On March 15, Malenkov, previously deputy chairman of the Council of Commissars, was not reinstalled in the new government’s Council of Ministers. However, three days later he and Beria became full members of the Politburo. On April 30, Novikov signed the final copy of ‘his’ statement in Abakumov’s office. Apparently this document affected Malenkov’s fate, because a week later the Politburo dismissed Malenkov from his position as a Central Committee secretary. The disgrace was not complete—two weeks later he was appointed Chairman of the Special Committee for Rocket Technology, the second most important military project after the Atomic Project headed by Beria. But Malenkov was sent out of Moscow to Kazakhstan until August 1946, when he was finally appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers (i.e., Stalin’s deputy). In 1948, he was reappointed secretary of the Central Committee. However, Malenkov never forgot Stalin’s brief disfavor, and he blamed Abakumov for organizing the Aviators Case.
On Stalin’s order, during April–May 1946 the Politburo members and heads of the aviation industry periodically received Abakumov’s reports on the investigation entitled ‘Summaries of the Results of Interrogations.’46 Aleksandr Poskrebyshev, head of Stalin’s secretariat, personally sent these ‘summaries’ to the addressees. For every aviation-industry addressee, the receiving of a new ‘summary’ was a personal threat. It was clear that if he did not please the dictator, his name would eventually appear in the records of interrogations and then he would share the fate of the previous arrestees.
On May 10–11, 1946, six days after SMERSH was merged with the MGB and Abakumov became MGB Minister, the Military Collegium chaired by Vasilii Ulrikh sentenced Novikov, Shakhurin, and the three other defendants to four to seven years, and two Party functionaries to two years in prison—an unusually lenient punishment for these crimes. All of them were charged with the ‘abuse of power and negligence of duties’ (Article 193-17a). Additionally, the properties of the condemned were confiscated. Immediately after the session Ulrikh sent Stalin a copy of the verdict marked ‘Top Secret.’47
As Molotov recalled later, Novikov and Shakhurin were guilty of making technical modifications to planes ‘in violation of the Politburo’s decision to prohibit any unauthorized alterations in the design of aircraft already operational in the air force.’48 In other words, specialists were forbidden to make professional adjustments in aircraft design after the Politburo had made its decision and the perpetrators were punished as criminals. Novikov was released in 1952, while those who remained imprisoned were released soon after Stalin’s death.
Khudyakov was held in MGB investigation prisons until April 1950, when he was sentenced to death and shot, with Stalin’s approval.49 In January 1951, his wife and two children were arrested as family members of a traitor to the Motherland. The OSO of the MGB sentenced them to exile in the Krasnoyarsk Province in Siberia. After Stalin’s death they were allowed to go back to Moscow, but their former apartment was occupied by the family of an MGB officer.
Zhukov’s new appointment, shortly before his downfall, was a typical Stalin trick. Already on June 1, 1946, at a High Military Council meeting, Stalin criticized Zhukov for his behavior in Germany and accused him of attempted plotting. Zhukov was dismissed and appointed Commander of the Odessa Military District, an unimportant position. Marshal Ivan Konev replaced him as commander in chief of the Ground Troops and deputy Defense Minister. Eight days later Stalin signed an additional top-secret order denouncing Zhukov.50 Stalin, Bulganin, and Vasilevsky prepared the text accusing Zhukov even of failure to conquer Berlin in time.
However, Stalin did not order Zhukov’s arrest, possibly due to Zhukov’s popularity among war veterans. The story continued two years later when Abakumov arrested Zhukov’s former subordinates, including General Telegin, for looting and corruption, and presented Stalin with more material on Zhukov.
In Austria and Hungary
There were no conflicts between SMERSH and the NKVD in the other Soviet occupation zones. By the end of the war, troops of the 3rd Ukrainian Front, with its UKR under Pyotr Ivashutin, occupied most of Austria and established its HQ in Vienna. At the end of May 1945, the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front began being relocated from Germany to Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Five armies of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, including two Romanian armies, joined them, and on June 10, all of these troops were renamed the Central Group of Military Forces (Tsentral’naya gruppa voisk or TsGV).51
Czechoslovakia was more fortunate: by December 1, 1945, both the Soviet and American troops (the latter had occupied the western part of the country) were withdrawn from its territory. However, Czechoslovakia was not left without an oversight of Soviet security services: on April 15, 1945, Ivan Chichaev, a long-term and experienced NKVD/NKGB agent, was appointed Soviet Envoy to Prague.
The TsGV’s HQ was located in the picturesque town of Baden, 26 kilometers from Vienna, while the HQ’s branch was in Budapest. Marshal Ivan Konev became TsGV commander in chief and Supreme Commissar of Austria. In April 1946, Konev was called back to Moscow, and in May 1946, Army General Vasilii Urasov replaced Konev in Vienna. Nikolai Korolev, former head of the UKR of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, headed the Military Counterintelligence Directorate (UKR) of the TsGV (Table 27-1). For secrecy, until 1946 the whole TsGV was called ‘Konev’s outfit,’ and its UKR was known as ‘Korolev’s outfit.’52
The HQ in Baden (its mailing address was ‘Army Unit No. 32750’) occupied a former high school building in the center of the town, while the Counterintelligence Directorate was located in several neighboring villas. An operational NKVD battalion, attached to the UKR, was stationed in another part of the town.53
The basements of the UKR buildings were turned into investigation prisons. Nicholas Nagy-Talavera, a former 18-year-old prisoner who had survived previous imprisonment in Auschwitz, later recalled:
The prison in Baden was very primitive, but very carefully done, in a former sanatorium-hotel, with a basement. Upstairs were the investigation cells with the officers, and they put you down in the basement when the examination was over…
The cells were of various sizes, but always overflowing. Regardless of how big or small they were, there were always more people than there were supposed to be.54
During a 59-day investigation, Nagy-Talavera was mercilessly tortured. ‘I still have scars from this torture—burns,’ he said in 1971.55
In Budapest, the OKR SMERSH/MGB was located in a notorious building at 60 Andrássy Boulevard, previously occupied by the HQ of the dreadful Fascist Arrow Cross Party and then by the equally feared Communist security service, the AVO/AVH. Currently, this building houses a museum called ‘House of Terror,’ which reminds Hungarians of the totalitarian past of their country, and of the Soviet occupation.
In addition to the UKR of the TsGV, there were two separate operational SMERSH/MGB groups permanently based in Budapest and Vienna. These groups had names of inspectorates attached to the Allied Control Commissions (ACCs). These international commissions were established, in theory, to orchestrate the Allied control of postwar management in the defeated former Axis countries. In fact, Soviet military representatives dominated the ACCs, and the commissions became a tool of the Sovietization of the East European countries. SMERSH officers of the inspectorates were called ‘inspectors.’