Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness, a Soviet Spymaster PDF
Preview Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness, a Soviet Spymaster
SPECIAL TASKS SPECIAL TASKS T H E M E M O I R S OF A N U N W A N T E D W I T N E S S — A S O V I E T S P Y M A S T E R Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatoli Sudoplatov with Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schecter Foreword by Robert Conquest Little, Brown and Company Boston New York Toronto London F O R E M M A Copyright © 1994 Pavel A. Sudoplatov and Anatoli P. Sudoplatov, Jerrold L. Schecter and Leona P. Schecter Foreword Copyright © 1994 Little, Brown and Company (Inc.) All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. First Edition ISBN 0-316-77352-2 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 94-75737 10 987654321 MV-NY Published simultaneously in Canada by Little, Brown & Company (Canada) Limited Printed in the United States of America C O N T E N T S Foreword by Robert Conquest vii Introduction by Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schecter xiii Evolution of the Soviet Security and Intelligence Service xxi Prologue Revealing a Secret 3 one Beginnings 7 two Spain: Crucible for Revolution and Purges 30 three Purge Years 50 four The Assassination of Trotsky 65 five Stalin and Hitler: Prelude to War 87 six The Great Patriotic War: Deception Games and Guerrilla Warfare 126 seven Atomic Spies 172 eight The Cold War 221 nine Raoul Wallenberg, lab x, and Other Special Tasks 265 v Vi Contents TEN The Jews: California in the Crimea 285 ELEVEN Final Years Under Stalin, 1946—1953 310 TWELVE The Fall of Beria and My Arrest 353 THIRTEEN The Trial 395 APPENDICES APPENDIX ONE Stalin’s Visitors, June 21 and June 22, 1941 433 APPENDIX TWO Atomic Espionage Documents, 1941—1946 436 APPENDIX THREE Technical Aspects of the American Atomic Bomb Project 468 APPENDIX FOUR First American Atomic Bomb Test 474 APPENDIX FIVE Basis for the Katyn Forest Massacre 476 APPENDIX SIX Rehabilitation Documents of Pavel Sudoplatov 479 Index 483 Photographs follow page 220 F O R E W O R D Robert Conquest This is the most sensational, the most devastating, and in many ways the most informative autobiography ever to emerge from the Stalinist milieu. It is perhaps the most important single contribution to our knowl edge since Khrushchev’s Secret Speech. It is not quite true that Pavel Sudoplatov’s name is little known, at least to historians. His role as organizer of the Trotsky murder had been established in a general way for some years. But full knowledge was indeed lacking even on this operation; and the rest of his multifarious career was obscure. A year or two ago the Moscow press printed some of his letters from prison, detailing the circumstances of the compara tively minor crimes for which he had actually been sentenced under Stalin’s successors, and asking for amnesty. A hitherto secret list of the orders and medals awarded to those, including Sudoplatov, who carried out an unspecified “special task” — i.e., the murder of Trotsky — was also published at this time. And a couple of pieces appeared on his role in organizing operations in German-occupied territory during the war. Later General Dmitri Volkogonov visited Sudoplatov with a view to arranging a full-scale interview. Sudoplatov refused; and Volkogonov published a not very informative account of the meeting, giving only the initial “S.” (This was folloWed by a less inhibited, but also unsuccessful, try by an Italian paper.) Though nothing solid emerged at this stage, vii viii Foreword Volkogonov left Sudoplatov with the suggestion that he write his mem oirs. At the time it looked unlikely that this would come to anything. Nor would it have but for the strenuous and devoted efforts of Jerrold and Leona Schecter, for which we must all feel the gratitude due to the right people at the right time and with the right understanding. Sudoplatov’s activities were, of course, for the most part those of the criminal agent of a criminal regime. His original justification, in fact, lies at the heart of Communist ethics — in Lenin’s theses that “our morality is completely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat,” and that “everything that is done in the proletarian cause is honest.” This was interpreted from the start as justifying “every thing” that was done in the interests of the Communist party. Sudoplatov has come to see that all this, and particularly the treat ing of all non-Communists as in principle enemies whose lives were for feit, has proved false and destructive — though even after his release from prison he found it hard to stomach the views of his old terror- comrades, like the remarkable Leonid Eitingon, who concluded that the whole system was rotten. In this foreword it will hardly be necessary to express general con demnation of the activities he records. They speak for themselves. Now adays there are few who still fail to understand and condemn them and the whole Stalinist system of which they formed part. Today, surely, the main thing is to learn the lessons of this history, to discover as much as we can about its circumstances. In this context Sudoplatov is helpful, for he has not allowed occasional excuses or expressions of contrition to distort his narrative. Perhaps it is only such a temperament which could give us so cool a recital of the horribly criminal, but also often disgraceful and absurd actions of the government he served. The range of Sudoplatov’s activities, though consonant with his post-1938 position as nkvd (later mgb) officer in charge of special oper ations and espionage, is remarkable. To have headed the organization of both the Trotsky murder and the atomic spy rings in America is only part of his record. From the less than twenty years of his career in this post, ending in his imprisonment while still in his midforties, he also covers for us the wartime operations behind the German front, the actions against the Ukrainian nationalist partisans who fought against both Nazis and (until 1950) Communists, the Red Orchestra spy ring in Berlin, a set of murders of individuals in the USSR, the anti-Semitic cam paign in the secret police itself, the fall and trial of Beria, and much else. Directly or at reliable second hand, he is also newly informative about Foreword ix the other key actions of the period — the Leningrad Case, the fall of Abakumov, the anti-Semitic operation in general — not only the Crimea Affair and the Doctors’ Plot but also, for example, the murder of the great Yiddish actor-producer Solomon Mikhoels (the first full account we have). Sudoplatov had direct contact, too, with most of the Stalinist lead ership. He had a meeting with Yezhov, then about to fall. He had much to do with Beria. He saw Stalin himself several times, and received instructions from him on the murders of Konovalets and Trotsky, and later a plan to kill Tito. He met others in high position, including Khrushchev and Molotov. His chapter on the Trotsky killing is far the fullest yet published, giving, for example, the reasons for the failure of the first attempt, and explaining why Trotsky’s American bodyguard, Harte, had to be murdered. Many readers will find his chapter on atomic espionage the most striking and informative. Using in the first place the ring set up to sup port the Trotsky operation, his men penetrated the Berkeley laboratory, and later (more importantly) Los Alamos itself. The physicists who wit tingly or unwittingly then made their secrets available to Stalin have their activities depicted in detail: not a few readers will surely be shocked as well as enlightened (almost the only figure to emerge creditably is the much-maligned Edward Teller). Sudoplatov had no links with gru (military intelligence) operations. On these, in the United States in the 1930s, he does however report a conversation with an elderly colleague from that organization, whose information about the Hiss connection is of much interest. His account of his own arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment, written, of course, from his own point of view, is remarkable testi mony to the continuance of the petty legalisms and political distortions which accompanied the first attempts at de-Stalinization. Though they were not as bad as in the Stalin era itself, it is revealing to read how Sudoplatov was stopped when he mentioned the role of any of the post- Stalin (and post-Beria) leadership in the crimes he was charged with, and particularly that of Khrushchev; and how, when Molotov and Malenkov fell from power, the interrogators, hitherto suppressing reference to them, started to link them with the case. Sudoplatov also gives^S, almost in passing, useful insight into the nature of Soviet society. For example, he tells us, as if it were perfectly natural, that among the awards given to police operatives for good work X Foreword was the right to send their children to higher education without taking the required examinations. This is not a matter of pull, or bribes, which might be met within other societies — and indeed, at a lower level in Soviet society too. No, here we find an official governmental (though unpublicized) award. Such attitudes thoroughly justify the concepts of the French scholar Emmanuel Todd — that the Soviet Union is to be considered a feudal society with, rather than a New Class, a New Caste — a priviligentsia deriving benefits, even (precariously) hereditary ones, not from their economic, but from their hierarchical status. Indeed, as the writer Konstantin Leontiev predicted for Russia a century ago, “Socialism is the feudalism of the future.” There has been for some years a tendency in certain academic circles of the more schematic type to reject personal reminiscences as almost by definition inferior to “documents.” When this view was originally put forward about the USSR in the 1930s, and later again in the mid-1980s, Soviet official documents were in general highly unreliable, while some at least of the reminiscences were true, or contained truth. Western his torical research of any value on the USSR was largely based on personal memoirs of defectors and others — and was largely validated when a mass of formerly secret Soviet documents appeared from 1989 on. Now there is a mass of such documentation. But it still needs to be said, first, that even the most secret documents of the Stalin period often contain gross falsifications; second, that the highest category of secrecy — “word of mouth only” — is naturally not documented; third, that crucial documents are missing — as Sudoplatov notes of several he knows to have once existed. Individual reminiscences must, indeed, be treated critically — but so must documents. Both are simply historical evidence, none of which is perfect, and none of which is complete. Evidence from individuals, given this caveat, is in fact often as important as, or even more important than, most documents — either cumulatively when it is a matter of mass expe rience, or singly in the case of high, or key, officials. Even in the spate of documentation now emerging in Russia, Sudoplatov’s evidence is vastly informative in major but (as yet, at least) undocumented areas. One should add that, with the help of his security contacts, Sudoplatov has had access to useful documents. In fact, in those huge and often muddled and misleading archives, his special knowledge enabled him to track down material which no one was otherwise able to locate. It is in the nature of autobiographies, however veridical in a general way, that they consist of various levels of evidence. First, the direct expe-
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