Anna Rudakova
Photo:
from the personal archive
Former Secretary of counterintelligence “SMERSH” (“Death to spies”), Anna Rudakova said that the person was typing confidential reports for Joseph Stalin and Lavrenti Beria. She told about it in interview to “Moskovsky Komsomolets”.
“The hardest part was to print special reports to Stalin. The requirements were special: the best paper (white, thick), padding on the fields and no fixes. I have a lot to President secret papers prepared”, – said Rudakov.
During the great Patriotic war, she said, she met with agents of the military counterintelligence and shorthand the testimony of German spies. “Some of their stories (it concerned high-ranking prisoners of war), I was forbidden to record. I had everything down to a single word, remember and then verbally convey this to your superiors,” she said.
According to Rudakov, the salary of the Secretary of “SMERSH” was 900 rubles. Staff are permitted to remotely place orders in a special store, and during the war they were given good rations. A woman’s work “SMERSH” ended only after it was disbanded by order of Stalin.
Rudakova recently turned 100 years old, she still lives in the house on Tverskaya five minutes from the building on Lubyanka square, where an apartment was given to many employees of state Security.