90 years ago, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) approved the decision of the OGPU collegium to sentence to the highest measure of social protection - the execution of the resident of Soviet intelligence, 29-year-old Yakov Blumkin. So the life of one of the greatest criminals, adventurers and seekers of Shambhala in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century ended.
Bolshevik otherworldly
One of the founders of Soviet intelligence Yakov (Simkha - Yankel Girshevich) Blumkin graduated from the Odessa Jewish religious elementary school (cheder), after which at the age of 14 he connected himself with revolutionary activities, joining the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Just a simple listing of his practices will take more than one newspaper page. And surely something will be missed, not mentioned. Something will be wrong. The Chekists knew how to keep their secrets. But perhaps the most mysterious episode in his track record is the attempt to establish contact with Shambhala. The same legendary, lost in Tibet, which, according to Indian mythology, is "the country of universal happiness, supreme wisdom and absolute justice."
In the fall of 1918, after the assassination of the German ambassador to Russia Wilhelm von Mirbach, Blumkin, who was sentenced by the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Central Executive Committee to three years in prison, went into an illegal position. It was during this period in Petrograd that he met the biologist, mystic writer Alexander Vasilyevich Barchenko (as a freemason and a spy, he was shot in 1938). An employee of the Bekhterev Institute of the Brain was fond of occult sciences, the functionality of the human brain and hypnosis. It was during these meetings that Blumkin, barely out of adolescence, became infected with the ideas of an older friend.
In 1924, Blumkin, who by that time had restored his authority in the OGPU (he returned to service a year after the incident with von Mirbach at the personal request of the then Cheka chairman Felix Dzerzhinsky), again met with Barchenko. He invited the naturalist to write a note to Dzerzhinsky about his passion for otherworldly phenomena and the possibility of transmitting thoughts at a distance.
Dzerzhinsky at that time headed the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the country. After reviewing Barchenko's note, he handed it over to a special special department of the OGPU, which was engaged in the protection of state secrets, radio intelligence, direction finding and cryptography. The head of the department, in which about 100 people worked, was a half-trained mining engineer, Chekist-freemason Gleb Ivanovich Bokiy (the initiator of the first concentration camps in Russia, was shot in 1937). Most of the employees are former employees of the Police Department of the Russian Empire. Bokiy was also fond of the occult, so the elite division of the Soviet special services was also interested in "through the looking glass" - from UFOs to Bigfoot.
Deputy Bokiy - Commissioner of State Security Yakov Saulovich Agranov met with Barchenko (on Lenin's instructions he compiled lists of people expelled from the country, was shot in 1938), and then Bokiy himself. As a result, Barchenko headed the secret laboratory of unidentified phenomena and parapsychology at the special department. It was he who suggested to Bokiy to engage in establishing contact with Shambhala, "in order to lead humanity out of bloody madness, that fierce struggle in which it is hopelessly drowning." It was decided to start selecting people who have reached moral perfection for this contact. And this should be done by the "secret mystical organization" United Labor Brotherhood ". The good from Bokiy to organize the brotherhood was received. He himself and several other Chekists joined it.
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Preparations began for the search for Shambhala. It was assumed that the Chekists disguised as pilgrims would get through the mountain ranges of the Afghan Hindu Kush to one of the Himalayan canyons, where the mysterious Shambhala is allegedly located. Barchenko was assigned to lead the expedition. Vladimirov (Blumkin) became the commissar under him. The base for the preparation of the expedition was one of the dachas of the special department in the village of Vereya near Moscow. Here the participants of the event learned English, Urdu and mastered horse riding. Everything was kept in the strictest confidence, as it could be in jeopardy. Due to the secrecy of the expedition, Blumkin was transferred to the apparatus of the People's Commissariat of Trade. In the trade department, he changed 12 positions.
Dzerzhinsky allocated 100 thousand gold rubles for this event.
"Kalmyk" Blumkin
But everything fell through. The head of the foreign department (INO) of the OGPU Meer Abramovich Trilisser (shot in 1940) learned about the preparation of the expedition. He reported on the project to the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs Genrikh Grigorievich Yagoda (shot in 1938), and he, after consulting with the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin, closed the project.
However, the story did not end there, and the Soviet occultists made another attempt. In 1926, the organizing bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decided to return Blumkin to the OGPU and appoint him chief instructor of the state internal security of the Mongolian Republic. But this was a cover for the main task - Blumkin was entrusted with the leadership of the activities of Soviet intelligence in Tibet, Inner Mongolia and the northern regions of China. Tibet was a priority. There Blumkin was supposed to join the expedition of the artist and philosopher Nicholas Roerich, who is fond of spiritualism and allegedly working for Soviet intelligence.
An employee of the USSR OGPU Yakov Blumkin in the form of a Buddhist lama (far right) during an expedition to Tibet organized on behalf of Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (September 1925).
A great friend of the then bohemia, one of the close people of Vladimir Mayakovsky, Yakov Agranov, took part in the preparation of the expedition. It will be appropriate to note here that Blumkin was no stranger to companies of writers. True, unlike Agranov, who signed the death sentence to the poet Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov, Blumkin did not pass sentences to writers, and only threatened to kill them. And then being drunk. For example, the poet Osip Emilievich Mandelstam came under his hot hand.
Blumkin, in addition to searching for Shambhala, was instructed to establish contacts with the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. Soviet Russia offered him large loans to buy weapons and promised protection from Tibet and China. But this expedition to search for Shambhala failed miserably.
It so happened that the members of the expedition, at the suggestion of the British special services, were detained by the governor of Xinjiang in Khotan on suspicion of espionage. The Soviet consul in Kashgar, the orientalist Max Frantsevich Dumpis (shot in 1938) helped them to get out of the unpleasant situation.
According to unconfirmed reports, Blumkin once again, disguised as a dervish, visited Tibet. How this attempt ended is unknown. The fact is that the expedition organized by Bokiy was not the only one. In 1928, Kalmyk officers were sent to Lhasa to meet with the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, who promised him protection from China and independence from Tibet. It is not excluded that one of these "Kalmyks" was Blumkin.
Interestingly, in the diaries, notes and letters of Nicholas Roerich, the name of Blumkin is never mentioned. In general, there are many versions of what Blumkin was doing in Tibet. All of them are quite different and are not always supported by documents. It would be interesting to get acquainted with the reports of the British intelligence agents who watched Roerich, but they are not yet available. By the way, Roerich knew that the British were "taking care of" him.
Trotskyist
After Tibet, Blumkin visited China, Mongolia, where he was looking for gold of the so-called ruler of Mongolia - the Russian general, Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg. Checked the work of the Soviet station in Palestine and Turkey.
In Constantinople, he met with Lev Sedov, the son of Trotsky, and then with the disgraced "demon of revolution" himself, from whom he received letters for the left opposition. Upon his return to Moscow, Blumkin met with the secretary of the executive committee of the Comintern Karl Berngardovich Radek (shot in 1939) and told him about his meeting with Trotsky. Frightened Radek did not read Trotsky's message and advised Blumkin to confess to the party about contact with the disgraced politician.
Blumkin shared his doubts with his mistress, an employee of the foreign department of the OGPU, Lisa Rosenzweig. The future illegal scout, the legend of Soviet intelligence, Colonel Zarubina-Gorskaya-Rosenzweig (died under the wheels of a bus in May 1987) immediately surrendered her lover to the leadership of the OGPU. The betrayal of the party is not a joke, and Blumkin is ordered to be arrested. In the apartment in Denezhny Lane, where he lived in the same house with the People's Commissar for Education Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky, he was not there. Rosenzweig, who joined the search, suggested that he should be looked for at the Leningradsky train station. As a result, Blumkin was arrested clumsily - with chase and shooting.
On November 3, 1929, Blumkin's case was considered at the OGPU court session. He was judged by the so-called "troika" consisting of the chairman of the OGPU Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky, deputy Menzhinsky, member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) Genrikh Grigorievich Yagoda and the chief of foreign intelligence Meer Abramovich Trilisser.
Menzhinsky and Yagoda were in favor of the death penalty, Trilisser was against it. By a majority of votes, it was decided to sentence Blumkin, as they said then, to the highest measure of social protection - execution "for repeated betrayal of the cause of the proletarian revolution and Soviet power and for betrayal of the revolutionary KGB army."
The Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) approved the resolution.
The exact date of the execution is unknown. Either November 3, or November 6. Some sources say December 12. But it is certain that Yakov Agranov was present at the execution of the sentence. And even took part in it.
They also say that before the execution, which took place in the courtyard of the OGPU building on Lubyanka, Blumkin exclaimed: "Long live Comrade Trotsky!" - and, taking off the blindfold from his eyes, commanded: "For the revolution - or!"
Interestingly, the Nazis who came to power shortly after this execution were also interested in finding Shambhala. They even founded the Ahnenerbe, a secret institution for the study of the occult sciences. They also organized expeditions to Tibet and even shot a two-part film "Indian Tomb" on this topic. After the war, this trophy film was released on our screens, and it was a great success with the audience.