The biography of this man is fascinating and delights, and even looks like an adventure novel. Mikhail Lyubimov is a scout, writer and publicist, candidate of historical sciences and is now quite old. He was already struck by eight dozen, but he is still the same ironic and dangerously charming, a third time married man with three grandchildren and a granddaughter. He has one son - Alexander Lyubimov - a journalist and a very famous person on television.
The charm of an old scout
His name is "legend", and he calls himself a "joke of intelligence." He is a great esthete who loves tweed jackets. He is very well-read, and for any occasion, elegant quotes break out of his mouth. Mikhail Lyubimov gave his own definition of intelligence, calling it a "paid form of pleasure", and created a new domestic genre - a spoof of parody. He has no contact with people from power, but few believe this.
Mikhail Petrovich Lyubimov: biography
He was born in Dnepropetrovsk on May 27, 1934 in the family of an employee of the OGPU and the head of SMERS, Pyotr Fedorovich Lyubimov. His mother was the daughter of a professor of medicine. He graduated from high school in Kuibyshev with a gold medal. Then he entered MGIMO and, after graduating in 1958, began his career as consular secretary of the USSR Embassy in Helsinki. A year later, he was already working in intelligence at the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR.
Mikhail Lyubimov, a scout who imitated a Western diplomat very well, was a regular in social events and London salons, where he often came with his beautiful wife (actress) Ekaterina Vishnevskaya. He began a very warm and friendly relationship with major English politicians, public and cultural figures.
Reviews
London friends called him “Smiling Mike” (he was loved in such a role). However, active intelligence activities were bearing fruit for the USSR. In 1965, he was expelled from England and declared persona non grata.
One famous English newspaper responded very interestingly about him , who described Lyubimov as an unusually charming man in a striped suit, sewn on Savile Road, sometimes wearing an Eton tie. However, this seemingly friendly Russian was one of the most motivated and talented KGB officers who led all anti-British espionage in Lubyanka.
For two years, Mikhail Lyubimov worked in Denmark as a deputy resident and first secretary of the embassy. In 1974, he was appointed deputy chief of the third department of PSU KGB.
Since 1976, Mikhail Petrovich - Advisor to the Embassy in Denmark. Upon returning to his homeland in 1980, he became the head of one of the departments of the KGB apparatus.
Literary work
After a while, he retires and begins to engage in literature and journalism. Two of his plays were staged in the 80s. Since 1987, he has been collaborating with Top Secret and Detective and Politics, as a journalist, in the magazine Ogonyok.
True fame brought him the novel "The Life and Adventures of Alex Wilkie." He tells the story of illegal immigrants abroad.
In 1995, he writes a memoir, Notes of a Good-for-Resident. In the same year, he published an article entitled Operation Calvary, which seriously agitated the public. He described how, in terms of perestroika, there were tasks to plunge the country into the chaos of wild capitalism, in order to later show the advantages of the socialist system, and thereby, thanks to the indignation of the masses, return to the previous state system. It turned out very prophetically. State Duma deputies took everything at face value and even wrote a letter to the secret services.
Books
In 1996, the collection of short stories “Spies I Love and Hate”, the collection “The KGB Travel Guide for World Cities” and the satirical novel “The Decameron of Spies” (1998) were released.
In 2001, Lyubimov published the book “Walking with the Cheshire Cat”, where he compares the English and Russian. In 2012, the continuation of the adventures of the spy Alex Wilkie called "Shot" was released. It describes episodes that were autobiographical in relation to Lyubimov. The main character is a "rat", which wound up inside Russian intelligence. The writer took this man to the smallest detail from the Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky. For many years he was deputy M. Lyubimov and worked for British intelligence.
Love-match
Being the son of a hereditary security officer, he fell in love with a hereditary noblewoman - Ekaterina Vishnevskaya, who became his first wife. She fascinated him as a young and beautiful actress, distinguished by her sparkling humor, magnificent erudition and bright independent disposition. They got married in the 60th year, and in 1961 they left for London. The son was born in the summer of 1962 and is an Englishman at the place of birth.
Nobles Vishnevsky
It is especially worthwhile to dwell on the pedigree of the wife of Mikhail Petrovich - Ekaterina Vishnevskaya. The writer even wrote a book about this, “Wanderings through the Genealogies.” His wife was from a wealthy noble family, about which Leskov wrote the story ("The Epic of Vishnevsky and his relatives"). In the encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron, as many as half a page are devoted to Vishnevsky. A curious episode is described there, when one of the Vishnevsky’s relatives, passing a village, was once struck by the wonderful voice of the singing Cossack Alexei Rozum in the church choir. Then he took the singer with him to Petersburg, and then attached him to the court choir. So the favorite of the Empress Catherine II Alexei Razumovsky got into the capital.
The Vishnevsky clan became related to the Trubetskoys, Dolgoruky and even some royal families.
With a healthy irony, we can say that the Vishnevsky Lyubimovs would not even be allowed into the hallway.
Conclusion
Lyubimov Mikhail Petrovich does not idealize intelligence, his heroes are not "solid stone shtirlitsy". They are more served in a fascinating ironic and humorous manner. Now he speaks a lot on television and radio, gives lectures in Russia and abroad. In his free time he visits theaters, art galleries, likes hiking and walking, as well as swimming. She loves to be with her family and drink Scotch whiskey. The huge black cat (this is his pet, which helps him relieve stress) became the hero of his latest book.
Now Mikhail Lyubimov lives and works in Moscow.