Abakumov was appointed deputy Commissar of the NKO, reporting directly to Stalin. Although he was relieved of the NKO post a month later, Abakumov’s removal as deputy Commissar was not a slight against him. Stalin simply wanted to reduce the number of NKO deputies. He promoted Marshal Georgii Zhukov to be first deputy, and replaced sixteen deputy commissars, including Abakumov, with only one, Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, head of the General Staff.18 In any case, as head of GUKR SMERSH, Abakumov continued ‘to be subordinated directly to the People’s Commissar of Defense [Stalin] and to follow only his orders’, as Decision 3222-ss/ov mandated.
On May 4, the Directorate of the NKVD Troops for Guarding the Rear of the Red Army (‘rear guard troops’) was promoted to a separate Main Directorate and given the responsibility of providing support for SMERSH’s activities.19 On December 1, 1944, Lt. General Ivan Gorbatyuk replaced Leontiev as head of this Main Directorate. These troops, now numbering 163,000 men, continued to capture German soldiers, spies, and paratroopers in the rear of Soviet combat units. The rear guard troops existed until October 13, 1945.
The same order that created GUKR SMERSH within the NKO created a parallel organization within the Navy Commissariat, the NKVMF, which was simply a reorganization of the 9th Department of the UOO that dealt with the navy.20 This organization was known as the Navy UKR SMERSH. A month later the 6th Department of the UOO, in charge of monitoring NKVD troops such as the Border Guards and rear guard troops, was reorganized into a third counterintelligence unit, the OKR Smersh, which remained within the NKVD.21 At the time, the NKVD troops grew into a separate army: in 1942, the number of servicemen in these troops was 420,000, and by January 1945, it reached 800,000.22
The Navy and NKVD counterintelligence units were smaller and therefore less significant than the NKO’s SMERSH. This is evident from the fact that they were organized as a UKR and an OKR, respectively. In all Soviet acronyms, ‘G’ at the beginning means ‘Main’; ‘U’ means ‘Directorate’; ‘O’ means ‘Department’; and ‘KR’ means ‘Counterintelligence’. A ‘Main Directorate’ is a larger organization than a ‘Directorate’, and a ‘Directorate’ is bigger than a ‘Department’. UKRs were subordinated to the GUKR, and each of the UKRs was comprised of departments. In typed documents of the NKVD’s OKR Smersh, only the ‘S’ in ‘Smersh’ was capitalized, while in NKO and NKVMF documents, SMERSH was spelled in all capital letters. UKRs were always comprised of one or more OKRs.
The Navy UKR SMERSH was headed by Pyotr Gladkov and two of his deputies, Aleksei Lebedev and Sergei Dukhovich. It consisted of four departments, along with an investigation unit, a ciphering section, an operational equipment section, and some miscellaneous units. It was given its own building in a central part of Moscow and moved out of the Lubyanka building. Besides the main headquarters in Moscow, each of the four fleets—the Baltic, Northern, Black Sea, and Pacific—had its own field OKR or Department of Counterintelligence that reported to the Navy UKR SMERSH in Moscow.
The OKR Smersh consisted of six sections, a special group (used for secret operations), a group for the registration of informers, and a Secretariat. Its head reported directly to NKVD Commissar Beria. Besides the Moscow headquarters, there were numerous branches of OKR Smersh: an OKR in the NKVD rear guard troops at each of the twelve fronts; two OKRs in the interior NKVD troops (in Ukraine and on the Northern Caucasus); ten Smersh departments in each of the border guard groups; and a department in the First Motorized NKVD Division and the Special Motorized NKVD Brigade.23 As with the other two SMERSH organizations, there was a vertical, centralized command structure in which each OKR reported to the next higher OKR level. Also, there were OKR Smersh departments in four big industrial cities: Moscow, Kuibyshev (now Samara), Novosibirsk, and Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg).
The work of the NKVD’s Smersh was based entirely on reports from informers. During 1943 and 1944, it arrested 293 alleged traitors to the Motherland, 100 espionage suspects, 76 ‘German supporters’, and 356 deserters among the NKVD troops.24 Additionally, in 1944 almost 10,000 servicemen, including 450 officers, were transferred from the NKVD troops (which were considered elite units compared to the military) to the Red Army because of ‘compromising materials’ the OKR Smersh had collected on them.
Besides its primary function of spying on NKVD troops, the NKVD OKR also kept an eye on the activities of Abakumov’s SMERSH. For example, NKVD counterintelligence reported to Beria on SMERSH officials who had sent looted property from conquered European territories to the Soviet Union. If arrested, SMERSH officers and their informants were tried by military tribunals of NKVD troops, not of the Red Army.25
Similarly, SMERSH officers reported to Abakumov on the false information that investigators of the rear guard troops extracted from arrested locals by beatings and torture. At the same time, there was also cooperation between the NKVD’s Smersh and Abakumov’s SMERSH. If the NKVD’s Smersh captured German paratroopers dropped behind Soviet lines, they were transferred to Abakumov’s SMERSH for full investigation.
Of the three military counterintelligence organizations, the NKO’s GUKR SMERSH became the most important and powerful agency by far. For simplicity’s sake, from this point on, this organization will be referred to as SMERSH.
The Structure and Function of SMERSH
A separate attachment to GKO Decision No. 3222-ss/ov detailed the organization of SMERSH and its branches in the army:
The ‘Smersh’ organs are a centralized organization. At the fronts and military districts the ‘Smersh’ organs (the NKO ‘Smersh’ directorates at fronts and NKO ‘Smersh’ departments at the armies, corps, divisions, brigades, military districts, and other units and organizations of the Red Army) are subordinated only to their higher organs…
The ‘Smersh’ organs inform Military Councils and commanders of the corresponding units, troops, and organizations of the Red Army on the matters of their work: on the results of their combat with enemy agents, on the penetration of the army units by anti-Soviet elements, and on the results of combat against traitors of the Motherland, deserters, and self-mutilators.26
Compared to its predecessor, the UOO, SMERSH was mostly focused on enemy spies, although Red Army servicemen were still under suspicion. The rules for arrests of servicemen were also detailed in the same GKO Decision:
a) The arrest of a private or a junior officer should be approved by a prosecutor;
b) [The arrest] of a mid-level commander should be approved by the commander and prosecutor of the military unit;
c) [The arrest] of a high-level commander should be approved by the Military Council [of the front] and a prosecutor;
d) [The arrest] of a commander of the highest level should be authorized by the People’s Commissar of Defense [Stalin].27
Abakumov kept Stalin updated on all high-ranking commanders, and according to Merkulov, Abakumov reported to Stalin almost every day ‘on the behavior of a number of leading military officers’.28
In general, the organization of SMERSH repeated the structure of the UOO within the NKVD. The headquarters, GUKR SMERSH, was located on the fourth and sixth floors of the NKVD/NKGB building in the center of Moscow at No. 2 Dzerzhinsky (Lubyanka) Square with the entrance from Kuznetsky Most Street. Abakumov’s huge office was on the fourth floor.