Fleming who convinced Stalin

The history of four publications that changed Soviet-British relations

I watched the new British series “Fleming: the man who wanted to become a bond.” The creator of one of the most striking cult images of the world mass culture of the second half of the twentieth century, continuing its screen life and adventure in our time, is presented in this mini-series with a pretty talented unlocked person, a dreamer, a womanizer and a hooligan. As an epigraph in the film, the words of Jen Fleming himself were used: "Everything that I write has true reasons." In my opinion, this is very appropriate in this film booking of Fleming, focused on Amuric plots and military exploits of the hero, who served in British naval intelligence.

True, sometimes these truthful grounds are borrowed from someone else's story. Well, for example, an episode from the final, 4th series about the participation of Fleming in the extraction of the secrets of the "Atomic Project" of the Third Reich. In fact, this in Italy, and in France, and in Germany were devoted to operations of the Alsos secret American mission. Her actors are known by name, and the materials have long been published. British intelligence did not participate in it. Although the British were immediately acquainted with some results of the mission. But it is easy to understand the creators of the film here: the first distributor of the series was the BBC America - a subsidiary of the British broadcasting corporation. And the authors, well -aware of the benefits of the popular and stainlessness of the story of the history of atomic espionage in the United States, took into account the tastes and interest of the American viewer. In each series, it is invariably repeated: "It is based on real events. Some names, places and events are changed for the dramatic effect." The dramatic effect is quite achieved. The series, with all the unpretentiousness of his characters (but after all, the Bond, which was created by the imagination of Fleming Bond is also not the hero of Dostoevsky!), I looked laughing, but enthusiastically. For my taste, it compares favorably with the Susal Hollywood filmbiography of the writer-intelligence spymaker: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming (1990). The Russian episodes are especially “good in the 1990 tape”: you can die with laughter, looking at a stately blonde with cold lips (according to this basis, the future father of Bond in the film unmistakably distinguishes good partners from the bad) named Galina Ilyinichna Katz (quite comparable with the Flecks General Smershovychikov and his subordinates Kronstein), who poses himself as a court lady (in the past), which Fleming takes for the princess. Of course, the “princess” Katz turns out to be a security officer who insidiously dragged our hero into a bed (a bed scene, unlike the current series, is not shown chastely), and after immediately passes the Englishman to comrades from the OGPU. By the way, a small "Russian episode" in the new film is also not the most successful. And there is also enough cranberries here. But all this does not look as funny as in the old Hollywood tape.

Shot from the series. Dominic Cooper in the role of young Fleming

By the way, what I don’t have enough in the new series (be condescending to the specifics of my interest!), This is the main Soviet episode. And this is not at all known to the whole world "from Russia with love." True, this is also quite justified: the action mainly takes place during the Second World War. At this time, Fleming briefly visited Moscow. But this is in his violent biography - a secondary episode. The main thing happened in 1933.

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Hundreds of books have already been written about the author of James Bond and his hero. (For obvious reasons, I especially appreciate one of them, the authors of which are my radio colleags Andrei Shary and Natasha Golitsyna). But about the first Moscow visit of Fleming, the writer biographers write little and sparingly. The exception here, perhaps, is only the compositions of the British author of writer's biographies Andrew Laisett and the Canadian historian-lawyer Gordon Morrela. However, not any of these books says what Fleming himself did not know: in the spring of 1933, 20 years before the publication of the first Bond Roman Royal, he had already gained his “main” Soviet reader in the USSR. He was Joseph Stalin.

The main thing that was interested in Stalin in April-May 1933 in the British press-publications on the trial in Moscow in the case of six British employees of Metropolitan-Vickers (Metro-Vickers), which mounted power plants in the USSR and supplied components for them. The employees were accused of espionage, sabotage and attempts to bribe with these criminal purposes of a number of Soviet civil servants who also held as accused in this case. In accordance with the order established by that time, information about these publications that significantly influenced both the position of the British government and on public opinion in England regularly laid on the table of the Kremlin dictator. And the articles in London The Times turned out to be the most significant in terms of such negative for the Kremlin. The author of these publications was a young specialist in the newspaper in the process of Ian Fleming.

Fleming described the background of the Metro-Vickers case as follows:

OGPU actions on the company [Metropolitan-Vickers] have not been a secret for those who were related to the company's activities in Russia ... In December 1932, the first signs appeared that attention from the OGPU was intensifying ... Once, closer to the end of 1932, an elderly Russian housekeeper [Metropolitan-Vicketers of William] McDonalda disappeared under Leningrad. Surname Ryabov. They didn’t see her anymore, and there was no news of her. Then, in January of the secretary of the company Anna Sergeevna Kutuzova ... lured in the OGPU, where they kept for about a day and interrogated. The feeling that the attack could begin at any moment is so sharp that Monkhaus [the main representative of the company in Moscow. - V.T.] went to England, intending to clarify the state of affairs to the Soviet trade representative in London. During the meeting with him, Monkhaus was given categorical assurances that there was nothing to be afraid of Metropolitan-Vickers, that the company has a very good reputation and that there are no complaints about Monkhaus or other employees. Therefore, Monkhaus can return to Russia and continue his work without the slightest fears of any persecution.

<...>

The day before the arrests of Monkhaus told Roden, one of the company's engineers who left for England on March 12, which, according to the study of the [Commissar of Heavy Industry Sergo] Ordzhonikidze, the company's prospects in Russia were more rainbowing ... Despite all this, the secret police conducted searches in the company's offices and residents of the company, 19 out of 40 employees were arrested ... Only now it was possible to describe in all details to describe in all details The engineers taking place in a prison in Lubyanka and during attempts to build a charge against them .

Allan Monkhaus was kept in the OGPU for two days. The meticulous Fleming managed to get his letter sent on March 14, 1933 (immediately after the release from the Lubyansk prison), another accused, Richards, who was already outside the USSR by that time. Thanks to the young journalist, the British reader, and with him Stalin, first saw the Lubyansky "inside" the eyes of the Englishman. In the article, the letter of Monkhaus was abundantly quoted:

"Four employees delivered me to the Lubyanka. A certain hitch occurred, during which I spoke with one of the leaders of the investigative department and told him about my conversation with the Soviet commercial representative in London and these guarantees. I warned him that this was very serious, and expressed the hope that the arrest was agreed with higher authorities. He assured me that everything was done with the full approval of the Soviet government, Which thoroughly considered this issue, where I went through ordinary prison procedures: I was divided, seized, tie, collar and the like, as well as all other items with which I could be hung out at about 3:30, and at 6:30 they woke up, after which, after which, at 8 in the morning, it continued Continuously for 19 hours.

I was not charged with any specific accusations, but they offered to confess everything. Ordinary threats were used, and ultimately I admitted that I tried to keep abreast of the general situation in the country in order to inform the board of directors about the general situation, as well as about the possibilities for doing business in the future, but I told them that I considered all this to ordinary business practice. They explained to me that this is a political and economic espionage, even though it was only in the interests of the company. Then they arranged a cross interrogation, the purpose of which was to force me to admit that I was an employee of British intelligence. After eight hours of fruitless dismissal, they threw this business. Then another interrogation began (it lasted five hours) to make me admit that I had a secret source of funds for counter -revolutionary and subversive work. Five hours later, this charge was removed. After that I was accused of military espionage, but they soon refused this accusation. "

Then, after midnight, Monkhaus was presented with a list of breakdowns of turbines over the past few years. And the exhausted Englishman finally admitted that "some breakdowns are associated with the inappropriate quality of materials and execution" ...

In his following articles on the Moscow process of 1933, Ian Fleming from the words of other accused, in particular, engineer John Kashny, who spent more than three weeks on Lubyanka, managed to expand the description of the technology for obtaining the confessions of the arrested British:

"During the numerous interrogations, Belogorsky (one of the main investigators) made significant efforts to make me admit. He spoke about this for about two and a half hours. At some point, he gave me a friendly advice, explaining the position of Soviet courts that a person who gave a sincere recognition is always in the most favorable position, and often he was released to the will. He said that he did not care that he personally doesn’t matter to him personally I admit, since they already have sufficient evidence of guilt that he can easily demonstrate to me. There was a moment when he said that if I do not admit now or during the day, it would be too late.

“At a rather early stage of interrogation, I was informed that Monkhaus behaved very prudently, confessed everything and was released under the promise not to leave Moscow. Another time they told me that my situation is hopeless, since neither the British government nor my company would protect me, and that people engaged in espionage, no one would still protect me. Then they did not need to speak from me, for whom the information was intended for which the information was intended for which the information was intended for which the information was intended for which the information was intended for I was collecting.

<...>

"In the end, I said that I will set out in writing the testimony. I did not say that I will write “recognition”, but I think they understood this that way. I said that I was tired and start writing tomorrow. The next morning, I was led to investigators who were in full confidence that I would sit down and write recognition. Then I said that I would not do this, but I will write a refusal. They reconciled with this only after long busting. In the process, they told me several times that I behaved inappropriate for the English gentleman, and persistently stated that they would not accept my refusal if it was not written in the following wordings: “I refuse to give further testimonies regarding my espionage activity.” So I wrote. They did not allow me to write “alleged spy activity”.

Perhaps the former prison singer Dzhugashvili and were interested in these details of the new techniques of the investigative investigation. But, of course, the main thing that was worried about when reading the translations from Times was on a different plane: how much does the Metro-Vickers case affect British-Soviet relations?

Back in early April, the Soviet ambassador to England Ivan Maysky wrote to his colleague in Stockholm Alexander Kollontai:

As you probably know from the press, they called in England a completely rabid anti-Soviet campaign that involuntarily reminded me of the worst times of the Czech House era (in the Czech House the Soviet embassy was located when in May 1927 there was a foreign minister O. Chamberlain, the Soviet government notified the Soviet government to break the diplomatic relations between the USSR and England).

It was still dangerous that some members of the government fully supported the press campaign and even openly declared (before the court, before the investigation of the case, there is no reason for the arrests, all your accusations against English engineers were invented. On this basis, a formal demand was put forward with the British side - to free the arrested British without a trial and to stop them against them. <...> At the same time, trade negotiations suffered - they are still suspended on the English initiative and it is not known when they are resolved.

On April 19, 1933, in England, in connection with the verdict of the Soviet court in the case of the English employees of the Metro-Vickers, the Embargo Law was adopted. It was forbidden to import a number of products from the USSR (forest, bread, oil, etc., which amounted to 80% of imported products) in England. The law entered into force on April 26. In this regard, Stalin had to urgently decide on further Soviet tactics in English-Soviet relations.

The previous decision-on the court of the British, “pests”-was the result of a multifactorial game of various Soviet departments, whose interests often did not coincide with the peep of the heavyprom Ordzhonikidze could lay arbitrarily rainbow hopes for further cooperation with the Metro-Vickers, which began with Russia even before the revolution and renewed in 1923. But in 1933, the USSR was supposed to pay from the Metro-Vickers for the delivered and mounted equipment (several million gold rubles and one and a half million pounds). And in the country, exhausted by violent collectivization and hunger caused by it, there was no money for this. One could try to reduce the debt with claims to the Metro-Vickers regarding the poor quality of mounted equipment and related accidents in production. They really happened. But the British explained this by the consequences of shock labor and the unprofessionality of Soviet collectors. The OGPU found another explanation, which was already tested in the 1928 Shakhty case, - sabotage and sabotage. However, the Chekists did not calculate the foreign policy consequences. In the context of the global economic crisis, when the prices for Soviet exports already fell, the British law on the embargo threatened the USSR with a complete economic collapse.

And, reading publications on the Moscow court in the hostile British press , and four large articles in Times in the USSR who were still unknown in the USSR, the author of Ian Fleming, turned out to be the most bright in this row, - Stalin found the way out: the sentenced British to release the abolition of the embargo law for this. British Foreign Minister John Simon in a note addressed to the People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov expressed consent with the Soviet proposal:

"... From the moment of the liberation of the Gg. Thornton and McDonald and their departure from the Soviet territory, the purpose of this law will be exhausted and the existing state of things will not be considered by the Government of His Majesty as subject to use in connection with any other circumstances."

On July 1, 1933, the Presidium of the CEC of the USSR ", in an amnesty order, replaced the imprisonment of English citizens with expulsion from the USSR." A few days later they returned to their homeland.