Part VI. SMERSH in Action: 1943–44

CHAPTER 18

General Activity

Although SMERSH continued working on identifying real and imagined Soviet military traitors and deserters, as the UOO had done before, its primary focus now shifted to countering German intelligence and counterintelligence. All operational SMERSH officers in the field were provided with a long instruction entitled Organization of Search for and Liquidation of Enemy Agents.1 Since German agents generally possessed forged Soviet documents and military awards, GUKR also published secret reference booklets for verifying military documents (Materials for Identification of Forged Documents, May 1943) and awards (Materials for Identification of Forged USSR Awards and Medals, September 1943). Additionally, it became easier to identify German agents with false documents because in December 1943 a unified system of officer IDs was introduced in the Red Army.2Now the IDs were created at special printing houses and had numbers that could be checked.

Near the front line, SMERSH initiated new tactics for capturing German agents, using operational groups of three members who constantly checked the documents of all suspicious-looking individuals.3 Two members of each group were SMERSH officers, and the third was a recruited former German agent who could identify other agents. But with the transformation of the UOO into SMERSH, Abakumov failed to take control of counterintelligence in the partisan (guerrilla) movement in the rear of the German troops.

In Partisan Detachments

With the creation of SMERSH it became unclear which organization was in charge of the Special Departments (OOs) within the partisan movement. While Panteleimon Ponomarenko, the influential first Party secretary of Belorussia, headed the partisan movement, the NKVD—under Lavrentii Beria—supervised the OOs in the partisan detachments created in 1942.4

The Soviet partisan movement had a long history. In the 1920s and 1930s, special schools attached to the OO trained terrorists and saboteurs for future war, and similar schools in the Red Army were part of the 5th Department of the General Staff.5 During the Great Terror of 1937–38, most of the sabotage specialists were arrested, convicted, and executed. They were considered unnecessary because of Stalin’s doctrine that future military actions would take place in the enemy’s territory.

On June 29, 1941, a week after the German invasion, the Council of Commissars (Sovnarkom) and the Central Committee ordered the creation of partisan detachments in the German-occupied territories.6 On July 5, the NKVD formed its own special sabotage group, which reported directly to Beria.7 Pavel Sudoplatov, who had successfully overseen the 1940 assassination of Leon Trotsky, was appointed its head. This group later became the 4th NKVD Directorate in charge of terror and sabotage in enemy-occupied territory. In April 1943, Sudoplatov’s directorate was transferred to the NKGB (State Security Commissariat), and its activities now partly overlapped those of SMERSH.

Paralleling the measures in Moscow, in 1941, local NKVD, NKGB, and Party functionaries in the German-occupied territories of Ukraine and Belorussia, as well as the OOs, political and military intelligence departments of the armies and fronts created their own partisan detachments.8At the end of the summer of 1941, Ponomarenko sent Stalin a detailed plan for centralizing control over all partisan groups. The following December, Stalin summoned Ponomarenko to the Kremlin, where, after a two-hour discussion, he approved the establishment of the Central Headquarters of the Partisan Movement (TsShPD).9

It was not until May 30, 1942, that the State Defense Committee (GKO) ordered that the TsShPD should be attached to the Stavka—in other words, directly subordinated to Stalin, with Ponomarenko appointed as its head.10 Beria tried to oppose this decision, believing that Sudoplatov’s department in Moscow should control all partisans. In a compromise move, Vasilii Sergienko, NKVD Commissar of Ukraine and Beria’s protégé, was made Ponomarenko’s deputy, thus essentially leaving Beria in charge of the partisans.

The fighting unit of the partisan movement called otryad (a detachment) consisted of varying numbers of men. By January 1942, NKVD operational groups that had OO functions were created within all otryady.11 Official reports attest to their efficiency: for example, from 1942 to 1944, counterintelligence in the Ukrainian partisan detachments exposed and arrested 9,883 spies and traitors, of whom 1,998 were Gestapo spies.12

Not all of those arrested were real German spies. For example, there was a bizarre but widespread belief among partisan commanders and heads of the partisan OOs that many local Jews who, having escaped Nazi extermination efforts, tried to join the partisans, were Gestapo spies. On August 10, 1943, the commander of the Osipich partisan detachment reported to Moscow: ‘Recently, the Gestapo has started to use Jews as spies. The Gestapo offices in Minsk and Borisovo have established a nine-month course for the Jews. Spies have been sent to apartments in the city and to partisan detachments, and supplied with poison to kill their commanders and other partisans. Several of these spies were unmasked near Minsk.’13

Based on this belief, many Jewish escapees were arrested and executed as spies in partisan detachments.14 The truth was that the Abwehr had opened numerous schools to train local Belorussian, Ukrainian, and Russian volunteers as saboteurs, propagandists, and translators, while the Jews were hunted down by the Gestapo and SS-Einsatzgruppen, and had nothing to do with these schools.15

But anti-Semitism was not the only reason for false accusations. Another report reads: ‘In August 1943, the head of the Special Department of the Chkalov Brigade of the Baranovichi Partisan Detachment (Belorussia) personally shot to death nineteen-year-old Yelena Stankevich, a scout in this brigade’s “For the Soviet Motherland” unit, accusing her of being a Gestapo spy. In fact, she simply refused to be his lover.’16 Such executions were quite common. In the same year, Ivan Belik, head of the OO of the ‘Assault’ Partisan Brigade in Belorussia, shot a woman partisan, Verkhovod’ko, who was pregnant by Boris Lunin, commander of the brigade, on the false charge that she was a German spy.17 The real reason for her execution was that Lunin, who had a small harem in the brigade, did not want to deal with a pregnant girlfriend. In 1957 Belik and Lunin were sentenced to seven years in labor camps for this crime.

Some of the ‘spies’ captured by partisans ended up in the GUKR’s Moscow headquarters. On March 18, 1943, Henri Czaplinski (in Russian documents, Genrikh Maksimovich Chaplinsky), a 53-year-old Polish Jew and professor at the Krakow and Lvov conservatories, joined the Donukalov Partisan Brigade near Minsk.18 As an internationally known violinist, he had performed in many countries before the war, and also spoke several languages. From 1922 to 1923, he was a professor at the Hamburg Conservatory in Toronto, and from 1925 to 1927, he was first violinist with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra.

Czaplinski told his OO interrogators that in 1940 he was arrested by the NKVD in Lvov and spent seven months in the Byelostok NKVD prison, from which he escaped during a German bombardment. On July 13, 1941, The New York Times published information about Czaplinski’s successful escape.19 After his escape, the multilingual Czaplinski worked as a translator at the headquarters of various Luftwaffe units stationed in Belorussia, which caused the OO officers of the partisan brigade to conclude that Czaplinski was an important German spy. Czaplinski was sent to Moscow, and on May 15, 1943, Ponomarenko and Lavrentii Tsanava, NKGB Commissar of Belorussia, reported to Stalin:

Preliminary interrogations of Czaplinski suggest that he might have been a German intelligence agent sent to the Donukalov partisan detachment with the task of getting to the rear of Soviet troops. He may also have worked in various countries as a longtime German intelligence agent. Czaplinski has already been transferred to the Main Directorate of SMERSH to Comrade Abakumov.20

Unfortunately, I have no information about what happened to Czaplinski at the hands of Abakumov’s subordinates.

In the autumn of 1943, Ponomarenko and Tsanava, and not GUKR SMERSH, still controlled the OOs in partisan detachments. On August 20, 1943, Abakumov sent a strong missive to Ponomarenko:

The organs of counterintelligence (‘SMERSH’) are charged with fighting against enemy agents penetrating headquarters and detachments of partisans. However, in many cases the unmasked spies, saboteurs, terrorists, members of the so-called Russian Liberation Army and other detachments created by the Germans, who have given themselves up to partisan detachments, are transferred to our [Soviet] territory, but the organs of counterintelligence ‘SMERSH’ are not informed. They are interrogated by members of the headquarters of the partisan movement who are incapable of investigating such cases. Documents brought from the partisan detachments and protocols of interrogations of the unmasked spies are copied and sent to various addresses. As a result, a wide circle of persons has knowledge of serious [secret] operational measures.21

Ponomarenko reacted swiftly and sternly, writing:

Believing that it is expedient to continue transferring to you captured enemy agents and materials in which your Directorate might be interested, we are extremely surprised by your claims… A question arises: Why, since the time ‘SMERSH’ was formed, has no worker from this Directorate told us what measures they were planning against enemy agents?… Why are no workers from your agency present in partisan detachments?22

Abakumov and Ponomarenko did not reach an agreement, and SMERSH did not take control of the partisan OOs. This question soon became unimportant when the Red Army began advancing to the West and liberating Soviet territory from the Germans. On January 13, 1944, seven months after SMERSH was created, the TsShPD was disbanded. Local headquarters, not Moscow, were now responsible for partisan detachments. Ponomarenko returned to Belorussia to supervise partisan activity there.

Ponomarenko never forgot his skirmish with Abakumov. After Abakumov was arrested in July 1951, Ponomarenko, then a Central Committee secretary, used to boast to his Party colleagues that he had helped to get rid of Abakumov.23 He was probably among those who made sure that Stalin received the report denouncing Abakumov, who was subsequently dismissed and arrested on Stalin’s orders.

Abakumov had much more success in taking control of the radio games from Beria’s subordinates.

The ‘Radio Games’ Rivalry

In addition to counterintelligence work in the rear of the Soviet troops, the 3rd Department of GUKR in Moscow was also in charge of radio games—also known as playbacks—which were intended to deceive the enemy.24 As already mentioned, German intelligence also widely used radio games against the Soviets. For instance, two arrested leaders of the famous Soviet spy network ‘Red Orchestra’, Leopold Trepper (alias ‘Director’) and Anatolii Gurevich (alias ‘Kent’, ‘Sukolov’, and ‘Barcza’), agreed to send radio messages for the Gestapo hoping that Moscow would think that they were working under Nazi control. Soviet radio games operated by using German agents captured from various German intelligence services.

Soviet radio operations started in 1942 in two NKVD directorates, the 2nd (counterintelligence) headed by Pyotr Fedotov (like Abakumov, he was Yakov Deich’s protégé), and the 4th (terrorism) headed by Pavel Sudoplatov.25 As the UOO head, Abakumov also personally controlled some of the radio games, especially in the Moscow Province. He presented written scenarios of the planned games to Stalin, who made editorial notes in blue pencil.26 Within the 2nd NKVD Directorate, a section headed by Vladimir Baryshnikov in the 1st (German) Department (headed by Pyotr Timofeev) was responsible for the games. In April 1943, this section was transferred to SMESRH, and Dmitrii Tarasov, head of the radio operations team, recalled the transfer in his memoirs: ‘V. Ya. Baryshnikov was appointed head of the [3rd] Department of the GUKR SMERSH, while the radio operations group became a separate section within this department… Its staff reached eight members, and I was promoted to the head of the [2nd] section.’27

In July 1943, before the Kursk Battle, Abakumov issued UKRs with the secret Instruction on the Organization and Conduction of Radio Games with the Enemy.28 It stated the goal of the games: ‘To paralyze the activity of the enemy’s intelligence services.’ Each radio game was carefully prepared. At first Baryshnikov, after interrogating and recruiting captured German agents, sent Abakumov a proposal for a game. For instance, on June 25, 1943 Baryshnikov wrote:

The [captured German] group [of two agents, one of whom was a Soviet double agent] has a very interesting task [i.e., recruiting an agent inside the Soviet Union for the assassination of Lazar Kaganovich, a GKO member and Commissar for Transportation]. That could allow us to conduct a serious counterintelligence action (for example, to call for the arrival of qualified [German] specialists in recruiting agents). Therefore, this group should be engaged in a radio game. The first radio communication should be transmitted on June 26 [1943].29

Abakumov wrote on the report: ‘I agree.’

In Tarasov’s section, Majors Sergei Yelin and Vladimir Frolov, and Captains Grigorii Grigorenko and Ivan Lebedev (Tarasov’s deputy) were the main developers and conductors of the games.30 Tarasov describes the preparation of messages: ‘The counterintelligence members wrote texts of radiograms that contained military disinformation for a transmission to the enemy based on the General Staff’s recommendations. The style of writing by a particular operator and a legend [story] given to him were also taken into consideration. In the most important cases consultants from the General Staff participated in this work.’31

Tarasov details the contacts with the General Staff and military intelligence (RU):

[We] were in constant contact with A. I. Antonov, deputy head of the General Staff, and S. M. Shtemenko, head of the Operational Directorate of the General Staff, as well as with F. F. Kuznetsov, deputy head of the General Staff and, simultaneously, head of the RU. Meetings with the first two took place in the General Staff’s building or the Stavka mansion at Kirov Street [not far from the Kremlin], while we met with Comrade F. F. Kuznetsov in the USSR Defense [Commissariat] at Frunzenskaya Embankment.32

Usually the former German radio operators—Germans or Russians who had graduated from German intelligence schools and agreed to work for Baryshnikov’s section—were placed in Lubyanka Prison and brought to SMERSH’s headquarters (another part of the same huge building) when there was a need for them or for radio transmission sessions. If radio sessions were conducted from a particular territory where the controlling German intelligence supervisors expected the agents to be located at the time, Tarasov’s men brought the operators to this area.

During the reorganization of security services in April 1943, Sudoplatov’s 4th NKVD Directorate was transferred to the NKGB and became its 4th Directorate. This directorate continued to control some important radio games. According to Sudoplatov’s memoirs, the NKGB’s success with radio game Operation Monastyr’ (Monastery) sparked Abakumov’s jealousy. This was the game in which Aleksandr Demiyanov, or ‘Max’—wrongly identified in Sudoplatov’s memoirs as Abwehr’s ‘Max’ from the ‘Max and Moritz’ operation—participated. Allegedly, when Abakumov came to Sudoplatov’s office demanding the transfer of all radio games to GUKR, Sudoplatov agreed to do so if ordered. The order came within one day, but it excluded Monastery and Couriers, another deception game. Abakumov was displeased, knowing that the results of these two operations were reported directly to Stalin.’33

Sudoplatov’s interpretation makes little sense—the results of all important radio games were reported directly to the Stavka, which meant that Stalin was already supervising all the most significant ones. For example, in September 1943, on Meshik’s report about one of the games, Abakumov wrote: ‘Such disinformation materials must not be sent without Com. [rade] Stalin’s approval.’34 However, the mere fact that information about two of the supposedly most successful games had been held back was apparently enough to anger Abakumov.35 The clash surrounding the radio games illustrates the tension and developing rivalry between Abakumov and the Beria–Merkulov duo after the creation of SMERSH.

Despite Abakumov’s opposition, the operations Monastyr’ and Berezino (which followed in 1944) remained in Sudoplatov’s hands. During the latter, twenty-two German intelligence men sent by the famous Otto Skorzeny into Soviet territory in response to false radio messages were caught, and thirteen radio transmitters and 225 packages of equipment and weapons were seized.36 Later Skorzeny wrote: ‘None of…my own men ever got back. I wondered whether the Russians were having a game with us all the time.’37Apparently, Sudoplatov hoped to lure Skorzeny himself with this game, but this did not happen.

As of spring 1943, SMERSH was responsible for most of the other radio games. Scores of deceptive operations were organized, and through them SMERSH collected a great deal of military information, especially about the transportation of German troops, terrorist acts in the rear of the Soviet troops and on German-occupied Soviet territory, and so forth. Operation Ariitsy (Aryans), a particularly successful joint SMERSH–NKGB–NKVD game, demonstrated that the Germans had very inadequate intelligence about the Soviet situation.

In May 1944, the Walli I (Abwehr’s center for Russia) flew twenty-four agents, under the command of Captain Eberhard von Scheller (alias ‘Quast’) into Kalmykia—an autonomous republic on the shore of the Caspian Sea in southern Russia.38 Von Scheller, a WWI hero who was awarded two Iron Crosses for bravery during that war, had worked in the Abwehr since 1938. Being sent to Kalmykia was punishment for a crime that he did not describe to SMERSH officers. Kalmykia was populated by the small nation of Kalmyks, a nomadic group professing Lamaism that settled in the lower reaches of the Volga River at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Incidentally, Vladimir Lenin’s father was a Kalmyk who had risen to the status of a minor nobleman.

Von Scheller’s group was supposed to prepare a base for the future arrival of the so-called ‘Kalmyk Corps of Dr. Otto Doll’ (many heads of Abwehr groups had aliases with the title of ‘doctor’), consisting of 3,458 horsemen (36 squadrons), that the Abwehr Group 103 organized during 1942–43. Dr. Doll’s real name was Sonderführer Otmar Rudolph Werva, and he was a German academic and Abwehr officer.39 During the Russian Civil War, he served in the Ukrainian nationalistic troops that fought for the independence of Ukraine. The German plan was for this corps to initiate an uprising against the Soviet regime, among the Kalmyks. Amazingly, German intelligence was apparently unaware that by then there were no Kalmyks left in Kalmykia.

In December 1943, the Politburo ordered the liquidation of the Kalmyk ASSR and renamed it the Astrakhan Region within the Russian Federation.40 This was Stalin’s retaliation for Kalmyk collaboration with the Germans during the occupation of a part of Kalmykia near its capital, Elista, from August 1942 to mid-1943. The Germans wooed the Kalmyks with the promise of an independent Great Kalmyk State with territory from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. During the occupation, a Kalmyk Cavalry Corps was formed, consisting of four divisions with five squadrons each, to fight against the Red Army.41

Following the Politburo decision, the NKVD executed an operation under the code name ‘Ulusy’ (ulus means region in the Kalmyk language), for which Beria and his deputy Vasilii Chernyshev were responsible. The NKVD troops rounded up the Kalmyks in Kalmykia (more than 93,000), put them on 46 trains, and deported them to the Altai, Novosibirsk, and Omsk provinces in Siberia. Sixteen thousand Kalmyks died during this operation.42 In March and June 1944, the remaining Kalmyks were deported from the Rostov and Stalingrad provinces; thus, no Kalmyks remained by the time German agents landed in Kalmykia.

During a clash between the NKVD and NKGB operational groups of the Astrakhan region and the German agents who were parachuted in, twelve German agents, including von Scheller, were taken prisoner, and the rest were either killed or managed to escape. SMERSH and the NKVD quickly developed a joint plan for a new radio game, Aryans, with the involvement of captured agents. On May 26, 1944, Abakumov and Aleksandr Leontiev, head of the NKVD Department for Combating Bandits, signed the plan, which Beria approved the next day. In the GUKR, Abakumov’s deputy Meshik and Baryshnikov, head of the 3rd Department, were responsible for implementing the plan.

Von Scheller volunteered for Soviet counterintelligence, and Hans Hansen, the radio operator of the downed German plane, agreed to work with von Scheller. The two were given the aliases ‘Boroda’ (Beard) and ‘Kolonist’ (Colonizer). In response to the disinformation transmitted, another German plane loaded with supplies for von Scheller’s agents landed in Kalmykia, where it was destroyed and five newly arrived agents were captured. After this von Scheller wrote to Abakumov:

Sir General!

I’ve volunteered for the Russian counterintelligence and I have worked honestly and hard for the implementation of a secret task. Our joint efforts succeeded in shooting down a gigantic German U-290 transport airplane and its passengers, including four German agents, were captured by the Russian counterintelligence service. Therefore, I ask for your approval to include me into the Soviet counterintelligence network. I pledge to keep secrets of the service for which I, probably, will end up working, even if I’d be working against German intelligence. In this case I ask for your approval of giving me the alias ‘Lor’.

E. von Scheller.43

Although further details of the ongoing operation are unknown, SMERSH sent a total of forty-two radio messages to the Germans and received twenty-three responses. In August 1944, the 3rd GUKR Department decided to end the game, and the last cable was sent to Germany, claiming that everyone in the second group had been killed and that the Kalmyks had refused to help von Scheller’s group. Von Scheller was supposedly going to the Western Caucasus, and would move from there to Romania. As a result of the game two planes were destroyed, twelve agents and members of German air crews were killed, and twenty-one German saboteurs were taken prisoner.

Baryshnikov’s team did not trust von Scheller. During detailed interrogations it appeared that von Scheller had tried to force Hansen to send a coded message to their German handlers that would reveal that they were operating under SMERSH’s control. Hansen refused and made a statement to SMERSH officers: ‘I’ve become acquainted with the honest and just people [meaning Baryshnikov’s men] who had been described to us [by Nazi propaganda] in a completely different way… If I’m impressed by the country in general as much as the officers and soldiers impressed me, I’ll conclude that any nation would be honored to be a friend of the Soviet Union.’44 Because of this, von Scheller and Hansen were dealt with differently by SMERSH. On October 20, 1945, the OSO sentenced von Scheller to death and two weeks later he was executed, while Hansen was sentenced to imprisonment in labor camps. He survived and was repatriated to Germany after Stalin’s death.

On April 21, 1945, at the end of the war, Abakumov received one of the highest military awards, the Kutuzov Order of the 1st Class, for the successful conclusion of a radio game code named ‘Tuman’ (Fog).45 It remains a mystery why only Abakumov was awarded for this effort because many participants, including Merkulov, were involved in it. The game concerned a German agent, a Russian named Pyotr Tavrin, who was sent by German intelligence to Soviet territory, and his wife. There are two main versions about how and when this happened.

The first is based on the documents of Gehlen’s FHO, studied by E. H. Cookridge, the author of a book about Gehlen and his German intelligence men. He wrote that Pyotr Ivanovich Tavrin ‘had been captured [by the Soviets] on May 30, 1942, in the Rzhev area. He informed his captors that he had been awarded the Orders of the Red Banner and of Alexander Nevsky…and displayed these medals with pride; but after the usual indoctrination he was prepared to go back as a spy’.46

However, Tavrin could not have had the Aleksandr Nevsky Order because this award was established on July 29, 1942, after Tavrin had been captured. The first Aleksandr Nevsky Order was bestowed in November 1942, after (according to Cookridge) Tavrin was smuggled back through the front line in September 1942. Even more questionable is the claim that Tavrin ‘was given a succession of important appointments, first at the ministry of defense, then on the staff of the supreme headquarters and eventually, with the rank of colonel, at the headquarters of Marshal Ivan Chernyakhovsky’, as well as the claim that on October 17, 1943 he was awarded ‘the gold badge of a Hero of the Soviet Union’.47 In August 1944, ‘Tavrin sent a signal saying that he had fallen under suspicion. Gehlen decided to withdraw him and asked Zeppelin [the SD spy organization] to collect him in a Messerschmitt’. At the end, Cookridge cites the supposedly Soviet information that on September 5, 1944 Tavrin, a German spy in the uniform of a Soviet colonel, and his wife were arrested near Smolensk and later executed.

The KGB/FSB version begins from the arrest on September 5, 1944 of a Zeppelin agent with false documents in the name of Pyotr Ivanovich Tavrin (his real last name was Shilo), and a woman, his wife, with false documents for Lidia Shilova (her real last name was Bobrik).48Surprisingly, in his memoirs Tarasov, who participated in Operation Fog, refers to the couple as the Pokrovskys [sic] and not the Tavrins.49 Over the years the FSB has changed its version of the circumstances of their arrest four or five times, so I will only address the published documents.50

On September 30, 1945 Merkulov reported to the GKO that on May 30, 1942, Tavrin-Pokrovsky crossed the front line and went to the Germans after the OO officer of his unit questioned him about his past. Tavrin had something to hide because from 1931 to 1938, he was arrested three times for embezzlement, and each time he managed to escape. Then he received a new passport under the name Tavrin instead of Shilo. While being held prisoner in German POW camps, in July 1943 he volunteered for German intelligence. Merkulov wrote:

From September 1943 till August 1944, [Tavrin] was personally trained as a terrorist for committing terrorist acts against the USSR leaders. [Heinz] Gräfe, head of the SD Eastern Department, [Otto] Skorzeny, SD member who took part in kidnapping [Benito] Mussolini [in September 1943], and SS Major [Otto] Kraus of the SD post [Russland-Nord] in Riga supervised the training. Additionally, G. N. Zhilenkov, former [Party] secretary of the Rostokinsky Regional Committee in Moscow, who has betrayed the Motherland and currently lives in Germany, guided Tavrin for a long time.

On the night of September 4 to 5 [1944] [Tavrin] was sent over the front line by a four-motor German plane from Riga Airport… The German intelligence organ, the Riga SD branch known as Zeppelin, organized his transportation.

The goal of sending [Tavrin] is to organize and conduct a terrorist act against C.[omrade] Stalin, as well as, if possible, acts against the other members of the government: Beria, [Commissar for Railroad Transportation Lazar] Kaganovich and Molotov… For discovering further intentions of German intelligence, a radio game has been started… Tavrin’s wife, Shilova Lidia Yakovlevna (arrested), who graduated from German courses for radio operators and was sent together with Tavrin, is used as an operator [in the game].51

The details Merkulov described became known from the interrogation of Tavrin conducted in Lubyanka, where the Tavrins were brought after their arrest near Smolensk, by Baryshnikov, head of the 3rd GUKR Department; Aleksandr Leontiev, head of the NKVD Department for Combating Bandits; and Leonid Raikhman, deputy head of the 2nd NKGB Directorate (interior counterintelligence).52 Interestingly, Merkulov stressed Tavrin’s connection to Georgii Zhilenkov, the highest Party official captured by the Germans, who became one of the leaders of the anti-Soviet movement and the Vlasov Army. Before the war, Zhilenkov was a secretary of Moscow’s Rostokinsky Regional Party Committee and a member of the Moscow City Party Committee. After the end of the war Zhilenkov surrendered to the Americans, but on May 1, 1946 they handed him over to the Soviets. On August 1, 1946 the Military Collegium sentenced Zhilenkov, along with General Vlasov and his other close collaborators, to death and they were executed.53

Tavrin-Pokrovsky’s testimony corroborated the words of a captured high-level RSHA officer whom Tarasov identified as ‘John’:

In Zeppelin circles, Pokrovsky [Tavrin] was discussed a lot. He was considered a ‘big bird’ that would bring Zeppelin glory, awards and more power in intelligence activity. In their conversations Hauptsturmführer [Alfred] Backhaus [of the Zeppelin headquarters in Berlin], [Otto] Kraus, and Untersturmführer [Heinz] Gräfe used to repeat: ‘Imagine the consequences if Pokrovsky succeeds in fulfilling his assignment.’54

If this testimony is true, it shows that Walter Schellenberg’s men in the Zeppelin branch had no idea about real life in the Soviet Union and the impossibility of Tavrin’s task.

Tavrin described how after leaving the plane, which had crashed while landing, the couple started out for Moscow by motorcycle. Tavrin was dressed in the uniform of a Soviet Major and Shilova, in that of a Junior Lieutenant. Tavrin had false documents of a deputy head of the OKR SMERSH of the 39th Army of the 1st Baltic Front and a fake typewritten order to come to the GUKR in Moscow.

Soon a group of NKVD operatives stopped them to check their papers. One of the officers noticed that the high military awards on Tavrin’s chest were attached incorrectly. The awards included the Gold Star of a Hero and the Aleksandr Nevsky Order that have already been mentioned, citing Cookridge’s story. Tavrin even had a fake newspaper clipping saying that he received the Gold Star on October 9, 1943. In fact, the star apparently belonged to Major General Ivan Shepetov, who was captured by the Germans on May 26, 1942 and executed in the Flossenberg Camp on May 21, 1943 after he tried to escape from the camp.

Interestingly, Tavrin did not try to fight or escape. A head of the local NKVD unit quickly established that there had never been a Major Tavrin in the 39th Army. The NKVD officers also found Tavrin’s sophisticated diversion equipment hidden in the motorcycle. Tavrin and Shilova were sent to the GUKR in Moscow. Three NKVD and one huge SMERSH search groups also arrested the pilot, navigator, radio operator, and two gunners of the German plane. All of them were sent to Moscow.

The Tavrins agreed to participate in a SMERSH radio game called first ‘A Couple’, then ‘Fog’. Most probably, SMERSH officers promised the couple that their lives would be spared if they collaborated. SMERSH’s task was to persuade the Zeppelin agents to come to Soviet territory, where they would be caught. Baryshnikov supervised the writing of false radio messages by Majors Frolov and Grigorenko (the future KGB colonel general), and then Abakumov or his deputy Isai Babich approved the texts. Pavel Fedotov, head of the 2nd NKGB Directorate, and Leontiev, head of the NKVD Department for Combating Bandits, were informed about each message because they supervised the investigation of the Tavrin case. Tavrin and his wife were kept in Lubyanka Prison as prisoners 35 and 22 (corresponding, apparently, to the numbers of their cells), and were taken to a secret dacha outside Moscow for radio transmission sessions.

Tarasov mentions that ‘the contact with the enemy was made with a delay because Pokrovsky [Tavrin] was not honest during the investigation and it took a long time for the Soviet counterintelligence to find out all the necessary details. To explain the long delay in communication, it was decided to create the impression that Pokrovskaya [Shilova] had tried to establish contact but was unable to do so due to her poor training’.55 Finally, in September 1944, Shilova sent her first message to Zeppelin under SMERSH’s control: ‘We have arrived successfully, and started the work.’56

The Germans were completely fooled. Later ‘John’ testified to SMERSH that ‘the radio contacts [with Shilova] were conducted with difficulty because Pokrovsky’s wife was poorly trained’.57 According to the messages, Tavrin was trying to penetrate the Kremlin circle. Strangely, some messages were addressed to Gräfe, although Tavrin was aware of Gräfe’s death on January 1, 1944. On April 9, 1945, Shilova sent the last message, to which Berlin did not respond.

Soon after the war, in August 1945, the OSO sentenced members of the plane crew to death and they were executed. For some time SMERSH and, later, the MGB, hoped that German agents might visit the Tavrins, and the couple was kept alive. On February 1, 1952, the Military Collegium sentenced them to death. Tavrin admitted that he was guilty of treason, but rejected the accusation of being a terrorist: ‘I have never been determined to follow the German order to conduct a terrorist act in the center [Moscow].’58His wife stated the same: ‘I was dreaming about the Motherland and my people. I do not regret that I flew back. If it is necessary, I’ll die…I ask for one thing: I’d like to share my fate with my husband… I believe that from the moment he stepped on our native ground he would not do anything against the Motherland.’59 Tavrin was executed on March 28, 1952, and his wife, four days later. In May 2002 the Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office refused to rehabilitate them.

It remains unclear why Cookridge gave an erroneous account of the Tavrin story. It’s possible that the documents he used were a red herring to conceal the fact that for two years Tavrin was being trained for a special assignment and was not successfully serving in the Red Army. Unfortunately, in his recent book about Nazi espionage Christer Jörgensen repeated Cookridge’s version of Tavrin’s story without any changes.60

However, not everything is clear in Tavrin’s ‘true’ story, which is now known due to the publications of FSB historians who had access to three volumes of the Tavrin investigation file. For instance, Aleksandr Mikhailov, FSB Major General, describes how in the 1930s, Tavrin successfully escaped from arrest three times, managed to attend law school, and even worked as a senior investigator at a Prosecutor’s Office in Voronezh.61 It would have been almost impossible to do this in the 1930s, when people’s backgrounds were constantly checked. The first escape, when some arrested criminals supposedly dismantled a wall and fled together with Shilo, is especially suspicious. This is one of the typical methods that the NKVD used for legalizing their secret informers.62

During interrogations in Moscow, Zhilenkov stated that in the German camp Tavrin told him that before the war he ‘lived in Voronezh and worked in the local NKVD directorate as head of the personal guards of the first secretary of the Voronezh Province Party Committee’, Iosif Vareikis.63 Zhilenkov added that he did not believe Tavrin’s stories, especially because ‘soon after Tavrin arrived in the camp, he was accused of stealing 130 rubles, and then prisoners beat him up for cheating while playing cards’. Anyway, it is possible that Shilo-Tavrin was recruited as an OGPU-NKVD agent after his first arrest and then luckily managed to ‘escape’. If so, most probably he went to the Germans as an NKVD (i.e., Sudoplatov’s) agent. This explains why he surrendered to the NKVD operatives practically voluntarily. If this scenario is accurate, it is a mystery why he was finally shot.

But perhaps the most complicated and least-known radio game was organized in December 1944 in collaboration with the General Staff’s Intelligence Directorate (RU).64 A month earlier, Soviet agents had reported from Germany that the Nazis were preparing an attack against American and British troops in the Ardennes. To get the Germans to move some of their troops from the Eastern Front to the Ardennes, Stalin ordered that a deception game be devised to persuade the Germans that the Red Army was exhausted and would temporarily discontinue its offensive.

Tarasov and Fyodor Kuznetsov, head of the RU, were responsible for the operation. They devised a very complicated radio game involving twenty-four transmitters located in a number of Soviet cities, from Kuibyshev to Leningrad. They transmitted reports, supposedly from various sources, but all containing the same basic information: part of the Soviet troops had been called back from the fronts for reorganization and training. RU agents disseminated similar disinformation among the population in the war zone.

The operation worked perfectly. The German command completely trusted the false information, and, on December 16, 1944, the Germans began their attack in the Ardennes, which involved not only the last reserves of the German army but also several tank divisions transferred from the Eastern Front. While the Western Allies were fighting in the Ardennes, the Soviet troops were preparing a new assault. On January 12, 1945, at the request of the Allies, the 1st Ukrainian Front and then the 1st Belorussian Front began their attack on Poland, and on January 13 and 14, the 2nd and 3rd Belorussian fronts attacked Eastern Prussia. The German defense in these areas was weakened because of radio game disinformation.

From 1943 to 1945, SMERSH and the NKGB conducted 183 radio games, some of which continued for years.65 Local SMERSH departments also organized radio games. Overall, approximately 400 German intelligence officers and agents were arrested and participated in the games. When the games ended, most of them were shot. For example, in March 1944 SD officer Alois Galfe, who had specialized in training the Russian POWs recruited for Operation Zeppelin, was captured by SMERSH operatives not far from Moscow as part of the ‘Zagadka’ (Puzzle) game.66This game was jointly conducted by the 3rd and 4th GUKR SMERSH departments and continued after the arrest of Galfe. Galfe was taken to Lubyanka Prison, where Abakumov interrogated him for six hours. On January 27, 1945, the OSO sentenced Galfe to death as a German spy and he was executed.

Kirill Stolyarov, a Russian historian, concluded: ‘SMERSH outfoxed the Abwehr… Stalin, who made replacements in the cadres quickly at the slightest indication of incompetence, kept Abakumov in his position during the whole war.’67 However, success was incomplete. Until the end of the war, 389 unidentified German agents continued to send radio messages from the territory liberated by the Red Army.68

Although the details remain unknown, radio games continued long after the war, apparently, with British and American intelligence. On November 15, 1952, MGB Minister Semyon Ignatiev reported to Stalin: ‘A plan of the cancellation of radio games advantageous for us and conducted from the territories of the Baltic Soviet Republics, will be presented to you on November 20.’69

In the Abwehr Schools

From the UOO, SMERSH inherited the practice of sending agents to the enemy’s rear. Some of these military counterintelligence officers successfully joined German intelligence organizations and also schools, where they collected information on the schools, their staffs, and students. On the Eastern Front there were more than 130 intelligence and counterintelligence SD and Abwehr organizations and 60 schools.70 Information gathered by Soviet agents allowed SMERSH operatives to arrest German agents when they entered Soviet territory.

Frequently, SMERSH agents had already attended the Abwehr schools. While many civilians and Soviet POWs volunteered for these schools ostensibly as German agents, they really intended to use the opportunity to return to Soviet territory and join the Red Army. After graduation, when Abwehr centers sent them to Soviet territory to work as German spies, these individuals found SMERSH units and gave them detailed information about the Abwehr schools and the tasks assigned to them by the German intelligence. In Chekist jargon, this was a situation in which a person ‘has admitted his/her guilt and testified about himself/herself’. These people were, of course, highly valuable to SMERSH, and when they were sent back as double agents, their special knowledge yielded much greater success at collecting intelligence than the results attained by other SMERSH agents.

In Moscow, the 4th GUKR Department controlled the sending of agents and double agents to the enemy. In the UKRs at the fronts, the 2nd departments handled these operations. From April 1943 to February 1944, 75 SMERSH officers were introduced into German intelligence organs and schools, and 38 of them managed to return.71 SMERSH agents collected information on 359 Abwehr officers and 978 intelligence school graduates; as a result, SMERSH operatives arrested 176 saboteurs operating in the Red Army’s rear. From September 1943 to October 1944, SMERSH sent ten groups of parachutists (78 officers) into the enemy’s rear at various fronts.72 Of these, six groups managed to join German intelligence as Soviet spies, recruiting 142 Soviet agents and unmasking 15 enemy agents.

On June 24, 1944, Maj. Gen. Pyotr Ivashutin, head of the UKR of the 3rd Ukrainian Front, sent a report to Abakumov describing the UKR’s success:

To:  Head of the Main Counterintelligence Directorate

SMERSH, Security Commissar of the 2nd Rank V. Abakumov

June 24, 1944

Report

On the work of the Directorate of Counterintelligence SMERSH of the 3rd Ukrainian Front in the enemy’s rear from October 1, 1943 to June 15, 1944

During this period, the work in the enemy’s rear included the penetration of our agents into the intelligence and counterintelligence organs of the enemy that were acting against our front. Until the end of 1943, Abwehrgroups 103, 203, and 303 were active against us. To penetrate these organs, the following agents were sent to the enemy’s rear [the names are omitted in the published document]. At the time, three of our agents—Rastorguev, Mikhail Aleksandrovich; Turusin, Georgii Dmitrievich; and Robak, Nadezhda Petrovna—had already joined Abwehrgroup-203.

Turusin, after being sent by the enemy to our rear, came to us to acknowledge his guilt and gave detailed testimony about himself and the other agents. Then, following our order, he recruited three agents of Abwehrgroup-203 to work for us. Later, when they were sent to our territory, they voluntarily gave themselves up to us. He helped us to arrest three more saboteurs who were parachuted in with him, and gathered valuable information about the staff and agents of the Abwehrgroup.

Rastorguev, another former agent of the Abwehrgroup-203, came to us to acknowledge his guilt. With Turusin and with GUKR SMERSH’s sanction, in September of last year he was sent to the enemy’s rear with the task of recruiting a member of the German intelligence staff. He fulfilled our task and recruited this officer and three more agents. After he was sent to the enemy for the second time, he personally brought three agent-members of his intelligence team back to us. Based on his information, the SMERSH Directorate of the 2nd Ukrainian Front arrested two agents of Abwehrgroup-204. He also collected full information on fourteen agents and ten staff members of Abwehrgroups 203 and 204.

Robak, Nadezhda Petrovna, an agent of Abwehrgroup-203, along with two other women agents, was parachuted into the rear of our front at the end of July 1943. She voluntarily came to us to acknowledge her guilt and gave detailed information about her connections with the German intelligence and about other agents. In 1943, based on her information, we arrested four women agents of Abwehrgroup-203, who were left in the Donbass [the coal mining area between Russia and Ukraine] to collect intelligence and to penetrate the Red Army. Like Rastorguev, with the sanction of the GUKR SMERSH, on September 22, 1943, she was sent to the enemy’s rear with the task of recruiting a staff member of the German intelligence. She fulfilled the task, and the recruited intelligence officer has already sent agents of Abwehrgroup-203 into the hands of Soviet counterintelligence.

Head of the SMERSH Directorate of the 3rd Ukrainian Front,

Major General                              IVASHUTIN.73

For some reason, Ivashutin’s report did not mention the name of Afanasii Polozov, the German intelligence officer recruited by Nadezhda Robak. As was common among Russian teachers in the Abwehr schools, he worked under the alias of ‘Vladimir Krakov’ or ‘Dontsov’.74 A young Cossack, he served as a veterinarian in the 38th Cavalry Division of the Red Army, and on May 12, 1942, he was taken prisoner by the Germans. After training in German intelligence schools, in April 1943 Krakov was appointed head of the Abwehrgroup-203 school for saboteurs attached to the 1st German Tank Army then stationed in the Ukraine. Soon he started searching for contact with Soviet military counterintelligence and sent some of his agents, including Nadezhda Robak, to find SMERSH officials.

Although it doesn’t mention Polozov by name, Ivashutin’s report presents the recruiting of Polozov and his work for SMERSH as a success. However, Polozov’s work for Ivashutin ended tragically. Later he testified: ‘When it became impossible [i.e., too dangerous] to continue my work [for SMERSH], in March 1944, I crossed the front line near the town of Yampol, and came to the head of counterintelligence of the Soviet Tank Army [of the 2nd Ukrainian Front] Shevchenko, who knew about my work.’75 To Polozov’s complete surprise, Shevchenko said that he had never known Polozov and that Polozov had never worked for Soviet counterintelligence.

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 SMERSHIstoricheskie 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).

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