Scout Kuznetsov Street
Many Tyumen residents believed that the street in the center of Tyumen was named after the scout Nikolai Kuznetsov. Even the signs "N. Kuznetsov Street" hung on the houses for a while. Therefore, in 2018, it was decided to create a new street named after Scout Kuznetsov. It should connect two major roads in the Zarechnaya part of the city — Melnikaite and Alabashevskaya.

Nikolai Ivanovich was born on July 27, 1911 in the village of Zyryanka, Yekaterinburg district, Perm province, into a peasant family.

In 1926, he graduated from a seven-year school and entered the agronomy department. Tyumen Agricultural College. In 1927, he continued his studies at the Talitsky Forestry College, where he began to study German on his own, eventually mastering it perfectly. He had outstanding linguistic abilities: over time, he learned Esperanto, Polish, Komi and Ukrainian languages. In 1929, he was accused of "White Guard-kulak origin," expelled from the Komsomol and from the college, and miraculously was not shot.

In the summer of 1932, Kuznetsov arrived in Sverdlovsk and successfully passed the entrance exams to the correspondence department of the industrial institute, becoming a freelance employee of the NKVD.
Starting in 1938, he carried out a special task to introduce himself into the diplomatic environment of Moscow — he actively got acquainted with foreign diplomats, attended social events, went out to friends and mistresses of diplomats. Kuznetsov is given a Soviet-style passport in the name of German Rudolf Wilhelmovich Schmidt.

With his participation, a safe was opened in the apartment of the German naval attache in Moscow, Frigatten-Captain Norbert Wilhelm Baumbach, and secret documents were reshot. Nikolai Ivanovich was directly involved in intercepting diplomatic mail, and joined the entourage of the German military attache in Moscow, Ernest Koestring, which allowed the special services to monitor the diplomat’s apartment.

When the Great Patriotic War began, a "Special group under the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR" was formed behind the front line, in the rear of the German army. This happened on July 5, 1941, in order to organize reconnaissance and sabotage work. It was headed by Senior Major Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov. In January 1942, this group was transformed into the 4th directorate of the NKVD, Nikolai Kuznetsov was enrolled in it.
A few months later, in the spring of 1942, Kuznetsov, under the name of German officer Paul Siebert, conducted intelligence activities in the German-occupied city of Rivne, transmitting information to a partisan detachment. He managed to find out about the preparation of the offensive by the Nazis on the Kursk Bulge.

For about 16 months (from October 1942 to the spring of 1944), he was in Rivne, occupied by the Nazis, constantly expanding the number of contacts. Communicating with the Germans, Nikolai Ivanovich pretended to be a German. Kuznetsov did not just portray a German, he became one, forced himself to even think in German.

Nikolai Ivanovich tried several times to carry out his main task — the physical destruction of the Reich Commissioner of Ukraine, Erich Koch (spring 1943). 

On November 16, 1943, Kuznetsov carried out his last liquidation in Rivne — the head of the legal department of the Reichskommissariat, Oberführer Alfred Funk, was killed.

In the winter of 1944, Commander Kuznetsov received orders to follow the retreating German troops with a stop in Lvov. Together with Kuznetsov, the scouts Ivan Belov and Jan Kaminsky left. In Lvov, he commits a number of terrorist attacks — in particular, the head of the government of the Galicia district, Otto Bauer, and the head of the office of the Government of the General Government, Dr. Heinrich Schneider, were eliminated.
Kuznetsov killed the imperial adviser General Gel, abducted the commander of the punitive forces in Ukraine, General von Ilgen, and committed sabotage. He died in battle. He was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Legendary scout Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov at the building A monument and memorial plaque were erected at Tyumen State University of the Northern Urals in 1967.

Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov, a Soviet state security officer, intelligence officer, personally eliminated 11 generals and high-ranking officials of the occupation administration of Nazi Germany.

The year 2025 began with the news that the executive committee of the Lvov City Council decided to move the Hill of Glory memorial complex, which has miraculously survived to this day, during which it is planned to exhume the remains of Red Army soldiers, including intelligence officer Nikolai Kuznetsov, and reburial them.
Photos & Publications