A few days ago, a photo was widely circulated on the Internet, which allegedly showed a KGB document from 1987 with a profile on Alexander Lukashenko, now the president of the Republic of Belarus. The document states that in the same 1987, Lukashenko was recruited by the USSR KGB as an agent of Valet. We decided to find out whether this document could be genuine.

Initially, a photo of the document appeared in Telegram channels, and later it was quoted by the media, mainly Ukrainian and Belarusian. The information was reprinted in such media as “Focus», Vesti-ua.net, "Chief editor», "Apostrophe», "Charter'97» etc.

Noteworthy is the fact that the first publications of the document appeared on December 7 in Ukrainian Telegram channels. The earliest (14:51) publication we found was published in the channel “Kyiv operational"(337,000 subscribers), two minutes later a publication with the same photo appeared in the channel Nazara Prikhodko. At the same time, “Kyiv Operational” verbally referred to certain Belarusian Telegram channels, but in fact, it was not possible to find these channels, as well as earlier publications of this photo.

Two hours later, the information (also with reference to unnamed Belarusian media) was published, among others, by the well-known Ukrainian Telegram channel InformNapalm. From that moment on, the authors of publications in other channels and media, including Belarusian ones, mainly referred to InformNapalm. For example, this was done on the opposition Belarusian resource “Charter'97”. But neither they nor other republishers were able to find any Belarusian sources of this information.

At the same time, InformNapalm supplemented the message with the statement that they have known about Lukashenko’s agent nickname for a long time and allegedly that is why in the deck of cards “War Criminals of the Russian Federation”, released by the publication in May of this year, the portrait of the President of Belarus is placed on the jack of diamonds. The fact that they had not made such statements before was explained in the publication as follows: they “were waiting for proof to appear in the public space to tell you about this interesting nuance.”

The document itself is compiled quite competently, but there are several nuances that cast doubt on its authenticity.

1. The description is given in free form, but in reality, to register agents in the KGB during this period, there was a special form approved by order Chairman of the KGB of the USSR No. 00145 dated July 4, 1983. The agent registration procedure itself was strictly regulated. In particular, it was described in paragraph 12 of the order. In such a form as in the document in the photo, characteristics of agents were given several decades earlier:

2. The first page of such documents, especially those prepared for the Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR, in the 1980s was printed on the official letterhead of the territorial division of the KGB. As an example, you can look at several declassified documents of the Ukrainian KGB from the same period (1, 2, 3):

Theoretically, the document could not be on the form if it was prepared in a hurry and contained operational information, but in this case there is no reason to assume that the compilers lacked time. At the same time, it is much more difficult to falsify a document on letterhead than a simple typewritten one.

3. It is unclear why the document was addressed to such a high authority, the head of the 13th department of the 2nd Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR A.V. Guk - this is a clear violation of jurisdiction. In the USSR, the KGB had territorial divisions responsible for its work in the republics and regions. The agents in the Mogilev region were handled by the KGB of the Byelorussian SSR; such information was not sent to Moscow. This is impossible - let's say, in Latvia alone in 1986 there were about 7,500 agents KGBIn total, there were many tens, if not hundreds of thousands of agents operating in the country; the head of the department could not approve all of them. Even for the central apparatus of the KGB of the BSSR, information about agent Valet was completely unnecessary; such issues were dealt with by local units.

4. The 13th department was responsible for monitoring Soviet citizens traveling abroad, while the sixth department of the 2nd department was in charge of monitoring foreigners entering the territory of the USSR (as discussed in the document). KGB.

5. Arkady Vasilyevich Guk actually headed the 13th Directorate of the 2nd Directorate of the KGB of the USSR since 1984, but, according to information from open sources, by January 1987 he had already left this position and worked as Deputy Head of the Directorate "RT" PGU KGB USSR.

6. On a document with the signature of a boss of this level and with the mark “I approve” there should have been a seal over the signature, but it is not in the photo. There is no stamp with an inventory number, no registration number of the document - such a document could not possibly have been intended for such a high authority and for storage in the archive.

7. The copy number is machine-printed on the document. This is a gross violation of the document flow rules of that time. As can be seen in numerous examples of KGB (and not only KGB) documents of that time, only the word “copy” was typed by machine, after which a blank space was left on the paper. This was due to the fact that copies were created directly while the original was being written using a copy sheet (later they were replaced by photocopiers), that is, both copies of the document were printed simultaneously on the same typewriter. The affixed number would appear on both copies of the document, which, of course, is unacceptable, so free space was left and the copy number was written by hand.

8. Opening and closing quotation marks are different from each other. This is a sign that the document was created in a graphic editor on a computer, and not on a typewriter, since in typewriters the opening and closing quotes were typed using the same key.

9. In the personal data of A. G. Lukashenko, his nationality is indicated as “Belarusian”. In 1987, this spelling of the word could not be used in official documents. This version appeared only in 1991, after the Supreme Council of the BSSR adopted the “Law of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic on the name of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic” on September 19, 1991, where the name of the country was fixed as Belarus. Until then, only the words “Belarus” and “Belorussian” were used in the USSR.

10. The colloquial form “with higher education” was used instead of the usual phrase “higher education” for Soviet document circulation. In documents of this type, this was one of the most common language cliches - it is difficult to imagine what could force the writer to abandon it.

11. In Soviet document circulation, the letter “ё” was used relatively infrequently. Here it appears twice, and, unlike the Mogilev region, Mogilev itself is written in the text with an “e”.

12. It is proposed to use Lukashenko as “the head of a leading collective farm with a million-plus population.” But, firstly, Lukashenko headed a state farm (Soviet farm), and not a collective farm (collective farm). And secondly, as is known from numerous memories eyewitnesses, the Gorodets state farm was deeply unprofitable in 1987 enterprise, Lukashenko headed it only in March of the same year and only in January 1988 began reforms, thanks to which another year later the enterprise became profitable.

13. The very meaning of the document is questionable. As a rule, the KGB was not interested in the details of the agent’s personal life, since he was not a KGB employee, but acted only as an informant. It is even more unclear how Lukashenko could “use cooperation with the KGB in his own interests,” given that he was already the head of the state farm, that is, the first person in the region. In addition, the KGB should have already had a reference for Lukashenko, since from 1975 to 1977 he served in the border troops of the KGB of the USSR, was an instructor in the political department of the military unit of the Western Border District (Brest). According to some reports, Lukashenko specifically asked to be sent to serve in the KGB of the USSR, wanting to subsequently make a career in the organs. However, both the command of the unit and the supervisor gave Lukashenko negative characteristics upon dismissal.

Thus, the document on the recruitment of A.G. Lukashenko has obvious signs of falsification and cannot be reliable. Apparently he was created recently using digital technology, and the nickname Jack was most likely borrowed from the InformNapalm deck of cards.

Cover photo: Media