South America: NKVD fixed-post agents against Nazi-fascism
May 6, 2005
![The Argentine press used to inform about mysterious fires on Spanish and Portuguese ships. On the photo – publication from the newspaper "La Nacion" (20.12.42).](/noticias/2005/vapor_c00b.jpg "The Argentine press used to inform about mysterious fires on Spanish and Portuguese ships. On the photo – publication from the newspaper "La Nacion" (20.12.42).")
A. Trushin, ITAR-TASS corr. (with the courtesy of the author)
At the time of fierce battles with fascists near Moscow, thousands of miles away from the Soviet Union in a tiny Chilean city Chillan warm sweaters were knitted for fighting Red Army men! The city that suffered the most devastating earthquake in 1939, was one of the first in the Western hemisphere to declare its solidarity with fighting Russia. And the organizer of these actions, Enrique Firberg, with the “authority” of the Chilean communist party very soon joined the intelligence net headed by the Soviet fixed-post spy “Arthur”, whose real name was Iosif Romualdovich Grigulevich. At that time he was hardly thirty.
That was narrated to the ITAR-TASS correspondent by a writer and journalist Nil Nikandrov, who is at present in Caracas. His long-term search in police archives of the Latin America countries, mass-media departments of national libraries, meetings with brothers-in-arms of Iosif Grigulevich, made it possible to restore the history of the heroic epopee of the “intelligence international” in the South America.
Grigulevich arrived to Argentina in December 1940 with the instructions to prepare the “Latin American legend”. The NKVD foreign department planned to send him to the occupied by the Hitlerites Western Europe. But after June 22, 1941, Grigulevich's destiny obtained a new turn: Germany attacked the Soviet Union and the activity of all intelligence agencies abroad was brought under the war time tasks. Iosif Grigulevich was appointed the chief of the South American fixed-post agents.
By the end of 1941 owing to the support of local communist parties, the “Arthur army” amounted to 200 warriors: Chileans, Argentineans, Uruguayans, Brazilians, representatives of other Latin American countries. It also included the Slavs – Ukrainians and Belorussians, who came to the continent in search for work. It is possible to state with confidence, that the most distant front-line of the Great Patriotic war passed through the Latin American countries.
The struggle with Nazis, their “fifth column”, abwer and gestapo agents was severe and straight-out.
South America was viewed by the Hitlerites as a convenient observation base for the USSR allies fleet movement. The Chilean and Argentine ports were used for secret supplies of raw materials and food for the Third Reich and its allies.
“Intelligence and sabotage international”, established by “Arthur” became a serious headache for the hitlerite special services. Fires in the holds of the so called “neutral” ships, used by Germany for transportation of military cargo from Buenos-Aires used to happen with alarming regularity. However, the “saboteurs” were difficult to reveal. The names of some of the fighters of that secret struggle – Antonio Gonzalez, Felix Verzhbitskyi, Pavel Borysyuk, Gregory Furdas and others – have only become known many years after the war.
Another mission of the Latin American net was to arrange transportation of reliable agents to the enemy and occupied by the enemy countries. In Chile they established the underground “documents factory” under the code name “Market”. For the period of 1942-1943 the “Market” provided with reliable documents at least 150 Spaniards, French and Italians, who without a single failure, were shipped to fighting Europe and joined the guerrilla and underground detachments. The most trained members of “Arthur” net among whom was a Chilean “Carlos” and Venezuelan “Inti” were sent for illegal activity in Madrid and Lisbon.
A lot has been done to expose the Nazi accomplices. In this case, the information obtained by the intelligence agents via a chain of intermediaries, was provided to the reliable parliamentarians in Argentine, Chile, Uruguay, who “voiced” it, sounded the alarm, demanded from the governments to more actively cut short the activities of fascists on the continent. So, in 1942, the Chilean senator Salvador Ocampo made an angry speech in the Parliament regarding shameless caliche trade with Franco Spain. The senator referred to particular facts (the information was supplied by “Arthur” people): thousands of tons of caliche were transported to the port of Buenos Aires to be reloaded to Spanish ships. The senator statement echoed throughout the world.
N. Nikandrov in his book “The agent with luck” devoted a big portion of his documentary research to the heroic but little-known activities of “Arthur” fixed-post agents net. The book is being prepared for publishing in Moscow.
Large photo of the newspaper
"La Nacion" (20.12.42)