“Popiro’s so-called advice,” Shpigelglias continued to me, “was actually an order to hurry up and get the child out of the house. My wife recalled that the Carlin’s had several relatives in Saratov, so we gave the child some money, bought her a train ticket and sent her off to Saratov. After she left. I have been afraid to look my daughter in the eye, and with my wife crying all day, I had to stay at Home as little as possible ……”
“Two months later, Karin’s daughter returned to Moscow. When she came to us, I was astonished: she was completely changed, her face was pale and as thin as wood. Her eyes were full of pain. There was no longer a trace of childishness in her. She said to me: ‘I have sent a complaint to the prosecutor’s office. Ask them to make the Family that occupies our house give me back my clothes.’ I also went to the Pioneer organization of the old school,’ the girl continued, ‘and received a certificate that I had joined the squad two years ago. But the Pioneer counselor insisted that I go to the Pioneer meeting first, and that I make a statement at the meeting that I fully supported the shooting of my Parents. I went, and I said. If my parents were really spies, then they should be shot. But the team members wanted me to admit that they were real spies and enemies of the people. I couldn’t, so I said …… but I knew very well that it was a lie! My mom and dad are the most honest people. And the ones who shot them were the real spies!’ She finished these words through gritted teeth. The girl refused to eat at our house and didn’t want the money we gave her.”
It was during such a horrible period that the “humanitarian era of Stalin” was being extolled in conferences and meetings, in the press and radio. Who knows how many homeless children were wailing and sobbing beneath the chants of “Stalin cares for the people” and “Stalin loves children with all his heart” ……
It is obviously much more difficult to eliminate the Cheka cadres abroad than to arrest those at home. Therefore, the best way is to trick them back to the Soviet Union first.
Luring foreign-based NKVD personnel back home must be particularly tactful. You know that the wave of purges at home has been heard by the Cheka personnel abroad, and they have to weigh their fate. Besides, if these people are forced to refuse to return, they may reveal to the Western countries the secrets of the NKVD’s activities in these countries. This was precisely the consequence Moscow feared most.
Stalin and Yezhov had to take all this into account. In order not to create a sense of self-anger among the NKVD personnel abroad. They postponed the operation to purge the Foreign Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was responsible for foreign intelligence work. For almost a year, Yerov ruthlessly eliminated the leaders of the other bureaus, but did not touch a single hair on the head of the Foreign Service Slutsky.
It was necessary to create the illusion for the NKVD staff still abroad that the bloody purge at home had nothing to do with them.
As early as December 1936, Yerev, who distrusted and conspired to eliminate the old fighters of the NKVD, set up a special operations bureau directly under his authority. The mission of this bureau was to go abroad to carry out secret orders issued by Stalin himself, which could not be made known to the rank and file of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and it had several operational teams, each with a number of trained assassins. They often traveled abroad to assassinate Trotskyist leaders and defecting Chekists. In January 1937, the Bureau set up clandestine operations in three European countries and in the capital of Mexico. The “permanent representatives” there were all in possession of false documents.
In the summer of 1937, a program was launched to call back the Ministry of Internal Affairs personnel from abroad, and the first few groups were called back to the country, whose families were left behind. It was not difficult to call them back, because in Stalin’s eyes, wives and children were the most deterrent hostages. The cadres were not arrested immediately after their return. As usual, Slutsky, after debriefing them, gave them one or two months’ leave and sent them to a southern resort or a sanatorium for senior cadres. There they happily wrote to their comrades abroad to inform them of their “safety”. When they returned from the South, they were given a new assignment – to go to a country they had never been to before to engage in clandestine activities. They received false documents. And at the appointed Time they left for their new place of work. Before leaving, the car stands naturally with many friends and relatives to see them off. However, their journey ended at a railway station somewhere outside Moscow: there they were taken off the train and transferred to a secret prison. Of course, news of their failure to reach their intended country would always leak out, but that would be at least a few months later.
At the end of June 1937, the head of the NKVD intelligence station in France, Smirnov (his real surname was Glinsky), was called back to his country to report on his duties. A week or so after his arrival in Moscow, he wrote a letter to his wife, who had remained in France, saying that he had received a new appointment – to work underground in China – and asked her to return home immediately with all her things. Smirnov had already been in France for four years, so it was a purely normal transfer to send him to another country. I am afraid that the Cheka personnel in Paris would never have learned about Smirnov’s subsequent fate for the rest of their lives, had it not been for a later event that Yezhov’s stream could not have foreseen.
Just two weeks after Smirnov’s return, the Grodrovskys, who had worked in France for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, returned to Paris. The wife whispered to the families of other cadres that on the eve of her departure from Moscow she had gone to the “Moscow Hotel” where Smirnov was staying, intending to say goodbye to him. She arrived at his door and was about to knock when it suddenly opened and two plainclothesmen with guns came out with Smirnov. She did not dare to stay half a step, and hurried away.
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