Nakhichevan partnership in Samarkand.

In November 1917, Tsaturov joined the Red Guard in Samarkand, and in February 1918, he joined the RCP (b). In the fall of 1918, the regional party committee appointed him a member of the board of the Regional Directorate and at the same time a member of the investigative commission of the Red Guard headquarters. In 1918-1921, he was the regional commissioner for national affairs and a member of the board of the Regional Department of Public Education, then the chairman of the Samarkand Regional Commission for Famine Relief and the chairman of the Children's Commission.

In 1922, the Turkestan Central Executive Committee sent him to Moscow as a representative on the affairs of the hungry under the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR.

A new stage in Garegin Tsaturov’s military service begins on August 17, 1923, when the Party Central Committee sends him to the Military Academy of the Red Army. He successfully passed the admissions tests and was accepted into the preparatory course. A year later, he was transferred to the junior year of the eastern department of the academy, as he knew oriental languages. He spoke Persian, Turkic, Farsi, and Uzbek languages. Having completed his training, Tsaturov was placed at the disposal of the Intelligence Department of the Red Army Headquarters, where he underwent reconnaissance training. In June 1927, he was appointed assistant chief of the Intelligence Department of the Central Asian Military District headquarters. For ten months, he studied the neighboring countries and in April 1928, Garegin Mosesovich was sent to work in Persia (Iran) legally. He was vice-consul in Qazvin, consul in Seystan, Ahvaz, Nasred Abad.

Returning from a business trip, he worked for just over a year in Moscow in the central apparatus of military intelligence. He was then sent back to Persia, where he served as consul in Ahwaz from March 1932 to November 1934. When he arrived in Moscow, the Red Army Intelligence School had just opened, and he became one of its first students. On December 13, 1935, he was awarded the rank of colonel.

Tsaturov served as head of the 2nd (eastern) department from July 1935 to April 1936, and then followed a new business trip, this time to China. He served as a legal resident in Urumqi and a military adviser in the Chinese province of Xinjiang (under the name Georgy Shanin) until the spring of 1938.

He was dismissed from the Red Army in May 1938 as someone arrested by the NKVD. However, in June 1939, at the request of the head of the 5th Directorate of the Red Army, Divisional Commander I.I. Proskurov, the reason for dismissal in the order was changed. This time he was discharged from the army “due to illness.” He subsequently received a personal pension.

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The debate about the role of the female factor in intelligence has not subsided for many years. Most ordinary people, far from this type of activity, believe that intelligence is not a woman’s business, that this profession is purely male, requiring courage, self-control, and a willingness to take risks and sacrifice oneself in order to achieve the goal. In their opinion, if women are used in intelligence, it is only as a “honey trap,” that is, to seduce gullible simpletons who are carriers of important state or military secrets. Indeed, even today the special services of a number of states, primarily Israel and the United States, actively use this method to obtain classified information, but it has been adopted by counterintelligence rather than by the intelligence services of these countries.

The legendary Mata Hari or the star of French military intelligence during the First World War, Martha Richard, are usually cited as the standard for such a female intelligence officer. It is known that the latter was the mistress of the German naval attaché in Spain, Major von Krohn, and managed not only to find out important secrets of German military intelligence, but also to paralyze the activities of the intelligence network he created in this country. Nevertheless, this “exotic” method of using women in intelligence is the exception rather than the rule.

OPINION OF PROFESSIONALS

What do the intelligence officers themselves think about this?

It is no secret that some professionals are skeptical about female intelligence officers. As the famous journalist Alexander Kondrashov wrote in one of his works, even such a legendary military intelligence officer as Richard Sorge spoke about the unsuitability of women for conducting serious intelligence activities. According to the journalist, Richard Sorge attracted female agents only for auxiliary purposes. At the same time, he allegedly stated: “Women are absolutely not suited for intelligence work. They have little understanding of high politics or military affairs. Even if you recruit them to spy on their own husbands, they will have no real idea what their husbands are talking about. They are too emotional, sentimental and unrealistic."

It should be borne in mind here that the outstanding Soviet intelligence officer allowed himself to make this statement during his trial. Today we know that during the trial, Sorge tried with all his might to get his comrades-in-arms and assistants, among whom there were women, out of harm’s way, to take all the blame upon himself, to present his like-minded people as innocent victims of his own game. Hence his desire to belittle the role of women in intelligence, limit it to solving only auxiliary tasks, and show the inability of the fair sex to work independently. Sorge knew well the mentality of the Japanese, who consider women second-class creatures. Therefore, the point of view of the Soviet intelligence officer was clear to Japanese justice, and this saved the lives of his assistants.

Among foreign intelligence officers, the expression “intelligence officers are not born, they are made” is perceived as a truth that does not require proof. It’s just that at some point, intelligence, based on the tasks that have arisen or assigned, requires a specific person who enjoys special trust, has certain personal and business qualities, professional orientation and the necessary life experience in order to send him to work in a specific region of the globe.

Women come to intelligence in different ways. But their choice as operatives or agents, of course, is not accidental. The selection of women for illegal work is carried out especially carefully. After all, it is not enough for an illegal intelligence officer to have a good command of foreign languages ​​and the basics of intelligence art. He must be able to get used to the role, be a kind of artist, so that today, for example, he can pass himself off as an aristocrat, and tomorrow as a priest. Needless to say that most women master the art of transformation better than men?

Those intelligence officers who had the opportunity to work in illegal conditions abroad were always subject to increased demands also in terms of endurance and psychological endurance. After all, women illegal immigrants have to live for many years away from their homeland, and even organizing an ordinary vacation trip requires comprehensive and in-depth study in order to eliminate the possibility of failure. In addition, it is not always possible for a woman who is an illegal intelligence officer to communicate only with those people she likes. Often the situation is just the opposite, and you need to be able to control your feelings, which is not an easy task for a woman.

A remarkable Soviet illegal intelligence officer, who worked for more than 20 years in special conditions abroad, Galina Ivanovna Fedorova, said in this regard: “Some people believe that intelligence is not the most suitable activity for a woman. In contrast to the stronger sex, she is more sensitive, fragile, easily wounded, more closely tied to the family, home, and more predisposed to nostalgia. By nature itself she is destined to be a mother, so the absence of children or long-term separation from them is especially difficult for her. All this is true, but the same small weaknesses of a woman give her powerful leverage in the sphere of human relationships.”

DURING THE YEARS OF THE WAR

The pre-war period and the Second World War, which brought unprecedented troubles to humanity, radically changed the approach to intelligence in general and to the role of the female factor in it in particular. Most people of good will in Europe, Asia and America were acutely aware of the danger that Nazism brought to all humanity. During the harsh years of war, hundreds of honest people from different countries voluntarily threw in their lot with the activities of our country’s foreign intelligence service, carrying out its missions in various parts of the world. Women intelligence officers who operated in Europe on the eve of the war and on the territory of the Soviet Union, temporarily occupied by Nazi Germany, also wrote bright pages in the chronicle of the heroic achievements of Soviet foreign intelligence.

The Russian emigrant and famous singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya, whose voice was admired by Leonid Sobinov, Fyodor Chaliapin and Alexander Vertinsky, actively worked in Paris for Soviet intelligence on the eve of World War II.

Together with her husband, General Nikolai Skoblin, she contributed to the localization of the anti-Soviet activities of the Russian All-Military Union (EMRO), which carried out terrorist acts against the Soviet Republic. Based on the information received from these Russian patriots, the OGPU arrested 17 EMRO agents abandoned in the USSR, and also established 11 terrorist safe houses in Moscow, Leningrad and Transcaucasia.

It should be emphasized that thanks to the efforts of Plevitskaya and Skoblin, among others, Soviet foreign intelligence in the pre-war period was able to disorganize the EMRO and thereby deprived Hitler of the opportunity to actively use more than 20 thousand members of this organization in the war against the USSR.

Years of hard times during the war indicate that women are capable of carrying out the most important reconnaissance missions just as well as men. Thus, on the eve of the war, the resident of Soviet illegal intelligence in Berlin, Fyodor Parparov, maintained operational contact with the source Martha, the wife of a prominent German diplomat. She regularly received information about negotiations between the German Foreign Ministry and British and French representatives. It followed from them that London and Paris were more concerned with the fight against communism than with organizing collective security in Europe and repelling fascist aggression.

Information was also received from Martha about a German intelligence agent in the General Staff of Czechoslovakia, who regularly supplied Berlin with top secret information about the state and combat readiness of the Czechoslovak armed forces. Thanks to this data, Soviet intelligence took measures to compromise him and arrest him by the Czech security authorities.

Simultaneously with Parparov, in the pre-war years, other Soviet intelligence officers worked in the very heart of Germany, in Berlin. Among them was Ilse Stöbe (Alta), a journalist in contact with the German diplomat Rudolf von Schelia (Aryan). Important messages were sent from him to Moscow warning of an impending German attack.

Back in February 1941, Alta announced the formation of three army groups under the command of Marshals Bock, Rundstedt and Leeb and the direction of their main attacks on Leningrad, Moscow and Kyiv.

Alta was a staunch anti-fascist and believed that only the USSR could crush fascism. At the beginning of 1943, Alta and her assistant Aryan were arrested by the Gestapo and executed along with the members of the Red Chapel.

Elizaveta Zarubina, Leontina Cohen, Elena Modrzhinskaya, Kitty Harris, Zoya Voskresenskaya-Rybkina worked for Soviet intelligence on the eve and during the war, carrying out its tasks sometimes at the risk of their lives. They were driven by a sense of duty and true patriotism, the desire to protect the world from Hitler's aggression.

The most important information during the war came not only from abroad. It also constantly came from numerous reconnaissance groups operating close to or far from the front line in temporarily occupied territory.

Readers are well aware of the name of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, whose majestic death became a symbol of courage. Seventeen-year-old Tanya, a reconnaissance fighter in a special forces group that was part of front-line intelligence, became the first of 86 women Heroes of the Soviet Union during the war period.

Women intelligence officers from the special forces detachment “Winners” under the command of Dmitry Medvedev, the operational reconnaissance and sabotage group of Vladimir Molodtsov, operating in Odessa, and many other combat units of the 4th Directorate of the NKVD, who obtained important information during the war years, also wrote unfading pages in the history of intelligence of our country. strategic information.

A modest girl from Rzhev, Pasha Savelyeva, managed to obtain and transport to her detachment a sample of chemical weapons that the Nazi command intended to use against the Red Army. Captured by Hitler's punitive forces, she was subjected to monstrous torture in the Gestapo dungeons of the Ukrainian city of Lutsk. Even men can envy her courage and self-control: despite the brutal beatings, the girl did not betray her comrades in the squad. On the morning of January 12, 1944, Pasha Savelyeva was burned alive in the courtyard of the Lutsk prison. However, her death was not in vain: the information received by the intelligence officer was reported to Stalin. The Kremlin's allies in the anti-Hitler coalition seriously warned Berlin that if Germany used chemical weapons, retaliation would inevitably follow. Thus, thanks to the feat of the intelligence officer, a chemical attack by the Germans against our troops was prevented.

Scout of the “Winners” detachment Lydia Lisovskaya was Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov’s closest assistant. Working as a waitress in the casino of the economic headquarters of the occupation forces in Ukraine, she helped Kuznetsov make acquaintances with German officers and collect information about high-ranking fascist officials in Rivne.

Lisovskaya involved her cousin Maria Mikota in intelligence work, who, on instructions from the Center, became a Gestapo agent and informed the partisans about all punitive raids of the Germans. Through Mikota, Kuznetsov met SS officer von Ortel, who was part of the team of the famous German saboteur Otto Skorzeny. It was from Ortel that the Soviet intelligence officer first received information that the Germans were preparing a sabotage action during a meeting of the heads of the USSR, USA and Great Britain in Tehran.

In the fall of 1943, Lisovskaya, on the instructions of Kuznetsov, got a job as a housekeeper for the commander of the eastern special forces, Major General Ilgen. On November 15, 1943, with the direct participation of Lydia, an operation was carried out to kidnap General Ilgen and transport him to the detachment.

THE COLD WAR YEARS

The hard times of war, from which the Soviet Union emerged with honor, gave way to long years of the Cold War. The United States of America, which had a monopoly on atomic weapons, did not hide its imperial plans and aspirations to destroy the Soviet Union and its entire population with the help of these deadly weapons. The Pentagon planned to start a nuclear war against our country in 1957. It took incredible efforts on the part of our entire people, who had barely recovered from the monstrous wounds of the Great Patriotic War, and the exertion of all their strength to thwart the plans of the United States and NATO. But in order to make the right decisions, the political leadership of the USSR needed reliable information about the real plans and intentions of the American military. Female intelligence officers also played an important role in obtaining secret documents from the Pentagon and NATO. Among them are Irina Alimova, Galina Fedorova, Elena Kosova, Anna Filonenko, Elena Cheburashkina and many others.

WHAT ABOUT “COLLEAGUES”?

The years of the Cold War have sunk into oblivion, today's world has become safer than 50 years ago, and foreign intelligence plays an important role in this. The changed military-political situation on the planet has led to the fact that today women are less used in operational work directly “in the field.” The exceptions here, perhaps, are again the Israeli intelligence service Mossad and the American CIA. In the latter, women not only perform the functions of “field” operational workers, but even lead intelligence teams abroad.

The coming 21st century will undoubtedly be the century of the triumph of equality between men and women, even in such a specific sphere of human activity as intelligence and counterintelligence work. An example of this is the intelligence services of such a conservative country as England.

Thus, the book “Scouts and Spies” provides the following information about the “elegant agents” of the British intelligence services: “More than 40% of the MI6 intelligence and MI5 counterintelligence officers in Great Britain are women. In addition to Stella Rimington, who was until recently the head of MI5, four of the 12 counter-intelligence departments are also headed by women. In a conversation with members of the British Parliament, Stella Rimington said that in difficult situations, women are often more decisive and, when performing special tasks, are less susceptible to doubts and remorse for their actions compared to men.”

According to the British, the most promising is the use of women in efforts to recruit male agents, and an increase in female personnel among the operational staff as a whole will lead to an increase in the efficiency of operational activities.

The influx of women into the intelligence services is largely due to the recent increase in the number of male employees who want to leave the service and go into business. In this regard, the search and selection of candidates for work in the British intelligence services among female students of the country's leading universities has become more active.

Another sophisticated reader might probably say: “The USA and England are prosperous countries; they can afford the luxury of attracting women to work in the intelligence services, even in the role of “field players.” As for Israeli intelligence, it actively uses in its work the historical fact that women have always played and continue to play a major role in the life of the Jewish community in any country in the world. These countries are not our decree.” However, he will be wrong.

So, at the beginning of 2001, Lindiwe Sisulu became the Minister of Affairs of all intelligence services of the Republic of South Africa. She was 47 years old at the time, and she was not new to the intelligence services. In the late 1970s, when the African National Congress party was still underground, she underwent special training in the ANC military organization Spear of the People and specialized in intelligence and counterintelligence. In 1992, she headed the security department of the ANC. When a parliament united with the white minority was created in South Africa, she headed the committee on intelligence and counterintelligence. Since the mid-1990s, she worked as Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs. According to available information, the previously considered independent National Intelligence Agency also came under its control.

WHY DO INTELLIGENCE NEED THEM?

Why are women encouraged to serve in intelligence? Experts agree that a woman is more observant, her intuition is more developed, she likes to delve into details, and, as we know, “the devil himself lurks in them.” Women are more diligent, more patient, more methodical than men. And if we add their external data to these qualities, then any skeptic will be forced to admit that women rightfully occupy a worthy place in the ranks of the intelligence services of any country, being their adornment. Sometimes female intelligence officers are entrusted with carrying out operations related, in particular, to organizing meetings with agents in those areas where the appearance of men, based on local conditions, is extremely undesirable.

The combination of the best psychological qualities of both men and women conducting intelligence abroad, especially from illegal positions, is the strength of any intelligence service in the world. It is not for nothing that such intelligence tandems as Leontina and Morris Cohen, Gohar and Gevork Vartanyan, Anna and Mikhail Filonenko, Galina and Mikhail Fedorov and many others - known and unknown to the general public - are inscribed in golden letters in the history of foreign intelligence of our country.

When asked what the main qualities, in her opinion, an intelligence officer should have, one of the foreign intelligence veterans, Zinaida Nikolaevna Batraeva, answered: “Excellent physical fitness, the ability to learn foreign languages ​​and the ability to communicate with people.”

And today, even, unfortunately, quite rare publications in the media devoted to the activities of female intelligence officers convincingly indicate that in this specific sphere of human activity, representatives of the fair sex are in no way inferior to men, and in some ways they are superior their. As the history of the world's intelligence services teaches, a woman copes well with her role, being a worthy and formidable opponent of a man when it comes to penetrating into other people's secrets.

COUNTERINTELLIGENCE ADVICE

And in conclusion, we present excerpts from lectures by one of the leading American counterintelligence officers of his time, Charles Russell, which he gave in the winter of 1924 in New York at a gathering of US Army intelligence officers. Almost 88 years have passed since then, but his advice is relevant for intelligence officers in any country to this day.

Advice to counterintelligence officers:

“Women intelligence officers are the most dangerous enemy, and they are the most difficult to expose. When meeting such women, you should not let likes or dislikes influence your decision. Such weakness can have fatal consequences for you.”

Advice to scouts:

“Avoid women. With the help of women, many good scouts were caught. Don't trust women when you're working in enemy territory. When dealing with women, never forget to play your part.

A Frenchman who had escaped from a German concentration camp stopped at a café near the Swiss border, waiting for night to fall. When the waitress handed him the menu, he thanked her, which surprised her. When she brought him beer and food, he thanked her again. While he was eating, the waitress called a German counterintelligence officer because, as she later said, such a polite man could not be German. The Frenchman was arrested."

The basic rule of conduct for a scout:

“Beware of women! History knows many cases when women contributed to the capture of male intelligence officers. You should pay attention to a woman only if you suspect that she is an agent of the enemy’s intelligence or counterintelligence service, and then only if you are confident that you are in complete control of yourself.”

The words “chercher la femme” translated from French mean “look for a woman.” These words, which have survived centuries, were spoken when, for unknown reasons, a certain monarch was sent to another world, a palace coup unexpectedly occurred, or the heads of participants in an unsuccessful conspiracy flew under the executioner’s ax.

Often, representatives of the fairer sex were behind such events. People who used women for their purposes knew well that the secrets of the royal or royal court were often hidden in the skirt of a maid. They knew that in order to catch a man in the net of a conspiracy, it would be a good idea to use a beautiful woman. And not necessarily of noble origin. A lot of secrets fell into the hands of intelligence officers through prostitutes.

During the First World War, the German dog Fritz repeatedly crossed the front line, delivering spy reports in his collar. The dog showed amazing resourcefulness, evading the pursuit and traps of the French every time. Then counterintelligence remembered the famous phrase “look for a woman.” And they slipped Fritz a bitch named Rosie. She was so beautiful that the stern dog’s heart could not stand it. Forgetting about the service, Fritz began to indulge in dog-like affection with her. Then the French took him.

Women are often assistants to intelligence officers and counterintelligence officers. It is not for nothing that Chinese wisdom says: “A woman’s tongue is a ladder along which misfortune enters the house.” However, the woman is so firmly entrenched on the front of the secret war that she is unlikely to give up her place to a man. However, there are very conflicting opinions on them.

Thus, one author (Bernard Newman) writes: “I do not at all want to say that there were no female intelligence officers at all, although their activities were by no means particularly outstanding. Among them there was only one Mata Hari, and even she did not accomplish a hundredth part of everything that was attributed to her. However, it is not gender that makes female intelligence officers so invariably harmless, but, mainly, the nature of their upbringing.

The thing is. that popular writers too often do not pay attention to the fact that the intelligence officer still needs to know something about the subject of his intelligence. It makes absolutely no sense to send a woman to

an enemy country in order to fish out the details of a new howitzer, if, having encountered both a howitzer and a field gun on the road, it cannot distinguish one from the other. This kind of intelligence officer or intelligence officer is more a danger than an acquisition for the country that uses them.”

The most accurate assessment of women as intelligence officers was given by counterintelligence officer Orest Pino:

“Most women suffer from three deficiencies that hinder intelligence and counterintelligence work. Firstly, they do not have the necessary technical knowledge. For example, if you need to find out the structure of a secret engine created by an enemy, then a garage mechanic has a better chance of success than the most educated woman. Already from his previous work, a mechanic is familiar with some of the basics of technology, but a woman has to start from the basics. As for military secrets, only a few women know military ranks and the difference between units, units, formations, that is, everything that makes up the modern army. Such knowledge can be acquired, but it will take time. Secondly, in an unusual environment, women are more noticeable than men. A man dressed as a worker can walk near a military facility for several hours without arousing suspicion, and a woman, especially a young and beautiful one, will immediately attract attention. Dressed simply, a man can walk into a bar in a seaport and no one will notice him. A woman shouldn't do this. She is a woman, this alone limits her capabilities and reduces her value as an agent. Thirdly, and this is the most important thing, women do not know how to control their feelings like men. I know of two or three cases where a woman had to win the love of, say, a senior enemy officer. She coped with this task successfully, but then she herself fell in love with her victim and spoiled the whole thing. It is not difficult to guess what followed next. She went over to the enemy’s side and revealed all the secrets she knew. I know that male spies also sometimes became traitors, but for different reasons. It seems to me that the only thing female spies are capable of is obtaining intelligence information. This is usually done like this. A woman wins the love of some enemy officer or official, learns something, and then blackmails him, threatening to tell his boss or, even worse, his wife. The threat is in effect and the spy receives comprehensive information. That's why I asked women who wanted to become secret agents if they were willing to sacrifice their honor. A decent woman will not do this. A woman who is capable of spending the night with an unfamiliar man, often physically repulsive, must have the soul of a prostitute in order to obtain the necessary information. And prostitutes are known to be unreliable. In all my 30 years of practice, when I had to deal with talented intelligence officers and counterintelligence officers in Europe and America, I have never met a woman who would prove herself to be a good spy or a good “spy hunter.” According to Pinto, counterintelligence officers are advised to pay attention to a woman only if there is a suspicion that she is an enemy agent. One of the best ways to expose it is jealousy. You need to choose a handsome, smart man from among your employees as bait for this woman. The next step is to establish an intimate relationship between them. Then introduce a counterintelligence officer into the game, supposedly because of whom the man will leave the woman suspected of being a spy. Then another employee should be sent to this suspect, who will play the role of a sympathizer. All women are talkative, and in the vast majority of cases, a woman suspected of being a spy will let it slip in a fit of anger. This gives counterintelligence the tip of a thread, by pulling which it is possible to unwind the entire tangle.

For many years, there has been an ongoing debate among historians - what role does a woman play in intelligence?

"Scout"- many people associate this profession exclusively with "male factor". Many are sure that only a woman can become a real intelligence officer. But this belief is easy to refute, since history provides us with such an opportunity. On the eve of the 71st anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, I would like to note the contribution of female intelligence officers to the defeat of Nazi Germany. The standard, the main legend of women's intelligence is considered to be the famous Matu Hari or a heroine of the First World War Martha Richard. By the way, the latter was the mistress of the German attaché in Spain. She managed not only to obtain important intelligence data, but also to paralyze the activities of an entire intelligence network that operated in this country.

But the example of Martha Richard is rather an exception; only in rare cases are intelligence officers used as a “trap,” that is, to seduce simpletons to obtain important information. Women come to intelligence in different ways, but they always undergo careful selection. They are subject to high demands - knowledge of foreign languages, psychological endurance, acting talents and much more. It is especially difficult for those ladies who work abroad and are, so to speak, in an “illegal situation.” They have to adhere to strict secrecy and communicate only with certain people. Many have been in this “situation” for 15 or even 20 years. 1930s have forced many states to reconsider the role of women in intelligence.

Scouts heroines of our time

By 1935, many people understood the danger that Nazism represented. During the terrible years of the war, a lot of people chose to throw in their lot with intelligence, and to be honest, there were quite a few women among them! Scouts performed many heroic deeds while carrying out missions, dangerous missions in different parts of the world. The tasks had to be mainly carried out in the territories of Europe and the USSR occupied by Nazi Germany. For example, even before the war, important information was received from an intelligence officer operating under the pseudonym “Alta.” The agent announced the formation of three army groups, and that they would carry out their main attacks on Moscow. In 1943, Alta was arrested by Gestapo officers and executed. Zarubina E., Cohen L., Modrzhinskaya E., Kitty Harris- they all worked for Soviet intelligence before and during the Second World War. They carried out very risky tasks. What motivated these women? Firstly, this is a sense of duty, secondly, a sense of patriotism, and of course, thirdly, it is to protect the world from the genocide of Nazi Germany. The work was carried out not only abroad, but also in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany. We all know the story of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Her action became a symbol of true courage. By the way, seventeen-year-old Z. Kosmodemyanskaya became the first woman to be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

The feat of a scout

A simple girl P. Savelyeva from the small town of Rzhev committed a courageous act. She sent to her squad a sample of chemical weapons that Hitler wanted to use against the Red Army. The girl was captured by the Gestapo and subjected to terrible torture. But, despite all this, she did not betray her comrades. On January 12, 1944, Pasha was burned alive in the courtyard of the Lutsk prison.

Scouts eternal memory

Many more heroic deeds were performed by the scouts. The war years have passed, foreign policy has entered the Cold War stage. And here work continued to obtain important intelligence data. The Cold War has become history. Today the world is considered relatively safe. Women are still involved in intelligence. Many experts have repeatedly noted that a woman is more observant than a man, and she also has highly developed intuition. It’s not for nothing that the basic rule of intelligence officers is: “Beware of women! History knows many cases when women contributed to the capture of male intelligence officers. You should pay attention to a woman only if you suspect that she is an agent of the enemy’s intelligence or counterintelligence service, and then only if you are confident that you are in complete control of yourself.”