The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, p. 90.

8. k-4,198,206. Doriot’s emotionally charged oratory caused him to perspire so profusely that after every major speech he was forced to change not merely his shirt but his suit as well. Brunet, Jacques Doriot, pp. 208-9.

9. k-4,198,206. A recent biography of Eugen Fried, the secret Comintern representative in the leadership of the French Communist Party, reveals that Comintern instructions were that the campaign against Doriot should go through three phases: “maneuverer, isoler, liquider.” Without access to KGB files, the authors assume—reasonably but wrongly—that only “political,” rather than “physical,” assassination was intended. Kriegel and Courtois, Eugen Fried, p. 228.

10. On Doriot’s break with the Communist Party and move to fascism, see Brunet, Jacques Doriot, chs. 9-12; Burrin, La Dérive Fasciste, chs. 5, 9.

11. k-4,198,206.

12. There are a number of examples in the VENONA decrypts of the use of the KHORKI (“Polecat”) codename for the Trotskyists.

13. k-4,206. The codename of the task force appears in vol. 7, app. 3, n. 15.

14. k-4,206.

15. Deutscher, Trotsky, vol. 3, pp. 348-9.

16. vol. 7, appendix 3, n. 15.

17. Deutscher, Trotsky, vol. 3, p. 349.

18. Deutscher, Trotsky, vol. 3, pp. 125-6.

19. Minute by R. A. Sykes, October 23, 1952, PRO FO 371/100826 NS 1023/29/G.

20. vol. 6, ch. 12.

21. Among the growing number of studies of the Terror, the classic account remains that by Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment. There is, however, vigorous controversy over the numbers of the Terror’s victims. In 1995 Colonel Grashoven, head of the Russian security ministry rehabilitation team, estimated that in the period 1935-45 18 million were arrested and 7 million shot. Olga Shatunovskaya, a member of Khrushchev’s rehabilitation commission, gave the figure of those “repressed” (imprisoned or shot) from 1935 to 1941 as 19.8 million (a statistic also found in the papers of Anastas Mikoyan). Dmitri Volkogonov arrived at a total of 21.5 million (of whom a third were shot) for the period 1929-53. Conquest’s own revised estimates are of a similar order of magnitude (Conquest, “Playing Down the Gulag,” p. 8). Recent studies based on incomplete official records suggest considerably lower, but still large figures. Stephen Wheatcroft, one of the leading analysts of the official figures, believes it “unlikely that there were more than a million executions between 1921 and 1953. The labor camps and colonies never accounted for more than 2.5 million prisoners.” What is striking even in the official records is the enormous rise in executions during the Great Terror: 353,074 in 1937 and 328,618 in 1938, as compared with a total of under 10,000 for the five year period 1932-6 (Wheatcroft, “The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930-45”). Controversy over the level of incompleteness in the official records (which do not, of course, include deaths in the camps or the millions who died from famine) will doubtless continue.

22. vol. 6, ch. 12.

23. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 149-61.

24. Radzinsky, Stalin, p. 371.

25. vol. 6, ch. 12.

26. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 281.

27. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 1, n. 1; vol. 7, app. 3, n. 15.

28. On Wollweber, see Flocken and Scholz, Ernst Wollweber.

29. k-4,206.

30. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 267.

31. See below, chapter 5.

32. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, chs. 10, 11.

33. vol. 5, ch. 7. All these episodes are conspicuous by their absence from the official SVR hagiography: Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 21-4.

34. Castelo’s personal file, archive no. 68312, registration no. 66160, once in the files of the FCD Fifteenth Department of the First Chief Directorate was transferred to the Eighth Department of FCD Directorate S. vol. 5, ch. 7.

35. After the defection of Orlov in July 1938, Eitingon succeeded him as resident.

36. vol. 5, ch. 7.

37. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

38. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 177-8.

39. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

40. k-4,198.

41. There is, however, one later reference to him being “killed”; vol. 6, ch. 12.

42. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 179-80. Volkogonov, Trotsky, pp. 359-60. Costello and Tsarev, Dangerous Illusions, pp. 282-4.

43. Deutscher, Trotsky, vol. 3, pp. 405-10. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 319-21.

44. vol. 6, ch. 12.