Bunich Igor Lvovich (September 28, 1937 - June 15, 2000) - Russian writer and publicist. He gained fame thanks to works in the genre of political journalism and folk history. He is also the author of popular history books on naval subjects.
From childhood he lived in Leningrad. In 1956-1959 he studied at the Yeisk School of Naval Aviation, after graduation he served as a navigator in the aviation of the Northern Fleet of the USSR Navy. Returning to Leningrad, he entered the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute. Since 1964 he worked at the Central Research Institute. Krylov, then - since 1974 - at the Naval Academy, researching archival materials and compiling analytical reviews for the leadership of the academy. He was engaged in translations, abstracting of foreign literature. As a hobby, he was interested in the history of the fleet. The last rank before his retirement in 1984 was lieutenant colonel in the naval aviation.
From the mid-1970s, he began to distribute among his acquaintances his translations from foreign specialized periodicals (either without indicating his authorship as a translator, or under various pseudonyms), as well as his own writings on military history, which he passed off as translations of foreign authors. In 1981, under the pseudonym "I. Colt" began to be published in the Leningrad samizdat magazine "Clock".
In 1982, he received the first official warning from the Leningrad Department of the KGB for the reproduction and illegal distribution of "slanderous" and "close to secret" materials; in 1984 - the second warning (in connection with the "Donskoy case") - regarding the dissemination of "anti-Soviet literature". Was expelled from work under the pretext of downsizing; since 1984 he served as a watchman and night watchman.
In the 1990s, he worked as an assistant to the People's Deputy Yuliy Rybakov, was engaged in journalism, published the books "Gold of the Party", "The Sword of the President", "Operation Thunderstorm" and others, which were sold in large numbers.
Books (16)
Second Pearl Harbor
One of the "blank spots" in the history of the Second World War for the Russian reader is the naval battle off Savo Island.
The aggressive Japanese Admiral Mikawa, who had not yet fully recovered from the defeat of the Japanese at Midway Island, hastily assembled a formation of ships and inflicted a cruel defeat on the Americans, which the American press rightly called the “second Pearl Harbor”. To remind readers of the "first" Pearl Harbor, Walter Lord's fascinating material is presented in an excellent authorized translation by I. Bunich.
Thunderstorm. Bloody games of dictators
The book is dedicated to one of the terrible "episodes" of the Five Hundred Years' War - the preparation by the Stalinist regime of a global military operation with the aim of capturing Europe and its subsequent Sovietization.
The author paid a lot of attention to the work of intelligence services to disinform the Nazi and Stalinist leadership in the last months before the clash of two bloody dictators. The book dispels the myths of nomenklatura historians about the peace-loving policy of the Soviet Union and convincingly reveals the reasons for the defeat of the Red Army at the initial stage of the most terrible war for our country.
D'Artagnan of the NKVD: Historical Anecdotes
The palace secrets of the time of Cardinal Richelieu, to which the famous D'Artagnan, the hero of the novels of Alexandre Dumas, is dedicated, pale in comparison with the mysteries and intrigues of the communist elite of the Moscow Kremlin.
The hero of the new book by Igor Bunich has been serving in the NKVD and the KGB for a long time, performing many “delicate” assignments, the results of which influence the development of events in the Soviet state in the most unexpected way.
Party Gold
The Communists came to our country in 1917 as invaders.
For more than seventy years they behaved like invaders, and realizing that their time had passed, they fled like fairground thieves, robbing the people to the bone and destroying the state. Even geographically, Russia was thrown back to the time of the memorable Tsar John IV Vasilyevich. That is, in the 16th century. And in the yard is already XXI.
President's case
“The Case of the President” is an action-packed story of a former Air Force officer who, like M.S. special equipment for sending a signal that meant nuclear war for mankind.
Corsairs of the Kaiser
It would seem that the pragmatic and cold 20th century left no room for romantic and daring sea adventures, during which corsairs would disembowel "merchants", burnt seaside towns, famously evaded pursuit and buried countless treasures on uninhabited islands.
But this is far from true! Corsairs operated throughout the 20th century.
There is no doubt that the dangerous adventures of such captains as Müller, Nerger, Keller and Luckner, described by Igor Bunich on the basis of documents and memoirs, will take their rightful place in the list of books about pirates created by famous authors of the past, such as Stevenson, Mariette, Conan Doyle and Sabatini.
Labyrinths of Madness
The work of Igor Bunich describes the events that led to the bloodiest war in the history of mankind. The two totalitarian regimes, intoxicated by the idea of world domination, moved inexorably towards a violent conflict.
Carefully concealing their intentions, the general staffs of the Soviet Union and Germany were preparing plans for lightning-fast offensive operations to crush each other.
Thanks to the global disinformation provided by the intelligence services of various countries, including his own, Stalin was in a kind of surreal world, from which he was brought out by the terrible blow of the sudden attack of the Nazi armies.
The history of the Great Patriotic War included an event that took place in the last days of July 1941 and was called the Tallinn Crossing of the Baltic Fleet. This operation, unparalleled in its complexity, has become one of the examples of the courage and selflessness of Soviet sailors.
Command miscalculation
As archival documents of past years testify, by the beginning of the attack of fascist Germany on the Soviet Union, the main base of the Baltic Fleet was in Tallinn. However, despite this, the necessary work to strengthen the city from land and sea was not carried out. The hopes of the command were pinned on the fact that, due to its distance from the state border, the capital of Estonia would not be attacked by the enemy.
These calculations were crossed out by the rapid development of the offensive operations of the German army, as a result of which, already in the first ten days of July 1941, the enemy was sixty kilometers from Tallinn, thus creating a real threat to the naval base located in it, to ground units, and also to the failed evacuate the civilian population.
Despite the fact that the need for evacuation was quite obvious, the command of the North-Western Direction, headed by Marshal K. E. Voroshilov, fearing responsibility, did not dare to give the appropriate order, and thus time was lost. For this reason, the withdrawal of the ships of the Baltic Fleet and ground forces from the enemy blockade in which they found themselves began under heavy enemy fire. This operation went down in the history of the war under the name of the Tallinn crossing.
Enemy efforts aimed at capturing Tallinn
Such a rapid advance of the German troops was caused by the order of Hitler, who demanded at all costs to prevent the transfer of ground troops and ships of the Baltic Fleet to Leningrad, the capture of which was, in accordance with the Barbarossa plan, one of the priority tasks of the German command.
As a result, the Tallinn crossing was carried out under the fire of seventeen artillery battalions stationed on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland, which were supported by two Finnish batteries. In addition, the situation was catastrophically complicated by a significant number of minefields put up by the joint efforts of the German and Finnish fleets, as well as enemy naval aviation. The Finnish ones operating in the waters of the bay also posed a serious danger.
The Confusing Order
Today, military experts have many questions about the command plan, on the basis of which the Tallinn crossing was carried out. Igor Lvovich Bunich, a well-known Russian writer, historian and publicist, in his book on the events of those years, draws attention to the unreasonable decision to use only the central fairway for the passage of all ships.
There is no doubt that only it was deep enough and suitable for the cruiser Kirov, which participated in the transition, but why the rest of the ships, which had a much smaller draft, were forbidden to use other fairways - it is not clear. Thus, the fleet stretched for many kilometers, and it was practically impossible to protect it from the enemy's naval and air forces.
As Igor Bunich testifies in his book, the Tallinn crossing was carried out with a catastrophic shortage of minesweepers. For this reason, mine reconnaissance was not carried out in the proper volume, and the waters of the bay were fraught with mortal danger due to the huge number of both German and Soviet sea mines.
The disposition outlined by the command of the fleet
According to the plan developed by the headquarters of the operation, the Tallinn crossing was to be carried out as follows: a detachment of the main forces was placed in front, followed by covering ships, a rearguard, and four convoys closed the caravan. Each group of courts was assigned a specific task, on the successful completion of which the overall outcome of the case depended.
In total, two hundred and twenty-five ships took part in the operation. The detachment of the main forces was led by the cruiser Kirov. It was followed by four destroyers, five submarines, the same number of minesweepers and a large number of torpedo, patrol and other boats. This was the main body.
The cover detachment included three destroyers, four submarines and boats for various purposes. The rear guard consisted of three destroyers, three patrol ships and boats. In their care were four convoys, consisting of a large number of transport ships carrying various cargoes and people. In addition to the listed vessels, a large number of additional escort ships took part in the operation.
Going to sea and the first losses
The Tallinn passage began in the early morning of August 28, when the warships and transports were ordered to enter the outer roadstead. However, their rapid advance was hampered by a storm that broke out that day, accompanied by a strong northeast wind. Only in the late afternoon did the weather conditions improve, and the ships, despite the heavy artillery fire of the enemy, began to reorganize into marching order.
Literally from the first minutes, minesweepers entered the fight against sea mines, constantly cutting them with their paravanes - devices specially designed for this purpose, as well as trawls. But the bay was filled with mines to such an extent that the ships were not always able to avoid meeting them in time. As a result, nine surface ships and two submarines became victims that day.
Evening and night filled with nightmare
On the first day of the journey, the transports and the convoy were subjected to enemy artillery fire several times, which was carried out intensively, but to no avail. Around 20:00, Finnish torpedo boats were seen approaching the Soviet ships, but with heavy gunfire they were driven off before they reached torpedo range. The caravan suffered heavy losses as a result of an attack by enemy aircraft undertaken just before dark. Four Soviet ships were sunk and two more were seriously damaged.
But to an even greater extent, the situation became more complicated with the onset of darkness, when the main detachment of ships was in the middle of a continuous minefield. That night, eleven surface ships and one submarine were blown up by mines and sank. Of their numerous crews and passengers on board, only a few dozen people were saved.
Based on the current situation, the commander of the fleet was forced to order all the remaining ships to anchor and wait for dawn. The result of this first night of the campaign was terrible - twenty-six ships of those that left Tallinn the day before were sunk. In addition, five ships are damaged, two are captured by the enemy, and one is missing.
Enemy air attacks
With the first rays of the sun on August 29, 1941, the ships continued on their way, but on this day fate prepared even greater trials for them. Already at 0530 hours, German reconnaissance aircraft appeared over the caravan, and starting from 07.30 air raids followed one after another. Their frequency was facilitated by the proximity of coastal airfields, the distance to which did not exceed one hundred kilometers, and the almost complete absence of Soviet aircraft in the sky.
Almost without any serious fire resistance, the German pilots were able to choose the largest and most vulnerable targets, and then hit them in cold blood. As a result of targeted bombing on August 29, fourteen more ships were added to the previously lost ships, as well as an increase in the number of those that were damaged and required towing.
Rescue work that saved thousands of lives
This day was marked by the highest number of casualties among both sailors and ship passengers, which included evacuated military personnel of ground units and civilians. Nevertheless, more than nine thousand three hundred people were rescued as a result of assistance to those in distress, and about six thousand managed to land from burning ships on the island of Hogland. The crews of ships sent specifically for rescue work from Kronstadt, as well as the islands of Lavensaari and Gogland, managed to save thousands of lives.
An attempt to understand the causes of the tragedy
Explaining the reasons for the large number of losses that accompanied the Tallinn crossing, Igor Lvovich Bunich, whose book was discussed above, as well as a number of military historians, point to the extreme incompetence of the command, which sometimes gave orders that were contrary to common sense. For example, the already small cover was weakened by an order according to which two submarines were ordered, leaving the convoy, to head to Kronstadt at full speed, which they did immediately.
Realizing that a number of orders were dictated by the obvious incompetence of officials, the commanders of individual ships, contrary to the order, navigated their ships through the southern fairway and, having safely reached their destination, saved people.
Vessels that have reached the desired goal
By the evening of that difficult day, the first ships of the main forces of the caravan began to arrive in Kronstadt. Before midnight, twenty-nine of them managed to safely anchor in the roads of this largest naval base. In addition, sixteen more reached the location of our troops on
On August 30, one hundred and seven more ships arrived in Kronstadt one by one, or in small groups. The delivery of all rescued crew members, as well as soldiers and civilians to Leningrad, was immediately organized. The wounded were distributed to hospitals, and those who could hold weapons in their hands were enrolled in units that were formed to be sent to the front. Thus ended the Tallinn passage, the results of which make it possible to attribute it to the most tragic pages in the history of the Soviet Navy.
Losses incurred during the days of the transition
Despite the fact that in separate printed publications a different number of ships lost during this operation is given, it is generally accepted that there were sixty-two of them. This number most closely matches the data available to the researchers. It included both warships and auxiliary ships, as well as transport ships.
There is also no consensus on the number of deaths. who commanded the Baltic Fleet in those years, in his memoirs he speaks of five thousand dead. From the report to Stalin of the Commissar of the Navy N. G. Kuznetsov, it follows that there were seven thousand seven hundred people, and the official publication of the General Staff reports ten thousand. Obviously, this information is most consistent with reality, since in Soviet times it was not customary to overestimate one's own losses.
Anniversary of tragic events
This year marked the 75th anniversary of the Tallinn crossing, in connection with which public attention was drawn to this heroic page of national history. At the end of August, a number of events of a historical and patriotic nature were held, in which both fleet veterans and youth took part.
Documentary films dedicated to this tragic event were released on the screens of the country. The Tallinn crossing is presented in them on the basis of archival documents and memoirs of participants in the events. They tell about the task that was assigned to the Baltic sailors. In addition to the work of Igor Bunich, which was mentioned above, in those days other books about the Tallinn crossing were presented to the attention of readers.
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- The book is dedicated to one of the terrible "episodes" of the Five Hundred Years' War - the preparation by the Stalinist regime of a global military operation with the aim of capturing Europe and its subsequent Sovietization. The author paid a lot of attention to the work of intelligence services to disinform the Nazi and Stalinist leadership in the last months before the clash of two bloody dictators. The book dispels the myths of nomenklatura historians about the peace-loving policy of the Soviet Union and convincingly reveals the reasons for the defeat of the Red Army at the initial stage of the most terrible war for our country. Written, like all the works of Igor Bunich, in a bright, exciting manner, free from the fetters of pseudoscientific muddiness, the book can be recommended to a young reader, primarily schoolchildren and students, as an excellent extracurricular reading on the history of our country in the 20th century.
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- Igor Bunin's book "Gold of the Party" offered to readers over the past decade has been a bestseller No. 1 in the vast expanses of Russia. What is the reason for such success? After all, mountains of literature have been written and rewritten about the cunning Ilyich, nimble commissars and security officers with cold heads. The answer is simple - Igor Bunich first presented the October Revolution, the seizure of power by Lenin and his associates, and the seventy-year history of the USSR that followed in terms of money - gold - a despicable metal - an evergreen convertible currency.
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- It would seem that the pragmatic and cold 20th century left no room for romantic and daring sea adventures, during which corsairs would disembowel “merchants”, burn coastal cities, famously evade pursuit and bury countless treasures on uninhabited islands. But this is far from being the case. ! Corsairs operated throughout the 20th century. There is no doubt that the dangerous adventures of such captains as Muller, Nerger, Keller and Luckner, described by Igor Bunich on the basis of documents and memoirs, will take their rightful place in the list of books about pirates created by famous authors of the past such as Stevenson, Mariette, Conan Doyle and Sabatini. Germany, as it were, compensated for the lost time when the British, Spaniards, Portuguese and French were engaged in sea robbery. In the first half of the 20th century, almost exclusively Germans were corsairs. That's how it happened historically. And although the naval flags of their country fluttered on the masts of the German cruisers, and the crews wore naval uniforms, they, like their distant predecessors, waged a war against all mankind at their own peril and risk. For they did not have any allies or bases in the ocean, and every five or six days they had to replenish their supplies of coal, fuel oil and fresh water. There was nowhere to be repaired - any damage could be the last. Only the remote bays of the godforsaken islands overgrown with coconut palms could serve as a place for them to take a short rest.
The first years of Russia's "democratic" development were marked by unprecedented upheavals. Why was a great country unable to quickly and effectively go through the path of transformation, as most of the countries of Eastern Europe did? Who was interested in the lawlessness that engulfed the territory of the former Union? The fierce struggle of the nomenklatura clans, desperate attempts to return the country to the communist stall by any means, the opposition of the regional elites to the center, ethnic conflicts... Written in the style characteristic of the author, rich in historical material, the book is a direct continuation of the famous "Gold of the Party" and is read with unflagging interest from the first to the last page.
The book is dedicated to one of the terrible "episodes" of the Five Hundred Years' War - the preparation by the Stalinist regime of a global military operation with the aim of capturing Europe and its subsequent Sovietization. The author paid a lot of attention to the work of intelligence services to disinform the Nazi and Stalinist leadership in the last months before the clash of two bloody dictators. The book dispels the myths of nomenklatura historians about the peace-loving policy of the Soviet Union and convincingly reveals the reasons for the defeat of the Red Army at the initial stage of the most terrible war for our country. Written, like all the works of Igor Bunich, in a bright, exciting manner, the book can be recommended reading on the history of the 20th century.
It would seem that the pragmatic and cold 20th century left no room for romantic and daring sea adventures, during which corsairs would disembowel "merchants", burnt seaside towns, famously evaded pursuit and buried countless treasures on uninhabited islands.
But this is far from true! Corsairs operated throughout the 20th century.
There is no doubt that the dangerous adventures of such captains as Müller, Nerger, Keller and Luckner, described by Igor Bunich on the basis of documents and memoirs, will take their rightful place in the list of books about pirates created by famous authors of the past, such as Stevenson, Mariette, Conan Doyle and Sabatini.
Germany, as it were, compensated for the lost time when the British, Spaniards, Portuguese and French were engaged in sea robbery. In the first half of the 20th century, almost exclusively Germans were corsairs. That's how it happened historically. And although the naval flags of their country fluttered on the masts of the German cruisers, and the crews wore naval uniforms, they, like their distant predecessors, waged a war against all mankind at their own peril and risk. For they did not have any allies or bases in the ocean, and every five or six days they had to replenish their supplies of coal, fuel oil and fresh water. There was nowhere to be repaired - any damage could be the last. Only the remote bays of the godforsaken islands overgrown with coconut palms could serve as a place for them to take a short rest.
The author of the bestsellers “Party Gold”, “Satan’s Polygon”, “Lawlessness”, “Tallinn Crossing” offers readers his version of one of the mysteries of the 20th century - the secret of the fateful fate of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II.
The search for the remains of the emperor, undertaken by the KGB on the orders of Mikhail Gorbachev, leads the protagonist to such terrible discoveries that the leadership of the security agencies does not even dare to report to the president.
I. Bunich's book opens the veil over the secrets of the prophecies of Seraphim of Sarov, Grigory Rasputin, Lucia Ebobera about the fate of Russia, the Romanov dynasty and Nicholas II.
The book by Igor Bunich, known for the bestsellers "Gold of the Party", "Sword of the President", "Nicholas II Syndrome", "Tallinn Crossing" and others, describes the events that led to the bloodiest war in the history of mankind.
The two totalitarian regimes, intoxicated by the idea of world domination, moved inexorably towards a violent conflict. Carefully concealing their intentions, the general staffs of the Soviet Union and Germany were preparing plans for lightning-fast offensive operations to crush each other. Thanks to the global disinformation provided by the intelligence services of various countries, including his own, Stalin was in a kind of surreal world, from which he was brought out by the terrible blow of the sudden attack of the Nazi armies.
The book describes a breathtaking picture of the struggle of the governments, general staffs and intelligence agencies of the USSR, Germany, England and the USA in the name of the future redistribution of the world.