SMERSH


SMERSH was an umbrella organization for three independent counter-intelligence agencies in the Red Army formed in late 1942 or even earlier, but officially announced only on 14 April 1943. The name SMERSH was coined by Joseph Stalin. The formal justification for its creation was to subvert the attempts by Nazi German forces to infiltrate the Red Army on the Eastern Front.
The official statute of SMERSH listed the following tasks to be performed by the organisation: counter-intelligence, counter-terrorism, preventing any other activity of foreign intelligence in the Red Army; fighting "anti-Soviet elements" in the Red Army; protection of the front lines against penetration by spies and "anti-Soviet elements"; investigating traitors, deserters, and self-inflicted wounds in the Red Army; and checking military and civil personnel returning from captivity.
The organisation was officially in existence until 4 May 1946, when its duties were transferred back to the Ministry of State Security. The head of the agency throughout its existence was Viktor Abakumov, who rose to become Minister of State Security in the postwar years.

Name

Joseph Stalin coined the name СМЕРШ as a portmanteau of the Russian-language phrase Смерть шпионам. Originally focused on combating German spies infiltrating the Soviet military, the organization quickly expanded its mandate: to find and eliminate any subversive elements—hence Stalin's inclusive name for it.

History

Until 3 February 1941, the 4th Department of the Main Directorate of State Security —the most important security body within the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs —was responsible for the Soviet Armed Forces' military counter-intelligence. On that date, the Special Section's 12 Sections and one Investigation Unit were separated from GUGB NKVD. The official liquidation of OO GUGB within NKVD was announced on 12 February by a joint order № 00151/003 of NKVD and NKGB USSR. The rest of GUGB was abolished and staff was moved to newly created People's Commissariat for State Security. Departments of former GUGB were renamed Directorates. For example, former Foreign Department became Foreign Directorate ; political police represented by Secret Political Department became Secret Political Directorate, and so on. The former GUGB 4th Department was split into three sections. One section, which handled military counter-intelligence in NKVD troops became 3rd NKVD Department or OKR, the chief of OKR NKVD was Aleksander Belyanov, Commissar State Security 3rd rank. On 25 February 1941, Viktor Abakumov became NKVD deputy Commissar in charge of supervising this and several other departments.
The second and most significant part went to the Defense Commissariat Soviet Armed Forces becoming its 3rd Directorate or. The 3rd NKO Directorate took over most of the 4th GUGB Department Sections and was headed by division commissar Anatolii Mikheev, the former and last OO GUGB NKVD chief. The third part of former OO became the People's Commissariat of the Navy 3rd Directorate. The head of navy KI was Andrei Petrov, a state security captain.

Operation Barbarossa

After the 22 June 1941 German invasion of the USSR, Stalin on 17 July, as Chairman of State Defense Committee, signed special decree №187 / ss, by which military counterintelligence was returned to the NKVD as a Directorate of Special Departments or UOO, with Viktor Abakumov as chief. UOO on every level was given much more power and a freer hand in decision making than at any time since the creation of Cheka. Also on 19 July, by the order of NKVD №00940, the UOO was moved from Moscow to the city of Kuibyshev. Navy 3rd Directorate was still under Navy control, till 11 January 1942 when it was incorporated into Directorate of Special Departments.
On 2 July 1941, NKGB USSR was incorporated back into the NKVD structure. NKGB did not return as GUGB, but as separate units. The NKVD structure organisation from 31 July 1941 shows that there are independent Directorates as in the 1st: foreign intelligence, 2nd: domestic KI, and so on. There is no GUGB within NKVD after its official liquidation in the beginning of February 1941.
After the situation on the Russian fronts became more stable, on 14 April 1943, the State Defense Committee, chaired by Stalin, ordered another split of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs into three organisations:
By decision of the Politburo of the CPSU nr. P 40/91People's Commissariat for State Security or was created for the second time. It was based on NKVD's Directorates. The most important of them were: 1st INU, 2nd KRU NKVD 2nd Department was transferred as NKGB 6th Directorate, NKVD Transportation Directorate was absorbed as NKGB 3rd Directorate and NKVD 4th Directorate was moved to NKGB with the same number. For detailed organization see NKGB. "Regulations of the People's Commissariat of State Security" were approved by SNK in order № 621-191ss from 2 June 1943.
After losing most of the operational units to the NKGB, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was still a very powerful government apparatus. It was responsible for public order in USSR by using heavily armed police in each corner of the country, running the largest penal labour camps under the Gulag Directorate, POWs camps and NKVD troops with loyal and well-equipped soldiers, that by the end of the war the numbers of NKVD troops were 1½ million strong with their own air force, armored and cavalry units.
Resolution No. 414-138 ss ordered the NKVD's Directorate of Special Departments to be split into three separate military counterintelligence units, within the NKO, Navy Commissariat and NKVD, respectively, as has been done in early 1941. The same order that created GUKR SMERSH within the NKO created a parallel organisation within the Navy Commissariat, the NKVMF. This organization was known as the Navy UKR SMERSH and headed by Peter Gladkov and his two deputies Aleksei Lebedev and Sergei Dukhovich. In reality, Gladkov reported to Abakumov, by then deputy Commissar of the NKO, and Stalin's deputy. Formally Gladkov was subordinate to his superior People's Commissar Nikolay Gerasimovich Kuznetsov, head of Navy.
OKR SMERSH of the NKVD USSR was subordinate to Lavrentiy Beria, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. The NKVD OKR SMERSH was headed by Semion Yukhimovich and later V. Smirnov.

Duties

The GKO officially created SMERSH to ensure the Soviet Union's security from internal political threats and foreign espionage, although it carried out a wide variety of other tasks between 1943 and 1946 as well. SMERSH's counterintelligence operations included seeking and destroying counter revolutionaries, finding and interrogating enemy agents, hunting Soviet agents who had not returned by the appointed date, and evaluating the usefulness of captured enemy documents. SMERSH also took an active role in the affairs of the Red Army by ensuring the good quality of Red Army facilities, improving discipline, eliminating poor leaders, and preventing desertion, self-inflicted wounds, panic, sabotage and poor discipline. Other SMERSH activities included: exposing collaborators in areas recently captured by the Red Army; exposing and punishing economic crimes such as black market activity; protecting secret material and headquarters from enemy agents and saboteurs; and determining the "patriotism" of those captured, encircled, and those who had returned from foreign countries. SMERSH operatives also controlled partisan operations behind German lines and evaluated the partisans' loyalty to the Soviet Union. SMERSH would then arrest and neutralise anti-Soviet partisans, saboteurs, spies, conspirators, mutineers, deserters, and people designated as traitors and criminal elements at the combat front.
The strategic directorate focused on counter-espionage wet operations and counter-insurgency pacification operations that answered directly to Stalin. In March 1946, SMERSH Chief Directorate was resubordinated to the People's Commissariat of Military Forces. The NKVS was later reorganized into the Ministry of Military Forces soon thereafter, and SMERSH was officially discontinued 4 May 1946.

Other activities

SMERSH activities included "filtering" the soldiers and forced labourers recovered from captivity. SMERSH was actively involved in the capture of Soviet citizens who had been active in anti-communist armed groups fighting on the side of Nazi Germany such as the Russian Liberation Army, the Cossack Corps of Pyotr Krasnov, and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
As the war concluded, SMERSH was given the assignment of finding Adolf Hitler and, if possible, capturing him alive or recovering his body. Red Army officers and SMERSH agents reportedly found Hitler's partially burned corpse near the Führerbunker after his suicide and conducted an investigation to confirm his death and identify the remains that were secretly buried at SMERSH headquarters in Magdeburg until April 1970, when they were exhumed, completely cremated, and dumped.
SMERSH fought the Armia Krajowa and post-war organisations participating e.g. in the Augustów roundup.

GUKR SMERSH HQ Organization

A separate attachment to GKO decision No. 3222-ss/ov detailed the organisation of SMERSH and its branches in the Army:
  • Defense Commissariat – headed by Defence Commissar Marshal of the Soviet Union – Joseph Stalin
  • Main Counterintelligence Directorate headed by Commissar of State Security 2nd rank Viktor Abakumov.
  • * first deputy: Commissar of State Security 2nd rank – Nikolai Selivanovsky
  • * deputy: Commissar of State Security 3nd rank – Pavel Meshik
  • * deputy: State Security Commissar – Isai Babich
  • * deputy for staff affairs: State Security Colonel – Ivan Vradii
  • Secretariat – Secretarial work within GUKR SMERSH headed by State Security Colonel Ivan Chernov
  • 1st Department – Counterintelligence within the Red Army command. Officers assigned to all military units, from the battalion level upward. Also control of political officers within Red Army – headed by State Security Colonel Ivan Gorgonov 29 April 1943 – 27 May 1946
  • 2nd Department – CI Operations within foreign POWs, and also filtering of Soviet armed forces officers and servicemen who had been POWs. Those investigations were result of Order No. 270 and Order No. 227. Also collection of intelligence information from areas immediately behind enemy lines headed by State Security Colonel Sergei Kartashov 29 April 1943 – May 1946
  • 3rd Department – was in charge both of identifying German agents working behind the Red Army front, and of radio games. In the field, officers or branches of the 3rd Dep. were assigned to all military units from the corps and higher. Also cooperation with 2nd dep's of UKRs of fronts and the 4th Sections of OKRs of the armies, State Security Colonel Georgii Utekhin Apr/Sep 1943
  • 4th Department – Counterintelligence behind enemy lines. Taking measures like finding the channels of penetration of enemy agents into the units and institutions of the Red Army. Sending qualified counterintelligence operatives and turned German agents to the occupied German territory to penetrate their intelligence organizations, and German administration. 4th GUKR Dep frequently cooperated with NKGB Directorates like 1st, 2nd run by Pyotr Fedotov and especially with 4th Directorate run by famous penetrator of Manhattan Project, Pavel Sudoplatov. Headed by State Security Colonel Pyotr Timofeev Apr/Sep 1943
  • 5th Department – was in charge of supervising UKRs of fronts. It also maintained military field courts, headed by State Security Colonel Dimitrii Zenichev, and from July 1944 by State Security Colonel Andrei Frolov
  • 6th Department – This unit was not present in a UKRs and OKRs structures. Unit existed only in the GUKR SMERSH headquarters in Moscow. Investigators of 6th Dep worked very closely with 2nd GUKR Dep officers. In charge of was State Security Lieutenant Colonel Aleksandr Leonov. Likhachev headed SMERSH group at the Nuremberg Trials. Also cases prepared by the 6th Department were tried by the Military Collegium or the OSO of the NKVD USSR.
  • 7th Department – in charge of statistics and archival data. Also responsible for surveillance of high level military personnel in the Central Committee and the Defense and the Navy Commissariats, as well as those involved in secret work who were sent abroad. Dep 7th was head by State Security Colonel Aleksandr Sidorov
At the end of the Second World War, American forces examining captured German intelligence sources determined that SMERSH was composed of six directorates, six departments, and three other branches. Directorates conducted operations involving agents on the "frontline" of the intelligence war whereas departments received and interpreted the information coming in from agents and enemy intercepts. SMERSH also ran three other groups: the Komendatura, which guarded and managed SMERSH installations and prisoners; the Troika, which acted as a military court and could administer punishment without defense from the accused; and the Administrative Bureau and Secretariat, which acted as the personal staff of the SMERSH commander.
Below is the organization of SMERSH based on German Intelligence. The second chart shows another way SMERSH may have been organized.