Ya.G. blumkin

Recipes 21.04.2022

Recipes

The meaning is clear: every revolution lights new stars in the sky. They burn brightly, but they usually burn out quickly. And the "loving" revolution immediately finds a new favorite in the crowd. Approximately the same thought was expressed by Danton on the scaffold: "The revolution devours its children." One of these "lovers" of the revolution was Yakov Blyumkin: the murderer of the German ambassador Mirbach, a Left Social Revolutionary and Bolshevik, a scout and punisher, a friend of Yesenin and Mayakovsky.

And even, it seems, the prototype of Stirlitz.

It is easy to write about him (the biography is fantastic) and very difficult, since most of the archives on Blumkin are still closed, and open publications contain many unconfirmed details. Therefore, much of what you read below is true only "in general". He was supposedly born in Odessa in 1900, shot, that’s for sure, according to the decision of the OGPU Collegium of November 3, 1929. Rehabilitated posthumously. The name seems to be Yakov Grigorievich Blyumkin (Simkha-Yankev Gershevich). My father seemed to be a clerk in a grocery store. Well, and so on. You can substitute all these numerous "seemingly" further yourself. And you don't seem to be wrong.

In his youth, he only graduated from the Jewish Theological School. But he was engaged in self-education - in his autobiography, written for the GPU after his arrest, he says that he read "drunkenly". Judging by the abundance of oriental languages learned by Blumkin later, he was a very capable person. He added Turkish, Arabic, Chinese and Mongolian to Yiddish and Hebrew, and he mastered them at a level that allowed him to portray a Mongolian lama, an Indian dervish, and a Palestinian.

In his youth, he wrote poems that were published in Odessa newspapers. Later, this helped him enter the circle of famous poets. One of the variants of the "Imagist Manifesto" was signed together by Yesenin and Blumkin. Conducted disputes between poets.

Once, when the police tried to intervene in a heated and noisy argument, Yakov simply told them: "I am Blumkin."

This turned out to be enough. True, at that time he was already famous as the murderer of Mirbach, a Chekist and a person close to Trotsky. Even Nikolai Gumilyov, later a victim of the Bolsheviks, wrote in the poem "My Readers": "The man who shot the imperial ambassador among the crowd of people came up to shake my hand and thank me for my poems." I do not know a single poem by Blumkin himself, but apparently he was not a graphomaniac. Otherwise, later, when they tried to accuse Blumkin of killing Sergei Yesenin (there was such a thing), there would not have been a suspicion that he wrote and threw in the famous dying lines: "Goodbye, my friend, goodbye."

While still very young, he was in the Jewish self-defense units that opposed the Black Hundreds in Odessa, and became a Socialist-Revolutionary. Together with Mishka Yaponchik, Babel's prototype of Benny Krik, he participated in the formation of the Volunteer "Iron Detachment".

Fame came in 1918. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries also worked in the Cheka at that time: after October, the Bolsheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, constantly in conflict, nevertheless cooperated. Blumkin was one of the KGB Socialist-Revolutionaries (at the age of 18 he headed the department for combating international espionage).

The murder of the German ambassador, according to the plan of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, was to disrupt the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and serve as a signal for an uprising against the Bolsheviks.

However, the Germans did not go to break with the Soviet regime. And the uprising, which some researchers call the "third" or "fourth revolution" (taking into account 1905), failed. Blumkin, in various versions of the circumstances of the terrorist attack, looks either desperately bold or comedic. Some even claimed that while running away, he received a bullet in the ass, and throwing himself out of the window, hung on the fence. In fact, he was wounded in the leg, there was enough turmoil, but there is nothing comedic in that terrorist act.

The wounded man took refuge in the headquarters of the Cheka, commanded by the Socialist-Revolutionary Popov, and they came to arrest him there. By the way, the relationship between the FED and Blumkin is also painted in very different colors. Some people believe that Blumkin was a favorite of "". Perhaps because Blumkin later became a brilliant scout. But immediately after the murder of Mirbach, which was carried out with the help of a certificate with a fake signature of Dzerzhinsky (during the investigation, he was even removed from business), the "knight of the revolution", I believe, did not feel the slightest sympathy for Blumkin. The Socialist-Revolutionaries cut the hero's hair, shaved it, and hid him in the hospital under a false name. The Chekists found him, set up guards, but he escaped anyway.

There is a version that the Bolsheviks were also involved in that terrorist attack, and therefore they were allowed to escape.

In my opinion, the version is not very convincing. In any case, this could not have been an initiative from above. Consent to the Brest-Litovsk peace was achieved as a result of the hardest inner-party struggle. And he did not have the slightest reason to disrupt the much-needed peace with the Germans at that time.

It is known that in Ukraine Blyumkin tried to eliminate Hetman Skoropadsky, but the explosive device did not work. Later, Denikin also hatched plans, but failed to repeat the "German success". They also hunted him: former comrades of the Socialist-Revolutionaries suspected of treason. Survived three assassination attempts. Once, when he, seriously wounded, was again in a hospital bed, a bomb was thrown through the window, they wanted to finish him off. However, this man was amazingly lucky. He ran again. Then he was captured by the Petliurists, tortured brutally and, considering him dead, they threw him naked on the railway tracks. Survived. He came to the Bolsheviks, repented of the murder of Mirbach. The Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced him to death, but (it seems that) the death penalty was replaced with "expiation in the battles to defend the revolution."

Bathed diligently. As a brigade commander, he fought on the Southern Front. Participated in a raid on the Persian port of Anzali - this is the first major special operation of Soviet Russia in the international arena. The Whites managed to withdraw a considerable part of the Caspian fleet there. As a result, 23 ships were returned. In Mongolia, commanding the 61st brigade, he defeated parts of Baron Ungern. He was the boss, he traveled with him on the train along the fronts. The revolution also made him a punisher: he suppressed the uprising of the peasants of the Lower Volga region, the Veshensky uprising on the Don, the uprising in Georgia, shot captured white officers in the Crimea. As a result, he achieved complete confidence and became a Bolshevik.

In 1920-1921, Blyumkin attended the courses of the Military Academy of the Red Army, where scouts were also trained. Specialization - East. True, studies were constantly interrupted by missions abroad through the INO (foreign department) of the Cheka, which was created just then, in 1920. He has many brilliant operations to his credit. Among them is a mission to Persia, where he participated in the overthrow of Kuchek Khan, and after the coup became a member of the Central Committee of the Iranian Communist Party. He was a resident in Palestine, where he was in contact with Leopold Trepper, the future head of the intelligence network in Nazi Germany, known as the "Red Chapel". He worked in Mongolia, Afghanistan, India and China. And from Constantinople he supervised all the work of Soviet intelligence in the Middle East. He also carried out assignments under the roof of the Comintern.

There are many stories, although of dubious authenticity, about how Blumkin, under the guise of a Mongolian lama, participated in Roerich's expedition to Western China and Tibet.

Allegedly tried to overthrow the Dalai Lama. Afghanistan, India, Persia, Palestine and China - all these were British sore points at that time, which the Bolsheviks tried to put pressure on, seeking concessions from London. The Celestial Tibet could also appear in this scenario. There is another version that Blumkin was looking for the mythical Shambhala there, but the Kremlin atheists, and even in those days, were, I think, still not up to it.

In the autumn of 1921, he was investigating embezzlement in Gokhran. I went to Revel under the pseudonym Isaev. It is believed that Yulian Semyonov used this very episode in his book Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Blumkin's other pseudonyms also hint at a connection with Stirlitz: Max and Vladimirov. Still, Stirlitz is with Semyonov - both Maxim Maksimovich Isaev and Vsevolod Vladimirovich Vladimirov. However, this is from the category of "seemingly".

The fact that Blumkin was a great adventurer, and that there is a lot of blood on his hands, is undeniable. But ... I don’t know who this undeniably talented person could have become if Ms. Revolution had not started making eyes at him. It was she who fashioned from her "lover" what he became. The revolution catastrophically and ruthlessly breaks the fate of millions of people. He breaks subtly, managing to turn even romance into an executioner.

In addition, Blumkin was not just a fan, which, by the way, is not surprising, this personality, like a magnet, repelled some and attracted others. In Blumkin's testimony - and he was arrested just for contacts with Constantinople - it is clearly seen how he rushes between loyalty to party discipline and the fact that he does not like much in the settings of that Stalinist time. He tried with all his might to be loyal to the CPSU (b), and not to betray Trotsky.

From the testimony of Blumkin, where he talks about his disputes (shortly before his arrest) with Mayakovsky: “During this sparring ... Mayakovsky threw me the phrase: “Don’t bully. I remember, Blyumochka, when you were a secretary," hinting that I worked for Trotsky. The following replied: "I was not a secretary, but was employed for especially important assignments with a man whom Koltsov (a well-known Soviet journalist) sitting here called one of the most analytical and sharpest minds of the October Revolution" and "that I hope that he will still be with us, and that we will still be together."

Because of these internal throwing and got caught. It was unbearably difficult for a person who knew how to be "one's own among strangers" to be "a stranger among one's own."

I went to Radek for advice, although I should have understood what kind of person he was. The cowardly and quirky Radek, of course, was terribly frightened. And there is a version that it was he who handed over Blumkin. Maybe.

Formally, the "troikas of the NKVD" appeared in 1937. However, Blyumkin was judged by the “troika” already in 1929. It was probably a "pilot project". The case was considered by Menzhinsky, Yagoda and Blumkin's direct supervisor at INO Trilisser. Trilisser was against the death penalty, others were for it. Versions of the shooting are different. Someone insists that Yakov Blumkin sang the "Internationale", others that he shouted: "Long live Trotsky!"

But there is another option, he himself commanded: "After the revolution - fire!"

Since Blumkin was only one of the "lovers" of the revolution, she, of course, survived this execution and continued on her way, only now arm in arm with other favorites. They will be shot a little later during the years of the Great Terror.

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A possible prototype of Stirlitz-Isaev was Yakov Blumkin.

Currently, the Russia TV channel is broadcasting a series about a young Chekist Vsevolod Vladimirov, who works under the pseudonym Maxim Maksimovich Isaev. This is the same Isaev, who later, under the guise of the German aristocrat Max Otto von Stirlitz, robbed in Shanghai, will come to an appointment with the German consul in Sydney, after which we will know him under this name. Since the release of the film "Seventeen Moments of Spring", we consider the image of Stirlitz to be collective. However, many facts from the early biography of Stirlitz described by Yulian Semenov have clear parallels with the biography of another prominent Chekist, Yakov Grigorievich Blumkin. And although the real Blumkin was shot in 1929, the writer extended his life on the pages of his novels.

Let's start with the date of birth. From the books of Yulian Semenov it follows that Stirlitz was born on October 8, 1900. The same date of birth was indicated by Yakov Blyumkin in his application form when he entered the Cheka. True, the Jewish Encyclopedia claims that Blumkin was born not in 1900, but in 1898. But, firstly, it doesn’t matter if he is 17 or 19, and secondly, in 1927, when Vladimirov, aka Isaev, became With Stirlitz, he could reduce himself a couple of years. He could also reduce them when he entered the Cheka.

The times were such that the age of 17 did not prevent Blumkin from becoming the head of the German department. Blumkin knew the German language perfectly. He knew it not only because German was similar to his native Yiddish. The fact is that before the First World War his family lived in Lemberg - this is how the current Lvov was called in Austria-Hungary. In this city, Yakov attended a German gymnasium, and communicated with fellow Austrians in their native German, as a result of which Blumkin spoke German without an accent. But then the First World War began, and on September 3, 1914, Lviv was taken by Russian troops during the Galician operation. A day later, the office of Count Georgy Alekseevich Bobrinsky, who was appointed Military Governor-General of the newly formed Galician Governor-General, began its work in the city. Blumkin's father Herschel Blumkind, who had previously been a minor official in the Austro-Hungarian service, remained in his place in the city office and began to be called Grigory Isaevich Blumkin. However, in the summer of 1915, the Austro-German counter-offensive began, and on July 14 Lvov was abandoned by Russian troops. Grigory Isaevich, together with his family, was evacuated to the town of Sosnitsa near Chernigov. From there he soon moved to Odessa.

After the February Revolution, Sister Rosa and older brothers Lev and Isai plunged headlong into the revolutionary movement. Not far behind them and 16-year-old Yakov.

In November 1917, he joined a detachment of sailors, participated in battles with units of the Ukrainian Central Rada, and in early 1918, together with Moses Vinnitsky ("Mishka Yaponchik"), he participated in the expropriation of the State Bank's valuables.

In May 1918 Blumkin moved from Odessa to Moscow. The leadership of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party sent Blumkin to the Cheka as head of the department for combating international espionage. From June 1918, Blumkin was the head of the counterintelligence department for monitoring the security of embassies and their possible criminal activities.

Soon Blumkin becomes a key figure in the assassination of the German ambassador to Soviet Russia, Count Mirbach. By the way, many noted the ability of Blumkin to change his age literally before his eyes. By changing facial expressions, he became either older or younger. In addition, at the age of 17, he already had a rather thick beard, and according to the descriptions of witnesses to the assassination attempt on Count Mirbach, the German ambassador was shot not by a 17-year-old youth, but by a 30-year-old man. True, again, Blumkin could not have been a participant in the assassination attempt at all, but to call himself such in order to shield a comrade from the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party.

This comrade, most likely, was Sergei Dmitrievich Maslovsky, a former colonel of the General Staff and a future Soviet writer, whom we know under the pseudonym Mstislavsky. After the assassination of Mirbakh, Maslovsky-Mstislavsky left the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party and entered the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Borotbists.

Blumkin knew that nothing would happen to him, Trotsky's favorite. This is how it actually happened. For the murder of Mirbach, Blumkin was sentenced by a military tribunal to death. But Trotsky made sure that the death penalty was replaced with "expiation for the battles to defend the revolution." Together with Maslovsky, Blumkin went to the Ukraine occupied by the Germans, where he became one of the organizers of the anti-German underground. When a revolution took place in Germany, and German troops left Ukraine, Blumkin returned to Moscow and served throughout the Civil War in Trotsky's headquarters. Then Trotsky sent him to study at the academy, but soon Yakov was again transferred to the bodies of the Cheka.

Further along Yulian Semenov, the future Stirlitz, under the guise of a White Guard captain, penetrates the headquarters of the ruler of Mongolia, Baron Ungern, and transfers the military-strategic plans of the enemy to his command. This fact is also found in the biography of Yakov Blumkin.

Natural Jewish ingenuity and the ability to understand precious stones, acquired by him during the Odessa expropriations, allowed Blumkin in the fall of 1921 to quickly unwind the case with theft in Gokhran. In October 1921, Blumkin, using the pseudonym Isaev (taken by his grandfather's name), goes under the guise of a jeweler to Revel (Tallinn) and Riga, where, acting as a provocateur, he reveals the foreign connections of Gokhran employees. It was this episode in the activities of Blumkin that was put by Yulian Semenov as the basis for the plot of the book “Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. Almost everything in this case is documented by Yulian Semenov. And Shelekhes, and Pozhamchi, and Prokhorov are real people. Only their middle names are changed in the film. 64 people were involved in the case, 19 of whom were sentenced to death, 35 to various terms of imprisonment, and 10 were acquitted. The main defendants were jewelers-appraisers Yakov Savelyevich Shelekhes, Nikolai Kuzmich Pozhamchi and another well-known appraiser Mikhail Isaakovich Aleksandrov. The prototype of Count Vorontsov was none other than Vasily Vitalievich Shulgin. True, he lived then, not in Reval, but in Riga.

Vasily Vitelyevich died in 1976, two years before his centenary. After his release from prison, he was friends with my grandfather, whom he knew from the white movement, and therefore I was still able to catch him alive. He really secretly visited the Soviet Union, but it is true that Gokhran did not rob at the same time.

However, in the book, at the behest of the time when it was published, the Russian intellectual Seva Vladimirov acts instead of the resourceful Yasha Blumkin. But the old security officers who advised the writer knew that during the Ukrainian stage of his activity, Blumkin worked under the pseudonym "Vladimirov".

In the autumn of 1923, at the suggestion, he was introduced to the Comintern for secret work. On the instructions of the Chairman of the Comintern, Grigory Zinoviev, in connection with the brewing revolution in Germany, Blumkin was sent there to instruct and supply German revolutionaries with weapons.

An important stage in the activities of the future Stirlitz was his residence in Shanghai. Blumkin has been there too, but mostly on short visits. Blumkin’s main place of residence was Mongolia, from which he visited China, but after the flight from the country of the head of the Eastern Sector of the INO Georgy Agabekov, who after his flight declassified information about Blumkin’s activities in Mongolia and China, Blumkin was recalled from there to Moscow and sent to Constantinople. From there, Blumkin oversees the entire Middle East. Blumkin also makes a trip to Palestine. There he is. working either under the guise of a devout laundry owner Gurfinkel, or under the guise of an Azerbaijani Jewish merchant Sultanov, he was engaged in the creation of a resident network. Soon he managed to recruit the Viennese antiquarian Jakob Ehrlich, and with his help he set up a residency, secretly under the Bookshop. In Palestine, Blumkin met Leopold Trepper, the future head of the anti-fascist organization and Soviet intelligence network in Nazi Germany, known as the Red Chapel.

In the end, the British, who then owned Palestine, expelled Blumkin from their mandated territory.

Blumkin returned to Moscow, but here the “trusted comrade” was suddenly accused of having connections with Trotsky, who then lived in Constantinople, subordinated to Blumkin. Having learned from his boss Trilisser that his mistress Lisa Rosenzweig had denounced him, Blumkin tries to escape. The chase ends with shooting and arrest. According to some sources, Blumkin was shot on November 3, 1929, according to others - on December 12. On the third, they shot him only for fun, again giving him the opportunity to work for the benefit of the Comintern as an illegal intelligence officer. Most likely, the whole story with the execution was invented precisely in order to explain to colleagues where such a prominent figure disappeared. It is possible that after his execution, Blumkin really worked illegally in Germany, and after the war he dug himself somewhere in Spain or Argentina.

Among world adventurers Yakov blumkin stands a little lower than Napoleon and a little higher than Dzhokhar Dudayev. His biography is full of contrasts: he signed death warrants, killed people - and was friends with Mayakovsky and Yesenin.

The father of Soviet espionage, who enveloped almost all the countries of the Middle and Far East with an intelligence network, he got burned while recruiting a girl in love with him. Today he would be Dmitry Yakubovsky: by the way, he also traded in ancient manuscripts and relics. Yes, and outwardly he looked like "General Dima" - broad-shouldered, full, lipped, self-confident.

Blood and love of Yakov Blumkin

Yasha Blumkina killed many times. Once he was sentenced to death by the Left SRs - for apostasy. He was sitting in a summer cafe on Khreshchatyk when two men approached him and began to shoot point-blank. Music rang out in the garden, so that no one heard the shots. blumkin overturned with the chair.

Unconscious, he was taken to the hospital. The Socialist-Revolutionaries learned that the traitor was alive, and decided to finish what they had begun: they threw a grenade into the hospital window. blumkin , however, by that time he had come to his senses so much that he managed to jump out of the same window a second before the explosion.

Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, former party comrades, blumkin nevertheless continued to be afraid. Already in Moscow, every time, going home from his favorite "Cafe of Poets", he begged his friends not to leave him alone - Yesenin, Mariengof, Kusikov and Shershenevich followed him in turn.

Once, when they were already approaching the house, a cry was heard: "Stop!" blumkin rushed to his heels, the poets behind him. Shots rang out. The bullets pierced the hat in two places Blumkin , after which he thought it best to stop. It turned out that it was not the Socialist-Revolutionaries who fired at them, but agents from the Lubyanka: the Cheka was catching the bandits. blumkin he immediately grew bolder and began to assure that if he opened fire back, the Chekists would not have survived: he shot amazingly.

Since then, he has been killed six more times: twice with bladed weapons, four times with a Browning gun and a revolver. He was kept by some secret force, until he failed again. fighting friend.

Zarubina.

Zarubina

He was generally indifferent to women. Serious passions raged in his life, and fighting girlfriends came across downright fatal. The Left Socialist-Revolutionary massacre, for example, was inspired by the Socialist-Revolutionary militant Lida Sorokina, a black-browed beauty with whom he had a crazy love in 1918.

In 1929 Blumkin betrayed to the Chekists by his ardent lover Liza Gorskaya. She was just about to be expelled from the party, and she, hoping to retain her membership in the CPSU (b), snitched on her dear Trotskyist friend.

However, here, too, animal intuition did not fail at first. Blumkin : on the night when the Chekist ambush was waiting for him in the apartment, he stayed with an old friend - a poet Sergei Gorodetsky . It did not help: the next day they took him anyway and soon shot him. For connection with Trotsky, whom Blumkin idolized.

Not being a complete Bolshevik, he remained a fanatic of terror and adventurism. A priceless shot of the hottest years of the revolution, blumkin was to be destroyed at the first sign of its petrification. And he was eliminated on the very eve of the thirties thirty-one years old, having lived a life of adventures and changes in which would be enough for ten.

Thick and thin

His appearance has been described by many, and always in different ways. “An incredibly thin, courageous face was framed by a thick black beard, dark eyes were firm and unshakable,” wrote Trotskyist Victor Serge, who was later arrested by the Chekists and released only at the request of Romain Rolland.

Over time, an incredibly thin face was transformed into a rather round one, and the poetess Irina Odoevtseva already remembered him as a big-faced Chekist, rage and red (however, he changed his hair color more than once).

Another contemporary depicts Blumkin broad-shouldered, rather well-fed, plump-lipped, black-haired. Poet Mariengof mentions "fat-faced" Blumkin and besides, he adds that his plump lips were always wet, and when he was very excited, he splashed everyone around him with saliva.

In the photographs you can’t make out whether he is fat or thin: his cheeks are hidden by a beard. But the aforementioned Victor Serge recalls Blumkin at the Academy of the General Staff: "His stern face was clean-shaven, his arrogant profile was reminiscent of a Hebrew warrior."

The "Hebrew warrior" was fond of his own image, recited Firdousi's poems aloud ... In a word, Blumkin was many-sided.

The godfather of counterintelligence began with the assassination of the ambassador

The most mysterious terrorist of the twentieth century was born in 1898 in the town of Sosnitsa, Chernihiv province, in the family of a clerk. He studied the Talmud, studied at an electrical workshop, worked as a messenger in various shops and offices... powerful organization.

The Socialist-Revolutionaries sent a neophyte to preach in Simbirsk, the birthplace of Lenin, where he, then nineteen years old, was elected a member of the Simbirsk Council of Peasant Deputies (although the peasants blumkin had nothing to do with it).

After the October Revolution blumkin entered the 1st Odessa Volunteer Iron Detachment, which formed the core of the Third Soviet Ukrainian Army, as a private. The detachment fought on the Romanian front, just where the independent Transnistria is now rampant. blumkin quite quickly rose to the position of assistant chief of staff of the army, and in April 18, when the army ordered to live long, he appeared in Moscow.

He was immediately accepted into the guard of the Central Committee of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party. On June 18, on the recommendation of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary, barely twenty years old blumkin was admitted to the Cheka as head of the department for combating international espionage.

He became the godfather of the Soviet counterintelligence

The most striking episode of his biography is the murder Mirbach 0 July 6, 1918. The German ambassador was sentenced to death by the Central Committee of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party. The Socialist-Revolutionaries hoped that after that Germany would break off diplomatic relations with Russia and die in the struggle against the Workers' and Peasants' Republic, undermined from within by a civil war with its own communists.

Peace with the Germans seemed to the Socialist-Revolutionaries an impermissible conformity and, in general, a retreat from the principles of the world revolution (which Lenin publicly called in March 18 "a beautiful fairy tale").

Refutation : This material refers to the participation of the famous adventurer Y. Blyumkin in the Central Asian expedition (1925-1928) of the outstanding artist, philosopher, public figure N.K. Roerich. The information is probably taken from the opuses of the scandalous journalist Oleg Shishkin. In fact, the works of O. Shishkin are not true and are slander, which was confirmed by the court session, first in the Tverskoy Intermunicipal District Court of the Central Administrative District of Moscow, and then in the Moscow City Court. Editorial Today (in which the first publications of Oleg Shishkin appeared) 1.5 million rubles were recovered for insults inflicted on the International Center of the Roerichs and its vice-president L.V. Shaposhnikova.

Sincerely,

Skorodumov Sergey Vladimirovich, Chief Specialist of the Environmental Protection Committee of the Administration of the Yaroslavl Region

Yakov Blyumkin Stalin's personal enemy

And even, it seems, the prototype of Stirlitz.

Once, when the police tried to intervene in a heated and noisy argument, Yakov simply told them: "I am Blumkin."

The murder of the German ambassador, according to the plan of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, was to disrupt the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and serve as a signal for an uprising against the Bolsheviks.

There is a version that the Bolsheviks were also involved in that terrorist attack, and therefore they were allowed to escape.

There are many stories, although of dubious authenticity, about how Blumkin, under the guise of a Mongolian lama, participated in Roerich's expedition to Western China and Tibet.

Because of these internal throwing and got caught. It was unbearably difficult for a person who knew how to be "one's own among strangers" to be "a stranger among one's own."

But there is another option, he himself commanded: "After the revolution - fire!"

The biography of Yakov Blumkin is still one of the most mysterious in the history of Soviet intelligence. His life is replete with legends, myths and coincidences, often contradicting each other. Blumkin went down in history as a participant in the assassination of the German ambassador Wilhelm von Mirbach in 1918. This act of terrorism served as a signal for the "Left SR" uprising. However, the Left SR Blumkin after the "action" was not only not shot or arrested, but continued to work in the Cheka for a long time.

A terrorist from the Cheka and a fierce enemy of Stalin

Self-defense and expropriations

"Misunderstandings" in the biography of Yakov Blumkin begin with the very date of his birth and the place of this very birth. According to one version, he was born in 1900 in Odessa in a proletarian Jewish family. Blumkin reported this in his questionnaire when he entered the Cheka in 1918. According to the second version, Jacob was born in 1898 in Lemberg (now Lvov) in the family of an employee of the city government. At that time, Lemberg was part of Austria-Hungary, and many Germans lived there. The second version seems to be the most probable, because many sources noted that Blumkin knew the German spoken language perfectly.
But we cannot fail to mention a coincidence that will later allow historians and researchers to consider Yakov Blumkin the prototype of Max Otto von Stirlitz. The fact is that in his questionnaire, Blumkin wrote that he was born on October 8, 1900. And it was this date that was the birthday of intelligence officer Vsevolod Vladimirov (pseudonym Maxim Maksimovich Isaev) from the novels of Yulian Semenov.
Yakov Blumkin's father, Herschel Blumkind, served in the city council of Lemberg. After September 3, 1914, when the city was taken by Russian troops, Herschel quickly converted to Orthodoxy, transformed into Grigory Blumkin and got a job in the city office. In July 1915, the Austro-German counteroffensive began, and the Russians left Lvov. Together with them, Grigory Blumkin and his family left the city. They move to Odessa.
Yakov's two older brothers, Leo and Isai, worked for Odessa newspapers. Another brother, Nathan, under the pseudonym Bazilevsky became a famous playwright. Political views in the family were different. Sister Rosa was a member of the RSDLP, Lev was an anarchist, and Yakov joined the Social Revolutionary Party (SRs) in 1917. It was then that Yakov Blumkin took up arms for the first time. He went to the self-defense units, which prevented Jewish pogroms. There Blumkin met Moisei Vinnitsa, better known as Mishka-Japonchik. A little later, Vinnitsa will become the real king of the criminal world of Odessa. Together with Vinnitsa, Blyumkin participated in the robbery of the State Bank of Odessa in January 1918. According to some reports, accomplices pocketed some of the "expropriated" funds, although most of the money was indeed transferred to the Bolsheviks and Social Revolutionaries, who at that time acted as a united front at the head of the new government in Russia.

Brest peace and split in power

In May 1918, Yakov Blumkin leaves Odessa and soon resurfaces in Moscow. Recall that the October Revolution, as a result of which the Bolsheviks gained power in Russia, could not have taken place without the support of the left wing of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. By agreement with the Bolsheviks, the Social Revolutionaries got the opportunity to promote their party members to a variety of positions, even to the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom). In the Cheka in 1918, the Social Revolutionaries accounted for almost 40% of the personnel. Yakov Blyumkin was sent to the Cheka. Since he knew German, he began to work in the "German" department.
After the October Revolution, Lenin began to insist on ending the war with Germany and disbanding the tsarist army. In which he saw a threat to the new government. But the Germans rolled out such conditions that even among the Bolsheviks, not to mention the Social Revolutionaries, serious disagreements arose. Members of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) Dzerzhinsky, Bukharin, Uritsky, Ioffe, Radek, Krylenko insisted on continuing the war. Another group, headed by Lenin and supported by Stalin, Zinoviev, Sverdlov, insisted on accepting any conditions for ending the war. Leon Trotsky took a neutral position, proclaiming the slogan: "No peace, no war." At that time, Lenin wrote: “A revolutionary war needs an army, but we don’t have an army ... Undoubtedly, the peace that we are forced to conclude now is an obscene peace, but if a war breaks out, our government will be swept away and peace will be concluded by another government” .
Germany demanded to leave behind all the territories it had occupied (at that time the Germans occupied Finland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus, occupied Pskov and some central and southern regions of Russia, a total of about 780 thousand square kilometers with a population of 56 million, this is a third of all subjects of the Russian Empire). The Germans also demanded a monstrous indemnity for those times of 6 billion marks and 500 million rubles. And only gold. Few people know that the Bolsheviks sent two echelons of gold to the Germans with a total weight of about 94 tons.
The conclusion of the Brest Peace became the main reason for the split between the Bolsheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Who claimed that the Bolsheviks were acting in the interests of the Germans. This is how it all happened: after the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Germany and Austria-Hungary were indeed able to withdraw military units from the Eastern Front and transfer them to the West. And almost turned the tide of the war. However, the United States stepped in. America entered the war in 1917. For almost a year, it did not take active actions in the war, limiting itself to the supply of weapons and food to France and England. But in 1918, the Americans decided to take more radical action. Several American divisions were transferred to Europe and Africa. The fate of the Quadruple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria) was decided. Six months later, Germany was forced to drink the same "drink" that Russia had drunk before. The Germans were forced to sign an even more shameful (than Brest for Russia) Treaty of Versailles.
But all this was a little later. And in the spring of 1918, when the shameful Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was concluded, the first split occurred in the revolutionary forces of Russia, which took over the leadership of the country. Trotsky, in accordance with the decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), began to actively create a new, revolutionary, Red Army. And the ideological opponents of the Bolsheviks, including the Social Revolutionaries, seriously believed that the army was a power tool of the imperialist regimes. People's power does not need such an instrument, and the defense of the revolution will be carried out by the armed masses. Now these arguments seem naive, but in those days, many held precisely these views.
Germany was in a hurry to consolidate the treaty with the Russians. It even recognized the Soviet Republic and established diplomatic relations with it. A personal friend of the Kaiser, Wilhelm von Mirbach, came to Moscow as an ambassador. He came to control the new government in Russia, but it turned out - for death.
The main version of the reason for the murder of Ambassador Mirbach is as follows: the “Left Socialist-Revolutionaries”, who do not agree with the shameful Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, sought to violate this very agreement, even by killing a diplomat.
But at the same time, some evidence suggests that Dzerzhinsky was aware of the preparations for the assassination of the ambassador. On the one hand, I recall his opposition to the Brest peace, and on the other hand, I somehow don’t really believe that the “iron Felix” did not know what was going on in the department he headed. After all, all the preparations for the murder were carried out precisely in the Cheka. And why did Dzerzhinsky not prevent the Socialist-Revolutionaries from preparing a terrorist attack? Maybe because he himself was against the Brest Agreement?

Mirbach's murder and bohemian parties

"Levoeser" Yakov Blyumkin, who worked in the "German" department of the Cheka, managed to find approaches to Mirbach. In those days, the German ambassador actively promoted the departure of Russian citizens of German nationality from Russia. Blumkin sent a letter to the German embassy about the fate of Mirbach's distant relatives. Someone there really was arrested by the Cheka, quite possibly just in order to get close to the ambassador. Mirbach could not but respond and agreed to a meeting with the staff of the Cheka. On July 6, 1918, Yakov Blyumkin and his friend (and party member) Nikolai Andreev came to the ambassador. Which of them became the murderer of Mirbach is now quite difficult to establish. One fired a revolver, the other threw bombs, after which both jumped out the window and fled in a waiting car. The Left SRs achieved what they wanted. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was broken.
On the same day, the "Left SRs" revolted against the Bolsheviks. Which was suppressed in no time. Already on July 7, most members of the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party were arrested, as well as their supporters in the regions. But Blumkin and Andreev, according to some reports, on the personal order of Leon Trotsky and with the support of Dzerzhinsky, escaped responsibility. Andreev left for Ukraine (where he died a year later), while Blumkin remained in the structure of the Cheka and became involved in active intelligence work.
First he is sent to Ukraine, and then to Persia. In 1921, Blumkin returned to Moscow and went to study at the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army. to the Oriental faculty. Where Blumkin masters Arabic, Turkish, Chinese and Mongolian. However, the first task after graduating from the Academy for Blumkin took place not in the east, but in the west of the former Russian Empire. He is sent to Tallinn, under the guise of a jeweler, where he must reveal the connections of Gokhran employees who sold valuables abroad, bypassing the authorities.
This episode of Blumkin's life is the basis of Yulian Semyonov's novel Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Blyumkin went to Estonia on a fake passport, taking the pseudonym Isaev (does he remind anyone?), On behalf of his grandfather. Blumkin coped with his work. Thieves from Gokhran were exposed.
Upon returning to Moscow, Yakov continued his studies at the Academy of the General Staff. At the same time, he met with poetic bohemia. It is authentically known that Blumkin was closely acquainted with many poets of that time, including Sergei Yesenin, Osip Mandelstam and Vladimir Mayakovsky. However, at that time, many employees of the Cheka rotated in that party. And Blumkin's passion for poetry does not look like something out of the ordinary.
In 1922, Blumkin's fate took another turn, which later became fatal. He became Trotsky's closest assistant and was in charge of counterintelligence activities at the General Staff of the Red Army.

Eastern period

His work in this area was highly appreciated. A year later, Blumkin was returned to the special service. But this time not to counterintelligence, but to the Foreign Department, the famous INO OGPU. In the same year, Blumkin, as a connoisseur of the East, was sent for intelligence work in Palestine. As his deputy, he invites a fellow Socialist-Revolutionary Yakov Serebryansky. The future creator of the "Yasha group", which we will talk about later.
In 1924, Blumkin was recalled to Moscow and soon sent to the Transcaucasus. Where there were serious frictions between the Soviet Union, Persia and Turkey. Blumkin, as an assistant to the military commissar and a member of the Transcaucasian Collegium of the OGPU, took part in the settlement of border conflicts and the suppression of peasant uprisings.
And then fate throws him into Afghanistan. Blumkin, under the guise of a dervish, wanders around the country, trying to reach the Ismaili sect. Why the OGPU needed this is not yet clear - the documents are still classified. But it is reliably known that Blumkin, in search of the leader of the sect, Agakhan, reached as far as India. Where he was arrested by the British police. Blumkin escaped from prison, taking with him documents and maps of a representative of British intelligence. How he succeeded is also a secret with seven seals.
In 1926, Blumkin was sent as the chief instructor for state security to the Mongolian Republic. And again, a coincidence with the literary character of Julian Semyonov. Seva Vladimirov also worked in Mongolia, under Baron Ungern...
In fact, Blumkin creates the security service of the whole country. Two years later, he is transferred to Turkey. Blumkin leads intelligence work throughout the Middle East. And for a while, it does its job quite well. But in 1929, Stalin's personal secretary, Boris Bazhanov, escaped from the USSR.
Stalin was furious and demanded that the secret services either intercept the traitor or kill him. It was known that Bazhanov fled from the USSR to Iran, then moved to India, from where the British transported him to Europe. According to some reports, Trotsky's comrades-in-arms, who by that time had already been expelled from the country, helped Bazhanov cross the border. It was then that I remembered that Yakov Blumkin, a specialist in the East, had once been Trotsky's personal assistant. Many historians believe that they simply made a “scapegoat” out of Blumkin. Bazhenov could not be intercepted, and it was necessary to blame someone. Blumkin was the best. In the autumn of 1929, he was recalled to Moscow, where he was arrested almost immediately. According to legend, Blumkin tried to avoid arrest, ran away and shot back. Like it or not, it doesn't really matter. However, the fact of secret relations with Trotsky was proved. And not an embossed confession, but quite serious documents. On November 3 (according to other sources, December 12), 1929, an executioner entered Blumkin's cell. The prisoner immediately understood everything, got up from the bunk, pulled up his jacket and sang the "Internationale". What did not save him from a bullet ...

Journal: War and Fatherland No. 6 (12), 2017
Category: Secrets of special services