Smetanin, Gennady Alexandrovich

The early years

A native of Chistopol, the eighth child from a large working-class family ^[1] . After the eighth grade, he entered the Kazan Suvorov School ^[1] . He graduated from the Kiev Higher Combined Arms Command School , served for some time in the army. Then he was sent to the Military Diplomatic Academy, where he studied Portuguese and French ^[1] . Since August 1982, he was a resident of the GRU in Lisbon , officially worked as an employee of the military attache apparatus ^{[2] [1]} . Characterized as an avid egoist and careerist ^[1] .

CIA Recruitment

At the end of 1983, Smetanin established contact with the CIA and demanded $ 1 million for his services ^[3] . The Americans agreed to pay 365 thousand ^[2] , issuing them to Smetanin against a receipt of the following content:

I, Smetanin Gennady Alexandrovich, received 365 thousand dollars from the American government, which I sign and promise to help him ^{[1] [4]} .

At the same time, Smetanin said that he had squandered this amount from state money, which the CIA also seemed suspicious. However, after a lie detector test, he was included in the CIA agent network under the pseudonym "Million", given the circumstances of the start of cooperation. On March 4, 1984, Smetanin's wife, Svetlana, was recruited, who worked as a technical secretary at the Soviet embassy in Portugal and gained access to classified documents ^{[1] [2]} .

While working at the CIA, Smetanin transmitted top secret information about the work of the GRU residency and its sources of information ^[2] . Suspicions of Smetanin appeared even when, during one of the receptions, his wife appeared in clothes and jewelry that did not correspond to her husband’s official incomes, but in Moscow they decided not to rush things, waiting for Smetanin to return on vacation and receive explanations from him ^[1] . Later, in an internal report of the KGB of the USSR from 1986, it was reported that Smetanin had about 30 meetings with CIA officers, at which he transmitted them intelligence information and photocopies of secret documents ^[5] .

Failure

On April 16, 1985, the head of the Soviet department of the CIA’s foreign counterintelligence department, Aldrich Ames sent a letter to the Soviet embassy stating that in exchange for $ 50,000 he was ready to disclose to the KGB information about three Soviet officers recruited by the CIA ^[5] . One of them was Smetanin.

On August 6, Smetanin met in Lisbon with his American curator and announced that he was going on vacation and would soon return to the next meeting scheduled for October 4 . It was planned that his trip to Moscow would be the last. In Moscow, he unexpectedly often came to visit his colleagues in the service and took “photographs for memory”, so that later they could be transferred to the CIA ^[3] . After he went with his wife and daughter to Kazan , where his mother lived. The KGB operative group set off for Smetanin: employees of the 3rd (military counterintelligence) and 7th (external surveillance) departments, as well as the fighters of Group A , who were supposed to detain the traitor ^[1] . Among the employees of the task force there were several women ^[3] .

It was expected that on September 14, the Smetanins would fly to Moscow, but after arriving in Kazan, Gennady Smetanin unexpectedly disappeared from the field of view of employees: he probably discovered surveillance. The commander of one of the units of group “A” wrote in his memoirs that the GRU was in a daze, but for several days conducted search activities throughout Kazan, connecting the local police ^[6] . Finally, they managed to track Smetanin, who took for himself, his wife and his 12-year-old daughter, three tickets for the train to Moscow from Yudino station on August 25, where his relatives lived - investigators also managed to eavesdrop on Smetanin's telephone conversation with his cousin from the village of Kozlovka, located next to the railway. An order was given to arrest Smetanin and his wife ^[1] . The GRU did not want to miss Smetanin: last time under similar circumstances, under the pretext of a trip to a country house in the Moscow region, the cryptographer of the 8th department of the KGB Main Directorate Viktor Sheimov fled ^[3] , in addition, GRU colonel Vitaly Yurchenko asked for political asylum ^{[5 ]} .

Arrest

The task force assigned to arrest the Smetanins arrived in Kozlovka three hours before the departure of the nearest train (the plane took off two hours later). The deputy commander of Group A, Colonel Vladimir Zaitsev , according to the memoirs, waited an hour, staying in Kazan, until 40 minutes later Deputy Vitaly Demidkin informed him about the discovery of Gennady Smetanin, his wife and cousin with friends. However, the investigators did not yet know what Smetanin's plans were, and therefore they were preparing for the worst scenarios up to armed resistance. It was later established that Smetanin put on a wig and glasses for disguise ^[3] .

On the evening of August 25, 1985, the Smetanins boarded the Tatarstan train in the direction of Moscow. Several operatives were in a compartment with the Smetanins, employees of the 7th KGB Directorate and operation leaders were in the neighboring compartment, and in the recreation compartment of the guides there were a man and a woman from KGB officers ^[5] . One of the investigators found Smetanin near the toilet, where he often went to smoke. He grabbed him from behind and lifted him, and the second grabbed him by the legs and dragged the detainees to the rest compartment of conductors ^[5] .

According to Zaitsev, Smetanin was lured out of the compartment due to an accident, because the door constantly jammed there (later the arrested person tried to blame the incident on the investigators who provoked him). Leaving the compartment, Smetanin was detained by operatives here, and his wife and daughter, who was traveling in the same compartment, were told that he had left on important matters, and the investigators did not know that she was also recruited by the CIA ^[3] . They detained the detainee in a tracksuit and confiscated all his personal belongings. During a search in Smetanin’s portfolio, they found a case with glasses, which contained instructions for contacting the CIA and a cipher-note pad, and found an ampoule with poison of instant action in the temple of glasses where there were glasses without diopters - its contact with the skin guaranteed instant death ^[3] .

Two more employees (a man and a woman) later arrested Smetanin's wife. A search of Svetlana Smetanina’s belongings took place in Moscow: during the search, a leather strap was seized, in the lining of which 44 diamonds were found ^{[2] [1]} . The stones were handed over to the spouses by a cousin of Gennady, who had previously worked at the diamond mines of Yakutia . Relatives of the Smetanins received a telegram on behalf of the spouses with a message about the alleged urgent need to go abroad ^[3] .

Court

At the trial, the spouses of Smetanina were found guilty of an offense under article 64 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR “Treason to the Motherland”. Smetanin denied the allegations and said that he had gone to the CIA because the GRU did not value him as a scout. July 1, 1986 was convicted by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR for treason in the form of espionage and sentenced to death with confiscation of property. The wife received 5 years in prison ^{[2] [1]} .

• Vitaly Karavashkin. Who betrayed Russia . - Olympus, AST, 2008 .-- 672 p. - ISBN 978-5-17-049896-3 .
• Kolpakidi A.I. , Prokhorov D.P. Traitors in the ranks of the GRU // Empire of the GRU. Prince 1, 2. - M .: Olma-Press , 2000. - ISBN 5-22400766-6 .