Smersh: Stalin's Secret Weapon: Soviet Military Counterintelligence in WWII

by Vadim Birstein

  In 1940, Stalin sent three special watchdogs, officially plenipotentiaries for the Soviet government, to supervise events in the Baltics: Party ideologue Andrei Zhdanov to Estonia; infamous former USSR prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky to Latvia; and Beria’s man, Vladimir Dekanozov, to Lithuania. Later Merkulov, Abakumov, and Serov went to Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, respectively, to organize and supervise the arrests and deportations.

  Irena Baruch Wiley, the wife of the American Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Latvia and Estonia, witnessed the deportation: ‘The long trains with curtained windows left every night for Russia. I had thought that in the unspeakable brutality of the Nazi invasion of Austria I had witnessed the depths of horror, but there was something even more nightmarish, more terrifying in watching, weary and helpless, this silent nightly exodus. The Nazis committed their atrocities night and day; the Russians, more surreptitious, only under cover of darkness.’42 Here then, in 1940, was a template for taking over a foreign state, a template that was expanded upon and used successfully, with SMERSH’s help, in the East European countries at the end of the war.

  By July 21, 1940, Soviet-controlled governments had taken power in the three republics. Members of the Baltic governments were taken to the Soviet Union. A year later, after the beginning of war with Germany, former Latvian and Estonian officials and their wives were jailed without trial and held in solitary confinement. They were not sentenced until 1952, when they became nameless secret political prisoners, held in strict isolation in the infamously inhuman Vladimir Prison, identified only by numbers.43

  The arrests continued through 1941. On May 16, 1941, Merkulov sent Stalin the final deportation plan for the former Baltic States.44 The plan stipulated the arrests of prominent members of ‘counter revolutionary’ parties; members of Russian emigrant organizations; all policemen, landowners, and owners of industrial plants; army officers; and so on. The arrestees ‘should be placed in [labor] camps for five to eight years and after their release they should be exiled to distant areas of the Soviet Union for twenty years’. In addition, their family members were to be banished to distant parts of the Soviet Union for twenty years. Incredibly, in 2009 Viktor Stepakov, the FSB-connected historian, wrote: ‘This document… was an example of true humanism [emphasis added]. During that complicated time, enemies… could [simply] be shot to death.’45

  But for many, this was a death sentence. For instance, during June– September 1942, 9,080 Lithuanian deportees, plus ethnic Finns and Germans exiled from Leningrad, were relocated to Yakutia (currently the Sakha Republic within Russia), a Siberian area with an extremely severe climate, as ‘fishermen’. Of these, only 48 per cent could work and 36 per cent were children under 16. The deportees were provided with no housing, food, boats or fishing-gear and were forced to live in dug-outs, each for 60 deportees. Only 30 per cent of them survived.46 By June 1941 Merkulov was able to report to the Central Committee that almost all the members of the intelligentsia of these small countries were in Soviet labor camps, and the number of the arrested and deported was about 66,000.47 However, the current Baltic States consider this number to have been underestimated:

  Deportees

  Country Total population Russian sources48 Baltic sources49

  Lithuania 2,879,000 28,533 35,000

  Latvia 1,951,000 24,407 35,000

  Estonia 1,133,000 12,819 15,000

  Simultaneously, mass purges were organized in the other territories occupied by the Red Army. May 1941 saw the deportations of approximately 12,000 family members of ‘counter revolutionaries and nationalists’ from Western Ukraine, formerly a part of Poland.50 Purges also took place in Bessarabia, previously a part of Romania, now renamed the Soviet Republic of Moldavia. There were deportations from several other areas of Romania and Belorussia as well. On the whole, the number of the deported during 1940-41 was approximately 380,000–390,000, and of them, 309,000–325,000 were former Polish citizens.51

  The Soviets had a different attitude toward ethnic Germans in the same states. Special Soviet–German agreements allowed ethnic Germans to move from the Baltic States to Germany, while ethnic Lithuanians, Russians, and Belorussians living in the Polish territory now occupied by Germany were forced to move to Soviet-occupied Lithuania.52 The Soviets even paid substantial sums of money to the Baltic Germans for property losses.

  On June 26, 1940, during the Baltic campaign, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet introduced new working rules, apparently in connection with the preparations for a big war. The Presidium’s decree established a seven-day working week and an eight-hour instead of seven-hour working day.53 Now quitting a job without permission of the administration or being late for work by 20 minutes were punished by imprisonment for two to six months. This meant that people became attached to particular working places and could not change jobs. On December 26, 1942 an additional decree increased the punishment to two to five years. Before the war, 2,664,472 perpetrators were sentenced under the June 26 decree, and during the war, their number was 7,747,405.54

  In 1941–42, five more decrees introduced additional restrictions. The number of people who fell foul of the working rules during the war reached 8,550,799; of these, 2,080,189 served terms in labor camps, making these convicts a majority among all prisoners. Probably, the feeling of slavery had an impact in the low morale of just-drafted soldiers during the first disastrous period of the war with Germany. The June 26 decree was abolished only in 1956, three years after Stalin’s death; overall, from 1940 to 1956, 14,845,144 perpetrators were convicted under it.55

  Three Security Services

  After the expansion, Stalin tried to maintain a good relationship with Hitler. In November 1940, Molotov, Merkulov, and Dekanozov arrived in Berlin for economic and political negotiations with the Nazis.56 Not everything went smoothly, but Dekanozov stayed in Berlin as Soviet Plenipotentiary and Bogdan Kobulov’s brother Amayak, who had no experience in intelligence, became NKVD chief rezident (head of a spy network) in the Soviet Legation. These appointments gave Beria and the NKVD a great deal of control over diplomats, especially those who were stationed in Berlin.

  With the new workload occasioned by the western expansion, it became clear that the NKVD was too monolithic to function efficiently. In January 1941, Beria proposed separating the intelligence and counterintelligence functions from the more mundane domestic terror organs by removing the GUGB from the NKVD and turning it into the State Security Commissariat, or NKGB.57 The NKGB would include three important directorates: foreign intelligence, domestic counterintelligence, and secret political directorate. From this time onwards, during almost all of the many subsequent reorganizations of the Soviet security services, foreign intelligence was called the 1st (or 1st Main) Directorate, and interior counterintelligence the 2nd (or 2nd Main) Directorate.

  GUGB head Merkulov became head of the new NKGB, with Beria remaining head of the now smaller NKVD, whose main function was to manage the countless Soviet labor camps and prisons with a population of 2,417,000 prisoners and an additional population of 1,500,000 people in labor and special settlements, including those transported from the Baltic States and other occupied territories.58 Although not the direct head of the NKGB, Beria still controlled it through Merkulov. On January 30, 1941, with Beria’s promotion to the rank of State Security General Commissar, speculation was rife that he would eventually succeed Stalin.59

  The OO, the 4th GUGB Department, was not incorporated into the new NKGB, but instead was split into three parts.60 One part, which handled military counterintelligence in the border guards and other NKVD troops, remained within the NKVD and became its 3rd department.61 In his first affiliation with military counterintelligence, on February 25, 1941 Abakumov became NKVD deputy Commissar in charge of supervising this and several other departments. The second and most significant part went to the Defense Commissariat (the NKO), becoming its 3rd Directorate.62 Now every military district (called fronts in wartime), army, corps, and
division had a 3rd department whose heads reported jointly to a 3rd department superior and to their unit’s military commander.63 The third part of the OO became the Navy Commissariat’s (the NKVMF) 3rd Directorate.

  But even though two parts of military counterintelligence were formally moved to the NKO and NKMF, Beria still controlled all secret services. The staff of the new 3rd directorates remained on the sixth floor of the NKVD Lubyanka building, and a special Central Council consisting of the NKGB and NKVD commissars, along with heads of the two 3rd directorates and the NKVD 3rd department, coordinated all military counterintelligence. Additionally, new deputy head positions were created within the 3rd directorates and their subordinate departments, which Merkulov filled with members of his staff.64 Finally, the NKGB had the right to transfer any investigation conducted by the 3rd directorates to its own investigation unit. In addition, the NKVD maintained a central archive through which it was able to keep detailed tabs on whatever happened in the other secret services.65

  The three-part organization of security services—the 3rd NKO Directorate, NKGB and NKVD—from February to July 1941 is remarkably similar to that Stalin established in April 1943, when for the Soviets the war started to turn from the defensive to offensive. In fact, this three-part structure made sense only if the Red Army was on the offensive. Military counterintelligence was moving with the front line and made the first arrests of real and potential anti-Soviet enemies in the new territories. Then the NKGB continued this job in the occupied territories, while the NKVD was primarily in charge of policing and keeping the arrested enemies and POWs. Most probably, the change in the year 1941 was part of Stalin’s general preparation for moving Soviet troops westward beyond the newly acquired territories.

  Notes

  1. Details in Yevgenii Gnedin, Vykhod iz labirinta (Moscow: Memorial, 1994), 11–20 (in Russian). Molotov (1890–1986) headed the Foreign Affairs Commissariat from May 1939 to May 1949.

  2. Details in Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin and the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1939–1941 (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1988), 246–60.

  3. ‘Moscow’s Week,’ Time, October 9, 1939.

  4. Dimitrov and Stalin, 1934–1943: Letters from the Soviet Archives, edited by Alexandr Dallin and F. I. Firsov (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 151–2. Similar Stalin’s political views are discussed in V. L. Doroshenko, I. V. Pavlova, and R. C. Raack, ‘Ne mif: rech’ Stalina 19 avgusta 1939 goda,’ Voprosy istorii 8 (2005): 3–20 (in Russian).

  5. Amnon Sella, ‘Red Army Doctrine and Training on the Eve of the Second World War,’ Europe-Asia Studies 27, no. 2 (April 1975), 245–64.

  6. Cited in Aleksandr Shitov, ‘Stalin khotel bol’shoi i dolgoi voiny,’ Novaya gazeta. ‘Pravda Gulaga,’ no. 7, June 16, 2010 (in Russian), http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2010/gulag07/00.html, retrieved September 4, 2011. 2010.

  7. NKVD Order No. 001064, dated September 8, 1939. Document No. 29, in Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 1 (1), 70–73. I am using the spelling ‘Belorussia’ and ‘Belorussian,’ as it was used in the Soviet Union, and not the current spelling ‘Belarus’ and ‘Belarusian’.

  8. NKVD Directive, dated September 15, 1939. Document No. 33, in ibid., 79–81.

  9. Details in Mikhail Mel’tyukhov, Sovetsko-pol’skie voiny (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2004), 463–566 (in Russian).

  10. Heinz Guderian, Vospominaniya soldata (Smolensk: Rusich, 1999), 114 (in Russian, translated from the German). On the cooperation of the NKVD and Gestapo see Hans Schafranek, Zwischen NKWD und Gestapo. Die Auslieferung deutscher und osterreichischer Antifaschisten aus der Sowietunion und Nazideutschland 1937–1941 (Frankfurt/Main: ISP–Verlag, 1990).

  11. Merkulov’s report to Beria, dated September 28, 1939. Document No. 42, in Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 1 (1), 96.

  12. NKVD Instruction No. 1042/B, dated March 20, 1940. Document No. 78, in ibid., 165–66.

  13. Politburo decision P13/144, dated March 5, 1940. Document No. 1, in Katyn. Mart 1940 g. –sentyabr’ 2000 g. Rasstrel. Sud’by zhivykh. Ekho Katyni. Dokumenty, edited by N. S. Lebedeva, N. Petrosyan, B. Woszcynski et al., 43–4 (Moscow: Ves’ Mir, 2001) (in Russian).

  14. Dmitrii Tokarev, former head of the Kalinin NKVD Directorate, a statement on March 20, 1991. Katyn. Dokumenty zbrodni. Tom 2. Zagłada marzec—czerwiec 1940, edited by W. Materski, B.Woszcyński, N. Lebiediewa, and N. Pietrosowa (Warszawa: Wydawn ‘TRIO,’ 1998), 432–70.

  15. Nikita Petrov (Memorial, Moscow), in Igor Mel’nikov, ‘Kto povinen v smerti tysyach pol’skikh grazhdan,’ Belarus’ segodnya, December 18, 2008 (in Russian), http://www.sb.by/post/78592, retrieved September 5, 2011.

  16. Beria’s report, dated December 12, 1940 (from the Presidential Archive), in Nataliya Lebedeva, ‘Chetveryi razdel Pol’shi,’ Novaya gazeta, no. 102, September16, 2009, http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2009/102/00.html, retrieved September 5, 2011.

  17. NKVD report, dated January 22, 1942, in Nikita Petrov, Istoriya imperii ‘Gulag.’ Glava 9 (in Russian), http://www.pseudology.org/GULAG/Glava09.htm, retrieved September 5, 2011.

  18. Politburo decisions P34/332 and P34/333. Announced as the Joint Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet and TsK VKP(b), dated August 17, 1941.

  19. Document No. 87, in Istoriya stalinskogo GULAGa. Konets 1920-kh—pervaya polovina 1950-kh godov. Tom 5. Spetspereselentsy v SSSR, edited by T. V. Tsarevsaya-Dyakina, 324–5 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004) (in Russian).

  20. Details in Wladislaw Anders, An Army in Exile (London: MacMillan & Co., 1949).

  21. V. M. Berezhkov, Kak ya stal perevodchikom Stalina (Moscow: DEM, 1993), 48 (in Russian).

  22. Molotov’s speech at the session of the USSR Supreme Council on October 31, 1940. Pravda, November 1, 1940 (in Russian).

  23. Molotov’s note dated November 26, 1939, published in Izvestia, no. 273 (7043), November 27, 1939 (in Russian).

  24. Quoted in M. I. Meltyukhov, ‘Ideologicheskie dokumenty maiya-iyunya 1941 goda o sobytiyakh vtoroi mirovoi voiny,’ in Drugaya voina: 1939-1945 (Moscow: RGGU, 1996), 76-105 (in Russian).

  25. Page 171 in V. A. Novobranets, ‘Nakanune voiny,’ Znamya, No. 6 (1990), 165–192 (in Russian).

  26. N. N. Voronov, Na sluzhbe voennoi (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1963), 136 (in Russian).

  27. Quoted in Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy, 113.

  28. Note 33 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR ‘SMERSH.’1939–1946, edited by V. N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov, and N. S. Plotnikova, 569 (Moscow: Materik, 2006) (in Russian).

  29. Joint NKO and NKVD Order No. 003/0093, dated January 24, 1940, in Klim Degtyarev and Aleksandr Kolpakidi, SMERSH (Moscow: Eksmo, 2009), 106 (in Russian).

  30. Ibid., 106–7.

  31. Anatolii Tsyganok, ‘Mify i pravda o Sovetsko-Finlyandskoi voine,’ Polit.ru, February 8, 2006 (in Russian), http://www.polit.ru/analytics/2006/02/08/finn. html, retrieved September 4, 2011.

  32. N. S. Khrushchev, Vospominaniya. Kniga 1 (Moscow: Moskovskie Novosti, 1999), 258 (in Russian).

  33. Quoted in Yulian Semenov, Nenapisannye romany, Chapter 15, http://virlib.ru/read_book.php?page=18&file_path=books/9/book04207.gz, retrieved September 5, 2011.

  34. For instance, Stalin and the Soviet-Finnish War, 1939, translated by Tatyana Sokokina, edited by Ye. N. Kulkov (London: F. Cass, 2002).

  35. Kirill Aleksandrov, Russkie soldaty Vermakht’a: Geroi ili predateli (Moscow: Yauza, 2005), 26–44 (in Russian).

  36. Beria’s letter to Stalin, dated July 29, 1940. Document No. 121, in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR, 181.

  37. Boris Bazhanov, Bazhanov and the Damnation of Stalin, translation and commentary by David W. Doyle (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1990), 212–4. Bazhanov was a former member of Stalin’s secretariat.

  38. Beria’s report to Stalin, dated July 20, 1940. Document No. 118 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR, 178–9.

  39. Details in, for instance, M. I. Mel’tyukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina.
Sovetskii Soyuz i bor’ba za Evropu: 1939–1941 (Moscow: Veche, 2000), 176–211 (in Russian).

  40. Timoshenko’s report No. 390-ss, dated June 17, 1940, in ibid., 206.

  41. Georgii Fedorov, Bruschatka. Dokumental’nye povesti i rasskazy (Moscow: Libr, 1997), 57 (in Russian).

  42. Irena Wiley, Around the Globe in Twenty Years (New York: David McKay Company, Inc.: 1962), 104.

  43. Prisoner cards in the Vladimir Prison Archive.

  44. NKGB Report No. 1687/M, dated May 16, 1941. Document No. 207, in Organy gosudarstvenoi bezopasnosti, 1 (2), 144–6. Also, Document Nos. 107–108 in Istoriya stalinskogo GULAGa. Konets 1920-kh–pervaya polovina 1950-kh godov. Tom 1. Massovye repressii v SSSR, edited by S. V. Mironenko and N. Werth, 394–400 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004) (in Russian).

  45. Viktor Stepakov, ‘Apostol’ SMERSHa (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2009), 75 (in Russian).

  46. Politburo decision P35/407, dated January 6, 1942. By October 2, additional groups of deportees were sent to five other Siberian areas as ‘fishermen’. On the whole, of the total number of 52,664 ‘fishermen’, only 35,684 were able to work physically. NKVD reports in Yurii Bogdanov, Ministr stalinskikh stroek. 10 let vo glave MVD (Moscow: Veche, 2006), 106–9 (in Russian).

  47. Document Nos. 2.73–2.101, in Stalinskie deportatsii 1928–1953, edited by N. L. Pobol’ and P. M. Polyan, 215–72 (Moscow: Demokratiya, 2005) (in Russian).

  48. NKGB Report No. 2288/M, dated June 17, 1941 and signed by Merkulov; Kobulov’s report, dated July 13, 1941; reports of Konradov, dated June 17, 1941 and September 15, 1941. Document Nos. 110, 112–114, in Istoriya stalinskogo GULAGa. Tom 1, 401, 404–7. Also, Moldavian NKGB Report No. 908, dated June 19, 1941; Document No. 260, in Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnost v Velikoi Otechstvennoi voine. Sbornik dokumentovi. Nakanune, T. 1 (2) (Moscow: Kniga i bizness, 1995), 260–1 (in Russian).