Were Russian female spies caught, because they exclaimed in Russian during child birth?

Upvote:2

As @Alex has correctly pointed out, this story is based on the 1970s megahit fictional series "17 Moments of Spring" about a high-level Russian spy at the heart of the Nazi intelligence and repression machine.

But that plot is far from 100% fictional and, in fact, and one would do well to remember that Yulian Semyonov who wrote the novel on which the series is based was something of an unofficial poet-laureate of the Soviet foreign espionage service and had access to a lot of true material which he used in his work. Many of the details and subplots he wrote about are known to be based on reality.

So, on the premise that Semyonov has perhaps worked a story he had from his sources into the plot, I googled around a bit in Russian and came up with a few leads. They are not entirely conclusive but still.

  1. Lyudmila Nuikina and her husband Vitaly worked undercover in 18 countries as Soviet spies. She gave birth to her second child during one of her assignments and in recent interviews she presents two different versions of what happened:

(a) She took care to scream in French (which according to her cover story was her mother tongue).

From her 21/02/2020 interview:

— Вы рожали за границей. Был риск, что могли во время родов закричать по-русски? Помните эпизод из тех же «Семнадцати мгновений весны», где Штирлиц говорит радистке Кэт: «Ты будешь кричать «мамочка» по-рязански»?

  • Рожала я за границей второго ребенка. Кричала по-французски. Я в командировках сделала русский язык врагом номер один. Мы с мужем никогда не говорили на нем на чужбине. Даже ссорились исключительно на иностранном.

In a slightly earlier interview from 2018 she gives the same account.

(b) However, in yet another interview from from 30/10/2020 she says that she gave birth in silence, using her own credentials as a former midwife (yes, she is a woman of many accomplishments indeed) to slightly ridicule the whole notion:

– А как же знаменитая история из «Семнадцати мгновений весны», что рожающие женщины кричат слово «мама» на родном языке?

– Никогда не понимала, зачем кричать при родах. Может, оттого, что сама столько родов приняла… Я оба раза рожала молча.

The exact truth of the matter in her case will probably not be revealed but she does seem to have had the issue in mind and to have been bothered about it.

  1. Two more similar cases are mentioned in this article. In one, the agent screamed in German and in the other in an unspecified foreign language.

To sum up, it's hard to disentangle fact from fiction from life imitating art in this case but there does seem to be something out there.

More post

Search Posts

Related post