The only difference was the that OKR SMERSH organizations had ‘sections’ instead of ‘departments’ and the responsibilities of the 3rd Department in UKR SMERSH units was divided between the 3rd and 4th sections in OKR SMERSH units with investigations being carried out by a separate Investigative Section.
The 1st Department of the GUKR SMERSH was in charge of counterintelligence within the Red Army command. Operational officers were assigned to all military units from the battalion level upward.32 The 1st Department coordinated all the information from secret informers and also controlled the political officers within the Red Army. Colonel Ivan Gorgonov, head of the 1st Department, previously headed the 10th UOO Department, which administrated the work of the front OOs.
The 2nd Department was in charge of working with foreign POWs and of ‘filtering’ Soviet servicemen who had been POWs.33 Its head, Colonel Sergei Kartashov, who had been working in military counterintelligence since 1937, was extremely efficient; he had a phenomenal memory and remembered hundreds of detainees’ names and all the details of their cases. The department was also responsible for collecting intelligence and sending SMERSH agents to areas immediately behind enemy lines.
To identify important people among prisoners, especially intelligence officers among German POWs, operatives of the 2nd departments depended on German informers. Nicola Sinevirsky wrote that ‘the Germans informed on one another very willingly. In our work with POWs we learned that even by offering them cigarettes and promising them liberty, one in ten would do a job for us’.34 Sinevirsky gives an example: ‘Hans had been a driver in the Abwehr of the Middle Group Army Headquarters. He could identify a number of German spies, which explained why SMERSH had dragged him from one stockade to another… The first day, he recognized and identified seven spies. By SMERSH standards, he did an excellent job and was rewarded with generous rations of tinned meat, white bread, and chocolate.’
In January 1945, Abakumov proudly wrote to Beria:
From September 1, 1943, to January 1, 1945, the SMERSH organs of the fronts and military districts recruited 697 former enemy agents and used them to search for German spies and saboteurs. They helped to arrest 703 German spies and saboteurs.
At present, the SMERSH organs are using 396 agent-identifiers to find enemy agents… I have already reported to Comrade Stalin on the matter described above.35
Information about the capture and interrogation of important prisoners was cabled to Moscow. Abakumov or his deputy would review the information and decide whether the prisoner should be sent to the capital. These prisoners were investigated by the 2nd Department’s Investigation Unit, but sometimes the 4th Department became involved too. If the case was significant enough for prosecution, the 6th Department would also become involved. Some prisoners were considered so important that they were kept in Moscow investigation prisons until 1951–52, when they were finally sentenced.
In the field, the 2nd departments, which were also known as operations departments, worked in cooperation with the units of the NKVD rear guard troops. They also did the work of the NKGB in liberated Soviet territory before the NKGB staff members arrived. In large formations, these detachments were known as the SMERSH Military Police. ‘The first step always taken by the Operations Department of SMERSH was to arrest all the organized enemies of the Soviet Union,’ wrote Sinevirsky, who worked as a translator in the 3rd Section of the 2nd Department of the UKR SMERSH of the 4th Ukrainian Front.36 ‘This included every leading member of any political party opposing communism…SMERSH men had been ordered also to arrest all active elements in any democratic parties.’
The 3rd Department of GUKR SMERSH was in charge both of identifying German agents working behind the Red Army’s front, and of radio games. In the field, officers or branches of the 3rd Department were assigned to all military units from the corps and higher.37 To find German agents, field officers cooperated with the 2nd departments of UKRs of the fronts and the 4th sections of OKRs of the armies.38 To search for an important German agent, an operational ‘Search File’ was created by the 1st Section of the 3rd GUKR Department in Moscow and sent to field branches.
Colonel Georgii Utekhin, who before the war headed the Counterintelligence Department in the NKGB Leningrad Branch, ran the 3rd GUKR SMERSH Department until late September 1943, when he was appointed head of the 4th Department. Colonel Vladimir Baryshnikov, former head of the 2nd Section in charge of radio games in the 3rd Department, replaced Utekhin. Dmitrii Tarasov, a member of the radio games team, vividly described Vladimir Baryshnikov in his memoirs:
Vladimir Yakovlevich [Baryshnikov] was an example of an armchair analyst or scientist. He was short and… solidly built. However… he was a little bit pudgy and always had a round-shouldered posture. While sitting at the desk, his face appeared to be drowning in papers because he was extremely short-sighted but refused to use eyeglasses. He had a soft and complaisant temper, was benevolent and intelligent, had tact, and doubtless was a man of high principle.39
The 4th Department of GUKR SMERSH was charged with ‘finding the channels of penetration of enemy agents into the units and institutions of the Red Army’40 and sending Soviet agents into German territory to collect counterintelligence on training schools for German agents. It consisted of only twenty-five men, divided into two sections. The first section trained agents to be sent behind the front lines and coordinated their work.41 Its deputy head, Major S. V. Chestneishy, wrote cover stories—‘legends’ in Chekist jargon—for Soviet agents. The second section, headed by Captain Andrei Okunev, collected and analyzed information about Nazi intelligence activity and German schools for intelligence agents. Baryshnikov’s and Okunev’s sections frequently cooperated in conducting radio games.
Colonel Pyotr Timofeev, former head of the 1st Department (capturing German spies) of the 2nd NKVD Directorate (counterintelligence), headed up the 4th GUKR SMERSH Department until late September 1943. Tarasov described Timofeev: ‘Pyotr Petrovich, called “PP” among his subordinates, was a man of medium height, stocky, with a massive shaved-bare head and big features in a long face. He was cheerful and energetic. He was considered an indisputable authority.’42 In September 1943, Utekhin replaced Timofeev, who became one of Abakumov’s assistants.
Branches of the 4th Department in the field were responsible for interrogating and investigating newly captured Germans. Their officers, junior and senior investigators, were assigned to all formations from the corps level and above. They also investigated cases of Russian servicemen and repatriated POWs arrested on suspicion of anti-Soviet activity. With the advance of the Soviet army to the West, branches of the 4th Department interrogated more and more German and other foreign prisoners.
The 3rd and 4th GUKR SMERSH departments also collaborated with the 1st (Foreign Intelligence, headed by Pavel Fitin) and 4th (Terror and Sabotage, headed by Pavel Sudoplatov) Directorates of the NKGB. The GUKR SMERSH, the NKVD, the Navy Commissariat, and partisan detachments were obliged to share military intelligence information they obtained in German-occupied territory, as well as information about enemy agents, with the Intelligence Directorate (RU) of the Red Army’s General Staff. This agency was organized on April 19, 1943, at the same time as SMERSH, and was headed by Lieutenant General Fyodor Kuznetsov.43 The RU did not collect foreign intelligence; this remained a function of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the Red Army (headed by Ivan Il’ichev), which received it from such sources as the network of Soviet agents in Switzerland (the Rote Drei group, a part of the Red Orchestra). The other GRU rezidents (heads of spy networks) sent information from England, Turkey, Sweden, USA, and Japan.