Victor Louis (journalist)
Encyclopedia
Victor Louis was a Soviet journalist who worked for Western media
outlets in Moscow
and had close work connections with the senior levels of the USSR KGB
. He was used by the Soviet government
as an informal channel of communication and for subtle disinformation
operations in the Cold War
. Viewed as agent provocateur
of the secret police, he was hated and boycotted by the Moscow intelligentsia
.
(Prussian) family that lived in Moscow.
Starting from 1944, Lui managed to land a series of low-level support staff positions with foreign embassies in Moscow, which got him into trouble with the NKVD
; he was arrested in Leningrad
around 1946 and later tried and sentenced to 25 years of labour camps
on espionage
charges (Article 58)
. He did time in Inta
.
He was released around 1956 and started co-operating closely with the KGB. His first official employment was with the CBS News
Moscow bureau, where, as his own account has it, he gave his boss, Daniel Schorr
, a tip, allegedly based on an article in Vechernyaya Moskva that reported the cancellation of a Hungarian ballet trip to Moscow, about the imminent Soviet invasion of Hungary
in November 1956. His next job was as an assistant to Edmund Stevens of Look magazine
.
Louis wrote for The Evening News until 1980, and then for The Sunday Express. As he would have news nobody else had, occasionally he made world headlines. As a journalist and a source of information for other foreign correspondents in the USSR, he was considered to purvey the western world with information that the Soviet régime would consider interesting to deliver, without committing itself to it.
His first sensational journalistic scoop was breaking the news through The Evening News - albeit cautiously worded - about the imminent ouster of Krushchev in October 1964. In his autobiographical accounts, Louis claimed that the report was based solely on his analysis of circumstantial evidence such as the disappearance of a big portrait of Khrushchev in the centre of Moscow and Khrushchev's name being expunged from Soviet media news reports, even though he admitted that the initial hint had been given to him by his "friend" who worked at the USSR Broadcasting Committee (Radiokomitet).
According to his own account, Louis had a series of personal meetings with the KGB Chairman Yury Andropov from the late 1960s
till the mid-1970s
. Louis claimed that Andropov personally gave him the go-ahead when, having overheard Andropov's telephone conversation with Leonid Brezhnev
, he volunteered to go to Chile
in the wake of the military junta's coup d'état in the autumn of 1973 in order to ascertain that Luis Corvalán
, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Chile
, was alive.
Louis reported that the Soviet Union might be considering a preventive nuclear attack against China
as well as the information about the Moscow metro bombing of 1977
; he ascribed the latter to dissidents
, which gave the authorities a pretext for a harsh crackdown. In 1968, a few months before the publication of Twenty Letters to a Friend by Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva
(who had defected two years prior), Louis brought out the KGB's pirated copy in Germany to damp the sensation. He was instrumental in smuggling both Khrushchev's memoirs and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
's Cancer Ward to the West, although in the latter case he is believed to have had the aim of compromising the writer at home.
He had an opulent dacha
at Bakovka west of Moscow, "where he lived like a millionaire"; he also had a series of expensive cars, including the makes of Porsche
, Bentley
and Mercedes-Benz
, some of them vintage
.
From 1965, he and his wife ran a lucrative 'hard-currency' business publishing the directory Information Moscow for foreigners in Moscow.
Until 1982, Louis' KGB overseer was KGB Major General Vyacheslav Kevorkov, who in 2010 published a book in Russia about Victor Louis' life that he claimed was based on the latter's oral accounts to him shortly before death. According to Kevorkov's 2010 interview, he would normally meet Louis at safe house
s (never at the KGB headquarters at Lubyanka
) and give him assignments directly from Yury Andropov; Kevorkov claimed that Louis never was a KGB officer, or a staff agent. He also noted that Louis was not good at writing in any language and his articles were edited by his English wife. The book, Victor Louis : Man with the Legend (Виктор Луи : человек с легендой), is written in first person as a quasi-biography (on behalf of Louis), in a fictional style, without reference to any documents.
He died of a heart attack in London on 18th July 1992, a few months after the demise of the USSR; his cremated
remains were interred in the Moscow Vagankovo Cemetery
.
He was survived by his wife (since November 1958) - UK-born Jennifer Margaret née Statham, a former nanny to a diplomat at the British Embassy in Moscow and three sons by her: Anthony, Michael, and Nicholas.
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
outlets in 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...
and had close work connections with the senior levels of the USSR KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
. He was used by the Soviet government
Government of the Soviet Union
The Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was the de jure government comprising the highest executive and administrative body of the Soviet Union from 1946 until 1991....
as an informal channel of communication and for subtle disinformation
Disinformation
Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth...
operations in the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. Viewed as agent provocateur
Agent provocateur
Traditionally, an agent provocateur is a person employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act...
of the secret police, he was hated and boycotted by the Moscow intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
.
Biography
Born Vitaly Yevgenyevich Lui (Луй) in Moscow, he changed his name to Victor Louis in the 1950s, when he began writing for the Western press. His Russian mother died a week of his birth; his father came from a well-off (prior to the 1917 revolution) GermanGermans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
(Prussian) family that lived in Moscow.
Starting from 1944, Lui managed to land a series of low-level support staff positions with foreign embassies in Moscow, which got him into trouble with 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....
; he was arrested in Leningrad
Leningrad
Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...
around 1946 and later tried and sentenced to 25 years of labour camps
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
on espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
charges (Article 58)
Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code)
Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on 25 February 1927 to arrest those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. It was revised several times...
. He did time in Inta
Inta
Inta is a town in the Komi Republic, Russia. During the Soviet era a "corrective labor camp" was located here. Population: It is served by Inta Airport....
.
He was released around 1956 and started co-operating closely with the KGB. His first official employment was with the CBS News
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
Moscow bureau, where, as his own account has it, he gave his boss, Daniel Schorr
Daniel Schorr
Daniel Louis Schorr was an American journalist who covered world news for more than 60 years. He was most recently a Senior News Analyst for National Public Radio...
, a tip, allegedly based on an article in Vechernyaya Moskva that reported the cancellation of a Hungarian ballet trip to Moscow, about the imminent Soviet invasion of Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
in November 1956. His next job was as an assistant to Edmund Stevens of Look magazine
Look (American magazine)
Look was a bi-weekly, general-interest magazine published in Des Moines, Iowa from 1937 to 1971, with more of an emphasis on photographs than articles...
.
Louis wrote for The Evening News until 1980, and then for The Sunday Express. As he would have news nobody else had, occasionally he made world headlines. As a journalist and a source of information for other foreign correspondents in the USSR, he was considered to purvey the western world with information that the Soviet régime would consider interesting to deliver, without committing itself to it.
His first sensational journalistic scoop was breaking the news through The Evening News - albeit cautiously worded - about the imminent ouster of Krushchev in October 1964. In his autobiographical accounts, Louis claimed that the report was based solely on his analysis of circumstantial evidence such as the disappearance of a big portrait of Khrushchev in the centre of Moscow and Khrushchev's name being expunged from Soviet media news reports, even though he admitted that the initial hint had been given to him by his "friend" who worked at the USSR Broadcasting Committee (Radiokomitet).
According to his own account, Louis had a series of personal meetings with the KGB Chairman Yury Andropov from the late 1960s
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
till the mid-1970s
1970s
File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...
. Louis claimed that Andropov personally gave him the go-ahead when, having overheard Andropov's telephone conversation with Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
, he volunteered to go to Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
in the wake of the military junta's coup d'état in the autumn of 1973 in order to ascertain that Luis Corvalán
Luis Corvalán
Luis Alberto Corvalán Lepe was a Chilean politician. He served as the general secretary of the Communist Party of Chile ....
, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Chile
Communist Party of Chile
The Communist Party of Chile is a Chilean political party inspired by the thoughts of Karl Marx and Lenin. It was founded in 1922, as the continuation of the Socialist Workers Party, and in 1934 it established its youth wing, the Communist Youth of Chile .In the last legislative elections in Chile...
, was alive.
Louis reported that the Soviet Union might be considering a preventive nuclear attack against China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
as well as the information about the Moscow metro bombing of 1977
1977 Moscow bombings
The 1977 Moscow bombings were a series of bombings in Moscow committed on January 8, 1977. These terrorist attacks claimed seven lives, while thirty-seven people were seriously injured. No one ever claimed responsibility for the bombing, though three members of an Armenian nationalist organization...
; he ascribed the latter to dissidents
Soviet dissidents
Soviet dissidents were citizens of the Soviet Union who disagreed with the policies and actions of their government and actively protested against these actions through either violent or non-violent means...
, which gave the authorities a pretext for a harsh crackdown. In 1968, a few months before the publication of Twenty Letters to a Friend by Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva
Svetlana Alliluyeva
Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva , later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin's second wife...
(who had defected two years prior), Louis brought out the KGB's pirated copy in Germany to damp the sensation. He was instrumental in smuggling both Khrushchev's memoirs and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
's Cancer Ward to the West, although in the latter case he is believed to have had the aim of compromising the writer at home.
He had an opulent dacha
Dacha
Dacha is a Russian word for seasonal or year-round second homes often located in the exurbs of Soviet and post-Soviet cities. Cottages or shacks serving as family's main or only home are not considered dachas, although many purpose-built dachas are recently being converted for year-round residence...
at Bakovka west of Moscow, "where he lived like a millionaire"; he also had a series of expensive cars, including the makes of Porsche
Porsche
Porsche Automobil Holding SE, usually shortened to Porsche SE a Societas Europaea or European Public Company, is a German based holding company with investments in the automotive industry....
, Bentley
Bentley
Bentley Motors Limited is a British manufacturer of automobiles founded on 18 January 1919 by Walter Owen Bentley known as W.O. Bentley or just "W O". Bentley had been previously known for his range of rotary aero-engines in World War I, the most famous being the Bentley BR1 as used in later...
and Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz is a German manufacturer of automobiles, buses, coaches, and trucks. Mercedes-Benz is a division of its parent company, Daimler AG...
, some of them vintage
Vintage car
A vintage car is commonly defined as a car built between the start of 1919 and the end of 1930 known as the "Vintage era". There is little debate about the start date of the vintage period—the end of World War I is a nicely defined marker there—but the end date is a matter of a little...
.
From 1965, he and his wife ran a lucrative 'hard-currency' business publishing the directory Information Moscow for foreigners in Moscow.
Until 1982, Louis' KGB overseer was KGB Major General Vyacheslav Kevorkov, who in 2010 published a book in Russia about Victor Louis' life that he claimed was based on the latter's oral accounts to him shortly before death. According to Kevorkov's 2010 interview, he would normally meet Louis at safe house
Safe house
In the jargon of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, a safe house is a secure location, suitable for hiding witnesses, agents or other persons perceived as being in danger...
s (never at the KGB headquarters at Lubyanka
Lubyanka
Lubyanka or Lubianka may refer to:*Lubyanka Square, Moscow*Bolshaya Lubyanka Street, Moscow*Lubyanka Building, former KGB headquarters and prison at Lubyanka Square, Moscow*Lubyanka , a metro station in MoscowPlaces in Poland called Lubianka...
) and give him assignments directly from Yury Andropov; Kevorkov claimed that Louis never was a KGB officer, or a staff agent. He also noted that Louis was not good at writing in any language and his articles were edited by his English wife. The book, Victor Louis : Man with the Legend (Виктор Луи : человек с легендой), is written in first person as a quasi-biography (on behalf of Louis), in a fictional style, without reference to any documents.
He died of a heart attack in London on 18th July 1992, a few months after the demise of the USSR; his cremated
Cremation
Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....
remains were interred in the Moscow Vagankovo Cemetery
Vagankovo Cemetery
Vagan'kovskoye Cemetery , established in 1771, is located in the Krasnaya Presnya district of Moscow...
.
He was survived by his wife (since November 1958) - UK-born Jennifer Margaret née Statham, a former nanny to a diplomat at the British Embassy in Moscow and three sons by her: Anthony, Michael, and Nicholas.
His books
- Sport in the Soviet Union. Elsevier. 1980. ISBN 0080245064.
- Collet’s Guide to Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev. Collets. 1990.
- The Moscow Street Atlas. Collets. 1990. ISBN 0569092582.
- Complete Guide to the Soviet Union. 1991. ISBN 0312058373.