Richard Sorge. The best Soviet intelligence officer

 

As you know, on the eve of the Great Patriotic War, ciphers, data and information from our intelligence officers about the approximate timing, nature and preparation of Germany for the coming war with the USSR came to Moscow from various points of the world. Perhaps the most famous of the agents was Richard Sorge, a half-Russian German, a staunch communist, an excellent journalist and an excellent intelligence officer. His life is covered with many mysteries and myths, which we will try to understand today.

The future agent, whose fate was connected with the Soviet Union, was born in 1895 in a village near Baku, into the family of a German engineer who worked in the oil fields and the Russian daughter of a worker. One of Richard's relatives worked as secretary to Karl Marx and led the First International, so communist and revolutionary views and traditions were strong in his family. In 1898, his family left for Germany. Before the First World War, life went on as usual: the family lived quite comfortably, Richard studied and did not know worries. But the war came, and Sorge Jr. volunteered for the front. Fighting on the western and eastern fronts, he received ranks and awards, and with them, injuries. In 1917, after one of them, when Richard lay on the battlefield for a long time, he had to undergo a severe operation, which caused one leg to become slightly shorter than the other (this caused him inconvenience throughout his life). At the same time, Sorge, realizing the horrors of the war, recognized himself as a supporter of communism.

Not forgetting about his education after demobilization (in 1918 he became a doctor of law, in 1919 - economics), Richard Sorge became more and more immersed in the party and revolutionary life, which was then very developed in Germany. Joining the Communist Party in 1919, the future intelligence officer was a propagandist, journalist and editor. In 1924, fate and the Comintern sent Sorge to work in Moscow, where he received Soviet citizenship and a job at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. Richard devoted four years of his life to science and writing articles. At the same time, Sorge broke up with his first wife (upon arrival in the USSR, she became a Soviet agent and left for intelligence work). Russian Russians soon met his future second wife, Ekaterina Maximova, with whom, however, he had to communicate in broken Russian colloquially, and in letters in French: Sorge did not know Russian very well.

In 1929, Richard was recruited by Soviet intelligence and went to work in the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army. His first major job after legalization in Germany (Sorge was officially a German journalist and represented the German Foreign Ministry) was intelligence in China, where he not only created an excellent network of agents, but also established contacts with American journalists, Chinese Communists and Japanese reporters. They say he even ingratiated himself with Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek and rode motorcycles with him. This type of transport was a scout's real passion. He loved speed and was thus sometimes distracted from his work. Once, however, while living in Japan, Sorge had an accident, carrying valuable information with him. Being in a fainting state, Richard, afraid of being exposed, contacted the assistant, handed him the documents and only then lost consciousness.

In 1932, the intelligence officer, on behalf of the center, returned to Germany, where soon, also on the instructions of his superiors, he carried out his final legalization: he not only became a confidant of the German Foreign Ministry, but also joined the Nazi Party and even established ties with the Gestapo and the intelligence service of the Reich. The Germans trusted Richard Sorge to the end, whom he later managed to trick more than once. In 1933, he was assigned to infiltrate Japan, where he became a correspondent for leading German newspapers (officially). And in 1937, in connection with the repression and reprisals in Soviet intelligence, Richard Sorge himself almost fell under the flywheel: his agency, which he had established with great difficulty, was disbanded, funding was cut, and Ramsay himself (Sorge's agent name) began to be treated very, very suspiciously, not trusting the data he collected. Richard and his associates had to live on earnings from articles and reports. Despite everything, Sorge managed to create such a powerful Soviet intelligence machine in Japan that the intelligence officer himself worked at the German embassy and had close friendly contacts with the German ambassador to Japan, and his agents were embedded in the office of the Japanese Prime Minister himself. That is why Richard received some of the most valuable and accurate information.

It is known that he became one of those who constantly reported on the upcoming German attack on the USSR. However, his information was not trusted. Firstly, because of suspicions about the intelligence officer himself, and secondly, because the data differed from each other. However, this was not the fault of Sorge, who received scattered data, because the highest circles of the Reich did not know exactly about the Fuhrer's plans. One thing is for sure: Ramzai did not and could not convey the exact date of the German attack on the USSR, but only reported that it would take place in the second half of June. The fact that he allegedly named the exact day - June 22, 1941 - is a myth. But Sorge was not just an intelligence officer, but also a scientist, researcher, and even a geopolitician. His assumption of the 1930s is well known that the United States is capable of becoming a world leader in the near future and displacing Britain in the international arena. He and his group also tried to convince the Japanese establishment of the undesirability of war with the USSR, and after the Japanese took a neutral position towards the Soviet Union, he was able to transmit this information to Moscow. Thanks to these data, the leadership was able to calmly remove the well-trained Siberian divisions from the east and transfer them to the defense of the capital.

In the fall of 1941, Sorge's group was exposed. The Japanese leadership arrested the intelligence officers and subjected their work to a thorough investigation. The Germans did not fully believe in the fact that Sorge was working for the USSR, but when they received irrefutable data, they were furious: Hitler demanded that the criminal be handed over to Germany, which, however, did not happen. On November 7, 1944, on the day of the October Revolution, Communist Richard Sorge was hanged. The only person who proved to be completely loyal to the intelligence officer was his Japanese common-law wife, Hanako Ishii. She tried to take Sorge's body for several years, and after permission, she went to identify him and was able to find his remains. After a long search, Hanako bought a plot of land in a Japanese cemetery for a lot of money, where she buried her husband's ashes.

As for the Soviet Union, for many years our country did not recognize the fact that Sorge worked for the USSR. His name turned out to be a myth. And only in 1964, when Khrushchev was shown the film "Who are you, Dr. Sorge?", he instructed him to find information about the intelligence officer and posthumously award him the title of Hero. Since then, the inscription "Hero of the Soviet Union Richard Sorge" has been gaping on the tombstone - fully deserved by a great man, an outstanding intelligence officer, scientist and journalist, who, not being the son of our country, did so much for her that he became one of her Heroes.