Either a Soviet resident or an American spy: a non-trivial story of a double agent - ForumDaily
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Either a Soviet resident or an American spy: a non-trivial story of a double agent

Journalist and intellectual, security officer and defector. Either a Soviet resident, or an American spy, or a Latvian, or a German, or Imant, or Peter Friedrich. Still on his grave near Washington - a made-up name, reports'Present Tense'.

Screenshot from the movie "My Father is a Spy"

In Riga, there are only a couple of declassified documents in the national archive and conflicting memories of relatives and friends. Former friends - there are no other spies. An unknown story about the oath and betrayal, flight and treason, told by the daughter of a former Soviet intelligence officer who asked for political asylum in the United States, in a documentary by Gints Grube and Yaak Kilmi.

Film available on site 6 to April.

Cemetery of the small town of Vienna, West Virginia. Peter F. Dorn. Years of life: December 17, 1931 - December 23, 1985. At least these numbers do not lie.

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Imant Leshchinsky was buried here, he died suddenly when he was 54 years old. The woman at the grave is his daughter, Ieva Leszczynski-Geiber. According to her memoirs, diary entries, travels through archives and places of memory, the shard after shard is restored, the story of a girl who has become an involuntary victim of spy games is collected from a broken family service.

There is still no clear version of the death of the double agent Leschinsky. An autopsy was not performed. The funeral was secret. And his lifetime memoirs completely disappeared mysteriously. As soon as the iron curtain collapsed, lovers of historical conspiracy theories began to race to guess - did the people from the Lubyanka kill the scout or were secret agents of the CIA? What secrets did he take with him?

“I wasn't particularly happy. It’s like, you know, when you’re walking down the street and everyone tells you to smile! Well, you smile. Just because it’s necessary,” she says.

Ieva doesn’t remember well what her childhood was like. She was born in Latvia, then the most “European” of the Soviet republics. Socialist Riga was probably the only place where one could feel like a “Western” person, and jazz could be heard from the windows of cafes on the cobblestone streets. Ieva's parents divorced when the girl was six. She stayed to live with her mother. But in the family album there are photographs of the whole family together. There are also very early photographs - in them little Ieva smiles in a stroller. These black and white frames are more than half a century old. The edges have been torn by history.

Screenshot from the movie "My Father is a Spy"

Innocent photos. One detail - they were made not by a loving dad, but by specially trained people in uniform, those from a separate service to create myths and legends for secret agents of the KGB. Cut all unnecessary, missing faces - paste. Collage of fictional life.

Screenshot from the movie "My Father is a Spy"

“I didn’t have a special relationship with my father - except for my fantasies. I saw him once every two to three months. We went to a cafe or restaurant together. He was always well dressed - in a nice suit, a good hat, smelling of expensive perfume. But who was he? What was he doing? All I knew was that my father was an important person."

We recruited an intellectual, a lover of literature and history, Imant Leshchinsky back in the 1950s. He was not even thirty then. First, he and his family had to go to Germany under the guise of a German born in Koenigsberg. Spy on the Soviet state. But that story did not come true.

“When I was 7 months old, my parents took me in their arms and transported me to Moscow. To undergo KGB training and become spies. My mother only told me that my father worked for the KGB when I was about sixteen years old. In a huge secret. But she never said that I was also part of the KGB.”

Screenshot from the movie "My Father is a Spy"

Old audio tape. The inscription on the cassette: March 30, 1984. Washington. Voice recording dad. He speaks English with absolutely no Soviet accent:

“I had three spy missions related to the Olympic Games. My mission was to collect intelligence information, establish connections with influential people ... "

In 2003, Janis Liepins’ book “I collaborated with the double agent of the KGB and CIA Imants Leshchinsky” was published in Latvia - a best-selling spy detective story based on real events. For the first time, the story of a double agent was described there.

Recruited by the KGB in 1956, Leshchinsky volunteered to cooperate with the American CIA back in 1960, when he was in Rome as part of the Soviet delegation at the Olympic Games. That is, in fact, all the work of the Chekists in the area of ​​Latvian emigration from the very beginning was controlled by the Americans.

What did Leshchinsky do? After the annexation of the Baltic countries by the Soviet Union, the local intelligentsia massively left their homeland. Many have left for the United States. Among them, to propagandize the Soviet idea and build a loyal attitude towards the USSR was the key task of Leshchinsky. First, from Riga, regularly visiting western countries and meeting with prominent representatives of Latvian emigration. Then - from New York.

Identification card of Imant Leshchinsky, an employee of the UN mission. Expires 1981. Issued in 1976. It was that year that he was transferred to work in the States. An intellectual in horn-rimmed glasses, for a long time he headed the magazine for emigrants Dzimtenes Balss (Voice of the Motherland), and gave lectures in Latvian clubs around the world. He quickly rose through the ranks and became chairman of the Committee for Cultural Relations with Compatriots Abroad. A very high position in the hierarchy of the KGB “propaganda department”. As a double agent, he persuaded the most popular Latvians from the diaspora to return to the Soviet Union. Then in his diaries he recalled:

“I let the genie out of the bottle, and now I need to put it back in.”

Screenshot from the movie "My Father is a Spy"

Until now, the attitude towards the role of Imants Leshchinsky among the Latvian intelligentsia is very ambiguous. One of the most emotional scenes in the film is how Ieva calls her father’s acquaintance. But before he has time to introduce himself, he hears in response (politely, but categorically): “I don’t think you’ll like talking to me. I won’t tell you anything good about your father.” Short beeps.

In the fall of 1978, Imant Leshchinsky commits an incredible act. Suddenly, for the Soviet mission to the UN, for his leadership in the KGB, he asks for political asylum in the USA. He is forced to confront employees of the Soviet embassy. They persuade him to change his mind. But he “chooses freedom.” Shortly before this act, he draws up documents for his daughter - a visa to America and permission to leave the Soviet Union. The daughter, arriving in the USA for the first time, suspects nothing about her father, remains in America.

Screenshot from the movie "My Father is a Spy"

“I believed Soviet propaganda, what I saw on TV - these stories about how every American carries a gun in his pocket, how there are sex shows at every turn.”

America in the eyes of a Soviet girl - what is it? One-story and poor - in the provinces, depraved and dirty - among New York skyscrapers, where cops with clubs bathe between sex workers in tattered stockings.

Of course, everything turned out to be completely different. “I felt like I was in heaven,” these are the words Ieva now recalls her first impressions of the city of freedom. And for some reason the smell was of soap in the shower.

Probably one of the most striking scenes of the film is a description of hugs. How does the spy greet you? Even if he is your father? Not too emotional. It seems to be warm. But still detached. Whether you are at least a daughter, at least an enemy agent, the movement of the hands of a Chekist (or a prince) is always honed and memorized. They have such a job that they have to leave warmth and love in the same place where their real name is.

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Screenshot from the movie "My Father is a Spy"

One day (without expecting, without preparing for it) Ieva Leszczynski also had to become a different person. The father chose the name Peter Friedrich Dorn. Dorn means “thorn” in German, he wanted to be the thorn that would prick the Soviet Union. Supposedly he was involved in publishing. Ieva, according to legend, was born in East Berlin, and after the construction of the wall she moved to West Berlin. She became Evelina Dorn, to be shortened to Yves - almost like Ieva's real name. And it was she – Evelina Dorn – that Ieva Leszczynski was until her father’s death. And until her death she did not ask him questions about why he chose to be a spy, why he made her a prisoner of his decision, too, without asking permission. Both she and you can find the answer to the question in the film.

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