On July 6, 1918, a glaring event took place in Moscow in the history of Russia's relations with other countries of the world. Shot dead in broad daylight at his residence German Ambassador to Soviet Russia Wilhelm von Mirbach.

The assassins of the ambassador were not terrorists, not robbers, but official employees of the Cheka Yakov Blyumkin And Nikolay Andreev.

The events on that fateful day developed as follows: at 14:15, a dark Packard drove up to the building of the German embassy in Denezhny Lane, from which two people got out, presenting the certificates of the Cheka employees to the doorman and demanding a meeting with the ambassador.

The reason for the meeting was the business of a certain relative of Ambassador Robert Mirbach, detained by the Cheka on suspicion of espionage. Count Mirbach agreed to receive the Chekists. In addition to him, the meeting was attended by Embassy Counselor Dr. Kurt Rietzler And adjutant of the military attache Lieutenant Leonhart Müller as a translator. The conversation lasted over 25 minutes.

The ambassador, to whom the materials of the case were presented, stated that he did not know anything about the relative. Then one of the Chekists asked: does Mr. Ambassador want to know about the measures that the Soviet government intends to take in connection with this case?

Mirbach nodded, after which Yakov Blumkin drew his revolver and fired three times. Oddly enough, none of the bullets hit the target. Then Nikolai Andreev threw a bomb, which ... did not explode. After that, Andreev fired at the ambassador, mortally wounding the diplomat. Meanwhile, Blumkin threw the bomb a second time, it exploded, and the Chekists rushed to run, jumping into broken window. Under fire from the guards and not without losses (Blyumkin broke his leg while jumping and was wounded), the attackers fled.

The 47-year-old German ambassador died a few minutes later.

At the scene of the murder, the attackers left a whole heap of evidence: their IDs, the case against the "ambassador's relative", a briefcase with a spare bomb. Thus, there were no difficulties in establishing the identity of the killers.

Shot "Aurora" for the Left SRs?

Much more important is another question - who was behind Blumkin and Andreev and "ordered" the massacre of the German diplomat?

According to the canonical version of the Soviet period, the assassination of the ambassador became a kind of "Aurora shot" for the rebellion of the Left SRs who tried to seize power in Moscow.

The Left Social Revolutionaries, together with the Bolsheviks, were part of the Soviet government from the autumn of 1917, but relations between the two parties finally deteriorated due to the issue of the Brest peace.

Most of the Left SRs considered peace with Germany on the terms of transferring huge Russian territories under German control as a "betrayal of the revolution." A little later, they moved to the same positions and Left SR leader Maria Spiridonova, which previously supported the Brest peace.

By the summer of 1918, the relations of yesterday's allies had escalated to the limit, and the Social Revolutionaries decided to act.

In early July 1918, the Third Congress of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party decided "to break the Brest Treaty, disastrous for the Russian and world revolution, in a revolutionary way."

The executors were two SRs who served in the bodies of the Cheka - Blyumkin and Andreev.

After the murder of Mirbach, they hid in the territory of the Cheka detachment, which was commanded by Socialist-Revolutionary Popov. Attempted arrest of terrorists Felix Dzerzhinsky, ended with the arrest of the head of the Cheka.

Detachments of the Left Social Revolutionaries began to seize the buildings of state bodies, but they could not achieve complete success. The Latvian riflemen who remained loyal to the Bolsheviks suppressed the rebellion, the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party ceased to exist legally, and Soviet Russia finally became one-party.

Changeable passions of the German count

The perpetrators of the terrorist attack, Yakov Blyumkin and Nikolai Andreev, who put the RSFSR on the brink of resuming the war with Germany, escaped severe punishment for the murder. Andreev fled to Ukraine, where, having been in the ranks of several political movements, including gangs fathers Makhno died of typhus.

As for Blumkin, he was ... taken on bail Leon Trotsky and went to "atone his guilt with blood" in the Civil War, taking the post of head of the personal guard of one of the leaders of the Bolsheviks.

It was the extremely soft attitude towards Blumkin that made historians doubt that the murder of Mirbach was the work of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.

And here we move on to the second version of the murder, much more detective and confusing.

It is no secret that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was extremely beneficial to Germany and allowed it to delay the military catastrophe in the First World War. Count Wilhelm von Mirbach put a lot of effort into its conclusion and considered it necessary to support the Bolshevik regime in Russia in every possible way. Historians who are negatively inclined towards the Bolsheviks even declare that Mirbach was one of the curators of the Bolshevik movement, paving the way for the October Revolution with German money.

Be that as it may, until the spring of 1918, Mirbach sent dispatches to Berlin, in which he spoke of the need to support the Bolsheviks. And at the same time, he clarifies that the Entente countries spend a lot of money on supporting their opponents and preparing a coup. In particular, the French and British intelligence officers are looking for connections with the Left SRs.

However, by the summer of 1918, the count's mood began to change. He reports that the Bolshevik regime will not last long and that we must begin to negotiate with those who can replace it.

There were many who wanted to negotiate with Mirbach.

The Bolsheviks, who already had enough problems, became aware of these negotiations.

Dzerzhinsky with the Social Revolutionaries or Lenin with Dzerzhinsky?

The orientation of the German ambassador to other political forces did not promise them anything good. And then the Cheka set out to resolve the issue with an overly active diplomat. Two young employees were appointed as executors - Yakov Blyumkin and Nikolai Andreev.

Blumkin initially engaged in the fabrication of the "Robert Mirbach spy case", which was supposed to allow the terrorists to meet with the ambassador and carry out their plans.

This is where our detective storylines begin to diverge. According to one of them, the cunning plan to eliminate the objectionable diplomat and at the same time trap the party of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who, after the assassination of the ambassador, were outlawed, belongs personally Vladimir Lenin.

Another version suggests that the top leadership of the Bolsheviks was not aware of the plans to assassinate Mirbach, and the conspiracy was organized jointly by the Chekists and the Social Revolutionaries, who decided to get rid of Lenin, Trotsky and Mirbach with one blow.

This assumption is supported by the fact that after the events of July 6, Felix Dzerzhinsky fell into disgrace for some time, and Lenin considered the question of abolishing the Cheka.

And most importantly, the order in the “Robert Mirbach case”, on the basis of which Blumkin and Andreev achieved a meeting with the ambassador, was signed by Dzerzhinsky, although the “iron Felix” insisted that it was a fake.

Mirbach's colleagues from the German embassy sinned against Lenin's involvement, noting that the Bolshevik leader, who came to the embassy on the day of the murder to express condolences and apologize, behaved emphatically coldly and indifferently. However, it is unlikely that there is a crime in this - Lenin did not like the conditions of the Brest peace, and he had no reason to worry about the death of one of those who determined the enslaving conditions.

But what about the possible resumption of war with Germany? Didn't it threaten the Bolsheviks?

The whole point is that between March 1918, when the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was concluded, and July 1918, when Mirbach was assassinated, there was a huge distance.

The Bolsheviks had a lot of difficulties, but Germany had no less of them. All military forces were sent to win in the West, and there were almost no opportunities to be distracted by the RSFSR.

Kaiser Wilhelm II from Berlin, of course, was indignant and demanded that a German battalion be sent to Moscow to guard the embassy, ​​but in response he saw only a Bolshevik fiddle - Lenin said that this was a direct violation of the sovereignty of the country and he would never do that.

Kaiser thought and preferred to silently wipe himself off.

As a result, it turned out that the German ambassador Wilhelm von Mirbach, who considered himself Karabas-Barabas, the owner of the puppet theater Russian politics, in fact, he himself turned out to be a puppet, which was used, and then, as unnecessary, was thrown into the oven.

- revolutionary man of mystery

Speaking about the murder of Mirbach, one cannot help but dwell on the personality of Yakov Blumkin. This is a truly unique person - perhaps the most mysterious figure of the times of the revolution.

Yakov Blumkin. Photo: Public Domain

Neither his place of birth, nor his origin, nor even the year of birth are known exactly. It seems that Blumkin remained incognito until the last days of his life, acting under various legends.

In January 1918, in Odessa, Blumkin, who is not even 20 years old, forms a Volunteer Detachment along with the legendary Mishka Yaponchik. Once in the bodies of the Cheka, Blumkin becomes the head of the department for combating international espionage. After the murder of Mirbach, the career of Yakov Blumkin goes uphill, he is entrusted with the most difficult and very responsible missions.

Among the operational pseudonyms of Blumkin there is the surname "Isaev". This is not a coincidence - the fact is that Yulian Semyonov, creating novels about young years Stirlitz, used, among other things, real operations conducted by Yakov Blumkin. In particular, the story of the investigation of the theft from the Gokhran, told in the novel Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, is based on an episode from the life of Yakov Blumkin.

In 1920, Blumkin participated in a mission to return ships from Persia, taken to this country by the White Guards, in 1923 he was a resident of Soviet intelligence in Palestine, and worked in Afghanistan. It is also known that Blumkin carried out special assignments in China, Tibet and Mongolia.

The missions carried out by Blumkin still have many "blank spots" to this day.

He was closely acquainted with famous Russian poets - Gumilyov, Yesenin, Khodasevich, Mayakovsky and others.

At the same time, information about Blumkin's personality is very contradictory - some describe him as a ruthless killer, executioner, illiterate and cruel person. However, it is difficult to imagine that such a character could be entrusted with the most difficult missions in the Middle East. There is no doubt that Blumkin knew several languages ​​perfectly, was an excellent psychologist, knew how to win people over, and in general was a very outstanding person who left behind many secrets and mysteries.

Yakov Blyumkin was killed by his closeness to Trotsky, who was in exile. In 1929, Blumkin was arrested as a Trotskyist, but his fate hung in the balance until the very end - apparently, he really did not want to lose such an agent. However, Yakov Blyumkin was shot in December 1929. Even about his death, several different versions are given, which makes one wonder if this execution was also a hoax? Perhaps Blumkin continued his activities much later, only under other names?

As for Wilhelm von Mirbach, the unfortunate count still retains a kind of "priority" - since then no ambassadors have been killed in Russia. Neither German, nor any other.

The argument for each version is based on different interpretations selective publications of documents collected in the "Red Book of the Cheka" (M., 1920. Book 1; M., 1989. Book 1. Ed. 2nd). Official Soviet documents, memoirs and Left Social Revolutionary publications were compiled by the Special Investigation Commission of the Council of People's Commissars created on July 7, 1918 (People's Commissar of Justice P. I. Stuchka, investigator of the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal under the All-Russian Central Executive Committee V. E. Kingisepp and Chairman of the Kazan Council Ya. S. Sheinkman) . 19 volumes of the materials of this commission are entitled "On the rebellion of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in Moscow in 1918 and on the murder of the German ambassador Mirbach". There are also many other debatable questions .

However, it remained undeniable: on July 6, 1918, a political assassination was committed, and the assassins were convinced of their impunity. Blyumkin wrote in his testimony: “The unshakable conviction did not leave me all the time that it was historically necessary to do so, that the Soviet government could not execute me for the murder of a German imperialist.” And he really was not executed, but amnestied, and he again made a brilliant Chekist career.

Among the explanations of the reasons for the assassination of the ambassador, there is also the following: Mirbach was killed by Blumkin, because he knew about Lenin receiving German money. This version was not supported by the researchers; not a single document was found that testified to Lenin's involvement in the terrorist attack. But the fact that the leader of the Bolsheviks used the situation for political purposes better than anyone else is undeniable.

The situation in the summer of 1918 was very critical for the ruling party. According to the adviser of the German mission in Moscow, Dr. K. Ritzder, by June 4, 1918, it appeared as follows: “Over the past two weeks, the situation has sharply worsened. Famine is approaching us, they are trying to stifle it with terror. The Bolshevik fist smashes everyone in a row. Hundreds of people are calmly shot... There can be no doubt that the material resources of the Bolsheviks are running out. Fuel supplies for cars are running out, and even the Latvian soldiers sitting in trucks can no longer be relied upon, not to mention the workers and peasants. The Bolsheviks are terribly nervous, probably feeling the approach of the end, and therefore the rats begin to leave the sinking ship in advance.

Mirbach's murder took place at the beginning of the work of the 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets. The party membership of the congress delegates - 773 communists and 353 left SRs - testified, in comparison with previous congresses, to the decline in the influence of the Bolsheviks. Middle Volga provinces, where it was blazing Civil War, were represented at the congress by 27 Bolsheviks and 33 Left SRs. The Bolshevik leadership understood that its salvation lay in the creation of extreme conditions, in getting rid of any opposition, in establishing a dictatorship as the only way to retain power. Therefore, the war on the Volga with the Komuchevites and Czechoslovak legionnaires was used, because the shots at Mirbach led to the defeat of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party, the then only legal organization in political struggle for the confidence of the masses.

The events that took place in Moscow on July 6, 1918, are now presented as a well-directed performance by someone. Mirbakh was killed not only by a Left Social Revolutionary, but by a Soviet employee who held a high position in the Cheka. However, the second was soon forgotten, and the first was used, and very purposefully and in an organized manner, to ostracize one of the government parties. It is hardly possible to speak of a Left Socialist-Revolutionary rebellion that day; rather, it was the 24 hours of the tragic finale of the party, which decided to fight for power with the Bolsheviks. They were defending, not advancing. They detained 27 Bolsheviks, including Dzerzhinsky, and did not shoot anyone. The Bolsheviks started shooting the next day. According to the memoirs of Mstislavsky, A.I. Rykov, who was negotiating with the faction of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, delegates to the 5th Congress of Soviets, unambiguously warned them - they are not people's deputies, but hostages for those communists who were arrested by Popov's Cheka detachment. “And if something happens to them…” Rykov kept silent. But you don't have to say it, it's clear...

Then the Bolsheviks, in order to justify their actions, will call what happened an anti-Soviet rebellion, and this definition will firmly enter Soviet historiography for many years, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries will reject all accusations against them. They approved and acknowledged their participation in the murder of Mirbach, but not in the anti-Soviet rebellion. On August 4, 1918, the 1st Council of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party was held in Moscow. Its opening was preceded by a statement to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee by the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries Sablina, Izmailovich and others, who were imprisoned in the Kremlin guardhouse: “We, members of the Left S.R. obviously included in the plan of action of the government party. Those arrested resented the insulting treatment they were being held without charge. At the same time, they prepared draft resolutions of the Party Council on various issues, including stating that “accepting terror as a matter of principle, the Council believes that terror can become a weapon of the Party’s struggle only if (and from that moment) if the conditions of the political situation stopped the possibility of legal work among the masses,” and resolutely protested against the slander that the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries had rebelled against the Soviet regime and wanted to overthrow the Bolsheviks by force of arms.

The opinion of the winners prevailed. The defeat of the party of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, former comrades-in-arms who dared to join the opposition, was completed rather quickly. The conclusion that there was no anti-Soviet uprising of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries at that time and could not have been, but only an armed defense by a detachment of the Cheka of the members of the Central Committee of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party from possible reprisals for taking responsibility for the murder of Mirbach, only recently began to be affirmed in Russian historiography. “It would be, perhaps, wrong ... to blame only one of the warring parties. Both the Leninists and the members of the Central Committee of the Left SRs were equally unable to see the historical perspective, to predict the coming dictatorship of the individual after the establishment of a one-party system, which buried both of them, ”writes Ya. V. Leontiev.

I. I. Vatsetis, the commander of the Latvian division, who led the military defeat of the Cheka detachment, since the Moscow garrison declared its neutrality, seeing only an inter-party squabble in what was happening, left several versions of his memoirs about the events of July 6-7, 1918 in Moscow . They can hardly be trusted, they are overly politicized and inaccurate. In the first versions of the memoirs, Vatsetis wanted to exaggerate the strength and capabilities of the "rebels" and set off his merits. It was he who named the number of opponents in 2000 bayonets, 8 guns, 64 machine guns, 4-6 armored vehicles. But when the commission of inquiry began to compile a list of persons from the Cheka detachment who at that moment took any part in the defense of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary leadership, they turned out to be only 174 people.

In his memoirs, written at the suggestion of Voroshilov at the end of the 1920s, Vatsetis discovered in Moscow on July 6-7 not only the Left SR, but also the Trotskyist uprising, which, of course, did not take place. The fate of Vatsetis, like all other actors, participants in the confrontation on July 6-7, 1918 in Moscow, was tragic. Vatsetis received a monetary reward for his actions (Trotsky handed him a package of money), became the commander-in-chief of the front, and then all the armed forces of the republic. But, probably, Lenin could not forget the moment of humiliation, the request to help him, and at least twice in 1918-1919. offered to shoot Vatsetis

On July 8, 1918, at the direction of Lenin, the chairman of the Cheka, F. Dzerzhinsky, was detained in his own office on Lubyanka on suspicion of organizing the murder of the German ambassador Mirbach. He was interrogated and gave written evidence. Galina Vesnovskaya, head of the department of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression, allowed me to get acquainted with them. The fact that they were hidden under the heading "Secret" for many decades completely refutes the official interpretation of the events of July 1918.

We know from the history books that allegedly in protest against the ratification of the Brest peace treaty with Germany, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries refused to participate in the work of the Council of People's Commissars (but remained in the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Cheka), and in July 1918 the leaders of this party Spiridonova, Komkov, Karelin, Sablin and others, relying on a detachment of the Cheka under the command of the Left SR Popov, revolted. To disrupt the Brest Peace Treaty, on their orders, the German ambassador to Moscow, Count Mirbach, was killed. By the evening of July 7, the rebellion was crushed. On the same day, Dzerzhinsky's deputy, Alexandrovich, who was participating in it, and 12 Chekists from Popov's detachment were hastily shot. On November 27, the Revolutionary Tribunal at the All-Russian Central Executive Committee sentenced the leaders of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party to one year of forced labor each. And then completely rehabilitated. The direct killers of Mirbach - Yakov Blyumkin and Nikolai Andreev received three years each, in absentia, because they were hiding. Already today The Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation, in accordance with the Law "On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions", reviewed the criminal cases of the participants in the rebellion. All rehabilitated except Blumkin and Andreev.
IN official sources Mirbach's murder is described something like this. On the night of July 5-6, 1918, the head of the department for combating international espionage of the Cheka, Yakov Blyumkin (a member of the Left Social Revolutionary Party), received the sanction of "his" Central Committee to kill Mirbach. He attracted a like-minded person, also an employee of the Cheka, Nikolai Andreev, to the action. Armed with pistols and a bomb, the terrorists arrived at the German embassy at 2 pm on July 6, under a fake mandate of the Cheka for the right to negotiate with Mirbach, penetrated the ambassador and killed him. Then they jumped out the window and drove off in a waiting car to Popov's detachment.
But let's see how Dzerzhinsky himself described all these events in his testimony.

(document style saved).

To the question why, having received information about the impending assassination attempt, the Chekists did not prevent it, the chairman of the Cheka replied: “Approximately in the middle of June of this year. I received from Comrade. Karakhan information emanating from the German embassy, ​​confirming the rumors about an impending attempt on the lives of members of the German embassy and about a conspiracy against Soviet power. Members of the German embassy gave a list of addresses where the criminal appeals and the conspirators themselves were to be found; in addition to this list, the text of two appeals was given in German translation. This case was referred for investigation by T.T. PETERS and LATSIS. Despite, however, such specific instructions, the searches undertaken by the commission did not reveal anything and it was necessary to release all those arrested in this case. I was sure that someone was deliberately giving false information to the members of the German embassy to blackmail them or for other more complex political purposes. My confidence rested not only on the fact that the searches had produced no results, but also on the fact that the appeals delivered to us had not been distributed anywhere in the city. Then at the end of June (28th) I was given new material, received from the German embassy, ​​about impending conspiracies. It was reported that there was no doubt that attempts were being made in Moscow against members of the German embassy and against representatives of the Soviet government, and that all the threads of this conspiracy could be uncovered with a single blow. It is necessary only today, i.e. On June 28, in the evening at 9 o'clock, send loyal people (incorruptible) to search Petrovka 19, apt. 35. It is necessary to examine in the most thorough way absolutely everything in the apartment: every piece of paper, books, magazines, etc. If there is something encrypted, it must be delivered to the embassy - they will immediately decrypt it. The owner of the apartment was Dr. I.I. Andrianov, who lives with the Englishman F.M. Weiber, the mastermind behind the conspiracy. Having received such information, etc. Peterson and Latsis sent to the indicated place and time (exactly) a squad of comrades worthy of complete confidence for a search. Several people were detained, including an English teacher, Wiber. He was found on the table in a book - six encrypted sheets. Nothing else that could compromise him was found.

Gr. Wiber, during interrogation, stated that he was not involved in politics and that he did not know how the encrypted sheets got into his book, and that he himself was perplexed about this. One of the found sheets, beginning with a cipher, was handed over to Comrade. Karakhan to members of the German embassy for decryption using the key they have. They sent us back this sheet already deciphered, as well as the key itself. The rest of the sheets were already deciphered by us (I, Karakhan and Peters). After reviewing the contents of these leaflets, I came to the conclusion that someone was blackmailing both us and the German embassy, ​​and that it could be c. Weiber is the victim of this blackmail.

To clarify my doubts, I asked Comrade. Karakhan to introduce me directly to someone from the German embassy. I met with Dr. Ritzler and Lieutenant Miller. I told them all my doubts and my almost certainty that someone was blackmailing them. Dr. Ritzler pointed out that it is difficult to guess, as persons who give him information do not receive money from him. I pointed out that there may be political motives for the alleged hoax, such as: - the desire of enemies to direct our attention to false tracks. That there was some kind of intrigue here, I was all the more sure that I had received quite reliable information that it was reported to Dr. Ritzler that I turn a blind eye to plots directed directly against the safety of members of the German embassy, ​​which, of course, is a fabrication and slander. By this distrust of myself, I explained the strange fact that binds my hands in revealing conspirators or intriguers, that I was not informed about the source of information about the impending assassination attempts; By this mistrust, artificially supported by someone, I also explained the fact that we were not immediately sent the key to the cipher and that it was necessary to convince Dr. Embassy.

It was obvious to me that this mistrust was raised by persons who had some purpose in doing so to prevent me from discovering the real conspirators, whose existence, on the basis of all the information at my disposal, I did not doubt. I was afraid of attempts on the life of Mr. Mirbach on the part of the monarchist counter-revolutionaries who want to achieve restoration through the military force of German militarism, as well as on the part of the counter-revolutionaries - Savinkovites and agents of the Anglo-French bankers. Distrust of me on the part of those who gave me the material tied my hands. The results of the search and the contents of the ciphered sheets and the very method of encryption (childish cipher - each letter has only one sign, the word is separated from the word, the use of punctuation marks, etc.) and the unknown source did not give me any threads for further investigation. Experience has shown me that an unknown source, unpunished and not subject to verification, cannot be trusted in any case.

In addition, in this case it was impossible to trust, especially since a certain BENDERSKAYA, apparently an accomplice in the conspiracy, mentioned in the ciphered letter, was, like me and comrade. CARAKHAN was told by Dr. Ritzler, who was at the same time the embassy's informer, and Dr. Ritzler's wish was expressed not to arrest her immediately, because. then she will not be able to find out more and inform about the course of the conspiracy and to postpone her arrest. I should note that in the first sheet deciphered at the German embassy, ​​the name “Benderskaya” was replaced by dots (……….), (I gave this deciphered sheet to Dr. Ritzler when we met). I asked Dr. Ritzler to ask his informant how he knew that the material could be found by conducting a search at exactly 9 o'clock no earlier and no later, where he got the cipher from, what was the purpose of the ciphered sheets found, who he knows from the conspirators, etc. .d. Through com. Karakhan, I then insisted that I be personally brought to informants. The surname of the chief informant was not given to me, as for Benderskaya, it was reported that when she came to the embassy for the first time, a revolver was noticed and taken from her. (Before the discovery of the encrypted sheets, Benderskaya was recently brought to our commission on some unimportant case, and was immediately released. The investigation was led by investigator Vizner, head of the criminal subdivision). Dr. Ritzler finally agreed to introduce me to his informants. A couple of days before the assassination attempt (I don’t remember the exact day), I met with him.

Lieutenant Miller was also present at the beginning of our conversation. I began to question the informer, and from the very first of his answers I saw that my doubts were confirmed, that his answers were uncertain, that he was afraid of me and was confusing me. At the same time, he apparently tried to sow distrust in me on the part of Lieutenant Miller in order to protect himself from me. It turned out that it was he who had given addresses and instructions for the first time, and, behold, he began to say in my presence that we had found appeals at these addresses, but for some reason we did not initiate proceedings. Lieutenant Miller did not stay long during our conversation, and when he began to leave, the informant jumped up alarmed to leave too, and only the lieutenant's assurance that he had nothing to fear, that nothing would happen to him calmed him a little, and he remained. He told me the following (I restore from memory and fragmentary notes of my own, written down during a conversation with him).
He is called Vladimir Iosifovich Ginch (he refused to give his address, although I did not insist). Russian, citizen, lives in Moscow for about 7 years, cinematographer. The organization he joined is called the "Union of Allies", i.e. "S.S." (see cipher leaflets) or "Salvation of Russia". The search at the addresses indicated by him for the first time did not yield sufficient materials, because it had to be carried out from Saturday to Sunday, but was carried out from Wednesday to Thursday (earlier than necessary).

During a search at the address indicated by him in Nirenzi's house (B. Gnezdikovsky, 10), appeals were found, Kuznetsov was the head of the detachment conducting the search. He himself was, through a certain Mameluk (Frenchman), whom he accidentally met, introduced into the combat five "S.S." (This Savinkov organizes in fives according to the military scheme. Note mine. F.D.). This five included: 1) Mamelyuk, 2) Olsufevsky, has been working at the factory for 3 years (Plyushchikha 19), 3) Moran, 4) Feikhis (Petrovka 17, apt. 98 or 89), 5) Butel (B. Dmitrovka 20 or 22, corner of Stoleshnikov, square 8). Conspiratorial appeals were printed in 7 printing houses. By the way, on Nikitskaya 4, that appeals were found there by the commission; in Komarchesky per. in Serebryannikovsky per. No. 5 at Antonova, where Mamelyuk ordered appeals.

From this last printing house, he received 2-3 appeals already printed from the boy, handed them over to the Embassy, ​​from the boy, and not from Mameluk, because they noticed him going to the embassy and stopped trusting him. When he was accepted into the five, they demanded an oath, he took a word-oath that the one caught would not betray anyone from the "five", otherwise he would be killed. The conspirators were supposed to give him appeals for distribution, for this they gave him an encrypted address, but then they took him away. They gave him 20,000 rubles for participation in the Union and for going with them to the railroad. Art. Fili, from there he went somewhere in a cab and brought 4 boxes of something to Moscow. Many appeals were printed on typewriters, somewhere in the Lubyanka. He received the cipher in this way: about 3 weeks ago he was with Mameluk, he had a cipher on his desk, Mameluk himself left the room for a few minutes, then he copied it for himself. In deciphering the letter found with Wiber, he helped the German embassy. I learned about Weiber from Benderskaya. Entered into her confidence, she blabbed. He asked her not to arrest at least until Saturday, she is needed. I showed her a letter written to him, where she talks about some 800 rubles (he asked me first if I knew the handwriting, since she was arrested by us) and that she was detained and released. The letter was dated 28/VI; her address was indicated in the letter - I told him that I would write down this address, he asked not to do this, because. until Saturday, at least it will not be necessary. I did write down her address, so that he would not notice that it was an address. After meeting with this gentleman, I no longer had any doubts, for me the fact of blackmail was obvious. I just couldn’t understand the goals - I thought that “to bring down the commission and that’s all” and to borrow not what I need. I also forgot to note that at the end of the conversation, when I got up to go, he asked me for a pass to the commission, that he was there several times with information, but they didn’t want to listen to him, that he was in Popov’s detachment, but also didn’t get any sense . (After this meeting, through Comrade Karakhan, I informed the German embassy that I considered the arrest of Ginch and Benderskaya necessary, but I did not receive an answer. They were arrested only on Saturday after the murder of Count Mirbach).

With regard to traitors in the Cheka, its chairman explained the following:“Aleksandrovich was introduced to the commission in December of last year as a comrade of the Chairman at the categorical demand of the members of the Council of People's Commissars of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. His rights were the same as mine, he had the right to sign all the papers and make orders instead of me. He kept a large seal, which was attached to a false certificate from my alleged name, with the help of which Blumkin and Andreev committed the murder. Blyumkin was admitted to the commission on the recommendation of the Central Committee of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. To organize counter-intelligence for espionage in the Department for Combating Counter-Revolution. A few days, maybe a week before the assassination attempt, I received information from Raskolnikova and Mandelstam (he works for Lunacharsky in Petrograd) that this type allows you to say such things in conversations: “People’s lives are in my hands, I’ll sign a piece of paper - in two hours No human life. Here I have citizen Puslovskaya, a poet, a great cultural value. I will sign his death warrant." But if the interlocutor needs this life, he will leave it, and so on. When Mandelstam, indignant, protested, Blumkin began to threaten him that if he told anyone about him, he would take revenge with all his might. I immediately passed this information on to Aleksandrovich, so that he could take from the Central Committee an explanation and information about Blumkin in order to bring him to trial. On the same day, at a meeting of the commission, it was decided, at my suggestion, to dissolve our counter-intelligence and dismiss Blumkin for the time being. Before receiving an explanation from the Central Committee of the Left S.-R. I decided not to report on the data against Blumkin.

About why the chairman of the Cheka was allegedly arrested in a detachment subordinate to him and was there for the entire period of the rebellion, Dzerzhinsky said: “I received information about the murder of Count Mirbach on July 6, at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, from the chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars by direct wire . Immediately went to the embassy together with comrade. Karakhan with a detachment, investigators and commissioners, to organize the capture of the killers.

Lieutenant Miller greeted me with a loud reproach: "What do you say now, Mr. Dzerzhinsky?" I was shown an identity paper signed with my name. It was a certificate, written on the letterhead of the Commission, authorizing Blumkin and Andreev to ask for an audience with Count Mirbach on the matter. I did not sign such a certificate, peering into my signature and Comrade. Ksenofontov, I saw that our signatures were copied, forged. Everything immediately became clear to me. The figure of Blumkin, in view of his exposure by Raskolnikov and Mandelstam, immediately became clear as a provocateur. Party of the Left S.-R. I did not suspect yet I thought that Blumkin had betrayed her confidence. I ordered that he be immediately sought out and arrested (I did not know who Andreev was). One of the commissioners, comrade. Belenky then told me that recently, after the murder, he had seen Blumkin in Popov's detachment. Meanwhile, he himself ordered the immediate arrest of Ginch, who intended not to arrest Benderskaya and this latter until Saturday (fatal). Belenky returned with the news that Popov had told him that Blumkin had gone to the hospital in a cab (Blumkin, as they said there, had broken his leg), but it was he, Belenky, who doubted the truth of Popov's words, that he was hiding him out of comradely feeling. Then I, with three comrades (Trepalov, Belenky and Khrustalev), after consulting with the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, as well as with the chairman of the Central Executive Committee, went to the detachment to find out the truth and arrest Blumkin and those who were hiding him. Arriving at the detachment, I asked Popov where Blumkin was, he replied that he had left sick in a cab, I asked him who saw this, he pointed to the head. economy. They called him, he confirmed. I asked him which hospital he went to, answered with ignorance. In the answers he was cheeky, apparently, he lied. I demanded that sentry soldiers be called who would confirm that they had seen Blumkin leaving - there were none. And I must say that the soldiers, armed from head to toe, apparently, were demobilized, crowded in the headquarters and in front of the headquarters, that guards were posted everywhere. I demanded from Popov the word of honor of a revolutionary, so that he would say that he had Blumkin or not. To this he answered me “I give you my word”, that I don’t know if he is here (Blumkin’s hat was lying on the table). Then I proceeded to inspect the premises, leaving Comrade with Popov. Khrustalev and demanded that all the rest remain in their places. I began to inspect the premises of Comrade. Trepalov and Belenky. They opened everything for me, one room had to be broken into. In one of the rooms Comrade. Trepalov began to question the Finn who was there, and he said that there was one there. Then Proshyan and Karelin come up to me and declare that I should not look for Blumkin, that Count Mirbach was killed by him on the decision of the Central Committee of their party, that the Central Committee takes full responsibility. Then I declared that I declared them arrested and that if Popov refused to hand them over to me, then I would kill him as a traitor. Proshyan and Karelin then agreed that they were obeying, but instead of getting into my car, they rushed to the headquarters room, and from there went into another room. At the door stood a sentry who did not let me in after them, behind the doors I noticed Alexandrovich, Trutovsky, Cherepanov, Spiridonova, Fishman, Kamkov and other persons unknown to me. There were about 10-12 sailors in the headquarters room.

I turned to them, demanding submission to myself, assistance in the arrest of provocateurs. They made excuses that they were ordered not to let anyone into that room. Then Sablin enters, comes up to me and demands the surrender of weapons, I did not give him back and again turned to the sailors, would they allow this gentleman to disarm me - their chairman, that they want to use them for a vile purpose, that the disarmament of me sent here by force from the Council of People's Commissars - this is a declaration of war on Soviet power. The sailors trembled, then Sablin jumped out of the room. I demanded Popov, he did not come, the room was filled with other sailors. Then Popov's assistant, Protopopov, came up to me, grabbed me by both hands, and then they disarmed me. I turned again to the sailors. Then Spiridonova comes in and explains in her own way why they are detaining us - because we were at the same time with Mirbach. By the way, Trepalov told me that Spiridonova disarmed him with her own hands, i.e. the sailors held his hands, and she took a revolver from her pocket. Having disarmed us, they put a guard on us, and they themselves staged a rally nearby, where Spiridonova's voice and clapping were heard. We had to remove the burden of betrayal from ourselves and from the sailors (everyone felt this during our disarmament) with the help of their phrases and cries. I should also note that Popov came into the room only after we were disarmed, and when I threw him a "traitor" - he said that he had always followed my orders, and now he was acting according to the decision of his Central Committee. Then he began to throw accusations that our decrees were written on the orders of “His Excellency Count. Mirbach" that we betrayed the Black Sea Fleet. The sailors were accused of taking away the flour from the poor, that they had treacherously ruined the fleet, that we were disarming the sailors, that we were not letting them go, although they had endured the brunt of the revolution on themselves. Individual voices were heard that, having disarmed their anarchists, more than 70 people were shot in Butyrki, then “I, for example. The Soviet government in Orel planted for 3 months, on Easter, that in the villages everywhere they hate Soviet power. Then came Cherepanov, Sablin. This one, the first one, rubbing his hands, happily said: “You had October days - we have July days. The world has been disrupted and you will have to reckon with this fact, we don’t want the authorities, let it be like in Ukraine, we will go underground, let the Germans occupy Moscow.”

Popov said that now there would be no need to fight the Czechoslovaks. Then they brought arrested Latsis, Dabal and others, then Zhavoronkov (secret. Muralov, a member of the Naval Collegium, I don’t know by name), at night Smidovich, Venglinsky and others. the barracks arrest the commissars and join us, the Latvians join us, the whole Zamoskvorechye is behind us, 2,000 arrived Don Cossacks from Voronezh, Muravyov is coming to us, the March regiment is with us. We already have six thousand people, the workers send us delegations. Their cordial mood was spoiled by the news that Spiridonova and the faction had been arrested. Popov flew in: “For Maria, I will demolish half the Kremlin, half the Lubyanka, half the theater. And indeed, cars were loaded with people and left for the rescue. Canned food, boots, provisions were distributed, white bagels were taken out. It was noticed that people drank. From our conversations with the sailors it was clear that they felt they were wrong and our truth. It was obvious that there was no ideology there, which was expressed through them by the desire to make money, people who were already divorced from the interests of the working masses of soldiers by profession, who tasted the sweetness of power and complete carefree security in the nature of the conquerors. Many of them - the most zealous - had 3-4 rings on their fingers.

To the question how did it happen that such people got into your squad, Dzerzhinsky answered as follows: “This is the business of Aleksandrovich, Popov and the Central Committee of the Left S.R. I had full confidence in Alexandrovitch. I worked with him all the time in the commission and he almost always agreed with me and did not notice any duplicity. This deceived me and was the source of all troubles. Without this trust, I would not have entrusted him with the cases against Blumkin, I would not have instructed him to investigate the complaints that were sometimes received against Popov’s detachment, I would not have trusted him when he vouched for Popov in those cases when I had doubts in connection with rumors about his booze. Even now I cannot reconcile myself with the idea that this is a conscious traitor, although all the facts are there and cannot be after only two opinions about him. His detachment turned into a gang in the following way: after sending the Finns to the Czechoslovak front, there were few of them left in the detachment, of the remaining more conscious, Popov began to fire and recruit new ones already for a specific purpose - Aleksandrovich began to go there constantly. The Black Sea people came, and received information about them from comrade. Tsyuryupy that this is a gang. Popov ordered to do reconnaissance. Popov’s detachment was always entrusted with the disarmament of gangs and he always brilliantly carried out such assignments - as a result, without the knowledge of the commission, he accepted up to 150 people into his detachment, and also accepted the Baltics on his own initiative and for his own purposes. 2-3 days before the fateful Saturday, Popov kept his detachment in full combat readiness, unnerving everyone with the "data" of his intelligence that the German counter-revolutionaries were going to disarm the detachment and arrest Popov himself. On the night from Friday to Saturday, Popov sounded a special alarm that an attack was supposedly being prepared that night. He confirmed the correctness of his data by the no longer fabricated fact that he received a summons from the commission to appear for interrogation on Saturday at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. This summons was sent by the commission on the case of accusing him of abuses in obtaining canned food from the commissariat. He received much more than he was entitled to. The remaining Finns, for the most part, remained faithful to us to the end. I must also add that from among the prominent SRs, while in the room, I saw Magerovsky. He came to our room and asked one of our Lettish scouts they had imprisoned to go with ours and say that it was all a misunderstanding. Alexandrovich, as it turned out now, having received five hundred and forty-four thousand rubles for delivery to the pantry. taken from the arrested person - handed over this money to the Central Committee of his party. In addition, he tried to sow distrust of Sachs by telling me that his Central Committee did not trust him.

According to later testimonies, on the morning of July 6, an employee of the Cheka, Ya. G. Blyumkin, went to the Extraordinary Commission, took an empty form of the Cheka from the duty officer and printed on it that he and Nikolai Andreev, a representative of the Revolutionary Tribunal, were authorized to "enter directly into negotiations" with the German ambassador, Count Mirbach "in a matter directly related" to the ambassador. Dzerzhinsky's signature on the form, according to Blyumkin, was fake, and it was forged by "one of the members of the Central Committee" of the PLSR. Ksenofontov's signature was also fake - Blumkin himself signed for him. After waiting for the "knowing nothing" deputy Dzerzhinsky member of the Central Committee of the PLSR V.A. Aleksandrovich, Blyumkin "asked him to put the seal of the Commission on the mandate." From Alexandrovich, Blyumkin received permission to use a car and went to the First House of Soviets, where Andreev was waiting for him “at the apartment of one member of the Central Committee” of the PLSR. Having received two heavy bombs, revolvers and final instructions, the attackers left the National at about two o'clock in the afternoon, ordered the driver to stop at the German embassy building, wait for them without turning off the engine, and not be surprised at the noise and shooting. Right there in the car sat the second driver, a sailor from the detachment of D. I. Popov. The sailor was "brought by one of the members of the Central Committee", and he apparently knew that an attempt was being made on Mirbach. Like the terrorists, the sailor was armed with a bomb.

At about two and a quarter, Blumkin and Andreev rang the doorbell of the German embassy. Those who came were let in. Upon presentation of a mandate from Dzerzhinsky and after some waiting, two embassy employees came out to talk to them - Ritzler and Lieutenant Muller (as an interpreter). All four went to the reception. According to Muller, Blumkin was “a swarthy brunette, with a beard and mustache, big hair, dressed in a black suit. Appears to be 30-35 years old, with a pale imprint on his face, an anarchist type. Andreev was “reddish, without a beard, with a small mustache, thin, with a hump on his nose. Looks like 30 years old. When everyone sat down around a large marble table, Blumkin told Ritzler that he needed to talk to Mirbach about the ambassador's personal business, and, referring to Dzerzhinsky's strict order, he continued to insist on a personal conversation with the count, despite Ritzler's objections that the ambassador would not receive.

In the end, Ritzler replied that, being the first adviser to the embassy, ​​he was authorized to conduct any negotiations instead of Mirbach, including personal ones. However, at the moment when the terrorists, perhaps, already considered the enterprise disrupted, Ritsler, who left the reception room, returned, accompanied by the count, who agreed to personally talk with the Chekists.

Blumkin informed Mirbach that he had come to negotiate the case of "Robert Mirbach, personally to the count of an unfamiliar member of a distant Hungarian branch of his family", implicated in the "case of espionage". In confirmation, Blumkin presented some documents. Mirbach replied that he "had nothing to do with the officer in question" and that "the matter was completely alien to him." To this, Blumkin announced that in ten days the case would be considered by a revolutionary tribunal. Mirbach obviously didn't care. And Ritsler offered to stop negotiations and give a written answer on the case through the usual channels of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, through Karakhan.

Andreev, who had not participated in the conversation all this time, asked if the German diplomats would like to know what measures would be taken by the tribunal in the case of Robert Mirbach. Blumkin repeated the same question. It was a prearranged signal. Mirbach, who suspected nothing, answered in the affirmative. With the words "I'll show you this now," Blumkin, who was standing at a large marble table, pulled out a revolver and fired through the table, first at Mirbach, and then at Muller and Rietzler (but missed). They were so stunned that they remained sitting in their deep chairs (they were not armed).

Mirbakh jumped up and ran into the hall next to the reception, but at that moment he was hit by a bullet fired by Andreev. Blumkin, meanwhile, continued to shoot at Ritzler and Muller, but missed 1. Then there was a bomb explosion, after which the terrorists jumped out the window and left in a car waiting for them. When Rietzler and Müller, awakened from their confusion, rushed to Mirbach, he was already lying dead in a pool of blood. Next to him, they saw an unexploded bomb (and at a distance of two or three steps from the ambassador - a large hole in the floor - traces of another bomb that exploded).

A sailor from Popov's detachment was driving the car that was carrying the terrorists away. They were taken to Trekhsvyatitelsky Lane, to the headquarters of the Cheka troops (which the terrorists did not know about). It turned out that Blumkin injured his left leg while jumping from the window, and besides, he was wounded, again in the leg, by the sentries guarding the embassy who opened fire on the terrorists. From the car to Popov's headquarters, the sailors carried Blumkin in their arms. At headquarters, he was "cut, shaved, dressed in a soldier's dress and taken to the detachment's infirmary, located on the opposite side of the street." From that moment on, Blumkin did not take a direct part in the events. Somewhat earlier, Andreev, the murderer of the German ambassador, disappeared from sight. For unknown reasons, Andreev's laurels were given to Blumkin.

But the murder was not clean. In the turmoil, the terrorists left in the embassy building a briefcase containing the “Robert Mirbach file” and a certificate in the name of Blumkin and Andreev, signed by Dzerzhinsky and Ksenofontov. Finally, two of the most dangerous witnesses to the crime - Rietzler and Muller - survived. One can only guess how the events of July 6 would have developed if it were not for these random blunders of the terrorists.

By whom and when was the preparation for the assassination of Mirbach started? Who was behind the assassination of the German ambassador? These questions are not as easy to answer as the available historiography tries to present. The fact is that there are no documents confirming the involvement of the Central Committee of the PLSR in organizing the murder of the German ambassador. The most complete collection of materials about the events of July 6-7 was published in 1920: The Red Book of the Cheka. But even in it there are no documents confirming the accusations against the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, primarily against the Central Committee of the PLSR, of organizing the murder of Mirbach and of "uprising". Historians, therefore, have so far resorted to a free retelling of the documents of the Red Book of the Cheka, and not to direct quotation. Here is what K. V. Gusev writes: “On June 24, 1918, the Central Committee of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party adopted an official decision on the murder of the German ambassador in Moscow, Count Mirbach, and the beginning of a counter-revolutionary rebellion.” Gusev is echoed by Academician I. I. Mints:

“On June 24, as is clear from the documents seized and published after the suppression of the adventure, the Central Committee of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, far from being in full force, adopted a resolution on a decisive action. It stated that the Central Committee of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party recognized it as necessary, in the interests of the Russian and international revolution, to put an end to the respite resulting from the conclusion of the Brest Peace. To do this, it is necessary to undertake a series of terrorist acts against representatives of German imperialism - in Moscow against Ambassador Mirbach, in Kyiv against Field Marshal Eichhorn, commander of the German troops in Ukraine, and others. For this purpose, the resolution stated, it was necessary to organize combat forces.

Meanwhile, the minutes of the meeting of the Central Committee of the PLSR of June 24, to which historians refer, did not say anything specific, and the protocol, in itself, does not prove the involvement of the PLSR in the murder. Moreover, the protocol states that the time of the terrorist acts will be determined at the next meeting of the Central Committee of the PLSR. But before July 6, as is known for sure, there was no such meeting. It follows from the text of the protocol that the Left SRs were afraid of being crushed by the Bolsheviks; and once the word “uprising” mentioned in the protocol meant, of course, not a rebellion against the Soviet regime, but an uprising in Ukraine against the German occupation. Thus, there is no reason to believe that the PLSR was preparing a speech against the Council of People's Commissars.

Who exactly was behind the assassination of the German ambassador? Blyumkin believed that the Central Committee of the PLSR. On July 4, before the evening session of the Congress of Soviets, he was invited "from the Bolshoi Theater by one of the members of the Central Committee for a political conversation." A member of the Central Committee told Blumkin that the Central Committee of the PLSR had decided to assassinate Mirbach “in order to appeal to the solidarity of the German proletariat” and “by confronting the government with the fait accompli of breaking the Brest Treaty, to achieve from it the long-awaited certainty and intransigence in the struggle for the international revolution.” After that, the "member of the Central Committee" asked Blumkin, as a Left Socialist-Revolutionary, within the framework of observing party discipline, to report the information he had about Mirbach. Blumkin therefore believed that "the decision to carry out the assassination of Count Mirbach was taken unexpectedly on July 4." However, at the meeting of the Central Committee of the PLSR, where, according to Blumkin, it was decided to kill the ambassador, Blumkin was not present. On the evening of July 4, he was invited to his place by the same “one member of the Central Committee” and for the second time asked him to “report all the information about Mirbach” that Blumkin had, being the head of the department “for combating German espionage”, and he was told that “this information necessary to commit murder." It was then that Blumkin volunteered to kill the ambassador. On the same night, the conspirators decided to carry out an assassination attempt on July 5. However, the execution of the act was postponed for one day, because "in such a short time it was impossible to make proper preparations."

Thus, the actions of Blumkin and Andreev, another member of the Left SR party, a photographer of the anti-espionage department subordinate to Blumkin, were led not by the Central Committee of the PLSR, but by someone called by Blumkin "one member of the Central Committee." What kind of member of the Central Committee this was, Blumkin does not indicate. But something else is surprising: during Blyumkin's testimony in the Kiev Cheka in 1919, the Chekists did not ask for the name of a member of the Central Committee of the PLSR, the obvious organizer of the murder. Perhaps the Bolsheviks knew who they were talking about, but were not interested in publicity. Who was this member of the Central Committee of the PLSR?

There is reason to believe that it was Proshyan, who “jokingly” suggested in March, in a conversation with the left communist Radek, to arrest Lenin and declare war on Germany. Spiridonova wrote about Proshyan's involvement in organizing the assassination of the German ambassador quite openly: "The initiative of the act with Mirbach, the first initiative in this direction, belongs to him." Proshyan has always stood on the left flank of the revolutionary spectrum. This is probably why he impressed such different people as Lenin and Spiridonova. Lenin wrote about Proshyan that he “immediately stood out for his deep devotion to the revolution and socialism”, that he was seen as a “convinced socialist”, resolutely taking the side of the Bolshevik communists against his colleagues, the left socialist revolutionaries. And only the question of the Brest-Litovsk peace led to a "complete divergence" between Proshyan and Lenin.

Spiridonova recalled Proshyan, that he was one of the first to split the Socialist-Revolutionary party: “When Natanson, with all his authority, once almost ordered him not to break with the party, “wait,” he left angry with sadness, “they cut my wings.” He was the first to "launch an open campaign against Kerensky and wrote such malicious and obscene articles against Savinkov" that the Central Committee of the AKP "rolled in convulsions of anger." In support of the Bolsheviks, Spiridonova echoes Lenin, Proshyan "went to the end and without a single hesitation"; and in the July days of 1917 he was arrested by the Provisional Government, like many Bolsheviks, on charges of espionage. For refusing to obey the directives of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, Proshyan was expelled from the AKP, reinstated at the request of the left wing of the then unified Socialist-Revolutionary Party, and again expelled for "too bold internationalist propaganda" (defeatism). He took such an active part in the preparation of the October coup that, according to the same Spiridonova, this coup "was also his work." Proshyan "was in favor of full unconditional joint work with the Bolsheviks" and was one of the "five", which "played a major role in the struggle and organization" of Soviet power. And since for the most part only Lenin and Proshyan visited the “five”, the work of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks took place in complete “consent and mutual understanding”.

Proshyan could take advantage of the decision of the Central Committee of the PLSR of June 24 and personally organize the murder of Mirbakh. Indirect evidence of this can be the fact that the name of Proshyan (and no one else) is mentioned in Blumkin’s testimony in connection with Blumkin’s letters to Proshyan “demanding an explanation of the party’s behavior after Mirbach’s assassination” and “Proshyan’s response letters.” What was in these letters, and on what basis did an ordinary member of the Left SR party present any demands to a member of the Central Committee? The Red Book of the Cheka does not answer this question. The Chekists also "did not take an interest in these letters." But Blumkin's demands on Proshyan are easy to guess. It turns out that the mysterious member of the Central Committee of the PLSR, with whom Blumkin agreed on the murder of Mirbach, assured the Socialist-Revolutionary militant that the task of the Central Committee of the PLSR "is only to kill the German ambassador." Blumkin showed:

“The general question of the consequences of the murder of Count Mirbach was not raised during my conversation with the aforementioned member of the Central Committee, but I personally posed sharply two questions to which I attached great importance and to which I demanded an exhaustive answer, namely: 1) whether, in the opinion of the Central Committee, in the event that Mr. Mirbach, the danger to the representative of Soviet Russia in Germany Comrade. Ioffe and 2) whether the Central Committee guarantees that its only task is to kill the German ambassador. I was assured that the danger of comrade. Ioffe, according to the Central Committee, is not threatened [...]. In response to the second question, I was officially and categorically stated that the only task of the Central Committee was to kill the German ambassador in order to confront the Soviet government with the fact of breaking the Brest Treaty.

If the member of the Central Committee who met Blumkin was Proshyan, then Blumkin's demand to him to explain the behavior of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party after the murder of Mirbach becomes understandable. After all, Blumkin, who lay in the hospital on July 6-7, had information about the events of those days only from Soviet newspapers, where the Bolsheviks unequivocally pointed to an uprising, that is, something that, according to Blumkin, could not have happened. Blumkin showed:

“In September, when the July events were clearly arranged, when government repressions were carried out against the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party, and all this became an event that marked a whole era in the Russian Soviet revolution - even then I wrote to one member of the Central Committee that the legend of the uprising frightens me and I need to impersonate the government to destroy it."

But "one member of the Central Committee" forbade it, and Blumkin, obeying party discipline, obeyed. Only at the beginning of April 1919, after the sudden death of Proshyan in December 1918, Blumkin violated the ban of the deceased and appeared in the Cheka to reveal the "secret" of the Left SR conspiracy.

However, this is only one hypothesis, one of the possible lines of assassination. And the most serious argument against the fact that, according to the testimony of the leader of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries Sablin, Proshyan was in the building of Popov’s detachment at the second hour of the day, while, according to Blumkin’s testimony, at about this time on July 6, Blumkin and Andreev were in the National in the apartment of "one member of the Central Committee" and received bombs and final instructions there. True, Blumkin does not claim that "one member of the Central Committee" was at home at that hour (and Sablin could be mistaken); but this forces us to look for other conspirators inside the PLSR. Outwardly, the most serious accusations fall on Spiridonova, who testified on herself during interrogation on July 10. These testimonies could be enough to blame Spiridonova for the murder of Mirbakh, forgetting about Proshyan. However, there is reason to believe that Spiridonova slandered herself too much and, at least, was not that “one member of the Central Committee” to whom Blumkin referred. First of all, the resolution of the Central Committee of the PLSR on the murder of Mirbach, to which Spiridonova refers, did not exist. This is pointed out by the historian L. M. Spirin: “there was no meeting of the Central Committee of the Left SRs on the night of July 5, 1918.” The editors of the new edition of the "Red Book of the Cheka" write the same: "There was no meeting of the Central Committee of the PLSR on the night of July 4." Thus, there was no such meeting, which was referred to in a conversation with Blumkin by "one member of the Central Committee" and which, in turn, was reported by Blumkin. Blumkin also testified that it was he who informed Alexandrovich about the upcoming assassination attempt. Meanwhile, if the decision to kill Mirbach, as Spiridonova claimed, was indeed issued by the Central Committee of the PLSR before July 6, Aleksandrovich, as a member of the Central Committee, could not have been unaware of this.

Numerous references to the non-involvement of certain PLSR activists in the murder and the events of July 6-7 are available in the literature. So, according to the commandant of the Kremlin P. D. Malkov, Ustinov and Kolegaev had nothing to do with them. Academician Mintz writes that the decision to "speak out" of the Central Committee of the PLSR was taken "far from being in full force." Gusev, talking about the Third Congress of the PLSR, which opened four days after the meeting of the Central Committee on June 24, notes that "the decisions of the congress did not directly mention the murder of Mirbach and the armed rebellion." It turns out that neither at the meeting of the Central Committee of the PLSR on June 24, nor at the congress of the PLSR, held from June 28 to July 1, the Central Committee of the PLSR indicated neither the timing of the terrorist act, nor its future victim, although the ambassador was killed a few days after the meeting of the Central Committee and the closing of the congress . Not a word was said in the resolution about the planned "uprising" against the Bolshevik government. Gusev, in this regard, points out that "the preparations for the rebellion were carefully concealed not only from the organs of Soviet power, but also from the rank and file members of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party." However, having accepted the blame for organizing the murder, Spiridonova, in her testimony on July 10, flatly refused to take responsibility for the "uprising", pointing out that in the "decisions of the Central Committee of the Party" of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries "the overthrow of the Bolshevik government was never planned.

Spirin points out that in those days "there was only a meeting of a small group of members of the Central Committee, created on June 24, 1918 with the aim of organizing the assassination of representatives of German imperialism." He has in mind the Bureau of three people mentioned in the testimony of Spiridonova and in the decision of the Central Committee of the PLSR: Spiridonova, Golubovsky and Mayorov. But Maiorov, connected with Ukraine and working there, as well as Golubovsky, did not show their participation in the July events in Moscow. Yes, and Spiridonova testified that she alone was in charge of the murder of Mirbach, and Maiorov and Golubovsky had nothing to do with the assassination attempt. Then the testimony of Spiridonova is read differently. If the Central Committee of the PLSR “at first singled out a very small group with dictatorial powers”, if then two of this group of three people had nothing to do with the events, then the entire responsibility for organizing the assassination of Mirbach really does not fall on the Central Committee of the PLSR, guilty only of the theoretical approval of terror in resolution of June 24, but on Spiridonova.

And yet there is an indirect indication that Spiridonova was not “one member of the Central Committee” whom Blumkin and Andreev met. Blumkin mentions in his testimony a letter he wrote to "one member of the Central Committee" in September 1918. But at that time Spiridonova was under investigation (and was released only on November 29). Therefore, Blumkin's letter could not have been addressed to her. But in April-May 1919, when Blumkin, who confessed to the Kiev Cheka, gave his testimony, Spiridonova was at large: on the night of April 2, on a false pass, she fled from the Kremlin, where she was kept under arrest. It is obvious that it was in April-May that the Bolsheviks really needed fresh accusations against Spiridonova, who was wanted all over the country. And if "one member of the Central Committee" really was Spiridonova, the Bolsheviks, of course, would have forced Blumkin to say this name aloud.

The names of Proshyan and Spiridonova are not limited to the list of suspects in organizing the murder of Mirbakh. We need to look for them not only among the members of the PLSR, but also among the left communists. In this regard, the behavior of the left communist and chairman of the Cheka Dzerzhinsky attracts attention. It was within the walls of his Commission, with the knowledge and consent of Dzerzhinsky himself, in early June that an employee of the Cheka, Blyumkin, opened a case against the "nephew of the German ambassador" - Robert Mirbach. This was the first "case" of Blumkin, who was introduced to the Cheka in early June as head of "German espionage" - the counterintelligence department "to monitor the security of the embassy and the possible criminal activities of the embassy." As Latsis later testified, "Blumkin showed a great desire to expand the department" to combat espionage "and more than once submitted projects to the commission." However, the “only case” that Blumkin really dealt with was the “Austrian Mirbach case,” and Blumkin “went entirely into this matter” and spent whole nights “on the interrogation of witnesses.”

Here was where to turn around the young Chekist. The case turned out to be not banal, primarily because Robert Mirbach, it seems, was not only the nephew of the German ambassador, but also an Austrian. As far as sources allow us to judge, Russified Baron R. R. Mirbakh lived peacefully in revolutionary Petrograd “acting as a member of the Council for the economic part of the Smolny Institute”. Alas, almost no information about him leaked into history. Only V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, who at that time had constant contact with Smolny, including economic ones, could know about the Russified baron. It can be assumed that information about the Russian Mirbach came to Blumkin from Bonch-Bruevich through Dzerzhinsky. The Russified baron, a member of the Council for the economic part of the Smolny Institute, disappeared, and in his place appeared the nephew of the German ambassador, an Austrian prisoner of war officer, distant relative Count-Ambassador Mirbach, with whom the ambassador never met. According to Chekists, Robert Mirbach served in the 37th infantry regiment of the Austrian army, was captured, ended up in a camp, but was released from prison after the ratification of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty. In anticipation of leaving for his homeland, he rented a room in one of the Moscow hotels, where he lived until the beginning of June, when the Swedish actress Landstrom, who was staying at the same hotel, unexpectedly killed herself. Whether this suicide was set up by the security officers or not, it is difficult to judge. The Cheka, meanwhile, announced that Landstrem committed suicide in connection with her counter-revolutionary activities, and arrested all the inhabitants of the hotel. Among them, they say, was the "nephew of the German ambassador" R. Mirbach.

Further actions of the security officers, primarily Blumkin, should be recognized as resourceful. The VChK immediately informed the Danish consulate, which represented the interests of Austria-Hungary in Russia, about the arrest of Robert Mirbach. On June 15, the Danish consulate began negotiations with the Cheka "on the case of the arrested officer of the Austrian army, Count Mirbach." During these negotiations, the Chekists suggested to the representative of the consulate Yevgeny Yaneika a version about the relationship between Robert Mirbach and the German ambassador. On June 17, a day after the start of negotiations, the Danish consulate handed over to the Chekists the document they had been waiting for:

“Hereby, the Royal Danish Consulate General informs the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission that the arrested officer of the Austro-Hungarian army, Count Robert Mirbach, according to a written message from the German diplomatic mission in Moscow addressed to the Danish Consulate General, is in fact a member of a family related to the German ambassador, Count Mirbach, who settled in Austria".

Since the first document of the Danish consulate is dated June 15, and the second dated June 17, it is correct to assume that the written response of the German embassy to the request of the Danes was given on June 16, immediately after receiving the Danish request, and pursued humanitarian goals: the German embassy decided to count the unknown count Robert Mirbach as a relative of the German ambassador in the hope that this would alleviate the fate of the unfortunate Austrian officer and he would be immediately released, especially since the charges against him seemed to Ritzler frivolous. The involvement of the German ambassador in the case of the "nephew" was apparently limited to the permission given to them to enroll Robert Mirbach as a relative.

The German embassy has already forgotten about the case. In Danish, they expected the release of Robert Mirbach from the Cheka. But more than a week passed, and Robert Mirbach was not released. Then, on June 26, Consul General of Denmark Gaksthausen turned to the Cheka with an official request “to release the Austrian prisoner of war Count Mirbach from arrest, subject to a guarantee from the consulate that the said Count Mirbach, upon first demand, until the end of the investigation [in the Landstrem case] will appear in Extraordinary Commission".

However, Gaksthausen's request was not granted. And it is no coincidence: the case of the "ambassador's nephew" formed the basis of the dossier against the German embassy and the ambassador personally. The main evidence in the hands of Blumkin was a document signed (voluntarily or under duress) by Robert Mirbach: “I, the undersigned, a German citizen, a prisoner of war officer of the Austrian army, Robert Mirbach, undertake to voluntarily, at my personal request” to inform the Cheka “secret information about Germany and German embassy in Russia

True, neither the Austrian officer nor the business executive of Smolny could be considered a "German citizen" and tell the Chekists "secret information about Germany and the German embassy in Russia." It was a clear fabrication, and this made the Germans worried. The German ambassador now denied family ties with Robert Mirbach, and saw a provocation in the fabrication of the "affair". The hustle and bustle of the Chekists around the German embassy and the business that had been opened were now known even in Berlin. And soon after the murder of Mirbach, it became known in the Soviet embassy in Germany "that the German government has no doubt that Count Mirbach was killed by the Bolsheviks themselves." “The attempt was being prepared in advance,” the German embassy in Moscow reported to Berlin at the same time. - The case of the Austrian officer Robert Mirbach was only a pretext for the workers of the Cheka to infiltrate the Kaiser's ambassador. Blumkin himself, however, denied this, arguing that "the whole organization of the act on Mirbach was exceptionally hasty and took only two days, the time interval between the evening of the 4th and the afternoon of July 6th." Blumkin cited circumstantial evidence of this: on the morning of July 4, he handed over the case of Robert Mirbach, who was arrested in mid-June, to the head of the department for combating counter-revolution, Latsis. “Thus, there is no doubt,” Blumkin continued, “that two days before the act I had no idea about it.” In addition, according to Blumkin, his "work in the Cheka in the fight against German espionage, obviously due to its significance, took place under the direct supervision" of Dzerzhinsky and Latsis, and about "all his activities, such as, for example, internal intelligence" in the embassy, Blumkin, in his words, "constantly consulted" with the presidium of the Cheka, with the Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Karakhan, and with the chairman of Pleinbezh, Unshlikht.

However, there is no contradiction in the German report and Blumkin's testimony. On the evening of July 4, Blumkin was involved in the conspiracy, but the preparation of the entire event could have begun earlier, in early June, when Blumkin was instructed to fabricate a “case” against the German embassy, ​​removing him, on the initiative of the Bolsheviks, primarily Latsis, from all other work. The fact that the plans of the opponents of the Brest Peace behind Blumkin’s back included murder, Blumkin might not have known until the evening of July 4, and his statement that he worked under the direct supervision of Dzerzhinsky and Latsis, in consultation with Karakhan and Unshlikht, once again convinces that one of the Bolsheviks could have been involved in the murder of Mirbach.

After the assassination of Mirbach, Dzerzhinsky tried to remove responsibility for the death of the German ambassador from the Cheka. He claimed that at the very beginning of July (it is not clear exactly when) Blumkin was removed from the case of Robert Mirbach. Dzerzhinsky called the complaint about Blumkin's arbitrariness, with which the poet O. E. Mandelstam and L. M. Reisner (Raskolnikov's wife) came to Dzerzhinsky a few days before the assassination of the ambassador, as the basis for the removal of Blumkin. However, Dzerzhinsky began this part of the testimony with an inaccuracy. To give weight to the conversation about the arbitrariness of Blumkin, Dzerzhinsky presented everything as if the people's commissar Raskolnikov himself came with a complaint, and not his wife. Meanwhile, Raskolnikov was only arranging a meeting between Mandelstam and Racer.

Dzerzhinsky testified that about a week before the assassination attempt, he received information from Raskolnikov and Mandelstam about Blumkin's abuse of power - the ability to sign death sentences. When Mandelstam, who heard about this, "protested, Blumkin began to threaten him." Immediately after the conversation with Mandelstam and Reisner, Dzerzhinsky, at a meeting in the Cheka, suggested, they say, that the counterintelligence department should be dissolved, and “Blyumkin should be left without a position for the time being”, until an explanation is received from the Central Committee of the PLSR.

Latsis also pointed to Blumkin’s removal from work, emphasizing (albeit after Mirbach’s murder) that he “especially disliked” Blumkin “and after the first complaints about him from employees decided to remove him from work.” A week before July 6, Latsis testified, Blyumkin was no longer listed in the department, “because the department was disbanded by decision of the Commission, and Blumkin was left without certain occupations,” and in the minutes of the meetings of the presidium of the Cheka there should have been a corresponding entry about that. Nevertheless, in the testimony of Latsis, Blumkin is called the "head of the secret department" and not the "former head." The “Red Book of the Cheka” did not publish extracts from the protocols on the exclusion of Blumkin, but, on the contrary, took Blumkin under her protection: she removed material that personally compromised Blumkin from the book. The note “From the Editor” stated that Zaitsev’s testimony “was not placed at all” due to the fact that “the witness speaks exclusively about the personality of Yakov Blumkin, and the facts compromising Blumkin’s personality cannot be verified”, and “a few lines from the testimony of F. E Dzerzhinsky" are omitted, as they transmit "stories of third parties about the same Blumkin, which are also not verifiable". It was important for the Bolsheviks to present Blumkin (since 1920 a communist) not as an anarchist-adventurist, but as a disciplined member of the Left SR party who committed a terrorist act by order of the Central Committee of the PLSR.

The disbanding of the "German espionage" department a few days before Mirbach's assassination cannot seem accidental. It seems that it was a mere formality: Blumkin did the same work as before. On July 6, at 11 a.m., he received from Latsis the file of Robert Mirbach from the safe, which, of course, could not have happened if Blumkin had been suspended from work. Rather, N. Ya. Mandelstam is right when she recalls that Mandelstam's complaint "about Blumkin's terrorist habits" was ignored. “If Blumkin had become interested then,” she continues, “the famous murder of the German ambassador could have failed, but this did not happen: Blumkin carried out his plans without the slightest hindrance.”

Blumkin was not interested, since it was not in the interests of Dzerzhinsky. The latter, apparently, knew about the impending assassination attempt on Mirbach already because the German embassy informed him about it twice. So, around the middle of June, representatives of the German embassy informed Karakhan and through him Dzerzhinsky "about the impending attempt on the lives of members of the German embassy." The case was referred to J. X. Peters and Latsis for investigation. “I was sure,” Dzerzhinsky later testified, “that someone deliberately gives false information to members of the German embassy to blackmail them or for other more complex purposes.” On June 28, Karakhan handed over to Dzerzhinsky "new material he had received from the German embassy about impending conspiracies." Dzerzhinsky, however, was not interested in the conspirators, but in the names of the informers of the German embassy; and the chairman of the Cheka told the German diplomats that, not knowing the names of the informers, he would not be able to help the embassy in exposing the conspiracies that were being prepared. Ritzler then began to believe that Dzerzhinsky was looking "through his fingers at conspiracies directed directly against the safety of members of the German embassy." But since it was important for Dzerzhinsky to find out “about the source of information about the impending assassination attempts” (that is, about the source of information leakage), he arranged a personal meeting with Ritsler and Muller through Karakhan. During the conversation that took place, Ritsler pointed out to Dzerzhinsky that “the persons who give him information do not receive money from him” and therefore he trusts his informants. Dzerzhinsky objected that "there may be political motives" and that "there is some kind of intrigue" aimed at preventing him from finding "real conspirators, whose existence, on the basis of all available" data, he did not doubt. “I was afraid of attempts on the life of Mr. Mirbach,” Dzerzhinsky testified, but “distrust of me on the part of those who gave me material tied my hands.”

Yielding to Dzerzhinsky's persuasion, Ritzler gave the name of one of the informants and arranged for Dzerzhinsky to meet with another. The first informant was "a certain Benderskaya." The second was V. I. Ginch, whom Dzerzhinsky met at the Metropol in the presence of Ritzler and Muller about two days before the assassination attempt. Ginch somewhere in early June (that is, when the "Robert Mirbach case" began) told the head of the chancellery of the German embassy, ​​Wucherfenik, that an assassination attempt was being prepared on Mirbach by the Union of Unions party. Several times then he came to the Cheka to report this, he was even in Popov's detachment, "but they did not want to listen to him." Ritsler, for his part, having received information from Ginch about the planned terrorist act, reported this to the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, from where the information was transferred to the Cheka, where the warning was again not given any importance. Then Ginch warned the embassy a second time, moreover, about ten days before the assassination attempt, he named the specific date of the terrorist act - between July 5 and 6, and during a meeting with Dzerzhinsky in the Metropol, he openly told him that some employees of the Cheka were involved in the case.

Dzerzhinsky declared all this a provocation and, having left the Metropol, through Karakhan requested permission from the German embassy to arrest Benderskaya and Ginch. The Germans did not answer this, but in the morning of July 6, shortly before the assassination of Mirbach, Ritzler went to the NKID and asked Karakhan to do something, since rumors about the upcoming assassination attempt on Mirbach were coming to the embassy from all sides. Karakhan indicated that he would report everything to the Cheka.

A number of circumstantial evidence suggests that Dzerzhinsky knew about the act scheduled for July 6th. So, according to the testimony of Latsis, when at 3.30 on July 6, while in the NKVD, he heard about the assassination attempt on the ambassador and went to the Cheka, they already knew that Dzerzhinsky "suspects of the murder of Mirbakh Blumkin." Dzerzhinsky was not in the Cheka, he “went to the scene of the crime,” from where Latsis was soon asked if “the case of Mirbach, the ambassador’s nephew, was completed, and who has it, because it was found at the crime scene.” Only then did Latsis realize that "the assassination attempt on Mirbach was indeed carried out by Blumkin." But Dzerzhinsky somehow knew about this even before the trip to the embassy.

From all this we can conclude that Mirbach was not killed by order of the Central Committee of the PLSR. Most likely, there was a conspiracy organized by certain representatives of the left parties (but not parties as such). If so, then obviously the participation in such a conspiracy of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries - Proshyan and, perhaps, Spiridonova, and the Left Communists - Dzerzhinsky, who allowed the act to take place, or Bukharin, who did not deny participation in the "conspiracy against Lenin" at the trial of 1938, although no specific there is no evidence of Bukharin's participation in the preparation of the assassination attempt.

However, whoever was behind the plot to assassinate Mirbach, the terrorist act was not the signal for an "anti-Soviet revolt" and was not carried out with the aim of overthrowing the Bolshevik government. Most likely, the conspiracy was not directed against Lenin personally (although at least one historian put forward just such a hypothesis). The shots fired at the German ambassador were shots fired at the government of the German Empire. And, as subsequent events showed, the Council of People's Commissars only benefited from Mirbach's assassination: after July 6, German influence on Soviet politics certainly weakened.

The biggest beneficiary of Mirbach's assassination was Lenin. He most likely did not know about the impending act. There are no, even indirect, indications of his involvement in the assassination attempt. But it is surprising that the Bolsheviks turned out to be much better prepared for this unexpected incident than the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries themselves, who, according to the Bolsheviks, were preparing this terrorist act. One way or another, from the moment of the first report of the assassination attempt on Mirbach, Lenin's role in the defeat of the PLSR was unequivocal: he decided to use Mirbach's assassination and put an end to the Left SR party. An employee of the Soviet embassy in Berlin, Solomon, tells about this, how L. B. Krasin, who returned to Germany from Moscow shortly after the July events, “with deep disgust” told him that he “did not suspect such deep and cruel cynicism” in Lenin. On July 6, telling Krasin about how he planned to get out of the crisis created by Mirbach's assassination, Lenin added "with a smile, mind you, with a smile": and we will keep innocence, and we will acquire capital. Solomon writes further that “during this visit, Krasin repeatedly in conversations” with him, “as if not having the strength to get rid of the heavy nightmarish impression, returned to this issue and repeated” to him “Lenin’s words” several times. Krasin returned to this topic later in his conversations with Solomon.

As the historian D. Carmichael rightly points out, the "internal loan" was "the accusation of the innocent Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in the murder of Mirbach." But Solomon's testimony is by no means the only one. Here is what Aino Kuusinen (wife of Otto Kuusinen) writes in his memoirs:

“In fact, the [Left] SRs were not guilty. When I returned home one day, Otto was in his office with a tall, bearded young man who was introduced to me as Comrade Safir. After he left, Otto informed me that I had just seen the murderer of Count Mirbach, whose real name was Blumkin. He was an employee of the Cheka and was about to go abroad with an important assignment from the Comintern. When I noticed that Mirbach had been killed by the [Left] SRs, Otto burst into loud laughter. Undoubtedly, the murder was only an excuse to get the [Left] Socialist-Revolutionaries out of the way, since they were Lenin's most serious opponents. In addition to the preparations for the assassination of Mirbach, whoever was behind him, in Moscow at the beginning of July, apparently, another confrontation was being prepared: the Bolshevik party intended to collide at the upcoming Congress of Soviets with the rival Left Socialist-Revolutionary party and crush it. The preparation by the Bolsheviks of a break with the Left SRs and the planned defeat in memoirs and historical literature was written quite often, sometimes with the proviso that it was not about a preventive strike on the PLSR, but about preparations for the suppression of an anti-government uprising that was being prepared by someone in Moscow in those days. Thus, in the second half of June, the commander of the Moscow military district, Muralov, who had at his disposal the Left Socialist-Revolutionary “special detachment”, a kind of Bolshevik Red Guard, received instructions from Lenin to closely monitor the detachment in the second half of June. Here is how Muralov describes his dialogue with Lenin:

That you have some kind of detachment of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, do you trust him? Yes, this squad is good [...]

[...] Just in case, watch 3 of them vigilantly.

And Muralov realized that, perhaps, “things would come to an armed clash” with the PLSR and “just in case, I decided to frequently check” the detachment “and gradually replace the command staff.”

From mid-June, preparations for the defeat of the PLSR, under the pretext of fears of counter-revolutionary action, were conducted in fact openly. “Latvian regiments were put on alert”; On June 18, Vatsetis ordered "the commander of the 2nd regiment to keep the regiment in combat readiness, and to allocate one battalion with machine guns at the disposal of the Moscow military commissariat." Somewhat later, the 3rd regiment of the Latvian division was transferred to Moscow from the south of the country. “Did anyone know that an uprising was being prepared in Moscow, and was there specific information about this?” - asks Vatsetis in his memoirs and answers: “I can answer absolutely in the affirmative”, that “they knew about the upcoming uprising and had specific instructions about it.” Vatsetis personally reported that “something was wrong in Moscow” to the commissar of the Latvian rifle division K. A. Peterson. He reacted to the message of Vatsetis "with some distrust, but two days later (the number of July 3 or 4)" told him that "the Cheka attacked the trail of the impending uprising," but did not tell Vatsetis the details.

Zinoviev spoke openly about the expected clash with the Left SRs. Just before Mirbach's assassination, at the regional congress of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, he proposed that the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries be included in the Council of People's Commissars and, in particular, that the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Lapierre be appointed Commissar of Communications. When, during a break, one of the Bolsheviks approached Zinoviev and asked with surprise whether he really intended to introduce the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries into the Council of People's Commissars, “Smiling slyly, Zinoviev led the questioners into his office, informing under the greatest secret that he has all the information about the upcoming uprising of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, but that he has already taken measures and that he only wants to lull the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries by his proposal.

Even Blumkin on July 4 heard rumors about something "wrong." In a conversation with “one member of the Central Committee,” he asked if the Central Committee of the PLSR was preparing an “act of party opposition,” since, according to him, “an impenetrable situation had been created around the preparation of the assassination,” which was aggravated by clashes between the Bolsheviks and the Social Revolutionaries at the Fifth Congress of Soviets. Blumkin, apparently, had in mind Trotsky's sharp speech, which plunged the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries into a panic. According to Sablin's memoirs, during a break arranged after Trotsky's extraordinary statement, Kamkov told him "about the possibility of arresting the Central Committee of the PLSR and even a faction in connection with a possible aggravation of relations with the Bolsheviks at this evening meeting." Thus, already on July 5, the Central Committee of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries began to realize that the Bolsheviks would deal with the activists of their party during the Congress.

Sverdlova writes a lot about the intensity of relations between the two parties, arguing, however, that the Bolsheviks had no idea about the upcoming "uprising" and "did not have reliable facts about the criminal plans of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, did not know anything about the impending adventure." But the closer to the Fifth Congress, Sverdlova continues, "the more wariness of Lenin, Sverdlov, Dzerzhinsky and other Bolsheviks against the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries grew, the more closely they watched their suspicious actions." True, Sverdlova gives only one example of such "suspicious" actions. It turns out that the PLSR "tried to set up its guards at the Bolshoi Theater for the duration of the congress," and the persistence with which they demanded this alerted Sverdlov, who "led the practical preparations for the congress." Sverdlov "agreed to give them the opportunity to participate in the protection of the Bolshoi Theater, but at the same time instructed" the Bolshevik guards of the congress "to take the necessary precautions."

However, the facts presented by Sverdlova do not so much speak of a conspiracy of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries as of the Bolsheviks' plan to deal with them. It is clear that the PLSR, as the ruling Soviet party, had the right to have its own party guards posted during the work of the congress. This in itself could not alert Sverdlov; all the more, such a demand should not be considered a sign of the impending Left SR "uprising" against the Bolshevik party. If the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries Zaks and Alexandrovich were Dzerzhinsky's deputies for the Cheka, and the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Popov was at the head of the KGB detachment, there was nothing unnatural in the desire of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to participate in the protection of the Bolshoi Theater during the congress.

It seems that on the opening day of the Fifth Congress of Soviets, the Bolsheviks held the last preparations for the possible arrest of the PLSR faction. By order of Sverdlov, “Latvian riflemen from the Kremlin guards” supporting the Bolsheviks were placed at all the most important posts inside the theater. On July 4, that is, the day Blumkin was informed of the planned assassination of Mirbakh, Sverdlov warned the commandant of the Kremlin, Malkov, that “one must be on the alert. You can expect all sorts of dirty tricks from the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.” At the same time, at the direction of Sverdlov, “the guards and internal posts in the Bolshoi Theater were strengthened.” Not far from each of the Left SR sentries, "without taking their eyes off them, stood two or three people." These were “specially assigned combat groups from among the Latvian riflemen guarding the Kremlin and other especially reliable units.” None of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries “could lift a finger without drawing attention to himself. At the same time, reliable guards were posted around the theater in the nearby streets and alleys.

All that remained was to arrest the PLSR faction at the congress. This is exactly what happened on July 6th. One can only marvel at the resourcefulness and determination of Lenin: having heard about the murder of the German ambassador, accuse the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries of an uprising against the Soviet regime, of an uprising that never happened.

On this day - July 6, 1918 - the German ambassador Count Mirbach was killed in Moscow. It was a classic political assassination. By itself, Wilhelm von Mirbach had nothing to do with it. As they say, nothing personal. The terrorist attack against a foreign diplomat of the only European power that maintained relations with the Soviet government was supposed to nullify the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and deprive the Bolsheviks of support from the Germans. The organizers were the Left SRs, a radical revolutionary party that, ironically, turned out to be the only political ally of Lenin's party at home. More details - in the rubric Andrey Svetenko"Razlom" on the radio "Vesti FM".

The Left SRs supported the October Revolution and joined the Council of People's Commissars. Naturally, members of this party worked in various people's commissariats, including power commissariats, such as the Cheka. The assassination attempt was committed by staff members of the Cheka - Yakov Blyumkin and Nikolai Andreev. Blumkin was the head of the German department of the Cheka.

A pretext was found - a discussion of the fate of the ambassador's relative, Hungarian army officer Robert Mirbach. The count replied with surprise that there was no such person among his relatives. Blumkin insisted, the ambassador kept a diplomatic pause. And then, on a prearranged signal - after Blumkin's phrase "Then you will know the measures that will be taken against you," Andreev pulled out a revolver from his briefcase and began to shoot. But, as the German adjutant, Lieutenant Muller, later claimed, he missed, did not hit either the ambassador or the adjutant.

Mirbach ran into the next hall, and then he was overtaken by a bullet in the back of the head, already fired by Blumkin. Immediately, the terrorists dropped a bomb, increasing the confusion and commotion, taking advantage of which they jumped out the window into the street and disappeared in a car waiting for them.

Lenin was forced to personally come to the embassy - to express condolences, to apologize, to promise, as they say, to improve. And the situation was very serious for the Bolsheviks. By the way, shortly before his death, Mirbach himself reported to Berlin: "After 2 months of observation of the situation in Soviet Russia, I can no longer make a favorable diagnosis of Bolshevism. We, undoubtedly, are at the bedside of a seriously ill person."

Yakov Blyumkin and Nikolai Andreev were sentenced in absentia by the court of the Revolutionary Tribunal to a prison term of 3 years. Already strange. It was, however, already in November 1918, after the collapse of the German Empire and the denunciation of the Brest Treaty.

The defendants in the case fled to Ukraine in the summer. Blumkin in Kyiv participated in the preparation of the assassination attempt on Field Marshal Eichhorn, which, by the way, was also successful. Andreev joined the Makhnovists - he was seen in Gulyaipole. In 1919 he died of typhus.

The fate of Blumkin is more exciting. In 1919, he was captured by the Petliurists, was severely maimed, but survived. With the advent of Soviet power, he turned himself in, at the request of Trotsky and Dzerzhinsky, Blumkin was amnestied - "to atone for his guilt in the battles to defend the revolution." He left the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, joined the CPSU (b). Worked in Trotsky's secretariat.

Since 1920, Blumkin has been a resident of the Cheka of the OGPU in Persia, then in Tibet, where he was preparing an assassination attempt on the Dalai Lama. Then - in Afghanistan, Mongolia, Turkey. In 1929, on the instructions of Stalin, Blumkin tried to make an attempt on the life of the former secretary of the Secretary General Bazhanov, a defector who went abroad and took with him many Kremlin secrets. It soon became clear that Blumkin had established contacts with Trotsky, who had been exiled abroad by that time. This settled the matter. In December 1929, Blumkin was sentenced to death under Article 58 and shot.

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Esters on the topic: Rift

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