General

Lieutenant General of the KGB of the USSR Leonid Vladimirovich Shebarshin, 1935–2012

He could only leave: he recorded his fortune on paper (“17:15 - the left eye refused, 19:00 - completely blind”), recorded the phone offline in the foreign intelligence service - for those who find it, shot his glasses and shot himself in his head. “I could not please my own birth. But his own death cannot grieve. The world is fair ”is from the book of his aphorisms, written in the mid-1990s and donated to the author along with another, the most piercing book, entitled“ ... and Life petty dreams ”. This is a book of memoirs - within the framework and in the form that a person who worked for almost 40 years in reconnaissance (Pakistan - India - Iran, in the last two countries, he headed the residencies) and ended his career as the head of Soviet intelligence - the KGB of the KGB of the USSR (the day that he headed the KGB, August 22–23, 1991 - not at the expense).

At fifty -six, he was dismissed: “I am not a sake of living, but about what to live” - this is from his aphorisms.

The general, the old man - so he called himself in books, so he thought about himself for the past 20 years: “A dashing operative, experienced boss, catcher of people who have turned into a worn pensioner” is Shebarshin about himself.

For many years, the author watched Shabarshin in the morning went to his office, located under one of the stands of the Dynamo stadium (now the stadium, and with it the office was demolished). He walked through the courtyard of my house-his apartment was in the house opposite: by Irony of fate exactly at the entrance, where the future first president of Russia Boris Yeltsin once lived, who sent Shebarshin to retire and destroyed, as the general believed, everything that made up the meaning of his life. And this meaning was called "recruitment for the Soviet flag." He did not want to talk with a journalist who considered his meanings a violation of human rights. He considered my investigations about the KGB not only offensive - destroying the state to which he gave the oath. And which he lost. Probably the fact that the new country - although for very different reasons - neither he nor I found it became close to us.

Shebarshin, probably, knew a lot - what is still lying on safe and secret banking cells. This knowledge could have made him a millionaire, as much less knowledge of many of his colleagues, who sold the secrets of his homeland in bulk and retail. And he walked in an old coat, always neat and carefully ironed, drove on a broken Volga, when his former subordinates - on Maybach and Bentley, earned a living through the structure created by him, which provided the banks, but it seems that this business was not particularly successful. He had tough and clearly defined views - an anti -Americanist, an anti -war, an unconditional statesman. The only thing we have in our long conversations in some restaurant and agreed was to build something normal in an absolutely corrupt state. “Smart,” his voice rang out in the telephone tube when I managed to write something sensible on this topic. His conviction of his innocence was sometimes difficult, but absolute honesty and directness were bribed. The concept of “the honor of an officer” - it was not just serious for Shebarshin: this is what kept him.

The last time we saw when he came to the editor. It was noticeable that he handed over, that his eyes were watery, and it was difficult to walk. Then they sat in a restaurant located in the neighborhood. He, as always, took out his brown wallet that saw his views: he never gave him to pay, despite all my objections: “But I don’t tell you anything, Zhenya, we just talk,” he said in response to my conversations about the ethics of a journalistic profession. 10 years ago, when we first introduced a conversation behind a glass of wine into practice, he replied how he chopped off: "My women do not pay for themselves." And from amazement, I did not find what to object. For some reason, our last meeting frankly, defiantly “grazed”, but it did not bother us frankly. It was somehow obvious: he left, although if he complained about anything, then in the eye. And then he left - the general left forever. “Only death is finally reconciled with life” - this is another aphorism. And this is General Leonid Vladimirovich Shebarshin wrote about himself. It seems to me that he had known he knew about the fact that his reconciliation of his life will happen alone and with the help of a bullet from a reward pistol. So I decided. I did as he decided.