Special training for counterintelligence officers NHS counterintelligence officers must undergo mandatory training and retraining in the field of undercover work and investigative methods, operational-search activities, directing and acting

Chapter 14 On the Art of Counterintelligence Legendary Developments As a rule, NHS counterintelligence officers have previously worked in government structures and have considerable practical experience. What should they take from it in a new field of activity? How to adapt to your needs

Chapter 15 Principles and methods of technical counterintelligence As noted above, intelligence is currently conditionally divided into undercover and technical. Obtaining information by undercover methods is carried out using technical means, and technical

Goals and objectives of the economic counterintelligence service Speaking in more detail, the main goals of economic counterintelligence can be formulated as follows.? Prevention, timely recognition and strict suppression of recruitment attempts by competitors

Planning the work of the counterintelligence service When planning and organizing the work of the counterintelligence service at an enterprise, first of all, it is necessary to consider what forces and means this unit of the security service will operate with. In this case, the forces are

Disinformation as an effective tool of economic counterintelligence Disinformation as a tool of counterintelligence struggle appeared long before any economic conflicts between business entities began to arise. For many centuries

Compromising evidence as a means of counterintelligence Compromising evidence in modern Russia is one of the most popular and effective means of conducting any struggle: competitive, political, economic, etc., so it would be strange if the economic

The True Essence Dear reader, it must be already languishing from the questions: “What is this notorious True Essence? What is this immortal, all-powerful thing that the author is talking about throughout the book?” I may upset you, but to understand what the True Essence is,

One of the most important factors that led the Soviet people to victory in the Great Patriotic War was the prevalence of clandestine warfare. The unprecedented courage of Soviet intelligence officers, faith in the ideals of justice and love for the Motherland worked wonders. What was the system of special services of the Soviet state in the difficult years of 1941-1945?

I must say that it is quite simple and effective.

Intelligence could conditionally be divided, as now, into “military” and “political”. The structure, both the first and the second, was repeatedly transformed over the years of the war in search of an optimal solution.

So, in 1939, the intelligence department of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army was transformed into the Fifth Directorate of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR. In 1940, it was reassigned to the General Staff and, accordingly, received the name of the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army. And on February 16, 1942, the world-famous abbreviation "GRU" was born. Soviet military intelligence, by a corresponding secret order, was reorganized into the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff. Its status was raised, and the states were expanded. As part of the GRU, two departments were created: the first - undercover (departments: German, European, Far East, Middle East, sabotage, operational equipment, radio intelligence), the second - information (departments: German, European, Far East, Middle East, editorial and publishing, military information , deciphering). And besides, a number of independent departments that were not part of the First and Second Directorates: political, external relations, personnel, special assignments, special communications, logistics, control and financial and military censorship.

Given the fact that "he who owns the information owns the world," Joseph Stalin drew the appropriate conclusions and further raised the status of military intelligence. In October 1942, an order was issued according to which the GRU was exclusively subordinate to the People's Commissar of Defense. The functional duties of the Main Directorate included the organization of undercover and reconnaissance and sabotage work, both on the territory of other countries and in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. At the same time, to fill the gap in the organization of front-line intelligence, the Directorate of Military Intelligence was created in the General Staff. The name of the new body speaks for itself. This structure was forbidden to engage in operational intelligence work. In fact, the new department performed the same functions as now the units responsible for coordinating the activities of the GRU special forces. Naturally, having lost the undercover component - "eyes and ears" - military intelligence has sharply reduced the effectiveness of its activities. And this could not but affect the success of operations on the fronts. As a result, in April 1943, the UVR became the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff. The functions of managing operational intelligence and reconnaissance and sabotage activities in the occupied territories of the USSR (in fact, in the front-line zone) were returned to him. In the new status, military intelligence brilliantly ensured the offensive of Soviet troops in Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and the Baltic states. The Main Directorate of Intelligence of the People's Commissariat of Defense retained the right to conduct intelligence work abroad - strategic intelligence.

After the liberation of the territory of the Soviet Union and the surrender of Germany, in June 1945, both military intelligence structures were quite logically merged into one - a single Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, which years later, at the suggestion of the traitor Rezun, became known to the general public under the name "Aquarium".

Political intelligence was conducted by state security agencies. The activities of the intellectual avant-garde of the organs were affected by all the changes that took place from the late 1930s to the early 1950s with the structures of the NKVD-NKGB. In 1939, the "gebesh" intelligence was headed by Pavel Fitin, who retained this position throughout the war. The designed prototype of the PGU KGB was created in 1941 under the name of the First Directorate of the People's Commissariat of State Security of the USSR. At all stages of its existence, Soviet foreign policy intelligence simply worked wonders. Relying on both enlightened proletarians and left-wing humanist intellectuals, the First Directorate established total information control over European capitals and developed mechanisms for effectively influencing the situation. His most impressive success was the creation of an intelligence network known to us as the "Red Chapel". Despite the solidarity efforts of all the Nazi secret services, the Nazis did not succeed in completely exposing and breaking it during the war years. Among the agents of the Soviet state security agencies were high-ranking diplomats (ranking up to ambassadors), officials (up to advisers and assistant ministers), employees of the Wehrmacht and the secret services of National Socialist Germany. Moreover, unlike the heroes of Seventeen Moments of Spring and Shields and Swords, the vast majority of them were ethnic Germans who organically rejected Nazi ideology and risked their lives to stop the genocide and the war that was suicidal for their people.
After the re-merger of the internal affairs and state security agencies into one structure, intelligence became the First Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR. In 1942, it was divided into the First Directorate proper under the leadership of Pavel Fitin (general intelligence) and the Fourth Directorate, led by the legendary saboteur Pavel Sudoplatov, responsible for reconnaissance and sabotage activities against the allies in the Nazi camp. Probably, at this stage, it was the activities of the Fourth Directorate that played an almost decisive role in disrupting the plans of the Nazi command in relation to the USSR. His employees worked just on the edge of the possible, risking their lives every second. They opened their own front against the Nazi troops in their rear - in the occupied territories of the USSR. Scouts from the NKVD formed partisan detachments and underground organizations around themselves, under the guise of defectors and local residents loyal to the invaders, penetrated the administration, got a job at military enterprises to carry out sabotage against the Nazis. If they were identified, they were mercilessly tortured and killed. If someone, for the sake of appearance, went to cooperate with the Nazis, then mainly in order to cross the front line, report to the command and unfold a new game against the enemy. Behind many episodes of the films "Shield and Sword" and "Saturn" there are real events ... As a result, having formed entire partisan armies in Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, the Baltic states, destroying and preventing the restoration of communications in the rear, destroying Nazi commanders, blowing up warehouses, vehicle fleets and airfields, tracking any movement of enemy troops and infiltrating the enemy army, Cheksite scouts actually paralyzed the work of the enemy rear, disorganized the Wehrmacht and saved millions of lives of the advancing Red Army soldiers.

Starting from 1944, the employees of the state security agencies had to think about protecting the Motherland not only from the direct enemy, but also from "sworn friends". The Western countries, which had already shown themselves during the Munich Agreement, did not hide their attitude towards the Soviet people. The leaders of the country were well aware of how both the Germans and the Americans could behave if they became monopoly owners of nuclear weapons. Obtaining information about atomic research has become one of the priorities in the activities of the NKVD. Group "C" was responsible for this area of ​​work, led by Pavel Sudoplatov. The Chekists were able to convince scientists of the peaceful intentions of the Soviet state and brilliantly completed the task, bringing international relations to a state of parity. Most likely, in those years, the NKVD intelligence officers saved the Earth.

No less effective than intelligence operated from the first days and Soviet counterintelligence. Initially, the main burden of counterintelligence work also fell on the shoulders of the NKVD. Under the Commissariat of Internal Affairs, a special group was created to combat German saboteurs, and with it - a separate motorized rifle brigade - the prototype of the modern special forces of the State Security forces.
In the summer of 1941, a special headquarters as part of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs forms extermination battalions. The first days of the war brought not only huge losses for the Red Army, but also terrible failures for the Nazi secret services. It was during these days that a rebellion of the Ukrainian extreme right in Lviv, inspired by fascist intelligence, took place, aimed at facilitating the Nazi offensive. However, the Soviet counterintelligence thwarted the plans of the Nazis. Thousands of German agents were identified who tried to act on transport, in the troops. After a year of the war, the Nazi leadership was forced to state that because of the Soviet counterintelligence, it had lost most of its best agents. Having lost the resource of quality, the Nazis tried to take it in quantity. More than 60 schools operated in the occupied territories, which trained intelligence agents and saboteurs. But their graduates, one by one, either failed, or themselves came with a confession to the state security agencies and offered their services.

The organs of the Soviet counterintelligence managed to carry out simply fantastic operations. As a result of organized radio games, the German command sent tons of weapons, explosives, food, equipment to non-existent underground groups in the rear of the Red Army. And the NKVD operatives managed to recruit even personnel officers from sabotage schools and representatives of the occupation administration as agents, as a result of which the failures of the German agents became even more widespread.
In 1943, in the People's Commissariats of Defense and Internal Affairs, as well as in the navy, SMERSH military counterintelligence units were created, recognized by historians and experts in the field of special services, as the best counterintelligence units of World War II. Operatives of "SMERSH", nicknamed "wolfhounds" finally fettered the hands of Nazi intelligence. There are legends about his activities, most of the documents related to it are classified, and young Chekists in most post-Soviet countries learn from his operations. Suffering huge losses, meeting face-to-face with the "werewolves" from the German intelligence agencies, the "wolfhounds" did not allow the Nazi special services to seize the initiative and largely predetermined the outcome of the war. And starting from 1946, the former "Smershevites" began to create the Soviet counterintelligence "peacetime". But that's a completely different story...

We, unfortunately, know little about the heroes of the secret war that unfolded in the rear in 1941-1945. In most cases, scouts become famous only after failures. And the failures of the Soviet special services were few. But the lack of information is no reason to underestimate the Soviet knights of the cloak and dagger. After all, every intercepted saboteur and military document stolen from the enemy means thousands, if not millions, of saved soldiers' lives...

Intelligence and counterintelligence in Russia have existed for as many years as Russian statehood has existed. 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 and almost all enterprises of the electrical and chemical industries, 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 liquidation of the "Conspiracy of Ambassadors", which was headed by the British diplomatic representative in Russia Lockhart, the French ambassador Noulens, the American ambassador Francis and Consul Poole, the English military attache Hill, the head of the French military mission General Lavergne and an 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, banditry became the scourge of almost all large and small settlements.

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 the shock detachments was 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 biggest successes of counterintelligence was the identification and elimination of the so-called "National Center" in the capital and its military organization - the "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 counter-revolutionary emigration and the underground were largely paralyzed, major figures of the enemy, Boris Savinkov and Sidney Reilly, were brought to Soviet territory and neutralized.

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 Directorate (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 denunciations 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 ​​the might of the military industry of the USSR, of the size 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 of the 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, the so-called Special Group was formed under the People's Commissar of the NKVD, which was soon transformed into the Fourth Directorate of the People's Commissariat. Under her rule, a separate motorized rifle brigade for special purposes was formed - the legendary OMSBON. From its fighters and commanders, sabotage and reconnaissance residencies were trained and completed, thrown behind enemy lines. Many of these groups subsequently, due to the influx of Red Army soldiers, encircled and local residents who fled from captivity, turned into strong partisan detachments, 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.

In total, more than 130 enemy special services operated on the Eastern Front. In addition, he created about 60 schools for the training of agents, mainly from among Soviet prisoners of war. The best breeding ground 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.

Spies from Western countries have intensified their activities, working in our country under the guise of diplomatic passports, under the guise of businessmen, journalists, and simply tourists. In espionage activities, they widely used new types of ingenious radio and other equipment specially developed in secret research centers and laboratories, methods of encoding and transmitting information, open surveillance, 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 well-known 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.

In recent years alone, our counterintelligence officers have exposed and neutralized more than 60 spies from countries, as they now say, "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 out of the country of strategic raw materials, non-ferrous and precious metals, fissile materials, cultural and historical values, and on a huge scale. Recently, illicit trafficking in narcotic drugs and weapons, terrorism, hostage-taking, corruption in the highest echelons of power and related organized crime have increased markedly.

With the collapse of the USSR and the formation of new sovereign states in its place, 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. Foreign intelligence, government communications, government security, and border troops, which were previously part of the KGB, became independent federal services.

But the essence is not just organizational shake-ups and change of 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 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

counterintelligence

1) state bodies endowed with special competence in the field of combating the intelligence of other states and the subversive activities of the organizations and persons used by it. Counterintelligence is one of the tools of the political power of the state.

In the capitalist countries, counterintelligence constitutes the most reactionary part of the state machinery. Bourgeois counterintelligence takes an active part in the struggle against communist and workers' parties, national liberation movements, and progressive organizations of workers. It is actively working against the intelligence services of the socialist states. In the interests of the monopoly bourgeoisie, counterintelligence often performs the functions of political investigation. The counterintelligence of the capitalist state is a system of numerous central and peripheral agencies, often dispersed among various departments.

In the socialist states, the functions of counterintelligence are determined by the interests of the working people and are aimed at protecting them from the subversive activities of the intelligence agencies of the capitalist states and the organizations and individuals they use. The counterintelligence agencies of the socialist countries enjoy the trust and support of the working people.

In the USSR, the functions of counterintelligence are performed by the counterintelligence apparatuses of the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR and their local agencies. In the modern period, they solve the following main tasks: identifying, preventing and suppressing espionage, terrorist, sabotage and other hostile intelligence actions, ideological centers of capitalist states and foreign anti-Soviet organizations, both on the territory of the USSR and abroad (against Soviet institutions and citizens) ; detection, prevention and suppression of the subversive activities of anti-Soviet elements within the country; ensuring the safety of state and military secrets in the Armed Forces of the USSR, at especially important industrial, transport, communications facilities, at research institutes, design bureaus and other facilities; participation in the detection, prevention and suppression of violations of the state border of the USSR; search for especially dangerous state criminals; ensuring the timely deployment of active intelligence and counterintelligence activities in a special period and in wartime; the solution of other tasks to combat the subversive activities of the enemy, determined by the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Soviet government.

Counterintelligence Dictionary. - Higher Red Banner School of the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. F. E. Dzerzhinsky. 1972 .

See what "Counterintelligence" is in other dictionaries:

counterintelligence- counterintelligence... Spelling Dictionary

COUNTERINTELLIGENCE- COUNTERINTELLIGENCE, counterintelligence, for women. (military). An institution that counteracts foreign espionage and propaganda and conducts intelligence work behind enemy lines. Counterintelligence shot the exposed enemy agent. see counter .... ... ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

counterintelligence- Abwehr Dictionary of Russian synonyms. counterintelligence n., number of synonyms: 3 Abwehr (3) defensive ... Synonym dictionary

COUNTERINTELLIGENCE- activities carried out by special bodies of the state to combat the intelligence of other states ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

COUNTERINTELLIGENCE- COUNTERINTELLIGENCE, and, for women. Special government agencies to counter intelligence (in 4 values) of other states; activities of such bodies. Serve in counterintelligence. Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 ... Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov

COUNTERINTELLIGENCE- [Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

counterintelligence- ... Wikipedia

counterintelligence- activities carried out by special bodies of the state to combat the intelligence of another state. In the capitalist states, K. is a system of numerous central and peripheral organs, often ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

counterintelligence- and; pl. genus. doc, date dcam; and. An organization to counter enemy intelligence, to combat espionage, sabotage, etc. ◁ Counterintelligence, oh, oh. * * * counterintelligence activities carried out by special bodies ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

counterintelligence- and. An organization created to counter enemy reconnaissance, to combat espionage, sabotage, etc. Explanatory Dictionary of Efremova. T. F. Efremova. 2000... Modern explanatory dictionary of the Russian language Efremova

Books

• Counterintelligence Future (collection), Vasily Golovachev. The launch of the giant Superstringer, which was supposed to help earthly scientists uncover the secret of the birth of the Universe, caused the appearance of exotic objects within the boundaries of our Metagalaxy, threatening ...

The forms and methods of work of the KRO OGPU remain relevant today.

The forms and methods of work of the KRO OGPU remain relevant today.

The strength of the intelligence service of any state is determined by a number of factors. In addition to material and technical resources, these are, first of all, the reliability of personnel and their professional qualifications, the quality and operational capabilities of the undercover apparatus, and social support.

All this was inherent in the Counterintelligence Department (CRO), created in May 1922 in the structure of the GPU. In a short time, the KRO became one of the most powerful divisions of the Lubyanka. The appearance of the department and the concentration in it of the best personnel capable of developing in practice the principles of "scientific counterintelligence" became the answer of the leadership of the GPU to the realities of life. KRO operations, daring and large-scale, with precise political calculation, are rightfully considered classics of Russian operational art.

However, the practical successes of counterintelligence activities also required theoretical understanding. With all the acuteness, the question of creating a school of operational art and transferring its foundations to the younger generation of Chekists arose on the agenda. In this regard, lecture courses and theoretical developments on counterintelligence topics began to appear from the pen of experienced OGPU employees. One of the first such works was the analytical work "The ABC of the Counterintelligence Officer", born in 1925 in the bowels of the KRO OGPU. The author of the "ABC" is unknown, but there are suggestions that the head of the KRO Artur Khristianovich Artuzov himself had a hand in writing it.

"Spying is a rust that dulls the bayonets of enemy soldiers... "

In the first lines of this kind of brief memo for young counterintelligence officers and novice agents of the OGPU, a definition of espionage is given, that is, the very phenomenon that, in fact, counterintelligence has to fight. According to the statement of one of the military geniuses of the past years quoted in the work, "espionage is rust that dulls the bayonets of enemy soldiers, mold that corrodes the walls of enemy fortresses." Further, the author of the ABC of the Counterintelligence Officer identifies the enemy and talks in detail about his intelligence agencies. Enemy, enemy, political and military, "any foreign state is recognized, whatever its relations with us, whatever "alliances", "cordial agreements" and peace treaties with it may be concluded. The author notes that the intelligence agency of a foreign state is one of the departments of its General Staff, which has its own permanent and sometimes temporary intelligence network on the territories of other states, consisting of persons of both sexes, of a wide variety of ages and professions, ranging from professor and bishop and ending with an organ grinder and a street prostitute. In addition to intelligence conducted by the General Staff of a given country, it is carried out by all foreign embassies, diplomatic and trade missions, and consulates without exception.

All kinds of concessions are used for the same purpose.

In addition to a permanent spy network, each state usually uses for reconnaissance various expeditions, excursions, etc., sent to the territory of other states, including archaeological, medical, charitable ones, for which several people with a special task are introduced into the environment of those sent.

"INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE ARE BETWEEN A BRUTAL FIGHT... "

What, according to the Chekists of the 1920s, could counterintelligence of the OGPU oppose to foreign intelligence, and what are the differences and similarities between them? “Intelligence and counterintelligence,” concludes the author of Azbuka, “are waging a fierce struggle between themselves. Who better and thinner disguises their agents, who better keeps the secret of the organization, who ... better uses the means that can be used, he will be the winner.”

It follows from this that if it costs a lot of effort, dexterity and composure for an intelligence officer to penetrate into the right environment, then even more expenditures of the same qualities are required on the part of the counterintelligence officer, who, in addition to penetration and camouflage, also needs to look for his unknown enemy and act in such a way so as not to reveal myself. Intelligence and counterintelligence work goes underground deeper and deeper, thinner and stronger disguised, taking on more and more new forms that simply did not exist until now. "What is the work of a counterintelligence officer?" asks the author of "Azbuka" and immediately answers it himself. "At first glance, it may seem to an inexperienced novice counterintelligence officer (agent) that he should look for some person who is engaged in espionage, works in a counterrevolutionary organization, agitates, catch him red-handed, convict him and consider this task completed."

“However, in the sense of suppressing espionage work, the author continues, it is not enough to identify such, it is necessary to find out what exactly this spy is doing, what interests him, where and from what sources he draws information, is it possible to start supplying him with disinformation, is he doing any other - any other tasks, and to reveal the circle of his acquaintances, the line of his connection up to the resident and down to other agents. In a word, the entire network, or at least part of it, is developed through one person. Then it becomes possible, by means of disinformation, to confuse the enemy's reconnaissance, and, if necessary, snatch out an entire spy group.

It should be noted that the theoretical calculations of the Counterintelligence ABC were based on the real results of the practical activities of the KRO. At the time of writing, the staff of the department managed to create stable channels for promoting disinformation about the size and weapons of the Red Army, the economic and mobilization capabilities of the USSR to the leading centers of the special services of a number of European countries.

“We managed to organize our work in such a way,” Artuzov, head of the KRO, wrote about his report, that at present the main headquarters of foreign states are supplied with 95% of the material that is being developed by the KRO OGPU together with the military department. Plus, a number of foreign intelligence services: Polish, Estonian, partly Finnish - were entirely in the hands of counterintelligence officers and acted on their instructions. During the same period, KRO employees managed to get the ciphers and codes of some foreign embassies in Moscow, which allowed people from Lubyanka to fully control their telegraph messages.

"ideological spies " FROM RUSSIAN EMIGRATION

The study of archival documents shows that the edge of the smashing sword of the KRO was directed not inland, but outward, to foreign emigrant centers, which in those years were actively used by foreign intelligence services for sabotage against the USSR. Therefore, in the ABC of Counterintelligence, special attention is paid to white emigration and the peculiarities of foreign espionage carried out with its support.

It should be noted that not without the influence of the OGPU, thinking opponents of Bolshevism began to gradually understand that the victory of the Reds in the Civil War was far from an accidental phenomenon. An ardent opponent of the Soviets, Boris Savinkov, reflecting on the origins of the defeat of the "white cause", in his famous letter "Why I recognized Soviet power" directly pointed out the main reason: the presence of social support for the Reds.

As you know, two months earlier, in mid-August 1924, Savinkov fell into a trap specially designed for him by the KRO OGPU and ended up in the inner prison of Lubyanka alone with his heavy thoughts. Ten days after his arrest, Savinkov appeared before the court, where he fully admitted his guilt before the authorities that had won in Russia. This confession was not preceded by torture in the style of the "thirties". Savinkov was defeated, first of all, ideologically: the interrogations conducted by the leading officers of the KRO looked more like intellectual duels.

"AN AGENT SHOULD BE AN ARTIST..."

A significant part of the ABC of Counterintelligence is devoted to the work of a novice intelligence agent and is replete with a large number of recommendations and tips on how to protect him from mistakes, mistakes and, most importantly, from decoding and failure. Such serious attention is paid to undercover work not by chance, since it was thanks to it that the operations "Trust" and "Syndicate-2" were successful.

But even the first employees of the Cheka completely rejected the possibility of using agents in their activities, since these methods of work were associated with the tsarist special services (security departments and the gendarme corps) and were called the "method of provocations." It was believed that the secret service of the new proletarian state should build its work only on the basis of "purely ideological assistance from Soviet elements." However, by the end of the first year of the existence of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky and his associates came to the unequivocal conclusion that without the institution of secret agents about 2000, any serious work to suppress the activities of underground White Guard organizations was out of the question. Such a decision did not come immediately and not suddenly. He was directly promoted by the experience gained by the Special Department of the Cheka in the course of exposing the Polish intelligence network and re-recruiting a number of Polish intelligence officers on an ideological basis. In early January 1921, Dzerzhinsky signed an order "On the punitive policy of the organs of the Cheka." In this document, for the first time, a new strategic line of the KGB apparatus was formulated. From that moment on, intelligence and operational work became a priority for the Cheka. The core idea of ​​the order was an indication of the creation of an effective information system that allows you to know "what such and such a name, former officer or landowner is doing so that his arrest makes sense", otherwise real spies and terrorists "will remain at large, and prisons will be overcrowded."

What qualities should a counterintelligence agent of the 20s have to have? and what did he have to do to make his work productive and produce good results? “An agent must be an artist, says the ABC, he must always take good and clear account of his own strengths and those of the enemy, not go ahead without weighing all the chances of success. A correct assessment of the situation, thoughtfulness, determination, composure, the ability to give an answer and rebuff in any situation, without showing his confusion, are necessary for the agent.The more clearly the agent imagines the psychology of the person for whom he claims to be, the better he understands and catches how this person would act and speak in this case, the more natural he will look and the more difficult it will be to distinguish fiction from reality. In addition to these recommendations, the author of the work advised the counterintelligence officer to be a man of few words, but well versed in everything that happens.

It should be noted that in practice the backbone of the KRO agents of the 20s. they were by no means the dregs of society, who decided, for the sake of saving lives or for food rations, to become secret employees of the GPU. These were people who had gone through a lot and experienced a lot.

Representatives of the service Russian nobility, who did not have property and huge land estates, people of action, who befell not only the revolution from different sides, faced a difficult choice. Either to work together with emigrants, who wittingly or unwittingly became a "tool" in the hands of foreigners seeking to organize new sabotage or intervention, or to search for the lost meaning of life in serving Soviet Russia. Not everyone was able to make such a turn in their destiny.

One of those who turned out to be capable of this was Alexander Alexandrovich Yakushev, a former active state councilor, an active participant in the KGB operation "Trust". At the end of 1921, at the very beginning of the operation, while on the Lubyanka and considering his life path, he wrote: “People must be found, strength must be found to save statehood, otherwise Russia will turn into a field of fertilizer for foreigners, and its territory in the future colonies for the Entente".

LEGEND OR PROVOCATION

In the classic counterintelligence operations of the OGPU in the 1920s. with great success, the legend method was used, the main purpose of which was to create the enemy's illusion of the existence of powerful underground anti-Soviet organizations on the territory of the USSR, capable of supporting an intervention from outside or an "explosion from within" at the right time. This form of work fit well into the realities of NEP Russia.

In the literature on the subject of special services, there is a different interpretation of the operational term of the KRO of the 20s "legendary organization" or "legendary development". At the suggestion of foreign authors, the definition "provocation in the style of the Russian secret police" often dominates, that is, "a network of traps for innocent people who are purposefully lured into them to fabricate high-profile cases." In this regard, separate pages are devoted to this aspect in the ABC of the Counterintelligence Officer. According to the Chekists of that time, “a legend is a fiction communicated to someone in order to increase interest and attention to the agent, to make it clear that he or one of his “friends” is connected with this or that kind of counter-revolutionary work, about his connections with an organization that exists only in the imagination, and thereby force the enemy to seek contact with a fictitious organization, that is, force him to show his cards. The main requirements for a legend look like this: it must correspond to the state of affairs and the situation, be quite probable, ideologically correspond to the environment where it will be used, not be full of details, certainly have ways to escape and maneuver, and be flexible throughout its development. The purpose of the legend, according to the author of The ABC of Counterintelligence, is "to reveal existing organizations or groups, to reveal ongoing counterrevolutionary or espionage work, but by no means to call anyone to this kind of activity that is prosecuted by law and the principles of counterintelligence work."

INSTEAD OF AFTERWORD

By the mid-20s. KRO OGPU came with a great store of theoretical knowledge and real undeniable successes in the practical field of counterintelligence art. It seemed that the experience of KRO in subsequent years would continue to grow with new operations and new knowledge. However, unfortunately, this did not happen. Within a few years, the agents working for the KRO, and the counterintelligence officers themselves, were involved in a maelstrom of dramatic events and faced with a moral choice: either remain true to their conscience and, as a result, become an outcast of the System, or become an obedient cog in the repression machine. There was no third way for them. But, as it turned out, sudden death awaited each of them in both cases...

At the turn of the 30s. the leadership of the CPSU(b) abruptly changed its political course and, figuratively speaking, knocked out a surgical scalpel from the hands of counterintelligence, and instead put in an executioner's ax, the blows of which were directed inland. All that was required of the Chekists was blind obedience to the will of the Kremlin. To form a new generation of the "armed detachment of the party", which was to solve the tasks of "cleansing the country", it was necessary to thoroughly reshuffle the existing cadres of the OGPU. As a result, a whole layer of personnel counterintelligence officers, organizers and active participants in the unique operations of the past years, was forced out of the central apparatus of the department to the periphery, and a few years later was destroyed by Yezhov in the meat grinder of 1937-1938. However, the operational experience of the KRO staff was not lost forever. The new young cadres of the Soviet counterintelligence, who came to the organs from the NKVD schools and university audiences already in the post-Zhezhov period, studied operational art according to the theoretical developments of their predecessors from the 20s, and the knowledge gained soon turned out to be in demand in a difficult invisible battle with the special services of Nazi Germany during time of the Great Patriotic War.

Vladimir Merzlyakov, Oleg Matveev