Englishman Kim Philby - legendary scout who managed to simultaneously work for the governments of two competing countries - England and the USSR. The work of the brilliant spy was so highly appreciated that he became the only owner in the world of two awards - the Order of the British Empire and the Order of the Red Banner. Needless to say, maneuvering between two fires has always been very difficult ...

Kim Philby is considered one of the most successful British intelligence officers, he held a senior position in the SIS intelligence service and his main task was to track down foreign spies. "Hunting" for specialists sent from the USSR, Kim at the same time was recruited by the Soviet special services. Work for the Land of the Soviets was due to the fact that Kim ardently supported the ideas of communism and was ready to cooperate with our intelligence, refusing to be rewarded for his work.

Philby did a lot to help the Soviet Union during the war years, his efforts intercepted sabotage groups on the Georgian-Turkish border, the information received from him helped prevent the American landing in Albania. Kim also provided assistance to Soviet intelligence officers, members of the Cambridge Five, who were on the verge of exposure in foggy Albion.

Despite the numerous suspicions put forward by Kim Philby, the British secret services did not succeed in obtaining a confession of cooperation with the USSR from their intelligence officer. Kim spent several years of his life in Beirut, officially he worked as a journalist, but his main task, of course, was to collect information for British intelligence.

In 1963, a special commission from Britain arrived in Beirut, which nevertheless managed to establish Kim's proximity to the Soviet Union. It is very interesting that the only irrefutable evidence turned out to be a bas-relief presented to the intelligence officer ... by Stalin. It was made of noble woods and inlaid with precious metals and stones. Mount Ararat was depicted on the bas-relief, which made it possible for Philby to come up with a legend that this curiosity was allegedly acquired in Istanbul. The British managed to guess that the point from which the majestic mountain was captured could only be located on the territory of the USSR.

After the exposure, Philby disappeared. It was not possible to find him for a long time, but then it became known that Khrushchev had granted him political asylum. Until his death in 1988, Kim Philby lived in Moscow. The fascination with the Soviet Union passed when the intelligence officer settled in the capital, much remained incomprehensible to him. For example, Philby genuinely wondered how the heroes who won the war could lead such a modest existence.

Another legendary Soviet intelligence officer who made a lot of efforts to defeat fascism is.

Gevork Andreevich Vartanyan was born on February 17, 1924 in Rostov-on-Don in the family of Andrey Vasilyevich Vartanyan, an Iranian citizen, director of an oil mill.

In 1930, when Gevork was six years old, the family left for Iran. His father was connected with the Soviet foreign intelligence and left the USSR on her instructions. Under the guise of commercial activities, Andrei Vasilievich conducted active intelligence work. It was under the influence of his father that Gevork became a scout.

Gevork Vartanyan connected his fate with Soviet intelligence at the age of 16, when in February 1940 he established direct contact with the NKVD station in Tehran. On behalf of the resident, Gevork led a special group to identify fascist agents and German intelligence agents in Tehran and other Iranian cities. In just two years, his group identified about 400 people, one way or another connected with German intelligence.

In 1942, "Amir" (the operational pseudonym of Gevork Vartanyan) had to carry out a special reconnaissance mission. Despite the fact that Great Britain was an ally of the USSR in the anti-Hitler coalition, this did not prevent the British from conducting subversive work against the USSR. The British created an intelligence school in Tehran, in which young people with knowledge of the Russian language were recruited for their subsequent transfer with intelligence missions to the territory of the Soviet republics of Central Asia and Transcaucasia. On the instructions of the Center, "Amir" infiltrated the intelligence school and completed a full course of study there. The Tehran residency received detailed information about the school itself and its cadets. Abandoned on the territory of the USSR "graduates" of the school were neutralized or re-recruited and worked "under the hood" of the Soviet counterintelligence.

"Amir" took an active part in ensuring the security of the leaders of the "Big Three" during the work of the Tehran Conference in November-December 1943. In 1951 he was brought to the USSR and graduated from the faculty foreign languages Yerevan University.

This was followed by many years of work as an illegal intelligence agent in extreme conditions and difficult situations in various countries of the world. Always next to Gevork Andreevich was his wife Gohar, who had come a long way in intelligence with him, an illegal intelligence officer, holder of the Order of the Red Banner and many other awards.

The Vartanyans' business trip abroad lasted more than 30 years.

The scouts returned from their last trip in the fall of 1986. A few months later, Goar Levonovna retired, and Gevork Andreevich continued to serve until 1992. Gevork Andreyevich Vartanyan's services in intelligence activities were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, many orders and medals, as well as the highest departmental awards.

Despite the fact that Colonel Vartanyan was retired, he continued to work actively in the Foreign Intelligence Service: he met with young employees of various foreign intelligence units, to whom he passed on his rich operational experience.

On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the legendary Soviet intelligence officer in the Moscow art gallery A. Shilov, People's Artist of the USSR Alexander Shilov presented a portrait of the Hero of the Soviet Union Gevork Vartanyan.

Check out the second series.
The main characters of the film "True Story. Tehran-43" are a married couple, illegal intelligence officers Gevork and Gohar Vartanyan. In the film, the intelligence officers themselves tell about the events in Tehran in 1943. The plot of the film is based on a unique intelligence operation carried out by the Soviet foreign intelligence and prevented the assassination of the leaders of the three powers, members of the anti-Hitler coalition - Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Tehran conference in 1943. By genre, the film "True Story. Tehran-43" - docudrama. The film contains large episodes played by actors, and there is a chronicle and a documentary part, where the Vartanyans comment on the events of those distant days. Sixteen-year-old Gevork Vartanyan receives from I. I. Agayants, a resident of Soviet intelligence in Tehran, the task of creating a small detachment of 6-7 people from his friends and voluntary assistants to identify German agents in Tehran. Gevorg Vartanyan is gathering his team. Among them is a sixteen-year-old Armenian girl Gohar. Between Gevork and Gohar, friendship first arises, and then love. From 1940 to 1945, Vartanyan's group discovered more than 400 German agents in Iran. Service in Iran, which lasted from 1940 to 1951, became the most important stage of life for Vartanyan and his wife. This is the only "page" of their undercover activity, about which one can speak openly so far.

World War II began for the anti-aircraft gunner, non-commissioned officer Alexei Botyan on September 1, 1939. He was born on February 10, 1917, back in Russian Empire, but in March 1921 his small homeland - the village of Chertovichi, Vilna province - went to Poland. So the Belarusian Botyan became a Polish citizen.

His calculation managed to shoot down three German " Junkers when Poland ceased to exist as a geopolitical entity. The native village of Botyan became Soviet territory, Alexei also became a citizen of the USSR.

In 1940 on a modest teacher elementary school drew the attention of the NKVD. Speaking Polish as a native, a former non-commissioned officer "pilsudchik"... no, he is not shot as an enemy of the working people, but quite the opposite: he is accepted into an intelligence school, and in July 1941 he is enrolled in the OMSBON of the 4th Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR. So for Alexei Botyan began new war, which ended only in 1983 - retirement.

Many details of this war, for the exploits in which he was presented three times to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, are still secret. But individual well-known episodes say a lot about this person.

For the first time he was in the German rear in November 1941 near Moscow, becoming the commander of a reconnaissance and sabotage group. In 1942, he was sent to the rear of the enemy, to the regions of Western Ukraine and Belarus.

Under his leadership, a major sabotage is being carried out: on September 9, 1943, the Nazi gebitskommissariat was blown up in Ovruch, Zhytomyr region, and 80 Nazi officers were killed in the explosion, including the gebitskommissar Wenzel and the head of the local anti-partisan center Siebert. 140 kilograms of explosives, along with meals, were dragged to Yakov Kaplyuka, the supply manager of the Gebietskommissariat, by his wife Maria. To insure against searches at the entrance, she always took with her the two smallest of her four children.

After this operation, the Kaplyuki were taken out into the forest, and Botyan was first introduced to the Hero - but received the Order of the Red Banner.

At the beginning of 1944, the detachment received an order to move to Poland.

It should be recalled: if on Ukrainian soil the Soviet partisans had problems with Bandera, which had to be solved sometimes by negotiations, and sometimes by weapons, then three different anti-Nazi forces acted on Polish soil: the Krayova Army (“ akovtsy", formally subordinate to the emigrant government), the People's Army (" alovtsy”, supported by the Soviet Union) and the rather independent Khlopsky Battalions - that is, peasant ones. To successfully solve the problems at hand, it was necessary to be able to find mutual language with everyone, and Botyan did it superbly.

On May 1, 1944, a group of 28 people headed by Botyan is heading to the outskirts of Krakow. On the way on the night of May 14-15, together with the AL unit, Botyan's detachment takes part in the capture of the city of Ilzha and frees a large group of arrested underground workers.

On January 10, 1945, in a blown up headquarters car, one of the Soviet reconnaissance groups operating in the Krakow region found a briefcase with secret documents on mining objects in Krakow and the neighboring town of Nowy Sanch. Botyan's group captured an engineer-cartographer, a Czech by nationality, who reported that the Germans kept a strategic stock of explosives in the Royal (Jagiellonian) castle in Nowy Sącz.

The scouts went to the warehouse of Major Ogarek of the Wehrmacht. After talking with Botyan, he hired another Pole, who carried an hour mine embedded in boots into the warehouse. On January 18, the warehouse exploded; more than 400 Nazis died and were wounded. On January 20, Konev's troops entered practically the whole of Krakow, and Botyan went to the second presentation to the Hero. (Subsequently, Botyan became one of the prototypes " Major Whirlwind from the novel of the same name by Yulian Semyonov and a TV movie based on his script.)

After the war, Alexei Botyan becomes the Czech Leo Dvorak (he did not know the Czech language; he had to master it vigorously " immersion method", fortunately, his legend explained the poor possession of" relatives» language) and graduated from a higher technical school in Czechoslovakia. There, by the way, he met a girl who became his faithful life partner - not yet knowing about the multi-layered life of Pan Dvorak.

The post-war activity of the intelligence officer is covered with an understandable fog. According to open information from the SVR and avaricious (“ permitted”) to Botyan’s stories, he performed special tasks in Germany and other countries, worked in the central office of the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR, participated in the creation of a special purpose group of the KGB of the USSR “ Pennant". And after his resignation, already as a civilian specialist, he helped prepare for another six years " young professionals».

Alexey Botyan was awarded two Orders of the Red Banner, Orders of the Red Banner of Labor and Patriotic War I degree, high Polish and Czechoslovak awards. In post-Soviet Russia, he was awarded the Order of Courage, and in 2007 President Putin presented him with a gold star of the Hero of Russia.

Simultaneous game session with cadets of the Vympel Military Patriotic Club, 20.02.2010.

Alexey Botyan still surprises everyone who knows him with his cheerfulness and optimism. He plays chess superbly, works out on an exercise bike, remembers the details of his eventful life to the smallest detail (but, of course, does not talk about what cannot be told). He is proud of the fact that for the entire time of "work" he was only once scratched on the temple by an enemy bullet - without even leaving a scar.

Yesterday the Scout Hero turned ninety-five.

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