The death of a group of Kuznetsov and Lydia Lisovskaya. Dolgopolov Nikolai Mikhailovich

17.05.2020

Among the Soviet intelligence agents, Nikolai Kuznetsov ranks special place. His whole life is a collection of myths, moreover, carefully cultivated and widely disseminated. From how he became a scout to the circumstances of his death. Vladimir Gorak, Candidate of Historical Sciences, wrote about the latter in The Day newspaper (November 13, 2009, No. 206). It is not our task to analyze the facts presented by him. This is a separate topic, although it is related to the myth-making around Kuznetsov.

Let's start with the most common legend, launched by the commander of the "Winners" detachment Dmitry Medvedev in the book "It was near Rovno" and for some reason taken for granted without any reason - an impeccable knowledge of the German language. The fact that a boy from a remote Ural village could have phenomenal linguistic abilities is in itself quite possible and not surprising. Lomonosov, Gauss and many other scientists, writers or artists did not come from the highest circles at all. Talent is the kiss of God and it social sign does not choose. But abilities are one thing, and the ability to learn a language so that real native speakers do not feel a foreigner in an interlocutor is another thing. And here legends and omissions, and even absurdities begin.

According to some sources, Kuznetsov could have learned the language by communicating, as a boy, with captured Austrians. According to others - as a result of acquaintance with German specialists at the Ural factories. The third option - he was taught by the maid of honor of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna Olga Veselkina, head of the Department of Foreign Languages of the Ural Industrial Institute, now the Ural State Technical University- UPI named after the first president of Russia B. N. Yeltsin (USTU-UPI).

In the book of Kuznetsov's official biographer, KGB Colonel Teodor Gladkov, "The Legend of Soviet Intelligence - N. Kuznetsov," it is said that Nina Avtokratova, who lived and studied in Switzerland, taught him German at school. With the labor teacher Franz Javurek, a former Czech prisoner of war, he improved his German. The third mentor of Kuznetsov was the pharmacist of the local pharmacy, the Austrian Krause. Undoubtedly, Nikanor Kuznetsov (later he changed his name to Nikolai) could thus master the conversational and written language. And quite successfully - taking into account the undoubted abilities. What does the fact that he was fluent in the Komi language say. And even composed poems and short works on it. This Finno-Ugric language is quite difficult for Russians to master. Already in Ukraine, he mastered the Polish and Ukrainian languages, which confirms his linguistic abilities. However, the first inconsistency appears here. After all, these people could not teach him the East Prussian dialect. In particular, Krause could have taught him the Austro-Bavarian dialect of German, which is very different from Berlin, which is literary and normative.

Gladkov cites his memoirs in his book former leader Soviet counterintelligence Leonid Raikhman, according to which, when applying for a job in the NKVD in his presence, an illegal agent who returned from Germany, after talking on the phone with Kuznetsov, noted: “He speaks like a native Berliner.” But not as a native of Koenigsberg. But according to legend, Paul Siebert was the son of the manager of the estate in East Prussia, according to other sources, the son of a landowner from the vicinity of Koenigsberg and a neighbor of the Gauleiter of Ukraine Erich Koch. And no one found errors in his language. Strange and inexplicable. After all, along with the Austrian or Swiss version, he had to learn the corresponding articulation - exactly what distinguishes, along with vocabulary, speakers of dialects from each other. Practice shows that it is extremely difficult to get rid of dialectal articulation, even for native speakers. The famous Moscow radio announcer Yuri Levitan made truly heroic efforts to get rid of the okanya characteristic of the Vladimir dialect. The Moscow Art Theater stars helped him master the culture of speech: Nina Litovtseva, appointed head of the announcer group, her husband, People's Artist of the USSR Vasily Kachalov, other famous masters - Natalya Tolstova, Mikhail Lebedev. As far as we know, no one specifically practiced Kuznetsov's pronunciation with him. The German ear accurately determines which region a person is from. To do this, you do not need to be the professor of phonetics Higgins from the famous work of Bernard Shaw. So the Austrian beginning in the study of the German language could become a formidable obstacle to the activities of Paul Siebert.

The second option is communication with German specialists. It also doesn't fit. In the middle of 1930s. relations between Germany and the USSR were very tense, and there were no more German specialists at the Ural factories. They had been there before, but then Kuznetsov did not work in Sverdlovsk. The German workers-communists remain. There were such, but, firstly, it is unlikely that they were qualified technical specialists from agricultural East Prussia, and secondly, at this age it is possible to increase vocabulary and knowledge of grammar, but it is already difficult to correct pronunciation, if at all possible.

And, finally, training with Olga Veselkina. Undoubtedly, the former maid of honor knew German as a mother tongue. Like a real German, especially since she taught it from native speakers since childhood. Judging by the books she wrote on the methods of learning foreign languages, she was also a good teacher. Only Veselkina could not teach Kuznetsov for the simple reason that he never studied at this institute. Gladkov and other researchers directly write about this.

The experience of Stalin's translator, Valentina Berezhkova, speaks about how a foreign language is studied so that they cannot recognize you as a foreigner. IN German school Phoebe on Lutheran street in Kyiv for deviating from correct pronunciation gave slaps. Perhaps not entirely pedagogical, but very effective. The teachers were Germans and spoke the Berlin dialect, and in classical German literature they brought up the feeling of hoch Deutsch. When he translated Molotov on a visit to Berlin in November 1940, Hitler noted his impeccable German. And even surprised that he was not German. But Berezhkov taught him from childhood, and in the family of his father, a tsarist engineer, everyone knew German. Berezhkov had undoubted linguistic abilities. In parallel, he learned English and Polish, and was fluent in Spanish. In any case, he knew English in such a way that he advised American interpreters at the talks between Stalin and Harry Hopkins in July 1941, but no one ever took him for an American or an Englishman. You can always distinguish: the language for a person is native or learned, albeit well. Listen to our former Russian-speaking politicians. Many of them learned the Ukrainian language very well. And compare how they say and those for whom Ukrainian is native, even with an admixture of dialectisms and reduced vocabulary. The difference is audible.

Now about one, also somehow not mentioned fact. It is not enough to speak without an accent, you need to have the habits of a German. And not even a German, but from East Prussia. Moreover, perhaps, the son of the local landowner. And this is a special caste, with its own customs, habits and customs. And her difference from other Germans was cultivated and emphasized in every possible way. Such things are impossible to learn, even if you have the most the best teachers and you will be the most diligent and attentive student. This is brought up from childhood, absorbed with mother's milk, from father, uncle and other relatives and friends. Finally, in children's games.

A foreigner is always easy to distinguish. Not only in accent, but also in habits and behavior. It is no coincidence that many famous Soviet intelligence officers in their host countries were legalized as foreigners. Sandor Rado in Switzerland was a Hungarian, Leopold Trepper in Belgium - a Canadian manufacturer Adam Mikler, and then in France - a Belgian Jean Gilbert, other members of the Red Chapel. Anatoly Gurevich and Mikhail Makarov had Uruguayan documents. In any case, they presented themselves as foreigners in the country of their business trip and therefore did not arouse suspicion of imperfect command of the language and the realities of life around them. Therefore, the legend about Stirlitz is unreliable, not only in the fact that Soviet intelligence could not have such an agent in principle, but in the fact that no matter how much he lived in Germany, he did not become a German. Moreover, according to the stories of Yulian Semenov, in exile with his parents he lived in Switzerland, and there is a different German language. By the way, Comrade Lenin, who knew literary German quite well when he arrived in Zurich and Bern, understood little at first. The German-speaking Swiss, like the Austrians, have a different pronunciation and vocabulary from Germanic German.

In Moscow before the war, Kuznetsov acted for some time as the German Schmidt. But the fact is that he pretended to be a Russian German. Here it is necessary to clarify that the descendants of German settlers in the Volga region, Ukraine and Moldova retained to a large extent the language that their ancestors spoke. It could well become a special dialect of the German language, which has largely retained its archaic structure. Literature had already been created on it, with the Union of Ukrainian Writers in Kharkov in the 1920s and 1930s, when it was the capital of the Ukrainian SSR, there was a German section. In Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye and other regions there were German national regions, schools taught in German, trained cadres of teachers. Then it was all liquidated, teachers were exiled, writers for the most part they were shot, and the rest were rotted in the camps on charges of Ukrainian (?!) nationalism. Probably because many of them wrote in both German and Ukrainian. In the Volga region, the autonomous republic of the Germans held out a little longer, but its fate was just as tragic. The Soviet Germans could do little to help prepare Kuznetsov. Their language has not been spoken in Germany for a long time.

By the way, Kuznetsov was not the only such terrorist agent. In 1943, Soviet intelligence officer Nikolai Khokhlov, acting under the guise of a German officer, brought a mine to the house of the head of the occupation administration of the General Commissariat of Belarus in Minsk, Wilhelm Kube, which was laid under his bed. Kube was killed, and underground worker Elena Mazanik received a Hero star for preparing an explosive device Soviet Union. For a long time we did not remember Nikolai Khokhlov, because after the war he refused to kill one of the leaders of the People's Labor Union and went over to the Americans. But Khokhlov posed as a German officer only occasionally. They want to assure us that Kuznetsov in Rovno, and then in Lvov, was only engaged in the breaks between terrorist attacks, which was to find out from chatty Germans their military and state secrets. And no one ever suspected him of anything, no one paid attention to his mistakes, which are quite natural for a foreigner. In addition to Gauleiter Koch, he did not meet a single resident of Koenigsberg and its environs, who simply could know the landowner Siebert and go to school with his son.

By the way, in order to get the rank of chief lieutenant, one had to either study at a military school, in our case an infantry school, or graduate from a higher educational institution and receive appropriate training. And Kuznetsov did not have the necessary bearing. And not Soviet, but German, but here there is a big difference, and it will immediately catch the eye of any prepared person. During the war, American counterintelligence exposed a deeply undercover Abwehr agent. He was no different from other American officers, only when he fired a pistol, he stood in the stance of a German officer, which caught the eye of his vigilant colleagues.

If Kuznetsov studied at a German university, he must have known special student slang. Moreover, different universities have their own. There are many small details, ignorance of which immediately catches the eye and arouses suspicion. One well-trained agent failed on ignorance of the habits of the professor, from whom, according to legend, he studied. He knew that the professor smoked, but did not know that it was cigarettes he smoked. In Germany, this was rare, and the professor was a great original. It is unlikely that Kuznetsov would not have met "his fellow students and classmates" in the process of wide acquaintances. There are quite a lot of students in German universities, and it was quite easy to meet the one with whom I “studied” in Rivne. Still, the capital of the occupied Ukraine. Either all Germans were blind and deaf, or here we are faced with another legend, designed not to explain, but to hide.

And once again about the little things in which the devil is hidden. England, late fall 1940 A well-trained group of three Abwehr agents was successfully thrown onto the island. Everything seemed to be taken into account. And yet ... After a rather cold night, agents with impeccable documents, who were pretty cold, at 8 o'clock in the morning knocked on the door of a hotel in a small town, in the vicinity of which they landed. They were politely asked to come back in an hour as the rooms are being cleaned. When they reappeared, counterintelligence officers were already waiting for them... It turned out that during the war, visitors were accommodated in English hotels only after 12 noon. Ignorance of such a small, but well-known detail, alerted the receptionist, and she called the police. But not just specialists worked in the Abwehr, but aces, many of them repeatedly visited and lived in England, but, for obvious reasons, they no longer knew the seemingly insignificant realities of military life. No wonder everyone noted that the counterintelligence regime in England was one of the most severe.

In fact, there are still many unsolved mysteries- and not only in the work of Kuznetsov and his staff. In the village of Kamenka, on October 27, 1944, near the Ostrog-Shumsk highway, the bodies of two women with bullet wounds were found. Documents were found with them in the name of Lisovskaya Lidia Ivanovna, born in 1910, and Mikota Maria Makarievna, born in 1924. The investigation established that at about 7 pm on October 26, 1944, a military vehicle stopped on the highway, in the back of which were two women and three or four men in the form of officers Soviet army. Mikota was the first to get out of the car, and when Lisovskaya wanted to give her a suitcase from the back, three shots rang out. Maria Mikota was killed immediately. Lydia Lisovskaya, wounded by the first shot, was finished off and thrown out of the car further down the highway. The car quickly left in the direction of Kremenets. It was not possible to detain her. Among the documents of those killed was a certificate issued by the NKGB department for the Lvov region: “The real comrade was issued. Lisovskaya Lidia Ivanovna that she is being sent to the disposal of the UNKGB in the Rivne region in the city of Rivne. Request to all military and civil authorities to provide all possible assistance in advancing comrade Lisovskaya to her destination. The investigation was carried out under the direct control of the head of the 4th department of the NKGB of the USSR Sudoplatov, but yielded nothing.

Lisovskaya worked in a casino in Rovno and introduced Kuznetsov to German officers, supplying information. Her cousin Mikota, on the instructions of the partisans, became a Gestapo agent under the pseudonym "17". She introduced Kuznetsov to SS officer von Ortel, who was part of the team of the famous German saboteur Otto Skorzeny. The story of Ortel is a separate legend, which we mentioned in the material about the Tehran Conference (The Day, November 29, 2008, No. 218). Let us pay attention to the fact that at that time UPA detachments were actively operating in the region, and sending valuable employees at night by car, risking their interception by militants, was careless, to say the least. Unless their demise was planned from the start. Sudoplatov and his employees did this with their own, but became unnecessary or even dangerous, repeatedly. And what resistance did the KGB authorities and party committees encounter, who worked with Kuznetsov, Nikolai Strutinsky, when he tried to establish the circumstances and place of his death! Although it seemed that he should have been given all kinds of assistance. This means that the competent authorities did not want this.

Inconsistencies, outright lies about the activities of the “Winners” detachment, and Kuznetsov in particular, suggest that in Rivne, under the name of Paul Siebert, there was not Kuznetsov, but a completely different person. And very likely a real German from East Prussia. And the militant who fired at the Nazi functionaries could indeed be the one we know as Kuznetsova. He could briefly act in a German uniform, but not communicate with the Germans for a long time because of a possible quick exposure.

Indirect confirmation of this version is the data reported in the film “Lubyanka. A Genius of Intelligence,” aired on Moscow's First Channel at the end of November 2006. It explicitly states that Kuznetsov's work in Moscow under the name of Schmidt is a legend. There was a real German named Schmidt, who worked for the Soviet counterintelligence. It may well be that it was this Schmidt who acted in the occupied Rovno. And it is quite possible that he also tried to get through the front line, but unsuccessfully. In general, it is not very clear why Kuznetsov compiled a written report on the work done not in a calm atmosphere after the transition to his own, but in advance, in the face of the danger of falling into the hands of the enemy. For such an experienced intelligence officer, this is an unforgivable oversight. It seems that this is unlikely.

Recently, the FSB of Russia declassified part of the documents on the activities of Kuznetsov. But very peculiar. They were handed over to the author of many books about the intelligence officer, Teodor Gladkov, a former KGB officer. He is also the author of numerous legends about Kuznetsov. So there is still a long way to go for clarity in this matter.

The legendary Soviet intelligence officer Nikolai Kuznetsov died under mysterious circumstances in the spring of 1944, his assistants - Lidia Lisovskaya and Maria Mikota - died under mysterious circumstances in the autumn of 1944.

Maria Mikota

Lydia Lisovskaya
Photo: Google

There are a lot of materials about this trinity on the Internet. I will quote just one:

"From the materials of the search case.

L. G. Lishenko (before and after the war - the chairman of the executive committee of the village council in the village of Doloche, neighboring Kunev): “On that day, N. V. Granchuk, the driver of the milk truck, arrived from Kunev and said that two women had been killed near Kamenka. I sat on the cart and told Nikifor to go to Mozyarka. The dead lay by the side of the road, facing the sky. She had a light blond, half-untwisted braid. Not far from the murdered woman, the secretary of our village council found a fur muff in which documents and photographs lay. We handed over all the documents to the commander of the 226th separate rifle battalion of the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Major Maksimov (we failed to find such a unit and such a major through the archive of the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. - Auth.). Some time after the murder, Major Maksimov told me that the car in which the killers were traveling had crashed into a house in Kremenets while being pursued. Two died, the third, who was sitting in the back, remained alive.

Was the survivor detained? Has his identity and the identity of the dead been established? Where did the fourth go? There are no answers to these questions yet.

Yu.K. Khvoinaya (a former resident of Kamenka, later went to Poland): “We were digging potatoes in the garden and saw what was happening 200 meters from us ... One woman jumped off the truck, and the second handed her a suitcase. At this time, an officer with golden shoulder straps jumped out of the cab and began to talk about something with the one who got off the car. There was a cry “Don’t shoot!” But three shots rang out. The officer quickly jumped into the cab, throwing a suitcase into the back of it, and the car went at high speed towards Shumsk. When we ran up to the woman lying on the road, she was already dead.

GV Babchuk (a resident of Kamenka): ..... And the one who brought the suitcase remained in the car. Then they shot her in a car and the blood dripped all the way to Mozyarka."

M. V. Stratyuk (former chairman of the local collective farm "Russia"): "In October - I don't remember the day now - forty-four years after dinner, a green Studebaker, half covered with a tarpaulin, rushed from Shumsk to Ostrog. On it sat four men in the form of Soviet military personnel and two women. After a while the car at a crazy speed again swept past us back to Shumsk. But now there was only one woman in the back next to the four military men. We immediately learned that a murdered woman was lying near the village of Kamenka. I drove to the indicated place. People gathered around the deceased. She lay in a roadside ditch. Soon a second one was also brought here, who died near the village of Mozyarki. Thanks to the documents found with them, it became clear to us that they were scouts from the “Pobediteli” detachment. We escorted the patriots with honors to last way. They erected a monument with a corresponding inscription on their grave ... "

Quite recently, a man who had long been considered dead turned to Kim Zakalyuk. This is Jerzy Lisowski, Lidia's husband.

Jerzy Lisowski was a Polish officer, was taken prisoner at the beginning of the war, then spent a long time in concentration camps. At first, the Lisovskys corresponded, then the connection was cut off.

Before the war, they had a friend Jozef, also an officer Polish army, about which Lisovsky was aware that with the outbreak of hostilities, he began to work for Polish intelligence, that is, for the Polish government, which had moved to London.

In response to one of her husband's letters, where he asked what she does, Lida writes: what Jozef does. What she meant by that is difficult to judge. Did she mean working for the Polish government in London? Or just intelligence? Jerzy Lisowski, as he himself told Zakalyuk, does not rule out that his wife could work for British intelligence. Apparently, he has a reason for this. But he will be able to confirm this more precisely after a trip to London, where he hopes to find Required documents. (By the way, Jerzy Lisowski is a Canadian citizen and currently lives in Poland.)

Is the death of Lisovskaya, Mikota, Kuznetsov connected with this new information? Perhaps the scouts knew something they shouldn't have known?

The chain of disappearances and deaths of those who saw Kuznetsov shortly before his death is also striking. Vasily Drozdov, a scout, for example, disappeared near the village of Boratin at the end of the war, and Fedor Pristupa, also a scout, crashed on a motorcycle under mysterious circumstances immediately after the war. The medical examiner who gave the opinion on the death of Lisovskaya and Mikota was killed the next day.

Former partisans told Kim Zakalyuk that relations between Kuznetsov and the commander of the Pobediteli detachment, D. M. Medvedev, were very strained. After an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Erich Koch, Hitler's viceroy in Ukraine, Medvedev arrested Nikolai Ivanovich and, accusing him of cowardice and excessive caution, asked the Center to apply capital punishment to him. Fortunately, the Center did not give consent then ...

We are also embarrassed by the fact that such professional and cautious intelligence officers, having worked for a long time in the fascist rear, side by side with the Gestapo and the SD, where they also served far from amateurs, are dying one by one at the hands of Ukrainian nationalists.

In a word, there are many mysteries and so far more questions than answers. That is why I would like the State Security Committee of the USSR to publish materials related to the activities and deaths of the famous intelligence officers and enter into a frank dialogue with those who are studying the undisclosed pages of our country's past.

We hope so. The classification "secret" from mysterious murders will be removed.

Timur SVISTUNOV Rivne - Milcha - Kyiv.

So, the 226th separate rifle battalion of the VV MVD. An obvious mistake of the author in the designation of the departmental affiliation of the part. In 1944, there were no ministries yet, but there were people's commissariats. So, it would be more correct to call this part like this: the 226th separate rifle battalion of the NKVD VV. However, the author argues that such a division did not exist in nature. OK. Now let's look at another document:

Photo: https://obd-memorial.ru/html/info.htm?id=83988535

So, almost all buried in the village. Kunev, Izyaslavsky district, Khmelnitsky region, in a mass grave in the center of the village (except for girls and private Viktor Solokh) are servicemen ... of the 226th separate rifle battalion of the internal troops of the NKVD of the USSR. The battles in these places were not with the Germans, but with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The situation at night is appropriate. Lydia Lisovskaya and Maria Mikota were experienced and very cautious scouts. It is unlikely that they would have sat down in the evening in the first passing car, feel a threat to their safety. And they sat down. I have no doubts that it was our own people who made such a "gift". Just what caused it? Did the girls know too much? Probably. In my opinion, this is how the connection between Soviet intelligence and Erich Koch was hidden. I suppose that it was Nikolai Kuznetsov and his assistants who worked in connection with him ...

For many years now, the death of Soviet intelligence officer Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov has remained a mystery. According to official data, his remains were buried on the Hill of Glory in Lviv. But is it?

Much evidence suggests that it is not Kuznetsov who is buried in Lvov. These are, in particular, the stories of eyewitnesses who, in the early spring of 1944, participated in the funeral of three unknown people in the village of Milcha in the Rivne region. One of those killed, a handsome blond with slicked back hair, was dressed in the uniform of a German officer, the other two, according to signs, were Kuznetsov's companions Belov and Kaminsky.

Collective farm chairman Andrey Ivanovich Movchanyuk, who lives in Mylcha and has been interested in the circumstances of Kuznetsov’s death for many years, told me that the priest who buried those three, and the church warden Mikhayshchuk, were summoned to the KGB in the 1950s, where they were shown photographs for identification. Both identified on one of them a killed German officer - it was Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov.

I met with the priest's widow, Alexandra Iosifovna Vorona, who witnessed those events. According to her, at the beginning of March 1944, several wagons arrived in the village, on one of which three dead were lying. One of them was wearing a German uniform. The people who accompanied the bodies demanded that the priest bury the dead according to the Christian rite. And Andrei Mikhayshchuk was ordered to gather the people - supposedly for the funeral of important people. Such a magnificent funeral in a harsh war time everyone was surprised.

I looked at the one who was lying in the center, - says Alexandra Iosifovna, - it was somehow unusual for a German officer to be buried in the church. In addition, he was very handsome, although his face was slightly swollen. Well, I am firmly convinced that it was Kuznetsov.

Let us recall that according to official data, the last people who saw Kuznetsov, Belov and Kaminsky were Bandera. They allegedly killed them. However, according to Alexandra Iosifovna, the people who accompanied the wagon with the dead did not look like Bandera at all. In addition, they were dressed in army overcoats and behaved in a strange way: they were silent all the time, did not ask questions, did not interfere. Knowledge Ukrainian language they seemed to be very limited.

In Kim Zakalyuk's article "Who killed Kuznetsov?" published in October 1990 in the newspaper “Silski Vesti”, testimonies of other participants in the funeral are given. Unfortunately, I did not manage to meet them. Kuznetsov was buried in the village of Milcha.

Also suggestive is the fact that in the summer of 1988, after the autopsy - at the initiative of the Museum of Youth and Komsomol of the Rivne regional committee of the LKSMU with the participation of Kiev forensic experts - of the alleged grave of Kuznetsov and his comrades, the KGB classified the case as "secret".

Why is the search causing such concern, especially since the remains of Kuznetsov are officially buried in Lvov?

Let's try to find an explanation. Although it is incredibly difficult to do so.

And here we will be helped by the writer Teodor Gladkov and journalist Kim Zakalyuk, who devoted many years of their literary activity to the fate of Kuznetsov and his associates.

A careful study of archival documents, eyewitness accounts, and testimonies allowed them to conclude that the two closest assistants of Nikolai Ivanovich, Lydia Lisovskaya and Maria Mikota, were also killed under strange, mysterious circumstances. Although, as you know, their death, like the death of Kuznetsov, is attributed to the OUN.

So, the word to Teodor Gladkov and Kim Zakalyuk:

“Lydia Ivanovna Lisovskaya and Maria Makarovna Mikota were among Kuznetsov's closest assistants. According to archival documents, they supplied their leader, who was operating in the "capital" of Ukraine temporarily occupied by the Nazis, Rivne under the guise of Wehrmacht officer Paul Siebert, with extremely valuable information or helped to receive it from other "sources".

The circumstances of the tragic death of patriots in the late autumn of 1944, after the liberation of Ukraine from the Nazis, still represent a continuous chain of mysterious events.

In early August 1944, Lisovskaya finally arrived from Lvov for a few days in Rovno, where she met with relatives who knew nothing about her fate. Then she again went to Lviv, where Maria Mikota was also.

Soon, an order came from Kyiv to the Rovno KGB to send Lisovskaya and Mikota to the capital to present them with orders. The Lvov comrades were also informed about this. At first it was assumed that they would go by train, but at the last moment everything was replayed. I had to return tickets. We left in a five-ton Studebaker with an awning, which was waiting at the checkpoint.

Who owned this car, has not yet been able to find out. And if Lisovskaya and Mikota had already received an official call from Kyiv to Lvov, then who needed to send a private telegram: “Come immediately. Mom is seriously ill. Lena"? A few months later, she was accidentally discovered in Lisovskaya's Lvov apartment by her other sister Valya.

Lisovskaya and Mikota did not appear either in Rovno or in Kyiv, where they were waiting for awards. None of their families heard from them again. And only at the end of November, the first secretary of the Lvov regional party committee, V.A. Begma, invited Lena to his place and told her:

Dear Lenochka, take heart. I was informed that a month ago your sister Lida, together with our comrades, went on a mission and died, and Mikota along with her.

Lydia's sister Valentina, having learned about this, went to Lviv, to an apartment on Dvornitskaya Street. Lida's Polish neighbor Nelya Boikova gave her that telegram that no one had sent from Rivne. “That day, I think it was October 25,” Boikova said, “Lida and Maya were packing their bags. They told me that they were going on a cart to the checkpoint, where a car was waiting for them, in which they would go to Rovno. At the same time, Lida said: "I'm going with our comrades."

We emphasize this not by chance. Everyone who knew Lisovskaya at a meeting with us unanimously repeated that the cautious and prudent Lida would never get into a car with people she did not know well.

The day after the departure of Lida and Maya, Boikova said, the "captain", chubby and blond-haired, came to the apartment. With the key he brought with him, he opened Lida's chest and took away all her things. Who was this man? Why did he need to rummage through Lisovskaya's things? Of course, he did not give Boikova an explanation for his actions.

Valentina went to the Lvov department of the NKGB, hoping to find out at least something about Lida and Maya. She knew that former Rovno residents who knew Lida and Maya were working there. A man who called himself Koreshkin came out to her. Valentina handed him a telegram, saying that no one had sent it from Rovno and that it worries her. The officer looked at the telegram, thought about something, then ordered:

Get home. Don't say anything to Polka, take the telegram with you and wait for me. I will come.

He really came. The conversation was very strange. The officer asked more than told. He wondered if she knew who killed the sisters, what of the things in the apartment belonged to them. He refused to open the room where Lydia lived and left.

And after this visit, the Polish woman almost had a fit. She seemed to be out of her mind.

You see, this is the same one that came in a black leather jacket, collected all Lida's things in a bag and drove off. He's been here several times before...

With that, Valentina Ivanovna left. Why, having buried the partisans - and they had documents showing who they were and where they came from - no one told their relatives about the tragedy that had happened and where they were buried? Why did not a single attempt of the Rovno Chekists to understand all this lead to anything, and not a single investigation was brought to an end?

Many years passed until one of the workers of the Rivne regional party committee accidentally stumbled upon the grave of Lida and Maya in the village of Kunev, Khmelnitsky region. He immediately informed Elena Ivanovna about this, and she rushed to get ready for the journey. Then, for some reason, she refused the trip, and Valentina Ivanovna decided to go herself.

This is where the rather strange and disturbing events begin. In the evening. knocked on the apartment. Approaching the door, Valentina Ivanovna saw that the slot into which the mail was dropped was covered by someone's hand. A muffled voice was heard from behind the door: “You are going to go somewhere. Do not do that. Otherwise, you will be the same as with your sister.” After that, the stranger disappeared.

Frightened to death, Valentina rushed for advice to an employee of the Rovno KGB department, L.A. Zaitsev, who had to deal with the Lisovskaya case, and told him about a strange visitor. Having learned that Lena knew about the trip to the place of Lida's death, and others could find out through her, Leonid Arsenievich advised not to tell anyone else about the day of departure and promised that they would go together.

From the materials of the search case.
In the village of Kamenka, Khmelnitsky region, on the Ostrog-Shumsk highway, the body of Maya Mikota was found, and further towards the city of Shumsk in the village of Mozyarki, the body of Lydia Lisovskaya was found. The investigation established: “On October 26, 1944, a military 5-ton Studebaker was traveling from Shumsk to Ostrog in the morning, and at 19 o’clock was returning back. Passing through the village of Kamenka, the car stopped near the house of the Ostashevskys - Yadviga Ludwigovna and Mikhail Stepanovich. They saw the girl got down from the car over the side, and the second handed her a suitcase. At this time, three shots rang out. The girl standing near the car fell, and the car drove on. Near the village of Mozyarki, the corpse of the second woman was found thrown out of the car. The corpses of the dead were taken to the village of Kunev, where a protocol of external examination and medical examination was drawn up, which was signed by the district commissioner A. A. Stasyuk, the head physician of the Pluzhnyansky district hospital Shevtsov and the head of the outpatient clinic of the village of Kunev P. G. Yashchuk.

Was the survivor detained? Has his identity and the identity of the dead been established? Where did the fourth go? There are no answers to these questions yet.

GV Babchuk (a resident of Kamenka): ..... And the one who brought the suitcase remained in the car. Then they shot her in a car and the blood dripped all the way to Mozyarka."

M. V. Stratyuk (former chairman of the local collective farm "Russia"): "In October - I don't remember the day now - forty-four years after dinner, a green Studebaker, half covered with a tarpaulin, rushed from Shumsk to Ostrog. On it sat four men in the form of Soviet military personnel and two women. After a while the car at a crazy speed again swept past us back to Shumsk. But now there was only one woman in the back next to the four military men. We immediately learned that a murdered woman was lying near the village of Kamenka. I drove to the indicated place. People gathered around the deceased. She lay in a roadside ditch. Soon a second one was also brought here, who died near the village of Mozyarki. Thanks to the documents found with them, it became clear to us that they were scouts from the “Winners” detachment. We escorted the patriots with honors on their last journey. We erected a monument with a corresponding inscription on their grave ... "

Quite recently, a man who had long been considered dead turned to Kim Zakalyuk. This is Jerzy Lisowski, Lidia's husband.

Before the war, they had a friend Jozef, also an officer in the Polish army, about whom Lisovsky knew that with the outbreak of hostilities he began to work for Polish intelligence, that is, for the Polish government, which had moved to London.

In response to one of her husband's letters, where he asked what she does, Lida writes: what Jozef does. What she meant by that is difficult to judge. Did she mean working for the Polish government in London? Or just intelligence? Jerzy Lisowski, as he himself told Zakalyuk, does not rule out that his wife could work for British intelligence. Apparently, he has a reason for this. But he will be able to confirm this more precisely after a trip to London, where he hopes to find the necessary documents. (By the way, Jerzy Lisowski is a Canadian citizen and currently lives in Poland.)

Is the death of Lisovskaya, Mikota, Kuznetsov connected with this new information? Perhaps the scouts knew something they shouldn't have known?

We hope so. The classification "secret" from mysterious murders will be removed.

Timur SVISTUNOV
Rivne - Milcha - Kyiv

(According to A. Kalganov)

On October 27, 1944, in the village of Kamenka, near the Ostrog-Shumsk highway, the bodies of two women with bullet wounds were found. They found documents in the name of Lisovskaya Lidia Ivanovna, born in 1910, and Mikota Maria Makarievna, born in 1924. During the investigation, it turned out that at about 7 pm on October 26, a six-ton truck stopped on the highway, in the back of which there were two women and three or four men in the form of the Soviet army. Mikota was the first to get off the car, and when Lisovskaya wanted to give her a suitcase from the back, three shots rang out. Maria Mikota was killed immediately. The car took off. Lydia Lisovskaya, wounded by the first shot, was finished off and thrown out of the car further down the highway.

The car quickly left in the direction of the city of Shumsk. Passing through the Shumsky checkpoint, she did not stop at the demand of the fighters of the checkpoint, but, breaking the barrier on the way, sped off to Kremenets. It was not possible to detain her.

Among the documents of those killed was a certificate issued by the NKGB department for the Lvov region with the following text: “Real comrade issued. Lisovskaya Lidia Ivanovna that she is being sent to the disposal of the UNKGB in the Rivne region in the city of Rivne. Request to all military and civil authorities to provide all possible assistance in advancing comrade Lisovskaya to her destination.

People's Commissar State Security Service Merkulov ordered a thorough investigation into the case of the kidnapping and murder of Lisovskaya and Mikota. The investigation was carried out under the direct control of the head of the 4th department of the NKGB of the USSR Sudoplatov.

Who was the 34-year-old Lydia Lisovskaya, if her death so worried the top leadership of the state security agencies? The answer to this question is provided by the recently declassified materials of the Central Archive of the FSB of Russia.

The maiden name of Lydia Lisovskaya is Demchinskaya. Before the war, she was married to a Polish officer who, with the rank of captain, took part in the battles against the German army in 1939, was captured and ended up in a Nazi concentration camp.

The German attack on the USSR caught Lydia in her hometown Exactly, after the capture of which by the Germans, she worked as an assistant cook in the canteen that served the officers and staff of the prisoner of war camp. At the risk of her life, she helped several Soviet soldiers, among which was Vladimir Gryaznykh, who joined the partisan detachment "Winners".

Exactly during the war it was the capital of Ukraine occupied by the Germans. All the main military and administrative authorities of the occupiers were located there, and the fascist Gauleiter of Ukraine Erich Koch also lived here. That is why, at the beginning of 1942, the operational group of the 4th Directorate of the NKGB "Pobediteli" was abandoned near Rovno, led by an experienced intelligence officer Dmitry Nikolaevich Medvedev. A little later, Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov joined the detachment under the pseudonym "Grachev", who had a special leadership task.

Among the main tasks of the partisans was the creation of a network of safe houses and safe houses in Rovno, attracting reliable, patriotic residents of the city who worked in the occupation institutions to the detachment. That is why Gryaznykh's report about Lisovskaya interested the Chekists, and intelligence officer Nikolai Gnidyuk, who legalized himself in the city under the guise of a petty merchant Yan Baginsky, was connected to her check.

By this time, Lydia managed to get a job as a waitress in the casino of the economic headquarters of the occupying forces in Ukraine, headed by General Kerner. Having met Lydia, Gnidyuk was convinced that she was sincere in her hatred of the Nazis. It was decided to reveal to the woman that Nikolai was a partisan. To this, Lisovskaya said that she had the opportunity to poison Kerner if the partisans gave her poison. But the scouts saw her in a completely different role.

In May 1943, German officers - regulars of the casino offered Lisovskaya to take on board Lieutenant Paul Siebert, who had recently arrived in the city. (For additional income, she sometimes rented out a room in her apartment to the Germans.) Siebert arranged meetings in the apartment with other Germans whom Lydia introduced him to. She, for her part, spoke to the chief lieutenant about the imminent defeat of Germany and the need to ensure its existence in the future.

This gave rise to serious doubts among the partisans - is Lisovskaya Paul Siebert probed by the Gestapo? Doubts were dispelled when Lydia again asked Gnidyuk for poison, this time in order to kill her guest, who confessed to her that he personally participated in the executions of prisoners of war. The check is over. Siebert, who is also a special agent of the 4th Directorate of the NKGB Nikolai Kuznetsov, revealed himself to Lisovskaya as a Soviet intelligence officer. From that time on, Lydia became his closest assistant.

Lydia helped Kuznetsov make acquaintances with German officers and collect information about high-ranking fascist officials in Rovno. In addition, she involved her cousin Maria Mikota in intelligence work, who, on the instructions of the partisans, became a Gestapo agent under the pseudonym "17". Now the detachment was able to learn in advance about the punitive raids of the Germans, and Kuznetsov met the SS officer von Ortel, who was part of the team of the famous German saboteur Otto Skorzeny.

From a conversation with Ortel, the Soviet intelligence officer concluded that the Germans were preparing a sabotage action during a meeting of the heads of the USSR, the USA and Great Britain in the Iranian capital. At the Center, Kuznetsov's message was not ignored, additional security measures were taken in Tehran, and the operation, carefully prepared by Skorzeny, failed.

In the fall of 1943, Lidia Lisovskaya, on the instructions of Nikolai Kuznetsov, got a job as a housekeeper to Major General Ilgen, commander of the eastern special forces. He was a key figure in the leadership of the nationalist armed formations, which consisted of former citizens of the USSR who went over to the side of the occupiers.

By November, Lydia was able to provide the partisans with detailed information about the daily routine, external protection, the time of departures and arrivals of General Ilgen, and other necessary information. An operation was planned for November 15, 1943, in which Nikolai Kuznetsov, his closest associate Nikolai Strutinsky, as well as two new partisans, Stefansky and Kaminsky, took part, for whom this task was a kind of test.

On November 15, at 4:15 pm, four partisans drove up in a car to Ilgen's house. Kuznetsov was dressed in the uniform of a German army captain, Strutinsky was a private, Stefansky was a lieutenant, and Kaminsky was in the uniform of an employee of the Reichskommissariat.

Vasily Lukovsky, a sentry from the Cossacks who had gone over to the side of the Germans, was on duty near the house. Strutinsky remained near him for observation. Kuznetsov went inside with two assistants, where Lisovskaya and Mikota were waiting for them. In the house was Ilgen's orderly Cossack Mikhail Myasnikov, who was immediately disarmed and put in an isolated room, offering to think about whether he wanted to go over to the partisans. Exactly at five, a car drove up to the house. The general got out of the car and went to the house. His driver waited for Ilgen to go inside, and only after that he left.

In the house, Ilgen was met by Lydia, who tried to distract him with a conversation. Kuznetsov, Stefansky and Kaminsky stood at the door in the corridor, ready to attack. When Ilgen began to undress, Strutinsky entered the house in the uniform of a private in the German army. The general asked loudly: "What do you want?" Kuznetsov immediately rushed at him, grabbed him by the throat and gagged his mouth. Kaminsky tied Ilgen's hands, but, as it turned out, he did it badly.

Then everyone went to the car. Kuznetsov led the general, the rest - the Cossacks. Five meters from the car, Ilgen broke free, his hands were untied. Physically strong, in the past - an excellent boxer, he hit Kuznetsov in the face and began to loudly call for help. The partisans ran up to Kuznetsov, calmed down Ilgen and put him in the car.

Four Germans ran out from a neighboring street and the changing of the guard appeared. Kuznetsov calmly approached the Germans and said that they had caught a bandit, and he was forced to arrest all four and deliver them to the Gestapo. The Germans began to make excuses that they were employees of the Reichskommissariat and were not involved in the case, they asked to be released. Kuznetsov persistently suggested that they follow him, then he arrested one of them - the most active, who turned out to be the personal driver of Gauleiter Erich Koch.

The driver Koch was put into a car with the partisans, Ilgen and the Cossacks. Kuznetsov stayed with the three armed Germans, slowly wrote down their names, after which he “let go”. While the new guard at Ilgen's house was trying to figure out where the sentry had gone, Kuznetsov calmly walked to the car, and the partisans left for a safe house.

In order to create an alibi for Lydia, she was sent in advance to meet with a Gestapo officer in a crowded place where there were many military men who knew her. In addition, on the instructions of the partisans, Ilgen's batman Mikhail Myasnikov left a note on the table in the general's office: “Thank you for the porridge, I'm going to the partisans and taking the general with me. Death to the German invaders! Cossack Myasnikov.

The next day, Lisovskaya was nevertheless arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo for eight days. Since it was not possible to convict her, and besides, the German officers who saw Lydia on the day of Ilgen's abduction stood up for her, she was released. Later, on the instructions of the partisans, Lisovskaya, together with the retreating German troops, moved to Lvov.

After the liberation of the Rivne region by the Soviet troops, the partisan detachment "Winners" was disbanded. For the courage shown in the fight against the invaders, Lidia Ivanovna Lisovskaya was presented to the Order Patriotic War 1st degree.

A thorough investigation into the circumstances of her death, conducted in 1944-1945, unfortunately, did not produce results. One of the versions spoke of the involvement in the murder of Rivne Gestapo agent Richard Arend, who before the war studied with Lydia in the same gymnasium, and after the German retreat, according to Lisovskaya’s reports, she caught her eye in Lvov in the form of a Soviet officer more than once. Other versions were based on Lisovskaya's reports of threats to her from Poles living in Lvov and Ukrainian nationalists.

Why Lisovskaya and Mikota did not go to Rovno by train, although railway tickets were bought for them, could not be established. They could not find the car that brought them up. One thing is clear: they fell victim to fascist agents who operated on the territory of Ukraine even after the liberation from the occupiers.

Military mysteries of the Third Reich Nepomniachtchi Nikolay Nikolayevich

THE FEAT OF THE SCOUT (How the assistant of the legendary Nikolai Kuznetsov died)

(According to A. Kalganov)

People's Commissar of State Security Merkulov ordered a thorough investigation into the kidnapping and murder of Lisovskaya and Mikota. The investigation was carried out under the direct control of the head of the 4th department of the NKGB of the USSR Sudoplatov.

The German attack on the USSR caught Lydia in her hometown of Rovno, after the capture of which by the Germans she worked as an assistant cook in a canteen that served officers and staff of a prisoner of war camp. At the risk of her life, she helped several Soviet soldiers escape, among whom was Vladimir Gryaznykh, who joined the Pobediteli partisan detachment.

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