The Mystery of Olga Chekhova

by Antony Beevor

  p. 105 Olga Chekhova as ‘sleeper’, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 25 September 2003.

  p. 105 ‘Here at last, Comrades ...’, quoted Andrew and Gordievsky, p. 58.

  p. 106 ‘Down with anti-Bolshevism!’, Helker and Lenssen, p. 89.

  p. 106 ‘fellow-traveller’, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003.

  p. 107 ‘Papa gestorben . . .’, 8 January 1924, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2735.

  p. 107‘sobbed like a child’, etc., L. K. Knipper to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, 7 January 1924, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2734.

  p. 108 ‘Everyone was such a formalist...’, E. A. Akulov, 25 October 1990, clipping in AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

  13. The End of Political Innocence

  p. 111 ‘be happy to play the mayor’s wife’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova to Nemirovich-Danchenko, Freiburg, 5 July 1924, Vilenkin (ed.), Vol. II, p. 147.

  p. 111‘I have left the Gnesina ...’, L. K. Knipper to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Moscow, 8 February 1924, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2738.

  p. 112 ‘Darling and dearest Aunt Olya...’, 10 March 1924, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2761.

  p. 112 ‘The Most Important Theatrical...’, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 270.

  p.112 ‘The theatre is full all the time...’, 16 March 1924, ibid.

  p. 113 Olga’s daughter, Ada (Olga Mikhailovna Chekhova), saying goodbye to Mikhail Chekhov, Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81.

  p. 113 ‘with a slightly guilty smile’, V. V. Knipper, p. 21.

  p. 114 ‘I am working for the Soviet state...’, Mariya Pavlovna Chekhova to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Yalta, 10 October 1924, Vilenkin (ed.), Vol. II, p. 147.

  p. 114 ‘The commemoration...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper Chekhova to Maria Pavlovna Chekhova, Moscow, 24 October 1924, ibid., p. 148.

  p. 115 For the arrival of Lulu Knipper and the children in Berlin and Olga’s life at this time, see Helker and Lenssen, pp. 94-i oo.

  p. 116 ‘Dear Aunt Olya!’ Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Paris, 23 April 1926, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2762.

  p. 116 ‘I am stuck here again...’, Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, 15 July 1926, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2763.

  p. 117 ‘I will be here...’, Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Berlin, 25 September 1927, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2764.

  p. 118 Invitation to stay, Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, 19 May 1929, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2765. The name Prechistensky was regarded as too religious by the Bolsheviks and changed to honour the dramatist Gogol.

  p. 118 ‘I am studying singing...’, Olga Konstantinova Chekhova to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Hochgebirge, Bavaria, 23 September 1929, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2766.

  p. 118 Love on Command (Liebe auf Befehl), Olga Chekhova in the United States, see Helker and Lenssen, pp. 120-23.

  p. 119 ‘It was shameful ...’, L. K. Knipper, Sovietskaya muzyka, No. 12, 1978, p. 89.

  p. 119 ‘My dream was to perform...’, ibid.

  p. 119 ‘They are making such...’, L. K. Knipper to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Leningrad, 13 February 1927, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2739.

  p. 120 ‘My life is still...’, L. K. Knipper to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, 18 July 1927, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2741.

  p. 120 North Wind, L. K. Knipper, Sovietskaya muzyka, No. 12, 1978, p. 89.

  p. 120‘politically unreliable’ and Major Viktor Ilin, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 25 September 2003.

  p. 120 Olga Knipper-Chekhova as an informer at the Moscow Art Theatre. Professor Donald Rayfield, the biographer of Anton Chekhov, kindly drew my attention to ‘plausible Moscow Arts Theatre folklore emanating from the late actor Mark Prudkin, for instance her remark to one of her scandalously many and young lovers: “If you make love to me especially tenderly, I shall save you [from the NKVD].”’ While Olga Leonardovna Knipper Chekhova was certainly a lot more manipulative and unscrupulous in the theatrical world than is shown in the heavily expurgated versions of her letters - the vicious gossip has been entirely suppressed - there can be no doubt that she was gossiped against in her turn. Her German origins and her marriage to Anton Chekhov provoked many hostile comments, most of which were probably unfounded.

  p. 121 ‘his enemies spread....’, Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81.

  p. 122 ‘I both accept the West...’, Ada Konstantinovna Knipper to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Paris, 10December 1931, MMKhAT K-Ch, No. 2574.

  p. 123Lyubov Sergeevna Zalesskaya and Gogolevsky bulvar, Andrei Lvovich Knipper, interviews, 22 and 23 September 2002.

  p. 123 ‘I was addicted for ever’, L. K. Knipper, Sovietskaya muzyka, No. 12, 1978, p. 89.

  14. The Totalitarian Years

  p. 125 ‘hot air factory’, Haffner, p. 97.

  p. 126 ‘pass through the brown shit’, quoted Burleigh, p. 286.

  p. 126 Die Nacht der Entscheidung. This work fascinates movie buffs because it has a single scene which runs for 175 feet.

  p. 126 ‘Adele had some fluffy garment ...’, recounted by Vera Tschechowa, quoted V. V. Knipper, p. 10.

  p. 127 Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov was born in 1908. His father was a stoker, his mother a laundress. He joined the NKVD in 1932 and in 1939 he became its head in Rostov. Helped by the purges, and the number of dead men’s shoes to be filled, he became Deputy Commissar of NKVD on 26 February 1941.

  p. 127 ‘Did you happen to meet ...’, protocol of interrogation, 29 April 1945, by Colonel Shkurin, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

  p. 127 Goebbels is estimated to have seen more than 1,100 films, Beyer, 1991, p. 7.

  p. 128 ‘Sing lower, Blondi ...’, Junge, p. 92. Zarah Leander (1907-81) and Soviet intelligence, The Times, 11 July 2003; and Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003. Rybkina was operating under the codename ‘Yartseva’.

  p. 129 ‘What sort of good manners ...’, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 126.

  p. 130 ‘So late, Frau Chekhova’, V. V. Knipper, p. 47.

  p. 130 ‘Oh, if you ...’, Junge, p. 95.

  p. 131 ‘Oh, him with his little worm!’, Beyer, 1991, p. 13.

  p. 132 Lida Baarova finally returned to Germany in 1975 to play in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant).

  p. 133 ‘If you won’t go ...’, Lenin, quoted Shentalinsky, p. 234.

  p. 133 ‘That doesn’t matter’, reply to Ivan Gronsky, quoted ibid., p. 257.

  p. 134 ‘Revolution violates art ...’, Stanislavsky, 1924, p. 566.

  p. 135‘unexpectedly asked to join ...’, L. K. Knipper, Sovietskaya muzyka, No. 12, 1978, p. 89.

  p. 135 ‘Nonsense instead of Music’, Shentalinsky, pp. 303-4.

  p. 135 ‘I am thinking about you ...’, 16 February 1932, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2744.

  p. 136 ‘Songs don’t live long ...’, quoted V. V. Knipper, p. 112.

  p. 136 Life at 23 Gogolevsky bulvar, Andrei Lvovich Knipper, interviews, 22 and 23 September 2002.

  p. 138 ‘Our Olga has...’, Berlin, 9 October 1936, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2575.

  p. 138 Invitation to the Reichschancellery, Helker and Lenssen, p. 162.

  p. 138 ‘I will do it gladly ...’, TB-JG, Teil 1, Aufzeichnungen 1924-1941, Band 3/II, p. 250.

  p. 139 ‘own little corner ...’, Ada Konstaninovna Knipper to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Brussels, 23 January 1937 (on Olga Chekhova-Robyns personal blank), MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2577.

  p. 139 ‘We have had guests ...’, Ada Konstantinovna Chekhova to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Berlin, 17 November 1937, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2578.

  15. The Great Terror

  p. 141 ‘Papa flew into a fury ...’, V. V. Knipper, pp. 58-9.

  p. 142 The Kremlin Crag-dweller, Shentalinsky, p. 173. In the final version of this poem, the ‘cockroach whiskers’ or ’cockroach moustaches’ (de
pending on the translation) was replaced by ‘cockroach eyes’ when Mandelstam wrote out the poem himself for Shivarov, his OGPU interrogator.

  p. 143 19 million people arrested, over 7 million died, Andrew and Gordievsky, p. 106.

  p. 143 ‘The execution squads ...’, Shentalinsky, p. 222.

  p. 143Ada sent two postcards asking for the document, AD-MCY.

  p. 144‘There were not any persons...’, Mariya Pavlovna Chekhova and Mikhail Pavlovich Chekhov, RGALI 2316/3/146.

  p. 145 ‘Gospoda!’ V. V. Knipper, p. 107.

  p. 145 ‘My life has become a lot more complicated ...’, L. K. Knipper to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Yalta, 4 April 1937, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2745.

  p. 146 ‘You see, my dearest Aunt Olya ...’, L. K. Knipper to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Yalta, 25 April 1937, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2746.

  p. 148 Barber’s shop in the proezd Serova, V. V. Knipper, p. 140.

  p. 149 ‘She was sitting ...’, Leo Rabeneck, ‘Posledniye minuty Chekhova’, Vozrozhdeniye, Vol. 84, Paris, December 1958, quoted Malcolm, p. 62.

  p. 149 ‘worries and joys’, 9 October 1937, TB-JG, Teil 1, Aufzeichnungen 1924-1941, Band 3, p. 294, and ‘professional concerns’, 5 May 1939, TB-JG, Teil 1, Aufzeichnungen 1924-1941, Band 6, p. 338. See also 4 February 1938.

  p· 149 ‘prima donna of the Nazi film ...’, Berezhkhov, 1972, p.109.

  p. 150 ‘Well, that’s life!’, 16 September 1938, TB-JG, Teil 1, Aufzeichnungen 1924-1931, Band 6, p. 93.

  p. 150 ‘The piece was not up to much’, TB-JG, Teil 1, Aufzeichnungen 1924-1941, Band 6, p. 337.

  p. 150 ‘a beautiful, sunny May Sunday’, TB-JG, Teil 1, Aufzeichnungen 1924-1931, Band 6, p. 348.

  p. 151 ‘poking their noses ...’, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 190.

  p. 152 ‘our people in Scandinavia’, Lev Bezymenski, Die Zeit, 15 October 1993.

  p. 152 ‘Prince, people like you ...’, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003.

  p. 153 General Nikolai Baldanov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Melikov, interview, 18 October 2003.

  p. 153General Baldanov’s imprisonment and execution. According to Lieutenant Colonel of State Security Igor Aleksandrovich Shchors, after Baldanov visited military plants in France and Germany he was denounced, probably by another member of the delegation, and accused of being a French agent. He was sentenced to ten years with no right of correspondence.

  Shchors saw his file and three petitions from his work colleagues, asking for him to be released. The reply to all three petitions was the same: ‘His crimes are too grave for the case to be reconsidered.’ Shchors became involved in this when, in 1943 or 1944, Mariya Garikovna asked him to tea. She was a very clever woman and he was sure she had her reasons for doing this. She asked some questions, in her charming, nonchalant manner, and then showed him a letter she wrote to the KGB leadership asking them to reconsider Baldanov’s case once again.

  She wrote that perhaps now that she had proved her devotion to her country and her eagerness to die for it, they would trust her more and believe her that her former husband was innocent. She asked Shchors to pass the letter on to his bosses. Shchors told her that the best way was for her to put the letter into the box for petitions in the building in the Dzerzhinskogo Square (now Lubyanka Square). Her letter reached its addressees. Some time later Sudoplatov asked Shchors to trace Baldanov in the camp and, if he had not received an additional term, to release him. He found out that Baldanov was a prisoner at a certain camp. The reply from there was that he had died from typhus in 1939 (long before the petitions were submitted). Just to be thorough, Shchors checked whether there had been any cases of typhus in that period. The answer was negative. Baldanov had probably been executed. Igor Aleksandrovich Shchors, interview, 7 December 2003.

  p. 153 Mariya Garikovna and Beria, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003, and Zoya Vasileevna Zarubina, interview, 25 September 2003. An ancestor, Prince Kochubei, featured in Pushkin’s epic Poltava.

  p. 154 ‘Lyovka, you son of a bitch! ...’, Andrei Lvovich Knipper, interviews, 22 and 23 September 2002.

  p. 154Lev’s mission in Poland, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003.

  16. Enemy Aliens

  p. 156 ‘Edification and Cheerfulness in Hard Times’, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 179.

  p. 156 ‘tall and sure of himself, but without a trace of arrogance’, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 180.

  p. 158 ‘For singing that song ...’, Berezhkov, 1982, p. 20.

  p. 159 ‘to assess personally ...’, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 25 September 2003. On Merkulov in Berlin, see also Andrew and Gordievsky, pp. 203-4.

  p. 160 ‘Occasionally, he would put...’, Berezhkov, 1982, p. 27.

  p. 162 Message from Lev, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003.

  p. 162 ‘Frau Olga Tschechowa in sincere ...‘, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 165.

  p. 162 ‘We’ve got to look after ourselves’, V. V. Knipper, p. 96.

  p. 163Lev’s relationship with Mariya Garikovna, Igor Aleksandrovich Shchors, interview, 7 December 2003.

  p. 163 ‘Who’s that?’ V. V. Knipper, p. 47.

  17. Moscow 1941

  p. 165 ‘One has to take ...’, quoted Turovskaya, p. 8.

  p. 165 ‘This was when ...’, Lev Knipper, Sovietskaya muzyka, No. 12, 1978, p. 89.

  p. 166 ‘Don’t be surprised ...’, L. K. Knipper to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, 23 June 1941, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2748.

  p. 168 ‘They have been asked ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhovato V. L. Knipper, September 1941, V. V. Knipper, p. 61 .

  p. 168 ‘We are at a complete loss ...’, Sofya Ivanovna Baklanova to V. L. Knipper, 11 September 1941, ibid.

  p. 170 ‘they were left to die ...’, Mariya Vadimovna Shverubovich, interview, 25 September 2003, and Moskovsky Khudozhestvenny Teatr: 100Let, Vol. II, Izd. 1998, MMkhAT.

  p. 171 ‘We were walking ...’, V. V. Knipper, p. 70.

  p. 173 Volga German, ibid., p. 15.

  p. 174‘from Leningrad to the Far East’, Parrish, p. 99.

  p. 174 ‘People sitting round ...’, V. V. Knipper, pp. 19-20.

  p. 175 ‘Well, you should remember ...’, ibid., p. 49.

  p. 175 ‘I am afraid of him’, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Melikov, interview, 18 October 2003.

  p. 176 Sudoplatov’s role, Andrew and Gordievsky, p. 252. Lieutenant General Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov was the head of the NKVD Partisan Administration and later head of the post-war Spetsburo, which carried out foreign assassinations. His deputy, Major General Eitingon, had organized Trotsky’s assassination.

  p. 176 ‘In October of 1941 ...’, Sudoplatov, 1996, p. 159.

  p. 177 ‘General Sudoplatov mobilized ...’, Zoya Vasileevna Zarubina, interview, 26 September 2003.

  p. 177 ‘key figures ...’, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003.

  p. 177 Zarubina, after finishing as case officer for Lev Knipper and Mariya Garikovna, worked on the translation of all the papers brought to Moscow from the Soviet spies within the Manhattan project. Zoya Vasileevna Zarubina, interview, 26 September 2003.

  p. 178 ‘The city has produced ...’, Moscow, 19 October 1941, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2748. This letter was sent by a friend of Lev’s called Sidorenko and so there was much less chance of it being censored by the NKVD.

  p. 179 ‘They were being prepared ...’, Zoya Vasileevna Zarubina, interview, 26 September 2003.

  p. 179 ‘falsely defect’, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24September 2003.

  p. 179 Sudoplatov and Zarubina are convinced that Lev and Mariya Garikovna were to be sent to Germany to make contact with Olga Chekhova. Colonel Shchors, on the other hand, believes that Lev’s target was Franz von Papen in Turkey.

  p. 180 ‘If they want a war ...’, Werth, p. 246.

  p. 181 ‘Lyova my darling...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper Chekhova to L. K. Knipper, Tbilisi, 6 December 194
1, collection of S. M. Chekhov, RGALI 2540/1/36.

  p. 182 ‘The case with the little photograph ...’, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 181.

  18. A Family Divided by War

  p. 184 ‘Lyova suddenly turned up ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova to V. L. Knipper, Tbilisi, 3 January 1942, V. V. Knipper, pp. 122-3.

  p. 184‘like stations of the cross ...’, L. K. Knipper, p. 94.

  p. 184Prokofiev, Sovietskaya muzyka, No. 12, 1978, p. 89.

  p. 184 ‘some short children’s pieces ...’, V. V. Knipper, p. 114.

  p. 184Paul Armand in Tashkent, Andrei Lvovich Knipper, interviews, 22 and 23 September 2002.

  p. 185 ‘I shudder to think ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper Chekhova to V. L. Knipper, 14 January 1942, V. V. Knipper, p. 123.

  p. 185‘very agitated letter’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova to V. L. Knipper, Tbilisi, 26 March 1942, ibid., pp. 134-5.

  p. 186 Sudoplatov believes that Lev Knipper was due to meet up with Miklashevsky, but other Soviet intelligence experts, such as Boris Volodarsky, consider that most unlikely. He thinks that the NKVD would have preferred two separate operations against Hitler. Meanwhile, Colonel Shchors, as mentioned earlier, thinks that Lev was part of the Papen assassination attempt in Turkey. Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003; Boris Voladarsky, e-mail to the author, 13 November 2003; Igor Aleksandrovich Shchors, interview, December 2003.

  p. 186 ‘that her connections ...’, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003. The NKVD, perhaps out of eagerness to please Stalin, who longed to get rid of Trotsky, was extremely interested in assassination plots. Kim Philby’s original task in Spain had been to organize the assassination of General Franco.

  p. 186 Lev accompanied by Colonel Maklyarsky and caviar tin with false bottom, Igor Aleksandrovich Shchors, interview, 7December 2003. Colonel Shchors continued as Lev’s paymaster and confirmed that he was a fully paid agent of the NKVD.