Legendary scout Philby. Zenchen (Sonny). From the book "Kim Philby" (1). "Dear Kim, what are you apologizing for?"

LONDON - He died with a bottle of cognac, not Russian vodka in hand. He drank to forget about his huge disappointment, so as not to notice the failures of Soviet communism, and at the end with the tenacity of a man who wants death. Kim Philby, the most famous British agent who went over to the side of the Soviet Union, a source of inspiration for novels, films and furious recriminations between the West and Moscow, anguished his wife: “Why are people living so poorly here? In the end, the Soviet people won World War II. Why?"

He never found an answer. And if he did, he didn't tell anyone about it publicly. But his wife Rufina Pukhova of Russian-Polish origin, whom he married after being secretly transported to the USSR, he entrusted his doubts, questions and a deep sense of disappointment, which undermined his confidence in the correctness of the decision made when he committed a betrayal of to his native Great Britain and went over to the side of the Soviet Union. “Kim chose the USSR because he believed in a society based on justice, and after he was behind the Iron Curtain, he devoted his whole life to the cause of communism,” his widow told the Guardian newspaper in London. "But when he found himself in the USSR, he experienced a severe disappointment, so deep that he had tears in his eyes."

He found a way out in alcohol. Two glasses of cognac after dinner every evening, after which he often drank the whole bottle during sleepless nights. Sometimes he asked his wife to hide the cognac from him, but then he began to look for it. Only at the end of his life, when he was afraid of losing her, and she threatened to leave her to save him if he did not stop drinking, Philby told her that there was no need to hide the bottle, that he would limit himself to two glasses and "kept his word" for a while. But it was too late anyway. “He drank to commit suicide,” says the widow, and he succeeded.

He was born in India in 1912 and graduated from the University of Cambridge. During his student years, he began to sympathize with the communists. In the thirties, he already worked in London as a KGB informant, continued this activity when he was a special correspondent for the Times newspaper during the Spanish civil war, then, on the eve of World War II, he enlists in the British counterintelligence service Mi-6 and makes a fast career ... But he played a double game, passing numerous classified data to the Kremlin. In 1963, while in Her Majesty's Secret Service in Beirut, he disappeared and fled to Moscow, where he was treated with respect. He led an isolated life under the protection or tutelage of KGB agents who followed his every move. For some time he was accompanied by other British agents who had gone over to the side of the USSR and were part of the Cambridge Five, with whom he studied at the university. The university was then a fertile ground for those who wanted to work in the secret service, but at the same time it was permeated with socialist and revolutionary ideas. In particular, one of the five Englishmen who fled to Moscow during these years, George Blake, the only one still alive, shared Philby's sentiments. But they could not help seeing that the idea of \u200b\u200bcommunism had failed, that they had failed to build a new society based on justice and respect for human dignity, in which they so believed.

“He told me that when he came to the USSR, he had so many ideas, so many proposals,” says Pukhova, whom Philby married in 1973, when he was 59 years old, and she was 38 years old, “but it seems that no one was not interested in his opinion. " Thus, he decided to resort to alcohol. “Once he told me bluntly that it was the easiest way to end his life. He quickly got drunk and changed before my eyes. Become a different person. But he was not aggressive. After a while he got up and got into bed. " He died in 1988, twenty-five years after he fled to the Soviet Union.

The information Philby passed on to the USSR led to the deaths of dozens of British agents and Soviet informers. In London he was convicted and cursed as a traitor. In Russia, he was officially considered a hero. A plaque in his honor was unveiled last December by the head of Russian intelligence at its headquarters in Moscow. But, perhaps, Kim Philby himself no longer felt like a decent person, having devoted his life as a spy to communist Russia and serving in the KGB.

He could become the head of British intelligence and go down in history as the greatest spy of all time

Cavalier of two awards

In 1945, Harold Adrian Russell Philby was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his services to intelligence during World War II. The award was presented at Buckingham Palace personally by King George VI of Great Britain. In 1947, Stalin signed a decree awarding Harold Adrian Russell Philby the Order of the Red Banner.

The most famous member of the "Cambridge Five" - \u200b\u200bexposed "patriots" of Great Britain who worked in favor of the USSR - Kim Philby, almost took over as head of British intelligence. A brave and courageous man, for 30 years he provided the Lubyanka with information of the highest - 9999 - sample. And he could and should have been the head of British intelligence. If ... not for the betrayal of the Soviet Chekists.

On the verge of failure

For the first time, a real threat of exposure hung over Philby in August 1945, when Konstantin Volkov, an employee of the Istanbul NKVD station, who worked under the cover of the vice consul of the USSR, was about to flee to the West. He contacted the British Consulate in Turkey and expressed his readiness to pass on information about Soviet agents infiltrated into British government structures. He said that two are working in the Foreign Office, and one in the ICU headquarters in London.

The information received from Volkov was sent to London by diplomatic mail. A week later, they ended up in the ICU and lay down on the table ... Philby. He immediately realized that he was one of those whom Volkov intended to name.

“I looked at the papers a little longer than it took to collect my thoughts,” Philby would later write in his memoir “My Silent War” (1968).

Philby reported the traitor to the Moscow Center. And then luck smiled at him: it was he who was sent to Istanbul to meet with Volkov. But by the time Philby got to Turkey, Volkov had disappeared without a trace and was never heard of again.

While in Washington, Philby had a fleeting romance with American cryptographer Meredith Gardner. After showing Philby some of the decoded Soviet documents, she commented on their content, noting that most likely the Soviet "mole" had entrenched itself in the British Foreign Office. Philby realized that the threat of exposure hung over Donald McLain (Donald Donald McLain, aka Mark Petrovich Fraser, nee Donald Duart MacLane, British diplomat, agent of Soviet intelligence, working pseudonym "Homer". Member of the Communist Party of Great Britain since 1932. Member of the CPSU since 1956. Doctor of Historical Sciences. - Ed.), and immediately warned the Moscow Center. They decided that Homer's mission as a Soviet secret agent had been completed, and it would be better if he disappeared from the field of vision of both the FBI and MI5 altogether. Soon McLain found himself in the Soviet Union and was hidden from possible encroachments on his life by the Anglo-American special services in Kuibyshev, a city closed to foreigners.

Writer and publicist Philip Knightley in his book "The Second Oldest Profession", London, 1987 (in Russian translation - "Spies of the XX century") categorically declares: "If the State Security Committee had not rushed to save their man in the Foreign Office of Donald McLain Philby could become the head of the ICU and thus go down in history as the greatest spy of all time. For the head of the ICU, Stuart Menzies, and his deputy, Hugh Sinclair, made it clear to the Prime Minister that they wanted to see Philby as the head of the British intelligence service after Menzies resigned. But in any case, in the McLane affair, Philby played his part with inspiration, with full dedication, in the language of the musicians - "spy-nessimo"! .. "

Indeed, following the disappearance of McLain, Philby also fell under suspicion of British and American counterintelligence officers. Without delay, he destroyed all the equipment he received from the Moscow courier and, as he writes in his memoirs: “Feeling clean as a piece of glass, I calmed down, knowing that neither the British nor the Americans would dare openly accuse me of anything without sanction top management, and for the sanction required irrefutable evidence, which was no longer there! "

However, the suspicions of the CIA chief of counterintelligence, James D. Angleton, were so strong that he persuaded the then Director of the Office, Walter Bedell-Smith, to ask the ICU to withdraw Philby from the United States.

In London, MI5 officers arrested Philby's passport. On several occasions they subjected him to sophisticated interrogations. Despite the fact that Philby was able to dismiss all suspicions in his address, he was still fired from the ICU with a severance pay of £ 2,000 (today it is $ 200,000) and a monthly pension of £ 2,000, which was to be paid to him for three years!

A new betrayal and a new excuse

Meanwhile, clouds began to gather over Philby: on April 2, 1954, Vladimir Petrov, the cipher officer of the Soviet embassy in Australia, went to the enemy. Talking about the escape of members of the "Cambridge Five" - \u200b\u200bMcLane and Guy Burgess, the traitor called Philby "the third man" in the spy group. In November 1955, a group of deputies in the lower house of parliament, trying to find out if Philby was really the "third man", sent a request to the newly elected Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. And that on November 7, 1955, at the parliamentary hearings, he publicly removed all suspicions from Philby: “No evidence has been found that Philby warned Maclean or Burgess. While in government service, he performed his duties skillfully and conscientiously. I have no reason to believe that Mr. Philby has ever betrayed the interests of the country, or that he is the so-called "third person", if there was one at all. "

Philby's passport was returned. He gave a press conference and conducted it so brilliantly that colleagues from the ICU brought him their congratulations.

CIA chief Smith and the Angleton counterintelligence chief were furious. And FBI Director Hoover, gritting his teeth, was forced to lift the sanctions against Philby and officially acquit him.

On December 29, the FBI closed its dossier on him, which resulted in the following conclusion: “Subject - Donald Stuart MacLaine et al. During a recent screening, all references to Harold A.R. Philby's were transcribed into 3 x 5 inch cards. Philby is suspected of having alerted the subject to the latest investigation. Viewing the documents does not give grounds to open an investigation into Philby's activities. "

According to Western analysts, the main damage that Philby inflicted on the CIA and the ICU was not so much in the operational sphere as in the relationship between the CIA and the FBI, and between the American and British intelligence services in general. After Philby, their relationship had never been so close - "his activities sowed seeds of mistrust and poisoned the minds of some CIA officers so much that they could no longer fully trust even their closest British colleagues."

Under the patronage of Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, Philby took a job as a Middle East correspondent for the Observer and The Economist, and soon went to Beirut as a journalist. The SIS management considered it unnecessary to notify his employers that the position of a correspondent would be just a cover for him. The thing is, Philby is incredible! - was again recruited into the SIS ...

Drunk Khrushchev and the gift of the leader of all nations

Stalin, having signed a decree in 1947 on awarding Philby with the Order of the Red Banner, ordered to thank the intelligence officer with a valuable gift. Especially for Philby, the best masters of the Union - artists, jewelers and sculptors - made a bas-relief of Mount Ararat.

The present from the leader to Kim Philby was presented by the courier at the next meeting.

The 40x25 cm bas-relief, made of valuable species of relict trees, inlaid with gold, platinum and the smallest diamonds interspersed into the snow-capped peaks of Ararat, was a unique work of art.

Philby was moved and fascinated. Changing dwellings when moving from one country to another, he invariably installed the precious thing in the most conspicuous place. For sixteen (!) Years, the guests never ceased to admire the refined taste of the owner, and Philby explained by rote, answering questions, that the bas-relief was more than a hundred years old and was acquired on occasion from a junk dealer from Istanbul.

Philby parted with the leader's gift only in 1963, when, under threat of exposure, he was hastily taken to the Union. After some time, Philby's stay in our country became public. Help for the British came from an unexpected direction. At a diplomatic reception at the GDR embassy in Moscow, a tipsy Khrushchev suddenly announced his decision to grant Philby political asylum and a Moscow residence permit.

However, the leadership of the ICU was wary of the statement of the Soviet prime minister: Khrushchev's drunken rantings about equipping the Soviet army with "underground combat boats", which allegedly surpassed any tanks in the world in terms of their tactical and technical data, were still fresh in their memory. Given Khrushchev's inadequacy, the ICU decided that it was necessary to obtain factual confirmation of Philby's presence in Moscow and his work in favor of the USSR.

Without waiting for this "factual confirmation" to be obtained, FBI Director Hoover announced that he had "exhausted his credit of confidence in the ICU." Indeed, until his death in 1972, he did not trust the British special services. In turn, Walter Bedell-Smith, by his behavior, made it clear that the special relationship of the CIA with the ICU would not be restored until the British put things in order in their house.

A large MI5 commission that arrived from London to Beirut, which included not only counterintelligence agents, but also experts, thoroughly examined Philby's home and all personal belongings in search of material confirmation of his espionage activities in favor of the USSR. No evidence was found. Only at the last moment, before leaving the apartment, the art expert noticed the bas-relief that flickered lonely in the living room of the villa. He was immediately investigated. With the help of special equipment, it was possible to establish that the thing is a fake antique, and its age does not exceed twenty years. Moreover, after taking a closer look at the "antique" work of art, the expert finally found confirmation of the connection between Harold Adrian Russell Philby and the Soviet Union.

The sensationalism of the discovery was that the two-headed peak of the mountain, in the sequence with which it was presented on the bas-relief, could be viewed only from the territory of the Soviet Union, but not Turkey. This means that the master-performers, making the sketch, were ... And if you take into account the lifetime of the thing ... In a word, the gift of the leader was the only "factual confirmation" that Philby worked in favor of the USSR ...

In the period from 1941 to 1945 alone, Kim Philby transferred to the USSR about 1000 of the most important documents. Even his wife did not recognize Philby's double play: the Austrian communist Litzi Friedman felt that her husband had betrayed high ideals and went over to the side of the capitalists for a fabulous salary.

Kim Philby was born in 1912 in India to a wealthy family. I easily entered the prestigious Cambridge University. He was one of the most active participants in the Cambridge socialist circle. After graduation, he was recruited by Soviet intelligence. During the Spanish Civil War, he left under the guise of a journalist for Madrid, where he collected information about the activities of German agents.

In 1940 he began working for the British Secret Intelligence Service. “I was appointed as an instructor on political sabotage and underground propaganda - issues in which I was more competent than my superiors thought. But it soon became apparent that although I had sufficient knowledge of these subjects, I was hopelessly incapable as an instructor, ”Philby recalled. He behaved like a skilled psychologist, urging his superiors to expand his powers. In conversations with the leadership, he insisted that working against Soviet intelligence requires close contact between all units of the British intelligence services. As a result, it was Philby who became the “generator of ideas” for effective work. “I considered all the posts I held in the ICU solely as a cover for my main activities, and my desire to competently perform my official duties was dictated by the desire to occupy those positions in which I could bring maximum benefit to the Soviet Union,” the agent wrote.

Philby. (wikipedia.org)

There is information that Philby gave the USSR information about the preparation of the Germans for the Battle of the Kursk Bulge, had access to the decrypted telegrams of the German Abwehr. In his work, he also used male charm - for example, the double agent began a close relationship with Eileen Fiers, who worked in the counterintelligence archive.

Interview. (wikipedia.org)

In 1947, he moved to Istanbul, where he prepared to penetrate the USSR. He solicits the authorities for an extension of the internship period for young specialists, referring to the high security of the Soviet Union. According to him, not a single agent sent with the assistance of Turkish organizations has returned.

American intelligence services

In 1949, Philby was offered a job in Washington. He used this chance to learn "about the Anglo-American activities against the USSR on a global scale." The scout arrived in the United States when the McCarthy movement reached its peak - the search for communists was accompanied by a wide propaganda campaign. In the States, he collaborated with a department whose goal was to destroy the communist regime. According to researchers, it was thanks to Philby's intervention that some joint Anglo-American operations against the USSR failed.

At a typewriter. (wikipedia.org)

In 1955, British services began to suspect Kim of a double game, and he was forced to resign. After the disclosure of two Soviet agents - Donald MacLane and Guy Burgess - an internal investigation began. Philby went to the Middle East, and in 1963 he moved to Moscow. Here he worked as an advisor on the UK, trained intelligence officers and wrote memoirs. For services to the Soviet Union, the double agent was awarded several honorary orders. In 1988, Kim Philby passed away.

That evening, exactly 50 years ago, a thunderstorm was raging in Beirut. A thin middle-aged man calmly closed the door of an apartment in a house located on a hill behind him, descended five flights of stairs and emerged onto the dark Ryu Kantari. Making sure that no one was watching him, he quickly walked through the water-flooded streets to the port, where the dry cargo ship Dolmatov was waiting for him. As soon as he boarded, the ship lifted anchor and sailed into the rough Mediterranean Sea. It went to Odessa, and a flag with a sickle and a hammer fluttered at its stern. After spending nearly a quarter of a century in the shadows, Kim Philby finally set out for his spiritual home, which he previously visited only in thought.

Philby's escape to the Soviet Union on January 23, 1963 was one of the most dramatic moments of the Cold War. Philby's disappearance added to the humiliating blow that the "Cambridge Five" inflicted on the secret world of British intelligence. Nine years earlier, Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan had declared in the House of Commons that there was reason to believe Philby was the so-called "Third" - the man who helped spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean flee to Russia in 1951. ), - no. Meanwhile, it was Philby who was this "Third".

Then there was the Fourth, Anthony Blunt, and the Fifth, John Cairncross, who helped reveal the secret of the atomic bomb. However, Philby remains an archetypal traitor. He was admired in MI6, the secret intelligence service, while he sent agents to their deaths behind the Iron Curtain.

Not the least of the victims of the war that Philby waged against his homeland is occupied by his wives, as well as children forced to live in the "vacuum" created by his disappearance. Dudley Philby, who his friends call Tommy, is the third of the five children of the spy. All of them were born by Philby's second wife Eileen. Abandoned by her husband, she died of respiratory failure in 1957 at the age of 47. Soon after, Tommy and the other Philby children lost their father as well. On suspicion of espionage, he was forced to leave MI6 and, having taken up journalism, left for Beirut as a correspondent for the Observer and Economist. His escape in 1963 split the family.

“When our mother died and my father left, relatives and godparents took us apart. They were all kind and considerate with us and they were very sympathetic to us, ”says Tommy.

He was able to visit his father in his exile only years later. They managed to restore relations, and Tommy visited Moscow five times in the seventies.

“I received the letter many months later, when my father was in Moscow,” he recalls. - He kept everything secret, but he was a very good father. He just believed in communism and followed his faith. I didn't like Moscow - I love whiskey. "

Philby's night escape was prompted by a visit from former MI6 chief of the Beirut residency, Nicholas Elliott, who was sent to seek a confession from an old friend. On January 10, 1963, Philby confessed orally to Eliot in exchange for a promise of immunity. Six days later, Philby was summoned to the British embassy. Suspecting a trap, "Third" contacted his KGB curator, who organized his sea evacuation.

“My father was a very kind man who had his own convictions,” says Tommy, who has worked with horses for most of his life. - I did not agree with him, but he was who he was. What could I do about it? "

What about those who died because of Philby's betrayal?

"There is no information that anyone died because of her."

However, Michael Smith, author of the MI6 history book "Six," doesn't think so. He recalls dozens, if not hundreds, of doomed agents who were thrown into the newly formed Eastern Bloc of MI6 and the CIA in the postwar period.

“The number of MI6 operations thwarted and agents killed because of Philby's betrayal is impossible to count,” he says. - However, it is clear that he thwarted all plans in the Baltics, Poland, Albania and in the south of the Soviet Union. Some of these operations would no doubt have failed for other reasons, but Philby is fully responsible for their failure. ”

Has Tommy's life been ruined by his father's reputation? “No, no,” he says. "I have great friends and good health."

Russia in the second half of the twentieth century turned out to be far from the socialist paradise that Philby dreamed of in his golden youth in Cambridge. In addition, he was not only not met as a hero, but was pushed to the sidelines, as the KGB feared that he was in fact a double agent. As a result, Philby began to seek solace in a bottle.

“I was not ready to see what I saw,” recalled KGB General Oleg Kalugin, who in 1972 visited Philby's apartment in a house near Gorky Street. - In a semi-dark hallway I was greeted by a human ruin, from which it smelled of vodka.

Kalugin was sent to rehabilitate Philby. The Kremlin saw that the number of potential agents in the West began to decline, and decided to show that it can provide its “moles” with a happy life in retirement.

Despite the “drying out,” Philby was never officially hired by the KGB. Nevertheless, he was provided with comfortable conditions: a renovated apartment, a summer house, a supply of English mustard, Oxford jam and Worcestershire sauce, as well as the novels of P.G. Wodehouse - relics of the bygone life that he left behind that January night.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Philby (Harold Adrian Russell Philby 01.01.1912 - 11.05.1988), one of the leaders of British intelligence and at the same time an agent of Soviet intelligence (since 1933). Famous international journalist on the centenary of the birth of this mysterious person Nikolay Dolgopolov prepared a book "Kim Philby", which was published in the ZhZL series of the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house.

With the kind permission of Molodaya Gvardiya Publishing House, we are publishing two excerpts from this book. The first tells about how the young Philby was recruited by Soviet intelligence and about interesting details of his origin. The second (which will be published tomorrow) will discuss how he was transported to the USSR. So here is the first excerpt from the book Nikolai Dolgopolov "Kim Philby".

Let's start with the date of creation of the illegal residency of Soviet intelligence in Great Britain - the year 1933. There is a continuous shine of the names of Soviet illegal immigrants. Orlov, even though he later fled to the USA, Deutsch, Mally, the lesser-known Rafe ... They managed to spy out, calculate, assess the prospects, prepare for recruitment, become contacts of the Five. Of all those mentioned, the SVR highlights Arnold Deutsch.

A portrait of Arnold Genrikhovich Deutsch, born in 1904 in Vienna, adorns one of the stands of the Cabinet of Foreign Intelligence History in Yasenevo. The biography was typical for that time. At the age of 20 - membership in the Austrian Communist Party, since 1928 - in the underground organization of the Comintern. Travel as a liaison to various countries - from Romania with Greece to Syria with Palestine. And in 1932 - the expected step. Deutsch moved to Moscow, transferred to the Bolshevik Party and, at the suggestion of the Comintern, worked in the Foreign Department of the USSR NKVD. During this time, in an incomprehensible way - how was the time? - manages to finish the university in Vienna, defend his diploma and become a doctor of philosophy, freely masters, in addition to his native German, English, French, Italian, Dutch and Russian.

From Moscow, the quickly trained illegal Deutsch, together with his wife, left for France in 1932, from where he often visited Austria, and in 1933 settled in England, where he studied psychology at the University of London.

Together with Deutsch, who was given the pseudonym "Stephen Lang", a group of his assistants moved to the British capital. Attention, among them is "Edith" - Tudor Hart!

Who is she, this lady who was destined to play a huge role in the fate of Kim Philby? An Austrian woman who married an Englishman. The wife of a famous doctor, with his help she managed to penetrate high society. The task Deutsch presented to Tudor Hart was obvious, but complex. She had to get acquainted with people who could be useful to Soviet intelligence now or in the future. Such a specialty in intelligence is called "gunner". Her areas of interest began with Oxford, Cambridge and the University of London, forging future cadres for the civil service of the British Empire. Of course, they touched the Foreign Office, various government agencies, not to mention intelligence with its decryption service, which in England has always been of the highest class. "Edith" looked for and found people already in certain positions, and young people for the future.

So promising "Edith" found Kim Philby. There are references to the acquaintance of Philby's first wife, Litzi, with the recruiter "Edith" in the memoir literature. Well, the two Austrian communists might well have known each other. But it is doubtful that Litzi would point Edith to Kim. Rather, the cautious "Edith" could consult with her, ask questions about Kim's past. After a period of study, she told Philby that he was very interested in someone who could play a significant role in his life. Without hesitation, Kim said he was ready "for a rendezvous" and "Edith" introduced him to Arnold Deutsch. It seems that the answer to the question "who recruited Philby and how?" At least, there is such a version of it - and the rest can be ignored, they are less interesting and convincing ...

Here is a description of Philby's acquaintance with Deutsch. One day in June 1934, Tudor Hart and Kim circled London for several hours, reaching Regent Park. Did Philby understand that transfers from taxis to the subway and walks along the streets were nothing more than Edith's desire to see if they were being followed?

In Regent Park, a companion led Philby to a bench, introduced him to a man who was sitting here, who called himself "Otto", and disappeared from his life forever - unlike a stranger who spoke to him for a long time in German, and then suggested abandoning the idea of \u200b\u200bjoining to the Communist Party. According to the plan of Arnold Deutsch, this bright representative of the establishment in appearance and origin, had to fulfill a completely different role. Philby immediately knew what it was: to become a deep penetration agent. Without asking whether Otto represented the Comintern or Soviet intelligence, Kim agreed to his proposal.

Deutsch quickly recognized Philby as a capable student. He was given the pseudonym "Zenchen". Many times talking with him, gradually introducing him into the circle of responsibilities, "Otto" made him pay special attention to the problem of ensuring his own safety, spending a lot of time on it - his own and his student. Philby didn't like the waste at first, but Deutsch stood his ground. And he convinced Kim of the need to always and everywhere observe the strictest precautions. Subsequently, Kim Philby admitted: he was so imbued with the ideas of the curator that “he was literally obsessed with the ideas of security and conspiracy. This is largely why I managed to survive. "

But Deutsch's fate was tragic. In 1937, he and his wife returned to the USSR, received Soviet citizenship and passports in the name of the Langs. Miraculously, he manages to avoid Stalin's prisons and camps - probably, it helped that Deutsch-Lang, while remaining in intelligence, was transferred to one of the institutes of the Academy of Sciences, where he worked as a senior researcher before the war began.

In June 1941, he returned to active intelligence activities. Due to extraordinary circumstances, one invented legend was replaced by another, and in 1942 Deutsch sailed from Arkhangelsk to the USA on a steamer. But he did not manage to reach the destination - the transport ship "Donbass" was attacked in the Norwegian Sea by German bombers and quickly sank. Parts of the passengers and crew managed to escape, but Deutsch, wounded in the legs, could not leave the sinking ship. He was only 38 years old. How much has been done! And how much more he could manage ...

It turned out that the father had nothing to do with it

Here is what the not-too-successful intelligence officer David Cornwell, who is also a super-successful writer, author of detective novels John Le Carré, wrote about Kim Philby in his essay:

Philby “was the product of the post-war depression, the hasty destruction of the kindred socialist spark and the millennial hibernation of Eden and Macmillan (British prime ministers - Auth.). Duplicity has become a kind of family tradition for Kim Philby.

Philby had the example of his father, an eminent scientist and a sickeningly disgusting man. Did he want to ruin that daddy image, outsmart it, or just follow in his footsteps? But, living far away (from England - Auth.), like his father, he would hardly have achieved these goals. But he inherited his paternal features.

A little king abandoned in the wilderness, Harry St. John Philby did not hide from Kim contempt for his London bosses. He dedicated his entire life to create an impenetrable mixture in Kim, which led to the further betrayal of the boy. And no one could have done it better than my father did. ”

The writer Le Carré is mistaken in many ways, as he, David Cornwell, was wrong, serving in MI5, and then working for intelligence under the cover of the British consulates in Bonn and Hamburg. I'll start with everyday life. Philby's father did little at all for his development as a person. He lived away from his firstborn son, Harold Adrian Russell, who was born on January 1, 1912 in Ambala (modern India). The Philby family, not distinguished by wealth, is one of the oldest English surnames. Grandmother Philby came from a family that gave Great Britain many glorious army officers, including Field Marshal Montgomery, a World War II hero, the most famous English military after Admiral Nelson. By the way, when in 1910 the Deputy British Commissioner in Punjab Harry St. John Philby married, his distant relative, Lieutenant Bernard Lowe Montgomery at that time, was the best man at his wedding.

John Le Carré, in many of his works, involuntarily displays Philby as the main character - and, moreover, a purely negative one. This "hero" is clever, cynical, ready to betray not only the country, but also any of his neighbors. It seems that the good writer Le Carré here again turns into a mediocre scout Cornwell. Yes, he knows the psychology of intelligence, its dark sides and ruthlessness. However, he does not know the thoughts of people who are disinterestedly fighting for an idea. Although, thanks to the books of the same Le Carré, Kim Philby was “fictionalized” during his lifetime, confidently entering not only documentary, but also fiction English and American literature, becoming a symbol of betrayal in the eyes of Cornwell - Le Carré. Meanwhile, even the fanatical "stubborn" compatriots of Philby, who are not accusing him of anything, admit that money and bribery have nothing to do with it. Then - why is "betrayal"? “Freedom of choice”, which is so much talked about in the West, is one of the inalienable human rights ...

Yes, we can say that “genes have leaped”. Many serious British publications, describing the unusual life of Harry St. John, write about his connections with intelligence. Indeed, in 1932, its leadership sent Philby Sr. to Mesopotamia, giving the task to turn the subjects of King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia against the Turks. He confidently coped with the assignment, becoming an adviser and then a friend of the king of the Saudi monarch. He, in which LeCare is right, did indeed work for the British intelligence service MI6, being numbered among them as a "noble correspondent." So in those years they called people from the establishment who worked for the ICU.

(For more details on the adventures of Kim Philby's father in the Middle East, see the text on Octopus. - Admin )

And then such changes followed, after which the frantic Arabist, who was notable for his undisguised - or ostentatious, a little on the public - eccentricity, had no time for his son at all. St. John Philby, unexpectedly for his colleagues, turned into a scientist. In addition, a Cambridge graduate, the son of a plantation owner, he converted to Islam, taking the name "Abdullah", divorced his wife, Dora, an Englishwoman, and shocked everyone by marrying a slave from Saudi Arabia. However, later his son Kim got along well with his two half-brothers - Farid and Khalid.

It is known that the name Kim was given to a six-year-old boy by his father visiting a family that left Punjab for the UK. He loved his son, and saw in his dexterous movements and witty little son a clear resemblance to the character in the novel "Kim", written in 1901 by Rudyard Kipling.

So the family broke up. The father remained on the outskirts, preferring the company of the Saudi king and slave to communication with the family that settled in Great Britain. So there was no influence, although family attachments remained.

Kim truly loved and respected his mother, Dora. As soon as she entered the room, he instantly jumped up. But Kim also loved his father. The centuries-old noble tradition that shaped personalities and characters is a great thing, and here Le Carré is not mistaken: Kim inherited some of his features. Among them are decisiveness, the desire for independence and for the right to their own opinion, which often differs from the generally accepted one. A certain stubbornness, the ability to make a choice and achieve a goal. A photograph of Harry St. John in white Arabic clothes, which remained with him all the years of wandering and forced departures, adorned and still adorns his son's apartment in the center of Moscow.

But St. John Philby held on to the extreme right to the end of his days. There are also references to the fact that he, as a potentially dangerous to his country, was interned during the Second War. Some researchers even label him as a fascist. But it was the struggle - and to the death - against fascism that forged the Kim Philby we know.

Yes, the son chose a completely different path on his own. I don’t want to play politics for a long time, describing the global crisis that broke out in the 1930s, which also swept through good old England. I will pass to the point that sane people tried to find an answer to the eternal question “why?”. The only alternative to the world collapse was Soviet Russia, which chose its own socialist path, which seemed to many then to be more successful. Marxism, the rapid industrialization of the once agrarian country, survival alone, and breathtaking conversations about building a new society aroused sympathy for the USSR and a part of the growing British establishment. The ideas of communism, formulated by the Englishman Thomas More, and then by Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, were seen as getting rid of capitalism that had once again fallen into an economic dead end.

The elite of British society, to which Kim Philby belonged, was also in a painful search. He, a graduate of the Westminster School, entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1929. The history student saw the way out of the political and economic impasse in following the ideas of Marxism, and he became a regular at the meetings of young socialists. Kim naturally knew how to gain trust, so that after the first year he was elected treasurer of the Socialist Society.

His views all leveled and leveled. He became friends with Guy Burgess, who did not hide his communist beliefs, looks into the left circle of the Apostles. He switches from studying history to studying economics. Isn't it possible to apply Marx's theory there faster and more successfully?

At the same time, Kim did not like rallies, long speeches, and too protracted discussions. Everything verbal, non-specific was not for him - he preferred real deeds to pathetic slogans. This craving for the concrete later manifested itself in intelligence work, both British and Soviet.

Rounding out the story about the reasons for Kim's life choice, I would like to draw your attention to his teacher - Professor of Economics Maurice Dobb, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He instructed the careful listener of his lectures in the appropriate spirit. So, the enthusiasm for leftist ideas; world economic crisis; the Great Depression and the rise of fascism - that's what influenced, as Philby later wrote, on his decision to "work in some form for the communist movement." Fortunately, he did not join the Communist Party, otherwise in the future Kim would have had even more difficult times.