Iwan Iwanowitsch Ilyichev

Iwan Iwanowitsch Ilyichev

Iwan Iwanowitsch Iljitschow ( Russian Иван Иванович Ильичёв ; * 14 August ^July / 27 August  1905 ^greg. In Nawoloki, today in Kaluga Oblast ; †  September 2, 1983 in Moscow ) was a Soviet officer, most recently lieutenant general . From 1942 to 1945 he was director of the GRU military intelligence service and played a key role in its war-related restructuring. He then switched to the diplomatic service, was Soviet ambassador to the GDR in 1952 and ambassador to occupied Austria from 1953 to 1955 . From 1956 he headed the 3rd European Department of the Foreign Ministry of the USSR responsible for Austria and the two German states for ten years .

Life

Ilyichov grew up in a peasant family near the town of Kaluga . As a teenager he experienced the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War . He then worked in one of the electromechanical workshops in Kaluga and from 1924 was active in the Komsomol , the communist youth organization. In 1925 he joined the CPSU . During this time, the country needed educated skilled workers and enabled young people from the working class to enjoy rapid advancement opportunities. In 1929 he joined the Red Army and studied at the political military academy "Tolmachev" in Leningrad , which was later moved to Moscow and was then called the Lenin Academy . In 1938, in his final year at university, he was denounced by an NKVD agent that, as a young Komsomol secretary, he had once attended a meeting of Trotskyists. He was expelled from the party, his friends distanced themselves for fear of him, and he awaited his arrest. But it was precisely at this point in time that the Stalinist purges had reached such proportions that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union limited the intensity of the persecution. A commission under Yemeljan Yaroslavsky was sent to Leningrad to review several hundred cases. In the course of this, Ilyichev got his party membership back and, completely surprisingly, was even promoted. He was appointed head of the political department of the Red Army with the rank of brigade commissar, while his informer was being tried.

Chief of the military intelligence service GRU

As a 33-year-old he was at the center of power and one of five department heads in the Red Army's intelligence administration. After the political purges, the structure of this military intelligence service had to be rebuilt, especially since the war was already on the way. During this phase he was in rivalry with Filipp Ivanovich Golikov , who, out of fear of Stalin, beautified the reports, while Ilyichov warned of an imminent attack by the German Reich. After the outbreak of the Second World War in June 1941, he found that the Soviet military reconnaissance was still poorly organized and in many cases came to nothing. In January 1942 he therefore wrote a dossier addressed to the members of the State Defense Committee. In it he proposed a reorganization of military reconnaissance and a separation of agency reconnaissance and troop reconnaissance. Stalin appreciated this report and made him head of the GRU intelligence agency. In October 1942, the Red Army's intelligence headquarters was reorganized and placed under the People's Commissar for Defense. With that, Ilyichev was now chief of all GRU agents abroad, including those in the German Reich. Fyodor Fedotowitsch Kuznetsov became chief of troop reconnaissance .

During this time he coordinated a network of agents and resistance fighters, which the German propaganda referred to as the Red Orchestra and which was able to record some successes in reconnaissance. Troop movements of the Wehrmacht were explored and from the end of 1942 the encryption department of the GRU succeeded in deciphering the German radio messages encrypted with the Enigma . As the war progressed, the Enlightenment became interested in the activities of its own allies. They were extremely reluctant to exchange information with the Soviet Union. Ilyichev was able to fall back on numerous informants abroad, including Richard Sorge (Ramsay), Rudolf Rössler (Lucy), Sándor Radó (Dora), Anatoli Gurewitsch (Kent), Ursula Kuczynski-Beurton (Sonia), Allan Nunn May (Alec), Arthur Adams (Achilles) and Klaus Fuchs . The GRU was not only informed about military operations by the Western Allies, but also about the British Tube Alloys nuclear program and the American Manhattan Project . Information about the German uranium project also reached Moscow.

During this time there was more and more rivalry with Lavrenti Beria , who saw Ivan Ilyichev and the GRU as competition to his NKVD. Beria tried several times to discredit this, but Stalin repeatedly stood before the GRU and was interested in the details of the agents' whereabouts. Ilyichev had direct access to Stalin, bypassing all instances, while he could fall back on the information of two independently operating secret services. Despite this rivalry with Beria, Ilyichev had good contacts with individual departments of the NKVD, for example with the head of the foreign intelligence service Pavel Michailowitsch Fitin and the head of the 4th administration Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov .

When Igor Gusenko , the cipherer of the GRU military attaché in Ottawa, Canada , fled to the Americans in September 1945 , when Ilyichev was at the height of his power due to his successes in the reconnaissance . He had taken 109 secret documents with him, some with Stalin's personal signature. A large part of the GRU agent network in the west was uncovered in one fell swoop, many were arrested or were able to travel quickly to the Soviet Union. Ilyichev had to reckon with his arrest and deportation again. But this time too, Stalin showed himself gracious to him. Above all, he was saved by the fact that he had questioned Gusenko's reliability even before the overflow and had recommended that he be recalled to Moscow. Nevertheless, his career in the secret service ended with this incident.

Diplomat of the USSR

After the founding of the GDR: On November 11, 1949, Ilyichev, dressed in civilian clothes, entered the hall to the right behind Marshal Chuikov

Ivan Ivanovich Ilyichov then struck a career in the diplomatic service of the Soviet Foreign Ministry. In 1948 he became deputy head of the 3rd European Department of the Foreign Ministry, which was then responsible for Austria and the two German states that were being formed. In July 1949 he was first deputy, then in October 1949 first deputy of the Soviet military administration in Germany . After transferring administrative sovereignty to the government of the GDR on November 11, 1949, he held the same office in the Soviet Control Commission until 1952 . From 1952 to 1953 he was head of the diplomatic mission of the Soviet Union in the GDR. During this time the Soviet Union started a program to infiltrate the FRG. For example, the chairman of the FDJ in West Germany, Jupp Angenfort , was summoned to East Berlin in July 1952 and instructed by Walter Ulbricht and Iwan Iljitschow how the KPD was to infiltrate the West German trade unions and the SPD.

After Stalin's death, however, Ilyichev was withdrawn from Berlin and transferred to Vienna in June 1953 , where he replaced High Commissioner Vladimir Petrovich Sviridov . The previous Soviet high commissioner was then raised to the rank of embassy, ​​which was interpreted as a step towards complete independence for Austria . At the same time, the identity checks at the sector borders within Austria were lifted on June 8, 1953. Subsequently, Ilyichev played a key role in the negotiations with the Austrian representatives, in particular with Federal Chancellor Julius Raab , Foreign Minister Leopold Figl and State Secretary Bruno Kreisky . The points at issue were the annual payment of ATS 151 million occupation costs to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1953, as well as the extent of the neutrality demanded. Austria insisted that these payments would only be possible if trade with neighboring western countries was possible at the same time.

Julius Raab put it this way: “ You have to understand, Mr. Ambassador, that only one or the other is possible. Either we pay - then we have to get the money somewhere because we don't have it. And nothing in this world is free. We have to do something about it. Or we remain neutral - then we cannot pay. "

On August 1, 1953, the Soviet Union waived the payments. On May 17, 1954, Ambassador Ilyichev summoned Raab and Figl to the Soviet embassy and accused them of having secret thoughts of joining West Germany. The French also share this concern. As proof, he cited the open statements of numerous war veterans at beer evenings. Only the assurances of the Austrian federal government and a telegram from US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles could clear the situation.

Ilyichov retained the post of Soviet ambassador until the conclusion of the Austrian State Treaty in May 1955. He was thus the last Soviet high commissioner in the ten years of occupation . He was then ordered back to Moscow and from 1956 took over the management of the 3rd European Department of the Foreign Ministry of the USSR, which was responsible for Austria, the GDR and the FRG for the next ten years . In this role he accompanied Nikita Khrushchev in November 1961 to talks about the construction of the Berlin Wall . From 1966 to 1968 he was the Soviet ambassador to Denmark , then head of department in the planning administration in the Foreign Ministry. He retired in 1975.

Web links

• CV ( memento from March 11, 2009 on WebCite ) on Webcite (Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} RIA Novosti: My grandfather was the head of the Enlightenment Headquarters ( memento of the original from September 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Alexei Ilyichov) 
2. ↑ Der Spiegel: Died - Iwan Iwanowitsch Iljitschow (issue 37/1983)
3. ^ Thuringian General: Explosive letter to Stalin (Gottfried Mahling, November 26, 2009)
4. ↑ Jan Foitzik: Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) 1945 - 1949  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Akademie Verlag, 1999 ISBN 978-3-05-002680-0 (pp. 138, 139)  
5. ^ Jan Foitzik, Nikita W. Petrow : The Soviet secret services in the SBZ / GDR from 1945 to 1953 , Walter de Gruyter, 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-023014-7 (p. 45)
6. ↑ Der Spiegel: Eastern Infiltration - From Brush to Gun , Issue 33/1952
7. ↑ Hans-Peter Schwarz: Files on the foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Institute for Contemporary History Munich, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1953, ISBN 978-3-486-56560-7 (p. 539)  
8. ↑ Der Spiegel: Caesar with button shoes , issue 36/1953
9. ↑ Der Spiegel: The Connection Ghost, Issue 23/1954
10. ↑ Der Spiegel: The wall is very bad, I admit it , issue 45/1961

predecessor	Office	successor
Alexei Pavlovich Panfilow	Director of the GRU (Head Office for Reconnaissance) 1942–1945	Fyodor Fedotowitsch Kuznetsov
Georgi Maximovich Pushkin	Soviet ambassador to the GDR 1952–1953	Vladimir Semyonovich Semyonov
Vladimir Petrovich Sviridov	Soviet High Commissioner in Austria 1953–1955	-
vacant (1938  Iwan Leopoldowitsch Lorenz )	Soviet ambassador to Austria 1953–1956	Andrei Andreyevich Smirnov
?	Soviet ambassador to Denmark 1966–1968	?