The Ministry of State Security of the GDR used against. Traces of Major Putin were found in the Stasi archives, whom German experts considered a skilled and serious intelligence officer

Exactly 65 years ago, on February 8, 1950, the Ministry of State Security of the German Democratic Republic (MGB of the GDR) was created - one of the most powerful and effective special services of the socialist bloc, according to many historians, second only to the State Security Committee of the Soviet Union in terms of capabilities. For at least many decades, the intrigues of the Stasi (East German intelligence) were attributed to the activities of the Red Army Faction and other left-wing terrorist organizations in the Federal Republic of Germany, and support for the Palestinian national liberation movement, and even overseeing the activities of Ernesto Che Guevara in Latin America . Perhaps only the KGB of the USSR and, to a lesser extent, the Romanian "Securitate" received so many mentions in the media of the second half of the twentieth century.

The first steps of the East German intelligence service

The decision to create the GDR MGB was taken by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany on January 24, 1950, and on February 8, 1950, the GDR parliament unanimously approved the adoption of a law on the creation of the Ministry of State Security of the German Democratic Republic. Thus, the newly created MGB of the GDR replaced the Main Directorate for the Protection of the Economy, which was responsible for state security in 1949-1950. The creation of the Ministry of State Security of the GDR was the result of strengthening the special services of the republic and took place under the direct influence of the USSR. Even the name testifies to the "Soviet experience" - the special service was named after the Soviet MGB, which answered in the early 1950s. for the state security of the USSR. The creation of a strong intelligence service was required by the interests of ensuring the national security of the GDR and the needs of the Soviet Union to strengthen control over East Germany, one of the key states of the socialist bloc. The border troops and transport police were also subordinate to the Ministry of State Security, although the people's police of the GDR remained under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic. By the end of 1952, 8,800 employees worked in the apparatus of the MGB of the GDR (compared to 4,500 employees at the end of 1951).

Also, the Berlin Security Regiment Felix Dzerzhinsky, which performed the tasks of protecting state and party institutions, was part of the MGB of the GDR. The regiment consisted of 4 battalions, an artillery battalion, an anti-terrorist team "A" consisting of two reconnaissance companies. By 1988, the regiment included the 1st team (4 rifle battalions), the 2nd team (4 motorized rifle battalions), the 3rd team (2 rifle battalions and the school of junior regiment commanders), the 4th team (5 rifle company and construction company), a separate sapper battalion (headquarters and 3 sapper companies), the strength of the regiment in 1988 was determined at 11,426 military personnel. The regiment was armed with light infantry, in 1956 anti-aircraft machine guns, mortars, cannons and armored personnel carriers arrived. Later, the regiment was armed with all types of Soviet armored personnel carriers - from BTR-40 to BTR-70, 120-mm mortars, 122-mm howitzers, etc. By 1988, the regiment was armed with 3994 PM, 7439 AK-74, 5835 AK, 751 PK, 64 PKM, 89 Strela-2 MANPADS, 515 RPG-7, 23 SPG-9, 324 BRDM, 38 BTR-60PB , 46 BTR-70, 4 BTR-70S, 750 vehicles.

The first head of the MGB of the GDR was Wilhelm Zeisser (1893-1958), a former officer in the German army, and then a professional revolutionary. During the First World War, Wilhelm Zeisser, a teacher's seminary graduate, served in the German army with the rank of lieutenant, and then, after the end of the war, returned to school teaching. As you know, the former front-line soldiers in the period after the end of the First World War were divided according to political sympathies. A significant part of the officers, non-commissioned officers and privates of the German army, who went into the reserve, joined the ultra-right nationalist organizations, but many participants in the war sympathized with the Social Democrats and Communists. From the left front-line soldiers, Red Guard detachments were formed, which performed security and assault functions under the Communist Party. In 1920, Wilhelm Zeisser, who by this time had become a member of the Communist Party of Germany, led the Ruhr Red Army. For this activity, he received six months in prison.

As early as the 1920s, Zeisser established close ties with the Soviet secret services. Through the Comintern, he was sent to Moscow, where in 1924 he completed special military courses, after which he led the paramilitary structures of the Communist Party of Germany. Autumn 1925 - spring 1926. Zeisser carried out the tasks of the Soviet foreign intelligence in the Middle East - in Syria and Palestine, and in 1927-1930. was on intelligence work in Manchuria. In 1932-1935. Zeisser lived in Moscow, where he taught military affairs at the International Lenin School. In 1936, he left for Spain, where he took part in the Civil War on the side of the Republicans - under the name "Gomez" he commanded the 13th International Brigade of the Republican Army. During World War II, Zeisser lived in the Soviet Union and was engaged in propaganda work among German prisoners of war (of course, this also meant acting as an agent of the Soviet special services). Thus, in fact, in the 1920s - 1940s. Wilhelm Zeisser worked with the Soviet secret services, performing their tasks and actually being their employee. The creation of the GDR required the new republican authorities to recruit personnel from the reserve of the German communist movement. Among many other German communists, Wilhelm Zeisser returned to his homeland in 1947. He became a member of the Central Committee and the Politburo of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), and in 1948 he was appointed Minister of the Interior of Saxony.

Appointed as the first Minister of State Security of the GDR, Wilhelm Zeisser led the newly created structure for a short time - only three years. In July 1953, he was removed from the post of minister and expelled from the SED Central Committee and the Politburo. The decision of the party leadership was motivated by Zeisser's alleged "capitulatory mood". However, in reality, the events of June 17, 1953, a grandiose uprising of the workers of a number of East German enterprises against the country's leadership, became the reason for the disgrace of the first head of the East German special services. The reason for the dissatisfaction of the working class of the GDR was the increase in output standards while maintaining the same wages. The situation was taken advantage of by anti-Soviet and anti-communist elements in the GDR, including those who collaborated with the West German and American intelligence services. Mass demonstrations in Berlin were dispersed by the people's police and Soviet military personnel.

However, the country's leadership remained dissatisfied with the activities of the Ministry of State Security of the GDR, which could not prevent the riots, and then promptly identify their instigators. Zeisser was deprived of his ministerial portfolio and Ernst Wollweber (1898-1967) became the new head of the GDR Ministry of State Security - also a veteran of the German communist movement, back in November 1918, while serving in the German fleet, who participated in the famous Kiel uprising of sailors. Like his predecessor Zeisser, Wollweber worked closely with Soviet intelligence. After the NSDAP came to power, he moved to Copenhagen, and then to Sweden, from where he led the Union of Sailors or the Union of Wollweber, which collected intelligence information and acts of sabotage against the German fleet during the Second World War. Prior to his appointment as Minister of State Security, Wollweber served as Deputy Minister of Transport of the GDR. However, in 1957 Wollweber was removed from his post as Minister of State Security. He was replaced by Erich Mielke (1907-2000) - the man with whom the most significant period in the East German intelligence services is associated.

General Erich Mielke

The personality of Erich Mielke, who headed the MGB of the GDR for thirty-two years, from 1957 to 1989, cannot be ignored when talking about the formation and military path of the East German special services. The whole conscious life of the hereditary proletarian (his father was a wood finisher and his mother was a seamstress) Erich Fritz Emil Mielke passed in the ranks of the German communist movement. He joined the youth communist organization of the KKE - the Communist Youth League of Germany - at the age of 14 - in 1921, and at the age of 18 he became a member of the Communist Party of Germany. After graduating from high school, Mielke worked as a sales agent while also being a reporter for the Red Banner (Die Rote Fahne) newspaper, the press organ of the German Communist Party.

In 1931, Mielke participated in the murder of two policemen, after which he fled to Belgium and further to the Soviet Union. While in the USSR, Milke studied at the International Lenin School, and then became its teacher. September 1936 - March 1939. Erich Mielke, under the name Fritz Leisner, fought in the Spanish Civil War. In the republican army, he led the operations department of the brigade headquarters, then was an instructor of the 11th international brigade and chief of staff of the 11th international brigade, having received the military rank of captain of the republican army. The final defeat of the Republicans by Franco's troops forced Mielke to hide in France, and then in Belgium. Mielke met World War II in France, where he posed as a Latvian emigrant and lived under a false name, secretly participating in the Resistance Movement. It is noteworthy that for several years the German occupation authorities have not been able to expose the underground communist. In December 1943, Mielke was detained by the German authorities and mobilized to the military construction organization Todt, from where he deserted a year later, in December 1944, and surrendered to the Allied forces.

In June 1945, after the end of World War II, Erich Mielke returned to Berlin. He joined the police and quickly made a career from a police inspector to one of the leaders of the German law enforcement system. After the formation of the German Democratic Republic on October 7, 1949, Milke joined the Main Directorate for the Protection of the Economy and was appointed its Inspector General, and in 1950 - Secretary of State of the service. In 1955, Erich Mielke took the post of Deputy Minister of State Security of the GDR, and in November 1957, Major General Erich Mielke headed the Ministry. In fact, it is Milke who can rightfully be called the father - the founder of this East German intelligence service, although he was already its third leader.

During the thirty-two years of leadership of the MGB of the GDR, Erich Mielke, of course, received new, higher military ranks. In 1959 he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General, in 1965 - Colonel General, and in 1980 - Army General. Erich Mielke became a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED in 1976, although much earlier than joining the leadership of the Central Committee, the Minister of State Security of the GDR played one of the key roles in both domestic and foreign policy of the country. In 1987, Milke was even awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, which, in principle, was quite justified, given the enormous merits of this man not only to the GDR, but also to the Soviet Union.

Creation of foreign intelligence. Markus Wolf

For three decades, the MGB of the GDR remained the strongest intelligence agency in Central Europe and one of the strongest intelligence services in the world. The Ministry of State Security of the GDR had an extremely effective intelligence service, one of the main tasks of which in the 1960s and 1970s was to was participation in the formation and support of national liberation and communist movements in Asia and Africa, as well as cooperation with radical left organizations in neighboring Germany and some other European countries. Initially, the foreign intelligence service of the Ministry of State Security of the GDR faced serious difficulties in its work, since the GDR was not recognized by many countries of the world and, accordingly, there was no possibility of creating legal representations at embassies. However, illegal work only benefited the special service, helping to increase the efficiency of its activities and improve the professional qualities of employees.

Almost from the very beginning of its existence, since December 1952, the East German foreign intelligence - the Main Intelligence Directorate of the MGB of the GDR - was headed by Markus Wolf (1923-2006). He was the son of the German communist Friedrich Wolf, and in his youth he was trained in the USSR, where the family was evacuated after the Nazis came to power in Germany. At the end of May 1945 22-year-old Wolf was sent to Germany among other German communists to ensure the coming to power of the German Communist Party. At first he worked as a correspondent in the media, then, after the creation of the GDR in 1949, he was appointed first adviser to the country's embassy in the Soviet Union. In August 1951, Markus Wolf was summoned from Moscow to Berlin, where he began work in the GDR's foreign intelligence service, which was being created. In December 1952, he headed the foreign intelligence service of the GDR, which at that time employed only 12 infiltrated agents. Over the three decades of leadership of the intelligence service, Wolf managed to bring the number of embedded agents to one and a half thousand people, many of whom occupied serious positions in the ruling structures of the enemy states, including Germany.

The most important activity of the Stasi was the work against the neighboring Germany. It was in this direction that the main forces of East German intelligence were concentrated, especially since the Soviet leadership also demanded information from the sponsored intelligence services of the GDR about the situation in West Germany. Stasi agents worked in the German government and intelligence services, monitored the Bundeswehr and American troops in West Germany, and monitored NATO activities in the Federal Republic of Germany. Since numerous NATO military formations were stationed on the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany, the task of the Stasi agents in West Germany was, first of all, to observe and collect intelligence data on the activities of NATO troops so that the Soviet military command, in turn, could assess and analyze the state of the troops probable adversary.

The tasks of East German intelligence included not only the implementation of classical intelligence activities to collect information of a political, military, economic nature, but also work to discredit and disorganize the right-wing conservative and anti-communist forces of the West German political scene. According to American and West German researchers, it was the Stasi that stood behind the left-wing radical terrorists from the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion) and some other organizations in the 1970s and 1980s. who waged an "urban guerrilla war" on the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, in reality, the contribution of the Stasi to the activities of the ultra-left is exaggerated. The East German leadership never had much sympathy for the Red Army Faction and other similar groups, since their ideology diverged significantly from the official Soviet version of communist ideology. On the other hand, the communist convictions of the members of the Red Army Faction could not but arouse a certain favor among some leaders of the East German special services. Therefore, RAF fighters, hiding from West German justice, found refuge in the territory of the GDR. Thus, members of the Red Army Faction Susanna Albrecht, Werner Lotze, Eckehart Freiherr von Seckendorf-Guden, Christian Dumlein, Monika Helbing, Sielke Meyer-Witt, Henning Beer, Sigrid Sternebekk and Ralph-Baptist Friedrich lived in the GDR under false names.

It is known that the Stasi provided some patronage to the legendary Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, nicknamed "Carlos the Jackal".
Carlos considered himself a revolutionary of the Leninist school, but most Western publications call him a professional terrorist. Be that as it may, he often visited the territory of the GDR and the East German secret services were personally instructed by the Minister of State Security of the GDR, Erich Mielke, in no case to interfere with the activities of Carlos, who lived on a South Yemeni passport and not to detain either him or his people, but only conduct surveillance against Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez. Carlos, who collaborated with the Libyan secret services and Palestinian revolutionary organizations, visited the territory of the GDR several times.

The Stasi in Africa and the Middle East

An important activity of the Stasi was the support of national liberation movements in the countries of the Third World. East German secret services had particularly strong ties with revolutionary organizations in the Middle East and Africa. The Stasi provided organizational, educational and methodological assistance to revolutionary organizations and regimes in Palestine, South Yemen, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, Southern Rhodesia, and South Africa. Erich Mielke argued that those who could control the activities of the Arab intelligence services and national liberation organizations would make a decisive contribution to the victory of the world communist movement. Therefore, the Arab East fell into the zone of priority attention of the Ministry of State Security of the GDR. Thus, the People's Republic of South Yemen (since 1970 - the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen) occupied one of the most important places in the activities of the Stasi, since it was considered by the Soviet and East German leadership as the main springboard for the spread of communist ideology on the Arabian Peninsula. A Stasi contingent of 60 officers was stationed in Aden, later increased to 100 employees. The residence of the MGB of the GDR in Yemen was led by Colonel Siegfried Fiedler.

The task of East German intelligence in South Yemen was to reorganize the local Ministry of State Security, which, before the arrival of foreign advisers, had a rather loose and ineffective structure. Instructors from the Stasi were assigned to each of the departments of the South Yemeni secret service, who simultaneously performed the functions of agents who monitored the activities of the South Yemeni intelligence officers and counterintelligence officers. On the other hand, South Yemen, under the influence of the GDR, began to provide material and technical assistance to numerous revolutionary organizations in Asia and Africa, whose bases were located on the territory of the country. Through South Yemen, arms were supplied to revolutionary organizations fighting in Palestine against Israel.

Another important object of attention of the MGB of the GDR in the Arab world was the Palestine Liberation Organization. On August 12, 1979, Colonel-General Erich Mielke met with the head of the PLO intelligence service, Abu Iiyab. The Stasi assisted the Palestinian national liberation movement in acquiring weapons and special technical equipment. With the help of the Stasi, the transfer to Palestine of volunteers from among the Western European leftists who wanted to receive military training at the bases of Palestinian organizations or take part in hostilities was also organized. The PLO militants made up the bulk of the students in the training courses for saboteurs organized by the Stasi on the territory of the GDR. At the same time, the Stasi also collected information about the balance of power in the Palestinian national liberation movement, which also did not differ in unity and was split into a number of organizations opposing, and even openly hostile to each other.

At the same time, the active presence in the Arab world also created a lot of problems for the GDR, which the special services had to disentangle. So, on the territory of the GDR there were a large number of Arabs - citizens of Iraq, Syria, Libya, who studied at local higher educational institutions or worked. Many of them were activists of the communist movement. The most serious problems arose with the Iraqi communists, who were persecuted in their homeland by Saddam Hussein's regime. In the GDR, Iraqi communists found political asylum, but were not freed from the surveillance of Iraqi intelligence. Moreover, the agents of the latter attempted extrajudicial reprisals against political opponents on the territory of another state - the GDR. So, in the summer of 1981, an attempt was made to kidnap an Iraqi emigrant right in the center of Berlin. Iraqi intelligence agents tried to drag him into the trunk of a car, but passers-by prevented the kidnapping. The Stasi had to carry out tasks to protect Iraqi communists living in the GDR from persecution by Saddam's special services. Many communists were supplied with fake passports and housed in safe houses. I also had to deal with the problems of the Kurds, who were also hiding from the persecution of the Iraqi special services.

Another Arab state with which the Stasi had to cooperate was Libya. Muammar al-Gaddafi, who came to power in this country in 1969, patronized revolutionary movements in all parts of the world, supporting the Palestinian national liberation movement, African revolutionary organizations, and even Philippine partisans. With the help of the Stasi, weapons were supplied to Libya, while the East German secret services also helped radical Arab organizations controlled by Gaddafi.

On the African continent, one of the closest partners of the Stasi was the Ethiopian state security agencies. After pro-Soviet officers came to power in Ethiopia as a result of the revolution, East German instructors were sent to the country, including in the field of organizing state security. The work on the creation of the Ethiopian special services was headed by Major General Gerhard Naiber, sent to Addis Ababa, to whom about 100 officers of the Ministry of State Security of the GDR were assigned to obey. For several years, Stasi employees, as well as specialists from the people's police and the National People's Army of the GDR, have been training employees of Ethiopia's law enforcement agencies. On the other hand, Ethiopian intelligence officers were trained in Berlin. The competence of the Stasi also included cooperation with Ethiopian intelligence in monitoring Ethiopian students studying in higher educational institutions of the GDR - many of them were under the influence of Western propaganda and were ready to flee to West Berlin at the slightest opportunity. Therefore, the Ethiopian intelligence services turned to East German colleagues for help when it was necessary to carry out operations to prevent impending escapes or to detain pro-Western agitators.

With the help of East German intelligence, the militants and commanders of the armed units of the African National Congress, called "Wimkonto We Sizwe" - "Spears of the People", were also trained. South African anti-apartheid fighters received special military training on the territory of the GDR. The training of partisans from South Africa began in the GDR in 1971. Later, the Stasi also organized training courses for fighters of the national liberation movements from Namibia, Mozambique and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). The students were divided into two groups. The commanders of military units were trained at a special military training ground, and the alleged future leaders and senior officers of the state security agencies of the South African states were trained at the Center for Foreign Relations of the Ministry of State Security of the GDR.

"De-Sovietization" and the end of the Stasi

The political crisis in the GDR, which preceded the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany, directly contributed to the cessation of the existence of the largest intelligence agency in Central Europe. The Soviet leadership, which actually “surrendered” the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States of America standing behind it, did not take any steps to maintain its influence in Eastern and Central Europe. The positions that allowed the Soviet Union to talk on an equal footing with the United States and NATO were lost almost instantly - when the Soviet leadership with M.S. Gorbachev agreed to the unification of Germany, without even demanding security guarantees for the sincere and longtime friends of the Soviet Union - the political and military leaders of the GDR. Meanwhile, the end of the Stasi also marked the gradual end of Soviet military and political influence in the region. The autumn of 1989 was accompanied in the GDR by an increase in popular uprisings of an anti-communist nature. First of all, the victims of the anti-communist attacks were police officers, military personnel, employees of state security agencies.

On November 13, 1989, 82-year-old General of the Army Erich Mielke, Minister of State Security of the country, was summoned to the People's Chamber of the GDR. He tried to assure the deputies that the ministry kept everything under control, but was ridiculed. On December 6, the elderly minister resigned, because the day before, on December 5, a criminal case had been opened against Mielke on charges of causing serious damage to the national economy of the GDR. Mielke was arrested and placed in solitary confinement. Despite his advanced age, Mielke was in prison all the time while the investigative measures lasted. But the new German authorities failed to find the real corpus delicti in the activities of the former Minister of State Security. Therefore, it was necessary to stir up the past, taking advantage of the only chance to put the elderly politician in prison.

In 1991, Erich Mielke was reminded of the murder of two policemen, committed back in 1931, during the fighting communist youth. Twenty months lasted trial on the fact of Mielke's participation in the murder of police officers sixty years ago. Finally, on October 6, 1993, 86-year-old Erich Mielke was sentenced to six years in prison. However, two years later, in 1995, he was released. Nevertheless, the money from the bank account and all property were confiscated from the elderly Mielke. The former Minister of State Security of the GDR was given a two-room apartment with a total area of 18 meters and an allowance equal to the allowances of all GDR state security pensioners - just over five hundred dollars a month. In March 2000, Mielke was placed in a nursing home and died on May 21, 2000.

The head of East German foreign intelligence, Colonel General Markus Wolf, resigned from the post of head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of State Security of the GDR back in 1986 - according to the official version, without working with Erich Mielke. The fall of the Berlin Wall forced him to emigrate to the USSR, and then, after the suppression of the State Emergency Committee in the USSR, to seek political asylum in Austria. In September 1991, Wolf nevertheless returned to Germany - at his own peril and risk, where, of course, he was arrested. In 1993, Wolf was sentenced to six years in prison, but in 1995 the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany overturned the sentence of the former intelligence chief. Markus Wolff until the end of his days was engaged in writing memoirs and was very proud of the fact that during interrogations by the German special services he did not betray a single Stasi agent. On November 9, 2006, 83-year-old Markus Wolf passed away. Despite the fact that a top-class professional, who also had a serious database, was offered life-long maintenance by the special services of many Western states - provided he worked for them as a consultant, Markus Wolf preferred to end his life as an ordinary German pensioner.

Cadres decide everything...!
/ I.V. Stalin /

Ministry of State Security of the GDR(German ministerium fur Sta ats si Cherheit ), informally abbr. Stasy, Stasi) - counterintelligence and intelligence (since 1952) state body of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
It was formed on February 8, 1950, following the model and with the participation of the USSR Ministry of State Security. The headquarters was located in the Lichtenberg district of East Berlin. Ministry motto: Shield and sword party"(German. Schild und Schwert der Partei), meant the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. Many experts consider the Stasi the most effective intelligence agency in the history of the world.

There is a lot of bukoFF in this material. The only thing I wanted to say is that this is not about the Stasi as an organization. People are the main focus of what follows.

Matthias Warnig, head of the Russian branch of Dresdner Bank, which was engaged in the evaluation of Yuganskneftegaz, worked in the secret police of the GDR before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and after the collapse of the USSR, maintained personal and official ties with future Russian President Vladimir Putin. This became known as a result of an investigation conducted by the business publication The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the translation of which was published on the Inopressa.Ru website.
According to the WSJ, the history of the relationship between Putin and Warnig was reconstructed from the intelligence documents of the GDR ("Stasi") and personal correspondence, as well as interviews with their colleagues.
Stasi documents declassified after the fall of communism, according to the WSJ, show that Warnig, now 49, began working in East German intelligence in the 1970s. It appears from the dossier that at the Stasi, Warnig specialized in collecting and evaluating information on the production of armaments. As former Warnig chief Frank Weigelt said in an interview last year, the would-be banker quickly gained a reputation as a top-notch recruiter in West Germany.

According to the WSJ, since 1985, Vladimir Putin has also been recruiting in the GDR, or more precisely, in Dresden, but already for the KGB. According to the publication, his duties included attracting potential secret agents capable of working in enemy territory without diplomatic cover.
A month before the fall of the communist regime of the GDR, in October 1989, Warnig was sent to Dresden for tacit cooperation with the KGB, writes WSJ. Soviet intelligence recruited Stasi employees, hoping to "intercept" its agents in the FRG. According to Klaus Zuckhold, who claims that Vladimir Putin himself recruited him to work for the KGB, Warnig belonged to one of the intelligence cells organized by a Soviet agent in Dresden. Zuckold said that the Warnig cell, set up by Putin after the fall of the Berlin Wall, operated "under the guise of a consulting company." Each of its agents was offered to establish their own company to finance intelligence activities.
Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Vladimir Putin returned to Leningrad, and Warnig, according to the WSJ, got a job at Dresdner under the guise of an employee of the GDR Ministry of Economics. When applying for a job, Walter did not mention working for the Stasi, and there is no information about his connection with intelligence in his personal file.
In 1990, Putin became an adviser to the mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak. From June 1991, he headed the city committee for external relations and supervised contacts with foreign investors. In the same year, Warnig came to Russia and headed the Russian branch of Dresdner Bank, which opened in St. Petersburg in December 1991.
According to the publication, Putin and Warnig did not hide their acquaintance. "It was Putin who introduced me to Matthias," Sergei Belyaev, a former deputy mayor in charge of privatization, told the WSJ. "Their camaraderie was visible at first sight."
And in 1993, BNP - Dresdner Bank, a joint venture between Dresdner Bank and the French Banque Nationale de Paris, was opened in the northern capital. According to the publication, this became possible thanks to the help of the mayor's office and, in particular, Vladimir Putin, through whom the licenses needed to open a bank passed.
In the second half of the 1990s, Dresdner becomes a major player in the Russian market and strengthens its ties with Gazprom. In 1996, the German bank was one of the financial advisors to the gas concern when selling its shares to foreign investors, and in 1999 advised Ruhrgas, which bought a 2.5 percent stake in Gazprom from the Russian government.
In 2002, when Vladimir Putin had been president of Russia for two years, Warnig moved to Moscow as president of ZAO Dresdner Bank. In the summer of 2003, when the Russian office of the bank's investment arm, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW), merged with ZAO Dresdner Bank, Warnig became head of all Russian operations for the group.
In August 2004, the Ministry of Justice hired DrKW to appraise Yukos' main asset, Yuganskneftegaz, in anticipation of its sale to pay off the oil company's debts. As noted by the WSJ, DrKW received this contract without a tender.
In the end, Yugansk was sold on October 19 to an unknown Baikalfinancegroup, which eventually came under the control of the state-owned Rosneft, which is involved in the merger with Gazprom. In February, Gazprom nominated Warnig to its board of directors.

Former Stasi officers serve in the Brandenburg Criminal Office. Some of them hold leadership positions, and two were part of the security service of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
A large group of former employees of the GDR state security service, known as the Stasi, serve in the criminal department of the federal state of Brandenburg. This was reported by the TV magazine Monitor of the first program of the German television ARD. Commenting on the data, the chairman of the police union, Rainer Wendt, said that this fact indicates a major mistake made by government authorities.
The Department of Criminal Affairs of the State of Brandenburg solves tasks that go to the federal level - it provides protection for statesmen and fights against organized crime. According to Wendt, many of his areas of activity are of interest to espionage services, as well as terrorist organizations and criminal groups. Therefore, people who do not cause the slightest doubt from the state-legal point of view should work there, the policeman emphasized.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Brandenburg admitted the facts given in the TV magazine
In response to an inquiry, the Brandenburg Ministry of the Interior said that 58 former Stasi employees now work in the criminal department. According to the data, there are about a hundred of them, 13 hold leadership positions. Some of them worked as interrogators in the elite Stasi IX division, which was engaged in staging political trials.

Historian Roger Engelmann (Roger Engelmann), who studied the work of this unit, called the incident a scandal. "I just can't believe it. I was sure that such people were weeded out a long time ago," the dpa agency quoted the historian as saying. Local media describe it as poignant that Chancellor Angela Merkel's dacha guards included two former Stasi operatives. One of them worked for ten years in Section III, which was engaged in listening to telephone conversations of subscribers from Western countries.

German Chancellor, CDU chairman Angela Merkel did not work for the GDR State Security Ministry (colloquially the Stasi) when she lived in the former East Germany, but admitted that they tried to "recruit her into the authorities". The Federal Chancellor spoke about this on Tuesday in the program of the German TV channel ARD "People visiting Sandra Meischberger".
Although Angela Dorothea Kasner (married Merkel), as you know, was born on July 17, 1954 in Hamburg (FRG), she lived in the GDR until the reunification of West and East Germany, since in the same 1954 her father, a Lutheran priest, moved the family in the GDR, to the parish he received in the small provincial town of Templin.
In this regard, Angela Merkel's political opponents from time to time tried to accuse her of ties with the Stasi, without which, according to them, her brilliant academic career in those days in the "socialist bloc" would have been impossible. However, no documentary evidence of these conjectures was found.
On the eve of the start of the election campaign scheduled for late September elections to the Bundestag, Angela Merkel answered questions related to the above suspicions for the first time.
The chancellor said that in the late 1970s, after an interview that she, as a young physicist, took place at the University of Ilmenau for the position of a researcher, she was brought to the office, which was occupied by an officer of the MGB.
To the offer of cooperation, according to Merkel, she replied that she was not suitable for such work, because she did not know how to keep her mouth shut and would quickly spill everything to her friends.
“This is where it all ended, since the ability to remain silent was the main prerequisite for being recognized as fit (to work for the Stasi),” the chancellor explained, adding that she never got a position as a researcher at this university.
Angela Merkel also admitted that at that time she repeatedly thought about leaving the GDR, but still did not take advantage of a trip to Hamburg to her relatives to escape. According to her, the attachment to parents and friends who remained in the GDR was too great.
The chancellor confirmed that in her youth, indeed, she was a member of the youth organization "Free German Youth" (the East German analogue of the Soviet "Komsomol"), which by no means characterizes her, by her own admission, as a fighter for German unity. "Naturally, there were many human rights activists who actively fought against the system (in the GDR)," Merkel said.
“I have chosen the life path of a scientist for myself. I have taken up a science that does not require many compromises, where it is not so easy to get around the truth,” she explained her choice of physics.
At the same time, according to Merkel, there were many positive things in the private life of the citizens of the GDR, so she urged not to paint everything in black and white.
Nevertheless, she, as a politician, does not accept anything from the GDR system as such, since she considers it a dictatorship built on injustice, and therefore incapable of developing into a state of law.
"All this system has taught us is that we will never want anything like that," Angela Merkel said.
The chancellor expressed the hope that she answered fairly frankly and in detail questions about her past with the Stasi and that there were no "dark spots" left in her biography.

In the photo - 1972, East Germany. Angela Merkel at a civil defense exercise.

Photo: Merkel and Putin (livejournal.com)

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who arrived in Brazil on the afternoon of July 13, began negotiations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. This is reported by Interfax. The meeting between Putin and Merkel takes place at the residence of the governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro.
According to the presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, the topic of negotiations between Putin and Merkel will be the situation in Ukraine.
RIA Novosti notes that the leaders of the two countries exchanged greetings and talked a little in German. After allowing media representatives to take some protocol photos, Putin and Merkel continued their conversation without journalists.
The result of the communication was not long in coming: German Chancellor Angela Merkel believes that the Ukrainian government should start negotiations with opponents of the central government operating in eastern Ukraine as soon as possible.
This is stated in the message of the press service of the German government following the meeting between Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Brazilian Rio de Janeiro.
“Both agreed that direct negotiations between the Ukrainian government and the separatists in the format of a video conference should be held as soon as possible,” the report says.
The German government clarified that the goal of such negotiations should be a bilateral ceasefire. An important condition for this, the message emphasizes, should be effective control over the Ukrainian-Russian border and the mutual exchange of prisoners.
The report also recalls that on Thursday, July 10, Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, in a telephone conversation with Putin, noted the need to make efforts for a ceasefire in Ukraine, as well as to hold a meeting between representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the OSCE and separatists.
“For this, Russia must use its influence capabilities,” the press service of the German government clarifies.
On the same day, Merkel was on the phone with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and both reportedly also agreed on the need for urgent talks involving all parties.
At the same time, the German chancellor recognized Poroshenko's actions regarding the separatists as legitimate, but urged him to take into account the balance of these measures and protect the civilian population.

Photo (screenshot) from the website: www.bundesregierung.de

Just a bunch of extracts that are like a puzzle that anyone can try to put together. I wish you good luck!
And I have just one question: "Who are you, Frau Merkel?"

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Stasi anarchists

Relations between the Stasi and the "Red Army Faction" began in March 1978 after intense West German police action ended with a series of arrests that forced the rest of the terrorists to flee West Germany. When several terrorists managed to escape in Paris, Inge Wit decided to head to the GDR. Crossing the East German border was not too difficult. The West German authorities did not check on anyone who traveled to the East, maintaining the myth of free movement throughout Germany. This was indeed a myth, since the entry control by the communist GDR was the most stringent in the world.

Wit arrived in East Germany through a checkpoint at Laueberg, about 25 miles southeast of Hamburg, armed with a pistol. Here she asked permission to speak with a Stasi representative and was detained until the arrival of Colonel Dahl from Berlin. Dahl spoke with the terrorist and received permission from General Nyber to let her into the GDR. Wit spent several days as a guest of the MGB of the GDR in a villa near Berlin. She then flew to South Yemen, where many members of the "Red Army Faction" were trained in camps set up by intelligence officers from South Yemen and the Palestine Liberation Organization. She received the plane ticket from the Stasi. Wit continued to maintain contact with Dahl and subsequently took part in the resettlement of "pensioners" of the Fraction, of which she became a member in 1983.

On April 18, 1991, prosecutor Alexander von Stahl prepared for decisive action. Based on the statements of fugitives - former Stasi employees and imprisoned terrorists, as well as on the files of the GDR MGB found in East Berlin, von Stahl issued six arrest warrants on charges of inciting premeditated murder and terrorism.

Five days later, on April 23, detectives from the federal crime agency based in eastern Berlin received five more arrest warrants. In addition to Nyber and Dahl, they arrested Günter Jaeckel, a former MGB colonel and deputy head of the anti-terrorist department; Gerhard Plomann - a former lieutenant colonel who was in charge of personnel in the MGB apparatus; former Major Gerd Seimseyl from the anti-terrorist department, who took care of the "pensioners" - "Red Army" on the orders of the leadership. The sixth warrant was “intended” for the head of the Ministry of State Security of the GDR, Erich Mielke, who was later placed in the Berlin Plötzensee prison, where he had been held since the winter of 1990, being accused of two murders. The seventh person under investigation was the former Lieutenant Colonel Helmut Voigt, who trained and patronized West German terrorists for more than ten years. He managed to escape to Greece, where he was arrested in 1994. He was sent to Germany, where he was convicted and sent to jail for 4 years.

Particularly appalling was the participation of former Stasi officers in the activities of the Stern-1 and Stern-2 training camps, where members of the Red Army Faction were trained in the use of anti-tank grenade launchers, weapons, and the handling of explosives. In these camps, MGB instructors - explosives specialists demonstrated to them the operation of grenade launchers equipped with a laser sight, which was powered by batteries and was intended to more accurately hit moving targets. The contact of the target with the laser beam led to the detonation of the explosive device.

On November 30, 1989, a shell containing about six kilograms of explosives pierced the side of an armored Mercedes in which Alfred Herrhausen was located. The 59-year-old head of Deutsche Bank, one of the brilliant West German businessmen and chief adviser to Helmut Kohl, was assassinated. The terrorists used the same grenade launcher that the Stasi specialists trained the Red Army terrorists to use. The shot was fired from a motorcycle parked on the side of the road near Herrhausen's home in Bad Homburg, near Frankfurt, on the only stretch of road Herrhausen used to take to his Frankfurt office.

The charge was set up and installed in such a way that, like an anti-tank projectile, it pierced the right rear door of the car and, having exploded in the passenger compartment, knocked out all four armored doors.

The “Wolfgang Beer group” claimed responsibility for the incident, reporting this in a letter to the police. The letter also contained an image of a five-pointed star, inside of which a machine gun and the letters RAF (Rote Army Fraction) were drawn. It was the "Faction" logo, used when terrorists claimed responsibility for their use of force.

Wolfgang Beer, a Faction terrorist, died in a car accident in 1980. His brother Henning appeared in East Germany shortly thereafter and made a confession about his involvement in the "Red Army".

Less than a year later, Fraction struck again. Its latest victim was Hans Neusel, the 63-year-old state secretary of the West German Ministry of the Interior, who was in charge of matters of domestic security. On June 27, 1990, a powerful rocket hit the starboard side of an armored BMW as it turned onto the autobahn near Bonn. Neusel that day gave his driver a day off and got behind the wheel himself - this saved his life. He received only minor injuries. The terrorists used exactly the same as in the case of Herrhausen, a grenade launcher with a laser sight, and again, the "Red Army Faction" took responsibility for the attack.

Specialists from the Stasi trained terrorists in the use of such weapons as the West German 9mm Heckler-and-Koch submachine gun, as well as the G-Z automatic rifle, the standard weapon of the German army; American revolver "Magnum-357" "Smith and Wesson" and the Soviet Kalashnikov AK-47. The shooting training, which took place in March 1981, was followed by practice - the "Red Army" learned to handle the Soviet RPG grenade launcher, which had long been the favorite weapon of terrorists around the world. During interrogations conducted by detectives of the federal criminal department, former Stasi Major Hans-Dieter Gaudich said that in these practical exercises they somehow placed mannequins made of sawdust stuffed with sawdust and a German shepherd in a Mercedes - the instructors wanted to bring the training situation as close as possible to real, combat. Three volleys from the RPG-7 tore the dummies and the dog to shreds.

In addition, the “probationers” were taught how to lay bombs and explained the most vulnerable places for explosions near cars. And finally, the terrorists from the "Red Army Faction" learned how to make explosives from medicines sold in any pharmacy. Explosives were placed in fire extinguishers, which were placed under the front and rear fenders of the car and exploded. According to Inge Wit, these classes took place in March 1982.

Five months later, on August 31, 1981, a bomb exploded in front of the European Headquarters of the US Air Force, located southwest of the German city of Ramstein. The explosion occurred at seven o'clock in the morning, when the personnel had just begun to arrive at the base. Twenty people were injured, including Brigadier General Joseph Moore, Deputy Chief of Operations and Staff Officer Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Young. Experts from the Federal Criminal Investigation Agency found that the bomb had been planted "quite professionally" in a Volkswagen car. Another bomb was in another car, but did not explode. Two days after the explosion, the West German news agency DPA received a letter from the "Red Army Faction" stating that the explosion had been carried out by "a unit of the Sigurd Debus Command". Debus was a member of the Fraction who died in a Hamburg prison in April 1981 as a result of a hunger strike.

From the book The Great French Revolution 1789–1793 author Kropotkin Petr Alekseevich

XLI "ANARCHISTS" But who, finally, are these anarchists about whom Brissot speaks so much and whose extermination he demands with such bitterness? First of all, anarchists are not a party. In the Convention there is a Mountain, a Gironde, a Plain, or rather a Swamp, or Belly, as they say.

From the book Makhno and his time: On the Great Revolution and the Civil War 1917-1922. in Russia and Ukraine author Shubin Alexander Vladlenovich

1. Anarchists in exile Once in Romania, the Makhnovists were disarmed by the authorities. Nestor and his wife were settled in Bucharest. The Bolsheviks demanded his extradition, and in April 1922 Makhno chose to move to Poland. April 12, 1922 Makhno and his associates were placed in Poland in

by John Keller

Moscow borrows Stasi technology A valuable side of the Stasi's cooperation with the KGB was the possibility for the first to use a computer data bank called the Joint Enemy Intelligence System. In fact, this system was created by engineers