The Fourth Empire. The Conspiracy of the Narcom's Children

In the evening of June 3, 1943, in Moscow on the steps of the Bolshoi Kamenny Bridge, the son of the Soviet People's Commissar for Aviation Industry A.I. Shakhurin first shot his girlfriend Nina — the daughter of the Soviet ambassador to Mexico Konstantin Umansky — and then shot himself. During the investigation, it turned out that Volodya Shakhurin was leading a youth anti-Soviet organization called "The Fourth Empire." This organization included children of the highest Soviet party-government elite. It is said that Stalin, after listening to a report on the investigation's findings, tersely said: "Wolf cubs." This story forms the central plot of A. Terekhov's novel "The Stone Bridge," which received the "Big Book" award in 2009. In 2020, a series titled "Wolf" was released, dedicated to the "Wolf Cubs Case." Based on documents from investigation file R-788 "The Fourth Empire," the Central Archive of the FSB of the Russian Federation, the author reconstructed the events leading up to the shots on the steps of the Bolshoi Kamenny Bridge.