Harold Adrian Russell Philby. Kim Philby: Soviet star of British intelligence. With the BBC and Sinatra

LONDON - He died with a bottle of cognac, not Russian vodka, in his hand. He drank to forget his great disappointment, to overlook the failures of Soviet communism, and in the end with the stubbornness of a man who wants to die. Kim Philby, the most famous British agent who defected to the Soviet Union, the inspiration for novels, films and violent recriminations between the West and Moscow, asked his wife in pain: “Why do people live here so badly? After all, the Soviet people won World War II. Why?"

He never found an answer. And if he found it, he did not publicly tell anyone about it. But to his wife Rufina Pukhova, of Russian-Polish origin, whom he married after he was secretly transferred to the USSR, he confided his doubts, questions and a deep sense of disappointment, which undermined his confidence in the correctness of the decision made when he committed a betrayal against to his native Great Britain and went over to the side of the Soviet Union. “Kim chose the USSR because he believed in a society based on justice, and after he was behind the iron curtain, he devoted his whole life to the cause of communism,” his widow told the London Guardian newspaper. “But, once in the USSR, he experienced a cruel disappointment, so deep that he had tears in his eyes.”

He found a way out in alcohol. Two glasses of cognac after dinner every evening, after which he often drank the whole bottle during sleepless nights. Sometimes he asked his wife to hide cognac from him, but then he began to look for it. Only at the end of his life, when he was afraid of losing her, and for his salvation she threatened to leave if he did not stop drinking, Philby told her that there was no need to hide the bottle, that he would limit himself to two glasses and for a while "keep his word." But anyway, it was too late. “He drank to commit suicide,” the widow claims, and he succeeded.

He was born in India in 1912 and graduated from the University of Cambridge. During his student years, he began to sympathize with the communists. In the thirties, he already worked in London as a KGB informant, continued this activity when he was a special correspondent for the Times newspaper during the Spanish Civil War, then, on the eve of World War II, he joined the British Mi-6 counterintelligence service and made a quick career . But he played a double game, passing numerous secret data to the Kremlin. In 1963, while on Her Majesty's secret service in Beirut, he disappeared and fled to Moscow, where he was treated with respect. He led an isolated life under the protection or tutelage of KGB agents who watched his every move. For some time he was accompanied by other British agents who went over to the side of the USSR and were part of the "Cambridge Five", with whom he studied at the university. The university was then a fertile ground for those who wanted to work in the secret service, but at the same time it was permeated with socialist and revolutionary ideas. In particular, one of the five Englishmen who fled to Moscow during these years, George Blake, the only one who is still alive, shared Philby's mood. But they could not help but see that the idea of ​​communism had failed, that they had failed to build a new society based on justice and respect for human dignity, in which they so believed.

“He told me that when he came to the USSR, he had so many ideas, so many proposals,” says Pukhova, whom Philby married in 1973 when he was 59 and she was 38, “but no one seems to not interested in his opinion. So he decided to resort to alcohol. “One time he told me straight out that it was the easiest way to end his life. He quickly got drunk and changed before my eyes. Became a different person. But he wasn't aggressive. After a while he got up and went to bed. He died in 1988, twenty-five years after his flight to the Soviet Union.

The information that Philby passed on to the USSR led to the deaths of dozens of British agents and Soviet informants. In London, he was condemned and cursed as a traitor. In Russia, he was officially considered a hero. A plaque in his honor was unveiled last December by the head of Russian intelligence at its headquarters in Moscow. But, perhaps, Kim Philby himself no longer felt like a decent person, devoting his life as a spy to communist Russia and serving in the KGB.

THE SPY WHO CHOOSE THE COLD

Rufina Pukhova, widow of intelligence officer Kim Philby: “My husband considered alcoholism an easy way to die”
When they met, she was 38, he was under sixty. Then he will call the sunset of his life golden.
Kim (full name Harold Adrian Russell) Philby is a legendary Soviet spy from the famous "Cambridge Five". An influential member of the English secret service MI6, for three decades, risking his life, he supplied the Soviet Union with the most valuable information. For services in the field of intelligence in 1945, Elizabeth II awarded him the Order of the British Empire, and in 1947 Stalin signed a Decree awarding Philby the Order of the Red Banner. Unprecedented event!

The English aristocrat Kim Philby served our country not for mercenary reasons, but, as they say, for conscience. He was fascinated by the ideas of communism.
In their apartment, which is a stone's throw from Tverskaya, little has changed. Here everything is as it was under Kim Philby. And an office with a view of a quiet lane, and reindeer skins on the wall, and the Riga lamp receiver "Festival", which still works properly to this day. My gaze falls on the marvelous beauty of a table made of a single piece of wood.
- The table is really unique, - Rufina Ivanovna agrees. “This is a gift from Tom Harris, an antique dealer and an old friend of Kim's. Seventeenth century. My husband loved antiques. The table used to stand in the monastery refectory, and when wine was spilled on it, the monks rubbed the stains with their palms and polished the surface to a matte sheen. Despite the fact that Philby was considered a traitor in England, his home library and this table were delivered to Moscow in containers. Private property is sacred.
- Rufina Ivanovna, why didn't you get married for so long? It seems to me that with your beauty, intelligence, wit, there should be no end to the suitors!
It's good to hear, but you're exaggerating. I never aspired to marriage. Of course, I had both fans and novels, but it was my fault that it didn’t get to the wedding. By the time I met Kim, I had gotten used to the idea of ​​being alone.
- How did you meet?

- I worked as an editor at the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute, together with the wife of intelligence officer George Blake. Ida was the translator. Once she said that George has a friend - a good person who has only one drawback - Rufina Ivanovna makes an expressive gesture. - He was not indifferent to alcohol.
One day, Ida asked me to get tickets to Luzhniki for an ice review. The four of us were going to go: Ida with George, his mother, who came to him from Holland, and myself. But my mother fell ill, instead of her I saw an unfamiliar elderly man - Kim. I was wearing dark glasses. When we were introduced, he said: "Please take off your glasses, I want to see your eyes." We went ahead with Ida. By the way, it was then, following us, that he decided to marry me. At that time, Kim's son Tom was visiting, he took him with him in the hope of buying an extra ticket. But there were no tickets, and Kim and Tom went home, inviting the whole company to his place for champagne. After the performance, we returned home by trolleybus, but I didn’t get to Kim’s house and got off at the subway.
A few days later, Ida invited me to a dacha in Tomilino for the weekend. Kim was there. He arrived with a huge bag filled with wine, whiskey, porcini mushrooms, chicken, vegetables. He even took pots and pans with him. He said that he would cook the rooster in wine in French. Ida and I tried to help, but Kim only trusted us to clean the mushrooms, which turned out to be half wormy. "That's protein!" Kim laughed. Usually accommodating, he did not tolerate when someone was in the kitchen. At any other time, even when he was busy with serious work and I accidentally interrupted him, Kim always greeted me with a beaming smile. But, if he was conjuring in the kitchen, he had such a concentrated look that it was impossible to say a word. He will try the sauce: a spoon into the sink, something else into the sink, a whole mountain gathered there.
- Did he immediately start courting you?
- What happened in the evening, can not be called courtship. We spent the day in the garden. According to the English tradition, they drank tea at five o'clock, at six - an aperitif. That was the first time I tried a gin and tonic and realized that it was my favorite drink. Dinner dragged on late, and George and Ida retired to the bedroom. I also went to my room. Behind the wall, the conversation continued in English, and only one familiar word was often repeated: "Rufa, Rufa." Falling asleep, I heard the door creak open and the red light of a cigarette appear in complete darkness: Kim. He delicately sits on the edge of the bed and solemnly announces: "I am an English man!" I understand that he has got well, and I say: “I know you are a gentleman!” "No," protests Kim, I'm an English man! Foolish situation. I try to send him out: "Tomorrow!" (tomorrow). He's leaving. And all this was repeated at least three times. I was shaking with laughter.
And in the morning, for the first time, I looked at him with different eyes. Serious, with a sculpted profile, he did not resemble the hero of a night adventure and turned out to be very attractive. On a walk in the forest, he was silent in concentration, and I decided that he was for the night episode. (Actually, he didn't remember anything, but suffered from a headache. I shouldn't have felt sorry for him!) To distract Kim, I tore off the bell and jokingly presented it to him. He held it in his hands all the way, and then for a long time he looked for a suitable vessel for the flower. Kim was not sentimental, but touchingly treated any manifestations of attention.

- He quickly proposed to you?
- Ida invited me on a trip around the Golden Circle by car, mentioning that Kim was also going. It didn't matter to me. I was happy to take a break from work. In Yaroslavl, we walked in the park on the banks of the Volga. I felt that Kim was not indifferent to me. It embarrassed me and I avoided it. Finally, he could not stand it, grabbed my hand, he had an iron grip, seated me on a bench and said: “I want to marry you!” I was confused, because we hardly knew each other, and began to look for excuses that I was lazy, used to a lonely life, that I was in poor health. But it was impossible to intimidate him. He said, “I am not a boy. I'm not rushing you. I can wait."
The next day, on the way to Moscow, he invited me to lunch at the Metropol. I was late by almost 40 minutes and was sure that he would leave. I was ashamed, and I consoled myself with the fact that I would call him and apologize. Approaching: Kim stands with a doomed look. He saw me, broke into such a blissful smile that my heart melted. I felt at ease and at ease in the restaurant. He asked me to give him Russian lessons and invited me to tea. We were sitting in the kitchen. It felt like home. Time flew. He even joked: “I invited you to tea, and you seem to be going to stay for dinner!” and repeated the offer. I was already at the mercy of his charm and said yes, although I did not stay for dinner.
- Did you know then who Kim Philby was?
“His name meant nothing to me. Nobody knew anything about Philby then. There was only an article in Izvestia under the heading "Hello, Comrade Philby!" Understanding came gradually, but for the first time I realized how famous he was when I entered the office and saw a whole shelf of books dedicated to him.
- Among them, probably, was the book by Eleanor Philby "The Spy I Loved".
- Ida told me about this book. I asked Kim to read it, He didn't say anything to that, went into the office and I never saw this book again. He destroyed her.
- Rufina Ivanovna, you left your maiden name - Pukhova. Why didn't you become Philby?
- Kim lived here under the assumed name of Martins. First, he was given a passport in the name of Andrey Fedorovich Fedorov. It was stupid, because when Kim, with his accent, pronounced the Russian name, patronymic and surname, Homeric laughter began. And then he himself suggested the neutral surname "Martins". In the column "place of birth" was New York, and in the column "nationality" - Latvian. But he did not enter into this image either. When I followed him and tried to call out to him: “Andrei Fedorovich!”, He didn’t even move his ear.
Was he afraid of being recognized?
- He did not believe that he was in danger, but did not want to meet with journalists. However, it so happened that when we first went to the Bolshoi Theater, during the intermission, we ran into a couple of his old friends, with whom he worked together in Beirut. The Beestons were journalists. Dick Beeston worked for a long time as a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph in Moscow. During the intermission, when the men went to smoke, Moira asked me if we were often at the Bolshoi. “Unfortunately not, because it's hard to get a ticket,” I replied. "What's easy here?" - with sarcasm: retorted Moira.

Once we were told that a certain man was guarding Kim at the post office, where her husband had a PO box, where his correspondence came: newspapers and magazines "Herald Tribune", "Times" and others. He couldn't live without it. But our vigilant comrades did not doze, and from that moment I began to pick up the mail myself. We used to go everywhere together.
Sometimes we were told that there was a threat to Kim's life. In such cases, before leaving the house: to the pharmacy, for bread, for any reason, we had to call a certain number, and five people followed us at a distance. I thought that I did not need to be accompanied, and when I went to the Moskva pool, I suddenly noticed that a young man was running after me. On the move, he jumped into my trolleybus and accelerated so fast that he almost flew into the women's locker room. While I swam, his blue jacket loomed on the parapet.
- Why do you think there was such guardianship by the KGB? Were you afraid for Kim Philby or did you not trust him to the end?
- Possibly both. Every year Kim's children came to visit us and we tried to come up with some entertainment for them. One day, his daughter Josephine stunned me: “Do you know that we are being watched?” Then we were at VDNKh and sat down to rest on a bench in a large square where it was impossible to hide. I diligently surveyed everything - no one. Then we went to a fish restaurant. I looked into the toilet. Josephine was right. A new, unopened roll of toilet paper hung in the stall. And this is in Soviet times! I didn't believe my eyes. I looked into the next booth - the same thing. And then in the hall she drew attention to a young man who, with a detached look, was picking something in a plate.
Kim, when watching our favorite series “Seventeen Moments of Spring” with the magnificent Tikhonov, said: “With such a focused face, he would not have lasted a day!”
- Rufina Ivanovna, sorry for the incorrect question: why didn't you give birth to a child from your beloved husband?
- It so happened that it was necessary to make a decision. I asked Kim and he said, “I already have five children. We are old parents, it's not good for the child, but it's your choice." I also had doubts. I was worried about my diagnosis, in my youth I had to undergo radiation. So, each of us had serious reasons for doubts. Then, of course, I regretted it.
- I read that only the Russian wife of Kim Philby managed to save him from drunkenness.
- It irritates me (this does not apply to our conversation) that in any publication dedicated to Kim, the topic of drunkenness is procrastinated. It looks like he hasn't done anything else in his life. We lived together for 18 years and two years later this problem no longer existed. He worked hard, he had students.
... It all started at 6 pm - drink time. Kim poured a little cognac into a glass, replacing the scarce whiskey with it and diluted it with water by two-thirds. He drank slowly, then prepared the second portion. And that would be enough. But if he continued to drink, he quickly got drunk and changed before his eyes. But he never became aggressive, but just went to bed.
Every morning I woke up to the sound of the BBC. Kim sat in front of the receiver, freshly shaven and smiling, sipping "Russian tea" and saying: "Tea is better!" Like I was arguing. This was my Kim.

- Perhaps he was afraid that you might leave?
- There was a funny case when in the winter we were going for a walk, one boot disappeared. Some kind of mystic. We fumbled around the corners in confusion, finally, Kim slaps his forehead, goes into the office and carries my boot. He was afraid that I would leave, and hid his boot.
In fact, I never said that I would leave, and I understood that I could not leave him. Of course, I tried in every way to save him: after all, he killed himself.
He never made promises that he would stop drinking. He listened in silence, bowing his head, to my exhortations, but one day, completely unexpectedly, without any reason, he suddenly declared: “I am afraid of losing you and will not drink anymore.” Of course, it was a miracle. He kept his word to the end.
But the tradition remained. At six o'clock he poured his portion, then the second, gave me a bottle and said with a smile: hide it. But this was no longer necessary. The bottles were in the bar.
- Mikhail Lyubimov, a veteran of intelligence and a friend of your family, told me that Kim Philby was a heavy smoker, and preferred strong Soviet cigarettes without a filter, although he could probably afford Marlboro.
- "Smoke" and "I will accept." He said that it was real tobacco, and some Marlboro was chemistry. If he came across a cigarette with a filter, he defiantly tore it off. Even with bronchitis, he grabbed a cigarette. Ashtrays were all over the house.
Kim was even proud of his forty years as a smoker. He did not like being lectured about the dangers of smoking, especially those who quit smoking.
- Probably, you had to put up with various prohibitions, restrictions? Could you go on holiday abroad?
- At first, we were not allowed to go abroad. Kim has never flown by plane. The plane could have been seized and landed in some Western country, where it would have been immediately put in jail. But we visited Cuba. We could not sail on a passenger ship, we were specially selected for a dry cargo ship that goes non-stop. They departed from Leningrad and returned to Odessa on a bulk carrier loaded with grapefruits, oranges, and bananas.
We were always accompanied on our trips. By the way, in Cuba they gave us a very pleasant escort, but more often it was different. Kim said for the last time: “That's it, I can't stand it anymore! I'd rather not go at all!" There was a man with us in Bulgaria who knew neither Bulgarian nor English.
But he didn't live in poverty here. He was paid a good pension, surrounded by care.
- He was embarrassed. Once they brought him a fee for some work, He stubbornly refused, saying: “Give it to the widows’ fund!” The curator laughed: “You have a widow in your family!” And Kim gave that money to my mom.
He constantly felt remorse, because he compared his situation not with the nomenklatura, but with the poor old men and old women whom he met on the street. I thought he was undeservedly rich.
- Did you enjoy any special benefits?
“Sometimes we were unaware of the existence of these benefits. In Bulgaria, I bought a sheepskin coat, and one friend in Moscow asked: “Do you dress in two hundred?” I didn't even understand what she was talking about the special section of GUM. For a long time, we didn't know we were entitled to grocery orders. The main thing is that some problems were solved for us, which at that time not everyone could do: book a hotel, get tickets, arrange a trip. You could always ask for something, although we did not abuse it.
- Rufina Ivanovna, what was your husband like in life?
- Very economic. When other people brought chandeliers from Czechoslovakia, in our compartment there was a whole set of enamel pots and other household utensils.
Kim was a whole person. I didn't find any flaws in it. He was a strong man and at the same time easily vulnerable. He could not stand being alone and was always tragic when I left the house. I prepared for a long time to say that I want to go to the theater or meet my friends. “Well, go if you want…” he said with a look of doom. And he did not like to visit. Most of all he liked being at home. Wherever we came back, he always repeated: "It's better at home!"
- Did your friends know who he was?
- I had many friends, but I could entrust this secret only to my closest ones. There is a narrow circle. I unwittingly offended someone, I had to break off relations with someone. Often at a party in the midst of fun, I had to rush home. And somehow I heard after: "They marry the English, and then disappear in English."
- Can we say that Kim Philby became Russified in Moscow?

- No, not at all. Not only in trifles (“Russian tea” in the morning at seven o’clock, with lemon and always from a glass with a glass holder, English tea at five o’clock, strong as tar, with milk from an old porcelain cup). I just can't compare him to anyone. He was special, not because he was an Englishman - they are very different.
He was a very tolerant person and at the same time irreconcilable. Once we were traveling along the Volga in a big company: Kim and I, his son and his wife and, of course, the curator from the KGB, with his daughter. We gathered in our cabin to discuss the route, and I say something to the curator, and he sits, leafing through a magazine, without looking up. Kim jumps up: "He who is rude to my wife is rude to me!" You should have seen his face. He got up every time a woman entered the room. My mother, who lived with us, even felt embarrassed.
- Tell me, Rufina Ivanovna, did Kim become disillusioned with socialism?
- Kim believed in a just society - in communism and devoted his whole life to this. And here he was disappointed. He was worried to tears: “Why do old people live so badly? After all, they won the war!”
- Maybe he drank for this reason? After all, other members of the "Cambridge Five" were looking for oblivion in alcohol.
- Kim told me: "I arrived, full of information, I wanted to give everything, but no one needed it." His alcoholism was suicidal. He even once said: "This is the easiest way to commit suicide."

Kim Philby is a famous person. Very famous. No joke, an illegal Soviet agent who worked at the heart of British intelligence for about thirty years, and when he was on the verge of failure, simply left for the Soviet Union. He left, of course, very “not easy”, but the main thing is the result. And the result was 100%. In the USSR, Philby is considered one of the greatest intelligence officers of the era. In Great Britain - one of the greatest traitors who caused great damage to the interests of the British crown. But, despite such fame, the story of his life, as befits the life story of a scout of this magnitude, is still shrouded in a slight haze of understatement and gives rise to more questions than it answers.

Boy from a good family

In fact, the Englishman Harold Adrian Russell Philby was born in India. Business as usual in the British Empire. It was 1912. The family was, as they say, from the elite. "Blue blood". His father, Harry St. John Bridger Philby, was a British official in the government office of the local raja, that is, he worked, in fact, in the British colonial administration. He also studied oriental studies and was a very famous Arabist. Moreover, Kim (this nickname was given to the future Soviet intelligence officer in childhood in honor of the hero of Kipling's most popular novel) is a worthy successor to the old English family. His paternal grandfather owned a coffee plantation in Ceylon. And this grandfather's wife, so Philby's grandmother, was Quinty Duncan. This very grandmother came from a family of hereditary military men. As they would say now - dynasties. And one of the representatives of this dynasty is none other than Field Marshal Montgomery.

On the high society road

What do we see next in the biographies of Kim Philby? Next, we see the usual path of the offspring of an old family. He was not raised in India. In England. This was the job of my grandmother. Apparently, she brought up well - the boy graduated from Westminster School with honors. Well, in 1929, as befits a future representative of the English elite, he began studying at Trinity College, Cambridge University. And then something unimaginable begins.

Socialist? Can not be!

And then the biographers of Kim Philby tell us that he was already a socialist in Cambridge. Yes, a young man from a good family. Old English kind and all that. Socialist. Moreover, four years later he ends up in Austria, where he takes an active part in the work of ... the International Organization for Assistance to the Fighters of the Revolution. This, so you better understand, is not just an organization of sympathetic slackers. No. This is the communist equivalent of the Red Cross. And it was created by decision of the Comintern.

"Where does the guy get Spanish sadness"

By the way, yes. Where? Where did all this cool revolutionary communist mess come from, which eventually led Philby to Civil War Spain, and then to the Soviet Union? We read his biography again and find that one of those who wrote about Harold Adrian Russell Philby reports the most curious news. It turns out that Philby's dad, the one that Harry St. John Bridger, was not just an official of the colonial administration. He was an adviser to Winston Churchill, he was the Minister of the Interior in Mesopotamia, he was an adviser and, as they say, a powerful adviser to King Ibn Saud. He converted to Islam with the name Hajj Abdallah, he took a Saudi slave girl as his second wife, he was an English spy, and at the same time he ... treated his class with great contempt, considered the British bureaucracy stupid and did not accept the official policy of Britain in the Middle East. Here, they say, hence Philby Jr.'s dislike for the British ruling class and socialist sentiments. But, it turns out, this is not at all surprising, because the majority of the English intellectuals of that time had an overwhelming rejection of the British establishment. Being a communist was an honor, and Marx was an icon. Like this.

Big discrepancies are raised by the question of when, in fact, Philby began working for Soviet intelligence. Everyone, however, agrees that it was the Soviet illegal spy Arnold Deutsch who attracted Kim to work for the intelligence of the USSR.

But where and, most importantly, when? Some say it happened when Philby was a special correspondent for The Times in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Someone says that he began working for Soviet intelligence back in England in 1934. Still others also talk about Philby's Spanish period, but insist that he was then working not for Soviet intelligence in its purest form, but for the intelligence of the Comintern. Although, in principle, this is to a large extent the same thing, and besides, there is still a big question, what is it - "intelligence of the Comintern"? Interestingly, some authors cite an opinion that supposedly belongs to British government circles. It seems that they believe that Kim began to work for the intelligence of the USSR already during the Second World War. And this means, rather, not the Second World War, but precisely our Great Patriotic War, that is, the period from 1941. But this is understandable: the British may simply not want to admit that they hired a Soviet intelligence officer to work in the famous MI6 (SIS). And so it seems, according to their version, that at first he became a British intelligence officer, and then he was already recruited by the Soviets.

Two Intelligence Awards

What is most interesting in the history of Kim Philby is that in MI6, where he got in 1940 thanks to Guy Burgess, who also worked for the USSR, he was made head of the counterintelligence department. That is, he could actually freely have contacts with people suspected of being Soviet spies. It really was a wonderful cover. And it became even more remarkable in 1944, when Philby was put in charge of a department that dealt with countering Soviet and communist activities in Britain. Kim was generally considered a rising star in British intelligence. He was one of its leaders, while working for the Soviet Union not out of fear, but out of conscience. As a result, Philby was awarded by the British government and the Soviet government. Moreover, the Soviet awards were very significant: the Order of Lenin, the Red Banner and the Patriotic War of the 1st degree.

The most significant achievements

The achievements of the Soviet intelligence officer Kim Philby are more than enough. After all, he performed very serious and sensitive tasks for MI6, which means that he had an excellent opportunity to transmit important information for the Soviet Union. According to some sources, during the Second World War Philby handed over more than nine hundred documents to Moscow.

But, according to his fourth (and last) wife, Rufina Pukhova, whom he married when he finally moved to the USSR, he himself considered his main merit the information that he transmitted to the center before the famous battle of Kursk, on the outcome of which he largely depended actually the outcome of the war itself.

Kim not only announced that the Germans would rely on their heavy tanks, but pointed out the village of Prokhorovka as the place of the main attack. They believed this information, carried out the necessary preparations and ... the result is known. But Rufina Pukhova herself focused on another extremely important piece of information passed on by Philby to Moscow.

This is information that Churchill allegedly put pressure on Truman to force him to ... drop a nuclear bomb on Moscow.

Perhaps this refers to Operation Unthinkable, which was developed in defensive and offensive versions on the instructions of Churchill already in 1945.

True, they rarely talk about relying on the atomic bomb in this operation. The overwhelming majority of experts agree that this was an operation in which conventional weapons were supposed to be used. And it was rejected by the military, who considered that the combined British-American forces would not achieve a quick victory over the USSR, and this would lead to an all-out war, in fact, to the Third World War, in which the chances of victory would become very doubtful.

Failure without failure

To say that Philby "failed" is impossible. In general, during his career, he rescued those Soviet agents who were on the verge of failure several times.

And in 1951, while working in Washington, including with the CIA and the FBI, he learns that Soviet agents Donald McLean and Guy Burgess were under suspicion. Philby, at great risk to himself, warns them and ... he himself is under suspicion. In fact, on the verge of failure.

McLean and Burgess, along with Philby and Anthony Blunt, are considered members of the so-called "Cambridge Five", which allegedly represented the core of the Soviet spy ring in Britain.

Why "Cambridge"? Because they were all allegedly recruited while studying at Cambridge. Why "five"? Because there is an opinion that initially it was a cell of the Comintern, and such cells consisted of fives. Philby himself scoffed at this. He said that he and others were not recruited at all in Cambridge, that each had his own destiny, and they began to work together only later. He also claimed that there was no cell of the Comintern in Cambridge, and therefore the fifth member of the "five" was not identified, who was tirelessly searched for, but never found.

By the way, of the four agents discovered, three, Philby, McLean and Burgess, were successfully transferred to the Soviet Union.

Against the war

Yes, after all, why did Philby become a Soviet agent? After all, it is one thing to be a communist, and quite another to work against your own country.

Rufina Pukhova answers this question simply: Kim was essentially an anti-fascist. He worked not so much for the Soviet Union as against fascism. And then? After all, despite the fact that since 1951 Philby was under the hood of MI6 and MI5, he lasted until 1956. Perhaps, after the victory, he worked against a new war, believing that only the USSR was capable of stopping it.

At least he did not know for sure that books and films would be written about him.

"I SERVE RUSSIA FOR HALF A CENTURY"

Kim Philby

Englishman Harold Adrian Russell Philby, known to the whole world under the name of Kim, was a Soviet intelligence officer. In more than twenty years that I have been writing about intelligence, I have not come across other examples of a foreigner, and even a representative of high society, doing so much for our country. Perhaps there were people more selfless, but their contribution to our victory in World War II is not comparable to what Philby did, who almost became the head of the Secret Intelligence Service - one of the most powerful intelligence services in the world.

Who knows, perhaps somewhere in the archives are the files of Soviet, Russian agents who did even more. One of my heroes, legal spies, hinted before his death that he was, and still is, such an agent. “Oh, if only you knew, Kolka!..” He called this man either the Leader or the Monolith. But maybe he was wrong or, as it happens, he mystified? So far, we do not know a foreign intelligence agent equal to Philby. It is not for nothing that his affairs are declassified so difficult, long, dreary and literally bit by bit.

Kim Philby considered his main success in intelligence to be the information he obtained in 1942-1943 about the offensive planned by the Germans near Kursk, called Operation Citadel. As you know, the bloody Battle of Kursk ended with a radical change in the Great Patriotic War, which began with the battle of Stalingrad, and the strategic initiative finally passed to the Red Army.

My book "Kim Philby" presents several of his reports, declassified in the summer of 2011. Among them is information about the flight from Germany to England of the prominent Nazi Rudolf Hess, information about the sabotage work of the British in the countries occupied by Hitler, about the structure of the British intelligence services and the characteristics of their leaders.

Philby got along with many intelligence officials. With some, such as, for example, with the famous writer Graham Greene and Tommy Harris, he continued to be friends even after his flight to the USSR from Beirut in 1963. Philby corresponded and received, together with his wife Rufina Ivanovna, the great Green at his home in Moscow. True, he did nothing special in intelligence. Tom Harris was not afraid to send him an old solid wood table to the Soviet capital. Former rich man - furniture maker Harris during the war years made an excellent career in counterintelligence. It was he who suggested to the authorities in June 1941 that they use Philby, who worked in Spain as a correspondent for The Times and could well lead the Spanish section.

Hearing Philby's name, SIS Deputy Director for Foreign Counterintelligence Valentin Vivian remembered Harry St. John Philby, who was well known to him. Upon learning that he was Kim's father, he helped Philby Jr. become the head of the sector, which conducted counterintelligence work in the Pyrenees and, partially, in North Africa.

Then Philby got access to the Abwehr telegrams decrypted by the British. He was one of the first to inform Moscow about the secret negotiations of his head - the German admiral Canaris with the British, about the timing of the admiral's arrival in Spain. Kim, apparently with the consent of his superiors, developed a plan to destroy Canaris, which his London leadership unexpectedly rejected. But even the hotel between Seville and Madrid, where the head of the Abwehr was supposed to stay, was well known to Kim Philby from his time in Spain. And Kim suspected that the matter was not only in the fears of Stuart Menzies, who headed the SIS, to be destroyed in turn by the Germans. The British kept Canaris under their wing just in case, you never know…

There are suggestions, shared by Philby, that the admiral shot by Hitler in 1944 gave the British information beneficial to a group of people who planned to physically destroy the Fuhrer, stop the war with the USA and Great Britain, concentrating all their efforts on a fight with the USSR. Canaris, with his German agents scattered around the world, was the link between the generals dissatisfied with Hitler and our then allies. The capture or assassination of the admiral was disadvantageous to Menzies, whose people carefully "grazed" Canaris.

Philby informed the Center more than once about secret separate negotiations between the British and the Americans with the Germans.

In the winter of 1941, when the Germans were driven away from Moscow, Philby gave his contact the text of a telegram from the German ambassador in Tokyo to Reich Foreign Minister Ribbentrop about the upcoming Japanese attack on Singapore. To Singapore, not to the Soviet Union. This confirmed the reports of the Tokyo residency: the Japanese are not going to go to war with the USSR yet.

Used Philby and his love affairs. He was close to Eileen Feares, who worked in the counterintelligence archive. Kim had no way of finding his first wife, Litzi. An Austrian communist with Jewish blood, she was able to leave Vienna for England thanks to her marriage to Philby and thus was saved from Nazi persecution. But then she disappeared. Philby reported to his superiors that he could not be a bigamist and would officially enter into a new marriage only when he terminated the previous one.

Eileen helped Kim with everything. It even allowed me to rummage through the archives. Often, Philby would take volumes of intelligence reports from colleagues from different countries from the archives in order to study them carefully late in the evening. However, many employees acted in this way contrary to the instructions, and they looked at it through their fingers.

Did Eileen know who Kim's selected information was intended for? Subsequently, she said that she did not even know about it. Kim confirmed that she didn't know for sure. He did not let his beloved know his secrets.

And it seems to me that Eileen still guessed. The woman on the bed is counterintelligence. But not necessarily hostile.

In 1944, Philby reported to the Center that one of the leaders of American intelligence told him in confidence about the joint secret work of British and American nuclear scientists on an atomic bomb using uranium. Moscow realized that if the allies joined forces, then they are close to the goal. This, in turn, spurred on Stalin and Beria, forced them to mobilize scientific personnel as much as possible and allocate considerable financial resources for the creation of the Soviet atomic bomb.

Philby also managed to get documents that spoke about the post-war plans of the British in relation to the USSR. The outcome of the war was already clear, and our allies were now preoccupied with the prospect of the formation of socialist states in Eastern Europe. So the USSR turned into the main enemy for the Western world. In this regard, at the SIS, on the initiative of Philby's patron Valentine Vivian, a special department was created to combat the Soviet Union.

The English plans for subversive activities against the USSR were taken more than seriously in Moscow. Philby was not given the task to get all these documents, they asked at least to inform about their content. And Philby once again did the impossible.

An experienced intelligence officer, Vivian, developed methods of fighting against Soviet intelligence, figured out how to sow enmity between the USSR and the communist parties of the West, how to split and incite the international communist movement against the Soviet Union with the help of disinformation. All these documents were kept in a secret folder called "Vivian's Documents".

But Philby outplayed family friend Vivian, who touchingly took care of him and promoted him through the ranks. The Vivian Papers sent by Philby allowed the Soviet leadership to take the necessary measures during the war.

Philby collected data on agents thrown by England into different countries. At first, these were only complex code aliases, then they took on real shapes and real names. A few years later, the Center already had an impressive list. There were so many of these spies that Moscow did not touch some of them, who settled in distant lands. Others, who settled closer to the Soviet borders, on the contrary, aroused great interest.

Unlike Burgess or Cairncross, Philby was an excellent conspirator. The lessons of his first teacher - the illegal "Otto" - Deutsch were not in vain. He tried to instill a simple truth for him in the other members of the "five": their safety largely depends on themselves. Guy Burgess especially bothered him. And, as subsequent events showed, not in vain.

And further. Philby, a man of a completely traditional sexual orientation, did not start moralizing conversations with any of his friends that their homosexual relationships could attract someone's attention, interfere with work. Here he hoped for luck. However, Burgess was expelled from intelligence because of too conspicuous, sometimes publicly advertised predilections.

Apparently, Philby correctly hinted to his contacts that “this” should not be discussed with his friends. The bad tendencies acquired in childhood in some privileged private school in Marlborough could not be corrected by exhortation. It would not bring benefits, but it would cause unnecessary irritability among colleagues in the "five".

And all the liaisons, from "Otto" - Deutsch to "Peter" - Modin, followed Philby's advice. This topic has been avoided for many years of cooperation.

Shortly after the outbreak of war, Philby was assigned to oversee the Allied negotiations to open a second front. And here he showed miracles of efficiency.

The delay with the opening of the second front turned into a strategic task for the Western allies. And any information on this subject from London fell on Stalin's desk. The leader was annoyed by the constant excuses, and then the promises of Roosevelt and Churchill that did not come true. He was especially infuriated by the duplicity of the British Prime Minister. He promised Stalin that the second front would open very soon, and Roosevelt convinced that the time had not yet come. Philby informed that the opening of the second front was deliberately delayed and that the Soviet side should not have any illusions on this score.

At the end of the Great Patriotic War, another unpleasant disagreement arose between the USSR and the allies. The deliveries of explosives, which were so expected from the British, were disrupted. Their caravans delivered any kind of cargo to Murmansk, but not explosives, which the advancing Red Army really needed. Philby's message that this was being done quite deliberately, and not through oversight or negligence, oddly enough, reassured Stalin. He realized that here, too, one must rely on one's own strength.

With great anxiety, Moscow received information from Philby about a possible war between the USSR and the Allies. They discussed among themselves whether it was realistic to start hostilities against the Soviet Union if Stalin continued his offensive against West Germany after the capture of Berlin. Perhaps this message from Philby to some extent cooled the ardor of Joseph Vissarionovich.

Note that the "five" acted separately. It was not a single group, a well-coordinated team. Under the terms of the game, its members did not have the right to contacts. The role of the unifying link was performed, with the strictest secrecy, by Kim Philby. Sometimes even the self-confident Burgess turned to him for professional advice.

Were there any repetitions in the information transmitted to Moscow? Of course there were. For example, information from counterintelligence that came from Blunt was not duplicated, but confirmed by Philby. In intelligence, the concept of "a lot of information" is absent. It is very important that the data of one source be confirmed by all others.

Despite suspicions of disinformation that hovered in the corridors of the Lubyanka, the Cambridge Five was appreciated, especially after Philby and Cairncross warned Moscow of the German advance at Kursk.

Analyzing the information transmitted by all members of the Cambridge Five, one comes to the conclusion that the most important source was Kim Philby. And from 1947, when he headed the notorious 9th department for the fight against communism, and until 1951, he had no equal either in value or in efficiency.

In 1945, the Cambridge Five were almost destroyed by the betrayal of the Soviet intelligence officer Konstantin Volkov, who worked in Istanbul under the roof of the Soviet consulate. For 30 thousand pounds sterling, he was going to tell the British, among other secret data, the names of three Soviet agents who worked in the Foreign Office and in counterintelligence.

In London, this information came to Philby. After long delays, he allowed himself to be persuaded to go to Istanbul, having managed to report Volkov's betrayal to the Soviet resident. Philby immediately understood who Volkov intended to betray - Burgess with McLean and Philby himself.

Bad weather delayed his flight to Turkey. And when he finally arrived there, no trace of Volkov could be found in Istanbul - Soviet intelligence managed to take Volkov to the Union. There has never been an official announcement of his fate. One can only guess about her.

Can you imagine Philby or Burgess coming in and offering to betray their comrades for 30 pieces of silver or 30,000 pounds? Unthinkable.

Even in England, where many people hate Philby and brand him a spy, it was recognized that “he was firm in his faith, absolutely devoted to his ideals, consistent in his actions. All this was aimed at creating and strengthening communist influence throughout the world. So wrote the City-Zen newspaper after Philby's death in May 1988. No one, even in the West, could reproach him for working for the USSR for money.

Philby had amazing stamina. She often helped in his dangerous work. But it must be admitted that he was lucky. Volkov's case fell to him, and not to someone else. An employee who was supposed to go to Istanbul was terrified of flying. Although Philby also did not like to travel by air, he replaced a cowardly colleague on the orders of the head of the SIS. Soviet intelligence worked exceptionally quickly, taking Volkov out of Turkey. And the British were too slow. Even the forces of nature were on Philby's side. His plane had to land in Tunisia because of a thunderstorm. And when Philby arrived in Istanbul, he did not find the British ambassador there, without whose consent it was impossible to make contact with Volkov. The diplomat went to rest for the weekend outside the city.

Are there not too many instances of an astonishing confluence of favorable circumstances for Philby? But this is reality. Or confirmation of the proverb - lucky strong.

And here it is - a double-edged sword. Heading a department whose goal was to actively fight against the USSR, Philby took daily risks. If the agents he sent in immediately failed, the head of the department would be taken under suspicion, and maybe even figured out. If he had not regularly reported on agents sent to the USSR not only by the British, but also by the intelligence services of other countries, the Soviet Union could have suffered damage. Dilemma?

Philby solved it together with colleagues from the Center. He warned about the upcoming sending of agents, and in Moscow they carefully considered what to do with them. Mostly they were people from the Caucasus, from the Baltic states, who fled with the Germans and went over to the side of the former allies of the Soviet Union. Sometimes they were deliberately let through by border guards who knew in advance about crossing the border, they were allowed to settle in our country, their connections were identified, and then they were arrested. Some offenders died. Philby assured them that there was not a single Englishman among them. Spies were often recruited. Then they played radio games.

Since 1945, the British tried to send as many spy groups as possible to the Baltic republics and Ukraine. But the spy groups, trained mainly from native Ukrainians who fled to Canada after the war, were waiting for arrests. Philby even passed on the names of agents - paratroopers from three groups.

The year 1946 showed that the British did not have any suspicions about Philby. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire. (It is somewhat blasphemous to compare it with the Order of Lenin, which Philby was also awarded, but the essence is clear.) Philby's chief Menzies wrote the idea of ​​awarding Philby. The award and subsequent celebrations at Buckingham Palace further boosted Philby's stock.

Therefore, the allegations that appeared in the 1980s that back in the early 1950s, Sir Stuart Menzies, who later headed the SIS and suspected a Soviet agent of a colleague, fooled Philby by deliberately slipping misinformation on him, sound ridiculous.

Complete nonsense, one CIA veteran who closely followed the Philby case told the Washington Post. - This man was a Soviet spy from the very beginning to the end. By the time of his death, he acquired all the necessary attributes of the hero of a work of art.

But the fact of the matter is that the intelligence officer lived a real everyday life. He finally divorced Litzi and married a life partner of many years, Eileen Fierce. Before the wedding, they already had three children, and soon a fourth appeared. Family life developed quite well.

Not surprisingly, Philby claimed to become Mr. "C" - that is, to become the head of British intelligence. How then could his fate have been? Philip Knightley, a well-known researcher of the British and other intelligence agencies, views such an appointment with a healthy dose of English skepticism. “There is a school of thought in the world of the secret service that says that an infiltrator who climbs too high cannot be of much use to the outsider,” he writes. - If Philby became a "C", he would have access to such important information that the KGB would have to use it, and this would mean exposing Philby. Thus, the usefulness that he could bring, having reached the top of the British intelligence tree, would be limited.

I do not agree 100 percent with this statement, but there is some truth in it. Although I am sure: Philby would have found a way out of this situation.

He made a career in British intelligence in just five or six years. Of course, experience can be acquired, but Philby did not have enough of it. After all, at home they did not know about his, one might say, parallel work, which, no doubt, gave in practical terms no less than successful work in the British intelligence service.

By the will of fate, or by the will of Philby, he, as it were, accidentally converged with people who were of great interest to Soviet intelligence. It is believed that Moscow knew nothing about Operation Venona, which had been carried out by the Americans since the war years. In short, thanks to the decryption of the intercepted telegrams of Soviet intelligence, by the end of the war, and especially after it, many agents of the USSR were identified. Among them, for example, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed at the height of McCarthyism in the United States. That's what the Americans say.

Operation Venona was kept a secret for many years. Even the Soviet agents who were put on trial were not charged, which could have made it clear to the KGB that some of the coded messages had been deciphered.

Back in the 1990s, Hero of Russia Vladimir Borisovich Barkovsky told me that, firstly, the “main enemy” managed to decipher only fragments of several telegrams, which yielded little. Barkovsky considered Venon to be an almost useless waste of a huge amount of money. And secondly, we knew about all these Venons back in the late 1950s. To my legitimate question "from where?" Barkovsky just shrugged.

When the archives - ours and others' - were slightly opened, the answer became absolutely clear. From Philby. He first heard about this before leaving for the United States from the head of the 9th department, Maurice Oldfield. Of course, the SIS wanted to know how the decryption was going, in which the British provided all possible assistance to the allies from the States.

I read the book "Operation Venona" and I believe that things, although slowly, were moving. Philby managed to get acquainted with the talented codebreaker Gardner. Friendship between them grew into friendship. Philby sometimes even managed to see the results of Gardner's work out of the corner of his eye. That's why I learned that secret American documents were constantly being leaked from the British Embassy in Washington. Philby realized that his friend in the "five" Donald McLean was under real threat.

Fortunately for all five, the British for some reason decided that the leak was coming from technical, support personnel, and not from diplomats. Lower-ranking personnel were tortured with universal checks. This delayed the investigation for years.

American sources flashed information about the connections of Philby, who constantly worked as a representative of the SIS in Washington, with another legendary Soviet intelligence officer - illegal immigrant William Fisher - Colonel Rudolf Abel. They probably knew each other from work in pre-war England, but met far from the American capital, presumably in Canada. There was no friendship between them. Fisher was ascetic and strict. And Philby's temperament was his antipode. But this did not interfere with the joint work of the intelligence officers who ended up in the States.

The British accuse Philby of betrayal. In fact, he remained true to the oath he had taken in his youth. Philby began to cooperate with the Soviet foreign intelligence in the 1930s, and was recruited into the ranks of another special service during World War II. So who did he betray? His selfless work in the name of the idea causes only respect. Principle, honesty, gentlemanship helped him live life the way he wanted.

Philby did not betray his compatriots, never worked against England. And he taught his Moscow students to work not “against England”, but “according to England”. Philby said more than once that not a single Englishman died through his fault or as a result of his actions. He worked "in England" - everyone passes this on deaf ears. He had a different approach to intelligence.

Yes, agents were destroyed, for example, in post-war Albania. And Philby gave an answer to this to the British journalist Philip Knightley: “Regrets should not arise. Yes, I played a certain role in disrupting the plan developed by the West to organize a bloody massacre in the Balkans. But those who conceived and planned this operation admitted the possibility of bloodshed for political purposes. The agents they sent to Albania were armed and determined to carry out acts of sabotage and assassination. Therefore, I did not feel sorry for the fact that I contributed to their destruction - they knew what they were doing.

And in Turkey, during the Great Patriotic War, saboteurs from various diasporas crossing the Soviet border were arrested. They were sent to fight against their compatriots in Armenia, Georgia and other republics.

And the traitor Volkov, who offered services to the British in the first post-war years, was taken out of Istanbul. It is clear what fate awaited him. But if Volkov went over to the wrong side, how many people would be arrested and executed.

Here is what Philby said in one of his rare interviews on Soviet television: “I have no doubt that if I had to repeat everything from the beginning, I would start the way I started and even better.”

And in a conversation with Knightley in his Moscow apartment, he said: “As for returning home, the current England is a foreign country for me. The life here is my life and I'm not going to move anywhere. This is my country, which I have served for over fifty years. I want to be buried here. I want my remains to rest where I worked."

Some of Kim's friends, who worked with him for the USSR, the same Anthony Blunt, eventually fell out of the race: 1945, the war ended, and they honestly stated: they say, they helped defeat a common enemy - fascism, and now that's it, bayonet into the ground. Philby stayed with us always. And when, before the war, because of Stalin's repressions, for almost a year and a half, the "five" had no connection with the Center. And when he was considered a double agent. For decades he worked for the Soviet Union away from it, and then 25 years in Moscow, which became his home.

But sometimes there was distrust towards Philby. He and his friends came to meetings with Soviet liaisons at any time, did not hide in bomb shelters, even when the Germans bombed London. It was a huge risk. They worked in force majeure circumstances. And in Moscow they were sometimes not believed. So the Kursk Bulge became a turning point not only in the Great Patriotic War, but also in relation to the Cambridge Five.

Perhaps some suspicions arose during the period of repressions in 1937. They shot at that time both English spies, and German, and American - all in a row. And suddenly an English source appears who writes: “There are only two or three Soviet agents on the line at the British Embassy in Moscow.” Two three! How so? "English agents" in the NKVD were shot by hundreds, thousands, and someone from London writes that they have only two or three agents. Yes, it can not be! So he's lying. It turned out that the wave of those repressions gave rise to distrust in themselves.

But Philby endured that too. His wife Rufina Ivanovna told me that Kim was very offended by Guy Burgess, who had fled to Moscow. McLean obeyed Philby - saving his life, eluded the inevitable arrest. Why did Burgess stay in Moscow? After all, if not for his disappearance, Philby, he firmly believed in it, he could work and work. And so the career of a scout actually ended. Despite the suspicions of the investigation, Philby managed to stay at large, even getting a job as a journalist in Beirut. But in 1963 he had to flee from there on a Soviet cargo ship.

Kim Philby was already over fifty when he found himself in a new, unusual environment. If you like, Philby ended up in Moscow in our political stagnation. He saw and understood everything. According to Rufina Ivanovna, he reacted to Brezhnev's "dear comrades" and protracted kisses with his comrades-in-arms with swearing. But don't give up. Brezhnevism flourishes, Philby is inactive, his mighty potential is not being used. New recognition - his studies with young intelligence officers, the publication of his books - came much later. The truth always breaks through.

Philby took the restructuring well, perked up. However, a whole era was leaving, which was also his era. And Philby went with her. He left in an aura of purity, romanticism and faith in the country for which he worked and risked for several decades ...

For outstanding services, Kim Philby was awarded the Orders of Lenin, the Red Banner, the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, and the Order of Friendship of Peoples. His personal contribution to the Victory in the Great Patriotic War over Nazi Germany is enormous. This is recognized by everyone, even those who hate him.

One of my high-ranking interlocutors from the special services said:

Philby did so much for the Victory over Nazi Germany! When I went into the materials, into the file, looked at it carefully, a feeling of injustice arose. How is it that he did so much and was not a Hero of the Soviet Union? Why? I began to bring this idea to management. They explained to me that the time was not right - 1987. Maybe Gorbachev didn't want complications with the British. However, this idea was not supported. And suddenly a document comes from our then chief Kryuchkov, which in turn came from the reception room of Yasnov, then chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. And a note to him: “Vladimir Alexandrovich, (this is Kryuchkov) I ask you to consider the attached letter.” In it, three Kharkov students write: how is it that such an outstanding person made a great contribution to the cause of the Victory and is not a Hero? Shortly before that, Philby's interview with the famous journalist Genrikh Borovik was shown on television, and the guys apparently watched this program. And if an appeal was received to confer the title of Hero in this way, then they gave the command to prepare a performance. We started to prepare documents. But on May 11, 1988, Kim Philby passed away. And somehow forgot about the show.

Declassified: Philby intelligence This chapter was written by Kim Philby himself - it was completed in September 1964 in Moscow, after fleeing from Beirut. It is unlikely that these notes, published for the first time, were intended for publication: rather, it is something like a diary written in hot

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