The chief custodian of the Lubyanka archives has opened a dossier about secret operations of reconnaissance groups for "RG"
On the eve of Victory Day, there are again a series of films about the war on TV. People watch them with great interest. Many would like to know where is the truth and where is fiction.
Now it has become easier to answer such questions, because a large number of documents of that time are being declassified. Removes the "secret" stamp from thousands of closed folders and Lubyanka. Lieutenant General Vasily Khristoforov, head of the registration and archival funds department of the FSB of Russia, told the "RG" correspondent about this.
Russian newspaper: Vasily Stepanovich, as the keeper of the secrets of our special services, you know exactly the truth about the war and the role of the NKVD, intelligence, counterintelligence, SMERSH detachments during the Great Patriotic War. Recently the whole country watched with interest the new series "Apostle". Tell me, in reality, could there be such a fact that the NKVD organs sent civilians, not professional intelligence officers, to the enemy's rear?
Vasily Khristoforov: Certainly. And there were such cases. Our archive contains materials from reconnaissance and sabotage groups and detachments. I will cite as an example an interesting case - reconnaissance group "Maria".
In August-October 1941, a reconnaissance group of three people operated in the Smolensk region. None of them was a regular employee of the NKVD. They acted under the guise of a refugee family. The father was portrayed by Moscow State University professor Yakov Stepanovich Kumachenko, and his wife was portrayed by a teacher at the pedagogical institute.
In the role of a son, a seventeen-year-old boy, known to us under the pseudonym Yasha, was sent to the rear - a radio operator from the People's Commissariat of the River Fleet, who on the eve of the war graduated from the Metrostroy radio school.
None of the three knew how to shoot and had never held a weapon in their hands before, so the NKVD operatives did not give it to them. For two months they walked around the rear of the enemy and transmitted the most valuable information to Moscow.
At first, for several days, the scouts moved along the front line with a column of real refugees. They carried a radio station with them in their backpacks, covering it on top with only pieces of bacon. After a while, they sent a radio message to the center that the Germans had increased the frequency of checks on the personal belongings of refugees and they were interrupting radio communications for a month, because they had to bury the radio station. But without a radio station, it became easier for them to go deep into the rear of the enemy.
RG: How was their fate?
Khristoforov: We know that in September alone, the group transmitted 36 radiograms. At the end of October 1941, they returned safely from the mission and received medals "For Military Merit". We recently found out that Yasha lives in good health in Tula. I hope that our personal meeting will take place in the next few days, about which it will be possible to tell the readers of "RG". Taking this opportunity, I would like to congratulate all veterans on Victory Day.
RG: So, as I understand it, no one from the group was the prototype of the television series, but in principle they could be?
Khristoforov: No, the "Apostle" is not built on archival data at all. In my opinion, there are also inaccuracies.
For example, at the beginning of the series, the main character, an ordinary teacher, played by the brilliant actor Yevgeny Mironov, an NKVD officer played by Nikolai Fomenko, forces him to cross the front line and become a saboteur with threats.
This has never happened. The historical truth is that only volunteers were sent to the rear of the enemy. Our archive contains hundreds of documents and reports in which ordinary Soviet people wrote that they considered it an honor to go behind enemy lines and complete any, even the smallest, task.
Our archives confirm that the NKVD not only did not experience a shortage of candidates for intelligence officers, but also chose the most suitable from among the numerous volunteers.
RG: How were they trained, how were they treated by the NKVD?
Khristoforov: The preparation process took about three months. But I would like to focus not on this, but on how their families were treated, because this point is also distorted in The Apostle. If you remember, as soon as the main character is taken to the NKVD for training, the Chekists and officials do something unimaginable to his wife.
The abundant documentary evidence in our archives suggests otherwise. As soon as volunteers were enrolled in intelligence schools, their real families were taken under full legal, physical and social protection, of course, as far as possible in a war.
According to the archives, a case is known when the family of an intelligence officer was denied a food card by local authorities. The officials considered that they, the villagers, could feed themselves, so to speak, from their own plot. But they complained to the NKVD and the card was returned to them.
RG: Any work of fiction must contain fiction, and access to archives, especially yours, is difficult. And the authors of this and other films cannot always objectively judge the truth.
Khristoforov: The authors of "Apostle" have never even approached us. Although at the beginning of the show, they positioned their work almost completely based on archival data, and only somewhere in the middle of the series they recognized that there was no documentary background in it.
The difference between fiction and falsehood is that fiction only embellishes and adds some details that do not affect the essence of the subject.
The most arrogant and unprincipled example of near-historical lies is the film "Bastards". Its creators knew that they were creating a fake, exactly the opposite reproducing the events of the forties.
Long before filming, they turned to us with a written request and received a detailed answer from us. We wrote to them that the NKVD never had camps for saboteurs from among adolescents, and that adolescents with sabotage goals were not sent to the rear of the enemy. But we have documentary evidence that German intelligence, for its part, selected gifted Soviet children from among the prisoners, trained them in sabotage schools and threw them into our rear.
In our reply, we also indicated that we are ready to provide all the archives and documents at our disposal on this topic. The authors of the "Bastards" thanked us, but none of them appeared with us anymore.
RG: What documents were you willing to disclose on this topic?
Khristoforov: NKGB archives of 1943, which speaks of the first arrests of young saboteurs prepared by German intelligence.
From the appendix to the report of the NKGB of the USSR to the State Defense Committee of October 5, 1943, it follows that in the first ten days of September, the NKGB bodies detained 10 saboteurs aged 14 to 16 years, who were transferred to the rear of the Red Army on airplanes.
The detainees turned out to be natives of the Kalinin and Smolensk regions, whom the Germans threw on the territory of the Kursk, Voronezh, Smolensk and Moscow regions on August 29-31. Five of them voluntarily surrendered after landing, and the rest were detained as a result of a special operation.
From their interrogations, the operatives learned all the details of the Nazis' plan. Initially, German intelligence set up a camp for teenagers in June 1943, 4 kilometers from Smolensk. Soon the children, disguised as sightseers, were transferred to Germany - the town of Waldeck near Kassel.
They took subscriptions from teenagers obliging them to fight against commissars, communists and political instructors. For a month, they took special courses, studied topography, drill and parachuting. In August, they were transported to the city of Orsha on the territory of Belarus and acquainted with the assignment. After landing in the rear of the Red Army, they had to go to the railway, find warehouses that supplied the locomotives with fuel, and toss pieces of explosives disguised as coal into the piles of coal. After completing the assignment, the teenagers were supposed to return to the Germans, collecting intelligence along the way.
RG: Are these the only documents on the use of minors for sabotage purposes?
Khristoforov: No. After the arrest of the first group of underage saboteurs, another case was recorded. In November 1943, in the Poltava region, NKVD officers detained a group of 4 German agents. Among them are two teenagers, 14 and 15 years old. The saboteurs were trained at the Abwehr Trup-203 intelligence school. They were supposed to commit sabotage on the Poltava-Kremenchug railway section using explosives disguised as coal.
RG: What other declassified documents from the FSB archives can debunk the prevailing cliches and myths?
Khristoforov: Recently, we are preparing for declassification a large number of documents concerning the detachments, around which there have long been enough fictions.
The detachments performed more commandant functions. They caught deserters and undocumented persons, identified spies, and returned the retreating to the units. They were in the army, led by an NKVD officer.
Each army formed three to five detachments of 200 men each. They were located in the rear, as they said then, of unstable divisions, which had previously shown themselves with massive retreats and the facts of desertion. And in the generally good TV series "Shtrafbat" it is the activity of the detachment that is shown most distortedly. We have thousands of pages of them in our archive, and chronologically there are no gaps from the beginning of their formation in 1942 and until their disbandment in 1944.
The Russian Foreign Ministry published materials on the activities of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the so-called Ukrainian Insurgent Army. These documents of the NKVD-MGB of the USSR were recently declassified by the archival service of the FSB of Russia. They give only a general idea of what they were, against whom and for what Hitler's henchmen fought in Ukraine. The historical truth is that the newly-minted Ukrainian heroes Bandera - as well as the Baltic SS men - "became famous" for their brutal punitive operations in Belarus.
Is there anything left "behind the scenes" - Lieutenant-General Vasily Khristoforov, head of the Department of Registration and Archival Funds of the FSB of Russia, told the SOYUZ correspondent about this.
Vasily Stepanovich, has the FSB declassified and presented to the public all that it knew and kept in its archives regarding the Ukrainian fascists?
If we talk about our service, then - yes. But this is only a part, and a small part, of that large archive that the KGB of the USSR had at its disposal. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to declassify and tell people the whole truth about the Bandera nationalists. Most of the materials remained in Kiev, in the archives of the former KGB of the Ukrainian SSR. The archives were not taken out, because during the collapse of the USSR, no one could even think that it would occur to someone to whitewash the fascist henchmen and present them as almost heroes.
Precisely by the heroes. Recently, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko conferred the title of Hero of Ukraine on one of the leaders of Ukrainian nationalists, knight of two Hitlerite "iron crosses" Roman Shukhevych. I am sure that now not only journalists, but also you, through your partner channels with the Ukrainian special service, will not be able to get access to those KGB archives of the Ukrainian SSR.
By and large, this does not change anything. In general, it is clear what kind of people they were, what they were doing. And now any visitor to the website of the Russian Foreign Ministry can himself familiarize himself with the information and documents of that time.
So who was Roman Shukhevych really - a Ukrainian Robin Hood, a punisher or, perhaps, an equally controversial historical figure like, say, old man Makhno, whose portrait is difficult to paint only in black and white?
Yes, he was an ordinary bandit. Even the materials at our disposal are sufficient to understand this. Shukhevych entered the criminal path even before the war. In 1932, in Poland, he was convicted of murder - he personally organized and participated in the assassination attempt on the school inspector Sobinsky. In 1934, the Polish authorities arrested him as an accomplice of the OUN terrorist group, which, under the leadership of Stepan Bandera, murdered the Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland Peratsky. After that, the court sentenced Shukhevych to life imprisonment. And, mind you, not a Soviet, and not a court of communist Poland. During the Second World War, after working at the German sabotage school "Nachtigall", the fascist command sent him to Belarus to carry out punitive operations.
Such a "hero" burned down Belarusian villages and killed old people, women and children.
But maybe Yushchenko awarded him the title of hero for later merits? In 1943, Shukhevych became one of the leaders of the so-called Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which, according to Ukrainian nationalists, was fighting for independence.
The facts show that the UPA took the only serious battle with the regular units of the Red Army only near Brody. And in the famous Brodovsky cauldron this army of Shukhevych was defeated by our troops, without even noticing that the Ukrainian army was fighting against them, fighting for independence. Just as, incidentally, in the Baltic states, the Baltic 20th SS division entered the only battle with the Red Army near Narva and also did not create any noticeable problems for our troops.
The Ukrainian and Baltic fascists were strong in that they fired from around the corner, knew the language, the locality, the people, they could betray the partisans to the Nazis, burn villages, and loot. But they did not win a single victory in open battle. Therefore, there is no need to say that they fought for an independent Ukraine and at the same time performed any feats.
Moreover, the Nuremberg trials put the final point on who to consider these people. During the Soviet era, Belarus could not demand compensation from its neighbors, since we were all one country. But now the Belarusians have such a right, especially since no one has canceled the results of the Nuremberg trial.
If they are canceled, then it will be necessary to abandon the recognition of the mass persecution of Jews. And such attempts, by the way, are being undertaken in the modern Baltic states. Recently a book was published in Latvia, which gives the original version of the famous Riga trial. As you know, immediately after the war, Nazi criminals were tried. In Riga, at the trial, the fascists operating in the Baltic were convicted. So, in this book, the results of the process are questioned, under the pretext that the Nazis were tried by a Jewish judge, the state prosecutor was a Jew, the NKVD officers were also Jews, therefore, the trial cannot be considered fair. According to the author, the Jews staged an unjust trial and simply dealt with respectable intelligent people, and not at all with fascist criminals.
One of the main "merits" of the so-called SS volunteer divisions is the arrests of Soviet activists and persons of Jewish nationality. By the way, they were often the same people, because many party and Soviet activists were Jews.
As I said, the Ukrainian and Baltic fascists were local, they knew very well who was who among the neighbors. For example, the "Arajs team" operating on the territory of the Latvian SSR was specially created by order of the head of the 3rd department of the SD, German General Stalecker, to carry out arrests and executions of Jews and Soviet activists. Since August 1941, without exception, all members of Viktor Arajs's team took part in organizing the executions of Jews throughout the Baltic States. They said: "The grass does not grow where Arajs's team has been." Arais himself and one of his closest assistants, the former captain of the Latvian army, Tsurkus, trying to unleash the animal instincts of his subordinates, often snatched babies from the hands of those arrested and tore them apart on their chest.
- But the President of Estonia Arnold Ruutel said in an interview that the 20th SS division did not exist, the Estonians did not take part in the execution of the Jews, and the Germans forcibly forced the Estonians to fight in their troops, and then only against the regular units of the Red Army.
With regard to the Baltic SS men, we have preserved more archival materials than in relation to the Ukrainian ones. Therefore, the Baltic politicians can say whatever they want, but it is more difficult for them to assign the title of hero to these guys, as Yushchenko did to Shukhevych.
There is evidence that, for example, Arajs's team in the Minsk ghetto under the leadership of officer Skamberg exterminated Jews in gas chambers. There, by the way, the atrocities carried out by the Araisovites under the leadership of Officer Turk became so loud that even the Germans themselves were forced to remove him from Minsk. Arajs' team employee Erinsh boasted that he personally destroyed 2,500 people. During the actions, Herbert Tsurkus usually shouted: "Give me a drink of blood." And these are not just words, but established facts, documented after the investigation of the atrocities of the Araisovites in the Ponary camp in the village of Audrini they destroyed.
But your opponents in these countries may say that then there was a war and it is impossible to approach those years with the standards of the present. For example, the Poles are still persistently seeking from Russia an investigation into the Katyn tragedy, when thousands of Polish officers were brutally killed. So what's the difference?
The difference, as I understand it, is that Russia does not assign the title of heroes to people who participated in mass repressions. Our country has long repented at various levels for many tragic pages of our history. Russia is not going to hide the historical truth.
Recently, forces have appeared in different countries that are trying to drag us into a war with their own memory, and are also passionately seeking to rewrite history and revise the results of the past war. But the facts are stubborn things and the documents show that at that time there could not be any third forces and patriotic liberation armies. Whatever you call them, in a world war it was possible to fight either on the side of the criminal fascist regime, or on the side of the USSR and its allies in the anti-Hitler coalition. I have already given examples, I can continue.
Here, for example, is an extract from the memorandum of the 1st Ukrainian Front on May 20, 1944 about the arrest of active Ukrainian nationalists from the village of Mogilnitsy, Budzanovsky district, Tarnopil region, Kozlovsky and Krychkovsky. "Witness S. A. Ryzhiy testified during interrogation: Kozlovsky, with the arrival of the German invaders in the village of Mogilnitsy in July 1941, voluntarily entered the service of the Ukrainian police, which consisted of nationalist Bandera, he was armed with a carbine and wore an armband with a trident badge. In July 1941, he arrested three Jewish families: Gelis, Mendel and Vorun, consisting of 18 people, old people, adolescents and children aged 6 months to 12. All of them were taken to the forest, where he shot adults, and children from 6 for months he took by the legs, hit them with their heads on a tree, then threw them into a hole ... "
Witness Yanitskiy S.N. about Krichkovsky he showed: "... On the night of March 18, Ukrainian nationalists-Bandera committed the massacre of Poles. They, under the guise of Soviet partisans, burst into the houses of Poles in masks and carried out the most cruel mockery of them, cut them with knives, hacked children with axes, they smashed their heads and then burned them in order to conceal the crimes. On that night, the Bandera members tortured, stabbed and shot up to 100 Soviet activists, Jews and Poles. "
So the regime, whose essence was the brutal fascist ideology, could not have had noble and highly moral heroes.
Vasily Khristoforov, or Vasya Voskres, had every chance of getting the title of “thief in law No. 1”, taking the place of Zakhary Kalashov. However, not so long ago it became known that at a large thieves' meeting in Moscow, the powers of the country's main mafiosi were transferred to Oleg Shishkanov, the largest thief in law near Moscow. Nevertheless, Khristoforov's authority in the criminal environment was and remains quite high.
How it all began
The first experience of Khristoforov's relationship with law enforcement agencies took place in 1989. Then he, being a 17-year-old boy, received a year in prison for knowingly false testimony. This was followed by service in the army, in the construction battalion.
Returning home two years later, to Dzerzhinsk, Vasily does not lead an idle life for long. In 1993 he attacks the driver of a Volga car with the aim of robbery. A trial and arrest followed. It turned out that the car actually belonged to a Nizhny Novgorod organization, and was not at all private. Khristoforov's actions were regarded as theft of state property on an especially large scale. And this, in turn, meant that Vasily faced six years in prison.
He was serving his sentence in the city of Chistopol, the Republic of Tatarstan. Preserved videotapes with a recording from the camera where Vasily was sitting, a kind of video report to other thieves. They did not reach their destination, and later they were seized during a search of Vyacheslav Leontyev (Bely), a close acquaintance of Khristoforov. From the footage, it can be noted that the time of serving the sentence in prison was not devoid of amenities for Khristoforov. The cell was hung with carpets, the large icon occupied one wall, which undoubtedly created a relatively cozy atmosphere. In addition to everything else, there was a VCR, a camera and other little things for convenient serving time. There was no shortage of food and alcohol either.
After leaving the correctional institution, Vasily firmly established himself in the criminal environment of Nizhny Novgorod. There is information about the long history of how Vasya “survived” from the circle of local authorities, Igor Novikov, who also claims to be the leader.
Confrontation with sectarians
A separate story, not so successful for Khristoforov, happened in 2003, as a result of which he again had to be in the dock. Even the US intelligence services did not ignore this case.
By this time, Vasily already had the title of thief in law, received from the hands of Ded Khasan (Usoyan) himself, and in the criminal environment he became more and more popular under the name Vasya Voskres.
In Nizhny Novgorod, under the leadership of Alexander Pokrovsky, a local authority figure, a religious sect was created, in whose teachings the idea of the superiority of the Russian person, his strength and spirit was carried out. The idea may not be new, but it is attractive, especially for the younger generation. As a result, Pokrovsky managed to rally around himself a group of young strong guys, many of whom he really managed to help, for example, to cope with alcohol addiction.
Pokrovsky's activities were not limited solely to the affairs of the community, its ideological component. In addition, he traded in “covering” local businesses. On this basis, the interests of Pokrovsky and Khristoforov's group clashed. A conflict ensued over control of a waste disposal company in the city of Sarov. The bandits turned out to be worthy of each other, no one was going to give in.
Realizing that someone should remain alone, and deciding to speed up the protracted process of dividing the sphere of influence, Khristoforov and, mentioned above, Vyacheslav Leontyev (Bely) called Pokrovsky to a conversation. The meeting took place. At the same time, both sides were accompanied by about thirty armed people. The conversation did not go well, no one compromised. It all ended with gunfire and injury to people on both sides. Khristoforov received a hand injury, White rubber bullet in the chest.
Vasily again had to go into hiding, however, soon he was nevertheless caught and taken to Nizhny Novgorod. There was not enough evidence of his guilt, the people of Pokrovsky, recognized as victims, refused to testify. The case reached a dead end, but it was not closed.
Two years later, Pokrovsky, along with his people, were arrested for the illegal transportation of weapons. Then all the details of the old incident with Khristoforov surfaced. Vasily was detained again. After lengthy court hearings, he was again given a two-year sentence, although it was originally supposed to imprison him for six years.
Hooked by the USA
It should be noted that the 2003 event was recorded, among others, in a document prepared by the Obama administration to combat transnational criminal groups.
According to the US authorities, today the greatest threat to the national security of their country is posed by four criminal groups: the Japanese Yakuza, the Italian Camorra, the Mexican Los Zetas, and the Brothers' Circle organization, which unites immigrants from the CIS countries.
The document names seven of its leaders, among whom Vasily Khristoforov is mentioned. The American special services noted not only an episode of the group's participation in a shootout in Russia, but also the fact that its leaders - Khristoforov and Leontyev - control the flow of drugs, and this, in turn, threatens the security of the United States.
To combat the current organized criminal group, it was decided to freeze the accounts of its members and arrest the private property of criminals in America. Also, a ban on entry to the leaders of the "Brothers' Circle" and punishment, up to and including criminal liability, for persons entering into commercial transactions with them. The American authorities do not insist on the personal arrest of the criminals, but in every possible way they are ready to help the Russian law enforcement agencies in the capture of the listed persons.
Someone you can trust
As already mentioned, in 2001, almost thirty-year-old Vasily Voskres becomes a member of the clan of Ded Khasan (Usoyan). From then until the death of Usoyan, and then under Zakhari Kalashov, Khristoforov established himself as a reliable executor of all orders from his superiors. Having a large reserve of trust, he was subsequently entrusted with managing the thieves' common fund. Therefore, it is not surprising that during the period of “anarchy” it was Khristoforov who was given the rights of a temporary successor, assuming that he would not encroach on power, but would fulfill everything as agreed.
At the same time, it is important to take into account that after the arrest of Shakro, the leaders of two criminal communities, the Slavic and the Caucasian, claimed his place. If we take into account that the Slavic wing was more or less united, and among the Caucasians within the clan there was a division into disunited groups, it becomes clear that the situation in the criminal world was not easy. Only a proven person could hold a place for a new boss without taking advantage of the position.
Vasily Khristoforov coped with the position of acting chief mafioso and saved a place for the chosen one, as a result, Kalashov Shishkan.
Note that it was the representative of the Slavic group who took the helm, since for a long time, power in the underworld remained with the Kurds. Either there was no time to wait for the Caucasians to propose a successful candidate, or there was no suitable one among those proposed. And the requirements were simple: a person claiming the role of the main mafiosi must be in Russia, free and not under investigation. Initially, Vasily Pichugin (Pichuga) was confidently moving towards the "throne", who was again supported and promoted by Vasily Khristoforov. But it didn't work out. In February 2017, Pichugin was arrested. So in the protracted interregnum, the Shishkans, obviously, turned out to be the perfect choice. Khristoforov, on the other hand, is still in the circle of close and confidential persons of “thief in law No. 1”, which in turn makes his persona desirable in case of a change of leader.
B.C. Khristoforov, A.P. Cherepkov
SECRETS OF THE RUSSIAN FLEET
The book you are now holding in your hands contains unique historical information that until recently was not available to readers, these documents were in the archives with the headings "secret", "top secret", "keep forever." And only after their declassification and publication in this book can we read without cuts about many heroic and dramatic pages in the history of the Russian fleet.
Needless to say, now the time has finally come when it is not only possible, but also necessary to learn about our past through real documents and facts. Of course, in this new reading of past events, there will be much less pathos and victorious reports in them, but on the other hand, there is something else - the truth of history. It is for the sake of searching for this truth that we study the past of our Fatherland, it is for this that we read historical books, search for and compare facts.
The use of security documents when covering historical events is essential. The archives of the FSB of Russia contain documentary information of a political, military and intelligence nature, which in some cases makes it possible to evaluate facts, events and phenomena on the basis of information that was obtained operatively using special forces and means characteristic of operational-search work. Of course, this kind of information, when used and generalized, is subject to scientific criticism and should be considered in conjunction with sources of a different nature, including military and military archives, documents of the country's higher authorities.
In orders, instructions, reports, special messages, memoranda and other documents of the Soviet counterintelligence, the negative aspects of events, critical statements and remarks of the characters, confidential opinions and points of view are presented to a greater extent. In many cases, this is a simple statement of facts, which requires additional historical comprehension. The open publication of counterintelligence documents requires a careful approach, balance and tact, taking into account state secrets, secrets of personal life, and in some cases, political expediency.
The materials published in this collection will tell the thoughtful reader much more than lengthy arguments on historical topics.
The book "Secrets of the Russian Fleet from the Archives of the FSB" is devoted to the "blank spots" in the history of the Russian Navy. Now, when Russia is actively restoring its naval power, and its warships have returned to the vastness of the World Ocean, the topic of naval history is becoming more relevant than ever. The book is special also because its authors are employees of the archives department of the FSB of Russia, i.e. people who have direct access to the most intimate secrets of past eras, who have found, processed and generalized unique materials.
The first section of the book is devoted to the events of 1916–1940. last century. The section opens with materials considering one of the versions of the sinking of the battleship "Empress Maria". Almost a hundred years have passed since the sinking of the ship, but historians and specialists are still interested in this topic.
New documents from the archives of the FSB of Russia provide an opportunity to see the causes of the tragedy in a new way. Unique documents tell the history of the creation and the first years of the activities of the Expedition of Special Purpose Underwater Operations (EPRON), formed under the Special Department of the OPTU. Initially, the Expedition was engaged only in the search for gold of the English ship "Black Prince", which sank in 1854 on the Black Sea, but from year to year, gaining strength, it became the main domestic organization for lifting sunken ships, conducting emergency rescue operations in all water areas of our country. At the same time, EPRON became an all-union school for training divers.
Of undoubted interest are archival documents about the so-called. "Bizerte fleet". After the Civil War, Russian ships ended up in Bizerte, Manila and European ports in a difficult situation, and the Soviet government did everything to return them to their homeland. The published unique documents contain information about the negotiations on the return of the Bizerte squadron and Stark's flotilla, data on the state of Russian warships and commercial ships that ended up abroad.
The first section ends with an article in which, on the basis of a study by the authors of documents from the archives of the FSB of Russia about the presence of German ships in the Soviet North on the eve of World War II, answers are given to questions whether the German base "Nord" was in the Soviet Arctic.
The second section of the book is devoted to various events of the Great Patriotic War, and this is no coincidence, because soon we will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory. Among the materials in this section, the chronicle of the destruction of the German U-250 submarine in the Baltic in 1944 and the protocols of the interrogation of its commander are of undoubted interest. For historians and researchers, the publication on the pages of this book of archival documents concerning the infamous Tallinn passage (1941), during which our fleet in the Baltic suffered the most significant losses during the war, is of significant importance; polar convoys, in particular the tragic fate of the PQ-17 convoy; the heroic defense of Sevastopol, where, with the support of the ships of the Black Sea Fleet and coastal artillery, our ground units were holding back the enemy's onslaught; battles for Novorossiysk. For the first time, documents of military counterintelligence on the actions of the marines in 1941-1942 are published, as well as a document obtained by Soviet intelligence from the British about the actions of the ships of the Northern Fleet in 1943.
Some of the materials have already been published since 1994 in various collections, magazines, mainly departmental, as well as in newspapers. However, the low circulation of these publications has led to the fact that the results of research, giving an objective history of the country and the domestic fleet, remain unknown to the general population. This, in turn, gives rise to myths and even falsifications.
Therefore, let this publication be another reminder to all of us about the valor and heroism of our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers who defended the independence of the Motherland. Take your time to flip through the pages of archival documents, read them, feel the drama and heroism of the events of that difficult time! This is our truth, and our story with you!
Andrey Vinokurov, Alena Malik
Russian President Vladimir Putin has fired four officials, each of whom has successfully passed elections to members of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Last week, Vladimir Putin chastised RAS President Vladimir Fortov for allowing officials to be elected to the RAS. The President recalled that earlier he had asked to refrain from such a practice.
“Nevertheless, some of our colleagues from the Presidential Administration, from the Ministry of Education, from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, from the Ministry of Defense, from the Federal Security Service (FSB) and from some other departments took part in the election and were elected,” Putin said on meeting of the Council for Science and Education last Wednesday. The President raised the question of whether these officials can simultaneously engage in serious scientific research and fulfill their duties at the place of service.
Putin several times asked Fortov if the elected members of the RAS were "prominent scientists", to which the latter noted diplomatically that they were worthy of being elected. However, the president was not satisfied with this answer. “I think that I will have to give them the opportunity to engage in science, because, apparently, their scientific activity is much more important than performing some routine administrative duties in the government and administration,” Putin said. The following Monday, orders to dismiss officials from their jobs appeared on the Kremlin's official website.
Now there were only four former officials, one from each department, which the president listed. However, each of these officials, apparently, was really associated with scientific activities. So, in the FSB, Lieutenant General Vasily Khristoforov, who was in charge of the registration and archival funds of the FSB, lost his post. If all his other colleagues in the civil service were dismissed of their own accord, then in his case the reason is “reaching the age limit for military service”.
Khristoforov was elected as a corresponding member of the RAS. According to the information on the RAS website, the main results of scientific activity, in particular, are: research on the basis of documents from state and departmental archives of questions of the military history of the USSR and the main problems of the activities of domestic security agencies. Also, according to the RAS reference, Khristoforov, based on his own experience and archival materials, comprehensively analyzed the social and political life of Afghanistan in the 1980s, as well as the evolution of Soviet-Afghan relations.
The next dismissed is the head of the main military medical department of the Ministry of Defense, Alexander Fisun, who was also elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to the RAS certificate, he is an honored physician of the Russian Federation, the chairman of the special expert council of the Higher Attestation Commission under the Ministry of Education and Science for Medical Sciences. One of the examples of the military doctor's scientific achievements is the substantiation and implementation of "modern organizational approaches to the medical support management system that ensure the required level of combat and mobilization readiness of the medical service of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation."
 |
| Konstantin Kotenko
|
The last of the high-ranking layoffs - Alexander Savenkov, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Head of the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. "A specialist in the field of criminal law, criminal procedure, forensic science, the author of more than 50 scientific works, of which 3 monographs, 15 textbooks and teaching aids (11 co-authored)", - says the reference of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Among the scientific achievements is the study of the formation of the criminal policy of the Russian state in the context of the development of the international legal framework for combating crime.
["Gazeta RBK", 11/29/2016, "Academics quit officials": On Monday afternoon, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev dismissed Deputy Minister of Education and Science Alexei Lopatin, who is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "He is a scientist, and he will continue his scientific activities," the government's press service said. […]
Alexander Savenkov is one of the most influential security officials dismissed by the president on November 28. Since 1985 Savenkov served in the prosecutor's office, from 2002 to 2006 he held the post of chief military prosecutor, deputy prosecutor general Vladimir Ustinov. After Ustinov's resignation, Savenkov was appointed First Deputy Minister of Justice, and then, according to an interlocutor of RBC close to the FSB, he was actually "sent to an honorary pension" to the Federation Council, where he represented the Vladimir region from 2009 to 2014. […]
After the appointment of Savenkov to the investigative department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, he began to establish army order there, three employees of the department told RBC. All the investigators were then forced to come to work in uniform, Saturday became a working day, and they had to forget about the vacation abroad, they complained.
In the spring of 2016, Savenkov applied for the post of Prosecutor General, said two interlocutors of RBC close to the FSB, but in June the Federation Council, on the proposal of the President, extended the powers of Yuri Chaika.
According to one of the sources, Savenkov was also considered a supporter of the idea of uniting the entire investigation under the roof of one department, that is, a competitor to the chairman of the TFR Alexander Bastrykin. - Box K.ru]
Political analyst Yevgeny Minchenko considers the dismissals to be a logical continuation of the "public flogging" that Putin arranged last week - "this is already playing out the game." At the same time, the expert does not consider the dismissals indicative: “The same Savenkov from the Ministry of Internal Affairs is not an ordinary person at all. There are no people who are inside the system of power structures and are not related to the "power games". Even the very fact that a particular character is neutral is already one of the factors of the general disposition. " According to Minchenko, Putin "has been fooling the elite over the past year and intends to do so in the future." “One of the manifestations of this tendency is fire on headquarters,” the political scientist shrugs.
Political scientist Gleb Kuznetsov laughed when asked about Khristoforov. “Who is Khristoforov? I don’t know that. Is this in the case of academicians, or what? " - commented the interlocutor of "Gazeta.Ru" laughing. “Well what can I say, this is labor discipline. If they were told to jump, then they have to get up and jump. If you want to keep your post, you must obey the leaders. Apparently, it didn't reach everyone. This unfortunate Khristoforov is a victim of an educational act, he just found himself in the wrong place at the wrong hour. Whatever Nobel laureate you are, you must obey your leader without question. I think the next generation of officials will be more disciplined. "
Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Education and Science Lyubov Dukhanina in a conversation with Gazeta.Ru said that “it is advisable to more clearly define the possibilities for officials to combine non-core activities”. According to the deputy, judging by the "clear message of the president", the definition of these issues with the help of a law or a corresponding government decree is possible in the near future.
Original of this material© "Novaya Gazeta", 24.11.2016, Photo: via "Novaya Gazeta"
Closed eyes
Andrey Zayakin[...] Head of the Main Military Medical Directorate of the Ministry of Defense Alexander Yakovlevich Fisun has six scientific articles reflected in the most authoritative medical database of publications in peer-reviewed journals pubmed. Five of them - in "organizational and administrative directions": leadership of military medicine, planning, equipment, organization of services to the population in military medical organizations. We were unable to find any other contribution of Academician Fisun to world science in pubmed. Google scholar, however, pointed us to Fisun's article "The Psychology and Psychopathology of Information Wars" in the Military Medical Journal. The Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) does not even know about the existence of such an author of scientific works as A.Ya. Fisun. The RSL does not have a single book authored by prof. Fisun. But it contains written-off dissertations, for the production of which prof. Fisun had a hand in leadership.
Anna Tyukina's dissertation under the guidance of prof. Fisuna was completely decommissioned from the work of Vladimir Igonin.
They differ only in the title page. In all other respects, they are completely identical. And who was Igonin's leader? Surprise surprise, the same prof. Fisun!
Also under the leadership of A.Ya. Fisun's dissertation was defended again by Anton Stazhinsky (supervisor - the above-mentioned student of Prof. Fisun Igonin) under the name of Elena Egorenkova.
And the same dissertation of Stazhinsky was defended by another Fisun graduate student, Vyacheslav Polovinka. The opponent of the dissertations of Stazhinsky, Polovinka and Egorenkova was the same person, prof. Nikolay Kolomoets.
Deputy Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - Head of the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Alexander Savenkov did not appear in Dissernet. His Hirsch index according to the RSCI is 8, in total there are 32 Savenkov's publications in the RSCI, 16 of them are cited by someone at least once.
(The Hirsch index allows, within the framework of one scientometric indicator, to assess both the fertility of a scientist and his relevance. For comparison, the Hirsch index of the co-founder of Dissernet, Prof. Rostovtsev, is 89.)
Mr. General writes mainly about corruption. The legal experts we interviewed did not classify Savenkov as an outstanding scholar in the field of jurisprudence. In scientific institutions, judging by the biography of Savenkov, Mr. General never had a main job, his career proceeded in the prosecutor's office, the Federation Council and federal ministries. In some journal articles, his position is listed as "Chief Researcher at the Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation." We received such a comment from an expert in the field of criminal law: “My uncle understands everything: both cybercrime and crimes in the implementation of the state defense order. It can be assumed that he is a "multi-source" who is actively being helped. "
Vasily Khristoforov, head of the registration and archival funds of the FSB of Russia, also fell under the hot hand of the president. Professor Khristoforov has 98 publications with 208 citations, the RSCI Hirsch index is 7.
We received such a comment from the expert historian Prof. Khristoforov: “… there were many documentary publications from the FSB archive, where he participated, it seems, published by the authoritative publishing house ROSSPEN, but I cannot assess the degree of his personal or departmental involvement. Participation in the defense of the Danilov Council looks depressing, there is also a connection with the former director of the IRI RAS Sakharov ... "
(Let me remind you that the Danilov Council is an office for generating fake dissertations at the Moscow State Pedagogical University, which was destroyed even before the emergence of Dissernet. Khristoforov was not a member of it.)
Personally, Vasily Khristoforov became the head of two almost completely written-off dissertations. Someone Ivan Yuryevich Chaev defended Magomed Timov's thesis again, and someone Maxim Kholodny defended Nurdin Sheudzhen's thesis in the same shop at the Moscow State Pedagogical University.
Where were the eyes of prof. Khristoforov, when he did not notice the almost one hundred percent plagiarism, we find it difficult to say. [...]
[Fontanka.Ru, 11/28/2016, "Ni Hirsha to yourself academicians": The status of an academician or member of the academician gives its holder the right to a scholarship of 100 thousand rubles or 50 thousand rubles, respectively building. The results of the election of members of the RAS were announced back in October. 2,273 people have registered as applicants. 518 people were elected and received the aforementioned benefits. With the light hand of the president, it is not discussed how deservedly they are awarded the status. Non-scientific productivity of academics. And their places of work.
The future academicians and correspondent members are elected by secret ballot by the full members of the RAS. Of course, the scientific world is narrow, many people know many personally or from scientific works. For example, in the old days physicists several times "rolled" their famous colleague Mikhail Kovalchuk, the director of the Kurchatov Institute, which bears the informal title "brother of Putin's friend." But since then, something has changed.
Until this year, elections were last held in 2011. But in 2013, as we know, the Russian Academy of Sciences underwent a reorganization. In particular, the academies of medical and agricultural sciences joined the "big" academy. Fontanka's sources three years ago feared that this would greatly dilute the "real" academicians, that is, lower the general level. Today they say that in the expanded and reorganized Academy, people simply do not really know each other. - Box K.ru]