Part VIII. The End of WWII
CHAPTER 25
Investigations in Moscow
At the end of 1944, Stalin showed his appreciation of the SMERSH, NKVD, and NKGB operatives who worked in Moscow by considerably improving their living conditions. On September 24, 1944 the GKO issued an order ‘On the Improvement of Food Supply of Operational Officers of the NKVD, NKGB, and SMERSH.’1 Now the food rations of 119,700 high-ranking officers, including those in SMERSH, became equal to the rations of sovpartaktiv (Soviet and Party high-level functionaries). 11,553 officers were given the same rations as those received by Central Committee members, commissars, and their deputies, which meant being able to eat in the Kremlin’s dining facilities without restriction and receiving special rations for their families. Rations were given to 27,200 officers of the second grade, and the rest, of the third grade; these were the so-called ‘liter [marked with a letter] “A” and “B” rations.’
Heads of directorates and departments (and their deputies) in commissariats were given ‘A’ food rations, while lower functionaries received the ‘B’ rations. In December 1942, the ‘A’ ration included the following for one person, per month: six kilograms of meat, approximately one kilogram of butter, 1.5 kilograms of buckwheat and pasta, seven kilograms of potatoes, and fifteen eggs.2 By comparison, at that time a worker at a military plant received 800 grams of poor-quality bread and one bowl of soup per day.
Prisoners in Moscow, 1944–45
As the Red Army advanced to the west, Moscow’s investigation prisons began to fill up with prisoners of war. Based on its operational lists prepared in Moscow, SMERSH field UKRs issued warrants for, and arrested, increasing numbers of important German, Hungarian, Romanian, and other foreign military figures and Russian émigrés and sent them to the capital. But most of the arrived prisoners belonged to the category of spetskontingent (special contingent)—that is, they were detainees held in investigation prisons without arrest warrants. Many members of the spetskontingent were not considered to have been formally arrested until 1950–52, when MGB investigators finally wrote arrest warrants before trials.
Nevertheless, all foreign prisoners were listed as POWs in Moscow investigation prisons. Lacking its own investigation prisons, GUKR SMERSH used two of the above-mentioned NKGB prisons: the Interior, or Lubyanka, located inside the NKGB/SMERSH building in the center of Moscow; and Lefortovo, a reconstructed palace built in the early 18th century in a remote district of Moscow. Prisoners who did not cooperate during interrogations, either by not giving the testimony that the SMERSH investigators wanted to hear, or by not admitting guilt, were transferred to the third investigation prison, Sukhanovka, where conditions were extremely harsh. SMERSH also had a section in the enormous Butyrka Prison belonging to the NKVD, which remained an NKVD/MVD investigation prison until 1950, when it was transferred to the MGB. Considered POWs, the SMERSH arrestees received the same food ration as those held in the NKVD POW camps. To encourage good behavior, investigators gave cooperative prisoners an officer’s ration, which was much better than a soldier’s.
Typically, Abakumov or one of his deputies would initially interrogate a newly arrived prisoner, often for several hours. Following this, a prisoner was commonly placed under the jurisdiction of Sergei Kartashov’s 2nd or Aleksandr Leonov’s 6th (Investigation) GUKR Department. In Kartashov’s department German-speaking prisoners were questioned by investigators of its 1st Section.
Investigation of German POWs
No information about the 1st Section of the 2nd GUKR Department has ever been published. I was able to establish the names of officers of this section by studying personal files of foreign prisoners at the Russian State Military (formerly Special) Archive (RGVA). As already mentioned, two files were opened for each SMERSH, NKGB, or NKVD prisoner under investigation: the Investigation File and the Prison File.
The Investigation File contained primarily transcripts (protokoly in Russian) of interrogations. When the investigation was closed, the accused had to look through this file, which was also presented at the trial after the chief USSR prosecutor or his deputy concluded that the investigation was finished. After conviction, the prisoner’s Investigation File went to the MGB/KGB (now FSB) Central Archive for storage. These files relevant to political cases are still essentially unavailable to researchers. Only the closest relatives of the rehabilitated former political convicts are allowed to read these files, and a researcher can examine an Investigation File at the FSB Central Archive only with notarized permission from direct relatives.
The Prison File contained documents about the prisoner’s arrest and his life in investigation prisons, including orders for transfers within the same prison or to other prisons. The file also included investigators’ instructions on special forms to prison personnel (a separate NKGB/MGB department not subordinate to the investigation departments) to bring the prisoner in for interrogation. The final documents in the Prison File contained the investigator’s conclusion concerning the charges to be brought against the prisoner in court and the applicable punishment (before the trial!). The investigator’s superiors and Abakumov or his deputy also signed the investigator’s conclusion.
Most GUKR SMERSH prisoners were tried by the Special Board (OSO) of the NKVD (and, from November 1946 onwards, of the MGB), or by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court. After the trial, the convicted person was transferred to NKVD jurisdiction. The Prison File now became a Personal File, containing copies of trial and sentencing documents as well as the investigator’s recommendation as to whether the convict should be sent to a punishment prison or a labor camp. The Personal File went with the convict, and documents about his prison or camp life were added. Upon a prisoner’s release the Personal File was archived. The Personal Files of foreign prisoners arrested by SMERSH, the NKGB, and NKVD ended up in the Russian State Military Archive in Moscow. If a convict died in prison, his or her Personal File went to the archive of the camp or prison’s local NKVD/MVD or MGB (in the case of special prisons) branch.
According to the materials in the files, when a prisoner arrived at the 2nd GUKR SMERSH Department, at first its head Kartashov or his deputy, Nikolai Burashnikov, inspected the file and, frequently, also interrogated the detainee. Kartashov was known as an extremely capable and efficient officer.3 No information is available on Burashnikov except his name surfaced in documents of the late 1930s, when he headed the 3rd Department (counterintelligence) of the NKVD’s Moscow Branch.4 After being interrogated by Kartashov or Burashnikov, the prisoner came under the jurisdiction of the 1st Section, headed by Lieutenant Colonel Yakov Sverchuk, or of other sections of the department. Sverchuk worked in the NKVD from 1938 onwards.
Kartashov, Burashnikov, and Sverchuk, and other investigators who did not know German, conducted interrogations through their young colleagues—Boris Solovov, Oleg Bubnov, Daniil Kopelyansky, Vladimir Smirnitsky, Anna Stesnova, and others. All of these young officers were professional German translators who had graduated just before World War II. Abakumov affectionately dubbed his favorite, Solovov, ‘the teacher’ because Solovov wore glasses.5 He personally recommended Solovov as a translator for the International Nuremberg Trial. SMERSH prisoners had a different opinion of Solovov. One was the former German counselor in Ploesti (Romania), Count Ruediger Adelmann, remembered him as ‘a very intelligent but mean person.’6 Frequently, Solovov’s friend Pavel Grishaev, an investigator in the 4th Department and then the 6th Department, also served as a translator at interrogations. In 1946 Grishaev, like Solovov, was sent to the International Nuremberg Trial as a translator.