‘A superbly researched and groundbreaking account of Soviet espionage in the Thirties … remarkable’ 5* review, TelegraphOn the trail of Soviet infiltrator Agent Blériot, in this bestseller, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a thrilling journey through Stalin’s most audacious intelligence operation.On a sunny September day in 1931, a Soviet spy walked down the gangplank of the luxury transatlantic liner SS Europa and into New York. Attracting no attention, Stanislav Shumovsky had completed his journey from Moscow to enrol at a top American university. He was concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students heading to prestigious academic institutions. But he was after far more than an excellent education.Recognising Russia was 100 years behind the encircling capitalist powers, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had sent Shumovsky on a mission to acquire America’s vital secrets to help close the USSR’s yawning technology gap. The road to victory began in the classrooms and laboratories of MIT – Shumovsky’s destination soon became the unwitting finishing school for elite Russian spies. The USSR first transformed itself into a military powerhouse able to confront and defeat Nazi Germany. Then in an extraordinary feat that astonished the West, in 1947 American ingenuity and innovation exfiltrated by Shumovsky made it possible to build and unveil the most advanced strategic bomber in the world.Following his lead, other MIT-trained Soviet spies helped acquire the secrets of the Manhattan Project. By 1949, Stalin’s fleet of TU-4s, now equipped with atomic bombs could devastate the US on his command. Appropriately codenamed BLÉRIOT, Shumovsky was an aviation spy. Shumovsky’s espionage was so successful that the USSR acquired every US aviation secret from his network of agents in factories and at top secret military research institutes.In this thrilling history, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a journey through Stalin’s most audacious intelligence operation. She pieces together every aspect of Shumovsky’s life and character using information derived from American and Russian archives, exposing how even Shirley Temple and Franklin D. Roosevelt unwittingly advanced his schemes.
Оглавление
Svetlana Lokhova. The Spy Who Changed History
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Maps
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
1 ‘SON OF THE WORKING PEOPLE’
2 ‘WE CATCH UP OR THEY WILL CRUSH US’
3 ‘WHAT THE COUNTRY NEEDS IS A REAL BIG LAUGH’
4 ‘AGENT 001’
5 ‘A NICE FELLOW TO TALK TO’
6 ‘IS THIS REALLY MY MOTHERLAND?’
7 ‘QUESTIONABLE FROM CONCEPTION’
8 ’THE WILY ARMENIAN’
9. WHISTLE STOP INSPECTIONS
10. GLORY TO STALIN’S FALCONS
11. BACK IN THE USSR
12. PROJECT ‘AIR’
13. ENORMOZ
14. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
POST-SCRIPTUM
APPENDIX I
APPENDIX II
FOOTNOTES. Introduction
1 ‘Son of the Working People’
2 ‘We Must Catch Up or They Will Crush Us’
4 ‘Agent 001’
5 ‘A Nice Fellow to Talk To’
6 ‘Is This Really My Motherland?’
7 ‘Questionable from Conception’
8 ‘The Wily Armenian’
9 Whistle Stop Inspections
10 Glory to Stalin’s Falcons
11 Back in the USSR
12 Project ‘AIR’
13 ENORMOZ
14 Mission Accomplished
NOTES. Abbreviations
Preface
Introduction
1 ‘Son of the Working People’
2 ‘We Must Catch Up or They Will Crush Us’
3 ‘What the Country Needs Is a Real Big Laugh’
4 ‘Agent 001’
5 ‘A Nice Fellow to Talk To’
6 ‘Is This Really My Motherland?’
7 ‘Questionable from Conception’
8 ‘The Wily Armenian’
9 Whistle Stop Inspections
10 Glory to Stalin’s Falcons
11 Back in the USSR
12 Project ‘AIR’
13 ENORMOZ
14 Mission Accomplished
Post-scriptum
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
About the Author
About the Publisher
Отрывок из книги
To my father for his unending love, help and support.
Proverbs 22:6
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Sultanov arrived in Shusha on 10 February 1919, but the Armenians refused to submit to him. On 23 April, in Shusha, the fifth Congress of the Armenians of Karabakh declared ‘inadmissible any administrative program having at least some relationship with Azerbaijan’.35 In response, with the full connivance of the British and American officials now present in the region, Sultanov embargoed any trade with Nagorno-Karabakh, causing a famine. At the same time, irregular Kurdish-Tatar cavalry troops under the leadership of his brothers killed Armenian villagers at will. On 4 June 1919, the Azerbaijani army tried to occupy the positions of the Armenian militia and the Armenian sector of the city by force. After some fighting, the attackers were repulsed, until, under promises of British protection, the Azerbaijani army was allowed to garrison the city. According to the National Council of the Armenians of Karabakh, Sultanov gave direct orders for massacres and pogroms in the Armenian neighbourhoods, saying: ‘you can do everything, but do not set fire to houses. Houses we need.’36
The foreigner’s decisive intervention in local affairs added a new level of confusion to an already complicated situation. The local oil industry was too valuable a prize for anyone to ignore. The area around Baku was strategically precious. Since 1898, the Russian oil industry, with foreign investment, had been producing more oil than the entire United States: some 160,000 barrels of oil per day. By 1901, Baku alone produced more than half of the world’s oil.37 There were already millions of dollars of foreign capital sunk into the derricks, pipelines and oil refineries, and now it was all up for grabs. Every city, indeed seemingly the whole country, was the pawn of foreign powers. Shumovsky had seen the British arrive first, to be kicked out by the Turks, only to return later, while each time their local proxy allies set about massacring the innocent inhabitants who were unlucky enough to be born on the wrong side. He perceived this not just as a civil war of Reds versus Whites, but also as an embodiment of the worst excesses of imperialism and deep-seated ethnic hatred – precisely the cataclysm described in the leaflets he had distributed in Kharkov. Only the unity of the working people could fight off the massed forces of imperialism descending on Russia.
