Date of Birth:
Place of Birth:	Zyryanka village, Yekaterinburg district, Perm province
Date of death:
A place of death:	Brody district, Lviv region
Alias:	Rudolf Schmidt, Nikolay Grachev, Paul Siebert
Nickname:	Pooh, Colonist
	Partisan detachment "Winners"
Battles / wars:	The Great Patriotic War

Pre-war years

War years

After death

Nikolay (Nikanor) Ivanovich Kuznetsov(14 (27) July 1911, Zyryanka village, Yekaterinburg district, Perm province, now Talitsky district, Sverdlovsk region - March 9, 1944, near Brody, Lviv region) - Soviet intelligence officer, partisan. He eliminated 11 generals and high-ranking officials of the occupation administration of Nazi Germany.

Biography

Pre-war years

Nikanor Kuznetsov was born into a peasant family, into a family of 6 people. He had older sisters Agafya and Lydia, younger brother Victor.

In 1926 he graduated from a seven-year school, entered the agronomic department of the Tyumen Agricultural College. After studying for a year and becoming a member of the Komsomol during this time, due to the death of his father from tuberculosis, he was forced to return to his native village. In 1927 he continued his studies at the Talitsky Forestry College, where he began to independently study the German language, discovering outstanding linguistic abilities, mastered Esperanto, Polish, Komi, and Ukrainian. In 1929, on charges of "whiteguard-kulak origin", he was expelled from the Komsomol and from the technical school.

In the spring of 1930, he ended up in Kudymkar and was hired by the Komi-Permyak regional land administration as an assistant taxator for the arrangement of local forests. Here he was reinstated in the Komsomol. Later he recovered and entered the technical school, but he was not allowed to defend his diploma - he was limited to a piece of paper about the courses he had attended.

While working as a taxi driver, I discovered that my colleagues were doing postscripts and reported them to the police. The court sentenced the robbers to terms of 4-8 years in prison, and Kuznetsov - to a year of corrective labor with 15% of his salary withheld (and was also expelled from the Komsomol again).

After the forest management party, Kuznetsov worked for some time in the Komi-Permyatsk "Mnogopromsoyuz" (Union of multi-industry cooperatives) as a conjuncturist and secretary of the price bureau, then, for about six months, in the Krasny Molot martel. Participated in collectivization, was attacked by peasants. According to Theodor Gladkov, it was his fearless behavior in moments of danger (as well as fluency in the Permian Komi language) that attracted the attention of state security operatives. Since that time, Kuznetsov has also participated in the actions of the OGPU district to eliminate gangster groups in the forests (operational pseudonyms "Kulik" and "Scientist").

In 1931, Nikanor officially changed his name to Nikolai. In addition, while working in Kudymkar, Kuznetsov met a local girl, Elena Chugaeva (from the village of Kuva, worked as a nurse in the surgical department of the district hospital), whom he officially married after a while. They lived together for a short time, and upon leaving Kudymkar, the divorce was not officially formalized.

In the summer of 1932, Kuznetsov took a vacation, came to Sverdlovsk (where his whole family had moved to permanent residence) and successfully passed the entrance exams for the correspondence department of an industrial institute. While studying at the Ural Industrial Institute, he continued to improve in German (Olga Veselkina was one of Kuznetsov's German teachers).

Since 1934 he has been working in Sverdlovsk as a statistician in the Sverdles trust. Then, for a short time as a draftsman at the Verkh-Isetsky plant, and in May 1935 he moved to Uralmashzavod as a workmanship designer in the design bureau, where he was conducting the operational development of foreign specialists (at that time he had the pseudonym "Colonist"). In February 1936 he was dismissed from the factory "as a truant".

In 1938 he was arrested by the Sverdlovsk NKVD and spent several months in prison.

In the spring of 1938, he was on the territory of the Komi ASSR, was in the apparatus of the People's Commissar of the NKVD of the Komi ASSR Mikhail Ivanovich Zhuravlev, helped as a specialist in forestry. A little later, Zhuravlev called Moscow to the head of the counterintelligence department of the GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR Leonid Raikhman and suggested that he take Kuznetsov to the central apparatus of the NKVD as a particularly gifted agent (Kuznetsov mastered six dialects of German).

Kuznetsov's personal data (conviction, expulsion from the Komsomol) did not dispose him to be admitted to the central office. However, the difficult political situation in the world and the need to obtain operational information about this situation forced the head of the secret-political department, Pavel Vasilyevich Fedotov, to take responsibility and hire Kuznetsov. Kuznetsov received a special status in the state security bodies: a highly classified special agent with a salary at the rate of a personnel security officer of the central office.

Kuznetsov is given a Soviet-style passport in the name of the German Rudolf Wilhelmovich Schmidt. Since 1938, he carried out a special assignment to infiltrate the diplomatic environment of Moscow - he actively got acquainted with foreign diplomats, attended social events, went out to friends and mistresses of diplomats. With the diplomats themselves, he entered into deals for the purchase of various valuable goods. So, in particular, the adviser to the diplomatic mission of Slovakia in the USSR, Geiza-Ladislav Krno, was recruited.

To work with German agents, Kuznetsov was given the profession of a test engineer at the Moscow Aviation Plant No. 22. With his participation in the apartment of the German naval attaché in the USSR, frigatten captain Norbert Wilhelm Baumbach, the safe was opened and secret documents were re-taken. Kuznetsov was also directly involved in intercepting diplomatic mail, when diplomatic couriers stayed in hotels (in particular, in the Metropol), was surrounded by German military attaché in the USSR Ernst Koestring, which allowed the special services to establish wiretapping of the diplomat's apartment.

War years

After the start of World War II, on July 5, 1941, to organize reconnaissance and sabotage work behind the front line, in the rear of the German army, a "Special Group under the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR" was formed, headed by Senior Major Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov. In January 1942, this group was transformed into the 4th department of the NKVD, and Nikolai Kuznetsov was enrolled in it.

The scout was given a biography of the German officer, Chief Lieutenant Paul Wilhelm Siebert. At first he was assigned to the Luftwaffe, but later "transferred" to the infantry. In the winter of 1942 he was transferred to a camp for German prisoners of war in Krasnogorsk, where he mastered the order, life and customs of the German army. Then, under the name Petrov, he trains in parachute jumping. Based on the results of all tests, it was decided to use Kuznetsov behind enemy lines along the "T" (terror) line.

In the summer of 1942, under the name Nikolai Grachev, he was sent to the Pobediteli special-purpose detachment under the command of Colonel Dmitry Medvedev, who settled near the occupied city of Rivne. The Reichskommissariat of Ukraine was located in this city.

From October 1942 Kuznetsov under the name of a German officer Paul Siebert With the documents of an employee of the secret German police, he conducted intelligence activities in Rovno, constantly communicated with officers of the Wehrmacht, special services, senior officials of the occupation authorities, transferring information to the partisan detachment.

Since the spring of 1943, he tried several times to carry out his main task - the physical destruction of the Reichskommissar of Ukraine Erich Koch. The first two attempts, on April 20, 1943 during a military parade in honor of Hitler's birthday, and, in the summer of 1943, during a personal audience with Koch on the occasion of a possible marriage to a Volksdeutsch girl, did not work at all - in the first case, Koch did not come to the parade, but the second had too many witnesses and guards. The attempted assassination attempt also failed on June 5, 1943 on the Reich Minister for Occupied Territories, Alfred Rosenberg - it was impossible to approach him.

Since the fall of 1943, several attempts were organized on the life of E. Koch's permanent deputy and the head of the administration of the Reichskommissariat Paul Dargel:

• On September 20, Kuznetsov, by mistake, instead of Dargel, killed E. Koch's deputy for finance, Hans Gel and his secretary Winter;
• On September 30, he tried to kill Dargel with an anti-tank grenade. However, Dargel was seriously injured and lost both legs (Kuznetsov himself was wounded by a grenade fragment in his hand), but survived. After that, Dargel was taken to Berlin by plane.

After that, it was decided to organize the abduction (with the subsequent transfer to Moscow), who arrived in Rovno in the summer, the commander of the Ostengruppen formation, General Max Ilgen. The task of the latter was to develop a plan for the elimination of partisan formations. The abduction was organized in November 1943, but it was not possible to take him to Moscow - the partisan detachment moved away from the city to an unattainable distance; Ilgen was shot at one of the farmsteads near Rovno.

On November 16, 1943, Kuznetsov carried out his last liquidation in Rovno - the chief judge of the occupied Ukraine, Ober-Fuhrer Alfred Funk, was killed.

In January 1944, the commander of the "Winners" detachment, Medvedev, ordered Kuznetsov to follow the retreating German troops with the first stop in Lvov. Together with Kuznetsov, scouts Ivan Belov and Yan Kaminsky, who had numerous relatives and many acquaintances in Lvov, left. In Lvov, Kuznetsov commits a number of terrorist attacks - in particular, the Vice-Governor of Galicia Otto Bauer and the head of the Chancellery of the Governorate, Dr. Heinrich Schneider, were liquidated.

In addition, during his work in Ukraine, Kuznetsov managed to obtain some information about the preparation of the German offensive on the Kursk Bulge.

Doom

In the spring of 1944, many German patrols in the cities of Western Ukraine had orientation with a description of the chief lieutenant. Kuznetsov decides to leave the city, fight his way into the partisan detachment or go beyond the front line.

On March 9, 1944, as they approached the front line, Kuznetsov's group came across UPA fighters disguised as Soviet Army fighters. This happened in the village of Boryatino, Brody district. During the skirmish, Nikolai Kuznetsov and his companions were killed. The version of the self-detonation of Kuznetsov with a grenade was later officially disseminated by Soviet propaganda.

The possible burial of Kuznetsov's group was discovered on September 17, 1959 in the Kutyki tract thanks to the search work of his comrade Nikolai Strutinsky. Strutinsky achieved the reburial of the alleged remains of Kuznetsov in Lvov on the Hill of Glory on July 27, 1960.

Forensic identification and reconstruction of Kuznetsov's appearance from the skull were carried out by Gerasimov's staff (Surnina, Uspensky, Institute of Ethnography, USSR Academy of Sciences).

After death

In 1990-1991, a number of protests by members of the Ukrainian military underground against the perpetuation of Kuznetsov's memory appeared in the Lviv media in view of the fact that the occupation German authorities responded to the terrorist acts of Kuznetsov in Rivne with massive repressions against local residents. For the murder of Bauer, 2,000 residents of Rovno were executed, for the death of Gel, all the prisoners of the Rovno prison were shot.

Monuments to Kuznetsov in Lvov and Rivne were dismantled in 1992. In November 1992, with the assistance of Strutinsky, the Lviv monument was taken to Talitsa.

Vandals have repeatedly tried to desecrate the grave of Nikolai Kuznetsov. By 2007, activists of the initiative group in Yekaterinburg had done all the preparatory work necessary to move the remains of Kuznetsov to the Urals.

Awards

• By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of November 5, 1944, Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for exceptional courage and bravery in performing the assignments of the command. Also, this decree awarded the Gold Star of the Hero to the employees of the special forces of the ICGB of the USSR, operating behind enemy lines. Among them is the commander of the "Winners" Dmitry Nikolaevich Medvedev.
• He was awarded two Orders of Lenin (December 25, 1943, ...).

Memory

• About the exploits of N.I. Kuznetsov:
• books written:
• “It was near Rovno” (1948) by DN Medvedev (in the book Kuznetsov is shown as an underground hero, a brave partisan, but his relation to the NKVD organs is not mentioned).
• "The Man Who Didn't Know Fear" Branko Kitanovic
• feature films were shot:
• "The exploit of the scout" (the collective image of the scout operating on the territory of Ukraine is presented, the name and position of the protagonist - Major Fedotov)
• "Strong in spirit" in 2 episodes
• multi-part "Special Forces"
• documentary films were shot:
• "Genius of Intelligence" in 2 episodes
• staged the play "I'm Going to Action" (staged on the stage of the Sverdlovsk Drama Theater)
• Monuments were erected to Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov in the Urals and Ukraine:
• Monument in Rovno (bronze, granite, 1961, sculptors V.P. Vinaykin, I.P.Shapoval, architect V.G. Gnezdilov) (demolished).
• Monument in Lviv opposite Lvovenergo (demolished).
• The monument in Yekaterinburg was opened in 1985. It is a 16-meter bronze obelisk in the form of a scout figure, ready to rush into battle, over which a banner flutters.

• Monument in Tyumen near the building of the Agricultural University, the former Agricultural College. Delivered in 1967.
• Dozens of museums have been created (in 1992 the museums of Kuznetsov's glory in Rivne and Lviv were liquidated), 17 schools and over 100 pioneer squads bore his name. Another six hundred schools had stands dedicated to the memory of the hero.
• The Talitsk forestry technical school, where Kuznetsov studied, was named after him in 1980.
• In 1984, the young city of the Rivne region of Ukraine - Kuznetsovsk - was named after Kuznetsov.
• In Moscow, at 20, building 1, on Staraya Basmannaya street, where Kuznetsov lived until 1942, a memorial plaque was installed.
• In May 2005, a memorial plaque was installed in Yekaterinburg on the wall of the house where Kuznetsov lived from 1936 to 1937 (Lenin Avenue 52/1).
• Posthumously awarded the title of honorary resident of Kudymkar (since 1977). Also in Kudymkar a school is named after him.
• Posthumously awarded the title of honorary resident of Yekaterinburg (since February 1978)
• A minor planet is named in honor of Kuznetsov.

Illegal intelligence officer of the USSR No. 1
When specialists in the history of Soviet special services or retired agents are asked to name the most highly professional illegal intelligence officer, almost everyone calls them Nikolai Kuznetsov. Without in the least doubting their competence, let us ask ourselves the question: why such unanimity?

Who is an illegal scout

The recruited agent lives in a country familiar to him from childhood. His documents are authentic, he does not need to strain to recall certain moments of his biography. Another thing is an abandoned illegal scout. He lives in a country foreign to him, whose language is rarely native to him, everyone around him recognizes a stranger in him. Therefore, an illegal always pretends to be a foreigner. A stranger is forgiven a lot: he can speak with an accent, not know local customs, get confused in geography. A scout, thrown into Germany, impersonates a Baltic German, an agent working in Brazil, according to legend - a Hungarian, a scout, a Dane living in New York according to documents.
There is no greater danger for an illegal than to meet a "compatriot". The slightest inaccuracy can be fatal. Suspicion will be aroused by a pronunciation that does not correspond to the legend (as the natives of Lvov and Kharkov speak the same Ukrainian language completely differently), a mistake in gesture (Germans, when ordering three glasses of beer, usually throw out the middle, index and thumb), ignorance of the national subculture (during the Ardennes operations of 1944-1945, the Americans split Skorzeny's saboteurs with the question "Who is Tarzan?").
It is simply impossible to predict all the subtleties of the legend: no reference book will write that Gretel, one of the many university laboratory assistants, is a local celebrity, and it is simply impossible not to know her. Therefore, every extra hour spent in the company of a "fellow countryman" increases the risk of failure.

At home among strangers

Nikolai Kuznetsov, communicating with the Germans, pretended to be a German. From October 1942 to the spring of 1944, for almost 16 months, he was in Rovno, occupied by the Nazis, revolving in the same circle, constantly expanding the number of contacts. Kuznetsov did not just portray a German, he became one, forced himself to even think in German. The SD and the Gestapo became interested in Siebert only after there was evidence that the chief lieutenant was involved in a series of terrorist attacks carried out in Rovno and Lvov. But Paul Siebert, as a German, never aroused suspicion in anyone. Language proficiency, knowledge of German culture, customs, behavior - everything was impeccable.

And this is all despite the fact that Kuznetsov has never been to Germany and never even traveled outside the USSR. And he worked in occupied Rovno, where every German is in plain sight, where the SD and the Gestapo are working to liquidate the underground, and almost everyone is under suspicion. No other intelligence officer was able to hold out in such conditions for so long, to penetrate so deeply into the environment, to acquire such significant connections. That is why the "fighters of the invisible front" unanimously call Kuznetsov illegal intelligence officer # 1.

Where did he come from?

Yes, indeed, from where? For most, the biography of the famous intelligence officer begins with his appearance in Medvedev's detachment in October 1942. Up to this point, Kuznetsov's life is not just white spots, but a solid white field. But brilliant scouts do not appear out of nowhere, they are nurtured and prepared for a long time. Kuznetsov's path to the heights of professionalism was long and not always straightforward.
Nikolai Kuznetsov was born in the village of Zyryanka, Perm province in 1911 into a peasant family. There are no nobles or foreigners in his family tree. Where did the boy, who was born in the Permian countryside, get the talent of a linguist, is a mystery. The winds of the revolution threw Nina Avtokratova, who was educated in Switzerland, into the seven-year school in Talitsk. It was from her that Nikolai received his first lessons in German.
But this was not enough for the boy. His friends were the local Austrian pharmacist Krause and the forester - a former prisoner of the German army, from whom Kuznetsov picked up profanity, which is not found in any textbook of the German language. In the library of the Talitsky Forestry College, where he studied, Nikolai discovered the "Forestry Encyclopedia" in German and translated it into Russian.

Blows of fate

In 1929, Kuznetsov was accused of concealing his "White Guard-kulak origin." Now it is no longer possible to determine what kind of passions raged in the Talitsky technical school, what intrigues Kuznetsov was involved in (his father was neither a fist, nor a White Guard), but Nikolai was expelled from the technical school and from the Komsomol. The future intelligence officer remained with an incomplete secondary education for life.
In 1930, Nikolai got a job in the land administration. Recovered in the Komsomol. Having discovered that the authorities were engaged in theft, he announced this to the authorities. The robbers were given 5-8 years and 1 year for Kuznetsov - for the company, however, without imprisonment: the punishment was to supervise and withhold 15% of earnings (the Soviet government was harsh, but fair). Kuznetsov was expelled from the Komsomol again.

Freelance agent of the OGPU

On duty, Nikolai traveled through the remote villages of Komi, simultaneously mastered the local language, made many acquaintances. In June 1932, the detective Ovchinnikov drew attention to him, and Kuznetsov became a freelance agent for the OGPU.
Komi at the beginning of the 30s was a place of exile for kulaks. Ardent enemies of the Soviet Power and the unjustly repressed fled to the taiga, gathered in gangs, shot postmen, taxi drivers, village correspondents - everyone who at least represented the power. Kuznetsov himself was also attacked. There were uprisings. The OGPU needed local agents. The forest manager Kuznetsov was also involved in the creation of an agent network and keeping in touch with it. Soon, higher authorities drew attention to him. The talented security officer was taken to Sverdlovsk.

At Uralmash

Since 1935 Kuznetsov has been a pattern maker at the Uralmash design bureau. The plant employed many foreign specialists, most of them Germans. Not all foreigners who worked at the plant were friends of the USSR. Some of them defiantly expressed their sympathy for Hitler.
Among them, Kuznetsov moved around, made acquaintances, exchanged gramophone records and books. The duty of the "Colonist" agent was to identify hidden agents among foreign specialists, suppress attempts to recruit Soviet employees, and find among the Germans those who were ready to cooperate with Soviet intelligence.
Along the way, Nikolai improved his German, assimilated the habits and demeanor characteristic of the Germans. Kuznetsov mastered six dialects of the German language, learned from the first phrases to determine which places the interlocutor was from and immediately switched to his native German dialect, which simply delighted him. I learned Polish and Esperanto.
Repressions did not pass by Kuznetsov. In 1938 he was arrested and spent several months in prison, but his direct supervisor managed to recapture his ward.

"He must be taken to Moscow!"

In 1938, a major Leningrad party official Zhuravlev, who arrived with an inspection in Komi, was introduced to a particularly valuable agent by one of the employees of the NKVD apparatus: “Brave, resourceful, initiative. He is fluent in German, Polish, Esperanto, and the Komi language. Exceptionally effective. "
Zhuravlev talked with Kuznetsov for several minutes and immediately called the deputy of the NKVD GUGB Raikhman: "Leonid Fedorovich, there is a man here - a particularly gifted agent, he must be taken to Moscow." At that moment in Reichman's office there was a scout who had recently arrived from Germany; Raikhman handed him the phone: "Talk." After a few minutes of conversation in German, the scout asked: "Is this a call from Berlin?" Kuznetsov's fate was decided.

Illegal in home country

When the head of the secret-political department of the GUGB NKVD Fedotov saw the documents of Kuznetsov who had arrived to him, he grabbed his head: two convictions! Twice expelled from the Komsomol! Yes, such a questionnaire is a direct road to prison, and not to the NKVD! But he also appreciated the exceptional abilities of Kuznetsov and designed him as a "highly classified special agent", hiding his profile from personnel officers behind seven locks in his personal safe.
To save Kuznetsov, they abandoned the procedure for conferring a rank and issuing a certificate. The special agent was issued a Soviet passport in the name of Rudolf Wilhelmovich Schmidt, according to which the Chekist lived in Moscow. This is how the Soviet citizen Nikolai Kuznetsov was forced to hide in his native country.

Rudolf Schmidt

At the end of the 30s, German delegations of all kinds of coloring became frequent in the USSR: trade, cultural, socio-political, etc. The NKVD understood that ¾ of the composition of these delegations were intelligence officers. Even in the crews of the Lufthansa, there were not pretty stewardesses who flew, but brave stewards with a military bearing, changing every 2-3 flights. (This is how the Luftwaffe navigators studied the areas of future flights.)
In the circle of this motley public, the Soviet German Schmidt, “yearning for Fatherland,” revolved, quietly finding out which of the Germans was breathing what, with whom he was establishing contacts, whom he was recruiting. On his own initiative, Kuznetsov obtained the uniform of a senior lieutenant of the Red Army Air Force and began to pretend to be a test engineer of a closed Moscow plant. The perfect recruiting target! But the German agent, who often fell for Schmidt, himself became the object of recruitment and returned to Berlin as an agent of the NKVD.

Kuznetsov-Schmidt made friends with diplomats, was surrounded by the German naval attaché in the USSR. Friendship with frigatten-captain Norbert Baumbach ended with the opening of the latter's safe and photographing secret documents. Schmidt's frequent meetings with the German military attaché Ernst Kestring allowed the Chekists to establish a wiretap in the diplomat's apartment.

Self-taught

At the same time, Kuznetsov, who supplied the most valuable information, remained illegal. All proposals of the management to send such a valuable employee to any courses Fedotov nipped in the bud, carefully hiding the "Schmidt" questionnaire from prying eyes. Kuznetsov never took any courses. The basics of intelligence and conspiracy, recruitment, psychology, photography, driving, German language and culture - in all areas Kuznetsov was 100% self-taught.
Kuznetsov has never been a party member. The mere thought that Kuznetsov would have to tell his biography at the party bureau at the reception threw Fedotov into a cold sweat.

Scout Kuznetsov

With the beginning of the war, Kuznetsov was enrolled in the "Special group under the NKVD of the USSR" headed by Sudoplatov. Nicholas was sent to one of the camps for German prisoners of war near Moscow, where he spent several weeks, getting into the skin of the German chief lieutenant Paul Siebert. In the summer of 1942, Kuznetsov was sent to the detachment of Dmitry Medvedev. In the capital of the Reichskommissariat, the city of Rovno, within 16 months, Kuznetsov destroyed 11 top officials of the occupation administration.

But you shouldn't take his work exclusively as terrorist. The main task of Kuznetsov was to obtain intelligence. He was one of the first to report on the upcoming offensive of the Nazis on the Kursk Bulge, and determined the exact location of Hitler's headquarters "Werewolf" near Vinnitsa. One of the Abwehr officers, who owed Siebert a large sum of money, promised to pay him off with Persian carpets, which Kuznetsov reported to the center. In Moscow, the information was taken more than seriously: it was the first news of the preparation by the German special services of Operation Long Leap - the elimination of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill during the Tehran conference.

Death and posthumous glory

Kuznetsov could not "hold on" forever. The SD and the Gestapo were already looking for a terrorist in the form of a German chief lieutenant. An official of the Lviv headquarters of the air force, who was shot by him, managed to give the name of the gunman before his death: "Siebert". A real hunt began on Kuznetsov. The scout and two of his comrades left the city and began to make their way to the front line. March 9, 1944 Nikolai Kuznetsov, Ivan Belov and Yan Kaminsky in the village. Boratin ran into an UPA detachment and died in battle.

N. Kuznetsov was buried on the Hill of Glory in Lvov. In 1984, a young city in the Rivne region was named after him. Monuments were erected to Nikolai Kuznetsov in Rovno, Lvov, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Chelyabinsk. He became the first foreign intelligence officer to be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

And the last bitter

In June 1992, the Lviv authorities decided to dismantle the monument to the Soviet intelligence officer. On the day of the dismantling, the square was crowded. Many of those who came to the “closing” of the monument did not hide their tears.

Thanks to the efforts of Kuznetsov's comrade-in-arms, Nikolai Strutinsky, and former soldiers of Medvedev's detachment, the Lvov monument was transported to the city of Talitsa, where Kuznetsov lived and studied, and installed in the central square of the city.

Nikolai Kuznetsov (July 27, 1911, Zyryanka village, Yekaterinburg district, Perm province, now Talitsky district, Sverdlovsk region - March 9, 1944, near Brody, Lvov region) - Soviet intelligence officer, partisan.

Nikolai was born into a peasant family. In 1926 he graduated from a seven-year school, entered the agronomic department of the Tyumen Agricultural College. In 1927 he continued his studies at the Talitsky Forestry College, where he began to independently study the German language, discovering outstanding linguistic abilities, mastered Esperanto, Polish, Komi, and Ukrainian. From 1930 he worked as a forest manager, led a political literacy circle. In 1932 he became a secret agent of the state security, studied at the Ural Industrial Institute, continuing to improve in German (one of the teachers of German at N.I. Kuznetsov was OM Veselkina).

For the last three years, with a few exceptions, I have spent abroad, have traveled all over Europe, and have studied Germany especially hard.

Nikolay Kuznetsov

In the spring of 1938, Kuznetsov moved to Moscow and joined the NKVD, carrying out assignments in European countries. In 1942, he was sent to the Pobediteli special task force under the command of Colonel Dmitry Medvedev, and showed extraordinary courage and ingenuity.

Kuznetsov, under the name of the German officer Paul Siebert, conducted intelligence activities in the occupied city of Rivne, led a reconnaissance group, constantly communicated with officers of the Wehrmacht, special services, senior officials of the occupation authorities, transferring information to the partisan detachment. Kuznetsov managed to learn about the preparation of the German offensive on the Kursk Bulge, about the preparation of the assassination attempt on Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill in Tehran.

By order of the command, he liquidated the chief judge of Ukraine Funk, the imperial adviser to the Reichskommissariat of Ukraine Gell and his secretary Winter, the vice-governor of Galicia Bauer, kidnapped the commander of the punitive forces in Ukraine, General Ilgen, and committed sabotage. However, he failed to carry out his main task - the physical destruction of the Reichskommissar of Ukraine Erich Koch.

On September 30, 1943, Kuznetsov made a second attempt on the life of E. Koch's permanent deputy and the head of the administration of the Reichskommissariat Paul Dargel (during the first assassination attempt on September 20, he mistakenly killed E. Koch's deputy for finance, Hans Gel, instead of P. Dargel). As a result of the action, Dargel was seriously injured from an anti-tank grenade thrown by Kuznetsov and lost both legs. After that, P. Dargel was taken to Berlin by plane.

On March 9, 1944, Kuznetsov's group was captured by the UPA militants, who mistook the Soviet saboteurs for German deserters (they were wearing German uniforms). Fearing failure, Kuznetsov blew himself up with a grenade, and his companions (Belov and Kaminsky) were shot.

However, Ukrainian nationalists claim that Kuznetsov was captured by them and drowned in a well, and the version of Kuznetsov's self-detonation on a grenade was officially disseminated by the Soviet authorities.

The war for the liberation of our Motherland from the fascist scum demands sacrifices. Inevitably, we have to shed a lot of our blood so that our beloved homeland flourishes and develops and that our people live freely. To defeat the enemy, our people do not spare the most precious thing - their lives. Victims are inevitable. I also want to tell you frankly that there is very little chance that I will return alive. Almost one hundred percent for the fact that you have to go for self-sacrifice. And I quite calmly and consciously go for it, because I deeply realize that I give my life for a holy, just cause, for the present and flourishing future of our Motherland.

In the history of world intelligence, few can compare in the degree of damage inflicted to the enemy with a legendary man like the scout Nikolai Kuznetsov. His biography without any embellishment is a ready-made script for a spy film, next to which Bondiana looks dull and primitive. However, after the death of the hero, many books and articles appeared in which the authors' conjectures and their personal and not always objective view of who Nikolai Kuznetsov (intelligence officer) were were presented as reliable information.

Biography: childhood

At the beginning of 1944, Kuznetsov and his group operated on the territory of the Lviv district and eliminated several important officials.

Doom

Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov is a scout, all the circumstances of whose death have not yet been disclosed. It is known for certain that in the spring of 1944, German patrols in Western Ukraine already had orientations with its description. Upon learning of this, Kuznetsov decided to go beyond the front line.

Not far from the battle zone in the village of Boratin, Kuznetsov's group came across a detachment of UPA fighters. Bandera recognized the scouts, although they were in German uniform and decided to take them alive. The scout Nikolai Kuznetsov (see photo in the review) refused to surrender and was killed. There is also a version that he blew himself up with a grenade.

After death

On November 5, 1944, N.I. Kuznetsov was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for his courage and exceptional courage. His grave remained unknown for a long time. It was discovered in 1959 in the Kutyki tract. The remains of the hero of the reburial in Lviv, on the Hill of Glory.

Now you know the biography of the intelligence officer Nikolai Kuznetsov, who died heroically in the struggle for the liberation of Ukraine from the fascist invaders.

An ingenious scout, polyglot, conqueror of hearts and a great adventurer, he personally destroyed 11 Nazi generals, but was killed by UPA fighters.

Linguistic talent

A boy from the village of Zyryanka with four hundred inhabitants is fluent in German thanks to highly qualified teachers. Later, Kolya Kuznetsov picks up profanity when meeting a forester - a German, a former soldier of the Austrian-Hungarian army. Studying Esperanto on his own, he translated his beloved "Borodino" into it, and while studying at a technical school, he translated the German "Encyclopedia of Forest Science" into Russian, at the same time he perfectly mastered Polish, Ukrainian and Komi. The Spaniards, who served in the forests near Rovno in Medvedev's detachment, suddenly became worried, reported to the commander: "Fighter Grachev understands when we speak our native language." And this was Kuznetsov's understanding of a previously unfamiliar language. He mastered six dialects of German and, meeting somewhere at a table with their officer, instantly determined where he was from and switched to another dialect.

Pre-war years

After studying for a year at the Tyumen Agricultural College, Nikolai dropped out due to the death of his father and a year later continued his studies at the Talitsky Forestry College. Later he worked as an assistant to the taxator for the arrangement of local forests, where he reported on colleagues who were involved in postscripts. Twice he was expelled from the Komsomol - on charges of "White Guard-kulak origin" during his studies and for denouncing colleagues, but already with a conviction to a year of correctional labor. He was fired from Uralmashzavod for absenteeism. Kuznetsov's biography was not replete with facts that presented him as a trustworthy citizen, but his constant penchant for adventurism, his curiosity and overactiveness became ideal qualities for working as an intelligence officer. A young Siberian with the classic appearance of an "Aryan", who was fluent in German, was noticed by the local administration of the NKVD and in 1939 he was sent to the capital to study.

Matters of the heart

According to one of the leaders of Soviet intelligence, Nikolai Ivanovich was the lover of the majority of the Moscow ballet, moreover, "he shared some of them with German diplomats in the interests of the cause." Back in Kudymkar, Kuznetsov married a local nurse, Elena Chugaeva, but, leaving the Perm Territory, broke up with his wife three months after the marriage, and never filed for a divorce. Love with the socialite Ksana in the 1940s did not work out due to a wary attitude towards the Germans, because Nikolai was already part of the legend and introduced himself to the lady of the heart as Rudolf Schmidt. Despite the abundance of connections, this novel remained the most important in the hero's history - already in the partisan detachment, Kuznetsov asked Medvedev: "Here is the address, if I die, be sure to tell Ksane the truth about me." And Medvedev, already a Hero of the Soviet Union, found this very Ksana in the center of Moscow after the war, fulfilled Kuznetsov's will.

Kuznetsov and UPA

Over the past ten years, a number of articles have appeared in Ukraine seeking to discredit the famous intelligence officer. The essence of the charges against him is the same - he fought not with the Germans, but with the Ukrainian OUN rebels, members of the UPA and the like. Archival materials refute these claims. For example, the already mentioned submission to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union with a petition attached to it to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, signed by the head of the 4th Directorate of the NKGB, Pavel Sudoplatov. The justification for the awarding mentions the elimination of eight high-ranking German military officials by Kuznetsov, the organization of an illegal residency, and not a word about the fight against any kind of Ukrainian separatists. Of course, the Medvedevites, including Kuznetsov, had to fight the units of Ukrainian nationalists, but only as allies of the Nazi occupation regime and its special services. Outstanding intelligence officer Nikolai Kuznetsov was killed by the OUN troops.

Doom

German patrols were aware of the search for Gautmann in the regions of Western Ukraine. In March 1944, UPA fighters broke into the house of the village of Boratin, which served as a refuge for Kuznetsov and his associates - Ivan Belov and Yan Kaminsky. Belov was struck with a bayonet at the entrance. For some time, under guard, they were waiting for the commander of the rebels, centurion Montenegro. He recognized in the "German" the performer of high-profile terrorist acts against the Hitlerite bosses. And then Kuznetsov detonated a grenade in a room filled with UPA fighters. Kaminsky made an attempt to escape, but a bullet overtook him. The bodies were loaded onto the horse-drawn carriage of Golubovich's neighbor Spiridon Gromyak, taken out of the village and, having dug up the snow, laid the remains near the old stream, covered with brushwood.

Posthumous glory

A week after the tragic clash, the Germans who entered the village found the remains of a soldier in Wehrmacht uniform and reburied them. The local residents subsequently showed the place of reburial to the employees of the Lviv KGB M. Rubtsov and Dziuba. Strutinsky achieved the reburial of the alleged remains of Kuznetsov in Lvov on the Hill of Glory on July 27, 1960. The memory of one of the heroes of the war, which shook the whole world and brought liberation from the brown fascist plague that flooded Europe with a dirty stream, will remain in the milestones of history. Nikolai Kuznetsov was right when one day, discussing the affairs of the people's avengers at the partisan fire, he said: “If after the war we talk about what we did and how, they will hardly believe it. Yes, I myself, perhaps, would not have believed it, if I had not been a participant in these cases. "

Movie hero

Many believe that the famous film "The Exploit of the Intelligencer" directed by Boris Barnett tells about the fate of Nikolai Kuznetsov. In fact, the idea for the film originated even before the hero began to work under the name of Rudolf Schmidt. The script of the film was repeatedly modified, some facts really were the narration of the events of his service, for example, the episode with the abduction of Kühn was written after a similar abduction by Kuznetsov of General Ilgen. And yet, most of the plots of the picture were based on the collective image of the heroes of the war; the facts from the biographies of other scouts were reflected in the film. Subsequently, two feature films directly about Nikolai Kuznetsov were staged at the Sverdlovsk Film Studio: "Strong in Spirit" (in 1967) and "Special Forces" (in 1987), but they did not acquire such popularity as "The Exploit of the Scout" ...