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

by Vadim Birstein

  On March 30, 1944, Polozov was arrested and sent to the GUKR SMERSH in Moscow for investigation. On November 1, 1944, the OSO sentenced Polozov to twenty years in labor camps as a military traitor who worked for the Germans. In fact, as was established during the reevaluation of Polozov’s case, his achievements were impressive: ‘According to the information of the 4th Department of the GUKR SMERSH… Polozov released from [POW] camps, recruited, and persuaded to give themselves up to the Soviet counterintelligence…more than forty people.’76 After Stalin’s death (1953), Polozov was pardoned in September 1955.

  Some other unlucky Soviet agents were simply shot to death on the spot by rabid officers and servicemen who indiscriminately killed anybody who crossed the line. On January 12, 1945, the troops of the 1st Ukrainian, 1st and 2nd Belorussian fronts assumed the offensive. Coded orders to move toward the Soviet troops were radioed to Soviet agents working in the enemy’s rear. Military intelligence and counterintelligence officers of the regiments, divisions, and corps of these fronts received the following instruction: ‘Intelligence officers who come out of the enemy’s territory should be provided with good food, medical help (if necessary), and clothing. It is categorically forbidden to take personal belongings, documents, weapons, and radio transmitters from them.’77

  Four days later Soviet agents began to approach the Soviet troops. However, not all commanders welcomed them. Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, Commander of the 2nd Belorussian Front, issued the following order:

  On January 19, 1945, in the town of Mlave, Engineer-Captain Ch-ov [the name was shortened to conceal his identity], commander of the group of agents, approached the servicemen of the 717th Rifle Regiment of the 137th Rifle Division and asked them to show him the way to the intelligence headquarters of the front. They did not help Comrade Ch-ov, but instead, brutally killed him…

  On January 18, 1945, a group of operational agents commanded by Lieutenant G-ov approached the servicemen of the 66th Mechanical Brigade near the town of Zechaune. The group was sent to Lt. Col. L-o, Commander of the 66th Mechanical Brigade. Instead of determining that the group consisted of intelligence officers, L-o called them ‘Vlasovites’ [i.e., solders of General Vlasov’s Army of Soviet POWs formed by the Germans], and ordered that they be shot. Luckily, they were not shot and, therefore, saved from death…

  I have ordered the [Military] Prosecutor of the Front to investigate incidents of executions.78

  The number of Soviet secret agents who were executed on the spot in similar incidents is unknown.

  In 1943, the Abwehr opened special schools (Abwehr-209 and others) to train thirteen-to sixteen-year-old teenagers as agents; boys were selected from the German-occupied Soviet territories. On November 1, 1943, Abakumov forwarded to Stalin a report from Vladimir Baryshnikov, head of the 3rd GUKR SMERSH Department, concerning the arrest of twentynine such agents dropped mostly at the Kalinin and Western fronts.79 The young saboteurs were supplied with explosives disguised as pieces of coal. All of the teenage agents immediately found SMERSH or NKGB operatives and gave themselves up. Despite this, all of them were imprisoned in labor camps.

  Notes

  1. Directive of GUKR SMERSH No. 49519, dated September, 1943. Appendix 1 in Klim Degtyarev and Aleksandr Kolpakidi, SMERSH (Moscow: Eksmo, 2009), 527–33 (in Russian).

  2. NKO Order No. 319, dated December 16, 1943. Document No. 185 in Russkii Arkhiv: Velikaya Otechestvennaya: Prikazy Narodnogo komissara oboroyy SSSR (1943–1945 gg.), T. 13 (2-3) (Moscow: TERRA, 1997), 233–4 (in Russian).

  3. These tactics are described in Vladimir Bogomolov, V avguste sorok chetvertogo (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1974) (in Russian).

  4. Biography of P. K. Ponomarenko (1902–1984) in K. A. Zalessky, Imperiya Stalina. Biograficheskii entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ (Moscow: Veche, 2000), 365 (in Russian). After the war, Ponomarenko was a Central Committee secretary, then he became Soviet Ambassador to Poland, India, and the Netherlands. In 1961, Ponomarenko was deemed persona non grata after he participated in the kidnapping attempt of a Soviet female defector in Amsterdam and fought with Dutch police.

  5. A. Yu. Popov, Diversanty Stalina: Deyatel’nost’ organov gosbezopasnosti na okkupirovannoi sovetskoi territorii v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (Moscow: Yauza, 2004), 34–54 (in Russian). Later, the 5th Department of the General Staff became the RU and then the GRU.

  6. Literature on the Soviet partisan movement in English is vast; for instance, A. Hill, The War Behind the Eastern Front: The Soviet Partisan Movement in North-West Russia 1941–44 (London: Frank Cass, 2005).

  7. See the structure of Sudoplatov’s department (later directorate), in A. I. Kokurin and N. V. Petrov, Lubyanka. VCheKa–OGPU–NKVD–NKGB–MGB–MVD–KGB. 1917–1960. Spravochnik (Moscow: Demokratiya, 1997), 275–76 (in Russian). and Aleksandr Kolpakidi, Likvidatory KGB. Spetsoperatsii sovetskikh spetssluzhb 1941–2004 (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2004), 10–13 (in Russian).

  8. Report by Ivan Syromolotnyi, head of the 8th Department of the Political Directorate of the Southern Front, dated March 6, 1942; quoted in Aleksandr Gogun and Anatolii Kentii, ‘…Sozdavat’ nevynosimye usloviya dlya vraga i vsekh ego posobnikov…’ Krasnye partizany Ukrainy, 1941–1944 (Kiev: Ukrainskii izdatel’skii soyuz, 2006), 12–13 (in Russian).

  9. V. I. Pyatnitsky, Razvedshkola No. 005 (Moscow: AST, 2005) (in Russian), Chapter 1, http://militera.lib.ru/memo/russian/pyatnitsky_va/01.htmlm retrieved September 8, 2011.

  10. Mentioned in NKO Order No. 00125, dated June 16, 1942. Document No. 208 in Russkii arkhiv. Velikaya otechestvennaya. Prikazy, 13 (2-2), 254.

  11. Popov, Diversanty Stalina, 183–6.

  12. Ibid., 91.

  13. An excerpt cited in B. V. Sokolov, Okkupatsiya. Pravda i mify (Moscow: AST-Press, 2002), 291 (in Russian).

  14. Kenneth Slepyan, ‘The Soviet Partisan Movement and the Holocaust,’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies 14, no. 1 (Spring 2000), 1–27; Leonid Smilovitsky, ‘Antisemitism in the Soviet Partisan Movement, 1941–1944: The Case of Belorussia,’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20, no. 2 (Fall 2006), 207–234.

  15. S. G. Chuev, Spetssluzhby III Reikha. Kniga 1 (St. Petersburg: Neva, 2003), 234–50 (in Russian).

  16. V. I. Boyarsky, Partizany i armiya. Istoriya upushchennykh vozmozhnostei (Moscow: AST, 2001), 149 (in Russian).

  17. Vyacheslav Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy. Voina 1941–1945 gg. v materialakh sledstvenno-sudebnykh del (Moscow: Terra, 2006), 498–509 (in Russian).

  18. Quoted in Sokolov, Okkupatsiya, 291–2.

  19. The New York Times, July 13, 1941. Reports on Czaplinski from Berlin and Philadelphia.

  20. Quoted in Sokolov, Okkupatsiya, 292.

  21. An excerpt quoted in Popov, Diversanty Stalina, 199.

  22. Ibid., 199–200.

  23. Kirill Stolyarov, Palachi i zhertvy (Moscow: Olma-Press), 117 (in Russian).

  24. This SMERSH activity has been detailed in a series of books in Russian, including Lubyanka 2. Iz istorii otechestvennoi kontrrazvedki, edited by Ya. F. Pogonyi et al., 238–53 (Moscow: Mosarkhiv, 1999) (in Russian) and Vadim Telitsin, ‘SMERSH’: operatsii i ispolniteli (Smolensk: Rusich, 2000), 34–238 (in Russian).

  25. Detailed biography of P. V. Fedotov (1901–1963) in Vadim Abramov, Kontrrazvedka. Shchit i mech protiv Abvera i TsRU (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2006, an electronic version), 101–30 (in Russian).

  26. Memoirs by Sergei Fedoseev. Document No.106 in Moskva voennaya, 1941–1945: memuary i arkhivnye dokumenty, ed. by K. I. Bukov, M. M. Gorinov, and A. N. Ponomarev, 223–32 (Moscow: Mosgorarkhiv, 1995).

  27. D. P. Tarasov, Bol’shaya igra SMERSHa (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2010), 33 (in Russian).

  28 Directive of GUKR SMERSH No. 38288, dated July 16, 1943. Appendix 2 in Degtyarev and Kolpakidi, SMERSH, 533–5.

  29. A photo of Baryshnikov’s report to Abakumov, dated June 25, 1943, on page 372 in I. Linder and N. Abin, Zagadka dlya Gimmlera. Ofitsery SMERSH v Abvere i SD (Moscow: Ripol klassik, 2006) (in Russian).


  30. SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki, 194.

  31. Tarasov, Bol’shaya igra, 40.

  32. Ibid. Photos of examples of radio messages approved by Kuznetsov in Linder and Abin, Zagadka dlya Gimmlera, 384 and 399.

  33. Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatoli Sudoplatov, with Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schecter. Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster (New York: Little, Brown, and Company 1994), 160.

  34. Quoted in Abramov, Abakumov, 104. Examples of disinformation texts approved by Abakumov are given in photos of documents on pages 241–3 in Lubyanka 2.

  35. Boris Sokolov discusses in detail Sudoplatov’s inconsistencies and, apparently, inventions regarding the Operation Monastyr’ by comparing Sudoplatov’s memoirs with the memoirs of two other participants in the operation. B. V. Sokolov, Okhota na Stalina, okhota na Gitlera (Moscow: Veche, 2003) (in Russian), 121–211.

  36. Telitsyn, ‘SMERSH,’ 224–38.

  37. Otto Skorzeny, Skorzeny’s Special Missions. The Memoirs of ‘the Most Dangerous Man in Europe’ (London: Greenhill Books, 1997), 125–6.

  38. Telitsyn, ‘SMERSH,’ 207–14.

  39. J. Otto Pohl, Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937–1949 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 63–64.

  40. Politburo decision P42/235, dated December 27, 1943, in Politburo TsK RKP(b)–VKP(b). Povestki dnya zasedanii. Tom III. 1940–1952. Katalog, edited by Z. N. Tikhonova, 330 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001) (in Russian). On the deportation of Kalmyks, see Document Nos. 152–155 in Istoriya Stalinskogo GULAGa. Konets 1920-kh–pervaya polovina 1950-kh godov. Tom 1. Massovye repressii v SSSR, edited by N. Werth and S. V. Mironenko, 477–81 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004) (in Russian).

  41. Pyatnitsky, Razvedshkola No. 005, Chapter 1.

  42. Details, for instance, in Pohl, Ethnic Cleansing, 61–73.

  43. A photo of a translation of part of this statement in SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki, 198. The complete text in Vladimir Galaiko, ‘“SMERSH” igral na korotkoi volne,’ Trud, October 30, 2003 (in Russian).

  44. Ibid.

  45. Telitsin, ‘SMERSH,’ 238–62.

  46. E. H. Cookridge, Gehlen: Spy of the Century (New York: Random House, 1971), 85.

  47. Ibid.

  48. Lubyanka 2, 253–6.

  49. Tarasov, Bol’shaya igra, 170-3.

  50. On several FSB versions, see Boris Sokolov, ‘Kak ubivali Stalina,’ Grani. ru, May 12, 2009 (in Russian), http://www.grani.ru/opinion/sokolov/m.151001.html, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  51. Merkulov’s report No. 4126/M. quoted in Vladimir Makarov and Andrei Tyurin, ‘“Delo Tavrina” i radioigra “Tuman”,’ Voenno-promyshlennyi kur’er, No. 32 (248), August 13–19, 2008 (in Russian), http://vpk-news.ru/articles/5210, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  52. A transcript of the interrogation in S. G. Chuev, Spetsluzhby III Reikha. Kniga II (St. Petersburg: Neva, 2003), 286–314 (in Russian).

  53. The biography of G. N. Zhilenkov (1907–1947) in Kirill Aleksandrov, Russkie soldaty Vermakhta. Gerio ili predateli (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2005), 244–6 (in Russian).

  54. Tarasov, Bol’shaya igra, 171. Alfred Backhaus worked in RSHA VI C/Z until April 1945. After the war he served in the police in Western Germany.

  55. Tarasov, Bol’shaya igra, 172.

  56. Quoted in Telitsin, ‘SMERSH,’ 256.

  57. Tarasov, Bol’shaya igra, 173.

  58. Quoted in Makarov and Tyurin, ‘Do poslednego.’

  59. Quoted in Oleg Matveev and Sergei Turchenko, ‘On dolzhen byl ubit’ Stalina,’ Trud, No. 147, August 10, 2000 (in Russian), http://www.trud.ru/issue/article.php?id=200008101470801, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  60. Christer Jörgenson, Hitler’s Espionage Machine: The True Story Behind One of the World’s Most Ruthless Spy Networks (Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2004), 126.

  61. Aleksandr Mikhailov, ‘Ubit’ Stalina,’ Aeroport, no. 8 (37), October 2007 (in Russian), http://www.rimv.ru/aeroport/37/predatel.htm, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  62. These methods were described in the document written by Ukrainian nationalists in 1945 and published in Jeffrey Burds, Sovetskaya agentura. Ocherki istorii SSSR v poslevoennye gody (1945–1948) (Moscow: Sovremennaya istoriya, 2006), 206–38 (in Russian).

  63. Zhilenkov’s statement quoted in Mikhailov, ‘Ubit’ Stalina.’ I. M. Vareikis (1894–1939) was the 1st Secretary of the the Voronezh Province Party Committee (June 1934–March 1935), then the 1st Secretary of the Stalingrad and after that, of the Far Eastern Province. On October 10, 1937 he was arrested and executed on July 29, 1939 See Zalessky, Imperiya Stalina, 82.

  64. Recollections by Dmitrii Tarasov in Yevgenii Zhirnov, ‘Na doklady v Kreml’ on ezdil v mashine Gimmlera,’ Kommersant-Vlast’, no. 19 (472), May 21, 2002 (in Russian), http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=322678&print=true, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  65. Memoirs by P. P. Stefanovsky, Razvoroty sud’by. Kniga pervaya: Abver–SMERSH (Moscow, 2002), 288–336 (in Russian).

  66. Photos of the Coupon for Arrest No. 293 and of other documents from Gälfe’s file in Lubyanka 2, 251–2. Also, a photo of the report on capturing Gälfe on page 437 in Linder and Abin, Zagadkia dlya Gimmlera.

  67. Quoted in Mlechin, KGB. Predsedateli organov bezopasnosti. Rassekrechennye sud’by (Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2006), 290 (in Russian).

  68. Aleksandr Petrushin, ‘Rozysk ili sysk,’ Tyumenskii kurier, no. 1444 (2041), October 24, 2006 (in Russian), http://www.a-pesni.golosa.info/ww2/oficial/tyumen/a-rozysk.htm, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  69. Ignatiev’s handwritten report to Stalin, dated November 15, 1952, in Nikita Petrov, ‘Pytki ot Stalina: ‘Bit’ smertnym boem,’’ Novaya gazeta. ‘Pravda GULAGa,’ no. 9, October 16, 2008 (in Russian), http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2008/gulag09/00.html, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  70. Valentin Kodachigov, ‘Smert’ shpionam,’ Nezavisimoe voennnoe obozrenie, no. 15, April 25, 2004 (in Russian), http://nvo.ng.ru/spforces/2003-04-25/7_ smersh.html, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  71. SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki, 167.

  72. Ibid., 169.

  73. Quoted in V. A. Bobrenev and V. B. Ryazantsev, Palachi i zhertvy (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1993), 297–9 (in Russian).

  74. Ibid., 268–94.

  75. Cited in ibid., 314.

  76. Cited in Igor Kuznetsov, ‘Oplacheno krov’yu,’ Belorusskaya delovaya gazeta, no. 1440, June 29, 2004 (in Russian).

  77. An instruction quoted in Vladimir Bogomolov, ‘Sram imut i zhivye, i mertvye, i Rossiya…’ Svobodnaya mysl’—XXI, no. 7 (1995), 79–103 (in Russian), http://vivovoco.rsl.ru/vv/papers/history/bogomolov.htm, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  78. Rokossovsky’s order, dated January 27, 1945, cited in ibid.

  79. Reports to Abakumov, dated October 30 and November 1, 1943, and Abakumov’s report to Stalin, dated November 1, 1943, in N. V. Gubernatorov, SMERSH protiv Bussarda (Reportazh z arkhiva tainoi voiny) (Moscow: Kuchkovo pole, 2005), 143–56 (in Russian).

  CHAPTER 19

  Against Our Own People

  In addition to its new responsibilities, SMERSH remained in charge of spying and reporting on Soviet servicemen. In the field, SMERSH used all kinds of measures to prevent Red Army servicemen from changing sides. For instance, in July 1943 UKRs of the Bryansk and Central fronts conducted the operation ‘Pretense “The Treason of the Motherland”’ in preparation for the Battle of Kursk.1 Groups of SMERSH-trained soldiers came up close to the enemy trenches, pretending that they wanted to cross the lines, and then threw grenades into the trenches. SMERSH operatives hoped that after this the Germans would shoot at any Red Army serviceman who appeared near their trenches.

  The number of servicemen sentenced as traitors by military tribunals increased considerably after the OOs became SMERSH: in 1941, the tribunals convicted 8,976 traitors; in 1942, 43,050; in 1943, 52,757; and in 1944, 69,895.2 The investigations conducted by SMERSH officers were usually unprofessional and cases were generally falsified. A 1943 incident sheds light
on the quality of investigation in the SMERSH field branches.

  A Report on SMERSH

  In May 1943, Aleksandr Shcherbakov, deputy NKO Commissar and head of the Army’s Main Political Directorate (GlavPURKKA, a directorate of the Central Committee), reported to Stalin on his and Abakumov’s inspection of SMERSH activity within the 7th Independent Army at the Karelian Front not far from Leningrad.3 This inspection was prompted by a complaint from the army’s commander, Major General Aleksei Krutikov, who reported to Moscow that most of the espionage cases prepared by the SMERSH department of his army were fabricated.

  Shcherbakov wrote that their inspection revealed many falsified cases. Several paragraphs of the letter demonstrate the common work methods of SMERSH field investigators:

  During inspection it was found that in a number of cases the Special Departments [it was the time of SMERSH, but many still referred to the SMERSH units by their previous name] used unlawful methods and violated the law. In particular, the Special Departments used as cell informers individuals who had already been sentenced to VMN [death] for espionage…[ Later] head of the Special Department of the [7th] Army, Colonel Com.[rade] Dobrovolsky, appealed to the Military Council of the Army asking that VMN be replaced by imprisonment for individuals who helped [the investigators] to incriminate others.4

  Yakov Aizenstadt, a member of a military tribunal, also recalled this practice: ‘Soon I discovered that “nasedki” [stool pigeons] and “stukachi” [informants], charged with getting confessions from prisoners under investigation, were put in each cell… Each “nasedka” and “stukach” had his pseudonym or alias, and each secret report contained the cell number.’5 Interestingly, when referring to cell informants, Shcherbakov used the term ‘kamernyi svidetel’ (cell witness) instead of ‘vnutrikamernik’ (cell insider), which was common in NKVD–SMERSH jargon. Perhaps, Shcherbakov considered the last word too explicit—that is, clearly indicative of the fact that the ‘witnesses’ were planted.