CHAPTER 19
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.
Shcherbakov continued: ‘An additional practice was the presence of investigators of the Special Departments at the trial [to intimidate the defendants], which was not necessary.’6 In the 1930s, NKVD investigators routinely rehearsed defendants before the open court trials, telling them what they should say during the trial and threatening to beat them severely after the trial if they did not follow instructions. Obviously, SMERSH investigators used similar methods, and their presence at the military tribunal sessions was meant to remind the defendants of their threats. Shcherbakov also emphasized that ‘another defect in the work of the punishment organs of the 7th Army was the complete lack of supervision by the prosecutor during the investigation’.7
Stalin immediately reacted to these points in Shcherbakov’s report. On May 31, 1943, he signed Order of the NKO Commissar No. 0089ss, handing down various punishments for SMERSH officers and prosecutors of the 7th Independent Army.8 The head of the SMERSH Department, Dobrovolsky, and the Military Prosecutor of the army received strict Party reprimands, while one of the investigators was to be tried and sentenced to five years in the labor camps. Three other investigators were to be discharged and sent to a punishment battalion. Finally, the Deputy Prosecutor of the Army responsible for supervising SMERSH Department work was demoted in rank.
However, it is unlikely that these fairly mild measures affecting one army represented a serious attempt to change SMERSH’s conduct. Besides, Stalin’s order did not address the general conclusions Shcherbakov placed at the end of his letter: ‘There are many inexperienced and semiliterate officers in the Special (currently, SMERSH) Departments. This defect should be corrected by transferring a few thousand political officers to [military] counterintelligence.’9
The last recommendation was clearly Shcherbakov’s attempt to place his own people, political officers, in Abakumov’s SMERSH. Political officers constantly complained about SMERSH operatives and commanding officers.
Transferring thousands of political officers who had no legal training would not have made SMERSH departments more professional, but would have increased GlavPURKKA’s influence within SMERSH, which Stalin definitely did not want. He needed SMERSH to remain under Abakumov’s sole control, thus ensuring that, through Abakumov, SMERSH would be under his own exclusive control.
Denouncing High Commanders
In 1943, 60 percent of trials in the tribunals of the Leningrad Front involved charges of ‘anti-Soviet propaganda’ (Article 58-10).10 For most of convicts terms of five to ten years in the labor camps were commuted to service in punishment battalions and companies. For convicted officers, three months in a penal battalion was equivalent to a ten-year prison term. Even generals were arrested at the front for ‘anti-Soviet propaganda’ or treason (Appendix I, see http://www.smershbook.com). Here are a few examples.
In May 1943, SMERSH arrested Lieutenant General Vladimir Tamruchi, commander of tank troops at the Southwest Front, just after he left hospital. He was charged with treason and spent the next seven years in the inhuman Sukhanovo Prison in solitary confinement.11 In October 1950 he died, still awaiting trial.
Before long, another general became a long-term prisoner of Sukhanovo. In December 1943, Lieutenant General Ivan Laskin arrived in Moscow, ostensibly to be appointed to a new position. Head of the HQ of the Northern Caucasian Front, Laskin was an internationally known figure. On January 31, 1943, he headed the military operational group that took prisoner the staff members of Field Marshal von Paulus’s 6th Army in Stalingrad, and Paulus himself surrendered personally to Laskin.12 In Moscow, Aleksei Antonov, head of the General Staff, informed Laskin about his new appointment as HQ head of the 4th Ukrainian Front. Before going to this front, Laskin was sent to the sanatorium Arkhangelskoe near Moscow, supposedly to rest and relax for a few days. However, the very next day a major came to Laskin’s room, saying that he had been sent to bring Laskin to the Military Intelligence (RU) HQ in Moscow. This was a lie: the major and two other officers who accompanied him were actually SMERSH operatives, and a car brought Laskin and the officers not to the RU, but to Lubyanka Prison. In his memoirs, Laskin recalled what happened next:
The officers took my handgun away from me and searched my pockets… I was brought to a huge room without windows, where my general’s shoulder boards were pulled off, then military orders were removed from my chest. Two guards, after grabbing my wrists, pulled me along an iron stair to… Colonel General Abakumov.
[Abakumov] looked at me from my feet up to my face and demanded in a fierce voice:
‘Tell me about your crimes.’
I strongly answered that I had never committed or even thought about committing any crime against the Motherland…
He continued to shout at me:
‘Already in 1938 we wanted to arrest you…and it’s a pity that we didn’t. And since then you have tried to escape our organs. Now you’ll find out who we are!’13
The ‘organs’ was a typical way the Chekists referred to themselves. Laskin was charged with treason (Article 58-1b) and kept in Sukhanovo Prison. Ironically, on December 31, 1943 the American government awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross ‘for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy, an action against our common enemy, Germany, in World War II’.14 Clearly, the Western Allies highly valued the capture of Field Marshal Paulus.
It wasn’t until December 1952 that the Military Collegium sentenced Laskin, now charged with not following his military duty (Article 193-1a), to ten years’ imprisonment. Allegedly, he violated his military oath in 1941, when, while he and his unit were surrounded by the Germans, he destroyed his Communist Party ID, got rid of his gun and exchanged his uniform for civilian clothes. Obviously, these ridiculous charges were trumped up to conceal the fact that Laskin had already spent almost ten years in Moscow investigation prisons without having committed any crime. The same December, Laskin was released.
Soon after Stalin’s death, during the process of rehabilitation, it was discovered what lay behind Laskin’s case: Mikhail Belkin, head of the UKR of the Northern Caucasian Front, denounced Laskin to Abakumov. Belkin greatly desired the Order of Lenin, and he asked Laskin to officially recommend him for that award. Laskin refused because he did not know Belkin well enough. Laskin’s arrest and the whole ‘case’ were a direct result of Belkin’s vengeance. In 1953 Laskin was rehabilitated, but only in 1966 did Soviet authorities present him with his Distinguished Service Cross.
The case of Major General Boris Teplinsky, head of the Operational Department of the Air Force of the Siberian Military District, was more personal for Abakumov. General Teplinsky was arrested in connection with his friend, high-ranking NKVD/NKGB official Viktor Il’in. According to some memoirs, Il’in confronted Abakumov with compromising information about one of Abakumov’s love affairs.15 However, Sudoplatov claimed that Il’in was arrested because he had notified Teplinsky about the preparations for his arrest in the GUKR SMERSH, and Abakumov used this as a reason for complaining about Merkulov and Beria and their subordinates to Stalin. Most probably, both events took place.
Anyway, on April 28, 1943 Abakumov personally arrested Teplinsky, and on May 3, 1943, Il’in was arrested in Merkulov’s office. Teplinsky and Il’in were accused of treason, conspiracy, and anti-Soviet propaganda. This was one of the cases that were without movement for years. During interrogations Teplinsky was tortured, and on eleven separate occasions he declared a hunger strike.16 It wasn’t until February 1952 that the OSO MGB sentenced Il’in to eight years of imprisonment for anti-Soviet propaganda, and he was then released because he had already spent this term under investigation. In March 1952, the Military Collegium sentenced Teplinsky to a 10-year imprisonment; he was released after Stalin’s death. Both were soon rehabilitated due to the lack of evidence that they had committed any crime.
On April 1, 1944, Abakumov presented Stalin with a long summary of reports from his subordinates concerning the Western Front headed by Vasilii Sokolovsky:
I report to you that agents of the Main Directorate SMERSH and the Counterintelligence Directorate of the Western Front reported to me that recently generals and officers of the Red Army General Staff and the Western Front have repeatedly stated that the Commander of the Western Front, Army General Sokolovsky, and his Head of Staff, Lieutenant General [Aleksandr] Pokrovsky, have not guided military operations appropriately.
For instance, Lieutenant General [A. I.] Shimonaev…said: ‘From 1942 to the present, the Western Front has been using two to three times more ammunition than any other front, but it has not achieved any result… Sokolovsky and Pokrovsky organized intelligence poorly. They did not have a clear understanding of the enemy or its fortifications—knowledge that is crucial in deciding where to break through the enemy’s defense…’
Col. Alekseev said: ‘On Pokrovsky’s order, Colonel Il’initsky, head of the Front’s Intelligence Department…falsifies estimates of the enemy’s force…’
In January of this year [1944], based on our information, Comrade [Fyodor] Kuznetsov, head of the Red Army Intelligence Directorate, sent a commission to inspect the Intelligence Department of the Western Front. [Deputy USSR Prosecutor] Lieutenant General [Afanasii] Vavilov headed the commission, which included Major Krylovsky. The commission discovered outrageous facts concerning the work of the Intelligence Directorate…
Il’initsky, with Pokrovsky’s approval, tried to compromise this Commission and even accused Krylovsky of drinking vodka instead of working. However, the Military Council of the Western Front did not take necessary measures based on the facts revealed [by the Commission].
On March 25…rocket launchers fired on our own troops, causing enormous losses in the 352nd Rifle Division… Pokrovsky asked that these significant casualties not be revealed to anyone…
In a conversation with Lieutenant General [Pavel] Zelenin, head of the Counterintelligence Directorate [of the Western Front], [Lev] Mekhlis, a member of the Military Council of the Western Front, said that Sokolovsky…was not happy with some members of the Red Army General Staff, calling them idlers. He was also sarcastic about some of their orders, which he criticized.17
Stalin ordered a new special commission headed by Malenkov to investigate the situation at the Western Front. Mekhlis handed over an anonymous letter to Malenkov from one of the commanders who complained about Abakumov’s subordinates. Apparently, Mekhlis wanted to clear himself of Abakumov’s accusations that he had not done enough against Sokolovsky and his accomplices. This anonymous letter was written with great passion:
I ask you, Comrade Stalin, not to judge me harshly.
The situation…at the Western Front is outrageous… Commanders are not trusted, and, in fact, counterintelligence representatives became the real heads of the military units. Frequently they undermine the authority of the commander…
They are spying on commanders, secretly watching their every step. If a commander summons someone, after leaving the commander this person is ordered to appear at the counterintelligence department, where he is interrogated about the purpose of the commander’s call and what the commander said…
All rights and initiative were taken from commanders. A commander cannot make any decision without the approval of the counterintelligence representative. Even women [PPZhs] were taken from commanders, while each counterintelligence officer lives with one or two women.
Commanders are threatened by the actions of Mekhlis against them, while the majority of the commanders have defended the Motherland, not caring about their own lives…
Why is this going on? Did the years 1937–38 come back again?
I do not sign this letter because if I put my name, I will be destroyed.18
In its long report to Stalin dated April 11, 1944, the Malenkov Commission described facts even more outrageous than those Abakumov had reported. Eleven military operations attempted at the Western Front during that period failed. The losses were enormous: ‘From October 12, 1943, to April 1, 1944, at the site of active military operations alone, 62,326 men were killed, and 219,419 men were wounded… In all…the Western Front lost 330,587 men. In addition, hospitals admitted 53,283 servicemen who needed medical attention.’19 During the same period, German losses at that front totaled approximately 13,000: that is, about five times fewer casualties than the Russian forces sustained.
The commission concluded: ‘Unsuccessful actions at the Western Front during the past six months, heavy losses, and significant utilization of ammunition were…due…only to the poor leadership of the Front commanders.’ It also recommended the dismissals of Sokolovsky, Pokrovsky, Il’initsky, and some others. It blamed Nikolai Bulganin, a member of the Military Council before Mekhlis, and Mekhlis for not reporting the trouble at the Western Front to the Stavka, and recommended that Bulganin be reprimanded. On April 12, 1944, Stalin signed a Stavka directive to rename the unfortunate Western Front the ‘3rd Belorussian Front’.20 Three armies of the former Western Front were transferred to the newly created 2nd Belorussian Front.
Despite strong accusations in the Abakumov and Malenkov reports, this time Stalin’s punishment of the Western Front commanders was extremely lenient. Sokolovsky was dismissed, but appointed to the high position of chief of staff of the 1st Ukrainian Front. Pokrovsky continued as head of the Staff of the 3rd Belorussian Front. Only Il’initsky lost his post. Mekhlis became a member of the Military Council of the 2nd Belorussian Front, and Bulganin, a member of the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front.
Soon, in November 1944, Bulganin received an enormous promotion to deputy defense Commissar, and inclusion in the GKO. Now the heads of the NKO main directorates reported first to Bulganin, and he reported to Stalin.21 Abakumov and Shcherbakov continued reporting directly to Stalin.
The reasons behind Stalin’s support and promotion of Bulganin remain unclear. According to some memoirs, Bulganin’s drunkenness and the fact that he kept on staff a harem of young women were legendary among the military at the fronts.22 In addition, while on military councils, he had five adjutants, two telephone operators, a personal cook, and a servant. Among those in Stalin’s circle, Bulganin was considered the military officer with the least amount of professional education.23 Incredibly, during the entire time he held military appointments during the war, Bulganin remained chairman of the Soviet State Bank.
POW Vetting Continues
In addition to army investigations, SMERSH continued vetting servicemen who had been taken prisoner or were in detachments encircled by the enemy—previously a task of the OO officers. Such servicemen were collected in the specially organized Collection-Transit Posts (SPP) in the rear of armies or Vetting-Filtration Posts (PFP) of fronts. Here the detainees were kept for five to ten days. From December 1943 on, special commissions that included a SMERSH officer and four army representatives conducted the investigations.
Generally, it was the same as the previous vetting by OO officers. At first, a detainee gave written testimony, which the SMERSH officers studied carefully. Then the person was interrogated in detail and his answers compared with the testimony. Finally, SMERSH investigators decided the person’s future fate, and a written investigator’s decision was filed. Various decisions were possible: a person could be drafted into the army for a second time; sent to work in the military industry; sent (in the case of a demoted officer) to serve in an assault battalion; or discharged as an invalid or dead person. If SMERSH officers suspected they were dealing with a German agent, a special Record File (Delo-formulyar) was opened for that person.
Frequently the German agents were caught because their soldier’s passport-sized IDs were made too perfectly. The staples in Soviet soldier IDs were made of iron and rusted spots would appear on the pages of the IDs around the staples. Although the printing work and paper in the forged German-made IDs were almost identical to those in the real IDs, staples in the forged IDs were made of stainless steel and the IDs did not have the rusted spots, and this feature was immediately recognized by SMERSH officers.
After the initial vetting, the person was transferred to a Front Screening-Filtration Camp (called NKVD Special Camps before 1944), where vetting continued for the next two months and the preliminary decision was checked more carefully. There were fifteen such camps in the rear of the 2nd Belorussian Front; thirty each, in the rear of the 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian fronts; ten each in the rear of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian fronts; and five in the rear of the 4th Ukrainian Front. Up to 10,000 people were kept in each camp; 58,686 were vetted from February 1 to May 4, 1945 in the camps of the 3rd Ukrainian Front alone, and of these, 376 were arrested. The vetting camps continued operating after the war in Soviet territory and in Eastern Europe, and the last of them were closed only after Stalin’s death in 1953.
As previously in the OOs, SMERSH officers did not send all those returning from captivity to filtration camps. Some were executed on the spot. Mikhail Shmulev recalled: ‘I ran from the Germans twice. The first time I was unlucky—I was caught and punished. The second time I managed to get to our advancing troops. I was stopped twice by drunken officers who wanted to execute me on the spot as a spy or a Vlasovite before I got to the military komendatura [commandant’s office]. Then I was kept in a SMERSH cell for convicts sentenced to death. For fifteen days I shared a cell with those unfortunates who had failed to convince investigators they had not served the enemy and were not traitors of the Motherland. They were shot.’24
The story of a woman pilot, Anna Timofeeva-Yegorova, is even more shocking. At the end of 1944, her attack aircraft was shot down near Warsaw and fell to the ground, engulfed in flames. At the last moment she managed to parachute out, but she was taken prisoner and placed in Küstrin (Kostrzyn in Polish), the concentration camp for Allied soldiers (Stalag III-C Alt-Drewitz). Timofeeva had serious burns that were treated by doctor-prisoners in a camp hospital. Bravely, the fellow prisoners managed to salvage her numerous awards (two Red Banner orders, the Red Star Order, the medal ‘For Bravery’, and the medal ‘For Taking over the Caucasus’), as well as her Party ID, risking their lives to do so.
On January 31, 1945, the Red Army liberated the camp, and prisoners were ordered to the town of Landsberg for vetting. Timofeeva put on a coat given to her by fellow British prisoners, attached her military awards to it, and started on her way, hardly able to walk. Soon SMERSH operatives picked her up and brought her to their headquarters. She recalled:
During the first night, two soldiers with machine guns took me to the second floor for interrogation. I could hardly move my legs because with every motion the thin skin that had just developed over the burned areas cracked and blood oozed when I bent my arms and legs. Every time I stopped, a soldier pushed me in the back with the butt of his machine gun.
They brought me into a bright room with pictures on the walls and a big rug on the floor. A major sat at the table. He looked friendly. But first, he took my awards and my party ID away from me and studied them with a magnifying glass. For a long time he did not allow me to sit down. I thought I would fall to the floor, but I managed to keep myself conscious and begged for permission to be seated. Finally, he allowed me to sit down. I thought I wouldn’t be able to rise from the chair by any means. Suddenly the ‘friendly’ major yelled at me, ‘Stand up!’ and I jumped up from the chair. Then he shouted at me:
‘Where did you get the awards and the party ID?’
‘Why did you allow yourself to be taken prisoner?’
‘What [German] task did you have?’
‘Who gave you the task?’
‘Where were you born?’
‘Whom were you ordered to contact?’
The major continued to ask these and similar questions until dawn. To all my answers, he shouted: ‘You are lying, Alsatian dog!’
This continued for many nights… They insulted me with every unprintable word… My name was not used anymore. Now I was ‘a fascist Alsatian dog…’
On the tenth day in SMERSH I lost my patience. I stood up from the trestle bed and, without saying a word, walked to the exit and up the stairs, right to the major on the second floor.
‘Stay still, you whore! I’ll shoot!’ shouted the guard, rushing toward me. But I continued to walk, I almost ran upstairs…
I opened the door quickly and shouted, or I only thought that I shouted: ‘When will you stop your insults? You can kill me, but I won’t let you insult me anymore!’25
Timofeeva was lucky. Finally, Major Fedotov released her. However, only in 1965 did she receive the highest military award for bravery, the Hero of the Soviet Union Star.
Timofeeva’s story was quite typical because air forces were especially targeted by SMERSH. Technically ignorant themselves, osobisty considered any technical failure as sabotage, and commanders frequently hid pilots from SMERSH officers while accident investigations were in progress. From 1943 till the end of the war, at least 10,941 pilots and crew members were taken prisoner by the Germans or were missing in action.26 Many wounded pilots who escaped from the enemy experienced beatings at the hands of SMERSH; in addition, investigators crushed their fingers with boots, staged executions, and so forth, not to mention that SMERSH prisoners were not fed or allowed to use a bathroom.27
Sometimes pilots used force to free their fellows from the clutches of osobisty. When Aleksandr Pokryshkin, commander of the 9th Guard Air Division and the most famous Soviet flying ace, saw what SMERSH officers did in a vetting camp to Ivan Babak, he almost shot to death the camp’s commandant.28 During the war, Babak shot down 37 enemy planes before he was shot down himself in April 1945. In the vetting camp, he was terribly tortured, and osobisty refused to believe that he was a Hero of the Soviet Union. Pokryshkin took Babak with him and Babak returned to his corps. However, military counterintelligence did not forget about him, and he was arrested after the war, in 1947. Again Pokryshkin’s intervention saved Babak, but Babak was forced to resign from the air force.
According to FSB historian Stepakov, 5,416,000 Soviet servicemen and civilians went through SMERSH’s vetting, and of these, 600,000 were selected and tried as war criminals and collaborators.29 General Aleksandr Bezverkhny, head of the current Russian military counterintelligence, believes that on the whole, SMERSH dealt with more than ten million people.30
Operations at Home: Deportations
On March 4, 1944 Abakumov was awarded the Order of Suvorov of the 2nd Class, along with Beria and Merkulov, who received the Order of Suvorov of the 1st Class and Order of Kutuzov of the 1st Class, respectively.31 Beria’s deputies Kruglov, Serov, and Arkadii Apollonov, and Merkulov’s first deputy, Bogdan Kobulov, also received awards. It is ironic that these security leaders received the highest Soviet military awards for their nonmilitary actions against Soviet civilians—organizing the deportations of four ethnic groups, or ‘nations’ in Soviet terminology, into exile. Besides the above-mentioned Kalmyks, the Karacharovs, Chechens, and Ingush were transported from the Caucasus to Central Asia and Siberia. In Stalin’s opinion, these small nations were Germany’s collaborators and traitors to the Soviet Motherland.
The deportations were Stalin’s reprisals for actions by insurgents of these nations in mid-1942 to early 1943 in the rear of the Red Army as it fought the Germans in the foothills of the Caucasus. With access to oil posing a constant problem for them, the Germans were determined to seize the oil fields in Azerbaijan and Chechnya. Furthermore, the Germans considered the conquest of this area the first step toward conquering the Middle East. With the German success in 1941, many people in the Northern Caucasus saw an opportunity to free themselves of their traditional enemies, the Russians.32 Russia had waged a war of conquest against the mainly Muslim Northern Caucasians from 1816 to 1865. In 1936, more than 1,000 families of the kulaks (prosperous peasants) were deported from the Northern Caucasus and most mosques were closed.33In answer, a guerrilla war began. In some form this terrible conflict continues today.
In November 1941, insurgents in that area totaled approximately 5,000, and in the summer of 1942, this figure increased by 300 percent.34 In February 1942, there were 6,540 anti-Soviet fighters in only twenty Chechen villages. Many Chechens and Ingush left the Red Army to join the insurgents in the mountains. In January 1942, most of the insurgents joined the Special Party of Brothers of the Caucasus (OPKB) with the goal of fighting for the defeat of Russia in the war with Germany and later creating a Muslim state.35 This party established contacts with the Germans and from July 1942 to July 1943, the Germans parachuted numerous groups of Caucasian saboteurs, mostly Soviet POW volunteers, into Chechnya and Dagestan.36
Groups of insurgents also appeared in Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. The Abwehr helped anti-Soviet emigrants to cross the Soviet border to join the insurgents. Pro-German sentiments ran high among the population of the German-occupied areas of the Northern Caucasus because they were under the control of General Ernst Köstring, the former German attaché in Moscow from 1931–33 and 1935–41. Köstring and most of his HQ officers belonged to the military resistance group that hated Hitler and tried hard to ameliorate the Nazi racial policy in those areas.37 In February 1943, the Red Army counteroffensive began, and in October 1943 the Germans were defeated in the Caucasus.
Beria was sent to the Caucasus as a Stavka representative twice, in August– September 1942 and March 1943.38 Of course, he brought Merkulov and other cronies with him. Beria created a formation of NKVD troops consisting of 121,000 men, separate from the Red Army units. However, most of these troops were not involved in the fight against the Germans. During his trial in 1953, Beria testified: ‘I didn’t allow the NKVD troops to participate in the defense of the Caucasus…[because] the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush was planned.’39
Stalin’s reprisal for the insurgency was truly terrible.40 On January 31, 1944, the GKO issued two top secret orders to deport the Chechen and Ingush populations to Kazakhstan and Kirgizia.41 In total, about 650,000 men, women, and children were deported by 19,000 SMERSH, NKVD, and NKGB operative officers backed up by 100,000 NKVD troops, and 714 officers were given military awards. As an NKVD officer recalled, during professional training the security officers were shown an educational documentary film about the arrests and deportations of the kulaks and their family members from Russia in the late 1920s–early 1930s.42 Therefore, the NKVD and SMERSH were well trained for such actions.
The deportations were executed with extreme cruelty. People who could not be transported, such as patients in hospitals, were burned, buried alive, or drowned in lakes.43 Mikhail Gvishiani, former head of Beria’s guards whom Beria brought to Moscow, supervised the burning alive of 700 inhabitants in the village of Khaitoba.44 Like Abakumov, he received the Order of Suvorov of the 2nd Rank for the operation.
Similarly, in March 1944 the Kabardins and Balkars were deported from the neighboring regions of the Caucasus; Beria personally commanded the action.45 Then, in May–June 1944, the Crimean Tatars (a population of 180,000), Greeks, Bulgarians, and Armenians were deported from the Crimea to Central Asia.46 Interestingly, Hitler had the same idea as Stalin, to completely evacuate the population of the Crimea, which Hitler wanted to turn into a German Gibraltar.47 At the end of 1944, the Turks-Meskhetians and Kurds living in Georgia were also deported to Central Asia.48
Notes
1. ‘Ognennaya duga’: Kurskaya bitva glazami Lubyanki, edited by A. T. Zhadobin, V. V. Markovchin, and V. S. Khristoforov, 25 (Moscow: Moskovskie uchebniki, 2003) (in Russian).
2. Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy, 558.
3. Report of A. S. Shcherbakov to Stalin, dated May 22, 1943. Document No. 238 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR ‘Smersh.’ 1939–March 1946, edited by V. N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov, and N. S. Plotnikova, 377–85 (Moscow: 2006) (in Russian).
4. Ibid., 382–3.
5. Yakov Aizenstadt, Zapiski sekretarya voennogo tribunala (London: Overseas Publication Interchange Ltd., 1991), 69 (in Russian).
6. The above-cited Shcherbakov’s report, 383.
7. Ibid., 384.
8. NKO Order No. 0089-ss, dated May 31, 1943. Document No. 240 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD, 385–6.
9. Ibid., 384.
10. Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy, 294.
11. Lidiya Golovkova, Sukhanovskaya tyur’ma. Spetsob’ekt 110 (Moscow: Vozvrashchenie, 2009), 96–97 (in Russian).
12. Details of Paulus’s surrender in I. A. Laskin, Na puti k perelomu (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1977), 322–34 (in Russian).
13. From unpublished memoirs by Ivan Laskin, quoted in Aleksandr Rud’, ‘Moi general,’ Literaturnyi Krym, no. 17–18 (164–165), May 27, 2005 (in Russian), http://lit-crimea.narod.ru/164-167/rud17-20.html, retrieved September 8, 2011.
14. ‘Ivan Laskin’ (in Russian), http://militarytimes.com/citations-medalsawards/recipient.php?recipientid=22918, retrieved September 8, 2011.
15. Aleksei Teplyakov, ‘Chekist dlya Soyuza pisatelei,’ Politicheskii zhurnal, no. 11-12 (154-155), April 2, 2007 (in Russian).
16. An excerpt fromTeplinsky’s letter to Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, dated June 4, 1953. Quoted in Vyacheslav Zvyagintsev, Tribunal dlya ‘stalinskikh sokolov’ (Moscow: Terra, 2008), 356 (in Russian).
17. Abakumov’s report, dated April 1, 1944. Quoted in B. V. Sokolov, Razvedka. Tainy Vtoroi mirovoi voiny (Moscow: Ast-Press, 2001), 196–201 (in Russian).
18. Quoted in ibid., 202–3.
19. Quoted in ibid., 180.
20. Soviet biographers of Marshal Vasilii Sokolovsky do not mention Sokolovsky’s failure. See M. Cherednichenko, ‘Marshal Sovetskogo Soyuza Vasilii Sokolovskii,’ in Polkovodtsy i voennonachal’niki Velikoi Otechestvennoi. Vypusk 1 (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1971), 331–71 (in Russian), http://militera.lib.ru/bio/commanders1/10.html, retrieved September 8, 20011.
21. NKO Order No. 0379, dated November 23, 1944. Document No. 268, in Russkii arkhiv. Velikaya Otechestvennaya. Prikazy, 13 (2-3), 332 (in Russian).
22. P. G. Grigorenko., V podpol’e mozhno vstretit’ tol’ko krys… (New York: Detinets, 1981), 294–306 (in Russian).
23. V. M. Shatilov, A do Berlina bylo tak daleko… (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1987), 324 (in Russian).
24. Page 741 in Mikhail Shmulev, ‘Pochemu ya ne prazdnuyu Den’ pobedy,’ Golosa Sibiri. Vypusk vtoroi (Kemerovo: Kuzbassvuzizdat, 2005), 738–49 (in Russian).
25. Pages 299–300 in Anna Timofeeva-Yegorova, Nebo, ‘shturmovik,’ devushka. ‘Ya—“Beryoza”! Kak slyshite menya?…’ (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2007) (in Russian).
26. Zvyagintsev, Tribunal dlya ‘stalinskikh sokolov,’ 130.
27. Recolections by Nikolai Bogdanov, in M. I. Veller, Kavaleriiskii marsh (St. Petersburg: Lan’, 1996) (in Russian), Chapter 7, http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/veller1/01.html, retrieved September 8, 2011.
28. Zvyagintsev, Tribunal dlya ‘stalinskikh sokolov,’ 136–8. A. I. Pokryshkin (1913–1985) was the only pilot who became a Hero of the Soviet Union three times.
29. V. N. Stepakov, Narkom SMERSHa (St. Petersburg: Neva, 2003), 95.
30. SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki, 6.
31. A. Kokurin and N. Petrov, ‘NKVD–NKGB–SMERSH: struktura, funktsii, kadry. Stat’ya chetvertaya (1944-1945),’ Svobodnaya mysl’, No. 9 (1997), 97–101 (in Russian).
32. B. V. Sokolov, Beria. Sud’ba vsesil’nogo narkoma (Moscow: Veche, 2003), 167–70 (in Russian).
33. Valerii Yaremenko, ‘“I kolesa stuchat, i telegarmmy letyat…” K godovshchune deportatsii chechenskogo naroda,’ Polit.ru, February 23, 2006 (in Russian), http://www.polit.ru/article/2006/02/23/checheviza/, retrieved Septmber 8, 2011.
34. Eduard Abramyan, Kavkaztsy v Abvere (Moscow: Yauza, 2006), 116 (in Russian).
35. Details in Yaremenko, ‘I kolesa stuchat, i telegarmmy letyat…’
36. Abramyan, Kavkaztsy v Abvere, 118–28.
37. Details in Hans von Herwarth and Frederick Starr, Against Two Evils (New York: Rawson & Wade, 1981), 228–39.
38. Sokolov, Beria, 152–64.
39. Quoted in ibid., 162.
40. Document Nos. 156–165 in Istoriya Stalinskogo GULAGa. Tom 1, 481–94, and Nos. 3.111-3.136 in Stalinskie deportatsii, 443–76.
41. GKO Order Nos. 5073-ss and 5074-ss dated January 31, 1944. Document Nos. 3.111 and 3.112 in ibid., 443–7.
42. Interview with Nikolai Tolkachev, former NKVD officer, on May 25, 2009, http://www.iremember.ru/drugie-voyska/tolkachev-nikolay-fomich.html, retrieved September 8, 2011.
43. Excerpts from various NKVD reports in Yurii Stetsovsky, Istoriya sovetskikh repressii, T. 1 (Moscow: Znak-SP, 1997), 460–4 (in Russian).
44. Sokolov, Beria, 165–6.
45. Document Nos. 156–169 in Istoriya Stalinskogo GULAGa. Tom 1, 481–6, and Nos. 3.136–3.145 in Stalinskie deportatsii, 477–91.
46. Document Nos. 166–174 in Istoriya Stalinskogo GULAGa. Tom 1, 494–505, and Nos. 3.146–3.170 in Stalinskie deportatsii, 494–522.
47. Herwarth and Starr, Against Two Evils, 238.
48. Document Nos. 3.172–3.183 in Istoriya Stalinskogo GULAGa. Tom 1, 525–40.