First Chief Directorate
The First Main Directorate 'of the Committee for State Security under the USSR council of ministers' was the organization responsible for foreign operations and intelligence activities by providing for the training and management of covert agents, intelligence collection administration, and the acquisition of foreign and domestic political, scientific and technical intelligence for the Soviet Union.
The First Chief Directorate was formed within the KGB directorate in 1954, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union became the Foreign Intelligence Service.
The primary foreign intelligence service in Russia and the Soviet Union has been the GRU, a military intelligence organization and special operations force.
History of foreign intelligence in the Soviet Union
From the beginning, foreign intelligence played an important role in Soviet foreign policy. In the Soviet Union, foreign intelligence was formally formed in 1920 as a foreign department of Cheka, during the Russian Civil War of 1918–1920. On December 19, 1918, the Russian Communist Party Central Committee Bureau decided to combine Cheka front formations and the Military Control Units, which were controlled by the Military Revolutionary Committee, and responsible for counter-intelligence activities, into one organ that was named Cheka Special Section. The head of the Special Section was Mikhail Sergeyevich Kedrov. The Special Section's task was to run human intelligence: to gather political and military intelligence behind enemy lines, and expose and neutralize counter-revolutionary elements in the Red Army. At the beginning of 1920, the Cheka Special Section had a War Information Bureau, which conducted political, military, scientific and technical intelligence in surrounding countries. WIB headquarters was located in Kharkiv and was divided in two sections: Western and Southern. Each section had six groups: registration, personal, technical, finance, law, and organization.WIB had its own internal stations, in Kiev and Odessa. The first had the so-called national section—Polish, Jewish and German.
On December 20, 1920, Felix Dzerzhinsky created the Foreign Department, made up of the Management office, chancellery, agents department, visas bureau and foreign sections. In 1922, after the creation of the State Political Directorate and connecting it with People's Commisariat for Internal Affairs of the Russian SFSR, foreign intelligence was conducted by the GPU Foreign Department, and between December 1923 and July 1934 by the Foreign Department of Joint State Political Directorate or OGPU. In July 1934, OGPU was reincorporated into NKVD of the Soviet Union, and renamed the Main Directorate of State Security. Until October 9, 1936, INO was operated inside the GUGB organization as one of its departments. Then, for conspiracy purposes, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Nikolai Yezhov, in his order #00362 had introduced a numeration of departments in the GUGB organization, hence Foreign Department or INO of the GUGB became GUGB's Department 7, and later Department 5. By 1941, foreign intelligence was given the highest status and it was enlarged to directorate. The name was changed from INO to INU—Inostrannoye Upravleniye, Foreign Directorate. During the following years, Soviet security and intelligence organs went through frequent organizational changes. From February to July 1941, foreign intelligence was the responsibility of the recently created new administration the People's Commissariat of State Security and was working in its structure as a 1st Directorate and, after the July 1941 organizational changes, as a 1st Directorate of the People's Commisariat for Internal Affairs.
It then returned to its former state. Already in April 1943, NKGB dealt with foreign intelligence as a 1st Directorate of NKGB. That state remained until 1946, when all People's Commissariats were renamed Ministries; NKVD was renamed Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the NKGB was renamed into Ministry of State Security. From 1946 to 1947, the 1st Directorate of the MGB was conducting foreign intelligence. In 1947, the GRU and MGB's 1st Directorate was moved to the recently created foreign intelligence agency called the Committee of Information. In the summer of 1948, the military personnel in KI were returned to the Soviet military to reconstitute a foreign military intelligence arm of the GRU. KI sections dealing with the new East Bloc and Soviet émigrés were returned to the MGB in late 1948. In 1951, the KI returned to the MGB, as a First Chief Directorate of the Ministry of State Security.
After the death of longtime Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in March 1953, Lavrenty Beria took over control of the security and intelligence organs, disbanded the MGB and its existing tasks were given to the Ministry of Internal Affairs which he was in control of. In the MVD, the foreign intelligence was conducted by the Second Chief Directorate and following the creation of KGB foreign intelligence was conducted by the First Chief Directorate of the Committee for State Security or KGB, subordinate to the council of ministers of the USSR.
Chiefs of foreign intelligence
The first chief of the Soviet foreign intelligence service, Cheka foreign department, was Yakov Davydov. He headed the foreign department until late 1921, when he was replaced by longtime revolutionary Solomon Mogilevsky. He led INO only for few months, as in 1925 he died in a plane crash.He was replaced by Mikhail Trilisser, also a revolutionary. Trilisser specialized in tracing secret enemy informers and political spies inside the Bolshevik party. Before becoming INO chief, he led its Section of Western and Eastern Europe. Under Trilisser's management, foreign intelligence had become big professionally and respected by their opponent's services. This period characterized the enlisting of foreign agents, wide use of emigrants for intelligence tasks and organization of a network of independent agents. Trilisser himself was very active, personally traveling to Berlin and Paris for meetings with important agents.
Trilisser left his position in 1930, and was replaced by Artur Artuzov, the former chief of department of counter-intelligence and main initiator of the Trust Operation. In 1936, Artuzov was replaced by then State Security Commissar 2nd rank Abram Slutsky. Slutsky was an active participant of the October Revolution and Russian Civil War. He had started work in security organs in 1920 by joining Cheka and later working in OGPU, Economic Department. Then in 1931, he went to serve in OGPU's Foreign Department, and often left the country for Germany, France and Spain, where he participated in the Spanish Civil War. In February 1938, Slutsky was invited to the office of GUGB head komkor Mikhail Frinovsky, where he was poisoned and died.
Slutsky was replaced by Zelman Passov, but soon he was arrested and murdered, his successor Sergey Spigelglas had met with the same fate, and by the end of 1938, he was arrested and murdered. The next chief of Foreign Department for only three weeks was the experienced NKVD officer Pavel Sudoplatov. Before he became INO head in May, 1938, on Stalin's direct order, he personally assassinated the Ukrainian nationalist leader Yavhen Konovalets.
Later in June 1941, Sudoplatov was placed in charge of the NKVD's Special Missions Directorate, whose principal task was to carry out sabotage operations behind enemy lines in wartime. During World War II, his unit helped organize guerrilla bands, and other secret behind-the-lines units for sabotage and assassinations, to fight the Nazis. In February, 1944, Lavrenty Beria named Pavel Sudoplatov to also head the newly formed Department S, which united both GRU and NKVD intelligence work on the atomic bomb; he was also given a management role in the Soviet atomic effort, to help with coordination.
After Sudoplatov left his post, he was replaced by Vladimir Dekanozov, before becoming INO head, Dekanozov was Deputy Chairman of the Georgian Council of People's Commissars and after he left his post in 1939 and became the Soviet ambassador in Berlin.
For the next seven years, from 1939 to 1946, the chief of the foreign intelligence department was a very young NKVD officer and graduate of the first official intelligence school, Major of State Security Pavel Fitin. Fitin graduated from a program in engineering studies at the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy in 1932 after which he served in the Red Army, then became an editor for the State Publishing House of Agricultural Literature. The All-Union Communist Party selected him for a special course in foreign intelligence.
Fitin became deputy chief of the NKVD's foreign intelligence in 1938, then a year later at the age of thirty-one became chief. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service credits Fitin with rebuilding the depleted foreign intelligence department after Stalin's Great Terror. Fitin also is credited with providing ample warning of the German Invasion of 22 June 1941 that began the Great Patriotic War. Only the actual invasion saved Fitin from execution for providing the head of the NKVD, Lavrenty Beria, with information General Secretary of the CPSU, Joseph Stalin did not want to believe. Beria retained Fitin as chief of foreign intelligence until the war ended but demoted him.
From June to September 1946, the head of foreign intelligence, was Lieutenant General Pyotr Kubatkin, when he was replaced by then Lieutenant General Pyotr Fedotov. Before he became head of foreign intelligence, he was working in OGPU/GUGB counter-intelligence and 'Secret Political departments and then he headed the NKVD's counter-intelligence department. From 1949 to 1951, the head of intelligence in the Committee of Information was Sergey Savchenko. Savchenko was born in 1904 and at first he was working as a security guard. He joined Soviet security organs in 1922 and in the 1940s was a top NKVD man in Ukrainian SSR. When Andrey Vyshinsky became Minister for Foreign Affairs and the head of Committee of Information, Savchenko was his deputy and head of foreign intelligence. In 1951, he was replaced by Lt. Gen. Yevgeny Petrovich Pitovranov, longtime secret service worker. Between 1950 and 1951, he was the deputy of MGB head Viktor Abakumov.
On March 5, 1953, MVD and MGB were merged into the MVD by Lavrenty Beria and his people took over all high positions. The foreign intelligence, was given to Vasili Ryasnoy. After Lavrenty Beria was arrested, along with his people in MVD, Aleksandr Panyushkin became the head of foreign intelligence.