От Chestnut
К All
Дата 28.06.2005 14:47:07
Рубрики Современность; Спецслужбы;

В возрасте 93 лет умерла быв.советская шпионка в Соед. Королевстве Мелита Норвуд

Melita Norwood, once described as "the most important British female agent ever recruited by the KGB", has died at the age of 93, it was announced yesterday.

Mrs Norwood, whose espionage activities were disclosed by Vasili Mitrokhin - a former KGB archivist - in 1999 after his defection to MI6 with a large number of files, died at a West Midlands nursing home almost four weeks ago.

Her family arranged a private funeral service after which there was a cremation.

Mrs Norwood, a committed CND and Communist party member, worked as a secretary for the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association, whose "tube alloys" project was a cover for nuclear weapons development.

For 40 years Mrs Norwood, who was given the codename Hola by her KGB spymasters, photographed documents and passed them to her Soviet controllers. The intelligence was passed on to Soviet intelligence officials.

According to Christopher Andrew's book, The Mitrokhin Archive, her treachery placed her on a par with Burgess, MacLean, Philby, Blunt and Cairncross. Prof Andrew, a Cambridge academic, discovered Hola's role while examining trunkloads of documents brought out of Russia by Mitrokhin. His research revealed that she had been recruited as an agent in the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, in 1937.

Prof Andrew said yesterday that Mrs Norwood had been an "extraordinaily motivated Soviet agent right to the end of her life".

She took the Morning Star every morning until her death on June 2.

Mrs Norwood once said: "I did what I did not to make money. I thought that perhaps some of what I had access to might be useful in helping Russia to keep abreast of Britain, America and Germany."

http://opinion.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/28/norw28.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/06/28/ixhome.html

In hoc signo vinces
От reinis
К Chestnut (28.06.2005 14:47:07)
Дата 29.06.2005 11:48:28

латыхска кстати (-)
От Chestnut
К reinis (29.06.2005 11:48:28)
Дата 29.06.2005 13:14:17

Урождённая Сирнис: вот некролог из сегодняшнего "Телеграфа". ОБКЗ, однако

Melita Norwood, who died on June 2 aged 93, caused a brief flurry of excitement in 1999 when it was revealed that not only had she spied for the Russians for four decades, but that the authorities had known of her treachery but had done nothing about it.

The story of Norwood, a jam-making great-grandmother and self-styled "Bolshevik of Bexleyheath", broke in September 1999 after she admitted being "Hola", a KGB agent exposed in papers produced by Vasili Mitrokhin, the KGB archivist who had defected to the West in 1992.

Norwood's treachery had begun in the 1930s when she was a secretary at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association and passed on secret documents, including details of Britain's first atomic bomb.

Her security clearance was revoked in 1951 amid suspicions about her Communist sympathies, and suspicions hardened into certainty in 1966, when the "Venona" files of decrypted Soviet communications revealed that she had worked as a spy in the immediate post-war years. Yet MI5 decided not to interview her, and she continued to pass documents to her Soviet handlers until her retirement in 1972.

When further evidence came to light following Mitrokhin's defection, junior MI5 staff decided not to pursue an investigation because it "might have led to criticism for harassing an old lady", and eventually the law officers too decided not to prosecute. The decision led to an investigation by the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee, which concluded that MI5 had made a series of "serious failures".

Far more outrageous, in the view of the press, was the fact that Norwood treated public indignation about her treachery as a huge joke. She steadfastly refused to accept that she had anything to be ashamed of: Soviet Communism was "a good experiment, and I agreed with it… I would do it again," she told reporters.

More interesting was the question of how an apparently intelligent woman could have remained loyal to a system which had caused the deaths of millions and impoverished and oppressed millions more.

She was born Melita Sirnis on March 25 1912 to an English mother and a Latvian father. A bookbinder by trade, Alexander Sirnis translated and printed works by Lenin and Trotsky, and later founded and edited a weekly paper, The Southern Worker and Labour and Socialist Journal. The family house, at Christchurch near Bournemouth, became known locally as "the Russian colony".

Alexander Sirnis died aged 37, when his daughter was six; but her political education was taken up by her mother, Gertrude, a member of the Co-operative Party and active in the Workers' Educational Association. When Melita was 10, the family moved to Thornhill, near Southampton, to live with her maternal aunt, one of the first female trades unionists and an official of the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries, which Melita was to join when she was 19.

Melita was educated at Itchen Secondary School, then studied Latin and Logic at Southampton University, but only for a year. She and her family moved to London, where she took a job in a Paddington bakers and joined the Independent Labour Party, getting to know such figures as Fenner Brockway, the founder of CND.

In 1936 the ILP split, with some members joining the Labour Party and others (including Melita Sirnis) the Communist Party. This was a time when Stalin was tightening his grip on the Russian people with purges and imprisonments without trial. Such details did not bother Sirnis: "You didn't have to agree with everything that was being done in Russia," she said. "But on the whole, it seemed to be a good idea."

In 1932 Sirnis had become a secretary with the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association at Euston, where she kept quiet about her Communism and was considered an industrious worker. The Russians were aware that the Association was involved in nuclear research, and in 1935 she was recommended to the NKVD, the precursor of the KGB, by Andrew Rothstein, one of the founders of the British Communist Party. She was recruited, and by 1937 was a full agent. In the early years of the war, a secret project known as "Tube Alloys" was launched, to build an atomic bomb. Understanding metals such as uranium was a key requirement, and much of the work passed over the desk of Sirnis's boss. Quietly and efficiently she removed Tube Alloys files from her boss's safe, photographed them and passed them on to her Soviet handlers.

After the Second World War, Anglo-American atomic co-operation broke down, and Britain decided to pursue Tube Alloys alone. It entailed massive investment in nuclear reactors and isotope separation plants. Every detail was passed on by Sirnis to the KGB.

She seemed to live a charmed life. In 1937 British agents rounded up a ring of Communist agents working at Woolwich Arsenal. Their ringleader, Percy Glading, had mentioned agent "Hola" in his notebook, but the authorities failed to identify her. After a few months on ice she was reactivated in 1938. In 1945 she was cleared for secret documents, despite concerns over her Communism.

In 1949 she married Hilary Norwood, a fellow-Communist and mathematics teacher. Her Soviet controller warned her not to tell her husband about her involvement in espionage, though he soon found out. Yet although he was said not to approve of her activities, he did not report her to the authorities nor, it seems, make any effort to dissuade her.

Most historians of the period argue that the nuclear spy Klaus Fuchs was more significant in enabling the Russians to build their nuclear capability, and that the worst that could be said of Norwood's treachery was that it enabled them to develop their atomic weapon a little earlier than they would have. This was a view expressed by MI5 in its written evidence to the 1999 parliamentary investigation.

Yet this was not quite the picture given in her file in the Mitrokhin archive, where she was described as "a committed, reliable and disciplined agent, striving to be of the utmost assistance". Indeed, so highly was she regarded by the KGB that in the 1930s, when, as a consequence of the purges, there were not enough Soviet officers to keep in contact with all their spies in the West, the KGB chose to keep in contact with her rather than with Kim Philby.

After the end of the Second World War, the KGB and Soviet military intelligence fought for control over her. She was secretly given a Soviet award, the Order of the Red Banner, in 1958, and was granted a small pension by the KGB a few years later.

In retirement, Norwood settled into suburban obscurity and would probably never have been unmasked had it not been for Mitrokhin's defection with six trunk-loads of files from the KGB archive, and for the work of the historian Christopher Andrew, who recognised the importance of the British spy codenamed Hola. The evidence provided by Mitrokhin added little to what MI5 already knew, but as interviewing Norwood might have led to the archive being compromised, the decision was taken to do nothing. When, in 1993, it was felt to be safe to interview her, MI5 again decided not to go ahead, reasoning that as a committed Communist she would be unlikely to incriminate herself, and that the service might be open to criticism for harassing an old lady.

The case slipped out of sight until 1998, when it was decided to allow the publication of Christopher Andrew's book on the Mitrokhin archive. The realisation that publicity surrounding the book might lead to the identification of agent Hola persuaded MI5 to consult the law officers, who recommended, yet again, that nothing be done.

Thus it was that when, in September 1999, journalists tracked Norwood down to her 1930s pebble-dash semi in Bexleyheath, their visit marked the first time that she knew she had been unmasked. For years she had carried on living with her secret, unaware that anyone, apart from her Russian handlers, knew about her past, her husband Hilary having died in 1986.

Much of the shock surrounding Norwood's exposure was due to the fact that she seemed so ordinary. Her neighbours in Bexleyheath knew she was a life-long Communist who still took the Morning Star - she would buy 32 copies of each issue and hand them out to friends - but she never appeared other than a mildly harmless eccentric, the only evidence of radicalism being the CND posters in her window. She was "The spy who came in from the Co-op".

She remained until the end a true believer in the myth of the Soviet peasant worker state that had first inspired her treachery.

She hated all reforms of the Soviet Union's genocidal dictatorship. Norwood remained convinced that Communism could work and that capitalism was ultimately doomed to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.

Melita Norwood is survived by a daughter.


In hoc signo vinces
От Женя
К Chestnut (28.06.2005 14:47:07)
Дата 28.06.2005 19:10:55

Разве до сих пор не ясна разница

между разведчиком (в т.ч. нелегалом) и щпионом?
Разведчик работает на свою страну (Абель-Фишер, Молодый, Вин и т.д.), при этом, бывает, вербует шпионов - предателей своей страны (Пеньковский, Филби, Гордиевский, Эймс и несть им числа).
Различать же по принципу "Наш - разведчик, чужой - шпион" можно, по-моему, только в детсадике.
От Александр А
К Женя (28.06.2005 19:10:55)
Дата 28.06.2005 21:32:41

разведчик и предатель-русские слова, а spion и spy- явно нет


Так что английский, немецкий американский -это всегда шпион, а русский всегда разведчик. Разница такая же как между космонавтом и астронавтом.
От Bigfoot
К Александр А (28.06.2005 21:32:41)
Дата 28.06.2005 21:37:24

В русском языке есть слово "шпион". (+)

Его можно найти в Толковом словаре русского языка. Как и "шпионаж".
Так что, не всегда. И разница не такая.
От Александр А
К Bigfoot (28.06.2005 21:37:24)
Дата 29.06.2005 11:10:48

Оно привнесенное...


А разведчик все-таки чисто русское слово.
Космонавт не совсем русское слово, однако разницу между космонавтом и астронавтом чувствуют все. Слово шпион несет в себе совершенно конкретный оттенок, который тоже чувствуют все(ну ладно, большинство). Вопрос на самом деле только в этом. Поэтому употребление слов "шпион", "разведчик"-вопрос личного пристрастия. Мне лично нравится употреблять их так как я написал.

Александр
От Bigfoot
К Александр А (29.06.2005 11:10:48)
Дата 29.06.2005 11:40:42

Способность к заимствованию...(+)

...это одна из характерных черт русского языка. В русском языке есть еще масса заимствованных слов, которые уже давно вошли в обыденный лексикон.
"Чистое" оно или нет - рояля не играет. В словаре есть - и баста.
А чувства к делу не подошьешь. Вам нравится - употребляйте, но не навязывайте свои предпочтения в качестве некого абсолюта:"Так что английский, немецкий американский -это всегда шпион, а русский всегда разведчик". Не всегда.
От Андю
К Chestnut (28.06.2005 14:47:07)
Дата 28.06.2005 14:54:58

Не шпионка, а разведчица. И большое ей человеческое спасибо. (-)
От tevolga
К Андю (28.06.2005 14:54:58)
Дата 28.06.2005 15:23:51

Если бы была "разведчицей" ее бы назвали "пионеркой":-))

Дело в величии и могучести русского языка:-))
C уважением к сообществу.
От СанитарЖеня
К tevolga (28.06.2005 15:23:51)
Дата 28.06.2005 15:30:50

Вас не затруднит выучить язык, прежде чем переводить с/на него?

На английский "разведчик" переводится, как scout,
а если подчеркнуть, что агентурный разведчик - intelligence/secret service officer/man/woman

Слово же pioneer переводится, как:
1) воен. "впереди идущий" (солдат пешего спецподразделения, выступающего впереди армии или полка для строительства дорог и создания необходимых условий для успешного продвижения войск)

Pioneer Corps — саперно-строительные части

2) пионер

а) первопоселенец, первооткрыватель, первопроходец

the pioneers of the West — первопоселенцы запада США

Syn:

settler, colonizer

б) первопроходец в науке, какой-л. профессии и т. п.; зачинатель, инициатор; новатор; in, of

the pioneer of open-space flights — первый вышедший в открытый космос человек

the pioneers of new wave in cinema — пионеры новой волны в кино

в) биол. растение, заселившее или занявшее свободный или пустующий ареал

3) устар.

а) землекоп; горнорабочий

Syn:

digger, excavator

б) сапер

pioneer tools — шанцевый инструмент

Syn:

miner
От tevolga
К СанитарЖеня (28.06.2005 15:30:50)
Дата 28.06.2005 15:43:43

А Вас не затруднит ознакомится с несколькими языками и историей пионерии в СССР

а не постить кусочки из словарей? Достаточно и ссылки:-))


>На английский "разведчик" переводится, как scout,

Как и до революции:-))

>Слово же pioneer переводится, как:
>1) воен. "впереди идущий" (солдат пешего спецподразделения, выступающего впереди армии или полка для строительства дорог и создания необходимых условий для успешного продвижения войск)

>Pioneer Corps — саперно-строительные части

Или же разведбатальон в немецком причем отнюдь не для строительства дорог;-))

Вы предполагаете что детская коммунистическая организация в СССР ассоциировалась с саперно-строительными подразделениями? Меня учили в детстве иному...
"Пионер - разведчик, шагаюший впереди".

Вы совсем забыли про английское "шпиен":-))

С уважением к сообществу.
От СанитарЖеня
К tevolga (28.06.2005 15:43:43)
Дата 28.06.2005 16:05:48

Re: А Вас...

>а не постить кусочки из словарей? Достаточно и ссылки:-))


>>На английский "разведчик" переводится, как scout,
>
>Как и до революции:-))

>>Слово же pioneer переводится, как:
>>1) воен. "впереди идущий" (солдат пешего спецподразделения, выступающего впереди армии или полка для строительства дорог и создания необходимых условий для успешного продвижения войск)
>
>>Pioneer Corps — саперно-строительные части
>
>Или же разведбатальон в немецком причем отнюдь не для строительства дорог;-))

Я вижу, Ваши знания истории ВМВ столь же фундаментальны?
Pionier - это сапёрный батальон.
Разведывательный назывался Aufklarungs.


>Вы предполагаете что детская коммунистическая организация в СССР ассоциировалась с саперно-строительными подразделениями? Меня учили в детстве иному...
>"Пионер - разведчик, шагаюший впереди".

Т.е. Ваше знание английского языка основывается на оставшихся в Вашей памяти обрывках пропаганды?
Применительно к скаутам, как детской организации - пионер это одна из возможных квалификаций скаута, дающаяся при сдаче зачета по оборудованию мостиков и разведке дорог.
А применительно к истории детского коммунистического движения - в СССР термин "пионер" был заимствован из немецкого (не английского) Der Junge Pionieren, детской организации, созданной КПГ. В свою очередь "пионеры" там восходят к военной специальности, существовавшей в Германии (а при Николае Первом также и в России), подвижные саперные подразделения, обеспечивающие прокладку путей войскам.

>Вы совсем забыли про английское "шпиен":-))

Вероятно, Вы имели в виду английское spy?
Слово "шпиен" не является английским, хотя и в русском его нет. В русском есть слово "шпион", точный перевод английского, с теми же коннотациями.
Фенимор Купер назвал свой роман "Шпион" (The Spy) именно потому, что по ходу чтения остается неясность в благородстве действий героя, разрешающаяся только к концу.
Хотел бы изначально подчеркнуть его честность - роман бы назывался The inlelligence Officer.
От tevolga
К СанитарЖеня (28.06.2005 16:05:48)
Дата 28.06.2005 16:34:34

Re: А Вас...

Вы меня убедили:-))
Был я в детстве "сапером":-))
Неужели и веру в комсомол развенчаете?;-)

C уважением к сообществу.
От eugend
К tevolga (28.06.2005 15:43:43)
Дата 28.06.2005 15:50:51

Re: А Вас...

>а не постить кусочки из словарей? Достаточно и ссылки:-))


>>На английский "разведчик" переводится, как scout,
>
>Как и до революции:-))

>>Слово же pioneer переводится, как:
>>1) воен. "впереди идущий" (солдат пешего спецподразделения, выступающего впереди армии или полка для строительства дорог и создания необходимых условий для успешного продвижения войск)
>
>>Pioneer Corps — саперно-строительные части
>
>Или же разведбатальон в немецком причем отнюдь не для строительства дорог;-))

>Вы предполагаете что детская коммунистическая организация в СССР ассоциировалась с саперно-строительными подразделениями? Меня учили в детстве иному...
>"Пионер - разведчик, шагаюший впереди".

>Вы совсем забыли про английское "шпиен":-))

>С уважением к сообществу.

С каких пор немецкие пионеры стали разведчиками? :))
От tevolga
К eugend (28.06.2005 15:50:51)
Дата 28.06.2005 15:57:12

Re: А Вас...

>
>С каких пор немецкие пионеры стали разведчиками? :))

А кто же они? Инженерные части? На мотоциклах?
Кто первым вошел в Белград в 1941? Еще и крест за это получил.

С уважением к сообществу.
От СанитарЖеня
К tevolga (28.06.2005 15:57:12)
Дата 28.06.2005 16:20:44

Re: А Вас...

>>
>>С каких пор немецкие пионеры стали разведчиками? :))
>
>А кто же они? Инженерные части? На мотоциклах?
>Кто первым вошел в Белград в 1941? Еще и крест за это получил.

На мотоциклах - это разведбат.
Но вот пионерный батальон действительно мог ворваться одним из первых - в его состав входил легкий понтонный парк, и он обеспечивал переправу.
От eugend
К Андю (28.06.2005 14:54:58)
Дата 28.06.2005 15:21:40

Только то же самое хотел написать. Присоединяюсь (-)