In the late 1980s, criminal groups began to appear in Russia, created both by outright bandits and formerly law-abiding athletes, military personnel, and security officers. There were also quite unusual organized crime groups. For example, the "White Cross." The gang was organized by former police officers who operated within a strict political platform — they intended to overthrow the Soviet government.

For several years, the editor of one of the St. Petersburg media outlets received letters with touching repentant poems. The letters were signed by a certain Arkady Mokeev — a prisoner from a special regime colony in Mordovia. The convict never asked for anything. The journalist decided to find out the fate of the criminal to try to somehow ease his plight. He sent an inquiry to the colony, to which a response soon arrived.

— In response to your letter, we inform you that Mokeev was found guilty of organizing a gang with the purpose of attacking state, public enterprises, institutions, organizations, and individual citizens; attempted murder under aggravating circumstances of a police officer; intentional murders under aggravating circumstances of a cashier, a collector, and a serviceman. He was also found guilty of vehicle theft; calls to commit crimes against the state; attempted escape from custody; and attempted murder.

Arkady Mokeev was born into a Soviet family in 1962 but grew up hating the authorities. There was a reason for this: his father had served time in the GULAG, only gaining freedom after Stalin's death. Prison had left him disabled. The Mokeev family lived in a cramped room in a communal apartment in Leningrad. They lived poorly — meat was eaten only once a week. Little Arkasha had neither toys nor decent clothes. Therefore, at 16, he swore to dedicate his life to overthrowing Soviet power.

After school, Arkady married and tried various professions, eventually settling on the position of a district police officer. In service, he was not known for discipline — his personal file at the 57th police department of the Vyborg District Police Department contained disciplinary penalties for absenteeism, fighting, and involvement with forged documents. Acquaintances of the policeman said that Mokeev was obsessed with the desire to accomplish something great.

Having risen to the rank of captain, Mokeev decided to fulfill his youthful dreams of overthrowing Soviet power. In 1989, the district officer organized the Russian Liberation Movement "White Cross," which included his cousin Vladimir Bikmullin, a patrol service officer, Igor Dyakov, a Leningrad hooligan, and Mokeev’s friend Igor Korenkov. Mokeev modeled the group after the pre-revolutionary terrorist organization "People’s Will," which aimed to force the government into democratic reforms. Members of the "White Cross" understood that political activity required money, so they began earning it through outright crime.

Initially, the bandits had only one homemade pistol, which Mokeev had taken from a criminal. On April 29, 1989, the leader attacked a colleague — police officer Lyudmila Markova, who was on duty in the building of the Central State Archive of the Navy. The goal was to seize her service weapon. When the woman tried to defend herself, Mokeev shot her in the head and took the pistol with two magazines. Then he finished Markova off with a blow from the pistol grip to the head. After the brutal assault, he fled. The woman survived — she managed to reach a phone and call an ambulance.

Leningrad police were shocked by the attack on their colleague, but despite all measures, they failed to catch the villain immediately. From the start, investigators suspected the criminal might be connected to the authorities because he knew the duty officer was alone at the site.

A week later, on May 7, now armed with two "guns," the bandits carried out a training raid on a cafeteria in Petrozavodsk, bursting in a few minutes before closing. The conversation with the cashier went badly, and he was shot. The raiders took 600 rubles from the cash register and fled. An examination established that the shots were fired from the service weapon stolen from Markova. Investigators questioned about a thousand people but failed to track down the gang.

The modest 600 rubles from the cafeteria cash register, of course, did not help the "White Cross" achieve their lofty goals. Mokeev needed a million. He planned to arm a hundred or so militants and seize government institutions and police departments in Leningrad. Bikmullin even negotiated with representatives of some national diasporas, who promised to help the "White Cross" with weapons. The bandits prepared for the next raid for several months — on August 30, they ambushed a cash-in-transit vehicle. Here is how it happened:

The cash-in-transit crew finishes their shift — they have to collect the takings at the last point, a jewelry store near the "Prospekt Veteranov" metro station. One of the collectors receives a bag of money from the cashier and returns to the service "Volga" car: the driver, a colleague, and bags with 800,000 rubles are waiting there. The driver starts the car, but the path is suddenly blocked by an old "Zhiguli," from which strangers with pistols jump out. The bandits open fire without hesitation — one of the collectors is killed on the spot. The experienced "Volga" driver hits the gas: the car miraculously maneuvers around the bandits' "Zhiguli" and then disappears into the traffic.

“During the shootout, one of the collectors was killed, the others wounded. But the driver managed to escape the fire and drive the car away,” says Alexander Malyshev, former head of the "homicide" department of the Main Directorate of Internal Affairs. The frustrated bandits did not dare to pursue the collectors: abandoning the "Zhiguli" in the nearest alley, they dispersed to their homes. Meanwhile, this crime by the "White Cross" finally convinced investigators that a gang was operating in Leningrad.

After this failure, the "White Cross" went underground. In spring 1990, the bandits began outright terror — late one April evening, Mokeev and Bikmullin stopped a taxi on the outskirts of Leningrad, asking to be taken into the city. Then they beat the driver and locked him in the trunk, while they drove around the city all night. Early in the morning, they went to a military unit in the village of Sertolovo in the Leningrad region, where weapons were stored. There they shot the sentry Batagov.

The body of Private Batagov, killed by members of the "White Cross" gang, Frame: TV program "The Investigation Was Conducted..."

The mortally wounded soldier opened return fire with his automatic rifle, and the bandits had to flee. They dumped the taxi driver in central Leningrad, then abandoned the car in one of the courtyards. The failure did not stop the "revolutionaries." They printed several thousand leaflets, which they posted all over Leningrad: "The people are tired of hopelessness and poverty, and we do not need a bone from the master's table called perestroika! Fellow citizens! A revolutionary situation has matured in the country! The day of freedom is near!" the leaflets read. The bandits promised a quick distribution of weapons "at all legal and illegal markets in the city" and announced new actions that were to demonstrate to the whole world the determination and will of the "White Cross" members.

One of the actions Mokeev scheduled for May 14, 1990 — the bandits decided to destroy the Lenin monuments at the Finland and Warsaw railway stations and set fire to the building of the Leningrad City Council. As usual, Bikmullin and Mokeev stole an old "Kopeyka" car and headed for central Leningrad. They loaded the car with Molotov cocktails — bottles with a mixture of gasoline, linseed oil, "Moment" glue, and fuses made from sparklers, as well as leaflets with anti-communist content.

Perhaps the bandits would have managed to carry out the action if the "Kopeyka" had not crashed into a truck on the way to the City Council. The traffic police officers who arrived at the accident scene discovered that the car was reported stolen. After searching the "Kopeyka," the inspectors realized that these were not ordinary car thieves.

In the end, the driver was left in the yard, and the car was stolen. That could have been the end of it, but Ivashchenko noticed a passing police patrol and asked for help. The patrol began chasing the stolen vehicle, which, trying to shake off the "tail," soon crashed into an emergency service truck. Mokeev and Bikmullin jumped out of the car and, firing at the police, ran away. But Bikmullin was soon caught and detained, while Mokeev managed to hide in one of the entrances of a nearby residential building. He ran into an apartment, introduced himself as a police officer, and took a woman hostage, but only briefly. Hearing the operatives breaking down the front door, Mokeev escaped through the kitchen window on the first floor onto the street, where he was detained by the police. According to other reports, the bandit managed to slip out of the apartment — he changed into clothes found there and, accompanied by the hostess, whom he held at gunpoint, left the apartment. Pretending to be a married couple, Mokeev and the hostage passed by the police officers, left the yard, then released her and fled. However, not for long — the leader was tracked down thanks to the testimony of his detained cousin Bikmullin. Mokeev was found in the apartment of distant relatives, where he wanted to lie low. Soon, two other gang members — Korenkov and Dyakov — were also imprisoned.

During interrogations, Mokeev did not hide his plans to stage a coup in the Soviet Union: he said that the idea was inspired by Solzhenitsyn's works. The leader of the "White Cross" admitted that in autumn 1989 he prepared an assassination attempt on 95-year-old Lazar Kaganovich — former People's Commissar and Stalin's associate, who lived in Moscow. Mokeev learned the address and even came to house No. 50 on Frunzenskaya Embankment: he knew that Kaganovich loved to play dominoes with neighbors and periodically went outside for this. The bandit wanted to ambush the former commissar, shoot him on the staircase, and leave a "White Cross" leaflet nearby. But shortly before the planned day of the assassination, Kaganovich fell ill and stopped leaving the apartment. Mokeev waited for him for about a week, then left empty-handed. Meanwhile, after a series of frank confessions, the leader realized he faced execution and began feigning insanity — claiming that all crimes were committed by his double. However, experts found no mental illnesses in Mokeev. The investigation into the "White Cross" case lasted three years — the gang members witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union in detention cells. In 1993, the robbers were sentenced: Korenkov received ten years in prison, Dyakov two years less.

Bikmullin, who actively cooperated with the investigation and had a three-year-old child to support, was sentenced to four years behind bars. And 31-year-old Arkady Mokeev was predictably sentenced to death, which was soon commuted to life imprisonment in the Mordovian colony "Yedinichka."

Sources:

https://life.ru/p/1393674

https://lenta.ru/articles/2022/12/04/banda/