The biography of Yakov Blumkin is still one of the most mysterious in the history of Soviet intelligence. His life is replete with legends, myths and coincidences, often contradicting each other. Blumkin went down in history as a participant in the assassination of the German ambassador Wilhelm von Mirbach in 1918. This terrorist act served as a signal for the "Left SR" uprising. However, the Left Veser Blumkin after the "action" not only was not shot or arrested, but for a long time continued to work in the Cheka.
Self-defense and expropriation
"Misunderstandings" in the biography of Yakov Blumkin begin from the very date of his birth and the place of this very birth. According to one version, he was born in 1900 in Odessa into a proletarian Jewish family. Blumkin announced this in his application form when he entered the Cheka in 1918. According to the second version, Yakov was born in 1898 in Lemberg (now Lvov) in the family of an employee of the city government. At that time, Lemberg was part of Austria-Hungary, and many Germans lived there. The second version seems to be the most probable, because many sources noted that Blumkin perfectly knew the German spoken language.
But we cannot fail to mention the coincidence that would later allow historians and researchers to consider Jacob Blumkin as the prototype of Max Otto von Stirlitz. The fact is that in his profile, Blumkin wrote that he was born on October 8, 1900. And it was this date that was the birthday of the intelligence officer Vsevolod Vladimirov (pseudonym Maxim Maksimovich Isaev) from the novels of Julian Semyonov.
Yakov Blumkin's father, Herschel Blumkind, served in the city government of Lemberg. After September 3, 1914, when the city was taken by Russian troops, Herschel quickly converted to Orthodoxy, transformed into Grigory Blumkin and got a job in the city chancellery. In July 1915, an Austro-German counteroffensive began, and the Russians left Lvov. Together with them, Grigory Blumkin left the city with his family. They move to Odessa.
Yakov's two older brothers, Lev and Isai, worked for Odessa newspapers. Another brother, Nathan, under the pseudonym Bazilevsky became a famous playwright. The family's political views were different. Sister Rosa was a member of the RSDLP, Lev was an anarchist, and Yakov in 1917 joined the Party of Social Revolutionaries (Social Revolutionaries). It was then that Yakov Blumkin took up arms for the first time. He joined the self-defense units that prevented Jewish pogroms. There Blumkin met Moisey Vinnitsky, better known by the nickname Mishka-Yaponchik. A little later Vinnitsky will become the real king of the thieves' world of Odessa. Together with Vinnitsky, Blumkin participated in the robbery of the State Bank of Odessa in January 1918. According to some reports, the accomplices pocketed part of the "expropriated" funds, although most of the money was actually transferred to the Bolsheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries,who in those days acted as a united front at the head of the new government in Russia.
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Peace of Brest and the split in power
In May 1918, Yakov Blumkin left Odessa and soon resurfaced in Moscow. Recall that the October coup, as a result of which the Bolsheviks gained power in Russia, could not have taken place without the support of the left wing of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. By agreement with the Bolsheviks, the Social Revolutionaries were able to promote their party members to a variety of positions, even to the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom). In the Cheka in 1918, the Social Revolutionaries accounted for almost 40% of the personnel. Yakov Blumkin was sent to the Cheka. Since he knew German, he began to work in the "German" department.
After the October Revolution, Lenin began to insist on ending the war with Germany and disbanding the tsarist army. In which he saw a threat to the new government. But the Germans rolled out such conditions that even among the Bolsheviks, not to mention the SRs, serious disagreements arose. Members of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) Dzerzhinsky, Bukharin, Uritsky, Ioffe, Radek, Krylenko insisted on continuing the war. Another group, led by Lenin and supported by Stalin, Zinoviev, Sverdlov, insisted on accepting any conditions for the end of the war. Leon Trotsky took a neutral position, proclaiming the slogan: "No peace, no war." At that time, Lenin wrote: "An army is needed for a revolutionary war, but we do not have an army … Undoubtedly, the peace that we are forced to conclude now is an obscene peace, but if a war starts, our government will be swept away and peace will be concluded by another government." …
Germany demanded to retain all the territories it captured (at that time the Germans occupied Finland, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus, occupied Pskov and some central and southern regions of Russia, in total about 780 thousand square meters. Km with a population of 56 million, this is a third of all subjects of the Russian Empire). The Germans also demanded a monstrous contribution at that time of 6 billion marks and 500 million rubles. And only gold. Few people know that the Bolsheviks sent two echelons of gold to the Germans with a total weight of about 94 tons.
The conclusion of the Brest Peace was the main reason for the split between the Bolsheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Who argued that the Bolsheviks were acting in the interests of the Germans. This is approximately how it was: Germany and Austria-Hungary, after the conclusion of the Brest Peace, were able to remove military units from the Eastern Front and transfer them to the West. And they almost turned the tide of the war. However, the United States stepped in. America entered the war in 1917. For almost a year she did not take active actions in the war, confining herself to the supply of weapons and food to France and England. But in 1918, the Americans decided to take more radical action. Several American divisions were deployed to Europe and Africa. The fate of the "Quadruple Alliance" (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria) was decided. Six months later, Germany was forced to drink the same "drink"which Russia had drunk before. The Germans were forced to sign an even more shameful (than Brest for Russia) Treaty of Versailles.
But all this was a little later. And in the spring of 1918, when the shameful Peace of Brest-Litovsk was concluded, the first split occurred in the revolutionary forces of Russia, which stood at the leadership of the country. Trotsky, according to the decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), began to actively create a new, revolutionary, Red Army. And the ideological opponents of the Bolsheviks, including the Social Revolutionaries, seriously believed that the army was a power tool of the imperialist regimes. The people's power does not need such an instrument, and the armed masses of the people will defend the revolution. Now these arguments seem naive, but in those days, many adhered to precisely these views.
Germany was in a hurry to secure an agreement with the Russians. Even recognized the Soviet Republic and established diplomatic relations with it. A personal friend of the Kaiser, Wilhelm von Mirbach, came to Moscow as ambassador. He came to control the new government in Russia, but it turned out - for death.
The main version of the reason for the assassination of Ambassador Mirbach is as follows: the "Left SRs", who did not agree with the shameful Brest Peace, sought to violate this very agreement, even by killing a diplomat.
But at the same time, some evidence suggests that Dzerzhinsky was aware of the preparations for the assassination of the ambassador. On the one hand, one recalls his opposition to the Brest Peace, and on the other, it is somehow not very hard to believe that the "iron Felix" did not know what was going on in the department he headed. After all, all the preparations for the murder were carried out in the Cheka. And why did Dzerzhinsky not prevent the SRs from preparing a terrorist attack? Maybe because he himself was against the Brest agreement?
Mirbach's assassination and bohemian parties
"Levoeser" Yakov Blumkin, who worked in the "German" department of the Cheka, managed to find approaches to Mirbach. In those days, the German ambassador actively promoted the departure of Russian nationals of German nationality from Russia. Blumkin sent a letter to the German embassy about the fate of Mirbach's distant relatives. Someone there was actually arrested by the Cheka, quite possibly only in order to get close to the ambassador. Mirbach could not help but respond and agreed to a meeting with the Cheka officers. On July 6, 1918, Yakov Blumkin and his friend (and fellow party member) Nikolai Andreev came to the ambassador. Which of them became Mirbach's killer is now quite difficult to establish. One fired a revolver, the second threw bombs, after which both jumped out the window and disappeared in a waiting car. The "Left SRs" achieved what they wanted. The Brest Treaty was broken.
On the same day, the "Left SRs" revolted against the Bolsheviks. Which was suppressed in no time. Already on July 7, most of the members of the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party were arrested, as were their supporters in the regions. But Blumkin and Andreev, according to some information on the personal order of Leon Trotsky and with the support of Dzerzhinsky, escaped responsibility. Andreev left for Ukraine (where he died a year later), and Blumkin remained in the structure of the Cheka and became involved in active intelligence work.
First he is sent to Ukraine, and then to Persia. In 1921, Blumkin returned to Moscow and was sent to study at the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army. To the oriental faculty. Where Blumkin masters Arabic, Turkish, Chinese and Mongolian. However, the first assignment after graduation from the Academy for Blumkin took place not in the east, but in the west of the former Russian Empire. He is sent to Tallinn, under the guise of a jeweler, where he must identify the connections of the Gokhran employees who sold valuables abroad bypassing the authorities.
This episode of Blumkin's life forms the basis of Yulian Semyonov's novel "Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat." Blumkin went to Estonia with a fake passport, taking for himself the pseudonym Isaev (does he remind anyone?), On behalf of his grandfather. Blumkin coped with his work. The thieves from Gokhran were exposed.
Upon his return to Moscow, Yakov continued his studies at the Academy of the General Staff. At the same time, he meets poetic bohemia. It is reliably known that Blumkin was closely acquainted with many poets of that time, including Sergei Yesenin, Osip Mandelstam and Vladimir Mayakovsky. However, at that time, many Cheka employees moved in that get-together. And Blumkin's hobby for poetry does not look like something out of the ordinary.
In 1922, Blumkin's fate took another turn, which later became fatal. He became Trotsky's closest assistant and was in charge of counterintelligence activities at the General Staff of the Red Army.
Eastern period
His work in this area was highly appreciated. A year later, Blumkin was returned to the special service. But this time not in counterintelligence, but in the Foreign Department, the famous INO OGPU. In the same year, Blumkin, as an expert on the East, was sent to Palestine for intelligence activities. As his deputy, he invites a colleague in the Socialist Revolutionary Party, Yakov Serebryansky. The future creator of the "Yasha group", which we will talk about later.
In 1924, Blumkin was recalled to Moscow and soon sent to the Transcaucasus. Where there were serious frictions between the Soviet Union, Persia and Turkey. Blumkin, as an assistant to the military commissar and a member of the Transcaucasian collegium of the OGPU, took part in the settlement of border conflicts and the suppression of peasant uprisings.
And then fate throws him into Afghanistan. Blumkin, disguised as a dervish, wanders around the country, trying to reach the Ismaili sect. Why the OGPU needed this is not yet clear - the documents are still classified. But it is reliably known that Blumkin, in search of the leader of the sect Agahan, reached all the way to India. Where he was arrested by the British police. Blumkin escaped from prison, taking with him the documents and maps of a representative of British intelligence. How he succeeded is also a mystery with seven seals.
In 1926, Blumkin was sent as the chief instructor for state security to the Mongolian Republic. And again, a coincidence with the literary character of Yulian Semyonov. Seva Vladimirov also worked in Mongolia, under Baron Ungern …
In fact, Blumkin is creating a security service for an entire country. Two years later, he was transferred to Turkey. Blumkin leads intelligence work across the Middle East. And for a while he copes with his work. But in 1929, Stalin's personal secretary, Boris Bazhanov, fled from the USSR.
Stalin was furious and demanded that the special services either intercept the traitor or kill him. It was known that Bazhanov fled from the USSR to Iran, then moved to India, from where the British transported him to Europe. According to some reports, the comrades-in-arms of Trotsky, who by that time had already been expelled from the country, helped Bazhanov to cross the border. It was here that I remembered that the specialist in the East, Yakov Blumkin, was at one time Trotsky's personal assistant. Many historians believe that Blumkin was simply made a "scapegoat". It was not possible to intercept Bazhenov, and it was necessary to blame someone else. Blumkin came up best of all. In the fall of 1929 he was recalled to Moscow, where he was arrested almost immediately. According to legend, Blumkin tried to avoid arrest, ran away and shot back. Whether this is true or not is not so important. However, the fact of secret relations with Trotsky was proven. And not a knocked out confessionbut quite serious documents. On November 3 (according to other sources, December 12), 1929, the executioner entered Blumkin's cell. The prisoner immediately understood everything, got up from the rack, pulled up his jacket and began to sing "Internationale". Which did not save him from the bullet …
Journal: War and Fatherland №6 (12). Author: Pavel Predein