Military counterintelligence FSB. Office of Military Counterintelligence

December 19 is celebrated in the Russian Federation as the Day military counterintelligence. This structure is engaged in activities that are very important for the security of the country and the armed forces: “specialists” identify individuals who cooperate with foreign intelligence services, fight terrorism, crime and corruption, drug addiction and other deviant phenomena in the army ranks. The current date for the Russian military counterintelligence has great importance- 99 years have passed since the creation on December 19, 1918, of special departments within the Cheka of the RSFSR. Almost a century has passed, but military counterintelligence officers are still colloquially called "specialists".

The path of military counterintelligence in Russia was thorny and difficult. This service has repeatedly changed its name, has undergone various organizational changes but the essence of her work remained unchanged. Despite the fact that the first departments involved in counterintelligence in the army appeared in the Russian Empire in 1911, the true development of military counterintelligence in our country is entirely associated with Soviet period domestic . The revolution needed protection, and the Soviet authorities took care of the organization of structures capable of fighting saboteurs and spies already in 1918. First, the Military Department of the Cheka and the Military Control were created. A certain number of tsarist officers who had previously served in the counterintelligence departments of the army were recruited into the Military Control.

However, the duality in the system of organizing the management of counterintelligence did not contribute to its effectiveness. The proposal to eliminate duality was made by Viktor Eduardovich Kingisepp - old Bolshevik, a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, seconded to the Cheka. Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky heeded Kingisepp's arguments. Already in December 1918. A Special Department of the Cheka was created under the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR.

Mikhail Sergeevich Kedrov became the first head of the Special Department of the Cheka. A Bolshevik with solid pre-revolutionary experience, Kedrov was included in the board of the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs of the RSFSR back in November 1917, becoming the commissar for the demobilization of the Russian army. In September 1918, Kedrov headed the Military Department of the Cheka, so there was nothing surprising in the fact that he was entrusted with the leadership of the military counterintelligence agencies. On January 1, 1919, Kedrov issued an order ordering the merger of the Military Departments of the Cheka and Military Control within the Special Department of the Cheka. The duality of the military counterintelligence system was eliminated.

The most reliable personnel were sent to serve in special departments, preference was given to proven communists. The first congress of employees of special departments even adopted a special resolution in which it emphasized that the requirements for party seniority for Chekists should be higher than for other Soviet party, military and government employees. In 1919, the chairman of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky, became the head of the Special Department of the Cheka concurrently. Thus, he took over the direct leadership of the military counterintelligence agencies. Special departments of the Cheka played a crucial role in the fight against spies and saboteurs during the Civil War. During the Civil War, counterintelligence officers liquidated a large number of conspiracies in which opponents of the Soviet regime participated.

An interesting episode in the history of military counterintelligence is the transfer of security duties to the Special Department of the Cheka state border RSFSR, which followed in November 1920. From July 1920 to July 1922 The special department of the Cheka was headed by Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky, who then replaced Dzerzhinsky as head of the OGPU. In January 1922, the Secret Operations Directorate (SOU) was created, which in July 1922 was divided into two departments - counterintelligence, responsible for general counterintelligence in the country and the fight against counterrevolutionary organizations, and a special one, responsible for counterintelligence work in the army and in the navy. It was in the 1920s-1930s that the military counterintelligence agencies were further strengthened. In 1934, the Special Department became part of the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) of the NKVD of the USSR as the 5th Department (since 1936), and in 1938, after the abolition of the GUGB, the 2nd Department was created on the basis of the 5th Department. Directorate of special departments of the NKVD of the USSR. However, in 1938, at the initiative of Lavrenty Beria, the Main Directorate of State Security was recreated. In its composition, the 4th Special Department of the GUGB, which is responsible for military counterintelligence, was also revived.

by the most serious test for military counterintelligence officers was the Great Patriotic War. In 1941, the Directorate of Special Departments was recreated, which included the 3rd Directorate of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR and the Special Department of the NKVD of the USSR. On April 19, 1943, the legendary SMERSH Main Directorate of Counterintelligence of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR was created by a decree of the USSR State Defense Committee.

The slogan "Death to spies!" was chosen as its name. SMERSH reported directly to People's Commissar of Defense Joseph Stalin, and Viktor Semenovich Abakumov, who had previously held the position of Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR and Head of the Directorate of Special Departments of the NKVD of the USSR, and before that headed the Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR for Rostov region. In addition to the GUKR "SMERSH" of the People's Commissariat of Defense, its own SMERSH department was created in the People's Commissariat of the USSR Navy, and the SMERSH department was created in the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR under the leadership of Semyon Yukhimovich. For better secrecy, all SMERSH operatives were ordered to wear the uniform of the troops in which they served.

The SMERSH bodies were entrusted with the responsibility of combating spies of enemy intelligence, combating desertion and deliberate self-mutilation at the front, combating abuses by command personnel, and war crimes. The very abbreviation SMERSH terrified not only the enemy, but also criminals and offenders in the ranks of the Red Army, deserters and traitors of all stripes. As the occupied territories are liberated Soviet Union, the SMERSH authorities also began to clarify the events that took place during the occupation, including identifying persons who collaborated with the Nazi occupation authorities. It was the SMERSH bodies that played the main role in identifying and detaining many war criminals - policemen, punishers and their accomplices from among Soviet citizens. Today, in some publications, SMERSH organs are shown exclusively as ruthless "punishers" who allegedly shot their own soldiers in the back and persecuted Soviet military personnel for the smallest violations, sometimes on trumped-up charges.

Of course, in the activities of SMERSH, like any other structure, there were mistakes and excesses, and, given the specifics, these mistakes could lead to broken destinies and cost someone their life. But blaming the entire SMERSH for these mistakes and even crimes is unacceptable. The Smershevites fought in their hands against the Nazi invaders, policemen, collaborators, participated in the liquidation of gangs of criminals and deserters who operated in forest areas, in rural areas and liberated cities. The contribution of SMERSH to the restoration of Soviet power, law and order in the liberated territories of the Soviet Union is invaluable. Many employees of counterintelligence "SMERSH" died in battles with the enemy, fell in the line of duty in the rear. For example, during the battles for the liberation of Belarus, 236 SMERSH employees were killed and another 136 employees went missing. SMERSH operatives served on average for three to four months, after which they dropped out due to death on a combat mission or due to a wound. SMERSH employees Senior Lieutenant Pyotr Anfimovich Zhidkov, Lieutenant Grigory Mikhailovich Kravtsov, Lieutenant Mikhail Petrovich Krygin, Lieutenant Vasily Mikhailovich Chebotarev were posthumously awarded the high title of Heroes of the Soviet Union. But a lot of Smershevites did not receive gold stars, although they fully deserved them - the authorities were not particularly generous with awards to counterintelligence officers.

Group photo of soldiers and officers of the SMERSH counterintelligence department of the USSR of the 70th army in Berlin

After defeating Nazi Germany counterintelligence "SMERSH" was engaged in the study and filtering of soldiers and officers returning from German captivity. In May 1946, the SMERSH bodies were disbanded, special departments were revived on their basis, transferred to the jurisdiction of the USSR Ministry of State Security. Subsequently, special departments retained their functions as part of the USSR State Security Committee. On March 18, 1954, the Third Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR was created as part of the KGB, which was responsible for military counterintelligence and the activities of special departments. From 1960 to 1982 it was called the Third Directorate, and in 1982 the status of the Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR was returned. Special departments were created in all military districts and fleets. AT Soviet troops ah, stationed outside the country, the Directorates of Special Departments of the GSVG (Group of Soviet Forces in Germany), SGV (Northern Group of Forces in Poland), TsGV (Central Group of Forces in Czechoslovakia), YuGV (Southern Group of Forces in Hungary) were created. A separate Directorate of Special Departments operated in the Strategic Missile Forces, and in 1983 the Directorate of Special Departments was created, which was responsible for counterintelligence work in Internal Troops Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR.

February 1974 to July 14, 1987 The Third Directorate was headed by Lieutenant General (since 1985 - Colonel General) Nikolai Alekseevich Dushin (1921-2001). He joined the Red Army in 1940, after graduating from the Stalingrad Military-Political School he served as a company political instructor, commander of a rifle company on the Far Eastern Front, and in 1943 he was transferred to the SMERSH military counterintelligence agencies. Nikolai Dushin served in the structures of military counterintelligence all his life - he devoted almost half a century to special departments. From December 1960 to June 1964, Nikolai Alekseevich headed the Directorate of Special Departments for the GSVG, then from June 1964 to August 1970. was the head of the 1st department of the Third Directorate of the KGB of the USSR. In 1987, Dushin was removed from his post - allegedly in connection with the revealed violations of the work of special departments in military units on Far East. In fact, apparently, the 66-year-old Colonel General fell under the unfolding flywheel of "cleansing" the state security agencies and the armed forces of the USSR from patriots - communists. Recall that it was in 1987-1989. the "liberation" of the Soviet power structures from the "old cadres" of the Stalinist conscription took place at an accelerated pace, in which M.S. Gorbachev and his entourage could see the danger to their plans for "perestroika" and the collapse of the Soviet state.

AT Soviet time"specialists" worked in every major military unit of the Soviet Army and Navy. AT peaceful conditions they were entrusted with the duty of monitoring the moral, psychological and ideological situation in military collectives. Military counterintelligence officers played a very important role during the participation of the Soviet Union in the armed conflict in Afghanistan. Many employees of military counterintelligence went through the Afghan war, participated in hostilities, in secret operations against the Mujahideen. These skills were useful to them and the younger generation of military counterintelligence officers already in the post-Soviet era, when former USSR a number of armed conflicts broke out.

Many people today know the name of Admiral German Alekseevich Ugryumov - Hero of the Russian Federation. In honor of German Ugryumov, a ship of the Caspian Flotilla (in which the officer began his service), streets in Astrakhan, Vladivostok, Grozny are named. A native of the military counterintelligence of the Navy, in which he served from 1975 to 1998, in the late 1990s German Ugryumov joined the central apparatus of the FSB of the Russian Federation - to the post of first deputy head of the military counterintelligence department of the FSB of the Russian Federation, led the activities of the military counterintelligence of the Russian Navy. In November 1999, German Ugryumov headed the Department for the Protection of the Constitutional System and the Fight against Terrorism of the FSB of the Russian Federation. He planned and developed numerous operations to combat terrorists in the North Caucasus, and on January 21, 2001, Vice Admiral Ugryumov was simultaneously appointed head of the Regional operational headquarters in the North Caucasus. Unfortunately, on May 31, 2001, at only the age of 52, German Ugryumov died suddenly in his office on the territory of the headquarters of the Russian military group in the village of Khankala (ChR).

Today, employees of military counterintelligence agencies, no matter how society treats them, continue to carry out their difficult and dangerous service to protect national security. Russian state. On this significant day for them, it remains only to congratulate the military counterintelligence officers and service veterans on the holiday, to wish them more success and fewer losses.

Are you into cinema? Eagerly catching the news of the film industry and waiting for the next high-profile blockbuster? Then you have come to the right place, because here we have selected a lot of videos on this fascinating and truly immense topic. Movies and cartoons should be divided into three main age categories - children's, teenage and adult.

Cartoons and films for children are most often some kind of fantasy and adventure. Simple and easily digestible life lessons, a pretty atmosphere or a storyboard (if it is a cartoon brainchild) contribute to the manifestation of children's interest. Most of these cartoons are pretty stupid, because they are made by people who do not have the slightest desire to work, but simply want to make money on your desire to distract the child for an hour or two. Such moments, in fact, are even dangerous for a fragile children's brain and can harm it, and therefore we don’t have such frank slag. We have collected for you both short and not very short cartoons that will not only distract your child, but also teach him to love himself, the world and the people around him. Even in children's cartoons, the plot and memorable characters and dialogues are important, because even the best thought will not be accepted from a person you do not trust. That is why we set out to select the most outstanding cartoons. Both modern animations and old Soviet or American classics.

Movies and cartoons for teenagers for the most part have the same problem as children's cartoons. They are also often made hastily lazy directors, and it is sometimes incredibly difficult to select something good among them. However, we did our best and put on display several hundred magnificent works that may be of interest not only to teenagers, but also to adults. Small interesting short films, which sometimes even win awards at various animation exhibitions, can be of interest to absolutely anyone.

And, of course, where without adult short films. There is no outright violence or vulgar scenes, but there are a lot of non-childish topics that can make you think about them for hours. Various questions of life interesting dialogues, and sometimes even a very badly made action. There is everything that an adult needs to have a good time and relax after hard working days, stretching out in a comfortable position with a cup of hot tea.

You should also not forget about trailers for upcoming films or cartoons, because such short videos are sometimes more interesting than the work itself. A good trailer is also part of cinematic art. Many people like to watch them, take them apart frame by frame and wonder about what awaits them in the work itself. The site even has entire sections that are devoted to the analysis of trailers for popular films.

On our site you can easily choose for yourself a movie or cartoon according to your taste, which will reward you positive emotions from viewing and will remain in your memory for a long time.

Almost immediately after the creation of the first regular military units in Russia, the question arose of their counterintelligence support and maintenance of law and order in the army. The first special services in Russia appeared in the 17th century. However, no specific specialization among the Russian knights of the cloak and dagger for a long time did not have.

The Order of Secret Affairs, the Preobrazhensky Order, the Secret Chancellery and the Secret Expedition were engaged in a little bit of everything: the fight against conspiracies against the monarch, intelligence and counterintelligence, the suppression of corruption and embezzlement. Often, kings and high-ranking officials chose special agents to carry out secret missions, who were not officially related to special services at all. Although the plots of films about midshipmen are largely fiction, the very style of solving important state problems in the 18th century is largely conveyed in them correctly.

“Special services in the Russian Empire were not professional for centuries, they developed on a semi-diplomatic basis,” Mikhail Lyubimov, a veteran of the Soviet special services, writer and publicist, said in an interview with RT, adding that until the beginning of the 20th century, the problem of counterintelligence support Russian army has not been properly resolved.

“In 1812, Barclay de Tolly created his own Special Office, which dealt with military intelligence and counterintelligence, but after the return of troops from Paris, it was disbanded. Also in the 19th century, for some time, as part of the Russian army, there was military police, which has proven itself well, but it did not operate for long and only on part of the country's territory, ”Alexander Kolpakidi, a writer and historian of the special services, told RT. A little later, according to the expert, the issues of military counterintelligence were transferred to the gendarmes, who were not at all specialists in it.

Only in 1903, as part of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Army, on the initiative of the Minister of War, General Alexei Kuropatkin, an Intelligence Department was created, which monitored, in particular, foreign military attachés. This division has been reorganized several times. It managed to visit both the St. Petersburg City Counterintelligence Department and the Counterintelligence Department of the Main Directorate of the General Staff. In parallel with it, the Military Espionage Intelligence Division existed in 1904-1908 as part of the Police Department, but was disbanded due to duplication of functions.

In 1912, the military authorities decided to expand the counterintelligence structure. Corresponding departments arose in the St. Petersburg, Moscow, Vilna, Warsaw, Kiev, Odessa, Tiflis, Irkutsk and Khabarovsk military districts. With the outbreak of the First World War, the bodies of military counterintelligence were repeatedly reorganized. Employees in them were recruited mainly from the composition of the Separate Corps of Gendarmes.

“In all this work, there was amateurism, a lack of understanding why this was needed at all. Spies were caught only from time to time, yielding in this matter to the enemy. The leaders of the special services themselves later admitted that things were not going well for them, and tried to attribute everything to the peculiarities of the Russian character, who allegedly disliked intelligence work. People today read Akunin, watch, excuse me, stupid TV shows and think that everything was so, that in tsarist Russia were brilliant intelligence agencies. But this is not the case at all,” Alexander Kolpakidi emphasized.

After February Revolution the counterintelligence units of the police, the gendarme corps and the St. Petersburg military district were defeated, but the Provisional Government left officers loyal to itself in the service. In March 1917, the work of the army military counterintelligence agencies was restored.

After October revolution the counterintelligence system has lost the remnants of unity. It was dealt with in parallel by the military, political departments, and in January - March 1918 - by the counterintelligence bureau of the Cheka, recruited from tsarist officers, and then defeated by sailors from the same emergency commission.

On the defense of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army

In January-February 1918, the Red Army (RKKA) was created in Soviet Russia. In April of the same year, the remnants of the old tsarist military counterintelligence agencies were planned to be transferred from the army to the Cheka, but this was opposed by Leon Trotsky.

On May 8, the All-Russian Main Headquarters of the Red Army was established, the structure of which implied the existence of a separate body of military counterintelligence - the registration service. And on May 12, the Supreme Military Council of the RSFSR adopted a directive on the creation of departments to combat espionage at all headquarters of the Red Army. In parallel, in July of the same year, a military sub-department was nevertheless created as part of the Cheka.

“Military counterintelligence in 1918 did not particularly show itself at first. Military specialists were recruited from the tsarist General Staff, who helped create the structure, but they themselves did not have necessary experience”, Alexander Kolpakidi emphasized. On December 19, 1918, the bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) decided to unite the counterintelligence units of the army and the Cheka into a single system - the Special Department of the Cheka under the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR.

“The decision was due to the fact that enemy agents penetrated the army counterintelligence agencies. The military did not like the idea, but they had to obey, ”Kolpakidi explained. According to the expert, the main role in the development of military counterintelligence was played not by central bodies, but by employees of special departments in the field. Enthusiasts came to them, creating units literally out of the blue.

“White intelligence and counterintelligence often outplayed the red one. The war was class. Red scouts recruited agents among the rank and file, while white scouts recruited at headquarters. In the film “His Excellency’s Adjutant”, the situation is shown in many ways very accurately,” Kolpakidi said.

After the end of the Civil War, military counterintelligence, according to the expert, worked quite effectively. Despite some excesses such as theft of military equipment and isolated riots, control was established over the troops, special officers began to regularly catch spies.

In 1930, as a result of the reorganization of the OGPU, military counterintelligence as a separate body was liquidated, merging into the unified Special Department. But in 1936 it was restored as an autonomous unit within the Main Directorate of State Security of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. In 1938-1941, the special services were repeatedly reformed, but the WRC constantly maintained its independent status.

"Death to Spies!"

At the beginning of 1941, the Special Department was withdrawn from the NKVD and transferred to the army, but immediately after the start of the Great Patriotic War, in July of the same year, the special officers were returned to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs.

During Battle of Stalingrad, according to experts, a number of facts were revealed indicating that the work of military counterintelligence as part of the NKVD was not effective enough, and in April-May 1943, separate units of the People's Commissariats of Defense, Navy and Internal Affairs were created on the basis of special departments , called "Death to spies!", Or Smersh for short.

“They played a colossal role in the Great Patriotic War,” Kolpakidi stressed.

“During the war years, Smersh became the most effective intelligence service in the world, outdoing Abwehr and the RSHA,” Anatoly Tereshchenko, colonel of military counterintelligence of the KGB of the USSR, historian and writer, told RT.

According to Alexander Kolpakidi, the myths that former royal cadres were allegedly enlisted in Smersh en masse have no real basis. “In 1938, against the background of repressions in the internal affairs bodies, new personnel really came en masse to the military counterintelligence. But those who served under the tsar were weeded out, ”the expert noted.

In addition, well-established front-line officers were often invited to serve in Smersh. And the military counterintelligence of the People's Commissariat of Defense worked very effectively, exposing over 30 thousand German agents, as well as 10 thousand saboteurs and terrorists during the war years.

“It often happened that Smersh, who had his own front-line agents in the enemy’s intelligence schools, wiped his nose in matters of obtaining information even for foreign intelligence,” Anatoly Tereshchenko emphasized.

War after war

For special officers, the war did not end in May 1945. According to experts, military counterintelligence operatives had to catch German spies and saboteurs left in our rear by the Nazis, and carry out filtration measures among prisoners of war.

From the composition of the People's Commissariat of Defense, military counterintelligence was transferred to the Ministry of State Security, and in 1954 to the KGB. According to Alexander Kolpakidi, it has become one of the key divisions of the state security agencies.

“I must say that the VRC coped with its tasks perfectly. In the USSR, she perfectly controlled the army, even in the most troubled times, which cannot be said about other countries of the socialist camp, ”Kolpakidi emphasized.

According to experts, in the post-war period, military counterintelligence not only monitored the state of affairs in the army, but also participated in suppressing the activities of traitors from among the employees of the Soviet special services recruited by the US CIA and British intelligence.

“I gave more than 30 years of my life to military counterintelligence. During this time, only the unit in which I served revealed more than a dozen CIA spies,” Anatoly Tereshchenko shared.

“The modern military counterintelligence of Russia is the successor of the traditions of the Soviet military counterintelligence. Judging by all the signs, it works very efficiently,” said Alexander Kolpakidi.

“We still meet with our young colleagues today. They are making great strides in exposing foreign spies. Military counterintelligence is necessary for the country. They say that without intelligence, an army is blind. So, without counterintelligence, it is generally defenseless, ”concluded Anatoly Tereshchenko.

Intelligence and counterintelligence in Russia exist for as many years as it exists Russian statehood. Intelligence was with Svyatoslav and with, with Mikhail Kutuzov and with the heroic defenders of Sevastopol. But there were no real, systemic intelligence services in Russia until the clouds of the First World War began to gather over Europe.

At the beginning of the century, it could not have gone unnoticed by Russia and the world community as a whole that Germany was too obviously building up its muscles in the Krupp military factories and other Ruhr enterprises. Austria-Hungary also supported her in this. The intelligence activities of these countries in Russia have also intensified. German firms owned many banks in it and almost all electrical engineering, chemical industry, many metallurgical plants ... The German and Austrian embassies, without too much disguise, directed the work of their intelligence networks in Poland, the Baltic provinces, the St. Petersburg military district and in the capital itself.

In 1903, professional counterintelligence was created in Russia.

The Main Directorate of the General Staff played the main role in this. At the same time, the experience and skills accumulated by such departments as the police department of the then Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as the well-known "okhrana" and the gendarmerie were also taken into account ...

In the summer of 1911, a system of counterintelligence agencies of Russia was already created.

The first body of state security after October 1917 was the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Sabotage, in everyday life - the "Cheka" headed by F. E. Dzerzhinsky. Subsequently, it was repeatedly transformed. Its name also changed - VChK, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, again NKVD, MVD, MGB, KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, simply KGB of the USSR ...

At first, the Cheka was engaged in precisely those cases that were indicated in its name: it was necessary to restore order in the cities, stop the robberies and robbery that had begun, take under guard everything that could be defeated and plundered, cope with the sabotage of old officials who did not want to recognize the new commissars .

The former tsarist general N. M. Potapov played an important role in the development of intelligence and counterintelligence in Soviet Russia.

In a short time, operations were carried out to liquidate such organizations as the Union of Real Assistance, the Military League, the Officers United Organization, the White Cross, the Order of the Romanovs, the Sokolniki Military Organization, the Union for the Struggle against the Bolsheviks and sending troops to Kaledin.

One of the most high-profile operations carried out by the then inexperienced Russian counterintelligence officers was the elimination of the "Conspiracy of Ambassadors", which was headed by the British diplomatic representative in Russia Lockhart, the French ambassador Noulens, american ambassador Francis and Consul Poole, the English military attache Hill, the head of the French military mission, General Lavergne, and the English intelligence officer of "Odessa origin", international adventurer Sidney Reilly. A feature of this operation was the introduction of Cheka officers Jan Buikis (“Schmidchen”) and Jan Sprogis into the ranks of the conspirators. This technique was successfully used by the Chekists in the future, although the exposure of the participant threatened him with inevitable death ...

In the summer of 1918, V. Borovsky, Commissar for Press Affairs, was killed in Petrograd by unknown people. On the same day, August 30, the "people's socialist" Leonid Kanegisser killed the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Uritsky, and in Moscow, Lenin was seriously wounded by several pistol bullets after speaking at a rally in front of the workers of the Michelson plant.

These attempts served as a justification for the deployment of the "Red Terror" in the country, during which several thousand representatives of the so-called former ruling classes were shot.

In the autumn of 1919, the "underground anarchists", united with some Socialist-Revolutionaries and with the participation of outright criminals, staged an explosion in the mansion of Countess Uvarova in Leontievsky Lane, which housed the Moscow City Party Committee. Eleven people died then. This time, almost all the participants in the conspiracy were captured by the Chekists.

During the years of the civil war and for a long time after it, the scourge of almost all large and small settlements became banditry.

With great difficulty, the Moscow Chekists managed to liquidate most of the gangs operating in Moscow.

In the dispersal of gangs in Moscow, the subsequently known counterintelligence officers F. Martynov and E. Evdokimov distinguished themselves. One of shock troops commanded by I. Likhachev, the future director of the automobile plant, which now bears his name, and the minister.

Until July 1918, not only communists served in the Cheka, but also their then allies, the Left Social Revolutionaries.

In order to disrupt the Brest Peace, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries resorted to a monstrous provocation. On the instructions of the Social Revolutionary Aleksandrovich, then deputy chairman of the Cheka, his employees Y. Blyumkin and N. Andreev entered the building of the German embassy and killed Ambassador Mirbakh. This served as a signal for the beginning of the Left SR rebellion, timed to coincide with the opening of the next Congress of Soviets at the Bolshoi Theater. The rebellion was put down. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries failed to break the Brest Peace. It was annulled after the November Revolution in Germany.

One of the greatest successes of counterintelligence was the identification and elimination of the so-called "National Center" in the capital and its military organization- Volunteer Army of the Moscow Region.

Thousands of people took part in the conspiracy, they were supposed to raise an armed rebellion when Denikin's army approached Moscow in the fall of 1919.

It was very important in the conditions of the civil war to organize counteraction to enemy reconnaissance in the military units and institutions of the Red Army. This work was carried out by a purely army institution, the so-called Voenkontrol and the military Cheka. On their basis, the Special Departments that exist to this day were created. The first head of the Special Department was the prominent Bolshevik M.S. Kedrov. Subsequently, the chairman of the Cheka, F. Dzerzhinsky, became the head of the Special Department concurrently, and I. Pavlunovsky and V. Avanesov became his deputies.

For services during the Civil War, the military counterintelligence was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

The reorganization also affected other functions of the Cheka. Foreign intelligence of the Cheka was formed - a foreign department of the Cheka was created (INO, later the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR, now the Foreign Intelligence Service - SVR RF) and a counterintelligence department - KRO, which was headed by A. Kh. Artuzov for many years.

Artuzov had the ability to construct multi-way combinations associated with deep penetration into the enemy's plans, taking into account his strengths and weaknesses. He knew how to select and raise cadres of counterintelligence officers.

Among the closest assistants and employees of Artuzov were V. Styrne, R. Pilyar, A. Fedorov, G. Syroezhkin and many other outstanding personalities.

Operations "Trust" and "Syndicate-2" carried out under the leadership of Artuzov were included in all textbooks on the history of intelligence and counterintelligence. Until now, they are unmatched in scope and effectiveness. With their help, the activities of the counter-revolutionary emigration and the underground were largely paralyzed, brought to Soviet territory and neutralized large enemy figures - Boris Savinkov and Sidney Reilly.

Subsequently, Artuzov successfully led the foreign department -INO, was the deputy chief of the Intelligence Department of the General Staff of the Red Army. It was he who, acutely sensing the inevitable approach of the Second World War and the involvement of the USSR in it, sent Richard Sorge to Japan, Sandor Rado to Switzerland, laid the foundations of the intelligence network in Germany, which went down in history under the name of the Red Chapel.

After the civil war, the Cheka was transformed into the State political administration(GPU) as part of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. With the formation of the USSR, the GPU was transformed into the United State Political Directorate (OGPU) already under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.

F. Dzerzhinsky became the chairman of the OGPU, and V. Menzhinsky became his deputy and then successor.

The times were difficult. Not only individual agents or groups were sent into the country - numerous, mobile and well-armed gangs invaded the territory of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus from abroad.

They killed border guards, fighters of small garrisons, civilians, robbed savings banks and Soviet institutions, burned houses. The gangs of Savinkov's associate Colonel "Serge" Pavlovsky, as well as the gangs of Bulak-Balakhovich, Tyutyunik, and many others, were distinguished by particular cruelty.

They were equipped with everything necessary by foreign centers.

Former white generals and officers founded the paramilitary organization "Russian All-Military Union" (ROVS) in Paris, its nominal head was Baron P. Wrangel, the actual leader was the energetic and still young General A. Kutepov. ROVS had branches in many countries of Europe and Asia, its number sometimes reached 200 thousand people. As conceived by the organizers, the ROVS was to become the core of the future invasion army, but for now it was preparing groups of militants to be sent to the USSR. Subsequently, both Kutepov and General Miller, who replaced him, were kidnapped by Soviet intelligence officers and taken to the USSR.

In Poland, B. Savinkov recreated the People's Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom under the updated name, which later moved to Paris.

All these organizations carried out subversive work in all regions, and above all in Russia.

Abroad, singsongs were made against Soviet institutions and individual workers. In Warsaw, the Soviet plenipotentiary L. Voikov was killed. On the same day, saboteurs threw two bombs into the premises of the Business Club in Leningrad, where 30 people were injured.

Plenipotentiary V. Borovsky was killed in Lausanne. In Latvia, diplomatic courier Teodor Netto was killed right in a train compartment.

A group of saboteurs was uncovered at one of the factories in Tula. In Moscow, former Kolchak officers were arrested, who were preparing an explosion at the Bolshoi Theater, where a solemn meeting was to be held in honor of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution. In Leningrad, a group of saboteurs set fire to the Kuzhenkovsky artillery depot. In Moscow, a group of employees of the Revolutionary Military Council was convicted of espionage. A group of terrorists planted a bomb in the building of the GPU dormitory on Malaya Lubyanka. An explosive device weighing 4 kilograms was found and defused. In August of the same year, two groups of terrorists were discovered at the moment they crossed the Finnish-Soviet border. One group was detained, the second - of two people - put up fierce resistance and was destroyed.

In 1934, after the death of the Menzhinsky GPU, it was transformed into the Main Directorate of State Security - GUGB - in the system of the newly created all-Union People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. The former deputy chairman of the OGPU, and in fact Stalin's spy under Menzhinsky, G. Yagoda, became the People's Commissar of the NKVD.

In an effort to please the all-powerful General Secretary, many NKVD officers began to invent all sorts of conspiracies, terrorist organizations, spy centers, etc. All-encompassing denunciation began to be encouraged. Investigators of the NKVD, extorting the testimony they needed from those arrested, began to use "illegal methods of influence" against them.

The repressions did not escape both the Lubyanka itself and its local authorities. In order to cover up the traces of the crime, the direct participants in the false cases and fake trials were almost all destroyed just because they knew too much. Yezhov, who replaced Yagoda as People's Commissar of the NKVD, destroyed his people, and L. Beria, who replaced the "bloody dwarf", freed himself from Yezhov's people in the same proven way.

But along with the executioners, the color of intelligence and counterintelligence was also destroyed: highly qualified professionals, devoted patriots and simply deeply decent people. There were about twenty thousand of them. Among them, the real aces of the domestic counterintelligence were shot: A. Artuzov, V. Styrne, R. Pilyar, G. Syroezhkin, S. Puzitsky, A. Fedorov, I. Sosnovsky (Dobrzhinsky), a participant in the famous operation "Trust" A. Yakushev ...

In the second half of the thirties, when he began to prepare for war, Soviet intelligence officers and counterintelligence officers faced specific difficulties. Information that they obtained with great difficulty, sometimes with mortal risk, remained unclaimed.

Stalin immediately rejected all the warnings that were contained in the daily reports of foreign intelligence and counterintelligence of the NKVD, the intelligence department of the General Staff. He stubbornly called them disinformation by the British, who were trying to push the USSR and Germany against their foreheads. On some memorandums, his resolutions were preserved in terms that were far from parliamentary.

Under these conditions, counterintelligence officers, true patriots of the Motherland, had to work against the Nazi secret services almost underground, risking the highest wrath.

Despite the most difficult working conditions, counterintelligence professionals managed to do the almost impossible in the pre-war years - in fact, paralyze the activities of German and Japanese intelligence services, block their access to the most important state and military secrets of the USSR. In 1940 and in the months preceding the attack in 1941 alone, our counterintelligence identified and liquidated 66 German special service stations and exposed over 1,600 fascist agents.

This is one of the reasons why the Nazis unexpectedly received an almost four-year exhausting war instead of a victorious blitzkrieg, which ended in their complete defeat.

After the war, Field Marshal V. Keitel admitted: “Before the war, we had very scarce information about the Soviet Union and the Red Army ... During the war, the data from our agents concerned only the tactical zone. We have never received data that would have a serious impact on the development of military operations.

And other Nazi generals admitted that they had the most erroneous idea of ​​\u200b\u200bpower military industry USSR, on the strength and capabilities of its armed forces. A complete nightmare, for example, was for them the sudden appearance in the Red Army of the Il-2 attack aircraft, the best tank of the Second World War T-34, the famous Guards mortars - "Katyushas" and much more. German intelligence failed to penetrate the secret of any major offensive operation Red Army.

In a short essay, it is impossible to tell about all the achievements of counterintelligence officers during the Great Patriotic War. In the rear, they were able to reliably cover defense facilities, railways, power plants, ports, airfields, communication centers, military plants and warehouses from enemy spies, saboteurs and terrorists. Already in the first days of the war, under the People's Commissar of the NKVD, the so-called special group, soon transformed into the Fourth Directorate of the People's Commissariat. With her, a separate motorized rifle brigade was formed special purpose- the legendary OMSBON. From its fighters and commanders, sabotage and reconnaissance residencies were trained and completed, thrown behind enemy lines. Many such groups subsequently, due to the influx of Red Army soldiers who escaped from captivity, encircled and local residents turned into strong partisan units, such as the "Winners" and "Elusive". Heroes of the Soviet Union Dmitry Medvedev and Mikhail Prudnikov, the commanders of these detachments, are now known to everyone. Experienced security officers worked in the formations of S. Kovpak, A. Fedorov, A. Saburov and other famous partisan generals.

In the cities occupied by the Nazis, state security officers were left to conduct intelligence work. Many of them died with weapons in their hands or were executed by the Nazis after being tortured. The names of Konstantin Zaslonov, Nikolai Geft, Viktor Lyagin should not be forgotten by descendants. Both directly in the war zone and in the front line, counterintelligence officers fought a direct duel with German intelligence agencies.

Total for Eastern Front more than 130 enemy special services operated. In addition, he created about 60 schools for the training of agents, mainly from among Soviet prisoners of war. the best nutrient medium for the selection of candidates for these schools were units of the "Russian Liberation Army" - ROA, better known as "Vlasov".

Our counterintelligence officers have learned how to infiltrate these highly classified schools, and get jobs in them even as teachers. As a result, agents thrown into our rear were immediately neutralized. In a number of cases, counterintelligence carried out successful "radio games" with enemy intelligence agencies and thereby misled the Wehrmacht command.

So, the young Soviet intelligence officer Ivan Savchuk, who started the war ... as a military assistant, stayed in the role of an agent recruited by the Nazis for over a year. During this time, he made three “walkers” to the Soviet side and handed over to our counterintelligence information on more than 80 German agents and 30 Abwehr personnel.

Another scout, I. Pryalko, managed to infiltrate the Abwehr group-102. He delivered data on 101 enemy agents and photographs of 33 German professional intelligence officers. The deputy head of the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris, Lieutenant-General Pickenbrock, testifying in captivity after the war, was forced to say that “Russia is the most difficult country for the introduction of enemy intelligence agents ... After the invasion of German troops into the territory of the USSR, we began to select agents from among Soviet prisoners of war. But it was difficult to recognize whether they really had a desire to work as agents or intended to return to the ranks of the Red Army in this way ... Many agents did not send us any reports after being transferred to the rear of the Soviet troops.

During the war in 1943, special departments were reorganized into the SMERSH military counterintelligence agencies and transferred from the NKVD system to the People's Commissariat of Defense and the People's Commissariat of the Navy. They were again reorganized into Special Departments and returned to the system of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR.

An extremely important operation of the Soviet counterintelligence was to prevent the conspiracy of the Nazi secret services against the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition: Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill during the Tehran Conference in November 1943. The preparation of the conspiracy became known from several sources at once. One of the messages came to the Center from the forests of Rovno - from Nikolai Kuznetsov...

With the advent of Victory Day, the war did not end for many counterintelligence officers ...

An important task in the post-war years for them was the identification, detention and justified prosecution of traitors to the Motherland: former policemen and punishers, employees of the German special services who stained themselves with the blood of their compatriots.

The search for traitors sometimes took years. So, the executioner of Lyudinov's reconnaissance group Alexei Shumavtsov, who was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, the former senior investigator of the local police Dmitry Ivanov, was hiding from retribution for twelve years! During this time, Ivanov changed his last name three times, traveled all over Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Transcaucasia, and the Far East.

The “hot war” ended, and almost immediately began what became commonplace in public consciousness as the “cold war”, poisoning the atmosphere around the world for several decades and more than once putting it on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe.

From among the so-called displaced persons who found themselves in the West, the former allies began to intensively train agents designed to conduct intelligence work on the territory of the USSR.

Trained mainly in American intelligence centers on the territory of West Germany, agents were delivered to the territory of the USSR in submarines and speedboats, dropped by parachute, and transported across the border by any means. Repeated attempts were made to recruit Soviet servicemen in Germany and other Warsaw Pact countries.

Scouts stepped up their activities Western countries working in our country under the guise of diplomatic passports, under the guise of businessmen, journalists, just tourists. In espionage activities, they widely used specially developed in secret research centers and laboratories, new types of ingenious radio and other equipment, methods of encoding and transmitting information, open observation, up to the use of space satellites.

This required technical re-equipment and our counterintelligence.

After the death of Stalin, the arrest of Beria and his henchmen, the state security agencies were radically restructured, and in the first place, their counterintelligence units. The KGB of the USSR was created. Thousands of employees were fired from counterintelligence who fabricated fake conspiracies, used beatings and torture during interrogations. Over three thousand of them were put on trial. And some famous executioners, such as Rhodes, Shvartsman, Ryumin, were shot.

Thousands of innocent people convicted of "anti-Soviet" and counter-revolutionary activities were released from prison. Hundreds of thousands were rehabilitated posthumously.

These difficult, even painful processes of cleansing our society contributed to the improvement of the situation in the state security agencies, which could not but affect the effectiveness of the work of counterintelligence officers.

They neutralized and brought to trial English and American spies Lieutenant Colonel P. Popov and Colonel O. Penkovsky.

The main sphere of activity of counterintelligence - the fight against espionage - was not interrupted even during the years of the radical reorganization of our society.

So, in 1985, the leading designer of the Research Institute of Radio Engineering of the Ministry of Radio Industry of the USSR A. Tolkachev, who transferred to the West the latest development of the on-board identification system "Friend or Alien", was arrested.

And the damage inflicted on our country by O. Penkovsky can only be compared with the activities of an American spy, a responsible officer of the GRU of the General Staff, Major General D. Polyakov.

And Popov, and Penkovsky, and Tolkachev, and Polyakov, and several of our former compatriots who became spies, were sentenced to an exceptional measure of punishment - the death penalty.

Totally agree last years our counterintelligence officers exposed and neutralized more than 60 spies from countries, as they say now, "far abroad".

However, it is well known that in recent years, other crimes that are not directly related to espionage have begun to pose a serious danger to the state. This is the smuggling of strategic raw materials, non-ferrous and precious metals, fissile materials, cultural and historical values, and on a huge scale. Per recent times illicit trafficking in narcotic drugs and weapons, terrorism, hostage-taking, corruption in the highest echelons of power and related organized crime have grown markedly.

With the collapse of the USSR and the formation in its place of new sovereign states The KGB of the USSR also ceased to exist.

The renewed bodies of the state security of the Russian Federation were born in the throes of endless reorganizations, divisions, mergers, shake-ups of structures, etc. Suffice it to say that the names of the department alone changed in a few years from half a dozen, until the current one was established - the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. independent federal services were formerly part of the KGB foreign intelligence, government communications, government security, border troops.

But the essence is not just in organizational shake-ups and changing signs, the main change is that now the FSB, for the first time since 1917, does not serve the interests of one political party but to the state and society as a whole. In their activities, state security agencies are guided only by the Constitution of Russia, its general legislation, including the Criminal and Criminal Procedure Codes, as well as laws that are directly related to it. For example, such as the Law on Investigative Activities, the Law on State Secrets.

The functions of the secret political police, which are essentially unusual for it, have now been completely excluded from the activities of the FSB bodies.

And the main thing in its work remains, of course, counterintelligence, i.e., the identification and suppression of espionage and other subversive activities on the territory of Russia by foreign special services.

Theodor Gladkov

From the book "Secret Pages of History", 2000, TsOS FSB of Russia