Abstract
In 1954, in the period following the death of Stalin, Nikolai Khokhlov, a captain in Soviet state security and a trained assassin, received an order from his superiors to travel to West Germany and kill a Russian émigré, Georgii Okolovich, who was the head of NTS, a well-known anti-Soviet organization. Khokhlov was ordered to murder Okolovich with a silenced pistol that had been made especially for him at the Lubyanka so that it would look like a pack of cigarettes. Instead of assassinating Okolovich, however, Khokhlov decided to defect and to cooperate with West German and American intelligence. At a press conference held shortly afterwards, Khokhlov detailed the history of his life and the plan for the assassination and showed the press the special pistol that he had been given.
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Notes
Arcadi Vaksberg, Le laboratoire des poisons: De Lenine a Poutine (Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 2007), pp. 224–225. The author would like to thank Martin Dewhirst of the University of Glasgow, Peter Reddaway of George Washington University, and Edward W. Walker of the University of California at Berkeley for their most helpful comments on a draft of this essay. The responsibility for the final version of the text is, of course, mine alone.
Igor’ Korol’kov, “Zapasnye organy,” Novaya gazeta, January 11, 2007.
Alex Goldfarb with Marina Litvinenko, Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB (New York: Free Press, 2007), p. 124. Italics in the original. Goldfarb is, of course, recalling here what Litvinenko related to him. For the book mentioned by Kamyshnikov, see
Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatoli Sudoplatov, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—a Soviet Spymaster (Boston: Little, Brown, 1994). The book contains a foreword by Robert Conquest. In his book, Sudoplatov writes that his best estimate is that Raul Wallenberg was poisoned by Grigorii Maironovskii.
For a detailed discussion of Litvinenko’s complex relationship with Berezovskii, see Martin Sixsmith, The Litvinenko File: The True Story of a Death Foretold (London: Macmillan, 2007), passim. Sixsmith served as a BBC correspondent in Moscow and was from 1997 to 2002 Director of Communications for the British government.
Martin Sixsmith, “The Moscow Plot,” Sunday Times (London), April 1, 2007.
Elena Tregubova, Baiki kremlevskogo diggera (Moscow: Ad Marginem, 2003), p. 156.
Peter Conradi, “KGB colonel tells of escape to London,” Sunday Times, November 5, 2000. In his book, Alex Goldfarb discusses in detail (pp. 3–19, 215–225) how Litvinenko managed to escape from Russia to Turkey and from Turkey to Britain.
Ibid., pp. 192–193. On this, see the interview with former FSB lieutenant Mikhail Trepashkin: Mark Franchetti, “Agents ‘asked me to betray Litvinenko,’” Sunday Times, December 9, 2007. Trepashkin, who had been imprisoned for four years for “revealing a state secret,” was released in late November 2007. During the course of the interview, he “revealed that a former colleague tried three times to recruit him for a state-sponsored operation to ‘get rid’ of Aleksandr Litvinenko … Trepashkin alleges that Russia’s security services had been planning to kill Litvinenko for years.”
Neil Mackay, Sunday Herald, “Russia’s new cold war,” www.craigmurray.co.uk, November 27, 2006. See also: “Top judge warned he may be the real target of colonel’s killer,” The Times, January 15, 2004.
Olga Craig, et al., “The rotten heart of Russia,” Sunday Telegraph, November 12, 2006.
Igor’ Korol’kov, “Zapasnye organy,’ Novaya gazeta, January 11, 2007.
Charles Gurin, “Roman Tsepov, R.I.P.,” Eurasia Daily Monitor (Jamestown Foundation), September 27, 2004; “Rassledovanie otravleniya radioaktivnym izotopom Romana Tsepova, byvshego telokhranitelya Anatoliya Sobchaka i Vladimira Putina,” sbobodanews.ru, January 12, 2007. In this second item, journalist Igor’ Korol’kov of Novaya gazeta states: “I was told by sources in the city [Petersburg] procuracy that an autopsy had been conducted and that Roman Tsepov had died from a radioactive element.” On Tsepov, see also Banditskii Peterburg, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg: “Neva,” 2005), pp. 188–199.
Pavel Korduban, “Will Russia help investigate Yushchenko poisoning?” Eurasia Daily Monitor, September 19, 2007.
In Jamie Glazov, “Symposium: From Russia with Death,” FrontPageMagazine.com, January 19, 2007, p. 6.
Edward W. Walker, “The Litvinenko Affair,” UC Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies, December 18, 2006, posted on Johnson’s Russia List, no. 284, December 19, 2006.
Steven Lee Myers and Alan Cowell, “Russian’s account further clouds a poisoning mystery,” The New York Times, March 18, 2007, p. A11.
Boris Volodarskii, “Dva fil’ma—odna sud’ba,” svobodanews.ru, January 23, 2007. The active planning for the assassination presumably began several months before Lugovoi’s telephone call to Litvinenko.
Balabanov, “Gruz-210,” gazeta.ru, December 8, 2006.
Peter Finn and Craig Whitlock, “Two old friends at center of poison mystery,” Washington Post, December 13, 2006.
Mary Jordan and Peter Finn, “Radioactive poison killed ex-spy,” Washington Post, November 25, 2006.
Yegor Gaidar, “How I was poisoned and why Russia’s political enemies were surely behind it,” Financial Times, December 7, 2006, p. 13.
Steve Boggan, “Who else was poisoned by polonium?” The Guardian, June 5, 2007.
Jeff Edwards, “We know KGB spy poisoner,” Daily Mirror, January 8, 2007.
Mark Franchetti et al., “Putin: How worried should the West be?” The Sunday Times, June 10, 2007.
Sean O’Neil and Tony Halpin, “Was the murder plot a sign of frustration with Britain?” The Times, July 20, 2007. It has been suggested that British law enforcement used wiretaps to track the movement of this suspect that could not legally be admitted as evidence in court.
“Attorney General Statement,” FT.com, May 22, 2007. See also Alan Cowell and Steven Lee Myers, “British accuse Russian of poisoning ex-K.G.B. agent,” New York Times, May 23, 2007, p. A3.
Richard Beeston, “Spy murder row poisons relations with Russia,” The Times, May 23, 2007.
David Leppard and Mark Franchetti, “Litvinenko: clues point to Kremlin, Britain blames FSB for killing,” The Sunday Times, July 22, 2007.
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© 2008 Paul Hollander
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Dunlop, J.B. (2008). Post-Communist Political Violence: The Poisoning of Aleksandr Litvinenko. In: Hollander, P. (eds) Political Violence. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230616240_6
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