How the blacksmith scout died. Hero with a tragic touch Nikolai Kuznetsov Legendary intelligence officer n Kuznetsov

About being a scoutNikolay Kuznetsovplayed an important role during the Great Patriotic War, everyone knows. And about the fact that he was born in the Urals - of course, too. But few people know that his parents were Old Believers-bespopovtsy from the remote village of Zyryanka, Talitsky district, Sverdlovsk region.

The Talitsky region in the Urals is still famous for its Pomeranian Kerzhaks. They let few people into their lives, try to communicate with outside people to a minimum and engage in labor—subsistence farming. They don't know any other life. Sometimes one of them can be found in a local museum...

And all because on July 27, 1911, joy happened in the family of Old Believers-peasants Ivan Pavlovich and Anna Petrovna Kuznetsov - their first son was born, who was named Nikanor.

The boy grew up in a friendly, religious, hardworking family with strong moral principles. Since childhood, he began to show interest in the German language, so his teacher Nina Avtokratova began to develop this ability in him day after day, to interest him in all the German books available to her, and often spoke to him in German.

Returning home to the atmosphere of native Russian life, he learned from his parents neatness and love of order, hard work, and determination.

Fellow villagers still remember today that he had a good memory and knew by heart - the only one in the whole village! - I learned Lermontov's Borodino. After school, a forestry technical school in Tyumen, where he communicated a lot with the ex-prisoner of war German Gunold, working in Kudymkar, he changed his name to the euphonious “Nikolai”, and in 1935 he got a job at the Uralmashplant, but three years later he moved to Moscow and got a job to work in the aviation industry.

Here he repeatedly met with his younger brother Victor, who had already fought at the front, and was jealous of him, since he could not get to the front, although he strived for this in every possible way. However, he didn’t waste time here either - he already seemed to understand that his “brilliant” German language would definitely come in handy in the near future. That's why I continued to practice. And when he finally managed to get to the partisans in August 1942, right behind enemy lines, he joyfully wrote to his brother: “Death to the German occupiers!”

It is time to create legends about his exploits in the partisan detachment. He fearlessly transformed into a German officer, and his impeccable knowledge of the enemy’s language allowed him to gain confidence in the highest circles of the fascists. Therefore, he received more and more new assignments from the command - to seize papers, destroy high-ranking Wehrmacht officials.

In October of the second year of the bloody war, he appeared in the uniform of a German officer on the streets of the Ukrainian city of Rovno captured by the Germans. Then there were “cases” to destroy key officers of the Nazi army and the seizure of important documents continued.

He didn't die. Actually, no one knows where he went: at the beginning of February 1944, he last met with a group of Soviet partisans, but he urgently needed to go to the command, so, after saying goodbye to them, his guys who continued to fight, he left. And how he sank into the water!

In November of the same year he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. And the village of Zyryanka has since become a memorial place - a museum was created here, tourists come here, and local residents proudly talk about their great fellow countryman, who sacrificed his life for the victory over fascism.

According to the honored traveler of Russia Leonid Bukrin, fellow countryman Nikolai Kuznetsov, who, by the way, dedicated one of his books to him, and even today he often visits his small homeland, the intelligence officer’s feat here is “absolutely” so much so that it even came to the detriment to other residents who went to the front and did not return from the war. Including the Old Believers.

They, who died a brave death, as well as those who went through all the horrors of the front and returned alive and well, are, of course, remembered here. But, alas, it’s not at all the same as about the same Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov, whose biography even local schoolchildren can easily reproduce in detail.

But the Old Faith in Zyryanka itself is slowly but surely withering away: people of the middle generation, whose fathers and mothers were strong Old Believers, no longer consider themselves such. They are proud that their roots are from the mighty tree of those who did not accept the reforms of Patriarch Nikon, but themselves, the overwhelming majority, grew up atheists.

This, unfortunately, happens.

Photo by Leonid Bukrin

A HERO WITH A TRAGIC SHADE

Nikolay Kuznetsov

Dozens of books have been written about Nikolai Kuznetsov, feature films and documentaries have been made. A comrade-in-arms of the legendary Dmitry Nikolaevich Medvedev and a fearless partisan, a Soviet intelligence officer who acted for 16 months under the guise of Chief Lieutenant Paul Wilhelm Siebert, and a fearless executor of death sentences for the fascist elite.

Let's remember the most famous and indisputable facts. Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov was born in 1911. By nationality - Russian. Became (we do not yet specify the specific year) a professional intelligence officer. During the Great Patriotic War, he led a reconnaissance and sabotage group in the city of Rivne, Ukrainian SSR. He worked under the guise of a Wehrmacht officer, Oberleutnant Paul Siebert. The group acted under the command of the commander of the “Winners” partisan detachment, security officer Dmitry Medvedev. From August 25, 1942 to March 8, 1944, Kuznetsov carried out a series of acts of retaliation. It was he who destroyed the executioner of the Ukrainian people, the chief German judge Funk, General Knut, Vice-Governor of Galicia Bauer, Vice-Governor Lvov Wechter and other high-ranking fascist executioners, kidnapped and destroyed the head of the so-called “Eastern Troops” General Ilgen. Prepared assassination attempts on the Gauleiter of Ukraine Erich Koch and General Dargel...

Conducted a number of reconnaissance operations and obtained strategic information. It was Kuznetsov who reported on the impending assassination attempt by the Germans, led by Otto Skorzeny, on the “Big Three” - Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill - in Tehran during the Conference of Leaders of the Anti-Hitler Coalition. Kuznetsov was killed by Bandera on the night of March 8-9, 1944. The title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded posthumously in 1944, and he was awarded two Orders of Lenin.

However, in the life of intelligence officer Nikolai Kuznetsov, much still remains classified as “secret”. Researcher and intelligence historian Theodor Gladkov helped remove this stamp. This opened up new pages in Kuznetsov’s biography. Theodor Kirillovich passed away, but not all of my notes from long conversations with him have been deciphered.

Theodor Kirillovich, it seems that everything is known about Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov. But it is in the new, 21st century that so much is written and told about him... New features are added to the already established and established image of an impeccable hero. Kuznetsov was almost accused of snitching: before the war he allegedly denounced his own people. He is both a cold killer and a seducer - almost even a pimp, who introduced ballerinas from the Bolshoi to other people's diplomats.

Stop, stop... A lot of chatter, nonsense, speculation, deliberate distortion. Sometimes there is a desire to embellish. It happens that you can denigrate. But why is there such a huge interest in Kuznetsov? Probably because the figure is very unusual, completely atypical for its time. And, this is certainly not only heroic, but also tragic in many ways.

Who really was intelligence officer Kuznetsov?

Indeed, there is something unclear and unsaid in Kuznetsov’s biography, which they previously preferred to remain silent about. Maybe this, hidden for the time being, gave rise to gossip?

Theodor Kirillovich, in Medvedev’s still popular book “Strong in Spirit,” the author casually mentions that one of his subordinates brought Kuznetsov to him in February 1942. Medvedev’s new partisan detachment was just being prepared to be deployed to the rear of the Nazis, and Nikolai Ivanovich, an engineer at a Ural plant, was introduced to Medvedev as a man who spoke excellent German and was capable of playing the role of a Wehrmacht officer. Let me ask you a direct question: did Kuznetsov collaborate with the authorities before the war or not?

Collaborated. When the partisan commander Dmitry Medvedev wrote the book “Strong in Spirit,” which glorified both him and Kuznetsov, who died in 1944, he did not have the opportunity to tell the whole truth about the intelligence officer. “...Medvedev’s detachment was supposed to fly near Rovno, and a Moscow engineer came to us and said that he knew German. And a month later Paul Siebert appeared...” - it is written in the book. This is a fairy tale for young children. Scouts are not born that way. But Medvedev, naturally, who knew the true biography of his subordinate better than anyone else, was shackled by secrecy. He could not, he did not have the right to write the truth in his book and he was very sad about this. In fact, Kuznetsov had been an unofficial employee of the state security service since the 1930s and worked at various enterprises in the Urals. And the fact that he studied at the Industrial Institute and wrote his diploma in German is nonsense. Only years later, in the 1970s, the KGB for the first time allowed it to be written, and only in one line, that Kuznetsov “since 1938 began to carry out special tasks to ensure state security.” From the mysterious and, in essence, nothing revealing wording, it follows that on August 25, 1942, on August 25, 1942, it was not a hastily prepared engineer from the Urals, an ordinary Red Army soldier Grachev, who landed in the German rear with a parachute, but a fairly experienced security officer, who had already worked for four years in the authorities. And relatively recently it was possible to find out that in fact, by that time, Nikolai Ivanovich’s professional experience was not four, but ten years.

But this also refutes all the common and familiar ideas about Kuznetsov.

Since June 10, 1932, Nikolai Kuznetsov has been a special agent of the district department of the OGPU of the Komi-Permyak Autonomous National District. He accepted the offer to work in the OGPU-NKVD because he was a patriot, and partly thanks to his youthful romanticism. Code nickname - "Kulik". Then in 1934 in Sverdlovsk he became a “Scientist”, and later, in 1937, a “Colonist”. In Medvedev’s detachment he acted under the name of Red Army soldier Nikolai Vasilyevich Grachev. And, for example, in Sverdlovsk, where he moved from Kudymkar in the summer of 1934, he was listed as a statistician in the Sverd-Les trust, a draftsman at the Verkh-Isetsky plant, and finally, a shop worker at the technical control bureau of the design department. In fact, he was on the secret staff of the Sverdlovsk department of the OGPU - NKVD. For four years as a route agent, he traveled the length and breadth of the entire Urals. The description of that period noted: “Resourceful and quick-witted, has an exceptional ability to make the necessary contacts and quickly navigate the situation. He has a good memory."

With whom did Kuznetsov make useful acquaintances for the OGPU?

In those years, many foreign engineers and craftsmen, especially Germans, worked at Uralmash and other factories. There weren't enough specialists of our own. Some came from Germany back in 1929 during the crisis to earn money - they were paid in hard currency. Others sincerely wanted to help the Land of Soviets. And there were also outright enemies: the chief fitter of the Borzig company defiantly wore a ring with a swastika.

Charming and sociable Kuznetsov knew how to easily get along with people of different ages and social status. I met with them at work and at home, talked in German, exchanged books and records. His sister Lida, who also lived in Sverdlovsk and did not have the slightest idea about her brother’s true profession, was worried about him: such communication with foreigners could come back to haunt her beloved brother Nika. But Nikolai just chuckled. None of his relatives ever guessed about his connection with the authorities - also a considerable achievement for an intelligence officer. And only on August 23, 1942, before being transferred to Medvedev’s detachment, “Winners” casually said at a farewell meeting to his brother Victor: if there is no news about him for a long time, then you can look at Kuznetsky Most, there in house 24 they will answer. After the war, Viktor Ivanovich Kuznetsov found out that this was the address of the NKVD reception.

And Nikolai Kuznetsov strove, as if sensing how his future fate would turn out, to adopt the style of behavior from the Germans. Sometimes he copied their style of dressing, learned to wear well-ironed suits, to which he matched shirts and ties by color, and showed off in a soft, slightly lopsided hat. I tried to keep abreast of new products in German literature, paying attention to scientific and technical books, and often looked into the reading room of the library of the Industrial Institute. Hence, by the way, the myth: Kuznetsov graduated from this institute and even defended his diploma in German.

Well, the young employee Kuznetsov communicated with foreigners and got along with them. What good does this do to the security officers?

Like which one? Special agent Kuznetsov did not sit idle. Imagine the same Uralmash - the center of the Soviet military industry. There are a lot of foreigners there, including Germans. It is clear that there were their intelligence officers and the agents they recruited. Many left, but those recruited remained. And Kuznetsov reported on moods and identified agents. There is a tip, and recruitment, and verification, and installation...

Kuznetsov also worked in agriculture: kulaks were exiled to the area where he worked in Komi. Of course, many were registered as kulaks in vain. But there were also kulak uprisings, and murders of activists, villagers, real, not fake sabotage. So taxi driver Kuznetsov received the right to carry weapons. Not just rifles, like all foresters. He had a revolver. The man went into the forest, and there they killed postmen, taxi drivers, and those who represented the authorities.

But how did Kuznetsov end up in Moscow? Who exactly recommended it?

Complicated story. He was found in Komi by the new People's Commissar of the NKVD, a former party worker, Mikhail Ivanovich Zhuravlev. He sent him to strengthen the ranks of the KGB, and he quickly rose to the rank of head of the republican ministry. He calls the Counterintelligence Department in Moscow and reports to his teacher Leonid Raikhman...

The same one who was accused of collaborating with Beria?..

I answer your question about Kuznetsov without going into details of the biography of Lieutenant General of the NKVD Raikhman, by the way, one of the ex-husbands of the famous ballerina Olga Vasilievna Lepeshinskaya. (He was the second and not the last husband of the ballerina. He was arrested, convicted, rehabilitated, but did not return to his wife after prison. - N.D.) Zhuravlev reports: “I have a guy here with fantastic acting and linguistic abilities. He speaks several dialects of German, Polish, and here he learned Komi, so much so that he writes poetry in this most complex language.” And Reichman just happened to have one of his illegal immigrants who came from Germany. I put Kuznetsov on the phone with him, we talked, and the illegal immigrant didn’t understand: he asked Reichman, did they call from Berlin? They made an appointment for Kuznetsov in Moscow. That’s how he ended up in the capital... But Kuznetsov never appeared at Lubyanka once in his life.

Were you afraid to let in?

There were few such agents. They were never illuminated. They could take a photo of a person entering the building and that would be the end of the job. The first meeting, as if according to tradition, was near the monument to the pioneer printer Fedorov. Then at safe houses, in the Park of Culture and in the Bauman Garden. They gave him housing on Karl Marx Street at number 20 - this is Staraya Basmannaya. The apartment is crammed with various equipment. All conversations of interest to Lubyanka were recorded.

Fishing with live bait

He was settled under the name of Rudolf Wilhelmovich Schmidt, a German by nationality, born in 1912. In fact, Kuznetsov, let me remind you, was born a year earlier. He pretended to be a test engineer at the Ilyushinsky plant and appeared in the uniform of a senior lieutenant of the Red Army Air Force.

But why the senior lieutenant?

Kuznetsov realized that his age, 29–30 years old, was just right for a lieutenant. A legend for strangers: he works in Fili, at a factory where airplanes are produced.

It’s surprising that Lieutenant Schmidt was so taken in by this.

Successfully invented - Rudolf Schmidt, that is, translated into Russian by Kuznetsov. He speaks German, was born in Germany, when he was two years old, his parents settled in the USSR, where the boy grew up. In hindsight, Kuznetsov was given a passport in this name and a “white ticket” so that he would not be dragged around the military registration and enlistment offices. It’s hard for any intelligence agency not to fall for such a tempting bait. In addition, the commander of the Red Army looks like a true Aryan. And what a bearing. Now photos of Nikolai Kuznetsov from those times are often published: he is in a flight suit. But here’s what’s interesting, or even characteristic. Nobody gave him that flight uniform with three head-to-toe senior lieutenant uniforms. He told Reichman that he got it himself, came up with a legend and acted on it. He never served in any army and had no military rank. But how smart he is in a German way, elegant in a European way. Now? we know: Kuznetsov was illegal in his own country.

But they could have awarded the title.

No title, no certificate. And when applying for a job, which was almost always fictitious, he wrote in his application form that he was exempt from military service due to illness. And he was absolutely healthy. True, when he underwent a thorough medical examination before being sent to Medvedev’s detachment, they discovered that he had a vision defect. But it is minor and does not interfere with operational work. And Kuznetsov always wrote that he didn’t know languages. And here’s what’s curious: if he had to, he could pass himself off as a foreigner who spoke Russian poorly. This was required several times.

Where did he work or at least what was he assigned to?

In Moscow, he was secretly on the staff and received a salary directly from the first department - the German one, created in 1940. Nikolai Kuznetsov even had the only position in the Soviet intelligence service: a highly classified special agent of the NKVD with a salary at the rate of a personnel detective of the central apparatus. And the salary is quite large. Everyone saw that he actively communicates with foreigners. There were so many denunciations. Lots of denunciations! I read them. Well, I’ll tell you, they did write. The most active one is the neighbor in his communal apartment: he takes foreigners and in general.

I guess the denunciations ended up in the same place.

In theory they should. But due to some confusion, our counterintelligence also took Kuznetsov into development and established surveillance on him. They even gave him nicknames: one was “Athlete” for his muscular figure, the other was “Front” for his elegance in clothes. I saw these denunciations signed by two different people from outdoor surveillance - “Kat” and “Nadezhda”.

It was probably the same women he used who were knocking.

Not at all necessary. Male agents also used female names to hide behind them. But Kuznetsov could be taken sooner or later.

Didn't intelligence chiefs warn their colleagues about him?

Never. This would be even more dangerous for him. The intelligence officer did not have the right to reveal his connections even to his office neighbor. But reports about Rudi Schmidt’s behavior ended up on the desk of NKGB People’s Commissar Merkulov. And he was faced with a dilemma - to arrest his own special agent or give the order to the outdoor surveillance not to respond to “Athlete”. Disclosing the agent was not part of the GB's plans. And Merkulov found the right solution, writing on the servant’s note: “Pay attention to Schmidt.” Which, in a language understandable to counterintelligence, meant: don’t touch, don’t arrest, don’t conduct conversations, but continue monitoring. So Kuznetsov was a cat that walked on its own. Otherwise it’s dangerous. They could, they could have grabbed it. Thus, Kovalsky, well-known in certain areas, who recruited General Skoblin in Paris, was shot by his own people. Although he told them, he swore to them who he was. It was in Ukraine, and the Center was looking for him, having lost contact with him. Kuznetsov left from observation. Did his job. Recruited Germans. Obtained secret documents. His task in counterintelligence was to get foreigners, primarily German intelligence agents, to fall for him. And General Reichman confirmed: “We didn’t teach him anything.” And Kuznetsov bought a camera and quickly took pictures of the documents handed to him by the agents - he learned to take photographs himself. And I also learned to drive a car myself. There was no time for studying at some intelligence school: by that time, Kuznetsov had been expelled from the Komsomol twice. First, for the fact that his father is supposedly a fist and even one of the former. Lies. Kuznetsov also had a criminal record. And a few years later, when he was already working in the authorities, there was another arrest. Not up to higher education - they didn’t even let him finish college.

Let's talk about the arrest a little later. But how did he manage to earn a criminal record in his young years?

When he was expelled from the Komsomol as the “son of a kulak,” he was expelled from the technical school a semester before graduation. There was nothing left until the end of his studies, and he was only given a certificate that he had attended the courses. And nineteen-year-old Kuznetsov rushed out of harm’s way, on the advice of his comrade, to the Komi-Permyak district. Where to go next? He served there as a forester, and someone from his direct superiors stole. Kuznetsov himself reported this to the police. And for his company, he was given a year of probation and again expelled from the Komsomol.

The biography is not the most suitable for a future organ worker. Am I right or wrong: on that first conviction, his organs were seized and recruited?

This is what usually happens. And with Kuznetsov, to my surprise, the story is somewhat different. Once in Komi, Kuznetsov famously fought off the bandits who attacked him. And he came to the attention of detective Ovchinnikov. A Komi-Permyak by nationality, he suddenly discovered that the young Russian who had recently arrived here was not only brave and strong, but also spoke, and fluently, in his native language. It was Ovchinnikov who recruited Kuznetsov, quickly realizing that he had accidentally landed on a nugget... And then in Komi, Mikhail Ivanovich Zhuravlev found strength, tore such talent away from himself, and gave it to Muscovites. But Kuznetsov could work in his distant place until the end of his days.

Why did he never take a course in the wisdom of the KGB?

Raikhman feared that upon admission to the KGB school, personnel officers would send Kuznetsov not to the exams, but to the detention center. But I had to work today. After all, the intelligence officers did not believe in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Reichman and his comrades even wrote a report about this. But Merkulov, their then boss, tore up the paper with the parting words: “They don’t like this at the top...” Moscow was flooded with German agents. They launched a very cunning combination, and certain circles approached Kuznetsov. And off we go. We managed to intercept two diplomatic couriers. Kuznetsov soon managed to compromise and recruit a certain Krno, a diplomat who actually replaced the envoy of Slovakia. He smuggled entire consignments of smuggled watches through diplomatic channels, part of the proceeds from their sale seemed to go to pay the agents, but in fact everything ended up in Krno’s pockets - he was such a greedy guy.

By the way, there were so many watches confiscated by intelligence that employees of our state security agencies were allowed to buy them at cost. And they bought it.

And Kuznetsov pressed hard on Krno, and the most valuable information came from him, who disappeared in the German embassy for days and nights.

Then, thanks to Kuznetsov, they found approaches to the German naval and military attache. Yes, he knew how to charm people. Here is a German delegation visiting ZIS - the famous automobile plant. And Rudolf Schmidt meets a member of the delegation, who in turn introduces the good-natured Rudi to his companion. The lady is beautiful, the advances of the Russian officer are pleasant to her. There is a rapprochement. And intelligence gets the opportunity to regularly read documents from the German Embassy, ​​where the beauty works in an inconspicuous but important purely technical position, through which many secret documents automatically pass. Kuznetsov managed to win over both the German ambassador’s valet and his wife.

Not quite clear.

There are many unknowns in his life. And before the war, thanks to Kuznetsov, they entered the ambassador’s residence in Teply Lane. Safes were opened, copies of documents were made, and the German intelligence network fell into the hands of Lubyanka employees. And the valet of the German ambassador, who considered Kuznetsov a real Aryan, a fascist, gave him a Nazi badge and the book “Mein Kampf” on the last pre-war Christmas and promised to formalize membership in the Nazi party after the end of the war.

Divorced, no children

There is a lot of gossip that Kuznetsov often used beautiful ladies in his work. Sorry for the rudeness, as if he put ballerinas and other artists in bed with foreigners. They even named the name of one people's artist, and other celebrities too.

It was, but, of course, not on the exaggerated scale that people talk about. Kuznetsov was a handsome man and enjoyed success with women. Including those who, in addition to him, also had wealthy fans, not only Soviet ones. The salary of ballerinas is not very high, but a foreigner will bring stockings and mascara from Paris, and throw in something else. So Kuznetsov didn’t set anyone up. The beautiful ladies knew their business even without him. Yes, among the ballerinas there were also his sources, who told Kuznetsov a lot of things.

He also had a serious affair with a lady artist. She was then about thirty, living in a luxurious apartment near Petrovsky Passage. Salon, bohemia - by the way, in that apartment Kuznetsov met actor Mikhail Zharov. And Kuznetsov, in my opinion, seriously fell in love with this socialite with a noble surname - Keana Obolenskaya. He was known to her as Rudi Schmidt. The beginning of the 1940s, and the pact is not a pact, the attitude towards the Germans is already wary, they could be punished for close ties with them. Little by little, the Germans began to be pressed down, evicted from Moscow, and the Republic of the Volga Germans was completely depopulated; its inhabitants were transported to the Kazakh steppes. And Ksana, so that God forbid nothing happens to her, took her love, to put it in modern terms, and abandoned her. Kuznetsov suffered. Already when he was behind the front line in a partisan detachment, vague rumors reached him about Ksana’s marriage. I asked Medvedev in January 1944 before leaving for Lvov: if I die, be sure to tell the truth about me to Ksana, explain who I was. And Medvedev, already a Hero of the Soviet Union, found this same Keana Obolenskaya during the war, in 1944, in Moscow, fulfilled the will of his friend, talked about the Hero, who loved her until the end of his days.

And a scene of repentance ensued?

Nothing like it. Complete indifference and indifference. Medvedev, a sincere, subtle man, was worried about his deceased intelligence officer.

Maybe Ksana was jealous? Kuznetsov had to sleep with other women.

For operational purposes. I had to bless Nicholas for these novels. As a result, valuable information was obtained. And Ksana turned out to be extremely soulless.

It’s such a shame for Nikolai Ivanovich. I didn’t know that such a love happened to him. Is it true that Kuznetsov was once married in his youth?

Pure truth. On December 4, 1930, the wedding took place, and, bam, on March 4, 1931, there was a divorce. My personal life didn’t work out, and I’ll never understand why. So it remained between two people who, apparently, loved each other at the beginning of their life together. His ex-wife Elena Chueva turned out to be an exceptionally noble and worthy woman. A graduate of medical school, she fought, saved the wounded and ended the war with the rank of major. She was demobilized after the victory over Japan. And, you know, I never boasted to anyone, saying that I am the hero’s wife, and I didn’t ask for anything.

There was some talk about children. More specifically, about my daughter.

There were no children. Rumors about the daughter really started to spread and they were verified. Kuznetsov only had a nephew.

Spies flew to us in batches

Kuznetsov began working in Moscow as an intelligence officer in difficult pre-war times.

Yes, and he had to communicate with different people.

He became a regular at the then famous jewelry consignment store on Stoleshnikov Lane. There he made acquaintances with both noble and unclean people. I knew many people in the artistic world. There was a moment when, in order to legalize Kuznetsov, they even wanted to make him the administrator of the Bolshoi Theater. But they were afraid to draw too much attention to him.

The Germans were most active in 1940 and 1941. At that time, German intelligence launched a truly frantic activity in the USSR. That's who got everything they could out of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. What delegations visit us often! Well, where has this happened - about two hundred people. And there was a constant change of employees - some worked for a month or three, and some showed up for a day or two, completed the task and were gone.

But little is written about this.

Not the best times. I don’t even want to remember them. There was a huge landing of Germans on the ZIL, many trade delegations. Go keep an eye on it. The most difficult years for our special services. It happened that among the terry spies our agents suddenly appeared in Moscow, for example Harnak, who went down in history as one of the leaders of the Red Chapel. Or they established air traffic, flew to Moscow from Berlin and Koenigsberg with landings in our cities by their Lufthansa. And instead of girls - flight attendants in aprons - only brave guys - stewards with excellent bearing. But they also changed: two or three flights, and a different team. This is how German navigators from the Luftwaffe studied the routes.

But I read in the memoirs of fascist intelligence officers that there were few permanent German spies in Moscow. And therefore in Berlin they took advantage of every chance to send in their own people, at least for a while. What about ours? Did you get to Berlin?

Ours also flew there. But in small groups. While the NKVD decides who can fly, who will be released...

I would like to ask you about the complicated story with the Soviet pilot Alekseev, who died mysteriously while testing a new aircraft model.

There was such a German squadron under the command of the world ace Theodor Rovel, which was named after the commander during his lifetime. And at altitudes inaccessible to pilots from other countries, she flew over all the countries that were subsequently attacked by Hitler.

German sources write modestly about her. We flew at enormous altitudes and took photographs. That's all. Who flew? Where? What kind of squadron is Rovel? At first, Hitler seemed to order her not to violate the borders of the USSR, so as not to suggest thoughts of non-compliance with the pact. Then, closer to the summer of 1941, all previous restrictions were lifted. If you believe the rumors, which one would like to call ridiculous, then Rovel’s squadron flew almost to Moscow. Just a young aviator Rust.

Yes, there is still work to be done by our researchers, including intelligence historians. And indeed there are photographs of Leningrad taken by Rovel’s pilots. But then our pilot Mikhail Alekseev appeared and, using experimental engines of the I-16 fighter, began to rise to altitudes close to German ones. And suddenly he died on one of the flights. Here, not the Germans, but the Japanese began to approach the test engineer, senior lieutenant Rudolf Schmidt, and were keenly interested in the fate of Alekseev. After all, Schmidt, according to legend, worked in Fili, at a factory built by the Germans. They are not here now, but who knows, perhaps they left behind agents or people who owed them something? By all indications, cautious Germans acted through the curious Japanese. Kuznetsov informed his superiors about the interest that arose and gave the Japanese a half-true version that suited them. True, perhaps he raised the ceiling that Alekseev reached. However, what actually happened to Alekseev and how he died is unknown.

Linguist from Mother Nature

Theodor Kirillovich, what is this confusion with Kuznetsov’s names? There is a myth that when he joined intelligence service, he received a new name.

But this is not entirely a myth, but the NKVD has nothing to do with it. Kuznetsov was born on July 27, 1911 in the village of Zyryanka, Kamyshlovsky district, Perm province. At birth he was named Nikanor, at home - Nika. The guy didn’t like the name Nikanor, and in 1931 he changed it to Nikolai. But some confusion and discrepancies did remain. Kuznetsov’s youth friend Fyodor Belousov told me that when Nikolai Ivanovich’s relatives and classmates learned that a certain Nikolai Kuznetsov had been awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, they thought it was a namesake. Even sister Lydia and brother Victor remained in the dark for a long time. He was believed to have gone missing. After all, there was no exact confirmation of his death: they didn’t even write in the decree that it was “posthumous.” Still, despite everything, there remained some faint hopes that the scout would be found. And in Moscow, Kuznetsov’s true biography was so secret that the Certificate of the Presidium of the Supreme Council awarding him the title of Hero remained undelivered to his relatives. At the end of the war, it was completely lost, and only in 1965 was a duplicate made.

Some biographers of Kuznetsov believed that Nikolai Ivanovich was allegedly an ethnic German, a native of a German colony, of which there were many before the Great Patriotic War. This explained his excellent knowledge of the language.

His father Ivan Pavlovich, like his mother Anna Pavlovna, are originally Russian people. Before the revolution, my father served in a grenadier regiment in St. Petersburg. But weaklings were not accepted as grenadiers. I pulled the strap for seven years. For accurate shooting, he was awarded prizes from the young Tsar Nicholas II: he brought a watch, a silver ruble and a bluish mug with portraits of the emperor and empress. However, he was not a nobleman or a white officer: he fought in the Red Army near Tukhachevsky, then near Eikhe. He beat Kolchak’s men, reached all the way to Krasnoyarsk, but caught typhus and was dismissed at the age of 45, as the clerk of the Fifth Army of the Eastern Front wrote, “in pursuance of the order to a primitive state.” And not a fist, as other everyday life writers claim. When Nikolai Kuznetsov was accused of hiding information about his wealthy family and expelled from the Komsomol for this, his mother gave her son a certificate. Even in those troubled times, local authorities were not afraid to confirm: “During his lifetime, Ivan Pavlovich Kuznetsov was engaged exclusively in agriculture, did not engage in trade and did not employ hired force.”

Where did Kuznetsov get such a talent for languages?

And from the same nature. A boy from the Ural village of Zyryanka with 84 households and 396 inhabitants mastered German perfectly. Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov was a brilliant linguist. And he was incredibly lucky with his foreign language teachers. This is how fate turned out - in his wilderness, from where the nearest provincial town is 93 miles away, educated people were brought who would teach in gymnasiums, and, fortunately, the village boy Nika Kuznetsov gained knowledge from them. At the Talitsk seven-year school, German and French were taught by Nina Nikolaevna Avtokratova. She received her education as a school teacher in a distant Ural village in Switzerland. Kuznetsov's passion for languages ​​was considered a whim. And therefore, his friendship with labor teacher Franz Frantsevich Yavurek, a former prisoner of war who settled in those parts, seemed mysterious to his classmates. I picked up colloquial speech, lively phrases and expressions from the soldier’s vocabulary, which could not have been in the dictionary of the most intelligent teacher. I chatted a lot with the pharmacist of the local pharmacy, the Austrian Krause. When I worked in Kudymkar, I surprisingly quickly mastered Komi, which is difficult, like all the languages ​​of the Finno-Ugric group. He even wrote poetry on it, as the ubiquitous security officers discovered. After studying for only a year in Tyumen, he joined the Esperantist club and translated his favorite “Borodino” by Lermontov into Esperanto. At the technical school, he came across the German “Encyclopedia of Forestry Science,” which no one had opened before him, and translated it into Russian. And already in Sverdlovsk, where he worked as a secret agent, he became friends with an actress of the city theater - a Polish national. The result of the novel is knowledge of the Polish language, which also came in handy for him. In the partisan detachment “Winners”, which operated in Ukraine, he spoke Ukrainian. The Spaniards, who served in the forests near Rivne in Medvedev’s detachment, suddenly became worried. They reported to the commander: soldier Grachev understands that when we speak our native language, he is not the person he claims to be. And it was Kuznetsov, with his linguistic talent, who opened up an understanding of a previously unfamiliar language. German has many dialects. In addition to the classic one, Kuznetsov owned five or six more. This helped Lieutenant Siebert more than once when communicating with German officers. It is clear that for the illegal Kuznetsov, who acted under a legendary biography, a meeting with a native of the German city where the intelligence officer was allegedly born would be almost a disaster. Kuznetsov-Siebert, quickly grasping which part of Germany his interlocutor was from, began to speak with a slight touch of the dialect of a land located at the other end of the country.

Or perhaps the conversation among fellow countrymen would have been more frank?

The worst thing for an illegal intelligence officer is to run into a fellow countryman: who taught chemistry at your favorite school? And now it’s a failure, very close. In Germany? Kuznetsov has never been.

Appearance of Chief Lieutenant Siebert

How did Oberleutnant Paul Siebert come into being?

For almost a year, Kuznetsov languished in our rear. He was indignant, wrote reports, asked to go to the front.

I was told that Nikolai Ivanovich, even before the “Winners,” managed to visit the German rear. But the story is vague and not entirely clear to me. The reconnaissance operation in the Kalinin area was mentioned.

More like the Kalinin Front. And its details are not clear to me. Kuznetsov was thrown behind German lines. He spent several days there, and the military were satisfied with his activities. That's probably all I managed to find out. But they were in no hurry to throw Nikolai behind the Germans again. Finally, the intelligence officer was included in Medvedev’s group. The order was signed by the People's Commissar of the NKVD Merkulov - the highest level, which already speaks of what results were expected from Kuznetsov.

At the beginning of 1942, documents of killed German officers were found near Moscow. Signs of Paul Siebert - height, eye color, hair, even blood type - well, everything matched Kuznetsov’s. True, Siebert was born in 1913, and Kuznetsov was two years older. By the way, Siebert is from Koenigsberg, now our Kaliningrad.

Intense preparations went on for several months. Parachute jumping and shooting from different types of weapons were not the most difficult tests in it. Although it suddenly turned out that Kuznetsov, an excellent hunter, shoots excellently with a carbine and very poorly with a pistol. This was obvious to Kuznetsov as well. Three weeks later he was already hitting targets with both hands: from the Parabellum and from the Walter.

Kuznetsov had to understand the structure of someone else’s army and master a slang that was unusual even for him. It was not easy to delve into the intricate system of the German intelligence services.

He was shown films with movie star Marika Rökk. He saw the paintings of the Fuhrer's favorite Leni Riefenstahl, who devoted her talent to praising fascism (and suddenly in our time was proclaimed almost an opponent of the Hitler regime). He read primitive German novels found in the field bags of killed German officers. I learned to whistle the soldiers’ favorite melodies like “Lili Marlene.”

Then, under the guise of an infantry lieutenant, Kuznetsov was placed in an officer’s barracks in a Soviet prisoner of war camp located near Krasnogorsk. He behaved carefully. The slightest mistake - and the bunk neighbors would not have spared the decoy duck. And to Kuznetsov’s surprise, the discipline of the captured Germans was strong. And they were arrogant, confident that they would soon take Moscow anyway, that this imprisonment was temporary.

The special agent was tested, did not show up anywhere, and the Nazis took him for one of their own. In the camp drama club where he studied (Lord, there was one), he was set as an example to others for his purely literary pronunciation. He managed to pick up so much slang words. He even made friends with whom he agreed to meet after the war, the end of which “wasn’t long.” And, perhaps, he understood the main thing - the confrontation between two antipodean systems seriously and for a long time. Kuznetsov did not notice any traces of the decomposition of the German army, which suffered its first defeat near Moscow, about which our newspapers and radio broadcast.

The authorities were pleased with this “penetration”. After all, it was difficult to imagine how the “replant” would be received - a foreign trench language, unusual manners. And the acting gift of complete transformation that was revealed at the same time turned Kuznetsov into a real illegal immigrant.

He languished in anticipation of the case, his reports with a request to be sent to any task accumulated with his superiors, until, finally, the long-awaited decision was made.

Fighter Nikolai Vasilyevich Grachev appeared in Medvedev’s “Winners” squad. And in the city of Rovno - Chief Lieutenant Siebert. Due to two wounds, according to legend, he was “temporarily unfit for front-line service.” Kuznetsov was sent for a short period of time. No one could have imagined that he would last almost a year and a half. This is a unique case, a record - to withstand so much with fake documents. After all, a deep check would have revealed it instantly. And he gave no reason for the slightest suspicion. If they sent the documents to Berlin, that would be the end of the epic.

Why do you think Chief Lieutenant, and then Captain Siebert, who personally destroyed many fascist bosses, managed to hold out for so long?

He was a great scout. Yes, today it seems incredible: a Russian man, a civilian, who had never served in any army for a day and did not even have a military rank, who had never been to Germany, acted under an assumed name for 16 months. And the small city of Rivne was completely visible by Hitler’s special services - counterintelligence, secret field police, Feldgendarmerie, local military gendarmerie, and finally, SD. Kuznetsov not only carried out death sentences to fascist executioners, but also constantly communicated with officers of the Wehrmacht, intelligence services, and senior officials of the occupation authorities. How much valuable information he conveyed! What was the value of the data alone about the impending assassination attempt on Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill in Tehran!

What if the Germans still wanted to check Siebert’s identity? The quartermaster, even after being seriously wounded, remained in Rivne for too long.

Much depended on two factors. The first one is from a legend. The second factor is the skill of the scout. With skill - everything is clear. And the legend was developed brilliantly. According to her, Siebert was not at all one of the quartermaster rats, whom the front-line soldiers did not like. After all, he was wounded in heavy battles near Moscow, as evidenced by the patch on his jacket. What huge losses his unit suffered then, even the headquarters was completely destroyed! And he began to fight “since the Polish campaign,” in September 1939, when he earned the Iron Cross, which was always on his uniform, albeit of the second degree.

Soon Kuznetsov was lucky: “his” 76th division was destroyed in 1943 near Stalingrad. It is unlikely that any of Siebert’s former real fellow soldiers remained alive. Unless he was captured. And if we were to go to Berlin for an in-depth investigation, where we could properly delve into the archives, then we needed some specific reason, an obvious suspicion. But Kuznetsov-Siebert did not give them. He attended to the little things with a thoroughness that was surprising even for Medvedev. Somehow it seemed to him that the German officer’s uniform he was putting on was not ironed enough. There was no iron in the squad. And then the uniform was ironed... with an ax heated over the fire by Simone Krimker. For the future illegal intelligence officer, this was an excellent lesson: there can be no trifles in this profession. Or another episode. A man's ring with an intricate monogram fell into the hands of security officers in Moscow. And at Kuznetsov’s request, the jeweler redid the engraving on PS - Paul Siebert. Kuznetsov, going to Rovno in the uniform of a chief lieutenant, put expensive jewelry on his finger when he wanted to impress an important and necessary interlocutor. A tiny detail, but it also naturally and believably complemented the appearance of an illegal immigrant.

I met with Foreign Intelligence Colonel Pavel Georgievich Gromushkin, who straightened out the documents for Nikolai Ivanovich. He was already over ninety, and he remembered Kuznetsov-Siebert very well, but he thought that it was too early to reveal this military page. He told me something, but asked “not to publish it yet.” (This “for now” has passed and therefore I will allow myself to tell something in this book.) Former printing engineer Gromushkin prepared documents for virtually all illegal immigrants, including his friend Colonel Fischer - Abel. Although he was able to create a document in any language.

Dmitry Medvedev's former deputy for intelligence, Lukin, told me that, according to his calculations, Siebert's documents were checked more than seventy times on a variety of occasions. And Kuznetsov reported on each case.

But don’t think that Kuznetsov was such a lone wolf in Rovno. Under his command were the scouts who had been abandoned with him, Red Army soldiers who had escaped from captivity, and local residents. He was reliably covered by the most experienced security officers from Medvedev’s detachment.

In intelligence, especially illegal intelligence, not believing in your star means failing from the very beginning. Yes, Kuznetsov believed. Faith almost always helped. And when a real hunt began for Kuznetsov’s Siebert, Nikolai Ivanovich took it without much fear. Perhaps we should be even more careful here. But how? Hide, refuse to carry out acts of retaliation? No, it was not in his spirit, Kuznetsov did not agree to such a thing. Played Russian roulette with fate. He was a brilliantly resourceful man. One day, a German intelligence officer invited him to take a dip in the river. Kuznetsov quickly came up with an excuse for refusal.

According to legend, he had two wounds, but not a single scar on his body. Kuznetsov knew how much he was needed and never allowed himself to relax.

mission Impossible

Here I will interrupt the conversation with the respected Theodor Kirillovich. It is a pity that soon our frank friendly meetings were interrupted forever. But there were topics that I told Gladkov about with the greatest possible frankness at that time.

In this chapter, I do not aim to tell about all the exploits of Kuznetsov. Rather, I’m trying to show the actions of a great intelligence officer in the harshest military conditions, where the price of any mistake is death. I am disgusted by some modern books where fascist counterintelligence is portrayed as stupid, clumsy, constantly losing to ours. I also don’t like translated literature, such as Schellenberg’s memoirs, where the fascists justify themselves by blaming all the troubles and defeats on Hitler, and boast about the Russian agents they recruited - the vast majority of them being frames of the Soviet state security.

The Third Reich managed to create a total system of investigation and detection. It reminds me very much of the system of indirect signs that the German counterintelligence used, perhaps inherited from its compatriots, in the fight against the ubiquitous Stasi.

Is this why we did not have our own agents in the Gestapo except Lehmann-Breitenbach, who was discovered and killed back in December 1942? And attempts to send well-trained German anti-fascists to restore contact with the still active Red Chapel ended in the arrest of our agents and the tragic destruction of the entire Chapel.

Let us remember that the successful assassination attempts carried out directly in Germany on fascist bosses do not appear in the long list of successful operations. The liquidations of Heydrich, von Kube and those whom Kuznetsov punished were carried out not on German soil, but on foreign soil.

I place Nikolai Kuznetsov’s hunt for Gauleiter Koch in the same series of difficult retaliation operations. Soviet intelligence was obliged to destroy the sadist, executioner and punisher, as well as the Fuhrer's governor in Belarus, Cuba, on Stalin's personal orders. And if Troyan, Mazanik, Osipova coped with the task, then Kuznetsov did not succeed with Kokh. And I sincerely think it couldn’t have worked out. The mission was obviously impossible. Kuznetsov was aware of this, suffering painfully and reproaching himself for his failure.

How much effort was spent trying to find out when Koch would appear in Rivne. With great difficulty, Kuznetsov sometimes obtained outdated information: on February 2, 1943, he learned that on January 27, Koch flew to Rivne and on the same day flew to Lutsk. Or here’s a message from February 20 of the same year: instead of Koch, his deputy is in charge of all affairs in Rivne. Or Kuznetsov learns from a German officer he knows: the Reich Commissioner only occasionally travels to Vinnitsa from Königsberg.

Shortly before April 20, 1943, luck finally smiled on Kuznetsov. On Hitler's birthday, Reich Commissioner Erich Koch was supposed to speak in Rivne in front of a crowd of people. The plan seemed relatively simple - Kuznetsov’s group one by one makes its way closer to the podium, throws grenades at it and tries to escape. Nikolai Ivanovich left a farewell letter to Medvedev: it is physically impossible to commit an assassination attempt and leave the crowded square. But he, like his partisan scouts, is ready for self-sacrifice. However, Koch did not come to Rivne.

Another plan called “Amateur Performance” also failed - a group of two dozen partisans, dressed in German uniforms, approached Koch’s residence in Rovno, singing a song they had learned in German, stormed the house and killed the Reich Commissioner. But going to a well-guarded residence was pure suicide, without the slightest chance of success.

One day the exact date of Koch’s arrival in Rivne became known. A partisan ambush awaited him near the airfield. With some luck, the operation promised to be successful. But the fascist did not arrive. Instead of Rovno, he went to the funeral of a party comrade who died in a car accident.

Attempts to destroy Koch by military means could be continued, forgetting about the risk. The question was different. They did not promise any success. And then experienced security officers Medvedev, Lukin and Grachev began to quickly develop the assassination attempt. The opportunity to learn about Koch's plans came unexpectedly. Chief Corporal Schmidt, a dog handler by civilian profession, trained a dog to guard Koch. He himself had to hand over the black bloodhound to the Reich Commissioner, who was going to arrive in Rovno on May 25, 1943 and stay with the dog next to Koch for ten days.

Siebert and Schmidt developed a friendly relationship, the chief lieutenant fueled them by treating the greedy chief corporal in a restaurant. And Schmidt's dog also began to recognize Siebert. Having been taught not to approach strangers, she gradually got used to her master's friend and even began to take food from Siebert's hands. But it was not yet clear how this could be used in the future.