The Soviet Dictator's Special Forces

摘要

SMERSH and its chief Viktor Abakumov have existed in the shadows of Soviet history, long neglected in the West. Laymen think of SMERSH in terms of James Bond novels, while scholars tend to identify them with the intelligence war against Nazi Germany, the Leningrad Case of 1949-1950 and Nikita S. Khrushchev's cleansing of the intelligence services in the mid-1950s. SMERSH lay experts get a solid "D-" while scholars get a gentleman's "C." This is easy to explain, given the paucity of Western and Soviet research and analysis. Only Michael Parrish's, The Lesser Terror and Robert W. Stephan's account of the intelligence battles on the Eastern Front between SMERSH and Germany's Abwehr have gotten most of the story right. Recent Russian biographies of Abakumov and histories of SMERSH have been more in the order of apologetics than serious histories.