"An exhibition, dedicated to the 100th birth anniversary of legendary Soviet intelligence agent Nikolai Kuznetsov, opened in the Russian Urals city of Yekaterinburg on Thursday."
Who was Kuznetsov?
"According to Kuznetsov’s Soviet biographers, 'in March 1938 he began carrying out special assignments in the sphere of state security.' All old publications summarize this man’s biography in just a few lines. ...
Kuznetsov set foot on Ukrainian soil in August 1942. He did so in a very rare capacity, doubling as an intelligence agent and a partisan. Biographers wrote that “he landed behind enemy lines outside Rivne, where he joined a special partisan unit ‘Pobediteli’ (controlled by the NKVD) ...
Kuznetsov (known as Nikolai Grachov to his brothers-in-arms in the “Pobediteli” unit and, to the Nazi occupation government in Rivne — as Ober-Lieutenant Paul Wilhelm Sieber, was disguised as “an extraordinary commissioner of the economic command for the use of material resources of the Eastern territories in the interests of the Wehrmacht”)
For the Soviet command he secured such valuable intelligence as the location of Hitler’s field headquarters outside Vinnytsia (December 1942) and plans by the Nazi command to launch a massive offensive at Kursk (Operation Citadel, late May 1943). “Oberleutenant Siebert” eliminated the following ranking functionaries in the Nazi occupation administration: Imperial Financial Advisor with ministerial status General Gell (September 1943); General von Ilgen, Chief Justice of the Supreme German Court in Ukraine; General Alfred Funk (November 1943); Vice-Governor of Galicia Otton Bauer; and the head of his chancellery Heinrich Schneider (Lviv, February 1944). “Siebert” wounded General Paul Dargel, Deputy Imperial Commissioner of the Reich Commissariat Ukraine, who was also the right-hand man of the Nazi satrap of Ukraine — Erich Koch. On May 31, 1943, Kuznetsov secured a personal audience with Koch himself, intending to assassinate him, but his plans failed, owing to the fact that Koch was extremely well guarded."
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"France had the guillotine and public executions. Public executions enshroud even the most dangerous criminal in a halo of heroism. Public executions incite the people; they give the enemy moral strength. The convict doesn't really die -- public executions leave the body to the relatives, they leave the last words, last will, and the exact date of death. Secret executions, in the basement, without the show, without official conviction, have an overwhelming effect on the enemy. The vast, merciless, omniscient machine grabs its victims and grinds them like a meat grinder. After the execution, there is no exact date of death, no last words, not corpses, not even the grave. Emptiness. The enemy is destroyed absolutely."