Love in the workplace: learned three real stories of office romances. Classified Secret: Five Mysterious Stories from the KGB Archives
Secrets of the Lubyanka: a view from Britain
Oleg Gordievsky is a spy. Or, to put it elegantly, a foreign intelligence agent. In this case, English, which he served faithfully for more than a dozen years.
Gordievsky is not the first KGB officer to commit an act of treason against his homeland: in Kryukov's KGB, at least half a dozen Chekists were caught red-handed while conducting espionage operations in favor of other states. He managed to escape from the networks of counterintelligence and now he and his family are enjoying the fruits of freedom somewhere in a well-fed English province.
No matter how we judge the actions of our compatriots who have changed the geography of their place of residence, who have fled or emigrated from a country of developed socialism, the attitude towards spies is always unambiguous. And not only with us. Kim Philby, John Walker, Heinz Felfe, hundreds of other people who in the past connected their lives with Soviet intelligence and worked for it sometimes from the most noble motives, in the eyes of the people they betrayed, are criminals. They will remain such in the history of different peoples, no matter what clothes they dress themselves in during their lifetime.
The foregoing does not mean at all that spies are inveterate scoundrels and mediocre creatures who are unable or unwilling to earn their daily bread in a righteous way. Rather, on the contrary: living a double life for many years, constantly walking on the edge of a knife, wearing the guise of a loyal citizen and a respectable family man, carefully following the instructions of one boss and then secretly running with a report to another is not an easy task, requiring not only good mental health, but also outstanding acting skills, the gift of reincarnation, in which virtuoso deceit crowns all the efforts of the player.
Oleg Gordievsky certainly belonged to this category of spies. He can be safely put on the same level as Penkovsky, a colonel in the Soviet military intelligence who collaborated with the British in the 60s. Unlike Penkovsky, who ended his life on death row, Gordievsky was lucky: he not only escaped the deserved punishment, but also wrote a book in collaboration with Christopher Andrew: “KGB. History of foreign policy operations from Lenin to Gorbachev. This book was published for the first time in England in 1990 and is now becoming available to the Russian public.
I'll say it bluntly: a more thorough and reliable study of Soviet intelligence has not yet been published by anyone and nowhere.
Of course, even before 1990, the Western book market offered the reader in abundance the memoirs of former KGB and GRU officers (Orlov, Deryabin, Khokhlov, Golitsyn, Levchenko, Suvorov), the works of numerous Sovietologists devoted to the activities of Soviet state security agencies (Conquest, Dallin, Epstein, Hanson , Hingley, etc.) But perhaps the most noisy success was John Barron's book about the KGB, which appeared in several editions after the scandal with Soviet "diplomats" in London in 1971. Unfortunately, this bestseller contains a lot of fabrications, gossip, distortions and inaccuracies. It can rather be attributed to a fascinating reading material than to a detailed and verified story about the almighty Soviet department.
Gordievsky's book favorably differs from all previous publications on this topic with a full-fledged retrospective analysis of the formation and development of intelligence structures in Russia and the USSR. It contains rich material that was previously inaccessible to the average citizen and the press, clearly reveals the mechanism of functioning of the most closed system of a totalitarian state. Giving credit to Gordievsky himself as an author, I cannot but say that a significant part of the book came out from the pen of Christopher Andrew. This applies primarily to episodes from the activities of Soviet intelligence, about which Gordievsky, due to his official position, could not know. Thus, the case of the murder of the Bulgarian writer, emigrant G. Markov was known to a very limited circle of people, and Gordievsky did not have access to it. Many of the pages devoted to the work of Soviet intelligence in the United States are apparently written by Christopher Andrew on the materials of American intelligence agencies and the testimony of former KGB defectors. However, this is the merit of the book: it captures broad layers, gives a global vision of problems.
The reader will probably want to gallop through the first hundred pages, which describes the history of the emergence of the Russian political police and its direct successor, the Cheka, and plunge into modernity with its twisted plots and many familiar names. Do not hurry. To understand the roots, the origins of our current troubles, you need to know how and where it all began. But to know not from the "Short Course" and textbooks of the Ministry of Education, not from slick and sterile historical monographs, but from unbiased, objective sources, which this book can serve as. The role of Lenin and Dzerzhinsky in organizing mass terror, the “Lockhart conspiracy” and the figure of the British spy Sydney Reilly, the activities of the Comintern and the “successes” of the Cheka-GPU on the domestic front will be seen in a new way. An entire chapter is devoted to Stalin and his relationship with law enforcement agencies. The history of the preparation for the assassination of Trotsky is described in detail. Sorge, Philby, McLean, Burgess, Blunt - the names that once filled the headlines of all the world's newspapers, except for Soviet ones, are now, thanks to this book, portraits and, undoubtedly, will become closer and more understandable to those for whom they made enormous sacrifices. .
The activities of Soviet agents in the United States during World War II are vividly presented. The Stalinist state security, taking advantage of the friendly disposition of the Roosevelt administration towards its ally in the East, managed to weave a very effective spy network in Washington. However, Gordievsky casts a shadow on the president's closest adviser, Harry Hopkins, in vain. In those years, sympathy for warring Russia was so strong in American society that any official could be considered an agent by unscrupulous Chekists only because of his willingness to share information and favorably treat the requests of Soviet representatives.
The book by K. Andrew and O. Gordievsky gives a broad retrospective of the operations of the Soviet foreign intelligence from its foundation in 1917 until the collapse of the USSR. The book is based on extensive factual and historical material obtained by the authors and testimonies of eyewitnesses and participants in these operations. And the personal experience of Oleg Gordievsky, who served 23 years in KGB foreign intelligence, and the knowledge of Professor Christopher Andrew, the leading scholar of intelligence history in the West, make this book even more significant. The Russian edition is supplemented with historical facts that became known at the time of publication in Russia.
Secrets of the Lubyanka: a view from Britain 1
Preface to the Russian edition 2
Evolution of KGB 3
List of abbreviations 3
Introduction 4
Chapter I - Roots (1565-1917) 8
Chapter II - The Cheka, the Counter-Revolution and the "Lockhart Plot" (1917-1921) 13
Chapter III - Foreign intelligence and "active actions". The era of Dzerzhinsky (1919-1927) 21
Chapter IV - Stalin and spy mania (1926-1938) 33
Chapter V - "Enemies of the people" abroad (1929-1940) 44
Chapter VI - The Radio Intercept Service, the Infiltration of Agents, and the Fab Five from Cambridge (1930-1939) 51
Chapter VII - World War II (1939-1941) 67
Chapter VIII - The Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) 78
Chapter X - Cold War. Stalin stage (1945-1953) 102
Chapter XI - The Cold War after Stalin (1953-1963) 116
Chapter XII - The era of Brezhnev. East, Third World and West (1964-1972/73) 132
Chapter XIII - The Decline and Fall of Détente (1972-1984) 148
Chapter XIV - Under Gorbachev (1985-1991) 168
Application: 179
Bibliography 179
Oleg Gordievsky, Christopher Andrew
KGB
Secrets of the Lubyanka: a view from Britain
Oleg Gordievsky is a spy. Or, to put it elegantly, a foreign intelligence agent. In this case, English, which he served faithfully for more than a dozen years.
Gordievsky is not the first KGB officer to commit an act of treason against his homeland: in Kryukov's KGB, at least half a dozen Chekists were caught red-handed while conducting espionage operations in favor of other states. He managed to escape from the networks of counterintelligence and now he and his family are enjoying the fruits of freedom somewhere in a well-fed English province.
No matter how we judge the actions of our compatriots who have changed the geography of their place of residence, who have fled or emigrated from a country of developed socialism, the attitude towards spies is always unambiguous. And not only with us. Kim Philby, John Walker, Heinz Felfe, hundreds of other people who in the past connected their lives with Soviet intelligence and worked for it sometimes from the most noble motives, in the eyes of the people they betrayed, are criminals. They will remain such in the history of different peoples, no matter what clothes they dress themselves in during their lifetime.
The foregoing does not mean at all that spies are inveterate scoundrels and mediocre creatures who are unable or unwilling to earn their daily bread in a righteous way. Rather, on the contrary: living a double life for many years, constantly walking on the edge of a knife, wearing the guise of a loyal citizen and a respectable family man, carefully following the instructions of one boss and then secretly running with a report to another is not an easy task, requiring not only good mental health, but also outstanding acting skills, the gift of reincarnation, in which virtuoso deceit crowns all the efforts of the player.
Oleg Gordievsky certainly belonged to this category of spies. He can be safely put on the same level as Penkovsky, a colonel in the Soviet military intelligence who collaborated with the British in the 60s. Unlike Penkovsky, who ended his life on death row, Gordievsky was lucky: he not only escaped the well-deserved punishment, but also wrote a book in collaboration with Christopher Andrew: "The KGB. A History of Foreign Policy Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev." This book was published for the first time in England in 1990 and is now becoming available to the Russian public.
I'll say it bluntly: a more thorough and reliable study of Soviet intelligence has not yet been published by anyone and nowhere.
Of course, even before 1990, the Western book market offered the reader in abundance the memoirs of former KGB and GRU officers (Orlov, Deryabin, Khokhlov, Golitsyn, Levchenko, Suvorov), the works of numerous Sovietologists devoted to the activities of Soviet state security agencies (Conquest, Dallin, Epstein, Hanson , Hingley, etc.) But perhaps the most noisy success was John Barron's book about the KGB, which was published in several editions after the scandal with Soviet "diplomats" in London in 1971. Unfortunately, this bestseller contains a lot of fabrications, gossip, distortions and inaccuracies. It can rather be attributed to a fascinating reading material than to a detailed and verified story about the almighty Soviet department.
Gordievsky's book favorably differs from all previous publications on this topic with a full-fledged retrospective analysis of the formation and development of intelligence structures in Russia and the USSR. It contains rich material that was previously inaccessible to the average citizen and the press, clearly reveals the mechanism of functioning of the most closed system of a totalitarian state. Giving credit to Gordievsky himself as an author, I cannot but say that a significant part of the book came out from the pen of Christopher Andrew. This applies primarily to episodes from the activities of Soviet intelligence, about which Gordievsky, due to his official position, could not know. Thus, the case of the murder of the Bulgarian writer, emigrant G. Markov was known to a very limited circle of people, and Gordievsky did not have access to it. Many of the pages devoted to the work of Soviet intelligence in the United States are apparently written by Christopher Andrew on the materials of American intelligence agencies and the testimony of former KGB defectors. However, this is the merit of the book: it captures broad layers, gives a global vision of problems.
The reader will probably want to gallop through the first hundred pages, which describes the history of the emergence of the Russian political police and its direct successor, the Cheka, and plunge into modernity with its twisted plots and many familiar names. Do not hurry. To understand the roots, the origins of our current troubles, you need to know how and where it all began. But to know not from the "Short Course" and textbooks of the Ministry of Education, not from slick and sterile historical monographs, but from unbiased, objective sources, which this book can serve as. The role of Lenin and Dzerzhinsky in organizing mass terror, the "Lockhart plot" and the figure of the British spy Sidney Reilly, the activities of the Comintern and the "successes" of the Cheka-GPU on the domestic front will be seen in a new way. An entire chapter is devoted to Stalin and his relationship with law enforcement agencies. The history of the preparation for the assassination of Trotsky is described in detail. Sorge, Philby, McLean, Burgess, Blunt - the names that once filled the headlines of all the world's newspapers, except for Soviet ones, are now, thanks to this book, portraits and, undoubtedly, will become closer and more understandable to those for whom they made enormous sacrifices. .
The activities of Soviet agents in the United States during World War II are vividly presented. The Stalinist state security, taking advantage of the friendly disposition of the Roosevelt administration towards its ally in the East, managed to weave a very effective spy network in Washington. However, Gordievsky casts a shadow on the president's closest adviser, Harry Hopkins, in vain. In those years, sympathy for warring Russia was so strong in American society that any official could be considered an agent by unscrupulous Chekists only because of his willingness to share information and favorably treat the requests of Soviet representatives.
The problems of the post-war system in Eastern Europe, the control of the party-police mafia there, the vile role of the then Soviet ambassador to Hungary Yu.
Soviet intelligence is presented in the book most impressively. Its history essentially began with Alexander Sakharovsky joining PGU in 1956, who did a lot to turn intelligence into a powerful, well-oiled bureaucratic mechanism. Having inherited from his predecessors an extensive network of agents, Sakharovsky managed at first not only to consolidate, but also to expand the scale of foreign operations. To a large extent, this was facilitated by the aggressiveness of the KGB counterintelligence apparatus, shamelessly seducing or forcing foreign citizens in Moscow to cooperate with the KGB, whether they were ambassadors, military attaches, clerks or embassy guards. They did not disdain the rare tourists and businessmen in those years.
Probably, there were not as many secrets as the USSR kept in any country in the world. The Iron Curtain hid everything that did not fit with the "beautiful Soviet life."
About the terrible nuclear accident that occurred in the Soviet Union in 1957, the whole world learned only thirty years later. The tragedy happened in the south of Russia near the city of Kyshtym. The accident was caused by an explosion in a container in which radioactive waste was stored, this container was shaped like a stainless steel cylinder and was covered with concrete. Moreover, it was designed in such a way that in the event of a repair it was impossible to get close to it, probably because the developers had no doubts about the strength of the structure.
At the end of September, the cooling systems failed, no one began to repair, and it was simply turned off, a few days later there was an explosion in the storage with 80 m3 of nuclear waste. The force of the explosion lifted some of the radioactive debris up to one and a half kilometers, resulting in a cloud. Already twelve hours later, radioactive fallout fell within a radius of three hundred and fifty kilometers, they covered the territories of the Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Tyumen regions, in total more than twenty thousand square kilometers were affected. As a result of the disaster, the houses of more than ten thousand people were destroyed, about three hundred thousand people suffered from radiation. For the first time, US intelligence agencies became aware of the tragedy in the 60s, but fearing a negative attitude towards nuclear tests, the world kept silent about it, and in 1976 a Soviet emigrant announced it in the press. The USSR confirmed the information about the disaster only a few years after the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
The Cold War between the USSR and the West dictated the condition of primacy in all spheres of life. The same position was in the field of astronautics, where the USSR and the USA competed in who would be the first to launch a man into space. The Soviet Union strictly classified all data on ongoing research, and many of the names of pilots - cosmonauts who had been preparing for flights for thirty long years were classified. So it happened with Valentinov Bondarenko - a fighter pilot, who was a member of the first space detachment of the USSR.
In 1960, he was selected to participate in training for space flights, and he became the fourth in a list of 29 pilots preparing for the first space flight. Unfortunately, he did not manage to fly.
The pilot underwent the training necessary for space flight, one of the trainings was a ten-day stay in the depressurization chamber at NII-7. The test involved being alone and in silence. However, fate played a cruel joke with him. During one of his medical studies, he made a mistake. After removing the sensors from the body, he wiped those places on the body on which they were fixed with alcohol, and threw away the cotton swab. The tampon fell on the hot spiral of the electric stove and flared up. Since almost all the air inside the pressure chamber consisted of pure oxygen, the fire instantly spread to the entire chamber and the pilot's woolen suit instantly caught fire ...
Unfortunately, the rescuers could not open the pressure chamber quickly, since there was a large pressure difference between it and the surrounding space. When Bondarenko was taken out of the depressurization chamber, he was still alive, although he received burns over 98% of his body, his eyes, hair and skin were completely burned, blood vessels could only be found on the soles of his feet. Being in pain shock, the pilot whispered that he was in great pain. He was urgently transported to the Botkin hospital, where, despite the efforts of doctors, he died sixteen hours later from burn shock. Nineteen days later, Yuri Gagarin flew into space ...
A year later, in 1961, Valentin Bondarenko was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Star (posthumously), he left behind a wife and a young son. The state did not help the family, they only received a pension until the child came of age, they tried to forget about the family. Valentin was buried in Kharkov, the inscription “from friends - pilots” was carved on the obelisk, and only in the 80s was attributed to “cosmonauts of the USSR”.
All data about the incident with Valentin Bondarenko was classified until 1986, when the story of his death was described in the Izvestia newspaper.
For a very long time, all data on the famine of 1932-1933 in some regions of the USSR were hushed up, they tried to forget about it and delete it from history, as something that actually did not exist.
The policy of collectivization, food requisition and grain procurement carried out by the Soviet regime led to the fact that a terrible famine broke out in a number of territories of the Soviet Union, especially Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Recently, theories have arisen that the famine in Ukraine was deliberately caused to eradicate a recalcitrant people, but one cannot say this one hundred percent. On purpose or not, this policy has taken the lives of millions of people.
It is also terrible that the terrible famine was hidden from foreign states, they did not know anything about it, or they knew, but did not want to aggravate relations with Stalin. In order to hide all the horrors taking place in the USSR, the top leadership played real “performances” in front of foreign tourists and correspondents: the store shelves were full of all kinds of products, but it was impossible for ordinary citizens to go there - any attempts ended in arrest. Sometimes such ideas reached the point of absurdity - the streets were washed out, and responsible party workers dressed up as peasants. It was not in vain that such performances were arranged, the French Prime Minister who visited Ukraine said that he was in a real “flowering garden”.
There is still no exact number of deaths from starvation, however, some researchers give a figure of up to seven million people, it is not for nothing that the census that the USSR conducted in 1937 was classified. Unfortunately, only in recent years has a true assessment of the events of the nightmares of 1932-33 in the Soviet Union been given.
For a long time, the tragedy that occurred in the Katyn Forest was classified, and the world community pretended that they knew nothing about these events. The horrors of the mass execution of the USSR were hidden not without the help of Great Britain and the USA.
Relations between Poland and the USSR have always been very complicated. In 1939, the fourth partition of Poland took place, more than half a million Poles ended up in Soviet captivity, the majority of the Soviet authorities handed over to German troops, and about forty thousand ended up in Soviet camps.
In 1940, Beria told Stalin that there were a lot of former Polish officers, reconnaissance workers and nationalists in the camps on the territory of Poland and the Union. Thus, more than 25,000 Polish citizens were branded, whose past did not please the USSR authorities. It was customary to consider their personal affairs with special care and apply execution to them. In April, those sentenced in groups of 350-400 people were taken to the Katyn Forest for execution, they threw an overcoat over their heads especially dangerous and shot in the back of the head near the moat, while German-made pistols were used, later the USSR used this fact at the Nuremberg Tribunal, trying to prove that the murders were committed Germans during the occupation of the USSR. The USSR adhered to this opinion until 1990, categorically denying its guilt.
However, Great Britain and the United States knew about the fault of the Soviet Union. So Churchill, in informal conversations, confirmed that this was the work of the Bolsheviks, but at the same time he imposed censorship on the English press in this matter. Roosevelt also did not want to openly blame Stalin, the evidence that the government knew about the guilt of the Union, surfaced in the United States only in 1952.
The arms race, which began immediately after the end of the war, gave a sharp impetus to the engineering development of the Soviet Union. One of these innovations was the Ekranoplan.
In the mid-60s, an American spy satellite managed to take pictures of an unfinished Soviet seaplane. The Americans were struck by the enormous size of the flying vessel - there was nothing like it in the USA. Moreover, American experts said that such a huge wingspan would not even allow the plane to take off. Size was not the aircraft's only oddity. Its engines were too close to the craft's nose than to its wings. However, the Americans failed to unravel the secrets of the flying object, until the collapse of the USSR.
The classified object turned out to be the Caspian Sea Monster - an ekranoplan, a kind of apparatus that combined an airplane and a ship that could fly just a few meters from the surface of the water.
The developments were top-secret, it was impossible to even mention the name of the device. Huge funds were allocated for the project, as the developers hoped that in the future such e-planes would be very useful. It was assumed that such "Monsters" would be able to transport hundreds of soldiers, tanks at a speed of about five hundred kilometers per hour, while they would be completely invisible to radar. The total mass of the ekranoplan with cargo could reach five hundred tons. It was supposed to install economical engines on the device, which would absorb less fuel than many cargo aircraft. In the course of development, the designers managed to build only one such ekronoplan, the length of which exceeded the Boeing by two and a half times, it was equipped with eight jet engines and six nuclear warheads.
During the first flight of the ekranoplan, which was built at the Nizhny Novgorod plant and the S. Ordzhonikidze Aircraft Building Plant, the designer of the giant Rostislav Alekseev himself was at the helm. The tests lasted fifteen years, and in 1980 the ekranoplan was destroyed during an accident.
Unfortunately, the Soviet people were very often characterized by negligence and disregard for their work, which very often led to accidents and disasters. One of such large-scale catastrophes was the Nedelin catastrophe. It happened during preparations for the first launch of the R-16 intercontinental missile.
Half an hour before the expected launch of the rocket, one of the engines started, as a result, the fuel tanks were destroyed, and the rocket fuel started to ignite. During the investigation, it was revealed that the day before there was a breakthrough in the membrane of one of the tanks, and the fuel was not drained in violation of the instructions. To speed up the preparation for the launch, an external ampoule battery was installed on board the rocket, an hour before the launch, which led to the appearance of voltage in the electrical circuits of the rocket, which led to a short circuit of contacts and an explosion.
According to all the rules, the rocket should have been sent for rechecking, and this would have dragged on for several months. Commander-in-Chief of the Missile Troops Mitrofan Nedelin commanded the launch of the rocket, and he reacted rather superficially to the breakdown that had occurred the day before in the rocket, especially since he had an order to launch the rocket by the Day of the Great October Revolution. The explosion that took place was of terrifying proportions - all the people on the launch pad died, the temperature was so huge that the coating of the pad was melted, because of which no one could escape - everyone was burned alive. More than eighty people died in the crash, about fifty were injured.
All information about the disaster was carefully classified, no official statements followed. It was announced that the commander of the missile forces, M. Nedelin, died in a plane crash. All relatives of the victims were told that their relatives died as a result of an accident. However, information and tragedies still got into the foreign media, and already at the end of 1960, the Italians reported a disaster where a hundred people died, and five years later in England, one of the exposed Soviet intelligence officers confirmed the data about the disaster. The USSR first announced the catastrophe only in 1989 in the Ogonyok magazine, where an essay was published.
In the late forties, the Soviet Union created a top-secret laboratory on one of the islands of the Aral Sea, which was engaged in the development of the latest biological weapons. The main developments were carried out with viruses of bubonic plague and anthrax. Later, smallpox joined these strains.
So it is believed that in 1971 they managed to develop a vaccine-resistant smallpox virus, which in 1990 may have been sold to Iraq as a bacteriological weapon. It was in 1971 that the developed virus was tested outdoors, leading to a severe outbreak of smallpox. Infection was detected in ten people. Quarantine was urgently introduced for several hundred people, and more than fifty thousand local residents of the Aral Sea region were vaccinated. All data on the outbreak of smallpox were classified, they learned about it only at the beginning of the 21st century, since the Russian authorities also did not recognize what had happened.
In Soviet times, there were cities that were not marked on more than one map, only those who lived there knew about their existence. Such cities received their status due to the placement of secret objects of national importance in them. It was impossible for an ordinary person to get there because of the strictest access system and the secrecy of the city's location. As a rule, they were given the name of the regional center with the addition of a number, for example, Penza - 19. Such secrecy often helped to hide the disasters that happened here, as in the case of the radioactive disaster in Chelyabinsk - 65. However, these cities also had pluses - they were well supplied, there was always a scarce commodity, and the crime rate was almost zero. It was very difficult to get a job in such a city - relatives were checked almost up to the 5th generation.
Each of these cities had its own secret specifics. So, in Zagorsk - 6 there was a Virological Institute, Arzamas - 16 was engaged in nuclear weapons, in Sverdlovsk-45 they were engaged in uranium enrichment. Later, relatives of residents were allowed to visit some cities, but for this they underwent strict checks in special bodies. In total, according to available data, there were forty-two closed cities in the Union, but fifteen of them are closed now.
Who among us has not watched the Soviet comedy "Office Romance", where the awkward Novoseltsev tries to hit on the strict director Lyudmila Prokofievna for the sake of promotion! After a series of funny cases and ridiculous situations, the affair develops into a sincere feeling of two lonely people, and the audience is waiting for a happy ending. In life, “like in a movie” rarely turns out, although office romances occur in almost every institution, whether it is a hardware store warehouse or a doctor's office.
Particularly persistent, of course, adhere to the rule “You don’t have to shit where you eat” (read “work”), because fiery feelings can quickly come to an end, and then try to find a new job. Others can't resist and still have an affair at work. We talked to Petrozavodsk residents and learned three real love stories.
Nastya and her reflective story
“I was on vacation when a colleague called me and told me that we had a new employee in our office. I remember that I was still scared that they were calling me from work, all of a sudden something urgent, but I still want to rest! It turned out that a colleague just missed me and at the same time shared news from work. I wasn't happy about this news at all. A colleague can be called practically a friend, we sat together in the same office, dined together and walked at lunchtime, chatted and laughed, sometimes visited each other. It was so much fun with her, and now she is being transferred to another floor, and another person is already working in our office!
And it's a man! His girlfriend has already taught him everything, explained the specifics of the institution, and I will come, as if not to my own office ... With a man at the workplace you will not keep secrets and laugh, as with a girlfriend, of course, and even your every movement will need to be controlled. Oh! I was even a little offended: they could have warned, and a friend could have called immediately, as she found out about the movement of personnel. And what kind of a man is still unknown. Although a colleague said that he was nothing, tall, normal, handsome, and generally hinted that I should like him. If she hadn't said that, maybe nothing would have happened, just colleagues, employees. But at these words, somewhere deep in my heart skipped a beat, and I unconsciously prepared for an intrigue. Like this: a friend intrigued - I have an intrigue and formed.
Actually, I'm married. Long and solid. But, probably, not firmly enough, since I got into this story. To be honest, I can't explain how it happened. Slowly, little by little, like an avalanche from a snowball - and do not stop. Who else would know whether to stop. I never believed in the phrase "I'm confused", and this happened to me. I condemn myself and am pleased with myself: what a fatal woman I am, I’ll get whoever you want! Such is the dual feminine essence.
Before, everything was simple in my life: I studied, married a man whom I knew from school days, got a job. I didn't really believe in feelings either. It's time to play a wedding, well, they played, we live, I bring up my daughter. The husband is somehow on his own, he brings money, and it's good. And passions, feelings - it only happens in the movies. But, apparently, something was missing. Bored, right? Or I wanted it to be "like in the movies."
For the rest of the vacation, I was fueled by curiosity as to who the man was in my office. And when I saw him, I was even disappointed: that’s really “nothing”, as a colleague said, just nothing special. There was no such spark between us. I ran to work early to make up for lost time during the vacation, well, curiosity urged on, and he came in, said hello and buried himself in the computer. In my embarrassment, I didn't even introduce myself or talk to him. Later, later, the boss came and introduced us to each other, ordered me to love and not offend the newcomer. It was like everyone was pushing me on purpose! I must love him, you see!
Until the lunch break, we were silent, I looked at him, but did not see what my friend found in him. At lunch, she went up to her and expressed, they say, she was intrigued in vain! And she told me: “What are you, he is so cool!” And indeed, gradually I began to notice that I was beginning to feel sympathy for the way he behaved, the way he talked: everything was jokes, jokes. This is when we got to know each other better. And the door will gallantly open for me if we manage to come at the same time. And give you candy. And he will gobble up half of my dinner without a twinge of conscience, if nothing has been brought, and I treat him. And he will say something that only applies to me, like: “Oh, who came to us!” - Well, who else will come, if the office is designed for us. So glad, or what, to me? I wanted to think so.
I immediately spoke about my marital status. He did not spread about his own, and I was not interested. In general, he never took our relationship beyond work: he didn’t call, he didn’t write, he didn’t see him off, nothing like that. And he didn’t bring home problems to work. But he started flirting first. Sits, looks and smiles. If you smile back, you will surely say something pleasant. You laugh it off - he will also joke, talk. And he always readily agreed to help in the work. I no longer carried heavy folders and books, I didn’t wait for the engineer’s help in problems with office equipment, I didn’t grab my head with some snags anymore - he raked everything himself. And he always somehow turned out to be nearby, strove for communication, violated borders.
And then it happened that we had to stay late at work. Actually, I had to. There was a power failure, and we didn't have time to finish what everyone was supposed to finish today. I called my husband and warned that I would be late so that he would meet the child (then my daughter went to first grade) and take her to her grandmother. It gets dark early in autumn, and we only have a table lamp, the situation is so promising. After all, we turned off the overhead light just in case, turned off the power when the interruption occurred, and when the electricity was given, we rushed to work, and it got dark. They completed it almost simultaneously and said “wow!” in unison. And he stretched himself and said that it turned out to be his birthday, and there was even something to celebrate, only everyone had forgotten in the park. That's how it all happened. And I finally came home in the morning. The husband and child spent the night with their grandmother, had breakfast there and went to the park on the occasion of the day off. My husband didn't seem to care, he didn't even call.
And my conscience terribly tormented me both for my behavior, and for my attitude towards my husband, and because of my daughter. After all, I do not need this colleague! Yes, and love these relationships can not be called. Simple flirting, true office romance. I can't explain myself how it happened. There was not enough romance, something forbidden, interesting. I tried to convince myself that nothing terrible happened, that this happens at every step. Somehow I coped with myself, on Sunday, even with my husband and daughter, the three of us spent time, which rarely happens, walked on the lakefront, ate ice cream in a cafe. And on Monday they offered me to drop everything and leave ... “What is keeping you here? Come with me to Pskov!” This is where the real mental and moral suffering began. His roots are from Pskov, and he offers me to leave at least with my daughter. Get divorced, quit and leave. With a half-familiar person. I only know him from work!
And, the saddest part, I wanted it. I even started planning. I was tossed like a ship during a storm, I either wanted to be with this person, then I began to doubt him, my feelings, what I want and whether I need it, I rushed to my husband, tried to treat him better , was afraid for her daughter, and told a colleague that, most likely, I would not get divorced and that in general it was necessary to end the relationship. As a result, I fell into depression, I didn’t want anything at all. A colleague was angry with me, I was angry with myself, a colleague and my husband, my husband did not want to see anything. I lost interest and energy in my work. Colleagues did not whisper behind my back, and thanks for that. I shared it with a friend, she would have figured us out anyway, but gossip didn’t go further than her, apparently.
So I was tormented for about a month. The colleague left the last word for me: "I suggested - think." Our relationship has hung. At work, I could not do anything, my head was thinking badly and was busy all the time with the wrong things. And it all ended when I was deprived of the award for such work. It kind of pissed me off, sort of. And I made a choice in favor of the family. Who is this colleague to change your whole life because of him? He created problems for me anyway ... I didn’t swear love to him to the grave, he didn’t swear to me either. Just tired. And he left for Pskov, as he intended. And it’s good, because I’m so tired of being afraid that everything will be revealed, that I will have to leave work, that my husband will find out, that I myself will go crazy from experiences! I am now sitting and waiting for someone else to be appointed to my office. But no more romance!
Male perspective on office romances. Alexander about his novels at work
“Who said that men are cynical in this matter? Cynicism is just characteristic of the female character! Indeed, in the Orthodox religion, women are considered unclean beings. After all, they themselves do not know what they want, some intrigue, intricacies ... But a man is simpler, more naive. If he found another, he will say in plain text: "Sorry, goodbye."
Personally, I have no illusions about my own age. But the hands are still stretching! Reflexively stretching hands to the young! The spinal cord sends an impulse, and you want to grab it! What - pills to drink? Everyone lives as they see fit, and I believe that I will live as I need, I don’t make excuses and I’m not going to teach anyone. At the age you want to flirt. The desire to please results in compliments, maintaining appearance at the level, some word games: understatement, ambiguity.
Romance between colleagues is not good and it is not bad. Even between colleagues, even just strangers. It's all about whether a romance occurs or not, no matter where. If the romance flows into something valuable, that's good. And just something somewhere in the corner - generally great. What's wrong with that? After all, it is always better to make a mistake before a serious relationship is accepted.
Again, we spend so much time at work! So much time that I call my wife by the name of a colleague. But this does not mean something like that at all, it is already a reflex. And my wife understands this very well, she realizes that we have been sitting for many hours in the same office for many years. And we obviously have some kind of romance with her. A work novel, not a love story. After all, you can do without coitus. Yes, I see her more than my own wife! I already forgot what my wife looks like. When a colleague cuts his hair, I will immediately see. And when the wife is not. Because I haven't been able to persuade her to do it for five years. I don't like long hair. And the wife loves it. So an office romance is inevitable. And its form can be completely different, as in any relationship between people.
Personally, office romances do not interfere with my work. Although it happens that this is a terrible thing - to twist love at work. When two colleagues lay eyes on one colleague, this is both jealousy and some intimate conflicts ... And flirting - every day! And while it is standing normally - there is hope that everything is proceeding normally, I'm not talking about you, but about this beam. Do you see? Everything is simple.
The main thing is to realize the following thought, which will help you understand that there is no smell of cynicism here. A person is realized in everything: in children, professions, hobbies. This is a normal, natural state of a person. It is impossible to be realized in the family and at the same time not be realized in relations with women in other places. And where? Not on the street! Although, deviating from the topic, why not, in the end.
Here, imagine, spring, puddles. Nothing is removed. And a woman walks in front of me. She reached a puddle and could not bypass either on the left or on the right. I advise her, they say, you can slip through there, and she told me: “I'm afraid, I have Italian boots!” I hop on her hands and moved. My son was with me, so my son constantly reminds me of this beneficence: “Do you remember how you endured a woman?” The son felt that it was necessary to do this and that it was good. But you won't wear them all!
Here we are realized in work and at work. Somewhere you need to realize yourself as healthy, somewhere smart, somewhere professional, somewhere sexy. Women have different experiences. And it is impossible for a man not to be realized, not to show himself sexually with a colleague of the opposite sex. With his wife - one thing, with his mistress - another. With a woman who is neither a wife nor a lover - the third is also not bad. I have an implementation. This is good.
Men cross the border in films. But this rarely happens in life, in a certain environment. Someone is on duty at night with the opposite sex - that's the talk! Sleep, sleep! And it may or may not be. It is important that they spend time and prove themselves in this respect too. There is nothing surprising, nothing strange, reprehensible. And it is not at all necessary that if you smiled at a colleague, then with the next movement you should get her in the corner. Maybe it's illegal in Europe. Here in the USA, they say, you can’t open the door for a woman, give a coat - I haven’t been there, I don’t know. I live here, and for this nation all these courtships, even with subtext, even without intentions, are the norm.
One of my friends went to work in Australia, so six months later he was forced to leave there. He is married, but traveled alone, without a wife. A week later, after sidelong glances, he was warned not to pull up the woman's chair, otherwise there would be trouble. The police will stop. All courtship is prohibited - it is illegal. Not only professionally - not even the beach. And he broke the contract and left: “I can’t live like this, I’m alone. The men look askance, the women warn about the police.” It is culture that defines. And how to be realized then? Where is everything to go?
We have a national feature - to take care of a woman. So, the Boxing Federation made a decision: in Russia you can’t look at a woman in a bikini - they say, it’s impossible to box after that. What nonsense! And next time they will demand a veil! Russia is not for this. A woman must have a heel, must have a cleavage, otherwise she is not a woman. With her, a man should feel a craving for realization. He must take care of her. And flirting is completely normal. Like an office romance."
That's where expressions like "sailed and quit" come from. Although the sailors have absolutely nothing to do with it, the following story is about them.
Like in the movies. A short but happy story of an affair at work from Olga
“In medicine, there are whole dynasties of medical families. And not only in medicine, I guess. A family of scientists, for example. Or athletes there, teachers - in my opinion, this happens and is not uncommon. People are looking for a person by themselves. Just with close views or meet where they are most often. We met at the faculty, then got married. Or they were colleagues. Or at the conference, fate brought together. She also brought me together, although not with a colleague, but at work the relationship was very close, laughter with laughter.
I then only after the medical school was, I got a job as a nurse in the hospital. Once, during my day off, colleagues call me and say: “Go to work, come on, there are such guys lying around!”
Oh, that didn't make me happy. The shifts are already difficult, long, exhausting, and then there is still fun with the daring youth, a whole company, as I understand it. They won't let you work in peace. Sailors often get inflammation of the tonsils, this is professional. And now we had to bring a new batch. And this one didn’t even want to go to bed, he said: “A friend persuades me, they say, what are you, there is such a sister, young, beautiful, he himself would hit, but not before.”
He refused, refused, in the end thundered anyway. Of course, I liked him - a young, stately sailor, a good guy. I only gave him one shot! And he courted, waited for my shift, I don’t know why, he helped to fill out the magazines on the shift, although this is impossible, he will take a pen and write, write. During the shift, after all, you get tired and stand, and sit, and hold the pen. Here he worked at night instead of me. Invaluable help! He lay down, recovered and went to sea. Before that, I found out my address. In the hospital. He didn't tell me anything.
And here I am sitting at home, suddenly the doorbell rang: it appeared. The bouquet is huge, larger than himself, and where he only got it. I cut off all the flower beds in the district, probably. We walked for two weeks, cinema, parks, said: “I’ll return from the flight - we’ll get married!” He sent me jeans from Italy, handbags. I sat and waited. I think that she is naive, she will go far and forget, in every city there are a million like me. Yes, I spent time. An no. I returned with my suitcases. He left his homeland, he left everything. Right to me. Married, 35 years together. That's such a strong love."
Maria Sidorova
How secret research ended in the USSR and how it changed the life of the country, see the documentary investigation of Unsolved Secrets.
On November 5, 1972, a month after the death of the writer Ivan Efremov, his apartment was suddenly searched. Chekists inspect the house thoroughly, they even have a metal detector with them. The official reason for the visit is that a criminal case has been opened on the fact of the obscure death of a popular science fiction writer, the author of The Andromeda Nebula. In fact, they are checking his connection with extraterrestrial civilizations. It is suspected that Efremov himself is an alien from outer space. At the same time, closed programs for the study of UFOs and people with non-standard abilities are being created in the State Security Committee.
What exactly did they do in these departments of the KGB? And why were the projects labeled "Top Secret"? The Efremov case will grow to 70 volumes in a year. What can be found out? And how will the KGB get to the world's first alien? Read about it in the investigation of the Moscow Trust TV channel.
A few years before these events, the picture "The Andromeda Nebula" was released. Starring Soviet stars Viya Artmane, Lyudmila Chursina and Nikolai Kryukov. Before the era of computer special effects is still more than a dozen years old, but the video sequence of the film is impressive. For example, on the table at the head of the space stations "Gift of the Wind" is an object very similar to a modern laptop, and the principle of operation is the same. Notice such details and the Soviet secret services.
"Several factors converged here. One of them was the paranoid spy mania in the KGB system in the early 70s. This was true. Moreover, then, in the early 70s, a special KGB directive was issued to the central apparatus and local authorities about the intensified search for illegal enemy agents. It seemed to them that there were these illegal agents all around, ”says historian Nikita Petrov.
The writer Efremov will also be suspected of espionage. Nikita Petrov once opened this story. When the archive materials of the KGB fell into his hands, he was shocked. It turned out that a few years after the launch of a man into space, the Chekists were waiting for aliens to visit the earth.
"An interesting author, what was Ivan Efremov, of course, attracts the attention of not only the public, but also the authorities. People always want to ask how he invents all this, how does he do it all? And many, especially those inclined to conspiracy theories, come to the conclusion "What does it mean to invent? Or maybe he knows all this? Or maybe he's from other worlds, from other planets?" Petrov says.
Then why do the Chekists begin checking Efremov only after his death? What are the KGB afraid of? Once the writer was already summoned to the Lubyanka. This happened immediately after the release of his novel "The Hour of the Bull" in the late 60s. Andropov himself then conducted a conversation with him. In the work of Efremov, he saw a satire on the existing regime. At that moment, they did not dare to come to the apartment of the science fiction writer with a search.
"Otherwise, it would look like arbitrariness, and Efremov is a fairly well-known writer - there would be noise in Moscow, they would talk about it in the West - that the KGB breaks into the writer just like that with a search. Who could afford it? And after death they thought that everyone it will somehow come off more or less quietly and imperceptibly, although after this search, of course, Moscow was full of rumors," Petrov notes.
There are clear instructions from the KGB on what grounds to open a case. Of course, there is no point about an alien agent among them. Therefore, the Chekists have to resort to a trick with the suspicious death of Efremov. In this case, they have access to the apartment, documents and relatives of the writer. But a year later, there will be nothing to report to the authorities. Was this whole story just someone's attempt to curry favor? Or is it the result of many years of work of the special services with the unknown?
"This is just a grain of sand in the sea of events that take place primarily in the sphere of state security agencies (now it is the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs). These stories - they are not told. They are only told there, after 50 years. But there are a lot of them," he said. Dmitry Fonarev, President of the Russian National Association of Bodyguards.
Dmitry Fonarev (former bodyguard of President Gorbachev) is a veteran of the 9th Directorate of the KGB, which provided security for the first persons of the state. He admits that people with non-standard abilities are always under the control of the Chekists.
“Somewhere in the 1970s and 1980s, intelligence officers began to encounter quite serious manifestations of threats in an unusual form. That is, when people went out of windows, they died as if for no reason, sudden death. And, in general, then, interest in these things - he never disappeared, "says Fonarev.
Fonarev himself also encountered a paranormal phenomenon. Since then, he has studied the work of his colleagues in this field. On that day, the guys from his group were on duty. And it was like this: it was 1989 in the yard. The Kremlin is going to the First Congress of People's Deputies. Security, as it should be at a government event, at the highest level. At the last post at the entrance to the hall, a man in civilian clothes calmly checks everyone's documents. It is necessary to show the pass and passport here, however, as in the two previous posts. One person who suddenly appears nearby and goes to the podium, the security officer stubbornly does not notice. And only when the unknown begins to rush between the front rows in search of a place, pays attention to him.
“Well, this kind of ordinary, one might say, a hard worker. He says: “But I don’t have a place.” They ask him: “How is there no place? Come on, come here, give me the documents." He says: "I have no documents." - "How are there no documents?" He is almost at the podium. , crazy, you never know, right? At the headquarters they began to figure it out: “Who are you?” - “I am such-and-such” (there is a surname and a name). - “How did you get there?” - “Well, how? I went - and hit. "The man passed three posts. Three posts! How? Nobody knows. That is, that he was let through at three posts - well, this is impossible. I myself stood at these posts, and I perfectly imagine what it is, " - says Fonarev.
How do the KGB deal with a man who was able to infiltrate the Kremlin? In the absence of corpus delicti, he is released. This story is chalked up to inattention. But in 2001, it is repeated, only in the United States at the inauguration of President George W. Bush. CNN's Invisible Man story makes a splash. It is also shown in Russia, but after the first news release, it is taken off the air.
"Then it turned out that yes, a person is such and such (this was not his first case, he did the same at Clinton's inauguration). But how? He says:" I can become invisible for protection. "And when a person says to people" invisible, "everyone remembers Wells" The Invisible Man "and says:" Guys, well ... "But with all this they are not seen. They are not seen! And this is what we are facing," says Dmitry Fonarev.
An expert on the history of special services, Valery Malevanny, claims that security officers became interested in non-traditional technologies immediately after the revolution. Under the OGPU of the USSR, a secret laboratory is being opened, in which drugs are being developed to influence the psyche of those arrested and to eliminate objectionable people. Further more.
“Today we know that Stalin, having come to power in 1927, is laying the foundations for an even deeper study of these paranormal phenomena. He surrounds himself with psychics. , numerologists). And without Natalia Lvova, Stalin did not dare to solve almost a single issue. We know that in 1939 Beria brought Messing to Stalin. And without Messing, Stalin also did not even try to solve some practical issue, "says Malevanny.
According to some reports, Messing is just a cover for real Kremlin oracles. So, under Lubyanka, there have been intelligence schools for many years, where psychic children are selected. Until the mid-1950s, this program was led by the physiologist Leonid Vasiliev, a student of the famous professor Chizhevsky, who studied the influence of the Sun and the Moon on people, crowds and technology.
What results can the KGB achieve? The first official and most famous psychics in Russia are Allan Chumak and Anatoly Kashpirovsky. During the years of perestroika, television broadcasts their sessions live. Chumak claims that his abilities were studied in a secret scientific laboratory in Furmanny Lane in the center of Moscow. What kind of experiments were carried out on him?
“They made such a small thermostat that reacted to temperature and to cosmic noises. That is, if an iron was placed on this thermostat, then for some time it did not react at all to a hot iron. That is, it was insulated quite well. Well, you can - try, raise the temperature, lower the temperature, maybe somehow suppress cosmic noises, do something else to make it clear that the device is inanimate, which cannot be inspired by anything, reacts to your influence, "said psychic Allan Chumak.
According to Chumak, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB used his services more than once. The psychic was even strongly recommended to become a secret employee of the Committee, promising an apartment and the rank of lieutenant colonel. But he refused.
The most high-profile crime that Chumak reveals is connected with the case of Medunov, a friend of Brezhnev. There is a struggle for power between Andropov and Shchelokov, the Minister of the Interior. Chekists strike at the first secretary of the Krasnodar regional party committee Medunov, thereby pointing out the missteps of the police.
“Great thefts were uncovered there. And they arrested someone, they didn’t arrest someone. This was done by the KGB and the police, of course. But they couldn’t find one person. They didn’t know where he was - in the country, whether he went abroad, escaped. And a man from the KGB approached me with a question about where this man is. You know, I had a state inside me that I can find him. This state is very similar to what happens when suddenly there is a desire to write poem, music. This is the inner creative state that makes it possible to get involved in this situation, "says Chumak.
Having laid out huge maps of Moscow and the Soviet Union on the floor at home, Chumak feels nothing for several minutes. The Chekist looks disappointed.
“But here, on the map of the Moscow region, several settlements were highlighted, where he seemed to be based, it happens where you can look for him, etc. Suddenly, the understanding came that this person would be in the Volokolamsk highway area on a certain street tomorrow (I don’t remember right now , which street). Not the exact time, but somewhere, there, in the evening. But it turned out to be enough for him to be taken just the next day on this street," Chumak tells this story.
Who else among the psychics works for the Kremlin and how have they changed the life of the country? It turns out that the capture of the most famous spy in Soviet history, Dmitry Polyakov, is also the merit of psychics.
“In 1985, there were failures throughout Western Europe (from 80 to 85). 27 of our agents, the best, “moles”, failed there. And the “mole” costs about 10 million in preparation. The question arose: "Who? Is there a traitor?" Big "mole". Where is he?" Malevanny says.
It takes three years for Soviet counterintelligence to recruit CIA Russian chief Aldrich Ames, who points to several GRU generals as potential traitors. He was not personally acquainted with the spy, and general information is not enough for accusations. Then the Chekists decide to resort to the help of psychics.
“It was just a shock when psychics and the KGB showed counterintelligence officers to Major General Polyakov, who had worked for the CIA for 25 years and had already retired. He was an ideological opponent of the Soviet regime. He did not work for money - this is the worst thing. the military tribunal sentenced him to death. The value of this agent was determined by the President of America, who came to Gorbachev then and asked to change it for one to ten. Gorbachev, despite all his democracy, said: "We have already shot this general." Although he was still alive ", - says Malevanny.
If the reason for the attention to psychics is obvious, then where does the secret KGB UFO program begin? As it turns out, the cause was an accident with aircraft number 1 in 1978. The pilot of the aircraft took the liberty of reporting that an unidentified flying object actively interfered with the landing approach at Vnukovo Airport.
"A coincidence. At the moment when he had already read the report, a man who oversaw the border troops of the KGB of the USSR came into his office and who, just a few days before, the border detachment from Leningrad had shown approximately a similar report. Andropov decided that it was a coincidence too much,” says Alexander Maksimov, an employee of the FSB of the Russian Federation (1995-1998).
According to Alexander Maksimov, it was from that moment on that the military, nuclear power plant dispatchers, ship captains were ordered to report any strange objects in their visibility zone. Valuable information becomes what used to be passed from mouth to mouth and often not reflected in reports due to fear of being misunderstood and fired.
"And the base gradually began to accumulate. There were quite a lot of funds, efforts and involved brains. And in more than 95 percent of cases like this they were explained from the point of view of physics by the influence of natural environments and so on. But still, 5 percent at the moment remain inexplicable from the point of view of modern technology and science," Maksimov explained.
This secret database was requested at the end of 1991 by the USSR pilot-cosmonaut Pavel Popovich. Once in an interview, he mentioned that he had observed unidentified objects in orbit. I could not reveal the details - I was bound by a non-disclosure agreement.
It is known that at one time the creator of Soviet rocket and space technology, Sergei Korolev, was also interested in UFOs. This task was given to him by Stalin.
“People seem to have begun to notice more and more, look into the sky and notice some strange objects, lights, which, accordingly, appeared in different parts of the Soviet Union. Perhaps this situation was very worried even by the State Security Committee, since it was part of his personal duty," says Vladimir Vasiliev, a leading researcher at the Institute for the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The authoritative designer had to determine whether these objects threatened the security of the USSR, how they could be eliminated, and whether they were weapons of the enemy. The scientist (and this happened in 1947) is locked in one of the Kremlin's offices for three days, having previously laid the table with boxes with the latest intelligence and reports of incidents. When Korolev appears before the leader again, his verdict will be comforting: "The objects do not pose a threat. Their origin is unknown, but it is definitely extraterrestrial."
The project that arose or began to take shape from the beginning of the 80s was later called the Blue Folder of the State Security Committee. Perhaps this was also connected with the analogy that in America, since about 1948, the US Air Force has been carrying out the Blue Book project, the meaning of which was precisely that all information from primary observers was collected in a passive mode.
"Blue folder" and receives Pavel Popovich. Why does the KGB go for it - provide secret information? Vladimir Vasiliev, a leading specialist at the Institute for the United States and Canada, says that only one case from that folder can be called suspicious. But, perhaps, the State Security Committee did not provide all the information?
“Yes, there was one moment. These were observations of exactly 1982, when incomprehensible lights fell into the field of view of the IL-62, which, in my opinion, flew from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. He observed the lights through a luminous object that flickered. And, accordingly, there the pilots saw this object, as if glowing, and even saw the emission of rays. They asked the controller. And the controller told them that there was no one nearby. But after three or four days, it turned out when examining the aircraft that it had engine blades The turbines were in a very bad condition, that is, we can say that they were in such a critical condition that they had to overhaul the engine," Vasilyev said.
The authorities continue to allocate money for special programs of the KGB - both after perestroika and after the collapse of the USSR. In 1993, the deputies were indignant at unreasonable spending from the state budget. The Chekists quickly calm them down: they say, this is not connected with UFOs. They do the same in the USA. The US government is in favor of funding similar programs in their country. At the same time, Washington benefits from the fact that the press is still obsessed with flying saucers. Local intelligence agencies regularly throw facts about UFOs into the media.
Information about UFO activity zones in Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg regularly appears in Russia. But apart from ufologists, she is of no interest to anyone. The authorities are puzzled by new problems. To solve them, even a secret military unit 10003 is being created.
"Military unit 10003 is a formation that is unique in its essence, because a military unit is not a fence with barbed wire, with rockets and with all sorts of antennas. Institutes were involved, laboratories were created, experiments were carried out. Why? 1975, the Americans have already opened their programs Bluebird and Stargate. Already at this level, it was clear that the confrontations were moving into the “psychic sphere” (we call it that). We had to understand what was happening," notes Dmitry Fonarev.
What was this secret military unit really doing? And why will it be closed with a scandal in 2003?
According to Valery Malevanny, it was a top secret facility that trained military space operators. "That is, military people were trained there to search for submarines, for example, to clear fields. Extrasensory. From a distance. I personally saw in Africa, in Angola, how military space operators cleared mines, led special forces through military fields. No need for sappers. Here he is walks, puts out his hand, and he sees this minefield. For him, a minefield is not a trap, but a clear map. That is, these are specially trained people, "says the historian.
However, Valery Malevanny admits that if then the military officers were told about superpowers, no one would have stepped into the minefield. They are told that new equipment has appeared in the USSR - microsensors that recognize explosives.
About 120 institutes were involved in this project. However, in the 9th Directorate of the KGB, they do not dare to completely trust the military psychics - the seers do not pass the test.
"In the so-called mass events, we had to understand who has weapons and who does not. That's a simple question, right? And when they turned to colleagues, to the Second Main Directorate and to intelligence officers, they said: "Yes, we there is such a person. "We made 10 visits, and the person himself wanted to - he took a gun, he wanted to - no. Out of nine cases, it was guessed whether he was with a gun or not. But when they asked a specialist if he could do it in a crowd, he says no. Accordingly, he immediately lost interest, "says Fonarev.
As the Chekists assure, there were never any psychics and parapsychologists under the Soviet rulers. Although Stalin kept fortune-tellers near him, he was afraid of them. So, there is a curious version that the twins of the leader of the peoples appeared precisely because of the fear of psychics. Malevanny notes that Stalin firmly believed that it was possible to penetrate into the human brain. For this, he specifically had five special doubles of his in order to deceive the enemy.
The fashion for clairvoyants and oriental gurus appears back in the time of Khrushchev. According to some reports, the most capable psychics in those years were encouraged to travel to India to improve their skills. Sometimes yogis themselves come to Moscow to exchange experiences. A boom in everything paranormal will begin during the years of perestroika, when many enterprising individuals suddenly feel the gift.
"Those sessions that I conducted on television - they launched a colossal research process, you know. In all countries of the world, well, in highly developed countries of the world, studies are being conducted on interaction with inanimate nature, with water. They are trying to understand what it is," Chumak notes.
Which of the psychics then became a member of the Kremlin? Who are the bodyguards of the first president hiding from TV cameras? And why does the healer Juna receive the rank of colonel general?
"The Soviet government, which built its system of party education on the foundations of materialism, is actually losing, because materialism does not work in the minds of citizens. They immediately slide into all sorts of metaphysical and other explanations of the world, instead of looking at all this clearly and clear," explains historian Nikita Petrov.
On the sidelines of the Kremlin, they also wanted new explanations for everything that was happening in the world. Boris Yeltsin surpassed his predecessors in this. According to some reports, he buys all the films with Vanga's predictions and starts a full-time astrologer - Georgy Rogozin. Behind his back they call him none other than "Nostradamus in uniform" and "Merlin". His prophecies often come true. Rogozin is even appointed first deputy head of the presidential security service. But, perhaps, the healer Juna stands above all.
On November 5, 1996, President Yeltsin undergoes heart surgery. Few believed that he would survive - his condition is critical. The best American cardiac surgeon Michael DeBakey was called to help Moscow specialists. But the life of a VIP patient may have been saved by Juna.
“Medics from all over the world come to him and say:“ He will die. ”Then Juna and the GRU military space operator, Colonel Savenkov, they take the soul out of the body into space to a height of 100 km and keep it there for eight hours, while Yeltsin’s body goes operation. As soon as the operation was over, psychics of the special services returned his soul back to its place. It was for this experiment that Juna was awarded the rank of colonel general of the medical service, "says Malevanny.
Physicist Rostislav Polishchuk, a member of the RAS Commission for Combating Pseudoscience, is a longtime opponent of all psychics and healers. In his opinion, none of them is ready to go into serious research, and all the declared miracles are unfounded.
"Russia survived a catastrophe - the collapse of the previous ideological attitude, faith in the teachings of communism, where there were great ideals. Well, each attitude has a finite resource. Well, at this time, when people lose such support, the primitive structures of primitive consciousness are activated. And a significant part of our people falls to the pre-Christian level, to the level of primitive magic, to the level of sorcerers. So the facts are firmly established things, and what contradicts them is already pseudoscience that opposes them, because we need to defend the intellectual health of our health, "- Polischuk says.
It was the commission on pseudoscience that achieved the closure of special unit 10003. Academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences do not recognize the results of military scientists. How then to be with the facts of healing, the impact on people at a distance?
“You know, there is a very powerful factor in the form of an attitude. The attitude, roughly speaking, is everything. Here, in primitive times, a sorcerer who violated a taboo says: “You will die. You will live". And if a person is told that if he does this and that, his attitude changes, he mobilizes his forces himself. If he says: "I can" - he can, if he says : "I can't" - he can't. And he capitulates. And as long as a person has spiritual strength, he resists and fights, "Polishchuk explains.
Nevertheless, intelligence experts assure that both in the West and in Russia, work in the field of the unidentified is still being carried out, but not advertised so as not to cause panic or excitement. However, it is likely that the high level of secrecy of these departments and programs is just a myth, and successes are highly embellished in science fiction novels and Hollywood blockbusters.
“We don’t know of a single example when hypnotists achieved any obvious success in the course of the investigation conducted by the KGB. Or where are those psychics who would help find, or help investigate the missing, or help investigate a lot of crimes? After all, how many of these crimes, even within the framework of the KGB, not completed, not investigated, well, just because it was impossible to detect something," Petrov believes.
What then to be done with the facts that provoked the emergence of special programs in the depths of the KGB?
“I don’t just believe, I just saw how it is done. That is, phantom, so to speak, formations, how you can work through them. These are unique things. And to say that “ah, these are KGB fantasies!” .. "But there are facts that are not intended for you, because it's a genie in a bottle. You open it, and then things start to happen that won't seem enough to you. And as long as your loved ones, relatives will not jump out of the windows in front of your eyes, you will never you won’t understand why it’s done, how it’s done, which scientists? And what sciences study it? It is studied by military scientists, a very narrow circle, "said Fonarev.
In many ways, the developments of the KGB made it possible after the collapse of the Soviet Union to calm the people and, possibly, avoid mass casualties during the storming of the White House and Ostankino in Moscow. Healing sessions, which were held live or in stadiums, were a tool of the secret services. With their help, the authorities were able to take control of the situation and ensure peace in the country.