Stalin's Romeo Spy

by Emil Draitser

  31. Orlov, Secret History, 229.

  32. Razumov, “Rukopis’ D. Bystrolyotova ‘Pir Bessmertnykh,’ ” 121; Alexander Barmine, One Who Survived (Malinowski Press, 2007), 21n3.

  33. Snegirev, “Drugaia zhizn’ Dmitriia Bystroletova,” 74. The last SVR posting erroneously dates the letter as being sent at the end of December 1936 (http://svr.gov.ru/smi/2006/novrkr20060130.htm).

  34. “Pir,” 1:534; http://svr.gov.ru/smi/2006/novrkr20060130.htm.

  35. Snegirev, “Drugaia zhizn’ Dmitriia Bystroletova,” 74; http://svr.gov.ru/smi/2006/novrkr20060130.htm. See also Degtiarev and Kolpakidi, 107.

  36. “Pir,” 1:42, 534. Although, in his memoirs, true to his oath of secrecy about his intelligence work, Bystrolyotov cites working with a German Wehr macht headquarters “source” as his new assignment, as known now, his true target was Captain King of the British Foreign Office (interview with Milashov, July 2003). Costello and Tsarev (204) identify the target as Donald Maclean of the Cambridge spy ring.

  37. “Pir,” 1:534. The boy’s photograph is included in Tsarev and West, Crown Jewels.

  38. Snegirev, “Drugaia zhizn’ Dmitriia Bystroletova,” 4; “Pir,” 1:42–43.

  39. Orlov, Secret History, 223–24.

  40. Poretskaia, Nashi, 106.

  41. Orlov, Secret History, 215; Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vneshniaia razvedka Rossii, 178–79.

  42. “Pir,” 1:42–43. On Gorb and Artuzov, see http://www.memo.ru/history/NKVD/kto/biogr/index.htm. On Samsonov, see appendix to Bystrolyotov, Putesh estvie na krai nochi, 585.

  43. On details of Poretsky’s assassination, see Kern, Death in Washington, 133–39.

  44. Poretskaia, Nashi, 94. On the number of recalled officers, see Orlov, Secret History, 225. On Slutsky’s murder, see also Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 80; Pringle, Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence, 242–43. For details of Slutsky’s murder, see Abramov, Evrei v KGB, 299–300. In his 2008 book, Mlechin doubts the poisoning scenario and thinks that Slutsky, who had a history of heart problems, died of a heart attack (Istoriia vneshnei razvedki, 56).

  45. Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vneshniaia razvedka Rossii, 180. The NKVD order to dismiss Bystrolyotov “on the grounds of staff reduction” is dated February 25, 1938. However, his personal work record book shows March 31, 1938, as the day of his dismissal.

  46. Ibid., 287; Pringle, Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence, 152–53. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 78; Duff, Time for Spies, 183–84; Andrew and Mitrokhin, ibid., 106; Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vneshniaia razvedka Rossii, 159.

  47. “Pir,” 3:398–99. The Operative Department of the Chief Directorate of State Security of the NKVD existed from 1934 to 1939; see http://www.memo.ru/history/NKVD/STRU/.

  48. “Pir,” 1:19; on the advantages of night arrests, see Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago: Volume 1, 6–7.

  49. See RGASPI; cited in Degtiarev and Kolpakidi, 104–12, 316–17.

  50. “Pir,” 1:20.

  Fourteen. In Ink and Blood

  1. On the background of A. P. Solovyov, see appendix to Bystrolyotov, Puteshestvie na krai nochi, 586. Andrew and Mitrokhin misspell his assistant’s surname—“Pushkin” (The Sword and the Shield, 81).

  2. Unless otherwise noted, Bystrolyotov’s experience and quotes from his writings in this chapter refer to “Pir,” 1:19–100.

  3. For more information on Butyrka prison, see http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7209-4.cfm.

  4. See appendix to Bystrolyotov, Puteshestvie na krai nochi, 586–87.

  5. One example of a prisoner consciously cooperating with the interrogation was Alexander Isbakh, a Soviet writer and literary scholar. Arrested on drummed-up charges, beaten half to death, barely making it to his cell, he kept telling his cell mates: “We have to help our interrogartors; that is our Party duty.” Cited in Benedikt Sarnov, Nash sovetskkii novoiaz [Our Soviet Newspeak] (Moscow: Eksmo, 2005), 450.

  6. As is revealed now, these denunciations had been filed on Dec. 7, 1937, over nine months before, and waited their turn to be used as grounds for Bystrolyotov’s arrest; see Degtiarev and Kolpakidi, 106.

  7. See the GlobalSecurity site http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/russia/lefortovo.htm.

  8. “Pir,” 1:352.

  9. Apparently, at the time Bystrolyotov was tortured, no longer People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs (his tenure ended there on November 25, 1938), Yezhov visited Lefortovo in the capacity of a member of the Politburo Commission on Judicious Affairs; he remained in that post until January 19, 1939 (see “Memorial,” “Rukovodiashchie kadry NKVD,” http://www.memo.ru/history/NKVD/kto/biogr/index.htm). For Yezhov’s full biography, see Marc Jansen and Nikita V. Petrov, Stalin’s Loyal Executioner: People’s Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895–1940 (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 2002).

  10. “Pir,” 1:353.

  11. Bystrolyotov, in conversation with the author, September 1973. On his beatings, see also Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 81.

  12. “Pir,” 1:354.

  Fifteen. Sentencing and Entering the Gulag

  1. Unless otherwise noted, Bystrolyotov’s experiences and quotes from his writings in this chapter refer to “Pir,” 1:110–295; on Kedrov’s background, see appendix to Bystrolyotov, Puteshestvie na krai nochi, 582.

  2. On Shpigelglas’s background, see Sudoplatov and Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 13; Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vneshniaia razvedka Rossii, 104–5.

  3. The episode with Solovyov is cited in “Pir,” 1:87; on Beria’s career, see http://www.memo.ru/history/NKVD/kto/biogr/index.htm; on the death sentence statistics, see http://www.hrono.info/organ/gulag.html. For a description of the widespread practice of applying these articles, see Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago: Volume 1, 60, 63–66.

  4. “Pir,” 1:314–15; see also Rossi, Gulag Handbook, 36, 497; see Sbornik, 86– 93; see also Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago: Volume 2, 303–4.

  5. See Ivanov, “Razvedchik, vozvrashchennyi iz nebytiia,” 8; on shortages of medical personnel in the camps, see Applebaum, Gulag, 369; on fellow prisoners’ opinion of the medical training of Bystrolyotov, see Razumov, “Rukopis’ D. Bystrolyotova ‘Pir Bessmertnykh,’ ” 132.

  As to Bystrolyotov’s formal training in medicine, both his stepgrandson, Sergei Milashov, and many current biographies (most likely having the same source) insist that, in the years 1931 to 1935, under one of his aliases, Bystrolyotov studied medicine at the graduate school of Zurich University, specializing in obstetrics and gynecology. During our conversations, Milashov elaborated on the subject by making a connection between Bystrolyotov’s choice of medical field and his mother’s specialization as a nurse in later years. Ostensibly recalling a conversation with his stepgrandfather, Milashov pointed out that the profession of gynecologist was chosen for operative purposes: it facilitated an approach to private information, for “a woman fully opens up only to her hairdresser, her lawyer, and her gynecologist.” There is no evidence of any operation in which Bystrolyotov utilized this access to any purpose. But, giving him the benefit of the doubt, he could have thought this way.

  It is also stated in current Russian publications that, after his graduation, Bystrolyotov practiced in one of the Swiss private clinics and even made the scientific discovery of a means to control the gender of a baby when planning a family. (See, for example, Degtiarev and Kolpakidi, 382.) Moreover, it is stated that Bystrolyotov published an article on the subject in a scientific journal, again under somebody else’s name.

  The problem with all this information is twofold. First, it’s hard to imagine how, extremely busy with his spy work and almost always on the move, Bystrolyotov could attend and successfully fulfill the rigorous requirements of medical school. Second, none of these statements could be verified with documentary evidence. When I paid a visit to the university archive, no records of graduates in the years 1935 and 1936 matched any of Bystrolyotov’s known alias
es. (Of course it’s possible that, when enrolling in the university, he could have used an alias that isn’t recorded in the current KGB files.)

  All this said and done, in addition to the fellow prisoners who were his former patients, Bystrolyotov’s memoirs confirm his solid knowledge in the medical field when he describes physical self-examinations during his many bouts with infirmities or discusses his attempts at scientific research in the camps.

  6. See Applebaum Gulag, 282–83; Lev Razgon, True Stories, trans. John Crow-foot (Dana Point, Calif.: Ardis, 1997), 185.

  7. See also Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago: Volume 2, 325.

  8. “The work of an agent in the Intelligence Department is on the whole monotonous. A lot of it is uncommonly useless,” Somerset Maugham, in the preface to his Collected Short Stories (New York: Penguin Classics, 1995), 3:7. On Stalin’s order to supply him with raw intelligence data, without analysis, see Orlov, Handbook of Intelligence, 10. For details on deliberate misrepresentation of Soviet spies’ information, see Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 52–55.

  9. On the history of Norillag, see http://www.vtalnahe.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=648; for other information on the camp, see http://www.memorial.krsk.ru/lager/Norillag/1.htm.

  10. For medical personnel’s privilege of sleeping not on the multiple bunks but on their own beds, see Applebaum, Gulag, 200; see also Isaac Vogelfanger, Red Tempest: The Life of a Surgeon in the Gulag (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996), 67.

  11. On Stalin’s order to abolish the shortening of sentences for good work, see Applebaum, Gulag, 473.

  12. Ibid., 102–3; on the effect of the word “comrade,” see Rossi, Gulag Handbook, 449.

  13. “Pir,” 1:315; see also Anna Larina, This I Cannot Forget: The Memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin’s Widow, trans. Gary Kern (New York: Norton, 1994), 159 (quoted in Applebaum, Gulag, 304).

  14. “Pir,” 2:72.

  15. See Nikolai Ostrovsky, How the Steel Was Tempered (Moscow: Progress, 1964).

  16. “Pir,” 1:189.

  17. Ibid., 191.

  18. On the shortage of warm boots and clothes in Norillag, see GARF 8131/37/4547; cited in Applebaum, Gulag, 225.

  19. “Pir,” 1:312–13.

  20. Ibid., 314.

  21. Cited in Stephen Kotkin, “Stalinism as a Civilization,” in The Stalin Years: A Reader, ed. Christopher Read (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 217–18.

  22. “Pir,” 1:316; on Prokhorov-Pustover, see Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago: Volume 2, 347; on posters glorifying labor in the camps, see Georgii Zhzhenov, Sanochki [Little Sleigh], http://www.russkoekino.ru/books/zhenov/zhenov-0007.shtml.

  23. “Pir,” 1:316.

  24. See also Nanci Adler, The Gulag Survivor: Beyond the Soviet System (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2004), xx; on the attractiveness of the Communist idea as an ideology of social cohesiveness, see Catherine Merridale, Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia (New York: Penguin, 2002), 418.

  Sixteen. The Invalid Camp

  1. Amdur [letter to Pravda editorial office], May 5, 1990, 1–2. Amdur has the number of prisoners aboard raised to six hundred. Unless otherwise noted, Bystrolyotov’s experience and quotes from his writings in this chapter refer to “Pir,” 1:182–207, 297–387, 536–54.

  2. Applebaum, Gulag, 169; on similar experiences of prisoner boat transport in the Gulag, see Applebaum, Gulag, 169–75.

  3. Razumov, “Rukopis’ D. Bystrolyotova ‘Pir Bessmertnykh,’ ” 132.

  4. Amdur [letter to Pravda], 3; my own impression of Dmitri when we met in the fall of 1973, when he was already an old man, is quite close to that of Amdur’s.

  5. On Anna Rosenblum’s background, see Pringle, Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence, 226–27; see also appendix to Bystrolyotov, Puteshestvie na krai nochi, 585, and, on the “Russian Genealogical Tree,” http://www.r-g-d.ru/R/rozen1.htm. On her testimony about the torture of Vasily Blyukher, see http://militera.lib.ru/research/cheryshev_ns/01.html. For a similar episode of a prisoner in Norilsk attacking (verbally) an unnamed imprisoned doctor who worked in Lefortovo prison (possibly Anna Rosenblum), see Dr. Georgy Popov’s memoir, Opiat’ ozhivaet potusknevshee vremia [Fading Time Comes to Live Again], http://www.memorial.krsk.ru/Public/80/19891230.htm. Bystrolyotov mistakenly says that Rosenblum was sentenced to twenty-five years of labor camps, not fifteen years (“Pir,” 1:356). She was freed from imprisonment and fully rehabilitated only in 1955.

  6. On prisoner transport by boat, see also Applebaum, Gulag, 169–72; Eugenia Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind, trans. Paul Stevenson and Max Hayward (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967), 351–53; Conquest, Kolyma, 24.

  7. On similar recovery camp units in the Gulag, see Applebaum, Gulag, 371–72.

  8. “Pir,” 2:59–60.

  9. Ibid., 1:541.

  10. “Pir,” 3:7.

  11. On card game rituals in the camps, see Applebaum, Gulag, 286–90.

  12. On criminals called “bitches,” see Rossi, Gulag Handbook, 126, 441.

  13. On imprisoned doctors’ perilous situation, see Applebaum, Gulag, 373.

  14. “Pir,” 2:392–93.

  15. Ibid., 61; 3:10; Bystrolyotov, in conversation with the author, September 1973.

  16. “Pir,” 3:9.

  17. Ibid., 2:48, 324–25.

  18. Ibid., 42, 98; 3:10.

  Seventeen. Love Behind Barbed Wire

  1. Giving her the name of an African girl was not whimsy but the act of a guilty conscience. During Dmitri’s sojourn in the village of Nianga in the western part of Belgian Congo, he presented the local chief, Assai, with a finely made dagger complete with a decorated sheath. Overwhelmed with joy, Assai sent him in return Liuonga, one of his daughters—a twelve-year-old girl, pretty and graceful as a “terra-cotta statuette.” She was puzzled when Dmitri tried to treat her as a child. Playful and coy, she made attempts at seducing him.

  In his memoirs, Dmitri admits that, then and there, during the “humid, hot, and relaxing” African nights saturated with the “intoxicating aroma of poisonous flowers,” he found himself disturbingly attracted to the girl and was fighting off temptation tooth and nail.

  It’s not clear whether he eventually succumbed to Liuonga’s charms, but, when the time came for him to return to Europe, she ignored his farewell words and, on the morning of his departure, appeared in his tent fully equipped to follow him. She considered it her joyful duty to accompany her husband, and she was devastated by his refusal to take her along. Her face turned gray and he realized that, by the cultural standards of her milieu, she considered herself an abandoned wife.

  He left alone. In Europe, he resumed the life of a spy. But he couldn’t help feeling guilty that he had inadvertently crushed the African girl’s life. His parcel addressed to her, containing the best perfumes and jewelry that money could buy in fashionable Parisian stores, came back with a note from a local postman that it couldn’t be delivered because of . . . the death of the addressee. Between her father’s untimely demise while lion hunting and Dmitri’s leaving, she lost her will to live.

  Thus, by giving the anonymous Russian girl he saved in the Gulag the name of the African girl he had abandoned, Dmitri attempted to at least symbolically bring her back to life. (For his detailed description of this episode, see “Pir bess-mertnykh,” 2:366–73, 387–92, 406–11.)

  2. Unless otherwise noted, Bystrolyotov’s life in the camps is reconstructed in this chapter based on details in “Pir,” 2:32–164, 204–301, 341–82.

  3. According to the official statistics of the year when the action takes place (1942), 13 percent of the Gulag prisoners were women (cited in Applebaum, Gulag, 311).

  4. On women’s plight in the Gulag, see ibid., 311–17.

  5. Ibid., 315.

  6. On shortages of writing paper in the camps, see ibid., 249–50.

  7. The directive is quoted ibid., 234; on the functions of the cultu
ral-educational departments in the camps, see ibid., 231–34; on cultural activities at Mariinsk, see the memoirs of E. Sydakova, Krutye stupeni [Steep Steps], 32, http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/sudakowa.txt.

  8. La Argentina was the stage name of Antonia Mercé (1888–1936), also known as “The Flamenco Pavlova” and “The Queen of the Castanets.” For her short biography, see http://tarotcanada.tripod.com/LaArgentina.html.

  9. On disciplinary barracks, see Rossi, Gulag Handbook, 37.

  10. “Pir,” 3:92.

  Eighteen. The High Price of Decency

  1. “Pir,” 3:92.

  2. Ibid., 108.

  3. Ibid., 2:433. On Norman Borodin’s background, see http://www.hrono.ru/biograf/bio_b/borodin_nm.html.

  4. Later, in 1951, Norman Borodin was exiled to Karaganda, where, from 1952 to 1953, he worked as a department head of the Sotsialisticheskaia Karaganda [Socialist Karaganda] newspaper. At the end of 1953, he returned to Moscow and, in 1954, was fully rehabilitated. In 1955, he was reinstated at the KGB; see http://www.hrono.info/biograf/bio_b/borodin_nm.html.

  5. At the time of the meeting with Bystrolyotov, Abakumov’s rank was higher; he had held the rank of colonel general since July 9, 1945. On May 4, 1946, he was made minister of state security (MGB), and he remained in that position until July 4, 1951. He was arrested a few days after his dismissal and, after spending three years in jail, convicted of high treason. He was shot on December 19, 1954. For more information and Abakumov’s photo, see http://www.memo.ru/history/NKVD/kto/biogr/index.htm.

  6. “Pir,” 3:109.

  7. On recollections of camp chiefs treating prisoners humanely, see Apple-baum, Gulag, 271–72. For an excerpt from a memoir written by one such camp chief, see Fyodor Mochulsky, “Citizen Boss: A Gulag Memoir,” trans. Deborah Kaple, Nassau Literary Review, Winter 2008–9, 36–45.