Leo Demidov (2024)

"I see my life only in relation to the people I love."^[1]

Leo Stepanovich Demidov, born Pavel Trofimovich Sidorov, (b. 1923 - ) was a former MGB officer and later head of the Moscow Homicide Department.

Biography[]

Childhood and early career[]

Born in the Ukrainian village of Chervoy to a peasant family, Leo (then Pavel Sidorov) was ten years old when the Holodomor was at its peak. His father, Trofim, left his family for Kiev in search of food, never to return. Pavel adapted to these circ*mstances by becoming a skilled hunter, though by early 1933, the village had consumed all its remaining domestic animals and wildlife. On 25 January, Pavel discovered a stray cat in a nearby wood, and attempted to catch it alongside his younger brother Andrei. After killing the cat, Pavel was attacked and knocked unconscious by Stepan Demidov, who intended to feed him to his starving son Leo, though the effort proved fruitless, as Leo had already died. Stepan, along with his wife Anna, decided to adopt Pavel, feeding him their son's remains. Suffering from a concussion and memory loss, Pavel adopted the name of their dead son, and traveled with them to Stepan's uncle's house in Moscow in a bid to escape the famine.^[2]

Life with his new family in Moscow was initially difficult, as Stepan's uncle's home was overcrowded and lacked sanitation or hot water.^[3] Leo later became a student at the Central Institute of Physical Culture, where he excelled in athleticism and physical prowess. During the Great Patriotic War, Leo was hand-picked by the NKVD to train in Mytishchi for service in the OMSBON (the Independent Motorized Infantry Battalion of Special Purpose). There, he underwent close combat and weapons training, as well as training in low-altitude parachuting and explosives. Leo's skill in assassination and infiltration quickly made him a poster boy for the Soviet liberation of German-occupied lands, and was awarded the Order of Suvorov 2nd Class. At the end of the war, Leo joined the NKVD (later renamed MGB) on the advice of his superiors.^[4] During the war, he developed a taste for methamphetamine, a vice he took from his German enemies and continued to indulge on the advice of MGB doctors for missions requiring long periods of physical activity.^[5]

His first assignment was in April 1949, when he was instructed by his then superior officer Nikolai Borisov to pose as a graduate of Moscow's Theological Academy Seminary and infiltrate the Church of Sancta Sophia, where its head priest Lazar and his wife Anisya were suspected of harbouring dissident documents. Two months later, the church was scheduled for demolition, and Lazar revealed the location of the documents to Leo, who subsequently revealed his true identity and brutally beat Lazar before having he and his wife arrested, and the documents destroyed.^[6]

In January 1950, Leo became infatuated with a woman he met in the Moscow metro identifying herself as Lena. She proved indifferent to him, stating only that she taught politics in a nearby school.^[7]

Around the same time, Leo was instructed by Major Janusz Kuzmin to escort noted American communist dissident Jesse Austin on a two day guided tour of Moscow, hoping to prevent him from seeing anything that would tarnish his favourable opinion of the Soviet Union. The American however put the mission at risk by insisting on deviating from the tour and visiting the school Lena worked at. Having imprudently lied that he had a girlfriend, Leo was forced on Jesse's insistence to invite Lena to a concert the next day. Lena, whose real name was Raisa, went along with the ruse and accompanied Leo to the concert.^[7] The two later married without ceremony,^[8] taking residence in apartment 124, with Leo using his influence to give his parents a pleasant apartment in the north of Moscow with all the amenities and employment opportunities due to the parents of a high ranking MGB officer.^[9]

Child 44[]

Arrest of Anatoly Brodsky[]

In early February, 1953, Leo was assigned by Major Kuzmin to arrest Moscow-based veterinarian Anatoly Brodsky on suspicion of spying for Western governments. His investigation was initially hampered by the death of Arkady Andreev, the son of his subordinate Fyodor. Although the child's death was classed as accidental, Fyodor was convinced that he had been murdered, prompting Leo to visit the grieving family and threaten them into accepting the investigation's official findings.^[10]

Upon arriving at Brodsky's residence, Leo found that the man had escaped and, after interrogating his neighbour Zina, deduced that he had escaped to the village of Kimov in a bid to cross the Finnish border. Accompanied on his search by his lieutenant Vasili and several others, Leo's efforts were hampered by growing insubordination in his men, who believed that Brodsky was actually heading for Kiev. Arriving at the family residence of Mikhail Zinoviev, who had been hiding Brodsky, Leo found the man over a frozen lake towards the Finnish border. Leo pursued and captured him, with both men nearly freezing to death in the lake's icy waters. On returning to the Zinoviev residence, Leo watched as Vasili shot both Mikhail and his wife, striking his subordinate before he could do the same to Mikhail's daughters Zoya and Elena.^[11]

Under orders from Major Kuzmin, Leo was sent to the Lubyanka to oversee Brodsky's interrogation alongside the now embittered Vasili. Leo's faith in the system he served was shaken after Brodsky was injected with a truth serum made of camphor oil, under which he reiterated that he was nothing more than a vet.^[12]

Investigating Raisa[]

Suffering from fatigue and recurring nightmares, Leo took a leave of absence for the first time in four years. After recovering, he visited Major Kuzmin, who revealed that Brodsky had confessed to being an American spy and had been executed after providing a list of collaborators, which included Raisa.^[13]

His loyalty put to the test, Leo trailed Raisa at her secondary school, where he saw her talking to Ivan Zhukov, a colleague of hers rumoured to be harbouring dissident literature. Suspecting her of adultery, Leo returned home and made a thorough search of his apartment with the unwelcome assistance of Vasili, finding nothing incriminating. Desperate for advice, he turned to his parents, who recommended that he denounce his wife in order to save them. This plan was foiled when Raisa announced she was pregnant, prompting Leo to declare his wife's innocence to his superiors.^[14]

Transfer to Voualsk[]

Three weeks later, Leo and Raisa were forced out of their home and sent to Voualsk, where Leo was to work as an uchastkovyy for the local militia under General Timur Nesterov. During the journey, the pair were visited by Vasili, who revealed to Raisa that Leo had been spying on her. Now encouraged by her husband's demotion, Raisa revealed to Leo that she only married him out of fear, and that her pregnancy had been a lie to save herself from being denounced.^[15]

Housed in a restaurant owned by Danil Basarov, Leo was called by Vasili, who taunted him over his misfortune, and revealed that his parents had been transferred to inferior accommodation. With his personal and professional life shattered, Leo nearly choked his wife to death in a fit of rage, blaming her for his predicament, only to have her smash a glass on his head. Later, Leo was summoned by Timur to review a case in which a girl, Larisa Petrova, had been savagely murdered in the nearby woods. Upon seeing the photographs, Leo noted similarities in her injuries with those inflicted on Arkady Andreev.^[16]

Initial murder investigation[]

Leo, accompanied by Timur, interrogated the main suspect, the mentally retarded orphan Varlam Babinich, whose tracks had been found on the crime scene and had a lock of Larisa's hair in his possession. Despite Timur's insistence, Leo began to doubt the boy's guilt when the latter revealed ignorance over the fact that the corpse's mouth had been stuffed with dirt, which had also been the case for Arkady. Upon returning home, Leo discovered that Raisa had left for the train station. Leo caught up with her and begged her to stay, to which she insisted that she would, on the condition that she be treated as an equal and that they be honest with each other from that moment on.^[17]

Leo's suspicions were proven correct when he examined the girl's body under the supervision of Dr Tyapkin, though he was interrupted by Timur, who accused him of still working for the MGB, and threatened to kill him if he tried to undermine his authority. Convinced of Babinich's innocence, and that a second body would prove it, Leo entered the Voualsk woods at night, only to be followed by Raisa, who berated him for putting their lives at risk by putting into question the case's official findings. She relented when Leo declared that it was likely that they would be arrested eventually in any case, and that solving these murders would be an act of redemption. The two continued the search and discovered the corpse of a young boy.^[18]

Convincing Timur to search the woods, Leo and the General rediscovered the body and, although Timur conceded that it couldn't have been Babinich's doing, he declared that this was the work of a separate murderer, likely a hom*osexual. A wave of arrests of suspected hom*osexuals was carried out, among which was Dr Tyapkin, who committed suicide before he could be apprehended. Shocked at these excesses and finding out that Babinich had been executed, Leo confronted Timur, resulting in a fist fight. After beating Leo, Timur became convinced of Leo's sincerity and agreed to assist him in his search for the real culprit.^[19]

Arrest[]

After a ten week secret investigation, Leo and Timur discovered that there were in fact over forty similar murder cases distributed throughout the Soviet Union in a pattern following the train line west of Moscow, with the majority of cases occurring in Rostov.^[20]

Hoping to recruit Fyodor Andreev to their cause, Leo and Raisa traveled to Moscow undercover, and revealed to the grieving father the results of their investigation. The three attempted to gain information from Fyodor's neighbour Galina, who had previously claimed to have seen Fyodor's deceased son being led to the woods by a man before disappearing, but had since denied knowledge of this over fear of being arrested for contradicting the case's official findings. The effort proved useless, as Galina stuck to her revised story and refused to cooperate.^[21] In desperation, Raisa suggested seeking help from her former colleague Ivan Zhukov, who was rumoured to have Western literature on serial killers that could be useful for the investigation. Upon meeting with him however, Leo became suspicious of Zhukov, noting that he'd never been arrested for his Western leanings and that his house was unusually well furnished. His suspicions were confirmed when Zhukov attempted to call an alleged psychiatrist friend of his for help, speaking in coded language Leo recognised from his MGB days. Leo strangled Zhukov to death, aware that they had now been exposed.^[22]

Hoping to say goodbye to his parents before returning to Voualsk, Leo visited them in their new but inferior housing. Accepting that this would likely have been the last time they ever saw each other, Stepan handed Leo a note containing information on his true origin, which Leo threw away on the train journey back without reading it. Upon arriving at the Voualsk militia headquarters, Timur revealed that they had been discovered and that Leo had only a few minutes to escape. Before letting him go, Timur told Leo that the killer was most likely a tolkach working for the Rostselmash tractor factory in Rostov, as Voualsk had a car assembly plant that frequently sent deliveries to the factory, and such an employment would have allowed the killer to travel the same train route the murders occurred in. Leo attempted to escape in Timur's car, but the pursuing MGB agents shot out his tyres, causing the car to crash. Leo was apprehended by Vasili, who took him to the Lubyanka for questioning.^[23]

Torture and escape[]

Incarcerated in the Lubyanka, Leo was tortured by Dr Roman Hvostov, who injected him with camphor oil, and began the interrogation by asking him his name, to which the now inebriated Leo replied 'Pavel'.^[24]

Leo and Raisa were dropped at Kazan train station the next day to be transported to the Kolyma gulag. On the way, Raisa was attacked by convicts payed by the MGB to make sure they never made it to their destination. Leo awoke from his drug induced stupour and killed two of them. He pleaded with the other passengers to help he and his wife, revealing the reason for his incarceration. With the help of some of the passengers, Leo managed to pry the nails from the floorboards of the carriage and escaped with Raisa to the nearby countryside.^[25]

After a grueling journey on foot, the pair came across a kolkhoz, where the local villagers agreed to give them refuge and keep their presence a secret. When a MGB patrol arrived, the villagers distracted the agents while Leo and Raisa hid beneath the MGB agents' own trucks.^[26] Once the patrol left, Leo and Raisa hid in the truck of a local driver who agreed to take them to Rostov. On the way, Raisa revealed that she'd fallen in love with Leo, and that she could never bear children due to physical trauma suffered during the war. Leo, in turn, confessed to Raisa that he had a brother.^[27]

Endgame[]

Arriving at the Rostelmash tractor factory in Rostov, Leo broke into the establishment's personnel files, discovering that the employee who best fit the killer's profile was in fact his younger brother Andrei.^[28] Leo went to Andrei's family home, discovering his younger brother in his makeshift cellar, unsurprised at the visit. Andrei revealed that he had never doubted that Leo was still alive, and had begun his killing spree after discovering Leo's photo in an issue of Pravda. The killings were in fact meant to get Leo's attention, as their method was meant to evoke their hunt for the cat twenty years earlier. Leo agreed to play one last game of cards before killing his brother, but was interrupted by Vasili. The embittered MGB agent forced Leo and Raisa on their knees, and was about to execute them before being fatally stabbed by Andrei. Having saved his elder brother, Andrei allowed Leo to shoot him. Upon hearing the shot, Vasili's men entered the cellar, seeing their dead superior officer. In order to avoid further bloodshed, Leo declared that Vasili had heroically died confronting the murderer.^[29]

The next day, Leo met Major Grachev, who had replaced Major Kuzmin during an anti-Stalinist purge. Grachev congratulated Leo, stating Andrei had been a Nazi-trained assassin with orders to undermine the Soviet system by murdering its next generation of communists, and that Leo's arrest had been a result of Stalinist excesses. As Raisa had assisted in the investigation, her loyalty to the state was no longer in doubt, and Leo's parents were to be transferred to their old apartment. Leo declined an offer of promotion, instead requesting that he be made head of a new Moscow-based Homicide Department in order to tackle similar crimes in future, with Timur Nesterov as his lieutenant.^[30]

A week later, Leo and Raisa went to Orphanage 12, where the two daughters of Mikhail Zinoviev, Zoya and Elena, were being housed and adopted them.^[31]

The Secret Speech[]

Meeting Fraera[]

In March 1956, his relationship with Zoya, his eldest adopted daughter, was strained, as she'd never forgiven him for his involvement in her father's death. Unbeknownst to Leo, she would fantasise about killing him by entering his room at night and hold a kitchen knife over him. On one such night, Zoya's ritual was interrupted by a phone call from Leo's former superior officer Nikolai Borisov, who demanded that Leo meet up with him. Before leaving, Leo noticed Zoya's knife hidden under the bed. Upon meeting Nikolai at the Homicide Department's headquarters, Leo was shown a series of photographs sent anonymously to Nikolai's address, all of which showed images of people he had previously arrested. With his thoughts lingering on Zoya, Leo was unable to appreciate the gravity of the situation and proposed that he and Nikolai meet at a later date.^[32]

Hoping to make amends with Zoya, Leo tried to convince her of his having now abandoned his MGB past, but only succeeded in frightening Zoya to the point of her wetting herself. The next day, he and his deputy Timur Nesterov were informed that Nikolai had murdered his wife and children and committed suicide. Before leaving, Leo received an anonymously sent parcel containing Khrushchev's denouncement of Stalin. Upon arriving at the scene, Leo and Timur were joined by KGB agent Frol Panin, who explained that there had been similar cases of harassment against former MGB functionaries throughout the Soviet Union, and that all the victims had been sent copies of Khrushchev's speech. At the crime scene, Leo examined a series of photographs, one of which showed Lazar, the priest he had arrested seven years earlier. Realising that the specific targets of the terror campaign were people involved in Lazar's arrest, Leo and Timur went to warn Patriarch Krasikov, the man who had denounced Lazar. The two arrived too late to save him from the young street urchin Malysh, who decapitated the patriarch. The pair pursued and captured Malysh in the Moscow sewer system, but Malysh escaped their grasp, revealing that his gang was now targeting Leo's wife Raisa.^[33] The two learned that Raisa was in critical condition after attempting to prevent the kidnapping of Zoya, and that the leader of Malysh's gang wanted to meet with Leo alone at the site of the now demolished Church of Sancta Sophia.^[34] Upon arriving that night at the ruins of the church, Leo discovered that the gang consisted of vory led by Lazar's wife Anisya, now going by the klikukha (nickname) of Fraera. Embittered by her experiences in prison, Fraera threatened to kill Zoya unless Leo liberated Lazar from his captivity in the Kolyma gulag.^[35]

Freeing Lazar[]

Three weeks later, Leo boarded the prison ship Stary Bolshevik under the guise of a prisoner, with Timur posing as a guard and holding a handwritten note by Fraera to be given to Lazar as proof of their intentions. During the journey, the ship collided with an iceberg, damaging the hull and inciting the prisoners to stage a mutiny. Leo managed to prevent the ship from sinking by keeping its coal furnace ablaze and stuffing rags into the bullet holes in the ship's hull produced during the uprising.^[36]

Shortly after arriving at Kolyma 57, Leo was apprehended by the gulag's prisoners, who saw Lazar, now a partially mute cripple, as their spiritual leader. Leo told Lazar of his mission, but was not believed. As punishment for his past misdeeds, Leo was condemned to suffer a series of tortures reminiscent of those inflicted on each prisoner over a period of one hundred days. After two days of this, and with no sign of Timur, Leo called upon the camp commander Zhores Sinyavsky, revealing that he knew of Khrushchev's speech. Exploiting Zhores's guilty conscience, Leo got the man drunk and requested that he read the speech aloud on the camp's tannoy speakers. Upon hearing his words broadcast throughout the camp, an orgy of violence ensued, with the prisoners killing or imprisoning several guards.^[37]

The prisoners organised a series of mock trials for all major camp functionaries and prisoners who had previously worked for the State. Once Zhores had been executed, Leo was set to follow, but was spared on the intervention of Lazar, who found Fraera's note on the body of one of the fallen guards. With a punitive military reprisal on the way, Leo instructed the prisoners to contact the soldiers via radio and tel them that the guards were unharmed. As a token of goodwill, Leo proposed sending some of the surviving guards to the military encampment, disguising himself and Lazar in their uniforms. Unaware that the prisoners had deliberately failed to tell the soldiers of their imminent arrival, Leo and Lazar were nearly killed when the camp's artillery fired upon them. Although they survived and managed to organise a flight to Moscow, the two were pursued by soldiers, unwilling to let them leave and spread the word over the appalling conditions in the gulags.^[38]

Evading their pursuers, Leo and Lazar arrived safely in Moscow and met up with Fraera on the Bolshoy Krasnokholmsky Bridge. There, Fraera promptly shot Lazar, and forced Leo to watch powerlessly as her men placed Zoya in a sack and threw her into the Moskva River.^[39]

Journey to Budapest[]

Six months later, with his personal life shattered and the Homicide Department disbanded, Leo sought to join the KGB. His adopted daughter Elena however suffered a mental breakdown and was institutionalised by force. In desperation, Leo sought the help of his former superior officer Major Grachev, who revealed that the release of Khrushchev's speech had resulted in insurgencies throughout the communist world, and that Zoya's death was followed by the state moderating or retracting some of its anti-Stalinist reforms.^[40]

The next day, Leo confronted Frol Panin at his dacha. Frol admitted that he and other Soviet hardliners in the Kremlin believed that Khrushchev's speech was an international embarrassment, and that its discussion of Stalin's crimes among the population had weakened the government's authority. Panin used Fraera's plans for revenge to convince the Kremlin to repeal parts of Khrushchev's speech, re-establishing their control. He revealed to Leo that Zoya was still alive and living with the vory in Budapest, Hungary, where they were trying to trigger an uprising among the population that would be thwarted by the occupying Soviet forces, further legitimising the Kremlin's position.^[40]

Upon arriving at a chaotic Budapest alongside Raisa, Leo and his wife were captured by Fraera's gang, which now counted Zoya among it. Leo tried to warn Fraera and Zoya of the upcoming Soviet intervention, but was ignored and incarcerated in the former headquarters of the Hungarian secret police, as Fraera delighted in the prospect of Soviet brutality being laid bare for the world to see. Leo and Raisa were subsequently joined in their imprisonment by Zoya and Malysh, who had attempted to escape the city together. After several days, a Soviet tank blew a hole into the building, allowing Leo, Raisa, Zoya and Malysh to escape. The fugitives' escape route was however blocked by a tank, which Malysh managed to destroy with a grenade, seriously wounding himself in the process. Recalling his time in the Red Army, Leo recognised Malysh's injury as fatal, and buried the boy in the outskirts of the city, an act that redeemed him in Zoya's eyes.^[41]

Two weeks later, after returning to Moscow and securing Elena's release, Leo began working as a baker, rebuffing Frol Panin's offer for further employment in the KGB.^[42]

Agent 6[]

^[43]

^[44]

References[]