The spies who came in from the cold
Now that Russia
has an ex-KGB boss as President, Jeremy Atiyah visits the Lubyanka while it's
still a museum
By Jeremy Atiyah
Published: 11 June 2000
If, 30 years from now, my grandchildren ask me to tell them stories of the
KGB, I know where I would like to take them in
Moscow.
South across the bridge by
Gorky Park,
behind the arts centre Tsentralny Dom Khudozhnikov, I'll show them a bizarre
little park known as the Graveyard of Fallen Monuments. There, in wintry sunshine,
they will see statues in dark metal of men with arms like machines and heads
like anvils. A Communist theme park for children? There is old Uncle Joe in
pink granite with his nose missing. Behind him, hundreds of shattered stone
faces are packed, jumbled together inside a wire cage - a nameless memorial to
the victims of the gulags.
Further in, under the trees, stand numerous diminutive Lenins, a Kalinin, a
Sverdlov. But dwarfing them all, towering in a great green coat at the back of
the park, like a race-horse out to grass, looms the shadowy figure of one Felix
Dzerzhinsky: the founder of the KGB.
Face-to-face with Dzerzhinsky under the chestnut trees last month, I tried
to guess which
Moscow square this
awesome statue had originally dominated.
Certainly not
Red Square, sacrosanct to Lenin, or
Gorky
Street, home to statues of Pushkin and Mayakovsky.
Where then? As any Russian will tell you, in a hushed voice: Dzerzhinsky
belonged to
Lubyanka Square,
where the old headquarters of the KGB is still located, and which - some 70
years ago - came to be eternally associated with the terror of Stalin's purges.
I visited it on a cold May morning this year, with an arctic wind spitting
snowflakes. In such conditions, Lubyanka still musters a certain bleakness. "Lubyanka?
Oh, the name itself sounds sweet, actually," a Russian friend assures me.
"Maybe it has some connection with lyubov, meaning 'love'. " But the
bowels of this great granite block, with its wire-covered windows, once
resounded to the screams of the ideologically incorrect.
Odd, then, that guided visits to the so-called "demonstration
hall" of the Russian secret services, right next door, have been possible
for some years, even for foreign tourists. This is the new
Russia;
even the secret services are in need of a few bob. And there's the question of
PR to consider. At the demise of the
USSR,
the secret services dropped the old name "KGB", with its sinister
connotations, and renamed itself the FSB ("Federal Service of
Security"). They have even produced a glossy coffee-table book entitled
Lubyanka2, costing 500 roubles and (allegedly) sold out.
There is no plaque saying "museum" - only a smiling, beautiful
interpreter in her fifties, standing in the street on time for our appointment.
My fellow visitors are mostly middle-aged Americans. Our guide, who will refer
to himself and to all his colleagues as "professionals", gives his
name as Valery. Is this his real name? His eyebrows are so thick and bushy that
I suspect they can double as a moustache in a crisis.
"Nothing really secret gets said here," he explains jovially. He
reminds me of Mikhail Gorbachev, short and unexpectedly human, cracking jokes
about the hell that was 20th-century
Russia,
for the interpreter to explain. "Thank God they stopped shooting us,"
she translates, in merriment, after reeling off the names of a string of KGB
bosses murdered by Stalin. The last boss but one was, of course, Vladimir Putin
- now very much alive as the newly elected Russian President.
The first issue Valery wants to clarify concerns the statue of Dzerzhinsky,
the founder of his organisation and hence a Good Thing. "Had he lived in
the 1930s, he would have been shot," he exclaims, in his defence. "He
wanted to introduce market reforms. He tried to abolish the death penalty. Last
year, the Russian parliament voted to return his statue to
Lubyanka
Square - but the
Moscow
city council have opposed this." He adds, with perhaps a trace of
bitterness, that they are going to get a White Russian general instead.
The museum was first opened in 1984 by Yuri Andropov, who was chief of the
KGB for 15 years. "At that time," Valery explains, "it was
strictly an internal affair. We never dreamt that foreign guests would ever be
permitted." But then came glasnost, and soon the museum was welcoming not
only "fellow professionals from foreign intelligence services" but
even plain old tourists.
Visitors have included Robert de Niro, who came in search of inspiration for
a possible role as a KGB officer. "He asked me about the uniforms,"
explains Valery, "until I reminded him that secret service professionals
do not wear uniforms." One less probable visitor was the
"professional" who now works as the director of the Cold War museum
in
Los Angeles, but who was born
the son of Gary Powers - the American spy shot down and captured during a
secret flight over
Russia
in 1962. No hard feelings, then? "Oh no," smiles Valery. "He
brought a picture of the rug woven from potato-sack thread by his father during
the years he was a guest in our jails."
The collections of photographs and espionage bric-a-brac are not so much the
attractions as the stories that pour from the mouth of this entertaining little
man. We hear about Philby, Maclean et al ("they did little damage to
Britain
but saved the lives of thousands during the Second World War"). We also
hear about Sydney O'Reilly, the British spy captured in
Russia
in 1924 who "shared much interesting information with us before being
shot". Valery concedes that O'Reilly was a skilful spy, but that he made
one crucial mistake: daring to enter the
USSR
in the 1920s.
Another outstanding character who emerges is one Bistroletov, one of the
greatest "professionals" ever to have worked for the Russian secret
services, who spoke 22 languages, and at various times passed himself off
successfully as a Chicago gangster, a Brazilian businessman, a Hungarian count
and a Greek grocer. Strictly in the interests of his profession he married an
Italian countess while - for the same reasons - his (real) wife was busy marrying
a German colonel.
The examples of James Bond-style gadgetry on display are less sensational
than the stories. Inside glass cases we see the usual tree branches with radio
cables inside them, tape recorders in briefcases, hiding places for agents
inside rubbish containers, false moustaches, hidden cameras etc. I ask Valery
how the challenges facing his organisation have changed in recent years.
"Before, we had the
USA
and
UK as
enemies. Now, it's the whole world. We have arrested agents from 68 different
countries in the last three years." Small fry, no doubt, beside the
colossal struggles of the past. When the tour is over I step outside into the
square once overlooked by Felix Dzerzhinsky. Today, the only clue as to
Lubyanka's nefarious past is a small monument across the road: a rough, uncut
block of stone taken from the remote Solovetsky camp in
Siberia,
beside a simple inscription: "For the victims of totalitarianism". A
single pink carnation taped to the stone flutters in the icy wind.
Getting there
Jeremy Atiyah travelled as a guest of Interchange (tel: 020 8681 3612),
which specialises in tailor-made packages to the former
Soviet Union.
Where to stay
Three nights b&b at the Hotel Rossia, including return flights and
transfers, costs £ 459 per person, based on two sharing.
Lubyanka tour
Tours take place twice a month, on non-specific days. Booking is essential,
through Patriarshy Dom Tours (tel: 007 0957950927). Show up on the day at the
tour office round the corner from the Lubyanka and pay $15.
Visas
Interchange can obtain your visa for you, but at least two weeks' notice is
required. If applying in person, get to the embassy by
9am to avoid long queues, and make sure your paperwork is
in order. For a £ 30 fee, you will collect your visa five days later;
for £ 100, you can collect the same morning. Russian Embassy, 5
Kensington
Palace Gardens,
London W8 (tel: 0900 117 1271, premium rate number).
Books: 'The Rough Guide to
Moscow',
£ 9.99.
