Nikolai Skoblin
Encyclopedia
Nikolai Skoblin (1892–1938?) was a general in the counterrevolutionary White Russian
army, a member of the expatriate
Russian All-Military Union
(ROVS), a Soviet double agent
, and husband to the gypsy folk-singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya
(1882–1940).
Division of the White Russian Army during the Russian Civil War
, 1918–1920. He was known for both his bravery and cruelty. Red
soldiers captured by Skoblin's men were hanged or shot on the spot. It is said he met his wife, Plevitskaya during the war. The romantic version is that Skoblin captured his wife during a raid against the Red Army
. She was Nadezhda Plevitskaya, a committed Bolshevik
considered to be a great beauty, who had been traveling the front singing and entertaining Red Army troops. Plevitkskaya used her considerable charms to seduce Skoblin and escape the gallows. Through her influence, Skoblin became a Bolshevik intelligence agent for the Cheka
and later for the Soviet Union
's NKVD
.
at the end of the Civil War. To outward appearances he was an anticommunist White émigré
. Skoblin soon became a leader in a White counterrevolutionary organization dedicated to overthrowing the Soviet government, the Russian All-Military Union
(in Russian, Русский Обще Воинский Союз, or ROVS). The ROVS, a collection of former Tsarist officers, constantly planned the fall of Joseph Stalin
's government and the unlikely restoration of the Russian monarchy while engaged in petty rivalries and subterfuges. Skoblin penetrated the highest level in this group, becoming the intimate of General Evgenii Miller
, its leader. It is a testament to Skoblin's skill as an informer and intriguer that he would remain Miller's confidant despite repeated warnings that he was a double-agent.
A series of articles published in the White émigré newspaper The Latest News (Posledniye Novosti) in February 1935 accused Skoblin of being a Soviet agent. The source of this information was a former member of the Kornilov Division, Lieutenant Colonel Magdenko, who had been recruited to work for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU
) in Berlin. Skoblin insisted upon having his case reviewed by a ROVS court of honor. Lacking any evidence other than hearsay, the court of honor duly exonerated Skoblin.
In the labyrinthine affair which preceded the arrest and execution of the Soviet Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky
, Skoblin is alleged to have played the role of a triple-agent, working for the Russian white counterrevolutinaries (ROVS), Stalin's secret police (NKVD
), and the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD)
. A review of Soviet archives after the fall of the Soviet Union established without doubt that Skoblin was in the employ of the NKVD
.
At the behest of the NKVD
, Skoblin began a whisper campaign to slander Tukhachevsky. He informed Reinhard Heydrich
, the chief of the Gestapo
and SD, that Stalin believed Tuchachevsky was planning a coup d'État with the help of the Wehrmacht
. Skoblin's deputy, Nikolai Alekseyev, simultaneously revealed this information to French intelligence, the Deuxième Bureau
. Heydrich saw an opportunity to implicate both the Wermacht and the Soviet Red Army
in a treasonous plot. Heydrich's aide, Walter Schellenberg
, claims that Heyrich brought Skoblin's information to Hitler in the beginning of 1937. Confronted with a choice, Hitler decided to back Stalin instead of Tukhachevsky and agreed with Himmler and Heydrich to create a forgery. The Abwehr
retained in their files numerous documents written by Tukhachevsky and other Red Army commanders in the 1920s when they had been allies with the Wermacht. The documents were needed for the forgery but Hitler did not want the German Army Staff to know of the plot. Heydrich staged a burglary of Abwehr headquarters and stole the documents. The Gestapo used the harmless documents to forge new ones establishing the guilt of Tukhachevsky and other Red Army commanders. Depending upon the source, the dossier thus produced was either "sold" to the NKVD or passed to Stalin through several third-party sources, including Edvard Beneš
. The dossier, it should be noted, was not introduced at Tukhachevsky's trial on June 11, 1937, known as the Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization
, and a copy of the "red folder" has never been found. It was not needed. Stalin had already beaten or extorted confessions from the defendants.
Judging by events which followed, it is possible that Skoblin's reward from the NKVD for his role in Tukhachevsky affair was the leadership of the ROVS. On September 22, 1937 Skoblin led the former White General and ROVS leader Evgenii Miller
to a meeting with two German Abwehr
agents to discuss the beginning of a secret collaboration between the ROVS and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris
.
In reality, the agents were not Germans, but rather peratives of the Soviet NKVD. They drugged Miller, smuggled him aboard a Soviet ship in Le Havre
, and carried him back to Moscow
, where he was tortured and finally executed on May 11, 1939. (Copies of letters written by Miller while he was imprisoned in Moscow are in the Dimitri Volkogonov papers at the Library of Congress
.)
However, Skoblin's ambition to become the leader of the ROVS was thwarted. Miller left behind a note to be opened if he failed to return from the meeting. Skoblin had not counted upon Miller's foresight and, with his cover blown, he fled to the Soviet embassy in Paris. The French police launched a manhunt, but Skoblin had vanished.
alleges that Skoblin escaped to Spain
and died in republican-held Barcelona
during a German bombing raid. In Deadly Illusions (1993) by John Costello and Oleg Tsarev, the authors suggest that an NKVD General Alexander Orlov
, smuggled Skoblin into civil war-ridden
Spain by airplane and disposed of him in a Republican front area, keeping his ring to use in a later blackmail scheme. Victor Alexandrov speculates in The Tuchachevsky Affair (1963) that Skoblin was poisoned aboard a Soviet vessel, the Kuban, bound from Spain
to Odessa
(Ukrainian SSR
, Soviet Union), and his skeleton ultimately ended up in a Soviet anatomical laboratory. Alexander Orlov in his own memoir, The March of Time (2004), writes that the NKVD compelled Skoblin to write undated love letters to Plevitskaya, which were used to buy her silence, and then smuggled him aboard a Soviet cargo vessel bound for Leningrad
. Orlov ends his story in the Baltic Sea
, leaving it to the reader to guess Skoblin's fate.
Nadezhda Plevitskaya's fate is well-known. She was put on trial as an accomplice to the kidnapping and murder of White émigré
General Miller. At the time, the French government had been sheltering both Red and White refugees from the Soviet Union
. The French Government had become enraged by near-daily NKVD attempts to kidnap and murder Russian political refugees in France. At her trial, Plevitskaya insisted that the couple was an unwitting accomplice to Miller's kidnapping, and that Skoblin had been murdered by the NKVD as well. However, ample evidence found at her apartment proved her involvement and work as an operative for the NKVD. Convicted on December 15, 1938, Plevitskaya was sentenced to the unusually harsh penalty of twenty years' hard labor. She died, aged fifty-six, in Rennes
prison of a heart ailment on October 1, 1940, three months after the German Wehrmacht
captured the city.
, who had known Plevitskaya in Berlin
, in his first English language story, "The Assistant Producer", in January 1943. It was also the basis of the French movie Triple Agent
(2004) directed by Éric Rohmer
. The Miller abduction and the Skoblin's relationship with Max Eitingon was the subject of a rancorous squabble between Stephen Schwartz
and Theodore Draper
in the pages of the New York Review of Books in April 1988.
In addition, the kidnapping of General Miller is also fictionalized in Nikita Mikhalkov
's award-winning film Burnt by the Sun
. In the film the character known as "Mitya" (Oleg Menshikov
) is a former White Army officer turned NKVD agent. Posing as a pianist in Paris, Mitya is descrived as having delivered five White Generals to the NKVD. All are described as having been kidnapped, returned to Moscow, and shot without trial. One of the Generals is given the name "Weiner."
White movement
The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...
army, a member of the expatriate
Expatriate
An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
Russian All-Military Union
Russian All-Military Union
The Russian All-Military Union was founded by White Army General Pyotr Wrangel in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on September 1, 1924...
(ROVS), a Soviet double agent
Double agent
A double agent, commonly abbreviated referral of double secret agent, is a counterintelligence term used to designate an employee of a secret service or organization, whose primary aim is to spy on the target organization, but who in fact is a member of that same target organization oneself. They...
, and husband to the gypsy folk-singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya
Nadezhda Plevitskaya
Nadezhda Vasilievna Plevitskaya was the most popular female Russian singer of the White emigration.-Early life and career:Plevitskaya was born Nadezhda Vasilievna Vinnikova to a peasant family in the village of Vinnikovo near Kursk...
(1882–1940).
Early Life and Russian Civil War
Skoblin was a cavalry officer in the KornilovLavr Kornilov
Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov was a military intelligence officer, explorer, and general in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I and the ensuing Russian Civil War...
Division of the White Russian Army during the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
, 1918–1920. He was known for both his bravery and cruelty. Red
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
soldiers captured by Skoblin's men were hanged or shot on the spot. It is said he met his wife, Plevitskaya during the war. The romantic version is that Skoblin captured his wife during a raid against the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
. She was Nadezhda Plevitskaya, a committed Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
considered to be a great beauty, who had been traveling the front singing and entertaining Red Army troops. Plevitkskaya used her considerable charms to seduce Skoblin and escape the gallows. Through her influence, Skoblin became a Bolshevik intelligence agent for the Cheka
Cheka
Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...
and later for the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
's NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
.
Life as Soviet Agent
Skoblin and his wife moved to ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
at the end of the Civil War. To outward appearances he was an anticommunist White émigré
White Emigre
A white émigré was a Russian who emigrated from Russia in the wake of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, and who was in opposition to the contemporary Russian political climate....
. Skoblin soon became a leader in a White counterrevolutionary organization dedicated to overthrowing the Soviet government, the Russian All-Military Union
Russian All-Military Union
The Russian All-Military Union was founded by White Army General Pyotr Wrangel in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on September 1, 1924...
(in Russian, Русский Обще Воинский Союз, or ROVS). The ROVS, a collection of former Tsarist officers, constantly planned the fall of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's government and the unlikely restoration of the Russian monarchy while engaged in petty rivalries and subterfuges. Skoblin penetrated the highest level in this group, becoming the intimate of General Evgenii Miller
Evgenii Miller
Evgeny Karlovich Miller was a Russian general and one of the leaders of the anti-communist White Army during and after Russian Civil War.-Biography:...
, its leader. It is a testament to Skoblin's skill as an informer and intriguer that he would remain Miller's confidant despite repeated warnings that he was a double-agent.
A series of articles published in the White émigré newspaper The Latest News (Posledniye Novosti) in February 1935 accused Skoblin of being a Soviet agent. The source of this information was a former member of the Kornilov Division, Lieutenant Colonel Magdenko, who had been recruited to work for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
) in Berlin. Skoblin insisted upon having his case reviewed by a ROVS court of honor. Lacking any evidence other than hearsay, the court of honor duly exonerated Skoblin.
In the labyrinthine affair which preceded the arrest and execution of the Soviet Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky
Mikhail Tukhachevsky
Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky was a Marshal of the Soviet Union, commander in chief of the Red Army , and one of the most prominent victims of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.-Early life:...
, Skoblin is alleged to have played the role of a triple-agent, working for the Russian white counterrevolutinaries (ROVS), Stalin's secret police (NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
), and the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD)
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
. A review of Soviet archives after the fall of the Soviet Union established without doubt that Skoblin was in the employ of the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
.
At the behest of the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
, Skoblin began a whisper campaign to slander Tukhachevsky. He informed Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
, the chief of the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
and SD, that Stalin believed Tuchachevsky was planning a coup d'État with the help of the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
. Skoblin's deputy, Nikolai Alekseyev, simultaneously revealed this information to French intelligence, the Deuxième Bureau
Deuxième Bureau
The Deuxième Bureau de l'État-major général was France's external military intelligence agency from 1871 to 1940. It was dissolved together with the Third Republic upon the armistice with Germany...
. Heydrich saw an opportunity to implicate both the Wermacht and the Soviet Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
in a treasonous plot. Heydrich's aide, Walter Schellenberg
Walter Schellenberg
Walther Friedrich Schellenberg was a German SS-Brigadeführer who rose through the ranks of the SS to become the head of foreign intelligence following the abolition of the Abwehr in 1944.-Biography:...
, claims that Heyrich brought Skoblin's information to Hitler in the beginning of 1937. Confronted with a choice, Hitler decided to back Stalin instead of Tukhachevsky and agreed with Himmler and Heydrich to create a forgery. The Abwehr
Abwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
retained in their files numerous documents written by Tukhachevsky and other Red Army commanders in the 1920s when they had been allies with the Wermacht. The documents were needed for the forgery but Hitler did not want the German Army Staff to know of the plot. Heydrich staged a burglary of Abwehr headquarters and stole the documents. The Gestapo used the harmless documents to forge new ones establishing the guilt of Tukhachevsky and other Red Army commanders. Depending upon the source, the dossier thus produced was either "sold" to the NKVD or passed to Stalin through several third-party sources, including Edvard Beneš
Edvard Beneš
Edvard Beneš was a leader of the Czechoslovak independence movement, Minister of Foreign Affairs and the second President of Czechoslovakia. He was known to be a skilled diplomat.- Youth :...
. The dossier, it should be noted, was not introduced at Tukhachevsky's trial on June 11, 1937, known as the Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization
Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization
The Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization was a 1937 secret trial of the high command of the Red Army, orchestrated by Joseph Stalin as part of the Great Purge.-Defendants:...
, and a copy of the "red folder" has never been found. It was not needed. Stalin had already beaten or extorted confessions from the defendants.
Judging by events which followed, it is possible that Skoblin's reward from the NKVD for his role in Tukhachevsky affair was the leadership of the ROVS. On September 22, 1937 Skoblin led the former White General and ROVS leader Evgenii Miller
Evgenii Miller
Evgeny Karlovich Miller was a Russian general and one of the leaders of the anti-communist White Army during and after Russian Civil War.-Biography:...
to a meeting with two German Abwehr
Abwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
agents to discuss the beginning of a secret collaboration between the ROVS and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Franz Canaris was a German admiral, head of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, from 1935 to 1944 and member of the German Resistance.- Early life and World War I :...
.
In reality, the agents were not Germans, but rather peratives of the Soviet NKVD. They drugged Miller, smuggled him aboard a Soviet ship in Le Havre
Le Havre
Le Havre is a city in the Seine-Maritime department of the Haute-Normandie region in France. It is situated in north-western France, on the right bank of the mouth of the river Seine on the English Channel. Le Havre is the most populous commune in the Haute-Normandie region, although the total...
, and carried him back to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, where he was tortured and finally executed on May 11, 1939. (Copies of letters written by Miller while he was imprisoned in Moscow are in the Dimitri Volkogonov papers at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
.)
However, Skoblin's ambition to become the leader of the ROVS was thwarted. Miller left behind a note to be opened if he failed to return from the meeting. Skoblin had not counted upon Miller's foresight and, with his cover blown, he fled to the Soviet embassy in Paris. The French police launched a manhunt, but Skoblin had vanished.
Death
There are several accounts of Skoblin's death, all of them secondhand. Pavel SudoplatovPavel Sudoplatov
Lieutenant General Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov was a member of the intelligence services of the Soviet Union who rose to the rank of lieutenant general...
alleges that Skoblin escaped to Spain
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
and died in republican-held Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
during a German bombing raid. In Deadly Illusions (1993) by John Costello and Oleg Tsarev, the authors suggest that an NKVD General Alexander Orlov
Alexander Orlov
Alexander Mikhailovich Orlov , born Lev Feldbin, 21 August 1895–25 March 1973), was a General in the Soviet secret police and NKVD Rezident in the Second Spanish Republic. In 1938, Orlov refused to return to the Soviet Union because he realized that he would be executed, and fled with his...
, smuggled Skoblin into civil war-ridden
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
Spain by airplane and disposed of him in a Republican front area, keeping his ring to use in a later blackmail scheme. Victor Alexandrov speculates in The Tuchachevsky Affair (1963) that Skoblin was poisoned aboard a Soviet vessel, the Kuban, bound from Spain
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
to Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
(Ukrainian SSR
Ukrainian SSR
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 to the breakup in 1991...
, Soviet Union), and his skeleton ultimately ended up in a Soviet anatomical laboratory. Alexander Orlov in his own memoir, The March of Time (2004), writes that the NKVD compelled Skoblin to write undated love letters to Plevitskaya, which were used to buy her silence, and then smuggled him aboard a Soviet cargo vessel bound for Leningrad
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
. Orlov ends his story in the Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
, leaving it to the reader to guess Skoblin's fate.
Nadezhda Plevitskaya's fate is well-known. She was put on trial as an accomplice to the kidnapping and murder of White émigré
White Emigre
A white émigré was a Russian who emigrated from Russia in the wake of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, and who was in opposition to the contemporary Russian political climate....
General Miller. At the time, the French government had been sheltering both Red and White refugees from the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. The French Government had become enraged by near-daily NKVD attempts to kidnap and murder Russian political refugees in France. At her trial, Plevitskaya insisted that the couple was an unwitting accomplice to Miller's kidnapping, and that Skoblin had been murdered by the NKVD as well. However, ample evidence found at her apartment proved her involvement and work as an operative for the NKVD. Convicted on December 15, 1938, Plevitskaya was sentenced to the unusually harsh penalty of twenty years' hard labor. She died, aged fifty-six, in Rennes
Rennes
Rennes is a city in the east of Brittany in northwestern France. Rennes is the capital of the region of Brittany, as well as the Ille-et-Vilaine department.-History:...
prison of a heart ailment on October 1, 1940, three months after the German Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
captured the city.
In Media
Skoblin's and Plevitskaya's story was fictionalized by Vladimir NabokovVladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
, who had known Plevitskaya in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, in his first English language story, "The Assistant Producer", in January 1943. It was also the basis of the French movie Triple Agent
Triple agent (film)
-Plot:The Popular Front wins the French general elections of 1936. In Spain the Civil War begins. Meanwhile, in a Paris apartment, Fiodor Voronin, a retired general of the Tsarist army lives an apparently quiet life with his Greek wife Arsinoé...
(2004) directed by Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter and teacher. A figure in the post-war New Wave cinema, he was a former editor of Cahiers du cinéma....
. The Miller abduction and the Skoblin's relationship with Max Eitingon was the subject of a rancorous squabble between Stephen Schwartz
Stephen Schwartz (journalist)
Stephen Suleyman Schwartz is an American Muslimjournalist, columnist, and author. He has been published in a variety of media, including The Wall Street Journal. He is the executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism...
and Theodore Draper
Theodore Draper
Theodore H. "Ted" Draper was an American historian and political writer. Draper is best known for the 14 books which he completed during his life, including work regarded as seminal on the formative period of the American Communist Party, the Cuban Revolution, and the Iran-Contra Affair...
in the pages of the New York Review of Books in April 1988.
In addition, the kidnapping of General Miller is also fictionalized in Nikita Mikhalkov
Nikita Mikhalkov
Nikita Sergeyevich Mikhalkov is a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, actor, and head of the Russian Cinematographers' Union.Mikhalkov was born in Moscow into the distinguished, artistic Mikhalkov family. His great grandfather was the imperial governor of Yaroslavl, whose mother was a Galitzine princess...
's award-winning film Burnt by the Sun
Burnt by the Sun
Burnt by the Sun is a 1994 film by Russian director and actor Nikita Mikhalkov. The film depicts the story of a senior Red Army officer and his family during the Great Purge of the late 1930s in the Stalinist Soviet Union...
. In the film the character known as "Mitya" (Oleg Menshikov
Oleg Menshikov
Oleg Evgenyevich Menshikov ; is a Russian entertainer. He is a film and theatre actor, singer and director. He started his film career in the early 1980s playing in the comedy Pokrovskie vorota and in Nikita Mikhalkov's Rodnya....
) is a former White Army officer turned NKVD agent. Posing as a pianist in Paris, Mitya is descrived as having delivered five White Generals to the NKVD. All are described as having been kidnapped, returned to Moscow, and shot without trial. One of the Generals is given the name "Weiner."