The Mystery of Olga Chekhova

by Antony Beevor

  p. 186 ‘I don’t think it expedient in the circumstances ...’, RGASPI 558/II/66.

  p. 187 ‘defection to Turkey ...’, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 25 September 2003.

  p. 188 ‘On one occasion’, Yevgenia Mikhailovna Chekhova, Sakharova (ed.), p. 210.

  p. 189 Olga Chekhova and Mariya Pavlovna Chekhova, information provided by the director of the Chekhov house-museum, Yalta.

  p. 189 ‘I can’t watch films ...’, quoted Junge, p. 70.

  p. 190 Film stars on newsreel, Deutsche Wochenschau Zwölf Minuten Magazine, UFA BA-FA 3246/1944.

  p. 190 Olga Chekhova during the Goebbels speech on 18 February 1943. I am most grateful to Vadim Glowna for bringing this to my attention. The footage was cut from the newsreel shown: Deutsche Wochenschau, BA-FA DW 651/1943/Roll 1.

  p. 190 Vadim Shverubovich in prison camp, Mariya Vadimovna Shverubovich, interview, 25 September 2003.

  p. 191 ‘a collective farm where ...’, Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide, MSN Entertainment. The Song of Russia was based on the novel Scorched Earth by Leo Mittler.

  p. 193 ‘This is Olga Chekhova, the cinema actress’, Vladimir Ivanovich Stezhensky, quoted V. V. Knipper, p. 176.

  p. 193 Aunt Masha’s state on the liberation of Yalta, Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81.

  p. 194 Schaub conversation. The film she was making was presumably Mit meinen Augen, released early in 1945. It was one of the very last movies made under the Third Reich. Deliveries of supplies and weapons to Berghof, V. V. Knipper, p. 190.

  p. 195 ‘Mecca of the film-world’, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 195.

  p. 196 ‘When our troops reached Germany’, Beria, p. 127.

  p. 196 ‘bombing-holiday’, ‘The land does not belong ...’, Tschechowa, 1973, pp. 211-12.

  19. Berlin and Moscow 1945

  p. 197 ‘did not even dare ...’, ‘all based on her initiative’, Albert Sumser, interview, 26 September 2003.

  p. 198 ‘We agreed that he would surrender ...’, Olga Chekhova’s handwritten deposition in Moscow to SMERSh, unsigned and undated, but almost certainly May 1945, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

  p. 199 Abakumov report on Wolfsschanze, 15 February 1945, GARF, 9401/2/93, pp. 6-15.

  p. 199 ‘We are already dreaming of the Crimea ...’, Sofya Ivanovna Baklanova to V. V. Knipper, 2 April 1945, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

  p. 200Olga Chekhova’s household, as the Red Army approached, consisted of Ada, Vera, a maid and a Russian dressmaker.

  p. 200 ‘Look, that’s a woman of perfect beauty’, Beyer, 1991, p. 15.

  p. 201 Olga Chekhova’s political beliefs. ‘As to her political views, she is in favour of the pre-Hitler system in Germany’, from interrogation of Boris Fyodorovich Glazunov, b. 1895 in Leningrad, by Captain Tereshchenko, senior investigator of 1st Division, 4th Department Counter-Intelligence SMERSh, of the Group of Soviet Occupation Troops in Germany, 10 October 1945, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

  p. 202 ‘My darling, darling Auntie Olya!’ Ada Konstantinovna Knipper to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Berlin, 26 April 1945, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2580.

  p. 203 ‘You killed Kolya!’, quoted V. V. Knipper, p. 180.

  p. 203 Albert Sumser’s version, interview, 15 October 2003.

  p. 204 Interrogation by Colonel Shkurin, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

  p. 205 ‘for a 72-hour rendezvous’, Deriabin, p. 59. Deriabin was at the time an officer of the NKVD Guards Directorate in charge of protecting Soviet leaders, and was thus in a position to know.

  p. 205 ‘Let Abakumov tell...’, VAR, pp. 208-13.

  p. 205‘The very ideal of a Chekist’, ‘a shock of black hair’, Kuznetsov, pp.149-50.

  p. 206 ‘a dirty runner bespattered ...’, Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Vol. I, 1974, p. 126.

  p. 206 Abakumov and Beria, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 25 September 2003.

  p. 206 KGB papers. According to Professor Sudoplatov, the papers released represent only a tiny proportion of those on the whole case. In fact the KGB revealed only the papers which concern SMERSh, when SMERSh had no idea of Olga’s true relationship with the NKVD. The key document—if the proceedings were ever trusted to paper—would be her NKVD debriefing for Beria and Merkulov, but that is unlikely to be released, especially since the KGB officially denied that there were any more papers.

  p. 206 ‘When are we going to meet?’ AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

  p. 207Olga Chekhova and Soviet intelligence, see also Beria, pp. 123-30; Parrish, pp. 126, 317; Deriabin, pp. 59-60; Sudoplatov, 1996, pp. 146, 159; Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 25September 2003.

  p. 207 ‘All that Olga Chekhova wrote ...’, Beria, pp. 123-30.

  p. 208 ‘Rumours circulating about me ...’, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

  p. 208 ‘It isn’t for me!’, Mariya Vadimovna Shverubovich, interview, 25 September 2003.

  p. 209 ‘Dear Vova’, L. K. Knipper to V. V. Knipper, 25 September 1945, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22. It would appear that either Olga Knipper-Chekhova herself or the Soviet authorities had decided to reduce her age by two years, considering that her date of birth was 22 September 1868 and her seventy-fifth birthday had already taken place in 1943.

  20. Return to Berlin

  p. 211 Olga and Lev after the war. Lev’s son is certain that he never went abroad again after the war, except to East Germany, and he is virtually certain that his father never heard from Olga. Andrei Lvovich Knipper, interview, 22 September 2002.

  p. 211‘According to your instructions ... ,’ AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

  p. 213 ‘He was being kept in a prisoner of war camp in Denmark ...’, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

  p. 213 ‘Dear Aunt Masha ...’, Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova to Mariya Pavlovna Chekhova, 2 August 1945, AD-MCY.

  p. 214 ‘My dear and dearest...’, Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Berlin, 2 August 1945, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

  p. 216 ‘Dearest Vladimir Semyonovich ...’, Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova to Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov, 18 October 1945, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

  p. 216 ‘Chekhova is extremely worried ...’, Lieutenant General Zelenin to Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov, Berlin, 22 October 1945, AC-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

  p. 217 Kurier and correspondence, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

  p. 218 ‘With regard to Olga Chekhova’s visit...’, document headed: ‘To Beria from Serov, 21 November 1945. Copy to Abakumov. Copy to Merkulov. Top Secret. NKVD of the USSR’, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

  p. 218 ‘Taken under control ...’, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003.

  21. After the War

  p. 222 ‘What, in Moscow? ...’ Mariya Vadimovna Shverubovich, interview, 25 September 2003.

  p. 222‘I’ve distanced myself...’, ‘In the evenings ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova to Ada Knipper, 17 January 1947, PAK/T.

  p. 223 ‘We sit together ...’, ‘and I am still alive‘, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova to Ada Knipper, 18 July 1948, PAK/T.

  p. 223 Lev’s 1947 expedition to Caucasus and Elbrus, Andrei Lvovich Knipper, interview, 22 September 2002.

  p. 224 Lev under General Sudoplatov until 1949, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003.

  p. 224 ‘Lyova is working!’, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Melikov, interview, 18 October 2003.

  p. 225‘Lyova, don’t be a fool, it’s winter!’, Tatyana Alekseevna Gaidamovich, interview, 4 January 2003.

  p. 225Lev and Mariya Garikovna split up, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Melikov, interview, 18 October 2003.

  p. 225 Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich condemend for ‘Formalism’, Shentalinsky, pp. 303-4. Shostakovich was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1957.

  p. 225 ‘propaganda posters’, Sovietskaya muzyka, No. 12, 1978, p. 89.

&nbs
p; p. 226 Olga Chekhova and Aleksandr Demyanov, Igor Aleksandrovich Shchors, interview, December 2003.

  p. 226 Olga Chekhova’s contacts with Abakumov and General Utekhin, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003. Abakumov’s misery dragged on. His greatest mistake had been to conceal from Stalin the suspicion that Zhdanov’s doctors had somehow been responsible for his death. He was finally charged with a failure to take ‘active measures’ against Zionists, at a time when Stalin saw ’Cosmopolitanism’ as treachery. Stalin’s xenophobia was now taking a more anti-Semitic form. Abakumov was also accused of the misappropriation of government funds and, as mentioned earlier, ‘ignoring Communist moral principles’. In December 1954, he was tried and sentenced to ‘suffer the highest degree of punishment: death by shooting’. Deriabin, p. 176.

  p. 226 ‘a rumour’, Deriabin, pp. 59-60.

  p. 227 ‘over-estimated the importance of Olga Chekhova’, Anatoly Pavlovish Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003.

  p. 227 Zoya Rybkina’s mission to Berlin, June 1953, Eduard Prokofievich Sharapov, interview, 22 September 2003; see also Sudoplatov, 1994, p. 336.

  p. 228 ‘a direct capitulation to imperialism’, quoted Lev Bezymenski, Die Zeit, 15 October 1993.

  p. 228 ‘Do you realize where you are going?’, Eduard Prokofievich Sharapov, interview, 22 September 2003.

  p. 229 Mariya Garikovna and end of her life, Zoya Vasileevna Zarubina, interview, 26 September 2003, and Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Melikov, interview, 18 October 2003.

  p. 229 Death of Misha Chekhov, Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81. Misha left his small ranch in California to Ada (his daughter with Olga Chekhova), but Ada died as a result of a plane crash in 1966.

  p. 230 ‘Venus-Film ...’, Helker and Lenssen, pp. 210-11.

  p. 231 ‘expanded very rapidly’, Renata Helker, interview, 13 October 2003.

  p. 231 ‘the millions which she had earned ...’, Helker and Lenssen, p. 214.

  p. 231 Soviet intelligence sources and Olga Tschechowa Kosmetik, Anatony Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003; Eduard Prokofievich Sharapov, interview, 22September 2003; Beria’s son, Sergo, also wrote: ‘Olga Chekhova was rewarded for her intelligence work. Her financial well-being was secured by the Soviet Union. But she never received any medals. And no one in the West was ever able to prove that she had been a Soviet spy’, Beria, pp. 123-30.

  p. 231‘the actress Olga Chekhova ...’, Lev Bezymenski, Die Zeit, 15 October 1993.

  p. 231‘a complicated and somewhat unusual story’, V. V. Knipper, p. 179.

  p. 233Symphony-Oratorium and Count Cagliostro, L. K. Knipper to Ada Knipper, 9 May 1974, PAK/T. He also wrote a ballet, The Source of Happiness, which was based on Tadjik music. Sovietskaya muzyka, No. 12, 1978, p. 89. Also Tatyana Alekseevna Gaidamovich, interview, 26 September 2003.

  p. 233 ‘A proletarian will always be a proletarian ...’, Olga Chekhova to Ada Knipper, 28 November [?], PAK/T.

  p. 234 Death of Olga Chekhova, Vera Tschechowa, interview, 16 October 2003.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

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  Benedetti, Jean (ed.), The Moscow Art Theatre Letters, New York, 1991

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  —Die Kunst des Schauspielers: Moskauer Ausgabe, Stuttgart, 1998

  Chekhov, Mikhail Aleksandrovich, see Cechov, Michail A.

  Chekhova, Olga Konstantinovna, see Tschechowa, Olga

  Deriabin, Peter, Inside Stalin’s Kremlin, Washington, DC, 1998

  Ehrenburg, Ilya, Men, Years - Life, Vol. V, New York, 1964

  Figes, Orlando, A People’s Tragedy, London, 2002

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  Junge, Traudl, Until the Final Hour: Hitler’s Last Secretary, London, 2003

  Kachalov, V. I., Sbornik Statei, Vospominany, Pisem, Moscow, 1954

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  Knipper, Lev Konstantinovich, Vospominaniya, dnevniki, zametki, Moscow, 1980

  Knipper, Vladimir Vladimirovich, Pora galliutsinatsy, Moscow, 1995

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  Kuznetsov, I. I., ‘Stalin’s Minister V. S. Abakumov 1908-1954’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1, March 1999

  Malcolm, Janet, Reading Chekhov, New York, 2001

  Marshall, Herbert, The Russian Theatre, New York, 1977

  Montefiore, Simon Sebag, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, London, 2003

  Parrish, Michael, The Lesser Terror: Soviet State Security, 1939-1953, Westport, Conn., 1996

  Peschersky, Vladimir, Krasnaya kapella, Moscow, 2000

  Pitcher, Harvey, Chekhov’s Leading Lady, London, 1979

  Porter, Cathy, and Jones, Mark, Moscow in World War II, London, 1987

  Rabeneck, Lev L., ‘Serdtse Chekhova’, Vozrozhdeniye, Vol. 92, Paris, August 1959

  Rayfield, Donald, The Cherry Orchard: Catastrophe and Comedy, London, I994

  —Anton Chekhov, New York, 1997

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  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The original spark which led to this book came in 2000 from Dr Galya Vinogradova, with whom I stayed in Moscow while researching Berlin: The Downfall 1945. Her daughter Dr Lyuba Vinogradova, to whom I owe so much for all her help over the last ten years, then suggested that she should drop by the Chekhov museum at Melikhovo, which is not that far from their dacha. This is where the Chekhova story started in earnest.

  From then on many people have helped in many different ways, both large and small. I am extremely grateful to Judith Baum, Professor Anatoly Aleksandrovich Chernobayev, Professor Tatyana Alekseevna Gaidamovich, Wolf Gebhardt, Angelica von Hase, the film historian Renata Helker, who generously gave me access to her Privatarchiv Knipper/Chekhova, Academician
Andrei Lvovich Knipper, Lesley Levene, Douglas Matthews, Igor Aleksandrovich Shchors, Mariya Vadimovna Shverubovich, Professor Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, Boris Voladarsky and Zoya Vasileevna Zarubina.

  Once again it has been a great pleasure and an enormous help working with the BBC. I am extremely grateful to Laurence Rees, Jonathan Stamp and Thecla Schreuders, the director, whose constant well-aimed questions produced an enjoyable and very useful debate.

  Andrew Nurnberg is mercifully still my agent and Eleo Gordon my editor at Penguin. I owe them both, as always, a very great deal. But naturally my deepest thanks go to my wife, Artemis Cooper, who along with everything else vastly improved the manuscript with her editing.

  INDEX

  The numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

  Abakumov, Colonel General Viktor

  heads SMERSh

  Olga Chekhova writes reports for

  receives reports on Olga Chekhova in Germany

  Serov denounces

  womanizing

  Olga Chekhova requests more sentries from

  Olga Chekhova maintains contact with

  purged

  Aimée

  Akhmatova, Anna

  Akulov, E. A.

  Alekseiev factories.

  Alexander III, Tsar statue destroyed

  Alexandra, Tsarina

  unpopularity

  sets up wartime hospital

  and Rasputin

  Alliluyeva, Nadezhda (Stalin’s wife)

  Anosov, Nikolai

  Anosova, Lyubov, see Knipper, Lyubov

  Anya Kraeva

  Armand, Paul

  Attolico, Contessa

  Aunt Masha, see Chekhova, Mariya