Moscow May Re-Establish SMERSH for Work in Russian-Occupied Portions of Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 11 – Igor Korotchenko, a retired Russian colonel who edits the National Defense journal and serves on the defense ministry’s social council, says that Moscow should create a structure within the special services analogous to the Soviet SMERSH to combat diversionary activities on Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine.

            He says Russia needs such a structure to fight diversionary and partisan activities in these places and that it should resemble “the fourth chief directorate of the NKVD of the USSR which also carried out the struggle against Ukrainian nationalists” and be part of the Russian FSB (ura.news/news/1052561084).

            Korotchenko’s proposal is interesting not only because it represents yet another effort to revive Soviet institutions but also because of what it says about Moscow assessments of the situation in the occupied regions of Ukraine. It suggests that at least some in the Russian capital have a far more negative view of conditions there than Kremlin propagandists are suggesting.

            The original SMERSH – a Russian acronym for “Death to Spies” – was directed not only against espionage and partisan activity but also at disloyal elements within the Soviet military and was involved in checking on the reliability of soldiers and civilians returning from captivity whom Stalin suspected were a threat to his rule.

            The editor does not mention this second set of functions – to do so would undoubtedly appear to be defeatist and disloyal – but SMERSH during its activities between 1943 and 1946 was far more involved with than with the first. And that raises the possibility that Putin and his regime may be almost as suspicious about conditions in the army as Stalin was earlier.

            If that is the case, then such a body would likely be involved in searching out and punishing, quite possibly in extra-legal means, anyone the FSB deems disloyal in any way first in the civilian population of Ukraine but then and particularly in Russian military and civilian personnel sent into Ukraine.