Why doesn't life punish traitors? Cheating on your wife or husband - is it a sin? Does God punish? (Explanations of the priests)
IN APRIL it was 25 years since the UN Deputy Secretary-General for Political and Security Council Affairs, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USSR Arkady Shevchenko disappeared from his apartment in New York. For the first time in the post-war history of the USSR, a Soviet diplomat of this rank became a defector.
The son of the escaped ambassador, Gennady SHEVCHENKO, recalls what preceded the escape and how it affected the family.
IN HIS book “The Break with Moscow” (1985), translated into almost all languages of the world, my father wrote that, having joined the nomenklatura in 1973, he hated the regime, which acted not in the interests of the people, but only of a narrow group of party members. elite. “Striving for new benefits was becoming boring. Hoping that, having risen even higher, I would be able to do something useful, was pointless. And the prospect of living as an internal dissident, outwardly retaining all the signs of an obedient bureaucrat, was terrible. In the future, I was expected to fight with others members of the elite for a big piece of the pie, constant KGB surveillance and incessant party fuss. Approaching the pinnacle of success and influence, I discovered a desert there."
But these words were written many years after the escape, and shortly before his appointment as ambassador to the UN, in 1972, on the day of my twentieth anniversary, my father gave me the complete works of V.I. Lenin with the inscription: “To my son Gennady. Live and learn like Lenin ".
Destination price
THE FATHER was a very ambitious man and was worried that he owed his appointment to the UN to his wife Leongina, who for this gave A. A. Gromyko’s wife a brooch with 56 diamonds. My father told me more than once: “But I became the messenger myself!” In those days, it was not enough to be a talented person (my father graduated from MGIMO with honors). To achieve the highest diplomatic rank and travel to a good country, it was also necessary to have high patrons or give gifts.
Deputy Head of the Security Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, KGB Colonel I.K. Peretrukhin recalls that Lydia Dmitrievna Gromyko, “according to eyewitnesses, for many decades had a serious influence on the placement of diplomatic personnel in her husband’s ministry. In addition, she was a big fan of accepting various kinds of gifts, especially when traveling abroad." But high-ranking international officials did not hesitate to accept expensive gifts. For example, my father gave an antique silver samovar to UN Secretary General K. Waldheim, who, after leaving this post, became the Federal President of Austria (1986-1992).
Those who remember my father in their memoirs usually write that the CIA or FBI recruited my father with the help of a prostitute. The same version is put forward by former KGB officers. But it has no basis. My father took this step deliberately and independently, refusing to work in the international department of the CPSU Central Committee and from the post of head of the USSR delegation to the Disarmament Committee in Geneva.
In the USA, my father achieved a high position on his own. For this, he had to work for the CIA from 1975 to 1978. After escaping, he published a book, receiving a million dollars for it. After that, he became an independent figure, was a professor at the American University in Washington, gave lectures to American businessmen, for each of which he received up to 20 thousand dollars, and a plane flew specially for him.
What secrets did your father reveal?
In HIS book, the father, who had access to documents of special importance (he was even forbidden to give public lectures in Moscow), spoke in detail about his cooperation with the CIA and gave detailed descriptions of almost all the top leaders of the Soviet state, prominent diplomats and KGB officers. He regularly informed the CIA about the disagreements emerging in the Kremlin between L. I. Brezhnev and A. N. Kosygin regarding relations between the USSR and the USA, reported what the USSR position was in the negotiations on the limitation of strategic arms and the extent to which the Soviet Union could to yield to the United States in these negotiations, passed on top secret information about the Soviet economy and even reports on rapidly declining oil reserves in the fields in the Volga-Ural region.
High-ranking CIA official O. Ames, recruited in 1985 by Soviet intelligence and exposed in 1994, admitted that Shevchenko had incredible access to top-secret Soviet information. The CIA only asked questions. My father betrayed to the United States all the KGB agents abroad that he knew. The head of the security service of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, KGB Colonel M.I. Kuryshev told me: “Your father caused more damage to the USSR than GRU Colonel O. Penkovsky, who worked for the CIA and British intelligence.” However, spies given out by their father were simply expelled from the country. And those whom Ames extradited were shot in the USSR. For example, GRU Lieutenant General D. Polyakov, who worked for the CIA from 1961 to 1988, and others.
Of course, the KGB felt that there was a powerful leak of information coming from somewhere “above.” “Already in 1975-1976,” writes KGB resident in New York Yu. I. Drozdov, “we felt that there was a traitor within the Soviet colony in New York... The circle of those in the know narrowed to a few people. Among them There was also Shevchenko." Drozdov does not name other names, but three high-ranking diplomats were suspected - the Permanent Representative of the USSR to the UN O. A. Troyanovsky, the USSR Ambassador to the USA A. F. Dobrynin and the Deputy Secretary General of the UN A. N. Shevchenko. But his suspicions were not taken into account. Drozdov writes: “Some of Shevchenko’s friends in our service even officially demanded that we stop monitoring him... I did not comply with this requirement of the Center... Every time information about Shevchenko was received, including from American circles ", we calmly and methodically sent them to the Center. In the Foreign Counterintelligence Directorate, in the division of O.D. Kalugin, they were received very reluctantly." Their father’s direct boss, Andrei Gromyko, did not accept them either. When asked who he primarily suspects of treason, Gromyko replied: “Shevchenko is beyond any suspicion.”
Moreover, before calling his father to Moscow in April 1978, Gromyko “pushed” for him a special position from L.I. Brezhnev - Deputy Minister for Disarmament Affairs. This information, which I received from circles close to Gromyko, was confirmed by Kuryshev. After my father's escape, this position was eliminated. Subsequently, as Ambassador O. A. Grinevsky writes, Gromyko could not remember whether he had an assistant named Shevchenko, in response to Andropov’s question. Then the deputy head of the Second Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR (counterintelligence) put on his boss’s desk family photographs seized during a search of Shevchenko’s apartment, in which he and his wife were eating barbecue at Gromyko’s dacha. Andropov just muttered: “Oh, Andrei Andreevich!”
Indeed, as Grinevsky further notes, Shevchenko was not Gromyko’s assistant, but his trusted adviser, including on relations with the KGB. Through him, particularly important documents from this department reached the minister’s desk. Such advisers were always Gromyko’s close people, who later went on to have brilliant careers. For example, A. M. Aleksandrov-Agentov, who became an assistant to four general secretaries of the CPSU Central Committee, V. M. Falin - ambassador to Germany, and then head of the international department of the CPSU Central Committee, secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and the last manager of the party fund. Now he lives in Germany.
Drozdov recalls what the KGB chairman confidentially told him in the summer of 1978: “Yu. V. Andropov said: “In the case with Shevchenko, you were right, I read all the materials. It's our fault. No one will punish you for him, but... and we won’t remove Gromyko either.” The KGB major general also did not receive a further promotion. The fact that he was right does not mean that Andropov was completely satisfied with him. Drozdov then actually admits his mistake himself, noting that A. A. Gromyko asked him why General Drozdov, whom he had known for many years, did not inform him about Shevchenko personally, but only to the deputy ministers and O. A. Troyanovsky.
It’s interesting that in 1976, when my father had already been working for the CIA for a year, my mother took Gromyko’s wife shopping in New York and bought her expensive gifts with her father’s money. As counterintelligence officer Colonel I.K. Peretrukhin notes, my mother “more often sent expensive things through others to the minister’s wife for subsequent resale in Moscow at substantially inflated prices.”
Diplomatic courier involuntarily
IN THE SPRING of 1978, I, the attache of the department of international organizations of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was on a temporary business trip abroad. On April 9, I was unexpectedly registered as a diplomatic courier, saying that it was urgently necessary to take a secret package to Moscow. Accompanied by the third secretary of the representative office, V.B. Rezun, I flew to Moscow, where I was immediately informed that my father remained in the USA.
I remembered Rezun a few months later, when Western radio stations reported that GRU Major Rezun, who had escaped from Geneva to England, said the following: “The son of UN Deputy Secretary General Arkady Shevchenko is my best friend.” Later I was called to the security service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where they showed me several photographs. Among them, I barely recognized Rezun, because I had known him for only a few hours. After this short-term acquaintance, so many stormy and terrible events passed: the loss of my father, dismissal from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the death of my mother, confiscation of property, etc. Therefore, I did not even remember the meeting with some Rezun. It is curious that KGB General V. G. Pavlov in his book “Open Sesame!” writes that when I was urgently sent home “under escort” in front of Rezun’s eyes, this event frightened the “ripe special forces soldier” so much that he categorically refused to continue cooperation with British intelligence.
If the KGB suspected Rezun of espionage, it would never have sent him to accompany Shevchenko’s son. This was another mistake by our special services.
Mom's suicide
LATE in the evening of May 6, 1978, my sister Anna, who lived with her grandmother in her parents’ apartment on Frunzenskaya Embankment, called me. She excitedly said that her mother had disappeared and left a note with the following content: “Dear Anyutik! I couldn’t do otherwise. The doctors will explain everything to you. It’s a pity that my grandmother didn’t let me die at home.”
The next morning I called the head of the security service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs M.I. Kuryshev and told him about what had happened. The KGB immediately organized a general search. Just in case, all airports were checked. I went with the KGB officers to our dacha in the village of Valentinovka. We didn't have keys and had to break open the strong oak doors. However, all searches were fruitless.
On May 8, my sister called me again, saying that there was some strange smell in the apartment. She was alone at home, since her mother asked her grandmother to stay with relatives in Khimki on May 5th. Arriving at my sister’s, I immediately called the police from the district department. We examined the apartment and quickly discovered that the smell was coming from a large closet in which a lot of clothes were hung. He himself began to pull apart numerous fur coats and sheepskin coats. Having rummaged with my hand in the corner of a large closet, it was about 2 meters deep, it came across my mother’s cold hand and immediately jumped out of there as if scalded. What happened next was as if in a fog. Workers from the prosecutor's office, doctors, and then representatives of the KGB arrived.
I started organizing funerals. I called Kuryshev at the Foreign Ministry and expressed the opinion that, for political reasons, my mother should be buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. The KGB colonel contacted Gromyko about this, but the minister said that alone, without a resolution of the CPSU Central Committee, he could not resolve the issue of burial in such a cemetery. Gromyko instructed the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to organize a funeral at the Novokuntsevo cemetery (this is a branch of Novodevichy). Relatives, representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the KGB attended my mother’s funeral. The Anthem of the Soviet Union was performed. Mom was buried next to the famous actor V. Dvorzhetsky, who died at the age of 39, who played the role of General Khludov, who fought against Soviet power during the Civil War, in the film “Running.”
End of life
IN FEBRUARY 1992, the father married a Soviet citizen who was 23 years younger than him, who found herself in Washington with 20 dollars in her pocket in mid-1991 with a 14-year-old daughter from her first marriage. She lived with her father for 4 years and during this time managed, consciously or not, to completely ruin him.
Before this marriage, A. N. Shevchenko had three large houses in the USA in 1991. The largest one, given to my father by the CIA, cost $1 million and was filled with expensive antique furniture. Artem Borovik once said jokingly that compared to Shevchenko’s house, M. S. Gorbachev’s dacha in Foros looks like a barn. My father also owned a four-room apartment in the Canary Islands. All this cost more than $2 million. The father mortgaged his last house in 1995 from a bank, taking out a loan of over 300 thousand dollars for his stepdaughter’s education at a prestigious university.
On February 28, 1998, at the age of 68, my father died of cirrhosis of the liver in a small rented one-room, half-empty apartment, where there was only his bed and shelves with his favorite books about diplomacy and espionage. His health was greatly undermined by his divorce in 1996 from his young wife, whom he loved very much and gave her and her daughter from his first marriage most of what he had.
Former KGB resident in New York Yu. Drozdov writes that his father’s burial place is kept secret. I know this “secret” - he was buried in Washington, without his daughter’s consent, on the territory of the church parish of Father Viktor Potapov.
KGB Colonel testifies
The editors of AiF asked the former deputy security service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, retired KGB colonel Igor PERETRUKHIN, to comment on the memoirs of Gennady Shevchenko:
IN NEW YORK, where this whole story took place, 11 special events were held with us, which were supposed to minimize the damage caused by the escape of Arkady Shevchenko, including to his own family.
And the extent of this damage is truly difficult to exaggerate. Shevchenko had access to top secret information concerning the finest details of negotiations with the United States on a variety of issues. When Gromyko came to New York for a session of the UN General Assembly, he told his friend Arkady about the balance of power in the Politburo, the state of health of its members, new appointments and much, much more that is impossible to even list. Shevchenko had information about KGB and GRU officers working under diplomatic “roof,” so after his escape, many of our activities were aimed at ensuring their safety. We also took measures to urgently deliver his wife from New York and his son Gennady from Switzerland to Moscow. Leongina Shevchenko was accompanied all the way to the steps of the Aeroflot plane by the USSR Ambassador to the USA Anatoly Dobrynin and the USSR Permanent Representative to the UN Oleg Troyanovsky, and each of them held her arm.
For Gennady himself, everything that happened was a terrible blow: the betrayal and escape of his father, whom he idolized, the suicide of his mother, the collapse of a diplomatic career that had just begun, divorce from his wife.
After some time, I received instructions from the head of the Second Main Directorate of the KGB, General Grigorenko, to place Gennady Shevchenko under a false name at the Institute of State and Law.
As for the father, in fact he was not at all what his son’s imagination pictured him to be.
Taking advantage of his high position in the Soviet colony in New York, Arkady Shevchenko had endless one-time connections with stenographers, typists, both “local” and those who periodically came to sessions of the UN General Assembly. He abused alcohol heavily. When his friends told him that he allowed himself too much, he only laughed in response: “I have nothing to be afraid of. As long as Andrei (Gromyko) is in place, nothing will happen to me.”
The Americans paid attention to Shevchenko’s wild character and carefully set him up with a very beautiful woman, a CIA agent. What happened next, as they say, was a matter of technique. The KGB station in New York quickly sensed a leak of information, and from a very high level. And telegrams poured in to the Center. One of them did a bad job.
The story of Arkady Shevchenko’s preparation for escape began with a business trip of a high-ranking official of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs to New York. It was Shevchenko's friend. Let's call him N. On the eve of his departure, on the table of one of the deputy foreign ministers, he saw a telegram from which it followed that Arkady Shevchenko was in some kind of trouble with the KGB. Upon arrival in New York, this man, according to our version, at the first opportunity told about Shevchenko’s telegram.
This message plunged the traitor into a state of “shock and awe.” The memories of the arrest of CIA agent Ogorodnik, nicknamed “Trianon,” at the Foreign Ministry and his suicide during the arrest were still fresh. Shevchenko understood that the same fate could await him. At night he came to the CIA safe house and threw a tantrum. They explained to him that he was under constant secret protection from the FBI, that the KGB in New York was not as omnipotent as in Moscow, but then Shevchenko unexpectedly showed firmness. He returned to his apartment, put some things in a travel bag and left. His wife was already asleep at that time.
Shevchenko was tried in absentia in Moscow. The court was, naturally, closed, and there was only one person in the hall, where the public usually sits. It was our operative. Before the start of the hearings, the secretary solemnly announced: “Please stand up, the trial is underway!” Our man hurriedly stood up, and it seemed to him that it was he who was being judged...
The court sentenced Arkady Shevchenko to capital punishment in absentia.
There is a saying: it’s good where we are not. Many people think that they will be better off in another country and that people there live completely differently. And the air is sweeter and the grass is greener. So in the Soviet Union there were citizens who succumbed to propaganda and tried with all their might to illegally get to the West.
Some defectors were received warmly, others not so much. The most valued were Soviet combat pilots who betrayed their homeland and hijacked their combat aircraft. For such people the gates of the West have always been open.
Western countries actively promoted democracy, freedom of speech and freedom of choice. Despite this, not all Soviet pilots were warmly received by capitalist countries. Pilots who hijacked civilian aircraft were perceived very poorly. Most often, such people were deported back to the USSR, where investigation and prison awaited them.
Combat aircraft are a completely different matter. The Soviet Union produced some of the best aircraft in the whole world. Combat fighters had impressive characteristics, and there was always a real hunt for new aircraft models. If a pilot betrayed his homeland and stole his combat vehicle to the West, big bonuses and honor awaited him. The latest Su and MiG aircraft were especially valued.
Fortunately, traitors were quite rare among Soviet combat pilots. Mostly representatives of Eastern Europe were involved in hijacking planes from socialist countries. The Hungarians fled to Italy on MiG-15 and MiG-21 planes, the Poles flew to Sweden on MiG-15 planes. There were also attempts by pilots from the GDR and Romania to escape abroad.
The most interesting thing is that hijackings of combat aircraft occur even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. One such incident occurred in January 2013. The Syrian pilot took off from Syria on a MiG-23 and landed in Turkey. Türkiye was very interested in the friend-or-foe system installed on the aircraft.
The fate of traitors
Most often, after the hijacking of a plane, Soviet pilots received political asylum in the West. The secret services provided all possible support in finding employment for such people, and practically nothing is known about the further fate of the defectors. Everything is shrouded in mystery.
But many traitorous pilots suffered a well-deserved punishment: prison or execution. We will talk about some unfortunate fates below.
1. In October 1948, Pyotr Pirogov and Anatoly Barsov hijacked a Tu-2 bomber to Austria. A year later, Barsov returned to the USSR, as he was guaranteed an amnesty. After arriving in the Soviet Union, he was arrested and shot six months later.
2. In March 1949, Lieutenant Colonel Shchirov attempted to hijack a U-2 plane to one of the border Asian countries. For some unknown reason, the hijacking failed, and he returned back to the USSR. On April 7, 1949, he tried to cross the border on foot and escape to Turkey. He was caught by border troops and sentenced to 25 years in prison without trial.
3. In September 1949, Major Kossa tried to hijack a Yak-9T fighter-bomber to Turkey. There was not enough fuel, and he landed on the territory of the Romanian People's Republic. Issued by the Romanian authorities to the Soviet side. Convicted of treason and executed on April 20, 1950.
4. In 1971, combat fighter pilot Peshchany was planning to hijack his plane abroad. He told a friend about his plan, the friend reported it to a special department. Peshchany was sentenced to 10 years in a maximum security colony.
5. In September 1976, Lieutenant Zosimov hijacked an An-2 plane to Iran. To avoid deterioration of relations between the USSR and Iran, the Iranian authorities handed over the pilot and the plane to the Soviet authorities. The pilot was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
"In the photo - a former Soviet diplomat, sentenced to death in his homeland for high treason, is resting with his son, daughter and grandson. In 1978, Shevchenko, then UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs and Security Council Affairs, took the most necessary things and left from his New York apartment while his wife slept.The first defector was a Soviet diplomat, the highest-ranking official to defect to the West during the Cold War.
A native of the Ukrainian Gorlovka, Shevchenko graduated from MGIMO with honors, defended his dissertation, and most importantly, met the son of a prominent diplomat Gromyko within the walls of the university. A young family friend was allowed into the house, and his wife, Leongina Shevchenko, gave gifts to Gromyko Sr.’s wife, who loved gifts and influenced her husband, including a diamond brooch. Shevchenko's career as a diplomat took off: from 1956 he worked in the Department of International Organizations of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by 1970 he rose to the position of personal adviser to Foreign Minister Gromyko, in 1973 he was appointed to the post of UN Deputy Secretary General for Political Affairs and Security Council Affairs UN with the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USSR.
Two years after his appointment to the UN, Shevchenko began leaking Soviet secrets to the Americans. Counterintelligence suspected him, but there was no direct evidence. According to the recollections of his colleagues, Shevchenko abused alcohol and had numerous relationships with subordinates and prostitutes, but to all comments he replied: “Nothing threatens me as long as Gromyko is in power.” However, when Arkady Shevchenko was called to Moscow in 1978, he decided to stay in the States.
The traitor's wife was taken by the arm to the plane. A month later, she committed suicide: she disappeared from the house, and three days later her son found her body in the closet. The widower, meanwhile, lived happily, had two houses in the USA and one on the islands. In the nineties, he married a Russian emigrant twenty years younger than himself. She quickly bankrupted him, and Arkady Shevchenko died of cirrhosis of the liver alone in a half-empty rented apartment."
From the memoirs of the son of the escaped ambassador Gennady SHEVCHENKO.
In the book “The Break with Moscow” (1985), translated into many languages, my father writes that, having joined the nomenklatura in 1973, he hated the regime, which acted in the interests of a narrow party elite. “Striving for new benefits was becoming boring. It was pointless to hope that by rising even higher I would be able to do anything useful. And the prospect of living as an internal dissident, while outwardly maintaining all the signs of an obedient bureaucrat, was terrible. In the future, I expected a struggle with other members of the elite for a big piece of the pie, constant KGB surveillance and incessant party fuss. As I approached the pinnacle of success and influence, I found it deserted.”
Diamond brooch
My father was a very ambitious man and was worried that he owed his appointment to the UN to his wife, who, as he said, gave Gromyko’s wife a brooch with 56 diamonds for this post. More than once he repeated to me: “But I became the messenger myself!” In those days, it was not enough to be a talented person (my father graduated from MGIMO with honors) to achieve the highest diplomatic rank and travel to a good country; it was necessary to have high patrons or give gifts. Deputy Head of the Security Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, KGB Colonel I.K. Peretrukhin recalls that (according to eyewitnesses) Lydia Dmitrievna Gromyko “for many decades had a serious influence on the placement of diplomatic personnel in her husband’s ministry. In addition, she was a big fan of accepting various kinds of offerings, especially when traveling abroad.” High international officials also did not hesitate to accept expensive gifts. My father, for example, gave an antique silver samovar (my grandmother bought it at a thrift store in Moscow) to UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim.
A popular version in memoir literature is that the CIA or FBI caught the father with the help of a prostitute. The same version is put forward by former KGB officers. But it has no basis. My father took such a step deliberately and independently, refusing to work in the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee and from the post of head of the USSR delegation to the Disarmament Committee with the rank of ambassador (Geneva).
In the USA, he had to work for the CIA from 1975 to 1978. However, having published a book and received a million dollars, he became an independent figure, a professor at an American university, gave lectures to American businessmen - for each he received up to 20 thousand US dollars - and a plane came specially for him. He wrote articles for the Encyclopedia Britannica and many newspapers and magazines. Books from many prominent diplomats were sent to him for review. By the way, the memoirs of the former ambassador to the USA A.F. Dobrynina.
In his book, my father spoke in detail about his collaboration with the CIA and gave unflattering characteristics to almost all the top leaders of the Soviet state, prominent diplomats and KGB officers. He regularly informed the CIA about disagreements between Brezhnev and Kosygin regarding relations between the USSR and the USA, reported what instructions Ambassador Dobrynin was receiving, what position the Soviet Union would take in negotiations on strategic arms limitation and what concessions it could make, and provided detailed information on the level of readiness The USSR participated in events related to the fighting in Angola, top secret information about the Soviet economy, and even reports on rapidly declining oil reserves in the fields in the Volga-Ural region. Senior CIA official Aldrich Ames, recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1985 and exposed in 1994, admitted that Shevchenko had incredible access to information. The CIA only asked questions. My father betrayed to the United States all the KGB agents abroad that he knew. Head of the Security Service of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, KGB Colonel M.I. Kuryshev told me: “Your father caused more damage to the USSR than GRU Colonel Penkovsky, who worked for the CIA and British intelligence.” And he added that, despite the constant security of four FBI agents, they could easily remove Shevchenko if only the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee had allowed it. However, the Americans simply expelled the spies given by their father from the country. And those whom Ames betrayed were shot in the USSR, like, for example, GRU Lieutenant General Polyakov, who worked for the CIA from 1961 to 1986.
Was there an assistant?!
After my father's escape, the Soviet leadership was in shock. The question of severing diplomatic relations with the United States was even considered. However, before this, the USSR KGB had no direct evidence of his father’s collaboration with the CIA. Suspicions of the KGB resident in New York Yu.I. Drozdov was not taken into account. Already in 1975-1976, he writes, “we felt that there was a traitor within the Soviet colony in New York... The circle of those in the know narrowed to a few people. Among them was Shevchenko (Drozdov did not name other names, but two more high-ranking diplomats were suspected - the USSR Permanent Representative to the UN O.A. Troyanovsky and the USSR Ambassador to the USA Dobrynin. - G.Sh.). One of Shevchenko’s friends in our service even officially demanded that we stop monitoring him... I did not comply with this requirement of the Center... Every time information about Shevchenko was received, including from American circles, we forwarded it to the Center In the foreign counterintelligence department, in the division of O.D. Kalugin, they were accepted very reluctantly.” As you know, in 2002, former KGB general Kalugin was convicted in absentia of treason, although he was no longer sentenced to capital punishment in Russia.
When Minister Gromyko was asked who he suspected of treason, he replied: “Shevchenko is beyond any suspicion.” Before recalling his father to Moscow in April 1978, Gromyko even “pushed” Brezhnev for a special position - Deputy Minister for Disarmament Affairs. And later, as Ambassador O.A. writes. Grinevsky, answering Andropov’s question, Gromyko could not remember whether he had an assistant named Shevchenko. And when the deputy head of the Second Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR (counterintelligence) put on his boss’s desk family photographs seized during a search at Shevchenko’s apartment - he and his wife were eating barbecue at Gromyko’s dacha - Andropov only muttered: “Oh, Andrei Andreevich! » But in fact, Shevchenko was not Gromyko’s assistant, he was his trusted adviser, including on relations with the KGB. Through him, particularly important documents from this department reached the minister’s desk. Gromyko's close people always became such advisers. For example, A.M. Aleksandrov-Agentov, who later became an assistant to four general secretaries of the CPSU Central Committee, V.M. Falin - Ambassador to Germany, then Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, head of the international department of the CPSU Central Committee and the last manager of the party fund.
Drozdov recalls how KGB Chairman Andropov told him in the summer of 1978: “In the Shevchenko case, you were right, I read all the materials. It's our fault. No one will punish you for him, but we won’t remove Gromyko either.”
It’s interesting that in 1976, when my father had already been working for the CIA for a year, my mother took Gromyko’s wife shopping in New York and bought her expensive gifts with her father’s money. As counterintelligence officer Peretrukhin notes, my mother more often than not sent expensive items through others to the minister’s wife for resale in Moscow at substantially inflated prices. It is possible that this was bought with CIA money!
In the spring of 1978, I, an attache of the department of international organizations of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was on a temporary trip abroad as an expert of the USSR delegation to the Disarmament Committee. On April 9, I was suddenly registered as a diplomatic courier - they say, it was necessary to urgently deliver a secret package to Moscow. Accompanied by the third secretary of the representative office, V.B. Rezun, I flew to Moscow, and I was immediately informed that my father remained in the USA.
I remembered Rezun a few months later, when I heard a report from Western radio stations that GRU Major Rezun, who had escaped from Geneva to England, said: “The son of Deputy UN Secretary General Arkady Shevchenko, who remained in the USA, Gennady is my best friend.” I was called to the security service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and shown several photographs. I recognized Rezun with difficulty, because our acquaintance was short-lived - a few hours of flight. And then - so many stormy and terrible events: the loss of my father, actual dismissal from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the death of my mother, confiscation of property, etc. It’s not surprising that I didn’t even remember the meeting with some Rezun.
But if the KGB had already suspected Rezun of espionage back then, it would be unlikely that he would have been sent to accompany Shevchenko’s son. This was another mistake by our special services. Now Rezun (Suvorov), it seems, does not mention our meeting in 1978 in any of his books. And then, after his escape from Geneva, the sensational “case” of A.N. Shevchenko gave “weight” to the unknown GRU major.
"That's what mothballs smell like"
On May 6, 1978, my sister Anna, who lived with her grandmother in her parents’ apartment on Frunzenskaya Embankment, called me late in the evening. She said that her mother had disappeared, leaving a note with the following content: “Dear Anyutik! I couldn't do otherwise. The doctors will explain everything to you. It’s a pity that my grandmother didn’t let me die at home.” In the morning I immediately called the security service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs M.I. Kuryshev and told him about what happened. The KGB immediately organized a search. Just in case, all airports were checked. I went with the KGB officers to our dacha in the village of Valentinovka. There were no keys, so we had to break into the powerful oak doors. But all searches were fruitless.
On May 8, my sister called me again, saying that there was some strange smell in the apartment. She was alone at home, since her mother asked her grandmother to stay with relatives in Khimki on May 5th. When I arrived, I immediately called the police from the district office. The district police officer did not smell any strange smell and said: “That’s what mothballs smell like.” After he left, I decided to explore the apartment myself and quickly discovered that the smell was coming from a large closet. We called the police again. The arriving captain, opening the closet doors, again said that he did not smell any smell other than mothballs. Then I myself began to part the fur coats and sheepskin coats. The closet was very deep, and there were a lot of clothes hanging... And suddenly in the corner I came across my mother’s cold hand and jumped out of the closet as if scalded. What happened next was as if in a fog. Workers from the prosecutor's office, doctors, and then representatives of the KGB arrived.
I started organizing funerals. I called Kuryshev and said that for political reasons, my mother should be buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. He contacted Gromyko, but the minister replied that in this case, without a resolution of the CPSU Central Committee, he could not resolve the issue of burial in such a cemetery. Gromyko instructed the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to organize a funeral at the Novokuntsevo cemetery (a branch of Novodevichy). Relatives, representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the KGB saw off my mother on her last journey. The anthem of the Soviet Union sounded...
A few days after my mother’s funeral, KGB investigators (about ten people) came to our apartment, led by the head of the group of investigators of the investigative department of the KGB of the USSR, Major O.A. Dobrovolsky. They were amazed: not an apartment, but a museum! Our large four-room apartment was filled with unique antique furniture and expensive antiques.
Grandma immediately protested: “It’s all mine! I bought all this in Austria and Romania in '48 and '49." I remained silent, but I knew for sure that all the antiques were purchased with my father’s money when he was appointed to the post of Deputy Secretary General of the UN, and the main valuables were purchased in 1975-1977, when he was already collaborating with the CIA.
Products with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires and gold (in the property inventory they were indicated as stones of white, red, green and blue, gold is a yellow metal) were valued ridiculously low, at least 2-3 times cheaper than them real value.
In the closet behind wooden panels they found 12 icons of the Rublev school with gold and silver frames and an ancient altar made of yellow metal with enamel (as indicated in the property inventory). Major Dobrovolsky asked me how much one such icon could cost approximately. I answered: “From 500 to 2000 rubles, and possibly much more. Only a specialist can determine for sure.” However, in the inventory, all the icons and the altar were valued collectively at exactly 500 rubles. I was very surprised, and Dobrovolsky answered somewhat embarrassedly: “We will rewrite this paragraph later.”
And I later learned that investigators from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB specifically valued the confiscated items very low, so that their superiors could buy everything on the cheap. By the way, Andropov, as you know, was interested in modern painting, but Shchelokov collected antiques, including icons.
Wearable items (mostly new), expensive fur coats (silver fox and mink), sheepskin coats, boas made of silver fox and arctic fox, cuts for coats and dresses, hundreds of meters of tulle were left in the apartment, and I was made responsible for their storage. Then everything was confiscated by the district bailiff; the KGB was not interested in this.
True, Dobrovolsky asked: “Where is the thick gold chain that is in this photograph of your mother?” “We need to look for her in the apartment of Gromyko or Kuznetsov,” I answered.
During the search, which lasted three days, Dobrovolsky called his superiors several times and consulted on how much confiscation should be made. In general, half of the things in my father’s apartment were confiscated based on their value, amounting to about 250 thousand rubles.
And in the fall of 1978, Kuryshev informed me that my father was sentenced by the Supreme Court of the RSFSR to capital punishment (in absentia) with complete confiscation of his personal property.
“We need to look for the ass”
During a long forced leave, I decided to try to get permission to stay at my favorite job. I asked my grandmother to call Lydia Dmitrievna Gromyko, who often visited her parents, and ask if I could stay at work in the non-travelling department of the ministry or at least temporarily work in the department of international organizations in order to pass the candidate minimum at MGIMO of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Gromyko allowed me to temporarily stay in the department. By the way, immediately after the grandmother’s call, the minister’s phone number was changed.
After some time, Kuryshev called me to his place. His attitude towards me has clearly changed. Before Gromyko’s instructions, the KGB colonel said that he would not allow even the minister to keep me at work in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but now he suggested temporarily continuing to work in my own department and at the same time thinking about where I would like to work. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and MGIMO were excluded. The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) and the international department of trade unions were proposed as options. I didn't want to be an official anymore. So I said I'll think about it.
At that time, a second secretary worked in the department of international organizations of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who traveled to Geneva twice a year for negotiations on the limitation of strategic arms. He was in big trouble - his own sister married an Italian, and he did not report this to the KGB. As a result, he was fired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and when he found out that I, the son of a traitor to the motherland, was still working in the department, his surprise knew no bounds. In general, the reaction of my colleagues was ambiguous.
Ambassador at Large L.I. was not afraid to shake my hand. Mendelevich is one of the brightest minds in the ministry. And other employees of our department, seeing me in the corridor, ran into a parallel corridor. I understood that it was not their fault. This is a system. Once I met at the Foreign Ministry my former boss in Geneva, Ambassador V.I. Likhacheva. He greeted me, but was quite surprised, perhaps even shocked. Apparently, he thought that I would be working very far from the Foreign Ministry.
Of course, I was no longer allowed access to secret and top secret documents; I was mainly engaged in preparing various certificates and other documents for management. And he did not lose hope of staying at work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For this purpose, I tried to get an appointment with Gromyko, whose office was on the seventh floor, three floors below our department. In the large reception room sat the senior assistant to the minister, Ambassador V.G. Makarov. When I entered, he pretended that he did not recognize me and muttered: “What do you want?” “I would like to ask you, Vasily Georgievich, to convey to Andrei Andreevich my request to accept me.” - “Who are you to be received by the minister?! He only accepts responsible workers! Get out of here." “Well,” I thought, “I’ll find another way to convey the request to the minister.”
At that time, our department was supervised by the First Deputy Minister, member of the CPSU Central Committee G.M. Kornienko. I asked Georgy Markovich to convey my request to the minister to keep me at work in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs without the right to travel abroad. A week later, he said that the minister suggested that I get a job at the Institute of State and Law for now, and then we’ll see.
I asked Kornienko to help me get a job at the Institute of the USA and Canada with Academician G.A. Arbatov or to the Institute of World Economy and International Relations to N.N. Inozemtsev. Arbatov refused, citing the fact that there were too many foreigners at his institute. Inozemtsev refused without explanation.
I had no choice but to work at the law school. However, the process of my registration was delayed, since the director of the institute, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, made it a condition for my employment to change my last name and provide a high guarantee. As Kuryshev rudely put it: “We need to look for the ass.” I didn’t understand him right away, and he explained: “I mean a guarantor who will be responsible for you if you behave in the wrong way.” Then no one told me who vouched for me. Only many years later, in the early 90s, did I find out that it was the ambassador, Doctor of Law, Professor O.N. Khlestov. Then he was a member of the Board of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, head of the contractual and legal department.
Family matters
As I was told, from the moment my father remained in the United States, everything that happened in our family was reported personally to KGB Chairman Andropov. Apparently, that’s why I had no problems restoring my registration in my father’s apartment, defending my dissertation for the degree of candidate of legal sciences, gaining access to materials “for official use” necessary for scientific work, finding reviewers for my scientific monographs, etc. . In Andropov’s times, children of traitors were not punished, but on the contrary, if they behaved patriotically, they were encouraged. Although, I think, only if they were part of the elite circle.
Of course, the help from the KGB was most likely explained by his father’s high connections, and also by the fact that, having remained in the USA, he blackmailed the leadership of the USSR, saying that he would reveal everything if his children were touched. He was not allowed to help the children financially, but was guaranteed that they would not suffer as a result of his actions.
Although I changed my last and patronymic names, everyone at the institute knew who I was. Despite the fact that Kuryshev told me: “When you fill out the form in the personnel department, indicate any parents in it, come up with them. We will lie for your own good."
The lawyers of the KGB of the USSR racked their brains for a long time about how to exchange our apartment, but they never came up with anything. After all, formally the share contribution belonged to the father, whose additional punishment was the complete confiscation of his personal property. Consequently, we had the right to live in his apartment (the Constitution of the USSR enshrined the right to housing), but we could not exchange it.
Then I appealed to the Supreme Court of the USSR. Supreme Judge for Civil and Housing Cases P.Ya. Trubnikov said that we have one way out: confiscating the share and paying it out anew. An appropriate decision was made. We paid out about 11 thousand rubles and got the opportunity to look for exchange options.
At the beginning of 1989, the KGB informed me that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had received a deed of gift from my father in favor of my sister for a dacha in the village of Valentinovka. True, my father pointed out that I also have the right to live there. However, I knew that this had no legal significance and I could at any moment lose the dacha that was left to us, because I proposed to the investigative authorities to confiscate the money in one of the savings books instead of the dacha. It was necessary to write an official letter addressed to the head of the consular department of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in which it was necessary to indicate that I objected to the official certification of this gift by the ministry. After some time I received a refusal. It was clear that such a decision could not be made without Shevardnadze’s sanction and it was dictated by political considerations that always guided the minister. I again turned to the KGB, and they answered me: “We are not able to do anything. Who are we compared to the one who made the decision?
Fake wife?
In April 1985, the head of the CIA department for Soviet affairs, Ames, was recruited by the KGB for a huge amount of money (he was given a total of about $2.5 million in cash). If he was not the first to recruit Shevchenko, then for some time he was his curator. Interestingly, the father received about the same amount from the CIA as Ames did from the KGB, and had a lifetime pension from the CIA only of $5,000 per month. Was Ames's recruitment a kind of revenge by the KGB for Shevchenko's escape?
In February 1992, as soon as my sister Anna was allowed to leave for the United States, my father married a Soviet citizen who was 23 years younger than him. She ended up in Washington in 1991 with
A 14-year-old daughter from her first marriage and with 20 dollars in her pocket. My father was a Russian man, he did not understand that in Russia there are not only Turgenev’s girls, that there are also sharks dreaming of rich widowers... She lived with her father for four years and managed, willingly or unwillingly, to ruin him.
Before leaving for the USA, my father’s wife worked with V. Aksyuchits, later a deputy of the State Duma of Russia. During our meeting in Moscow at the beginning of 1996, she did not hide her acquaintance with the security officers. At the same time, in 1996, I talked with one employee of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (an illegal immigrant). He was sure that this woman, a cartographer by profession, the daughter of a lieutenant colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was set up by the KGB for my father, knowing his weakness in relation to the female sex.
Before this marriage, Shevchenko had three houses in the United States by 1991. The largest, donated by the CIA, cost a million US dollars and was filled with expensive antique furniture. Artem Borovik, whose employee interviewed his father in this house, once said, jokingly or seriously, that compared to Shevchenko’s house, Gorbachev’s dacha in Foros looks like a barn. My father also owned a four-room apartment in the Canary Islands. All this cost more than two million dollars. The father mortgaged his last house in 1995, taking out a loan of over 300 thousand US dollars - for his stepdaughter’s education at a prestigious university.
And on February 28, 1998, at the age of 68, my father died of cirrhosis of the liver in a small rented one-room, half-empty apartment, where there was only his bed and shelves with his favorite books about diplomacy and espionage. He spent the last weeks of his life in an American court - his ex-wife (they divorced in 1996) tried to sue for half of his large pension of almost seven thousand dollars a month.
After the death of A.N. Shevchenko found out that he had a debt of about 600 thousand US dollars. This information was confirmed by the Inurkollegium. In an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda on March 3, 1999, my sister confirmed that my father took 250 thousand dollars from her and failed to return (my sister sold a dacha in Valentinovka and a three-room apartment on Frunzenskaya Embankment in 1994).
They write that the father’s burial place is kept secret. I know this “secret” - he was buried in Washington, on the territory of the church parish of Father Viktor Potapov, who wooed the cartographer Natasha’s father, receiving for this a new Ford car and substantial donations. In addition, during Orthodox holidays, my father organized charity dinners and prepared Ukrainian borscht himself.
Gennady Arkadyevich Shevchenko - Candidate of Legal Sciences, has the diplomatic rank of attaché, was a member of the USSR delegation to the Disarmament Committee in 1977-1978 (Geneva), author of over 70 scientific works on issues of international law and disarmament. In 1979-1997 - researcher at the Institute of State and Law of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and Russia.
Do you believe that it is wrong to offend people and that the offense will definitely return to the offender? Have there ever been situations in your life when the person who offended you clearly received a “boomerang” punishment? I had such a situation.
This story happened many years ago, on my wedding day. The final preparations are in full swing - the hairdresser is doing my hair, relatives and girlfriends are running around. The groom will soon arrive for the “ransom”. And suddenly the doorbell rang. Let's open it. This is Antonina Petrovna, a neighbor from below, with a statement that we are flooding her.
In fact, everything was fine with the plumbing, but the water flowed down to her through a common pipe from the top floor. They invited her to come in and see that water was not flowing anywhere, and they opened this pipe by removing the panel in the corridor - they showed that the problem was in a different place, she had to go to the floor above. We went with her to the top floor, but there were no residents of the flooded apartment in the building. There was no way we could call them, but for some reason Antonina Petrovna continued to accuse us, screamed and did not leave. The message that we have an important event today, and the fact that, in general, we are not to blame for this misfortune, but ourselves suffered, for some reason did not soften it or calm it down.
Having somehow convinced her that apart from calling the plumbers to turn off all the water in the house at the moment, nothing could be done, we freed ourselves from her. She left, promising to come again. We all remained on our nerves and somehow calmed down. The corridor was urgently tidied up to meet the groom.
Tears began to boil in my eyes, threatening to spill out in streams and wash off my wedding makeup; I wanted to cry from the injustice. The holiday - the biggest holiday in every girl's life - lost its joy and seemed irrevocably spoiled. And although I did not participate in these negotiations and trips to the top floor, I felt slandered and harmed and was deeply offended by my neighbor. True, I didn’t realize it then.
The wedding went well. The groom arrived on time, we managed to do everything. Of course, the wedding commotion hid the unpleasant emotions, and the offensive situation was somehow forgotten. We began to live in the same apartment (with the same neighbor downstairs).
Retribution for the unfair accusation really came to her. We started filling it regularly! Then I will not secure the drain hose from the washing machine in the bathtub properly, and it will come loose and the entire contents of the machine will end up on the floor. Then, when I turn on the water in the kitchen, I place the dishes in the sink so poorly that the water overflows. But the most incredible thing is that I accidentally knock over a bucket of water twice right in the corridor! Such heights of clumsiness have never happened to me in my life, either before or since. Whatever happened, the result was the same - we flooded it again. Once a month is a must.
She comes, swears, we somehow explain ourselves, apologize. The husband offers money for repairs, and for some reason she demands respect instead of money. That is, the very fact of flooding for her is an act of disrespect for her person. She doesn’t care about the material component of the conflict, it doesn’t matter that the wallpaper in the hallway is damaged. She demands from us that we start respecting her and stop flooding her. But I still remembered that situation with her unfair accusation against us and clearly understood that I could not have any respect for her - such an unfair woman.
These regular floods, of course, did not benefit anyone. I was nervous, I watched the water with all my might, it became almost an obsession - not to spill the water - and still I spilled it, missed it and flooded it. The neighbor was offended and once again reproached us for disrespect. My husband wondered how I, otherwise a fairly responsible person, could not keep track of the water and kept missing it. And I couldn’t understand it myself.
Forgiveness
I was looking for an answer to this question and somewhere in popular psychology books I read about the harm of resentment and, finally, I remembered that situation and my experiences on my wedding day. I realized with surprise that I still (two years have passed) am offended by my neighbor. It looked as if subconsciously I wanted to take revenge on her: “Yeah, you accused me in vain, you ruined the holiday, so now get what you accused me of!” I definitely didn’t want to flood it consciously. I realized that my grievance prevents me from living.I decided that I needed to forgive. It turned out to be not so simple; you can’t snap your fingers and forgive. From the decision to forgive the offender to the forgiveness itself, I had to take a certain path. I convinced myself that she didn’t mean to offend me then, but that she was upset herself. I used various multi-step forgiveness techniques, went to forgiveness seminars, and tried very hard to follow all these recommendations. And finally, I did it. At one fine moment, I felt that this resentment no longer oppressed me, and what a liberation, a relief, as if a stone had been lifted from my soul!
Surprisingly, from that moment on we stopped flooding our neighbor from the bottom floor.
And I’m sure it’s not that we’ve become better at taking precautions with water.
“Am I right or am I wrong?”
Later I told this story to different people as an interesting fact confirming the destructive power of resentment. The listeners were divided into two camps. Some agreed with me, they say, yes! The offense returns to the offender sooner or later. “God sees everything, he will punish you, even if I forgive you!” Others shrugged their shoulders: “They carry water for the offended. An insult cannot harm anyone except the one who was offended.”
The first option for dealing with offense was obvious to me, and I wondered why not all people see this situation the same way as I do? Why are people so different? And why did that great insult happen to me, the visible consequences of which tormented me and my family?
The different attitudes of people towards offense are very accurately explained by the system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan. She identifies eight psychotypes, calling them vectors. Each vector is innate and gives a person special, unique properties, abilities, desires, value systems and life priorities. All these properties, values and desires are formed and developed during life, but only in the direction specified by the vector. No new properties appear. In this case, a person can have from one to all eight vectors at once.
The state of resentment, real resentment as it is, is not experienced by all people, but only by the owners of one of the vectors. These are wonderful people, excellent professionals in their field, caring mothers and fathers, faithful husbands and wives. Their values are respect for others, fairness and equality. Their life priorities are home and family. For girls with this vector it is very important to get married, for men - to get married. There should always be order and comfort in their home, everything should be clean and tidy. In relationships with other people, they want everything to be equal.
In the system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan, such people are called owners of the anal vector. They have the best memory, remembering well the smallest details of their past. Such a phenomenal memory is given to them to fulfill their special, native role in society - to accumulate the experience of the past and pass it on to new generations. The best profession for them is the profession of a teacher, their favorite hobby is history.
But phenomenal memory is not selective. We store in our memory not only the information necessary to fulfill our professional role. We remember all the good things that people have done to us, and we want to thank our benefactor by returning to him exactly as much good as he did for us, and we do this. But we also remember everything bad, and this manifests itself as resentment, which can lie like a stone in our heart for many years.
It is very important for us that the offender apologizes and admits his guilt - then this compensates for our offense, we can forgive him and regain our peace of mind. And if we do not receive an apology, then the resentment grows, and we will take it out subconsciously or consciously on the offender, on members of his family, on things or animals that belong to him. We will take revenge - to give exactly as much bad to a person as he did to us.
All people are different
“Everyone is different,” people and psychologists often say. This postulate, easily observed in society and not previously known to anyone, is explained by the presence of different sets of vectors in people. If a person has an anal vector, he will have all the properties inherent in the anal vector. He will understand the power of feelings of resentment and guilt. If this vector does not exist, then resentment and guilt have no meaning.And yet, a person’s touchiness increases when he loses his social fulfillment. His phenomenal memory is no longer used in his profession, and therefore is used only to accumulate memories.
You have already guessed that the heroines of the described story, of course, both have an anal vector. The conflict began at a time when our values were under threat. Antonina Petrovna was offended for her apartment, which was damaged by the flood, and I was offended for the most important (in my opinion) event in the girl’s life, the day the birth of her own family.In addition, Antonina Petrovna turned out to be a retired teacher. She lacked the respect of her students and colleagues that she previously had, and she looked around for confirmation that she remained a respected person. That is why during conflicts during the flood she spoke of respect.
Knowledge of system-vector psychology explained this past story to me and helped me avoid many, many other similar stories. After all, there are so many events and phenomena in life that it is very easy for the owner of the anal vector to be offended by.
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