The headquarters of the SVR was decorated with 60 golden portraits

In the most secret place in Moscow, where the headquarters of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service is located, more than 60 unique gold art items are stored. These are portraits of legendary scouts made with the help of precious metal. Some of the people depicted on them have not yet been declassified, but most of them know the whole world – such as Alexei Botyan (the intelligence officer who saved Krakow), the spouses Gevork and Gohar Vartanyan (in 1943 in Tehran they thwarted the assassination attempt on Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin), Nikolai Kuznetsov (during the war he single-handedly eliminated 11 generals of Nazi Germany). Their names are inscribed in history in gold letters, hence the idea is to depict them on metal, which is not subject to rust and corrosion and at the same time is a symbol of nobility, purity and immortality. The intrigue is that American gold is best suited for this. So, it is extracted by secret ways and handed over to the artist by scouts from countries friendly to Russia.

About all this – in the material “MK”.

The studio of the artist Alexander Osipov is located in an ordinary Moscow apartment. But once you get there, you will find yourself in… a branch of the National Portrait Gallery. The fact is that she does not have her own building, so the creators keep the paintings in their workshops. Ingots of gold, bags of gold coins are nowhere to be found. And golden portraits hang on the walls. But not only them.

The hospitable host Alexander Osipov greets you at home, without his red butterfly (in which he invariably appears in the photo with the first persons), and conducts a tour. In the meantime, it turns out that he graduated from the Faculty of Mechanization of the Timiryazev Academy, and sat on the same desk as the legendary head of Soviet intelligence Pavel Fitin.

“When his biography was finally declassified, I read that during his studies at the academy he liked to sit in the gallery, by the window, watching a lonely larch,” says Osipov. — Exactly the same thing I did. The larch stands alone there (it “stripped off” the alley), and you can see it only from the back desk if you sit by the window. In general, since childhood, I loved films about intelligence. The life of a scout has always attracted, intrigued, called.

Osipov has been painting portraits since 1980. In his workshop there is an interesting drawing – the evolution of a face from a monkey to Lenin. As a portrait painter, he tried to analyze theories of the origin of man. In a nutshell, he has questions for Darwin.

– Have you heard the expression from one sacred book: “I (God) made the face. And angels worked on the body”?

“No,” the artist replies. “But a face can tell a lot about a person, if not everything. Of course, it’s really possible to learn how to control facial expressions, but nothing can be done with a look.

The collection of the National Portrait Gallery contains unique portraits, for example, Nikita Khrushchev with hair (everywhere he is depicted as bald) or Tsiolkovsky (with a blissful expression on his face), Vysotsky (in which the singer and composer seems to soar over Moscow), Juna’s self-portrait (she make sure it’s loaded). There are paintings that were commissioned by the first persons of the state or for the first persons. And then a series of portraits of legendary scouts appeared. Osipov communicated with many during his lifetime. Alexei Botyan is one of them, and he did not like to pose. So Osipov from memory restored the image of a man who “smiles lightly, but smiles, like intelligence, with his eyes.”

– At some point, I thought: how to express gratitude to the greatest people who “without the right to glory for the glory of the state?” Osipov says. – Their entire biography is sealed. But they wrote the golden pages of our history with their exploits. And I decided to use a noble metal, the most complicated technique – working out classic linear graphics with gold. And so the project “Golden Pages of the History of the Fatherland” appeared, which resulted in a whole gallery of portraits of scouts. The fate of these people is written in gold. And everything else is secondary.

– You say “without the right to fame”, but isn’t a portrait a glory?

“But this is the glory of great people for future generations. Most of the heroes did not live to see the day when these portraits appeared. Although there were happy exceptions. Alexey Botyan saw his during his lifetime. At first he was against it (it seems to be too pathetic), but then he softened, finding his face against the backdrop of the city of Krakow, which he saved from death. And the golden technique in the case of Botyan reflects the wild, crazy energy of a man who lived for 103 years and gave odds to the young. Through gold (overflows, luminous rays) it is possible to convey sensations, to emphasize that it was an energy clot.

The only double portrait is Gevork and Gohar Vartanyan. This is a legendary intelligence couple (I interviewed both shortly before their deaths).

“Gohar Leonovna saw this portrait,” says Osipov. – I made two, and one hangs at the home of the Vartanyans (now with their descendants, because the spouses have died). In general, I think to continue doing family portraits of scouts. For example, Elena Vavilova and Andrey Bezrukov – they were exchanged not so long ago.

With golden portraits, everything is not easy. Unlike ordinary ones, they cannot be redrawn or corrected. Osipov reworked the portrait of Colonel Leonid Kvasnikov (he headed the department of scientific and technical intelligence of the USSR state security agencies, oversaw the nuclear project – the work of Soviet intelligence on the atomic problem) several times. At first there was an image of a young, then an already established intelligence officer.

Separate series – women. Voskresenskaya-Rybkina opens the women’s series. And few people know that this children’s writer for many years headed the analytical section of intelligence.

You can imagine what kind of woman she was. She is the heritage of the nation. What a beauty inside and out. I didn’t see her live, but I was brought up on her books (then I had no idea that they were written by an intelligence analyst). Or Africa De las Heras. Fantastic woman who went through the war. I tried to portray her in such a way that the portrait would inspire people. A woman in intelligence is a whole phenomenon. I think that all of them should be erected a monument during their lifetime. Few people understand the essence of their feat. Many gave up the most expensive to serve people.

After the portraits of intelligence officers appeared, related departments began to say: “We had legends, depict them too.” So the portrait of Richard Sorge appeared in the GRU Museum.

“There are about 70 photos of Sorge,” says the artist. — And it was necessary to find some single image. Then there was a long chain of approvals, including intelligence, counterintelligence and the Ministry of Defense. And then Sergei Naryshkin handed over the portrait to Sorge Shoigu, who gave it to the head of the GRU.

Well, then the project began to be supplemented by portraits of other people, one of which is the editor-in-chief of MK Pavel Gusev.

— Where do you get gold? I ask the master.

– American gold is best suited for portraits (mostly in rolls). We extract it by difficult logistical ways, bypassing the sanctions. The Americans are trying to block these deliveries. But intelligence officers from friendly states help us to deliver it so that the process does not stop. The United States does not know that we make portraits of our intelligence officers from their gold.