Real Stirlitz. Isaev Maxim Maximovich. Quotes from the film “Seventeen Moments of Spring”

From whose biographies was the prototype of the most beloved Soviet intelligence officer formed?

Elusive Stirlitz ( Maxim Maksimovich Isaev) - the most popular intelligence officer in Soviet and post-Soviet culture. None of these characters even came close to his fame. Everyone who has watched the film at least once Tatiana Lioznova“Seventeen Moments of Spring”, the question arose: was there Stirlitz? And if so, what was his fate?

Who are you, Maxim Maksimych?

There is no consensus on who could serve as the prototype for the famous Standartenführer for Yuliana Semenova, the author of the epic about Stirlitz, is still missing. At the end of the 60s, the writer was given an honorable task: to write an ideologically inspiring work about the feat of a Soviet intelligence officer.

In order for the plot to be as close to reality as possible, by personal order Yuri Andropov(at that time the chairman of the KGB) the writer was allowed to enter the holy of holies, allowed to see the documents, which, as they say, must be burned before reading. Thus, facts from the lives of several Soviet residents are intertwined in Stirlitz’s biography.

Or a spy or a champion

Stirlitz, as you know, was the Berlin tennis champion. Among the Soviet intelligence officers, only one professionally wielded a racket, and also played football well - . But to be a spy and at the same time a real champion in any sport is simply impossible - an athlete requires constant training, and the best among them are always under the closest attention of various organizations, the press and simply the curious.

For Alexander, the path to intelligence began precisely on the tennis court, where he was noticed by representatives of domestic intelligence services. Soon, on recommendation, he came to work at Lubyanka. He began his journey in a very unusual way - as an elevator operator, and only then “went up.”

At first there was a boring position as a clerk in the foreign department. But the guy took a liking and was sent for individual training: he learned to wield several types of weapons, mastered them perfectly German, completed a driving course and after several years was sent abroad.

Korotkov headed a group created to eliminate traitors to the Motherland and worked in France. Already at the end of the 30s, his name was well known to those who should. But before the onset of the new year, 1939, Korotkov, along with several colleagues, was obliged to appear at Beria, who informed the agents that their services were no longer needed.

Korotkov was furious. He decided on the unprecedented: he wrote Lavrenty Pavlovich a letter in which he dared to demand his reinstatement without unnecessary “curtseys.” To everyone's amazement, no tragic consequences happened: on the contrary, Korotkov was returned and sent to serve in Berlin.

There is a version that it was he who was the first to transfer Germany to the USSR back in March 1941. In the early 40s, while under close surveillance, Korotkov managed to establish contact with the underground group “Red Chapel” and sent their valuable information to the USSR and allied countries.

Good guy in a hat

Another prototype of Stirlitz is considered to be an intelligence officer who worked under the pseudonym Breitenbach. It was he who, on June 19, 1941, transmitted information to the USSR that in three days Germany would attack Soviet Union. This was a man who at one time himself expressed a desire to work for Soviet intelligence - he categorically did not share fascist ideology. Like Stirlitz, Lehmann was a Gestapo officer, an SS Hauptsturmführer, and of all the intelligence officers, he held a position most similar to the one that Yulian Semyonov prepared for his Stirlitz.

But Leman certainly looked strikingly different from the handsome Tikhonov. The bald little kind man with poor health did not arouse suspicion among anyone; it was impossible to think that he was an enemy agent.

Meanwhile, the information he transmitted was extremely valuable: it concerned the production of self-propelled guns, the development of chemical weapons and new types of fuel, as well as changes in the personnel of the German intelligence services and the secret plans of the Gestapo.

Lehman sewed his reports into the lining of his hat. Another Soviet agent whom Leman met in a cafe had exactly the same one. There was an imperceptible exchange of hats, and, as they say, the trick was in the bag.

When Lehmann was exposed in 1942, the SS leadership was shocked: for 13 years they had been led by the nose by a Soviet agent! Leman was hastily shot by order Himmler, and his case was urgently destroyed before it reached the Fuhrer. Lehman's family learned about true reasons his death only after the end of the war.

Rich heir

Another prototype of Stirlitz - . Having fought for the Spanish Republicans in the mid-30s, he returned to Moscow and received an offer to become an intelligence officer. His specialty was encrypted radio communications.

Gurevich began his work in Brussels, where he received a pseudonym Vincent Sierra. Then he became a member of the famous “Red Chapel”, where he acquired the call sign Kent. While working in Brussels, Anatoly married the daughter of a local wealthy industrialist and is probably the only real Soviet people, became a wealthy heir to “unearned income.”

It was thanks to the information conveyed by Gurevich that the Red Army was able to win several important victories in the fall of 1941. But almost at the same time, Gurevich was overtaken by an evil fate: his transmitter was tracked, the codes were broken, and German counterintelligence joined in the radio game. The scout and his wife managed to escape to France, but were soon arrested. Only then Margaret found out that her husband is Soviet spy. The lady was not at all happy about this.

Miraculously, the couple managed to survive, but their marriage was doomed. When the war ended, Anatoly separated from his wife and returned to Russia. Here prison awaited him again - the leaders of Soviet intelligence were not going to stand on ceremony with the failed agent. Gurevich was given 25 years for treason, but he was released a little earlier, in 1960. All charges against the intelligence officer were dropped only 30 years later, and Gurevich himself lived to be 96 years old and died in Moscow in 2009.

Yulian Semenov himself has repeatedly said that one of the main prototypes of Stirlitz was, whom the writer knew personally. Norman's father Mikhail Borodin- comrade-in-arms Lenin- he himself was a Soviet intelligence officer, worked in the diplomatic mission in China, served as an adviser to the then Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen. When Sun Yat-sen died, it became very dangerous to remain in the East. Soviet diplomats managed to take Borodin out of the country, and his son, 16-year-old Norman, was transported to the USSR as part of a ballet troupe Isadora Duncan, which was touring in China at the time. The handsome young man was dressed as a girl.

Norman spoke English as a native speaker. Already at the age of 19, he worked in the foreign department of the NKVD, and his first task was entrusted to him when the guy turned 25: he went to the USA as an illegal resident, receiving a pseudonym Granite. Despite this nickname, the agent’s position was extremely vulnerable: he could not even count on the help of the Soviet embassy. After the betrayal of one of his colleagues, Borodin was urgently recalled from the States, but upon returning to Moscow he was fired from intelligence. He managed to return only with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.

He was sent to Berlin, where he created a reliable network. At the same time, under the guise of a volunteer, Norman worked in the Swiss branch of the Red Cross.

After returning to Moscow, Borodin became a correspondent, and in vain! He was completely disillusioned with Soviet reality. The former spy even wrote to Stalin: does the great leader know what is going on around him? The “answer” was the arrest of his father, who, unable to withstand the torture, died in prison.

Then it was my son's turn. But Borodin Jr. was lucky: he was exiled to Karaganda. There he met Yulian Semenov and his brothers Weiners. Having heard Borodin's incredible life story, Semenov asked permission to use part of Norman's biography in a new novel about Stirlitz.

Some time after Stalin's death, Borodin was able to return to Moscow, all charges against him were dropped, and he again worked in the KGB. Borodin took an active part in the work on the film “Seventeen Moments of Spring” as a consultant. But the credits indicate his fictitious name: Andropov ordered it to be classified.

From tragedy to joke

Some researchers also consider Stirlitz to be prototypes Mikhail Mikhalkov, brother of a famous writer, as well as a young employee of the Cheka Yakova Blyumkina, whose activities in Soviet intelligence also ended in arrests, and in the case of Blyumkin, execution.

The prototype of Stirlitz is often mentioned Richard Sorge, who became Soviet intelligence officer No. 1. But a detailed study of his biography casts doubt on this version; there are practically no coincidences in the biographies of the real and literary intelligence officers, except that they both worked for some time in Shanghai.

The fictitious Stirlitz was a little more lucky with recognition of his merits than the real intelligence officers. There is a legend that Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, being a big fan of the film about Stirlitz, once asked whether Isaev was given a Hero. Having not received an answer to the question, Brezhnev ordered this to be done immediately.

Yes, Stirlitz was born from the imagination of Yulian Semenov. And thanks to the 12-episode film “Seventeen Moments of Spring” he gained immortality. But, as many would like to believe, he did not have a direct prototype. Colonel of foreign intelligence, candidate of historical sciences, writer Mikhail Lyubimov says:

“Life sometimes exceeds fiction, and sometimes fiction exceeds life. As for Yulian Semenov, he was a brilliant dreamer. But he used archives, of course. Although we, unfortunately, did not have Stirlitz, there were agents of even greater caliber than the Stirlitz described by Semenov. There was a magnificent “Red Chapel”, the Germans, but not the Gestapo. We also had Americans - major agents. The British are the famous Cambridge Five. They held positions in British intelligence, and British intelligence, as is known, intercepted German codes, encryption between various departments in Germany. That is, thanks to this, we were aware of what was happening in Germany during the war.”

The intelligence officer is convinced that the collective image of Stirlitz is a masterpiece by Yulian Semyonov. The historian of the 3rd Reich, associate professor at Moscow State University Tatyana Timofeeva agrees with this, but suggests that Stirlitz may have had a distant prototype:

“It is very difficult to introduce your own person, especially a Russian, into Germany for a decade, a German into Russia, and have a great return from him. But there are always people who agree to cooperate - for money or for ideological reasons. Perhaps the prototypes of Isaev were among the Germans. Specifically, Willie Lehman. At the RSHA, he oversaw state secrets at military enterprises in the pre-war period. And he sent us information about weapons. Already during wartime in 1942, a messenger was sent to him, who was discovered by the Gestapo, and he turned him in. After that, the RSHA decided not to wash dirty linen in public, and Willie Lehman disappeared without a trace.”

In reality, intelligence stories rarely end with a happy ending. And in the Stalin era, everything was very dramatic, says Mikhail Lyubimov:

“The endings are usually tragic, and not as good as Stirlitz’s, because everyone knows well that our intelligence service in 1937-38 was cut down by 90 percent by Stalin. He did not like intelligence - he was practical and very suspicious. Therefore, intelligence was destroyed on the eve of the war. And take individual fates - they are also sad. Richard Sorge, whom Stalin did not want to change, and he was executed. Or Nikolai Kuznetsov, who was killed by Bandera - he was ambushed. And how many large intelligence officers were imprisoned! The same Sudoplatov was the leader of the partisan movement during the war. So the fates of the scouts are not at all happy.”

“I have unlimited respect for Tatyana Lioznova, who not only assembled the most talented group of actors... She managed to show our opponents as intellectuals. It showed the life of Germans under the Nazis, who, unfortunately, did not go to demonstrations against Hitler. It was interesting. The film is very human. Again, the film has an optimistic ending - the threshold of victory. This is the key to success in everything.”

Not to mention the brilliant performance of Vyacheslav Tikhonov - Stirlitz for all times: a wise and sensitive Soviet intelligence officer.

As the operational pseudonym of Vsevolod Vladimirovich Vladimirov already in the first novel about him - « » .

Maxim Maksimovich Isaev - Stirlitz - Vsevolod Vladimirovich Vladimirov - born October 8, 1900 (“ Expansion - I") in Transbaikalia, where his parents were in political exile. If you believe Stirlitz himself, he spent some time as a child in the vicinity of the ancient Russian town of Gorokhovets. It should be noted that Yulian Semyonov does not say that his hero was born here: “Stirlitz realized that he was drawn to this lake because he grew up on the Volga, near Gorokhovets, where there were exactly the same yellow-blue pines.” . Gorokhovets itself stands on the Klyazma River, and is far from the Volga. But Isaev could have spent his childhood “on the Volga near Gorokhovets,” since the Gorokhovetsky district that existed at that time was 4 times larger than the current Gorokhovetsky district and in the northern part reached the Volga.

From the party profile of von Stirlitz, a member of the NSDAP since 1933, SS Standartenführer

One more time he would meet his old acquaintances from the RSHA, former Nazis, in West Berlin in 1967 ( "Bomb for the chairman", 1970). This time, aged, but not losing his grip, Isaev managed to prevent the theft of nuclear technology by a private corporation and clash with a radical sect from Southeast Asia...

In addition to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, awarded in 1945, as of 1940 he was awarded two more Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner and the Golden Arms ( "No password needed", "Major Whirlwind"). Also received awards from France, Poland, Yugoslavia and Norway ( "Bomb for the chairman").

Works by Yu. Semenov, where Stirlitz participates

Radio show

In 1984, radio “Mayak” created a multi-part radio show “Ordered to Survive” based on the novel of the same name. Director - Emil Wernick; the author of the dramatization is Sergei Karlov. The production was conceived as a radio continuation of the famous television film “17 Moments of Spring”: it featured the same music as in the film, Mikael Tariverdiev, and the main roles were played by the same actors: Vyacheslav Tikhonov (Stirlitz), Leonid Bronevoy (Müller), Oleg Tabakov (Schellenberg). The text from the author was read by Mikhail Gluzsky.

Jokes

Below are other possible prototypes that to one degree or another influenced the creation of Stirlitz:

• A possible prototype of the early Isaev is Yakov Grigorievich Blyumkin (real name - Simkha-Yankev Gershevich Blyumkin; pseudonyms: Isaev, Max, Vladimirov), (1900-1929) - Russian revolutionary, security officer, Soviet intelligence officer, terrorist and statesman. One of the founders of the Soviet intelligence services. In October 1921, Blyumkin, under the pseudonym Isaev (taken by his grandfather’s name), travels to Revel (Tallinn) under the guise of a jeweler and, acting as a provocateur, reveals the foreign connections of Gokhran employees. It was this episode in Blumkin’s activities that Yulian Semyonov used as the basis for the plot of the book “Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.”
• Another possible prototype of Stirlitz is Willy Lehmann, SS Hauptsturmführer, employee of the IV department of the RSHA (Gestapo). The German, a passionate horse racing gambler, was recruited in 1936 by Soviet intelligence, whose employee lent him money after losing, and then offered to supply secret information for a good fee (according to another version, Lehman independently contacted Soviet intelligence, guided by ideological considerations). He bore the operational pseudonym "Breitenbach". At the RSHA he was involved in countering Soviet industrial espionage.
  Leman failed in 1942, under circumstances close to those described by Yulian Semyonov: his radio operator Bart, an anti-fascist, during a surgical operation, under anesthesia, began talking about codes and communications with Moscow, and the doctors signaled to the Gestapo. In December 1942, Lehman was arrested and executed a few months later. The fact of the SS officer's betrayal was hidden - even Lehmann's wife was told that her husband had died after being hit by a train. The story of Willy Lehmann is told in the memoirs of Walter Schellenberg, from which Yulian Semyonov apparently borrowed it.
• According to the Vesti newspaper, Stirlitz's prototype was the Soviet intelligence officer Isai Isaevich Borovoy, who lived in Germany from the late 1920s and later worked in Himmler's department. In 1944 he was arrested, after Stalin's death he was the main prosecution witness in the trial of Beria. [ ]
• A probable prototype of Stirlitz could be Sergei Mikhalkov’s brother, Mikhail Mikhalkov. Yulian Semyonov was married to Ekaterina, the daughter of Natalya Petrovna Konchalovskaya from her first marriage. Mikhail Mikhalkov served in a special department at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War

Max Otto von Stirlitz, created by the imagination of Yulian Semenov, could have many prototypes. There are several real personalities who could well have inspired the writer. One of them is a Soviet intelligence officer, a security officer. Among his many pseudonyms are “Max” and “Isaev” (Isaev was the name of the scout’s grandfather). This is where the surname of the literary character, a Soviet agent behind the lines of the fascist enemy, Maxim Maksimovich Isaev, could come from.

Confirmation that Blumkin could be the prototype of Stirlitz is another fact from his biography. In 1921, he was sent to the Baltic city of Revel (now Tallinn). There, an intelligence officer disguised as a jeweler tracked possible connections between Soviet Gokhran employees and foreign agents. Semyonov used this episode when writing the novel “Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.”

Sports background

The character and biography of Stirlitz were assembled, like a puzzle, from scattered episodes of life different people. In one of the episodes of the epic film he is mentioned as a Berlin tennis champion. Only one Soviet intelligence officer was a tennis player - A. M. Korotkov. But he was not a champion in this sport, otherwise he would not have become a good agent. A scout cannot be such a prominent figure.

The Germans could also have inspired Semenov

Another prototype of the “Soviet Bond” is the German, SS Hauptsturmführer and “true Aryan” Willy Lehmann. It is known about this man that he collaborated with the USSR for a long time and was one of the most valuable agents. The exact motives for his actions are not known. Obviously, ideological considerations also played a significant role. Not everyone in the camp of the Third Reich sympathized with the dominant ideology.

There were also versions that Lehman became a spy because of one loss at the races in 1936. An acquaintance, who later turned out to be an agent of Soviet intelligence, lent him money. After this episode, Lehman's recruitment took place. For very important information, he received a good fee from the Soviet government. In 1942, the Nazis discovered a traitor in their ranks, and Leman was shot.

Mikhalkov

Various sources call the fourth prototype of Stirlitz another intelligence officer - Mikhail Mikhalkov, brother of the poet Sergei Mikhalkov. During the war, Mikhail Vladimirovich was captured by the Germans. He managed to escape and hide from persecution. This experience served as an impetus for his future activities as an illegal agent. Mikhalkov supplied Soviet army valuable military information.

In 1945, he was arrested by SMERSH counterintelligence and accused of spying for the Germans. Mikhail Vladimirovich served 5 years in prison and only in 1956 was he completely rehabilitated. Yulian Semenov was married to his relative, Ekaterina Konchalovskaya. Surely Mikhalkov’s personality could have inspired him while writing the novel.

Semenov’s “muse” could well have been intelligence officer Norman Borodin, the son of Lenin’s comrade-in-arms Mikhail Borodin. The writer communicated with Norman personally and knew a lot about his complex and exciting life. There are many people who could become prototypes for Stirlitz. Many Soviet agents who worked for victory behind enemy lines had a similar fate. The indestructible intelligence officer Isaev is a brilliant collective image of all these heroes.

Dear friends, I am opening a new section on my blog, “Literary Detective”. Here I will publish my materials about the history of creation literary works and real prototypes of famous literary heroes. My first material is dedicated to the legendary and cult character Stirlitz. I would be grateful for reasonable criticism and corrections, if any. I warn you that these materials are my personal version, which may differ from other, more accepted and popular versions.

So, meet Max Otto von Stirlitz

The most iconic character of the Soviet era, Soviet intelligence officer Max Otto von Stirlitz, created by the talented pen of Yulian Semenov, has always caused a lot of discussion. General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev believed in the reality of Stirlitz so much after watching the serial film “Seventeen Moments of Spring” that he even awarded him the star of the Hero of the Soviet Union; with great difficulty it was necessary to persuade him that such a scout in real life did not exist and actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov, who played Stirlitz in the film, had to be given a Hero of Socialist Labor.

Who was this mythical Stirlitz and did he have a real prototype? I want to immediately dispel the main myth - Stirlitz did not have any real prototype.

Let's start with the fact that Stirlitz's real name is not Maxim Maksimovich Isaev, as one might assume from “Seventeen Moments of Spring,” but Vsevolod Vladimirovich Vladimirov. The surname Isaev was taken by Yulian Semenov as the operational pseudonym of Vsevolod Vladimirovich Vladimirov already in the first novel about him - “Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.”

In the novel “Expansion II” we learn that Vsevolod Vladimirov was born on October 8, 1900 in Transbaikalia, where his parents were in political exile. The father is Russian, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Vladimirov, “a professor of law at St. Petersburg University, dismissed for freethinking and closeness to social democratic circles.” Brought into revolutionary movement Georgy Plekhanov. His Ukrainian mother, Olesya Ostapovna Prokopchuk, died of consumption when her son was five years old.

The parents met and got married in exile. At the end of their exile, father and son returned to St. Petersburg, and then spent some time in exile, in Switzerland, in the cities of Zurich and Bern. Here Vsevolod Vladimirovich showed his love for literary work. In Bern he worked part-time at a newspaper. Father and son returned to their homeland in 1917.

It is known that in 1911, Vladimirov Sr. and the Bolsheviks diverged. After the revolution, in 1921 - while his son was in Estonia - Vladimir Vladimirov was sent on a business trip to Eastern Siberia and there he died tragically at the hands of the White Guards. This is the background story of the famous intelligence officer.

I will not analyze absolutely all the legends regarding who was Isaev’s prototype. I will focus on the most plausible versions, which are directly or indirectly confirmed by Semenov himself.

Birth of Maxim Isaev

The image of Maxim Isaev (Vsevolod Vladimirov) was born from a secret dispatch from Dzerzhinsky, who forwarded it to Far East talented young man, who loved horses and painting and had a keen mind and erudition. This is how Maxim Isaev was born. Semenov himself spoke about it this way: “There are different rumors about me: that Yulian Semenov has access to folders marked “top secret”, to the most untouchable archives... I use sources that are quite accessible - even to high school students, if they so desire. information. I do not and never have had any authority to get into secret archives. I also have no experience in “secret” work, as I already said. I simply buy in a bookstore, accessible to everyone, for example, correspondence of the heads of three states who were in an alliance against Hitler during the war. There I find a passage from a letter from one chapter to the head of another allied state about the people who informed our Supreme Command. You can go to any city library and read what I wrote. Of course, there is no mention anywhere that there was such a Soviet intelligence officer Isaev. I “invented” him because there were similar people, remember - Sorge, Abel... Of course, I work in archives, but this is not forbidden to anyone.”

In the photo Yakov Grigorievich Blyumkin

And yet, the young Stirlitz had a real prototype, part of whose biography was absorbed by the literary character. This is Yakov Grigorievich Blumkin (real name - Simkha-Yankev Gershevich Blumkin). It is interesting that among his pseudonyms there are the names Vladimirov and Isaev. He and Stirlitz also have the same date of birth - October 8, 1900. Blumkin's biography is extremely entertaining. He was highly valued by Dzerzhinsky and Trotsky, he participated in the murder German Ambassador Mirbach, was noted for the assassination attempt on Hetman Skoropadsky and German Field Marshal Eichhorn, “expropriated” the values ​​of the State Bank together with Mishka Yaponchik, was involved in the overthrow of the Persian head Kuchek Khan and created the Iranian communist party. One episode from Blumkin’s life almost entirely became the basis for the plot of Semenov’s book “Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” In the mid-twenties, Yakov graduated from the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army and worked on the eastern question, traveled to China, Palestine, Mongolia, and lived in Shanghai. In the summer of 1929, Blumkin returned to the capital to report on his work, but was soon arrested for his old connections with Leon Trotsky. At the end of the same year, Blumkin was shot. In October 1921, Blyumkin, under the pseudonym Isaev (taken by his grandfather’s name), travels to Revel (Tallinn) under the guise of a jeweler and, acting as a provocateur, reveals the foreign connections of Gokhran employees. It was this episode in Blumkin’s activities that Yulian Semyonov used as the basis for the plot of the book “Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.”

Another prototype of the young Isaev was Yulian Semenov’s relative by wife, Mikhail Mikhalkov. Yulian Semenov was married to Ekaterina, the daughter of Natalya Petrovna Konchalovskaya from her first marriage. Here are the facts of the biography of Mikhail Mikhalkov: at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War he served in a special department of the Southwestern Front. In September 1941, he was captured, escaped and then continued to serve behind enemy lines as an illegal agent, supplying the Red Army intelligence agencies with important operational information. In 1945, during a battle in a German uniform, he crossed the front line and was detained by military counterintelligence agencies SMERSH. On charges of collaborating with German intelligence, he served five years in prison, first in Lefortovo prison, later in one of the camps in the Far East.

Max Otto von Stirlitz

Pictured is Willy Lehmann, photo from Gestapo archives

But Max Otto von Strielitz was born from the biography of another intelligence officer who worked for Soviet intelligence, but this time a German. Semyonov took this character from the memoirs of Walter Schellenberg, whom he made Stirlitz’s boss.

The service of SS Standartenführer von Stirlitz took place in Berlin on Prinz Albrechtstrasse, in the Main Office of Reich Security (“Reichszicherheitshauptamt”). The RSHA had 6 directorates, or general bureaus: legal, 2 investigative, “supporting the life of the Germans,” secret police (Gestapo), foreign intelligence. It was in the latter, the so-called Amt VI, that Stirlitz served. Judging by the previous novels in the series, the gallant Standartenführer often moved from one department to another. In the “Spanish Version” (set in 1936), Stirlitz is clearly an employee of Department VI E, which dealt with Italy and Spain. In 1941 (“Alternative”) he definitely serves in department VI D ( Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia). And in 1945 (“Moments”) he most likely works in either VI A (general department) or VI B (special operations). The Soviet intelligence service, which contains Colonel Isaev’s work book, remains a mystery. Most likely, this is still the external intelligence of the NKVD under the leadership of General Pavel Fitin.

Stirlitz's chief, Brigadefuehrer Walter Schellenberg, is one of the most extraordinary personalities in the Reich. At less than thirty, he became the head of German intelligence - thanks not only to his brilliant abilities, but also to the patronage of Lina Heydrich, the wife of the head of the RSHA, Reinhard Heydrich. Schellenberg, contrary to Semyonov, was not at all an unprincipled (from the point of view of Nazism) opportunist: he refused to cooperate with the allies and, shortly before his death at the age of only 44, wrote memoirs full of sincere sorrow for the lost greatness of National Socialism.

And here we come to the third prototype of Stirlitz - the main one for the German stage of life. His name was Willie Lehman. The name Willy Lehmann became known only recently. Meanwhile, this amazing man, who oversaw the defense industry and military construction in the Gestapo fascist Germany, for 12 years he transmitted invaluable information to Moscow about the scale of fascism’s preparations for the establishment of world domination.

The declassified documents are included in the published book “His Majesty’s Agent,” written by the famous historian and intelligence expert Theodor Gladkov. Only a small part of the documents in the Lehman case has been opened so far.

There is a version that Leman was simply recruited for money. The German, a passionate horse racing gambler, was recruited in 1936 by Soviet intelligence, whose employee lent him money after losing, and then offered to supply secret information for a good fee. He bore the operational pseudonym “Breitenbach”. At the RSHA he was involved in countering Soviet industrial espionage.

However, this version is contradicted by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, which declassified part of the documents in the Breitenbach case. According to the SVR representative, unlike some Soviet intelligence agents, Leman was not recruited. He proactively approached the Soviet station and selflessly offered his services in the fight against Nazism.

On June 19, 1941, the intelligence officer informed the Soviet leadership about the German attack planned three days later. Wilhelm Lehmann, who, like Stirlitz, was a Gestapo officer and SS Hauptsturmführer. Lehman's desire to work for the USSR was dictated by his intransigence to the basic ideals of fascism. The good-natured and friendly person that Lehman was was called “Uncle Willy” by many at work (in the IV department of the Gestapo RSHA). No one, including his wife, could even imagine that this bald, good-natured fellow, suffering from renal colic and diabetes, was a Soviet agent. Before the war, he conveyed information about the timing and volume of production of self-propelled guns and armored personnel carriers, the development of new nerve agents and synthetic gasoline, the beginning of testing liquid fuel missiles, the structure and personnel of the German intelligence services, counterintelligence operations of the Gestapo and much more. Lehman sewed documents confirming the fact of the impending attack on the Soviet Union into the lining of his hat, which he then quietly replaced with the same headdress when meeting with a Soviet representative in a cafe.

It was also not known until now that it was Lehmann who handed over to Moscow the key to the Gestapo codes used in telegraph “Funkshpruch” and radio “Fernshpruch” messages for communication with his territorial and overseas employees. Thus, at Lubyanka they had the opportunity to read Gestapo official correspondence.

In 1942, the Germans managed to declassify the brave intelligence officer. Willy Lehman failed under circumstances close to those described by Yulian Semyonov: his radio operator Bart, an anti-fascist, during a surgical operation, under anesthesia, began to talk about codes and connections with Moscow, and the doctors signaled to the Gestapo. In December 1942, Willy Lehman was arrested and executed a few months later. The fact of the SS officer's betrayal was hidden - even Willy Lehmann's wife was told that her husband had died after being hit by a train. The story of Willy Lehmann is told in the memoirs of Walter Schellenberg, from which Yulian Semyonov apparently borrowed it.

Himmler was simply shocked by this fact. The employee, who worked in the Gestapo for thirteen years, constantly supplied information to the USSR and was never even suspected of espionage. The very fact of his activities was so shameful for the SS that Lehmann’s file was completely and completely destroyed before it could reach the Fuhrer, and the intelligence officer himself was hastily shot shortly after his arrest. Even the agent’s wife did not know for a long time about the true reasons for her husband’s death. His name was included in the list of those killed for the Third Reich. Of all the Soviet intelligence officers, it was Lehmann who occupied a position similar to Stirlitz, a high-ranking SS officer, surrounded by the arbiters of Germany’s destinies and entering the very heart of the Reich.

This is how we got our first literary detective story, fascinating and interesting. How could it be boring to read about such a character as Maxim Isaev-Stirlitz?!

To be continued?