He fought four wars. He happened to be a liaison officer for a partisan detachment, a scout, and a saboteur, and command small units and cavalry formations. Lay land mines yourself and organize partisan work over a vast territory. Communicate with the powers that be and ordinary soldiers - war workers. Which, in fact, he himself remained all his life.
In a civil whirlwind
One of the aces of sabotage work and the progenitors of the Soviet special forces, Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich Mamsurov, was born on September 15, 1903 in the village of Olginskoye, Vladikavkaz district, Terek province, into a peasant family.
At the beginning of the summer of 1918, the young man arrived in Vladikavkaz and became a worker at the railway depot. In August, when the Northern Caucasus was overwhelmed by revolutionary events, he joined the Reds and became a fighter in the mountain cavalry hundred of the 11th Red Army, where he fought for several months. But, having fallen ill with typhus, he was abandoned by his retreating colleagues in one of the Vladikavkaz hospitals. The city was occupied by the White Guards, and a wild massacre began in it. In January 1919, in the capital of Ossetia and its environs, almost 17 thousand Red Army soldiers, mostly wounded and sick, were killed without trial or investigation. It was only by luck that Haji managed to avoid the bloody massacre.
Since April 1919, Mamsurov was a scout and liaison officer for a partisan detachment operating in the area of Vladikavkaz and Grozny. More than once he distinguished himself in dashing raids on White units and headquarters, as well as in the battles for Kislovodsk, Pyatigorsk, Georgievsk, Nevinnomyssk. In 1920, after the return of regular Red troops to the North Caucasus, he became an employee of the Terek Cheka. As part of its operational groups, he participated in many special operations to eliminate the surviving White Guard detachments. In March 1921, already having a membership card of the RCP (b) in his pocket, he became an intelligence officer in the special department of the 11th Red Army.
The name of the brave young man was heard not only by the mountaineers who supported the Soviet regime. However, fate gave Hadji a chance to shine at the highest level.
In mid-1921, he went to study in Moscow, at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. It seemed that now his life would be far from the army. But fate decreed otherwise. A year and a half later, he was summoned to the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army and placed at the disposal of the Military Council of the North Caucasus Military District, having previously been granted leave. Hadji was resting in his home when it became known that in mid-May the All-Union Elder Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin himself would come to the celebration of the unification of the peoples of the Mountain Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The celebration was supposed to take place between the Ossetian village of Olginskoye and the Ingush village of Bazorkino, where representatives of many mountain peoples were going to arrive.
However, on the eve of the arrival of the distinguished guest in Olginskoye, alarming news arrived: a large gang of White Cossacks was preparing to attack the All-Union headman. There was no time to gather large forces. But allowing guests to be attacked in their own home meant breaking the ancient law of the mountains and covering themselves with shame.
Haji gathered two dozen local daredevils and set up an ambush. As soon as the Cossacks approached the village, Mamsurov’s detachment, whistling and whooping, struck them on the flank. During a short but brutal cavalry clash, the attackers were overthrown and took to their heels. Several people among the mountaineers were wounded, including the commander of the detachment, Khadzhi Mamsurov: the bullet tore apart the thigh, fortunately, without touching the bone.
The holiday took place. Leaving for Moscow, the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee took with him a wounded highlander who had shed blood to save him, and assigned him to one of the best clinics in the capital.
It is no wonder that such an eventful biography opened the way for the young cavalryman to the elite of the Red Army. In 1929, Hadji-Umar (at 26 years old!) became the commander of a cavalry regiment, and two years later, having completed advanced training courses for command personnel at the Lenin Military-Political Academy, he was transferred to work in the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army. From now on, his life will be connected with military intelligence.
Spanish ballad
In the early 1930s, the center of international tension moved to the Iberian Peninsula. In Spain, the monarchy fell and a republic was established. However, on July 18, 1936, a rebellion broke out in the country, raised by General Franco. Part of the country came under the control of pro-fascist military personnel. A 200,000-strong Italian expeditionary force and a 50,000-strong German Condor Legion arrived in the country to help the rebels. The Soviet Union did not stand aside either, coming to the aid of the Republicans.
Major of the Soviet military intelligence Khadzhi-Umar Mamsurov, who by that time had already become a specialist in organizing partisan warfare and sabotage work, also found himself in this boiling cauldron.
In the Pyrenees, he acted under the name of the international terrorist Xanthi, a Macedonian by nationality, which was greatly facilitated by the external similarity between the Caucasians and the Levantines. Let us remember that at that time the concept of “terrorist” meant belonging to the extreme left political parties - social revolutionaries and anarchists, which legally existed in many countries and professed armed methods of achieving power. Arriving in Spain, “Colonel Xanthi” took the position of chief of intelligence of the XIV Corps, concentrating in his hands, in fact, all reconnaissance and sabotage work in the Republican army.
Things went very badly for the Republicans at the first stage of the war. Only brigades of volunteer internationalists fought more or less staunchly. But their Francoist personnel units, reinforced by Italian and German units, were pushed back to the coast and into the mountains. At that time, the only effective tactic that thwarted the enemy’s plans and gave time to organize the defense of large cities still under the control of the revolutionary authorities and the formation of regular battalions and regiments of the republican army was to carry out well-organized sabotage. This is what “Colonel Xanthi” did.
He had more than a dozen successful sabotage operations to his credit. Let's talk about just one of them, which almost cost Mamsurov his life.
In the second half of November 1936, a general Franco offensive against Madrid was planned. Haji sent several reconnaissance groups behind enemy lines with the task of finding out the exact timing of the attack. Only one returned, dragging with her a dead tongue - an officer. With him, fortunately for the Republicans, was an order from Franco himself, which read: to begin the offensive on November 25.
“Colonel Xanthi,” who adhered to the proven principle that “every sabotage has its hour,” launched a preemptive strike a day earlier. His sabotage detachment, crossing the front line, blew up four bridges on railways and highways, and at the end of the raid attacked the airfield, destroying almost three dozen transport aircraft. While leaving the airfield, Mamsurov was wounded in the shoulder, seriously concussed by a nearby grenade explosion, lost consciousness and... remained lying on the battlefield.
Ernest Hemingway The loss of the commander was discovered only during the gathering of saboteurs at the appointed place. It is unknown how the fate of “Colonel Xanthi” would have developed further if the brave Argentine translator Paulina-Marianna, sent to Spain by the Communist Youth International, had not been assigned to him. Having made sure that Mamsurov was absent from the collection point, the girl jumped behind the wheel of a car that happened to turn up, returned to the smoking airfield and literally took out the helpless Hadji from under the noses of the Francoists combing the area. After returning from Spain to the Soviet Union, Xanthi and Lina, as fellow internationalists called her among themselves, became husband and wife.
Another significant event was the intelligence officer’s meeting with the writer Ernest Hemingway, who was at that time in the Pyrenees as a war correspondent for several American newspapers. It is well known that it was “Colonel Xanthi,” whose real name the American never learned, who became the prototype of the main character of the novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” It is interesting that the saboteur himself, without in any way appreciating the literary talents of his eminent acquaintance, in his memoirs spoke briefly and specifically about Hemingway the man: “He drinks too much and talks too much.”
And such harshness is quite understandable: the people of the military profession, which Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich chose for himself, never strived for widespread fame and cheap popularity.
Mamsurov himself, who received two military orders and a third tie on his buttonholes after returning from the Iberian Peninsula, was already awaiting a new theater of military operations. After the sultry mountains of Spain, he had to find himself in the snow-covered forests and swamps of the Karelian Isthmus.
In 1938, Hadji-Umar was appointed head of one of the units responsible in the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army for organizing sabotage work behind enemy lines after the outbreak of hostilities. And therefore, as soon as the first shots rang out in the Karelian forests, he went to the front.
In the winter of 1939-1940, Mamsurov commanded a special ski brigade, consisting of regular Red Army soldiers and volunteers selected by the command from students of the Leningrad Institute of Physical Education. Its troops went to the Finnish rear 60-80, sometimes 120, or even 150 kilometers.
The most high-profile cases of Mamsurov’s saboteurs include the destruction of the communication line between the Puolank and Kukhmoniem groups of enemy forces. To do this, the skiers, together with their commander, had to cover about 200 kilometers in five days through a completely deserted area in a frost of forty-five degrees, find cable channels made of durable concrete, hidden deep under the snow and earth, and plant the explosives they brought with them in them...
In addition, Mamsurov’s skiers destroyed the headquarters of the Finnish 9th Infantry Division, destroyed an army communications center, thoroughly damaged the control centers of three infantry regiments, and destroyed the ammunition depots of the enemy’s 9th Artillery Regiment. And this is in addition to ordinary ambushes and raids carried out 6-8 kilometers from the front line.
There were also losses, sometimes very annoying. On February 18, 1940, Mamsurov was summoned to the political department of the 9th Army, where he was given the task of “giving the Finns a gift for the anniversary of the Red Army,” that is, organizing a high-profile sabotage on February 23. Hadji-Umar tried to convince the political departments that they were thinking too primitively and standardly, that on this very day the Finns would triple their posts and increase vigilance. Everything is like hitting the wall! As a result, a group of 50 skiers sent to the Finnish rear was easily discovered, surrounded and completely destroyed. Mamsurov’s men fought an unequal battle surrounded by them for three days; the last two of the surviving saboteurs blew themselves up with grenades.
Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich spoke about all this, as well as many other things, in April 1940 in Moscow, at a meeting of the commanding staff of the Red Army, where the experience of the Soviet-Finnish war was summarized.
Then many people came to the podium. But it was Colonel Mamsurov’s speech that became the most striking and resonant. He, like most military leaders, was asked a question by Stalin, who was sitting on the presidium: “Tell me, did anyone interfere with your command?” The leader’s curiosity was not idle: the country’s leadership heard rumors that the head of the Political Directorate of the Red Army, Army Commissar 1st Rank Lev Mehlis, and some of his subordinate political workers allowed themselves to interfere in the leadership of troops, the command of regiments and divisions.
It was not by chance that the question was asked to Mamsurov: at the front, Mehlis was a member of the military council of the 9th Army, in whose zone Hadji-Umar’s saboteurs operated. And it was Mehlis who initiated that very “gift to the Finns on February 23”, which cost the lives of fifty of Mamsurov’s fighters.
Before this, as Army General Pavel Batov later recalled, all the high-ranking army commanders, heroic corps commanders, division commanders and brigade commanders answered the leader’s question in the negative. And only the ski brigade commander said: “Sometimes, Comrade Stalin, they interfered. And they interfered greatly."
There was silence in the hall for several seconds. And then Mamsurov began to talk about his work at the front, sharply criticizing Mekhlis and some other high-ranking political workers for introducing rules in the army that linked the creative capabilities and initiative of commanders.
However, the commanders themselves, especially the lower ones, also suffered from Mamsurov. “I was given lieutenants from the Tambov Infantry School,” the colonel gave an example. “These people were not commanders, they couldn’t even be fighters.” They turned out to be well trained, knew how to walk on the parade ground, dashingly show off to their superiors, but did not know either weapons, maps, or compass movements. Many of them were openly afraid to go to the Finns’ rear. The very first military operations showed that the commander of a platoon or group in a raid was actually not a lieutenant, but a Red Army soldier, a fighter who had at least two weeks of combat experience.”
Further, Mamsurov said that he trained his skier saboteurs for only a month, but they still managed to achieve a lot. And he summed up his report with a sentence that caused a mixed reaction in the room:“I believe that if I had fighters trained in peacetime, we would be able to inflict more significant damage on the enemy. I propose to raise and resolve the issue of creating special units in a number of districts. We must start preparing them before the war, no matter who it happens to. As part of armies, these units will be of great benefit, performing, in addition to special work, long-range reconnaissance tasks.”
So for the first time, in the presence of the entire military, party and government leadership, a proposal was made to create army special forces.
During a break in the meeting, Army Commissar 1st Rank Mehlis, passing by Mamsurov, looked at the colonel unkindly with a withering glance. And the head of the armored forces of the Red Army, Hero of the Soviet Union, 1st Rank Army Commander Pavlov, Mamsurov’s comrade-in-arms in Spain, shaking Hadji-Umar’s hand with his right, twisted his left hand several times at his temple and quietly asked: “Xanthi, are you evil or immortal?”
After that April meeting, many expected, if not arrest, then at least Mamsurov’s transfer with a demotion somewhere in the periphery. And he became the head of the 5th department of the Red Army Intelligence Department and was sent to advanced training courses for command personnel at the Military Academy. M.V.Frunze.
Half a war - a partisan, half a war - a cavalryman
On June 22, Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich was lying at home with a high fever, swallowing pills, warming his neck, which was impossible to turn from the wild pain. But it turned out that war is the best medicine for a saboteur: the first shock from the terrible news was so great that the disease instantly receded.
Already on June 24, almost all of Mamsurov’s subordinates, led by him, ended up in the Belarusian Special Military District. Now no one argued with Hadji-Umar about the need to launch guerrilla warfare and sabotage work behind the aggressor’s rear. But where could we find these same partisan commanders and professional saboteurs? After 1938, they were hard to find in the Soviet Union during the day. In fact, the 5th department of the Intelligence Department - Mamsurov's department - turned out to be the only unit at the top of the Red Army capable of teaching at least something to people left by party and government bodies behind enemy lines.
"Our whole special group,– Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich recalled after the war, – in those days she worked on organizing a special network of agents in the area of Rogachev, Mogilev, and Orsha. At the very first meeting with the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus Ponomarenko, we discussed the issues of organizing the partisan movement and the urgent training of special reconnaissance and sabotage personnel, and outlined an action plan. Of course, the leadership of Belarus found and organized people. But they had to be familiarized with the tactics of guerrilla warfare, establish safehouses, connections, safe houses, hiding places, and prepare agents for underground activities. There was no one else to do this but us.
I myself went near Mogilev to the training area for partisan detachments, where I conducted classes on sabotage tactics. Training went on day and night. Already on the morning of June 29, we sent the first group - about 300 people - to carry out combat missions behind enemy lines. This is how the partisan movement in Belarus was born.”
Mamsurov remained on the Western Front until July 7, when he was recalled to the capital by code, where he received a new order - to go to Leningrad to organize the partisan movement on the North-Western Front.
Alas, Colonel Mamsurov did not have to do his business there for long. After the German breakthrough near Chudov, Hadji-Umar was forced to take command of the remnants of the 311th Infantry Division, organize defense on a new line and lead heavy defensive battles of the formation. On August 24, the newly promoted division commander was seriously wounded by shell fragments - in both legs and arms.
After being discharged from the hospital, the colonel was appointed to the headquarters of the partisan movement, where Mamsurov headed the operational department and personally trained future commanders of partisan detachments.
When our affairs in the south went from bad to worse, by decree of the State Defense Committee of August 3, 1942, the Southern Headquarters of the partisan movement was created to lead the partisan struggle in the North Caucasus and Crimea under the military council of the North Caucasus Front. It was headed by Colonel Mamsurov. At the headquarters, he organized a school for training sabotage personnel, and attracted many former fighters of the international brigades, whom he knew from Spain, to teaching work.
At the same time, Haji-Umar submitted a proposal for the formation of light cavalry divisions, intended, in the absence of a continuous front line, for deep, rapid raids behind enemy lines. I liked the idea, was approved at the very top, and in March 1943, Colonel Mamsurov assumed the post of commander of the 2nd Guards Crimean Cavalry Division, with which he fought until the Victory.
And how he fought!
At the beginning of October 1943, Mamsurov’s cavalry crossed the Dnieper north of Kyiv, expanded the bridgehead for the troops of the 60th Army and went for a walk along the fascist rear. On November 11, they captured the city of Korosten, and on November 12, Zhitomir. Having only captured artillery at their disposal, the cavalry guards held Zhitomir for six days, destroying more than 50 tanks and over three thousand enemy soldiers and officers. The city was nevertheless surrendered, but the exhausted enemy did not have time to help his units fighting near Kiev. The Nazi offensive in the Fastov-Kiev direction was thwarted. For excellent leadership of the division's combat operations, Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich was awarded the Order of Suvorov, 2nd degree, and promoted to major general.
At the end of January 1944, Mamsurov's horsemen crossed the Styr River and, finding themselves behind enemy lines, quickly moved south. The division, joining with several partisan detachments, defeated the 19th Hungarian Infantry Division and the 143rd German Infantry Division, liberated many settlements and on February 1, 1944 raised the red banner over Lutsk. Moving to join the advancing units of the 1st Ukrainian Front, the cavalrymen thoroughly battered the rear of the enemy’s Dubna group.
During the Lviv-Sandomierz operation, Mamsurov's division captured the city of Kamenka-Strumilovo, destroying more than 8 thousand Nazis and capturing over 2 thousand prisoners, including two generals.
The raids on the German rear were devastating. In September 1944, having broken through the enemy’s defenses, Mamsurov’s cavalry as part of the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps successfully operated on the territory of Czechoslovakia. Having broken through the Nazi defenses on the Neisse River, they captured a number of cities and rushed towards Berlin from the southwest. And on April 24, south of Torgau, they fought their last battle, during which, in addition to capturing rich trophies, they freed 15,600 prisoners from two concentration camps.
On May 29, 1945, Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. On the same day, he was appointed battalion commander of the combined regiment of the 1st Ukrainian Front, with which he participated in the Victory Parade on June 24.
After the war
IN 1948, the general graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff. He commanded a corps and an army. He had to fight again in the fall of 1956, when a military rebellion broke out in Hungary and Soviet troops were brought into the country. Mamsurov’s units took part in restoring order in Debrenc, Miskolc and Győr, where they completed the task within a week without much difficulty or loss.
In 1957, Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich was appointed to the post of deputy head of the GRU. At the same time he headed the Special Purpose Center.
The general, who devoted his entire life to Soviet military intelligence and became one of its legends during his lifetime, died on April 5, 1968 and was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery.
He was born in Ossetia at the dawn of the twentieth century and became not an eyewitness, but an active participant in its most significant events. In the Red Army - since 1918, in the Civil Army - as intelligence officers. He came to Moscow to the Intelligence Directorate through the light hand of the All-Union head Mikhail Kalinin, who firmly remembered the fighter who saved him from a white gang in the Caucasus. Hadji-Umar Mamsurov completed courses under the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army before the war in Spain. The same one that glorified Colonel Xanthi.
In Republican Spain in the 1930s, legends were made about him. By appearance he is Basque, by nationality he is Macedonian, by profession he is a merchant and saboteur.
All of Spain knew about the exploits of Xanthi. A man of desperate courage, he led operations behind Franco lines, derailed trains, blew up bridges. A Macedonian named Alexander Xanthi was he for Dolores Ibarruri, George Orwell, Mate Zalka and, of course, for Ernest Hemingway. And only in Moscow did they know his real name - the secret commissioner of special department A - active intelligence - Major Khadzhi-Umar Mamsurov.
Ossetians come from the village of Olginskoye, Terek region of the Russian Empire. In the past, he was a cavalryman, a scout, and now a volunteer military expert sent to defend the young Spanish Republic.
People of the older generation will never forget what in the language of diplomats was called “events in Spain.” Roman Karmen's combat film reports were shown before all screenings in all cinemas. Spanish “No pasaran!”, “They will not pass!” It was clear then to everyone in the USSR - from young to old.
Today one can have different attitudes towards the events of that time, but in Spain the first battle was given to the advancing fascism. The rebellion of General Franco was then supported by both Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. The Second World War was inexorably approaching, and its rehearsal was underway in Spain.
Since those fiery 30s, Spain has forever entered the heart of Khadzhi Mamsurov. Here he met love - Paulina Abramson - the daughter of an Argentine revolutionary, a native of Russia. She was known in Spain under the name Lina Argenti. To everyone, she was an Argentine fighting the fascists, and only the initiated knew the truth. He did not immediately understand that Lina was destiny. There was gratitude for salvation, which made me take a closer look... And love came. They were together - then in Spain, and then - for the rest of their lives.
Paulina and Hadji-Umar Mamsurov
On the monument to Hadji Mamsurov in Spain there is a silhouette of a bell, as a reminder that the hero of the best novel about the Spanish Civil War is copied from him - from the legendary Xanthi. They were introduced by Ilya Erenburg and Mikhail Koltsov. Ernest Hemingway attended a training camp and twice went behind the front line with saboteurs. The blowing up of a bridge in the mountains of Guadarrama was imprinted in my memory and did not let go: it was this episode that formed the basis of the novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” And Hadji-Xanthi became Robert Jordan. Hemingway never learned that the Macedonian Xanthi - the hero, the legend - was in fact a Soviet intelligence officer, Ossetian Hadji-Umar Mamsurov.
At the end of the novel and the film, the hero dies in a very Soviet way, covering the detachment’s retreat. In his life, Khadzhi Mamsurov was wounded five times, but each time he returned to duty. Fate prepared three more wars for him: Finnish, Great Patriotic War, and an indefinite undeclared - secret...
From the first days of the Great Patriotic War, Mamsurov was on the front line: he organized the partisan movement in Belarus, commanded the 2nd Guards Cavalry Division. He crossed the Dnieper, went on desperate raids in the rear, liberated cities in the country and in Europe, saved prisoners of concentration camps, received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union... Major General Mamsurov ended the war near Berlin, and on June 24 at the head of the battalion of the combined regiment of the 1st Ukrainian Front Haji-Umar minted a step at the Victory Parade.
After the war, Mamsurov graduated from the General Staff Academy. He commanded a division, a corps, an army... From Hungary in 1956, Mamsurov returned gray-haired and suffered a heart attack. But if it weren’t for Hadji, the Hungarian autumn would have been much bloodier: he personally convinced the authorities to open the borders, and many thousands of Hungarians found refuge in Austria. Based on the Hungarian events, the film “The Trip” was shot in Hollywood. The role of the main character Major Surov, in whom it is easy to guess Mamsurov, was played by the famous Yul BrInner. Outwardly completely different from Hadji, in the film he repeated the actions of Hadji. And his words:
I never thought we were hated so much.
Haji is called the father of Soviet special forces. In 1957, he became the first deputy head of the Main Intelligence Directorate and headed the Special Purpose Center. It was in this center that the now legendary GRU special forces were forged. Everything was strictly secret. Even from the Central Committee. Only Defense Minister Georgy Zhukov, the initiator of the creation of the top-secret sabotage center, GRU chief Shtemenko and his first deputy, Major General Mamsurov, who created this center, knew. When the secret became clear, a scandal broke out. Khrushchev, taking advantage of the situation, accused Zhukov of attempting a coup and the famous marshal of victory was removed from all posts. This story cost Mamsurov a second heart attack.
The film “7 Days in May” brought events that happened in the USSR to American soil. They recognized Marshal Zhukov in General Scott, and General Mamsurov in Colonel Casey, played by Hollywood star Kirk Douglas. The author of the book taken as a basis admitted that he took the idea for his action film from the materials of the famous Plenum of the Central Committee in 1957. This is how Hadji Mamsurov entered literature and cinema for the third time...
< Герой Советского Союза, генерал-полковник Хаджи-Умар Джиорович Мамсуров
And yet, the real, not fictional life of Khadzhi Mamsurov turned out to be much more interesting than any novel. It was full of losses, dramatic events and adventures... Mamsurov was always in the thick of passions - political and human. You can’t invent such a biography; such stories are just bait for the writer and director.
Khadzhi Mamsurov died in the spring of 1968. When he realized that his arguments were not being heard, that the lessons of Hungary had not been learned and that troops would be sent into Czechoslovakia, his heart could not stand it.
He devoted half a century to the military and intelligence services and became its legend. Hadji-Umar Mamsurov was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery. He lies next to his comrade and friend from the Spanish era, the writer Ilya Ehrenburg - head to head.
See you! If we don’t meet in geography, we will meet in history!” - this is how they said goodbye during their lifetime. Now they are forever close - both in geography and in history.
The intelligence profession does not involve publicity. A significant part of Khadzhi Mamsurov’s life is still classified as “secret”. As the hero of another Hemingway novel said, “there are 50 years of undeclared wars ahead. I signed a contract for the entire term."
Time has confirmed Khadzhi Mamsurov’s place in history - streets in Vladikavkaz and Tskhinvali, Beslan, Grozny and Lutsk are named after him... In Moscow, a memorial plaque was installed on the house in which the general lived for many years, and a monument was erected in his native village of Olginskoye... Monument The Hero of the Soviet Union now stands in distant Fuenlabrada. After more than seventy years, the legendary Hadji-Xanthi returned to Spain - in granite and bronze.
P.S. We have been living in a different time, in a different country, for a long time, although we have never moved anywhere. But the past does not disappear anywhere, it remains forever where it was. You just need to return there sometimes - in memories, books, films. Because it is not past tense.
He fought four wars. He happened to be a liaison officer for a partisan detachment, a scout, and a saboteur, and command small units and cavalry formations. Lay land mines yourself and organize partisan work over a vast territory. Communicate with the powers that be and ordinary soldiers - war workers.
Which, in fact, he himself remained all his life...
ONE OF THE ACES of sabotage work and the ancestors of the Soviet special forces, Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich Mamsurov was born on September 15, 1903 in the village of Olginskoye, Vladikavkaz district, Terek province, into a peasant family.
At the beginning of the summer of 1918, the young man arrived in Vladikavkaz and became a worker at the railway depot. In August, when the Northern Caucasus was overwhelmed by revolutionary events, he joined the Reds and became a fighter in the mountain cavalry hundred of the 11th Red Army, where he fought for several months. But, having fallen ill with typhus, he was abandoned by his retreating colleagues in one of the Vladikavkaz hospitals. The city was occupied by the White Guards, and a wild massacre began in it. In January 1919, in the capital of Ossetia and its environs, almost 17 thousand Red Army soldiers were killed without trial or investigation, most of whom were wounded and sick. It was only by luck that Haji managed to avoid the bloody massacre.
Since April 1919, Mamsurov was a scout and liaison officer for a partisan detachment operating in the area of Vladikavkaz and Grozny. More than once he distinguished himself in dashing raids on White units and headquarters, as well as in the battles for Kislovodsk, Pyatigorsk, Georgievsk, Nevinnomyssk. In 1920, after the return of regular Red troops to the North Caucasus, he became an employee of the Terek Cheka. As part of its operational groups, he participated in many special operations to eliminate the surviving White Guard detachments. In March 1921, already having a membership card of the RCP (b) in his pocket, he became an intelligence officer in the special department of the 11th Red Army.
The name of the brave young man was heard not only by the mountaineers who supported the Soviet regime: thanks to family ties - his uncle Sakhandzheri Mamsurov became a member of the bureau of the mountain faction of the Caucasian Committee of the Bolshevik Party, and later the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Mountain Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, an ally of Kirov and Ordzhonikidze - it began to sound among the country's new leaders. However, fate gave Haji a chance to personally “shine up” at the highest level.
In mid-1921, he went to study in Moscow, at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. It seemed that now his life would be far from the army. But fate decreed otherwise...
A year and a half later, he was summoned to the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army and placed at the disposal of the Military Council of the North Caucasus Military District, having previously been granted leave. Hadji was resting in his home when it became known that in mid-May the All-Union Elder Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin himself would come to the celebration of the unification of the peoples of the Mountain Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The celebration was supposed to take place between the Ossetian village of Olginskoye and the Ingush village of Bazorkino, where representatives of many mountain peoples were going to arrive.
However, on the eve of the arrival of the distinguished guest in Olginskoye, alarming news arrived: a large gang of White Cossacks was preparing to attack the All-Union headman. There was no time to gather large forces. But allowing guests to be attacked in their own home meant breaking the ancient law of the mountains and covering themselves with shame.
Haji gathered two dozen local daredevils and set up an ambush. As soon as the Cossacks approached the village, Mamsurov’s detachment, whistling and whooping, struck them on the flank. During a short but brutal cavalry clash, the attackers were overthrown and took to their heels. Several people among the mountaineers were wounded, including the commander of the detachment, Khadzhi Mamsurov: the bullet tore apart the thigh, fortunately, without touching the bone...
The holiday took place. Leaving for Moscow, the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (nominally the first person in the Soviet state hierarchy) took with him a wounded highlander who had shed blood to save him, and assigned him to one of the best clinics in the capital.
In 1928, Khadzhi, then the military commissar of a separate Dagestan cavalry division, with his horsemen, by order of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, provided security for the village and fortress of Gunib, where the all-Union elder came to rest with his family. They met daily for three weeks, spending hours talking on various topics. Later in his memoirs, Mamsurov will say: “During my communication with Kalinin, I graduated from a real university, a real academy of life.”
It is no wonder that such an eventful biography opened the way for the young cavalryman to the elite of the Red Army. In 1929, Hadji-Umar (at twenty-six years old!) became the commander of a cavalry regiment, and two years later, having completed advanced training courses for command personnel at the Military-Political Academy. Lenin, transferred to work in the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army.
From now on, his life will be connected with military intelligence...
Spanish ballad
IN THE EARLY 1930s, the center of international tension moved to the Iberian Peninsula. In Spain, the monarchy fell and a republic was established. However, on July 18, 1936, a rebellion broke out in the country, raised by General Franco. Part of the country came under the control of pro-fascist military personnel. A 200,000-strong Italian expeditionary force and a 50,000-strong German Condor Legion arrived in the country to help the rebels. The Soviet Union did not stand aside either, coming to the aid of the Republicans.
Spain turned into an arena for a military clash between two political systems, on the side of each of which professional military men acted under the guise of volunteers and military advisers. Major of the Soviet military intelligence Khadzhi-Umar Mamsurov, who by that time had already become a specialist in organizing partisan warfare and sabotage work, also found himself in this boiling cauldron.
In the Pyrenees, he acted under the name of the international terrorist Xanthi, a Macedonian by nationality, which was greatly facilitated by the external similarity between the Caucasians and the Levantines. Let us remember that at that time the concept of “terrorist” meant belonging to the extreme left political parties - social revolutionaries and anarchists, which legally existed in many countries and professed armed methods of achieving power. But that's not the point.
Arriving in Spain, “Colonel Xanthi” took the position of chief of intelligence of the XIV Corps, concentrating in his hands, in fact, all reconnaissance and sabotage work in the Republican army.
Things went very badly for the Republicans at the first stage of the war. Only brigades of volunteer internationalists fought more or less staunchly. But their Francoist personnel units, reinforced by Italian and German units, were pushed back to the coast and into the mountains. At that time, the only effective tactic that thwarted the enemy’s plans and gave time to organize the defense of large cities still under the control of the revolutionary authorities and the formation of regular battalions and regiments of the republican army was to carry out well-organized sabotage. This is what “Colonel Xanthi” did.
He had more than a dozen successful sabotage operations to his credit. Let's talk about just one of them, which almost cost Mamsurov his life.
In the second half of November 1936, a general Franco offensive against Madrid was planned. Haji sent several reconnaissance groups behind enemy lines with the task of finding out the exact timing of the attack. Only one returned, dragging with her a dead tongue - an officer. With him, fortunately for the Republicans, was an order from Franco himself, which read: to begin the offensive on November 25.
“Colonel Xanthi,” who adhered to the proven principle that “every sabotage has its hour,” launched a preemptive strike a day earlier. His sabotage detachment, crossing the front line, blew up four bridges on railways and highways, and at the end of the raid attacked the airfield, destroying almost three dozen transport aircraft. While leaving the airfield, Mamsurov was wounded in the shoulder, seriously concussed by a nearby grenade explosion, lost consciousness and... remained lying on the battlefield.
The loss of the commander was discovered only during the gathering of saboteurs at the appointed place. It is unknown how the fate of “Colonel Xanthi” would have developed further if the brave Argentine translator Paulina-Marianna, sent to Spain by the Communist Youth International, had not been assigned to him. Having made sure that Mamsurov was absent from the collection point, the girl jumped behind the wheel of a car that happened to turn up, returned to the smoking airfield and literally took out the helpless Hadji from under the noses of the Francoists combing the area.
After returning from Spain to the Soviet Union, Xanthi and Lina, as her fellow internationalists called her among themselves, became husband and wife...
Another significant event was the intelligence officer’s meeting with the writer Ernest Hemingway, who was at that time in the Pyrenees as a war correspondent for several American newspapers. It is well known that it was “Colonel Xanthi,” whose real name the American never learned, who became the prototype of the main character of the novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” It is interesting that the saboteur himself, without in any way appreciating the literary talents of his eminent acquaintance, in his memoirs spoke briefly and specifically about Hemingway the man: “He drinks too much and talks too much.”
And such harshness is quite understandable: the people of the military profession, which Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich chose for himself, never strived for widespread fame and cheap popularity.
Mamsurov himself, who received two military orders and a third tie on his buttonholes after returning from the Iberian Peninsula, was already awaiting a new theater of military operations. After the sultry mountains of Spain, he had to find himself in the snow-covered forests and swamps of the Karelian Isthmus...
“Xanthi, are you evil or immortal?”
SHORTLY after the return of “Colonel Xanthi” to the Soviet Union, the Red Army was overwhelmed by a wave of personnel purges. Many people got it. Sakhandzheri Mamsurov, the uncle of Hadji-Umar, who did not hide his commitment to the Trotskyists, was arrested and shot. And since Leon Trotsky’s ideas on the development of the world revolution were adhered to by many military experts and fighters of international brigades returning from the Iberian Peninsula, the danger of arrest for Hadji was more than real.
However, he managed to avoid reprisals. Moreover, in 1938, he was appointed head of one of the units responsible in the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army for organizing sabotage work behind enemy lines after the outbreak of hostilities. And therefore, as soon as the first shots rang out in the Karelian forests, he went to the front.
In the winter of 1939/1940, Mamsurov commanded a special ski brigade, consisting of regular Red Army soldiers and volunteers selected by the command from students of the Leningrad Institute of Physical Education. Its detachments operated in the zone of the 9th Army, going 60–80, sometimes 120, or even 150 kilometers behind the Finnish rear.
The most high-profile cases of Mamsurov’s saboteurs include the destruction of the communication line between the Puolank and Kukhmoniem groups of enemy forces. To do this, the skiers, together with their commander, had to cover about 200 kilometers in 5 days through a completely deserted area in a frost of forty-five degrees, find cable channels made of durable concrete, hidden deep under the snow and earth, and plant the explosives they brought with them in them...
In addition, Mamsurov’s skiers destroyed the headquarters of the Finnish 9th Infantry Division, destroyed an army communications center near the village of Kuhmoniemi, thoroughly damaged the control posts of the 25th, 27th and 65th Infantry Regiments, and destroyed the ammunition depots of the enemy’s 9th Artillery Regiment. And this is in addition to ordinary ambushes and raids carried out 6–8 kilometers from the front line.
There were also losses, sometimes very annoying. On February 18, 1940, Mamsurov was summoned to the political department of the 9th Army, where he was given the task of “giving the Finns a gift for the anniversary of the Red Army,” that is, organizing a high-profile sabotage on February 23. Hadji-Umar tried to convince the political departments that they were thinking too primitively and standardly, that on this very day the Finns would triple their posts and increase vigilance. Everything is like hitting the wall! As a result, a group of 50 skiers sent to the Finnish rear was easily discovered, surrounded and completely destroyed. Mamsurov’s men fought an unequal battle surrounded for three days, the last two of the surviving saboteurs blew themselves up with grenades...
Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich spoke about all this, as well as many other things, in April 1940 in Moscow, at a meeting of the commanding staff of the Red Army, where the experience of the Soviet-Finnish war was summarized.
Then many people came to the podium. But it was Colonel Mamsurov’s speech that became the most striking and resonant. He, like most military leaders, was asked by Stalin, who was sitting on the presidium: “Tell me, did anyone interfere with your command?” The leader’s curiosity was not idle: the country’s leadership heard rumors that the head of the Political Directorate of the Red Army, Army Commissar 1st Rank Lev Mehlis, and some of his subordinate political workers allowed themselves to interfere in the leadership of troops, the command of regiments and divisions.
It was not by chance that the question was asked to Mamsurov: at the front, Mehlis was a member of the military council of the 9th Army, in whose zone Hadji-Umar’s saboteurs operated. And it was Mehlis who initiated that very “gift to the Finns on February 23”, which cost the lives of fifty of Mamsurov’s fighters.
...Before this, as Army General Pavel Batov later recalled, all the high-ranking army commanders, heroic corps commanders, division commanders and brigade commanders answered the leader’s question in the negative. And only the ski brigade commander said: “Sometimes, Comrade Stalin, they interfered. And they interfered greatly."
There was silence in the hall for several seconds. And then Mamsurov began to talk about his work at the front, sharply criticizing Mekhlis and some other high-ranking political workers for introducing rules in the army that linked the creative capabilities and initiative of commanders.
However, the commanders themselves, especially the lower ones, also suffered from Mamsurov. “They gave me lieutenants from the Tambov Infantry School,” the colonel gave an example. - These people were not commanders, they couldn’t even be fighters. They turned out to be well trained, knew how to walk on the parade ground, dashingly show off to their superiors, but did not know either weapons, maps, or compass movements. Many of them were openly afraid to go to the Finns’ rear. The very first military operations showed that the commander of a platoon or group in a raid was actually not a lieutenant, but a Red Army soldier, a fighter who had at least two weeks of combat experience.”
Further, Mamsurov said that he trained his skier saboteurs for only a month, but they still managed to achieve a lot. And he summed up his report with a sentence that caused a mixed reaction in the hall: “I believe that if I had fighters trained in peacetime, we would be able to inflict more significant damage on the enemy. I propose to raise and resolve the issue of creating special units in a number of districts. We must start preparing them before the war, no matter who it happens to. As part of armies, these units will be of great benefit, performing, in addition to special work, long-range reconnaissance tasks.”
So for the first time, in the presence of the entire military, party and government leadership, a proposal was made to create army special forces.
During a break in the meeting, Army Commissar 1st Rank Mehlis, passing by Mamsurov, looked at the colonel unkindly with a withering glance. And the head of the armored forces of the Red Army, Hero of the Soviet Union, Army Commander 1st Rank Pavlov, Mamsurov’s comrade-in-arms in Spain, shook Hadji-Umar’s hand with his right hand, twisted his left hand several times at his temple and quietly asked: “Xanthi, are you bad or immortal?”
After that April meeting, many expected, if not arrest, then at least Mamsurov’s transfer with a demotion somewhere in the periphery. And he became the head of the 5th department of the Red Army Intelligence Department and was sent to advanced training courses for command personnel at the Military Academy. M. V. Frunze…
Half a war - a partisan, half a war - a cavalryman
JUNE 22 Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich was lying at home with a high fever, swallowing pills, warming his neck, which was impossible to turn from the wild pain. But it turned out that war is the best medicine for a saboteur: the first shock from the terrible news was so great that the disease instantly receded.
Already on June 24, almost all of Mamsurov’s subordinates, led by him, ended up in the Belarusian Special Military District. Now no one argued with Hadji-Umar about the need to launch guerrilla warfare and sabotage work behind the aggressor’s rear. But where could we find these same partisan commanders and professional saboteurs? After 1938, they were hard to find in the Soviet Union during the day. In fact, the 5th department of the Intelligence Department was Mamsurov’s department, which included such aces of reconnaissance and sabotage work as Guy Tumanyan, Nikolai Patrahaltsev, Ivan Demsky, Vasily Troyan, Sergei Fomin, Valery Znamensky, Nikolai Shchelokov, Grigory Kharitonenkov, Pyotr Gerasimov, - turned out to be the only unit at the top of the Red Army capable of teaching at least something to people left behind enemy lines by party and government bodies.
“Our entire special group,” recalled Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich after the war, “in those days worked to organize a special network of agents in the area of Rogachev, Mogilev, and Orsha. At the very first meeting with the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus Ponomarenko, we discussed the issues of organizing the partisan movement and the urgent training of special reconnaissance and sabotage personnel, and outlined an action plan. Of course, the leadership of Belarus found and organized people. But they had to be familiarized with the tactics of guerrilla warfare, establish safehouses, connections, safe houses, hiding places, and prepare agents for underground activities. There was no one else to do this except us...
I myself went near Mogilev to the training area for partisan detachments, where I conducted classes on sabotage tactics. Training went on day and night. Already on the morning of June 29, we sent the first group - about 300 people - to carry out combat missions behind enemy lines. This is how the partisan movement in Belarus was born.”
Mamsurov remained on the Western Front until July 7, when he was recalled to the capital by code, where he received a new order - to leave for Leningrad to organize the partisan movement on the North-Western Front.
Alas, Colonel Mamsurov did not have to do his business there for long. After the German breakthrough near Chudov, Hadji-Umar was forced to take command of the remnants of the 311th Infantry Division, organize defense on a new line and lead heavy defensive battles of the formation. On August 24, the newly promoted division commander was seriously wounded by shell fragments - in both legs and arms.
After being discharged from the hospital, the colonel was appointed to the headquarters of the partisan movement, where Mamsurov headed the operational department and personally trained future commanders of partisan detachments.
When our affairs in the south went from bad to worse, by decree of the State Defense Committee of August 3, 1942, the Southern Headquarters of the partisan movement was created to lead the partisan struggle in the North Caucasus and Crimea under the military council of the North Caucasus Front. It was headed by Colonel Mamsurov. At the headquarters, he organized a school for training sabotage personnel, and attracted many former fighters of the international brigades, whom he knew from Spain, to teaching work.
At the same time, Haji-Umar submitted a proposal for the formation of light cavalry divisions, intended, in the absence of a continuous front line, for deep, rapid raids behind enemy lines.
I liked the idea, was approved at the very top, and in March 1943, Colonel Mamsurov assumed the post of commander of the 2nd Guards Crimean Cavalry Division, with which he fought until the Victory. And how he fought!
At the beginning of October 1943, Mamsurov’s cavalry crossed the Dnieper north of Kyiv, expanded the bridgehead for the troops of the 60th Army and went for a walk along the fascist rear. On November 11, they captured the city of Korosten, and on November 12, Zhitomir. Having only captured artillery at their disposal, the cavalry guards held Zhitomir for six days, destroying more than 50 tanks and over 3 thousand enemy soldiers and officers. The city was nevertheless surrendered, but the exhausted enemy did not have time to help his units fighting near Kiev. The Nazi offensive in the Fastov-Kiev direction was thwarted. For excellent leadership of the division's combat operations, Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich was awarded the Order of Suvorov, 2nd degree, and promoted to major general.
At the end of January 1944, Mamsurov's horsemen crossed the Styr River and, finding themselves behind enemy lines, quickly moved south. The division, joining with several partisan detachments, defeated the 19th Hungarian Infantry Division and the 143rd German Infantry Division, liberated many settlements and on February 1, 1944 raised the red banner over Lutsk. Moving to join the advancing units of the 1st Ukrainian Front, the cavalrymen thoroughly battered the rear of the enemy’s Dubna group.
During the Lviv-Sandomierz operation, Mamsurov's division captured the city of Kamenka-Strumilovo, destroying more than 8 thousand Nazis and capturing over 2 thousand prisoners, including two generals.
Crushing raids on the German rear. In September 1944, having broken through the enemy’s defenses, Mamsurov’s cavalry as part of the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps successfully operated on the territory of Czechoslovakia, breaking through the Nazi defenses on the Neisse River, captured a number of cities and rushed to Berlin from the southwest. On April 24, south of Torgau, they fought their last battle, during which, in addition to capturing rich trophies, they freed 15,600 prisoners from two concentration camps.
On May 29, 1945, Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. On the same day, he was appointed battalion commander of the combined regiment of the 1st Ukrainian Front, with which he participated in the Victory Parade on June 24...
Guilty without guilt
IN 1948, the general graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff. He commanded a corps and an army. He had to fight again in the fall of 1956, when a military rebellion broke out in Hungary and Soviet troops were brought into the country. Mamsurov’s units took part in restoring order in Debrenc, Miskolc and Győr, where they completed the task within a week without much difficulty or loss.
In 1957, Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich was appointed to the post of deputy head of the GRU. And soon a colossal scandal broke out in the military and party leadership of the Soviet Union, in which the name of General Mamsurov was also involved. It was about the preparation by Defense Minister Zhukov of nothing less than... a coup d'état! For this purpose, the marshal allegedly intended to use special-purpose units, the order for the creation of which, secretly from the Party Central Committee, was given to the leaders of the GRU - generals Shtemenko and Mamsurov...
There are enough literary and film versions of those events. But here’s what career intelligence officer and close associate of Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich Mikhail Milshtein said in his memoirs about this story.
“Shortly before his trip to Yugoslavia, G. K. Zhukov called Mamsurov to his place and shared his decision to form special-purpose brigades, based on the possible nature of future military operations in that region (i.e. in the Balkans! - Author). These brigades were supposed to be relatively small (up to 2000 people), armed with light, but the most advanced weapons. It was supposed to gather into a single fist selected, physically strong personnel trained in close combat techniques, including hand-to-hand combat, airborne landings and the use of modern explosives. Georgy Konstantinovich entrusted the formation of these brigades to Mamsurov.
Hadji-Umar Dzhiorovich had a friend whom he had known for many years - General Tumanyan. At that time, he served as deputy head of the armored academy for political affairs. Tumanyan was a relative of Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan. Being married to sisters, they often met and treated each other in a friendly manner. Mamsurov spoke about the meeting with Zhukov and his instructions to Tumanyan, who, in turn, reported what he had heard to A. I. Mikoyan.
Mikoyan, First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, took the story very seriously. The question he asked sounded something like this: “Can these brigades be dropped from the air onto the Kremlin?” Tumanyan replied that if Mamsurov gets down to business, then the people he trained can be thrown out anywhere. At the same time, he meant only the quality of the military-professional training of future Soviet special forces, but not their political beliefs or the complete absence of them.
Hearing this answer, Anastas Ivanovich hurried to report to Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. In the fevered imagination of the first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers, brought up on conspiracy theories, the idea immediately arose of Zhukov’s intention to prepare a military coup with the help of special forces brigades.”
Not only Mikoyan had a fevered imagination, but also the absolute majority of members of the CPSU Central Committee, who were obsessed with the struggle for power and, most of all in their lives, were afraid of losing it.
In October 1957, a plenum of the Central Committee was convened, on the agenda of which there was only one question: “On improving party-political work in the Soviet Army and Navy.” The speaker was M. A. Suslov, the main Soviet ideologist, who said literally the following: “The Presidium of the Central Committee learned that the Minister of Defense G. K. Zhukov, without the knowledge of the Central Committee, decided to organize a school of saboteurs with more than two thousand students (can you feel the difference between the “brigade” special forces" and "school of saboteurs"? - Author). Comrade Zhukov did not even consider it necessary to inform the Central Committee about this school. Only three people should have known about its organization: Zhukov, Shtemenko and Mamsurov, who was appointed head of this school. But General Mamsurov, as a communist, considered it his duty to inform the Central Committee about this illegal action of the minister.”
What was illegal in the actions of the Minister of Defense, Mikhail Andreevich Suslov, who so elegantly exposed Mamsurov as an informer and party informant, did not explain. Yes, this was not required, because a reason was found for the removal from the post of Minister of Defense of Marshal Zhukov, who was so feared and whose popularity in the army and the people was envied by many party leaders.
Marshal Malinovsky was appointed to replace the removed Zhukov, leaving the entire GRU leadership in place. And Mamsurov continued work on creating Soviet special forces. There was no better candidate for this at that time.
Few nations can boast of having such a prominent, historical figure among their compatriots as Khadzhi-Umar Mamsurov. September 15, 2016 marked the 113th anniversary of his birth.
noar.ru decided to collect for its readers a retrospective of legends - incredible, but not fictitious - about one of the brightest Soviet intelligence officers, about Khadzhi-Umar Mamsurov.
...The military future of the general and intelligence officer “began” early. Already at the age of 15, on the advice of his uncle, the Bolshevik Sakhandzheri Mamsurov, he joined the ranks of the Red Army.
At the age of 20, Hadji-Umar Mamsurov was already in command, political and teaching positions in cavalry units. Since 1935 - in the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army Headquarters.
Secret commissioner of Special Branch "A" (active intelligence), Soviet military adviser to the military leadership of the Republican Army of Spain, organizer and leader of the partisan movement in Spain, participant in the Soviet-Finnish war...
Then - exploits on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. In May 1945, H.-W. Mamsurov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. After the war, Hadji-Umar Mamsurov graduated from the Higher Military Academy. Voroshilov, served in command positions, and in 1957 returned to intelligence as first deputy chief of the GRU General Staff.
He was among the creators of the GRU special forces. Awarded three Orders of Lenin, four Orders of the Red Banner, Order of Kutuzov, 1st degree, Order of Suvorov, 2nd degree, Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, and medals. Kh. Mamsurov died in 1968. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.
These are the dry summaries of the biography of this legendary man. But behind the words are years of incredible adventures, difficult roads and personal battles, years dedicated to serving one’s country.
A lot of time has passed since the death of the general, but documents about his activities have not yet been declassified. Happy are those generations who will be able to read real summaries, reports and reports about the life of this unusual person.
Films are made about such people, heroes are “written off” from them, “dreamy” and “romantic” people dream about them. This happy “fate” of being an inspiration did not spare Colonel Xanthi, the legendary hero of the Spanish revolution, Macedonian and rebel, and finally, Major of the Soviet intelligence Hadji-Umar Mamsurov.
According to the legend “invented” for the Spaniards, H.-W. Mamsurov-Xanthi was a Macedonian trader who came to Madrid from Turkey. Having volunteered to join a detachment under the command of Buenaventura Durruti (one of the key figures of the anarchist movement - approx. noar.ru), he fought near Barcelona and Zaragoza. Soon he became an adviser to the commander and, at the head of the Durruti Column, went to the aid of besieged Madrid...
Rumors about Colonel Xanthi instantly turned into legends and fables. Desperate partisans served under the command of the taciturn and outwardly unsociable colonel. They committed annoying and noticeable sabotage for the enemy: somewhere in the rear of the “Francoists” artillery depots were blown up into the air, then German bombers with bombs on board exploded right at the airfield, or a railway bridge was blown up... Then “guerrilleros” (partisans ) returned and safely disappeared into the depths of Madrid.
...The mysterious figure of Colonel Xanthi could not help but interest Ernest Hemingway, who was in search of a protagonist for his novel about the war in Spain.
The Spanish "story" of Ernest Hemingway began in 1937. The Spanish Civil War greatly worried the American writer. His sympathies were on the side of the Republicans who fought General Franco; Hemingway even organized a fundraiser in their favor. Having collected the necessary funds, the writer turns to the North American Newspaper Association with a request to send him to Madrid to cover the progress of the hostilities. A film crew was soon assembled, led by film director Joris Ivens, who intended to shoot a documentary film “Land of Spain”. The screenwriter of the film was Hemingway... During the most difficult days of the war, Ernest was in Madrid, besieged by the fascists, at the Florida Hotel, which for a time became the Headquarters of Internationalists and the Club of Correspondents.
The correspondent of the newspaper Pravda, Mikhail Koltsov, arranged the desired interview with Xanthi for the writer. An interview at the Florida Hotel in Madrid gave the world Robert Jordan, a young American fighter of the International Brigades, a key character in the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.
In the story, Robert Jordan is tasked with blowing up a bridge to prevent Franco reinforcements from attacking Segovia. This storyline also has its real embodiment. After urgent requests from Ernest Hemingway, he was allowed to take part in one of the operations of a small detachment of Xanthi - blowing up an enemy train with ammunition. Having proven himself well, Hemingway, with the consent of Xanthi, took part in another secret operation - this time it was to blow up a strategic bridge in the mountains of Guadarrama. It was this episode, which the writer remembered most vividly, that became the main storyline of the future novel...
In 1943, based on Hemingway's novel, director Sam Wood made a film of the same name. The main roles were played by Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper. Thus, the history of the legendary Xanthi has found another road to eternity...
Ossetian, born in the village of Olginsky in the Right Bank region (North Ossetia) into a peasant family. In the Red Army since 1918. Participant in the Civil War. Member of the RCP(b) since 1924. In 1924 he graduated from the military-political school, in 1932 - the Improvement Course for Political Staff, in 1941 - the Improvement Course for Command Staff (KUKS) at the Military Academy named after M. V. Frunze. 1930-1940s Under the pseudonym “Colonel Xanthi” he participated in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. Military adviser to the Headquarters of the Republican Army, adviser to B. Durutti and leader of the “guerrilleros” (saboteurs, “14th Corps”) detachments. In Soviet and Russian literature there are statements that Mamsurov served as the prototype for one of the Heroes of E. Hemingway’s novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls”: Ilya Erenburg believed that “much of what Hemingway said in the novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls” about actions of the partisans, he took from the words of Hadji,” and Roman Carmen claimed that “Ernest Hemingway sat with him for two Evenings at the Florida Hotel and subsequently made the brave Hadji the prototype of one of the Heroes of the novel.” However, Mamsurov’s biographer M. Boltunov notes that “Hemingway endowed many of the Heroes of his novel with the features of Khadzhi Mamsurov,” but there is no talk of his direct depiction in the book. Then he participated in the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. Since 1941 - On the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. In the summer of 1941, Mamsurov, on Stalin’s orders, arrested the commander of the Western Front, Army General D. G. Pavlov. Then he commanded the 2nd Guards Cavalry Division (1st Guards Cavalry Corps, First Ukrainian Front). He distinguished himself during the Berlin operation. With its entry into battle in mid-April 1945, in the Dresden direction, the division, with skillful actions behind enemy lines, inflicted great damage on it and liberated two Nazi concentration camps (about 16 thousand people). On May 20, 1945, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. By the Military Council of the 1st Ukrainian Front, he was appointed battalion commander of the front's combined regiment, with which he participated in the Victory Parade on June 24, 1945. After the war After the war he continued to serve in the army. In 1948 he graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff. Mamsurov's grave at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow. Commander of the 3rd department. Guards Evpatoriya Rifle Brigade in Bryansk (October 1946 - March 1947), 27th Mechanized Division of the 38th Army (1948-1951), 27th Rifle Corps of the 13th Army (1951-1955), commander of the 38th Army of the Carpathian VO (June 1955 - July 1957). Lieutenant General (1953). In 1956, he personally participated in the suppression of the uprising in Hungary; upon his return he became seriously ill. From October 1957 to 1968 - head of the Special Purpose Center, first deputy chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. Colonel General (1962). The sudden resignation of Georgy Zhukov from the post of Minister of Defense in 1957 is associated with Mamsurov. According to the speech of M. A. Suslov at the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee on October 28, 1957: “Recently, the Presidium of the Central Committee learned that Comrade Zhukov, without the knowledge of the Central Committee, decided to organize a school of saboteurs with more than two thousand students... Only three people should have known about its organization people: Zhukov, Shtemenko and General Mamsurov, who was appointed head of this school. But General Mamsurov, as a Communist, considered it his duty to inform the Central Committee about this illegal action of the minister. This version of events is disputed by a number of experts - for example, the journalist L. Mlechin, who believes that “ the general only turned to the department of administrative bodies of the CPSU Central Committee with a reasonable question why he had not been confirmed in office for so long,” however, those employees with whom he dealt were not aware of Zhukov’s plans, and the senior management simply used this situation as an excuse to remove the marshal. He was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery.
