83. A. Muranov and V. Zavenyagin, Sud nad sud’yami (osobaya papka Ulrikha) (Kazan: Kazan, 1993), 60–61 (in Russian).
84 Kudryavtsev and Trusov, Politicheskaya yustitsiya, 329–35.
85. Leonid Mlechin, in Vladimir Kozlov, Neizvestnyi SSSR. Protivostoyanie naroda i vlasti 1953–1985 (Moscow: Olma-Press, 2006), 13–14 (in Russian).
86. Andrei Sukhomlinov, Kto vy, Lavrentii Beria? (Moscow: Detektiv-Press, 2004), 449–52 (in Russian).
87. Sergei Kremlev [apparently, a pen name made up from the word ‘the Kremlin’], Beria. Luchshii menedger XX veka (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2008) (in Russian); the second edition was published in 2011.
88. Vadim Abramov, Abakumov—nachal’nik SMERSHa—Vzlyot i padenie lyubimtsa Stalina (Moscow: Yauza, 2005), 205–6 (in Russian).
89. Oleg Smyslov, ‘Rytsar’ GB,’ Rossia, June 9-15, 2005, 8 (in Russian).
90. Biography of S. G. Bannikov (1921-1989) in Kokurin and Petrov, Lubyanka, 254.
91. Stanislav Lekarev, ‘Umer genii rossiiskoi kontrrazvedki,’ Argumenty nedeli, no. 22 (56), May 31, 2007, http://www.argumenti.ru/espionage/2007/06/34624/, retrieved September 4, 2011.
92. Biography of F. D. Bobkov (b. 1925) in Kokurin and Petrov, Lubyanka, 256–7.
93. The current FSB structure in Andrei Soldatov and Irina Bogoraz, The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and The Enduring Legacy of the KGB (New York: Public Affairs, 2010), 243–6.
94. Molyakov’s interview in Igor Korotchenko, ‘Voennaya kontrrazvedka ne dopustit vooruzhennogo myatezha,’ Nezavisimaya gazeta, June 19, 1997 (in Russian).
95. ‘Obrazovan Vysshii Ofitserskii Sovet,’ http://rusk.ru/st.php?idar=103107, retrieved September 4, 2011.
96. Vladimir Petrishchev, ‘Rossii nuzhna svoya ideya,’ Vremya novostei, No. 98, June 6, 2005 (in Russian).
97. ‘Kadroviku prezidenta porucheno sosredotochit’sya na nagradakh,’ Pravo. ru, October 15, 2009 (in Russian), http://www.pravo.ru/news/view/18706, retrieved September 4, 2011.
98. ‘V Moskve otkryt monument slavy voennoi kontrrazvedki,’ Interfax-AVN, May 5, 2005 (in Russian), http://www.chekist.ru/?news_id=742, retrieved March 16, 2011.
Part II. The Roots of SMERSH
CHAPTER 2
Stalin’s Ruling Mechanism
The years 1938 through 1941, during which Stalin consolidated his power and gained new territory in Europe, are critical to an understanding of Soviet military counterintelligence and particularly SMERSH. In order to gain total control of the Soviet Union, Stalin made sophisticated and extra-legal use of the Communist Party structure, the secret services, the judicial system, and the legislative system on all levels.
The Politburo: Stalin and His Confidants
By late 1938, with the purges of the Great Terror over, the situation within the Party leadership stabilized. By 1939 the Politburo, the Communist Party ruling body, was Stalin’s ‘instrument of personal rule’.1 From March 1939 to March 1946, it consisted of the same nine full members and at first two, then five candidate (non-voting) members:
| Members | Candidates |
|---|---|
| Joseph Stalin | Lavrentii Beria |
| Vyacheslav Molotov | Nikolai Shvernik |
| Andrei Andreev | Georgii Malenkov (after Feb. 1941) |
| Lazar Kaganovich | Aleksandr Shcherbakov (after Feb. 1941) |
| Mikhail Kalinin | Nikolai Voznesensky (after Feb. 1941) |
| Nikita Khrushchev | |
| Anastas Mikoyan | |
| Kliment Voroshilov | |
| Andrei Zhdanov |
The real Politburo was a small group of five or six of Stalin’s most trusted confidants.2 He called them ‘the five’ or ‘the six’, and together they usually worked late into the night. However, Stalin carefully kept up the fiction of a functioning government, officially publishing Politburo decisions as decisions of either the entire Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (the highest legislative body in the Soviet Union), or the Council of Commissars (known after 1946 as the Council of Ministers). Politburo meetings often continued after working hours at Stalin’s ‘nearby’ dacha in the Moscow suburbs. Stalin, especially at his dacha, ‘liked to use foul language (matershchina). And all members of his circle followed his example’.3
At meetings in Stalin’s office on the second floor of the triangular eighteenth-century Yellow Palace in the Kremlin, he guided the discussion of matters prepared by the Politburo’s secretariat. Non-members like Viktor Abakumov were invited to present important issues. The Politburo voted on each question discussed, and Stalin’s secretariat head Aleksandr Poskrebyshev telephoned absent members to record their votes.4 As did most Soviet people, those in Stalin’s inner circle called him ‘Khozyain’, meaning ‘Boss’ or ‘Master’, and stood at attention even while talking to him on the phone.5 Or they said ‘HE’, making it clear the significance of ‘HE’, as Lev Mekhlis, a secretary of Stalin, did: ‘It’s always pleasant to hear how HE speaks.’6
Stalin decided many important questions, especially regarding the NKVD and the Red Army, alone or only with Molotov, and he frequently gave orders orally rather than in writing. For instance, Stalin didn’t put his signature on the General Staff plans he approved, even when changes were made.7 This allowed him to place blame on the generals when things went wrong.
Total Secrecy
Most Politburo decisions were distributed in secrecy, and the details of how the system worked were discovered only in the late 1990s. Stalin’s secretariat, known also as ‘Stalin’s cabinet’, was originally called the Secret Department, and then, from 1934 on, the Special (Osobyi) Sector of the CC.8 It was a relatively large organization—in 1930, there were 103 members, while the whole CC staff comprised 375 people.
The Special Sector consisted of seven sections, including the Secret Archive of the CC, which later became known as the Presidential Archive. Assistants to CC secretaries (in 1941, Stalin, Andreev, Malenkov, Zhdanov, and Aleksandr Shcherbakov) and their staffs constituted the first section. Of this group, Stalin’s assistant Poskrebyshev was extremely powerful. He prepared all documents for Stalin and controlled his calendar. According to a contemporary, Poskrebyshev was ‘a short, stout man… very clever and had a phenomenal memory. He never forgot anything, remembering every detail’.9 Poskrebyshev headed the Special Sector from 1934 until 1952, despite the fact that in 1940 the NKVD, apparently with Stalin’s approval, arrested his first wife, most likely because of a distant family relationship to Trotsky. She was executed in October 1941. In early 1953, Stalin accused Poskrebyshev of losing secret documents and replaced him with his deputy.10 But after Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953, Poskrebyshev was released, and he immediately retired.