Directorate of Special Departments within NKVD USSR
Main Directorate within MGB USSR
Dissolved
4 May 1946[1][2]
Type
Military counter-intelligence
Jurisdiction
Soviet Union newly liberated and newly occupied territories (World War II)
Headquarters
Lubyanka (4th and 6th floors) Moscow, Soviet Union
Motto
Death to spies!
Parent department
State Defense Committee
Parent Military counter-intelligence
State Defense Committee
SMERSH (Russian: СМЕРШ) was an umbrella organization for three independent counter-intelligence agencies in the Red Army formed in late 1942 or even earlier, but officially announced only on 14 April 1943. The name SMERSH was coined by Joseph Stalin. The formal justification for its creation was to subvert German attempts to infiltrate the Red Army on the Eastern Front.[3][4]
The official statute of SMERSH listed the following tasks to be performed by the organisation: counter-intelligence, counter-terrorism, preventing any other activity of foreign intelligence in the Red Army; fighting "anti-Soviet elements" in the Red Army; protection of the front lines against penetration by spies and "anti-Soviet elements"; investigating traitors, deserters, and self-inflicted wounds in the Red Army; and checking military and civil personnel returning from captivity.
The organisation was officially in existence until 4 May 1946,[1][2] when its duties were transferred back to the MGB.[5] The head of the agency throughout its existence was Viktor Abakumov, who rose to become Minister of State Security in the postwar years.
^ abService record for Victor Abakumov, Head of SMERSH GUKR (in Russian) Retrieved 2012-07-21
^ abService record for Nicholas Selivanovsky, Deputy Head of SMERSH GUKR (in Russian) Retrieved 2012-07-21
^"The Soviet Army: SMERSH", SpetsNaz Psychology
^Антонов-Овсеенко, Антон (1999). Берия. АСТ. p. 316. ISBN 978-5-237-03178-2.
^Parrish, Michael (1996). The Lesser Terror Soviet State Security, 1939–1953. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 114–120. ISBN 0-275-95113-8. Retrieved May 18, 2011.
SMERSH (Russian: СМЕРШ) was an umbrella organization for three independent counter-intelligence agencies in the Red Army formed in late 1942 or even earlier...
a high-ranking member of the feared Russian counter-intelligence agency SMERSH, where she serves as the supervisor of Department II (operations and executions)...
"Syndicat des Ouvriers d'Alsace" (French for "Alsatian Workmen's Union"), a SMERSH-controlled trade union. He is first encountered as an inmate of the Dachau...
to assist him in his mission to bankrupt Le Chiffre, the paymaster of a SMERSH-controlled trade union. She poses as a radio seller, working with secret...
list of original main villains in James Bond computer and video games. SMERSH – SMiERt SHpionam, "Death to Spies", Bond's original nemesis in the novels...
spread as gold bullion in many countries. Goldfinger is the treasurer of SMERSH, a Soviet counterintelligence agency, which is Bond's nemesis. Goldfinger...
them while exacting revenge on Bond for killing their agent Dr. No; ex-SMERSH operative Rosa Klebb, SPECTRE's Number Three, is in charge of the mission...
high-level Soviet security official who from 1943 to 1946 was the head of SMERSH in the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense, and from 1946 to 1951 of the...
Hitler's dogs were repeatedly buried and exhumed. The last burial was at the SMERSH facility in Magdeburg on 21 February 1946. In 1970, KGB director Yuri Andropov...
as Anya Amasova Portrayed by Barbara Bach In-universe information Gender Female Affiliation KGB (film) SMERSH (novelisation) Classification Bond girl...
Berns-Martin triple draw shoulder holster and a number of the weapons used by SMERSH and other villains. In thanks, Fleming gave the MI6 Armourer in his novels...
and her offspring Wulf) were discovered in a shell crater by a unit of SMERSH, the Soviet counter-intelligence agency. The dog thought to be Blondi was...
Directorate of Security (KHAD successor in Afghanistan) Numbers station RAW SMERSH Sbornik KGB SSSR Security Service of Ukraine State Security Department Venona...
captain in the Red Army during World War II, Solzhenitsyn was arrested by SMERSH and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag and then internal exile for criticizing...
Presidential Library. Retrieved 27 September 2021. Stephan, Robert (1987). "Smersh: Soviet Military Counter-Intelligence during the Second World War". Journal...
The Soviet troops handed over those who had been in the Führerbunker to SMERSH for interrogation, to reveal what had occurred in the bunker during the...
with its own SPECTRE Island training base capable of replacing the Soviet SMERSH. In the novels, SPECTRE is an organised crime enterprise led by Blofeld...
Army soldiers experienced under the Special Detachments (later renamed SMERSH). On the other hand, Beevor noted the often extraordinary bravery of the...
In April 1943, Directorate of Special Departments was transformed into SMERSH and transferred to the People's Defense and Commissariates. At the same...
offspring, Wulf) were repeatedly buried and exhumed. The last burial was at the SMERSH facility in Magdeburg on 21 February 1946. In 1970, KGB director Yuri Andropov...
due to the city's rapidly growing industrial base. Due to the fight of SMERSH with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Lviv obtained a nickname with a negative...
of the SMERSH counterintelligence department of the 47th Army. From 29 April 1943 he was the head of the counterintelligence department SMERSH South-West;...
as a cipher clerk. Her superiors, in connection with the Soviet agency SMERSH, plan to sow dissension in the intelligence community by murdering and discrediting...
majority of Cossacks from both groups were transferred to Red Army and SMERSH custody at the Soviet demarcation line in Judenburg, Austria. This episode...
2010, retrieved 3 November 2013 Original: the Fourth Department of the SMERSH Directorate of Counterintelligence of the 2nd Belorussian Front, USSR (1978)...
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