According to the 1944 peace agreement, Finland was obliged to return Soviet citizens to the Soviet Union, and twenty-two ‘Leino’s Prisoners’ were a small group compared to over 100,000 people that Finland, pressed by the ACC, handed over to the Soviets by January 1945.42 Among them there were thirty-one German doctors and medical nurses who, according to international agreements, should have been released. When Finnish officials raised this question, General Savonenkov responded: ‘In this case, the Red Cross and international agreements do not play any role [for us].’43 In 1948, Yrjö Leino was dismissed from his post after a special Constitutional Commission of the Finnish Parliament concluded that he was wrong to hand over Finnish citizens to the Soviets without the official sanction of the Finnish government. Later Leino divorced Kuusinen’s daughter, Hertta.
Notes
1. NKVD Order No. 0016, dated January 11, 1945. Document No. 1 in Spetsial’nye lagerya NKVD/MVD SSSR v Germanii. 1945–1950 gg. Sbornik dokumentov i stsatei, edited by S. V. Mironenko, 11–14 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001) (in Russian).
2. N. V. Petrov, ‘Apparat upolnomochennogo NKVD–MGB SSSR v Germanii (1945–1953 gg.),’ in Spetsial’nye lagerya NKVD/MVD, 349–66.
3. On the Nazi underground resistance see Perry Biddiscombe, The SS Hunter Battalions: The Hidden History of the Nazi Resistance Movement 1944–45 (Tempus, 2006).
4. Quoted on page 311 in V. A. Kozlov, ‘Deyatel’nost’ upolnomochennykh i operativnykh grupp NKVD SSSR v Germanii v 1945–1946 gg.,’ in Spetsial’nye lagerya NKVD/MVD, 311–30.
5. Abakumov’s report, dated January 15, 1945, quoted in Kozlov, ‘Deyatel’nost’ upolnomochennykh,’ 315.
6. According to the above-cited NKVD Order No. 0016, dated January 11, 1945.
7. Tsanava’s Order No. 10ss, dated January 22, 1945. Document No. 4 in Apparat NKVD-NKGB v Germanii, 1945–1953, edited by N. Petrov and Ya. Foitsekh, 62–63 (Moscow: Demokratiya, 2009) (in Russian).
8. Abakumov’s report, dated February 15, 1944, cited in Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945 (New York: Viking, 2002), 96–98.
9. Quoted in ibid., 98.
10. Paul Born, Smertnik Vostochnogo fronta, 1945. Agoniya III Reikha (Moscow: Yauza-Press, 2009), 79–80 (in Russian, translated from the German).
11. Leonid Rabichev, ‘Voina vse spishet,’ Znamya, no. 2 (2005) (in Russian), http://magazines.russ.ru/znamia/2005/2/ra8-pr.html, retrieved September 8, 2011.
12. Quoted in Petrov, Pervyi predsedatel’ KGB, 44.
13. Stavka’s directive No. 11072, dated April 20, 1945. Quoted in Mark Solonin, Net blaga na voine (Moscow: Yauza-Press, 2010), 242–3 (in Russian).
14. Details of the Solzhenitsyn case, including a number of documents from his file, in Kirill Stolyarov, Palachi i zhertvy (Moscow: Olma-Press, 1997), 333–49 (in Russian).
15. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volumes One and Two, translated from the Russian by Thomas P. Whitney (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 164.
16. Details in Pavel Polyan, Ne po svoei vole… Istoriya i geografiya prinuditel’nykh migratsii v SSSR (Moscow: OGI-Memorial, 2001), 191–216 (in Russian).
17. Details in ibid., 189–90.
18. GKO Order No. 7467-ss, dated February 3, 1945. An excerpt quoted in ibid., 211.
19. Ibid., 213–6.
20. A photo of Abakumov’s report to Beria, dated March 10, 1945 in SMERSH, 91.
21. Tkachenko’s report to Beria, dated March 17, 1945. Document No. 301 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR ‘Smersh.’ 1939–mart 1946, edited by V. N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov, and N. S. Plotnikova, 502–4 (Moscow: Materik, 2006) (in Russian).
22. NKVD Order No. 00453, dated May 5, 1945. Document No. 4 in Spetsial’nye lagerya NKVD/MVD, 18–19.
23. M. I. Semiryaga, Kak my upravlyali Germaniei: politika i zhizn’ (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1995), 161–2 (in Russian).
24. Beria’s report No. 438/b, dated April 17, 1945. Document No. 2 in Spetsial’nye lagerya NKVD/MVD, 14–16.
25. V. A. Kozlov, ‘Deyatel’nost’ upolnomochennykh i operativnykh grupp NKVD SSSR v Germanii v 1945–1946 gg.,’ in Spetsial’nye lagerya NKVD/MVD, 321.
26. NKVD Order No. 00315, dated April 18, 1945. Document No. 3 in Spetsial’nye lagerya NKVD/MVD, 16–18.
27. A. Von Plato (253–254), ‘Sovetskie spetslagerya v Germanii,’ in Spetsial’nye lagerya NKVD/MVD, 245–87.
28. NKVD Order No. 00461, dated May 10, 1945. Document No. 5 in Spetsial’nye lagerya NKVD/MVD, 19–25.
29. The above-cited NKVD Order No. 00315.
30. Alfred J. Reiber, ‘Zhdanov in Finland,’ The Carl Beck Papers, no. 1107 (1995), 1–81.
31. Edvard Hamalainen, ‘Uzniki Leino,’ Russkaya mysl’ (Paris), no. 4371, July 5, 2001 (in Russian), http://www.kolumbus.fi/edvard.hamalainen/docs/uzniki.htm, retrieved September 8, 2011. From 1948 to 1951, G. M. Savonenkov (1898–1975) was Soviet Ambassador to Finland.
32. Major General Sergei Kozhevnikov was Abakumov’s assistant in charge of the Leningrad Front and head of the Inspection (SMERSH group) at the Allied Control Commission in Finland. N. V. Petrov, Kto rukovodil organami gosbezopasnosti 1941–1954 (Moscow: Zven’ya, 2010), 471–2 (in Russian). Possibly, Kolesnikov was Kozhevnikov’s operational name.
33. Abakumov’s report to Beria, dated May 1945; a photo of the letter in SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki, 143.
34. Kirill Aleksandrov, Russkie soldaty Vermakhta. Geroi ili predateli (Moscow: Yauza/Eksmo, 2005), 31 and 37 (in Russian). Aleksandrov refers to numerous documents from the Military Archive in Helsinki.
35. Abramov, SMERSH, 219–20.
36. Parvilahti, Beria’s Gardens, 21.
37. Eleonora Ioffe-Kemppainen, ‘Karl Gustav Emil Mannerheim—marshal i prezident,’ Zvezda, no. 9 (1999) (in Russian), http://karelkurs.narod.ru/files/kgm.en.html, retrieved September 8, 2011.
38. Quoted in Hamalainen, ‘Uzniki Leino.’
39. Dmitrii Prokhorov, ‘Tragediya kronshtadtskogo “myatezhnika”,’ Sovershenno sekretno—versiya v Pitere, no. 8 (March 3, 2002) (in Russian).
40. P. Bazanov, ‘Prokuror i ruka s ruporom,’ Rodina, no. 4 (2009) (in Russian), http://www.istrodina.com/rodina_articul.php3?id=2976&n=141, retrieved January 24, 2011.
41. W. G. Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service (New York: Enigma Books, 2000), 209.