A man from the shadow

The real life of the "independent journalist" Victor Louis

The charm of twilight being. This man was called Vitaly Evgenievich Levin. But he became informed like Victor Louis. Two leading channels of the country at once made films about him. NTV - documentary "Louis King". The first-in the prime-Time showed a three-part phenomenon film "Informed Source in Moscow." Who was this mysterious person really and why the legend of him was in demand today - found the New Times

Shooting from behind-the corporate identity of the "independent journalist" Viktor Louis (in the picture-on the left)

"Is it far from the Moevites?" - "Not it ..."
A. Pushkin. "Boris Godunov"

The creators of both ribbons, as it turned out, were aware of the complexity of their main character: “KGB agent”, “worked for the organs”, “Kreepy Kremlin insider”, “Andropov supervised Louis”, “Transaction with the devil”. But both of them attracted the charm of “one of the most influential figures of the era of developed socialism”: “The first dollar millionaire”, “he was envied ... lived a real master, and even the highest party nomenclature was an irregularity.” In the country in an elite Bakovka - a park of luxurious cars: Porsche, Bentley, Volvo. The owner - a Soviet citizen, a former prisoner of the Stalinist camps, now working as a correspondent of Western newspapers and married in an Englishwoman, in passing to play: "I have more than that of Brezhnev."
What hid the "estate"? Really only a fleet? By no means!

A sign figure

The writer, dissident, then (in 1976), emigrant Anatoly Gladilin, told about the visit to Viktor Louis in the book “The First attempt of memoirs”. In 1972, the publishing house “Sowing” in Frankfurt-on-Main was his novel “Forecast for Tomorrow”, and for this the author was just oppressed. Suddenly - an invitation received through the screenwriter Yuri Kirshon, a former coalger Louis: “Louis invites to visit. He has a gift for you ... Your book published in Germany ... " -" Yura, but I will not have troubles? " - "Nonsense, Louis, of course, is a large intelligence officer, but you are too small for him ..."
(Gladilin knew about the scale of Louis's “work” - he “became a sign figure in international life. At the reception at the American embassy, ​​a high -ranking diplomat says:“ We have long been preparing our president’s visit to Moscow. And Victor Louis said that the visit will not be ”and was puzzled by his hands. The visit did not take place ...”)))
The “Sign Figure” took the writer to the library: “The basement room, very well -groomed, equipped in the book hall: all samizdat! All Tamizdat! A complete collection of anti -Soviet literature. These books would have been enough to wind up the full term of more than one or two dissidents, but to the whole battalion! ” Louis took off the shelf and handed Gladilin his book ...
Reader, are you imbued with respect for the courage of the holder underground (literally!) Library? In those years, “Books” usually finished their way differently: the manager of the Odessa library of Samizdat Vyacheslav Gamesov in 1975, in 1975, hit a “psychiatric hospital” for a couple of years, and Peter Butov who replaced him in 1982 went to Perm political camps for five years ...

Benefactor

But sometimes conversations in the "estate" were more practical. In 1972, in the midst of the struggle of Soviet Jews for traveling to Israel, David Markish, the son of a poet and a member of the anti-fascist Jewish committee of Pereza Markish, received advice: call Louis, he will solve your problems! He called, received an invitation, arrived. “Look,” said Louis, “these are families of refuseniks. Twenty -three families. Your friends in Jerusalem passed the list, asked to help. Eighteen families have already left. There are five left. You are among them. I will call a week before you get permission. They will give a little time for fees. ” - “And the rest? I asked. "Lerner, Slepak, Polish?" - “They are a little more complicated with them. But let them not despair. So tell them. ” * * "Lehaim" No. 9, 2002

"Smiling young man with glasses" - this was a novice agent

Markish managed to leave in November 1972. It was really more difficult with others. They tried to act publicly: open letters, press conferences, hunger strikes. Vladimir Semenovich Slepak even entered the Helsinki group in 1976-and in 1978 he went “for hooliganism” for five years in exile in Buryatia. Marquis is surprised: “How and why Victor Louis, throughout the 1970s, flew to Israel at least five times?” (With whom, we add, the Soviet Union had no diplomatic relations.)
There was no diplomatic relationship with Taiwan, nevertheless, our hero has been there more than once, and for this he also had nothing - unlike other Soviet citizens. The crew of the Tuapse tanker, captured by the islanders in 1954, carefully gathered around the world-and sent to the camps. True, in the film “Emergencies-Extraordinary Investigation” shot by this plot, the “emergency” was not mentioned about such delicate things, the heroism of Soviet sailors sang the heroism of Soviet sailors there in the best traditions of propaganda films.

Questions of literature

“Judging by the statements of Victor Louis, Andropov was his direct curator and guardian. It was he who allowed Louis an extraordinary line of behavior and a lifestyle for the Soviet Union, ”writes Markish. From the cottage, Louis brought him to Porsche. “It was crowded, unusual, like in the pilot cab:“ An excellent car, ”Victor said. - The fee for "twenty letters to a friend."
“Twenty letters to a friend” - the so -called memoirs of Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Stalin in 1967. The film reports about the “daring operation to remove memoirs” carried out by Louis. That is, Louis, it turns out, risking, took the memoirs to the west? Svetlana Iosifovna herself in the book “Only one year” spoke about this differently. She wrote memories for several years, left the USSR to India, stayed there, and here ... “Daily Express began to print photos stolen from my table under the heading“ Stalin's Secret Albums ”, with the comments of Louis, where the names, dates, and facts were confused. Louis made a mixture of photographs, his own text and retelling of the manuscript - this also began to publish Stern under the guise of Svetlana's Memoirs.
The fake was not only a product, but also raw materials: Louis referred to an interview with Svetlanina Aunt Anna Sergeyevna, long deceased, quoted conversations with ex -husbands, whom he did not meet. Louis told reporters that he received photographs and the manuscript in Moscow “From the Alleiluyeva family”, although her children never knew anything about the manuscript and she was not stored at home. “Or was it an amateur manual of an“ independent journalist ”? - asked Svetlana Iosifovna.
Louis's works paid by Porsche were actually part of the campaign to compromise “twenty letters” and their author to present her as Svetlana herself, “crazy with increased sexuality” and, ideally, to disrupt the release of the book.
In 1968, Viktor Louis provided the same “assistance” in the publication abroad of the Solzhenitsyn “Cancer Corps”: he sold the manuscript of the Emigrant “facets” obtained by the Habeshniki. Solzhenitsyn believes that in this way, in the “best” case, they were going to put him, and at least - to stop the publication in his homeland, in the “New World”. Alexander Isaevich outlined this story in the book "Boda Boda Oak with an oak." Louis himself turned out to be compromised. The film of Anton Khrekova on NTV says that after this story with Louis stopped saying, from the West they called in hysteria: "Are you trading stolen?" He panicked and went to Solzhenitsyn to “understand”, demanded an apology. “And even such a person as Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn apologized to him,” they tell us from the TV. “And there was no one more time or mention of this.” Did he apologize with fear and fell silent? - I was perplexed in her open letter published in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta, * * * September 29, 2009, the widow of the writer Natalya Dmitrievna. Lie: “About Luya” Solzhenitsyn wrote in 1972, and in 1975, and in 1998, and everything is unflattering ...

In the film film "Informed Source in Moscow" one of the key episodes -

Viktor Louis transfer information about the withdrawal of N. S. Khrushchev to the west before the official message of TASS.

In the role of Louis - Victor Verzhbitsky. Khrushchev - Sergey Losev

For lack of Reichstag

“Active events” with the participation of our hero were not limited to literature. Alexander Isaevich writes about one episode where another great dissident played the main role, Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov: “In early 1977, Sakharov had to become an unprecedentedly sharp confrontation with state security-and I consider these months the top in his struggle, the peak of his courage. This happened from the explosion of January 8 in the Moscow metro and the vile note Viktor Louis in the West that the explosion was produced by dissidents. ” * * TASS announced the explosions on January 10, on the same day, an article by Viktor Louis was published in London Ivning News.
The story with an explosion in the Moscow metro on January 8, 1977 is still covered with darkness. Dozens of people were then killed and injured. The “independent journalist” Louis on the same day reports to the West: the explosion arranged a dissident group “like a gang of Baader-Mainhof”. Then it was not necessary to explain what the terrorist levak group “Rot Armam Fraxion” is. * * The Red Army faction - RAF, Rote Armee FrakTion, Baader -Mainhof Group, Levoradical Terrorist Organization "City Partisan" in Germany and West Berlin, was founded in 1968. In June 1972, the key figures of RAF were arrested. The provocation of Louis was very timely: in January 1977, the attention of the European media was focused on the 192-day RAF process, which ended in April for life sentences. It turned out from Louis that the dissidents were the same terrorists, therefore, there was nothing to stand on ceremony with them ...
Only a decisive and joint demarche of the dissident community broke the situation. On January 12, Sakharov said: “... I can’t get rid of the feeling that the explosion in the Moscow metro and the tragic death of people is a new and most dangerous provocation of repressive organs in recent years ...” After which the provocateurs themselves were forced to make excuses.
“We do not know who organized these explosions, but what we know for sure - who used these explosions” - this is how the KGB summarized the article “For the lack of the Reichstag”, which then went to Samizdat. How appropriate these words would be in the fall of 1999, when other explosions became the leitmotif of another political campaign, and nothing could stop this campaign! But the author of the long-standing article hiding under the pseudonym P. Pryzov, in the world, better known as Gleb Olegovich Pavlovsky, by the end of the 90s was already “on the other side” ...
Sakharov remained an object of operational development for another ten years, in which Louis participated. In the 80s, holding him in Gorky, “the Soviet authorities faced a problem well known to many terrorists-with the need to prove again and again that the hostages are alive and are in their hands ... an information vacuum ... filled with Victor Louis. The photographs were followed by video films shot in a bitter camera, ”wrote human rights activist Efrem Yankelevich, who was then the Voice of Sakharov in the West. In the most dramatic months of Sakharov’s hunger, it was Victor Louis to the west that eight videos mounted from pieces of operational shooting and trying to imagine that the exiled academician is supposedly free, healthy, not starving and convinced that Chernobyl is nothing terrible ...

Mr.-enemy or friend?

In the film "Louis King" they say: "This person simply should not have existed in the Soviet Union." Why? It was such a person that was necessary! Someone was supposed to translate the information outward in the form available to the rest of the world. “TASS is authorized to say” here did not fit: the style is not the same. Exit: create an “adapter”, as it were, a journalist, and at the same time-as it were, the office of the Kremlin. A person who would listen to foreign correspondents and diplomats. The shape and presentation of its messages is unofficial. Information is reliable ... sometimes. As in the case of Khrushchev, the removal of which Viktor Louis was the first to the west - a few hours earlier than TASS! In both films, this was presented as a "key episode in the life of an independent journalist." An independent one would receive a “tower” under the 64th article, for treason. It is clear that journalism, both in this case and in others, has nothing to do with it: for the special services, the information was not the object of “free manufacture and distribution”, as stated in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but weapons in the information war.
To correspond to the image of an “independent journalist”, the estate and other facts that so amazed the imagination from Louis’s life so amazed. “The first dollar millionaire ...” in the country where “for currency” was planted under Article 88 (and in 1961 and executed), this could only be with the permission of the KGB. Like the underground library of Samizdat. Like free flights to England, Israel and Taiwan. Like the estate with the "Dvinat" and the fleet.
What is mysterious here? “At the same time, the former ZEK and Aristocrat, Patriot and Westerner, Snob and shirt-Park, his own and alien”? Well, artistry, the ability to reincarnate, to be with every interlocutor as he wants to see you, or the way you need it-perhaps the main requirement for an employee of the special services, full-time and outside -... Look at Vladimir Putin-the school is visible!
The designs of the “drain tank” are different: someone abuses information from their favorite source, someone confuses the editorial office with a departmental press service, someone “undercover” works for the “office”. For a professional journalist, that is, for a person who did not turn his profession into “second ancient”, there are no questions, mysteries and contradictions: dirt, muck, meanness are obvious.
Twenty, even ten years ago, such films seemed unthinkable: Solzhenitsyna and Sakharov, it seems, was read, and they knew something about Louis. Maybe the matter of washing out knowledge and knowledgeable people - some have gone, others came?
Maybe there are no authors, editors, readers who would remember who Victor Louis is?
Or just changed the criteria for those who know, and the unacceptable twenty years ago first became acceptable, and now - the norm?

Valery Fried,
"58 and a half, or notes of the camp moron"
The knocks die, but I am afraid of them, I live.
<...> After breakfast, a smiling young man with glasses appeared in our hut. He asked: does anyone have wool for sale? Old sweaters, scarves, socks? You can be dirty, torn - it does not play a role. They will pay bread.
It turned out that the wool was required for the manufacture of carpets, and the young man was, as it were, an agent in supply. The Hungarian Jew Schwartz headed the carpet workshop, it was he who gave the idea to the local authorities. He received dyes in the parcels, and the workers - by the way, the most beautiful girls on the OLP - washed the rowing obtained by a bespectacled supplier, dissolved carpets and rugs on simple machines. Rugs - small bosses, carpets - large. <...>
The buyer of wool introduced himself: Victor Louis. He said that he was also a Muscovite, worked at the embassy - on which he burned. And he led me to Kapler: he was in charge of the parcel. <...>
- Uncle Lucy! - said Louis. - This boy is from VGIK. Capler smiled affably ... - From VGIK? Do you know Yulik Dunsky? -?! “Then I know who you are.” Are you Valery Fried? <...>
“In the meantime, Valerik,” and Capler smiled even wider, “if you do not want to have major troubles, be very careful with this person.” - Uncle Lucy! - Louis was offended, and Capler, all with the same smile, continued: - Do you think I'm joking? Quite seriously: this is a very dangerous person. A dangerous person, it turns out, in addition to the duties of the supplier, performed others: he was a informer known to the whole camp. <...>
But having returned seven years later to Moscow, I heard that there was such a journalist, a correspondent of two London newspapers Viktor Louis; He is married to an Englishwoman, lives richly, in a country house - who called this house a villa, who - a estate. His reputation is unimportant.
<...> And recently Louis died. Here is an excerpt from the American necrologist in front of me: “... a muddy Russian journalist who served as an intermediary in the relations of the CPSU and the KGB with the West ...
- Why do you all call me a colonel of the KGB? He once asked the English writer Ronald Payne. “Lord, so you finally made you to the generals, Victor?” - answered Payne. " (Time, August 3, 1992.) since quotes have gone, I will allow myself another one - from the "Story of a Simple thing" by Boris Lavrenev: "The skilles of the gamn on the Svita!"