Video: Failed killers: unsuccessful assassination attempts on Soviet leaders
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
In the history of each state there were moments when experienced saboteurs, political oppositionists, or lonely psychos tried to commit attempt on the leader … Sometimes they succeeded, but more often such attempts were prevented by the special services or ended in failure due to poor preparation and reliable security. But the names of these people have gone down in history forever. Now they are called "Secretary generals" and they do not assess their actions so unambiguously - many sincerely regret that these attempts were not crowned with success.
I. Stalin was panicky afraid of conspiracies and attempts on his life, and if conspiracies appeared to him, as a rule, where they were not, then he feared the second, not without reason. Twice he was saved from death by Lavrenty Beria, who immediately fell under suspicion himself. German saboteurs tried to kill the leader several times, in the period from 1939 to 1944. But the Soviet counterintelligence and special services worked flawlessly - all the attempted assassination attempts were averted.
The most famous was Operation Long Jump, developed by the Nazis and entrusted to a group led by Otto Skorzeny. He was supposed to kill Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill during a meeting of heads of state in Tehran, but Skorzeny was exposed. However, there is a version that this story was a propaganda myth invented after the war.
In 1956, during N. Khrushchev's visit to England, an attempt was made on his life. Submariner Lionel Crabbe tried to plant a mine on the Ordzhonikidze cruiser, where the secretary general and other members of the delegation were. The saboteur was discovered and neutralized by the intelligence group officer E. Koltsov.
The loudest attempt on the life of the head of the Soviet state is called the attempt by Viktor Ilyin to shoot Leonid Brezhnev. On that day, January 22, 1969, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU was supposed to follow in a motorcade with the crews of Soyuz-4 and Soyuz-5 to the ceremonial events on the occasion of the meeting of the cosmonauts in the Kremlin. The 21-year-old officer escaped from his unit, stealing two pistols, and came to Moscow. He took a police uniform from his uncle and in it was able to get into the Kremlin without hindrance.
Standing in a cordon, Viktor Ilyin waited for the motorcade and opened fire on the car in which Brezhnev was supposed to go. However, the car of the secretary general followed a different route. It turned out that the terrorist was shooting at cosmonauts Beregovoy, Leonov, Nikolaev and Tereshkova. Fortunately, none of them were injured, but the driver was killed and the security officers were injured. The killer was declared insane and placed in a special psychiatric hospital, where he spent 21 years. In 1990 he was released.
One attempt was made on the life of M. Gorbachev. On November 7, 1990, Alexander Shmonov, a locksmith, came to Red Square, hiding a sawn-off shotgun under his coat. He put on a wig, stuck on a mustache and got lost in the crowd of people participating in the demonstration. Approaching Gorbachev at a distance of 50 meters, he opened fire, but missed the target. He was immediately arrested, later found insane and sent to the hospital. And in 1998 Shmonov published a brochure entitled “How and Why I Shot at the Leader of the Totalitarian State M. Gorbachev”.
History knows cases when criminals managed to bring their plans to the end: 7 Russian monarchs who were killed, or assassination attempts on presidents: from the Tekumse curse to lonely psychos
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