Lenka Panteleev

Childhood, Youth

Leonid Ivanovich Pantelkin was born in 1902 in the city of Tikhvin in the Novgorod province . He graduated from elementary school there, having received primary education. After graduation, he was accepted to professional courses, where he received the prestigious profession of a typesetter and typesetter at that time. He worked in the printing house of the newspaper "Kopeyka" .

Service in the Red Army

In 1919 Pantelkin voluntarily joined the Red Army , was sent as part of one of the units to the Narva Front , where he took part in battles with the troops of General Yudenich and units of the Estonian army . Having outstanding organizational skills and makings of a leader, without special education, he rose to the post of commander of a machine-gun platoon . At the end of the Civil War, he was demobilized and, among thousands of Red Army soldiers , was discharged into the reserve in 1921 .

Service in the bodies of the Cheka

While working in the Petrograd Cheka, he participated in the suppression of kulak uprisings in the Poltava region in 1920-1922 ^[1] . On July 11, 1921, the 19-year-old Pantelkin was accepted as an investigator to the military control unit of the road transport Extraordinary Commission of the United North-West Railways. Shortly thereafter, on October 15, 1921, he was appointed to the position of controller agent in the Road Transport Emergency Commission ( DTCHK ) in Pskov . During his service at the Cheka, Pantyolkin stood on the radical positions of left-wing party members and was negative about the new economic policy , which was not welcomed then, given the change in the government's course towards private enterprise. According to the OGPU archival certificate, in January 1922 Pantyolkin was dismissed from the Cheka "to reduce staff." According to the same certificate, the order number and the specific date of dismissal are not available in the files of the personal file.

In 1925, Sergei Kondratyev, the head of the 1st brigade of the Leningrad Criminal Investigation Department engaged in the fight against banditry, wrote in the magazine “The Court is Coming” that Panteleev “engaged in robbery at one of the searches.” Therefore, they expelled from the Cheka. The time was difficult, severe, and Pskov was actually a border city, so they fired without giving a real reason.

Criminal activity

In early 1922, Panteleev settled in Petrograd , where he gathered a gang, which included: Leonid Bass - Panteleev’s colleague in the Pskov Cheka, Varshulevich, former commissar of the battalion during the Civil War, member of the RCP (b) Gavrikov and professional criminals Alexander Reintop (nicknamed “Reintop” Sashka-pan ”) and Mikhail Lisenkov (nicknamed“ Bear-Sloppy ”). Around the same time, the gang committed a number of robberies in and around Petrograd. Panteleev's raids were distinguished by careful preparation, as well as some theatricality and bravado. Panteleev’s weapons and his people were extremely rare.

On September 4, 1922, Panteleev was arrested after a shootout in the Kozhtrest shoe store, during which Pavel Barzai, the head of the 3rd branch of the Petrograd police, died, who had been searching for Panteleev for six months. November 10, 1922 the provincial court of Petrograd sentenced Lenka Panteleev to death. On the night of November 11, taking advantage of the help of a supervisor, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, who negatively accepted the government’s policy, Panteleev with several accomplices escaped from Kresty prison and began a new series of armed robberies. This one differed from the first series in that Panteleev sometimes began to kill his victims. Not only the criminal investigation department, but also the GPU bodies were involved in the liquidation of the gang.

On the night of February 13, 1923, Panteleev with his partner Lisenkov (Mishka-Koryavyi) came to the apartment of the prostitute Mitskevich in the hope of a good rest.

One evening, people from the police who told me about this drama - and who admired Lyonka - surrounded him on "raspberries", in his den, naturally, on a tip. There were women and wine. He came in, threw off his leather jacket, drank a glass of vodka in one gulp, took a guitar. What to sing? “Oh, gone, he said, your head is violent ...” During the singing they killed him. Silent dangerous guitar. ^[1]

Chekist Ivan Busko point-blank shot Panteleev in the head. He fell to the floor dead, and Lysenkov tried to escape. He was shot in the neck. Only Sashka-Pan (Raintop) remained at large. He was detained by a friend.

Despite the announcement in the newspapers that the famous Lenka Panteleev was killed, the population did not immediately believe this. The fear of the famous raider was so great that the vast majority of Petrograd residents were sure that Panteleev was alive and would still show himself. To dispel the rumors about Panteleev’s elusiveness, his corpse, by order of the authorities, was put on public display in the morgue of the Obukhov Hospital , where thousands of people could see him.

Relatives of the deceased body was never identified. At the same time, raids and robberies continued on behalf of Lenka Panteleev in Petrograd ^[2] .

In which period Leonid Pantelkin took the pseudonym Lenka Panteleev, it is not known for certain.

• Lenka Panteleev is dedicated to the poem by Elizabeth of Polonsky “In the loop” (1923).
• The life and “exploits” of Lenka Panteleev are reflected in the television series “ Life and Death of Lenka Panteleev ”.
• Panteleev is devoted to the story of Lev Sheinin and the 3rd series of the television series “ Born of the Revolution ”. In both works, taking into account their artistic nature and ideological censorship, the image of Panteleev is very far from reality. So, in the story of Sheinin, the bandit’s romantic affection for a robbed woman is described, while Lyonka is not killed during detention, but sentenced to death by the court, in the film “Born of the Revolution” Panteleev is credited with a pre-revolutionary criminal past, he is silent about his service in the Cheka (in contrast from the book on which the film was made). In the same film, a voiceover informs, with reference to the newspaper Petrogradskaya Pravda , that from November 1917 until the detention Panteleev committed 82 murders, 170 robberies and 192 robberies.
• In 2004, Alexander Bondar’s short story “Lenka Panteleev” was published, which is a modern remake of the story of L. Sheinin, written in 1939 .
• Two documentaries were shot about the Panteleev case (from the Red Strip and Investigation cycles ... ); the latter showed the alcoholic head of Panteleev, which has survived to this day in one of the laboratories at the faculty of law of St. Petersburg State University .
• The history of Panteleev is based on the documentary story of M. Tokarev “Lenka Panteleev - detectives of a thunderstorm”.
• Panteleev - one of the protagonists of the fourth trilogy of the epic Andrei Valentinov's “Eye of Power”. Valentinov himself adheres to the version of Panteleev’s activity as a special operation of the GPU.
• In the criminal environment, Lenka Panteleev still enjoys the fame of the elusive, dashing raider. He devoted more than one song in the genre of "Russian chanson." The most famous are performed by Vika Tsyganova (Lyrics: V. Tsyganov, music: Y. Pryalkin) from the album “Walk, Anarchy” (1991) and performed by Anatoly Polotno , from the album “Greetings from Lenka Panteleev” (1990), “Lenka Panteleev ”performed by the author Vladimir Kalusenko from the album“ Tramp ”(2014). In the song of Vika Tsyganova , the erroneous opinion is expressed that Lenka Panteleev acted in Moscow . Similarly, in the song of Anatoly Polotno we are talking about Odessa .
• The band " Bad Balance " recorded the song "Lenka Panteleev" in the album Legends of the Gangsters (2007).
• In May 2012, in the Youth Theater named after A. Bryantsev (St. Petersburg), the premiere of the play “Lenka Panteleev. The Musical ”(16+). The directors are Maxim Didenko and Nikolai Dreiden . The playwright is Konstantin Fedorov. The performance is a laureate of the National Award “ Musical Heart of the Theater - 2012” in the nomination “Best Performance”.
• The main character of the book by Elena Khaetskaya (under the pseudonym Elena Tolstaya) “Lenka Panteleev. Book 1. Lucky man. Book 2. The Son of Perdition. ”
• Mentioned in the song of Alexander Rosenbaum "Ligovka":

• L. Panteleev

• Petrograd Maze
• Leo Sheinin. Lenka Panteleev, M., 1968
• Cooper Alexander Lenka Panteleev
• Panteleev Lenka. 1902 - February 13, 1922. Life story.
• The case of Lenka Panteleev’s gang (“The Court is Coming” magazine, 1925)
• Leonid Panteleev / Leonid Pantelkin /
• Raider number 1. Lenka Panteleev from the series of programs “ The investigation led ... ”
• “Brother - 0” Lev Lurie: how they caught Lenka Panteleev
• Lyrics by rozenbaum.ru