Scouts are non-public people. Moreover, the intelligence officers are illegal immigrants. If fate makes one of them famous, then this is most likely a matter of chance. Most remain in the shadows even after completing their feat, even after their physical death. One of these unknown heroes of the Great Patriotic War for a long time was intelligence officer Igor Kharitonovich Aganin.

Intelligence does not like spotlights and investigative journalism. That's why it's a secret war - and in such a war, the secret becomes clear only in case of failure or when the time has come to talk about the heroes. Soviet people and even the current generation remember the name of the Soviet intelligence officer Nikolai Kuznetsov, who worked under the name of the German officer Paul Wilhelm Siebert. In 1943, another (?) Soviet intelligence officer wore the uniform of a Wehrmacht officer. The feat of Igor Aganin, who for more than a year transmitted secret information from the secret field police - Geheime Feldpolizei (GFP) - of the Third Reich, became known after the war. When we write it became known, this means that not the intelligence services, but the general public were aware of this.

A native of the village of Surgadi in Mordovia, he spent his childhood in the city of Engels, the capital of the autonomous republic of the Volga Germans. Quite quickly I mastered the German language, which was spoken everywhere here - on the street, in shops, in clubs. The boy had a penchant for languages ​​and, moreover, like many of his peers, wanted to help “give the land to the peasants in Grenada.” At one time there was such a very famous song in the USSR based on the verses of Mikhail Svetlov about a boy who left his “native hut” for the sake of Spanish “Labradors”, that is, plowmen-farmers. So Igorek diligently studied foreign languages ​​in order to help his class brothers who were not yet familiar with the all-powerful teaching of Marx-Lenin.

His uncle Alexei Nikolaevich, who fought in Budyonny’s First Cavalry during the Civil War, like Makar Nagulny from Sholokhov’s “Virgin Soil Upturned,” convinced his nephew that he needed to know foreign languages ​​to talk with the “world counter.” Unlike the protagonist of the novel, Alexei Nikolaevich placed a big bet on Germany, where, in his opinion, the dawn of revolution was about to break out and he would have to help the German proletariat. In a word, Aganin had a good incentive.

“I loved German classical literature,” Igor Aganin told journalist Lyudmila Ovchinnikova, author of the book “Soldiers of the Secret War.” - I could read Goethe’s poems for hours, delving into the music of the solemn rhythm. I was fascinated by monologues from Schiller's plays. I recited them at amateur costume concerts.” Moreover, the boy had a great understanding of the geography and economy of a country he had never been to, and for his endless quotes from German classical thinkers in the original language, he received the nickname “professor” from his peers.

In 1940, after graduating from school, Igor Aganin came to Moscow and entered the Bauman Higher Technical School. The sophomore volunteered for the front. Knowledge of German came in handy when scouts brought in another enemy “language.” Soon Aganin is taken as a translator to the regiment headquarters. What followed was injury, escape from encirclement, hospital, and then military translator courses in Kuibyshev. Aganin recalled how he first heard about Mein Kampf, on which German youth were brought up, and how teachers tried to convey to their listeners the peculiarities of the psychology of German soldiers and officers. Knowledge of the Wehrmacht regulations, its structure, ranks, insignia and awards - all this will be needed by the intelligence officer when he finds himself on the other side of the front.

Aganin was offered to remain as a teacher in military translator courses, but he was eager to go to the front. In 1941, there was a funeral for Uncle Alexei Nikolaevich, who died a heroic death, and in 1942, my mother wrote that my brother Misha had gone missing. Lieutenant Igor Aganin received an assignment to the reconnaissance platoon of the 258th Infantry Division, which was sent from near Moscow to the Stalingrad Front. Despite the heavy losses that the regiment suffered, the scouts regularly caught “tongues”.

“Near Stalingrad I had the opportunity to interrogate many German officers and soldiers,” recalled Igor Kharitonovich. “And I was amazed at how high their fighting spirit was.” How they were unshakably confident in their imminent victory. Even during interrogations, it was impossible not to notice from the expression of the eyes, the individual remarks that escaped, that the Germans felt their strength. There were cases that were absolutely amazing. The scouts captured a German officer. They brought him to our headquarters with his hands tied. You should have seen with what an impudent expression he sat in front of us. With what a sense of superiority he looked at us. I translated questions for him: what unit is he from? He demanded to know its composition, the name and surname of the commander. The officer refused to answer. He even said that he would help save us from being shot if he was treated well. He said that our troops are doomed. Stalingrad will fall in the coming days. In a word, he behaved as if it were not he, but we, who were in captivity.

One day a German plane was shot down over a field. The pilot jumped out with a parachute. Landing above our trenches, he shouted: “Rus, surrender!” He was brought to headquarters. He shouted hysterically that we would all be killed here, and so on.” In January 1943, Nazi soldiers who were captured radically changed their defiant behavior and behaved like beaten dogs - the Stalingrad “cauldron” was not in vain for them. Hungry and ragged, they asked for a piece of bread and a cigarette.

Once, having been surrounded by a group of our soldiers, Lieutenant Aganin, as a senior in rank, decided to go out, pretending to be leading Soviet prisoners of war. He took off his overcoat and trousers from the murdered German officer and took his documents. At night he gave commands in a loud voice. So he managed to lead the Red Army soldiers to the location of his unit. After this incident, at the headquarters of the Southwestern Front, Igor Aganin was offered to become a scout behind the front line.

The legend was thought out in advance. Lieutenant Otto Weber, who returned from vacation, did not manage to get to the unit where he was heading when he was captured. Aganin was the same age as 20-year-old Weber. In addition, Otto spoke Russian fluently and also served as a translator. There was an even more important detail - the Baltic German Otto Weber lived and studied among Russian emigrants and only just before the start of the war he left for his historical homeland. Only this could explain the ineradicable Russian accent in Igor Aganin’s excellent German. Instead of Lieutenant Weber, but with his documents, a “double” was supposed to cross the front line.

Aganin was prepared carefully, but hastily - Weber could not forever “wander through the Russian steppe.” It is never possible to foresee everything, especially in such a short period of time. Aganin was never specifically trained to be a scout and he did not know the specifics of this profession. For example, he did not know how to use a code. And our intelligence officer did not know much that the German lieutenant should have known. Not only had he never lived in Germany, but he had never even been passing through there. He could "burn out" on anything: on ignorance of German films and actors, football teams and famous players. He could automatically stand at attention or salute as is customary in the Red Army. Just in case, to explain the slow reaction, sluggishness and possible miscalculations of the false Weber, he was “prescribed” for shell shock on a genuine form from a German hospital. The big problem was communication with the command: after all, it was impossible to take the walkie-talkie with you.

To some extent, chance helped. When Aganin-Weber got to “his people,” he ended up in a wormwood, and in the commandant’s office he met his uncle’s comrade in arms. By that time, the Wehrmacht lieutenant colonel and uncle of Otto Weber had died at Stalingrad, which our intelligence officer knew about, but the Germans did not yet know. On the one hand, he had to look around while lying in the hospital, on the other, he already had patrons among senior officers in the person of a friend of his “native uncle.” Everything taken together not only saved the intelligence officer from failure, but also helped him in completing the mission of Soviet intelligence. On the recommendation of his military comrade, Uncle Otto, he was sent as a translator to the secret field police created within the Abwehr system. Its task included, among other things, identifying in the occupied territories everyone who was resisting the German authorities, fighting partisans and underground fighters.

Aganin completed his first reconnaissance mission with honor, and when he felt that he was close to failure, and was about to cross the front line to surrender to his own, as had been agreed upon even before he was sent behind enemy lines, he received a new task - to remain behind the front line, again reincarnated as another German officer. And only after the war, Igor Kharitonovich graduated from Baumanskoe, entered graduate school and defended his Ph.D. thesis. He often had to speak at post-war trials against war criminals, punishers and traitors, as a witness - after all, the Soviet intelligence officer knew many of these non-humans personally.

He was often called in the Russian way - Igor Kharitonovich. But his real name is Ibrahim Khatyamovich. He was from the Mordovian village of Surgadi. How did he learn German?...

He was often called in the Russian way - Igor Kharitonovich. But his real name is Ibrahim Khatyamovich. He was from the Mordovian village of Surgadi.

How did he learn German? He had an uncle - Alexey Nikolaevich Agishev, who lived in the city of Engels, before the war - the capital of the Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans. He persuaded his parents to give him Ibrahim to raise. Ibrahim graduated from a German school. Language practice was present at every turn in the city. Ibrahim was fond of classical German literature. His uncle Alexey Nikolaevich also studied German. But, as he believed, for a practical purpose. He believed that with knowledge of the language he could help German workers free themselves from Hitler. However, fate will have it different...

Alexey Agishev will volunteer for the front and die near Tula from a German bullet. And his nephew, having put on a German uniform, will become a scout and will receive terrible mental burns for the rest of his life, having seen with his own eyes the crimes of the Gestapo.

After graduating from school in Engels, Ibragim Aganin entered the Moscow Bauman Higher Technical School in 1940. I only studied for a year. In 1941 he went to the front. At first he fought in Ukraine, and he often had to interrogate prisoners. Aganin was seriously wounded in the battle. After the hospital, he was sent to translator courses.

“We were taught by teachers from Moscow State University, the Institute of Foreign Languages, as well as senior intelligence officers. We studied the regulations of the German army, its structure, and insignia.

The teachers tried to reveal to us the psychology of German soldiers. We translated dozens of German documents and soldiers' letters.

Then, finding myself behind German lines, I remembered my teachers with gratitude. At first I thought that this knowledge would help me better interrogate prisoners of war. But it turned out that I myself would have to get used to the role of a German officer,” he told me at a meeting when I, as a war correspondent, found him and wrote down his memories for three days.

Lieutenant Aganin was sent to the 258th division, which fought at Stalingrad. “When I had to interrogate captured Germans, I was often surprised at how strong their convictions were. Let me give you an example. I asked questions to the captured German officer: I demanded to know his name, what division he was from... And he said that he would take care of saving our lives if he was treated well. So he was confident of victory.”

Aganin commanded a reconnaissance platoon. “As I learned later, the higher authorities came up with a plan for my “reincarnation” into a German officer. I was brought to the headquarters of the Southwestern Front. And I was shocked to learn about the task that I had to complete. I was informed that a German lieutenant, Otto Weber, who was returning from Germany on vacation, was captured. His part was surrounded and defeated. He didn't know about it. He wandered around the steppe and was captured. I had to go to the German rear with his documents. At first I was placed in a prisoner of war camp, where I was next to Otto Weber. He talked about his family, relatives, and friends. Together with his mother, Weber left for Germany from the Baltic states. Like me, he also spoke German with a slight Russian accent. He, like me, was 20 years old. He also commanded an intelligence unit. Now Otto Weber's fate was to become mine. I caught and remembered every word he said. And he also said that his uncle commanded the regiment at Stalingrad. He just didn’t know that this regiment was also defeated and his uncle was killed.”

The preparation for Aganin's transformation into the German officer Otto Weber was quite short: he, according to legend, could not wander around the steppe for too long.

In the documents that were handed to Aganin, other notes were made about Weber’s stay in Germany. In his backpack were home-knitted wool socks. Everything in Aganin’s equipment was genuine, German.

In mid-February 1943, Aganin was brought to a steppe river, beyond which, as scouts reported, there were German units. After the encirclement of enemy troops at Stalingrad, in many areas of the steppe there was no continuous line of defense. Crossing a frozen river, Aganin fell into a wormwood. On the shore he poured water from his boots. He took refuge in a haystack. In the morning, in the distance I saw a dirt road along which rare cars passed. Headed in that direction. Raising his hand, he stopped the truck. “Where are you going?” “To Amvrosievka!” "Great! That’s where I’m going!”

When sending Aganin behind the front line, no one could know which military unit he would end up in. However, the underground reported that officers and soldiers from scattered units were being sent to Donetsk. Here an “army of revenge” is being formed, which will take revenge for Stalingrad. Scout Aganin had to try to get to Donetsk. In this city there was still hope of setting up a “mailbox” for him. His aunt lived here. According to the intelligence department, Aganin will pass through her an encrypted note, which will be taken by the Donetsk underground fighters. It was not an easy scheme...

Arriving in Amvrosievka, Weber-Aganin went to the commandant’s office. He submitted documents to the commandant and made a personal request: “At Stalingrad, his own uncle commanded the regiment. He would like to send him greetings from his family.” And then the commandant perked up. It turned out that he knew this colonel. “I served under his command. He saved my life. Glad to see his nephew." Meanwhile, Aganin felt that he had caught a cold. He was shivering. The commandant noticed his condition. "You are sick? They will take you to the hospital."

Aganin-Weber was among the wounded and sick. He remained silent for the most part, saying that he was shell-shocked. Meanwhile, he wasted no time. In the hospital, I observed the manner of communication, memorized anecdotes and jokes, the names of sports teams, songs that were sometimes addictive here.

“My documents were genuine. They couldn't arouse suspicion. I was afraid to make mistakes in small things, at the everyday level. It would be strange not to know, say, a song that is popular in Germany,” Aganin recalled.

He was discharged from the hospital. And he again goes to the military commandant. He says: “Courage, Otto! I made inquiries. Your uncle died. I see how sad you are." In memory of his dead friend, the commandant promises to take care of Otto Weber. “You are still too weak to return to the trenches.” He calls someone on the phone. The conversation focused on the field Gestapo. Aganin hears that the Gestapo needs translators.

Weber-Aganin travels to Donetsk. Here he learns that he is being appointed as a translator to a field Gestapo unit, which is listed as GFP-721. The Field Gestapo was a special punitive body created within the Abwehr system.

Field Gestapo officers followed the advancing Wehrmacht troops and were intended to fight underground fighters and partisans. No wonder they were called “chain dogs.” GFP-721 operated over a long distance - from Taganrog to Donetsk. This meant that scout Aganin would be able to collect information over a large area.

“On the very first day, the head of the GFP Meisner took me through the torture room,” said Ibragim Aganin. “There was a wounded man lying on the table, who was being beaten on his bloody back with rubber truncheons. The beaten face turned into a mask. For a moment I saw eyes clouded with pain. And suddenly it seemed to me that it was my older brother Misha. I felt scared. Did he really see me among his tormentors? All my life this memory haunted me. After the war, I found out: my brother Misha, a tank commander, went missing near Donetsk”...

Finding himself in a strange environment, Aganin, despite his youth and inexperience, showed remarkable resourcefulness and cunning to get into clerical work. This way he could not only save his life, but also avoid participating in the actions, as operations against partisans and underground fighters were called here.

“My appointment as a translator was not something special,” said Aganin. “Next to me was a translator, the son of a policeman, who knew German at the level of a high school student. So, with my knowledge of German and Russian, the authorities needed me. I tried my best. They brought me piles of papers. Among them were many orders addressed to the local population. I translated every line with utmost pedantry. I had good handwriting. I mentally thanked my teachers. When the employees, taking up arms, were preparing for an operation, and I was sitting at the desk, they openly called me a coward. They made fun of me. There was even a nickname: “Otto the paper mouse.”

In Donetsk and the surrounding area, Aganin saw the location of military units, airfields, and warehouses. But how to transfer this information to the intelligence department behind the front line? He did not have a walkie-talkie and could not have had one.

Genre: Successful People / Military

01. Mikhail Maklyarsky. The feat of a scout

In September 1947, the undisputed leader in film distribution was the film “The Feat of a Scout.” For the first time, the activities of front-line intelligence were shown on the screen during the very recent war. Only a few knew that the author of the script was the current state security colonel Isidor (Mikhail) Maklyarsky, who in real life composed and acted out completely different scenarios.

02. Yakov Serebryansky. The hunt for General Kutepov

General Kutepov, chairman of the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS), was kidnapped in Paris on January 6, 1930, by agents of the Foreign Department of the OGPU as a result of a secret operation prepared and carried out under the leadership of Yakov Serebryansky. Many documents about this operation are still secret and inaccessible to historians.

03. Grigory Boyarinov. Assault of the Century

On December 27, 1979, the assault on Amin's palace began - a special operation codenamed "Storm-333", which preceded the beginning of the participation of Soviet troops in the Afghan war of 1979-1989.
In the summer of 1979, Grigory Ivanovich Boyarinov was sent to the Republic of Afghanistan as the commander of the Zenit special forces detachment, in which capacity he participated in the storming of Amin’s palace, during which he died. For courage and heroism, Colonel Grigory Ivanovich Boyarinov was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

04. Gennady Zaitsev. "Alpha" is my destiny"

On July 29, 1974, by order of KGB Chairman Yu. V. Andropov, the anti-terrorist group “A” (“Alpha”) was created. On November 10, 1977, Gennady Zaitsev was appointed its commander. In his post, he repeatedly led special operations to free hostages and eliminate dangerous criminals: the American Embassy in Moscow (March 1979), Sarapul of the Udmurt Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (December 1981), Tbilisi (November 1983), Ufa of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (September 1986) and Mineralnye Vody (December 1988).

05. Ibrahim Aganin. War behind the front lines

During the Great Patriotic War, Soviet intelligence officer Igor Kharitonovich Aganin served in the Nazi counterintelligence agency GFP-312. Aganin's real name is Ibragim Khatyamovich. Reconnaissance deep behind enemy lines is not a one-time, but a daily and hourly risk! Every minute is a test. One wrong step and...

06. Sergey Fedoseev. The fate of a counterintelligence officer

During the war, Sergei Mikhailovich Fedoseev was directly involved in operations to capture German paratrooper agents and in radio games with the Abwehr. In June 1953, Beria appointed resident in the SFRY, but due to the Khrushchev coup, the business trip did not take place. He was dismissed from the authorities as a defendant in the Beria case. Subsequently restored. In 1960, he headed the newly created unit to combat smuggling and violations of foreign exchange transactions. Led the development of the “currency traders case”

07. Vadim Matrosov. Border is locked tight

Vadim Aleksandrovich Matrosov - army general, Hero of the Soviet Union.
He graduated from the courses for junior lieutenants at the Higher Border School of the NKVD in March 1942.
From March 1942 he fought on the Karelian Front. He carried out combat missions to protect the rear of the front, fight against German-Finnish sabotage groups in the Kirov Railway, and also conducted reconnaissance in the interests of the front troops. Personally participated in 10 long-distance reconnaissance raids deep behind the Finnish troops. He supervised the destruction of enemy reconnaissance and sabotage groups. Participated in the Vyborg-Petrozavodsk offensive operation in 1944. After the liberation of Karelia was completed, he was sent to the Far North and participated in the Petsamo-Kirkenes offensive operation.
In December 1972, he was appointed head of the Main Directorate of Border Troops - head of the border troops of the KGB of the USSR. He actively took part in directing the combat operations of border guards in the northern regions of Afghanistan during the Afghan War. Personally, he repeatedly visited the location of border troops units introduced into Afghanistan, participated in the development of combat operations and coordination of their actions with army units.

08. Rem Krasilnikov. Spy Hunter

The greatest successes in exposing and capturing secret agents of foreign intelligence services in the Soviet Union were achieved by Rem Sergeevich Krasilnikov, from 1972 to 1992, who headed the counterintelligence department for countering the special services, and his subordinates. He was also called the “double agent mole hunter.” It is with the name of Krasilnikov that the particularly scandalous revelations and failures of the CIA are associated. Despite the fact that most of the materials are still in the archives under the heading “Top Secret”, information about some high-profile operations has become available to the general public. The huge failures of the American intelligence services in the eighties literally destroyed the Moscow station.

09. Colonel Medvedev. Special purpose raid

The documentary tells about the unique operation of the Soviet intelligence and sabotage services during the war. The “Winners” detachment, under the command of state security captain Dmitry Medvedev, fought in Western Ukraine. Being located a thousand kilometers from the mainland, waging constant battles with German punitive forces and Ukrainian nationalists, the partisans destroyed 12 thousand Nazi soldiers and officers. Under the name of a German officer, the outstanding Soviet intelligence officer Nikolai Kuznetsov acted in Rovno and Lvov, eliminating 11 fascist generals and major officials. He and his comrades regularly supplied the Center with valuable intelligence information, including about the Wehrmacht counteroffensive near Kursk and the location of Hitler’s headquarters in the Vinnitsa region.

10. Alexey Botyan. How I liberated Poland

The documentary film tells about the legendary intelligence officer, brave and successful saboteur, hero of Russia Alexei Nikolaevich Botyan. With partisan detachments, he traveled thousands of kilometers behind enemy lines, carried out dozens of successful military operations, and in 1944 received an almost impossible task: to destroy the “executioner of Poland” - German Governor-General Hans Frank. While hunting for the Nazi leader, Botyan learned about plans to destroy Krakow and managed to stop the Nazis by blowing up an armory. This helped the advance of the Red Army and put Alexei Botyan among the heroes who saved this ancient city from destruction and liberated Poland from fascism.

11. Scout Korotkov's mission

The documentary tells the story of several days at the end of June 1941. There is a network of German anti-fascist agents operating in Berlin. Soviet intelligence officers are in touch with them, among them Alexander Korotkov.
Moscow sent two portable radio stations to Berlin. They must be handed over to agents. But ours are blocked at the embassy. They enter into a game with an SS officer. They offer him money, and in return they ask him to take Alexander to the city for a couple of hours so that he can say goodbye to his beloved German girl. He agrees. And on June 24, Korotkov goes to meet with radio operator Elizabeth. Two hours of incredible tension. At any moment, both he and Elizabeth could be captured. But everything worked out. That same evening the first radiogram went to Moscow.

12. Dmitry Tarasov. Jamming war

The film is dedicated to the man who headed one of the most important areas of work of the Soviet counterintelligence SMERSH. The radio games department, consisting of 8 people, was opposed to the huge and well-oiled mechanism of the Abwehr and SD. A year, Tarasov and his subordinates conducted about 80 radio games to disinformation the enemy. The result was the defeat of the Germans in the Battle of Stalingrad and on the Kursk Bulge, and the unprecedented success of the Soviet military operation Bagration. Tarasov made a significant contribution to the Victory and rightfully became a legend of state security.

Part three. The last witness

For many, the war ended in 1945, but not for Ibragim Aganin. The intelligence officer will present his account of the fascist executioners in the post-war period at the trials, which, as already mentioned, will take place in many countries of the world and here in Russia. For dozens of years he will carry out the second part of his special assignment, received in February 1943. As Konstantin Simonov wrote in one of his military essays, “his memory began with the war.” Then the punishers, even in their worst nightmares, could not imagine that their “colleague”, the translator of the secret Gestapo - GFP-312 in Donetsk and GFP-721 in Crimea - would present them with his Hamburg account of retribution.

Many books have been published about the heroism of underground fighters in the Nazi-occupied territories of Donbass and the Crimean Peninsula. I'll name just a few. “Death Stared in the Face” is about the Donetsk underground of front-line writer Viktor Shutov, with whom Ibragim Aganin had a strong friendship for many years. “In Our City” - about Donetsk Young Guards - Larisa Cherkashina. “Another Page” is a story by Leonid Lokhmanov about the Crimean Young Guards of “Young Guard-2”.

Yes, when in December 1943 the Soviet Information Bureau reported on the feat of the tragically killed Young Guards of Krasnodon, another underground militant organization was born - in the village of Marfovka, Crimean region. She also called herself the “Young Guard” and continued the work of her comrades. So Alexander Fadeev’s novel “The Young Guard,” which immortalized the feat of the young Krasnodon residents, can be said to be a literary monument to the Crimean Young Guard.

In the response of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation to my request, another book was named - “Heroes of the Invisible Front”, published in Donetsk quite recently, in 2007. And in the essays of journalists S. and G. Nakonechny, new pages of the life and struggle of I.Kh. Aganina.

But I would not have been able to read or hold all these publications in my hands if not for the life-saving help of the rector of the Chelyabinsk State Academy of Culture and Arts Vladimir Yakovlevich Rushanin, the director of the Chelyabinsk Regional Universal Scientific Library Irina Vasilyevna Gudovich, and her deputy Natalya Petrovna Rastsvetaeva. It was impossible to find the books and magazines I needed not only in Chelyabinsk, but also in other cities of Russia. Apparently, the political echo of the 90s also affected the heritage of military literature. But the war was the same for everyone: Russians, Tatars, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Jews. And Victory, washed by the blood of soldiers of different nations, was also the same for everyone. Natalya Petrovna Rastsvetaeva’s resourcefulness saved me. We still managed to obtain an electronic version of the book by Ukrainian authors “Heroes of the Invisible Front”.

...So, at trials in Rostov, Moscow, Berlin, the punishers identified with the help of I. Aganin immediately recognized the former field Gestapo translator Rudi - Rudolf Kluger, or Georg Bauer. And at first they did not understand the purpose of his presence on the ships. Moreover, they hoped, with the help of the former Sonderführer, to prove their innocence. Bauer-Kluger himself managed to achieve this. But what a shock the former fascist executioners fell into when the true role of the secret police translator became obvious. His testimony was worse than the shelling on the front line.

So, after the war, Ibragim Aganin managed to uncover dozens of former Abwehr and SD employees. But the path to the truth was difficult. He went through incredibly complex evidence of the guilt of traitors and the innocence of slandered patriots. There are plenty of examples of this in the book “Heroes of the Invisible Front”. I will give some of them.

...During the war years, the Chekist underground operated in Crimea. How much valuable information the intelligence officers conveyed to the Center is known only to history itself. And these eighty brave, desperate guys were suspected of treason. And eighty families received news of their sons, brothers, husbands as missing. But I. Aganin argued the opposite: no, the intelligence officers were not missing, their resident Colonel Gisak Arabadzhaev was to blame for their death.

And Ibrahim Khatyamovich identified the traitor using fascist materials that revealed the path of a werewolf in uniform. Just two months after the group landed in Crimea, the colonel found himself in the hands of provocateurs of Abwehrgruppe-302 “Hercules”. He was interrogated at Field Police No. 312. Bauer-Aganin was the translator. And all the traitor’s testimony was recorded: from information on the transfer of our intelligence officers to Berlin and ending with the appearances of security officers in Crimea.

However, I. Aganin’s messages were not taken into account by the relevant authorities and remained unrealized until 1978. It was in that year that one former Crimean punisher was arrested. And only after that the truth triumphed. Eighty families learned about the tragic death of their relatives: all the security officers were shot by the Gestapo.

But it was not only adults who were betrayed. Stanislav Nakonechny in his essay “Secret Police Translator” cites a chilling fact.

After the death of the writer Alexander Green (Scarlet Sails, Running on the Waves), beloved by all the children of our country, his widow Nina Green remained underground during the war in the occupied territory of Crimea. But she took up completely different things. Having become a lady pleasant in all respects for the Nazis, she handed over to the Nazis a group of pioneers and schoolchildren aged 10-13. The children were shot as dangerous enemies of Germany. And Nina Green and her accomplices did everything to slander the young patriots posthumously. And their mothers were exiled to Siberia, from where many never returned.

How much time and effort Ibrahim Aganin devoted to restoring justice and the good name of patriotic children, he alone knew. Writer Ivan Melnikov dedicated the wonderful book “While the Heart Beats” to the heroic deeds of young heroes. But, paradoxically, I. Aganin had to fight for the good name of the writer himself. In March 1986, he wrote to Stanislav Nakonechny, the author of essays about the fate of the intelligence officer himself, in the book “Heroes of the Invisible Front”: “The other day I was visited by a writer from Simferopol, Ivan Karpovich Melnikov, the author of more than 20 works on the Crimean underground. Because in his books he sharply offended criminals and spoke at a meeting against local party officials, his party card was stolen, a case of immorality was concocted, his family was broken up, and he was expelled from the party. Former criminals and their patrons laugh, allies go into the bushes, and for two years he has been seeking the truth in vain.”

...Scientists have been studying the phenomenon of betrayal for a long time. There is no consensus. According to the author of an article on collaboration, that is, betrayal, during the Great Patriotic War, Evgeniy Krinko, political clichés prevent many scientists from understanding the essence of this phenomenon. It is necessary to distinguish between active and passive betrayal, everyday, administrative, economic, and military-political collaboration. And not all actions “can be qualified as treason.” The scientist’s conclusion: “...young historians are now distinguished by the desire to create a more or less impartial picture of the events of the occupation, abandoning moral and ethical evaluative and political-legal categories.”

And for some reason I immediately remembered Goebbels’ book “Last Notes,” published in Russia in the mid-90s. It was dedicated to the last months of the war: I remember the episode of the meeting with General Vlasov. In the fall of 1941, Vlasov advised Stalin to form a division of prisoners for the defense of Moscow. And in March 1945, Vlasov gave the same advice to Goebbels. The Minister of Propaganda makes the following entry in his diary: “I told the Fuhrer in detail about my conversation with Vlasov, in particular about the means that he used on behalf of Stalin in the fall of 41 to save Moscow. The Fuhrer agreed to create several women's battalions in Berlin."

But let's return to our story. Testimony of intelligence officer I.Kh. Aganin was involved in many military trials in the case of traitors to the Motherland, historians, writers, scientists, and journalists. From a letter from military lawyer General S. Sinelnikov to military historian S. Asanov: “With great pleasure I read in the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper your story about the work of intelligence officer I. Aganin in the Nazi counterintelligence agency GFP-312. Honor and praise to him - a courageous Soviet man. I will never forget his testimony at the trial in Krasnodar in the case of traitors and traitors to the Motherland - Mikhelson, Shepf, Potemin and others. Truly little-known pages of the war have unfolded before us.”

I think we should go into more detail on one page. And for this we will have to go back to 1943 again.

...In early March, the Nazis celebrated the day of remembrance of the soldiers who gave their lives for the Fuhrer and great Germany. In front of the line of subordinates, police commissioner GUF-312 Meisner made a speech. Yes, the same Meissner who met the newly arrived Georg Bauer-Aganin in his office, where the prisoner was being tortured. The Meisner who gave orders to arrest all civilians who even from a distance looked towards military columns, trains, headquarters, barracks, and every second person who fell into the hands of Meissner’s investigators, lost his life.

“We stood next to Potemin in that formation,” witness I. Aganin told the military tribunal of the Moscow Military District, “because we were the same height.” In connection with the ceremonial formation, we were wearing a brand new military uniform. It was this kind of Sonderführer uniform that Potemin dreamed of when he was recruited by the Abwehr right in our intelligence school.

From Potemin's friends, as well as from documents stored in the field Gestapo safes, Bauer-Aganin learned that Potemin was in excellent standing with Chief Executioner Meissner. Active, diligent. “Deserves gratitude and leave with the right to travel to the empire.” This was stated in the order of the field police commissioner. But such a biography had to be earned through torture, denunciations, and executions, which Potemin did with great zeal in the hope of a new life in Nazi Germany.

And with the arrival of our people, Potemin rewrote his biography. In it, he already appeared as a lieutenant who led a group of reconnaissance officers behind enemy lines and “for the sake of secrecy” remained with the Gestapo. He created a sabotage group, naming among its members people who had already been shot by the Nazis, and so on and so forth.

A “clean” biography saved Potemin in peacetime. He defended himself, became a candidate of historical sciences, and the head of a department at one of the large Moscow universities.

But Potemin had no idea that during the war his crimes were observed by the underground and his “colleague”, field Gestapo translator Georg Bauer, our intelligence officer. Retribution came in peacetime. But if in trials it was not difficult to prove Potemin’s work with the Nazis, then revealing his true face in our days was more difficult. That is why I.Kh. Aganin spoke with his irrefutable arguments at almost all domestic and foreign trials. As the authors of the essay “Please invite witness Aganin,” M. Korenevsky and A. Sgibnev emphasize: “Aganin, a born analyst, a subtle psychologist, as they say, “figured out” traitors...” Indeed, Ibrahim Khatyamovich did this scientifically and without fail.

“Was there no reason to assume,” he wrote to his friends in Donetsk, “that if Potemin survived the war and was repainted, then over time he would be drawn to the Donetsk archive? And if so, is it difficult to determine exactly which archive funds he wants to look into? And if this version is correct, then he will try to seize the necessary documents from those funds. But this will not be possible for a person who has not become “one of his own” in the archive. And this, probably, can only be a reputable researcher, most likely a professional historian... Now we, with our entire scouting group, are “identifying” two more from GFP-721, they “know” well the circumstances of the death of many underground heroes, partisans, intelligence officers of Ukraine and the Northern Caucasus..."

Yes, in addition to scientific and teaching activities, Ibragim Aganin was engaged in other work for decades. It can be called military-patriotic, but it would be more accurate - search at the behest of memory.

Almost every summer, Ibrahim Aganin went with his students on expeditions to the combat areas of the Makeyevka, Donetsk, and Crimean underground fighters. And the result was new facts, names, unexpected turns of already known events.
Letters were sent constantly and in huge quantities to the one-room Moscow apartment of the former intelligence officer.

“I bow deeply to you and to all the trackers who removed the shadow of suspicion from my father. Now it is officially and widely announced in our city that he remained faithful to his homeland until his last breath.”

“We have already lost hope of finding out the truth about the last days of our fellow countrymen, captured by the Gestapo in the winter of 1943 in different places of the Kerch Peninsula. And suddenly we read the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on rewarding heroes...”

And there are countless such letters of gratitude. But I would like to emphasize one more feature of Ibragim Aganin’s character. He never forgot his combat assistants behind enemy lines. Not being Soviet soldiers, they delivered material obtained from the Nazis across the front line. Among them is the Romanian Ion Cojuharu, already familiar to us, who was saved by our intelligence officer from being shot by the police commissioner Otto Kausch and convinced to go over to the side of our army. And the German anti-fascists Rudolf Gramsci and Hans Ugnade, who were part of one of the groups of the partisan detachment.

“I consider it advisable,” I. Aganin wrote to S. Nakonechny, “to go to Germany with an order (award), films about Donetsk patriots, including Gramsci, Ugnada, plays, works about these heroes, and maybe with materials about the atrocities of the fascists in the Donbass and donate all this to German youth as a symbol of our joint struggle for peace.”

Ibrahim Khatyamovich did not have time to do this. Like many other things planned for many years to come. The heart of the scout, who continued his battle in peacetime, could not stand it. One heart attack, two...

In one of the Moscow cemeteries, a monument with a five-pointed star directed upward was erected. Here in the fall of 1987 the general’s farewell words were heard:

— Ibrahim Khatyamovich Aganin rightfully entered the top ten legendary scouts behind enemy lines...

I heard these same words quite recently, in December 2009. There was a program on the federal channel “Zvezda” about young intelligence officers introduced into Nazi structures during the war, their courage, bravery, and professionalism. And the native name of Ibragim Aganin sounded.

***
However, it is too early to put an end to the story. While working on the essay, I more than once turned for help to a member of our Public Chamber, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, Evgeny Fedorovich Kurakin, a man of extraordinary destiny, whose name is familiar to all South Urals. At the age of eighteen he went to the front and was wounded many times. In peacetime, he raised virgin soil, raised grain, managed state farms, worked in the apparatus of the regional and central party committees, for fifteen years he was engaged in the improvement and well-being of the lives of his fellow countrymen as chairman of the regional executive committee and for almost two decades he has headed the city council of war, labor, Armed Forces and law enforcement.

I showed the essay to Evgeny Fedorovich, and our conversation lasted several hours. I will reproduce a small excerpt of this conversation.

- Evgeniy Fedorovich, philologists claim that our word “feat”, with a clear and direct meaning, has difficulty finding an accurate translation in European languages. What do you think about it?

- In my opinion, this word became our symbol in the twentieth century - bloody, difficult, heroic. Yes, the pre-war generation of boys and girls grew up in an atmosphere of heightened sense of the Motherland. It was expressed in everything: in the long lines of teenagers at the district military registration and enlistment offices in June 1941. Of course, fourteen- to fifteen-year-old boys were sent home to “grow up,” but they stubbornly besieged the thresholds of military registration and enlistment offices again and again.

You correctly noted in the essay that international feelings were close to our people at that time. We all studied Spanish and German and prepared to defend our land.

And how I tried to get sent to the front. They didn’t take it, the age didn’t suit me. Then after ninth grade I got a job at a cartridge factory. There was one in Chelyabinsk, factory No. 541, evacuated from Voroshilovgrad. It produced cartridges for small arms. I issued four standards, instead of 60 parts I turned out 250 pieces. After graduating from school with honors, I managed through the district and city committees of the Komsomol to have the military registration and enlistment office send me to the front.

If you had asked me then what war meant to you, I would have answered: offensive and losses. After each battle, out of 120 people, no more than ten to fifteen fighters remained in the company. The formation was formed again, but after another attack, out of 120 soldiers, only a few remained.

— You went through all of Belarus, Poland, left behind three military winters and two summers, beyond the Vistula near Warsaw in January 1945 you were seriously wounded in both legs. We were treated in hospitals for a long time. Returning home in July 1945, we immediately went to the military registration and enlistment office. And when asked what you can do, they answered: I know how to kill fascists... Has the war changed you a lot?

- Yes, we went to war at eighteen years old, and returned at 21-22 years old as adults. We learned something that you cannot read in books or see in films. Therefore, the memory of all participants in the Great Patriotic War, despite their age and illness, is strong and the memories are vivid.

There were 32 people in my platoon. We were all different in character, but in battle we behaved like one person, because each of us knew that we had a comrade in arms nearby. And we returned from the war with victory and faith in the strength of the spirit of our people.

Ibragim Khatyamovich Aganin (photo from the 60s).
Photo from the magazine "Tatar World"

2011 is the year of the 66th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War and the year of the 70th anniversary of its beginning. And it was marked not only by the honoring of veterans who have survived to this day, but also by justice for the still living accomplices of Hitlerism.

In February 2011, the Budapest prosecutor's office indicted Sandor Kepiro, a 97-year-old Nazi criminal. According to investigators, in 1942 he took part in mass executions of civilians on the territory of Serbia.

In March, a Lithuanian court found 85-year-old Algimantas Dailide guilty of persecuting Jews and collaborating with the Nazis during World War II, but, unfortunately, did not impose a prison sentence - according to the court decision, due to the defendant’s advanced age and because he no longer poses a threat to society.

Finally, after many years of trial, Ivan (John) Demjanjuk was convicted: in May 2011, the Munich Regional Court sentenced him to five years in prison for participating in the extermination of Jews during the Second World War. As we see, not all the criminals and villains of the last war have been punished.

It seems that in this regard it makes sense to recall one of the many cases against exposed Nazi henchmen. It was completed more than 30 years ago, but it became truly famous not so long ago and, so to speak, is still “not closed.” This is the so-called “Mironenko-Yukhnovsky case.” In many respects, this case is significant, and some of the conclusions arising from it are now becoming increasingly relevant.

HIS NAME WAS ALEX LUTY

In 1976, a message appeared in the domestic press that a certain Yukhnovsky, a Nazi punisher who had been hiding for a long time under the name of Alexander Mironenko, had been sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out. But only in our time the FSB declassified the materials of this criminal case.

So, Alexander Ivanovich Yukhnovsky, aka “Khlyst”, aka “Alex Lyuty”, began his service to the Germans in the fall of 1941 as a translator for the German police in the city of Romny at the age of sixteen. From April 1942 to August 1944, he was already a member of GFP-721. As the dry operational summary says, all this time he “participated in mass executions and torture of Soviet citizens.” During the investigation, employees of the 7th Department of the 5th Directorate of the State Security Committee (a special department involved in the search for war criminals) were able to trace the career of a traitor who served almost the entire war in the GUF-721 - the secret field police. Operatives and investigators traveled through 44 settlements, interviewed many people and were able to thoroughly recreate the life path of Mironenko-Yukhnovsky. They even got involved in the case with colleagues from the Stasi, the security service of the then GDR (it was at their disposal, and not at all at the Lubyanka, that most of the surviving archives of the Gestapo and other punitive structures of the Reich were at their disposal).

Here, apparently, it is necessary to briefly explain what kind of organization we are talking about. In novels about the war and in films, as well as in textbooks and history books, it is often said that the Gestapo operated in the occupied territory of the USSR. In fact, the functions of the secret police were performed by the SD: the security service under the SS, the department of Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. And in the front line there was an organization that was little known to the general public - the secret field police, or GFP: Geheimefeldpolizei. Of course, most of the employees in the GUF were sent there from the Gestapo, and, of course, the methods were no different from those used by this department. The GUF was part of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security (RSHA) as the V Directorate. At the same time, local GUF organizations were subordinate to Wehrmacht intelligence and counterintelligence, field and local commandant's offices. At the same time, they performed the functions of the Gestapo in the combat zone, in the front and army rear areas, at the same time being the army security service along with the field gendarmerie.

In this, if I may say so, office, in one of its most famous units for atrocities - the field team of GFP-721 - the successful journalist Mironenko was a member. GFP-721 is responsible for the mass murders of Soviet citizens in the Donbass, Rostov region, Kharkov region, Chernigov region, and then in Moldova. It was GFP-721 that destroyed 75 thousand people in the area of ​​mine No. 4/4-bis in Kalinovka, whose bodies filled the shaft of this not the smallest mine in Donbass almost to the top: out of 360 meters of the depth of the mine shaft, 305 meters were filled with corpses. The history of mankind knows no other precedent when such a huge number of victims were killed in one place. As it turned out along the way, Alex-Yukhnovsky’s activities were connected not only with GFP-721, but also with two no less famous punitive organizations on the territory of Ukraine: Sicherheitedinent-11 and Sonderkommando No. 408.

Giving evidence, Yukhnovsky initially tried to present himself as just a blind executor of his father’s will (it was his father who assigned him to the police) and tried to convince him that he was in the GUF-21 only as a translator. But quite strange circumstances quickly became clear. For example, that young Yukhnovsky quickly gained authority among the Germans, was enrolled in all types of allowances and received a pistol, while not having any rank and being listed as just a translator. “Backed to the wall,” Mironenko admits that he “had” to “beat the arrested with a rubber truncheon” during interrogations.

Witness Khmil, an ordinary person detained during the raid, recalled: “I asked Sasha not to beat me, I said that I was not guilty of anything, I even knelt before him, but he was inexorable┘ Translator Sasha┘ interrogated me and beat with passion and initiative.”

Other witnesses say much the same thing. “Alex beat a prisoner who escaped from the camp and was caught in a raid with a rubber hose, breaking his fingers┘.” “Before my eyes, Yukhnovsky shot some girl. She was about seventeen. He didn’t say why.” “In the summer of 1943, he beat a woman until she was unconscious. Then they threw her into the yard, then they took her away┘.”

The only one of all the “Hiwis” (an abbreviation of the German “Hilfswilliger”: personnel of the Wehrmacht and other German departments, recruited from residents of the occupied territories) who were in the GUF-721, he was awarded the German medal “For Merit for the Eastern Peoples”. Moreover, as his colleagues recalled (some were brought to the trial from prisons, where they were serving sentences for treason), all the policemen were very afraid of Alex - despite the fact that many of them were old enough to be his fathers. The same thing, as well as the fact that the police unquestioningly followed the instructions of Alexander Yukhnovsky, is also noted by witnesses. The testimony of one of them reported how in some town Alex Lyuty punched a burgomaster in the face who was trying to object to something, and the deputy head of GFP-721 Muller, who was present, did not object. Others recalled how casually he behaved with the occupiers at times: like one of his own or “almost one of them.” Investigators have never encountered anything like this.

What did this mediocre translator do that was so special for the Germans? Was Alex Lyuty, for example, an employee of the so-called “Russian Secret Police”: a special organization operating among Soviet citizens serving the occupiers? Or maybe he was a member of some other German intelligence service? In this regard, let us mention one interesting episode of his biography. In 1943, Yukhnovsky was awarded a trip to the Third Reich. In itself, this was sometimes practiced - however, as witness statements say, he did not talk much about the trip, getting off with stories about meeting German girls and visiting cinemas. Which, again, is uncharacteristic, because such “excursionists” were not only recommended to praise what they saw in “Greater Germany” as often as possible, but were even simply obliged to give appropriate lectures to Nazi collaborators and the population. Perhaps Yukhnovsky was sent not to rest, but to study? Perhaps the Nazis had very far-reaching plans for this cruel, young and intelligent punisher?

Another revealing point: as the case materials and witness testimony say, Alex Lyuty despised not only his fellow countrymen in general, but also those Ukrainians who served the Germans with him - in particular. Perhaps, like today's Russian Nazis, he associated himself not with his people, but with the “superior Aryan race” (or at least considered himself its privileged servant).

It should be noted that the younger Yukhnovsky was not a convinced Ukrainian nationalist like his father and was not among those “offended” by the Soviet regime. Although the head of the family was not just a clergyman - a defrocked archpriest, but also a former officer in Petliura’s army. (Which, however, did not prevent Ivan Yukhnovsky from successfully working as an agronomist in the 30s.)

Be that as it may, in the summer of 1944, the fate of Alex Lyuty took a sharp turn: in the Odessa region, he fell behind the convoy GFP-721 and after some time appeared at the field military registration and enlistment office of the Red Army, calling himself the name Mironenko. And one can only guess: did this happen due to military confusion or in fulfillment of the orders of the owners?

PUNISHER WITH A LITERARY TIP

Mironenko-Yukhnovsky served in the Soviet Army from September 1944 to October 1951 - and served well. He was a squad commander, a platoon commander in a reconnaissance company, the head of the office of a motorcycle battalion, then a clerk at the headquarters of the 191st Rifle and 8th Guards Mechanized Division. He was awarded the medal “For Courage”, medals for the capture of Koenigsberg, Warsaw, and Berlin. As his colleagues recalled, he was distinguished by considerable courage and composure. In 1948, Mironenko-Yukhnovsky was seconded to the Political Directorate of the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany (GSOVG). There he worked in the editorial office of the newspaper “Soviet Army”, publishing translations, articles, and poems. Published in Ukrainian newspapers - for example, in Prykarpatska Pravda. He also worked on radio: Soviet and German. During his service in the Political Directorate he received numerous thanks, and, in a bitter irony of fate, for speeches and journalism that exposed fascism. I wonder: what would those who awarded him say if they learned that at the beginning of his career as a translator, Mironenko-Yukhnovsky published poems in occupation newspapers praising Hitler and cursing the Bolsheviks and “world Jewry”?

Let us note one important detail: while serving in Germany, Lyuty had the opportunity to easily “go” to the western occupation zone (he visited it more than once). But he did not take advantage of this seemingly obvious opportunity. Yukhnovsky did not try to join the Banderaites. And in general he behaved like an ordinary honest Soviet citizen. After demobilization, he moved to Moscow and got married. From that moment on, Yukhnovsky began to make, if not a rapid, but smooth and successful career, confidently rising to the top.

Since 1952, he worked for the newspaper Na Stroyke, and since 1961, for the publishing house of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, where he held various positions and was even chairman of the local trade union committee for several years in a row. In 1965 he even became a candidate for party membership; then - a member of the CPSU. In addition to his main work, Yukhnovsky collaborated in various newspapers and magazines: “Red Warrior”, “Soviet Aviation”, “Forest Industry”, “Water Transport”. And everywhere he was noted with thanks, certificates, encouragements, successfully advanced in his career, became a member of the Union of Journalists of the USSR. Translated from German, Polish, Czech. In 1962, for example, his translation of the book by the Czechoslovak writer Radko Pytlik “The Fighting Jaroslav Hasek” was published - and an excellent translation, it should be noted. “I served and worked as best I could, and apparently not bad; “I would have done even more useful things if it weren’t for the severity of what happened,” he said with simple-minded cynicism in a written statement after his arrest. By the mid-70s, he, already an exemplary family man and the father of an adult daughter, became the head of the editorial office of the publishing house of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The Voenizdat publishing house accepted for publication a book of his memoirs about the war, written, as the reviewers noted, fascinatingly and with great knowledge of the matter, which, however, is not surprising, since Mironenko-Yukhnovsky was an actual participant in many events, however, “from the other side of the barricades” .

Mironenko was even nominated to the party committee of the publishing house, and thus the possibility of a further very good career was opened up for him. And in connection with this nomination, he was required to document the receipt of the Order of Glory, which Mironenko had previously stated. He was unable to do this, and a check revealed discrepancies in two autobiographies he wrote in his own hand: in one he wrote that he served in the Red Army from the beginning of the war, in the other that he lived under occupation in Ukraine until 1944. Members of the party organization found this suspicious, especially since inconsistencies in the biography of the person involved were first noticed back in 1959. And the Ministry of Civil Aviation sent a corresponding request “to the right place.”

It should be mentioned that a complex and well-thought-out state system was formed to search for punishers and policemen. This work was carried out on an ongoing basis, systematically. Its strategy and tactics, methods and techniques, methods and even a kind of ethics have developed. There were special search books: the combined work of probably many generations of KGB officers. They included lists of persons to be wanted and brought to trial as war criminals, with full identifying information on them. The operatives sifted through a mass of fragmentary evidence, fleeting mentions, random slips of the tongue, selecting the necessary facts. And quite quickly, the identity of the journalist and the punisher first became an investigative hypothesis, and then the basis for initiating a criminal case.

However, according to another version, it all started with the fact that a former employee of Smersh identified the punisher Yukhnovsky in Mironenko, whom he accidentally met in the metro.

One way or another, the Soviet citizen and promising party member Alexander Mironenko disappeared and again appeared on the stage of history, Alex Lyuty, to play the last act of the bloody and cruel play that was his life. And he tried to play it with some subtlety. So, approximately in the middle of the investigation, he suddenly announced that he allegedly went to work for the German police on the orders of his father, in order to help him in anti-fascist activities. By that time, he was already the chief of police of the city of Romny, but at the same time he actively worked for the partisans, helping to make the necessary passes and other documents. Then, when his father was sent to the prison he had previously managed on charges of attempting to kill a German officer, Alex had to go to the partisans. At the beginning of August 1943, the detachment of Captain Elizarov, in which he fought, was completely killed in battle. But Yukhnovsky allegedly managed to escape from the Germans. After which he waited for the advancing Soviet troops and was called up by the field military registration and enlistment office. But, out of fear that they would not believe him, he changed his last name and hid the fact of serving the occupiers. However, it quickly became clear that Yukhnovsky’s father was shot after the war as a traitor; his connection with the partisans was not established. And he began his activities as the chief of the German police of the city of Romny, Yukhnovsky Sr., by organizing the public hanging of more than 200 people. In addition, as it turned out, Elizarov’s partisan detachment began its activities in September 1942, therefore, Mironenko-Yukhnovsky could not have gotten there in April 1942. After this, Yukhnovsky, as they say, broke down, fully admitted his guilt, and for the rest of the time before the trial he wrote long, confusing explanatory notes to the investigative authorities and the prosecutor’s office: mainly on abstract topics.

The trial took place and a verdict was passed that left no doubt.

But if from the legal side the case can be considered solved, then from the factual side Yukhnovsky has remained largely a mystery. How and why did he become a merciless killer, without any reason or seemingly corresponding inclinations? Why was he sent to the Third Reich? What was he doing there? Have you taken courses at any agent school? And why didn’t he escape from the USSR, having every opportunity? Maybe he just changed masters, like many recruited by the Germans and, so to speak, “wholesale” transferred by the chief of the “Russian department” of the Abwehr, Reinhard Gehlen, “in touch” with the CIA? It is possible, given how skillfully, under the guise of an honest Soviet veteran, Mironenko led the competent authorities by the nose for 30 years. But if so, then why did he make such gross mistakes with his biography? No answer.

But perhaps it is more important not to deal with these mysteries, but to try to understand: what motivated the young man, almost a teenager, whose arms were not even up to the elbows, but up to the shoulders, covered in the blood of his compatriots? After all, before the war, as all witnesses unanimously say, Sasha Yukhnovsky was an ordinary schoolboy. A kind, sympathetic boy who wrote good poetry, as his literature teacher recalled (whom, having already become Alex Lyuty, the “poet” severely beat him, recalling to the poor fellow moderate criticism of his work).

OUR PEOPLE IN THE GESTAPO

And now let’s take a break from the figure of Yukhnovsky himself and talk about one interesting circumstance that largely contributed to his successful exposure. The fact is that two Soviet intelligence officers served in GFP-721 together with Yukhnovsky. This may seem incredible, but that’s exactly it – people from Smersh successfully worked in the organization designed to fight “Bolshevik spies.”

First, let's talk about the first one - Lev Moiseevich Brenner (aka Leonid Dubrovsky). A graduate of the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages, Brenner was sent to the front as a translator in the very first days of the war. Twice he was surrounded and successfully reached his own people. But the third time his luck changed, and he was captured. To avoid destruction as a Jew, Brenner is named after his deceased friend, Leonid Dubrovsky. In the camp, as he knew German, Brenner was appointed translator. Taking advantage of his position, Brenner escaped from captivity and crossed the front line. Contrary to existing myths, the former prisoner did not end up in Siberia, but in military intelligence. More than once he went behind the front line, and, as his track record says, the information he brought helped liberate the cities of Morozovsk and Belaya Kalitva. In February 1943, Lieutenant Brenner was again sent to reconnaissance with a captured certificate as a translator at the Chernyshevsk commandant's office. However, he was captured by the Feldgendarmerie and mobilized for service in the familiar GFG-721. As it turned out, one of its leaders, Field Commissar Runzheimer, urgently needed a translator.

In just three months, “Dubrovsky” managed to establish contact with the underground, destroy a large number of denunciations against Soviet citizens, and save an entire partisan group in Kadievka under the leadership of a prominent underground fighter Stepan Kononenko. Brenner helped many compatriots avoid arrest or deportation to Germany by fabricating false documents. But the main thing is that he managed to convey to Soviet military counterintelligence information about 136 German agents sent to the Soviet rear. Alas, another messenger sent to him from behind the front line was captured. At the age of 23, Lev Brenner, after severe torture, was shot in the Dnepropetrovsk prison┘

And more than thirty years later, his reports were retrieved from the archives, becoming evidence in the Yukhnovsky case.

The second intelligence officer working in the GFP-721 team was NKGB lieutenant Ibragim Khatyamovich Aganin. Having grown up in the city of Engels, Saratov region, surrounded by Germans from the Volga region and knowing German no worse than his native Tatar, he also got into intelligence as a student - from the second year of the Moscow Higher Technical School. N.E. Bauman - and more than once successfully outplayed the Abwehr professionals.

This man, who many years after the war became known as the “Tatar Stirlitz,” Alex-Yukhnovsky and other “colleagues” knew as the head of the punitive office, a defector from among the Soviet Germans, Georgy (Georg) Lebedev-Weber.

This is what Aganin recalled:

“In the GUF we met with him (Dubrovsky - V.S.) often. Sometimes they had a seemingly heart-to-heart conversation. Evaluating my colleagues in the State Financial Programme, I have often thought about Dubrovsky. Then I could not understand what made this young, intelligent and handsome man betray his homeland and go into the service of the Nazis. Even when the Germans shot him, I believed that his chance acquaintance with the underground had let him down. I learned that Leonid Dubrovsky was a Soviet intelligence officer only after the war.”

According to one version, it was Aganin who recognized Mironenko, as already mentioned, having met him by chance in a Moscow crowd.

CURRENT CASE

Already in the 2000s, this case, being among those declassified, suddenly became famous in its own way. Suffice it to say that three books were dedicated to him: Felix Vladimirov’s “The Price of Treason,” Heinrich Hoffmann’s “Gestapo Officer,” and Andrei Medvedenko’s “You Can’t Help but Return.” It even formed the basis of two films: one of the episodes of the documentary series “Nazi Hunters” and a film from the “Investigation Conducted” series on the NTV channel, called “Nicknamed “Fierce”. The paradox of the current era: more than thirty years after the execution, policeman Yukhnovsky, so to speak, “made a career” on television. How many war heroes will the reader remember to whom two films would be dedicated in our time?

The interest, however, is understandable: the Mironenko-Yukhnovsky case still leaves many questions, and not everything about it has yet become public.

However, as already mentioned, the more important thing is not these riddles, which, in general, are interesting only from a historical point of view. Apparently, for our time, the personality of Alex Lyuty is much more important, from a young budding poet who became a merciless killer. And it’s hard not to draw parallels between him and similar traitors and punishers of the 40s and, for example, the former Komsomol secretary and excellent student Salman Raduev. Or the Chechen field commander Salakhutdin Temirbulatov - “Tractor Driver”. At one time he was considered a kind person and an exemplary worker, and in the 90s he became famous for the brutal torture of prisoners, which he liked to film.

And now we are approaching, perhaps, the most important lesson that we can learn from the “Yukhnovsky case” and similar cases of previous days and our time.

Sometimes you hear about the prosecution of still living Nazi criminals: is it really so important to look for and judge decrepit old men for whom, even if they are alive, a life lived in fear has become a worthy punishment? This question can be answered in the affirmative by quoting the classic lines of the poet Robert Rozhdestvensky: “It’s not the dead who need this, the living need this.” For in the current world, where small but bloody and cruel wars with massacres and terror are being waged; where blowing up civilians in the subway or cafe has long been a common method of work for various fighters for “faith,” “freedom,” or money from foreign sponsors of the terrorist international, these examples of the rigorous pursuit of evil are extremely important. As confirmation that what is secret and forgotten still becomes apparent and that one will be rewarded for one’s deeds not after death, but during life, and that even after many years, retribution inevitably comes.