home For men Yuri Drozdov: For the United States, Russia is not a defeated enemy.

Yuri Drozdov: For the United States, Russia is not a defeated enemy.

The head of the Illegal Intelligence Directorate of the KGB of the USSR, a living legend of the domestic special services, Major General Yuri Drozdov, in an interview with Fontanka, talks about the secret agreements of the US State Department and explains that the source of ethnic conflicts in Russia is in the West, reveals American methods of influencing the masses and recalls how he was a resident of Soviet intelligence in China and the USA and rescued Rudolf Abel from a New York prison.

- According to the US foreign policy doctrine of the USSR, the very existence of the Soviet Union was incompatible with American security. In your opinion, has the US attitude towards Russia changed after the official announcement of the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR?

By 1991, judging by the documents of the International currency board and a number of documents within the United States itself, the Americans conducted a deep study of our economy and moral and political state and mood Soviet people. The US Congress reviewed these materials and, as a result, Law 102 of 1992 was adopted under the name “Liberty Act for Russia and the Newly Independent States,” which was insulting to Russia. At the same time, in the fall of 1992, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff reported to the President and Congress an assessment of the state of the armed forces of the United States, where the very first paragraph of Chapter 11 “Special Operations” states that, despite the fact that the leaders of Russia took upon themselves obligations to reform our armed forces and law enforcement agencies, Russia will still remain our main adversary, requiring the closest attention.

But we can also say that these were only the first post-Soviet years and the United States, perhaps, was still under the impression of our country’s recent militaristic past, from their point of view? They were simply in no hurry to trust us.

Well, in principle, we can say that it was still a hot time, the “wild 1990s,” but... A few years ago, the Norwegian Institute for Strategic Studies published a work written by a former Soviet officer, which probably once “went” to the West - I did not specifically investigate this circumstance - under the title “Can the territory of a former superpower become a battlefield.” In it he, based on own experience and, based on the analysis of many documents, gives a conclusion about what kind of resistance military units of NATO countries may encounter on Russian territory: in which place they will be met with stones, in which place they will be shot, and in which they will be welcomed.

As far as we were able to understand, further observing the fate of this work, it went through a wide range of research in NATO countries and was very seriously accepted in the USA. Of course, they will never admit it, but it is true. So I am completely confident that the US attitude towards us has not changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today's US attention to Russia is attention to an enemy that was not completely defeated in 1991. And the United States is guided by this principle in implementing its foreign policy.

If the United States still does not trust us and, to put it mildly, does not contribute to our development, then why were they not afraid of the revival of post-war Germany, their real enemy on the battlefield?

The Americans were not afraid of the revival of post-war Germany, just as they are not afraid of its strengthening now, because in 1949, before the Federal Republic of Germany was finally formed, which was allowed to have the Bundeswehr, Germany was tied hand and foot by agreements with the United States and other NATO countries. The former chief of military counterintelligence of the Bundeswehr, General Kamosa, published the book “Secret Games of the Secret Services,” where he directly writes that according to the post-war German-American agreements, every new German Chancellor who comes to govern the country must immediately after the elections come to the United States and sign a document called "Chancellor Act". The expiration date of the Chancellor Act is 2099. I will quote you an excerpt from “Secret Games of the Secret Services”: “On May 21, 1949, Federal Intelligence published a secret state treaty under the heading “Top Secret”, which set out the basic principles of the winners’ approaches to sovereignty Federal Republic until 2099..." Will a German remain a German by this time? Will the Bundeswehr remain capable of fighting the way it fought in World War II by this time? What is the final purpose of the "Chancellor Act"? These are the questions that arise when reading this books.

By the way, General Kamosa was very careful, so he did not dare to publish “Secret Games of the Secret Services” in Germany, but was forced to release the book in Austria. There was a little noise. Our correspondents, who read “Secret Games of the Secret Services” in Austria, published a small note: does General Kamosa realize what “bomb” he issued? At the same time, they asked themselves: what did our leaders sign in 1991? Political observer of Nezavisimaya Gazeta Faenko six months ago in one of his articles posted his “bomb”... He writes that in the United States many prominent political figures and large businessmen are dissatisfied with the fact that Russia does not adhere to the unspoken agreements that were signed by its managers.

In your opinion, did the USSR ever have even a theoretical opportunity to become a full-fledged partner of the United States? Well, at least at the peak of Soviet-American cooperation in World War II.

No, because the blame for the fact that the Germans attacked the USSR in 1941 also lies with the United States. For some reason they don’t remember this now, but in 1940, the adviser to the English Prime Minister Churchill, Montgomery Hyde, who helped William Donovan (one of the heads of the American intelligence services - author) create the Office of Strategic Services, gave it to him for presentation to the president The United States sent a letter from Churchill to Roosevelt, where he wrote: since the United States is not at war with Germany, could you encourage Hitler to leave the Balkans alone and speed up measures regarding Russia. Many years have passed since then, and many in the West think that everyone has forgotten about this letter. But you can forget only when you don’t want to remember something.

Today, no one remembers that in fact, preparations for World War II began in 1929 with a meeting of American President Herbert Hoover with the most prominent US entrepreneurs from the Russell Center; They have such a secret society. It told Hoover: “A crisis is approaching, to try to avoid the difficult situation in which the United States may find itself can only be done by changing the balance of power in the world. To do this, we must provide assistance to Russia so that it will finally get rid of the devastation - the consequences civil war, and help Germany get rid of the grip of the Versailles Treaty." "But this requires money,” Hoover objected, “several billions. And why do we need this, what will happen next?” “And then we need to pit Russia and Germany against each other so that, having recovered after the crisis, the United States finds itself only face to face with the remaining of these adversaries.”

As a result, such money was allocated. And the same American concerns that helped Russia restore its economy - built factories, participated in the creation of the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station - restored and equipped Germany. It’s not for nothing that the grandfather of US President Bush, Prescott Bush, who helped the Germans in the 1930s, was deprived of the right to manage his property immediately after the start of the war, based on the fact that the United States this moment are at war with Germany. All this is documented, including in the five-volume book of the American economist and historian Anthony Sutton. And what was known after the war: throughout the entire 20th century, the Americans carried out very serious, well-thought-out work to destroy the only strong enemy they had left in the person of the USSR.

By the way, the principle of selective memory in relation to history was clearly demonstrated today, for example, by Svanidze in his program “The Court of Time,” where he regularly deliberately keeps silent about important facts, well, if the interlocutor reminds him of them, then he quickly cuts him off. Watching this program, of course, was disgusting, but interesting, because it shows the depth of the work of the Americans to carry out an operation of influence on the other side. In America it has been developed very interesting system influence large numbers of people in order to persuade them to accept the American point of view on one issue or another.

From 1979 to 1991, you headed the Illegal Intelligence Directorate of the KGB of the USSR, so you probably know better than anyone what, besides the purely humanitarian imposition of the American view of the past and present of a particular country, are the other goals of the “system of influence on large populations of people”?

Well, for example, to gain some kind of diplomatic advantage in relations with one state or another. That is why the US political line to destroy the internal calm content of this or that country is deeply thought out, and not local and spontaneous, as it sometimes seems. For this purpose, in many countries layers of people are created who spread the ideas that are dictated to them in the West in order to facilitate its mastery of a specific territory. After all, Sun Tzu also said that it is better to conquer a country without fighting. The United States, having begun to seriously study us in 1917, never left us out of its sight again; they were engaged not just in analytical or scientific work, but also carried out very serious intelligence activities.

By the way, interesting fact. After the explosion of the twin towers in New York, the Americans did a lot of work to study the experience of the struggle of the Soviet government against the Basmachi. By the way, the development of terrorism in the countries of the Middle East, South-East Asia, and on our territory this phenomenon is by no means accidental. If you look closely at who studied in special schools in the United States and Great Britain, it becomes clear that it was there that Mujahideen and Wahhabis were trained, say, for subversive activities in Ufa or the North Caucasus.

And what happened in Tatarstan in the Zelenodolsk region was apparently prepared by the British, I mean unrest among Muslims provoked by the Wahhabis, which, fortunately, the Tatars themselves quickly suppressed; the people who organized these unrest went to England for training, and there were a lot of such people. Or take the difficulties that Bashkiria is currently experiencing. They also have Western roots. And there is nothing to be surprised about here, because the Americans have created a special institution - the United University for training leaders of anti-terrorist organizations, under the auspices of which personnel are trained to organize unrest in various regions of the world, and not just for the real fight against terror.

Did the “Kryuchkov list” really exist, in which the then head of the KGB lists agents of Western influence in domestic power structures?

Certainly. And now, probably, someone has a similar list. And as for the “Kryuchkov list”... Such a list was indeed handed over to Kryuchkov. He went with him to Gorbachev. Gorbachev sent him to Yakovlev (at that time the secretary of the CPSU Central Committee for ideology - author)...

Which was on that list...

-... (Laughs) ...After the change of power, Deputy Prosecutor General Lyseiko pestered me with questions about the “Kryuchkov list”: “Did you receive such documents?” I answer: “I don’t remember.” He again: “Who was on this list?” "I do not remember". "Why don't you remember?" I say: “You see, there is a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the mid-1930s, which prohibits law enforcement agencies from accumulating materials on management team state." Lyseiko opens his folder: "Yes, there is such a resolution!" I continue: "These materials were transferred to Kryuchkov, reported to the top, returned to us and destroyed." "So what, you still don't remember anything?" "I don't remember ". He does not lag behind: “Whose materials were these?” I answer: “Did you want me to become a traitor twice? Will not work. I do not remember anything..."

In 1992, an article by lawyer Knyazev was published in “Soviet Russia” or “Pravda”, which directly stated that Drozdov did not confirm the data on the “Kryuchkov list”, nor did Shebarshin (one of the last heads of the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR - author) didn’t confirm... Well, we didn’t need to confirm it. For what?

In the next month and a half, a book will be published written by one of the former military counterintelligence officers and a former employee of the special sector of the CPSU Central Committee, Joseph Borisovich Linder, entitled “Legends of the Lubyanka. Yakov Serebryansky.” About famous intelligence officer with a difficult biography. This book presents in a concentrated form all the complexities of our development, from 1917 to the end of the Great Patriotic War, which have never been revealed in this way. ...Be sure to read it.

And the enemy will not find anything new for himself in this book?

The enemy already knows a lot, but most likely he will compare the facts he knows with those presented in this book. By the way, I remember when Mitrokhin, a retired employee from the intelligence accounting units, “left” in the 1990s, he handed over to the Americans the materials he had filmed. So the Americans sent these materials to me - I was already retired at that time: “Please get acquainted with Mitrokhin’s materials. Could you confirm where is truth and where is fiction.” (Laughs).

When you read “Yakov Serebryansky”, you will understand how in the most difficult situation in the old intelligence service the process of forming units and selecting people was carried out; then within the intelligence service itself there were divisions that no one knew about. After 1991, all this, of course, changed.

You worked for several years as a resident of Soviet intelligence in New York and know America and its political structure, as they say, from the inside. Tell me, can US policy towards Russia fluctuate depending on the personal characteristics of certain persons in the American ruling establishment? How independent do you think senior US government officials are in decision-making?

Several years ago, the US Congress entrusted the president with working with public organizations as one of his priorities, and the head of the US State Department, Condoleezza Rice, shortly before leaving this post, approved a special directive “On the tasks of the State Department in carrying out special operations of political influence,” which outlines the functions of each diplomatic employee: from the ambassador to the smallest dragoman.

In the context of answering your question, the work prepared by the Rand Corporation (an unofficial think tank of the US government - author) “US Foreign Policy before and after Bush” is of great interest, where an assessment is made of the whole range of political activities of the US government and a national strategy is developed in relation to countries which are of great interest to the United States. So the US policy towards Russia and other countries of interest to them is a carefully thought-out approach when preparing any official or unofficial events. Another thing is that the conclusions drawn by certain American analysts from the same Rand Corporation are not always accepted by the US administration when developing specific measures - and this is the sacred right of anyone statesman- but the fact that they are listened to attentively is for sure.

Has the United States ever declared out loud its interests in the mineral resources of the USSR or the idea of developing natural resources of our country began to be in the air only in post-Soviet times?

The United States has always had great appetites for the economic wealth of our country. Few people know that at the end of the Great Patriotic War, when the countries participating in the anti-Hitler coalition discussed the future of the world, two decisions were made, I quote: “to create the United Nations with a Security Council - as a prototype of a world government” and - American billionaires especially insisted on it - “to create a tripartite commission to carry out gradual attempts to merge the economies of the USA and the USSR.” And such a commission was created. She existed. She acted. When I worked in America, I had to take part in some meetings with Rockefeller, and from his questions it became clear to me what the Americans wanted from the USSR as a result.

For them, the main political goal of working in this commission was, of course, the complete absorption of our economy, which some people from the CPSU Central Committee, who were then at the helm of our economic policy, knew or guessed, but participated in this game, hoping in turn to outwit the enemy and through this commission improve trade contacts between the USSR and the West. In some cases they succeeded, in others they did not, but it took the West, as we see, about 50 years to fully realize their plans.

Judging by what you write in your book “Operation President”. From the “Cold War” to the “reset,” everything terrible for Russia is just beginning: “The world has entered the phase of the most dangerous confrontation - a civilized one. The price of defeat in this confrontation is the complete disappearance of one of the civilizations from the face of the Earth”...

In this case, the word “civilization” refers to a system or systems of values that unite people different nationalities living in different countries and professing different religions. Powerful transnational oligarchic clans have already determined the future of all humanity, and the academic circles of the West even gave it a scientific and theoretical form for greater persuasiveness. The practical process of globalization is already underway, and every year the world is steadily approaching the triumph of a new world order.

At the same time, the history of the West does not give any reason to hope that its ruling circles will provide non-Western countries and peoples with the necessary resources and material benefits that Western states have purposefully taken from them over the centuries. The entire history of the world convincingly demonstrates that they will never, under any circumstances, reduce their consumption for the sake of the survival of non-Western peoples. Under these conditions, Russia is destined for the fate of a calf, which must be sacrificed “for the good of all mankind,” as US President Wilson’s personal adviser, Colonel House, proposed almost a hundred years ago.

In this situation, what will be the significance of the state security agencies called upon to protect the country’s sovereignty?

Dutch scientist, laureate Nobel Prize Jan Tinbergen said directly: “Security cannot be left to the discretion of sovereign nation states. <...>We must strive to create decentralized planetary sovereignty and a network of strong international institutions that will implement it...” That's it. The global structuring and hierarchization of the world, while simultaneously abolishing the sovereignty of national states, will give the oligarchy free access to all the natural resources of the planet.

In assessing the Soviet political offensive during the détente period, the US administration concluded that the activity of Soviet intelligence operations was five times greater than the activities of the CIA and allies. But if we keep in mind that the USA nevertheless became the gravedigger of the USSR, then a reasonable question arises: why did we lose?

American intelligence officer, former US resident in India Harry Rozicki wrote in his book that if the US had such an illegal intelligence service as in the Soviet Union, numbering at least 100 people, then America could feel calm. So, intelligence did not lose. The country as a whole lost. And I lost because we didn’t have time. After all, almost the entire period of the first five-year plans, when we managed to create something, took place in conditions of struggle. Moreover, the struggle, both from the outside and as a result of very serious disputes and disagreements in the political leadership of the USSR. Moreover, these disagreements were also in last years existence of the USSR.

In particular, using the example of interaction between intelligence and political power USSR I can say that the work of our leaders to use the connections we have established in the political interests of the state has been weakened to some extent. Each of the leaders considered their point of view to be the ultimate truth, and they had serious disputes with each other. Let’s say, in the case of Shevchenko (in the 1970s, the deputy representative of the USSR to the UN, who fled to the West - author), Yuri Vladimirovich (Andropov - author) directly told me: “I read everything you wrote. You were right, and no one will punish you." The fact is that, having suspected Shevchenko of treason, I, as a resident of our intelligence service in the United States, began to signal this to Moscow. And as a result, he received... a ban on monitoring Shevchenko! However, I told myself: “No, this won’t work!” and continued to send materials compromising Shevchenko to the center.

Was the ban on touching Shevchenko an internal conflict and a reluctance to cast a shadow on the Foreign Ministry, or was it guarded by agents of influence in power structures in Moscow?

It’s difficult for me to say now why I wasn’t allowed to touch Shevchenko, but I know that Shevchenko’s influence on our leaders was quite high. He and his family had very close relations with Gromyko. In addition, Shevchenko also had a group of good friends in different positions and positions who could play along with him, influencing our leaders who reviewed my materials on Shevchenko. Since Shevchenko worked in New York for a long period of time, my predecessors, who communicated with him there, also felt a little connected, they were afraid of being reprimanded if something came up, and then not going abroad. These are natural things... Unfortunately, such stories happen in life. (Sighs). Troyanovsky (Soviet diplomat, next, after Shevchenko, representative of the USSR to the UN - author) then asked me directly: “What, can’t a Soviet person choose a new homeland for himself?” I answered him: “There is only one homeland, you can change your place of residence.” And he made another enemy.

Then, perhaps, one of the internal reasons for the death of the Soviet Union was that, as you put it, “the work of our leaders in using the connections we had established in the political interests of the state was to some extent weakened,” which, speaking in simple language means: they took note of the intelligence information, but were in no hurry to use it. Have you felt any political or diplomatic impact from your work?

In principle, I felt, and even attended receptions with our leaders, who got acquainted with the results of the work of illegal intelligence and made decisions based on it, but, on the other hand, let’s say, in my personal file, as I was told, there is a resolution from Nikita himself Sergeevich Khrushchev, whom in the 1960s I, as a resident of Soviet intelligence in China, warned about impending clashes at Damansky, and Khrushchev wrote on the material with this information of mine: “I don’t believe it.” But then we specifically sent people to the area where Chinese units were concentrated opposite Damansky, where former White Guards then lived; these people met there with our ancient “source”, who said that the Chinese drove him out of his own apiary, built a giant box of sand in its place, in which they recreated the entire territory on the other side of the border that belonged to the USSR, and are conducting military exercises there .

After this information, we studied the situation in Chinese railways- what kind of transportation is carried out and where, we talked with foreigners, and one circumstance helped us make the final conclusion, which unfortunately turned out to be correct. I had a meeting with representatives of the Krupp concern, to whom we supplied vodka and who were courted by the Chinese on a number of issues, and one of these representatives directly told me: “Are you blind? Don’t you see what the Chinese are doing? But I see, because I am Krupp, I am steel, and steel is war! That's the whole conversation, which nevertheless filled the cup of our guesses. We summarized the information and came to the conclusion: we should expect an armed provocation in the Damansky area. But Khrushchev didn’t believe us.

The deputy of the late Alexander Mikhailovich Sakharovsky (at that time the head of the PGU KGB of the USSR - author), Lieutenant General Mortin, who at that time was sitting in his place, when I came on vacation and met with him, told me: “Listen, you are in my You’ll give me a heart attack with your telegrams!” (Laughs). One can understand him; it was a difficult situation. Was in China cultural revolution, which is increasingly acquiring an anti-Soviet and anti-Russian character, in which, by the way, former Trotskyists who were thrown out of the USA and for some reason thrown into China actively participated; this happened at the height of McCarthyism in the late 1940s. I knew some of them. Knew Anna Louise Strong and Weinstein well. They all spoke Russian well.

-... I listen and don’t understand, why then did Mao Zedong himself congratulate you on his birthday?

Mao Zedong could not congratulate me. It was a joke from my colleagues. When I celebrated one of my birthdays in China, the guys who were part of our station produced a “message” for the Xinhua report (Chinese information Agency- author) on this event. (Laughs). Many years after this incident, when I came to work in New York, where I celebrated my 50th birthday, I found several of my former employees there who remembered our Chinese period well. It was they who brought and placed in front of me a roll of teletype tape, where it was reported that Mao Zedong congratulated Yuri Drozdov on his anniversary. I say: “Have they created a provocation again?” ...Here you need to understand that the “Americans” and the “Chinese” were two internally benevolently competing structures in intelligence, and this joke made me understand that the large legal station in the United States accepted me as one of their own.

Returning to China... As I understand it, in the 1960s it was still impossible to discern the origins of the Chinese economic miracle? There was nothing for intelligence to draw such far-reaching conclusions from?

When in 1968 I was finishing my work as a resident of Soviet intelligence in China, the center sent me a telegram: “Despite the fact that your work in China is completed, Yuri Vladimirovich asks you to stay for a month and write your thoughts on the situation in China and prospects for Soviet-Chinese relations." During this month, I wrote 103 pages, where, among other things, it was said that the situation that is currently developing in China is changeable, the Chinese are deciding the issue of creating a new social formation, but this is not surprising, we must be tolerant of this and proceed from that the Chinese will use the advanced elements of both the socialist and capitalist systems in the interests of their country.

Is it true that a portrait of Andropov hung in the office of one of the American counterintelligence officers?

Yes its true. It was the head of the FBI office in New Jersey. This was in the mid-1970s. Personally, I did not see this portrait; it was seen by our employee, who maintained contacts with the FBI on the exchange of our comrades, who were then in the central New York prison. Enger and Chernyaev. By the way, in fact, it was Shevchenko who gave them away, although, in principle, they should not have been caught, however, during one of the operations Chernyaev and Enger were detained because we did not take into account that the Americans would launch a small sports plane into the air, from which will monitor our scouts. So here it is. When our employee was in the office of the head of the FBI department, he looked up, saw Andropov’s portrait on the wall and was terribly surprised. There was an answer: “Why are you surprised? Can’t I hang up a portrait of the head of the best intelligence service in the world?”

Did the USSR have more prospects for survival with Andropov than with any other Soviet leader? What are your impressions of Andropov?

I remember that Semichastny (in the early 1960s, the head of the KGB of the USSR - author) first sent me to report to Andropov, as the head of the department of socialist countries of the Central Committee. I did not expect that in the Central Committee I would meet a completely different and interesting person from the rest of the party leaders, with whom I could talk; We sat with Andropov for more than 4 hours, he asked about China, and at that time people came in and out of his office, Andropov left some: “Sit, listen, you need this.” Andropov, for example, read everything: both pleasant and unpleasant, but there were also leaders who read only pleasant information.

Andropov never took revenge on anyone. If he saw that something was not working out for a person, he simply transferred him to another job, and if, for example, he removed a security officer who had made some mistake to another unit, then, having received an additional explanation why the person made a mistake, he could change your point of view. I remember once during our report to Andropov, Yuri Vladimirovich said that he had information that was different from ours. I objected: "That's not true." Andropov says: “How many days does it take to check who is right: me or you?” "40-50 days. Difficult conditions." ...Kryuchkov later reproached me for why I reacted so rudely, but I said that Andropov had been asking me to tell only the truth for a long time. After a period of time, the same Kryuchkov meets me: “Well, how?” "Unfortunately, I was right." (Laughs).

Now the FSB is preparing for release the book “Andropov’s Team”, in which I wrote my impressions about the relationship with Yuri Vladimirovich, which I titled “Yu.V. Andropov (on the account in illegal intelligence).” (Smiles). He really was a member of our party organization. Came. But not every time, he was still a very busy man.

What were maximum terms intelligence officers being in an illegal position? And, by the way, when was it easier to prepare an illegal immigrant: in your time or now?

In those years when we had to work, the future illegal immigrant often did not have the qualities that the most ordinary people; our employees, for example, initially did not have the toothy acumen of people running a business. Therefore, it was often necessary to look at what personal qualities are inherent in a particular person and, in fact, give him a second education, from high school- to the highest. We did not have illegal immigrants who knew only one foreign language, at least 2-3. That is, we did a great job.

In one case, the most short term The training of an illegal immigrant for a specific purpose took us 7 years, after which the person worked abroad for 3 years and decorated his chest with 2 orders and the “Honorary Security Officer” badge. Naturally, the period of preparation of an illegal immigrant depends on the goal set for him. But the goal can be different: from good place, where he can live and work in peace, to the safe of some foreign leader. In this sense, the longest period from the start of work in illegal conditions to the completion of the assigned task was 17 years; This man, by the way, returned as a Hero of the Soviet Union.

If we talk about the length of continuous residence abroad as an illegal intelligence officer, then Vartanyan, for example, spent 43 years in this role. In fact, my entire life! One couple of our illegal immigrants had two children abroad, and when, as a result of Gordievsky’s betrayal, they had to return with the whole family to their homeland, the children began to ask their parents to go back: “Mom, let’s go home! There is no Coca-Cola or bananas here.” (Laughs).

What incentives guide people who decide to go into reconnaissance to “make the life” of another person? Romance?

Certainly. Let me give you an example. One day in Rostov, a 16-year-old girl came to the KGB and said that she wanted to work in intelligence. The head of the department asks her: “Have you finished school? Do you know foreign languages?” “No” “Then first finish college, learn the language, and then come.” She asks again: “What language should I learn?” The boss replies: “Whatever you want!” A few years later, she again comes to the same head of department: “Do you remember me? I graduated from college, I speak a foreign language...” and repeats her request. Stubborn girl!.. (Smiles). We took her. Prepared. They married our good employee...

But did she have the right to refuse?..

She had, of course, they were first introduced, shown to each other... And they, as a couple, left for work. They helped each other there. And now they live as husband and wife. Although there were, of course, cases when they quarreled abroad and drove back from the airport in different cars. For Soviet illegal immigrants abroad, a completely different life began: children, for example, could study in Catholic monasteries, and when some of the illegal immigrants returned home, they had to get used to life again environment, although it would seem that this was their homeland.

If we have already touched on a sensitive topic... On an intelligence assignment, could an illegal employee get married abroad?

Could. I had friends like this. Shortly before the unification of the two Germanys, my German colleagues asked me: “Do you know such and such a woman?” I say: "I know." "Can we use it?" I answer: “If she agrees.” They started talking to her. She asks: “Which employee should I go with? With him? - recalls the person with whom she worked before. - With him, even to the ends of the earth! But with the other - not.” (Laughs). By the way, the guy she remembered was from Leningrad. He's already dead.

You too, Yuri Ivanovich, if you didn’t happen to get married by order, then in the early 1960s you had to find a new “relative” in the person of legendary scout Rudolf Abel to help him get out of an American prison... Did you decide to become his “cousin” Jurgen Drives?

I myself, but on instructions from the Center, and as I believe today, acted somewhat frivolously. When they told me that I had to take part in the operation to return Abel, I only had the documents of a legal employee, that is, I had to be documented somehow. And then one day, returning from one assignment from West Berlin, I read on the iron fence of a dilapidated house: “Doctor Drives Yu.” I thought to myself: “Now there is a surname and an address. And the main thing is that this address is in West Berlin.” And when the conversation came up about what documents I should do in order to become a “relative” of Abel, to take part in this combination and in correspondence with James Donovan (at that time Abel’s New York lawyer - author), I gave these first and last names and an address in the GDR. And so they did.

And in Germany then there was a rule: in order for the local police officer to see who lived where, it was necessary to write your name on a board, the so-called “Silent Porter”, and hang it on the fence next to the house or next to the door to the house. The Americans gave the task of checking “my” address to their “source,” who completed the task and found this building, although he was very afraid of the territory of the GDR, where West Berlin was located. I later read his report to the Americans.

During the operation, I had to talk with Donovan, meet and see him off - we even shared a bottle of wine with him, and later in his memoirs he wrote: “Drives had big hairy hands.” (Laughs) I thought for a long time: “Do I have hairy arms?” (Shows hands).

- Is “roof liners” an offensive term?

Not offensive at all. This is a person who, due to his employment, has a permanent place of work in some civil institution, private or public. In the USA, for example, I was listed as our deputy permanent representative to the UN.

The words of the 10th adviser on national security US President Brzezinski: “We are deliberately increasing the possibility that the Soviet Union will send troops to Afghanistan.” Was it possible to avoid the violent scenario of events, not to be provoked? And did intelligence know about these words?

I knew. But it was impossible to avoid the introduction of our troops into Afghanistan, because the Americans themselves actively went there, moved their technical observation posts to our southern borders and even concluded an agreement with China on Afghanistan. So it was an objective necessity. By the way, this was not the first time we entered Afghanistan on such a mission, but the third or fourth. Besides, we had absolutely no intention of staying there...

Indeed, there was a withdrawal plan in the form of a document Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1980?

Yes. I destroyed this document. A few years after the troops were brought in, I came to Kryuchkov and said: “Since 1980, I have had this kind of material lying around, the implementation of which has not come to fruition. What are we going to do?” He answers: “Destroy.” I destroyed it. Quite interesting and good document, which we prepared together with Akhromeyev (at that time the first deputy chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR - author).

By the way, today Afghans, including Rabbani (in 1979-1989 - one of the commanders of the Mujahideen, in 1992 - 2001 - President of Afghanistan - author) say: “What fools we are for fighting the Russians then! It would be better if we were friends with them then." And NATO has long wanted to leave Afghanistan, but I very much doubt that the Afghans will let them out so easily, because NATO, unlike us, did nothing but shoot and bomb, and we shot once, then received a bullet in response, but at the same time they continued to build; We built a lot of facilities in Afghanistan.

During the stay of our troops in Afghanistan, there were cases when, for example, near Kandahar, where the situation was very difficult at that time, the leader of the local Mujahideen came to the head of our special forces at night with a bottle of cognac and said: “I new government I won’t accept it, but I don’t want to fight with you. Let's not shoot at each other?" And today the Americans, Danes, and British are accustomed to looking at these things a little differently: "Obey - that's all!"

Here we also need to say this... The West is using the territory of Afghanistan and the territories of our Central Asian republics to penetrate Russia; in Afghanistan they are training people who will create hotbeds of tension in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan... In this case, the Americans are implementing the plan that is set out in the work “Tasks of the US Air Force in the North Caucasus and Central Asia" - to divide the former republics of the USSR into pieces in order to immediately pick up what falls off.

Bin Laden - an American invention?

In the office in which we are talking now, sat the former American leader of Osama Bin Laden. We talked for a long time. In that Afghan war Americans took a direct part in the activities of the Mujahideen. When a new cohort of young generals came to the Pentagon about 5 years ago, they came to Moscow, Leonid Grigorievich Ivashov met with them, who invited me to this meeting. There the Americans ask me: “What is Basayev?” But it is known that Basayev was one of the leaders of a special forces unit involved in the military. I answer the Americans: “Basayev is our mistake, and your mistake is Bin Laden. As a result of a mistake in organizing relations between Bin Laden and the head of the local special forces, you and Bin Laden broke up. The same thing happened with us.”

What, in your opinion, is missing from our competent authorities in the fight against terrorism? Can you give an example of a modern effective way to cope with this scourge of the 21st century?

Arnold Schwarzenegger, a very smart person in this sense, when he was the governor of California, perfectly organized anti-terrorist work in his state. Schwarzenegger knew his state, its population very well, and understood how to notify the population about threats of terrorist attacks and organize the collection of the necessary information - for this he even created his own intelligence operations center. And most importantly, he did what our people don’t want to do - serious, thoughtful intelligence work in order to keep the region in their hands. After all, undercover work underlies the foundations of all anti-terrorist actions, and our people are simply afraid of this work. There is no need to talk a lot about this work, but you need to do it seriously.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the legendary reconnaissance and sabotage detachment "Vympel", the creation of which was initiated by you. Why did the country need such a special unit at that relatively prosperous time?

I started thinking about the need to create such a special unit a long time ago; the history of the fight against the OUN underground in Ukraine, the landing of American agents from the air in Ukraine and the Baltic states - said that the decision to liquidate for political reasons in the 1950s - 1960s units that carried out special activities on enemy territory and were capable of operational transfer throughout the country requires revision. I was confirmed in my thought when I saw what “our” armed forces looked like when they arrived in Afghanistan, and in what physical fitness Some of my former employees are there.

Guided by these considerations, in 1980 I reported my idea to Andropov. "Why is this necessary?" - he was surprised. I answer: “For example, an acute situation has developed, you throw us into place, we solve the main problems, and in the evening the main forces arrive...” “How many people do you need?” "One thousand and a half."

A year after we prepared all the documents, this issue was considered in Central Committee and the Council of Ministers. And only on August 19, 1981, a corresponding decision was made. The guys who developed this material and wrote the papers are still alive... I remember, “cutting” them, correcting them, expressing my thoughts... It turned out to be an interesting document; in the year that it was being considered, I made a small path to the Kremlin. (Laughs). I reported to lawyers, and to this, and to that... What happened! They even recalled similar events that took place in the pre-war period.

On what basis were people selected for the first Vympel?

Those who took part in the Afghan events were made the basis of the backbone, on which someone else’s meat was then built up. They took only volunteers from all over the Union, only KGB officers and troops. There were fewer KGB officers, firstly, because a large number of It was difficult to recruit them, and, secondly, as soon as we trained such an officer in our courses, he then sat down at the desk, and, look, after 3-4 years he had already gained weight, which means he was no longer suitable. Marshal Akhromeyev, when he looked at them in Afghanistan, then said to me: “Listen, why are they so thick?” (Laughs).

Full recruitment took one and a half to two years, but, having created a small unit of 100 people and given it basic training, we immediately sent it on a combat mission. They went on missions under different names: “Cascade”, “Vympel”, in my opinion, one group was even called “Vega”. Some Vympel employees underwent, naturally, illegally, “internship” in NATO special forces units, and 90% of Vympel employees knew foreign languages, many had 2-3 higher education, some even graduated from the Sorbonne, but at the same time, I emphasize, training in, say, hand-to-hand combat For everyone, without exception, we walked not on a soft carpet, but on asphalt.

The material support for Vympel differed from that for employees of ordinary bodies by a factor of two, because people devoted themselves virtually entirely to their work. The government's attention to them was enormous...

To the point that any operation could only be authorized personally by the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR...

There's only him. Because enormous forces were immediately involved...

And outside the USSR. What did you do and where exactly?

First of all, in Afghanistan, Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Cuba... They did everything that is done in war. And even more. “They stole,” for example, people who were secret carriers from enemy territory. Or, in one of the countries of the Middle East, citizens of the USSR were taken hostage. Negotiations with terrorists did not yield any results. And suddenly, under unclear circumstances, the bandit leaders die one after another. Those who remained received an ultimatum: if they do not release the hostages, then they will have to choose for themselves who will be next... Everyone was released.

The preparation of Vympel is legendary...

- “Vympelovtsy” were fully prepared. They could, for example, use hang gliders during their small operations. They could, if it was necessary for business, drink two bottles of vodka and remain sober - there is a special medicine that turns alcohol into clean water. They used special cartridges that made it possible to turn ordinary objects into powerful weapons: pens, umbrellas, canes. They knew how to make explosives from household chemicals. They knew which spiders could be eaten and which ones could not, and which herbs the same rat should be boiled with to make it fit for consumption. On the territory of a number of countries, we have equipped caches with stored there special equipment for reconnaissance and sabotage activities during the “special period”. Do they exist now? I will say this: let this question give a headache to someone else.

The Vympelovites knew how to camouflage themselves very well. I remember once that Army General Zakharov, who was inspecting us, was brought to the place where our guys were conducting exercises. He didn't find them. Then, in order to demonstrate to him that the disguised Vympelovites could see him, we asked Zakharov to make some movements and turned on the radio louder. We ask: “What is the general doing now?” They answer: “He adjusts his cap.” (Laughs). And in the area of Chernogolovka near Moscow, they literally walked along the “pennants” when they were looking for them - they merged so much with nature. When the guys got tired of this, they asked with a prearranged signal: “Can I take it?” They were told: “It’s possible.” They immediately put down the pursuers.

Did Vympel operate on the territory of the USSR?

There were exercises, but what kind of exercises!.. In the mid-1980s, at the request of the leadership, we checked the combat readiness of the special services and law enforcement countries. They threw 182 “saboteurs” with equipment into the territory of the USSR, from Odessa to Leningrad; For example, we got out of a submarine in the Sevastopol area, went through the whole of Crimea, reached almost Kiev, and not a single signal was received from us, although all the local authorities seriously set the guys on us: the Moscow KGB department, the Ukrainian KGB, the Belarusian KGB asked to strengthen surveillance behind strategically important objects, because, they say, saboteurs are expected. No one was caught.

As a result, we calmly went to those objects that we had designated for “sabotage”: we checked, say, Voronezh and Beloyarsk Atom stations, quietly studied their structure, got to the reactors and conditionally mined them, and dropped troops from the air onto the Yerevan nuclear power plant. At the same time, a large section of the Druzhba oil pipeline right up to the border was “mined” in as many as 16 places, and they also hung a “mines” sign on one of the duty booths. Or. They even penetrated the regional KGB department in Dubna.

The fate of Vympel is tragic - it became a hostage to political squabbles among the leadership of the new democratic Russia...

Yes. Yeltsin did not forgive Vympel for refusing to storm The White house in 1993, although in 1991 Vympel, in a similar situation, also did not storm the building of the Supreme Council, where Yeltsin was then hiding. On December 23, 1993, Yeltsin signed a decree reassigning Vympel to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. 112 people immediately submitted their resignations. 150 people went to counterintelligence, intelligence, and the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Some former employees created private security companies or your business; As far as I know, none of them stained themselves by serving criminal authorities, who offered advisory work for a colossal fee. At that time, only 50 people remained in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. As far as I remember, these are the guys who came to Vympel at its late stage, in the late 1980s, when the cooperative movement began to develop in the country. Therefore, as for the real “pennant fighters” who created this unit, I am sure that if the situation in the country had not changed, they would still continue to improve their fighting qualities with me

You had a very difficult life: you stormed Berlin in 1945 and saw the collapse of the victorious country, you wandered around the world under false names in the name of the security of your homeland, and you saw a time when in your homeland the names of security officers were indiscriminately ostracized... It seems that it is possible to retire, but I know that you are still in service, Yuri Ivanovich. What are you doing today, unless, of course, this is a state secret?

Peace! I have the same field professional activity there was always the whole world. In my memory, in addition to the countries that I told you about, Tierra del Fuego, Chile, New Zealand and many, many others; people associated with these countries are remembered. But here’s a paradoxical thing I want to tell you... From the point of view of understanding a number of subtleties in the political intricacies of world politics, before, oddly enough, I was poorer than now, because I was engaged in analytics only on narrow problems that directly concerned me as head of this area. Therefore, I would venture to say that work in the analytical center, which I created immediately after my resignation in 1991, keeping in mind the 16th chapter of the American manual for intelligence officers “Use of open sources of information”, from the point of view of understanding the situation in the world, gave me no less than management Soviet illegal intelligence.

Rg: Yuri Ivanovich, first of all, thank you for sending your new book “Operation President”. From the Cold War to the Reset. I came to congratulate you on your 85th birthday, but you are still at work.

Yuri Drozdov: My wife is still trying to persuade me: enough, go away. And I always answer the honest truth: If I leave, I’ll die. I still manage the Independent Marketing and Consulting Agency (NAMACON). And I write books.

RG: Serious, concerning history, politics, strategic development of Russia. But I would still like to talk to you...

Drozdov: I told everything about intelligence that was allowed. Or almost everything.

RG: Almost everyone admitted: it’s impossible to talk about some things even in 100 years, but about some things, perhaps, in five to ten years. The years passed unnoticed.

Drozdov: We can learn a lot from history new information. Okay, let's try. A lot of people have passed through my hands.

RG: I wrote a book about the illegal immigrant Abel Fischer, whom you rescued from captivity under the name of his cousin Jurgen Drives.

Drozdov: Abel was a wonderful man. And, by the way, a good artist. He gave me his painting. It still hangs at home right next to the chair. I felt how this coming of yours would turn out. Here you go, I have prepared an advertisement for you from the Internet. Have you seen it? “I will sell the drawings of intelligence officer Abel in Moscow for 120,000 rubles.”

RG: Wow business. Yes, this is his drawing from Atlanta. Now a lot of things are spinning and being told around Abel. For example, our other illegal immigrant, Georgiy, actually replaced the arrested Abel. But if we return to Abel, could we today evaluate what he did in the USA? Did the same George surpass him?

Drozdov: That's not exactly how the question is posed. They have different areas of work. Abel worked to some extent on atomic topics. The most difficult period of world history - the late 1940s - 1950s - the rampant McCarthyism. And Abel restored in the USA what might have been partially lost. To restore almost everything - no, it was not possible, it was not possible. This required much more time than he had. But there were new recruitments, acquisition of new agents. But he saved a lot. The work took place both through the legal residency and through illegal immigrants. All this was done and resolved as a result of prolonged efforts over many years. And it took almost five to seven years to prepare an illegal immigrant for active work. About five years after Abel was exchanged in 1962, we met him in our dining room. They came up and had a warm conversation. He was a very bright man.

RG: Have you talked?

Drozdov: I didn't have to. He told me, I never thanked you, but I should have. But, you know how it is with us: I left as a resident in China. Only that picture remained as a memory.

RG: And now let’s try to smoothly move on to his replacement - an illegal immigrant known as Georgy.

Drozdov: I'm afraid you take the word "replacement" too literally. A huge amount of work has been done here. Well, Georgy arrived there as an older man.

RG: From previous conversations, I understood that he was a Soviet subject, but a foreigner.

Drozdov: No, our normal Russian man is old and has serious mistakes in the German language, who still had to be made a foreigner. He had to point out these things all the time, and he assured: everything would be eliminated and done as it should be. So we continued our work stubbornly, especially since Georgy was good specialist in your area.

RG: Isn’t it a legitimate question that I’m asking you now - which one?

Drozdov: He was a technician. Closely related to what is called innovation today. And taking into account its characteristics and condition German language he needed to find an assistant. And a German woman with a good, let’s say, local pronunciation, became one, covering up the flaws in his language.

RG: But the West Germans skillfully split everyone who came to them according to certain criteria.

Drozdov: And so we had to work. We started with her, explained some points, and she said to you in German: “This is comical.” She tied it all to publications in literature, to events that happened a long time ago. Quite interesting security measures and conditional signals were taken, and she understood all of this. And then, when the time came, we introduced them. They looked carefully, meticulously, warily. And, you know, at first they quarreled. But then it all developed into something completely different, which lasted throughout their entire stay there.

RG: Did she have a husband?

Drozdov: No. She was not married. He still had relatives and family in Russia. But this is not the worst thing that happens in the lives of illegal immigrants. He returned to them. And he died in St. Petersburg - at home. I went and got peritonitis. To survive there for so many years... And it was very interesting with her. I see it as if I were alive. A pretty woman, above average height.

RG: And, of course, the blonde, Frau Elsa.

Drozdov: Not blonde, she was dark brown. But Frau Elsa is the best. Homemade, exactly what George needed to suit his appearance. Capable girl. When I worked in New York, I sometimes visited their house. I'll drive past the windows and take a look...

RG: But you didn’t stop by, didn’t meet?

Drozdov: God forbid. This was still not enough. I am a proponent of the idea that when working with illegal immigrants, no one should meet anyone at all. At the last stage of my work, already as the head of the department, I introduced the following order: there is only an impersonal connection. And no contact with illegal immigrants, no. After this couple worked for a long time, bypassing intermediate departments and divisions, their reports came only to me. This is to ensure their complete safety. They agreed with me, although some began to look askance at me and be offended. Even our strongest analysts, and others too. But I had reason to take care of illegal immigrants, because they were doing productive work and serious developments were underway. And that time was already dangerous. A period that in our official language is called “violation of the rules of residence of Soviet employees in the United States.” And when these violations appeared, I sent materials to Moscow. UN Deputy Secretary General Shevchenko was among the violators.

RG: Who asked for political asylum there, having managed to work a little for the Americans. Yuri Ivanovich, to hell with him, with this Shevchenko, but how did such an international couple of Soviet illegal immigrants - Georgy and his lady - end up in the USA? You once said that not without the help of a certain inspector Kleinert, in whose role you acted.

Drozdov: The aristocratic ex-Nazi Hohenstein showed up, and so did Inspector Kleinert. It was very difficult at a certain stage to interest the West in the personality of George. And we discussed this with one of the heads of the department of our Berlin apparatus, who came up with a bold idea. We went together to the East Germans to their control. It was a kind of test of my knowledge of the German language. We talked for a long time, including touching on one of the places where I, perhaps, needed to go in order to create a situation for sending George to the West, so that it would become obvious to them. It hung straight in the air. This whole test ended with our chief of staff asking: “Well, will he pass for a German?” And a German general from the GDR “married” me to enter this correspondence forwarding point, saying: “Let him go.”

RG: The forwarding point is in the GDR?

Drozdov: No, it was already there. They provided all this, and I worked there for exactly two weeks. What these 14 days consisted of: I needed to see that the documents for George had arrived, to see what they looked like. Although I myself took part in their preparation at an early stage. And forward the documents further, check that they went to the right concern. We managed to do all this.

RG: Is the concern American?

Drozdov: No, West German. We managed to do this, and also to establish good contacts with the people who worked at this point, controlled by their intelligence services. When it was time to leave, I arranged a retreat. We sat and drank beer. Everything is fine. There was a trembling in my heart, of course. God forbid it breaks. But what can you do? Everything worked out. The situation was played out correctly. Then, after the response that “we are expecting your arrival” was intercepted, they began to resolve the issues of the next stage. Georgy's arrival to work at this concern and further jump to the USA. It took him about a year and a half from the start of his work there.

RG: Did he know English?

Drozdov: No, only German. But there was also an element of risk here. We said goodbye in Berlin. I say: remember your mistakes. And he told me: “Now I’ll survive. She will support." He was a good, brave guy. Art helped him.

RG: I don’t quite understand: Georgy was not a professional intelligence officer?

Drozdov: Professional. A scout trained by us. And in his specialty he was a good, competent engineer. Just at that time in the USSR they were deciding questions about the latest electronics. And that's why we needed him to be there. The memory of him remains to this day. He left some of his instruments - reading microdots and everything else - to me. And then I gave them away. They should be somewhere in our Foreign Intelligence Service museum. Yes, George is a capable man. And he was drawn to photography; he was a wonderful photographer. But not everyone in the States loved him, not everyone. His wife told me: in New York he was considered one of the former Nazis. In any case, he did a great job for the country. The materials were very helpful.

RG: George’s case remains a mystery for the Americans. But there was also a lot that they somehow found out about.

Drozdov: In one of my conversations with the then intelligence chief Kryuchkov, I dropped the following phrase: you know, Vladimir Alexandrovich, we need to be as careful as possible when working with our materials. On Monday you get acquainted with documents from such and such a country, on Tuesday - from such and such a country, Wednesday, Thursday... On Friday, Saturday, Sunday - everyone rests, and we work, processing what we received. And next week the same work is going on, but no one should know this.

RG: Were you afraid of betrayal?

Drozdov: That's how it really was. There are some people in the highest echelons of power who under no circumstances should know about all this, about our results. The so-called “Kryuchkov List” with the names of these people from American agents was not made up out of thin air.

RG: Do you think there were such people?..

Drozdov: I don't think so, I'm sure of that. Confirmation is our agent materials.

RG: Yuri Ivanovich, but there were some just yet unknown people, about which even we are completely unknown?

Drozdov: Yes they were. It took 17 years to build the life of a completely different person. Take an illegal immigrant into the country, turn him from an unemployed person into an honorary citizen of the city. When he was awarded the Hero Star, there was a celebration. And then we were left alone in his apartment. Our country has already entered a critical period of history. And he admitted to me: “If 17 years ago they would have told me that it would all end like this, I would never have believed it.” He was terribly worried, he knew who was hanging on him, what his capabilities were, what needed to be done. Heroic man. At one time, we brought his son to one of the countries of Western Europe, where he went on a business trip from his permanent place of residence, so that the boy could see what a worthy father he had. And they spoke normally. But trouble happened. The son, while relaxing in the camp, drowned. And my father was at the funeral that day. One day. I packed up and went there again.

RG: Was the wife there too, with her husband?

Drozdov: No. We weren't able to use them together at that time. Firstly, her tongue didn’t work. Secondly, character... Moreover, Slavic appearance. She recently died.

RG: And your husband, Hero of Russia?

Drozdov: Soviet Union. He died here strange death. Got hit by a car...

RG: How do you see the future of intelligence? And does it have this future in the computer age?

Drozdov: I am optimistic about the future of intelligence. Because throughout the history of the world, man has always been engaged in reconnaissance. When the child looked through the keyhole for the first time, he had already begun to explore. And therefore, without intelligence, if you re-read biblical sources, society cannot live. Intelligence is needed in any state. As for our state, we definitely need it. We want to build our relations with the world correctly and move forward. To do this, they must also have a well-equipped, comprehensively trained illegal intelligence service.

RG: They say that now this is not necessary, because computers, open tools...

Drozdov: Of course, all this exists. But a lot of things also work for other people’s intelligence services. Why should we give up what all powerful powers use? We need to have a complete picture of the political landscape and work out a future strategy. Is this possible without intelligence?

RG: Yuri Ivanovich, thank you for the conversation. You are 85, congratulations. Maybe in another five or ten years, the classification of secrecy will be lifted from some other episodes. Then, I believe, you will tell us many more unknown things.

Permanent Address:"CHRONICLES and COMMENTARIES» .

Interviewed by Lev Sirin, Moscow, Fontanka.ru

According to the US foreign policy doctrine of the USSR, the very existence of the Soviet Union was incompatible with American security. In your opinion, has the US attitude towards Russia changed after the official announcement of the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR?

By 1991, judging by the documents of the International Monetary Fund and a number of documents within the United States itself, the Americans conducted an in-depth study of our economy and the moral and political state and mood of the Soviet people. The US Congress reviewed these materials and, as a result, Law 102 of 1992 was adopted under the name “Liberty Act for Russia and the Newly Independent States,” which was insulting to Russia. At the same time, in the fall of 1992, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff reported to the President and Congress an assessment of the state of the armed forces of the United States, where the very first paragraph of Chapter 11 “Special Operations” states that, despite the fact that the leaders of Russia took upon themselves obligations to reform our armed forces and law enforcement agencies, Russia will still remain our main adversary, requiring the closest attention.

Well, in principle, we can say that it was still a hot time, the “wild 1990s,” but... A few years ago, the Norwegian Institute for Strategic Studies published a work written by a former Soviet officer who probably once “left” to the West - I did not specifically study this circumstance - under the title "Can the territory of a former superpower become a battlefield." In it, based on his own experience and based on the analysis of many documents, he gives a conclusion about what kind of resistance military units of NATO countries may encounter on Russian territory: in which place they will be met with stones, in which place they will be shot, and in which they will be welcomed.

The Americans were not afraid of the revival of post-war Germany, just as they are not afraid of its strengthening now, because in 1949, before the Federal Republic of Germany was finally formed, which was allowed to have the Bundeswehr, Germany was tied hand and foot by agreements with the United States and other NATO countries. The former chief of military counterintelligence of the Bundeswehr, General Kamosa, published the book “Secret Games of the Secret Services,” where he directly writes that according to the post-war German-American agreements, every new German Chancellor who comes to govern the country must immediately after the elections come to the United States and sign a document called "Chancellor Act". The expiration date of the Chancellor Act is 2099. I will quote you an excerpt from “Secret Games of the Secret Services”: “On May 21, 1949, Federal Intelligence published, under the heading “Top Secret,” a secret state treaty, which set out the basic principles of the winners’ approaches to the sovereignty of the Federal Republic until 2099...” Will it remain by this time the German is a German? By this time, will the Bundeswehr remain capable of fighting as it did in World War II? What is the final purpose of the Chancellor Act? These are the questions that arise when reading this book.

Today, no one remembers that in fact, preparations for World War II began in 1929 with a meeting of American President Herbert Hoover with the most prominent US entrepreneurs from the Russell Center; They have such a secret society. It told Hoover: “A crisis is approaching, to try to avoid the difficult situation in which the United States may find itself can only be done by changing the balance of power in the world. To do this, we need to help Russia so that it finally gets rid of the devastation - the consequences of the civil war, and help Germany get rid of the grip of the Treaty of Versailles." “But this requires money,” Hoover objected, “several billions. And why do we need this, what will happen next?” “And then we need to pit Russia and Germany against each other so that, having recovered from the crisis, the United States finds itself only face to face with the remaining of these adversaries.”

As a result, such money was allocated. And the same American concerns that helped Russia restore its economy - built factories, participated in the creation of the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station - restored and equipped Germany. It is not for nothing that the grandfather of US President Bush, Prescott Bush, who helped the Germans in the 1930s, was deprived of the right to manage his property immediately after the start of the war, based on the fact that the United States is currently at war with Germany. All this is documented, including in the five-volume book of the American economist and historian Anthony Sutton. And what was known after the war: throughout the entire 20th century, the Americans carried out very serious, well-thought-out work to destroy the only strong enemy they had left in the person of the USSR.

By the way, the principle of selective memory in relation to history was clearly demonstrated today, for example, by Svanidze in his program “The Court of Time,” where he regularly deliberately keeps silent about important facts, and if his interlocutor reminds him of them, he quickly cuts him off. Watching this program, of course, was disgusting, but interesting, because it shows the depth of the work of the Americans to carry out an operation of influence on the other side. In America, a very interesting system of influencing large numbers of people has been developed in order to convince them to accept the American point of view on one issue or another.

By the way, an interesting fact. After the explosion of the twin towers in New York, the Americans did a lot of work to study the experience of the struggle of the Soviet government against the Basmachi. By the way, the development of terrorism in the countries of the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and on our territory is by no means a random phenomenon. If you look closely at who studied in special schools in the United States and Great Britain, it becomes clear that it was there that Mujahideen and Wahhabis were trained, say, for subversive activities in Ufa or the North Caucasus.

Did the “Kryuchkov list” really exist, in which the then head of the KGB lists agents of Western influence in domestic power structures?

-... who was on that list...

-... (Laughs) ...After the change of power, Deputy Prosecutor General Lyseiko pestered me with questions about the “Kryuchkov list”: “Did you receive such documents?” I answer: “I don’t remember.” He again: “Who was on this list?” "I do not remember". "Why don't you remember?" I say: “You see, there is a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the mid-1930s, which prohibits law enforcement agencies from accumulating materials on the leadership of the state.” Lyseiko opens his folder: “Yes, there is such a resolution!” I continue: “These materials were transferred to Kryuchkov, reported to the top, returned to us and destroyed.” “So what, you still don’t remember anything?” "I do not remember". He doesn’t lag behind: “Whose materials were these?” I answer: “You wanted me to become a traitor twice? It won’t work. I don’t remember anything...”

In the next month and a half, a book will be published written by one of the former military counterintelligence officers and a former employee of the special sector of the CPSU Central Committee, Joseph Borisovich Linder, entitled “Legends of the Lubyanka. Yakov Serebryansky.” About a famous intelligence officer with a difficult biography. This book presents in a concentrated form all the complexities of our development, from 1917 to the end of the Great Patriotic War, which have never been revealed in this way. ...Be sure to read it.

- And the enemy will not find anything new for himself in this book?

In the context of answering your question, the work prepared by the Rand Corporation (an unofficial think tank of the US government - author) “US Foreign Policy before and after Bush” is of great interest, where an assessment is made of the whole range of political activities of the US government and a national strategy is developed in relation to countries which are of great interest to the United States. So the US policy towards Russia and other countries of interest to them is a carefully thought-out approach when preparing any official or unofficial events. Another thing is that the conclusions drawn by certain American analysts from the same Rand Corporation are not always accepted by the US administration when developing specific measures - and this is the sacred right of any statesman - but the fact that they are listened to carefully is certain.

Did the United States ever declare out loud its interests in the mineral resources of the USSR, or did the idea of developing the natural resources of our country begin to be in the air only in post-Soviet times?

For them, the main political goal of working in this commission was, of course, the complete absorption of our economy, which some people from the CPSU Central Committee, who were then at the helm of our economic policy, knew or guessed, but participated in this game, hoping in turn to outwit the enemy and through this commission, improve trade contacts between the USSR and the West. In some cases they succeeded, in others they did not, but it took the West, as we see, about 50 years to fully realize their plans.

In this case, the word “civilization” refers to a system or systems of values that unite people of different nationalities, living in different states and professing different religions. Powerful transnational oligarchic clans have already determined the future of all humanity, and the academic circles of the West even gave it a scientific and theoretical form for greater persuasiveness. The practical process of globalization is already underway, and every year the world is steadily approaching the triumph of a new world order.

- In this situation, what will be the significance of the state security agencies called upon to protect the country’s sovereignty?

Dutch scientist and Nobel Prize laureate Jan Tinbergen said directly: “Security cannot be left to the discretion of sovereign national states.<...>We must strive to create decentralized planetary sovereignty and a network of strong international institutions that will implement it...” That's it. The global structuring and hierarchization of the world, while simultaneously abolishing the sovereignty of national states, will give the oligarchy free access to all the natural resources of the planet.

In particular, using the example of interaction between intelligence and the political authorities of the USSR, I can say that the work of our leaders in using the connections we established in the political interests of the state was to some extent weakened. Each of the leaders considered their point of view to be the ultimate truth, and they had serious disputes with each other. Let’s say, in the case of Shevchenko (in the 1970s, the deputy representative of the USSR to the UN, who fled to the West - author), Yuri Vladimirovich (Andropov - author) directly told me: “I read everything you wrote. You were right, and no one will punish you." The fact is that, having suspected Shevchenko of treason, I, as a resident of our intelligence service in the United States, began to signal this to Moscow. And as a result, he received... a ban on monitoring Shevchenko! However, I told myself: “No, this won’t work!” and continued to send materials compromising Shevchenko to the center.

Was the ban on touching Shevchenko an internal conflict and a reluctance to cast a shadow on the Foreign Ministry, or was it guarded by agents of influence in power structures in Moscow?

Then, perhaps, one of the internal reasons for the death of the Soviet Union was that, as you put it, “the work of our leaders to use the connections we had established in the political interests of the state was to some extent weakened,” which, in simple terms, means: information They took note of the scouts, but were in no hurry to use them. Have you felt any political or diplomatic impact from your work?

After this information, we studied the state of affairs on the Chinese railways - what and where transportation is carried out, talked with foreigners, and one circumstance helped us make the final conclusion, which unfortunately turned out to be correct. I had a meeting with representatives of the Krupp concern, to whom we supplied vodka and who were courted by the Chinese on a number of issues, and one of these representatives directly told me: “Are you blind? Don’t you see what the Chinese are doing? But I see, because I am Krupp, I am steel, and steel is war! That's the whole conversation, which nevertheless filled the cup of our guesses. We summarized the information and came to the conclusion: we should expect an armed provocation in the Damansky area. But Khrushchev didn’t believe us.

The deputy of the late Alexander Mikhailovich Sakharovsky (at that time the head of the PGU KGB of the USSR - author), Lieutenant General Mortin, who at that time was sitting in his place, when I came on vacation and met with him, told me: “Listen, you are in my You’ll give me a heart attack with your telegrams!” (Laughs). One can understand him; it was a difficult situation. A cultural revolution was underway in China, increasingly acquiring an anti-Soviet and anti-Russian character, in which, by the way, former Trotskyists who were thrown out of the USA and for some reason thrown into China actively participated; this happened at the height of McCarthyism in the late 1940s. I knew some of them. Knew Anna Louise Strong and Weinstein well. They all spoke Russian well.

-... I listen and don’t understand, why then did Mao Zedong himself congratulate you on his birthday?

Mao Zedong could not congratulate me. It was a joke from my colleagues. When I celebrated one of my birthdays in China, the guys who were part of our station prepared a “message” for the Xinhua (Chinese news agency - author) report on this event. (Laughs). Many years after this incident, when I came to work in New York, where I celebrated my 50th birthday, I found several of my former employees there who remembered our Chinese period well. It was they who brought and placed in front of me a roll of teletype tape, where it was reported that Mao Zedong congratulated Yuri Drozdov on his anniversary. I say: “Have they created a provocation again?” ...Here you need to understand that the “Americans” and the “Chinese” were two internally benevolently competing structures in intelligence, and this joke made me understand that the large legal station in the United States accepted me as one of their own.

- Is it true that there was a portrait of Andropov hanging in the office of one of the American counterintelligence officers?

Did the USSR have more prospects for survival with Andropov than with any other Soviet leader? What are your impressions of Andropov?

What was the maximum length of time that intelligence officers could remain illegal? And, by the way, when was it easier to prepare an illegal immigrant: in your time or now?

In those years when we had to work, the future illegal immigrant often did not have the qualities that most ordinary people have today; our employees, for example, initially did not have the toothy acumen of people running a business. Therefore, it was often necessary to look at what personal qualities were inherent in a particular person and actually give him a second education, from secondary school to higher education. We did not have illegal immigrants who knew only one foreign language, at least 2-3. That is, we did a great job.

In one case, the shortest period for training an illegal immigrant for a specific purpose was 7 years, after which the person worked abroad for 3 years and decorated his chest with 2 orders and the “Honorary Security Officer” badge. Naturally, the period of preparation of an illegal immigrant depends on the goal set for him. And the goal can be different: from a good place where he can live and work peacefully, to the safe of some foreign executive. In this sense, the longest period from the start of work in illegal conditions to the completion of the assigned task was 17 years; This man, by the way, returned as a Hero of the Soviet Union.

What incentives guide people who decide to go into reconnaissance to “make the life” of another person? Romance?

-... but she had the right to refuse?..

She had, of course, they were first introduced, shown to each other... And they, as a couple, left for work. They helped each other there. And now they live as husband and wife. Although there were, of course, cases when they quarreled abroad and drove back from the airport in different cars. For a Soviet illegal immigrant abroad, a completely different life began: children, for example, could study in Catholic monasteries, and when some of the illegal immigrants returned home, they had to re-acclimate to the environment, although, it would seem, this was their homeland.

- If we have already touched on a sensitive topic... On an intelligence assignment, could an illegal employee get married abroad?

You too, Yuri Ivanovich, if you didn’t happen to get married by order, then in the early 1960s you had to find a new “relative” in the person of the legendary intelligence officer Rudolf Abel to help him get out of an American prison... You yourself decided to become his “cousin” "Jurgen Drives?

- Is “roof liners” an offensive term?

The words of the 10th National Security Advisor to US President Brzezinski are known: “We are deliberately increasing the possibility that the Soviet Union will send troops to Afghanistan.” Was it possible to avoid the violent scenario of events, not to be provoked? And did intelligence know about these words?

-... Was there really a document in the form of a plan for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1980?

Yes. I destroyed this document. A few years after the troops were brought in, I came to Kryuchkov and said: “Since 1980, I have had this kind of material lying around, the implementation of which has not come to fruition. What are we going to do?” He answers: “Destroy.” I destroyed it. Quite an interesting and good document that we prepared together with Akhromeyev (at that time the first deputy chief of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces - author).

During the stay of our troops in Afghanistan, there were cases when, for example, near Kandahar, where the situation was very difficult at that time, the leader of the local Mujahideen came to the head of our special forces at night with a bottle of cognac and said: “I will not accept the new government, but I don’t want to fight with you. Let’s not shoot at each other?” And today the Americans, Danes, and British are accustomed to looking at these things a little differently: “Obey - that’s all!”

Here we also need to say this... The West is using the territory of Afghanistan and the territories of our Central Asian republics to penetrate Russia; in Afghanistan they are training people who will create hotbeds of tension in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan... In this case, the Americans are implementing a plan that is set out in the work “Tasks of the US Air Force in the North Caucasus and Central Asia” - to divide the former republics of the USSR into pieces in order immediately pick up what falls off.

- Bin Laden - an American invention?

In the office in which we are talking now, sat the former American leader of Osama Bin Laden. We talked for a long time. During that Afghan war, the Americans took a direct part in the activities of the Mujahideen. When a new cohort of young generals came to the Pentagon about 5 years ago, they came to Moscow, Leonid Grigorievich Ivashov met with them, who invited me to this meeting. There the Americans ask me: “What is Basayev?” But it is known that Basayev was one of the leaders of a special forces unit involved in the military. I answer the Americans: “Basayev is our mistake, and your mistake is Bin Laden. As a result of a mistake in organizing relations between Bin Laden and the head of the local special forces, you and Bin Laden broke up. The same thing happened with us.”

What, in your opinion, is missing from our competent authorities in the fight against terrorism? Can you give an example of a modern effective way to cope with this scourge of the 21st century?

A year after we prepared all the documents, this issue was considered in the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers. And only on August 19, 1981, a corresponding decision was made. The guys who developed this material and wrote the papers are still alive... I remember, “cutting” them, correcting them, expressing my thoughts... It turned out to be an interesting document; in the year that it was being considered, I made a small path to the Kremlin. (Laughs). I reported to lawyers, and to this, and to that... What happened! They even recalled similar events that took place in the pre-war period.

- On what basis were people selected for the first Vympel?

Those who took part in the Afghan events were made the basis of the backbone, on which someone else’s meat was then built up. They took only volunteers from all over the Union, only KGB officers and troops. There were fewer KGB officers, firstly, because it was difficult to recruit a large number of them, and, secondly, as soon as we trained such an officer in our courses, he then sat down at the desk, and, lo and behold, after 3-4 years I've already gotten fat, which means it's no longer good for me. Marshal Akhromeyev, when he looked at them in Afghanistan, then said to me: “Listen, why are they so thick?” (Laughs).

Full recruitment took one and a half to two years, but, having created a small unit of 100 people and given it basic training, we immediately sent it on a combat mission. They went on missions under different names: “Cascade”, “Vympel”, in my opinion, one group was even called “Vega”. Some Vympel employees, naturally, illegally, underwent an “internship” in NATO special forces units, and 90% of Vympel employees knew foreign languages, many had 2-3 higher educations, some even graduated from the Sorbonne, but at the same time, I emphasize , training, say, in hand-to-hand combat for everyone, without exception, took place not on a soft carpet, but on asphalt.

-... to the point that any operation could only be authorized personally by the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR...

There's only him. Because enormous forces were immediately involved...

-... and outside the USSR. What did you do and where exactly?

- There are legends about the preparation of “Vympel”...

- “Vympelovtsy” were fully prepared. They could, for example, use hang gliders during their small operations. They could, if it was necessary for business, drink two bottles of vodka and remain sober - there is a special medicine that turns alcohol into clean water. They used special cartridges that made it possible to turn ordinary objects into powerful weapons: pens, umbrellas, canes. They knew how to make explosives from household chemicals. They knew which spiders could be eaten and which ones could not, and which herbs the same rat should be boiled with to make it fit for consumption. On the territory of a number of countries, we have equipped caches with special equipment stored there for reconnaissance and sabotage activities during the “special period.” Do they exist now? I will say this: let this question give a headache to someone else.

- Did Vympel operate on the territory of the USSR?

There were exercises, but what kind of exercises!.. In the mid-1980s, at the request of the leadership, we checked the combat readiness of the country's special services and law enforcement agencies. They threw 182 “saboteurs” with equipment into the territory of the USSR, from Odessa to Leningrad; For example, we got out of a submarine in the Sevastopol area, went through the whole of Crimea, reached almost Kiev, and not a single signal was received from us, although all the local authorities seriously set the guys on us: the Moscow KGB department, the Ukrainian KGB, the Belarusian KGB asked to strengthen surveillance behind strategically important objects, because, they say, saboteurs are expected. No one was caught.

As a result, we calmly went to those objects that we had planned for “sabotage”: we checked, say, the Voronezh and Beloyarsk nuclear power plants, quietly studied their structure, got to the reactors and conditionally mined them, and dropped troops from the air onto the Yerevan nuclear power plant . At the same time, a large section of the Druzhba oil pipeline right up to the border was “mined” in as many as 16 places, and they also hung a “mines” sign on one of the duty booths. Or. They even penetrated the regional KGB department in Dubna.

The fate of Vympel is tragic - it became a hostage to political squabbles among the leadership of the new democratic Russia...

Yes. Yeltsin did not forgive Vympel for refusing to storm the White House in 1993, although in 1991, in a similar situation, Vympel also did not storm the building of the Supreme Council, where the same Yeltsin was then hiding. On December 23, 1993, Yeltsin signed a decree reassigning Vympel to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. 112 people immediately submitted their resignations. 150 people went to counterintelligence, intelligence, and the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Some former employees created private security companies or their own businesses; As far as I know, none of them stained themselves by serving criminal authorities, who offered advisory work for a colossal fee. At that time, only 50 people remained in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. As far as I remember, these are the guys who came to Vympel at its late stage, in the late 1980s, when the cooperative movement began to develop in the country. Therefore, as for the real “pennant fighters” who created this unit, I am sure that if the situation in the country had not changed, they would still continue to improve their fighting qualities with me

Peace! For me, the field of my professional activity has always been the whole world. In my memory, in addition to the countries that I told you about, Tierra del Fuego, Chile, New Zealand and many, many others; people associated with these countries are remembered. But here’s a paradoxical thing I want to tell you... From the point of view of understanding a number of subtleties in the political intricacies of world politics, before, oddly enough, I was poorer than now, because I was engaged in analytics only on narrow problems that directly concerned me as head of this area. Therefore, I would venture to say that work in the analytical center, which I created immediately after my resignation in 1991, keeping in mind the 16th chapter of the American manual for intelligence officers “Use of open sources of information”, from the point of view of understanding the situation in the world, gave me no less than management Soviet illegal intelligence.

"Arguments and Facts" after the August 1991 events published the "Secret List of Kryuchkov" of 75 names, which includes the famous democrat Lev Ubozhko, Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Eduard Shevardnadze, Yakovlev, Rutskoy, Khasbulatov, Burbulis, Popov, Luzhkov, Shakhrai, Stankevich ....

"Rossiyskaya Gazeta" - Federal issue No. 5289 (210)

This is someone you can’t say about: “The less you know, the better you sleep.” Yuri Ivanovich Drozdov knew all the illegal immigrants who worked in Soviet foreign intelligence. For many years he headed the department that directed their work.
Russian newspaper: Yuri Ivanovich, first of all, thank you for sending your new book “Operation President.” From the Cold War to the Reset. I came to congratulate you on your 85th birthday, but you are still at work.
Yuri Ivanovich Drozdov: My wife is still trying to persuade me: enough, go away. And I invariably answer with the honest truth: if I leave, I will die. I still manage the Independent Marketing and Consulting Agency (NAMACON). And I write books.
RG: Serious, concerning history, politics, strategic development of Russia. But I would still like to talk to you...
Drozdov: I told you everything about intelligence that was allowed. Or almost everything.
RG: Almost everyone admitted: some things cannot be talked about in 100 years, but some things, perhaps, in five to ten years. The years passed unnoticed.
Drozdov: We can learn a lot of new information from history. Okay, let's try. A lot of people have passed through my hands.
RG: I wrote a book about the illegal immigrant Abel Fischer, whom you rescued from captivity under the name of his cousin Jurgen Drives.
Drozdov: Abel was a wonderful man. And, by the way, a good artist. He gave me his painting. It still hangs at home right next to the chair. I felt how this coming of yours would turn out. Here you go, I have prepared an advertisement for you from the Internet. Have you seen it? "I will sell drawings of intelligence officer Abel in Moscow for 120,000 rubles."
RG: Wow business. Yes, this is his drawing from Atlanta. Now a lot of things are spinning and being told around Abel. For example, our other illegal immigrant, Georgiy, actually replaced the arrested Abel. But if we return to Abel, could we today evaluate what he did in the USA? Did the same George surpass him?
Drozdov: That’s not exactly how the question is posed. They have different areas of work. Abel worked to some extent on atomic topics. The most difficult period of world history - the late 1940s - 1950s - the rampant McCarthyism. And Abel restored in the USA what might have been partially lost. To restore almost everything - no, it was not possible, it did not work out. This required much more time than he had. But there were new recruitments, acquisition of new agents. But he saved a lot. The work took place both through the legal residency and through illegal immigrants. All this was done and resolved as a result of prolonged efforts over many years. And it took almost five to seven years to prepare an illegal immigrant for active work. About five years after Abel was exchanged in 1962, we met him in our dining room. They came up and had a warm conversation. He was a very bright man.
RG: Have you talked?
Drozdov: I didn't have to. He told me, I never thanked you, but I should have. But, you know how it is with us: I left as a resident in China. Only that picture remained as a memory.
RG: Now let’s try to smoothly move on to his replacement - an illegal immigrant known as Georgy.
Drozdov: I'm afraid you take the word "replacement" too literally. A huge amount of work has been done here. Well, Georgy arrived there as an older man.
RG: From previous conversations, I understood that he was a Soviet subject, but a foreigner.
Drozdov: No, our normal Russian man is old and has serious mistakes in the German language, who still had to be made a foreigner. He had to point out these things all the time, and he assured: everything would be eliminated and done as it should be. So we continued our work stubbornly, especially since Georgy was a good specialist in his field.
RG: Isn’t it a legitimate question that I’m asking you now - which one?
Drozdov: He was a technician. Closely related to what is called innovation today. And taking into account his characteristics and the state of the German language, he needed to find an assistant. And a German woman with a good, let’s say, local pronunciation, became one, covering up the flaws in his language.
RG: But the West Germans skillfully split everyone who came to them according to certain criteria.
Drozdov: And that's why we had to work. We started with her, explained some points, and she said to you in German: “This is comical.” She tied it all to publications in literature, to events that happened a long time ago. Quite interesting security measures and conditional signals were taken, and she understood all of this. And then, when the time came, we introduced them. They looked carefully, meticulously, warily. And, you know, at first they quarreled. But then it all developed into something completely different, which lasted throughout their entire stay there.
RG: Did she have a husband?
Drozdov: No. She was not married. He still had relatives and family in Russia. But this is not the worst thing that happens in the lives of illegal immigrants. He returned to them. And he died in St. Petersburg - at home. I went and got peritonitis. To survive there for so many years... And it was very interesting with her. I see it as if I were alive. A pretty woman, above average height.
RG: And, of course, the blonde, Frau Elsa.
Drozdov: Not blonde, she was dark brown. But Frau Elsa is the best. Homemade, exactly what George needed to suit his appearance. Capable girl. When I worked in New York, I sometimes visited their house. I'll drive past the windows and take a look...
RG: But you didn’t stop by, didn’t meet?
Drozdov: God forbid. This was still not enough. I am a proponent of the idea that when working with illegal immigrants, no one should meet anyone at all. At the last stage of my work, already as the head of the department, I introduced the following order: there is only an impersonal connection. And no contact with illegal immigrants, no. After this couple worked for a long time, bypassing intermediate departments and divisions, their reports came only to me. This is to ensure their complete safety. They agreed with me, although some began to look askance at me and be offended. Even our strongest analysts, and others too. But I had reason to take care of illegal immigrants, because they were doing productive work and serious developments were underway. And that time was already dangerous. A period that in our official language is called “violation of the rules of residence of Soviet employees in the United States.” And when these violations appeared, I sent materials to Moscow. UN Deputy Secretary General Shevchenko was among the violators.
RG: Who asked for political asylum there, having managed to work a little for the Americans. Yuri Ivanovich, to hell with him, with this Shevchenko, but how did such an international couple of Soviet illegal immigrants - Georgy and his lady - end up in the USA? You once said that not without the help of a certain inspector Kleinert, in whose role you acted.
Drozdov: The aristocratic ex-Nazi Hohenstein showed up, and so did Inspector Kleinert. It was very difficult at a certain stage to interest the West in the personality of George. And we discussed this with one of the heads of the department of our Berlin apparatus, who came up with a bold idea. We went together to the East Germans to their control. It was a kind of test of my knowledge of the German language. We talked for a long time, including touching on one of the places where I, perhaps, needed to go in order to create a situation for sending George to the West, so that it would become obvious to them. It hung straight in the air. This whole test ended with our chief of staff asking: “Well, will he pass for a German?” And a German general from the GDR “married” me to enter this correspondence forwarding point, saying: “Let him go.”
RG: The forwarding point is in the GDR?
Drozdov: No, it was already there. They provided all this, and I worked there for exactly two weeks. What these 14 days consisted of: I needed to see that the documents for George had arrived, to see what they looked like. Although I myself took part in their preparation at an early stage. And forward the documents further, check that they went to the right concern. We managed to do all this.
RG: Is the concern American?
Drozdov: No, West German. We managed to do this, and also to establish good contacts with the people who worked at this point, controlled by their intelligence services. When it was time to leave, I arranged a retreat. We sat and drank beer. Everything is fine. There was a trembling in my heart, of course. God forbid it breaks. But what can you do? Everything worked out. The situation was played out correctly. Then, after the response that “we are expecting your arrival” was intercepted, they began to resolve the issues of the next stage. Georgy's arrival to work at this concern and further jump to the USA. It took him about a year and a half from the start of his work there.
RG: Did he know English?
Drozdov: No, only German. But there was also an element of risk here. We said goodbye in Berlin. I say: remember your mistakes. And he told me: “Now I’ll survive. She’ll support me.” He was a good, brave guy. Art helped him.
RG: I don’t quite understand: Georgy was not a professional intelligence officer?
Drozdov: Professional. A scout trained by us. And in his specialty he was a good, competent engineer. Just at that time in the USSR they were deciding questions about the latest electronics. And that's why we needed him to be there. The memory of him remains to this day. He left some of his instruments - reading microdots and everything else - to me. And then I gave them away. They should be somewhere in our Foreign Intelligence Service museum. Yes, George is a capable man. And he was drawn to photography; he was a wonderful photographer. But not everyone in the States loved him, not everyone. His wife told me: in New York he was considered one of the former Nazis. In any case, he did a great job for the country. The materials were very helpful.
RG: George's case remained a mystery to the Americans. But there was also a lot that they somehow found out about.
Drozdov: In one of my conversations with the then intelligence chief Kryuchkov, I dropped the following phrase: you know, Vladimir Alexandrovich, we need to be as careful as possible when working with our materials. On Monday you get acquainted with documents from such and such a country, on Tuesday - from such and such a country, Wednesday, Thursday... On Friday, Saturday, Sunday - everyone rests, and we work, processing what we received. And next week the same work is going on, but no one should know this.
RG: Were you afraid of betrayal?
Drozdov: So it really was. There are some people in the highest echelons of power who under no circumstances should know about all this, about our results. The so-called “Kryuchkov List” with the names of these people from American agents was not made up out of thin air.
RG: Do you think there were such people?..
Drozdov: I don't think so, I'm sure of that. Confirmation - our agent materials.
RG: Yuri Ivanovich, were there still completely unknown people, about whom even we are completely unknown?
Drozdov: Yes they were. It took 17 years to build the life of a completely different person. Take an illegal immigrant into the country, turn him from an unemployed person into an honorary citizen of the city. When he was awarded the Hero Star there was a celebration. And then we were left alone in his apartment. Our country has already entered a critical period of history. And he admitted to me: “If 17 years ago they would have told me that it would all end like this, I would never have believed it.” He was terribly worried, he knew who was hanging on him, what his capabilities were, what needed to be done. Heroic man. At one time, we brought his son to one of the countries of Western Europe, where he went on a business trip from his permanent place of residence, so that the boy could see what a worthy father he had. And they spoke normally. But trouble happened. The son, while relaxing in the camp, drowned. And my father was at the funeral that day. One day. I packed up and went there again.
RG: Was the wife there too, with her husband?
Drozdov: No. We weren't able to use them together at that time. Firstly, her tongue didn’t work. Secondly, character... Moreover, Slavic appearance. She recently died.
RG: And your husband, Hero of Russia?
Drozdov: Soviet Union. He died a strange death here. Got hit by a car...
RG: How do you see the future of intelligence? And does it have this future in the computer age?
Drozdov: I am optimistic about the future of intelligence. Because throughout the history of the world, man has always been engaged in reconnaissance. When the child looked through the keyhole for the first time, he had already begun to explore. And therefore, without intelligence, if you re-read biblical sources, society cannot live. Intelligence is needed in any state. As for our state, we definitely need it. We want to build our relations with the world correctly and move forward. To do this, they must also have a well-equipped, comprehensively trained illegal intelligence service.
RG: They say that now this is not necessary, because computers, open tools...
Drozdov: Of course, all this exists. But a lot of things also work for other people’s intelligence services. Why should we give up what all powerful powers use? We need to have a complete picture of the political landscape and work out a future strategy. Is this possible without intelligence?
RG: Yuri Ivanovich, thank you for the conversation. You are 85, congratulations. Maybe in another five or ten years, the classification of secrecy will be lifted from some other episodes. Then, I believe, you will tell us many more unknown things.

The main document studied in the new book by Yu. I. Drozdov and A. G. Markin was report 171; Russian Foreign Policy. Origins and Incarnation 187;, prepared by a group of American analysts from the RAND Corporation for the US Presidential Administration. This report, covering political and economic development Russian state over the past decade, recommendations are given to the American ruling elite on how and what needs to be done so that Russia, while remaining 171;a convenient partner 187;, cannot resist global American hegemony in establishing 171;New World Order 187;. The authors trace the history of relations between Russia and a number of Western states, based on geopolitical and geostrategic documents of the past and present era, assessments of political figures, calculations of sociological services and media evidence. The book by Yu. I. Drozdov and A. G. Markin is intended both for specialists in the field of development of laws governing world processes, and for the widest range of readers.

Publisher: "Artstyle-Poligraphy" (2010)

ISBN: 978-5-9902343-2-1

Drozdov, Yuri Ivanovich

CEO analytical center "Namacon"; born in 1925 in Minsk; participant of the Great Patriotic War; Graduated from the First Leningrad Artillery School, Faculty of Special Propaganda of the Military Institute foreign languages in 1956, trained at the Institute of Foreign Languages of the KGB of the USSR (1956-1957); was a resident of the USSR KGB in China and the USA; 1979-1991 - Head of Directorate "S" (illegal intelligence) of the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR; retired major general; Honorary President of the Association of Veterans of Special Forces and Special Services "Vympel-Soyuz".

Drozdov Yu. I., Markin A. G. “Operation “President”. From the Cold War to the Reboot M.: Artstyle-Printing. 2010

The legendary Soviet intelligence officer Yuri Drozdov, a major general who headed the Illegal Intelligence Directorate of the PGU KGB of the USSR for twelve years, and now the head of the NAMAKON analytical center, who recently celebrated his 85th birthday, presented the reader with his latest work. The new book by Yuri Drozdov and Andrei Markin, like their previously published work “Arrogant Eagle - 2007”, attracts the reader’s attention not only with its title...

The authors were prompted to write this book, subtitled “From the Cold War to the Reset,” by the recently published report “Russian Foreign Policy” by a group of American analysts. Origins and incarnation." It was prepared specifically for the US administration. This report covers the political and economic development of Russia over the past decade and gives, as always, obsessive recommendations to the US ruling elite on what and how to do so that our country remains a “convenient partner” and cannot resist global American hegemony to establish a “new world order."

Based on an analysis of the works of the founders of the Anglo-Saxon geopolitical school, the authors propose to the reader the following geopolitical matrix, which can be called the formula for world domination: “Control over world space plus control over all resources and plus control over the World Island (Eurasia).” And in the preface to their book, Drozdov and Markin remind us of events more than 60 years ago - about the speech in Fulton (USA) by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. His speech about peace and friendship with Russia, which marked the beginning of the Cold War of the West against Russia, the authors for the first time in last half century decided to publish it in full so that modern readers and especially the younger generation can be convinced that nothing has changed in relations between Russia and the West, including the peacekeeping rhetoric of Nobel Peace Prize laureate 44th US President Barack Obama.

The Cold War, as we know, ended in victory for the West. After its end, the leaders of Russia and the United States repeatedly announced a move away from confrontation and an upcoming strategic partnership. However, each side understood such a partnership in its own way. So, ex-president USA Clinton, at a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October 1995, summing up the interim results of this partnership, said: “We have achieved what President Truman was going to do with the Soviet Union through atomic bomb. True, with one significant difference - we received an appendage of raw materials, a state not destroyed by an atom, which would not have been easy to create. Yes, we spent many billions of dollars on this, and they are already close to what the Russians call self-sufficiency: in four years, we and our allies received $15 billion worth of various strategic raw materials, hundreds of tons of gold, precious stones. For non-existent projects, over 20 thousand tons of copper, almost 50 thousand tons of aluminum, two thousand tons of cesium, beryllium, strontium, etc. were transferred to us for negligible amounts.

Having shaken the ideological foundations of the USSR, we were able to bloodlessly withdraw from the war for world domination the state that constitutes the main competitor to America. Our goal and task is to continue to provide assistance to everyone who wants to see in us a model of Western freedom and democracy.”

According to the authors of the book, since 2000, “the political lines of Russia and the United States have left the state of harmony, which consisted in the fact that Russia played giveaway with the United States, receiving in return condescending praise from its “big brother.” But gradually this game lost interest for the American side, because nothing is valued as cheaply as what one gets for nothing.

Managing Russia and its resources from the outside has long been, the authors emphasize, the subject of dreams of many representatives of European, Asian, and, since the beginning of the twentieth century, American ruling elites. The book analyzes the internal and economic factors of Russian foreign and security policy, highlighting interests, goals and approaches in this area. A complete picture of the contents of the book by Yuri Drozdov and Andrei Markin is given by a simple listing of some of its chapters: “The Internal Situation of Russia”, “Russian Economy and Resources for Defense”, “ Modern Russia and the USA” – which provides an analysis of global political processes and their extrapolation for the next 20–30 years. Such extrapolation of facts gives the work freshness and relevance, despite the fact that it is structured rather complexly with many large comments in small print, digressions, charts, graphs, footnotes and multi-page excerpts from American documents and various foreign experts on geopolitics and globalization.

The main title of the book, “Operation President,” is also somewhat inconsistent with the content. This “operation” is allocated only nine pages in this journalistic work. However, this is not so important, the main thing is that the authors’ work clearly traces the history of relations between Russia and Western states, shows the interests of the United States from the point of view of security problems and affirms the idea that without cooperation with Russia it is impossible to successfully combat transnational threats and the danger emanating from proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The authors express the opinion that in the near future the United States will offer Russia a kind of analogue of the Molotov-Ribbentrop plan for Asia, dividing it into spheres of influence, Washington will give Moscow the dubious right to deal with the legacy that will remain from the US presence in this region. In Afghanistan, the United States and NATO will also try to shift the entire burden to the CSTO and SCO, pitting China and Russia in the struggle for influence in Asia, while they themselves will try to remain “above the fray.”

A separate subsection of the book is devoted to the activities of the Bilderberg Club, the emergence of which is associated with the attempt of the European elites to somehow restrain the US claims to leadership of all world politics, which was assumed by the Council on international relations. On the other hand, American politicians and financiers willingly took part in the Bilderberg Club, as they hoped to more actively and directly influence the powers that be in Europe, knowing that its ultimate goal was the creation of a world government, and to miss the opportunity to directly influence the authorities they could not possibly control Europe.

The authors of the book are absolutely right when they touch upon the problem of global scarcity of natural resources. The global structuring and hierarchization of the world, while simultaneously abolishing the sovereignty of national states, will give the oligarchy free access to all the natural resources of the planet.

This idea is now being actively developed by Western experts. For example, the American economist Anthony Dolman proposes to abolish the ownership rights of nations to Natural resources their states and give them to the property of “all mankind.” Naturally, they will be directly managed by the world government, the creation of which is so advocated by the transnational oligarchy. A more realistic option for the denationalization of resources is proposed by the Dutch scientist, Nobel Prize laureate Jan Tinbergen, who seeks to prove the thesis about the need to revise the principle of national sovereignty in its modern understanding. In his opinion, in the near future the sovereignty of national states over natural and human resources will remain. The implementation of Tinbergen's project leads to the elimination of national sovereignty. He recognizes that the implementation of his theoretical construct will allow the gradual "internationalization" of all the world's resources based on the principle of the "common heritage of mankind." Ultimately, Tinbergen believes, “we must strive to create decentralized planetary sovereignty and a network of strong international institutions that will implement it.” It is clear that this “network of strong international institutions, that is, the world government, will be led by a transnational oligarchy. In addition, the intellectual elite of the West calls for the creation of effective supranational institutions that would be engaged in “optimal management of the planet.” This, she believes, is extremely necessary because in the modern world “security cannot be left to the discretion of sovereign nation states.” In this regard, it is proposed to create 12–15 regional federations of the same scale from currently existing states, as certain “building blocks” from which the “optimal world order” will be built. The next phase of global integration is the formation of a global governance system.

Needless to say, the new book by Yuri Drozdov and Andrei Markin makes you think about a lot, and it ends very eloquently: “Powerful transnational oligarchic clans have already determined the future of all humanity, and the academic circles of the West even gave it a scientific and theoretical form for greater persuasiveness. The practical process of globalization is already underway, and every year the world is steadily approaching the triumph of a new world order.

The history of the West gives no reason to hope that its ruling circles will provide non-Western countries and peoples with the necessary resources and material benefits that Western states have purposefully taken from them over the centuries. The entire history of the world convincingly demonstrates that they will never, under any circumstances, reduce their consumption for the sake of the survival of non-Western peoples.

Under these conditions, Russia is destined for the fate of a calf, which must be sacrificed “for the good of all mankind,” as US President Wilson’s personal adviser, Colonel House, proposed almost a hundred years ago.”

Diagnostics and diseases. Medicines from A to Z

Yuri Drozdov: For the United States, Russia is not a defeated enemy.

Drozdov, Yuri Ivanovich