June 16, 2017 marks the 112th anniversary of the birth of one of the founders and leaders of Soviet scientific and technical intelligence, an active participant in the Enormoz operation to extract American atomic secrets, honorary state security officer, Colonel Leonid Kvasnikov. For a long time this name was known only to a narrow circle of professional intelligence officers and historians of special services. And only in 1996, half a century after the end of Operation Enormoz, Leonid Romanovich, among its six active participants, was awarded the high title of Hero of Russia. And 20 years later, in December last year, a book by the doctor of historical sciences, director of the House-Museum I. V. Kurchatov Raisa Kuznetsova “The genius of scientific and technical intelligence. L. Kvasnikov in the service of the Fatherland”. This book was written on the basis of personal conversations between Raisa Vasilievna and Leonid Romanovich in 1983-1993 and contains the full text of the 1993 interview of Leonid Romanovich, which he gave to Raisa Vasilievna shortly before his death. These materials, never published before, recreate the true atmosphere of the joint work of Soviet scientists and intelligence officers on the creation of nuclear weapons and thereby open a new chapter in the historiography of the Atomic Project.
L. R. Kvasnikov (until 1928)
Kvasnikov's 1993 interview is unique in the sense that, chronologically, it is the first detailed account of the essence of "atomic espionage" made by one of its participants. In the open press, Alexander Feklisov, a subordinate of Kvasnikov in his New York residency, first spoke about "atomic espionage" in his book "Overseas and on the Island. Scout Notes "(1994). In the same year, a book of memoirs by Lieutenant General Pavel Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, was published in the United States (republished in 1997 in Russia). And finally, in 1999, another book by Feklisov, "The Confession of a Scout", appears.
Most of the intelligence material obtained on the Manhattan Project was transmitted in encrypted form over the radio. In July 1995, in the United States, at the initiative of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the National Security Agency (NSA) began publishing decrypted messages from the Venon dossier. A total of 49 messages were published for the period 1944-1945, relating to the history of "atomic espionage". Sorted by date, they are posted on the NSA and CIA websites. In addition, at the beginning. In the 1990s, the SVR provided access to archival materials on this topic to former KGB officer Aleksandr Vasiliev, who soon left for the West, taking with him eight notebooks of extracts he had made. All of them are currently available on the Internet.
Taking into account these and other publications, we can conclude that the general management of Operation Enormoz was carried out by the head of the 1st Directorate (external intelligence) of the NKVD-NKGB of the USSR, the Commissar of the State Security of the 3rd rank Pavel Fitin. The developer of the operation itself was the head of the 3rd (Anglo-American) Department of the 1st Directorate, GB Commissioner Hayk Ovakimyan, who until 1941 worked as a resident in New York and attracted the Rosenberg spouses to cooperation. Responsible for the operation was appointed a deputy resident in New York, then Major of the State Security Committee Leonid Kvasnikov, who, as head of the 3rd department of the 3rd department of the 1st Directorate, since 1939, was at the forefront of the organization of scientific and technical intelligence. Its most important sources, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, were physicists Klaus Fuchs, Ted Hall, Morton Sobell, and David Greenglass,engaged in the creation of molds for focusing lenses in Los Alamos. The staff of the New York residency, Alexander Feklisov and Anatoly Yatskov, as well as US citizens Harry Gold and the Coen's wife, kept in touch with them.
On January 18, 1942, from the 1st Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR, the 4th (reconnaissance and sabotage) Directorate was allocated, headed by the senior major of the State Security Service Pavel Sudoplatov. In 1944, it was he who was entrusted with coordinating the work of the special services for atomic intelligence, since among Sudoplatov's subordinates were the creators of the Soviet illegal intelligence service, Yakov Serebryansky and Naum Eitingon, as well as the famous illegal William Fischer (Rudolf Abel). For this purpose, the group "C" ("Sudoplatov") was formed.
L. R. Kvasnikov with his fellow students (summer 1928)
Acting in San Francisco under the guise of the post of vice consul of the USSR, resident Grigory Kheifets established confidential contact with the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer. A large network of agents among American scientists was located there, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Major Semyon Semyonov (Taubman), who had worked there since 1938. It was he who established the code for the Manhattan Project and the location of its main research center - the former juvenile delinquent colony of Los Alamos (New Mexico). The wife of a Soviet resident in New York, Vasily Zarubin, Major of the GB, Elizaveta Zarubina, met Oppenheimer's wife Catherine, who was a former member of the US Communist Party.and she, at the request of Zarubina, convinced the “fathers” of the atomic bomb, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, to allow a number of specialists recruited by our intelligence to participate in the Manhattan project.
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Another important source of information was the illegal network of agents formed by Sudoplatov's deputy Eitingon in 1939-1941 during the preparation of Operation Duck to eliminate Leon Trotsky in Mexico. Then Eitingon was given the emergency right to recruit agents without the approval of the Center, using family ties. In particular, one of the agents registered a pharmacy in Santa Fe (New Mexico). In 1943, Lev Vasilevsky was appointed a resident in Mexico City, who knew these agents well, since he himself was a member of Operation Duck. Three people copied the most important documents at Los Alamos, gaining access to them through Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi and Victor Weisskopf. Then, bypassing residency in New York, the materials were sent by courier to Mexico through a pharmacy in Santa Fe.
12 days after the assembly in Los Alamos of the first atomic bomb "Gadget", which worked on the basis of the decay of plutonium-239 and had an implosive detonation scheme, the Center received its description, and through two independent channels - from agents Charles (Klaus Fuchs) and Mlad (Ted Hall, aka Perseus). The first telegram arrived at the Center on June 13, the second on July 4, 1945. Five years later, these telegrams were decoded during the Venona project and used to arrest Fuchs, but this time in England. This allowed him to avoid the electric chair in which the Rosenberg spouses who participated in the transfer of these secrets were executed.
Lieutenant GB L. R. Kvasnikov - employee of the 5th (foreign) department of the GUGB NKVD of the USSR
Test "Tricks" made on July 16, 1945 on Mount Alamogordo (New Mexico). Soon the Center received detailed documents on the characteristics of the test explosion. The same device had the Fat Man bomb dropped on August 9, 1945 on Nagasaki, and, accordingly, the first Soviet atomic bomb RDS-1. On August 11, 1992, the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper published an interview with the chief designer of the RDS-1, Academician Yuli Khariton. He first mentioned that the German communist, theoretical physicist Klaus Fuchs, who had worked in Los Alamos since 1943, in 1945 handed over to our intelligence "a fairly detailed diagram and description of the American atomic bomb." Khariton, in particular, uttered the following words: "… our first atomic bomb is a copy of the American one." And in the article "Nuclear weapons of the USSR: came from America or were they created independently?"published in the newspaper Izvestia on December 8, 1992, Yuliy Borisovich adds: "It was the fastest and most reliable way to show that we also have nuclear weapons."
On August 20, 1945, immediately after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a Special Committee on “Problem No. 1” was created, headed by Lavrentiy Beria, who was entrusted with “the leadership of all work on the use of the intra-nuclear energy of uranium”. The committee received emergency powers and unlimited funding. As early as 1942, the scientific leadership of the problem was entrusted to Academician (then professor) Igor Kurchatov. The First Main Directorate (PSU) became the executive body of the Special Committee. Under him, the Scientific and Technical Council (STC) and Bureau No. 2 were formed. The "C" Department, formed on the basis of the "C" group of Sudoplatov, became the working apparatus of Bureau No. 2. The most important operational materials, including 200 pages from the operational case "Enormoz", were transferred there from the American foreign intelligence department. The deputies of Sudoplatov were Colonel Lev Vasilevsky, who, returning from Mexico, in 1945-1947 headed the scientific and technical intelligence of the NKGB-MGB of the USSR, and Lieutenant Colonel Yakov Terletsky, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, who summarized all intelligence materials and reported them at meetings of the NTS … The chairman of the NTS was at first the people's commissar of ammunition, one of the first three times Heroes of Socialist Labor, Colonel-General Boris Vannikov, and his deputy and then chairman was academician Igor Kurchatov, who headed the NTS until the end of his life. In addition to them, the NTS included Beria's deputies Vasily Makhnev and Avraamy Zavenyagin, as well as academicians Abram Ioffe, Abram Alikhanov, Isaak Kikoin, Vitaly Khlopin and Yuliy Khariton.and Lieutenant Colonel Yakov Terletsky, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, who summarized all intelligence materials and reported them at meetings of the NTS. The chairman of the NTS was at first the people's commissar of ammunition, one of the first three times Heroes of Socialist Labor, Colonel-General Boris Vannikov, and his deputy and then chairman was academician Igor Kurchatov, who headed the NTS until the end of his life. In addition to them, the NTS included Beria's deputies Vasily Makhnev and Avraamy Zavenyagin, as well as academicians Abram Ioffe, Abram Alikhanov, Isaak Kikoin, Vitaly Khlopin and Yuliy Khariton.and Lieutenant Colonel Yakov Terletsky, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, who summarized all intelligence materials and reported them at meetings of the NTS. The chairman of the NTS was at first the people's commissar of ammunition, one of the first three times Heroes of Socialist Labor, Colonel-General Boris Vannikov, and his deputy and then chairman was academician Igor Kurchatov, who headed the NTS until the end of his life. In addition to them, the NTS included Beria's deputies Vasily Makhnev and Avraamy Zavenyagin, as well as academicians Abram Ioffe, Abram Alikhanov, Isaak Kikoin, Vitaly Khlopin and Yuliy Khariton.and then the chairman - academician Igor Kurchatov, who headed the NTS until the end of his life. In addition to them, the NTS included Beria's deputies Vasily Makhnev and Avraamy Zavenyagin, as well as academicians Abram Ioffe, Abram Alikhanov, Isaak Kikoin, Vitaly Khlopin and Yuliy Khariton.and then the chairman - academician Igor Kurchatov, who headed the NTS until the end of his life. In addition to them, the NTS included Beria's deputies Vasily Makhnev and Avraamy Zavenyagin, as well as academicians Abram Ioffe, Abram Alikhanov, Isaak Kikoin, Vitaly Khlopin and Yuliy Khariton.
Kvasnikov was recalled from New York at the end of 1945, and after the removal of Vasilevsky in 1947, he headed the scientific and technical intelligence, remaining in this post, despite various reforms and renaming of organs, until his resignation in 1966. In the book of the historian-archivist, Doctor of Historical Sciences Raisa Kuznetsova, director of the Kurchatov House-Museum, interesting conversations with Leonid Romanovich are given, allowing you to look inside the mysterious Section "C", feel the atmosphere of the NTS meetings and the joint work of intelligence officers and scientists on the creation of atomic weapons. "… When Yakov Petrovich reported on materials on atomic weapons … they (academicians - AV) raised their hands and said:" Please send this material. " Got it? A list of interested parties was drawn up. They came and worked for me … Terletsky presented all the materials at the Council. Five hundred and sixty materials are thousands, thousands of pages of information that I processed when I was abroad and from there transferred materials to the Center. And in the Center a special department was created, which was led by four generals (besides Sudoplatov, I know two more - Naum Eitingon and Amayak Kobulov. - A. V.) and one colonel (Lev Vasilevsky. - A. V.). It was called Section "C". The colonel worked in scientific and technical intelligence, and the generals were all close to Beria. The department had tasks: the first was to translate all these materials. For this there was a translation bureau, which was in the "C" Department. Then they were processed by theoretical physicists - Terletsky and Rylov. All of these materials eventually passed through Terletsky. He reported them at the Council, and everyone who had gathered there stood up and said: "Write this report for me!"They came to my work, got acquainted with the materials and used them. “No,” they say today. And I say: "Well, why are you not ashamed, you sat with me, got acquainted with the materials, and now you say that you did not use them!"
With a delegation of Soviet scientists at a conference in London (1947) L. R. Kvasnikov (second from right), academician A. N. Nesmeyanov (second from left)
The background of Raisa Vasilievna's book is as follows. In 1983, Leonid Romanovich turned to the leadership of the Kurchatov Institute with a request to visit Kurchatov's house again. “Everything is like when Igor Vasilyevich received it! he exclaimed when Raisa Vasilyevna opened the door for him and led him into Kurchatov's office. - This is the same leather sofa on which I usually sat. And Igor Vasilyevich was sitting opposite, in that chair over there. Thus began conversations with Leonid Romanovich, but when asked to take notes, he invariably shook his head negatively … 1993 came - Kurchatov's 90th birthday was approaching. After Kvasnikov attended a ceremonial meeting of the Academic Council of the Kurchatov Institute, in the evening of the same day he called Raisa Vasilievna and said,that the report of Khariton and Smirnov embarrassed him and led him to bewilderment … "And he invited me with a tape recorder and a video camera to his home," writes Raisa Vasilievna.
In the interview, one feels that Leonid Romanovich wants to convey to the audience the truth about the events in which he happened to be a participant. Of course, one cannot fail to notice his special predilection for the personality of Academician Khariton. For example, quoting Khariton's words “Well, what is it Klaus Fuchs, he couldn't tell you anything at all!..” Leonid Romanovich exclaims: “And you, Yuliy Borisovich Khariton, have forgotten how you got acquainted with the materials? And you are still using this case, thanks to these detailed materials! Got it? And no one will tell you about this now. When I went to Kyshtym (to the Mayak plant for the production of weapons-grade plutonium - AV), I took one of the jobs with me - especially on plutonium. And the spectrum of neutrons. And on the expansion of TVELs. This is a whole job! Is he not familiar with her? He asked to be given it … A question about the lithium. Use of lithium. Here he is. Recorded by. It goes under such and such number, and there is a number of the volume in which it was collected - number such and such. Or here's the material - atomic bomb production technology. Here comes the technology. And it goes by diffusion (shows notes in a notebook). Khariton is the leader of one of a number of individual jobs. In this regard, I consider any of the academicians. I have met many and know their opinions. And when they say: "I did it all myself!" - I think: "What are you doing yourself?" I know where you got this material from. This material from the company is such and such, and you want to reproduce it. "In this regard, I consider any of the academicians. I have met many and know their opinions. And when they say: "I did it all myself!" - I think: "What are you doing yourself?" I know where you got this material from. This material from the company is such and such, and you want to reproduce it. "In this regard, I consider any of the academicians. I have met many and know their opinions. And when they say: "I did it all myself!" - I think: "What are you doing yourself?" I know where you got this material from. This material is from the company, and you want to reproduce it."
I asked Raisa Vasilievna how she came to the idea after so many years to publish these conversations. “This is due to my profession,” replies Raisa Vasilievna. - To return the most important information from historical memory to the public consciousness, find it, preserve and use - these are the primary tasks of a museum worker, historian-archivist. One of the main motives in this case is the search, as we say, for sources of funds and collections from objects of museum significance, documentary materials, the search for people - historical figures, carriers of information about the most important events, outstanding personalities. In our case - people who worked in the Atomic Project, who knew its scientific leader - Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov. Over time, this problem - obtaining colossal energy from the phenomenon of nuclear fission - opens up more and more horizons for its use. It has always been international. Leonid Romanovich also spoke about this, emphasizing that he was interested in the whole world. I myself did not seek a meeting with him, but it seems to me that by the beginning of the 80s, a desire had matured in him to slightly open the veil of secrecy over the activities of scientific and technical intelligence, which he created and in which he worked since 1938. And it was this desire of his, apparently, that led him to the idea of visiting the house in which he had talked more than once with the scientific director of the Atomic Project Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov. Leonid Romanovich himself was also an outstanding person - strict, restrained, with a high sense of civic spirit and patriotism. As it appears,talented - he began his studies at the Moscow Institute of Chemical Technology, graduated from the Moscow Institute of Chemical Engineering, then entered graduate school, was an inventor. Probably could become a scientist. But when he was summoned to the Central Committee, where he was offered to work in the NKVD in the line of scientific and technical intelligence and was told: "Now and here the country needs you most of all" - he immediately felt what the Motherland needed in those years. But before, when they said: "The Motherland needs!" - people understood. For the generation that created the country, built on its land, defended it - for our grandfathers and fathers, the concept of "Motherland" was sacred. And when they walked barefoot on their native grass and felt their land under their feet, they understood that "they do not need the Turkish coast …". And although Kvasnikov subsequently spent several years in the United States, he wore an American hat,I saw an overseas way of life, but he did not fall on his knees in front of them and did not let his Motherland be brought to his knees, because he believed, felt, knew and believed that there was no more beautiful land than ours. In this they were similar to Kurchatov. They defended the country when it was weakened by war, occupation, devastation, and the entire West and the best minds from all over the world worked for the United States. Moreover, the United States classified all its developments on the uranium topic even before the start of the war, but used ours, for example, Flerov and Petrzhak, who in 1940, under the leadership of Kurchatov, discovered the phenomenon of spontaneous fission of uranium nuclei. And if the Americans on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean had not received information about this discovery, how many years would they have been going to it? And without him it was impossible to carry out the Atomic Project. As far as I remember, the United States was implementing the British atomic project. Taking advantage of all these developments, they killed the population of two Japanese cities in order to show: Russians, look what happens to you! What is it like? So excuse me, but intelligence always and everywhere solves its tasks, timely reveals emerging external threats, helping to ensure the necessary parity in the nuclear confrontation of the great powers in order to triumph of good, peace and justice on Earth."
Colonel of State Security L. R. Kvasnikov (July 1949)
By the way, according to Raisa Vasilievna, the pre-war developments of Soviet scientists, including nuclear physicists from Kurchatov's laboratory at the Leningrad Physics Institute, were at the level of world standards. It was they who formed the basis of the Soviet Atomic Project, the scientific program of which Igor Vasilyevich prepared and submitted to the government and the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1940.
Thus, everything in the world develops mutually, enriching and complementing each other. Therefore, speaking about the Soviet atomic bomb, Kvasnikov emphasizes: “The fact that it is a copy of the American one, I am not going to discuss this issue. Because it is in my head, and I know, so to speak, the ending … There is a repetition - exactly, and the editing itself goes exactly - a repetition of our data”.
Speaking about the participants in Operation Enormoz, Leonid Romanovich notes: "In addition to the two I mentioned - Feklisov and Yatskov, there was also Barkovsky." And it was Anatoly Yatskov who said that the bomb was created not by intelligence, but by scientists and specialists relying on the scientific, technical and economic potential of the country. All of us, both intelligence officers and scientists, must bow to Igor Kurchatov and his associates for the fact that in incredibly difficult conditions, incomparable with those of the United States, they were able to create atomic weapons in a short time, preventing unpredictable developments.
In the house of I. V. Kurchatov with R. V. Kuznetsova. June 2017
Author: Andrey VEDYAEV
Photos courtesy of Raisa Kuznetsova