The Biggest Bank Robbery in the Soviet Union

Nikolai Kalachyan, born in 1951 in Borodino, Krasnoyarsk Krai, had a troubled upbringing. His family’s financial difficulties, primarily due to his father’s illness, left them destitute. Nikolai’s early years were marked by instability—he ran away to join a gypsy camp, dabbled in drug trafficking, and worked as a trash collector. With only a basic education and training as a turner, Nikolai turned to crime. His first successful robbery involved breaking into a savings bank by creating a hole in the wall. The crime went unsolved, and the stolen money was quickly squandered.

Brothers Felix and Nikolai Kalachian

Felix Kalachyan, on the other hand, was born in the village of Kazanchi in the Ashotsk district. After finishing school, he moved to Leninakan (now Gyumri), where he married and became a father of two. Working as a janitor, Felix struggled to provide for his family. Despite his humble profession, Felix had an athletic background—he was a skilled gymnast with the title of Candidate for Master of Sports. Nikolai convinced Felix to join him in a life of crime, and together they robbed an electronics store by dismantling a wall. They sold the stolen goods for 15,000 rubles, some of which Felix sent to his family, while the rest was spent on a spree in Moscow.

Meanwhile, the director of the store from which the Kalachyans stole the tape recorders, for some reason, did not go to the police: the brothers got away with this crime. According to Nikolai, the director's silence was explained by the fact that the stolen tape recorders were unaccounted goods and were intended for illegal sale.

Yerevan branch of the State Bank of the USSR

Their next target was far more ambitious: the State Bank of the Armenian SSR in Yerevan. Nikolai’s plan relied on insider information provided by a bank employee and close associate, Zaven Bagdasaryan, who had direct access to the vault during routine inspections.

Zaven, a member of the commission tasked with recounting the money stored in the Yerevan branch of the State Bank, was deeply impressed by the enormous sums he encountered in the vault. He informed the Kalachyan brothers that approximately 100 million rubles were stored at the branch and proposed a bold plan: to steal it.

Bagdasaryan described the setup in detail. The cash was stacked on several shelves inside a small room on the second floor. The bank itself was housed in a three-story building dating back to the 1930s, constructed by prisoners using volcanic tuff—a relatively fragile material. This architectural vulnerability made breaking into the vault plausible. Initially, the Kalachyan brothers hesitated, deeming the risk too great. However, after three months of deliberation, they decided to proceed. The operation, to be executed by the nimble Felix, took several additional months of meticulous planning. Bagdasaryan even sketched detailed blueprints of the bank’s layout, including the walls, floors, and alarm systems, to aid in the preparations.

The open window of the bank through which Felix entered

Disguised as an artist, Nikolai began frequenting the streets near the bank. He casually passed by the branch repeatedly, observing every detail of its operations. During his surveillance, he noted that the bank shared its ground floor with a police station. However, his observations revealed that only a couple of officers were on duty during weekends, prompting the brothers to schedule the heist for a summer weekend.

By early August, their plan was finalized. Felix would breach the wall on the third floor, which adjoined a residential building, and gain entry into the bank employees’ break room. Every aspect of the operation was meticulously considered, down to the inclusion of three bottles of mineral water for Felix to combat the sweltering summer heat and cool the drills.

A seemingly ordinary item—a simple umbrella—was crucial to their plan. According to Nikolai’s design, Felix was to drill a small hole in the floor, insert the umbrella through it, open it, and continue drilling. This would catch falling debris, muffling the sound and minimizing mess.

However, shortly before the heist, Nikolai was involved in a car accident and hospitalized. Despite this setback, he remained undeterred. After consulting with Felix, Nikolai decided to proceed with the plan and coordinated the robbery from his hospital bed.

Felix Kalachian during investigative experiments

On the appointed day, Felix set out with a large hiking backpack containing all the necessary tools: a hand drill, various bits, rope, a crowbar, a hacksaw, a chisel, a hammer, a flashlight, and, of course, the umbrella. Upon reaching the third floor of the residential building, he began drilling the wall. He worked all night, but could not break through the partition. Frustrated but determined, Felix returned the next evening to reassess the situation and devise a backup plan on the spot.

Climbing onto the roof of the apartment building, Felix noticed that the recreation room window of the State Bank employees was not secured. Ongoing renovations had left the window slightly ajar, covered only by a polyethylene sheet to allow paint fumes to dissipate. Additionally, the bank’s caretaker had forgotten to properly close it.

Felix initially tried throwing a rope with a weighted end through the window but repeatedly missed his target. Realizing he needed a bold move, he sprinted and leapt from the roof, miraculously landing inside the third-floor window.

The second phase of the plan unfolded seamlessly. Felix drilled a 34-centimeter hole in the floor, then used a rope secured to a piece of reinforcement to lower himself into the vault. Inside, he retrieved two bags of cash containing a total of 1.5 million rubles—equivalent to approximately 100 million rubles today. After carefully packing the money into his backpack, Felix climbed out through the lounge window using a rope, slipping away unnoticed as dawn broke on Sunday morning.

Felix’s first stop was the hospital to meet his brother. Overjoyed by the success, Nikolai discharged himself the same day. The brothers then retreated to a rented apartment where they hid the loot. While examining the cash, Nikolai noticed a critical detail: most of the 100-ruble notes bore the same serial series—AI.

Recognizing the potential for these notes to trace back to them, Nikolai instructed Felix and Zaven not to spend the AI-series bills. His caution proved prescient.

Meanwhile the investigators quickly established the method by which the thief had entered the bank building: the trick of jumping through a window, under which a tarpaulin was stretched for safety, was repeated by the detectives themselves. Despite this breakthrough, the investigation soon hit a dead end, leaving the case at a standstill.

Upon learning of the audacious heist, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev took personal interest in the case and ordered a nationwide alert. Directives were sent to all savings banks across the Soviet Union, instructing staff to report any transactions involving AI-series 100-ruble notes.

Following the robbery, the cousins fled to Moscow. Kalachyan brothers spent all the small bills rather quickly and began to think about what to do with packs of hundred-ruble notes. Nikolai found a way out: he suggested buying three-percent government loan bonds with them, for which they could then get “normal” money. However, the thieves were not going to go to the savings banks themselves.

Nikolai Kalachian during investigative experiments

There, Nikolai met Ludmila Viktorovna Aksyonova, whose brother, Vladimir Kuznetsov, was a taxi driver. Vladimir was unwittingly drawn into their scheme, tasked with purchasing bonds using stolen 100-ruble notes. To avoid suspicion, Nikolai claimed he needed the bonds to fund an elaborate wedding to Ludmila. Vladimir, unaware of the robbery, agreed to help.

However, the stolen money bore a critical flaw: most of the 100-ruble notes shared the same serial series, "AI." Soviet authorities had issued a nationwide alert to all savings banks, instructing employees to report any transactions involving such notes.

Kuznetsov agreed to help his future relative. He bought the first batch of securities in several trips in Tashkent, spending about 24 thousand rubles. To the delight of the criminals, Vladimir came across inattentive savings bank employees. Because of this, the criminal investigation officers did not immediately find out that the AI series banknotes had surfaced in the Uzbek SSR.

By the time investigators reached Tashkent, Kuznetsov had already fled the country. Meanwhile, the Kalachyan brothers decided to relocate to Sochi. Nikolai purchased a used green Zhiguli (some sources suggest it was a Moskvich) for 13,000 rubles at the market near Moscow's Southern River Port. To maintain their cover, he registered the car under Lyudmila's name.

Vladimir’s downfall came when he attempted to purchase 6,000 rubles’ worth of bonds in a Moscow savings bank. The cashier, suspicious of the large sum, pretended to retrieve additional bonds from the vault but instead contacted the police. Spooked, Vladimir fled, but the cashier had already noted his appearance and the license plate of his green Zhiguli car.

Police tracked the vehicle to an apartment building on Leninsky Prospekt, where the Kalachyans were staying. On the night of June 7, 1978, law enforcement arrested Nikolai, Felix, and Vladimir.

More than 800 thousand rubles of the money stolen from the Yerevan bank were found in the dismantled wheel. The criminals buried the remaining 100 thousand rubles under a house in Leninakan. By then, the criminals had already spent 600,000 rubles of the stolen money.

The trial was swift, and the sentence was harsh. Nikolai and Felix Kalachyan were sentenced to death, while Zaven Bagdasaryan received 11 years in a maximum-security prison. Vladimir Kuznetsov, who played a secondary role, received a lighter sentence. Nikolai's mother, who had barely survived the death of her husband, never learned the court's verdict: upon hearing the charges against her son, she fell gravely ill and soon passed away.

But the death penalty for two young men, one of whom was a father of two children, seemed excessive to the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR Babken Sarkisov. The official appealed to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR with a request to pardon the brothers: they considered Sarkisov's arguments reasonable and granted the request.

However, the papers that could have saved the Kalachyans arrived in Yerevan with a fatal delay. By the time the documents finally reached the prison, it was discovered that Felix and Nikolai had been executed the day before.