Smersh: Stalin's Secret Weapon: Soviet Military Counterintelligence in WWII
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In November 1941 Stalin ordered Stavka member and deputy NKO Commissar Kulik to restore order in the Crimea—an impossible mission at the time.45 After Kulik’s predictable defeat in the Crimea, he reported to Stalin: ‘The army had turned into a gang! All they did was drink and rape women. I had no chance of defending Kerch with such an army. I arrived too late; it was impossible to save the situation.’46 Kulik was tried by a special session of the Supreme Court and demoted to major general, dismissed from the post of deputy NKO Commissar, and deprived of all military awards. In vain he appealed to Stalin in a long letter, saying: ‘If I am a wrecker [as accused under Article 58-7] and conducting underground work, I should be shot. If I am not, I ask you to punish the slanderers.’47 Stalin did not answer. Later Kulik commanded various formations and was promoted to lieutenant general, but then demoted to major general again. Finally, in 1947, after being arrested for anti-Soviet conversations, he was sentenced to death and executed in August 1950.
Other 1941 Cases
After the Pavlov Case, military counterintelligence seems to have gone somewhat out of control. Numerous arrests of commanders of all ranks, including generals, followed at the Western and other fronts. Many of them were sentenced under paragraphs 193-17b (abuse of power) and 193-20a (surrender of troops), and executed (Appendix I, see http://www.smershbook.com). In Moscow, Mikheev’s deputy, A. N. Klykov, reported to Beria about one of Stalin’s favorites, Marshal Semyon Budennyi, commander of the Southwestern Front and Timoshenko’s deputy. 48 The report accused Budennyi of spying simultaneously for British, Polish, Italian, and German intelligence. These accusations were so obviously ridiculous that the report went no further. However, two months later Timoshenko was dismissed as deputy Commissar and appointed commander of the Southwestern Front instead of Budennyi, while Budennyi became commander of the Reserve Front (in existence only until October 1941).
Incredibly, on July 16, 1941, Mikheev even denounced NKO Commissar Timoshenko, pointing to Timoshenko’s connection with the previously executed military leaders.49 Timoshenko was not arrested, but on July 19, 1941, Stalin himself became NKO Commissar, while Timoshenko was demoted to a post as Stalin’s deputy. The same day Mikheev was made head of the 3rd Department of the Southwestern Front, and two months later he was killed in action while trying to break through a Nazi encirclement. He was one of 3,725 osobisty killed and 3,092 missing in action between June 22, 1941 and March 1, 1943.50
Later Abakumov’s investigators continued to collect compromising materials on Timoshenko. In 1953, General Boris Teplinsky wrote a letter from a labor camp to Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky: ‘While having been in prison [in Moscow]… [the investigators] offered me the chance to play a role of a provocateur against Marshal Timoshenko because I was a cell mate of his former deputy, Major General F. S. Ivanov [arrested in 1942, released in 1946]… After I refused, the investigation of my case stopped… For the next 9 years I had no idea about my future fate.’51
Notes
1. Text of Zhukov’s speech written on May 19, 1956 (Zhukov has never made the speech). Published in Vasilii Soima, Zapreshchennyi Stalin (Moscow: Olma-Press, 2005), 411–28 (in Russian).
2. A. I. Mikoyan, Tak bylo. Razmyshleniya o minuvshem (Moscow: Vagrius, 1999), 389–90 (in Russian).
3. Joint decree of the Sovnarkom’s Presidium and Central Committee, dated June 30, 1941. Details in Yurii Gor’kov, Gosudarstvennyi Komitet Oborony postanovlyaet (1941–1945). Tsifry, dokumenty (Moscow: Olma-Press, 2002), 30–41 (in Russian).
4. On February 3, 1942, Mikoyan and Voznesensky were added, and then Kaganovich (on February 20, 1942) and Nikolai Bulganin (on November 22, 1944). Voroshilov was expelled when Bulganin was included; Bulganin was also promoted to NKO deputy Commissar.
5. Politburo decision P34/99 and Joint decree of the Sovnarkom’s Presidium and Central Committee, both dated June 23, 1941. Document No. 175 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR, 289, and Document No. 8 in Gor’kov, Gosudarstvennyi Komitet Oborony, 494. The function and coordination of the work of the Stavka, General Staff, GKO and Stalin’s control of the whole structure is described in detail in S. M. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab v gody voiny (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1989), Part I, Chapter 7, and Part 2, Chapters 1 and 8 (in Russian).
6. The board of Stavka’s advisers consisted of marshals Grigorii Kulik, Kirill Meretskov, Shaposhnikov, Commander of Air Forces Pavel Zhigarev, First Deputy Chief of Staff Nikolai Vatutin, Commander of Air Defense Nikolai Voronov, Mekhlis, and Politburo full and candidate members Beria, Kaganovich, Malenkov, Mikoyan, Voznesensky and Zhdanov.
7. Published in Pravda, July 3, 1941 (in Russian).
8. Yefimov, Desyat’ desyatiletii, 326.
9. Decrees of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Council, dated June 22, 1941. Texts in Skrytaya pravda voiny: 1941 god. Neizvestnye documenty, edited by P. N. Knyshevsky et al. (Moscow: Russkaya kniga, 1992) (in Russian), http://www.rkka.ru/docs/spv/SPV3.htm, retrieved September 5, 2011.
10. Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Council, dated June 27, 1941. Mozokhin, Pravo na repressii, 223.
11. Order No. 00246/00833/PR/59ss, dated June 28, 1941. Document No. 623, in 1941 god. Kniga vtoraya, 445–6.
12. Yefimov, Desyat’ desyatiletii, 350.
13. Novobranets, ‘Nakanune voiny.’
14. In Arkadii Vaksberg, ‘Taina oktyabrya 1941,’ Literaturnaya gazeta (April 20, 1988) (in Russian).
15. Ibid.
16. Excerpt from the interrogation transcript of Merkulov in 1953, in Nikita Petrov, ‘Samyi obrazovannyi palach’,’ Novaya Gazeta. ‘Pravda GULAGa’, no. 12, August 30, 2010 (in Russian), http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2010/gulag12/00.html, retrieved September 5, 2011.
17. S. I. Vetoshkin, F. K. Charsky, V. I. Khokhlov, and Ye. A. Gul’yants were released. Vaksberg, Neraskrytye tainy, 57.
18. K. A. Meretskov, Na sluzhbe narodu (Moscow: Politizdat, 1968), 214 (in Russian).
19. Page 131 in B. L. Vannikov, ‘Zapiski narkoma,’ Znamya, no. 1 (1988), 130–60 (in Russian).
20. Memoirs by V. Filippov, quoted in Boris Sokolov, Beria. Sud’ba vsesil’nogo narkoma (Moscow: Veche, 2003), 214 (in Russian).
21. Page 521 in an interview with V. N. Novikov, former deputy armaments Commissar, in G. Kumanev, Govoryat stalinskie narkomy (Smolensk: Rusich, 2005), 512–49 (in Russian).
22. Text of Mekhlis’s cable to Stalin and Stalin’s answer, quoted in Vyacheslav Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy. Voina 1941–1945 gg. v materialakh sledsten-no-sudebnykh del (Moscow: Terra, 2006), 72–73 (in Russian). Also, Document Nos. 358–379, in Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 2 (1), 210–7.
23. For a description of Pavlov’s case, see P. A. Pal’chikov, ‘On byl obrechen,’ Moskva, no. 5 (2006) (in Russian), http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/palchikov/01.html, retrieved September 5, 2011.
24. Interrogations of Pavlov on July 11 and 21, 1941, and Meretskov on July 12, 1941, in A. Rzheshevsky, Pavlov. Taina rasstrelyannogo generala (Moscow: Veche, 2005), 306–12 (in Russian).
25. Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, edited and translated by Harold Shukman (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1991), 423–4.
26. Transcript of the court session of the Military Collegium, dated July 22, 1941. Page 387 in Document No. 437, in Organy gosudarctvennoi bezopasnosti, 2 (1), 381–92.
27. Ibid., 467.
28. Document No. 437, in ibid., 391.
29. Verdict of the Military Collegium, dated July 22, 1941. Document No. 438, in ibid., 392–3.
30. Report of Col. General N. N. Voronov, dated August 15, 1941 (from the Presidential Archive), in Aleksandr Melenberg, ‘Podachka iz arkhiva,’ Novaya gazeta, No. 48, May 7, 2010 (in Russian), http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2010/048/09.html, retrieved September 5, 2011.
31. Order No. 0250, dated July 28, 1941, in Russkii arkhiv. Velikaya Otechestvennaya. Prikazy narodnogo komissara oborony SSSR 22 iyunya 1941 g.—1942 g., 13 (2-2) (Moscow: Terra, 1997), 192–3 (in Russian).
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32. Politburo decision P23/152, dated December 7, 1940. Document No. 140, in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD, 201–4. On Pavlov’s wife, a report by Aleksandra Oseichuk (in Russian), http://memorial.krsk.ru/svidet/Maafan1.htm, retrieved September 5, 2011.
33. Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy, 80–88.
34. Quoted in B. V. Sokolov, ‘Stalin i ego generally: pereklichka iz dvukh uglov,’ Znanie–sila, no. 12 (2000) (in Russian).
35. NKO Order No. 039, dated October 4, 1941, in Russkii Arkhiv. Velikaya Otechestvennaya. Prikazy, 13 (2-2) (1997), 108-9.
36. Pages 524–5 in an interview with V. N. Novikov in Kumanev, Govoryat stalinskie narkomy, 512–49.
37. A letter of A. F. Pavlova to Nikita Khrushchev, dated April 20, 1956. Quoted on page 96 in A. P. Pal’chikov, ‘On byl obrechen,’ Moskva 5 (2006), 50–98 (in Russian).
38. Suvenirov, Tragediya RKKA, 334.
39. Rosamond Richardson, Stalin’s Shadow: Inside the Family of One of the World’s Greatest Tyrants (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 149.
40. Vadim Birstein, The Perversion of Knowledge: The True Story of Soviet Science (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), 53–58, 434–5.
41. Excerpts from transcripts of interrogations in Boris Sopelnyak, Smert’ v rassrochku (Moscow: Olma-Press, 2004), 148–9 (in Russian).
42. Details in N. S. Cherushev, Udar po svoim. Krasnaya Armiya 1938–1941 (Moscow: Veche, 2003), 364–5 (in Russian).
43. Details in N. S. Cherushev, ‘Nevinovnykh ne byvaet…’ Chekisty protiv voennykh, 1918–1953 (Moscow: Veche, 2004), 421–2 (in Russian).
44. V. A. Bobrenev and V. B. Ryazantsev, Palachi i zhertvy (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1993), 211–3 (in Russian).
45. Details in N. A. Zen’kovich, Tainy kremleskikh smertei (Moscow: Nadezhda, 1995), 432–544 (in Russian).
46. Cited in Leonid Mlechin, ‘Taina mogily na Donskom kladbishche’ (in Russian), Vechernyaya Moskva, no. 100 (24145), May 7, 2005 (in Russian).
47. Quoted in Zen’kovich, Tainy kremlevskikh smertei, 500.
48. Text of Klykov’s report in L. Ye. Reshin and V. S. Stepanov, ‘Sud’by general’skie,’ VIZh, no. 1 (1994), 15–23 (in Russian).
49. Text of Mikheev’s report dated July 16, 1941, in L. Ye. Reshin and V. S. Stepanov, ‘Sud’by general’skie,’ VIZh, no. 12 (1993), 16–21 (in Russian).
50. SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki i arkhivnye materialy, edited by V. S. Khristoforov, et al. (Moscow: Glavarkhiv Moskvy, 2003), 57 (in Russian).
51. From Teplinsky’s archival file, quoted in Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy, 312–3.
CHAPTER 8
Directorate of Special Departments (UOO)
With the Soviet Union now defending its own ground rather than taking new territory, Stalin decided to merge the recently created NKGB and the three military counterintelligence services back into the NKVD. The thought was that a monolithic NKVD could better control the retreating army and keep order more efficiently than three separate services.
UOO Structure and Activities
On July 17, 1941, the GKO issued an order to transfer the 3rd NKO Directorate back to the NKVD as its Special Departments Directorate, or UOO (Figure 8-1).1 An NKVD instruction explained: ‘The goal of the reorganization of the 3rd directorates into special departments within the NKVD is to conduct a merciless fight against spies, traitors, saboteurs, deserters, and various kinds of panic-stricken persons and disorganizers.’2 Viktor Abakumov, retaining his position as deputy NKVD head, was now appointed head of the UOO, an important position because military counterintelligence became so critical. Solomon Milshtein, who was involved in the extermination of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest massacre, became his deputy.3 Six months later, in January 1942, the 3rd Navy Commissariat Directorate was also transferred to the UOO.4
Five days after the reorganization in the NKO and NKVD, the NKVD and NKGB were again merged into one Commissariat, the NKVD.5 Operational directorates, largely repeating the GUGB structure, were created within the new NKVD, and the UOO became one of six operational directorates (Figure 8-1). Beria remained NKVD Commissar and Merkulov was once again his first deputy.
By the end of 1941, Abakumov’s UOO headquarters consisted of eight departments, and Abakumov acquired three more deputies: Fyodor Tutushkin, Nikolai Osetrov, and Lavrentii Tsanava. Later, both Tutushkin and Osetrov headed SMERSH front directorates. By July 1942, after additional changes, the UOO headquarters in Moscow increased to twelve main departments (Figure 8-2), and had a staff of 225 people.6
Field operations were carried out by OO directorates at each of the six fronts created in July 1941, which reported to the UOO, the Main Directorate, in Moscow (Table 8-1). Later, in August—December 1941, additionally six, and in January 1942—August 1942, five more fronts with their OO directorates were organized. There were department-level OOs in all armies, corps, divisions, and independent brigades but not at regimental and battalion levels. OO functions at this level were performed by a single OO officer (osobist) attached to these units. The chain of command within the OO directorates at the fronts was hierarchical. A typical OO unit at the division level consisted of about twenty-five people:
Figure 8-1
THE RECONSOLIDATION OF MILITARY COUNTERINTELLIGENCE INTO THE NKVD’s UOO JULY 1941 TO APRIL 1943
Figure 8-2
THE STRUCTURE OF THE UOO WITHIN THE NKVD JULY 1941 TO APRIL 1943
TABLE 8-1. OO DIRECTORATE HEADS AS OF JULY 1941¹
Equivalent
Position7 State Security Rank Military Rank8
Head Captain Lt. Colonel
Assistant head Senior Lieutenant Major
Two operational officers Lieutenants Captains
Secretary (usually a woman) Junior Lieutenant Senior Lieutenant
Executive officer Junior Lieutenant Senior Lieutenant
A platoon of 15–20 riflemen — Privates
In the field, the OO assistant heads and operational officers of OO departments conducted the actual investigations of political cases. In addition to clerical duties, the secretary was in charge of ciphers and coded messages. The head of each OO sometimes carried out executions personally. From July 1942 onwards, OOs had ‘the right to arrest deserters and, when necessary, shoot them to death’ without trial.9
The OO head recruited informers commonly called seksoty (secret workers) or stukachi (this word comes from the Russian word stuchat’ or to ‘knock’, and carried the meaning of secretly knocking at the door of the NKVD office) among officers of the military staff. A classified KGB textbook explains how this worked: ‘Operational workers recruited agents and informers in all military units of the front line forces, despite the presence or absence of hostile elements [in the units]. The number of agents of special departments also grew due to recruitments of secret informers in reserve units, from where they were sent to the front line forces.’10
The OO officers met secretly with their informers in offices apart from the regular military facilities, often located in separate buildings. Seksoty were sworn to secrecy. Pyotr Pirogov, a former Soviet officer and later a defector to the West, recalled the document that an OO officer ordered him to sign after recruiting him, which read: ‘I, Pirogov, had a conference with a member of the Special Section and undertake to tell no one of this meeting. I am aware that in the contrary case I shall be subject to prosecution under Article 58 of the Criminal Code.’11 Each seksot or stukach was given a code name that he used for signing his reports.
Seksoty (the plural) were also recruited among the privates. An infantryman recalled in 2009: ‘I remember one night the osobist of our regiment called me [from the wet trenches] up to the battalion headquarters in a dry dug-out. He kept me for an hour and a half, trying to recruit me to be a stukach, but I refused. What could he do to me? I was a machine-gunner, not an informer. The osobist got mad and I remember how he screamed at me: “If you want to live, don’t you dare tell anybody about our conversation!”’12 Another infantryman remembered the sa
me: ‘Our osobisty… talked to me… and even gave me a pseudonym, “Leonov”, derived from the name of my place of birth—Leonovo. Later they continually rebuked me: “Why don’t you want to share what you know with us? Why don’t you write a report for us?” What would I write in a report if there weren’t traitors among us? Should I write some fiction?’13
From the structure of the UOO and its field branches it is obvious that during the first period of the war, the main objective of military counterintelligence was spying on the Red Army and Red Navy in order to keep them in line. For instance, on July 22, 1941 Viktor Bochkov, OO head of the Northwestern Front, issued the following directive:
There were numerous cases when formation commanders and privates left positions without an order, ran away in panic, and left all military equipment behind. The most dangerous is… that some special departments did not even investigate such cases and did not arrest the guilty servicemen, and they were not tried. All secret agents should be instructed to identify such persons…
The fight against the deserters, panic-mongers and cowards is the main task of our organs [i.e., OOs], along with the fight against spies and traitors…
Special departments must introduce strong discipline and order in the rear of divisions, corps, and armies so the desertion and panic should be terminated in the next few days.14
According to the reports of the OOs of the Western, Northwestern, Southern, Southwestern and Leningrad fronts, from July to December 1941, 102 large groups of Soviet servicemen defected to the enemy. In addition, the OOs prevented the crossing over of 159 additional groups and 2,773 individual servicemen.15
Self-injured servicemen, nicknamed samostreltsy, were one more OO problem. On August 2, 1941, the GKO ordered the OOs to arrest ‘self-injured’ servicemen and, if necessary, to shoot them on the spot as deserters. 16 A mortar man recalled in 2006: