The three-part organization of security services—the 3rd NKO Directorate, NKGB and NKVD—from February to July 1941 is remarkably similar to that Stalin established in April 1943, when for the Soviets the war started to turn from the defensive to offensive. In fact, this three-part structure made sense only if the Red Army was on the offensive. Military counterintelligence was moving with the front line and made the first arrests of real and potential anti-Soviet enemies in the new territories. Then the NKGB continued this job in the occupied territories, while the NKVD was primarily in charge of policing and keeping the arrested enemies and POWs. Most probably, the change in the year 1941 was part of Stalin’s general preparation for moving Soviet troops westward beyond the newly acquired territories.
Notes
1. Details in Yevgenii Gnedin, Vykhod iz labirinta (Moscow: Memorial, 1994), 11–20 (in Russian). Molotov (1890–1986) headed the Foreign Affairs Commissariat from May 1939 to May 1949.
2. Details in Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin and the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1939–1941 (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1988), 246–60.
3. ‘Moscow’s Week,’ Time, October 9, 1939.
4. Dimitrov and Stalin, 1934–1943: Letters from the Soviet Archives, edited by Alexandr Dallin and F. I. Firsov (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 151–2. Similar Stalin’s political views are discussed in V. L. Doroshenko, I. V. Pavlova, and R. C. Raack, ‘Ne mif: rech’ Stalina 19 avgusta 1939 goda,’ Voprosy istorii 8 (2005): 3–20 (in Russian).
5. Amnon Sella, ‘Red Army Doctrine and Training on the Eve of the Second World War,’ Europe-Asia Studies 27, no. 2 (April 1975), 245–64.
6. Cited in Aleksandr Shitov, ‘Stalin khotel bol’shoi i dolgoi voiny,’ Novaya gazeta. ‘Pravda Gulaga,’ no. 7, June 16, 2010 (in Russian), http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2010/gulag07/00.html, retrieved September 4, 2011. 2010.
7. NKVD Order No. 001064, dated September 8, 1939. Document No. 29, in Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 1 (1), 70–73. I am using the spelling ‘Belorussia’ and ‘Belorussian,’ as it was used in the Soviet Union, and not the current spelling ‘Belarus’ and ‘Belarusian’.
8. NKVD Directive, dated September 15, 1939. Document No. 33, in ibid., 79–81.
9. Details in Mikhail Mel’tyukhov, Sovetsko-pol’skie voiny (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2004), 463–566 (in Russian).
10. Heinz Guderian, Vospominaniya soldata (Smolensk: Rusich, 1999), 114 (in Russian, translated from the German). On the cooperation of the NKVD and Gestapo see Hans Schafranek, Zwischen NKWD und Gestapo. Die Auslieferung deutscher und osterreichischer Antifaschisten aus der Sowietunion und Nazideutschland 1937–1941 (Frankfurt/Main: ISP–Verlag, 1990).
11. Merkulov’s report to Beria, dated September 28, 1939. Document No. 42, in Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, 1 (1), 96.
12. NKVD Instruction No. 1042/B, dated March 20, 1940. Document No. 78, in ibid., 165–66.
13. Politburo decision P13/144, dated March 5, 1940. Document No. 1, in Katyn. Mart 1940 g.—sentyabr’ 2000 g. Rasstrel. Sud’by zhivykh. Ekho Katyni. Dokumenty, edited by N. S. Lebedeva, N. Petrosyan, B. Woszcynski et al., 43–4 (Moscow: Ves’ Mir, 2001) (in Russian).
14. Dmitrii Tokarev, former head of the Kalinin NKVD Directorate, a statement on March 20, 1991. Katyn. Dokumenty zbrodni. Tom 2. Zagłada marzec—czerwiec 1940, edited by W. Materski, B. Woszcyński, N. Lebiediewa, and N. Pietrosowa (Warszawa: Wydawn ‘TRIO,’ 1998), 432–70.
15. Nikita Petrov (Memorial, Moscow), in Igor Mel’nikov, ‘Kto povinen v smerti tysyach pol’skikh grazhdan,’ Belarus’ segodnya, December 18, 2008 (in Russian), http://www.sb.by/post/78592, retrieved September 5, 2011.
16. Beria’s report, dated December 12, 1940 (from the Presidential Archive), in Nataliya Lebedeva, ‘Chetveryi razdel Pol’shi,’ Novaya gazeta, no. 102, September 16, 2009, http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2009/102/00.html, retrieved September 5, 2011.
17. NKVD report, dated January 22, 1942, in Nikita Petrov, Istoriya imperii ‘Gulag.’ Glava 9 (in Russian), http://www.pseudology.org/GULAG/Glava09.htm, retrieved September 5, 2011.
18. Politburo decisions P34/332 and P34/333. Announced as the Joint Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet and TsK VKP(b), dated August 17, 1941.
19. Document No. 87, in Istoriya stalinskogo GULAGa. Konets 1920-kh—pervaya polovina 1950-kh godov. Tom 5. Spetspereselentsy v SSSR, edited by T. V. Tsarevsaya-Dyakina, 324–5 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004) (in Russian).
20. Details in Wladislaw Anders, An Army in Exile (London: MacMillan & Co., 1949).
21. V. M. Berezhkov, Kak ya stal perevodchikom Stalina (Moscow: DEM, 1993), 48 (in Russian).
22. Molotov’s speech at the session of the USSR Supreme Council on October 31, 1940. Pravda, November 1, 1940 (in Russian).
23. Molotov’s note dated November 26, 1939, published in Izvestia, no. 273 (7043), November 27, 1939 (in Russian).
24. Quoted in M. I. Meltyukhov, ‘Ideologicheskie dokumenty maiya-iyunya 1941 goda o sobytiyakh vtoroi mirovoi voiny,’ in Drugaya voina: 1939-1945 (Moscow: RGGU, 1996), 76-105 (in Russian).
25. Page 171 in V. A. Novobranets, ‘Nakanune voiny,’ Znamya, No. 6 (1990), 165–192 (in Russian).
26. N. N. Voronov, Na sluzhbe voennoi (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1963), 136 (in Russian).
27. Quoted in Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy, 113.
28. Note 33 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR ‘SMERSH.’ 1939–1946, edited by V. N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov, and N. S. Plotnikova, 569 (Moscow: Materik, 2006) (in Russian).
29. Joint NKO and NKVD Order No. 003/0093, dated January 24, 1940, in Klim Degtyarev and Aleksandr Kolpakidi, SMERSH (Moscow: Eksmo, 2009), 106 (in Russian).
30. Ibid., 106–7.
31. Anatolii Tsyganok, ‘Mify i pravda o Sovetsko-Finlyandskoi voine,’ Polit.ru, February 8, 2006 (in Russian), http://www.polit.ru/analytics/2006/02/08/finn.html, retrieved September 4, 2011.
32. N. S. Khrushchev, Vospominaniya. Kniga 1 (Moscow: Moskovskie Novosti, 1999), 258 (in Russian).
33. Quoted in Yulian Semenov, Nenapisannye romany, Chapter 15, http://virlib.ru/read_book.php?page=18&file_path=books/9/book04207.gz, retrieved September 5, 2011.
34. For instance, Stalin and the Soviet-Finnish War, 1939, translated by Tatyana Sokokina, edited by Ye. N. Kulkov (London: F. Cass, 2002).