Death or staging? Mysterious deaths of famous personalities (10 photos). A great ruler achieves goals without paying attention to anything

It became known about the death of Alexander Poteev - ex-employee of the service foreign intelligence, who was responsible for the work of our illegal immigrants in the United States, who surrendered Anna Chapman and nine other intelligence officers to the CIA and was sentenced in absentia in Russia to 25 years in prison for treason. Rumors about "Moscow's revenge" are groundless, experts say.

On Thursday it became known about the death of the former colonel of the Russian foreign intelligence Alexander Poteev. “According to some reports, Poteev died in the United States. This information is currently being verified," one of the Interfax sources said.

As a result of the betrayal of the ex-colonel of the SVR Poteev, a group of Russian illegal intelligence officers was discovered abroad, including Anna Chapman. Recall that the exposure of a group of Russian intelligence officers in the United States took place in the summer of 2010. The US Department of Justice announced the arrest of 10 people suspected of spying for Russia, and put one more on the wanted list.

In June 2011, Poteev was convicted. He was found guilty on two counts - high treason and desertion - and sentenced in absentia by the Moscow District Military Court to 25 years in prison. The court also deprived Poteev of the military rank of colonel and awards. The mechanism of the "work" of the traitor was announced in court.

Poteev revealed to CIA agents the mechanisms for financing Russian intelligence agents abroad and channels of communication with them. According to the case file, the convict, having access to the list of agents operating abroad, in 2010 handed them over to the CIA - he did this as in the course of foreign trips, and during the meetings in Moscow.

Exposed scouts, in particular Anna Chapman, said that, at the suggestion of Poteev, they were followed from the very beginning. At the trial, it was also indicated that the United States, which helped the traitor to escape, continues to provide him with protection.

“I don’t comment on such things,” Anna Chapman told VZGLYAD newspaper. The Foreign Intelligence Service also did not comment on reports of Poteev's death.

Georgy Sannikov, a veteran of KGB foreign intelligence, in an interview with the VZGLYAD newspaper, did not rule out that Poteev "could go into deep underground... A person wants to dissolve, get a completely different name, imitate death ...". In turn, Foreign Intelligence Colonel Mikhail Lyubimov noted in a commentary to the VZGLYAD newspaper that the rumors about Poteev’s death are “hardly misinformation, there have never been such cases.”

“A lot of people have a roof going, or they “crawl into a bottle”

“Still, I’m more inclined to believe that this is really a real death,” Nikolai Kovalev, a member of the State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption, and a former director of the FSB, told the VZGLYAD newspaper. - If the United States included a witness protection program, it would be easier for them to announce that he was missing, or simply not to mention, to give him a plastic surgery and issue a passport in a different name and thus hide from an information attack, control by bloggers, journalists , public opinion".

The life of a traitor is not a sweet thing, the interlocutor noted: “A lot of people go nuts, either they ‘get into a bottle’ or get on drugs, and all this ends very badly for health.” Kovalev did not rule out that Poteev could be sick already here , in Russia, the Americans offered him some kind of treatment, he hoped that he would be cured, and this prompted him to betray.But this is again one of the versions.

From Afghanistan to New York

Alexander Poteev is the son of a regular soldier Nikolai Pavlovich Poteev, who received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1944 for the destruction of nine Nazi tanks.

At one time, Alexander himself, who, after serving in the army, graduated from the Minsk KGB school, distinguished himself in the war in Afghanistan. As part of the KGB special groups "Cascade" and "Zenith", he visited this country several times, received the Order of the Red Banner and several medals.

Upon completion of work in Afghanistan, he graduated from the Red Banner Institute of the KGB of the USSR, worked in the First Main Directorate (PGU) of the KGB, which was engaged in foreign intelligence. His career continued in the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of Russia, where Poteev rose to the rank of deputy head of department "C", responsible for the work of illegal intelligence officers in the United States. Headed the 4th (American) department of the Foreign Intelligence Service.

Work in this direction was started when Poteev was sent to the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Since 1995, Poteev has been in the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the UN in New York.

Flight of "citizen Dudochkin"

Poteev began to give out secret information starting from 1999-2000, from the time he got access to it - RIA Novosti reported this, citing the verdict handed down to Poteev in 2011.

CIA long time controlled Russian agents, not stopping their activities, but limiting the fulfillment of goals, as a result of which their work was ineffective in the absence of errors.

According to Kommersant, before his escape overseas, Alexander Poteev was able to transport his wife, daughter and son to the United States and find a job. By the way, the son of Poteev Vladimir, a graduate International Institute in Moscow, since 2005 he worked at the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Rosoboronexport. Poteev Jr. moved to the United States shortly before the exposure of the "Chapman - Lazaro - Pelaez group".

By the time of the escape, Poteev's wife had already lived in the United States for a long time, an Interfax source stated in power structures immediately after the news of the flight of the scout. According to the source, "these circumstances that accompanied the flight of the traitor, of course, exacerbate the gross miscalculation of our special services."

In the spring of 2010, Poteev, having taken a leave of absence to visit his relatives in Belarus, moved to Ukraine, and from there was transported by the CIA first to Germany and then to the United States.

At the same time, he used a fake passport in the name of citizen Dudochkin. Dudochkin - real existing person, was interrogated in court and said that he had not lost his passport. However, according to him, in 2009 he handed over his passport to the US Embassy for a visa.

"Mary, I'm leaving forever"

It is curious that, judging by media reports about the trial in the Poteev case, the wife of the defector, Marina, did not just testify against her husband in Russian court, but also, in fact, became a key witness.

Marina Poteeva said that her husband, due to poor health, took time off from a meeting in the Foreign Intelligence Service. He told his wife that he was going on a business trip to Belarus, and the next day he sent her an SMS message: “Mary, try to take this news calmly, I am not leaving on a business trip, but forever. I didn't want it, but it happened. I will start life over. I will help children, if they accept it, please do not turn them against me.

The witness explained that after this message she did not receive any information from her husband. The escapee left his certificates, passes and seals at home.

Seven years before the flight of the father of the family, a strange incident took place in the life of the Poteevs. On January 25, 2003, Marina turned to the police with a statement that “three unknown persons, introducing themselves as police officers, entered her apartment, threatening with two pistols, tied her husband, Alexander Nikolaevich Poteev ... and son, Vladimir Alexandrovich Poteev, a student, with tape 4th year MMU. Then, according to Marina, the attackers stole $3,300 from the apartment and fled. A number of media outlets, citing sources in the Foreign Intelligence Service, reported on the assumption that the attack could have been staged by agents of the American intelligence services who demonstrated to the “client” that he was not protected, despite a responsible position in Russian foreign intelligence.

Expanded "ten"

At the end of June 2010, the US Department of Justice announced the arrest of 10 people suspected of spying for Russia. Moscow noted that the spy scandal was "hyped up" a few days after the visit to the United States by Dmitry Medvedev - at that time the President of Russia.

The DOJ website reported that the defendants, referred to in quotation marks as "Richard Murphy" and "Cynthia Murphy", lived in New Jersey near New York. In Yonkers, near New York, "Vicki Pelaez" and "Juan Lazaro" were also arrested. "Anna Chapman" was arrested by the FBI in Manhattan. The accused "Michael Zottoli" and "Patricia Miles" were arrested in Arlington, Virginia, a suburb of Washington. “Mikhail Semenko” was also arrested there. "Donald Howard Heathfield" and "Tracey Lee Ann Foley" are arrested in their Boston apartment. The accused "Christopher Metsos" is still at large, the US Department of Justice said. Later, Metsos, whose true name was never disclosed, was detained in Cyprus, released on bail of 27 thousand euros and disappeared.

Anna Chapman, 28, is one of the accused in the case of "Russian spies" arrested on Tuesday in the United States. A total of 10 people have been charged with spying for Russia in this case.

Disclosed Agents Russian intelligence was initially charged with money laundering. Later, a number of defendants in the case were accused of using forged documents, including for infiltrating government circles. The intelligence officers were accused of passing information to the SVR using classic espionage techniques - disappearing ink, shortwave transmitters, and by exchanging identical suitcases at train stations. However, the use of "prosaic" e-mail was also mentioned.

Already on July 8, 2010, the trial took place. Nine suspects admitted to being Russian citizens (the tenth, Vicki Pelaez, originally from Peru), and confessed to secret activities in the United States.

The biggest exchange since cold war

The Washington Post, commenting on the trial of "Russian spies", suggested that the capture of the "ten" is nothing more than a prelude to the largest exchange of exposed "moles" since the Cold War.

Indeed, such an exchange took place. As early as July 7, 2010, it became known that Moscow and Washington had come to an agreement on the exchange of "dozens" for persons serving sentences in Russia for espionage and similar crimes.

On our part, the following were handed over: the defendant in a high-profile spy scandal, military analyst Igor Sutyagin (now working at the British Royal Joint Institute for Defense Studies), ex-GRU Colonel Sergei Skripal (convicted of spying for the UK), as well as former colonel SVR Alexander Zaporizhsky, who, as reported, could be involved in a high-profile spy scandal - the failure of FBI officer Robert Hanssen. In addition, Gennady Vasilenko, a former employee of the KGB of the USSR, ex-deputy head of security for the NTV-Plus television company, was handed over to the American side, convicted of illegal possession of weapons and attempted manufacture of an explosive device.

The exchange was also reminiscent of the times of the Cold War. On July 9, 2010, planes from Moscow and New York landed simultaneously in the far corner of Vienna Airport (the traditional "no man's land"), after which the "spy bridge" was again "divorced".

On this plane, the so-called. "Russian spies" He must also pick up and take to America deported from Russia Igor Sutyagin and other prisoners sentenced in Russia for espionage

After the obligatory "quarantine", somewhere in the Moscow region, the discovered Russian illegal immigrants were met by Vladimir Putin - at that time the Prime Minister of Russia.

"30 pieces of silver will stick in the throat"

In December 2010, while answering one of the questions during a direct line, Putin touched on the topic of the spy scandal - while using strong language.

“As for the traitors, they will die themselves, I assure you, because ... Here is our last case of betrayal, when a group of our illegal immigrants was betrayed. These are officers, you understand, officers! A man betrayed his friends, comrades in arms - these are people who put their whole lives on the altar of the fatherland. What is it like to learn a language at the level of a native, to abandon relatives, not to be able to come to bury loved ones! Just think about it!”

“A man devoted his whole life to serving his homeland, and some kind of cattle was found that betrays such people! - furiously continued to brand the prime minister a traitor. How is he going to live with this for the rest of his life? How will he look his children in the eye, pig?! Whatever it is, and no matter what 30 pieces of silver these people receive, they will stand like a stake in their throats, I assure you. Hiding all my life, not being able to communicate with loved ones ... You know, a person who chooses such a fate will regret it a thousand times more.

“Chapman considers Poteev to be the person who ratted her out”

A number of media outlets, in particular Kommersant, on fresh tracks in November 2010, reported that a certain Colonel Shcherbakov was a traitor in the SVR who issued the "top ten" - it was indicated that this former boss the American Department of Directorate "C", which oversees work in the area of ​​illegal intelligence.

The name of Alexander Nikolaevich Poteev surfaced later. In particular, in June 2011, Anna Chapman testified at the trial in the case of an SVR colonel. An employee of foreign intelligence reported (her story was quoted by RIA Novosti): in the first months of her stay in the United States, work went smoothly, but since April 2010, communication failures began.

According to Chapman, at the same time she was met by a man who gave the password and asked to meet with her. At the meeting, he handed her an illegal passport, which Chapman allegedly had to give to another person on assignment. Around the same time, an SVR officer noticed that she was being followed. “Analyzing the situation, including interrogations at the CIA, she came to the conclusion that she was followed from the first days of her stay in the United States. She considers Poteev to be the person who handed her over to the US special services, ”the report said about Chapman’s testimony.

"No one will destroy it"

There is no “revenge” on the part of our special services in the possible death of Poteev, Georgy Sannikov, a veteran of foreign intelligence, emphasized in a commentary to the VZGLYAD newspaper.

“In ancient times, even under the Soviet Union, all this was categorically prevented,” the interlocutor noted. He is convinced that in the 21st century, liquidation by special services is something out of the realm of fantasy.

“No one will eliminate him. Why eliminate him - he is a traitor, let him suffer and die from such a state in which they (traitors - approx. VIEW) have been for many years. This is their business, and this death is morally painful,” Sannikov said.

As for the rumors that have now gone that he was killed, "the hand of Moscow - Putin once said something," they remain only rumors, agrees retired foreign intelligence colonel Mikhail Lyubimov. “We have preserved all our traitors and have not eliminated anyone: they live and live. Viktor Suvorov (Viktor Rezun) flourishes, writes books, (Oleg) Gordievsky flourishes. Everyone is shouting that they are about to be kicked, although even I have Gordievsky's address,” the source said.

“I would like at least one press organ to give an example of liquidation by the special services not under Stalin, but in the post-Stalin period. I don't know of any case. They all lived well, some hid, some did not, ”said Lyubimov. According to him, “who needs Poteev now? Relations with the United States are being improved, a serious political game is underway in Europe... and then someone will liquidate Poteev?”

The anti-Putin press is likely to raise a fuss, the expert suggests. However, in international politics, this event is more likely to be ignored. “He died and died, he’s not so young, while he survived so much, probably stole a lot of money,” said Lyubimov.

“It is clear that there will be heightened interest in his death”

Information about the death, of course, needs to be double-checked, Nikolai Kovalev, a member of the Russian State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption, former director of the FSB, notes in a commentary to the VZGLYAD newspaper. There must be a body, an autopsy, the conclusion of pathologists about the causes of death, and you can’t hide it.

“It is clear that there will be increased interest in his death from the press, the public ... Pathologists are unlikely to commit a criminally punishable act and give some fake conclusion about the causes of death. This is quite severely punished in the United States, and not only there,” Kovalev added.

He believes that "once again the thesis about a certain Russian trace, long arms that Moscow extended to the United States" will be used. A vivid example of this is the terrorist attack in Istanbul, although Russia did everything to prevent this terrorist attack, for 13 years we have been trying to extradite the organizer of this terrorist attack. The same situation with the terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon, the source recalled.

He noted that scouts in many countries of the world are actually known. "There is Golden Rule- the intelligence officer's family is inviolable," Kovalev emphasized.

“It is only necessary for some special service to follow this path, there will be a chain reaction. One has only to prove involvement in the murder in at least one case, this can cause irreversible processes, a war will begin between special services, who will quickly eliminate the largest number“enemies,” the interlocutor explained. He recalled that the main task of any intelligence officer in any country is to find out if something threatens the security of his country. “What is the threat to the security of another state where he works? It doesn't exist as such. He is primarily concerned with ensuring the security of his homeland. And in this sense, getting involved in this war of annihilation is stupidity. Twenty-first century - politics common sense, and special services do not use such methods,” Kovalev summed up.

Last adventure of the year.
Would you like, at the end of the old year, to free yourself from taxes, bills, or liability of any kind? Then we invite you to die. Well, what are you, of course, pretend, fictitious. Legal Disclaimer: This article is written for entertainment purposes only. No one calls to fake their death by buying fake passports, collaborating with corrupt officials.

Preparation stage.
To fake your own death, you need to preparatory work. Choose a hideout. Everything will go down the drain if family and friends see the “dead person” a week after the “funeral”. You need to find a safe place where acquaintances will not meet. Naturally, the further it is, the better. So, the option to hide in the attic will not work.

You need to raise enough money in advance.
The acquired freedom will not bring joy if there is no money for living. A secret cash reserve must be created in advance. As soon as the bank receives notification of the death of a person, all accounts and credit cards will be frozen. Therefore, we must begin to remove them gradually six months before the expected death. Most importantly, withdraw a small amount at a time to prevent possible suspicions in the future.

Change documents.
Today, in an era of increased security, it is impossible to travel freely without any documents. Therefore, the most best way out in this situation is to buy fake passport, driver license, TIN, black market birth certificate. Before you go shopping for new documents, you need to come up with a name and date of birth.

Change appearance.
Even if the authorities do not detect forgery, they can recognize a person by their appearance. So, it is better to change the hair color, haircut; maybe glue a mustache or beard, or, conversely, shave them off. Currently plastic surgery offers a wide range of options for changing the appearance.

If someone is thinking about prank suicide, a suicide letter must be left.
It should write about disappointment due to unfulfilled expectations or about loneliness in cruel world. Do not include a return address in the letter. Before leaving the kingdom of the earth, you need to behave as usual, without arousing suspicion. You can’t sell real estate, say goodbye to someone or insure your life.

Many suicides are thrown off the bridge.
In our case, it should not be real. It's just, you have to make everyone think that it was a suicide. For several weeks, one must constantly walk gloomy, not make contact with anyone, and, most importantly, there must be witnesses to this terrible act of suicide. After leaving the water, you will urgently need to jump into a pre-prepared car and quickly escape from the scene.

Death in the tropics
In many third world countries, people are willing to do anything for one dollar. You can go on vacation to the tropics, bribe some local government official to give you a death certificate, and then send it to the embassy. Only the cause of death must be plausible, for example, you drowned in the turbulent waters of the Kikitaki River while hunting for crocodiles, or you were mowed down by malaria in a particularly severe form.

You can stage a disaster, and leave a wallet with documents nearby.
A fire or explosion is best, as there will be no traces. Everything must be done professionally so that they cannot later be accused of arson. The method is very popular in the cinema. This will require:
fast reaction;
automobile;
a steep slope or mountain from which a car could fly over and then explode and shatter into thousands of pieces (you must jump out before the car hits a road barrier).

Act out the scene of your own death.
Thousands of people die every year from the penetration of bandits into the house. Why not choose such a death for yourself? To stage the "number", you will need weapons, blood, from one to two hours of time.

First you need to create such an atmosphere in the house that it seems that there was a struggle here.
Then take out all the valuables. Sprinkle your blood (be sure your own, as they will check DNA) on the floor or walls. The easiest way to do this is to slightly cut right hand just above the elbow. And in conclusion, make a few shots at the walls and immediately run away. Of course, the absence of a corpse will look suspicious, but after a futile search, they will decide that the killers took the body with them.

Another convincing way of the farewell scene is kidnapping for ransom.
If a wage low and there is no point in kidnapping such a person, you can go to Mexico City, where the kidnapping of any European is comparable to winning the jackpot. After a person goes on a journey, he needs to disappear. It is imperative to choose a safe place where no one can recognize him or recognize him, where there are no police. After twenty-four hours of "imprisonment" it is necessary to make sure that the "third" person contacts a loved one or close relatives and demands a ransom from them. It will be ideal if this person can be trusted so that in the future he will not be able to blackmail.

It is necessary to call from a telephone booth, which is located far from the place of shelter.
The call should not last more than 30 seconds, so that the police do not trace the whereabouts of the kidnapper. The first time you need to describe the situation in dark colors and demand a ransom (in the amount of 300 to 500 thousand dollars). A time frame must be set: "The money must be delivered within forty-eight hours, otherwise the victim of the kidnapping will be killed." When those forty-eight hours have passed, the artificial abductor must call again and make the same demands. If your loved ones don't have that kind of money, you should immediately hang up the phone. If there is, then great, 2 million rubles will be added to your pocket!

No matter what the outcome of this case is, the kidnapper must refuse to hand over the hostage.
After some time, relatives and friends, having no news, will understand that the kidnapped was killed.

Only Lazarus returned.
Oddly enough, playing a fake death is a lifelong commitment. If someone has done such a thing, he must disappear from the planet once and for all (or move to another city and even country). Otherwise relatives and loved ones who mourned the departure loved one, will be upset when they find out that a lot of money was spent on an artificial funeral. By the way, before you dare to take such a step, think, for sure, among your environment there will be people who will be very hard to experience your “leaving”. So, whoever decides on a fake death, must do it wisely, for real. Good luck!

How to fake your own death? tell me some rational and effective methods - how to simulate your death? (let's say I have a couple of ideas in terms of "suicide") well, first of all - so that everyone in the city (let's say - a small city) in which you were born everyone believed that you died? this is one side of the issue - the second - who deals with all these "feints with reissuance" and with forgery of documents - it is preparing the process itself so that on paper you are officially dead. what are these services and what are these specialists called? where is it better to do it in a new place - from where you start to start new life or in the city in which you "are going to commit suicide." I don't ask - for comments about my motivations for j this issue, I ask about methods that can really work, preferably those who have already come across this one way or another - with least consequences in terms of the law, its violation, the possibility of disclosing the fact. and I’ll make a reservation - we are not talking about concealing offenses, etc. - in this regard, I am clean - we are talking about slightly different motives. and by the way - in spy films - such a frequent technique is used in this process - as a change in one's appearance. in general in real life - with everything already said above, how much does it work? if for some reason - people who know a lot about this matter cannot write here - then write in a personal message and in general in case of status - missing - how to get the status officially dead - well, let's say - went to the wilderness - full of wolves and did not return - how much time will pass when you are declared dead - and how can you be sure of this? and let's say - you were declared dead, you changed your appearance (this is me so figuratively according to logic) - how much time will pass - and when is it better to go for a new passport - and where - to the official passport office in a new city in a new region, in a new region ? What kind of questions should I expect if I go there without documents, and should I do it at all? or contact the service of fake documents for these purposes, well, let's say - I'm officially dead - where to go - where to start - what to do if you move to another city in another region, to another region - where they don't know you. for sure, documents will be required during this process, which means, as I believe, documents for a new name and surname need to be taken care of in advance. the question is how to do this another question is how the fact of death is recorded - in the police in the morgue - such as "died in hospital from an incurable disease" (this is me at a discount) - what happens in this case - what documents and what employees are involved in this during registration.

Famous Beatle lover Kolya Vasin last year stunned the public with a statement that "in fact, Lennon lives in a monastery in Italy." “There are even supporting photographs, I saw them, but for some reason they are not published in the press. Kolya said. “John played a prank on everyone and went into seclusion.” We confirm: there are photographs proving the stay of the leader of the supergroup in the monastery and even a video.

However, John Lennon still has nothing to do with it: the well-known Beatleman and the initiator of the erection of the John Lennon temple mixed everything up. Although the story about the famous rock musician hiding from the killers in a monastery (albeit in Spain, not Italy), he did not come up with it himself.

True, video material about the life of Jim Morrison ( we are talking about him) from 1971 to 1974 has no legal value. This is a 1989 film by American director Larry Buchanan, "Behind the Doors" ("Beyond the Doors"), which, by the way, has another name "Down on Me" ("Woe to me!") - as you know , one of the songs of Janis Joplin is called.

The film is about the fate of not only Jim Morrison, but also Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. However, this is not a biographical picture at all. First of all, the story begins after the death of the musicians.

... In the early 1980s, a group of hunters wandered through the fields near Cumberland (USA, Maryland) in the fog. Suddenly they hear a shot, then they see two people - the one who shot and the mortally wounded one. Smiling ominously, the gunslinger says, “Rock and roll is dead. Long live rock and roll!" and hides in front of shocked witnesses of the crime.

Thus begins Larry Buchanan's 1989 film about Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison.

After the funeral, the hunters entered the house of the deceased, and found out that he was an FBI agent. The widow of Alex Stanley (played by Sandy Kenyon) does not even admit that her husband was the victim of a hunting accident - she is sure that Alex's murder is connected with his professional activity.

In the future, Alex's widow tells her son, Frank (Stephen Tice plays his role) that his father's documents can hide the secret of his father's death. They are stored in a case, which she hid at his request. Stanley gave her strict instructions that if anything happened to him, they should be given to Frank.

From the documents it turns out that Frank's father not only worked for the FBI, he participated in the activities of a secret spy agency that once instructed him to neutralize the rock stars Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison. In their opinion, musicians have a negative impact on American youth and spread ideas that are alien to American society.

The agent honestly manages to kill Hendrix, Joplin, and another "unrecorded musician" through poisoning. A particularly curious way Stanley chose to kill Joplin. He poisons her food lethal dose heroin, and then scatters empty syringes around, and, for authenticity, pricks Janice's arm with one of them.

That's just Morrison guesses about the plans of the FBI, and avoids death. He finds ways to fake his death and then goes to a Spanish monastery. True, in 1974 he dies anyway, but that is beside the point. To Frank, son of Stanley, who came to the monastery, the monks living there show real grave Jim.

It should be noted that Kolya Vasin, as a collector of such rarities, was very lucky that he watched such a film. Now for some reason it is quite difficult to buy it in Western online stores. How interesting this film is to watch is also difficult to judge for the reason described above.

However, the topic covered in the film is very, very relevant. I must say that, despite the excess texture, no one has ever set it. Therefore, it is still worth considering - is this film so inaccessible due to low quality or because of something else?

Hardly dug out on the Internet "self-made" critical article raises serious doubts about the quality of the film. However, its author notes that a spectacular drama can be staged on the same topic, and he is at a loss - why has no one done this yet?

The fact is that American (and popular in America British) musicians have a habit of dying so often and early, and the causes of their death are so diverse that this inspires the authors of not only dramas, but also black comedies. Not so long ago, the film “Who Killed Victor Fox?” related to this genre was released, hinting at the strange circumstances of death, the execution of the will and, finally, so to speak, the posthumous glory of Freddie Mercury.

Thus, it is the realism of the plot that suggests that a remake of the film - or simply a creative rethinking of such a profitable topic is yet to come. One way or another, it may be worth repeating the feat of Kolya Vasin, getting and watching the mysterious film “Behind the Doors”.

Author - Anton Bykov. First published on the Open Russia website.

In November of this year, an unknown man attacked anthropologist Sergei Mokhov. When he approached the entrance of his house, a young man with a bouquet of flowers in his hands stuck a syringe with an unknown liquid into his thigh, after which he disappeared. Mokhov, before losing consciousness, managed to call his wife, who called an ambulance. The Sklifosovsky Institute could not determine the drug that was in the syringe, because active substance quickly decomposed in the body. Doctors say that he was lucky, he could suffocate. The attack on the anthropologist is associated with the professional activities of his wife, Lyubov Sobol, who is investigating at the Alexei Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Frame from the film "Prick with an umbrella", 1980

Mokhov's incident is not the only one. In May last year, an attempt was made on the life of journalist and historian Vladimir Kara-Murza, he was poisoned with an unknown substance, and an investigation into the death is still ongoing in London former officer FSB Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned, according to investigators, on the initiative of the Russian special services. Such accusations against the special services are not groundless. For almost 80 years they have been researching poisons, and their victims are dissidents, separatists and the KGB themselves, who fled the USSR.

The toxicological laboratory for the study and production of poisons appeared in post-revolutionary Russia as early as 1921 by order of Vladimir Lenin, but until 1937 it was in the department All-Union Institute biochemistry and was not directly connected with the special services. In 1938, the laboratory was included in the 4th special department of the NKVD, and its employees began to work on the manufacture of poisons that could simulate the death of a person by natural causes. One of the most common poisons used by KGB agents was ricin, which is made from the seeds of the Ricinus communis (castor bean) plant. It is many times more toxic than rattlesnake venom. Ricin poses the greatest danger when it enters circulatory system by injection. A dose of ricin the size of a few salt crystals can cause death in humans.

Hunting for Ukrainian nationalists

Autumn 1949 Supreme Court The USSR at a closed meeting sentenced the leader of the Ukrainian nationalists Stepan Bandera to death penalty, and 10 years later, KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky shot him in the face with a cyanide pistol. Under the influence of the poison, Bandera fell to the stone floor and broke his head. On the way to the hospital, he died without regaining consciousness. Neighbors did not hear the shot and did not see the killer. The cause of death was initially given as cardiac paralysis. When re-examining the body, one of the doctors drew attention to the smell of bitter almonds that came from the face of the deceased. Further examination showed that Bandera died as a result of potassium cyanide poisoning.

The weapon used by Stashinsky was a double-barreled cylinder with a spring and a trigger, loaded with hydrocyanic acid ampoules. During the shot, the ampoules break, the poison is thrown out to a distance of up to one meter. A person who inhales vapors loses consciousness, his heart stops. Two years earlier, Stashinsky tested this weapon during a special operation to eliminate another leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Lev Rebet. The operation was successful, the Ukrainian emigrant press wrote that Rebet died of a heart attack. The fact that he was killed with a special poison became known later.

Failed assassination attempts

In 1957, KGB agent Khristina Kratkova tried twice to poison Soviet intelligence captain Nikolai Khokhlov, but both attempts failed. Khokhlov is one of the most famous "defectors", who during the Second World War took part in the preparation of the assassination of the Gauleiter of Belarus Wilhelm Kube. FROM Soviet intelligence Khokhlov broke after he was instructed to kill one of the leaders of the People's Labor Union, Georgy Okolovich, who lived in the Federal Republic of Germany. Instead, Khokhlov warned Okolovich about the planned assassination and publicly exposed the actions of the Soviet secret services.

“I was supposed to die from a newly invented poison, so camouflaged that the results of the autopsy would show death from an industrial poison used to kill rodents. However, this poison - thallium - could only kill a person with very poor health. In Moscow, specialists from secret laboratory The KGB turned a grain of thallium into radioactive isotope. The agents managed to toss it into my coffee cup. The idea was that the grain would hit me from the inside with radiation sickness, and then quickly disappear. The waist effect, however, would remain and should have confused the doctors. And so it happened. In fact, I was sentenced to death and, despite the fact that American doctors at the Frankfurt military hospital worked for many weeks to save me, why I still survived remained unclear, ”recalls Khokhlov.

Another unsuccessful attempt was made on Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In August 1971, during a trip to Novocherkassk, the writer fell seriously ill. It is believed that KGB agents injected him with a syringe with poisonous substance(presumably ricin). According to another version, Nobel laureate imperceptibly sprinkled with poison. Solzhenitsyn survived, but was ill for a long time. “I was so unbearable for the KGB that in 1971, on August 9, in Novocherkassk, they directly killed me with an injection of ricinin, for three months I lay in a layer in mysterious blisters the size of a saucer,” wrote Solzhenitsyn in the article “Darkness is not looking for light.”

Bulgarian umbrellas

The most famous and mysterious crime in the history of the Cold War was the murder of dissident writer Georgy Markov. He died on September 11, 1978 in London as a result of poisoning, which occurred, presumably, after being pricked with an umbrella (according to another version, a device disguised as a fountain pen served as the murder weapon). The criminal case was closed only in 2013 due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. Many historians believe that Markov was killed by the Bulgarian special services with the participation of the KGB, but this has not been proven.

Before his death, Markov recalled that on September 7, he was walking past a bus stop on Waterloo Bridge in London and stumbled on something, at the same time feeling a slight prick. Turning around, the writer noticed how the stranger picked up an umbrella from the ground, got into the car and left. Markov did not attach any importance to this incident, but already at night he was hospitalized with a high temperature.

At an autopsy in the writer's leg, doctors found a microcapsule less than two millimeters in diameter, which, according to investigators, was filled with ricin. The poison entered the bloodstream after the shell of the capsule melted under the influence of heat. Experts aware of the umbrella incident immediately recalled a similar incident that occurred two weeks before Markov's murder: in the Paris metro, an unknown person fired a ricin capsule at another Bulgarian defector, Vladimir Kostov, but thick clothes prevented the capsule from penetrating deep into the skin, and the doctors managed to extract it in time. Two years later, the French filmed the comedy "Prick with an Umbrella" with Pierre Richard in the title role. The picture was wildly popular with Soviet viewers.