Alexander Batyan scout biography. Alexei Botyan - the legend of Soviet intelligence

MOSCOW, February 10 - RIA Novosti. The legendary Soviet intelligence officer, Hero of Russia Alexei Botyan, who during the Great Patriotic War made a great contribution to the elimination of the Nazis and the salvation of a huge number of civilians in the Soviet Union and Poland, celebrates his 101st birthday on Saturday.

Botyan became the prototype of the protagonist of the book by Yulian Semyonov and the film of the same name "Major Whirlwind", dedicated to the operation carried out in 1945 to save the Polish city of Krakow from destruction by the Nazis.

Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service Sergey Naryshkin sent congratulations to Botyan on his own behalf and on behalf of all employees of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia.

“For many Russians, you are a legendary intelligence officer, who has more than one feat of arms on his account, including saving the most beautiful city of Krakow from destruction by the Nazis. For us, your colleagues, you are an example of high professionalism and selfless service to the Fatherland,” the telegram says. , the text of which is given in the message of the SVR press bureau.

“I am very glad that you are cheerful, energetic, surrounded by the care and love of relatives and colleagues. And in chess you still have the first youth category!” Naryshkin noted. "And most importantly, what I would like to wish you: good health, good spirits, vitality, longevity and, of course, happiness," the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service added.

In the Polish army

Aleksey Nikolaevich Botyan was born on February 10, 1917 into a peasant family in the village of Chertovichi in the native Belarusian lands, which the Poles considered theirs in the 1920s.

After graduating from school, Botyan was drafted into the Polish army, in which, commanding the calculation of an anti-aircraft gun, from the first days of September 1939 he participated in battles with the Nazi invaders. Thus, Botyan is considered the first of the intelligence officers who entered the fight against fascism from the very beginning of World War II. In the battles near Warsaw in September 1939, Botyan shot down three German aircraft.

In 1939 he was drafted into the Polish army, served in anti-aircraft artillery units in Vilna, rose to the rank of non-commissioned officer. He took part in the battles against the Nazi troops in September 1939. According to some reports, he shot down three German aircraft as an anti-aircraft gun crew commander. After the occupation of Poland by the Nazis with a military unit, he went out to meet the units of the Red Army and surrendered. He returned to his native village, completed teacher training courses and worked as a teacher in an elementary school, received Soviet citizenship.

Intelligence and sabotage

In May 1940, he was sent to serve in the NKVD of the USSR and enrolled in an intelligence school. In July 1941, he was enrolled in the Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade for Special Purposes, subordinate to the 4th Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR.

During the battle for Moscow, Botyan participated in various special operations in the rear of the Nazis, who by that time had come close to the capital. Together with other Chekists, Botyan was repeatedly transferred over the front line to conduct reconnaissance, destroy communications and lines of communication of the enemy.

In November 1941, as a commander of a reconnaissance and sabotage group, he was transferred to the front line. Participated in the defense of the capital. In January 1943 he was again sent to the deep rear of the enemy in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus. He acted there both independently and as part of large partisan detachments.

Under the direct supervision of Botyan, an operation was carried out to blow up the German gebitskommissariat in the city of Ovruch, Zhytomyr region, Ukrainian SSR, when an inspection from Germany was there. As a result of this operation, on September 9, 1943, almost a hundred Nazi officers were destroyed. Having thwarted the strategic operation to "clean up" several regions of Ukraine, Botyan saved tens of thousands of civilian lives.

Operations in Poland

In May 1944, on the instructions of the Center, at the head of a group of almost 30 people, Botyan made the transition to Poland, having the task of organizing reconnaissance of the location and movement of the enemy in the region of the city of Krakow. Thanks to a good knowledge of the Polish language and the culture of the local population, as well as his organizational skills, he managed to organize interaction and joint military operations with such different political forces as parts of the Krainova Army, the Ludowa Army and the Khlopsky peasant Battalions.

In particular, Botyan's group carried out a daring operation to seize the city of Ilzha together with units of the Ludova Army, during which arrested Polish patriots were released from prison, a large number of weapons and equipment were seized. Later, a monument to the heroes of that battle was erected in Ilzha, on which, along with the names of the Poles, the names of the Soviet fighters of the Botyan group were engraved.

Saved Krakow

Botyan's group managed to settle in the Krakow region and launch extensive reconnaissance and sabotage activities. At the end of 1944, the fighters of the group captured a Pole, engineer-cartographer Sigmund Ogarek, who was mobilized into the Nazi army and served in the rear units of the Wehrmacht. Ogarek gave valuable testimony about the explosives warehouse in the Jagielon Castle, which was supposed to be used to destroy the historical center of Krakow, the Rozhnov dam and bridges over the Dunajec River.

Botyan managed to infiltrate the castle under the guise of a loader, a Polish patriot, who planted a time bomb. In the midst of the offensive of the Red Army on the morning of January 18, 1945, the mine was activated. A huge enemy warehouse flew into the air. The enemy was unable to mine and destroy the objects planned for the explosion in Krakow. And on January 19, the advanced units of the 1st Ukrainian Front under the command of Marshal Ivan Konev broke into Krakow.

In the last months of the war, the Botyan group operated behind enemy lines in the occupied territory of Czechoslovakia.

Star of the Hero of Russia

After the end of the war, Alexey Botyan worked successfully in intelligence for many years, was repeatedly involved in complex and responsible assignments abroad. Advised employees of the Vympel Foreign Intelligence Unit of the KGB of the USSR. He retired with the rank of colonel.

For the results achieved, Botyan was repeatedly awarded military and other state awards. He was awarded two Orders of the Red Banner, Orders of the Red Banner of Labor and the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree, many medals, as well as the badge "Honorary State Security Officer".

For the courage and heroism shown in the operation to liberate Krakow during the war years, and for preventing its destruction by the Nazis, Botyan was awarded the title of Hero of Russia in May 2007.

Intelligence does not like unnecessary noise. The scouts whose names are heard are revealed employees, many of whom died in the line of duty. Alexey Botyan is one of the few who survived and did not know the bitterness of failure. Let's take his personal file in our hands and carefully turn over, pausing on some pages.

NONTER OFFICER OF THE POLISH ARMY

He was born in 1917 in Western Belarus, which seceded to in 1921, so it is not surprising that Alexei spoke Polish fluently. His father was a carpenter, went to work in Germany, Argentina, taught his son the German language and managed to give an education - in 1935, Alexei received the specialty of a primary school teacher.

In 1939, the young man was drafted into the army. The draft board sensibly reasoned that it was useless to send a competent recruit to the infantry as a private, and assigned him to a sub-officer's school, from where Alexei left as an anti-aircraft crew commander with corporal's stripes.

The war for Botyan began on September 1, 1939, when the anti-aircraft crew under his command entered the battle and shot down the Junkers. Then three weeks of fighting, two more planes shot down, retreat to Lvov. Then the anti-aircraft gunners saw soldiers with red stars on their caps, to whom, after a short verbal skirmish, they surrendered.

The prisoners were loaded into the wagon and taken away. At night, Alexei oriented himself by the stars: the train was heading east. “Uh, no,” thought the guy, “me in the other direction.” He and several of his comrades broke the board and began to jump out of the car. The very next day, the corporal on his way home was detained by a patrol. Alexei ran away again. So, with adventures and two escapes, he got home, arriving in his native village in full dress: in a uniform with non-commissioned officer stripes.

On the newly acquired lands, the Soviet government first of all began to organize schools. It took a lot of teachers. Aleksey offered his services, he was sent to the courses of Soviet teachers and, upon graduation, was appointed director of the school. And in May 1941 they “came” to him.

A former non-commissioned officer, his father was in and, speaks fluent Polish and German, twice escaped from Soviet captivity ... The reader, accustomed to articles about the "crimes of the bloody gebni", is already waiting for a story about the arrest, imminent trial and imprisonment in the GULAG of a young Belarusian... Well, no.

Someone read his profile in a completely different way: a junior officer, has military experience, speaks fluent Polish and German, is bold and enterprising (twice fled). We need guys like this! Alexei was offered a job in the authorities, he said "yes" and in May arrived in Moscow to study at the Higher School of the NKGB of the USSR.

The vast majority of cadets were from the "occupied" territories: from Western, Western Belarus, the Baltic states, Bessarabia - the territorial bodies needed people who spoke languages ​​and were familiar with local specifics. Young people studied, and meanwhile teachers looked at them, noting those who are capable of more.

SABOTEUR

Turning pages quickly. War. A special sabotage and reconnaissance group is being formed under the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs - this will be an elite, people are selected into it one by one. Botyan is a private of the Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade for Special Purposes (OMSBON). In November 1941, the first transfers to the rear. Saboteurs blew up bridges, mined roads, took languages.

1942 - the best of the best are again selected from the OMSBON fighters and taught again. 1942 was not the easiest year for the USSR, but they are being prepared for a whole year (no “fast courses”!) To get scouts-saboteurs at the exit, each of which costs a company.

At the beginning of 1943, detachments began to be formed from graduates and sent behind the front line. Some had to grow into partisan brigades, and some, remaining a small inconspicuous group, carried out sabotage, the scale of which was comparable to major military operations. As part of one of these groups, Alexei Botyan also went behind the front line.

Sabotage, military operations, the destruction of major military officials and heads of occupation administrations - there are many pages in the case, we will linger on one of them.

OPERATION IN OVRUCH

Saboteurs go at night, because they do not need extra attention. And during the day they sit out in the forests or with reliable people. However, it happens that you have to seek shelter, relying on your instinct and luck. So it was this time. It was getting light, we had to look for shelter. After watching the house on the edge of the village for some time, Alexey gave the command: “Forward!”

The owner of the house turned out to be a former foreman of the Red Army. Word for word, and suddenly, as if by the way: “You know, I have a relative in Ovruch who works in the Gebietskommissariat.”

Having occupied Ukraine, the Nazis divided it into regions and districts, and this division did not always coincide with the Soviet one. For example, the capital of the Reich Commissariat "Ukraine" was not Kyiv, but Rivne. The provincial Ovruch became the administrative center of the district (gebi-ta), which included the entire Zhytomyr region, part of the Kyiv region, and even a piece of Belarus. The occupation administration and all the services were housed in a four-story building of the former barracks, where all the authorities also lodged. Along the perimeter around the Gebitskommissariat - barbed wire, security, in the city itself - a garrison of 10,000 people, at the entrance - police checkpoints.

Alexei’s eyes lit up: “Will you organize a meeting with him?” - "Yeah right now. Get on the cart and let's go. Today, familiar policemen are standing at the checkpoint, I will say that you are my relative. Go?" The owner looked inquisitively at Alexei: how would he react to the offer to go straight to hell? Botyan threw off his machine gun from his shoulder and put it on the table. He unbuttoned and took off his belt, took out a parabellum from his holster and put it under his shirt in his belt, in his pockets - a grenade each: "Let's go."

On September 14, a group of “specialists in the fight against partisans” arrived in Ovruch from Berlin to help local authorities organize the fight against the “bandits”.

The authorities from the districts and neighboring regions came together. At 9 pm, when guests from Berlin were sharing their experiences at the Gebietskommissariat, the surroundings of Ovruch were shaken by an explosion. In Berlin, "specialists in the fight against partisans" returned in coffins.

Pages, pages - how many such operations are on the account of this person? Another page, printed in large letters "Krakow" catches the eye.

SAVE KRAKOW

At the end of 1944, the Botyan group, which was already operating in Poland, captured a German engineer-cartographer, from whom the saboteurs learned that the Nazis were bringing a huge amount of explosives to the city of Nowy Sącz, to the Jagiellonian Castle. Why - this prisoner did not know. On January 10, saboteurs attacked the headquarters car. Among the captured documents was a secret order to mine Krakow and dams on the Carpathian rivers.

According to the plan, two weeks after the city was occupied by Soviet troops, the dams were blown up and a water shaft was supposed to fall on Krakow, sweeping away the city and the headquarters of the front and two armies located in it, rear services, military units. And then the German Wehrmacht was supposed to come into action.

Both the city and the castle, turned into a warehouse, were guarded by the Nazis more than their eyes - tons of explosives in the cellars. The entrance to the territory of the warehouse was strictly by passes, they searched anyone who aroused suspicion, regardless of rank and rank. The city was under the control of the SD and the Gestapo.

And yet, on January 18, the warehouse exploded - the detonator was carried in the sole of a boot. Hundreds of Nazis died in the explosion, and how many Soviet soldiers survived due to the fact that the planned "tsunami" did not take place, who can calculate this?

Pages, pages... In 1947, Botyan became an illegal intelligence agent and, under a false name, left for Czechoslovakia for a long 8 years. Then new foreign "business trips". Do not expect to hear the story of where and why - on the pages there are purple stamps "secret", "top secret" ...

In 1972, Alexei Botyan's "business trips" ended, but only in 1989 did he finally part with the state security agencies.

In the mid-1990s, Alexei Botyan was finally declassified, and his own daughter found out that her father was a legendary man. In 2007, Vladimir Putin signed a decree awarding Botyan the title of Hero of the Russian Federation, without the tragic specification "posthumously." Alexey Nikolaevich Botyan at the time of writing (November 2016) is alive, healthy, plays volleyball and knocks out 29 points out of 30 possible at the pistol shooting range.

Soviet intelligence officer, Hero of Russia Alexei Botyan, who during the war years made a great contribution to the elimination of fascism and the salvation of a huge number of civilians, is celebrating his centenary today, reports.

The most famous operation carried out by Botyan is considered to be the salvation of Krakow from destruction by the Nazis in 1945. He became the prototype of the protagonist of the book by Yulian Semenov (and the film of the same name) "Major Whirlwind", dedicated to those events.

“Aleksey Nikolaevich Botyan was born on February 10, 1917 into a peasant family in the village of Chertovichi in the native Belarusian lands, which the Poles considered theirs in the 1920s. After graduating from school, he was drafted into the Polish army, in which, commanding the calculation of an anti-aircraft gun, from the first days of September 1939 he participated in battles with the Nazi invaders. In the battles near Warsaw in September 1939, Botyan shot down three German planes.- the publication says.

After the reunification of Belarus, he became a citizen of the USSR. Then he was sent to study at the intelligence school of the NKVD. Its end coincided with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.

During the battle for Moscow, Botyan participated in various operations in the rear of the Germans. Later, as part of a partisan detachment, he fought on the territory of Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

“In November 1943, already as the commander of a reconnaissance and sabotage group, Botyan worked deep behind enemy lines in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus. On his account, the explosion of the SS headquarters in the Zhytomyr region of Ukraine - at the same time, almost a hundred officers, punishers, who, ironically, gathered at a meeting to combat the partisan movement, were destroyed. Having thwarted a strategic operation to "clean up" several regions of Ukraine, Botyan saved tens of thousands of civilian lives," the article says.

Then his group was sent to the area of ​​the Polish city of Krakow. There he managed to get top secret plans of the German command to destroy the city in the event of the approach of Soviet troops.

At the end of 1944, my group captured a cartographer from the headquarters of the rear units of the Wehrmacht, a Pole Sigmund Ogarek. When he had maps of the fortifications of Nowy Sącz, where there was a huge warehouse of explosives and weapons, including those intended to destroy the historical center of Krakow, a dam and bridges,

Botan said.

Ogarek agreed to cooperate with the Soviet intelligence officer. It turned out that he was in touch with a Pole who served in the Wehrmacht and had the rank of Hauptmann.

So he brought an English time bomb into the warehouse, put it between piles of Faust cartridges and explosives. The explosion took place on January 18, 1945 early in the morning. He was so strong that 400 Germans who came there for ammunition died. Thus, we disarmed the Germans. The Soviet army, in fact, was able to enter Krakow without unnecessary fighting, and they managed to save it,

The scout said.

Throughout the war, he was never wounded.

God kept me, probably, there is some kind of star above me. It helped a lot that I was very hardy - I could walk 40 kilometers a day through the mountains and I selected the same people for my team.

After the war, Botyan continued to serve in intelligence. He retired with the rank of colonel.

During his service he was repeatedly awarded military orders and medals. In May 2007 he was awarded the title of Hero of Russia.

“On the eve of a significant event, Alexei Nikolaevich is cheerful and cheerful. He is actively preparing to celebrate his 100th birthday with his family and friends, colleagues in the service, ”the agency was told in the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation.

The prototype of the protagonist of the film "Major Whirlwind" told how much the scriptwriters had to invent in order not to declassify the then-current intelligence officer

In a solemn atmosphere in the Museum of Victory Park, the premiere of the documentary film "Dynamo on the battlefields" took place. The special solemnity of the event was given by the fact that the premiere took place with the participation of many characters, which are described in this film.

With great surprise, the correspondent of "Trud" found among the invited guests of honor a famous intelligence officer who participated in many significant operations. Some of them were so secret that we learned about the participation of our hero in them many years after the end of the Great Patriotic War. We are talking about Alexei Botyan, who served as a prototype for the main character of the film "Major Whirlwind" and the novel of the same name.

Sniper at 95

At the request of our correspondent to reveal another secret - this time about his sports activities - Alexei Nikolayevich told Trud:

Yes, I have always loved sports. Played football since childhood. This game immediately became good for me because I ran faster than anyone. I am still an avid fan. And football, and even more - volleyball. Maybe because Dynamo and Russian volleyball teams are more successful than football ones. I myself fell in love with volleyball, already becoming an adult, and it worked out well. I was very jumpy. Without learning any technique, and without specially training, I overcame a height of 1 meter 40 centimeters. Moreover, even without a sports uniform - in a tunic and boots. (Let's add on our own: this result will seem even more impressive if we take into account that Botyan's height is about 1 meter 50).

But, unfortunately, big sport is incompatible with intelligence service. He spent his childhood and youth in the village, and then in military service. Then - the war. If he showed good sports results, it was only due to natural inclinations and general physical training, which he received thanks to peasant labor. And the reaction and quickness always helped me out. As a child, near my village, I caught hares, moreover, with my bare hands. Approximately the same as football goalkeepers do, diving for a soccer ball. And I dived from the boundary into the wheat and pulled out a hare from there! And when the horse ran away from the leash, I caught up with it and came home by the mane, while still a very young boy. Already during the war, reaction and sports training often helped out. One day we went to pick up the leaders of a gang of Ukrainian nationalists. We were waiting for them in the hut, at the place of the agreed meeting. Change into Vlasov uniforms. Our commander sat down at the table, and, knowing that I was a good shooter, he put me at the door. And when the Benderites entered the hut, I shot at them faster than they had time to raise their guns.

But to participate in tournaments, and even more so - to purposefully prepare for them, I rarely had the opportunity. Just like in shooting. Only during the period of service in the Polish army, and then, having started working in the NKVD, I actively participated in Dynamo competitions in various sports - but this continued only in 1940 and 1941. Later, the specifics of my activity, as you understand, was incompatible with participation in competitions. And I trained constantly and varied - on my own or with instructors.

And a few years ago, while my legs allowed, I regularly, at least once a week, met with my younger comrades in the service. We played volleyball and table tennis. And I still like to play chess, and do it regularly.

As the responsible officials from Dynamo told me, the phrase “several years ago”, said by Alexei Botyan, does not mean the distant past, but only two or three years. The old scout has been chained to his chair for the past year, although in conversation he is still very lively, energetic and has retained an excellent memory. And when Alexei Nikolayevich was celebrating his 95th birthday, he not only regularly played volleyball and tennis with his “younger comrades” (as he calls those who were 70-75 years old), but also arrived at a meeting with the soldiers of one of the airborne units, he from a pistol unfamiliar to him, he shot 29 points out of 30 possible at the local shooting range. At 95 years old! Dozens of people witnessed this event.

Went to reconnaissance in the form of a railway worker

Aleksey Botyan knows many languages ​​perfectly, and this helped him in his work as a scout. And therefore I have always been occupied with the question: what is his nationality?

As Alexei Nikolaevich told Trud, he was born in the Vilna province, which in the 1920s and 30s was the territory of Poland. Now it is the Minsk region. Parents were Belarusians. Moreover, as the scout himself explained to me, there is a nuance here: if the surname “Batyan” is spelled with an “a”, then it is Ukrainian, and with an “o” it is Belarusian. From childhood, he spoke Belarusian, Russian, Polish, and later mastered Czech, Slovak, German.

Born in Tsarist Russia, but in 1921 this territory was ceded to Poland. So by the beginning of World War II he was a citizen of Poland. From March 1939 he served in the army as an anti-aircraft gunner and, I must say, he mastered this specialty quite well. The crew of Botyan was armed with the most modern anti-aircraft guns of the Swedish production of 1936 at that time, equipped with excellent Zeiss optics. During the exercises, a large air-filled bag was used as a target, which was pulled by an airplane on a trailer. After he was told the distance to the aircraft and its speed, Alexei quickly aimed the gun, corrected it and hit such a bag on average once out of three - this is a good indicator for an anti-aircraft gun. And already fighting the Germans, Botyan shot down three Luftwaffe aircraft on the outskirts of Warsaw.

(Looking ahead, we note that the technical skills that Botyan acquired in his youth were useful to him in his mature years. At some periods of his life he did not even receive funding from Moscow, and his family lived on the money earned as a mechanic and even an engineer. Including - and in uranium mines!)

But the enemy was advancing rapidly, and the entire division in which our hero fought was surrounded in the Lodz region. He did not stay in captivity for long - thanks to resourcefulness and knowledge of languages, Botyan escaped, reached the border with the USSR and crossed it. Since 1940, he worked in the NKVD, and then in intelligence.

At first I participated in the defense of Moscow. - Alexei Botyan continues his story to Trud. - And when the threat of the capture of the capital by the enemy was eliminated, I crossed the front line in the area of ​​Staraya Russa. He was deputy commander of the partisan detachment Viktor Karasev, was responsible for intelligence. We acted in Belarus, and then we were given the task of moving to Ukraine. This was very difficult, because in Belarus the resistance movement was much stronger than in Ukraine, where in the western regions the local population often met the Germans very cordially. But we hid in the vast forests of the Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions. I constantly walked in the form of a railway worker, and the locals even called me Aleksey Koleyash, that is, a road worker, from the word “track”. They did not suspect that I was a scout and saboteur. Sometimes I even walked openly with two or three assistants to the railway station, found out when the train would be. And if the situation did not require delay, I quickly sent people to the detachment for explosives and mines. So technical skills helped me in this work.

I could not refrain from asking about the film "Major Whirlwind". How much did its creators have to change in the script compared to what was in reality? Indeed, at that time, Alexei Botyan was not yet declassified.

No, it was in 1963 that the activities of the Golos group behind enemy lines were declassified, so the writer Yulian Semenov got access to the archives. Botyan told Trud. - So in 1966 I made some adjustments to the script to make everything look logical. And then he talked a lot, talked with the actor Vadim Beroev. We tried to make everything as realistic as possible. But the operation, thanks to which we managed to save the historical center of Krakow from an explosion, was far from the only one that we carried out on the territory of Poland. And here the knowledge of the Polish language has always helped me a lot. In a conversation with the locals, I pretended to be a Pole, and thanks to this I gained confidence even in those people who did not sympathize with the Soviet Union at all. Just as before - in the partisan detachment - knowledge of the Ukrainian language helped out.

Returned to intelligence ... with a pay cut

Strange as it may seem to a simple layman, Botyan's professional activities are still not subject to disclosure. He himself and his relatives are not even recommended to name those countries in which Alexei Nikolayevich had a chance to work after the war. By the way, the creators of the film "Dynamo on the battlefields" also felt this limitation, especially when preparing episodes about Botyan.

As the producer and screenwriter of this film told Trud, the authors of such films also face another problem. Those materials that are being declassified are already attracting little—much less than before—the attention of a wide audience. Today's youth live with other problems. And the affairs of bygone days are significantly obscured by momentary problems. For example, 6,000 German films, recently "declassified", were brought to the film archive in the village of Belye Pillars. And no one even came to see them. The press hunts only for sensationalism. Because the general reader is attracted only by short catchy headlines. Basically - details from the life of stars. And to create such films, a public request on a particular topic is needed. The film turned out great. But in the current realities, sadly, one has to doubt how massive his audience will be.

Writers and screenwriters also face other problems, including the “bureaucratization” of the process of declassifying documents. But this is not always bad. Moreover, this closeness is often dictated by reasonable necessity. Each such act requires the convening of a special commission, and this procedure is justified by practice.

The largest military historian Mahmud Gareev gave such an example. There is a genuine letter from Field Marshal Kutuzov, in which he mentions that some dragoon regiment showed itself poorly, not completing the task assigned to it. This became a big black spot on the biography of the regiment commander. But it turned out that the true information came to Kutuzov 10 minutes after this letter was sent to the emperor. Kutuzov spoke badly about the dragoons, relying only on the initial information, which turned out to be erroneous. Nevertheless, the fact of the presence of this letter is there, and out of context, people are discredited, although in fact they are heroes.

For example, I was personally surprised that Alexei Botyan was not a Hero of the USSR, and he received the title of Hero of Russia only in 2007.

When, back in the 1950s, the head of foreign intelligence, Pavel Sudoplatov, was repressed, mass layoffs of his subordinates began. Aleksey Nikolaevich Botyan got a job as a head waiter at the Prague restaurant, and then his excellent knowledge of languages ​​was very useful to him. At that time, this work was very prestigious, profitable. Moreover, as he himself recalls, then one should have been glad that he was not put behind bars at all. And he coped with his new duties perfectly, earning the sincere respect of the visitors, among whom were influential people. Nevertheless, as soon as such an opportunity presented itself, Alexei Nikolayevich was transferred from this position back to the Foreign Intelligence Service. And although then he lost significantly in material terms, and his wife and daughter had new difficulties in their personal lives, he did not regret his return to service. The well-known postulate “there are no former intelligence officers” Botyan willingly confirms even now. Constantly follows political news. He worries about today's Russia, as they say, passing through himself all the successes of the country and all its troubles.

Aleksey Nikolaevich Botyan - one of the prototypes of the cinematic major Whirlwind - was just a lieutenant when he saved the Polish Krakow with his detachment. The Germans were preparing to blow up the city, but 28 fighters of the "partisan Alyosha", as the Poles called Botyan, prevented the explosion. He was even introduced to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, but somehow it did not work out. Probably because, from the point of view of harsh personnel officers, a young guy - a subordinate of the NKVD General Sudoplatov, recruited the wrong people at all. Yes, and the biography of Alexei was in doubt, it was very atypical for a scout.

When Botyan turned 90, the secrecy was partially removed from him. A photo: Sergey Kuksin

His father lived first in Germany and then in Argentina. And in the fall of 1939, Alexey served as an anti-aircraft gunner in the Polish army, which was unfriendly to us that year. Even then he was distinguished by amazing accuracy. The artillery crew of the gunner Botyan shot down three German Junkers. And then the young non-commissioned officer was taken prisoner by the Red Army, which occupied, it was like that, part of the territory of Poland. Only two weeks in the camp, but after all he did. And he escaped right from the train carrying Polish prisoners of war: he jumped out of the car at full speed. But where he showed up - in Soviet Belarus. Here, as I believe, it attracted the attention of the Chekists, who understood: soon we will fight against Hitler. How else to explain that in 1941, elementary school teacher Alyosha Botyan was sent to a specialized school of the NKGB in Moscow, where the diligent Belarusian stood out against the background of his comrades with marksmanship and a serious attitude to his favorite subject - reconnaissance and sabotage training. But the study was quickly completed, and with the outbreak of war he was transferred to the Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade for Special Purpose OMSBON.

And then the usual fate of a scout: combat missions in the territories of Belarus and Ukraine occupied by the Germans, and then Poland and Czechoslovakia. He was introduced to the title of Hero for the blown up headquarters of the Nazis, in which fascist specialists in the fight against partisans gathered. Then for the saved Krakow, but something did not grow together either. For example, in Poland, he found a common language not only with the communists, but also with the chiefs of combat detachments of the Home Army, which was subordinate to the Polish government in London, which was looked askance in Moscow, oh how askance. It's good that the young lieutenant was so smart and diplomatic. But how did he take people who were recorded by the top Soviet leadership as someone else's accomplices? Or, how, for example, was it possible to penetrate major transport hubs not in a plastun way, but in the full uniform of a Polish railway worker? After such "visits" of his, large stations filled with German equipment took off into the air. He knew languages, and depending on the circumstances, a Belarusian from the village of Chertovichi pretended to be a Pole, a Ukrainian, a Russian, then a Czech ... According to harsh military canons, a saboteur officer, abandoned with a combat mission behind enemy lines after a month of training, was released a month of his life . Botyan, on the other hand, went through the entire war without a single wound, with only one scratch from a German bullet that hit his temple. Likes and with good reason to repeat: "How lucky I am." It was impossible not to celebrate the exploits of a real Hero, and he was twice encouraged by the military orders of the Red Banner.

Do you feel what a collision has turned out to be? The saboteur-sniper turned into a scout. This became clear to the leaders of Botyan. And the saboteur Alexei Botyan disappeared for many years, becoming, apparently, an illegal intelligence agent. These long pages from the biography of Alexei Nikolaevich have not been declassified. Well, if you speculate, then why not assume that he could work somewhere in Eastern Europe or to the west of it. Maybe in Germany? Judging by the awards received, Botyan's activities there were successful. At least it is known that after the war he graduated from an engineering college abroad and got a job as an engineer at uranium mines in the Sudetes, which were of great interest to Soviet intelligence. But even from there, Leo Dvorak, aka Botyan, went somewhere far away from his native land. He was accompanied by a pretty Czech woman, Galina, whose permission to marry was not immediately given by the strict authorities of Botyan. But, as it turned out, the Center worried in vain. Only when they found themselves in Moscow, Pani Dvorak and daughter Irina were surprised to find out what their husband and father actually did. Here is such a conspiracy.

And the highest justice triumphed 57 years after the end of the war. In 2007, by decree N 614 of President Putin, Aleksey Nikolaevich Botyan was awarded the title of Hero of Russia. But, pay attention, for the feats accomplished in the Great Patriotic War. We haven't gotten to the rest yet. However, at the age of 90, Alexei Nikolayevich was allowed to communicate with journalists. He enjoys talking about military operations. And - point.

Botan is retired. More than once I saw him pondering the move at the chessboard. One day, "Major Whirlwind"'s young colleagues in the Foreign Intelligence Service invited him to the shooting range. And Alexey Nikolayevich, who at that time had already crossed the 95-year mark, knocked out 29 out of 30 from a pistol - the best result. He played volleyball, traveled, met with the younger generation, posed for the artist Shilov for a successful portrait ... Closer to the centenary, health gave an understandable failure: the colonel moved to a wheelchair. And suddenly a transformation. Got up again. Yes, today there is no time for his favorite volleyball, but he walks, communicates, rearranges chess pieces ... "Major Whirlwind", aka Colonel Alexei Botyan, does not give up.