What did Putin do in Dresden?
Vladimir Putin’s career did not begin in Moscow, but in Dresden. Until the fall of the Honecker regime, he was a KGB agent in the German Democratic Republic. This period in Putin’s biography lasted for five mysterious years and spawned many rumors.
On that winter day, in one of the Dresden new buildings, a more or less conspiratorial meeting took place. She was hastily organized by two KGB officers. In addition, there was an employee of the political police of the GDR, who, it is true, had been carrying out the assignments of the Soviet special services for several years, as well as a representative of the foreign intelligence of the East German Ministry of State Security. As a result of the peaceful revolution, he lost his job. It was January 16, 1990.
On the table is a bottle of champagne. She was brought from the West. True, there are no special reasons for the holiday. GDR will soon cease to exist, its intelligence services, too. The Dresden District Office of the Ministry of State Security on the night of December 6, 1989 was subjected to assault. Cases stored there are placed under the protection of a civil committee. It is not possible to save the situation by starting restructuring in the GDR. Intelligence agencies in East Germany have lost their capacity. Without fraternal socialist assistance, they cannot even protect secret telephone lines from wiretapping. The time of operational activities and fake passports has passed. This is a catastrophe. Now four men are pondering what else can be saved and how to transfer the remnants of the GDR agent network to the KGB.
Moscow agents are in a difficult situation. They are instructed to engage in "intensive search for new intelligence officers." This development knocks the Chekists out of the rut, and at this meeting they even neglect the main commandments of their profession. And maybe both Soviet spies anyway? Maybe they understand that the Cold War is lost and revolutionary changes will soon take place in the USSR? During the conversation, the interlocutors drink coffee, children run around. Although both agents probably know that class enemies have already gained access to the personal files of East German spies, the former intelligence officer under the pseudonym 'Klaus Tsaundik' ran into the KGB on that day. The glasses are ringing, four men are drinking for successful cooperation and democratic socialism in the GDR.
Nothing was saved. Fourteen years later, Klaus Tsaundik works as a gardener. George S., a former criminalist in the service of the KGB, lives off social benefits. The trace of one of the Soviet security officers is lost. And only the fourth participant in the meeting, who recruited Klaus Zaoundik and called George S. “our best agent,” made an incredible career that at that moment could not even be imagined. This is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the current president of Russia.
Four and a half years, from August 1985 to January or February 1990, Vladimir Putin spent in Dresden. However, it is unlikely that residents of the city on the Elbe remembered this short man when, on December 31, 1999, Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly appointed him as his successor. The Dresden period in Putin’s biography gave rise to many idle gossips. Did Volodya really in these years lay the foundation of his fast-moving career in post-Soviet Russia? Has he established his network in Dresden? Was he part of Operation Luch, in which KGB officers spied on SED functionaries? Who was Putin at all - the Cold War super spy or an ordinary agent in the East German province?
Work in Dresden was for 32-year-old Putin's first assignment abroad. Germany was for him a new, unexplored country, both personally and professionally. The gray German province turned out to be a paradise of real socialism. Start at least with housing conditions. In Leningrad, Putin, along with his wife and first daughter Masha, was huddled in the cramped apartment of their parents. In Germany, he gets a three-room apartment in a block house on the outskirts of the forest. After Russia, this housing seems incredibly spacious. His second daughter Katya is born in Dresden in December 1986.
Chet Putin delighted with Germany. "The standard of living there was much higher than ours, and the range of products is much richer," recalls Lyudmila Putin in an interview. They can afford something. In the GDR, Putin receives a fairly decent salary — 1,800 East German marks, plus another hundred dollars as a mark-up. They even manage to save money on a private car. When a favorable exchange rate of the dollar to the brand is established, Putin asks his friend in West Berlin to buy a music center for him. New stereo proudly takes its place in the furniture wall. According to the recollections of friends, Putin had no organizational skills.
If in terms of privacy, Dresden was a paradise for Putin, then in professional terms it was a second-class career, not a triumph, but rather a dead end. "Dresden meant a link," says a KGB officer who also spent about five years in this city. Any graduate of the Moscow intelligence school dreamed of a business trip to the territory of a class enemy, somewhere in Washington, Bonn or Vienna. But Putin did not even make it to East Berlin.
Dresden could not be called an agent center, so only a small KGB unit settled here. What did Putin do on Angelikastrasse, what was his task? There are many legends on this subject. There are various rumors. They say, for example, that Putin already in the late seventies had to work in Bonn. Intelligence of one of the allied countries allegedly spotted and photographed it in the West Berlin shopping center KaDeWe. It is alleged that he organized access to the documents for the Eurofighter project and tracked down how Robotron and Siemens corporations are establishing close contacts. He was also rumored to be spying on a prominent scientist from the GDR, Manfred von Ardenne. Putin allegedly watched the SED reformers Hans Modrow and Wolfgang Berghofer or even supported them. Prove nothing is impossible Many of these statements contradict the logic of the work of the socialist special services, and most of them, in general, are like fiction. For example, this concerns staying in Bonn - after all, when Putin came to Dresden in 1985, he barely spoke German. His professional interest in Modrow and Berghofer is also doubtful. The head of the district organization of the SED and the city burgomaster were supposed to be occupied by higher KGB officials and, probably, Soviet party cadres.
A similar situation exists with other rumors of this kind. "What they didn't write about me," Putin complained in an interview. “All this is complete nonsense,” confirms Vladimir Usoltsev, who for two years sat with Putin in the same office. Definite answers do not exist. Those few personal files that were kept in the Dresden KGB archives were either burned in 1989 or forwarded to Moscow. Putin himself speaks of working in Dresden only with hints.
Only a few decide today to speak out about this period in the life of the Russian president. So, for the former chief of East German foreign intelligence, Marcus Wolf, Putin was "a rather insignificant figure." This is evidenced, at least, by the fact that for his merits Putin received from the Ministry of State Security of the GDR only the 'bronze medal of the National People's Army'. Such an award, according to Wolf, was a Stasi, each cleaning lady.
In turn, the former KGB general Oleg Kalugin, who fled to the West, does not consider Putin to be an outstanding intelligence officer. However, neither Wolf nor Kalugin had ever met Putin personally. Vladimir Usoltsev, who was a colleague of the current head of state, does not harbor any illusions about his previous activities: "For five years we worked for some unknown reason." The work was 'over-regulated and ineffective'. The secret service, which brought such horror to people, was a hermetically sealed little world consisting of a stupid routine, meaningless reports, and an endless study of personal files.
According to Usoltsev, Vladimir Putin was involved in "illegal intelligence" and "intelligence using fake documents." According to this data, Putin was just a small cog in a huge KGB car. His task was to persuade the ideologically steadfast citizens of the GDR to cooperate and, above all, students from third world countries. These people were supplied with the corresponding legend and sent to the West. As Usoltsev writes, it was like searching for pearl grains in a dunghill. Thousands of potential candidates were taken under surveillance, hundreds passed the test for ideological reliability, dozens were scrutinized, twenty or thirty people eventually became informants and only a few were trained as future illegal agents.
Can Putin’s career in Germany be considered a success? At first glance, yes. In the end, being in Dresden, he was promoted twice. At first he became a major, and then a lieutenant colonel. Putin himself calls this promotion "pay for the specific results of his work," as well as the number of "realized" sources of information. However, Vladimir Usoltsev believes that these sources did not matter much. According to him, Putin may have recruited only two people for illegal work, but he managed to get an extra star for epaulets for each of these cases.
Contacts with spies in the West and informers in the East are not Putin’s task. But he has two so-called “leading unofficial officers”, two GDR citizens who, under the legend, settled in the district directorate of the people's police of the GDR - Reinhard E. and Georg S. Putin in the background, he is an officer-curator. He develops plans of operations, approves events and organizes secret meetings.
Russian fear of Americans was felt in Dresden at every turn. The Soviet Union was firmly convinced that a possible US nuclear strike would not be a bolt from the blue. Moscow believes that the preparation of the attack cannot go unnoticed, and it will be possible to judge the planned attack by indirect signs.
Putin must also contribute to the common cause. Moscow proceeds from the fact that on the eve of a nuclear conflict, Washington will send its "green berets" on assignment to neutralize the ability of the USSR to strike back. The US Army Special Forces deployed, in particular, at the Bad Tauri military base in Bavaria. The task of each security officer was to register any signs of preparation for a nuclear strike. Potential informants were subject to recruitment, including in Dresden.
It was a Sisyphean work. Thousands of applications from citizens of Germany who wish to visit Dresden were subjected to multi-day checks. Almost every evening the KGB officers sat in their dark offices, digging into card files and looking at documents. As soon as it turned out that someone from Bad Taurus was going to arrive in Dresden, the operational work immediately began. At first it was necessary to check whether this person had previously come into the view of the Stasi or the KGB. Then the check of the inviting party began. According to Usoltsev, this work was meaningless. Putin allegedly had an informant at a base in Bad Tölz or somewhere in the area. Even if it was true, the informant produced only small pieces of the mosaic, which somewhere in distant Moscow became part of some general picture.
At some point, Putin stops believing there is a threat from the West. In public, he demonstrates a commitment to the ideas of perestroika, but in face-to-face conversations, he begins to express critical judgments. To his roommate Usoltsev, he says that the Soviet Union is a country without laws, and declares that we must follow the example of the United States. Americans, in his opinion, built an ideal social system. Consequently, the danger does not come from Washington, but from Moscow. Despite all these statements, Putin continues to carry out his work in good faith. Usoltsev calls him a pragmatist and conformist. No matter how much Putin criticizes his own country in private conversations, this does not officially manifest itself. At the official level, he continues to praise the "inseparable friendship" of fraternal peoples, and then in his circle is indignant at that he faced an absolutely 'mothballed society' in the GDR. He even declares to his friends that "Honecker must go."
Did he express his personal convictions or did he perform another task? Perhaps Vladimir Putin was part of Operation Luch, during which a secret KGB group allegedly collected information about the SED and supported reformers in party ranks. Proponents of conspiracy theories even claim that this group led the overthrow of Honecker and other radical changes in the GDR. There are no publicly available documents for this group. No one knows what its size was, or to what extent it influenced the reform process in East Germany. In any case, the operation failed. After all, its goal was to bring the government faithful to Moscow to power in East Berlin. The scanty facts that were publicized testify against the fact that Putin was a member of the Luch group, because people officially working in the GDR in the KGB, could not be its potential participants. Moscow lost confidence in the Chekists in East Germany, because these people were structurally dependent on the Stasi and were suspected of excessive sympathy for this department. This included, among others, employees in Dresden, including Vladimir Putin.
However, Putin is trying to establish contact with his comrades in arms, explaining that, at least, the need to learn German. During the first private visit, Klaus Tsaundik secretly rises to Putin on the floor without turning on the light on the stairs. They met on football. Every employee of Stasi is obliged to play sports. Every Thursday at seven in the morning, Dresden foreign intelligence officers gather to drive the ball. Sometimes Putin joins them. Tsaundik and Putin get to know each other, enter into a conversation, become friends. They conduct not only professional conversations about illegal intelligence and verification of candidates. Often it comes to German literature and philosophy. Putin is not impressed by Marx, but by Immanuel Kant with his philosophy in the spirit of enlightenment, the Critique of Pure Reason and the treatise "Towards Eternal Peace",
However, Central Europe of the late eighties is infinitely far from a peaceful device in the spirit of Immanuel Kant. No one else knows that the cold war will end soon, the GDR will disappear from the world map, and the Soviet empire will collapse. Putin does not know this either, who, however, no longer believes in communism and doubts the KGB mission, but continues to do his job. He works professionally, even if it is needed only to preserve privileges. However, these privileges are also in question. Vladimir Putin has to experience, in his own skin, what a superpower crisis is.
On December 5, 1989, an enraged mob stormed the district Stasi squad in Dresden. Just around the corner is the KGB building. It also comes to the attention of the demonstrators. The atmosphere is heating up. As an officer on duty, Putin is forced to stand in the doorway to block the rally. He needs advice and support. First he calls to Berlin, but no one there can help him. Then he contacts the Soviet Union and asks the KGB to protect the army units. However, the duty officer replies that such intervention is impossible without the permission of Moscow, and utters two words that Putin has deeply bumped into memory: "Moscow is silent." Putin sets himself and his comrades to defend themselves on their own. However, it all ends peacefully. Putin is shocked. For the first time, in his own words, he experienced a feeling that his country no longer exists. That evening, it became clear to him that the Soviet Union was suffering from a deadly, incurable disease, called the “paralysis of power”. That same night, the Dresden KGB agents begin to burn case files. A few weeks later, Vladimir Putin and his family are gathering things. He has no special prospects in the KGB, but in Moscow he can count on a new job. However, Putin receives an appointment outside the capital - in Leningrad. German friends finally give him a washing machine, and he leaves a reserved corner of real socialism. A few weeks later, Vladimir Putin and his family are gathering things. He has no special prospects in the KGB, but in Moscow he can count on a new job. However, Putin receives an appointment outside the capital - in Leningrad. German friends finally give him a washing machine, and he leaves a reserved corner of real socialism. A few weeks later, Vladimir Putin and his family are gathering things. He has no special prospects in the KGB, but in Moscow he can count on a new job. However, Putin receives an appointment outside the capital - in Leningrad. German friends finally give him a washing machine, and he leaves a reserved corner of real socialism.
In Dresden, he leaves a time bomb to his Cheka colleagues. The recruitment of Klaus Tsaundika, one of Putin’s last official activities, turns out to be a complete fiasco. Eleven months later, Caundic runs to the other side. The KGB has to pay for the fact that Putin has ceased to observe the conspiracy. The defector testifies. As a result, at least 15 informants are exposed. Georg S., Putin's 'best agent', arrested. Much of the KGB agent network in Dresden is revealed.
But this failure can no longer harm Putin. When Tsaundik switches to the other side, Putin is already working in the team of the Leningrad mayor-reformer Anatoly Sobchak. Soon Leningrad again becomes St. Petersburg. In 1990, Putin still does not suspect that now he is destined to go only up. Be that as it may, without the collapse of the Soviet Union, without the unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Gorbachev and without dissolving the CPSU, he would hardly have gotten a chance for a second career.
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