In the meantime, SMERSH operatives continued to arrest high-ranking Romanian and German intelligence officers and numerous Russian émigrés. On November 22, 1944, Abakumov reported to Beria on SMERSH activities in Romania:
On the whole, by November 15 [1944], 794 enemy intelligence and counterintelligence officers were arrested, including:
| Officers of Romanian and German intelligence | 47 |
| Rezidents of Romanian and German intelligence | 12 |
| Agents of German intelligence | 180 |
| Agents of Romanian intelligence and counterintelligence | 546 |
| Agents of Hungarian intelligence | 9 |
Among the arrestees are: BATESATU, Head of the Romanian intelligence center ‘N’ of the 2nd Section of the Romanian General Staff; SERBANESCU, Deputy Head of the Intelligence Center No. 2 of the ‘special information service’ of Romania; a German, STELLER, rezident [head of a spy network] of German intelligence; ZARANU, rezident of the German intelligence organ ‘Abwehrstelle-Vienna’, and others.
The investigation has found that German and Romanian intelligence services actively used White Guardists and members of various anti-Soviet émigré organizations for espionage against the Red Army.
‘SMERSH’ organs have arrested 99 members of such organizations, who have admitted that they spied for the Germans and Romanians.
For instance, the following active White Guardists were arrested in the city of Bucharest: POROKHOVSKY, I. Ye., General Secretary of the Main Ukrainian Military Organization in Europe; KRENKE, V. V., Doctor of Economics; DELVIG, S. N., Lieutenant General of the Czar’s Army.34 They confessed to their contacts with the enemy intelligence services…
I have already reported on all of this to Comrade STALIN.35
The last phrase was a reminder to Beria that although Abakumov was obliged to report to Beria, he, in fact, reported directly to Stalin.
Interestingly, on September 26, 1944 Stalin had already signed a cable to the commanders of both the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian fronts: ‘The Stavka… prohibits the making of arrests in Bulgaria and Romania… From now on, nobody should be arrested without the permission of the Stavka.’36 Therefore, it is possible that Stalin personally approved most of the above-mentioned arrests.
A few months later, an arrested Finn, Unto Parvilahti, met Romanian intelligence officer Theodor Batesatu, who was mentioned by Abakumov, in Lefortovo Prison. Parvilahti wrote in his memoirs: ‘A black patch covered his [Batesatu’s] right eye-socket; the eye was missing and he told me that he himself had shot it away when trying to blow his brains out on capture… “Now they’re going to do the firing,” he said with grim humor.’37
Soviet military leaders also urged the arrest of the Romanian king and his court, but Stalin decided to use Romanian Communists to get rid of the king later. General Shtemenko recalled:
In late August and the beginning of September 1944… while reporting to the Stavka on the military situation, many times A. I. Antonov [first deputy head of the General Staff] and I… suggested taking decisive measures against [i.e., arresting] the king’s court. As usual, the Supreme Commander [Stalin] listened to us attentively, lit his pipe unhurriedly, smoothed out his smoky moustache with the pipe’s mouthpiece, and said approximately the following: ‘The foreign king is not our concern. Our tolerance toward him will be advantageous for our relationships with the Allies. The Romanian people… will make their own decision regarding the real meaning of the monarchy. And it’s reasonable to think that the Romanian Communists… will help their people to understand the situation.’38
In the meantime, on July 6, 1945, Stalin gave the king the highest Soviet military award, the Order of Victory, made of platinum, gold, silver, rubies, and diamonds. The other recipients of this order were fifteen of the highest military leaders of the war; Stalin and Marshals Georgii Zhukov and Aleksandr Vasilevsky received it twice.39 Among the five foreign recipients, including the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, King Mihai was the only civilian.40
Apparently, while awarding Mihai supposedly for ordering the arrest of Ion Antonescu and his accomplices, Stalin tried to gloss over the fact that on February 27, 1945, Stalin’s watchdog Andrei Vyshinsky, Soviet Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs, whom Stalin sent to Bucharest, forced Mihai I to appoint the new government headed by the pro-Soviet Petru Groza as prime minister.
In December 1947, Stalin’s secret plan to get rid of Mihai I was implemented. Backed by orders from Moscow, Groza and Gheorghiu-Dej, general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party, forced the king to abdicate. In 2007, King Mihai I recalled: ‘It was blackmail… They said, “If you don’t sign this immediately we are obliged”—why obliged I don’t know—to kill more than 1,000 students that they had in prison.’41 Outside the palace the king could see soldiers and artillery facing the compound. A few days later he left the country. Only in 1992, after the fall of the Communist regime, did the king visit Romania again.
Bulgaria
On September 7, 1944, the Red Army invaded Bulgaria from Romania. Bulgaria had joined the Axis in 1941, when the Bulgarian King (Tsar) Boris III declared war against England and the United States, but not against the Soviet Union.42 His father, Ferdinand I, was the founder of the royal dynasty of Bulgaria and a relative of Queen Victoria, as well as of the French, Belgian, Portuguese, and Mexican royal families. Additionally, Boris III was married to Giovanna di Savoia, daughter of Victor Emmanuel III of Italy. During World War II, German Minister Adolf Heinz Beckerle constantly tried to intervene in Bulgaria’s internal affairs.43 Tsar Boris was extremely embarrassed by Beckerle’s efforts, especially because Beckerle was not a professional diplomat, but a policeman.
On August 15, 1943, during the ongoing collapse of Italy (on July 10 the Western Allies landed in Sicily, and the armistice was signed on September 3), Tsar Boris visited Hitler and refused to change Bulgaria’s neutrality toward Russia. Apparently, this was too much for Hitler. Shortly after his return from Berlin Boris III died mysteriously—most probably, poisoned by the Germans. Boris’s son, Simeon II, was only six years old, and his uncle Prince Kyril of Bulgaria, Prime Minister Professor Bogdan Filov, and Lieutenant General Nikola Mihov of the Bulgarian army were appointed regents, while Dobri Bozhilov succeeded Filov as prime minister. All these people were pro-German.