Table Of ContentSPECIAL TASKS
SPECIAL
TASKS
T H E
M E M O I R S
OF A N
U N W A N T E D
W I T N E S S —
A S O V I E T
S P Y M A S T E R
Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatoli Sudoplatov
with Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schecter
Foreword by Robert Conquest
Little, Brown and Company
Boston New York Toronto London
F O R E M M A
Copyright © 1994
Pavel A. Sudoplatov and Anatoli P. Sudoplatov,
Jerrold L. Schecter and Leona P. Schecter
Foreword Copyright © 1994
Little, Brown and Company (Inc.)
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means,
including information storage and retrieval systems,
without permission in writing from the publisher,
except by a reviewer who may quote
brief passages in a review.
First Edition
ISBN 0-316-77352-2
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 94-75737
10 987654321
MV-NY
Published simultaneously in Canada
by Little, Brown & Company (Canada) Limited
Printed in the United States of America
C O N T E N T S
Foreword by Robert Conquest vii
Introduction by Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schecter xiii
Evolution of the Soviet Security and Intelligence Service xxi
Prologue Revealing a Secret 3
one Beginnings 7
two Spain: Crucible for Revolution and Purges 30
three Purge Years 50
four The Assassination of Trotsky 65
five Stalin and Hitler: Prelude to War 87
six The Great Patriotic War: Deception Games
and Guerrilla Warfare 126
seven Atomic Spies 172
eight The Cold War 221
nine Raoul Wallenberg, lab x, and Other
Special Tasks 265
v
Vi Contents
TEN The Jews: California in the Crimea 285
ELEVEN Final Years Under Stalin, 1946—1953 310
TWELVE The Fall of Beria and My Arrest 353
THIRTEEN The Trial 395
APPENDICES
APPENDIX ONE Stalin’s Visitors, June 21 and June 22, 1941 433
APPENDIX TWO Atomic Espionage Documents, 1941—1946 436
APPENDIX THREE Technical Aspects of the American Atomic
Bomb Project 468
APPENDIX FOUR First American Atomic Bomb Test 474
APPENDIX FIVE Basis for the Katyn Forest Massacre 476
APPENDIX SIX Rehabilitation Documents of
Pavel Sudoplatov 479
Index 483
Photographs follow page 220
F O R E W O R D
Robert Conquest
This is the most sensational, the most devastating, and in many ways
the most informative autobiography ever to emerge from the Stalinist
milieu.
It is perhaps the most important single contribution to our knowl
edge since Khrushchev’s Secret Speech.
It is not quite true that Pavel Sudoplatov’s name is little known, at
least to historians. His role as organizer of the Trotsky murder had been
established in a general way for some years. But full knowledge was
indeed lacking even on this operation; and the rest of his multifarious
career was obscure. A year or two ago the Moscow press printed some
of his letters from prison, detailing the circumstances of the compara
tively minor crimes for which he had actually been sentenced under
Stalin’s successors, and asking for amnesty. A hitherto secret list of the
orders and medals awarded to those, including Sudoplatov, who carried
out an unspecified “special task” — i.e., the murder of Trotsky — was
also published at this time. And a couple of pieces appeared on his role
in organizing operations in German-occupied territory during the war.
Later General Dmitri Volkogonov visited Sudoplatov with a view
to arranging a full-scale interview. Sudoplatov refused; and Volkogonov
published a not very informative account of the meeting, giving only the
initial “S.” (This was folloWed by a less inhibited, but also unsuccessful,
try by an Italian paper.) Though nothing solid emerged at this stage,
vii
viii Foreword
Volkogonov left Sudoplatov with the suggestion that he write his mem
oirs. At the time it looked unlikely that this would come to anything.
Nor would it have but for the strenuous and devoted efforts of Jerrold
and Leona Schecter, for which we must all feel the gratitude due to the
right people at the right time and with the right understanding.
Sudoplatov’s activities were, of course, for the most part those of
the criminal agent of a criminal regime. His original justification, in fact,
lies at the heart of Communist ethics — in Lenin’s theses that “our
morality is completely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle
of the proletariat,” and that “everything that is done in the proletarian
cause is honest.” This was interpreted from the start as justifying “every
thing” that was done in the interests of the Communist party.
Sudoplatov has come to see that all this, and particularly the treat
ing of all non-Communists as in principle enemies whose lives were for
feit, has proved false and destructive — though even after his release
from prison he found it hard to stomach the views of his old terror-
comrades, like the remarkable Leonid Eitingon, who concluded that the
whole system was rotten.
In this foreword it will hardly be necessary to express general con
demnation of the activities he records. They speak for themselves. Now
adays there are few who still fail to understand and condemn them and
the whole Stalinist system of which they formed part. Today, surely, the
main thing is to learn the lessons of this history, to discover as much as
we can about its circumstances. In this context Sudoplatov is helpful,
for he has not allowed occasional excuses or expressions of contrition
to distort his narrative. Perhaps it is only such a temperament which
could give us so cool a recital of the horribly criminal, but also often
disgraceful and absurd actions of the government he served.
The range of Sudoplatov’s activities, though consonant with his
post-1938 position as nkvd (later mgb) officer in charge of special oper
ations and espionage, is remarkable. To have headed the organization
of both the Trotsky murder and the atomic spy rings in America is only
part of his record. From the less than twenty years of his career in this
post, ending in his imprisonment while still in his midforties, he also
covers for us the wartime operations behind the German front, the
actions against the Ukrainian nationalist partisans who fought against
both Nazis and (until 1950) Communists, the Red Orchestra spy ring in
Berlin, a set of murders of individuals in the USSR, the anti-Semitic cam
paign in the secret police itself, the fall and trial of Beria, and much else.
Directly or at reliable second hand, he is also newly informative about
Foreword ix
the other key actions of the period — the Leningrad Case, the fall of
Abakumov, the anti-Semitic operation in general — not only the Crimea
Affair and the Doctors’ Plot but also, for example, the murder of the
great Yiddish actor-producer Solomon Mikhoels (the first full account
we have).
Sudoplatov had direct contact, too, with most of the Stalinist lead
ership. He had a meeting with Yezhov, then about to fall. He had much
to do with Beria. He saw Stalin himself several times, and received
instructions from him on the murders of Konovalets and Trotsky, and
later a plan to kill Tito. He met others in high position, including
Khrushchev and Molotov.
His chapter on the Trotsky killing is far the fullest yet published,
giving, for example, the reasons for the failure of the first attempt, and
explaining why Trotsky’s American bodyguard, Harte, had to be
murdered.
Many readers will find his chapter on atomic espionage the most
striking and informative. Using in the first place the ring set up to sup
port the Trotsky operation, his men penetrated the Berkeley laboratory,
and later (more importantly) Los Alamos itself. The physicists who wit
tingly or unwittingly then made their secrets available to Stalin have
their activities depicted in detail: not a few readers will surely be shocked
as well as enlightened (almost the only figure to emerge creditably is the
much-maligned Edward Teller).
Sudoplatov had no links with gru (military intelligence) operations.
On these, in the United States in the 1930s, he does however report a
conversation with an elderly colleague from that organization, whose
information about the Hiss connection is of much interest.
His account of his own arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment,
written, of course, from his own point of view, is remarkable testi
mony to the continuance of the petty legalisms and political distortions
which accompanied the first attempts at de-Stalinization. Though they
were not as bad as in the Stalin era itself, it is revealing to read how
Sudoplatov was stopped when he mentioned the role of any of the post-
Stalin (and post-Beria) leadership in the crimes he was charged with, and
particularly that of Khrushchev; and how, when Molotov and Malenkov
fell from power, the interrogators, hitherto suppressing reference to
them, started to link them with the case.
Sudoplatov also gives^S, almost in passing, useful insight into the
nature of Soviet society. For example, he tells us, as if it were perfectly
natural, that among the awards given to police operatives for good work
X Foreword
was the right to send their children to higher education without taking
the required examinations. This is not a matter of pull, or bribes, which
might be met within other societies — and indeed, at a lower level in
Soviet society too. No, here we find an official governmental (though
unpublicized) award. Such attitudes thoroughly justify the concepts of
the French scholar Emmanuel Todd — that the Soviet Union is to be
considered a feudal society with, rather than a New Class, a New
Caste — a priviligentsia deriving benefits, even (precariously) hereditary
ones, not from their economic, but from their hierarchical status.
Indeed, as the writer Konstantin Leontiev predicted for Russia a century
ago, “Socialism is the feudalism of the future.”
There has been for some years a tendency in certain academic circles
of the more schematic type to reject personal reminiscences as almost by
definition inferior to “documents.” When this view was originally put
forward about the USSR in the 1930s, and later again in the mid-1980s,
Soviet official documents were in general highly unreliable, while some
at least of the reminiscences were true, or contained truth. Western his
torical research of any value on the USSR was largely based on personal
memoirs of defectors and others — and was largely validated when a
mass of formerly secret Soviet documents appeared from 1989 on.
Now there is a mass of such documentation. But it still needs to
be said, first, that even the most secret documents of the Stalin period
often contain gross falsifications; second, that the highest category of
secrecy — “word of mouth only” — is naturally not documented; third,
that crucial documents are missing — as Sudoplatov notes of several he
knows to have once existed.
Individual reminiscences must, indeed, be treated critically — but so
must documents. Both are simply historical evidence, none of which is
perfect, and none of which is complete. Evidence from individuals, given
this caveat, is in fact often as important as, or even more important than,
most documents — either cumulatively when it is a matter of mass expe
rience, or singly in the case of high, or key, officials. Even in the spate
of documentation now emerging in Russia, Sudoplatov’s evidence is
vastly informative in major but (as yet, at least) undocumented areas.
One should add that, with the help of his security contacts, Sudoplatov
has had access to useful documents. In fact, in those huge and often
muddled and misleading archives, his special knowledge enabled him to
track down material which no one was otherwise able to locate.
It is in the nature of autobiographies, however veridical in a general
way, that they consist of various levels of evidence. First, the direct expe-
