Vadim Birstein

Smersh (eBook, ePUB)

Stalin's Secret Weapon

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

SMERSH is the award-winning account of the top-secret counterintelligence organisation that dealt with Stalin’s enemies from within the shadowy recesses of Soviet government. As James Bond’s nemesis in Ian Fleming’s novels, SMERSH and its operatives were depicted in exotic duels with 007, rather than fostering the bleak oppression and terror they actually spread in the name of their dictator. Stalin drew a veil of secrecy over SMERSH’s operations in 1946, but that did not stop him using it to terrify Red Army dissenters in Leningrad and Moscow, or to abduct and execute suspected spooks - often without cause - across mainland Europe. Formed to mop up Nazi spy rings at the end of the Second World War, SMERSH gained its name from a combination of the Russian words for 'Death to Spies’. Successive Communist governments suppressed traces of Stalin’s political hit squad; now Vadim Birstein lays bare the surgical brutality with which it exerted its influence as part of the paranoid regime, both within the Soviet Union and in the wider world. SMERSH was the most mysterious and secret of organisations - this definitive and magisterial history finally reveals truths that lay buried for nearly fifty years.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Biteback Publishing
• Seitenzahl: 528
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. November 2013
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781849546898
• Artikelnr.: 40895836

Autorenporträt

Dr Vadim J. Birstein, a Russian-American who arrived in the United States in 1991, is a historian and molecular geneticist. Born in Moscow and educated at Moscow State University, he received his Doctor of Science in 1987. Until the end of 1998 he was a Senior Research Scientist at the Koltsov Institute of Developmental Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences. He is the author of over 150 scientific papers and three scientific books and is one of the world's greatest authorities on the endangered sturgeon. His well-received history The Perversion of Knowledge: The True Story of Soviet Science was published in 2001 by The Westview Press.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents
Foreword vii
Acknowledgments x
Notes on Transliteration and Archival Materials xi
Introduction 1
Part I. The Big Picture
Chapter 1 - Soviet Military Counterintelligence: An Overview 13
Part II. The Roots of SMERSH
Chapter 2 - Stalin's Ruling Mechanism 43
Chapter 3 - Laws and Tribunals 52
Chapter 4 - Highest Courts 63
Chapter 5 - Division of Europe 72
Chapter 6 - On the Verge of the War 83
Chapter 7 - The Scapegoats: Hunting for Generals 87
Chapter 8 - Directorate of Special Departments (UOO) 96
Part III. Military Counterintelligence: July 1941-April 1943
Chapter 9 - At the Moscow Gates 109
Chapter 10 - More About OOs 115
Chapter 11 - Alleged New Traitors (Late 1941-Early 1943) 124
Chapter 12 - Special Tasks of the OOs 131
Part IV. German Intelligence Services at the Eastern Front
Chapter 13 - German Military Intelligence at the Eastern Front 143
Chapter 14 - Abwehr's Failures and Successes 153
Chapter 15 - German Intelligence and Occupation 166
Part V. The Birth of SMERSH
Chapter 16 - The Birth of SMERSH 177
Chapter 17 - Leaders of SMERSH 193
Part VI. SMERSH in Action: 1943-44
Chapter 18 - General Activity 217
Chapter 19 - Against Our Own People 235
Chapter 20 - First Trials of War Criminals 247
Smersh 25102011 NC.indd 5 25/10/2011 18:44
Part VII. Toward Berlin
Chapter 21 - Crossing the Border 263
Chapter 22 - In the Heart of Europe 287
Chapter 23 - Berlin and Prague Are Taken 301
Chapter 24 - The End of Abwehr 314
Part VIII. The End of WWII
Chapter 25 - Investigations in Moscow 323
Chapter 26 - War with Japan 337
Part IX. SMERSH After the War: 1945-46
Chapter 27 - In Europe and at Home 349
Chapter 28 - The SMERSH Team in Nuremberg 374
Epilogue. The Road to the Top: Abakumov Becomes a Minister 397
Notes 405
Index 495
Extra web content located on http://www.smershbook.com:
Appendix I. Red Army and Navy Officers Arrested During WWII
Appendix II. Foreign Diplomats Arrested by SMERSH from 1944 to 1945
Appendix III. Finnish Persons Arrested by SMERSH in April, 1945