General Miller was the leader of the All-Russian Union of Military Men and Women. He was kidnapped in broad daylight in the center of Paris. This incident really angered the French. Thus, the atrocity committed by Soviet spies on September 23, 1937, actually saved Krivitsky’s Life. But he did not escape Stalin’s punishment: in 1941, Krivitsky’s body was found shot to death in a hotel room in Washington.
A number of other NKVD personnel abroad also disappeared. Their disappearances, however, were not as dramatic as those of Rice and Krivitsky. Many of them were eliminated simply on suspicion of turning their backs on the Stalinist system and refusing to return Home.
In early 1938, Agabekov, former head of the State Political Security Directorate’s intelligence station in Turkey, was assassinated in Belgium. Agabekov had left Stalin’s regime as early as 1929, which means that Stalin’s pursuit of him lasted a full decade. Agabekov’s murder was virtually unknown. His mysterious disappearance caused uneasiness in only one person, the famous Russian political exile Burtsev, who often met with him. The Agabekov affair showed that the passage of Time was meaningless to the NKVD: no matter which agent dared not return to the Soviet Union, sooner or later Stalin’s men would find his whereabouts and do their best to eliminate him, no matter how many years had passed.
The vast majority of Soviet agents abroad returned to the Soviet Union in a disciplined manner, even though they knew from abroad that there was only death to return. This phenomenon was difficult for many foreigners who did not know much about Stalin and his “apparatus” to understand. In fact, those who know a little bit about it and put themselves in the shoes of the foreign staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs would understand that Stalin’s policy of terror and intimidation did not allow them to make any other choice.
The key factor preventing them from breaking with the Stalinist regime was the implication of their families. None of them dared to forget the special decree issued on June 8, 1934. The decree stipulated that the next of kin of soldiers who defected abroad would be exiled to the farthest reaches of Siberia, regardless of whether they had prior knowledge of their intention to defect. This decree was supplemented by a secret provision announced in the Ministry of Internal Affairs that the next of kin of an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs who refused to return to his country while on duty abroad or who defected from the Soviet Union would be sentenced to deprivation of liberty for up to ten years, and that if the person betrayed state secrets, his next of kin would be sentenced to capital punishment – death. It is easy to understand why few people dared to leave the Stalinist regime: to do so would be to put their loved ones to death, and to live in fear in a foreign country forever.
NKVD personnel abroad know that in almost every country there is an NKVD intelligence network among government officials (the NKVD never spends money on this). Some of the informants were even senior officials of key departments. With their assistance, Yezhov’s operation could effortlessly locate and eliminate “traitors”.
For those “defectors” with young children, the situation was even more critical: Moscow could order their children to be abducted. If the NKVD agents managed to kidnap two former Tsarist generals (Kutepov and Miller) from downtown Paris in broad daylight, could they not coax or forcefully subdue small children?
I think there is another reason why the vast majority of the NKVD personnel rushed to return home on orders from Moscow: they had a clear conscience and believed that they were blameless before Stalin and his regime. They were confusedly sure that they would not be unjustly punished, even though they had heard that the principle of justice had been brutally and ruthlessly trampled on in many other cases. Many of them had the secret hope that the fact that they had returned to the Soviet Union of their own accord, knowing that their comrades were being arrested and shot, was proof of their infinite loyalty to Stalin, and that this alone would be enough for them to be treated differently.
Among the cadres of the Foreign Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs who were recalled to the Soviet Union in 1937 was a brilliant scout named Mari (alias Mann). For many years he had been operating in Europe as the head of an intelligence station and had a very unusual experience.
During the First World War, Marley joined the Austro-Hungarian army as a Hungarian cleric accompanying the army. He was later captured by the Russian army, and the October Revolution made him a famous Bolshevik. After the end of the civil war, the party sent him to work in the counterintelligence branch of the State Political Security Directorate. A few years later, in the early 1930s, he was transferred to the Foreign Service Sub-Directorate and went to Europe as head of a secret intelligence station. Mari became one of the most outstanding cadres of the Foreign Affairs Bureau and enjoyed a high reputation throughout the Ministry of Internal Affairs. At that time, every Soviet scout on a secret mission abroad had to conceal his nationality, master a foreign language, and pass himself off as a citizen of some European country. Mari, however, did not need to disguise himself – he was a true European himself. Whether pretending to be a Hungarian, an Austrian, a German or a Swiss, he was all very well dressed. Mari was exceptionally brave and had volunteered to infiltrate fascist Germany on several extremely dangerous missions, any one of which would have been enough to kill him in a Gestapo torture chamber. The head of the Foreign Service, Slutsky, was particularly fond of Marley, whose success, he believed, lay mainly in his attractive appearance and good manners. Indeed, Mari’s appearance was very attractive: tall, firm, manly face, and big blue eyes that shone with brilliance.
Despite his long years in the party and his service to the “organ”, his history as a priest made him extremely cautious. He always believed that people around him, even his colleagues, saw him first and foremost as a Hungarian priest. He did not even dare to consider himself a worthy Communist, even though everyone knew that Stalin had also attended theological school and had been memorizing the catechism until the age of twenty, with the intention of becoming a clergyman.
What happened later showed that it was this feeling of “deserving” that played a decisive role in Mari’s life, and it happened at a crucial moment when it was necessary to get rid of such prejudices and to have a completely clear head.
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