The New Soviet Spy Directors
NICOLAEVSKY, BORIS I.
A noted authority on Communism attempts to analyze THE NEW SOVIET SPY DIRECTORS By Boris I. Nicolaevsky The creation of a special State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the...
...Controversial questions are referred, if necessary, to the Council of Ministers...
...The return to that policy does not yet signify a return to the tactics of that period...
...Its tentacles reached into every country in the world...
...Since that was their status for a decade before Stalin's death, the current transfer has been regarded as a purely routine administrative reorganization...
...Hence, it was quite natural for the Kremlin to determine not only to exploit conflicts which had already arisen but to provoke new ones by itself...
...Furthermore, Beria was almost the only man on the top levels of the dictatorship with whom Stalin talked comparatively frankly, reverting to his native Georgian tongue...
...The intermittent fever of purges in 1953 in Georgia is further confirmation of this...
...Far more important is the political activity aimed at influencing public opinion abroad...
...the trial of Peter Gabor, former Hungarian Minister of Internal Affairs and a Beria henchman...
...He has unquestionably been invested with tremendous plenary powers for unifying the secret operations of the three main "apparatuses...
...Serov's active role in the purges was by no means confined to the Tukhachevsky affair...
...A general staff for Communist diversionary activity in the euemy's rear has been created...
...Even minor organizations like Intourisl and VOKS (All-Union Society for Cultural Contact), which do not set themselves any independent tasks in this work, perform auxiliary functions for the main centers to which the regime assigns the direction of secret work abroad...
...What was new about the trial of Slansky et al...
...Boris Meissner lists 57 such organs which functioned between 1941 and 1953 (Europa Archiv, Frankfurt, No...
...The military police receives solid support from the heads of the Party apparatus...
...These organs, many of which were temporary, were not all of equal importance...
...The influencing of precisely these groups is the most important task of Soviet secret work abroad...
...The practice of creating special committees or "chief administrations" under the Council of Ministers is an old one...
...they lowered the latter's capacity to resist Soviet aggression...
...Serov was one of the most important Chekists who worked in Stalin's personal secretariat, under the supervision of Poskrebyshev and Malenkov (the latter having been Poskrebyshev's closest collaborator in the 1930s...
...In my opinion, however, the new State Security Committee is far more than the old Ministry of State Security (MGB) with its face lifted...
...Abakumov's disappearance, in fact, was directly connected with the Prague arrests...
...what was unquestionably involved was the very foundations of the MGB's foreign-operations policy carried out by Abakumov in 1948 and declared to constitute "wrecking" in 1951...
...Now it must be clearly understood that Soviet secret operations abroad are by no means confined to the narrow tasks of espionage, important though the latter is...
...In some form and to some extent, secret work is carried on by all Soviet organizations abroad...
...Czech sources have reported that, at the time of his arrest, Geminder tried to get the Kremlin on this direct wire, but the arresting officer would not permit him to do so...
...trials of Czech Communists connected with Slan-sky and Clementis, etc...
...The purging of Abakumov and the ensuing appointment of Ignatyev as Minister of State Security was a victory for the political line of the military-police organs and the secret-operations apparatus of the Communist party...
...Poskrebyshev's disappearance immediately after Stalin's death gave reason to suppose that Beria had destroyed him in the first few days of the confused interregnum...
...The creation of the State Security Committee means that the Soviet regime, with its fifth columns, has gone over to an offensive against the entire non-Communist world...
...In 1949-50, Beria was at the height of his power...
...There appears to be substantial evidence that it will be a far more active and dangerous institution than the earlier MGB, MVD, NKVD, OGPU and Cheka...
...Information coming from the USSR indicates that the irritation against this activity of the MGB was one of the major reasons for the creation of a well-nigh united front of all the other Soviet leaders against Beria...
...Of course, more was involved than just the sending of arms to Israel...
...These purges were one of the Soviet regime's acts of political preparation for war against the Western democracies...
...But the old policy itself has unquestionably been revived...
...with each new round, the criteria of "treason" became stricter...
...Igor Gou-zenko testified that in Canada, in 194.5-46...
...We know only that Serov was not in Beria's camp and that he is closely connected with the present leaders of the military police...
...The decisive role in unseating Beria was played by the same forces that determined Abakumov's fate: the top echelon of the Party apparatus and the military police...
...But who precisely was capable of destroying Abakumov, a henchman of Beria...
...The foreign work of the intelligence organs of the armed forces, which was reduced almost to nothing in the years of the Great Purge, expanded greatly during and, particularly, after the war...
...There has been a colossal growth not only in the size of this police, but also in its importance in the overall Soviet apparatus...
...Serov was not permitted to work in the Ministry of State Security after the war and had to be satisfied with the post of First Deputy Minister for Internal Affairs...
...The questions of Abakumov and of the Prague Trial could not, of course, pass this organ by...
...I believe that the key to this is a remark in the huge document on the organization of the Soviet "secret service" prepared for the German High Command in December 1944 on the basis of information from prisoners and defectors...
...The chief task of the entire secret work of the Soviet dictatorship became the preparation and organization of socio-political diversionary activity to disintegrate the enemy's rear...
...These are the two main forces—the old leadership of the Party apparatus and the military Chekists—which destroyed Beria...
...This last factor unquestionably played a major role in his selection for the chairmanship of the State Security Committee, whose special task is to unify and guide the work of all Soviet state-security organs abroad...
...They started in 1951-52 and were suspended after Stalin's death...
...The year 1953 saw a new struggle among these various groupings...
...A major role in that struggle was played by questions connected with the foreign work of the MGB...
...today, it has become a major force...
...This has been particularly true in recent years, since the number of full-fledged committees has been systematically reduced...
...These forms lent great mobility and flexibility to the new organs and also permitted the head of the Council of Ministers to exercise direct supervision of the committee's work...
...Vishinsky's Law of the Soviet State (Moscow, 1938) lists 11 such committees and "chief administrations" in the first months after the new Soviet Constitution took effect...
...it was a defeat for the policy pursued by Abakumov's Ministry of State Security, which operated under Beria's personal control...
...In 1936, it should be noted, Geminder had been arrested in Prague as a Comintern agent and convicted as a "Soviet spy...
...Slansky, Geminder et al...
...the newspapers provide the necessary data every day...
...The MGb's functions, however, were never confined to the territorial limits of the USSR...
...The Western press, in discussing the secret work of Soviet agents and laying special emphasis on espionage, gives its readers an incorrect perspective...
...In the postwar years, these frictions were particularly serious, and so was the resultant damage...
...Stalin's death and the general feeling of confusion strengthened Beria's position, which had necessarily been greatly shaken after the purging of Abakumov...
...Tokayev's memoirs provide some interesting information on this...
...What made such a super-MGB necessary...
...And it is precisely in the area of the MGB's foreign activity that we must seek the reason for its current "structural reform...
...The full story of the behind-the-scenes battle is not yet known...
...What distinguishes these two committees from other ministries most sharply is their "supra-jurisdictional" character: Both are organs of the Council of Ministers as a whole...
...Beria banked heavily on these relations with Stalin, but, as it turned out, Stalin proved an unfaithful ally...
...The MGB stood at the head of the principal one, but it had rivals, and this rivalry often caused damaging and disorganizing frictions...
...For all its tremendous importance, espionage occupies a completely secondary place in Soviet secret work abroad...
...Thus far, little information has been published as to its composition or its tasks, but there can be no doubt that the new organ was given its special form by reason of the special plenary powers assigned to it...
...Beria made great efforts to bring the apparat under his control, and late in 1946, after Malenkov lost the post of First Secretary of the Party Central Committee and the Secretariat came under Zhdanov's domination...
...the Minister of Defense himself is Bulganin, a Chekist for many years who during the war devoted tremendous attention to organizing and strengthening the military police...
...The plans for all the gigantic "Stalinist construction projects," adopted in 1950, were worked out by organs under Beria's jurisdiction...
...10-11, 1953...
...It would be a mistake to regard them as the absolute masters of the situation in Moscow, but they undoubtedly exert great influence, especially on the regime's secret operations abroad...
...A member of the Politburo and Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, he not merely ran all ministries concerned with the domestic policy of the regime (the MVD, MGB...
...It was headed by A. N. Poskrebyshev, Stalin's personal secretary, with Stalin himself dictating its main policy lines...
...Yet, the facts in the Beria affair do not bespeak influence on the part of the Army as a whole, but rather of the military Chekists and, above all, the Chekists in the occupation armies...
...were arrested in late November and early December 1951, and Aba-kumov's name appeared in the Soviet press for the last time in the reports of the November parade in Red Square...
...Stalin included among these "allies" not only conflicts among the various non-Communist countries but conflicts within each of those countries...
...Doubtless it was he who instigated the 1952 campaign against Beria, overthrew Abakumov, named Ignatyev Minister of State Security, and inspired the Prague Trial and the "Jewish doctors' plot...
...He headed the entire "special sector" of the NKVD, which worked on direct instructions from Stalin's personal secretariat and conducted the most important operations for the destruction of Stalin's leading opponents...
...On the eve of the April 1954 session of the Supreme Soviet, only two such full-fledged committees remained: the State Planning Committee and the Committee for Construction Affairs...
...Much has been written in the foreign press about the strengthened role of the Army in Soviet life and its influence in the struggle over Beria...
...they work out overall work plans for the other ministries in their respective spheres...
...The executed Czech Communists included people who had long been securely bound to organs under Beria's control, people long regarded as representatives of the Moscow MGB...
...was the blow struck at those who had organized assistance for the State of Israel when it was fighting for its life against the Arabs...
...It is still difficult to judge how strong its apparatus is, because its heads have not yet undergone a purge like that launched against Beria, and therefore there have not been many important defectors from its highest echelon...
...His Prague office telephone had a direct line to the Kremlin, and it was known that he received regular instructions from the top leaders of the MGB's foreign work...
...A wave of purges in the satellite parties had begun after Tito's rebellion in 1948...
...Since the Prague trial of Slansky, Geminder et al...
...In fact, the Prague arrests coincided with the disappearance of V. S. Abakumov, Minister of State Security of the Soviet Union...
...The future policy of these secret operations can easily be determined...
...The latter type (the huge majority) play a purely auxiliary role...
...Almost all the chief posts in the Political Administration of the Ministry of Defense today are held by generals of the military police (Zholtov, F. F. Kuznetsov et al...
...The name of this organ is not given very precisely in the document in question...
...there were three or four distinct secret apparatuses operating...
...Nevertheless, this apparatus is very important, and its political influence at the top levels of the Soviet regime is tremendous...
...The MGB encroached upon the activities of the other ministries, all of which, including their top leaders, were under its most careful scrutiny...
...Reports on these new trials indicate that they are being conducted in more restrained tones than the Slansky trial...
...perhaps Poskrebyshev did survive (as did his closest collaborator, Matvei Shkiryatov)—he may even be the behind-the-scenes inspirer of the policy pursued today by Khrushchev...
...however, the point is not its exact name, but the fact that such a "super-supreme" organ did exist in the apparatus of the Central Committee Secretariat...
...As far as state-security work within the USSR is concerned, the authority of the old MGB was already virtually unlimited...
...for it was Abakumov, as Minister of State Security, who was directly responsible for the policy of aiding Israel in 1948...
...Previously, the old Razvedupr (Intelligence Administration of the People's Commissariat for Defense) was almost insignificant...
...Beria succeeded temporarily: The apparat was transferred from the Foreign Section of the Central Committee Secretariat to the jurisdiction of the MGB...
...The Foreign Section of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist party, which always exerted tremendous influence on the enormous secret apparatus of the Comintern, has, since the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943, formally taken over that entire apparatus—known to foreign Communists and to the Kremlin hierarchs simply as "the apparat...
...On this issue, Beria took the risk of opposing Khrushchev, although he must have realized that behind Khrushchev's plans stood Stalin himself...
...On the other hand, Serov maintained close ties with the leaders of the Party apparatus grouped around Poskrebyshev...
...Ignatyev became Minister of State Security early in 1952...
...But Beria could not keep the apparat in his hands once Malenkov had returned to the Central Committee as First Secretary...
...The new State Security Committee, created by a decree adopted by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on March 13 and approved by the Supreme Soviet on April 27, is an organ of precisely this kind: Its position is confirmed by a special amendment to the Constitution, and its chairman is a full-fledged member of the Council of Ministers...
...From the occupation areas, this military police has extended its tentacles into the Western democracies...
...Stalin himself often gave him very responsible assignments...
...The number of such committees and "chief administrations" was always considerable, and increased particularly during the war...
...It is difficult to estimate Serov's position in the conflicts now raging in the Kremlin: Serov's past shows close collaboration with both Malenkov and Khrushchev, and new disputes always tend to produce new groupings...
...This was the Deputy Minister charged with political matters, but the Ministry itself was given jurisdiction of the non-political departments of the old unified NKVD...
...And today there is under way a process not of expansion of the MGB's role inside the USSR, but, on the contrary, of very definite contraction of the authority of the MVD as a whole and of the MGB in particular—a process of subordinating them to the direct control of the highest organs of the Party and Government...
...In passing, this work declares that in the USSR political control "of the NKVD and probably also of the NKGB" is wielded by a "section for state security and secret party control within the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist party...
...April and May saw the shooting of Patrascanu, founder of the Rumanian Communist party and leader of its right wing, the renewal of the case against Ana Pauker, and a series of trials of Rumanian Zionist leaders...
...The activity of the Czech Communists on behalf of Israel was clearly performed with the consent and the direct encouragement of Moscow...
...Serov's work during the war as deputy chief of SMERSH, the Army's secret security division, and then as political aide to the commander of the occupation armies in Germany, also strengthened his ties with the leading cadres of the military police...
...For such diversionary activity, most useful are not the Communist parties, whose influence in any given country is clearly defined, but the groups, organizations and parties which, professing to be non-Communist or even anti-Communist, nevertheless may?under the influence of Soviet secret work—take a position objectively advantageous to Soviet policy...
...Ministry of Stale Control and Ministry of Justice), but headed whole branches of state construetion, directed the mighty "atom trust," etc...
...The State Security Committee will be, therefore, an organ of the Council of Ministers charged with unifying and directing the activity of all Government organs in questions relating to state security...
...An important factor in this growth was the creation of a military police with the occupation armies, which even today is the real master of all the occupied countries...
...A noted authority on Communism attempts to analyze THE NEW SOVIET SPY DIRECTORS By Boris I. Nicolaevsky The creation of a special State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR has generally been appraised as a simple transfer of the political-police organs from the overall Ministry of Internal Affairs to an independent ministry...
...But one cannot be sure of that...
...Their resumption now indicates a return of the state-security policy to the same track along which it was roaring in the last months of Stalin's life—the course inspired by those who instigated the Slansky trial and the attempt to rig up the "Jewish doctors' plot...
...The Kremlin always conducted its secret work abroad along several lines, constructing several secret apparatuses...
...Their position varied, depending on whether their existence was confirmed by the Constitution or was based on a Government order...
...This was especially true of Bedrich Geminder, who had lived in Moscow for many years, who was Deputy General Secretary of the Czech Party and in charge of its foreign relations...
...Colonel Tokayev, a postwar Soviet defector, declares in his memoirs published in London that it was Serov who bore primary responsibility for the shooting of Tukhachevsky and his co-defendants...
...their chairmen are all full-fledged members of the Council of Ministers...
...Apart from the MGB, such main centers are the intelligence services of the armed forces and the Foreign Section of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...
...All these trials are related to the struggle among various secret "apparatuses" which led to the execution of Slansky and the purging of Abakumov...
...The MGB always played a leading role in this activity, though it never had a monopoly...
...Of the leading figures in this Party apparatus, the only one to disappear from the horizon has been Poskrebyshev—who was, judging from all available information, a really powerful man, with a strong will and great talent as an organizer and intriguer...
...This background illuminates the significance of the Supreme Soviet decree creating the Committee of State Security and appointing as its chairman the veteran Chekist, Ivan Alexandrovich Serov, Colonel-General of State Security...
...Stalin gave a precise definition of the important tasks of this work when he wrote thirty years ago: "Conflict and war among our enemies—there is our greatest ally...
...But the position of committees which are included in the list of ministries given in Article 70 of the Soviet Constitution is sometimes even higher than that of regular ministries...
...was held with the direct participation of Soviet stage-managers, it must be regarded as an outward manifestation of the struggle among various Moscow groups for jurisdiction over secret work outside the USSR...
...In March 1951, Khrushchev suffered a defeat on the "agro-city" issue, but it was at about that time that the decisive struggle began between Beria and Khrushchev, which ended in Beria's execution in December 1953...
...Abakumov's name never again appeared in the press, even in the spring of 1953 when Beria for a short time was at the very pinnacle of power...
...The most important of the guideposts to this struggle is the trial of Slansky, Clementis, Geminder and other leaders of the Czech Communist party...
...Yet, in 1951-52 all these actions were pronounced criminal and the organizers of the aid to Israel were shot...
...It is more than probable that, for this very reason, Beria maintained a reserved attitude toward Serov...
...The key to the new organization's importance is the fact that it is called the State Security Committee and not, as before, the Ministry of State Security...
...But we can recognize the great importance of the dispute surrounding the "consolidation of the kolkhozes" and the resettlement of peasants from small villages to large "agro-cities...
...Furthermore, Serov was one of the creators of the political and police sectors of the new, "post-Yezhov" Army apparatus, which has lasted to this day...
...they coordinate, unify and direct, with the explicit right to interfere in the work of the other ministries...
...All such conflicts introduced elements of disorganization into the non-Communist world...
Vol. 37 • June 1954 • No. 25
