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The James Bond villain Francisco Scaramanga was based on a real person who was a Soviet assassin.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Background of Bogdan Stashinsky
3. Career with the NKVD/KGB.
4. Promotion to KGB assassin
5. Stashinsky’s career as a Soviet assassin
6. Reactions to Rebet’s and Bandera’s death
7. From East Germany with Love
8. Life in Moscow
9. Fleeing to the West
10. Trial
11. After the Ordeal
12. My personal thoughts
1. Introduction
“According to author Serhii Plokhy, a Harvard historian, Stashinsky's unusual exploits inspired Ian Fleming's 1965 James Bond novel, "The Man With the Golden Gun," which features a weapon that squirts liquid cyanide and leaves no trace. Plokhy is no Ian Fleming. His narrative skills are a bit stodgy. But this is one story that does a good job of telling itself.”
“ Ian Fleming’s The Man with the Golden Gun, written in 1964, less than two years after the trial, was clearly inspired by the Stashinsky case, and there are plenty more Bond notes throughout. Yet, as Plokhy notes, this story has as much in common with Dostoevsky and Conrad as it does Fleming. It is a story that straddles two cultures, two systems and a lot of history.”
2. Back ground of Bogdan Stashinsky
3. Career with the NKVD/KGB.
4. Promotion to KGB assassin
“HURI: So, speaking of the poison gun itself... is that something that was commonly used? Was Stashinsky the only one to use it? Did the KGB continue using it, do you know?
SP: What we know is that in the 1950s they were trying to use these technological achievements to improve the art of the killing. The crimes became more and more innovative. And one of the things that they were already trying to use was radioactive polonium back in the 1950s. We know about the failed attempt to kill one of the defectors with polonium, and we know about the Stashinsky gun.
In both cases, we know about them because something went wrong. There probably were more cases like that, there were quite a few suspicious deaths, including among the leaders of the Ukrainian immigration, but these are the two cases that we know about: One dealing with the Russian defector, one with the leaders of the Ukrainian immigration.
My understanding is that the original gun was an improved version of a gun used by the German intelligence during the Second World War. I'm not an expert on those gadgets, so I can't say that with 100% certainty, but looking at different types of this spray gun or poison gun (including at the Spy Museum here in Washington DC), that's the connection I made. And they kept improving it, because Rebet was killed with a gun that had just one barrel. By the time they got to killing Bandera, the gun had two barrels, and Stashinsky pushed the trigger for both barrels at the same time. That was one of the reasons it became clear that it was an assassination or poisoning, not a heart attack.”
“But he simply could not imagine himself killing an unarmed person. He had been raised a Christian, and some of his values his parents had taught him had stayed with him.”
5. Stashinsky’s career as a Soviet assassin
“Stashinsky was entrusted with two targeted assassinations, one in 1957 and the other in 1959. He completed both assignments successfully, concealing his poison-spraying gun under a neatly folded newspaper and stalking his targets throughout Munich until he knew their routines perfectly. Both victims were prominent leaders in the Ukrainian émigré community and ran resistance networks that actively fought Nikita Khrushchev’s stifling rule. Top KGB officials, and possibly Khrushchev himself, seemed to hope that the elimination of these Ukrainian nationalist leaders would spark a power struggle within the movement and weaken it.”
"Stashinsky bent down, ostensibly to fix his shoelace, while he waited for Bandera to figure out the door. Stashinsky began to have second thoughts — perhaps it was not the right time to carry out his plan. But he kept going. ... He raised the weapon, still rolled up in the newspaper, and fired it in Bandera's face. He later admitted that he had been nervous and fired both barrels, not just one. There followed a pop. ... In two hours, he was aboard an express train to Frankfurt."
6. Reactions to Rebet’s and Bandera’s death
“Cyanide Poisoning with no indication of violence pointed to suicide rather than murder”
7. From East Germany with Love
“Beauty is not the point,” replied Stashinsky. “When you’ve known someone for a long time and know that it will be good to go on living with her, that’s exactly what you need”
8. Life in Moscow
“Inge found the sanitary conditions in the Soviet capital utterly appalling. The trash cans were full and always dirty, so one had to be careful not to brush against them. People would spit everywhere. She called the toilets a “public tragedy.” Some of them were nothing more than holes in the ground, surrounded by filth, emitting a terrible smell.”
“The messenger produced-the envelopes had already been opened-and told the Stashinskys that he had had no time to read and translate them. He instead asked the couple to tell him what the letters were about. Now it was Stashinsky’s turn to experience culture shock. The KGB was reading their correspondence and not even trying to hide the fact from them”
9. Fleeing to the West
10. Trial
11. After the Ordeal
12. My personal thoughts