The spy next door. Russia's foreign intelligence chief pushes to commemorate Stalin's spies in Moscow's Yasenevo

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The superspy square and Soviet cloak-and-dagger thrills

As soon as Sergei Naryshkin took over as director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service in 2016, monuments to Soviet spies began to appear across the country, and streets and schools began to be renamed in their honor. Unsurprisingly, biographical details of the spies Naryshkin seeks to immortalize are often exaggerated — or fictional — and many of the real-life figures have no small amount of blood on their hands.

The presentation of SVR's newest initiatives to memorialize intelligence heroes began in March 2023, amidst Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine. By then, the West had expelled nearly 500 Russian diplomats, a third of whom were officers of Russia's security and intelligence agencies: the GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate), the FSB (Federal Security Service), and the SVR. Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky is also involved in the project, and the PR campaign has included performances by the V.S. Loktev Children's Song and Dance Ensemble.

The renaming of streets and schools was already in full swing even before the official presentation of Naryshkin’s project. In November 2018, a previously unnamed Moscow square not far from SVR-affiliated residential buildings was christened in honor of Cold War-era Cambridge Five defector Kim Philby. While still working in MI-6 during World War II, Philby turned over at least 914 classified documents to Moscow. Researchers believe his actions resulted in the deaths of several British intelligence officers.

In 1963, Philby fled to Moscow and thereafter served as a freelance counselor for the KGB's First Main Directorate. For special merits, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union awarded the defector with the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Star, and a 120-square-meter apartment in Trekhprudny Lane. In his apartment, Philby trained future deep-cover agents in methods of conspiracy and recruitment. He died in 1988, at the height of Gorbachev's perestroika, following a period of deep depression (some sources claim he committed suicide). After the death of the super mole's widow in May 2021, his students began fighting over his inheritance. A lot was at stake: an 1850 edition of “A History of the Crimean War,” other rare books stolen from the library of Dublin's Trinity College, a Piranesi print, 17th-century Spanish furniture, old Persian handwoven rugs, various paintings and icons, and gifts from the East German Stasi and Bulgarian KGB. As The Insider discovered then, shortly before Philby’s widow's death, Naryshkin's close friend, Veronika Krasheninnikova, showed up at the apartment and conducted an audit. Eventually, Philby's students were left with nothing, and the rarities migrated to the SVR museum.

Naryshkin did not stop at “Filbi” Square. Soon Yasenevo saw a street named after Pavel Fitin, the head of the Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service (the street was previously Proektiruemy Drive No. 5063).

In 2022, School #1694 was renamed in Fitin's honor. The school students' parents raised no objections, as one-third of them were career SVR officers. The SVR website even published a press release:

“At a very young age, a child sees before them an example of service to the country and an immediate role model. This is how, from a young age, the process of patriotic education of the younger generation brings the greatest effect.”

Fitin (operational alias “Old Man”) joined the NKVD in 1938. Against the background of purges in the department, he made a dizzying career, rising to head of foreign intelligence only a year later. At the age of 31, Fitin was considered to be a favorite of secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria. Among the accomplishments attributed to “Old Man” was the alleged thwarting of attempted separate talks between the Western Allies and Nazi Germany. This story inspired Yulian Semyonov's novel “Seventeen Moments of Spring,” later adapted as a cult-classic TV series. In the on-screen version, much loved by Russia’s present-day spy-turned-president, Fitin is portrayed as Vladimir Gromov (“Alex”), receiving cipher messages from deep-cover Soviet spy Stierlitz (“Eustace”), who has penetrated Hitler’s inner circle in Berlin.

In reality, there were no behind-the-scenes negotiations: Averell Harriman, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, officially informed Vyacheslav Molotov, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, about SS General Karl Wolff's visit to Allen Dulles, the American station chief n in Switzerland, to discuss the terms of the surrender of German troops in Italy, and the Soviet side did not object. Fitin was dismissed from service after Beria's arrest in July 1953.

The immortalization of Fitin's name began in 2008 with the inauguration of a memorial plaque in his native village of Ozhogino, Kurgan Region. In 2014, a memorial plaque was also installed on the wall of the Yalutorovskaya Orthodox Christian Gymnasium, where he studied. In 2016, a similar plaque appeared on the building of the FSB in the Sverdlovsk Region, and a year later, a monument to “Old Man” was unveiled in front of the SVR Press Bureau. In February 2020, a peak on the Soudor Ridge in North Ossetia was also named after Fitin.

“Stalin's savior” and handler of the Cambridge Five

Following Filbi Square and Fitina Street, two more “spy” addresses appeared in the vicinity of the SVR headquarters: Razvedchika Deycha and Gevorka Vartaniana Streets. Pro-Kremlin historians refer to Gevork Vartanian as “Stalin's savior”, because he, as an employee of the NKVD's Iranian station, allegedly thwarted Hitler's plans to destroy the Big Three heads of state — Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt — at the Tehran Conference in 1943.

According to historian Vladimir Voronov, no such conspiracy existed — by early 1943, the German intelligence network in Tehran was in tatters, mainly thanks to the efforts of British counterintelligence. As for Vartanian, he was 19 years old in 1943, and his operational tasks included following British citizens under the guise of a cyclist.

Vartanian later worked in NATO countries for the KGB's political intelligence arm. He maintained unofficial contacts with future Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and allegedly set him up with Putin. In 2012, Vartanian died of cancer at Botkin Hospital.

Austrian communist Arnold Deutsch, after whom Razvedchika Deycha Street was named, was recruited in 1928 when he visited Moscow for the first time. After being sent to London, Deutsch recruited more than 20 agents and also supervised the aforementioned Cambridge Five. In November 1942, Deutsch was sent as a spy to Argentina, but the tanker that carried him — Donbass — was sunk by a German Z27 destroyer.

Spymania continues

According to The Insider's source in the Moscow Mayor's Office, Naryshkin proposed assigning the names of Soviet spies to at least 12 more squares and streets. In the next five years, there are plans to immortalize the names of: Yuri Shevchenko, who worked in Spain and Portugal under the cover of a UNESCO employee; Vadim Kirpichenko, the head of the KGB station in Tunisia; former head of the SVR Vyacheslav Trubnikov, who was called a “knight of the Cold War”; Yevgeny Kim, who spied in Asian countries; and Vladimir Lokhov, ex-KGB station chief in Iran. The renaming will mainly affect streets that currently bear “unfriendly” names — for instance, Rizhskaya Square and Rizhsky Railway Station (named after the Latvian capital), Tallinnskaya Street (after the Estonian capital), and the pair Litovsky Boulevard and Vilnyusskaya Street (after Lithuania and its capital).

In Yasenevo, plans have been floated to name a new building in the neighborhood after África de las Heras, who served in the Uruguayan station of Soviet intelligence. Under the cover of owning a French fashion salon in Montevideo, she made acquaintances with the wives of politicians, diplomats, and military officers, and through them learned state secrets. Future Chilean president Salvador Allende and Cuban revolutionary hero Ernesto Che Guevara were part of Heras's agent network.

According to the source in the municipal government, the initiative to name a street after Pavel Sudoplatov, who led a group of assassins tasked with killing Stalin's enemies, sparked a debate. Interestingly, the initiative cannot be rejected on legal grounds, as in 1992 Sudoplatov was fully rehabilitated. That year, President Boris Yeltsin issued a classified decree reinstating the “purger” to the rank of lieutenant general while returning his state awards — this despite the fact that Sudoplatov organized the murders of Leon Trotsky in Mexico and the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists Yevhen Konovalets in the Netherlands. In addition, acting on Beria's orders, Sudoplatov devised plans to assassinate the former Commissar of Education of Ukraine Oleksandr Shumsky, Ruthenian Catholic Bishop Theodore Romzha, shipbuilding engineer Naum Samet, and Isaac Ogins, a U.S. national recruited by the Comintern. In 1953, Sudoplatov was arrested as an accomplice of Beria and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Upon release, he was met by Pavel Fitin.

So far, the SVR has limited itself to installing a bust of Sudoplatov in the Bryansk Region and naming a street after him in occupied Melitopol. “[Sudoplatov] was a legendary figure, the creator of special-purpose guerrilla units. His name is inscribed in golden letters in the history of the Soviet special services,” Bryansk Region governor Alexander Bogomaz said at the unveiling ceremony.

Meanwhile, Yasenevo's municipal government is rife with rumors about the possibility of changing the neighborhood’s name to Fitino. The initiative is attributed to the district head, Irina Grishina, who is friends with Naryshkin and has a commendation from the FSB director. As Grishina told the Razvedchik (lit. “intelligence officer”) magazine, she is “proud of her cooperation with and proximity to the SVR, and this brings only positive results for the district.” According to The Insider's interviewee at the municipal government, the rumors are not unfounded, as Grishina succeeded in getting School #1694 renamed after Pavel Fitin without any apparent problems.

The Insider submitted inquiries to Ms. Grishina, but she had not responded at the time of publication.