The Mystery of Olga Chekhova (38 page)

p. 201
Olga Chekhova’s political beliefs. ‘As to her political views, she is in favour of the pre-Hitler system in Germany’, from interrogation of Boris Fyodorovich Glazunov, b. 1895 in Leningrad, by Captain Tereshchenko, senior investigator of 1st Division, 4th Department Counter-Intelligence SMERSh, of the Group of Soviet Occupation Troops in Germany, 10 October 1945, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

p. 202
‘My darling, darling Auntie Olya!’ Ada Konstantinovna Knipper to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Berlin, 26 April 1945, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2580.

p. 203
‘You killed Kolya!’, quoted V. V. Knipper, p. 180.

p. 203
Albert Sumser’s version, interview, 15 October 2003.

p. 204
Interrogation by Colonel Shkurin, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

p. 205
‘for a 72-hour rendezvous’, Deriabin, p. 59. Deriabin was at the time an officer of the NKVD Guards Directorate in charge of protecting Soviet leaders, and was thus in a position to know.

p. 205
‘Let Abakumov tell...’,
VAR,
pp. 208-13.

p.
205
‘The very ideal of a Chekist’, ‘a shock of black hair’, Kuznetsov, pp.149-50.

p. 206
‘a dirty runner bespattered ...’, Solzhenitsyn,
The Gulag Archipelago,
Vol. I, 1974, p. 126.

p.
206
Abakumov and Beria, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 25 September 2003.

p. 206
KGB papers. According to Professor Sudoplatov, the papers released represent only a tiny proportion of those on the whole case. In fact the KGB revealed only the papers which concern SMERSh, when SMERSh had no idea of Olga’s true relationship with the NKVD. The key document—if the proceedings were ever trusted to paper—would be her NKVD debriefing for Beria and Merkulov, but that is unlikely to be released, especially since the KGB officially denied that there were any more papers.

p. 206
‘When are we going to meet?’ AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

p.
207
Olga Chekhova and Soviet intelligence, see also Beria, pp. 123-30; Parrish, pp. 126, 317; Deriabin, pp. 59-60; Sudoplatov, 1996, pp. 146, 159; Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 25September 2003.

p. 207
‘All that Olga Chekhova wrote ...’, Beria, pp. 123-30.

p. 208
‘Rumours circulating about me ...’, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

p. 208
‘It isn’t for me!’, Mariya Vadimovna Shverubovich, interview, 25 September 2003.

p. 209
‘Dear Vova’, L. K. Knipper to V. V. Knipper, 25 September 1945, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22. It would appear that either Olga Knipper-Chekhova herself or the Soviet authorities had decided to reduce her age by two years, considering that her date of birth was 22 September 1868 and her seventy-fifth birthday had already taken place in 1943.

20. Return to Berlin

p. 211
Olga and Lev after the war. Lev’s son is certain that he never went abroad again after the war, except to East Germany, and he is virtually certain that his father never heard from Olga. Andrei Lvovich Knipper, interview, 22 September 2002.

p.
211
‘According to your instructions ... ,’ AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

p. 213
‘He was being kept in a prisoner of war camp in Denmark ...’, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

p.
213
‘Dear Aunt Masha ...’, Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova to Mariya Pavlovna Chekhova, 2 August 1945, AD-MCY.

p. 214
‘My dear and dearest...’, Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, Berlin, 2 August 1945, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

p.
216
‘Dearest Vladimir Semyonovich ...’, Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova to Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov, 18 October 1945, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

p. 216
‘Chekhova is extremely worried ...’, Lieutenant General Zelenin to Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov, Berlin, 22 October 1945, AC-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

p. 217
Kurier
and correspondence, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

p. 218
‘With regard to Olga Chekhova’s visit...’, document headed: ‘To Beria from Serov, 21 November 1945. Copy to Abakumov. Copy to Merkulov. Top Secret. NKVD of the USSR’, AD-MCM, V. V. Knipper Fond, File 22.

p.
218
‘Taken under control ...’, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003.

21. After the War

p. 222
‘What, in Moscow? ...’ Mariya Vadimovna Shverubovich, interview, 25 September 2003.

p.
222
‘I’ve distanced myself...’, ‘In the evenings ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova to Ada Knipper, 17 January 1947, PAK/T.

p. 223
‘We sit together ...’, ‘and I am still alive‘, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova to Ada Knipper, 18 July 1948, PAK/T.

p. 223
Lev’s 1947 expedition to Caucasus and Elbrus, Andrei Lvovich Knipper, interview, 22 September 2002.

p. 224
Lev under General Sudoplatov until 1949, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003.

p. 224
‘Lyova is working!’, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Melikov, interview, 18 October 2003.

p.
225
‘Lyova, don’t be a fool, it’s winter!’, Tatyana Alekseevna Gaidamovich, interview, 4 January 2003.

p.
225
Lev and Mariya Garikovna split up, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Melikov, interview, 18 October 2003.

p. 225
Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich condemend for ‘Formalism’, Shentalinsky, pp. 303-4. Shostakovich was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1957.

p. 225
‘propaganda posters’,
Sovietskaya muzyka,
No. 12, 1978, p. 89.

p. 226
Olga Chekhova and Aleksandr Demyanov, Igor Aleksandrovich Shchors, interview, December 2003.

p. 226
Olga Chekhova’s contacts with Abakumov and General Utekhin, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003. Abakumov’s misery dragged on. His greatest mistake had been to conceal from Stalin the suspicion that Zhdanov’s doctors had somehow been responsible for his death. He was finally charged with a failure to take ‘active measures’ against Zionists, at a time when Stalin saw ’Cosmopolitanism’ as treachery. Stalin’s xenophobia was now taking a more anti-Semitic form. Abakumov was also accused of the misappropriation of government funds and, as mentioned earlier, ‘ignoring Communist moral principles’. In December 1954, he was tried and sentenced to ‘suffer the highest degree of punishment: death by shooting’. Deriabin, p. 176.

p. 226
‘a rumour’, Deriabin, pp. 59-60.

p. 227
‘over-estimated the importance of Olga Chekhova’, Anatoly Pavlovish Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003.

p. 227
Zoya Rybkina’s mission to Berlin, June 1953, Eduard Prokofievich Sharapov, interview, 22 September 2003; see also Sudoplatov, 1994, p. 336.

p.
228
‘a direct capitulation to imperialism’, quoted Lev Bezymenski,
Die Zeit,
15 October 1993.

p. 228
‘Do you realize where you are going?’, Eduard Prokofievich Sharapov, interview, 22 September 2003.

p. 229
Mariya Garikovna and end of her life, Zoya Vasileevna Zarubina, interview, 26 September 2003, and Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Melikov, interview, 18 October 2003.

p. 229
Death of Misha Chekhov, Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81. Misha left his small ranch in California to Ada (his daughter with Olga Chekhova), but Ada died as a result of a plane crash in 1966.

p. 230 ‘Venus-Film ...’, Helker and Lenssen, pp. 210-11.

p. 231 ‘expanded very rapidly’, Renata Helker, interview, 13 October 2003.

p. 231
‘the millions which she had earned ...’, Helker and Lenssen, p. 214.

p. 231
Soviet intelligence sources and Olga Tschechowa Kosmetik, Anatony Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003; Eduard Prokofievich Sharapov, interview, 22September 2003; Beria’s son, Sergo, also wrote: ‘Olga Chekhova was rewarded for her intelligence work. Her financial well-being was secured by the Soviet Union. But she never received any medals. And no one in the West was ever able to prove that she had been a Soviet spy’, Beria, pp. 123-30.

p.
231
‘the actress Olga Chekhova ...’, Lev Bezymenski, Die Zeit, 15 October 1993.

p.
231
‘a complicated and somewhat unusual story’, V. V. Knipper, p. 179.

p.
233
Symphony-Oratorium and
Count Cagliostro,
L. K. Knipper to Ada Knipper, 9 May 1974, PAK/T. He also wrote a ballet, The
Source of Happiness,
which was based on Tadjik music.
Sovietskaya muzyka,
No. 12, 1978, p. 89. Also Tatyana Alekseevna Gaidamovich, interview, 26 September 2003.

p.
233 ‘A proletarian will always be a proletarian ...’, Olga Chekhova to Ada Knipper, 28 November [?], PAK/T.

p. 234
Death of Olga Chekhova, Vera Tschechowa, interview, 16 October 2003.

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