In 1972, after the death of the famous science fiction writer Ivan Efremov, the KGB opened a case - supposedly the writer was replaced by the British in his youth. Then the KGB began to suspect Efremov of being an alien.
The most mysterious episode in the biography of the famous science fiction writer and professor of paleontology Ivan Antonovich Efremov occurred after his death. Efremov died on October 5, 1972, and a month later, on November 4, a long-term general search was carried out in his house, and it is not known what subject.
Almost everything that has been known about this story so far, including the people closest to Efremov, has been collected and published in A. Izmailov's article "The Nebula" (Neva, 1990, No. 5). According to the testimony of T. Efremova, the writer's wife, the search began in the morning and ended after midnight; it was carried out by eleven people, not counting the house of law and attesting witnesses. Taisiya Iosifovna kept the protocol of the search, from which it follows that it was carried out by the officers of the KGB Directorate in Moscow and the Moscow Region for the purpose of discovering "ideologically harmful literature." The list of confiscated items was 41 items, including old photographs of Efremov (1917, 1923 and 1925), his letters to his wife, letters from readers, photographs of friends, receipts.
(Left - Ivan Efremov)
Efremov's manuscripts were not among the seized, but the attention of the competent authorities was attracted by "an orange tube with a black head with foreign words", "a book in a foreign language with a dust jacket depicting Africa and printed: African ecology homon evolution and other words" dried wood leaves, “various chemicals in vials and jars” (turned out to be homeopathic medicines) and other equally important things. They also confiscated samples of minerals collected by Efremov, a collapsible cane with a "mounted sharp metal object" and "a metal club made of non-ferrous metal." The last two items were not returned later, considering them cold weapons.
As stated in the protocol, "a metal detector and an X-ray were used during the search." And only thanks to the decisiveness of T. Efremova, the "experts" did not open the urn with the ashes of Ivan Antonovich, which was not yet buried and was in the apartment. Later, T. Efremova, who was trying to understand what was the matter, and to return the seized letters and things, the KGB reported that among the seized there was an anti-Soviet article - in 1965 someone sent it to Efremov from the city of Frunze without a return address.
At the same time, the investigator, in a conversation with the writer's widow, was especially interested in what were the injuries on her husband's body, and "asked everything: from her birthday to her husband's death." And the prosecutor's office asked how many years she had known Efremov. On the direct question of what the writer is accused of, the KGB officer answered bluntly: "Nothing, he is already dead."
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Subsequently, already in perestroika times, Izmailov managed to meet with the investigator Khabibulin, who conducted the search. But he did not clarify the situation either. True, he answered the main question that worried Izmailov: was there any denunciation that caused the case? Khabibulin assured that no, there was no denunciation.
Finally, in 1989, it was possible to obtain an official written response from the Investigative Department of the Moscow KGB Directorate to an inquiry about the reasons for the search from Efremov. It turns out that the search, as well as "some other investigative actions" were carried out "in connection with the suspicion of the possibility of his violent death." Meanwhile, the search had considerable consequences: the publication of the five-volume collected works of the writer was prohibited, the novel "Hour of the Bull" was withdrawn from libraries, until the mid-seventies Efremov was not published, it became impossible to mention him even in special works on paleontology, although Efremov was the founder of the whole scientific direction. The reasons for the ban remained unclear.
Already soon after the search in Moscow, startling rumors spread: that Efremov was not Efremov, but an English intelligence officer, for whom he was replaced in Mongolia during the expedition. In 1991, the Stolitsa magazine published an article by V. Korolev, a former employee of the Second Service (counterintelligence) of the Moscow KGB Directorate, who was engaged in “counteracting the British special services”. Korolev told how a case against Efremov was created in his department.
The initiator of the development of the case was the head of the department, Lieutenant General Alidin, the case took 40 volumes and was conducted for another 8 years after the death of Efremov (we are talking about an agent, not a criminal case, about secret surveillance). Korolyov outlined the version of the substitution of the real Efremov for the fake even before the revolution (and not at all in the 1940s in Mongolia), accompanied by various murders of close and distant relatives.
Korolev writes that shortly before the writer's death, the idea came to mind - to give photographs of Efremov to his three sisters for identification, but immediately after this decision, all three suddenly died one after the other, from which the version of their murder by false Efremov and British intelligence grew … Korolyov believed that the first of the sisters could well have died a natural death of age, and the other two could not bear the news of her death. Only, Efremov never had three sisters: there was only one.
Korolev writes: "Ivan Antonovich died at the table in his home office on October 5, 1972, in front of an operative who exercised an unspoken visual control over him with the help of special operational and technical means." The latter, in the corresponding certificate, reported that death occurred at the moment when the object opened a letter allegedly received by him from some foreign embassy. On the basis of this certificate, Alidin made the following conclusion: British intelligence, having established that the Chekist ring around its resident had closed, removed it by sending a letter to Efremov, processed with a potent poison.
But only, according to T. Efremova, Efremov died at night in bed from another heart attack. And about the poisoned letter, she notes that the KGB officer who opened all of Efremov's correspondence would rather have died from it (they watched him quite clearly). True, Korolev writes that the writer's wife was also enrolled in English spies. As a result, we have: espionage; anti-Soviet agitation; suspicion of a violent death.
The suggestion that Efremov might have been suspected of anti-Soviet agitation stems from a search warrant and the fact that two years earlier, in 1970, his novel The Hour of the Bull had caused criticism. Efremov was suspected of trying to allegorically criticize Soviet reality. KGB Chairman Yu. Andropov on September 28, 1970 in a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU directly writes that Efremov in this novel "under the guise of criticism of the social system on the fantastic planet Tormans slanders Soviet reality."
In the field of fighting spies, the regional (and in its essence deeply provincial) Moscow department of the KGB, headed by Viktor Alidin, which is always overshadowed by the powerful central apparatus of the KGB, tried to distinguish itself. O. Kalugin described one of the cases started during this period: the basis for his establishment was the testimony of a worker (later recognized as a madman) who allegedly saw the parachutists disembark. A version arose in the minds of the Moscow Chekists, according to which "a relative of the famous Soviet writer left illegally for England, and an illegal English intelligence agent was thrown into the USSR with his documents for introduction into Soviet society, collecting secret information and ideological decomposition from within." Kalugin does not say which writer he is talking about, but, as he writes, Alidin fooled the country's leadership with this business for a long time. Is it not here that we should look for the cause of the Efremov case?
The case is opened by a special message signed by the Deputy Prosecutor of the city of Moscow to the First Deputy Prosecutor General of the USSR M. Malyarov dated January 30, 1973: “We inform you that on January 22, 1973, the Investigation Department of the KGB under the USSR Council of Ministers for the city of Moscow and the Moscow Region opened a criminal case on the fact of death professor of paleontology, science fiction writer Efremov I. A., which followed on October 5, 1972, due to the unclearness of the cause of death and to verify his identity. The investigation of the case is being conducted by the senior investigator for particularly important cases of the investigative department of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR for Moscow and the Moscow Region, Lieutenant Colonel R. Khhabibullin. We are sending a copy of the order to initiate the case."
Efremov died while in his apartment. The circumstances of Efremov's death arouse suspicion, in particular, on October 5, 1972, at the time of the deteriorating health of Efremov, his wife Efremova T. I. did not call doctors from the city ambulance station; an autopsy on Efremov's body was not carried out, and he was cremated on October 6, 1972. Thus, the cause of Efremov's death remained insufficiently clarified. In addition, there are materials that give reason to believe that Efremov is not the person he claimed to be."
During the search in Yefremov's apartment, a large number of written documents addressed to Efremov were seized, and in particular, letters from A. P. Urbonas, a resident of the Byelorussian SSR, and G. G. Permyakov, a resident of Khabarovsk. Urbonas is a former agent of the counterintelligence agencies of bourgeois Lithuania and the German fascist invaders. In 1933, he offered his services to Polish intelligence. For this purpose, he wrote a letter in which he provided his biographical data and named the persons through whom he could collect secret information. Urbonas enclosed his photograph with the letter. At present, a cryptographic examination is being carried out in the case to decrypt the text of the letter from Urbonas to Efremov dated March 17, 1967.
According to the preliminary opinion (conclusion) of the experts, this letter, as well as other materials of the correspondence between Urbonas and Permyakov, contains coded information.
Finally, on March 7, 1974, the departments for the supervision of the investigation in the state security bodies of the Prosecutor's Offices of the USSR and the RSFSR were notified of the termination of the criminal case on March 4 “on the fact of the death of IA Efremov. in the absence of a crime event”.
Korolev wrote about the connection with British intelligence, but some Urbonas was discovered, allegedly working for the German and offering to work for the Polish. Judging by the fact that there is not a word in the decision to terminate the case neither about who Efremov really was, nor about his coded correspondence, both these versions have failed.
Of all the available interpretations of these investigative actions, only one, the most fantastic, has not yet been refuted. It was expressed in a conversation with Izmailov with science fiction writer A. N. Strugatsky: “Just in those days, in the late 60s and early 70s, at least in two US organizations - CI and the Army Institutions were created that were seriously engaged in the development of flying saucers, on the possibilities of alien penetration into Earth. Ours could have a similar idea. And at the same time, the fans, that is, fans of science fiction, came up with and strengthened a kind of fix idea: they say, leading science fiction writers are agents of extraterrestrial civilizations. Boris Natanovich and I received more than one letter on this topic. One can imagine that the newly created department of competent authorities was headed by a romantic-minded officer,who believed in the absurdity of "science fiction writers are agents." And they began to watch over Efremov. During his lifetime, they were afraid to touch him: God knows what to expect from an alien. Having learned about death, they came in the hope of finding something. I put myself in the place of a hypothetical romantic officer, and I reason sensibly: if Efremov is an agent of an extraterrestrial civilization, then there must be some kind of communication tool. But what does the means of communication look like for a civilization that has outstripped us by three or four hundred years, and even well disguised this means ?! Therefore, they took the first thing that came across. Then, satisfied that what was taken was not what was sought, they returned everything. "and I reason sensibly: if Efremov is an agent of an extraterrestrial civilization, then there must be some means of communication. But what does the means of communication look like for a civilization that has outstripped us by three or four hundred years, and even well disguised this means ?! Therefore, they took the first thing that came across. Then, satisfied that what was taken was not what was sought, they returned everything. "and I reason sensibly: if Efremov is an agent of an extraterrestrial civilization, then there must be some means of communication. But what does the means of communication look like for a civilization that has outstripped us by three or four hundred years, and even well disguised this means ?! Therefore, they took the first thing that came across. Then, satisfied that what was taken was not what was sought, they returned everything."
And in fact, in fact, everything converges: a posthumous search, a metal detector, the seizure of chemicals, even an attempt to inspect and open an urn with ashes, and an emphasis on the fact that an autopsy was not carried out, that cremation, contrary to custom, followed on the second day after death, and the strange questions of T. Efremova, whether she has known her husband for a long time.
Indeed, the KGB was just looking for alien artifacts, as well as the anatomical differences of the disguised alien (maybe it was made of silicon, as Efremov himself described). In this light, the circumstances of the usual biography of the writer can be interpreted differently. For example, his geological research and excavation of vertebrates or craving for "dinosaur skulls." Efremov had a story about how paleontologists found an alien skull in a dinosaur burial ground.
Among fans of science fiction, the authority of Efremov was great, the fame was firmly entrenched for him that he had anticipated some scientific discoveries. It was written in this connection, for example, about holography. All of this in the aggregate mystified the employees of the authorities, who, even behind rather innocent events, saw secret springs, outside influence. With this approach, Efremov could become a suspicious or convenient figure for working out theories. But the developers could not even tell all of their direct management directly about "alien suspicions" (or entrust it to paper).