Yasha's group. Biography. Sentence and amnesty

Pianist, musicologist, teacher.
Theme of the doctoral dissertation: “Franz Liszt and his pianism” (Moscow Consultancy, 1941).

Born into a family of muses. master and adjuster. Mother is a distant relative of A.G. and N.G. Rubinsteinov. From early childhood, he began to play the fp, self-taught. Studied at the Voronezh Museum of Music. school at M.D. Berlin-Pechnikova. On one of his visits to Voronezh, the young musician was listened to by K.N. Igumnov, who strongly advised him to move to Moscow for professional music studies. In 1925-32 he studied at the Moscow Conservatory. in class S.A. Kozlovsky, from 1929 - with Igumnov. He played a lot and with great success at student evenings and in open concerts, attracting the attention of connoisseurs and music lovers with his nobility, expressiveness, beauty and melodiousness of sound, bright temperament and natural virtuosity. He was especially successful in his productions. Romantic composers - “Symphonic Etudes” by R. Schumann, Sonata in b moll by F. Liszt, Barcarolle, Polonaise in fis moll and Sonata in b moll by F. Chopin. In the same year he entered graduate school (graduated in 1935). The young pianist was predicted to have a brilliant concert future, but a severe disease of the joints and muscles of the hands closed this path for him.
Milstein's further activity developed in the field of physics. pedagogy and music research, essentially music and writing. From 1935 he was Igumnov’s assistant and closest assistant until the latter’s death (March 1948).

Almost all students of Igumnov’s class, incl. R. Atakishiev, A. Babajanyan, K. Blumenthal, O. Boshnyakovich, M. Gambaryan, D. Serov, N. Shtarkman and others remained to complete their studies with Milstein (some of them, even after graduating from the conservatory, used his consultations for many years). In the very first days of the Great Patriotic War he was mobilized; in 1943, after demobilization, he returned to work at the conservatory. Having become a direct successor of Igumnov’s musical and pedagogical traditions, Milstein, over the years of work at the Moscow Conservatory, trained over 100 performers, laureates of international competitions, professors and teachers of Moscow and other conservatories (including foreign ones). Among them (besides those mentioned): B. Bekhterev, V. Sakharov, V. Skanavi, E. Leonskaya, M. Mdivani, D. Milanova, S. Milshtein, X. Osorio, A. Papazyan, L. Shilovskaya. He also taught at the Music School at the Moscow Conservatory and at the Central Music School. As a teacher, he preferred the method of showing the instrument (he had a unique gift for reading the most complex works from sight, and performed arrangements of orchestral parts with inimitable “orchestrality”).

Along with pedagogical work, he carried out extensive scientific work. The main range of interests is the history and theory of piano performance and pedagogy, musical textual criticism, the work of romantic composers, as well as I.S. Bach. In the 1930s, while in graduate school, he wrote an extensive study about Liszt, whose personality and genius he was fascinated with from a young age. This abstract grew into a Ph.D. dissertation. According to the unanimous opinion of opponents - A.B. Goldenweiser, G.M. Kogan, V.E. Fermanagh - Milshtein was immediately nominated for the degree of Doctor of Art History for his exceptionally deep, original and multifaceted development of the material (for many decades he was the only Doctor of Art History in the piano department). Subsequently, after lengthy revision and improvement, the study was transformed into a major monograph “F. Sheet. 1811-1886" (Moscow, 1956), repeatedly republished and translated into various languages.

EVEN IN PRISON HE THINKED ABOUT THE GOOD OF THE FATHERLAND

On March 30, 1956, in Butyrskaya prison, during interrogation by an investigator of the USSR Military Prosecutor's Office, Major General of the Legal Service Tsaregradsky, one of the organizers of Soviet foreign intelligence, Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky, who three times became a prisoner of the Lubyanka during his KGB activities, died of a heart attack. Even the seasoned illegal intelligence officer, whose name in the 20-30s was covered in legends among the KGB, could not stand it. And today the name Serebryansky can be seen among the seventy names of the best foreign intelligence officers in its entire history, listed on the Memorial Plaque of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation.

An active and talented intelligence officer, Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky, lived a heroic and at the same time tragic life, full of anxiety and danger. On December 9, 1892, in Minsk, a son was born into the family of journeyman watchmaker Isaac Serebryansky, to whom his parents gave the name Yakov. He grew up, like all people from the Jewish poor, without knowing much prosperity. The boy was six years old when his father managed to get a job as a clerk at a sugar factory. The family's financial situation improved somewhat, which allowed Yakov to enter the Minsk city school. In 1908 he successfully completed his studies.

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE JOURNEY

The restless character of the young man led him in 1907, while still a student at the city school, to become a member of the Socialist Revolutionary student circle, and a year later to the Socialist Revolutionary Party, where he became a member of its most radical wing - the Socialist Revolutionary Maximalists. It was the maximalists who organized assassination attempts on the tsarist ministers, governors, generals, senior police officers and other government officials.

Yakov Serebryansky.

In May 1909, Yakov, who was barely 17 years old, was arrested by the police for “possession of criminal literature” and on suspicion of complicity in the murder of the head of the Minsk prison. He spent one year in prison, after which he was administratively deported to Vitebsk. From April 1910 he worked as an electrician at the Vitebsk power station.

In August 1912, Yakov was drafted into the army. He served as a private in the 122nd Tambov Regiment in Kharkov. From July 1914 he fought on the Western Front as a private in the 105th Orenburg Regiment. However, service in the active army did not last long for the young man. Already in August, during the Samsonov breakthrough in East Prussia, Serebryansky was seriously wounded. He was treated in the hospital for almost six months, and then was demobilized from the army. From February 1915 he worked as an electrician at a gas plant in Baku.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Serebryansky became an activist in the Socialist Revolutionary organization and a member of the Baku Council. From the Socialist Revolutionary Party he was elected as a delegate to the First Congress of Soviets of the North Caucasus. Since March 1917 - employee of the Baku Food Committee. After the liberation of Baku from the Musavatists, Serebryansky served in the Red Army as the head of a detachment of the Baku Council for the protection of food cargo on the Vladikavkaz railway.

In 1918, at the apartment of his friend and colleague in the Baku Soviet and Socialist Revolutionary Party Mark Belenky, Serebryansky met his 18-year-old sister Polina. Subsequently, she became Yakov’s wife and shared with him all the difficulties of the difficult life of an illegal intelligence officer.

Soon the Baku Commune fell, and the city was occupied by British invaders. Serebryansky moved to the Persian city of Rasht, where Polina and her parents had previously moved to escape the Civil War. In May 1920, units of the Red Army entered Persia, pursuing detachments of the White Guards and the British. On June 6, Rasht was proclaimed the capital of the Gilan Soviet Republic.

It was at this time that fate brought Serebryansky together with a prominent security officer of that time, Yakov Blumkin, who in July 1918, on instructions from the Central Committee of the Left Social Revolutionaries, killed the German ambassador Count Mirbach. In Gilani, Blumkin served as commissar of the headquarters of the Persian Red Army.

He contributed to Serebryansky’s admission to serve in the Special Department. Thus began the work of Yakov Serebryansky in the Cheka. After the defeat of the Gilan Republic, Serebryansky moved to Moscow, where he continued to serve in the central apparatus of the Cheka as an operational worker. In September 1920, he became secretary of the administrative and organizational department. Here he met the head of the department, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, and the head of the special department, Artur Artuzov. However, Serebryansky’s service in the central apparatus of the Cheka also did not last long. Already in August 1921, he was demobilized and began studying at the Electrotechnical Institute.

While working in the Cheka, Serebryansky continued to maintain contact with his former Socialist Revolutionary friends, which played a cruel joke on him. At the institute, he was arrested by his own former colleagues, security officers. On December 2, 1921, Serebryansky went to visit his old comrade, the right-wing Socialist Revolutionary David Abezgauz, and... fell into an ambush set up there. Yakov spent four months in prison.

The investigation examined the question of his possible affiliation with the right-wing Social Revolutionaries, who were effectively banned at that time. On March 29, 1922, the Presidium of the GPU, having examined his case, issued a resolution: to release him from custody, but “to register him and deprive him of the right to work in political, investigative and judicial bodies, as well as in the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.” Serebryansky got a job as the head of the office of the oil transport department of the Moskvotop trust, but at the beginning of 1923 he was arrested on suspicion of bribery. The investigation did not confirm the charges against him, and Serebryansky was taken on bail and released. In October of the same year, Yakov went to work at the editorial office of the Izvestia newspaper, where he made his final political choice and became a candidate member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

THE CHOICE IS MADE

And again Blyumkin intervened in Serebryansky’s fate. At that time, he was going to work illegally in Palestine as a resident and was looking for a deputy.

Blumkin invited Yakov, who was fluent in English, French and German, to go with him. Serebryansky gave his consent. The previously adopted resolution of the Presidium of the GPU regarding the former security officer was canceled, and he was enrolled as a special representative of the overseas part of the Foreign Department. In December 1923, scouts Blyumkin and Serebryansky left for Jaffa (now Tel Aviv). On the eve of departure they were received by V. Menzhinsky. He set the task of collecting information about the plans of England and France in the Middle East. In parting words to the scouts, he drew their attention to the need to intensify recruitment work.

In June 1924, Blumkin was recalled to Moscow and was replaced as resident by Serebryansky. The historian of the Russian special services, Oleg Kapchinsky, describes this period of the intelligence officer’s activity as follows: “Now the intelligence leadership set Serebryansky an even more difficult task - to create a deeply secret intelligence network in the region, and primarily in the militant Zionist movement, which he coped with excellently. In addition, Within a year, he managed to attract to cooperation a large group of emigrants from among both Zionist settlers and Russians - former White Guards who settled in Palestine.The people recruited by Serebryansky subsequently formed the core of the special group he led.

Polina Natanovna Belenkaya

In 1924, Serebryansky was joined by his wife Polina, who was sent to Jaffa to help her husband on the personal instructions of the head of the Foreign Department, Trilisser.

Another historian of Russian intelligence, Eduard Sharapov, writes about this: “In 1924, when Serebryansky had been abroad for almost a year, Trilisser, who was at that time the head of the INO OGPU, summoned his wife, Polina Natanovna Serebryanskaya.

“You need to go to your husband,” Trilisser said. - It's difficult for him. You need to be close.

I won't go, I'm afraid.

The somewhat protracted conversation between Serebryanskaya and Trilisser ended very simply. After persuasion and explanations, Trilisser put his palm on Serebryanskaya’s hand and said softly but firmly:

Well, that's it, Polina Natanovna. Either you will go abroad to join your husband, or you will have to put your party card on the table.

For her, a party member since 1921, an employee of the Krasnopresnensky district party committee, this was simply unthinkable, and she went. And she was with her husband in Palestine, France, Germany, the USA and Belgium, everywhere helping him in difficult and necessary work for the country.”

In 1925, Serebryansky was recalled from Palestine and sent to work illegally in Belgium. He returned to Moscow in February 1927 and was accepted as a member of the CPSU (b). That same year he was sent as an illegal resident to Paris, where he worked until March 1929. Materials about Serebryansky’s activities in Belgium and France are still classified as secret. At the end of his trip abroad, the intelligence officer was awarded the highest departmental award - the "Honorary Security Officer" badge and a serious promotion, and in 1927 and 1928. twice awarded with personal military weapons.

In Moscow, Serebryansky headed the 1st department of the INO OGPU (illegal intelligence) and at the same time led the Special Group under the chairman of the OGPU, which in KGB usage was unofficially called “Yasha’s group.” It was an intelligence unit independent from the leadership of the Foreign Department, whose task was to deeply penetrate agents into objects of military-strategic significance in the United States, Western Europe and Japan, as well as prepare and conduct sabotage operations behind enemy lines in case of war. At the same time, one of the main tasks of the illegal apparatus of the Serebryansky group was the organization of special events abroad against the most vicious enemies of the USSR, traitors and traitors to the Motherland.

A special group operated abroad only illegally. Its employees did not use official Soviet diplomatic or trade missions as cover. It reported directly to the chairman of the OGPU V. Menzhinsky, on whose initiative it was created.

In the summer of 1929, the leadership of the OGPU came to the Central Committee with a proposal to kidnap and take to the Soviet Union the chairman of the Russian All-Military Union, General A.P. Kutepov, who intensified the sabotage and terrorist activities of the organization on the territory of the USSR. This proposal was approved by Stalin. On March 1, 1930, Yakov Serebryansky, together with the prominent security officer Sergei Puzitsky, went to Paris to lead this operation. It should be emphasized that until the mid-60s. the involvement of Soviet state security agencies in the kidnapping of General Kutepov was not advertised and was even categorically denied. Only in 1965 did the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, the official organ of the Ministry of Defense, talk about this operation. And the details of its implementation were published in 1997 in the 3rd volume of “Essays on the history of Russian foreign intelligence.”

KIDNAPPING OF GENERAL KUTEPOV

On April 25, 1928, the chairman of the Russian All-Military Union, General Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel, died in Paris. His successor as chairman of the EMRO was Lieutenant General Alexander Pavlovich Kutepov.

He was born on September 16, 1882 in Cherepovets in the family of a forester. After completing a full course at the classical gymnasium in Arkhangelsk, he entered the St. Petersburg Junker School, from which he graduated in 1904 with the rank of sergeant major.

With the beginning of the Russian-Japanese War, Kutepov submitted a report on being sent to the active army, where he served in regimental intelligence. For distinction in battles he was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir with swords and bow.

After the war, Lieutenant Kutepov was the commander of a training company in the Life Guards Preobrazhensky Regiment. During the First World War, he commanded a company and a battalion of Preobrazhensky soldiers, was wounded three times, and was awarded the Order of St. George. In 1916, for the battles on the Stokhod River, he received the St. George's Arms and the rank of colonel.

After the February Revolution, Kutepov became the commander of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, and when the front collapsed and the soldiers fled to their homes, he went to the Don and joined the Volunteer Army of General Kornilov. He commanded a company of the 1st officer regiment, and then the Kornilov regiment. In January 1919 - commander of the 1st Army Corps. For the victory over the Red Army units near Kharkov, he was promoted to lieutenant general.

Once in exile, Kutepov continued the armed struggle against the Bolsheviks. At the beginning of 1924, he headed the Military Organization of the EMRO, which sent terrorists and saboteurs into the territory of the Soviet Union. In May 1927, Kutepov’s militants tried to blow up a house in Moscow in which OGPU employees lived; in June 1927, an explosion was organized at the House of Political Education in Leningrad; in July 1928, a bomb was thrown at the OGPU pass office in Moscow.

In order to reduce the sabotage activity of the EMRO, the leadership of the INO OGPU decided to organize operational games with it on behalf of the legendary organizations. One of these, the “North Caucasian Military Organization” (NCVO), was successfully substituted for the representatives of the EMRO in Romania, Generals Steifon and Gerua. This operational event made it possible to open channels for the transfer of militants to Soviet Russia and reveal their connections with underground organizations in the North Caucasus, Kuban and the Don region. The security officers also managed to take their agents abroad and introduce them into branches of the EMRO in Romania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. At the same time, an operational game was carried out directly with the headquarters of the EMRO on behalf of the “Internal Russian National Organization” (VRNO), created by the OGPU with the involvement of former tsarist officers.

At the first stage, VRNO established contacts with the editor of the magazine “Fight for Russia” S.P. Melgunov, who maintained close ties with the head of the office of General Kutepov, Prince Sergei Trubetskoy. Then an OGPU agent, former colonel of the tsarist army A.N., would be sent to Paris as a representative of the VRNO. Popov. He met with Melgunov, informed him about the situation in Russia, the goals and objectives of the VRNO and asked to organize a meeting with the chairman of the EMRO, General Kutepov. Kutepov agreed to meet with Popov.

Such a meeting took place in early January 1930 in Berlin, where representatives of the VRNO Colonel Popov and Colonel De Roberti, who was Kutepov’s chief of staff in Novorossiysk in 1918, arrived from Moscow. During the conversation, they raised the question of sending several groups of reliable EMRO officers to the USSR to prepare for uprisings in the spring of 1930. However, during lunch at a restaurant, de Roberti, left alone for a while with the general, informed him that Popov and he were acting on instructions from the OGPU, that no underground organization VRNO exists and that an assassination attempt is being prepared on Kutepov.

Kutepov calmly accepted de Roberti’s information and during a further conversation with Popov did not betray himself in any way. Later, the OGPU became aware of de Roberti's betrayal. He was arrested and, after a short investigation, executed in May 1930. The kidnapping of General Kutepov took place on Sunday, January 26, 1930, at about 11 o'clock in the afternoon at the corner of Oudinot and Rousselet streets in the 7th quarter of Paris. The Paris station of the OGPU knew that on this day at 11:30 a.m. Kutepov was supposed to attend a memorial service for the deceased General Kaulbars in the Gallipoli Church on Mademoiselle Street, which is a 20-minute walk from his house. However, the general did not reach the temple. The day before, January 25, one of the employees of Serebryansky’s task force passed a note to General Kutepov, in which he was scheduled for a short meeting on the way to the church. At the same time, the intelligence officers took into account that the general always went alone to meetings related to the agents and combat activities of the EMRO. After waiting for some time for the author of the note at the tram stop on Sevres Street, Kutepov continued on his way. Employees of Serebryansky's group, as well as agents of the Parisian OGPU station, posing as French police officers, detained the general under the pretext of checking his documents and offered to go to the police station to find out his identity. Kutepov allowed himself to be seated in the car, but when he heard Russian speech, he tried to resist. He was sedated with chloroform. However, the general’s ailing heart could not withstand the effects of anesthesia, and he died of a heart attack.

The measures taken by the French police and personally by the head of counterintelligence of the EMRO, Colonel Zaitsev, to search for Kutepov did not yield positive results. General Shteifon, who was in Paris at the time and visited his family on the day General Kutepov disappeared, wrote on January 27 to General Gerua in Bucharest: “Yesterday, unexpectedly, under unclear circumstances, A.P. Kutepov disappeared. He went to church in the morning, not expecting to go anywhere, “I didn’t make a date with anyone and agreed with my wife that after lunch at one o’clock in the afternoon they would go to the city with the whole family.”

A few days later, a witness to the kidnapping of General Kutepov was discovered. It was a janitor from a clinic located on Rue Oudinot, named Auguste Steimetz. The janitor stated that on the morning of January 26, at about 11 o’clock, he saw through the clinic window a large gray-green car, next to which stood two tall men in yellow coats, and not far from them a red taxi. There was a policeman on the corner right there. When Kutepov, whose characteristics Steymets described accurately, caught up with the gray-green car, people in yellow coats grabbed him and pushed him into the car. A policeman also sat in it and calmly watched what was happening. The car drove off at high speed towards the Boulevard of Invalids. A red taxi followed him. No one saw General Kutepov again.

Yakov Serebryansky, who returned to Moscow on March 30, 1930, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for a successfully carried out operation.

NEW TASK

Immediately after the completion of the operation to neutralize Kutepov, Serebryansky began creating an autonomous agent network in various countries of the world to organize sabotage during a possible war. It should be noted that by the mid-30s. Serebryansky’s group had 16 operational illegal stations abroad (212 agents), mainly in Nazi Germany, France, the USA and in the Japanese-occupied territory of Northeast China. Among his assistants there were many people who particularly distinguished themselves in carrying out the tasks of their homeland. These include Agent Henry, who headed one of the illegal groups. According to the plan developed by Serebryansky, he managed to seize Trotsky’s archive, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

Another illegal group, led by Ernst, managed to sink 7 German ships with weapons intended for General Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Serebryansky's employees obtained very valuable data on new aircraft, warships and other weapons of Nazi Germany.

On June 13, 1934, that is, three days after the creation of the NKVD of the USSR, “Yasha’s group” was directly subordinate to the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs and transformed into the “Special Group for Special Purpose” (SGON). Under her, a school of illegal intelligence officers with a sabotage profile was created. During the Great Patriotic War, many of its graduates became major specialists in carrying out sabotage behind enemy lines. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Serebryansky’s group, who was awarded the rank of senior state security major on November 29, 1935, participated in illegal arms supplies to the Republican government. Thus, in September 1936, members of the special group, with the help of agent Bernadette, managed to purchase 12 new military aircraft from the French company Devoitin, allegedly for a certain neutral country. The planes were delivered to an airfield bordering Spain, from where, under the pretext of flight tests, they were safely transported to Barcelona. The Russian intelligence historian Eduard Sharapov, mentioned above, writes in this regard: “An unheard-of international scandal broke out. French President Blum and War Minister Pernet were accused of patronizing Republican Spain. And a little later, on December 31, 1936, a resolution of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR was published in the Soviet press "On the award for special merits in the fight against counter-revolution comrade. Serebryansky Ya.I. Order of Lenin."

One of the objects of development by Serebryansky’s group in the second half of the 30s. there was Trotsky’s son Lev Sedov, who was listed in the materials of the OGPU-NKVD under the pseudonym Sonny.

Sedov, who fully shared his father’s political views, began work in 1937 to organize the first congress of the Fourth International. And in Moscow they began preparing an operation to kidnap him. Its implementation was entrusted to Serebryansky, who was in France at that time. Later he wrote: “In 1937, I received the task of delivering Sonny to Moscow... The task was about the disappearance of Sonny without a trace - without making noise and delivering him alive to Moscow...”.

How was the operation planned? The archival documents of foreign intelligence say the following about this: “The plan for Sedov’s kidnapping was developed in detail and included his capture on one of the Parisian streets. The time and usual routes of Sedov’s movement in the city were previously established through observation. Capture rehearsals were held on the spot.

There were two options for its delivery to Moscow. The first is by sea. In mid-1937, a small fishing vessel was purchased, assigned to one of the northern ports of the country. On the outskirts of the port city they rented a house - a place of temporary shelter, where they settled a married couple of employees of Yasha's group. The crew was selected. Only the captain was told the legend that it might be necessary to make the transition to Leningrad with a group of comrades and take equipment there for Republican Spain. The captain studied the route, had a sufficient supply of coal, water, and food. While waiting for the command, the ship's crew made regular trips to sea to fish.

The second option is by air. The group had its own aircraft with a base at one of the airfields near Paris. The pilot is a reliable agent. A legend has been spread in aviation circles: a sports flight is being prepared on the route Paris - Tokyo. The pilot began training, bringing his non-stop time in the air to 12 hours. Experts' calculations showed that, depending on the direction and strength of the wind, the plane could fly from Paris to Kyiv without landing in 7-8 hours.

7 employees of Serebryansky’s illegal station took part in the preparation of the operational event. There was no connection with the “legal” Parisian station of the NKVD. Serebryansky himself and his wife played an active role in the operation. However, fate decreed otherwise. Sedov's kidnapping never took place - in February 1938 he died after an operation to remove appendicitis."

FLYWHEEL OF REPRESSION

And in the intelligence officer’s homeland, the flywheel of repression was in full swing, which soon affected him. In the summer of 1938, the resident of the NKVD in Spain, Alexander Orlov, who arrived in France on business, disappeared. Unexpectedly summoned to Moscow, he believed that arrest awaited him there, and he and his family fled to the United States. Orlov’s flight cast suspicion on the leading intelligence cadres, including Serebryansky. In the fall of 1938, he was recalled from Paris and on November 10, together with his wife, he was arrested in Moscow, right next to the plane. The warrant for their arrest was signed by the head of the GUGB NKVD L. Beria. Until February 13, 1939, Serebryansky was kept in custody in the internal prison on Lubyanka without the sanction of the prosecutor. On February 21, he was dismissed from the NKVD due to his arrest.

Soviet intelligence historian Valery Prokofiev, in his book “Foreign Intelligence: Combat Commonwealth,” draws attention to the following interesting fact during the period Serebryansky was under investigation: “It is characteristic that during the investigation in 1939, being in terrible conditions, Serebryansky wrote “Instructions for resident for sabotage." In this "instruction" he considered illegal work as an important part of the country's defense through the destruction of important military installations of the enemy in the event of an attack on the Soviet Union. Considering this part of the work very responsible, he indicated: "Only he has the right to send comrades for work that is dangerous to their lives, who are willing to expose themselves to this danger. You should be happy that the party entrusts you with such a responsible area of ​​work." This was written on October 15, 1939." During the investigation, which was led by the future Minister of State Security Viktor Abakumov, and at a later stage by the deputy head of the NKVD investigative unit Solomon Milshtein, the intelligence officer was subjected to “intensive interrogation methods.” The first interrogation of Serebryansky took place on November 13, 1938. And the day before, Beria imposed a resolution on the document concerning the intelligence officer: “Comrade Abakumov! Interrogate him thoroughly!” Four days later, Beria himself, his deputy Kobulov and Abakumov took part in the interrogation of Serebryansky. The scout was severely beaten and forced to incriminate himself. Interrogations, accompanied by torture and torture, continued. As a result, on October 4, 1940, the investigator of the investigative unit of the GUGB NKVD, state security lieutenant Perepelitsa, drew up an indictment in investigative case No. 21782 accusing Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky of crimes under Art. 58 clauses Ia and II of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. “On November 10, 1938, the NKVD of the USSR arrested Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky, suspected of espionage activities. The investigation carried out in the case established that Serebryansky, a former active Socialist Revolutionary, was twice arrested by the OGPU and, with the assistance of exposed enemies of the people, penetrated the Soviet intelligence agencies. In 1924, while in Palestine, he was recruited by the emigrant Pokrovsky for espionage activities in favor of England.In 1927, Serebryansky, on instructions from British intelligence, transferred from Palestine to the USSR a group of terrorist spies in the person of Turyzhnikov, Volkov, Ananyev, Zakharov and Eske, who later in the laboratory of the GUGB special group he prepared for sabotage and terrorist activities on the territory of the USSR. Through Turyzhnikov, Serebryansky conveyed spy information about the political and economic situation of the Soviet Union to British intelligence. In 1933, Serebryansky was recruited by the exposed enemy of the people Yagoda into an anti-Soviet conspiratorial organization that existed within the NKVD.

On the instructions of Yagoda, Serebryansky established a spy connection with French intelligence, which he informed about the activities of Soviet intelligence behind the cordon, and obtained potent poisons to commit a terrorist act against the leaders of the party and the Soviet government. He pleaded guilty to the charges. Convicted by the testimony of Volkov, Syrkin, Alekhin, Uspensky, Bulanov, Turyzhnikov (convicted), Perevoznikov, Serebryanskaya (arrested) and the confrontation with Turyzhnikov...”

Almost the same indictment was brought against Serebryansky’s wife, Polina Natanovna. On July 7, 1941, when war was already raging in the vastness of the Soviet Union, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced Serebryansky to death with confiscation of property, and his wife to 10 years in the camps for failure to report her husband’s hostile activities.

At the trial, Serebryansky did not admit his guilt, saying that during the preliminary investigation he incriminated himself as a result of physical pressure from investigators. However, the court ignored the intelligence officer's statement. After Serebryansky's arrest, his special group ceased to exist.

Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky in 1941

TURNS OF DESTINY

However, the Great Patriotic War, which unexpectedly took a tragic turn for Stalin, required the concentration of all forces to repel the enemy. In these conditions, state security agencies had to rebuild on a military basis, and not engage in departmental showdowns and searches for internal enemies. The enemy was present, unprecedentedly cruel and powerful. Within the NKVD, the 4th Directorate was created, whose task was to organize behind-the-front reconnaissance and launch sabotage warfare behind enemy lines. But due to the repressions that took place before the war, this department clearly lacked professionals like Serebryansky. The head of the 4th Directorate, General Sudoplatov, turned to Beria with a request to release Serebryansky and a number of other security officers from prison, who was awaiting execution. This is how he later recalled this in his memoirs: “At the beginning of the war, we experienced an acute shortage of qualified personnel. My deputy Eitingon and I proposed that former intelligence and state security officers be released from prison. Beria’s cynicism and simplicity in deciding human destinies is clear manifested itself in his reaction to our proposal. Beria was not at all interested in whether those whom we recommended for work were guilty or not guilty. He asked the only question: “Are you sure that we need them?” “Quite sure,” I answered. - “Then contact Kobulov, let him release you. And use them immediately." I received the files of the people I requested to review. From them it followed that everyone was arrested on the initiative and direct order of the highest leadership - Stalin and Molotov. Unfortunately, Shpigelglas, Karin, Malli and other intelligence officers were by this time have already been shot..."

By the decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on August 9, 1941, Yakov Serebryansky and his wife Polina were amnestied and then reinstated in the party. On August 22, all awards were returned to them. After two months of rest and treatment, Serebryansky was appointed head of the group in the 4th Directorate of the NKVD. During the war, he was involved in preparing and deploying task forces behind enemy lines to carry out reconnaissance and sabotage missions. For concrete results in his work, Serebryansky was again awarded the Orders of Lenin and the Red Banner, as well as the medal “Partisan of the Patriotic War, 1st degree.”

In 1946, Viktor Abakumov was appointed Minister of State Security of the USSR, who in the pre-war years led the case of Yakov Serebryansky and personally participated in his interrogations. The intelligence officer had no choice but to urgently resign “for health reasons.” It was unpleasant, but still better than falling into the hands of Abakumov again. However, Serebryansky’s combat and professional experience was again needed by the state security agencies, and in May 1953, at the request of Sudoplatov, he was reinstated to work in the 9th department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs as an operational worker of the 1st category.

And again fate turned out to be unkind to Serebryansky. In July 1953, Beria was arrested. And on October 8, by decision of the Prosecutor General of the USSR, Serebryansky was arrested “for serious crimes against the CPSU and the Soviet state.”

During the investigation, it was not possible to find evidence of his involvement in the “Beria conspiracy”. However, the authorities did not want to release Serebryansky into the wild. Then the false case of 1938 was revived. On December 27, 1954, the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on amnesty was canceled, despite the fact that the process of rehabilitation of victims of unjustified repression had already begun. Intensive interrogations of the intelligence officer continued. The investigators, however, did not apply any physical force to the arrested person, but they constantly put psychological pressure on him in order to obtain a confession. Yakov Serebryansky did not expect such a turn of events. On March 30, 1956, during the next interrogation by the investigator of the USSR Military Prosecutor's Office, Major General of the Legal Service Tsaregradsky, Serebryansky's heart gave out, and the outstanding illegal intelligence officer died at the age of 64.

At the beginning of 1971, in connection with the preparation of the first textbook on the history of Soviet foreign intelligence, KGB Chairman Andropov learned about the heroic and at the same time tragic fate of Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky and ordered an additional investigation. His instructions were carried out.

With son Anatoly

On May 13, 1971, by decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, the verdict against Yakov Serebryansky dated July 7, 1941 was overturned, the case was dismissed for lack of evidence of a crime. A week later, the 1953 case was also dismissed due to the lack of proof of the charges against him. The scout was completely rehabilitated. But only a quarter of a century later, on April 22, 1996, by decree of the President of Russia, Yakov Serebryansky was posthumously restored to rights to the awards confiscated from him during his arrest. They were returned to the intelligence officer's son Anatoly Serebryansky.

In 1912 he was drafted into the army and served as a private in the 122nd Tambov Regiment in Kharkov. After the outbreak of the First World War, a private in the 105th Orenburg Regiment on the Western Front. Since February 1915 - electrician at oil fields in Baku. After the February Revolution - an activist of the Socialist Revolutionary organization, a member of the Baku Council, a delegate from the Socialist Revolutionary Party to the First Congress of Soviets of the North Caucasus. Since March 1917 - employee of the Baku Food Committee. In March 1918 - head of the detachment of the Baku Council for the protection of food cargo on the Vladikavkaz railway.

During this period, Serebryansky met the prominent Socialist Revolutionary Ya.G. Blumkin, who attracted him to participate in the Gilyan expedition (Iran). Since July 1919, Serebryansky has been an employee of the Special Department of the Iranian Red Army in Rasht (Iran).

After the fall of the Gilan Republic, he went to Moscow. In May 1920 he entered service in the central apparatus of the Cheka; employee of the Directorate of Special Departments of the Cheka (secretary of the Administrative and Organizational Department). From August 1921, after his dismissal from the Cheka due to demobilization, he worked in the editorial office of the newspaper Izvestia in Moscow.

In December 1921, Serebryansky was arrested by the Cheka for belonging to the Socialist Revolutionary Party, but was released from custody. In 1922-1923 worked in the Moskvotop trust system.

In October 1923 he became a candidate member of the CPSU(b).

In November 1923, with the assistance of Blyumkin, he was accepted to the position of special representative of the Trans-Kordonny unit of the INO OGPU and was soon sent to work abroad. Together with Ya. Blumkin, he went to Palestine, where for 2 years he acted illegally, first as Blumkin’s assistant, and then independently.

Before leaving, Serebryansky was received by the deputy. Chairman of the OGPU V.R. Menzhinsky, who admonished him with the wish to do abroad “everything that will be useful for the revolution.” In the Middle East, he managed to reliably penetrate the underground Zionist movement, attract a large group of Russian-born immigrants to cooperate with the OGPU: A.N. Ananyeva (I.K. Kaufman), Yu.I. Volkova, R.L. Eske-Rachkovsky, N.A. Zakharova, A.N. Turyzhnikov and others. They formed the backbone of the battle group, later known as the “Yasha group”. In 1924, Serebryansky’s wife Polina Natanovna joined the group, who, although she did not officially work in the INO OGPU, constantly accompanied him on trips abroad.

In 1925-1928. Serebryansky is an illegal resident of the INO OGPU in Belgium and France. In 1927 he came to the Soviet Union, where he successfully passed the party cleanup and was accepted as a member of the CPSU (b).

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In April 1929, he was appointed head of the 1st department of the INO OGPU (illegal intelligence), while remaining the head of the Special Group (“Yasha’s group”) under the chairman of the OGPU. Under this name, there operated an intelligence unit independent of the INO, whose task was the deep penetration of agents into objects of a military-strategic nature in the event of war, as well as carrying out sabotage and terrorist operations.

In the summer of 1929, a decision was made to capture and transport to Moscow the chairman of the Russian All-Military Union (EMRO), General A.P. Kutepov, who intensified sabotage and terrorist actions on the territory of the USSR. Together with the deputy Head of the KRO OGPU St. Puzitsky Serebryansky went to Paris to lead this operation. On January 26, 1930, employees of “Yasha’s group” pushed Kutepov into a car, injected him with morphine and took him aboard a Soviet steamship stationed in the port of Marseille. On March 30, 1930, Serebryansky was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for a successful operation.

Upon completion of the operation, Serebryansky began to create an autonomous agent network in various countries to conduct intelligence work in case of war. He was included in the special register of the OGPU. He personally recruited more than 200 people abroad.

In 1931 he was arrested in Romania, but was soon released and continued his illegal activities. In 1932 he traveled to the USA, in 1934 to Paris. On July 13, 1934, he was approved as the head of the Special Purpose Group (SGON) under the NKVD of the USSR. In November 1935, Serebryansky was awarded the rank of senior state security major. In 1935-1936 was on a business trip in China and Japan. After the start of the national liberation war in Spain, he was engaged in the purchase (partly illegally) and supply of weapons for the Republicans. So, in September 1936, employees of the Special Group purchased 12 military aircraft from the French company Devuatin, which were delivered to an airfield bordering Spain, from where, under the pretext of flight tests, they were transported to Barcelona. For this operation, Serebryansky was awarded the Order of Lenin.

In November 1936, illegal immigrants from SGBON with the help of agent M. Zborovsky (“Tulip”), introduced into the circle of Trotsky’s son L.L. Sedov, managed to seize part of the archives of the International Secretariat of the Trotskyists. Several boxes of documents were handed over to the legal resident of the INO in Paris, G.N. Kosenko (Kislova) and transported to Moscow.

In 1937 L.L. Sedov (“Sonny”), at the direction of his father, began preparations for the First Congress of the Fourth International, which was to take place in the summer of 1938 in Paris. In this regard, the Center decided to kidnap Sedov. The operation was entrusted to Serebryansky's group. The plan to kidnap “Sonny” was worked out in detail. 7 Special Group employees took part in the preparation of the operation, including Serebryansky’s wife. However, Sedov's kidnapping did not take place - in February 1938 he died after surgery to remove appendicitis.

In the summer of 1938, Serebryansky was recalled from France, and on November 10, together with his wife, he was arrested in Moscow at the boarding ramp on the basis of a warrant signed by L.P. Beria. Until February 1939 he was kept in custody without the sanction of the prosecutor. During the investigation, which was led by the future Minister of State Security B.C. Abakumov, and at a later stage investigators from SR. Milshtein and P.I. Gudimovich, Serebryansky was subjected to the so-called. "intense interrogation techniques" According to the investigative file, he was first summoned for interrogation on November 13, 1938. The interrogation protocol contains Beria’s resolution: “Comrade. Abakumov! Have a good interrogation!”

It was after this that during the interrogation on November 16, 1938, in which L.P. himself participated. Beria, as well as B.Z. Kobulov and B.S. Abakumov, Serebryansky was beaten and forced to give false testimony. On January 25, 1939, he was transferred to Lefortovo prison (during interrogation in 1954, Serebryansky testified that even before the trial, that is, during the preliminary investigation, he renounced the testimony in which he pleaded guilty and slandered others).

On July 7, 1941, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced Serebryansky, accused of espionage for England and France, connections with “conspirators” from the NKVD led by Yagoda and preparation of terrorist attacks against Soviet leaders, to capital punishment, and his wife - to 10 years in the camps “for failure to report her husband’s hostile activities.” But the sentence was not carried out. The Great Patriotic War was going on, and intelligence was sorely lacking in experienced personnel. In August 1941, thanks to the petition of P.A. Sudoplatov and the intervention of L.P. Beria, Serebryansky, by decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, was amnestied and reinstated in the NKVD and the party.

From September 3, 1941, Serebryansky was the leader of the group in the 2nd department, from January 18, 1942 - the head of the group, the head of the 3rd department of the 4th directorate of the NKVD-NKGB of the USSR. Since November 1943 - in the special reserve of the 4th Directorate of the NKGB of the USSR as a group leader. Serebryansky was an employee of this department throughout the war years, personally participating in many intelligence operations, and led reconnaissance and sabotage work in Western and Eastern Europe. An example is the recruitment of the captured German admiral Erich Raeder.

In May 1946 he retired due to health reasons. He asked to resign, but the MGB Personnel Directorate did not change the wording.

In May 1953, P. A. Sudoplatov was invited to work in the central apparatus of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as an operational officer of the secret staff of the 9th (Reconnaissance and Sabotage) Department. Since June 1953 - employee of the Voronezh State University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR.

In July 1953 dismissed from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the reserve of the Ministry of Defense. October 8, 1953 arrested. In December 1954, the decision on amnesty of August 1941 was canceled. Due to the fact that in the criminal case initiated in 1953, sufficient evidence of Serebryansky’s guilt as a participant in the conspiratorial activities of Beria was not obtained, and his conviction in 1941 was recognized by the USSR Prosecutor's Office as justified, the 1941 case was sent to the Supreme Court of the USSR with a proposal to replace the execution with 25 years of imprisonment. On March 30, 1956, Serebryansky died in Butyrka prison during interrogation by the investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office Tsaregradsky.

In May 1971, by decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, the verdict of July 1941 was overturned and the case was dismissed. Posthumously rehabilitated. In April 1996, by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation, his rights to state awards confiscated during arrest were restored.

Awarded 2 Orders of Lenin (1936, 1946), 2 Orders of the Red Banner (1930, 1945), medals, 2 badges “Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU”, personalized weapons.

From the moment of its inception, the world's first state of workers and peasants, being in a hostile capitalist environment, found itself in the position of a besieged fortress. At the same time, the balance of forces remained unequal: if the White émigré counter-revolutionary organizations entrenched abroad could use their extensive connections in their former homeland to carry out subversive work against Soviet Russia, then yesterday’s poor people who came to power and their allies from among the intelligentsia did not have sufficient experience in neutralizing external threats. Hence a series of bitter defeats, including during the Soviet-Polish war of 1919–1920. The Foreign Department (INO) of the Cheka, created on December 20, 1920, that is, Soviet foreign intelligence, was called upon to turn the situation around. Its main task was to obtain proactive information about the intentions of political opponents of the RSFSR, for which an intelligence apparatus was formed behind the cordon in the form of legal and illegal residencies, and intelligence work was carried out among foreign citizens on the territory of the RSFSR.

Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky

The main geopolitical opponent of Soviet Russia was Great Britain, which, as a result of the First World War in April 1920, achieved a mandate to govern the territory of Palestine. England was eager for Iraqi oil, and it needed the Mediterranean coast to transport it to England. Such an overt colonial policy led to the activation of the Zionist movement, which could be used by the Soviet leadership to penetrate the plans of the British.

In the fall of 1923, the chairman of the OGPU, Felix Dzerzhinsky, gave the order to create an illegal residency in Palestine, entrusting this task to Yakov Blumkin (operational pseudonyms - Max, Isaev), a former left Socialist Revolutionary, participant in the murder of the German ambassador Count Wilhelm von Mirbach on July 6, 1918. Since he spoke a number of eastern languages ​​and had extensive experience in organizing combat groups in the rear of the White Guards on the fields of the Civil War, Blyumkin was sent to Iran in the spring of 1920, where an uprising took place against the Shah’s government and the British who supported him. Having become the commissar of the headquarters of the Persian Red Army in the province of Gilan, Blumkin met and recruited to work in the Special Department Yakov Serebryansky, also a Socialist Revolutionary, a native of Minsk, who ended up in Baku after being seriously wounded as part of the 105th Orenburg Regiment of the Russian Army on the Western Front. In Baku, Serebryansky worked as an electrician in the oil fields and was forced to flee to Iran after the fall of the Baku Commune in 1918.

With the support of the Soviet Volga-Caspian military flotilla, the Gilan partisans, who proclaimed the Gilan Soviet Republic, reinforced by Soviet commanders and commissars, pushed back the White Guards and the British and were able to capture a number of strategically important cities on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. A very short distance remained to Tehran, and the proclamation of Soviet power in Iran was already on the agenda. And, although the uprising in Gilan in November 1921 was suppressed and the Shah’s regime managed to restore control over the entire territory of the country, the existence of the Gilan Soviet Republic for more than a year became one of the brightest pages not only in the Iranian revolutionary movement, but also in the Russian presence in Middle East.

Returning to Russia with Blumkin in 1920, Yakov Serebryansky, on his recommendation, became an employee of the central apparatus of the Cheka in Moscow. And when Yakov Blyumkin is sent as an illegal resident to Palestine, he, with the sanction of Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, takes Yakov Serebryansky as his deputy. After Blumkin was recalled to Moscow in 1924, the residency was headed by Serebryansky. In the same year, his wife, Polina Belenkaya, joined him in Palestine, who has since accompanied him on almost all foreign business trips.

Serebryansky’s work in Palestine was considered successful: he managed to infiltrate the underground Zionist movement that fought against British expansion, including for control of the Suez Canal. Serebryansky attracted a number of emigrants from Russia operating there to cooperate with the OGPU, promising them, in agreement with the leadership, transfer to Russia. It was they who later formed the core of the battle group known as the “Yasha group.”

As the famous historian and foreign intelligence veteran Arsen Martirosyan notes in his book “Stalin and Intelligence,” already from the beginning. In 1925, Soviet intelligence reported on new aggressive plans from England to prepare a consolidated Europe for war against the USSR. Thus, in a secret letter to the French government dated March 2, 1925, Chamberlain directly pointed out the need to include Germany in the Anglo-French bloc directed against the USSR. The contours of a new world war began to emerge clearly.

In response to this, in 1926, Moscow adopted a decree “On active reconnaissance.” Yakov Serebryansky was entrusted with the creation of illegal stations for deep penetration into enemy military-strategic installations to carry out sabotage and liquidation in the event of the outbreak of hostilities. For this purpose, in 1926 he was sent as an illegal resident to Belgium, and then to Paris, where he remained until 1929.

After returning to Moscow, Serebryansky was appointed head of the 1st department of the INO OGPU (illegal intelligence). Now he has a personal office in Lubyanka, his own staff of the Center and a network of illegal residencies he created behind the cordon, including numerous deeply undercover agents. In fact, it was a parallel intelligence network, personally subordinate to the chairman of the OGPU, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky. The uniqueness of the situation was that Serebryansky and his deputy Naum Eitingon received the right to recruit agents without the consent of the Center. This has never happened in the history of intelligence, either before or since. The created structure consisted of agents who were known only to three people: Serebryansky, Eitingon and the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. However, its effectiveness cannot be overestimated: Serebryansky’s illegals sank ships carrying strategic cargo en route to Nazi Germany, obtained American nuclear secrets, occupied various positions in the Israeli government, and eliminated traitors and Nazi collaborators. All materials related to “Yasha’s group” are in special storage and will never be declassified.

On March 30, 1930, for the successful operation in Paris to capture and transport to Soviet territory the chairman of the Russian All-Military Union (EMRO), General Alexander Kutepov, who unleashed terror and sabotage against the USSR, Yakov Serebryansky was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

Clippings from French newspapers of that time dedicated to the disappearance of General Kutepov, as well as copies of various archival documents are kept in the family archive of Anatoly Serebryansky, the son of the legendary intelligence officer. His father’s activities were so secret that, as Pavel Sudoplatov claimed, when he returned from his first trip abroad, he did not know that he was talking with the leader of “Yasha’s group.”
It is all the more interesting to hear the story of Yakov Serebryansky’s son, every meeting with whom reveals something new for me.

Anatoly Yakovlevich, today there are not many people who can boast that their father was hired by Comrade Felix Dzerzhinsky himself. Have you heard about this yourself from your father?

My father never talked about his work. Although it is known for sure that his deputy Naum Eitingon (also, by the way, a former Socialist Revolutionary) was personally invited to the central apparatus of the Cheka by Dzerzhinsky - Eitingon’s daughter Muza Naumovna spoke about this.

In fact, this is what is said in the book “At the Ultimate Height” by Muse Malinovskaya and Leonid Eitingon: “Soon he met with the head of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky. He, noting the strong-willed qualities of the 22-year-old Eitingon, sent him to Bashkiria, instructing him to put an end to banditry... In May 1923, Eitingon was again summoned to Moscow. He arrived on Lubyanka Street, straight to “Iron Felix” and received a new assignment - to the next office.”

I had to hear from Nikolai Gubernatorov, an assistant to Yuri Andropov, who also worked with three previous chairmen of the KGB of the USSR, that Eitingon and Sudoplatov were the largest intelligence analysts and masters of unique special operations, who suffered, like your father, during the unjustified repressions in the “Beria case.” Can we assume that your father was their teacher?

The father was older than them in age, but it is incorrect to say that he was their teacher. Sudoplatov, for example, considered Sergei Shpigelglas as a teacher. And Eitingon already in 1933 took his father’s place, heading illegal intelligence (1st department of the INO), and then went to the USA, where he worked in illegal residencies until his appointment as deputy resident of the NKVD in Spain under the name of General Kotov. This suggests that at this time the father focused on the activities of the SGBON - a special special purpose group. It is not for nothing that one of the films about him said that “Serebryansky did not work in intelligence - he created it.” And first of all, illegal networks behind the cordon for organizing sabotage at industrial facilities on the territory of a potential enemy in the event of war. As part of the Special Group under People's Commissar Lavrentiy Beria, he participated in the organization of the partisan movement and supervised the training of agents to be sent behind enemy lines. Recently, from the memoirs of intelligence officer Anna Filonenko-Kamaeva, which you sent me, I learned something new about my father’s work during the war years. It turns out that in the fall of 1941, at the direction of the Supreme Command Headquarters, employees of the Special Group under the leadership of Sudoplatov and Eitingon began preparing operations in the event of the capture of Moscow by the Nazis. At the same time, Yakov Serebryansky was directly involved in the combat training of the security officers left underground.

It is known that on November 10, 1938, after the resident in Spain, Alexander Orlov, fled to the West, your father was arrested, declared a spy and sentenced to death. However, the war began, and at the suggestion of Sudoplatov, he was amnestied and again invited to work in the NKVD. Before your father’s arrest in 1938, did you live in Moscow?

Yes. My first childhood memories are of a mansion on Gogolevsky Boulevard, building 31. We lived there, and there, as we now know, there was a safe house where my father received his workers. Then Tverskoy Boulevard appeared in my life, on which, after the arrest of my parents, I lived with my aunt, my mother’s sister. Then the war, evacuation. In December 1941, my father, returned to the NKVD, summoned us to Moscow. My mother and I settled in the Moscow Hotel, as I remember now, in room 646 - the windows looked directly onto the current Duma. Two rooms away from us lived Colonel Dmitry Medvedev with his adjutant Nikolai Korolev, the absolute champion of the USSR in boxing. Their reconnaissance and sabotage detachment “Mitya” from the NKVD OMSBON had just returned after its raid in the Bryansk and Smolensk regions.

Later, Dmitry Medvedev commanded the special-purpose partisan detachment “Winners” abandoned in Western Ukraine in 1942, in which Nikolai Kuznetsov acted under the guise of a German officer. Both of them became Heroes of the Soviet Union.

Yes exactly. After that we moved to Gorky Street, 41, apt. 126. Although the very first impression of Moscow was a visit to my father, who was in the hospital on Varsonofyevsky. It was, as I later established, December 26th. Why did I remember the date - there was a speaker on his table, and Yuri Levitan was just reading out an order from the Supreme Command Headquarters on the occasion of the capture of Naro-Fominsk.

As Anatoly Yakovlevich said, in subsequent years his father’s regime was as follows: he came home at about 4 o’clock in the morning, slept until 9–10 o’clock. By this time the son had already left for school. Then my father went to work and sometimes came for lunch. It was in these rare moments that they saw each other. When Serebryansky was dismissed in 1946, he and his son became much closer. My father was engaged in translations and translated several books on geography. One of them is dedicated to Portugal, the other to Canada.

Anatoly Yakovlevich, what was your father like in life?

He was a very balanced, reserved person. I can't even remember him kissing me. He will hug you and hold you close... I remember with great love the warm relationship between my parents. I don’t remember a time when they raised their voices at each other. I don’t remember my father yelling at me, although I probably gave many reasons for this. I never saw my father drunk. At the same time, when guests came on holidays, there was a bottle of wine on the table. Among my friends I remember Nikolai Varsanofyevich and Polina Aronovna Volkov. Well, as for habits: my father smoked a lot, but doctors forbade him because of a heart attack. We rented a dacha in Ilyinsky. So he goes somewhere far away, so that mom doesn’t see, and smokes...

But there are references to Nikolai Volkov in specialized literature?

Yes, after my father was released from death row at the beginning of the war by personal order of Beria and included in the Special Group, which was later transformed into the 4th Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR, he, under the leadership of Sudoplatov, took part in organizing the partisan movement. Volkov, also an employee of this department, with a small detachment of 12 people was sent to Slovakia. There his detachment grew into a partisan brigade of over 600 people, which took part in the liberation of the city of Banska Bystrica, and Volkov became its honorary citizen.
According to Anatoly Yakovlevich, in May 1953, after the death of Stalin, his father, who had been retired for many years, Lieutenant General Pavel Sudoplatov again invited him to work in the 9th (reconnaissance and sabotage) department of the newly formed Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, which united the previously existing Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security. Headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs Beria. Polina Natanovna opposed her husband’s decision to return to service. And for him this was his whole life, and he could not refuse.

Polina's premonitions were confirmed. Following the arrest of Beria, arrests of his employees followed. They were charged with absurd charges of “treason to the Motherland.” Serebryansky was arrested along with his wife on October 8, 1953. “For me,” says Anatoly Yakovlevich, “it was unexpected. I came from the institute, some people are digging around, rummaging through books. I ask: “What happened, where are the parents?” They answer me: “Parents are arrested.” Then they sealed two of the three rooms - they left one for me. But I think that the parents guessed about the upcoming arrest. The only time in my life I saw my mother cry was when it became known about the arrest of Sudoplatov and Eitingon..."

Former senior state security major Yakov Serebryansky died under investigation during another interrogation in 1956. During the three years of his imprisonment, investigators were unable to prove his guilt and therefore did not find a better solution for themselves, how to uphold the espionage charges brought against him during the notorious years of the “Great Terror.”

How did you find out about your father's death?

I was invited to the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court and they said: “Your father has died.” It took me a while to come to my senses. “Do you know that he was a Socialist Revolutionary?” - "I know". “They looked at me in bewilderment: “So, he had many sins against the Soviet regime, he was a Socialist Revolutionary. We will inform you." There is no information about where he was buried. Mom was released earlier, also without finding evidence of her guilt. Moreover, as having a criminal record (on charges dating back to 1938), she was sent 100 km from Moscow. Then she was allowed to return to Moscow, and here she was already seeking rehabilitation - both hers and her father’s...

Seeing how difficult it is for my son to talk about all this, I again return to the professional activities of Yakov Serebryansky and learn incredibly interesting details. The fact is that among the employees of “Yasha’s group” was the now legendary William Genrikhovich Fischer, better known as Rudolf Abel. “He was very close to his father,” says Anatoly Yakovlevich, “he was his subordinate, and his father treated him very well. Fischer joined his father's group before the war. This is not written about explicitly anywhere, since membership in “Yasha’s group” was deeply classified, but individual information still sometimes leaks out. For example, as Sudoplatov wrote, Konstantin Kukin (“Igor”) went through a large combat training school as part of the “Yasha group” in China. An experienced intelligence officer, later a resident in England, who was in contact with the “Cambridge Five”, he was at one time the head of the department of “Yasha’s group”. In 1947, in connection with the reorganization of foreign intelligence, Colonel Kukin was appointed part-time Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USSR to England... As for Fischer, it is known that he was dismissed from the authorities in 1938 after Orlov’s escape. And when Serebryansky returned to service in 1941, the first thing he did was find Fischer and again took him into his group. Their relationship was based on high mutual respect. Kirill Henkin, who lived in the same apartment at that time with William Fisher and Rudolf Abel (whose name Fisher used after his arrest in New York), writes in his memoirs that Willie and Rudolf treated Serebryansky with great respect, among themselves they called him “Old Man” "and considered them their teacher."

And when did Fischer find out about the death of Yakov Isaakovich?

Apparently, immediately after his return from an American prison. In the summer of 1962, he called me and invited me to his dacha in Chelyuskinskaya. Regarding the fate of his father, he was already aware of the matter. He asked about me: where I study, what I’m interested in, whether I need anything.

What was the training center that your father created?

Konstantin Kvashnin has written well about this. He was his father’s student from that very same class of 1937 - the first and the last. People with higher education were taken there (Kvashnin, for example, was taken from graduate school at the Institute of Communications) and trained in organizing sabotage at large enterprises of a potential enemy. Leading experts from various industries of the USSR were involved in the training, who told how to quickly disrupt the operation of a particular industrial facility using minimal means. In addition, they were taught good manners, etiquette, and foreign languages. That is, it was a school for illegal immigrants and saboteurs.

Which also acted as a punishing sword?

No, the “punishing sword” is just one of many tasks facing SGBV. From the point of view of the Soviet government, defectors such as, for example, former NKVD officers Nathan Poretsky or Georgy Agabekov, are traitors who betrayed many Soviet illegal immigrants. And they should have received the punishment they deserved. Therefore, I consider their liquidation (but not murder!) to be correct. At the same time, I note that, despite the mountains of rumors and slander, only one SGBON special operation is described in detail in the specialized literature - the above-mentioned kidnapping of General Kutepov. I first heard about this operation from my mother, who was next to my father at the time. However, my father had nothing to do with the kidnapping of General Miller, who became the head of the EMRO after Kutepov. The main thing in the work of SGBON lay in a completely different plane. Thus, after the outbreak of the Civil War in Spain, “Yasha’s group” was engaged in illegal purchases and supplies for international brigades. In September 1936, 12 military aircraft were purchased from the French company Devoitin and secretly transported to Barcelona. For this operation, my father received the Order of Lenin. In November 1936, illegal immigrants from the SGON, with the help of agent Mark Zborovsky (“Tulip”), introduced into the entourage of Leon Trotsky’s son, managed to seize part of the archives of the International Secretariat of the Trotskyists. Several boxes of documents were sent to Moscow. By this time, Serebryansky had created 16 illegal residencies in various countries. It was actually “intelligence within intelligence.” It is known that deep-lying agents introduced by my father in the 1930s in the United States were subsequently used to obtain American atomic secrets. They were led by Willie Fischer (Abel), his father’s student, who was sent to work illegally in the United States in 1948, remaining there until his exposure in 1957.

As Anatoly Yakovlevich notes at the end of our conversation, neither Serebryansky, nor Sudoplatov, nor Eitingon earned millions from their work. The inventory of the property seized during the arrest of Serebryansky, which fits on one page, contains: “Men’s suit - 1; men's long johns - 2; etc.". He had neither his own dacha, nor a car, nor jewelry, despite the fact that in France, as a cover, he was the owner of a pearl factory, and while purchasing weapons for Spain, he kept suitcases of money with him. At the same time, he believed that he personally had nothing to do with this money. This was a special cohort - Soviet intelligence officers of the 1920s and 1930s - unmercenary, crystal clear and dedicated people.

These traditions, largely lost during the years of the “Khrushchev Thaw,” began to be revived after Yuri Andropov was appointed chairman of the KGB of the USSR, who began a large-scale renewal of security personnel through their comprehensive training and retraining. Yuri Vladimirovich once said in a narrow circle that high morality and spirituality are historically characteristic of the Soviet people, constitute their moral essence, therefore, these qualities should distinguish those who defend the security and very statehood of this people.

With the support of Andropov, the organizational development of the Advanced Training Courses for Officers (CUOS) took place at the first faculty of the Higher School of the KGB of the USSR. Since 1969, KUOS were based in Balashikha. There they prepared the active KGB reserve in case of guerrilla warfare, that is, they continued the traditions laid down by Serebryansky, Eitingon and Sudoplatov. KUOS graduates, who later formed the backbone of the Zenit and Vympel special forces, could carry out assigned tasks almost anywhere in the world, being in an illegal situation in conditions of war between states. Representatives of this profession call themselves special-purpose intelligence officers, combining the qualities of a legal intelligence officer and a special forces soldier.

To prepare them, textbooks were needed, among which was a manual written by Yakov Serebryansky in prison (!) while awaiting his sentence. Having familiarized himself with it, Yuri Andropov became interested in the fate of Serebryansky, and in May 1971, the decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR was revised. Yakov Serebryansky was posthumously rehabilitated on all counts of the charges previously brought against him. At the same time, Polina Serebryanskaya was completely rehabilitated. In April 1996, Yakov Serebryansky’s rights to the awards confiscated during his arrest were restored.

For a long time, the question of reinstating his parents into the party, from which they had been expelled after their arrest, remained unresolved for Anatoly Yakovlevich. His archive contains a letter sent from the Central Archive of the KGB of the USSR to the Control and Audit Commission of the Moscow State Committee of the CPSU, dated October 26, 1989, No. 10/A-4241 with the following content: “At the request of Comrade V.P. Goncharov. (MGK instructor) we inform you that there is no data on violations of socialist legality by former state security officer Ya.I. Serebryansky, born in 1892, in archival materials. By order of the Chairman of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated September 7, 1977, for high merits in ensuring the security of our Motherland, Ya.I. Serebryansky. among other security officers, he was listed on the Memorial Plaque of the Cabinet of Security Service Glory. Deputy head of the archive V.K. Vinogradov."

Yakov and Polina Serebryansky were posthumously reinstated in the party in November 1989.

Now the Cabinet of Chekist Glory, located in Yasenevo, is called the Museum of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, and the name of Yakov Serebryansky appears on the memorial plaque in the top ten most outstanding intelligence officers of the Soviet era.

On December 11, 2016, we celebrated a milestone anniversary - 125 years since the birth of Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky. And just shortly before this event, his great-great-grandson was born, who was also named Yasha. Let’s hope that this time “Yasha’s group” will only be in kindergarten. This is what his great-great-grandfather dedicated his life to.

Awarded 2 Orders of Lenin, 2 Orders of the Red Banner, Medal “XX Years of the Red Army”, Medal “Partisan of the Patriotic War” 1st degree, Two badges “Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU”, Personalized weapon.

Ranks

Colonel

Positions

group leader in the 2nd department of the NKVD 1941-1942

Head of the 3rd Department of the 4th Directorate of the NKVD-NKGB USSR 1942-1943

in the special reserve of the 4th Directorate of the NKGB of the USSR as a group leader 1943-1946

Biography

Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky November 26 (December 8), 1891, Minsk - March 30, 1956, Moscow) - state security colonel (1945), employee of the Foreign Department of the OGPU - NKVD, one of the leaders of foreign intelligence and sabotage work of the Soviet state security agencies.

Biography

Youth

Born into a poor Jewish family. In 1908 he graduated from a four-year city school in Minsk. Back in 1907, he joined the student organization of the Socialist-Revolutionary Maximalists. In 1909, he was arrested for possession of “criminal correspondence” and on suspicion of complicity in the murder of the head of the Minsk prison. He spent one year in prison, after which he was administratively exiled to Vitebsk, where he worked as an electrician at a power plant.

War. Revolution. Civil War In August 1912 he was drafted into the army and served as a private in the 122nd Tambov Regiment in Kharkov. With the outbreak of the First World War, he was sent to the active army on the Western Front as part of the 105th Orenburg Regiment, 2 companies. On August 7, 1914, during the unsuccessful offensive of Russian troops in East Prussia near Matishkemen (there is an entry in item 2462 (16) in the “Name list of losses of the lower ranks of the 105th Orenburg Infantry Regiment”) he was seriously wounded and after hospital was demobilized. From February 1915 he worked as an electrician in the oil fields of Baku.

After the February Revolution, he actively participated in the activities of the local organization of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, was a member of the Baku Council, and an employee of the Baku Food Committee. Represented the Socialist Revolutionary Party at the 1st Congress of Soviets of the North Caucasus. In March 1918, he led a detachment of the Baku Council for the protection of food cargo on the Vladikavkaz railway. After the fall of the Baku commune he moved to Persia.

In May 1920, the Volga-Caspian military flotilla under the command of Fyodor Raskolnikov and Sergo Ordzhonikidze was sent to Anzali (Persia) with the aim of returning Russian ships that had been taken to Persia by the White Guards who had evacuated from Russian ports. As a result of the ensuing hostilities, the White Guards and the British troops occupying Anzeli retreated. Taking advantage of this situation, in early June, armed detachments of the revolutionary Dzhengal movement under the command of Mirza Kuchuk Khan captured the city of Rasht - the center of the Gilan ostan, where the Gilan Soviet Republic was proclaimed.

Serebryansky, who was in Rasht at that time, with the assistance of Yakov Blumkin, who at that time held the post of military commissar of the headquarters of the Persian Red Army, became an employee of the Special Department that had just been created in it, but soon returned to Russia.

Moscow, first arrest of the Cheka

Since August 1920 - an employee of the central apparatus of the Cheka in Moscow. In August 1921, he was demobilized and entered the Electrotechnical Institute. In December 1921, he was ambushed by the Chekists at the apartment of his old comrade in the Socialist Revolutionary Party and spent four months in prison. Upon his release, he worked in the Moskvotop trust system; in 1923 he was arrested on suspicion of bribery and was under investigation, but the charges were not proven.

Illegal work abroad

Palestine

In November 1923, Yakov Blyumkin, whom the leadership of the INO OGPU appointed resident of illegal intelligence in Palestine, invited Serebryansky to become his deputy. In December 1923, Serebryansky was hired as a special representative of the Zakordonnaya part of the INO OGPU and, together with Blumkin, went to Jaffa with the task of collecting information about the plans of England and France in the Middle East and about local revolutionary movements.

In June 1924, Blumkin was recalled to Moscow, and Serebryansky began independent work. He managed to infiltrate the underground Zionist movement and attract a large group of emigrants from Russia to cooperate with the OGPU, who formed the core of the fighting group, later known as the “Yasha group”. In 1924, Serebryansky’s wife, Polina Natanovna Belenkaya, joined them.

In 1925-1926 Serebryansky is an illegal resident of the INO OGPU in Belgium. In February 1927 he traveled to Moscow, where he was accepted as a member of the CPSU (b).

From Moscow he went as an illegal resident to Paris, where he worked until March 1929.

In April 1929, he returned to Moscow and was appointed head of the 1st department of the INO OGPU, while continuing to lead the Special Group (“Yasha’s group”), which reported directly to the Chairman of the OGPU V.R. Menzhinsky and was created for the deep penetration of agents into military-strategic objects nature in case of war, as well as sabotage and terrorist operations. From the “Yasha group” came such specialists of the Soviet state security agencies in secret actions and liquidations as S. M. Shpigelglas, S. M. Perevoznikov, A. I. Syrkin, P. Ya. Zubov.

Operation against General Kutepov

In 1929, an operation was prepared, and on January 26, 1930, under the direct leadership of Serebryansky and the deputy head of the counterintelligence department of the OGPU S.V. Puzitsky in Paris, members of the “Yasha group” carried out an operation to kidnap the chairman of the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS), General A.P. Kutepov, who intended to intensify sabotage and terrorist activities on the territory of the USSR.

In the summer of 1929, a decision was made to capture and transport to Moscow the chairman of the Russian All-Military Union (EMRO), General A.P. Kutepov, who intensified sabotage and terrorist actions on the territory of the USSR. Together with the deputy the head of the KRO OGPU S.V. Puzitsky, Serebryansky went to Paris to lead this operation. On January 26, 1930, employees of “Yasha’s group” pushed Kutepov into a car, injected him with morphine and took him aboard a Soviet steamship stationed in the port of Marseille. On March 30, 1930, Serebryansky was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for a successful operation.

Romania, USA and France again

Upon completion of the operation against General Kutepov, Serebryansky began creating an autonomous agent network in various countries to conduct intelligence work in case of war. He was included in the special register of the OGPU. He personally recruited more than 200 people abroad.

In 1931 he was arrested in Romania, but was soon released and continued his illegal activities. In 1932 he traveled to the USA, in 1934 to Paris. On July 13, 1934, he was approved as the head of the Special Purpose Group (SGON) under the NKVD of the USSR. In November 1935, Serebryansky was awarded the rank of senior state security major.

China and Japan

In 1935-1936 was on a business trip in China and Japan.

After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he was engaged in the purchase (partly illegally) and supply of weapons for the Republicans. So, in September 1936, employees of the Special Group purchased 12 military aircraft from the French company Devoitin, which were delivered to an airfield bordering Spain, from where, under the pretext of flight tests, they were transported to Barcelona. For this operation, Serebryansky was awarded the Order of Lenin.

Operation against Trotsky's son

In November 1936, illegal immigrants from the SGON, with the help of agent M. Zborovsky (“Tulip”), embedded in the entourage of Trotsky’s son L. L. Sedov, managed to seize part of the archives of the International Secretariat of the Trotskyists. Several boxes of documents were handed over to the legal resident of the INO in Paris, G. N. Kosenko (Kislov) (“Fin”) and transported to Moscow.

In 1937, L. L. Sedov (“Sonny”), at the direction of his father, began preparing the First Congress of the Fourth International, which was to take place in the summer of 1938 in Paris. In this regard, the Center decided to kidnap Sedov. The operation was entrusted to Serebryansky's group. The plan to kidnap “Sonny” was worked out in detail. 7 Special Group employees took part in the preparation of the operation, including Serebryansky’s wife. However, Sedov's kidnapping did not take place - in February 1938 he died after an appendectomy.

Recall to Moscow and second arrest by the NKVD

In the summer of 1938, Serebryansky was recalled from France, and on November 10, together with his wife, he was arrested in Moscow at the plane's ramp on the basis of a warrant signed by L.P. Beria. Until February 1939 he was kept in custody without the sanction of the prosecutor.

Torture and beatings

During the investigation, which was led by the future Minister of State Security B.C. Abakumov, and at a later stage the investigators and P.I. Gudimovich (“Ivan”), Serebryansky was subjected to the so-called. "intense interrogation techniques" According to the investigative file, he was first summoned for questioning on November 13, 1938. On the interrogation protocol there is a resolution from Beria: “Comrade. Abakumov! Have a good interrogation!”

It was after this that during the interrogation on November 16, 1938, in which L.P. Beria himself participated, as well as B.Z. Kobulov and V.S. Abakumov, Serebryansky was beaten and forced to give false testimony. On January 25, 1939, he was transferred to Lefortovo prison (during interrogation in 1954, Serebryansky testified that even before the trial, that is, during the preliminary investigation, he renounced the testimony in which he pleaded guilty and slandered others).

Sentence and amnesty

On July 7, 1941, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced Serebryansky, accused of espionage for England and France, connections with “conspirators” from the NKVD led by G. G. Yagoda and preparation of terrorist attacks against Soviet leaders, to death, and his wife - to 10 years in the camps “for failure to report her husband’s hostile activities.” But the sentence was not carried out. The Great Patriotic War was going on, and intelligence was sorely lacking in experienced personnel. In August 1941, thanks to the petition of P. A. Sudoplatov and the intervention of L. P. Beria, Serebryansky, by decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, was amnestied and reinstated in the NKVD and the party.

The Great Patriotic War

From September 3, 1941, Serebryansky was the head of the group in the 2nd department, from January 18, 1942 - the head of the group, the head of the 3rd department of the 4th directorate of the NKVD-NKGB of the USSR. Since November 1943 - in the special reserve of the 4th Directorate of the NKGB of the USSR as a group leader. Serebryansky was an employee of this department throughout the war years, personally participating in many intelligence operations, and led reconnaissance and sabotage work in Western and Eastern Europe. An example is the recruitment of the captured German admiral Erich Raeder.

Retirement and once again an employee of the intelligence and sabotage department

In May 1946 he retired due to health reasons. He asked to resign, but the MGB Personnel Directorate did not change the wording.

In May 1953, P. A. Sudoplatov was invited to work in the central apparatus of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as an operational officer of the secret staff of the 9th (Reconnaissance and Sabotage) Department. Since June 1953 - employee of the Voronezh State University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR.

In July 1953, he was dismissed from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the reserve of the Ministry of Defense.

Third arrest and death in Butyrka prison

On October 8, 1953, he was arrested for the third time. In December 1954, the amnesty decision of August 1941 was canceled. Due to the fact that in the criminal case initiated in 1953, sufficient evidence of the guilt of Ya. I. Serebryansky as a participant in the conspiratorial activities of L. P. Beria was not obtained, and his conviction in 1941 was recognized by the USSR Prosecutor's Office as justified, case 1941 year was sent to the Supreme Court of the USSR with a proposal to replace the execution with 25 years of imprisonment. On March 30, 1956, Serebryansky died in Butyrka prison during interrogation by the investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office, Major General of the Legal Service P.K. Tsaregradsky.

Addresses of residence in Moscow

First address, Moscow - Tverskoy Boulevard 9, apt. 26. (room in a communal apartment. Pyatnitsky lived in the same house (and entrance).

The second address in Moscow is somewhere in a building overlooking Pushkin Square.

From the beginning of the 30s until 1938 - Gogolevsky Boulevard, 31 (Mansion) Working meetings were held there, on the 1st floor

After release from prison in 1941 - Hotel "Moscow", No. 646;

Then - st. Gorky in building 41, apt. 26 (from the mid-40s until his arrest in 1953).

Posthumous rehabilitation

In May 1971, by the decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, he was posthumously rehabilitated “on all counts of the charges previously brought against him, in November 1989 he was reinstated in the party, and in April 1996 - in the rights to awards confiscated during arrest.”

Two Orders of Lenin (12/31/1936, 04/30/1946),

Two Orders of the Red Banner (03/6/1930, 12/4/1945),

Medal “XX Years of the Red Army” (02/23/1938),

Medal "Partisan of the Patriotic War" 1st class (08/25/1944),

Two badges “Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU” (1929, 1932),

Named weapon.

Notes

Erroneously [source not specified 1279 days] some publications indicate Bergman’s real name. A certificate of graduation from a four-grade school in Minsk has been preserved, which indicates the real name - Serebryansky. The surname of the older brother is also Serebryansky;

Gilan Soviet Republic

Pavel Aptekar Unknown Soviet republic

V. Starosadsky Punishing sword of intelligence Intelligence and counterintelligence news, M., 11/18/2005

Igor Simbirtsev, Special services of the first years of the USSR. 1923-1939. - M.: ZAO Tsentrpoligraf, 2008. - 381 p. ISBN 978-5-9524-3838-5

Yakov Serebryansky - three times prisoner of Lubyanka Military-industrial courier, Moscow, 11/01/2006

Serebryansky Yakov Isaakovich. Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. Retrieved August 6, 2013. Archived from the original on August 20, 2013.

Literature

Serebryansky Ya. I. // Petrov N. V., Skorkin K. V. Who led the NKVD, 1934-1941: reference book / Ed. N. G. Okhotin and A. B. Roginsky. - M.: Links, 1999. - 502 p. - 3000 copies. - ISBN 5-7870-0032-3

Starosadsky V. Punishing sword of intelligence. / Intelligence and counterintelligence news. - M., 11/18/2005.

Encyclopedia of Russian Secret Services / Author-comp. A. I. Kolpakidi. - M.: Astrel, AST, Transitbook, 2004. - 800 p.

I. B. Linder, S. A. Churkin. Saboteurs: The Legend of Lubyanka - Yakov Serebryansky. Publisher: - Ripol classic, 2011, 684c. - 978-5-386-02669-1.

Yakov Serebryansky - three times prisoner of Lubyanka

Kolesnikov Yu. A. Among the gods. Unknown pages of Soviet intelligence. Documentary novel. 848 pp. Ed. "Book World" 2014 ISBN 978-5-8041-0681-3

Documentaries

“Secret love. Love Yasha." Director: Valery Udovydchenkov. 41 min. 2006.