It's alien. . . ': Horror cannot be described, it can only be experienced. . . '
This movie has a long backstory. It was shot in 1967, but it all started much earlier. Before the director Ivan Lukinsky made his first film. Before Athanasius of Salyn began his literary activity. Before the Great Patriotic War began. Sergei Chuev, who specializes in the history of the Second World War, has a capital work called 'Special Services of the Third Reich'. The pages of this book will help shed light on what Salynsky described in his play ' Pebbles on the Palm' (1965). A few months before the attack on the USSR, the peripheral organs of the German military intelligence – Abverstelle (ACT) – in Koenigsberg, Stettin, Vienna and Krakow organized reconnaissance and sabotage schools, which trained scouts-saboteurs intended for use against the Soviet Union. Initially, these schools were staffed with agents recruited from white émigré youth and members of various anti-Soviet nationalist organizations. Agents who graduated from schools were thrown into the rear of Soviet troops with reconnaissance and sabotage tasks. However, practice showed that agents from the White émigré environment were poorly oriented in Soviet reality. With the outbreak of hostilities on the Soviet-German front, German intelligence began to expand reconnaissance and sabotage schools for the training of qualified agents. Such schools were organized at the headquarters of the "Valley" and "AST-Ostland", as well as reconnaissance and sabotage Abverkommandos, operating under the army groups "Mitte", "Zud" and "Nord".
Agents for these intelligence schools were recruited mainly among Soviet prisoners of war, from an anti-Soviet and criminal element who had defected to the German army. In the Abwehr, it was believed that agents from prisoners of war could be quickly prepared for front-line work and easier to implement in units of the Red Army. Lukinsky's film tells exactly this: from a concentration camp to the Roitenfurt school of German intelligence sent part of former Soviet intelligence officers recruited from among prisoners of war, for future deployment in the USSR. Among them is Nikolai Verezhnikov, who, not being a professional scout, managed to impose his own game and interfere with the plans of the enemy. Few people know that the main character of the film Nikolai Smerechinsky is a real character. Screenwriter Afanasy Salynsky did not even change his name - it is as real as the hero himself. Nikolai Smerechinsky was captured in 1941. In the prisoner-of-war camp, the Germans selected the most suitable people from their prisoners and sent them to the Roitenfurt School of German Intelligence, where they trained future saboteurs and spies. Many years later, Nikolai Smerechinsky, reviewing the film with his students, KGB officers, explained to them how it was: ' Selected fighters were trained almost like astronauts, testing endurance, studying their habits, character. They were checked at every step, watched every breath. Only one thing in the film turned out to be fiction - the directors added romance. There were no girls. We were thrown there like toy soldiers and trained. In groups of cadets, the Germans introduced their “spies”, agitated the prisoners themselves to inform each other, monitor each other, identify those who tried to conduct subversive activities in the school.
After the end of the film, the viewer could only guess what happened next with the main characters. It's no longer a secret today. After the landing, the double agents, neutralizing the “extra”, if any, were sent to the nearest branch of the NKVD. Having recruited a sufficient number of double agents in the ranks of new pupils of the German intelligence school, Nikolai Smerechinsky still returned to his homeland. In 1942, his group was thrown into the Ryazan region. There, meeting with local Chekists, they provided secret information obtained at the school - microfilms with pictures of the personal files of saboteurs and plans for their landings. This served as a pass home and a guarantee that they would not be shot. On the instructions of the Germans, Smerechinsky and his radio operator were to collect and transmit to the German command information about the factories operating in the Soviet rear, about the progress of mobilization, and other information that could play a certain role in the war. The NKVD leadership decided to use this task in their favor. Smerechinsky and his assistant were redirected to Chkalov. And already here, before the end of the war, together with the Orenburg and Kazakh employees of the NKVD conducted a radio game “Duet”. They gave the Germans information that misled the enemy, and from them they collected information about the upcoming landings of new groups. The landing was thrown on the territory of Kazakhstan. Each new group was met by trained people. For each new spy, there were already personal cases. Until 1944, the same double agents as Smerechinsky often arrived in these groups. The radio game "Duet" became more and more extensive. In 1944, the recruitment of “their own” in the German intelligence school ceased, and the activities of the underground organization were stopped – it was no longer necessary. Therefore, the remnants of the scouts thrown out by the Germans were accepted without division into their own and strangers. It was time to eliminate German espionage. The Germans never figured out that they were playing a double game, and until the last informed our fighters about new landings.
For exemplary performance of tasks for the protection of state security in wartime, Nikolai Smerechinsky, among many other employees of the NKVD, was presented to awards.
"We are faceless behind the front line, we do not take orders with us, we make up names without unnecessary, without impromptu ..." (Sergei Berestov)