The Man with the Poison Gun

by Serhii Plokhy

  In Moscow he was met by a KGB man who provided him with Soviet currency and registered him at the Hotel Ukraine, one of the “seven sisters,” the seven Moscow high-rises commissioned by Joseph Stalin. The Hotel Ukraine (known today as Radisson Royal Hotel, Moscow) was a brand-new building. Its construction had begun in 1953, the year of the dictator’s death, and had been completed four years later. At about the same time, Khrushchev, Stalin’s longtime viceroy in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, had fully consolidated his hold on power. When the hotel officially opened to guests in May 1957, it had been heralded by the Soviet press as the largest hotel in Europe. It was certainly the tallest, measuring 650 feet from its foundations to the top of its spire. Its façade and outside walls were decorated with symbols of Soviet power: stars, hammers and sickles. The hotel stood at the head of the new, glamorous (by Soviet standards) Kutuzov Avenue—which was lined with the residences of the most famous and powerful citizens in the Soviet capital.1

  The day after Stashinsky arrived, the KGB officer showed up at his suite with a man who introduced himself only by his first name and patronymic: Georgii Avksentievich. Stashinsky never learned his surname or his exact rank and position in the KGB. “The practice in the KGB,” he recalled later, “is that when you speak with some colleague, you never know exactly what position he holds.” Was he the head of the secret police? The answer to that question remained unclear. Stashinsky remembered later, however, that Damon had said “the head of the KGB himself” would speak with him. Whoever he was, the man made a strong impression on Stashinsky. He seemed to be in his mid-forties and was unlike any KGB officer Stashinsky had met before. “I looked upon him the whole time as an aristocrat; he was so calm and, as he sat beside me, he expressed his thoughts in such an unwavering tone that contradicting him was unthinkable. In highly self-confident fashion. . . . One could easily see that he was used to giving orders; that he occupied one of the top posts in the KGB.”2

  According to declassified biographies of KGB officials, Georgii Avksentievich’s last name was Ishchenko. At the time of their meeting, Colonel Ishchenko was a few months short of his fiftieth birthday, but with his dark hair combed back, he apparently looked younger than his age. There was nothing aristocratic about his background. He had been born in 1910 into the family of a manual laborer in the village of Krymskaia in the Kuban region of the Russian Empire. He claimed to be a Russian despite his Ukrainian surname—probably the result of the drastic change in Soviet nationality policy in the early 1930s, when Stalin ordered the closing of all Ukrainian publications and educational institutions in the Kuban in the wake of the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932–1933, when all Ukrainians in the region were reregistered as Russians. Ishchenko began his career in the party apparatus and switched to the secret police in the wake of Stalin’s great purge of 1937. In the last years of Stalin’s rule, Ishchenko headed the NKVD apparatus in his home Kuban region. After the dictator’s death he was sent to Hungary to run the NKVD; later he served as liaison with the Hungarian security services. He took an active part in the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in the fall of 1956. At that time he worked closely with the head of the KGB, General Ivan Serov, who had been dispatched to Budapest.3

  Sitting at the table in Stashinsky’s hotel room, Colonel Ishchenko asked him about his latest assignment: a successful mission to track down Stepan Bandera, the leader of the largest and, as the Soviets believed, most dangerous group of Ukrainian émigrés in the West. Stashinsky obliged, and told Ishchenko what he knew about Bandera.

  In the spring of 1958, Sergei Damon had asked Stashinsky to go to a West Berlin bookstore and look for anything published by an author called Popel. It was the first time that Stashinsky had heard the name. In fact, the only book that would have had that name on the cover was one that had been published in Lviv in 1943. It was A Chess Player’s Beginnings by Stepan Popel, a Ukrainian chess player. After the war, Popel had won numerous Paris championships, and after moving to the United States in the 1950s he had held the Michigan state championship for three consecutive years. Not surprisingly, the bookshop Stashinsky visited in West Berlin in the summer of 1958 did not have Popel’s Ukrainian-language book from fifteen years prior. Stashinsky told his case officer that he had seen no books by such an author, and Damon had dropped the issue.4

  Popel’s name would soon come up again in Stashinsky’s life. In May 1958, Ukrainian émigrés in Europe marked the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of the founder of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Colonel Yevhen Konovalets, who had been killed on Stalin’s personal orders by Pavel Sudoplatov. The KGB officers decided to use the commemoration of Konovalets’s death to start plotting their assassination attempt on his successor. The commemorative ceremony on May 25, 1958, took place at the Crooswijk Cemetery in Rotterdam, where Konovalets was buried, and brought together Ukrainian nationalist leaders from around the world. Both Stepan Bandera and Andrii Melnyk, the leaders of the two rival factions of the OUN, attended the ceremony. Damon wanted his agent to see and identify in person the man he would later be ordered to kill. But he of course did not reveal his true motives to Stashinsky. Instead, Damon asked him to attend the ceremony with his camera and take a few pictures of the nationalist leaders. Stashinsky was off to Rotterdam.5

  Despite the tight security, Stashinsky managed not only to make his way to the cemetery, but also to take pictures of people in the commemorative procession. He got close enough to Konovalets’s tombstone to see the speakers delivering eulogies. One of the speakers, whom he had never seen before, received more attention than the others. His speech was the longest. He mourned Konovalets and lashed out against his killers. “Today, as before, we can say that the enemy of God, Ukraine, and all freedom-loving humanity has not managed to destroy the OUN and the Ukrainian liberation movement by killing its founder and leader,” declared the speaker. “But at the same time we realize that this is a great, irreparable loss, one that we have not been able to overcome in twenty years.”6

  Stashinsky did not know who the speaker was, but he noticed his car—the dark blue Opel Kapitan. Upon his return from Rotterdam, Sergei Damon showed him a newspaper with the texts of speeches delivered at the ceremony. The longest of them was attributed to Stepan Bandera. It was then that Stashinsky realized who the speaker was and to whom the Opel Kapitan belonged.

  Damon was interested not only in Stashinsky’s pictures and the people he had seen in Rotterdam, but also in his description of the cemetery and the area around Konovalets’s grave. He asked whether something could be hidden there. Stashinsky responded in the affirmative. But when he realized that Damon had in mind another bomb, not in a box of chocolates this time but in Konovalets’s grave, he changed his answer and said that it would be hard to do something like that. He also suggested that, given the congested space, the victims of such an attack would include not only nationalist leaders but also women and children. Damon dropped the subject at the time, but the assassination of Bandera was evidently very much on his mind.7

  It was in early January 1959 that Damon gave Stashinsky his next assignment: go to Munich and find out where Bandera lived. Damon told him that Bandera most likely was living under the name Stefan Popel. He was possibly still at the address the KGB had on file, but they wanted that information either confirmed or updated. Stashinsky flew to Munich, using new West German documents issued in the name of Hans Joachim Budeit. It did not take long for him to confirm that the man whom he had seen in Rotterdam did not live at the address they had given him at Karlshorst. Where he lived now was anyone’s guess.

  The assignment was over. Stashinsky could return to Berlin and report on his findings. But at the last moment he decided on a whim to check the Munich telephone book. And there he was, Stefan Popel, with his telephone number and residential address, Kreittmayrstrasse 7. Was this the right Herr Popel? The next morning Stashinsky was at Kreittmayrstrasse. In the archway leading to the courtyard at building no. 7, he s
aw the familiar Opel Kapitan and the speaker from Rotterdam working on his car. The list of residents near the entrance to the building included the name Stefan Popel. Later that morning Stashinsky saw the same Opel Kapitan parked near the headquarters of the local Ukrainian organizations on Zeppelinstrasse. There was no doubt that Stefan Popel of Kreittmayrstrasse 7 was none other than Stepan Bandera. Stashinsky was a good agent. Not for nothing had he abandoned the guerrilla hideouts of Western Ukraine and made it all the way to the coveted posting in Berlin. Damon could not believe his ears when he heard the report. “We have finally managed to pick up Bandera’s trail,” he told Stashinsky euphorically.

  After attentively listening to Stashinsky’s story about tracking down Bandera in Munich, Colonel Ishchenko told him that the decision had been made to “liquidate” his target in the same manner as Rebet. Alarmed, Stashinsky voiced his reservations: unlike Rebet, Bandera was armed and had a bodyguard. The KGB colonel told the assassin that the weapon he was about to receive was an improved model with two barrels. If necessary, Stashinsky could kill the bodyguard as well. “He paid no attention whatever to my objections,” remembered Stashinsky later. “I was to carry it out, exactly how was my business; he said that my attempt would be successful.” They got a bottle of Soviet champagne and drank to the success of the mission. “It made me think of a Russian film I had once seen,” recalled Stashinsky. “It was about the ‘heroic deed’ of a spy, and the officer who sent the spy on a mission behind enemy lines took leave of him with champagne.”8

  Colonel Ishchenko told Stashinsky that it would be a shame for him to know Western Europe, but not to get acquainted with Moscow. He wanted him to see the Soviet capital. It was standard KGB practice to show their agents and assassins the holy places of the Soviet Union before they were dispatched abroad. Lenin’s mausoleum and Red Square were by far the most venerated ones. Ishchenko gave Stashinsky a special pass to the grandstand at Red Square to attend the May Day military parade and demonstration. Stashinsky had seen parades before in Lviv and Kyiv, but those couldn’t compare to this grand display. Stashinsky was especially impressed with the new military equipment showcased at the parade. As he watched the demonstration of Soviet might, he could look directly across the square at Nikita Khrushchev, the man who had never forgotten about Bandera. Now fate and circumstances had brought them together, united in a single purpose: kill Bandera.9

  9

  HERR POPEL

  Before leaving Moscow, Stashinsky received a new, improved spray pistol. This one had two barrels so that the assassin could kill two targets without reloading—in this case Bandera and his bodyguard. Colonel Ishchenko, the KGB officer with aristocratic manners, told Stashinsky to go back to East Berlin and await orders. Stashinsky went back to his apartment on East Berlin’s Marienstrasse, and he began drinking heavily. His orders came during the second week of May 1959: Moscow wanted Bandera dead as soon as possible. Stashinsky got documents from Sergei Damon, a new weapon, and the antidote pills and ampoules. He also received a set of keys to open the entrance door to Bandera’s apartment building. The hallway was the ideal place in which to carry out the killing, he was told in Moscow. But if circumstances were right, he could do so in the courtyard of the building as well. He could use his own judgment.

  After arriving in Munich, Stashinsky followed the same routine for a few days. He started his days loitering near Bandera’s apartment building, and by 11:00 a.m. he would move to Zeppelinstrasse, where Bandera had his office. He saw Bandera on a number of occasions, mostly in the company of his bodyguard. One day he spotted Bandera returning home alone. Bandera went by in his Opel Kapitan on Kreittmayrstrasse near the entrance to his apartment building. The car turned into the archway, heading toward the courtyard and garages. Stashinsky took his weapon out of his pocket and prepared to carry out his assignment, but changed his mind at the last moment. In order to make it impossible to go back, he fired the spray pistol into the ground and then dropped it from a bridge into the same stream in the Hofgarten where he had dumped the weapon he had used to assassinate Lev Rebet a year and a half earlier.

  Stashinsky may have felt relieved after refusing to follow the order to kill Bandera. But there was also a reason for concern: he would have to explain to Sergei Damon back in Karlshorst why he had failed to carry out the assignment. For all he knew, he might well have been followed by another KGB agent who would have seen him dropping the pistol into the water. The only thing Stashinsky knew for certain was that whoever followed him could not possibly have seen what actually happened in the courtyard of Bandera’s building. Stashinsky decided to tell Damon that he had seen someone in the courtyard near Bandera’s garage and had been forced to abort the attempt. He also went the extra mile to show that he had tried hard to get into the apartment building—the KGB’s first choice for the site of the assassination. As he tried to open the entrance door, he had broken a couple of keys. He had then tried his own key and broken it as well. Stashinsky was going to show Damon the broken key as evidence that he had done his best to carry out the assignment.

  Sergei Damon was not pleased to hear the news, but there was little he could do. In August, Stashinsky went to the Soviet Union to take a short vacation. It was only after his return that Damon told him Moscow had ordered another try. Stashinsky flew to Munich on October 14, carrying the loaded pistol, the antidote pills, and a set of new keys to Bandera’s apartment building. He expected to spend anywhere between seven and ten days in Munich—as was standard. After ten days, the KGB wanted him back whether he fulfilled the assignment or not.

  October 15 was supposed to be Stashinsky’s first “working day,” and he didn’t expect to accomplish much, hoping only to begin his observations. Even so, he took his antidote pill in the morning and put the spray gun, wrapped in newspaper, into the inside pocket of his jacket. It was too late to find Bandera at home, so he went to the Ukrainian offices on Zeppelinstrasse. His observation point was on the Ludwig Bridge, near the Deutsches Museum and the tram stop. It was there that visitors to the museum and tram passengers might have noticed a man in his late twenties loitering with no obvious purpose, taking quick looks from time to time in the direction of Zeppelinstrasse. First he spotted Bandera’s car parked near building no. 67. Then, around noon, he saw a man and a woman leave the building, get into the car, and drive away.

  It seemed that Stashinsky’s working hours were over. Bandera was in someone’s company, so there was no chance to get him that day. But Stashinsky decided to take a tram and go to Bandera’s apartment building, if only to prove to his handlers, if they were watching, that he was doing all he could to complete his mission. After arriving at Bandera’s street and not seeing him or his car, Stashinsky decided to set a time when he could leave the area without raising any watcher’s suspicion that he had not tried hard enough. He decided on 1:00 p.m. as a cutoff point. As he was checking his watch for the magic moment, he suddenly saw a car coming in his direction. It was Bandera’s Opel Kapitan, and he was alone. The woman Stashinsky had seen an hour earlier from the Ludwig Bridge was gone.

  When the Opel Kapitan turned into the archway, Stashinsky moved in that direction as well. The car was in front of an open garage, and the driver was busy unlading things from the back. Stashinsky used his new set of Karlshorst-made keys to open the main entrance. He was now in the hallway of the building, the place where his bosses wanted him to do his job. Everything was falling into place, until he heard a woman’s voice a few stories above. Stashinsky turned toward the elevator and waited until the woman passed him on her way out. He then returned to his previous position behind the first turn of the stairs, where he could not be seen by anyone entering. Stashinsky was back in control. He heard someone trying to open the main door. He knew this was Bandera. He began to go down the stairs, the pistol wrapped in newspaper in his right hand. He would shoot Bandera as he had shot Rebet, once they were on the same level. But there was a problem with the original plan. Bandera was carryin
g a bag of vegetables and, with only one hand free, was struggling to open the door: his key was stuck in the lock. Holding the bag in his right hand, Bandera tried to push the door with his foot while using his left hand to withdraw the key. It was not working. Stashinsky bent down, ostensibly to fix his shoelace, while he waited for Bandera to figure out the door.

  Stashinsky began to have second thoughts—perhaps it was not the right time to carry out his plan. But he kept going. After asking Bandera what was wrong with the lock, and receiving an answer that everything was in order, he raised the weapon, still rolled up in the newspaper, and fired it in Bandera’s face. He later admitted that he had been nervous and fired both barrels, not just one. There followed a pop. Stashinsky stepped out, closed the door behind his back, and turned left, walking along Erzgiessereistrasse. He then headed toward the city center. He unrolled the newspaper, hid the eight-inch cylinder in his pocket, and took out a handkerchief and sniffed it, holding it to his mouth and nose. In two hours he was aboard an express train to Frankfurt.1

  Stashinsky wanted to get out of West Germany as soon as possible, but by the time he reached Frankfurt, the last flight to West Berlin had already left. He ordered a ticket for the next day and registered at the Hotel Wiesbaden, room 53. Today the hotel, which still stands, is advertised as being located only ten minutes from the city center and fifteen minutes from the airport. Stashinsky was interested in the latter. When he arrived at the airport the next day, the newsstands were full of papers reporting the mysterious death of Stepan Bandera, known to his neighbors as Stefan Popel. This was Stashinsky’s first real confirmation that his target had died. Upon arrival in Berlin, he called Sergei Damon. The KGB handler already knew about the outcome of the operation and congratulated Stashinsky on a job well done. They met at the Café Warsaw in the eastern part of the city, and Stashinsky told Damon the details. He again filed two reports—the first on the places he had visited and the time he had spent there, and the second, as after the killing of Rebet, pertaining to greetings to an “acquaintance.” He reported that the greetings had been delivered successfully.2