After the arrest of the cadres of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the cases against them were not investigated in any way, not even a “passing”. They were declared Trotskyists or spies one by one and were shot without any trial. The Polish-born Cheka was designated as a Polish spy, the Latvians were declared Latvian spies, and the Russians became German, British or French agents.
What such accusations were really a play on words can be seen in the case of Kazimir Baranski. Baranski was a decorated scout in the Foreign Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but now he was labeled a “spy” by Yezhov. Baransky was a Polish national who fought to the death as a fervent communist on the western front against the Polish army during the Soviet civil war. In one battle, he carried the wounded regiment from a hail of bullets and was wounded himself. For this he was awarded a medal. After the end of the civil war, Baranskiy was transferred to the Foreign Affairs Department of the State Political Security Directorate. In 1922, under the pseudonym Kazimir Kobetsky, he became the Second Secretary of the Soviet Embassy in Poland, while his real task was to organize an intelligence network in Poland.
In 1923, the Soviet government intended to send troops through Poland to aid the workers’ movement in Germany. Baranski was ordered to blow up the arsenal and equipment depot in the city of Warsaw. On October 12, 1923, he successfully completed this extremely dangerous mission.
The Poles learned from some source that the bombing in Warsaw was carried out by their compatriot, Kazimir Kobietski, the Second Secretary of the Soviet Embassy. Instead of asking the Soviet government to recall him, they decided to capture him on the spot when he came out again and then settle the score. They waited almost a year for such an opportunity. Before that happened, the Polish counterintelligence agency sent a spy working in the Polish Foreign Ministry who managed to penetrate Baranski’s intelligence network. In order to lure Baranski in, the spy gave the Soviets some real information from his own ministry and gradually won Baranski’s trust. Baranski began to meet with him personally. One summer night in 1925, the spy asked for a meeting with Baranski, asking him to return some secret documents in Time, including the report of the Polish ambassador to Japan, Paterk.
Baranski took the secret documents the spy had given him in the past and arrived at the appointed place on time. He immediately noticed that some suspicious people were watching him. As Baranski was trying to slip away, the spies had already surrounded him. He fought his way out of the circle and ran down a side street into the church of St. Katerina in order to throw away the documents in his coat pocket, which would have ruined him. He stuffed the documents into a crack under the prayer mat and ran out of the church through another door onto the Jerusalem boulevard. Here, the secret agents, who had once lost their target, found him again. They caught him and searched his entire body, but could not find the document they were looking for. Furious, the agents punched and kicked him, severely injuring his head.
Fearing that he would be killed in the street, Baranski called for help in Polish to the pedestrians in order to get a message to the Soviet Embassy: “Look, gentlemen, the Polish police are beating the Soviet diplomats!” He lost consciousness before he could shout a few times.
When he woke up, he was in the police headquarters. Baranski refused to answer the questions of the head of the Polish counterintelligence agency, but repeatedly declared that he enjoyed diplomatic immunity and demanded his immediate release. However, it was not until the Soviet government protested strongly that he was freed. When Baranski returned to the Soviet Embassy, he was disheveled, his head was bandaged, and he was soaked in blood. He spent just over a week in hospital before being deported back to Moscow at the strong request of the Polish government.
Immediately after Baranski’s return to the Soviet Union from Poland, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Chicherin, filed a complaint about his behavior with the Central Supervisory Commission, the highest organ responsible for monitoring the words and actions of party members. The Foreign Ministry denounced Baranski’s involvement in a dangerous espionage scandal involving Poles while in Warsaw, which led to the deterioration of Soviet and Polish relations. Yagoda’s deputy Trilichel, well aware of Baranski’s short temper, gave him a special call to appear “in order” at the Supervisory Commission’s hearings and admitted that he had gone too far in many matters. JISC Chairman Allan Solz himself presided over the JISC hearing on the Baranski case. He first said nothing, and only after Ambassador to Poland Obolensky had finished his accusations against Baranski did he suddenly speak up: “Who are you accusing? You know that this is a Red Army soldier who was wounded during the struggle with the enemy! Comrades, I propose that we all receive the Red Banner for Comrade Baransky in recognition of his service!”
As a result, Baranski was indeed awarded the highest ranking military medal of the time, while Ambassador Obolensky was reprimanded for vilifying him.
The severe beatings by the Polish police severely damaged Baranski’s health. Soon after his return to Moscow, he developed partial paralysis and lost the ability to speak. Later the paralysis was cured, but he was a cripple from then on. Such a scout, crippled for Life by the Polish counterintelligence, was later declared a Polish spy by Yerev and shot without any trial. Both Stalin and Yezhov knew very well that Baranski was not a Polish spy at all, nor could he have been, and that his only “crime” was “unreliability”: he had many friends in the NKVD, and from them he probably learned (for sure) He had already learned about the Moscow trial, including the instructions given by Stalin to the interrogation authorities.
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