Chichaev, Ivan Andreevich

Early years

Born in a peasant family. In 1915 he was called up for military service. In 1917 he was actively involved in revolutionary activities, was a member of the Council of Soldiers' Deputies, chairman of the division committee ^[2] .

Since 1919, an employee of the Cheka. He worked as Chairman of the Revolution Commission and the Cheka of Ruzayevka. In 1920, he became chairman of the Cheka station Alatyr. In the years 1921-1923. He was a representative of the GPU on the Moscow Railway, he ensured the restoration of the work of railway transport after the military devastation.

In 1923 he was sent to the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. In the same year he was sent on a foreign intelligence mission to Mongolia , where, on cover, he was the head of the consular part of the Soviet Embassy (embassy). He worked on the line of external counterintelligence.

In Foreign Intelligence

In 1924 he went to work in foreign intelligence - INO OGPU . In the years 1924-1925. was consul of the USSR in the Tuva Republic, which was then an independent state. From 1925 to 1927 he worked as a referent for the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs .

In 1927-1930 headed the residency of foreign intelligence of state security agencies in Seoul , where he was under the guise of the consul general ( Korea was a Japanese colony ).

The Consulate General of the USSR was housed in the building of the former Russian diplomatic mission, in which at the end of the last century the last Korean king was hiding from the Japanese invaders. During the Japanese occupation of Korea, the Soviet Consulate General was blocked by Japanese intelligence services. Chichaev, who had already gained operational experience, managed to break through the blockade. He recruited an agent of the Japanese political police, from whom important information was subsequently received. There were so many authentic Japanese documents that it was physically impossible for the residency to completely process it. The most important document received from this source was the Tanaki memorandum on the plans of the Japanese military to establish Tokyo's hegemony in Asia and around the world.

Upon his return from a business trip to Seoul I.A. Chichaev in 1930-1931. again working under the guise of an NKID referent, and in 1932 he was sent by a foreign intelligence resident to the Soviet consulate in Vyborg, then owned by Finland. Here he was until 1934. In 1934, he was sent by a foreign intelligence resident to Estonia , where he remained until 1935. In the years 1935-1938. worked in the central intelligence apparatus.

1938-1939 - Resident of Soviet intelligence in Riga . In October 1940, Chichaev was appointed a resident of foreign intelligence in Sweden , where he went under the guise of an adviser to the embassy. In Stockholm, he was introduced to the envoy of the USSR, Alexander Kollontai .

With the outbreak of World War II, I. A. Chichaev was appointed a resident in the northwestern regions of the USSR occupied by fascists to launch a guerrilla war against the invaders. However, on the eve of the transfer to the front line, he was called by the People’s Commissar of State Security and ordered the evacuation of the central intelligence apparatus and their families to Novosibirsk. Two weeks after the evacuees were placed in Novosibirsk, he was urgently taken by plane to Moscow and given a new assignment. Together with V. M. Zarubin, Chichaev was instructed to conduct negotiations with the British ICU intelligence mission on establishing cooperation in the fight against Hitler’s intelligence services ^[3] . After negotiations, Chichaev was appointed representative of Soviet intelligence in London, where he arrived in the fall of 1941. He managed to establish a trusting relationship with the leaders of the Czechoslovak, Yugoslav, Greek, Norwegian, Belgian intelligence, who willingly shared with us the information they got ^[4] .

In the fall of 1944, I. A. Chichaev was appointed charge d'affaires at the USSR Embassy to the Allied Governments in London . In May 1945, it was decided to send him as political adviser to the USSR Embassy in Finland . However, the situation in Europe was changing rapidly, and while Ivan Andreevich traveled by boat from London to Odessa through the Mediterranean Sea , a new appointment followed - a resident of the state security organs in Czechoslovakia .

By a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of April 15, 1945, he was assigned the rank of Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Envoy. In 1947, Chichaev returned to Moscow, where he took up the post of head of department in the newly created Information Committee , combining political and military intelligence. Six months later, he became deputy head of the KI department. At the same time, he gave lectures at special courses of the Higher Intelligence School of KI .

In September 1952 he retired for health reasons (suffered a heart attack). After the resignation was engaged in literary work. He is the author of three books (“Unforgettable Years,” “Pages of Bygone Days,” “Ruzayevka at the Dawn of October”).

He was awarded the Order of Lenin , two Orders of the Red Banner , Orders of the Red Star and the Badge of Honor, many medals.

He died in 1984.

• Zoya Voskresenskaya called her “godfather” in intelligence Chichaev ^[1] .

• Klim Degtyarev, Alexander Kolpakidi. Foreign intelligence of the USSR . M., Eksmo, 2009, ISBN 978-5-699-34180-1 .
• Zoya Voskresenskaya, Eduard Sharapov. The mystery of Zoe Voskresenskaya . M., Olma-Press, 1998, ISBN 5-87322-877-9 .

• Page on the website of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation
• Eurasian Odyssey of Colonel Ivan Chichaev
• Secret missions of Ivan Chichaev