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

by Vadim Birstein

  On February 13, 1945, the troops of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts took the rest of Budapest, and the 102-day siege was over. The former Hungarian minister of finance Nicholas Nyaradi recalled the final battle he witnessed:

  The Germans were behind a barricade of ripped-up paving blocks and overturned trams… A line of Soviet infantrymen simply marched, as though on a parade… Naturally, they were mowed down by German machine guns… I counted a total of twenty such attacking waves of Soviet infantrymen, each new row falling on top of the dead… Then the last waves of the Russians, charging up the stack of corpses, vaulted the barricades and slaughtered the Germans with savage ferocity.

  What made my blood run cold was not the way in which the Nazis were exterminated, but the complete indifference with which the Russian officers commanded their men to die, and the complete indifference with which the soldiers obeyed the orders.97

  Marshal Malinovsky granted his troops three days of ‘pillage and free looting,’ which turned into a two-week rampage of rape, murder, and drunkenness.98 Nyaradi wrote: ‘Even the women of the Red Army managed to rape Hungarian men, by forcing them into sexual intercourse at the point of tommy guns!’99 Swiss diplomats presented a detailed description of events in a report they compiled in May 1945, after returning to Switzerland:

  During the siege of Budapest and also during the following fateful weeks, Russian troops looted the city freely. They entered practically every habitation, the very poorest as well as the richest. They took away everything they wanted, especially food, clothing, and valuables… There were also small groups which specialized in hunting up valuables using magnetic mine detectors in search of gold, silver, and other metals. Trained dogs were also used… Furniture and larger objects of art, etc. that could not be taken away were frequently simply destroyed. In many cases, after looting, the homes were also put on fire…

  Bank safes were emptied without exception—even the British and American safes—and whatever was found was taken… Russian soldiers often arrested passersby, relieving them of the contents of their pockets, especially watches, cash and even papers of identity.

  Rapes are causing the greatest suffering to the Hungarian population. Violations are so general—from the age of 10 to 70 years—that few women in Hungary escape this fate. Acts of incredible brutality have been registered… Misery is increased by the sad fact that many of the Russian soldiers are ill and medicines in Hungary are completely missing…

  Near the town of Godollo, a large concentration camp has been erected where some forty thousand internees are being held and from where they are being deported for an unknown destination toward the East. It is known that these internees get very little food unless they sign an agreement to engage as volunteers in the Red Army or accept a contract for work in Russia… The population of Germanic origin from the age of two up to the age of seventy is deported en masse to Russia…

  Russians have declared that all foreigners who stay in Budapest will be treated exactly as if they were Hungarians… During looting the [Swiss] legation, at one of four occasions, the Russians put a rope around the neck of Mr. Ember, an employee of the legation, in order to force him to hand over the keys of the official safe. As he refused to do so, even in his plight, they pulled the rope around his neck until he lost consciousness. Then they took the keys from his pocket, emptied the safe, and took away all the deposits, amounting to several millions…

  A big safe of the Swedish legation which the Nazis had unsuccessfully tried to remove was removed by the Russians with all its contents. This affair will have a diplomatic consequence as the Swedes propose to protest to Russia.100

  The Swedish press did complain about the last event. Amazingly, Soviet diplomats confirmed that Soviet soldiers had looted the Swedish legation and raped a servant.101

  Witnesses reported more on Soviet behavior to Stockholm: ‘The Russians seemed not to differentiate in their treatment of good or bad Hungarians, Jews or Gentiles, pro Allies or quislings. The Russians did not respect the “protective passports” with which Hungarian Jews had been issued by neutral legations. They qualified these as “interference in Hungarian domestic affairs.”’102

  During this period, SMERSH, as usual, was hunting enemy agents in Budapest. Between January 15 and March 15, 1945, operatives of the UKR SMERSH of the 2nd Ukrainian Front arrested 588 people, including 110 agents of German intelligence services, 20 agents of Hungarian counterintelligence, 56 terrorists, 10 officers of German intelligence and counterintelligence, and 30 officers of Hungarian intelligence and counterintelligence. 103

  All high-ranking officers, diplomats, and other important foreigners were taken to Moscow. Count István Bethlen, Hungarian Prime Minister from 1921 to 1932 and an influential figure in politics, was among them. His main offense, in Soviet eyes, may have been that in 1943, he was among those Hungarian politicians who tried to organize secret, separate peace negotiations with the British and Americans, but not the Soviets. Apparently, the Soviets ignored information received in March 1943 from a Soviet spy ring in Switzerland that Count Bethlen also planned peace negotiations with the Soviet Union.104

  On December 2, 1944 SMERSH operatives of the 3rd Ukrainian Front detained Bethlen, and at first the Count was kept in Hungary. On February 17, 1945, Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs Dekanozov reported to Foreign Affairs Commissar Molotov: ‘Count Bethlen is the most outstanding representative of the Hungarian reaction and a convinced advocate of pro-British orientation…Bethlen must be…arrested and transported to the Soviet Union, where he must be kept for a few months, after which the issue must be settled for good.’105 Molotov wrote on the report: ‘Carry out. March 20, 1945.’ After this Bethlen was flown to Moscow, imprisoned and on April 28, 1945 formally arrested. On October 5, 1946 the 72-year-old Count died in the Butyrka Prison Hospital in Moscow.

  The Armija Krajowa

  In late July 1944, the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front under Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky began the liberation of Poland; they were followed by the troops of the 2nd and 3rd Belorussian and the 1st Ukrainian fronts. Rokossovsky was one of the few Soviet commanders who was arrested in 1937 but later released. Of Polish origin, he was accused of spying for Poland, and was brutally tortured during interrogations by OO investigators. During World War II, Rokossovsky successfully commanded several fronts. In 1944, Rokossovsky’s 1st Belorussian Front included the 1st Polish Army under General Zygmund Berling, formed in the Soviet Union. It consisted of four infantry divisions, one cavalry brigade, and five artillery brigades. Counterintelligence was called the Informational Department and included SMERSH officers who did not know Polish.106

  Rokossovsky’s troops were in the suburbs of Warsaw on August 1, 1944, when the Polish underground Armija Krajowa, subordinate to the Polish Government-in-Exile in London, began its tragic Warsaw Uprising.107 On Stalin’s order, Rokossovsky’s troops stopped advancing until the uprising was over. There is little doubt that Stalin’s reason for holding the Russian troops back was his desire to have the Germans destroy the Armija Krajowa for him. On August 25, 1944, the HQ of the NKVD rear guard troops of the 3rd Belorussian Front explicitly demanded that the troops disarm and detain every Armija Krajowa unit moving to Warsaw to help the insurgents. 108

  Stalin had his own plans for Poland. In an attempt to co-opt the Polish emigrant government in London, a Communist provisional government, the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PCNL), was created in Moscow on July 21, 1944. The PCNL agreed that all military operations in Poland would be conducted under Stalin’s control. The 1st Polish Army was merged with the Armija Ludowa, a group of pro-Communist partisans in Nazi-occupied Poland, and became the Ludowe Wojsko Polskie (People’s Army of Poland, or LWP). On August 1, 1944, the PCNL moved to the liberated city of Lublin.

  From August to December 1944, Nikolai Bulganin represented Soviet interests at the PCNL, organizing local administrations on Soviet-occupied territory and coordinating the activity of the 1st, 2n
d, and 3rd Belorussian fronts and the 1st Ukrainian front.109 He was also responsible for ‘cleansing the rear of the Red Army of various groups representing the emigrant [Polish] “government” and the armed units of the so-called Armija Krajowa… and detaining their officers via “SMERSH” organs.’110 NKVD troops under Beria’s deputy, Ivan Serov, collaborated with SMERSH operational groups to carry out the cleansing. Serov had prior experience, having cleansed the newly acquired Polish territories in 1939.111

  Another unit was created within the LWP to conduct the cleansing—the Main Informational Directorate under Piotr Kozuszko (Kozhushko in Russian).112 This military counterintelligence unit at first consisted exclusively of SMERSH and NKVD operatives. On October 17, 1944, Beria reported to Stalin and Molotov: ‘To enforce the counterintelligence organs of the Polish Army [LWP], Comrade Abakumov will send 100 “SMERSH” workers. We will also send 15 comrades from the NKVD–NKGB to help the Polish security organs. Comrade Abakumov—“SMERSH”—and Comrade Serov will assist on sites of the Counterintelligence Directorate of the Polish Army and its head, Comrade Kozhushko.’113 The directorate had its own concentration camps for detaining arrested members of Armija Krajowa (or AK, in Chekist parlance).

  On October 26, 1944, Serov reported to Beria:

  Through the agents, operational SMERSH groups on the territory of the Bialystok Voevodstvo [Province] found out that…an ‘AK’ unit of 17,000 men is in the Bielovezhskaya Pushcha [forest]. Comrade MESHIK [Abakumov’s deputy] was sent to check this information. He reported that…the ‘SMERSH’ operational group of the 2nd Belorussian Front is performing actions against the AK members [i.e., arresting them] …

  The investigation of 20 cases of active members of the ‘AK’ has been completed and in the near future they will be sentenced by the Military Tribunal.114

  Investigations were conducted with the usual cruelty. A former member of the Armija Krajowa detachment, a woman partisan named Stanislava Kumor, recalled: ‘In the Bialystok Prison, the Chekists broke my arms, burned me with cigarettes, and lashed my face with a whip.’115

  Apparently, the Armija Krajowa’s threat in the Bialystok Region was so serious that Abakumov and Lavrentii Tsanava, one of Beria’s men and later NKGB Commissar of Belorussia, were sent to clear up the situation. On October 29, 1944, Beria reported to Stalin:

  To assist Comrades ABAKUMOV and TSANAVA in carrying out the measures, two NKVD regiments are being relocated to the town of Bialystok.

  The troops will arrive on the evening of October 31, 1944.

  Therefore, a total of three NKVD regiments and up to 4,000 men will be concentrated in Bialystok.

  Major General KRIVENKO of the NKVD is being sent to Bialystok to command the NKVD troops.

  All comrades being sent have already been instructed.116

  General Mikhail Krivenko was deputy head of the NKVD Main Directorate of Border Guards. He had already participated in the anti-Polish action in 1940, when, as head of the NKVD Convoy Troops, he organized the transportation of captured Polish officers from the Ostashkov Camp, where they were being held, to the Katyn Forest, where they were massacred. Krivenko and other participants in the execution received high awards.117 From 1942 to 1943, Krivenko again headed the NKVD Convoy Troops.

  Four days after Beria’s report to Stalin, Abakumov and Tsanava sent Beria a coded cable reporting on their first measures in Bialystok:

  In this operation we are using 200 experienced SMERSH and NKGB operatives, as well as three NKVD regiments.

  The operational groups have the following objectives:

  To find and arrest: leaders and members of the ‘Armija Krajowa’; agents of the Polish emigrant government; leaders and members of other underground organizations undermining the work of the Committee of National Liberation, and, partly, of the Red Army; agents of the German intelligence organs ‘Volksdeutsch’ and ‘Reichsdeutsch’; members of gangs and groups hiding in the underground and forests; and persons opposing measures on the resettlement of the Belorussians, Ukrainians, Russians, and Rusyns [a small Slavic nation in the Carpathians] from Polish territory to the Soviet Union.118

  Therefore, every Pole who opposed the Sovietization of Poland was arrested. In addition, all Slavs of non-Polish origin were forced to move to the Soviet Union.

  Abakumov and Tsanava continued:

  The operation to capture [the enemies] is scheduled for November 6 of this year. Until then, we are working to establish who should be arrested…

  Up to November 1 [1944], the operational ‘SMERSH’ groups had arrested… 499 persons, of whom 82 were sent under guard to the territory of the Soviet Union [possibly, to GUKR SMERSH in Moscow]. We are preparing to send the remaining 417 persons to the NKVD Ostashkov Camp.

  An additional 1,080 men were disarmed and transferred to the reserve of the Polish Army…

  We are using the Bialystok City Prison to hold the arrestees until they are transported under guard to the Soviet Union.119

  This was the same Ostashkov Camp in which the captured Polish officers were held in 1939–40 before they were massacred.

  On November 8, 1944, Abakumov and Tsanava sent another cable to Beria:

  On November 8 [1944], 1,200 active members of the Armija Krajowa and other underground organizations were arrested. Of them, 1,030 persons were sent to the NKVD Ostashkov Camp by special train No. 84176…

  On the night of November 6/7 of the current year, the documents of people living in the city of Bialystok were checked, resulting in the arrest of 41 members of the ‘AK’ and other criminal elements.

  The operation to capture members of the ‘Armija Krajowa’ and agents of German military intelligence continues.

  On November 11, we are planning to send a second train to the Ostashkov Camp.120

  The first train, carrying 1,030 prisoners identified as ‘interned persons,’ left Bialystok on November 7, 1944, and arrived in Ostashkov on November 19.121 Amazingly, 15 prisoners managed to escape on the way to Ostashkov.

  The last cable to Beria from Abakumov and Tsanava in Bialystok said:

  On November 12 [1944], we sent a second train No. 84180 with 1,014 arrested active members of the ‘Armija Krajowa’…to the Ostashkov Camp. A total of 2,044 persons were arrested and sent out…

  On November 10, the Chief Plenipotentiary for resettlement informed [us] that he had listed 33,702 families to be resettled…196 families have already been sent to the BSSR [Belorussia]…

  A total of 341 persons are working on the resettlement…

  We consider it expedient to leave small [NKVD] operational groups subordinate to Colonel [Vladimir] KAZAKEVICH, deputy head of the Directorate ‘SMERSH’ of the 2nd Belorussian Front, who is in charge of the operational work in Bialystok and Bialystok Voevodstvo…

  We consider it expedient to return and to continue conducting our usual duties.

  We ask for your instructions.122

  The second train, carrying 1,014 Poles, left Bialystok on November 12, 1944,123 and arrived eight days later in Ostashkov. Later, on April 14, 1945, 1,516 Poles were transferred to other POW camps, while the rest were sent back to Poland in 1946 and 1947.124

  Beria considered the operation complete. On November 14, 1944, in a cover letter accompanying copies of Abakumov and Tsanava’s last report, he wrote to Stalin, Molotov, and Malenkov: ‘During the operation, 2,044 active members of the Armija Krajowa and other underground organizations were arrested. The work preparing the resettlement of the Belorussians and Ukrainians to the Soviet Union has been improved… I think Comrades ABAKUMOV and TSANAVA should be allowed to leave.’125

  The permission was granted and Abakumov returned to Moscow, while Tsanava went to Belorussia. Two months later Tsanava was back at the 2nd Belorussian Front as NKVD Plenipotentiary. Now the SMERSH Directorate of this front was under his, and not Abakumov’s, control.

  Notes

  1. Stalin’s Order No. 70, dated May 1, 1944, page 187 in I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya, T. 15 (Moscow: P
isatel’, 1997), 185–8 (in Russian).

  2. Nicola Sinevirsky, SMERSH (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1950), 62–63.

  3. Wilhelm Hoettl, The Secret Front: The Story of Nazi Political Espionage (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1954), 182. On Ion Antonescu (1882–1946), see Dennis Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and His Regime, Romania 1940–1944 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

  4. Details in transcripts of Stahel’s interrogations in GUKR SMERSH on April 28 and August 25, 1945. Document Nos. 79 and 80 in Generaly i ofitsery Vermakhta rasskazyvayut… Dokumenty iz sledstvennykh del nenetskikh voennoplennykh. 1944–1951, edited by V. G. Makarov and V. S. Khristoforov (Moscow: Demokratiya, 2009), 387–402 (in Russian).

  5. Hoettl, The Secret Front, 188; Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop (London: Bantam Press, 1992), 411.

  6. Quoted in ‘German Diplomats in Bucharest after 23 August, 1944,’ Radio Romania International, July 8, 2009, http://www.rri.ro/arh-art. shtml?lang=1&sec=9&art=22271, retrieved September 8, 2011.

  7. ‘Turkey: Advance Man’s Retreat,’ Time, October 13, 1941.

  8. Elizabeth W. Hazard, Cold War Crubicle: United States Foreign Policy and the Conflict in Romania. 1943–1953 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1996), 40–81.

  9. Later Frank Wisner became CIA station chief in London, chief of the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination, and the CIA’s deputy director of plans. In 1965, he suffered a nervous breakdown and committed suicide.

  10. Hazard, Cold War Crubicle, 44–45.

  11. Shlomo Aronson, Hitler, the Allies, and the Jews (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 162–6.