The most epic failures of Soviet intelligence
The words of the British deputy interior minister Ben Wallace that the West needs to “take seriously the once powerful Kremlin intelligence services” and that one should not “underestimate the GRU’s capabilities despite the high-profile failures of Russian military intelligence” are certainly nothing more than a mockery at the style of "subtle English humor." However, starting from them, it is worth recalling the times when our scouts soaked things, in comparison with which all the current leapfrog is just babble. What for?! But this will be discussed below ...
In the days of the USSR, propagandists and writers did a great job in this field - in the eyes of many generations the concept of “Soviet intelligence” was associated exclusively with the heroic images of Stirlitz or “Major Whirlwind”. At the worst, Richard Sorge, who has fulfilled his duty to the end and is tortured by villains by enemies. Enchanting punctures and failures of the domestic "knights of the cloak and dagger" of publicity, of course, did not indulge. They were hushed up no less carefully than cases of their betrayal of the homeland and the transition to the service of the enemy.
And there was nothing to talk about ... The Foreign Department (INO), created at the same time, first the Cheka, and then the OGPU and the Intelligence Directorate of the Headquarters of the Red Army, was completed, of course, not by the great professionals of the secret war (where they were to take Soviet Russia in the beginning of the 20s?), but comrades ideologically sustained and devoted to the cause of the revolution. Hence the results ... No, the Soviet intelligence officers were able to achieve absolutely stunning successes, as they say, from the first steps. But what absurdities these successes sometimes crossed out and came to naught - a completely different conversation.
A remarkable example from this area is the failures that occurred in neighboring Lithuania, which at that time (as now, however) was not at all a friendly country for Soviet Russia. In 1920, Vincas Griganavičius, a member of the intelligence department of the headquarters of the Armed Forces of Lithuania, barely managed to get his feet off. In fact - an employee of the OGPU and a communist since 1917, Vincent Griganovich. Having more talentedly infiltrated the Lithuanian army and made a career in it, which any scout can only dream of, instead of observing conspiracy and regularly supplying valuable information to the Center, Griganovich began to study policies and almost in open friendship with the local communists who were in Lithuania in an illegal situation.
It came to almost holding meetings of all kinds of underground committees right in his apartment! Naturally, vigilant neighbors were found - they reported "where to" about obscure gatherings and dubious personalities lugging about them. Local counterintelligence reacted accordingly. Griganovich managed to get away, but the most valuable channel for obtaining information was irretrievably lost. And, what, at least something did this colleagues from INO teach? No way! Seven years later, Soviet intelligence attacked the same "rake" in Lithuania, only on a much larger scale.
On May 19, 1927, a whole Lithuanian army lieutenant general Konstantin Kleschinsky was detained in his house. As it turned out, he, for some time even acting as chief of the General Staff there, has been working for the INO OGPU under the pseudonym Ivanov-XII for many years now! The reasons for the failure of such an overvalued source are still being wondered. According to one version, one of the brainless figures of the Comintern thought of embossing some of the information received from Kleshchinsky in a newspaper. According to another, the “tail” was dragged along by employees of the Soviet permanent mission, with whom the general was in touch, whether they were tests of external surveillance that were not trained in elementary rules, or simply neglected them ...
Most likely, just the second version is true, because at the moment when the employees of Zhvalbigy, the Lithuanian secret police, burst into the house of Kleshchinsky, the Soviet envoy Sokolov calmly sat there, who could not find another place to get a package with top-secret information. The diplomat managed to throw this package out of his own pocket - and escaped with only deportation to the USSR. But Konstantin Kleshchinsky, after an extremely short investigation, on which he did not even try to lock himself, was shot. According to some reports, his last words were: “Long live Soviet Russia!”
And if this happened in Lithuania alone! (Well, maybe the place is damned?) In France, for example, things were going even worse. Then the courier of the Soviet Intelligence Agency, who was traveling from Switzerland with a passport in the name of the Italian Enrico Versellino, gets nerves at the border and he throws a fit tantrum and undergoes the most thorough examination, as a result of which the stunned policemen find not only thick packs of dollars in the “traveler's” baggage, but and secret documents, as well as explicit encryption ...
One of the INO agents, the French Communist Henri Gauthier, for some kind of mischief, interferes with an anti-communist rally held on the eve of parliamentary elections at the Saint-Nazaire and starts to “educate everyone” there. This, given the French hot temperament, quite naturally ends with a banal scuffle. Everything would be fine, but only at the same time Gauthier has a briefcase in his hands, literally full of secret information about the French Navy, aircraft factories, arsenals and no less interesting things for Soviet intelligence (which he, of course, intended). Upon the arrival of the police, who appeared to separate the brawlers, Gauthier quickly flies off - throwing at the same time his briefcase, like a string bag with potatoes. The French counterintelligence from such a find, of course, is in shock.
The Parisian police are experiencing roughly the same emotions when they tied a certain Cassio to the French Communist newspaper “Humanite” (which is the press agency, moreover, not without reason, has long been believed to be a branch of the Soviet intelligence). Not only that, his documents turn out to be false and in a false name - in his pockets and in his briefcase, this monsieur simply reveals a breakthrough of papers with the most serious security stamps - from detailed staff lists of army and naval units, to beautifully executed photographs of French arsenals. The special intelligence of the counterintelligence forces is ... a top secret memorandum on the Red Army, the most insolent way stolen from the French General Staff!
It is not surprising that with such a statement of work, in 1934 the entire intelligence network of the USSR in France was completely destroyed, and even with the scandal that Petrov and Boshirov had never dreamed of! The cry about “unbridled Soviet spies” was such that even TASS and Izvestia had to make an angry rebuttal - they say, all this is nothing but “empty fabrications” and provocations of Nazi Germany. That's it ... And, by the way, disgrace was not limited to France - by the beginning of the 30s, the intelligence networks and residency of Soviet intelligence were torn to pieces in Finland, Romania, Italy, Estonia, Latvia.
The mess going on in intelligence (we shall call a spade a spade!) Mess got to the liver of Stalin himself. Joseph Vissarionovich on March 19, 1934 was forced to personally deliver a report at the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which had a very distinctive title: "On the campaign abroad on Soviet espionage." Yeah ... Something familiar to the pain, is not it? Do you think it helped? All fell prostrate before the formidable leader, after which, shaking with horror and sweating from the excess of official zeal, began to fulfill their duties in an ideal way? Not at all! In 1935, the “Copenhagen Failure" struck, which is considered the most grandiose shame of Soviet foreign intelligence of all time.
Another name for this nightmare is “meeting of residents”. That's just no meeting and other official affairs there and did not smell. The situation was much more prosaic - simply, a couple of employees of the central apparatus of the Red Army Reconnaissance, taking with them a third, decided to visit the fourth comrade in a simple way. Business! So what, that one of them handed over, and the second accepted all residency in Germany? Right there, literally, an old friend from the Civil War sits in Denmark - how not to visit? Why there - from Berlin to Copenhagen, it’s just a stone's throw! Here in Copenhagen, in the safe house of all of them, and even in the company of a dozen agents of the Danish intelligence network, the secret police there swept the most reliable way ...
And this happened, by the way, because the Danish resident of Razvedupra, Ulanovsky, did not give a damn about the strictest ban, continued to recruit cadres among the local Communists, one of whom turned out to be a police informant. You see, they decided to drink vodka, to remember the good old days - how they drove the squirrels with sabers ... That’s exactly how it was, because in his report on this matter the then head of the Intelligence Agency, Arthur Artuzov, wrote so bluntly: “... custom to visit all his friends, as in his homeland, can be eradicated with great difficulty ... ”To which Marshal Voroshilov, stunned by such a“ motivation ”of a fantastic fiasco, who called Artuzov’s reply“ slurred and naive ”imposed a resolution:“ Foreign intelligence is limping on everything four legs!" Well, horse, what do you take ...
Why all this long story? First of all, to the fact that, despite all of the above (and many other) mistakes, cruel defeats, failures and defeats, the Soviet foreign intelligence after a very short time was able to become one of the most effective in the world. To become that formidable special service, the mere mention of which, as we see, to this day causes dreary horror in the West. Stirlitz, Ramsay, Red Chapel, Dora’s residency and penetration of the most secret nuclear secrets of the Americans - all this was! But it was later, after the special services of the USSR survived what is now called the "Stalinist purges."
No one, of course, calls on the current leadership of Russia to act with the same radical methods. However, any failures of scouts abroad primarily indicate the need for certain changes in their homeland. It is a fact.
In the days of the USSR, propagandists and writers did a great job in this field - in the eyes of many generations the concept of “Soviet intelligence” was associated exclusively with the heroic images of Stirlitz or “Major Whirlwind”. At the worst, Richard Sorge, who has fulfilled his duty to the end and is tortured by villains by enemies. Enchanting punctures and failures of the domestic "knights of the cloak and dagger" of publicity, of course, did not indulge. They were hushed up no less carefully than cases of their betrayal of the homeland and the transition to the service of the enemy.
And there was nothing to talk about ... The Foreign Department (INO), created at the same time, first the Cheka, and then the OGPU and the Intelligence Directorate of the Headquarters of the Red Army, was completed, of course, not by the great professionals of the secret war (where they were to take Soviet Russia in the beginning of the 20s?), but comrades ideologically sustained and devoted to the cause of the revolution. Hence the results ... No, the Soviet intelligence officers were able to achieve absolutely stunning successes, as they say, from the first steps. But what absurdities these successes sometimes crossed out and came to naught - a completely different conversation.
A remarkable example from this area is the failures that occurred in neighboring Lithuania, which at that time (as now, however) was not at all a friendly country for Soviet Russia. In 1920, Vincas Griganavičius, a member of the intelligence department of the headquarters of the Armed Forces of Lithuania, barely managed to get his feet off. In fact - an employee of the OGPU and a communist since 1917, Vincent Griganovich. Having more talentedly infiltrated the Lithuanian army and made a career in it, which any scout can only dream of, instead of observing conspiracy and regularly supplying valuable information to the Center, Griganovich began to study policies and almost in open friendship with the local communists who were in Lithuania in an illegal situation.
It came to almost holding meetings of all kinds of underground committees right in his apartment! Naturally, vigilant neighbors were found - they reported "where to" about obscure gatherings and dubious personalities lugging about them. Local counterintelligence reacted accordingly. Griganovich managed to get away, but the most valuable channel for obtaining information was irretrievably lost. And, what, at least something did this colleagues from INO teach? No way! Seven years later, Soviet intelligence attacked the same "rake" in Lithuania, only on a much larger scale.
On May 19, 1927, a whole Lithuanian army lieutenant general Konstantin Kleschinsky was detained in his house. As it turned out, he, for some time even acting as chief of the General Staff there, has been working for the INO OGPU under the pseudonym Ivanov-XII for many years now! The reasons for the failure of such an overvalued source are still being wondered. According to one version, one of the brainless figures of the Comintern thought of embossing some of the information received from Kleshchinsky in a newspaper. According to another, the “tail” was dragged along by employees of the Soviet permanent mission, with whom the general was in touch, whether they were tests of external surveillance that were not trained in elementary rules, or simply neglected them ...
Most likely, just the second version is true, because at the moment when the employees of Zhvalbigy, the Lithuanian secret police, burst into the house of Kleshchinsky, the Soviet envoy Sokolov calmly sat there, who could not find another place to get a package with top-secret information. The diplomat managed to throw this package out of his own pocket - and escaped with only deportation to the USSR. But Konstantin Kleshchinsky, after an extremely short investigation, on which he did not even try to lock himself, was shot. According to some reports, his last words were: “Long live Soviet Russia!”
And if this happened in Lithuania alone! (Well, maybe the place is damned?) In France, for example, things were going even worse. Then the courier of the Soviet Intelligence Agency, who was traveling from Switzerland with a passport in the name of the Italian Enrico Versellino, gets nerves at the border and he throws a fit tantrum and undergoes the most thorough examination, as a result of which the stunned policemen find not only thick packs of dollars in the “traveler's” baggage, but and secret documents, as well as explicit encryption ...
One of the INO agents, the French Communist Henri Gauthier, for some kind of mischief, interferes with an anti-communist rally held on the eve of parliamentary elections at the Saint-Nazaire and starts to “educate everyone” there. This, given the French hot temperament, quite naturally ends with a banal scuffle. Everything would be fine, but only at the same time Gauthier has a briefcase in his hands, literally full of secret information about the French Navy, aircraft factories, arsenals and no less interesting things for Soviet intelligence (which he, of course, intended). Upon the arrival of the police, who appeared to separate the brawlers, Gauthier quickly flies off - throwing at the same time his briefcase, like a string bag with potatoes. The French counterintelligence from such a find, of course, is in shock.
The Parisian police are experiencing roughly the same emotions when they tied a certain Cassio to the French Communist newspaper “Humanite” (which is the press agency, moreover, not without reason, has long been believed to be a branch of the Soviet intelligence). Not only that, his documents turn out to be false and in a false name - in his pockets and in his briefcase, this monsieur simply reveals a breakthrough of papers with the most serious security stamps - from detailed staff lists of army and naval units, to beautifully executed photographs of French arsenals. The special intelligence of the counterintelligence forces is ... a top secret memorandum on the Red Army, the most insolent way stolen from the French General Staff!
It is not surprising that with such a statement of work, in 1934 the entire intelligence network of the USSR in France was completely destroyed, and even with the scandal that Petrov and Boshirov had never dreamed of! The cry about “unbridled Soviet spies” was such that even TASS and Izvestia had to make an angry rebuttal - they say, all this is nothing but “empty fabrications” and provocations of Nazi Germany. That's it ... And, by the way, disgrace was not limited to France - by the beginning of the 30s, the intelligence networks and residency of Soviet intelligence were torn to pieces in Finland, Romania, Italy, Estonia, Latvia.
The mess going on in intelligence (we shall call a spade a spade!) Mess got to the liver of Stalin himself. Joseph Vissarionovich on March 19, 1934 was forced to personally deliver a report at the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which had a very distinctive title: "On the campaign abroad on Soviet espionage." Yeah ... Something familiar to the pain, is not it? Do you think it helped? All fell prostrate before the formidable leader, after which, shaking with horror and sweating from the excess of official zeal, began to fulfill their duties in an ideal way? Not at all! In 1935, the “Copenhagen Failure" struck, which is considered the most grandiose shame of Soviet foreign intelligence of all time.
Another name for this nightmare is “meeting of residents”. That's just no meeting and other official affairs there and did not smell. The situation was much more prosaic - simply, a couple of employees of the central apparatus of the Red Army Reconnaissance, taking with them a third, decided to visit the fourth comrade in a simple way. Business! So what, that one of them handed over, and the second accepted all residency in Germany? Right there, literally, an old friend from the Civil War sits in Denmark - how not to visit? Why there - from Berlin to Copenhagen, it’s just a stone's throw! Here in Copenhagen, in the safe house of all of them, and even in the company of a dozen agents of the Danish intelligence network, the secret police there swept the most reliable way ...
And this happened, by the way, because the Danish resident of Razvedupra, Ulanovsky, did not give a damn about the strictest ban, continued to recruit cadres among the local Communists, one of whom turned out to be a police informant. You see, they decided to drink vodka, to remember the good old days - how they drove the squirrels with sabers ... That’s exactly how it was, because in his report on this matter the then head of the Intelligence Agency, Arthur Artuzov, wrote so bluntly: “... custom to visit all his friends, as in his homeland, can be eradicated with great difficulty ... ”To which Marshal Voroshilov, stunned by such a“ motivation ”of a fantastic fiasco, who called Artuzov’s reply“ slurred and naive ”imposed a resolution:“ Foreign intelligence is limping on everything four legs!" Well, horse, what do you take ...
Why all this long story? First of all, to the fact that, despite all of the above (and many other) mistakes, cruel defeats, failures and defeats, the Soviet foreign intelligence after a very short time was able to become one of the most effective in the world. To become that formidable special service, the mere mention of which, as we see, to this day causes dreary horror in the West. Stirlitz, Ramsay, Red Chapel, Dora’s residency and penetration of the most secret nuclear secrets of the Americans - all this was! But it was later, after the special services of the USSR survived what is now called the "Stalinist purges."
No one, of course, calls on the current leadership of Russia to act with the same radical methods. However, any failures of scouts abroad primarily indicate the need for certain changes in their homeland. It is a fact.
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