Due to bad coordination of efforts and failures of the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front at the Polish–Slovak border, by October 27 the German troops and the Slovak units that remained loyal to the pro-German Slovak fascist President Jozef Tiso had defeated the insurgents. Generals Viest and Golian were captured by the Germans and were later executed in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, while General Čatloš, who deserted to the partisans on September 2, ended up in SMERSH’s hands together with General Jozef Turanec (pronounced Turanets), who succeeded Čatloš as Slovak Defense Minister after the escape of the latter. Both generals were brought to Moscow and, apparently, were kept in secrecy because SMERSH investigators ordered Jan Loyda, a German POW who was put with Čatloš (and later with Raoul Wallenberg and his cell mate Willy Roedel) obviously as a cell spy, not to tell anybody that he had been his cell mate.62
In January 1947, Čatloš and Turanec were brought back to Prague to testify during the trial of Jozef Tiso, who was sentenced to death on April 15, 1947.63 In December of the same year, Čatloš was tried and sentenced to five years in prison, but the next year he was released. Turanec, who in 1941–42 commanded the Slovak Motorized Division in Soviet territory, was sentenced to death. His death sentence was commuted to a 30-year imprisonment, and in 1957 he died in Leopoldov Prison, where convicted functionaries of the Tiso regime were incarcerated.64
One more Slovak officer, Captain František Urban (who during the uprising fought in the Aleksandr Nevsky partisan detachment under the command of a Red Army officer, V. A. Stepanov), was ordered to come to Moscow and join the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps formed in the Soviet Union and commanded by General Ludvik Svoboda, a personal friend of Marshal Ivan Konev.65 On September 25, 1944, Captain Urban arrived in Moscow and was immediately arrested. In Lubyanka Prison he shared a cell with the Finn Unto Parvilahti.66 After a two-year SMERSH investigation, the OSO sentenced him to five years in labor camps, allegedly for treason and collaboration with the Germans. In 1951, he was released to the Czechoslovak military authorities and returned to Slovakia.
Yugoslavia
By October 20, 1944, the troops of the 3rd Ukrainian Front, assisted by partisans of the Yugoslavian Communist leader, Josip Broz Tito, had liberated a considerable part of Yugoslavia, including its capital Belgrade. With the assistance of Yugoslav Communists, SMERSH operatives began making arrests.
In early October, Yugoslav partisans arrested the Russian émigré Mikhail Georgievsky and handed him over to SMERSH. Georgievsky, a professor of ancient languages, was the main ideologist and general secretary of the emigrant anti-Soviet organization, the National Alliance of the New Generation (NSNP) established in 1930 and known since 1936 as the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (NTS).67 The goal of the NSNP/NTS was to organize a revolution in Russia, and for years the NTS sent its agents into the Soviet Union to establish contacts and collect information on the political situation inside the country.
In 1941, Georgievsky’s plans to move to England were thwarted by the rapid German occupation of Yugoslavia. He refused to serve the Germans, and the Gestapo arrested him in the summer of 1944 along with a great many other NTS members. In Moscow, Georgievsky, after being held in investigation prisons until the autumn of 1950, was finally sentenced to death and executed on September 12, 1950.68
On December 24, 1944, in the town of Novi Sad, UKR operatives of the 3rd Ukrainian Front arrested another influential emigrant, 66-year-old Vasilii Shulgin. Shulgin was a Russian monarchist leader who had been a well-known political figure before the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.69 On March 2, 1917, he accepted the abdication of Nicholas II. During the Civil War, Shulgin actively participated in the White Russian movement, escaping to Romania in 1920, and later living in Bulgaria, Germany, France, and Yugoslavia. In 1925–26, Shulgin secretly visited the Soviet Union, later describing the trip in his 1927 book, Three Capitals, published in Berlin. He wrote sympathetically about Soviet Russia. In fact, the ‘secret’ trip was organized by the OGPU, using the old enemy for propaganda purposes. However, during his time in Yugoslavia Shulgin did not participate in politics. A group of SMERSH arrestees that included Shulgin was sent to Moscow by plane. This was the first flight in Shulgin’s life. On January 30, 1945 Shulgin was brought to Lubyanka Prison.70
A nineteen-year-old officer, Pavel Kutepov, was arrested in Panchevo, a town near Belgrade. His father, Major General Aleksandr Kutepov, head of ROVS from 1928 to 1930, was kidnapped on January 26, 1930, by an OGPU terrorist group in Paris headed by Yakov Serebryansky.71 General Kutepov died after his kidnappers injected him with morphine. In the eyes of the Soviet secret services Pavel Kutepov was guilty merely for having such a father. The SMERSH interrogators decided that Pavel intended to kill Stalin. In June 1945, Abakumov reported to Stalin:
KUTEPOV testified that having been born in emigration, he was raised in an atmosphere of hatred of the Soviet Union and, being on good terms with the terrorist [Boris] KOVERDA, a murderer of the Soviet Envoy [Pyotr] VOIKOV [in Warsaw in 1927], he decided to follow [Koverda’s] example and to commit a terrorist act against Comrade Stalin [Stalin’s name was inserted in handwriting in the original].72
To do this, beginning in 1941 KUTEPOV sought a way to enter the USSR. For this purpose, he tried to join the German intelligence in order to be sent to the Soviet Union. When this failed, he decided to change sides and go to the Red Army to obtain the trust of the organs [i.e., secret services] and thus get to Moscow.
Following this plan, KUTEPOV stayed near Belgrade after the Germans were pushed out of Yugoslavia. Here he was arrested. The interrogation of Kutepov continues.
In fact, Pavel Kutepov, a cadet at the Russian Military Cadet Corps in the town of Belaya Tserkov, was a member of a pro-Soviet underground organization in this émigré corps.74 Oddly, he was convinced that his father had not been kidnapped, but had secretly gone to the Soviet Union on Stalin’s invitation. After the Soviet troops took over Yugoslavia, and before his arrest, Kutepov Jr. worked as a translator for the Red Army. This work was no doubt what Abakumov meant by ‘he decided to change sides and go to the Red Army to obtain the trust of the organs’.
Apparently, SMERSH/MGB investigators failed to prove Kutepov’s alleged intention to kill Stalin, because in 1947 he was sentenced to 20 and not 25 years in prison (that year, the death sentence was replaced by a 25-year imprisonment). After conviction, as of July 25, 1947, Shulgin and Pavel Kutepov were being held in Vladimir Prison, and both survived the imprisonment.75
Back in March of 1945, Abakumov had reported to Beria that in all, SMERSH operatives had arrested 169 leaders and active members of anti-Soviet emigrant organizations in Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia.76
Hungary
After Yugoslavia, the troops of the 3rd Ukrainian Front marched into Hungary, where the 2nd Ukrainian Front had already begun encircling Budapest. Although the details are unknown, at the time Abakumov was already involved in Hungarian affairs. On September 23, 1944, a Hungarian delegation headed by Baron Ede Atzel crossed the front line and was captured by SMERSH operatives of the 4th Ukrainian Front.77 The delegation represented the underground Hungarian Independent Movement and included Joseph Dudas, one of the Hungarian Communist leaders. The Hungarians wanted to discuss the possibility of an armistice.78