The famous Soviet security officer Medvedev in his memoirs says that agreements with the Romanians were fictitious from the very beginning. Nestor Makhno and Zinkovsky decided to take advantage of the “Sigurants” offer so that Lev Zinkovsky and his comrades could get the treasure buried in the Dibrovsky forest for a rainy day.
After interrogations and clarifications, everyone except Lev Nikolaevich Zinkovsky was released from custody, prohibiting them from leaving Kharkov until the circumstances were fully clarified. Having lost hope of a successful outcome, during one of the interrogations conducted by Spector, Zinkovsky asked: if he was threatened with execution, then Mark Borisovich should bring a bottle of vodka. After six months of interrogation, Zinkovsky’s fate was decided in his favor. The authorities decided to use his rich experience in intelligence and counterintelligence, as well as his great authority among the Makhnovists, to involve him in illegal work in the GPU. And besides, at that time he was already covered by the amnesty of 1922 for former Makhnovists. The first to bring the news of the liberation to Zinkovsky was security officer Mark Spektor, who had previously worked in secret for the Makhnovists under the name “Matvey Boychenko” and wrote the book “In Makhno’s Lair.”
After his release, Lev Zadov worked with his brother Daniil as non-staff employees of the Kharkov Republican GPU, and only in the spring of 1925 they were assigned to legal work as detectives of foreign departments of the GPU. Lev Zinkovsky served in the Odessa department of the GPU-NKVD.
His track record in this position:
- 1929 - gratitude to the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR and 200 rubles for the liquidation of the major saboteur Kovalchuk (Zinkovsky-Zadov himself was wounded in the arm during the operation);
“...Once, while in ambush, Lev saw the silhouette of a man slowly moving between the trees. Having let the saboteur get within 5-6 meters, Zinkovsky loudly demanded: “Drop your weapons!” In response, a shot rang out at the same instant. A sharp pain burned my hand. Without moving or changing his intonation, in response to the point-blank shot, Lev Zinkovsky repeated: “Drop your weapon!” - and went to the bandit. The seasoned killer trembled and raised his hands. Subsequently, during interrogation, the detainee said that if a group had attacked him, he would have fired back and walked away from them, as he walked away many times: “And here, I’m shooting point-blank, and he stands there and calmly offers to hand over the weapon. I don’t remember how I raised my hands,” the bandit testified during the investigation...”
- 1932 - registered military weapons from the Odessa Regional Executive Committee;
- 1934 - monetary reward for the liquidation of a group of terrorists and registered military weapons.
Death
On August 26, 1937, Zadov was arrested and accused of spying for Romania. A quick court found him guilty of all charges, including serving with Father Makhno, and sentenced him to death (verdict of the visiting session of the USSR All-Russian Military Commission on September 25, 1938). It is believed that the accusation of past sins was only a means of eliminating a person close to L. D. Trotsky, who was Zinkovsky. Zadov's cellmate was K.F. Shtepp, who left a detailed description of him. Only during perestroika in January 1990 was Zadov rehabilitated.
In literature
- The literary and then film image of Levka Zadov is known in the interpretation of the 1930s writer Alexei Tolstoy in the novel “Walking Through Torment”:
Now, a sleek, smiling man in a short jacket, the kind worn by operetta celebrities and singers in the provinces, walked in, somewhat waddling from being overweight... Well, marvel at me, - said the man in the jacket, - I’m Lyova Zadov, you don’t need to bullshit with me, I I will torture you, you will answer...
- Lev Zadov and his relationship with the security officers are shown in the novel about the Civil War by Igor Bolgarin and Viktor Smirnov “Crimson Feather Grass”.
- The story of Lev Zadov, as well as his trial, is examined in detail in the book “Lev Zadov: Death from Selflessness” by Vitaly Oppokov.
- Vasily Zvyagintsev identified Zadov with Leonid Zakovsky (“Local Fights”; “Scorpio in Amber”).
- A.P. Listovsky in the work “Cavalry” is depicted as a disgusting executioner and murderer, an implacable enemy of the Budyonnovsky Red Army soldiers.
To the cinema
The artistic image of Zadov as an Odessa criminal and chief assistant to Old Man Makhno was quite popular in Russian literature and cinema. His image was embodied by:
- Vladimir Belokurov (“Gloomy morning”, 1959)
- Nikolai Georgievich Penkov (“Walking in Torment”, 1977)
- Oleg Primogenov (“Nine Lives of Nestor Makhno”, 2006)
Family
- Brother - Daniil Nikolaevich Zotov (Zadov), (1898-1938), anarchist and Makhnovist, later an employee of the INO OGPU in Tiraspol, shot. Author of the memoirs “My War for Justice” (Tulcea, Romania, 1922).
- His wife, Vera Matveenko, a native of Kremenchug, was repressed after Zadov’s arrest, spent more than a year in prison, but was then released.
- Son - Vadim Lvovich Zinkovsky-Zadov (1926 - 2013), after graduating from the Taldy-Kurgan school of mechanization, he worked as a tractor driver, in January 1944 he volunteered for the front, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, rose to the rank of colonel of the Soviet Army, and since 1977 in the reserve. He wrote the book “The Truth about Zinkovsky-Zadov Lev Nikolaevich - anarchist, security officer.”
- Daughter - Alla, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, a nurse, died in June 1942 near Sevastopol.
The images of many historical figures enter our consciousness distorted, implausible, the way they were supposed to be portrayed for ideological reasons.
Meanwhile, the own fate of such individuals is much more interesting and unusual than what is written in “novels”. Today we will see a true (if possible) biography of the right hand of Nestor Makhno, head of counterintelligence of the Makhnovist army Leva Zadov. The literary and then cinematic image of Levka Zadov is known to us in the interpretation of the main liar of Soviet literature of the 30s, Alexei Tolstoy.
Let us recall the description of the head of counterintelligence in the novel “Walking Through Torment”: “Immediately, a sleek, smiling man in a short undershirt, the kind worn by operetta celebrities and coupletists in the provinces, walked in, somewhat swaying from being overweight... “Well, marvel at me,” said the man in the undershirt, “I’m Leva Zadov, you don’t need to bullshit with me, I’ll torture you, you’ll answer...”There is not a word of truth in this description. In the Gulyai-Polye Museum they showed me the rarest photographs of the Makhnovists at a rest stop. Among the group of dashing guys, belted with machine-gun belts, stands out the tall, two-meter, figure of a thin but broad-shouldered warrior with “pound” fists - this is Leva of the civil war period. The deliberate Odessa accent reproduced by Tolstoy is also false, because Leva Zadov became an Odessa resident after the war, and before that he was Lev Zinkovsky..., from Donbass.
2 Lev Zinkovsky was born in 1893 in the Veselaya colony, Dnepropetrovsk region, a Jew, one of eleven children. Due to poverty, I finished only two classes already in Yuzovka (Donetsk), where the whole family moved when Leva was 7 years old. The tall and strong boy looked older than his years, and they managed to get him a job at a metallurgical plant. Gradually, Leva Zadov began to join the political struggle and joined the anarchist party. In general, Leva’s pre-revolutionary biography resembles Makhno’s life path like two peas in a pod. Participation in rallies and strikes, then expropriation or simply robbery of the rich, arrest and “prison universities” until February 1917. Returning to Yuzovka, he re-entered his native plant, was elected a member of the city council, and at the beginning of 1918 volunteered for the Red Army.
How Levka’s transfer to Makhno’s army took place is not known for certain. However, this was not difficult, since at the moment the old man was fighting on the side of the “Reds”. At first, Leva Zadov held leading but secondary positions. Perhaps his progress was hindered by another of Father’s favorites, the Baltic sailor Fyodor Shus. Shus was in the detachment from the first days of its existence; there was a case when he, risking his life, saved Makhno in an unsuccessful raid against the Germans. But soon a black cat ran between Nestor Makhno and Fyodor Shus. Proud and autocratic Makhno did not like to share command with anyone; he needed only a faithful comrade, obedient to the will of the “father”. Shus knew Nestor in the best and worst of times, he claimed power in the detachment and died as a result. After another quarrel with Dad, Fyodor Shus announced that he was leaving the detachment, and this could have resulted in a split in the Makhnovist ranks. However, he did not have time to go far, and I had to talk with an eyewitness who claimed that she remembers how the Baltic sailor Fyodor Shus lay in the middle of a dusty rural road, with his arms outstretched, shot by an enraged father. 3 Isn’t it from this moment that Leva Zadov’s “gangster career” began: head of counterintelligence, commander of the Crimean group for the liquidation of Wrangel and, finally, adjutant of the commander (Makhno) for counterintelligence, that is, an exclusively trusted person.
I am not going to idealize Leva Zadov. Unlike Makhno, a creepy and at the same time attractive nature, a born leader, Levka Zadov was a performer, although he had his own opinion, carefully hidden from the suspicious dad. In addition, counterintelligence is usually run by people of a certain type, for whom the barrier of rigidity does not exist. We will return to this issue later.
By August 1921, the large Makhnovist forces were finished. The detachment led by Makhno, which included the most faithful comrades in the struggle, including the wife of the “father” Galina Kuzmenko and Leva Zadov with her brother Daniil, disarmed the border post and, having crossed the Dniester, surrendered to the Romanian authorities. The difficult years of emigration dragged on. The Zinkovsky-Zadov brothers lived in Bucharest, then earned their daily bread by doing seasonal work. In 1924, Romanian intelligence (“Siguranza”) offered the Zinkovskys cooperation and participation in a sabotage group on the territory of Soviet Ukraine. The saboteurs crossed the border along the “corridor” prepared by intelligence, and immediately Leva Zadov made a radical statement:
“Guys,” he said, “to hell with this terror.” Let's go give up
4 Subsequent events showed that Leva Zadov’s action was not unexpected. The famous Soviet security officer Medvedev in his memoirs talks about the “ransom” that Levka prepared. According to Zadov, the agreement with the Romanians was fictitious from the very beginning. Nestor Makhno decided to take advantage of the offer from the Sigurans so that Zadov and his comrades could get the treasure buried in the Dibrovsky forest for a rainy day. Dad’s dark day came, but Leva decided to hand over the Makhnovist treasure to the Soviet authorities. Medvedev describes in detail how Leva Zadov absolutely accurately indicated the treasured place, participated in the “excavations” and independently extracted from a shallow hole a multi-pound (!) cauldron filled with rings, cups, bracelets and other looted valuables. But this is not the most surprising thing.
The famous poet of the 20-30s, Eduard Bagritsky, in his “Duma about Opanas” described the phenomenon of the popular Makhnovist movement:
Ukraine, Ukraine - golden grain.
We used to go to the Cossacks,
And now into bandits
There is also a version, although not yet confirmed by archival documents, that Leva Zadov worked for the Cheka since his service with Makhno. In short, since December 1924, Leva Zadov and his brother were officially enrolled as security officers, although for the rest of the participants in the Makhnovist movement, amnesty followed only in November 1927. And Leva Zadov faithfully serves her new masters in the Odessa department of the GPU-NKVD. His track record in this position is no less interesting:
1929 - gratitude to the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR and 200 rubles for the liquidation of the major saboteur Kovalchuk (Zinkovsky-Zadov himself was wounded in the arm during the operation).
1932 - registered military weapons from the Odessa Regional Executive Committee.
1933-1934 - monetary reward for the liquidation of a group of terrorists...
Liquidation, i.e. legalized murders were nothing new for Lyova; he found himself in his place in the Cheka.
6 Alexey Tolstoy, who drew the literary caricature of Levka Zadov, quite possibly saw portraits of Leva in the mid-30s. I also saw one of these photographs. The grown-up, well-groomed Lev Zinkovsky passes on his skills to the younger generation of Soviet security officers. Meanwhile, Leva Zadov’s crazy past played a cruel joke on him. On September 3, 1937, he was arrested and accused of spying for Romania. The trial was quick and wrong; within 15 minutes Leva Zinkovsky-Zadov was found guilty on all counts, including serving with Father Makhno, and sentenced to death. It could have ended there if it weren’t for the strange twists and turns of modern history. The case of Leva Zadov was considered along with the cases of other political prisoners during Gorbachev's perestroika, and in January 1990, the former counterintelligence officer and security officer was rehabilitated. Well, the truth is not black or white and everyone chooses their own path. The fate of Leva Zadova is another picture of a bygone era, and I would like to hope that we will avoid the horrors of civil war, in which it is difficult to establish the line between victim and executioner. "I'm Lyova Zadov - you don't need to play tricks with me" , Mark: I think many readers remember this phrase. It was said by an actor who played the role of a close ally of Old Man Makhno in the film based on Alexei Tolstoy’s trilogy “Walking through Torment”. In the film, as in the book, Levka Zadov is a sadist, executioner, executor of the most villainous orders of Nestor Makhno. Physically, he is a simply disgusting person:... A sleek man in a short jacket, the kind worn by operetta celebrities and singers in the provinces, walked in, somewhat swaying from being overweight... Levka was an executioner, a man of such amazing cruelty that Makhno allegedly tried to kill him more than once him, but forgave him for his loyalty... And here’s what Levka tells about herself in the book: “... she carried me in her arms: money, women... I had to have my heroic strength. In all the newspapers they wrote: Zadov is a poet-humorist... I have an interesting biography. My father is a bindyuzhnik from Moldavanka... I finished real with a gold medal. And right away I was at the pinnacle of glory. It’s clear: beautiful as a god - this belly was gone - bold, impudent, luxurious voice - cascades of witty verses. It was I who brought into fashion a short little girl and patent leather boots: a Russian knight!.. Everything was plastered with posters... I traded everything in jest! Anarchy - that’s life! I’m rushing in a bloody whirlwind...” That’s exactly how Levka is captured in my memory. But, I thought, perhaps this executioner, this boastful fanatic, is a character without a prototype. After all, a writer has the right to fiction, and “Walking in Torment” is not a documentary chronicle, but a novel... Several years ago I met a man who, as it turned out, served in Turkmenistan at the same time as me. He was a border guard at the 17th outpost of the Kizil-Atrek border detachment on the border with Iran. Those places were among the most difficult for service in the entire border district: salt marshes, lack of water, terrible heat in summer, hurricane winds in winter. At that time I served at the headquarters of the TurkVO, and the southwestern direction was within the scope of my competence, so I visited Atrek and Sumbar often. So there was something to remember with Yakov Borisovich. The surname of the former border guard - Zadov - did not evoke any associations. Suddenly, at the beginning of the new year, Yakov casually mentioned that his uncle Lev Zadov served with Father Makhno. Yes, yes, the same Levka Zadov about whom Alexei Tolstoy wrote is his father’s cousin. And he, Yakov, is very interested in the fate of his uncle, collects everything he can from what has been written about him, writes down the stories of his relatives, thank God there are many of them both here and in Russia. And he, Yakov, now knows for sure that Lev Nikolaevich Zadov was not at all the same as the “Soviet count” portrayed him. It would be more correct to say that he did not depict it, but rather caricatured it. Mark: And in what way, tell me, Yakov Borisovich, does the real image of your uncle differ from that, frankly speaking, most unpleasant person from Alexei Tolstoy’s trilogy? Yakov Zadov: - Perhaps the only correspondence is Lev Nikolaevich’s two-meter height. Everything else is, to put it mildly, made up. Both his origin and his role in the rebel army of Nestor Makhno. Well, look, a copy of the questionnaire from the personal file of Lev Nikolaevich Zadov: Born in 1893 in the agricultural colony of Veselaya, Yekaterinoslav province, in the family of a Jewish peasant who had 10 children. He studied for two years at a Jewish school (cheder). Since 1908 - a laborer at a mill, since 1911 - in a blast furnace shop, catal, Yuzovka. He became a member of the local anarchist organization, participated in expropriations, was arrested in 1913, sentenced to 8 years of hard labor, released during the February Revolution of 1917. Then the uncle returned to his own blast furnace shop, again working as a catalyzer. In January 1918, he joined an anarchist fighting unit and fought against the Cossacks in the Donbass. In April, German-Austrian occupiers came to Donbass, and the detachment retreated to Tsaritsyn and joined the anarchist regiment. Thanks to his courage, bravery, and resourcefulness, Lev Zadov became the commander of one of the units. In August, the regiment was included in the Kruglyak Red Army brigade, and Zadov was seconded to the headquarters of the Southern Front. There they decided to use him for underground work behind German lines and sent him to Ukraine. In November 1918, in the Gulyai-Polye region, Lev Zadov met with Nestor Makhno. If you believe the book by Alexei Tolstoy, then your uncle served with Father Makhno as the head of counterintelligence, simultaneously performing the duties of an executioner. What was it really like? Yakov Zadov: - In fact, Tolstoy distorted the real activities of Lev Zadov as well as his appearance. By the way, in the detachment he was known by his anarchist pseudonym - Zinkovsky, not Zadov. According to the authors of the books - S. Semakov "Leva Zadov - the right hand of the father", S. Shvedov "Leva Zadov", V. Opokin "Lev Zadov - death from selflessness" - he led not the punitive service, but the intelligence service. And he successfully coped with his responsibilities. His younger brother Daniil served with him in intelligence. Subsequently, he said: “Leva’s operational reconnaissance consisted of several groups of 2-3 people: young women, boys 13-14 years old, old men. Each group was on a cart. 5-6 such groups were sent. They traveled for several days and returned, reporting ", where which enemy units are located or where they are heading within a radius of 50 - 60 km. So, dad always knew the situation in detail." However, Zadov also had agents in the enemy troops and even headquarters. For example, when he arrived to Makhno on an armored train, Leva warned his dad not to go to negotiations in this armored car, but to send him to a lower rank. The parliamentarians were immediately arrested, and the armored train rushed at full speed to Kharkov, where after interrogation they were shot by security officers. But Makhno had counterintelligence naturally. Its head was Lev Golik. So, apparently, Tolstoy swapped Lev Zadov with his namesake. What, besides intelligence, did Zadov do? Yes, to everyone that Makhno instructed. He edited the newspaper of the rebel army, it was called “The Path to Freedom.” He issued leaflets with an appeal from Nestor Makhno to villagers, townspeople, enemy soldiers and fighters of Makhnovist regiments. In March 1919, Zadov became a member of the so-called “Initiative Group,” which took away valuables from wealthy residents of those cities and towns that fell under the rule of the Makhnovists. In the fall of 1920, Makhno appointed Zadov commandant of the Crimean Corps, sent to participate in the assault on Perekop. This is perhaps the only time when Leva broke up with his dad. The rest of the time he was with him continuously. And he saved him from death more than once. So, thanks to his agents, he exposed one of the commanders, Polonsky, who intended to poison Nestor with strychnine. However, of course, one cannot consider Leva Zadov to be a white-handed purist. He was an active member of the so-called “Commission on Anti-Makhnovist Activities” - a kind of military tribunal, according to whose verdicts many people were executed, including innocent ones. And more than once Leva Zadov carried out these sentences with his own hands. But many did this, and not only in the Makhnovist army. There was a civil war going on - dirty, unrighteous, bloody. But perhaps Zadov’s main position is Makhno’s adjutant. He was even called “daddy’s shadow.” Leva became especially famous when he twice carried the wounded Makhno out of the most desperate chopping block. Father was a man of unbridled courage who despised danger. If he believed that his intervention could turn the tide of the battle, then, without hesitation, he rushed into the thick of the cavalry battle. Over three years, Father Makhno was wounded 11 times, including four times seriously. At the beginning of 1921, when the main strategic tasks of the Red Army were resolved, its command sent forces that were many times superior to them to eliminate the rebel detachments of Nestor Makhno. And by August of the same year, the Makhnovist detachments were either destroyed or scattered. The old man had 70 horsemen left, but he managed to break through and went to Romania. Did Leva Zadov participate in this last throw of the ataman? Yakov Zadov:- Of course, I participated. On August 28, in a battle with the Red Army, Nestor was wounded in the head and Lev Zadov took command of the detachment. He led him to the Dniester in the Kamenka area, where the river could be crossed on horseback. But there was a border outpost there, and Zadov led the Makhnovists in the final attack. Before the battle, he took off a very expensive old ring with a large diamond from his finger and gave it to Makhno’s wife, Galina Kuzmenko. Zadov said that this was the only jewel in the detachment, and if they broke through, then the Romanians might not begin to search the woman. And then this ring can be sold so that at least some money will be available for the first time. Having crossed the Dniester, the Makhnovists broke through and went to Romania. Lyova turned out to be right: the ring was sold and the proceeds greatly helped in the treatment of the father. Mark Many former citizens of the USSR were of the opinion that Makhno’s rebel army was nothing more than a bunch of bandits and, because of this, did nothing but rob the population. And when she met with regular troops, she immediately ran away without offering resistance. However, recently evidence has appeared that in fact Makhno’s army was a completely combat-ready army, and the old man himself was a talented military leader... Yakov Zadov:- Recently, many books and studies have been published that fairly objectively show the activities of Nestor Makhno - military and socio-political. The history of the Makhnovist movement is especially professionally presented in the works of V. Telichkin, V. Akhinko, V. Volkovinsky, A. Avdeenko, S. Bykovsky. From them you can find out, for example, that Makhno’s army did not have a permanent composition, but it numbered from 50 to 100 thousand fighters. In 1920, under the command of Makhno there were more than 70 thousand people in four corps, with 1,100 machine-gun carts and 50 guns. By the way, it was Makhno who invented the machine-gun cart - a powerful type of weapon in maneuverable battles of the Civil War. It was only later that Soviet commanders adopted it from Makhno, and until the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the cart remained in service with the Red Army. It was sung in songs, consigning to oblivion the one who came up with the idea of putting a “Maxim” on a rural spring chaise. Nestor Makhno also developed methods for the combat use of machine gun regiments on carts. They rushed towards the attacking lava of the enemy cavalry, turned around at full gallop and literally mowed down the enemy with heavy fire from hundreds of machine guns. With the help of such a technique, for example, the Makhnovists destroyed the cavalry corps of Wrangel’s general in the Crimea. Makhno also had other military-tactical ideas, and it was not for nothing that he became famous for his resourcefulness and combat skill, defeating much superior enemy forces and skillfully escaping from encirclement and persecution. Few people know today that during the period when Nestor Makhno collaborated with the Red Army, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner number four and presented him with the order, the same one that later tried to take him away on an armored train. Mark: Do you know, Yakov, how the fate of your uncle, Lev Nikolaevich Zadov-Zinkovsky, developed abroad after his detachment moved to Romania? After all, there are only rumors about this and subsequent periods of his fate. Yakov Zadov:- The Romanians interned the Makhnovists and sent them to a camp. But Nestor himself and his wife and the Zadov brothers, with the permission of the authorities, settled in a Bucharest hotel. Soon, however, the brothers moved out of there: there was no money for a hotel. They got jobs as workers at a sawmill, then as helpers at construction sites. They continued like this for four years. But in 1924, the Romanian secret service invited Lev Zadov to lead a sabotage group that was planned to be sent to the USSR. Zadov, after consulting with his brother, agreed. The group consisted of 6 people armed with revolvers and bombs. She was transported to Ukraine on June 9, 1924. Immediately after crossing the state border, Lev Zadov invited the others to surrender. Everyone agreed. The border guards took them to Kharkov, where the capital of Ukraine was then located, and there the Makhnovists explained to the security officers that they agreed to the task only in order to freely cross the border and surrender. In addition, they knew that on April 12, 1922, the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee granted an amnesty to everyone who fought against Soviet power in Ukraine with arms in hand. The only exception was Makhno. Nevertheless, all the defectors were put in prison and their testimony began to be checked, for which an agent was specially sent to Romania. He was given a letter from Lev Zadov to his comrades. The security officer completed the task. With the help of this letter, an intelligence group was created among the Makhnovists, who agreed to work for Soviet intelligence. This played a significant role in the fact that both brothers were released from Kharkov prison six months later. Mark And many don’t even know that Leva Zadov has returned to his homeland. Those who know are sure that he was shot immediately. And only recently did information appear that he lived in the USSR for another 14 years, worked, and was not in prison. Is this true? Yakov Zadov:- Moreover, the brothers began to serve not just anywhere, but in the OGPU - the department that replaced the Cheka. Lev was sent to the Odessa department, and Daniil to the Ternopil department, each to the foreign department of his department. But before that, Lev lived in an apartment after prison and fell in love with the owner’s wife, Vera. She was a beauty, a Russian noblewoman by birth, and had two children - Vladislav and Alla. They fell in love with each other, and when their uncle was sent to, Vera went with him, taking her daughter with her. They got married. A year later their son Vadim was born. In the Odessa department, Lev Zadov dealt with the overseas agents of the OGPU - the one that operated in Romania. He served for 13 years, very conscientiously and honestly. This is evidenced by entries in the personal file. There are no penalties, only awards, including a Mauser with a gold monogram: “To L. Zadov for military merits.” He received another pistol in 1932 with the inscription: “For an active and merciless fight against counter-revolution.” However, despite all these awards, he was also hit by a wave of repression: in August 1937, he was arrested by the NKVD. They also took brother Daniel. Despite the amnesty of 1922, they charged him with participation in the Makhnovist detachments. Well, in addition, they invented a scenario related to the failure of the Romanian agents in 1934, “appointing” the brothers as traitors who had been converted. With the help of terrible beatings and abuse, which lasted almost a year, they forced me to “confess” to all the charges. On September 25, 1938, after a “trial” that lasted 15 minutes, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced Lev Zadov and his brother Daniil to death. A day later the sentence was carried out. In 1987, by decision of the USSR Prosecutor General's Office, Lev and Daniil Zadov were rehabilitated "for lack of corpus delicti." Their rehabilitation was achieved by the son of Lev Nikolaevich Zadov, front-line soldier, retired colonel Vadim Lvovich Zinkovsky. According to my information, he now lives in, his two sons are officers. They are all Zinkovskys. And we - the Zadovs - live here in America... Alexey Tolstoy completed the last part of the trilogy - "Gloomy Morning" - in 1941. It is now known that he was provided with access to classified materials from the NKVD archives, in which he could obtain comprehensive information about Makhno and his comrades. Consequently, he knew the whole truth about Lev Zadov and did not improvise out of ignorance, but quite deliberately distorted the truth, slandering a man of such an unusual and tragic fate... Jews
-Who are you, a prostitute? Come to me to clean your nails...
The girl began to cry and went to tell the teacher about me. And I just repeated, turning to her, the phrase of the Makhnovist Levka Zadov from the film “Walking in Torment” the day before I watched))
It must be said that Soviet cinema sometimes managed to create incredibly cute images of all kinds of scoundrels.)
Lyovka Zadov is one of them. All his phrases were divided into quotes. For example, this one, in response to an opponent’s smile: "Hide your teeth, virva!"
Although, of course, the image was completely operetta-like, especially in the first version of the film. Compare - the same episode:
I wonder what he really was like, how his fate turned out?
Lyovka was born into a large Jewish Zodov family in the Donbass. Later he would change his last name to Zadov, and his brother-colleague to Zotov. Many knew him under the name Zinkovsky...
Lyovka belonged to that sometimes encountered type of heroic robbers who rarely die a natural death; they become either notorious bandits or heroic commanders. Two meters tall, slanting fathoms at the shoulders, Lyovka works at a metallurgical plant in Yuzovka (Donetsk), where he is interested in the ideas of anarchism. In practice, this means engaging in expropriations, and, to put it bluntly, robberies and robbery. In 1913, Zadov was sent to hard labor, and only the February Revolution of 1917 allowed him to return to his homeland.
In the photo Lev Zadov with his brother Daniil Zotov
The whirlwind of revolution caught the daring Lyovka, he becomes the right hand of Nestor Makhno, heads intelligence, fights against Wrangel in the Crimea, and commits crimes.
Children are frightened with his name, the fame of the Makhnovist thug resounds throughout Ukraine. In some ways he looks like Grigory Kotovsky, even in appearance...
In 1921, Father Makhno was finally defeated, and he was forced to flee to Romania. The Zadov brothers ended up there with him.
Three years in exile, three years of attempts to organize resistance and sabotage groups.
In 1924, Zadov and a group of saboteurs crossed the border... and immediately surrendered to the NKVD.
He repents, promises to atone with blood, remembers his proletarian origin and episodes of the fight against the White Guards.
He is left free. Family, wife, daughter...
And a successful career in the NKVD. Such people turned out to be very necessary there.
Lev Nikolaevich Zinkovsky knows no pity for the enemies of Soviet power; he shows particular cruelty towards the remnants of the Makhnovists, his former comrades...
By the mid-30s, Lev Nikolaevich was an honored and respected veteran of the Odessa NKVD...
In the photo he is in the center, with his colleagues.
Well, it’s not hard to guess that no matter how many strings it twists...it got twisted into a noose in 1937.
What remains is the testimony of Konstantin Feodosievich Shtepp, a professor who spent several days in the same cell with Zinkovsky:
Another security officer was sitting with us, one of the most colorful people I have ever met in my life.
It is a feature of the Soviet system that the most powerful people in any respect are either sooner or later destroyed, or they are absorbed into power. Some are the vanguard of the working people - the party, others - the vanguard of the party itself - the NKVD.
The second cellmate's name was Zinkovsky (Zinkovsky).
This was the same Levka Zadov, who was once the head of the Makhnovist counterintelligence, whom Alexey Tolstoy described in one of his stories.
Huge in stature, heavyset, with a freckled face and red hair, he really must have made a terrible impression on the people who fell into his hands. And there were quite a few of them, since the Makhnovist counterintelligence was not inferior to the Cheka in cruelty.
I admit, I felt somewhat uneasy when I learned from Zinkovsky who I was dealing with.
Zinkovsky told us, his cellmates, the story of his life.
The son of a Jewish tenant from Sloboda Ukraine, he grew up in a fairly wealthy family.
Zinkovsky became an anarchist, then became involved in a terrorist attack, for which he received eight years of solitary confinement.
He told me how he got used to his situation and fell in love with his camera. When release came, he went up the hill and spent a long time looking for the window of his cell. I felt that a considerable part of his life remained behind that window, a piece of his soul that we leave behind wherever fate takes us. We leave this piece in every person we meet...
After prison, years of wandering began for Zinkovsky in search of daily bread. This was the most interesting period of his life. He could talk about her very entertainingly. Whoever he was during these years, and whoever fate brought him into contact with!.. I forgot many of his stories, but what was especially etched in my memory was how he was engaged in gilding church utensils under the name Zolotorevsky.
To make it easier to get clients, he pretended that he was doing his work as a vow, for free. And since, according to his documents, he was a cross, they believed him and willingly gave him a job.
When dealing with gold and silver, he donated his labor, and rewarded himself with the material with which his customers supplied him. In addition, he was warmly received everywhere, not suspecting that they were dealing with a former convict, and even a terrorist.
This type of activity introduced Zinkovsky closely to the spiritual environment. In his stories, he approached her with good-natured humor, without reverence and without ridicule.
Before the revolution, Zinkovsky was something of a traveling salesman. By that time he managed to contact his party, and as soon as Makhno began to form his troops, he found himself in his camp.
Fortunately, Gulyai-Pole was not far from his native place, and he knew many of the Gulyai-Polye residents personally, just as they knew him.
How it happened that he, not being a cruel person, took on a cruel task, Zinkovsky did not explain.
It happened!
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In the NKVD, Zinkovsky rose to high positions. Before his arrest, he was already the head of a department in the regional administration.
Like most prisoners, he did not know the immediate reason for his arrest. His former activities in the service of Makhno were a thing of the distant past, it was well known to everyone and did not prevent him from moving up the career ladder for almost twenty years.
So this did not seem to be the reason for the arrest. But there were connections, not so much personal as of an official nature, with high-ranking people both in the “organs” (the usual designation for their department among security officers) and in the party apparatus.
They turned out to be “enemies” and for this reason they “sat down.” Even drivers and couriers were imprisoned for “connections.”
Zinkovsky was taller. His immediate superior at one time was Laplevsky, who succeeded Balitsky as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.
Leplevsky “sat down” and, apparently, had already been shot. This was quite enough to eliminate Zinkovsky.
Like every condemned person, Zinkovsky hoped for a pardon or a retrial, but at the same time he mobilized his last internal resources (I use Soviet verbal stencils) so as not to lose his dignity at the moment of execution.
I remember on one cloudy day, when things were especially difficult in our cell, Zinkovsky walked from corner to corner for a long time, we walked in turns, since the size of the cell allowed only one person to walk - five steps forward and five steps back, Zinkovsky approached and asked me a question that was so unexpected that at first I was even taken aback.
“Help me understand one thing,” he said. “I’ve thought about this all my life and could never understand it myself.” What does it mean: “trampling death upon death”?
I was puzzled. I understood that what was expected of me was not an explanation according to the catechism, but some kind of explanation, if not deeper, then more accessible. But what could I say? Did I myself then understand the great meaning of these words?
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We didn't talk about anything else the whole next day. Levkovich and I lay on our beds, Zinkovsky walked heavily around the cell, only occasionally stopping and squeezing his temples with his hands.
At night they called Zinkovsky. He took his things - he always had them collected, shook hands with Levkovich, came up to me and hugged me tightly.
“With dignity,” he whispered.
“Pray,” I told him very quietly.
“I’ll try,” he answered just as quietly.
The bolt moved. I never saw Zinkovsky-Zadov again. But I found out later, when I was free, that he was shot that same night. Whether he managed to maintain his dignity, which is what he was so worried about, I don’t know.
In 1938, Lev Zadov-Zinkovsky was shot.
Although, there are two death certificates, however, this is no longer important.
This is how he was, the darling of the revolution, the legendary Levka Zadov.
- Hide your teeth, virvu!
Anarchist Lev Zadov-Zinkovsky is better known as Levka Zadov. He managed to fight in the Red Army, and be the right hand of Father Makhno, and work for the NKVD... His stormy biography ended, as often happened with his kind, by execution.
Anarchist from Yuzovka
Lev Nikolaevich Zadov was born on April 11, 1893 in the small Jewish colony Veselaya near the village of Yuzovka, Bakhmut district, Ekaterinoslav province. His real name was Zodov. After graduating from cheder, he got a job, first at a mill, then at a metallurgical plant, where he joined the anarchists. He especially managed to distinguish himself in robberies and “expropriations.” The anarchists robbed artels, railway ticket offices, post offices, and used the money “for the revolutionary movement.”
In 1913, Zadov was arrested and sentenced to eight years of hard labor. There, the anarchist took himself a more euphonious pseudonym - Zinkovsky. After the February Revolution of 1917, an amnesty was declared for all political prisoners. Zadov-Zinkovsky also fell under it. Returning home, he was immediately elected as a local workers' deputy. When the Bolsheviks came to power, Lev volunteered for the Red Army and fought near Tsaritsyn. He was quickly promoted from an ordinary private to a brigade chief, but soon deserted the army and returned to Ukraine.
In Makhno's army
Zadov joined the rebel army of Nestor Makhno, soon receiving the post of chief of counterintelligence of the 1st Donetsk Corps. In fact, they robbed wealthy people under the guise of “indemnity”, and also fought with other armies, for example, Denikin’s. Meanwhile, some Makhnovists accused Zadov of unreliability and claimed that he had been recruited by the Cheka, and even demanded that Makhno shoot him. Lev was saved from reprisals by Makhno’s wife, who sympathized with him, Galina Kuzmenko.
After the defeat of Denikin in 1920, Makhno and his associates were declared “enemies of the people.” Zadov became one of the saviors of Nestor Makhno, hiding him from the Bolsheviks in a safe shelter. Then Lev, together with his brother Danila, also a Makhnovist, returned to their native Donbass.
They were very lucky. The Bolshevik government decided to attract the Makhnovists to their side so that they would help them defeat the remnants of Wrangel’s army in the Crimea. So Lev Zadov again ended up in the Red Army, taking part in the defeat of the white movement on the peninsula.
But in the summer of 1921, together with Makhno and his few surviving comrades, Zadov-Zinkovsky fled to Romania. On the way, they killed a detachment of border guards.
Career in the GPU
Life in exile turned out to be difficult. Lev and his brother had to work in seasonal jobs, earning pittance. But soon Zadov was recruited by Romanian intelligence - the “Siguran”. He joined a sabotage group that was sent to the territory of Soviet Ukraine in 1924. However, as soon as he found himself on the other side of the border, Zadov and his group immediately surrendered to the Soviet authorities. He was interrogated by the GPU for six months. And in the end they decided to offer cooperation. After all, the former Makhnovist had extensive experience in intelligence and counterintelligence. And members of Makhno’s army were amnestied back in 1922.
There is, however, a legend that Zadov managed to come to an agreement with employees of the Kharkov GPU, revealing the location of the treasure buried by the rebels of Makhno’s army in the Dibrovsky forest. One way or another, he was sent to Odessa, where he fought gangs and terrorist groups.
Shot security officer
In August 1937, Zadov, like many other people with dubious pasts, was arrested on charges of spying for Romania. Since the NKVD did not have any evidence of his guilt, torture was used. Only a year later they managed to extract from Zadov-Zinkovsky a confession of working for foreign intelligence services. On September 25, 1938, he was shot. The same fate befell brother Danilo, who also worked for the NKVD, only in Tiraspol.
It is curious that Lev Zadov-Zinkovsky appears in Alexei Tolstoy’s novel “Walking Through Torment.” Moreover, he acts there as a cruel executioner, carrying out Makhno’s bloodiest orders. “I am Leva Zadov, you don’t need to joke with me,” says this hero.
In 1990, Lev Nikolaevich Zadov-Zinkovsky was posthumously rehabilitated as an innocent victim in the dungeons of the NKVD. But his activities during the Civil War are not so well known.
Zadov’s son, Colonel Vadim Lvovich Zinkovsky, subsequently wrote an autobiographical book about his father, “The Truth about Zinkovsky-Zadov Lev Nikolaevich - an anarchist, security officer,” trying to whitewash his image in the eyes of his contemporaries.
“Take your teeth away! Otherwise I’ll vomit!”- With this favorite phrase of mine “Odessa poet-humorist” Leva Zinkovsky, thanks to Alexei Tolstoy and his famous novel “Walking through Torment”, entered the mass reader’s consciousness.
The deliberate accent reproduced by the writer is false - after all, Lev Zinkovsky became an Odessa citizen after the Civil War, and before that he was Lev Zadov.
Leva Zadov
Zinkovsky Lev Nikolaevich (Leva Zadov) was born in 1883 in the Yekaterinoslav province, in the village of Veselaya. In those years, there was a Jewish agricultural colony there with the optimistic name “Veselaya”. Leva's father Nicholas owned two acres of land. There wasn't enough income. Every year more offspring were added; there was nothing to feed them. And Nikolai Zadov, having sold his property, moved to Yuzovka (modern Donetsk), where he started driving cabs. Strong Leva worked for some time as a loader at a mill. Then at the metallurgical plant we loaded the smelting furnaces.
At the factory, Zadov became close to the anarchists. He took part in robberies, although not “ordinary” ones, but ideologically motivated ones. They robbed institutions and individual wealthy citizens, thereby replenishing the party coffers. On the party line, robberies of this kind were called expropriation. During another such Leva, Zadov was caught red-handed and sentenced to 8 years in prison. He served half his sentence - he was saved by the amnesty declared by the Provisional Government.
After his release, Zadov returned to Yuzovka. As a knowledgeable person, who also suffered for the people's cause, the factory workers elected Leva to the city council of workers, peasants and soldiers' deputies. After the October coup, Leva Zadov joined the Bolsheviks. He fought with the Petliurites and Cossacks of Ataman Krasnov. At the end of 1918, he moved to Gulyai-Polye, to Father Makhno. There he changed his last name Zadov to Zinkovsky.
For some time, Leva was listed as an ordinary soldier. But quite quickly, thanks to his obvious organizational skills and indomitability, he was elected regiment commander. Zadov fought with Denikin, Wrangel, Petlyura. Led the Crimean group. The one that stormed Perekop. Then Makhno brought Zadov closer to him.
Makhno's Zadov led intelligence, and quite successfully. Leva’s younger brother Daniil, who served with him, recalled: “Leva’s operational reconnaissance consisted of several groups of 2-3 people: young women, boys 13-14 years old, old men. Each group was on a cart. 5-6 such groups were sent. They traveled for several days and when returning, they reported where which enemy units were located or where they were heading within a radius of 50-60 km. So the dad always knew the situation in detail.”
The Makhnovist army had a glorious walk across Ukraine! At the end of August 1921, the Makhnovists left for Romania and surrendered to the local authorities. In the last cart leaving Ukraine were Makhno with his wife Galina, Levka Zadov with his girlfriend Fenya and coachman Sashko... And on June 9, 1924, six horsemen who secretly crossed the border of the USSR from Romania surrendered to Soviet power. Two of them were the Zadov brothers, Lev and Daniel. For almost a year, their answers during interrogations were carefully checked by security officers. The results of the audit completely satisfied the leadership of one of the most powerful secret organizations in the world. And the Zadov brothers were enlisted in the service. Lev Zadov - to the foreign department of the Odessa OGPU, Daniil Zadov was sent to one of the regional divisions in the west of Ukraine, to Ternopil.
Shot as a spy, but later completely rehabilitated!
Leva, under Soviet rule, lived in Odessa in house No. 5 on the street. Postal (Zhukovsky), by the way, in the same front door with Vera Mikhailovna Inber.
In Odessa he got married and had two children. (Zadov’s daughter Alla died in 1942 during the defense of Sevastopol, and his son Vadim, who went through the entire war, then rose to the rank of colonel). So he officially became an employee of the foreign intelligence apparatus, where he was listed as a “specialist on Romania.” For thirteen years, Lev Zadov led the OGPU agents operating in Romania, codenamed “Fiddlers.” The group had some success, because one of its agents ("Tamarin") worked in the general staff of the Romanian army, and the other ("Tourist") headed intelligence at the headquarters of the 3rd Army Corps, stationed in Chisinau.
Death of the Zadov brothers.
When the Siguranza (Romanian counterintelligence) exposed the “Fiddlers”, Moscow began to intensively search for the culprits. The employees of the Odessa INO were declared as such, primarily Lev Zadov-Zinkovsky and Daniil Zadov-Zotov. During the purge of state security organs initiated by Yezhov, the Zadov brothers were arrested. As a result of many days of interrogations with passion, a certain Yakov Shaev-Schneider, who was in charge of the case of the Zadov brothers, obtained from them a confession on all charges. On September 25, 1938, a visiting session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced Lev Zadov and his brother to death in 15 minutes of “work.” On the same day the sentence was carried out.
His son, retired Colonel Vadim Lvovich Zinkovsky, sought his father’s rehabilitation for many years. And in January 1990, the plenum of the Supreme Court of the USSR completely rehabilitated Lev Nikolaevich Zinkovsky-Zadov, recognizing his services to the revolution.
Anarchist, communist, security officer...
Black holes of history
The only capital Nikolai Zadov inherited from his wife was ten children!
In one of the previous issues of the Nabat newspaper, a note was published entitled “Leva Zadov’s granddaughter studied at the Kremenchug Medical School.” Who is Lev Nikolaevich Zadov (Zinkovsky)? This was the famous anarchist, comrade-in-arms of the legendary Nestor Ivanovich Makhno, head of his counterintelligence, glorified by the writer Alexei Tolstoy in the trilogy “Walking in Torment” (glorified negatively).
Only during the years of Gorbachev's perestroika, during the rehabilitation of L.N. Zadov-Zinkovsky, was the fact made public that the Makhnovist L.N. Zadov worked in Odessa as a security officer in the NKVD until 1937. He then lived on Zhukovsky Street in house No. 5, apartment 17 (as it was stated in the arrestee’s questionnaire, this was an NKVD dormitory). There was also one convincing fact that confirmed the selfless character of L.N. Zadov-Zinkovsky. In the case materials in the search report, the most valuable things seized during the search included a Browning revolver and ammunition for it, a small-caliber rifle, a camera, binoculars and “one treasury note” worth five dollars, as well as 253 type cards and two boxes unusable photographic plates.
They were destroyed as having no value, as evidenced by the corresponding act dated October 5, 1937.
Colonel of Justice N.L. Anisimov and captain 1st rank spoke about the fate of L.N. Zadov-Zinkovsky in 1990 in the Moscow “Military Historical Journal” in a documentary material entitled “Servant of Anarchy and Order” under the heading “Examining Judicial Materials” V.G.Oppokov.
In 1937, L.N. Zadov-Zinkovsky was accused “of having connections with Makhno’s overseas center for the purpose of an anti-Soviet conspiracy and counter-revolutionary action.” In a letter to the Prosecutor General of the USSR, the son of Lev Zadov-Zinkovsky, already in our time, wrote and rightly noted that the perception of the image of his father in an extremely negative and unsightly manner was influenced by the famous work of A. Tolstoy and the film based on the novel by the same writer. This is how A. Tolstoy “lies” through the mouth of Zadov in the trilogy:
“Odessa carried me in its arms: money, women... In all the newspapers they wrote: Zadov is a poet-humorist... My biography is interesting. I graduated from reality with a gold medal. And my dad was a simple binder from Peresyp. All of Odessa was plastered over posters with my portraits..."
The biography of Lev Zadov was actually completely different. The future head of Makhno's counterintelligence and the future security officer of the NKVD was born in 1893 in the Yekaterinoslav province in a village called Veselaya.
The family had an allotment of two acres of land and was engaged in agriculture. The almost annual birth of a new child made it impossible not only to think about wealth, but also to get out of poverty. In the end, the head of the family, Nikolai Zadov, decided to say goodbye to the “grain-growing gesheft” and in 1900 moved to the Donbass in Yuzovka (then Stalino, now Donetsk). Here he died, ten years later, having not become rich, except for the only capital inherited from him by his wife - ten children.
His wife significantly outlived him; back in 1936 she was 80 years old and was dependent on six daughters (five lived in Stalino, one in Mariupol). The elder brother, Isaac Zadov, was a driver before the revolution; during the Imperialist War and Revolution he speculated and became rich. In 1929 he was dispossessed as a nepman, then somewhere in the Crimea he worked on a collective farm. The second brother, Naum, lived in Stalino and was a poor artisan. The third brother, Daniel, who changed his last name to Zotov during his stay in exile in Romania in the 20s, lived in Tiraspol and worked as an investigator in the Foreign Department of the State Security Administration of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
What was the real biography of L.N. Zadov-Zinkovsky? He began to use the surname Zinkovsky in exile in Romania and then when working in the NKVD. Zadov was in Father Makhno’s counterintelligence service. In 1912 he worked at the Yuzovsky Metallurgical Plant. Joined a small anarchist group. He participated in expropriation raids three times: in Rutchenkovo against a local mine worker, in the village of Koran (near Mariupol) against a post office and at Debaltsevo station against a railway cashier.
After his arrest by the Yuzovsky police, he was under investigation for two years, and then served his sentence in Bakhmut, Lugansk and Yekaterinoslav prisons. In 1917, after the February coup, he was released, as L.N. Zadov-Zinkovsky emphasized in his testimony, in 1937 in connection with the amnesty of political prisoners. The fact is very significant. In many books, Lev Zadov is presented as a “hardened criminal,” but he was considered a political prisoner. And one more detail: in all the investigative questionnaires Zadov-Zinkovsky is listed as a non-party member, but in the certificate preceding the interrogation protocol dated September 3, 1937 there is such a significant entry: “From 1913 to 1921 - an anarchist-communist.”
Let's add a few words about the fate of L.N. Zadov-Zinkovsky's brother Daniil Zotov-Zadov, who worked in the NKVD in Moldova. D.N. Zotov was sentenced to death by the verdict of the visiting session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on September 25, 1938. However, on August 2, 1964 (under N.S. Khrushchev), the Chief Military Prosecutor issued a protest to overturn the verdict and dismiss the case against Zotov-Zadov. The Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR satisfied this protest and “discontinued the Zotov-Zadov case for lack of corpus delicti.” To some extent, the writer Alexei Tolstoy is “to blame” for falsifying the image of Zadov in the trilogy “Walking Through Torment.” There he endows Zadov with juicy thieves' Odessa jargon and makes him an executioner.
"Take your teeth away! Otherwise I'll pull them out!" - With this favorite phrase of his, the “Odessa poet-humorist” Lyova Zadov, thanks to Alexei Tolstoy and his famous novel “Walking Through Torment,” entered the mass reader’s consciousness.
Why did A. Tolstoy turn a working Yuzovsky guy into a drunkard-coupletist? A. Tolstoy was not a participant or witness to the civil war.
He, so to speak, gleaned information about Zinkovsky from “documentary” books published at that time, which, due to the ideological conjuncture, denigrated Father Makhno and the Makhnovshchina and the “bandit-expropriator” Lev Zadov. This is the book by I. Teper (Gordeev) "Makhno", published in 1924 in Kyiv by the publishing house "Young Worker" and kept in a special storage facility, the book by M. Kubanin "Makhnovshchina", published in 1927 by the publishing house "Priboy" and the work S. Chernomordin (P. Larionova) “Makhno and Makhnovshchina”, published in 1933 by the Moscow publishing house “Politkatorzhanin”.
The authors in the Military Historical Journal state: “We will not analyze the assessments given by the authors of the books presented to such an ambiguous, contradictory and complex phenomenon as the Makhnovshchina. It is impossible to judge the general and private assessments of these authors. Let’s just say that they have a certain distrust The biographies of the Zadov brothers evoke their perversion."
During the period of Gorbachev's perestroika, the newspaper "Evening Kyiv" published on its pages an interview with the son of Lev Zadov-Zinkovsky, who lived in Odessa at that time. He did not see his father, who was shot in 1937, and he himself was subjected to repression, like Zadov’s son. It was he who said that his daughter was studying at the Kremenchug Medical School. It is unlikely that this Kremenchug student told her classmates about her legendary grandfather and, in all likelihood, when she got married, she changed her surname to her husband’s surname. These are the zigzags of history using the examples of individual individuals.
P.S. In 1918, in Uman, in the headquarters carriage of S. Petlyura, his “conciliatory” meeting with representatives of N.I. Makhno was supposed to take place. But the Makhnovists were preparing an assassination attempt against S. Petlyura. This action was led by the head of the Makhnovist counterintelligence Lev Zadov-Zinkovsky. The attempt failed for a number of reasons. The Petliurites suspected something and canceled the meeting. This fact is mentioned in his book “Makhnovshchina” by the Poltava writer Yu. Dmitrenko-Dumich, published three years ago in a small edition in Kremenchug. L. Zadov-Zinkovsky was shot by his fellow security officers, and S. Petlyura in Paris was killed in broad daylight on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, according to some Ukrainian nationalist historians, by an agent of the Cheka-NKVD.
The circle is closed...
newspaper "Nabat", Evgeniy Lutoslavsky
