Image failed to load
Personal Details
- Russian Name
- Вероника Федоровна Такач
- Birth Date
- 26-Dec-16
- Defection Date
- 15-Aug-47
Veronika (Vera) Feodorovna Takacs
Вероника Федоровна Такач
Service Details
Biography
Mikhail Denisov (see also in this database) and Vera Takacs met each other while working as interpreters for Soviet forces in Hungary after World War II. They were both born in Russia, although Takacs lived much of her life in Hungary. They defected together because Denisov’s military commanders refused to allow them to get married and demanded they stop seeing each other.[i]
Denisov was born in August 1923 in the Ryazan Oblast, but moved with his family to Moscow as an infant. His father worked as a driver for senior Soviet officials—a position of considerable trust. Denisov attended primary school in Moscow and went on to graduate from an aviation technical school in 1939. He worked at airplane plants in Moscow and Kuibyshev until he was called into the Soviet Army in June 1942.
He studied at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages of the Red Army, which in 1941 had been evacuated to Stavropol-na-Volge (later renamed Tolyatti), where he initially began studying German, but transferred to Hungarian after a month. He graduated in April 1944 as a junior lieutenant assigned as a GRU interpreter, initially in the Fourth Ukrainian Front in early 1945, and later in the Allied Control Commission in Budapest. In June or July 1946, Denisov was assigned to the Soviet Embassy in Budapest as the personal interpreter for the Soviet Minister in Hungary, Georgiy Maksimovich Pushkin.
Denisov’s life changed when he met Veronika (Vera) Feodorovna Takacs in Budapest in late 1946. She was born in Astrakhan, Russia, in December 1916, but when her parents divorced in 1920, her mother remarried a Hungarian and they moved to Budapest. She attended an acting school in Budapest and took a job with a cabaret. She traveled extensively as an actress throughout Europe and the eastern Mediterranean area until 1937, when she decided to leave the acting career and settle down. She moved back to Budapest to live with her parents and she worked as a secretary for a construction engineer throughout the German occupation of Hungary. In 1944, she married a Hungarian named Istvan Takacs so she would have a Hungarian name and because German occupiers suspected foreign nationals and naturalized citizens. The marriage did not last long.
When Soviet forces arrived in Hungary in January 1945, Vera was arrested because she had been born in Russia and spoke Russian. She was taken to an NKVD officer, Captain Abramov, who checked into her background and asked her to be his interpreter. She traveled as Abramov’s interpreter to Czechoslovakia and Austria, but she complained to his superiors about his uncontrolled and licentious behavior. In summer 1945, she returned to Budapest to be an interpreter for the Allied Control Commission Inspectorate, which was a Soviet intelligence cover organization, where she was working when she met Denisov.
Takacs and Denisov decided to get married. However, Denisov’s superiors forbid them from marrying or even seeing each other. Denisov was transferred to Moscow in January 1947, but in April 1947, he was reassigned back to Hungary as an interpreter for the GRU section of the Red Banner Danube Fleet—this is likely an indicator of the GRU’s inability to meet its Hungarian language requirements. This is the same unit from which another GRU officer, Aleksandr Kirsanov (see separate entry in this database), had defected the previous year.
Denisov resumed his entreaties to marry Takacs, with the same result. So the couple decided to escape together. With the help if a black marketer, they traveled to the Hungarian border with Czechoslovakia in August 1947. They continued on to Prague, where they approached the British Embassy to speak to a military attaché. The military attaché told them to come back the next day, but while they were walking away, they met two men who told them to meet at a bridge in Prague that evening. They followed the instructions and were taken by car to a house, where they were told that, because no British occupation zone shared a border with Czechoslovakia, they would be handed to the Americans. They were taken from there to Regensburg, Germany, where they were interrogated and provided a substantial amount of valuable information. No further information is available about them.
[i] Joint Intelligence Committee, A Study of Defectors from the U.S.S.R., August 1948, pp. 29-30, TNA, FO 1093/551. The JIC study does not mention Vera’s Russian maiden name. The FBI’s 1955 monograph Soviet Defectors: A Study of Past Defections from Official Soviet Establishments Outside the USSR does not include Denisov and Takacs.
Denisov was born in August 1923 in the Ryazan Oblast, but moved with his family to Moscow as an infant. His father worked as a driver for senior Soviet officials—a position of considerable trust. Denisov attended primary school in Moscow and went on to graduate from an aviation technical school in 1939. He worked at airplane plants in Moscow and Kuibyshev until he was called into the Soviet Army in June 1942.
He studied at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages of the Red Army, which in 1941 had been evacuated to Stavropol-na-Volge (later renamed Tolyatti), where he initially began studying German, but transferred to Hungarian after a month. He graduated in April 1944 as a junior lieutenant assigned as a GRU interpreter, initially in the Fourth Ukrainian Front in early 1945, and later in the Allied Control Commission in Budapest. In June or July 1946, Denisov was assigned to the Soviet Embassy in Budapest as the personal interpreter for the Soviet Minister in Hungary, Georgiy Maksimovich Pushkin.
Denisov’s life changed when he met Veronika (Vera) Feodorovna Takacs in Budapest in late 1946. She was born in Astrakhan, Russia, in December 1916, but when her parents divorced in 1920, her mother remarried a Hungarian and they moved to Budapest. She attended an acting school in Budapest and took a job with a cabaret. She traveled extensively as an actress throughout Europe and the eastern Mediterranean area until 1937, when she decided to leave the acting career and settle down. She moved back to Budapest to live with her parents and she worked as a secretary for a construction engineer throughout the German occupation of Hungary. In 1944, she married a Hungarian named Istvan Takacs so she would have a Hungarian name and because German occupiers suspected foreign nationals and naturalized citizens. The marriage did not last long.
When Soviet forces arrived in Hungary in January 1945, Vera was arrested because she had been born in Russia and spoke Russian. She was taken to an NKVD officer, Captain Abramov, who checked into her background and asked her to be his interpreter. She traveled as Abramov’s interpreter to Czechoslovakia and Austria, but she complained to his superiors about his uncontrolled and licentious behavior. In summer 1945, she returned to Budapest to be an interpreter for the Allied Control Commission Inspectorate, which was a Soviet intelligence cover organization, where she was working when she met Denisov.
Takacs and Denisov decided to get married. However, Denisov’s superiors forbid them from marrying or even seeing each other. Denisov was transferred to Moscow in January 1947, but in April 1947, he was reassigned back to Hungary as an interpreter for the GRU section of the Red Banner Danube Fleet—this is likely an indicator of the GRU’s inability to meet its Hungarian language requirements. This is the same unit from which another GRU officer, Aleksandr Kirsanov (see separate entry in this database), had defected the previous year.
Denisov resumed his entreaties to marry Takacs, with the same result. So the couple decided to escape together. With the help if a black marketer, they traveled to the Hungarian border with Czechoslovakia in August 1947. They continued on to Prague, where they approached the British Embassy to speak to a military attaché. The military attaché told them to come back the next day, but while they were walking away, they met two men who told them to meet at a bridge in Prague that evening. They followed the instructions and were taken by car to a house, where they were told that, because no British occupation zone shared a border with Czechoslovakia, they would be handed to the Americans. They were taken from there to Regensburg, Germany, where they were interrogated and provided a substantial amount of valuable information. No further information is available about them.
[i] Joint Intelligence Committee, A Study of Defectors from the U.S.S.R., August 1948, pp. 29-30, TNA, FO 1093/551. The JIC study does not mention Vera’s Russian maiden name. The FBI’s 1955 monograph Soviet Defectors: A Study of Past Defections from Official Soviet Establishments Outside the USSR does not include Denisov and Takacs.