Awarded 2 Orders of Lenin, 2 Orders of the Red Banner, Medal "XX Years of the Red Army", Medal "Partisan Patriotic War» 1st degree, Two badges «Honorary worker of the Cheka-GPU» , Nominal weapon.
Ranks
colonel
Positions
group leader in the 2nd department of the NKVD 1941-1942
head of the 3rd department of the 4th department of the NKVD-NKGB of the USSR 1942-1943
in a special reserve of the 4th department of the NKGB of the USSR as a group leader 1943-1946
Biography
Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky November 26 (December 8), 1891, Minsk - March 30, 1956, Moscow) - colonel of state security (1945), employee of the Foreign Department of the OGPU - NKVD, one of the leaders of foreign intelligence and sabotage work of the Soviet state security agencies.
Biography
Youth
Born in poverty Jewish family. In 1908 he graduated from the four-year city school in Minsk. Back in 1907, he joined the student organization of the Maximalist Social Revolutionaries. In 1909, he was arrested for possession of "correspondence of criminal content" and on suspicion of complicity in the murder of the head of the Minsk prison. He spent one year in prison, after which he was administratively sent to Vitebsk, where he worked as an electrician at a power plant.
War. The revolution. Civil War In August 1912 he was drafted into the army, served as a private in the 122nd Tambov Regiment in Kharkov. With the outbreak of the First World War, he was sent to the army on the Western Front as part of the 105th Orenburg Regiment, 2 companies. August 7, 1914 during the unsuccessful offensive of the Russian troops in East Prussia near Matishkemen (there is an entry item 2462 (16) in the “Nominal list of losses of the lower ranks of the 105th Orenburg Infantry Regiment”) was seriously wounded and was demobilized after the hospital. From February 1915 he worked as an electrician in the oil fields of Baku.
After February Revolution actively participated in the activities of the local organization of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, was a member of the Baku Council, an employee of the Baku Food Committee. Represented the Socialist-Revolutionary Party at the 1st Congress of Soviets North Caucasus. In March 1918, he led a detachment of the Baku Council for the Protection of Food Cargoes on the Vladikavkaz Railway. After the fall of the Baku commune, he moved to Persia.
In May 1920, the Volga-Caspian military flotilla under the command of Fyodor Raskolnikov and Sergo Ordzhonikidze was sent to Anzeli (Persia) with the aim of returning Russian ships that were taken to Persia by the White Guards who had evacuated from Russian ports. As a result of the ensuing hostilities, the White Guards and the British troops occupying Anzeli retreated. Taking advantage of this situation, in early June, the armed detachments of the revolutionary movement of the Jengalis under the command of Mirza Kuchuk Khan captured the city of Rasht, the center of the Gilan stan, where the Gilan Soviet Republic was proclaimed.
Serebryansky, who was at that time in Rasht, with the assistance of Yakov Blumkin, who at that time held the post of military commissar of the headquarters of the Persian Red Army, became an employee of the Special Department that had just been created in it, but soon returned to Russia.
Moscow, the first arrest of the Cheka
Since August 1920 - an employee of the central apparatus of the Cheka in Moscow. In August 1921 he was demobilized and entered the Electrotechnical Institute. In December 1921, he was ambushed by the KGB at the apartment of his old comrade in the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and spent four months in prison. Having been released, he worked in the Moskvotop trust system, in 1923 he was arrested on suspicion of bribery and was under investigation, but the charges were not proven.
Illegal work abroad
Palestine
In November 1923, Yakov Blumkin, whom the leadership of the INO OGPU appointed as a resident of illegal intelligence in Palestine, invited Serebryansky to become his deputy. In December 1923, Serebryansky was accepted as a special representative of the Zakordonnaya part of the INO OGPU and, together with Blumkin, went to Jaffa with the task of collecting information about the plans of England and France in the Middle East and about local revolutionary movements.
In June 1924, Blumkin was recalled to Moscow, and Serebryansky set about independent work. He managed to infiltrate the underground Zionist movement and enlist a large group of emigrants from Russia to cooperate with the OGPU, who formed the core of the militant group, later known as the “Yasha group”. In 1924, Serebryansky's wife, Polina Natanovna Belenkaya, joined them.
In 1925-1926. Serebryansky is an illegal resident of the INO OGPU in Belgium. In February 1927 he went to Moscow, where he was accepted as a member of the CPSU (b).
From Moscow, he went as an illegal resident to Paris, where he worked until March 1929.
In April 1929, he returned to Moscow and was appointed head of the 1st department of the INO OGPU, while continuing to lead the Special Group (“Yasha’s group”), which was directly subordinate to the chairman of the OGPU V.R. nature in case of war, as well as sabotage and terrorist operations. From the "Yasha group" came such specialists of the Soviet state security agencies on secret actions and liquidations as S. M. Shpigelglas, S. M. Perevoznikov, A. I. Syrkin, P. Ya. Zubov.
Operation against General Kutepov
In 1929, it was prepared, and on January 26, 1930, under the direct supervision of Serebryansky and the deputy head of the counterintelligence department of the OGPU S.V. Puzitsky in Paris, members of the Yasha group carried out an operation to kidnap the chairman of the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS), General A.P. Kutepov, who intended to intensify sabotage and terrorist activities on the territory of the USSR.
In the summer of 1929, a decision was made to capture and evacuate to Moscow the chairman of the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS), General A.P. Kutepov, who intensified sabotage and terrorist actions on the territory of the USSR. Together with Deputy Head of the KRO OGPU S. V. Puzitsky Serebryansky went to Paris to lead this operation. On January 26, 1930, employees of the "Yasha group" pushed Kutepov into a car, injected him with morphine, and took him aboard a Soviet steamer that was in the port of Marseille. On March 30, 1930, Serebryansky was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for a successful operation.
Romania, USA and again France
Upon completion of the operation against General Kutepov, Serebryansky set about creating an autonomous intelligence network in various countries to conduct intelligence work in case of war. He was enrolled in a special register of the OGPU Abroad personally recruited more than 200 people.
In 1931 he was arrested in Romania, but soon released and continued his illegal activities. In 1932 he went to the USA, in 1934 - to Paris. On July 13, 1934, he was approved as the head of the Special Purpose Group (SGON) under the NKVD of the USSR. In November 1935, Serebryansky was awarded the rank of senior major of state security.
China and Japan
In 1935-1936. I was on a business trip to China and Japan.
After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he was engaged in the purchase (partly illegally) and the supply of weapons for the Republicans. So, in September 1936, employees of the Special Group purchased 12 military aircraft from the French company Devuatin, which were delivered to the airfield bordering Spain, from where they were transferred to Barcelona under the pretext of flight tests. For this operation, Serebryansky was awarded the Order of Lenin.
Operation against Trotsky's son
In November 1936, with the help of agent M. Zborovsky (“Tulip”), who was introduced into the circle of Trotsky’s son L. L. Sedov, the illegals of the SGON managed to seize part of the archive of the International Trotskyist Secretariat. Several boxes of documents were handed over to the legal resident of the INO in Paris, G. N. Kosenko (Kislov) (“Fin”) and forwarded to Moscow.
In 1937, L. L. Sedov (“Sonny”), at the direction of his father, began preparations for the First Congress of the Fourth International, which was to be held in the summer of 1938 in Paris. In this regard, the Center decided to kidnap Sedov. The operation was entrusted to the Serebryansky group. The plan for kidnapping "Son" was worked out in detail. 7 employees of the Special Group, including Serebryansky's wife, took part in the preparation of the operation. However, Sedov's abduction did not take place - in February 1938 he died after an appendectomy.
Response to Moscow and the second arrest of the NKVD
In the summer of 1938, Serebryansky was recalled from France, on November 10, together with his wife, he was arrested in Moscow at the gangway of the plane on the basis of a warrant signed by L.P. Beria. Until February 1939, he was held in custody without the sanction of the prosecutor.
Torture and beatings
During the investigation, which was led by the future Minister of the Ministry of State Security V.C. Abakumov, and at a later stage, the investigators and P. I. Gudimovich (“Ivan”), Serebryansky was subjected to the so-called. "intense interrogation techniques". According to the investigation file, he was first summoned for interrogation on November 13, 1938. On the protocol of interrogation there is Beria's resolution: “Comrade. Abakumov! Good interrogation!"
It was after this that during the interrogation on November 16, 1938, in which L.P. Beria himself, as well as B.Z. Kobulov and V.C. Abakumov, Serebryansky was beaten and forced to give false testimony. On January 25, 1939, he was transferred to the Lefortovo prison (during interrogation in 1954, Serebryansky testified that even before the trial, that is, at the preliminary investigation, he had retracted the testimony in which he pleaded guilty and slandered others).
Sentence and amnesty
On July 7, 1941, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced Serebryansky, who was accused of spying for England and France, having connections with the "conspirators" from the NKVD headed by G. G. Yagoda, and preparing terrorist attacks against Soviet leaders, to be shot, and his wife - to 10 years in the camps "for not informing about the hostile activities of her husband." But the sentence was not carried out. The Great Patriotic War was on, and intelligence was sorely lacking in experienced staff. In August 1941, thanks to the petition of P. A. Sudoplatov and the intervention of L. P. Beria, Serebryansky was amnestied by the decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, reinstated in the bodies of the NKVD and the party.
The Great Patriotic War
From September 3, 1941, Serebryansky was the head of the group in the 2nd department, from January 18, 1942 - the head of the group, head of the 3rd department of the 4th department of the NKVD-NKGB of the USSR. Since November 1943 - in the special reserve of the 4th department of the NKGB of the USSR as a group leader. Serebryansky was an employee of this department throughout the war years, personally participating in many reconnaissance operations, led reconnaissance and sabotage work in Western and Eastern Europe. An example is the recruitment of the captured German Admiral Erich Raeder.
Retirement and again an employee of the reconnaissance and sabotage department
In May 1946 he retired for health reasons. He asked to be dismissed, but the personnel department of the MGB did not change the wording.
In May 1953, he was invited by P. A. Sudoplatov to work in the central office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as an operative of the secret staff of the 9th (Reconnaissance and sabotage) department. Since June 1953 - an employee of the VGU of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR.
In July 1953, he was dismissed from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the reserve of the Ministry of Defense.
Third arrest and death Butyrskaya prison
On October 8, 1953, he was arrested for the third time. In December 1954, the amnesty decision of August 1941 was annulled. Due to the fact that in the criminal case initiated in 1953, there was no sufficient evidence of the guilt of Ya. year was sent to the Supreme Court of the USSR with a proposal to replace the execution by 25 years in prison. On March 30, 1956, Serebryansky died in the Butyrka prison during interrogation by the investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office, Major General of the Legal Service P.K. Tsaregradsky.
Addresses of residence in Moscow
The first address, Moscow - Tverskoy Boulevard, 9, apt. 26. (a room in a communal apartment. Pyatnitsky lived in the same house (and entrance).
The second address in Moscow is somewhere in the house overlooking Pushkin Square.
From the beginning of the 30s to 1938 - Gogolevsky Boulevard, 31 (Osobnyak) Working meetings were held there, on the 1st floor
After being released from prison in 1941 - the Moscow Hotel, No. 646;
Then - st. Gorky in house 41, apartment 26 (from the mid-40s until his arrest in 1953).
Posthumous rehabilitation
In May 1971, by decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, he was posthumously rehabilitated "on all counts of the charges against him earlier, in November 1989 he was reinstated in the party, and in April 1996 - in the rights to the awards confiscated during the arrest."
Two orders of Lenin (12/31/1936, 04/30/1946),
Two Orders of the Red Banner (6.03.1930, 4.12.1945),
Medal "XX years of the Red Army" (23.02.1938),
Medal "Partisan of the Patriotic War" 1st class (08/25/1944),
Two badges "Honorary Worker of the Cheka-GPU" (1929, 1932),
Named weapon.
Notes
Erroneously [source not specified 1279 days] in some publications indicate as the real name Bergman. A certificate of graduation from four classroom schools in Minsk has been preserved, which indicates real name- Silver. The surname of the elder brother is also Serebryansky;
Gilan Soviet Republic
Pavel Aptekar Unknown Soviet Republic
V. Starosadsky Punishing sword of intelligence Intelligence and counterintelligence news, M., 11/18/2005
Igor Simbirtsev, Special services of the first years of the USSR. 1923-1939. - M.: ZAO Tsentrpoligraf, 2008. - 381 p. ISBN 978-5-9524-3838-5
Yakov Serebryansky - three times a prisoner of the Lubyanka Military-industrial courier, Moscow, 01.11.2006
Serebryansky Yakov Isaakovich. Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation. Retrieved August 6, 2013. Archived from the original on August 20, 2013.
Literature
Serebryansky Ya. I. // Petrov N. V., Skorkin K. V. Who led the NKVD, 1934-1941: a reference book / Ed. N. G. Okhotin and A. B. Roginsky. - M.: Links, 1999. - 502 p. - 3000 copies. - ISBN 5-7870-0032-3
Starosadsky V. Punishing sword of intelligence. / News of intelligence and counterintelligence. - M., 11/18/2005.
Encyclopedia of the secret services of Russia / Ed. A. I. Kolpakidi. - M.: Astrel, AST, Transitbook, 2004. - 800 p.
I. B. Linder, S. A. Churkin. Saboteurs: Legend of the Lubyanka - Yakov Serebryansky. Publisher: - Ripol classic, 2011, 684c.- 978-5-386-02669-1.
Yakov Serebryansky - three times a prisoner of the Lubyanka
Kolesnikov Yu. A. Among the gods. Unknown pages of Soviet intelligence. Documentary novel. 848 p. Ed. "Book World" 2014 ISBN 978-5-8041-0681-3
Documentaries
"Secret love. Love Yasha. Director: Valery Udovydchenkov. 41 min. 2006.
In November 1923, Yakov Blyumkin, whom the leadership of the INO (Foreign Department) of the OGPU appointed as a resident of illegal intelligence in Palestine, invited Serebryansky to become his deputy.In June 1924, Blumkin was recalled to Moscow, and Serebryansky began independent work.
He managed to infiltrate the underground Zionist movement and enlist a large group of emigrants from Russia to cooperate with the OGPU, who formed the core of the militant group, later known as the “Yasha group”.
In 1925-1926 Serebryansky was an illegal resident of the INO OGPU in Belgium.
Then he went as an illegal resident to Paris, where he worked until March 1929.
In April 1929 he returned to Moscow and was appointed head of the 1st department of the INO OGPU, while continuing to lead the Special Group (“Yasha Group”), which was created to conduct sabotage and terrorist operations.
In 1929, it was prepared, and on January 26, 1930, under the direct supervision of Serebryansky and the deputy head of the counterintelligence department (KRO) of the OGPU S. Puzitsky in Paris, members of the Yasha group carried out an operation to kidnap the chairman of the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS), General A.P. Kutepov, who intended to intensify sabotage and terrorist activities on the territory of the USSR.
In 1932 he went to the USA, in 1934 - to Paris. July 13, 1934 was approved by the head of the Special Purpose Group (SGON) under the NKVD of the USSR.
In November 1935, Serebryansky was awarded the rank of senior major of state security.
In 1935-1936 he was on a business trip in China and Japan.
After the start civil war in Spain he was engaged in the purchase (partly illegally) and the supply of weapons for the Republicans.
In the summer of 1938, Serebryansky was recalled from France, on November 10, together with his wife, he was arrested in Moscow. Until February 1939 he was held in custody without the sanction of the prosecutor.
On July 7, 1941, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced Serebryansky, accused of spying for England and France, preparing terrorist attacks against Soviet leaders, to be shot.
But the sentence was not carried out. The Great Patriotic War was on, and intelligence was sorely lacking in experienced staff. In August 1941, thanks to the petition of P. A. Sudoplatov, Serebryansky, by the decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, was amnestied and reinstated in the NKVD.
From September 3, 1941, Serebryansky was the head of the group in the 2nd department, from January 18, 1942 - the head of the group, head of the 3rd department of the 4th department of the NKVD-NKGB of the USSR.
Since November 1943 - in the special reserve of the 4th Directorate of the NKGB of the USSR as a group leader. Serebryansky was an employee of this department throughout the war years, personally participating in many intelligence operations, led reconnaissance and sabotage work in Western and Eastern Europe.
In July 1953, he was dismissed from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the reserve of the Ministry of Defense.
October 8, 1953 re-arrested. In December 1954, the amnesty decision of August 1941 was annulled.
Due to the fact that in the criminal case initiated in 1953, there was no sufficient evidence of the guilt of Ya. I. Serebryansky as a participant in the conspiratorial activities of L.P. to the Supreme Court of the USSR with a proposal to replace execution by 25 years in prison.
March 30, 1956 Serebryansky died in Butyrka prison during interrogation by the investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office.
In May 1971, by decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, the sentence of July 1941 was canceled and the case was dismissed. Posthumously rehabilitated.
In April 1996, by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation, he was restored to the rights to state awards confiscated during his arrest.
Colonel Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky. Moscow.
Photo provided by the author
On March 30, 1956, during an interrogation by the investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office of the USSR, Major General of the Legal Service of Tsaregradsky, one of the organizers of Soviet foreign intelligence, Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky, who became a prisoner of the Lubyanka three times during his Chekist activities, died of a heart attack. The heart of even a battered illegal intelligence officer, whose name in the 1920-1930s was covered in legends among the Chekist, could not stand it. The active and talented intelligence officer Yakov Serebryansky lived a heroic and at the same time tragic life full of anxieties and dangers.
START BY CITIES AND LOCATIONS
On December 9, 1892, in Minsk, a son was born in the family of an apprentice at the watchmaker Isaac Serebryansky, who was named Yakov by his parents. He grew up, like all people from the Jewish poor, not knowing much wealth. The boy was six years old when his father managed to get a job as a clerk at a sugar factory. The financial situation of the family improved somewhat, which allowed Yakov to enter the Minsk city school. In 1908 he successfully completed his studies.
In 1907, as a student at a city school, Yakov joined the student Socialist-Revolutionary circle, and a year later, he joined the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, where he became an activist in its most radical wing, the Maximalist Socialist-Revolutionaries. It was the maximalists who organized assassination attempts on tsarist ministers, governors, generals, senior police officers and other government officials.
In May 1909, Yakov, who was barely 17 years old, was arrested by the police for "possession of criminal literature" and on suspicion of complicity in the murder of the head of the Minsk prison. He spent one year in prison, after which he was administratively exiled to Vitebsk. From April 1910 he worked as an electrician at the Vitebsk power plant.
In August 1912, Yakov was drafted into the army. He served as a private in the 122nd Tambov Regiment in Kharkov. After the outbreak of the First World War, from July 1914 he fought on Western front private of the 105th Orenburg regiment. However, service in the army for a young man did not last long. Already in August, during the Samsonov breakthrough in East Prussia, Sereryansky was seriously wounded. For almost six months he was treated in the hospital, and then was demobilized from the army. From February 1915 he worked as an electrician at a gas plant in Baku.
After the February Revolution of 1917, Serebryansky became an activist of the Socialist-Revolutionary organization, a member of the Baku Council. From the Socialist Revolutionary Party, he was elected a delegate to the First Congress of Soviets of the North Caucasus. Since March 1917 - an employee of the Baku Food Committee. After the liberation of Baku from the Musavatists, Serebryansky served in the Red Army as the head of the detachment of the Baku Council for the Protection of Food Cargoes on the Vladikavkaz Railway.
In 1918, at the apartment of his friend and colleague in the Baku Soviet and the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, Mark Belenky, Serebryansky met his 18-year-old sister Polina. Subsequently, she became the wife of Jacob and shared with him all the difficulties of the difficult life of an illegal intelligence officer.
EMERGENCY ASSIGNMENTS IN PERSIA AND AGAIN ARRESTS
Soon the Baku commune fell, the city was occupied by the English invaders. Serebryansky moved to the Persian city of Rasht, where earlier, fleeing the disasters of the Civil War, Polina moved with her parents. In May 1920, units of the Red Army entered Persia, pursuing detachments of the White Guards and the British. On June 6, Rasht was proclaimed the capital of the Gilan Soviet Republic.
It was at this time that fate brought Serebryansky with a prominent Chekist of that time, Yakov Blumkin, who in July 1918, on the instructions of the Central Committee of the Left SRs, killed the German ambassador, Count Mirbach. In Gilani, Blumkin served as commissar of the headquarters of the Persian Red Army. He contributed to the adoption of Serebryansky for service in the Special Department created in it. Thus began the work of Yakov Serebryansky in the Cheka.
After the defeat of the Gilyan Republic, Serebryansky moved to Moscow, where he continued to serve in the central office of the Cheka as an operative. In September 1920, he became secretary of the administrative and organizational department. Here he met the head of the department, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, and the head of the Special Department, Artur Artuzov. However, Serebryansky's service in the central apparatus of the Cheka did not last long. In August 1921, he left the Cheka for demobilization and went to study at the Electrotechnical Institute.
While working in the Cheka, Serebryansky continued to keep in touch with his former Socialist-Revolutionary friends, which played a cruel joke on him. Already studying at the institute, he was arrested by his own former Chekist colleagues. On December 2, 1921, Serebryansky went to visit his old comrade, the Right Social Revolutionary David Abezgauz, and fell into an ambush set up there. Yakov spent four months in the Lubyanka inner prison. The investigation studied the question of his possible belonging to the right SRs, who were at that time under a de facto ban. On March 29, 1922, the Presidium of the GPU, having considered his case, issued a decision: to release him from custody, but "to register and deprive him of the right to work in political, search and judicial bodies, as well as in the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs."
Serebryansky got a job as head of the office of the oil transportation department of the Moskvotop trust, but in early 1923 he was arrested again, this time on suspicion of bribery. The investigation did not confirm the charges against him, and Serebryansky was taken on bail and released. In October of the same year, Yakov went to work at the editorial office of the Izvestia newspaper, where he made the final political choice and became a candidate member of the CPSU (b).
TOP SECRET WORK
And again Blumkin intervened in the fate of Serebryansky. At that time, he was going through foreign intelligence to work illegally in Palestine as a resident and was looking for a deputy.
Blumkin suggested to Serebryansky, who was fluent in English, French and German to go with him. Serebryansky gave his consent. The previously adopted decision of the Presidium of the GPU in relation to the former Chekist was canceled, and he was enlisted as a special representative of the foreign department of the Foreign Department. In December 1923, the scouts left for Jaffa (now the Tel Aviv area). However, in June 1924, Blumkin was recalled to Moscow, and Serebryansky replaced him as a resident. The intelligence leadership set the young resident quite difficult task: create a deeply conspiratorial network of agents in the region. Serebryansky did an excellent job with the task.
He managed to attract to cooperation a large group of emigrants from among both Zionist settlers and Russians - former White Guards who settled in Palestine. The people recruited by Serebryansky subsequently formed the core of the special group led by him.
In 1924, Serebryansky was joined by his wife Polina, who was sent to Jaffa to help her husband on the personal instructions of the head of the Foreign Department, Mikhail Trilisser. The historian of Russian intelligence Eduard Sharapov writes about this: “In 1924, when Serebryansky had been abroad for almost a year, Trilisser, who at that time was the head of the INO OGPU, summoned his wife, Polina Natanovna.
“You need to go to your husband,” said Trilisser. - It's hard for him. You need to be around.
I won't, I'm afraid.
The somewhat drawn-out conversation between Serebryanskaya and the head of foreign intelligence ended very simply. Trilisser, after persuasion and explanation, put his hand on Serebryanskaya's arm and said softly but firmly: “Well, that's it, Polina Natanovna. Either you will go abroad to your husband, or you will have to put a party card on the table.
For her, a member of the party since 1921, an employee of the Krasnopresnensky district party committee, this was simply unthinkable, and she went. And she was with her husband in Palestine, France, Germany, the USA and Belgium, everywhere helping her husband in difficult and necessary work for the country. In 1925, Serebryansky was recalled from Palestine and sent to work illegally in Belgium. He returned to Moscow in February 1927 and was accepted as a member of the CPSU (b). In the same year he was sent as an illegal resident to Paris, where he worked until March 1929.
Materials about Serebryansky's activities in Belgium and France are still classified. Evidence of his successful operational activities can only be the fact that at the end of a business trip abroad, the scout was awarded the highest departmental award - badge"Honorary Chekist" and a serious promotion, and earlier, in 1927 and 1928, he was twice awarded with personal combat weapons.
Returning to Moscow, Serebryansky headed the 1st branch of the INO OGPU (illegal intelligence) and at the same time became the head of the Special Group under the chairman of the OGPU, which in KGB usage was unofficially called the “Yasha group”. It was independent from the leadership of the INO intelligence unit, whose task was the deep introduction of agents to objects of military-strategic importance in the United States, Western Europe and Japan, as well as the preparation and conduct of sabotage operations behind enemy lines in case of war. At the same time, one of the main tasks of the illegal apparatus of the Serebryansky group was to organize special events abroad in relation to the most vicious enemies of the USSR, traitors and traitors to the Motherland.
A special group operated abroad only from illegal positions. Its employees did not use official Soviet diplomatic or trade missions as cover. It reported directly to the chairman of the OGPU Menzhinsky, on whose initiative it was created.
HUNTING FOR GENERAL KUTEPOV
Lieutenant General Alexander Pavlovich Kutepov (successor of Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel) headed militant organization Russian All-Military Union (ROVS), which sent terrorists and saboteurs into the territory of the Soviet Union. In May 1927, Kutepov’s militants tried to blow up a house in Moscow where OGPU employees lived, in June 1927 an explosion was organized in the House of Political Education in Leningrad, in July 1928 a bomb was thrown at the OGPU pass office in Moscow.
In the summer of 1929, the leadership of the OGPU came to the Central Committee with a proposal to kidnap and deport to the Soviet Union the chairman of the ROVS, General Kutepov, who had stepped up the organization's sabotage and terrorist activities on the territory of the USSR. This proposal was approved by Stalin. On March 1, 1930, Yakov Serebryansky and one of the leaders of foreign intelligence, Sergei Puzitsky, went illegally to Paris to lead this operation.
It should be emphasized that until the mid-1960s, the involvement of Soviet state security agencies in the abduction of General Kutepov was not advertised and was even denied. It was only in 1965 that the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, the official organ of the Ministry of Defense, reported on this operation. And the details of its implementation were published in 1997 in the third volume of Essays on the History of Russian Foreign Intelligence.
The abduction of General Kutepov was carried out on Sunday, January 26, 1930, at about 11 o'clock in the afternoon at the corner of Oudinot and Rousselet streets in the 7th quarter of Paris. The OGPU resident knew that on that day at 11:30 a.m. Kutepov was supposed to attend a memorial service for the deceased General Kaulbars in the Gallipolis Church on Mademoiselle Street, which is a 20-minute walk from his house. However, the general did not reach the temple.
The day before, on January 25, one of the employees of the task force of Serebryansky handed over a note to General Kutepov, in which he was assigned a short meeting on the way to the church. At the same time, the scouts took into account that the general always went to meetings related to the agents and combat activities of the ROVS alone. After waiting for some time for the author of the note at the tram stop on Sevres Street, Kutepov continued on his way.
Employees of the Serebryansky group, as well as agents of the OGPU Parisian residency, posing as French policemen, detained the general under the pretext of checking documents and offered to go to the police station to find out his identity. Kutepov allowed himself to be seated in a car, but, having heard Russian speech, he tried to resist. He was sedated with chloroform. However diseased heart The general could not stand the effects of anesthesia, and he died of a heart attack.
The measures taken by the French police and personally by the head of counterintelligence of the ROVS, Colonel Zaitsev, to search for Kutepov did not give positive results. The general was never seen again. On March 30, 1930, Yakov Serebryansky was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for a successful operation.
YASHA GROUP OF SUBVERSION PROFILE
Immediately after the completion of the operation to neutralize Kutepov, Serebryansky set about creating an autonomous intelligence network in various countries of the world. It should be noted that already by the mid-1930s, Serebryansky's group had 16 efficient illegal residencies abroad, mainly in Nazi Germany, France, the United States and the Japanese-occupied territory of Northeast China.
Among his assistants there were many persons who especially distinguished themselves in carrying out the tasks of our Motherland. Among them should be attributed "Henry", who headed one of the illegal groups. According to the plan developed by Serebryansky, he managed to seize Trotsky's archive, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. Another illegal group, led by "Ernst", managed to sink seven German ships with weapons intended for General Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Serebryansky's employees obtained very valuable data on new aircraft, warships and other weapons of fascist Germany.
On June 13, 1934, that is, three days after the creation of the NKVD of the USSR, the "Yasha group" was directly subordinated to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs and transformed into a Special Special Purpose Group (SGON). Under her rule, a school of illegal intelligence agents of a sabotage profile was created. Many of its graduates during the Great Patriotic War became major specialists in sabotage behind enemy lines.
After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Serebryansky's group, who on November 29, 1935 was awarded the rank of senior major of state security, participated in the illegal supply of weapons to the republican government. So, in September 1936, with the help of the agent "Bernadette", the members of the special group managed to purchase 12 new military aircraft from the French company "Devouatin", allegedly for some neutral country. The planes were delivered to the airfield bordering Spain, from where they were safely transferred to Barcelona under the pretext of flight tests.
An unheard-of international scandal erupted. French President Blum and Minister of War Pernet were accused of patronizing Republican Spain. And a little later, on December 31, 1936, the Soviet press published a resolution of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR “On awarding for special merits in the fight against counter-revolution comrade. Serebryansky Ya.I. Order of Lenin.
DEATH FROM APPENDICITIS
One of the objects of development of Serebryansky's group in the second half of the 1930s was Trotsky's son Lev Sedov, who appeared in the materials of the OGPU-NKVD under the pseudonym "Son".
Sedov, who fully shared his father's political views, in 1937 began preparing the first congress of the Fourth International. And in Moscow, they began to develop an operation to kidnap Sedov. Its implementation was entrusted to Serebryansky. Later, Serebryansky wrote: “In 1937, I received the task of delivering the Son to Moscow. It was about the disappearance of "Son" without a trace and about delivering him alive to Moscow. How was the operation planned? AT archival documents foreign intelligence says:
“The plan for the kidnapping of Sedov was worked out in detail and provided for his capture on one of the Parisian streets. Preliminarily, by observation, the time and usual routes of Sedov's movement in the city were established. Rehearsals for the takeover were held on site. There were two options for its delivery to Moscow. The first is by sea. In the middle of 1937, a small fishing vessel was purchased, assigned to one of the northern ports of the country. On the outskirts of the port city, they rented a house - a place of temporary shelter, where they settled a married couple of employees of the "Yasha group".
Picked up the crew. Only the legend was brought to the captain that it might be necessary to make the transition to Leningrad with a group of comrades and take equipment there for republican Spain. The captain studied the route, had a sufficient supply of coal, water, food. In anticipation of the command, the crew of the vessel made regular trips to the sea for fish.
The second option is by air. The group had its own aircraft based at one of the airfields near Paris. The pilot is a reliable agent. A legend has been circulated in aviation circles: a sports flight is being prepared along the Paris-Tokyo route. The pilot began training, bringing the non-stop time in the air to 12 hours. Calculations by specialists showed that, depending on the direction and strength of the wind, the plane could fly from Paris to Kyiv without landing in seven to eight hours.
Seven employees of Serebryansky's illegal residency took part in the preparation of the operation. Serebryansky himself and his wife played an active role in the operation. However, fate decreed otherwise. The abduction of Sedov never took place - in February 1938 he died after an operation to remove an appendicitis.
SENTENCE TO SHOT
In the homeland of the scout, the flywheel of repression was spinning to the fullest, which soon touched him himself. In the summer of 1938, the NKVD resident in Spain, Orlov, who arrived on business in France, disappeared. Unexpectedly summoned to Moscow, he considered that he would be arrested there, and fled to the United States with his family. Orlov's flight cast suspicion on the leading intelligence cadres.
In the fall of 1938, Serebryansky was recalled from Paris and on November 10, together with his wife, was arrested in Moscow right at the gangway of the plane. The intelligence officer was kept in custody in the inner prison on Lubyanka. It is characteristic that during the investigation, being in terrible conditions, he wrote "Manual for the resident on sabotage."
During the investigation, which was led by the future Minister of State Security Viktor Abakumov, Serebryansky was subjected to "intense interrogation methods." As a result, the scout was forced to incriminate himself. In the indictment, which was approved on October 4, 1940 and sent to the prosecutor's office of the USSR, Serebryansky was exposed as an agent of British and French intelligence, as well as an active participant in the anti-Soviet conspiracy in the NKVD.
On July 7, 1941, when the war was already in full swing in the expanses of the Soviet Union, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced Serebryansky to death with confiscation of property, and his wife to 10 years in camps for not informing about her husband's hostile activities.
At the trial, Serebryansky pleaded not guilty, saying that during the preliminary investigation he slandered himself as a result of physical pressure from the investigators. However, the court ignored the intelligence officer's statement. After Serebryansky's arrest, his special group ceased to exist.
REHABILITED POSTMOSTLY
The Great Patriotic War, which unexpectedly took a tragic turn for Stalin, demanded the concentration of all forces to repulse the enemy. Under these conditions, the state security agencies had to reorganize on a military footing. The enemy was there, unseen cruel and powerful. Within the framework of the NKVD, the 4th Directorate was created, whose task was to organize overseas reconnaissance and deploy sabotage behind enemy lines. But because of the repressions that took place before the war, this department clearly lacked professionals like Serebryansky. The head of the 4th department, General Pavel Sudoplatov, turned to Lavrenty Beria with a request to release Serebryansky and a number of Chekists, who were awaiting execution, from prison.
Here is how Serebryansky later recalled this in his memoirs: “Beria's cynicism and simplicity in deciding people's destinies were clearly manifested in his reaction to our proposal. He asked the only question: "Are you sure we need them?" “Quite sure,” I replied. “Then contact Kobulov, let him release him. And use them immediately,” came the reply. Unfortunately, Spiegelglas, Karin, Malli and other scouts had already been shot by this time.
By the decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 9, 1941, Yakov Serebryansky and his wife Polina were amnestied. They were released from prison and were reinstated in the party. On August 22, all awards were returned to them. After a two-month rest and treatment, Serebryansky was appointed head of a department in the 4th Directorate of the NKVD. During the Great Patriotic War, he was engaged in the preparation and deployment of operational groups behind enemy lines to carry out reconnaissance and sabotage tasks. For specific results in the work, Serebryansky was repeatedly awarded with orders Lenin and the Red Banner, as well as the medal "Partisan of the Patriotic War" 1st degree.
In 1946, Viktor Abakumov was appointed Minister of State Security of the USSR, who in the pre-war years led the case of Yakov Serebryansky and personally participated in his interrogations. The scout had no choice but to retire "for health reasons." However, the combat and professional experience of Serebryansky was again needed by the state security agencies, and in May 1953, at the request of Sudoplatov, he was reinstated at work in the 9th department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.
And again, fate turned out to be unfavorable to Serebryansky. In July 1953, Beria was arrested. And on October 8, by decision of the USSR Prosecutor General, Serebryansky was arrested "for serious crimes against the CPSU and the Soviet state.
During the investigation, it was not possible to find evidence of his involvement in the “Beria conspiracy”. However, the authorities did not seek to release Serebryansky into the wild. Then the fake case of 1938 was reanimated. On December 27, 1954, the decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 9, 1941 on amnesty was canceled, despite the fact that the process of rehabilitation of the victims of unjustified repressions had already begun. Intensive interrogations of the scout continued. True, the investigators did not apply physical measures to the arrested person, but he was constantly subjected to psychological pressure in order to obtain confessions. Yakov Serebryansky did not expect such a turn of events. On March 30, 1956, at the next interrogation, Serebryansky's heart could not stand it. An outstanding illegal intelligence officer died at the age of 64.
In 1971, in connection with the preparation of the first textbook on the history of Soviet foreign intelligence, KGB Chairman Yu.V. Andropov learned about the heroic and at the same time tragic fate Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky and ordered an additional investigation. His instructions were carried out. On May 13, 1971, by decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, the sentence against Serebryansky dated July 7, 1941 was canceled and the case was dismissed due to the lack of corpus delicti. A week later, the case of 1953 was also dismissed due to the lack of evidence of the accusations against him. The scout was fully rehabilitated. But only a quarter of a century later, on April 22, 1996, by decree of the President of Russia, Yakov Serebryansky was posthumously restored to the rights to the awards confiscated from him during his arrest.
Yakov Isaakovich Kalnitsky- Russian-Ukrainian bilingual Soviet prose writer.
He was born on October 10 (October 23 according to a new style), 1885, in the family of a small merchant in the city of Yekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine). He started working at the age of 10, graduated from a technical school. With the outbreak of the First World War, he was drafted into the army. He was a private in the 86th Infantry Reserve Regiment of the 35th Division, then in the 138th Volkhov Regiment. He was a full Knight of St. George. After the February coup of 1917, and in accordance with the well-known "Order No. 1" published after this, he was elected chairman of the soldiers' committee. In June of the same year, he participated in the offensive in the Carpathians, and after that he was sent to pacify the unrest in Petrograd, where he joined in revolutionary movement. He formed the detachments of the Red Guard in Yekaterinoslav. During the Civil War - regiment commander, then chief of staff of the brigade. After the war, he served for some time in the GPU, then entered the Dnepropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute for training. He traveled a lot around the country, participated in polar expeditions. He began to print in 1924. He wrote in Ukrainian and Russian.
In 1924 he published a book of autobiographical essays "From February to October", which had considerable success and was repeatedly reprinted (1925, 1964). Inspired by success, he left his studies, moved to Kharkov and devoted himself completely to literary work. Peru Kalnitsky own books of stories and short stories "Everything happens" (1925), "Sharp-toothed anchovy" (1928), "Floating resort" (1929), "The man who was killed. Cain's Notes (1929), Letters to America (1934), Novaya Zemlya Stories (1938), and the novel The Island of Blue Foxes (1937). In addition, Kalnitsky wrote the documentary In the Crimson Ring (1929), the memoirs of a member of the Combat Squad to Protect the Jewish Working Population from Pogroms, as well as the story Lights in the Arctic (1934) about the winter trip to Cape Zhelaniya by the icebreaker Krasin ', of which he was a member.
The collection Novaya Zemlya Stories unwittingly became fatal in the fate of its author. Kalnitsky presented one copy of the book with an autograph to his old acquaintance Eduard Yenukidze, brother of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Secretary Avel Yenukidze. When the Yenukidze brothers were subjected to repressions, during a search in the apartment of the youngest of them, the “hardened Trotskyist”, a book by J. Kalnitsky with a dedicatory inscription was found. This was enough to accuse its author of belonging to an "anti-Soviet Zionist spy organization."
On June 4, 1938, Kalnitsky was arrested, and by June 18 he broke down and wrote a lengthy confession that he was a longtime and sworn Zionist spy and an ardent anti-Soviet. On March 13, 1939, Kalnitsky was charged with belonging to "an anti-Soviet Zionist terrorist organization, to which he was recruited by the Minister for Jewish Affairs under Petliura Krasny." On October 29, 1939, a special meeting at the NKVD passed a sentence (protocol No. 38): to imprison Ya. I. Kalnitsky for three years in a forced labor camp.
He served his sentence in Oneglag at Art. Puksa Northern railway. Despite all the petitions of Kalnitsky and his relatives, the decision of the special meeting was never revised. Kalnitsky completely served his term of imprisonment and returned to Kharkov a week before the start of World War II.
After his release, Kalnitsky was no longer published and died in oblivion and need in March 1949.
The year after his death, the story "The End of underground city”, in 1958 - a large novel “The Polyakov Family” and reprinted “From February to October”, “Lights in the Arctic”, part of “Novaya Zemlya Stories” and some others.
By the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of January 16, 1989 “On additional measures to establish justice for the victims of repression that took place in the period of the 30s-40s and early 50s”, Yakov Kalnitsky was completely rehabilitated.
(1956-03-30 ) (64 years old)Yakov Isaakovich Serebryansky(November 29 [December 11], Minsk - March 30, Moscow) - Colonel of State Security (), an employee of the Foreign Department of the OGPU - NKVD, one of the leaders of foreign intelligence and sabotage work of the Soviet state security agencies.
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Biography
Youth
Born November 29, 1891 in a poor Jewish family. His father Isaak (Itska) Serebryansky (? -1941, died in the Minsk ghetto) was an apprentice at a watchmaker, and since 1898 a clerk at a sugar factory. In 1908 he graduated from the four-year city school in Minsk. Back in 1907, he joined the student organization of the Maximalist Social Revolutionaries. In 1909, he was arrested for possession of "correspondence of criminal content" and on suspicion of complicity in the murder of the head of the Minsk prison. He spent one year in prison, after which he was administratively sent to Vitebsk, where he worked as an electrician at a power plant.
War. The revolution. Civil War
Serebryansky, who was at that time in Rasht, with the assistance of Yakov Blyumkin, who at that time held the post of military commissar of the headquarters of the Persian Red Army, became an employee of the Special Department that had just been created in it, but soon returned to Russia.
Moscow, the first arrest of the Cheka
Since August 1920 - an employee of the central apparatus of the Cheka in Moscow. In August 1921, he was demobilized and entered. In December 1921, he was ambushed by the KGB at the apartment of his old comrade in the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and spent four months in prison. Having been released, he worked in the Moskvotop trust system, in 1923 he was arrested on suspicion of bribery and was under investigation, but the charges were not proven.
Illegal work abroad
Palestine
France
From Moscow he went as an illegal resident to Paris, where he worked until March 1929.
In April 1929, he returned to Moscow and was appointed head of the 1st department of the INO OGPU, while continuing to lead the Special Group (“Yasha’s group”), which was directly subordinate to the chairman of the OGPU V.R. nature in case of war, as well as sabotage and terrorist operations. From the “Yasha group” came such specialists of the Soviet state security agencies on secret actions and liquidations as N. I. Eitingon, S. M. Shpigelglas, S. M. Perevoznikov, A. I. Syrkin, P. Ya. Zubov.
Operation against General Kutepov
In 1929, it was prepared, and on January 26, 1930, under the direct supervision of Serebryansky and the deputy head of the counterintelligence department of the OGPU S.V. Kutepov, who intended to intensify sabotage and terrorist activities on the territory of the USSR.
In the summer of 1929, a decision was made to capture and evacuate to Moscow the chairman of the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS), General A.P. Kutepov, who intensified sabotage and terrorist actions on the territory of the USSR. Together with Deputy Head of the KRO OGPU S. V. Puzitsky Serebryansky went to Paris to lead this operation. On January 26, 1930, employees of the "Yasha group" pushed Kutepov into a car, injected him with morphine and took him aboard a Soviet steamer, which was in the port of Marseille. On March 30, 1930, Serebryansky was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for the successful operation.
Romania, USA and again France
Upon completion of the operation against General Kutepov, Serebryansky set about creating an autonomous intelligence network in various countries to conduct intelligence work in case of war. He was enrolled in a special register of the OGPU Abroad personally recruited more than 200 people.
Response to Moscow and the second arrest of the NKVD
In the summer of 1938, Serebryansky was recalled from France, on November 10, together with his wife, he was arrested in Moscow at the gangway of the plane on the basis of a warrant signed by L.P. Beria. Until February 1939, he was held in custody without the sanction of the prosecutor.
Torture and beatings
During the investigation, which was conducted by the future Minister of the Ministry of State Security V. S. Abakumov, and at a later stage by investigators S. R. Milstein and P. I. Gudimovich (“Ivan”), Serebryansky was subjected to the so-called. "intense interrogation techniques". According to the investigation file, he was first summoned for interrogation on November 13, 1938. On the protocol of interrogation there is Beria's resolution: “Comrade. Abakumov! Good interrogation!"
It was after this that during the interrogation on November 16, 1938, in which L.P. Beria himself, as well as B.Z. Kobulov and V.S. Abakumov, took part, Serebryansky was beaten and forced to give false testimony. On January 25, 1939, he was transferred to the Lefortovo prison (during interrogation in 1954, Serebryansky testified that even before the trial, that is, at the preliminary investigation, he had retracted the testimony in which he pleaded guilty and slandered others).
Sentence and amnesty
Retirement and again an employee of the reconnaissance and sabotage department
In May 1946 he retired for health reasons. He asked to be dismissed, but the personnel department of the MGB did not change the wording.
In May 1953, he was invited by P. A. Sudoplatov to work in the central office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as an operative of the secret staff of the 9th (Reconnaissance and sabotage) department. Since June 1953 - an employee of the VGU of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR.
In July 1953, he was dismissed from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the reserve of the Ministry of Defense.
