Jan Karlowitsch Bersin

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January Karlovich Berzin ( Russian Ян Карлович Берзин , Latvian Papus (born 13: Pavel Ivanovich Bersin, nickname: Starik, party name original name Pēteris Ķuzis, too; Jānis Bērziņš jul. / 25. November  1889 greg. In Kligen , community Zaube , Livonia Governorate , Russian Empire , today Amata District , Latvia ); † July 29, 1938 in Kommunarka near Moscow ) was a Soviet intelligence chief of Latvian-Russian origin. From 1924 to 1935 and 1937 he was the chief of the Red Army's military intelligence service and one of the organizers of the secret cooperation between the Red Army and the Reichswehr .

biography

Bersin was born into a Latvian farming family in what was then the Russian governorate of Livonia . He attended boarding school in the city of Kuldīga from 1902 . During the Russian Revolution , the boarding school was closed in November 1905.

Bersin returned home and joined a social democratic resistance group called "Flail". A little later he became a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and belonged to the Bolshevik wing . With the failure of the St. Petersburg uprising, the local Latvian resistance groups adopted a terrorist tactic against the tsarist forces of order. Bersin killed an officer in a collision with the police in 1906 and was only saved from immediate shooting by the remaining police officers by a group of Cossacks . He was tried on a court martial and sentenced to death . Due to procedural errors, the judgment was declared invalid. In a second trial he was sentenced to death again in Tallinn in 1907 . Due to his young age of 17, the sentence was commuted to an eight-year prison sentence to be served in Siberia .

During his detention, Bersin worked in the prison pharmacy and acquired basic knowledge of pharmaceuticals . In 1909 he was pardoned and released from prison. He immediately rejoined the Bolsheviks. He distributed propaganda materials for the party in Riga under various pseudonyms . In August 1911 he was arrested again for this political activity and exiled to Irkutsk Governorate . He fled exile in the spring of 1914 , using forged documents with the name Jan Karlowitsch Bersin. During the First World War he was drafted into the Russian Army under this identity and deserted in 1915. According to his official biography, he then worked under a false name as a locksmith in Petrograd . He took an active part in the February Revolution of 1917 and then became the editor of a Latvian Bolshevik party newspaper. During the October Revolution he was a member of the Bolshevik party committees of Vyborg and Saint Petersburg and was part of the circle of Leon Trotsky .

Career in the Cheka and the Red Army

In December 1917, Bersin began his career as an employee of the Cheka . In this capacity he took part in the suppression of the uprising of the Social Revolutionaries in Yaroslavl in 1918 . As a result of the Bolshevik counterattack, 428 opponents of the Bolsheviks were executed in the city on July 28, 1918. According to the Soviet defector and former GRU agent Viktor Suvorov , Bersin was said to have played a significant role in the development of the hostage shooting system that was used by the Red Army and the Cheka during the Russian Civil War to raise resistance oppress local people. After the end of the fighting in Yaroslavl he took over the duties of secretary of the municipal administration of the Cheka. In March 1919 he was posted to Latvia , which had been Soviet since January , in order to secure the power of the Bolsheviks there as Deputy Commissioner for the Interior. On May 22, 1919, however, the Red Army had to withdraw from Riga in front of the Baltic National Army , which was supported by former German soldiers and fought against the Soviet Russian troops with the approval of Great Britain and could only retain control of the easternmost part of the country. After the withdrawal from Riga, Bersin was transferred to the Red Army, where from July to August 1919 he was first chairman of the political department of the 11th Rifle Division of the Latvian Red Army, which was renamed the 15th Soviet Army during this period . In August 1919 he was appointed chief of the Special Political Department of the 15th Army. He kept this post until shortly before the dissolution of the 15th Army . During this time he took part in the defense of Petrograd against the offensive of General Yudenich and in the Polish-Soviet War . The 15th Army was routed and wiped out at the Battle of Warsaw in August 1920 ; However, Bersin managed to avoid capture by Polish troops.

Career in the reconnaissance department of the Red Army

In December 1920, on the recommendation of Felix Dzerzhinsky , he switched to the reconnaissance department of the Red Army (later GRU).

In March 1921, Bersin was involved in the suppression of the Kronstadt sailors' uprising. He proved to be particularly adamant in liquidating the rebel sailors, which in the eyes of the Soviet leadership recommended him for responsible positions.

Head of Department 2 - Foreign Espionage

From April 1921 on, Bersin was head of Department 2 of the GRU, which was responsible for foreign espionage . In December of the same year, Bersin became deputy head of the GRU. In the beginning, Bersin had to struggle very hard with problems caused by the lack of food and clothing in Russia and from 1922 in the Soviet Union after the end of the civil war. In letters written in 1921 and 1922, for example, he repeatedly called for better food and clothing contingents in order to raise the morale and work performance of GRU employees to a normal level and to prevent possible betrayal. The demands and requests Berzin was the Politburo of the RCP due complied very.

Bersin liked the new role in military reconnaissance . He went abroad several times in person and undertook undercover trips to Great Britain , Poland , Czechoslovakia and the Weimar Republic . Under the leadership of Bersin, Department 2 of the GRU succeeded in creating a comprehensive picture of all military air fleets in Western European countries and the USA from 1921 to 1923 using public publications and its own espionage activities. Furthermore, the GRU began to build up a comprehensive network of residences in Bulgaria, Germany, Austria, Italy and other European countries. In addition to classic espionage purposes, these residences also served to persecute opposition white emigrants (here in particular the Sofia residences ) and to support and coordinate communist uprisings within the Comintern in the respective host countries. For example, at the instigation of the Soviet politicians Radek and Zinoviev, the Hamburg uprising in October 1923 and on December 1, 1924 a completely failed coup attempt in Estonia were supported. The GRU worked closely with the international department of the Cheka. For example, missions of the Soviet Red Cross served as camouflage .

Head of the reconnaissance department of the Red Army

In March 1924, on the recommendation of his predecessor Arwid Seibot de jure , Bersin became chief of military intelligence . Due to his tireless activity and his talent for the tasks of a head of the secret service, the GRU became a highly efficient secret service which, in contrast to the other Soviet secret services, has survived to the present day.

After the fiasco in Estonia, Bersin was against instigating rebellions in the countries surrounding the Soviet Union. The revolutionary activities of the Comintern had, in addition to huge casualties, only resulted in “thousands of Comintern parasites being on the GRU payroll.” In Germany , the GRU built from the “remaining usable personnel of the German Comintern”, in the words of GRU agent Kriwitzki a "brilliant secret service, the envy of every other nation." Bersin ensured that the GRU began to operate worldwide by enormously expanding the existing network of residences . He had bogus companies set up to camouflage the reconnaissance activities, which enabled his agents to forge very extensive relationships in the society of the respective "host countries". An example of this is the Inpress press agency owned by GRU agent Sándor Radó .

A US $ 100 gold certificate note from 1922. These banknotes were counterfeited en masse in the Soviet Union in 1927 and put into circulation by the GRU and OGPU. With the conversion of the US currency to a smaller paper format in 1928, however, the massive deposit of such obsolete banknotes soon became noticeable.

Due to the political and economic isolation of the Soviet Union and the Weimar Republic, the secret cooperation between the Red Army and the German Reichswehr in the development of modern weapons was initiated by Karl Radek in 1922 . The Rapallo contract formed the basis for further joint projects. After his rise to the position of head of the GRU, Bersin took over the organization of these relationships, which continued until 1934. One of the German-Soviet companies was Bersol, officially a joint venture that was involved in the production of chemical fertilizers for the Soviet Union. Unofficially, Bersol was supposed to produce large quantities of artillery shells filled with mustard gas and phosgene for the Red Army and the Reichswehr. The Bersol project failed because the German side, represented by the entrepreneur Hugo Stoltzenberg , was slow to meet deadlines . In a 1928 report to the People's Commissar for Army and Fleet of the USSR Voroshilov , Bersin expressed skepticism about the results of the joint projects carried out up to then, but advocated a continuation of the cooperation under the stipulation of "maximum use", different, together with the Reichswehr facilities used, such as the Aviation School in Lipetsk .

In the autumn of 1926 the fear of a new war against a coalition of Western European states under the leadership of Great Britain, fueled by the leadership of the CPSU, increased . In January 1927, Bersin prepared a secret report in which he expressly stated that the armaments activities of the European states in 1926 and the activities to be expected in 1927 in no way indicated such a war. However, this intelligence service knowledge was ignored by the Soviet leadership in order to implement the planned, comprehensive development of the Soviet arms industry.

In the period from 1927 to 1933, Bersin was involved in the distribution of US $ 100 notes counterfeited in the Soviet Union in China, Europe, and the United States. The purpose of the action was the demand by Stalin to procure additional foreign currency for the Soviet Union. Counterfeiting caused several scandals in Europe and the United States. From side of the GRU was the spread of false banknotes finally stopped after it had succeeded US authorities to find a trail leading toward the Soviet Union. The OGPU continued this unconventional way of obtaining foreign currency until 1936.

After the takeover of the Nazis in Germany organized Bersin especially the elucidation of projects of Hitler government to engage the Soviet Union in a war and the intelligence security cooperation between the two countries in the military field. This concerned the monitoring of the exchange of armaments material, the raw materials intended for armaments production, the personnel deployed for military training as well as the intelligence service of the armed forces including their organizations via a network of agents deployed in and around Germany. The Soviet secret services GRU and OGPU did not miss a single detail of the political development in Germany due to the extensive network of agents . The events of the Röhm putsch in the Soviet Union were followed closely and were an occasion for Stalin to improve relations between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich. To what extent these events might have inspired Stalin in terms of carrying out the Great Terror remains speculation.

Covert activities in the Soviet Far East and the Spanish Civil War

A somewhat different task arose for the activities of the GRU in the Far East and the Pacific region. Above all, it was of great importance to monitor the military conflicts that were repeatedly carried out between the individual states in this area and to recognize in good time any emerging dangers for the Soviet Union or the countries bordering on its territory. Richard Sorge was one of his residencies from 1929 onwards , and he was employed in China and later in Japan from 1933 onwards .

The Soviet freighter Kursk loaded with aid supplies for the Spanish Republican troops in the port of Alicante. (December 28, 1936)

In the initial phase of the Great Terror, Bersin was entrusted with the liquidation of some undercover NKVD employees in the Far East from April 1935 to July 1936 . At that time he was officially deputy chief of the Special Far East Army under the code name Gallen , which was under the command of Marshal Wassili Blücher . During his absence, his deputy Jossif Unschlicht took over his management activities .

After his stay in the Far East, Bersin was under the code name Grischin from July 1936 to July 1937 the highest Soviet military advisor in the Spanish Civil War in Madrid . In place of Unschlicht, Semjon Urizki was entrusted with the deputy management of the GRU. In Spain, Bersin was subordinate to a camouflaged, specialist expeditionary force of the Red Army with a strength of 2,000 soldiers. De facto he was the commander of the Republican troops during his stay . Bersin reorganized the republican armed forces and brought about the appointment of General José Miaja as commander in chief . At the end of 1936 and in January and February 1937, he successfully defended the Spanish capital Madrid against offensives by Franco's troops. (→ Siege of Madrid ) In March 1937, Bersin prepared a report to Voroshilov in which he complained about the terrorist measures of the NKVD in Spain, which Alexander Orlov was responsible for carrying out . (→ Andreu Nin ) To the GRU members, Stalin and Voroshilov asserted that the measures described by Bersin were wrong; in fact, the NKVD agent Orlov was still given a free hand. After his deputy Uritsky was arrested by the NKVD, Bersin had to hurry back to the Soviet Union via Paris.

After his return, Bersin resumed his post as head of the GRU on June 9, 1937. He was awarded the Order of Lenin for his achievements in Spain and promoted to army commander of the second rank .

Arrest and execution

Photo by Jan Bersins, which was created for the prisoner cards of the NKVD .

At the instigation of the People's Commissar for Defense Voroshilov, Bersin fell victim to the purges in the Red Army, although no competent successor was available for his post as head of the GRU and he himself had always been loyal to Stalin and the CPSU . He was arrested by the NKVD on November 27, 1937 . Stalin publicly justified this step at a conference with the fact that the Soviet military espionage had been infiltrated by the Germans . Whether that was actually the case is still debated in Russia today. On February 15, 1938, Bersin was expelled from the Communist Party as an " enemy of the people " along with 15 other arrested functionaries . On July 29, 1938, Bersin was sentenced to death for alleged membership in a counterrevolutionary terrorist organization . He was then in Kommunarka near Moscow shot .

On July 28, 1956, Bersin was legally rehabilitated in the course of de-Stalinization .

Awards

In addition to the Order of Lenin, Bersin received the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of the Red Star during his service .

literature

  • Lev Alexandrowitsch Besymenski : Stalin and Hitler - The poker game of the dictators ; Construction publishing house Berlin 2004; ISBN 3-7466-8109-X
  • Louis Fischer: Russia's Road from Peace to War ; Harper and Row Pub. New York; 1969
  • Овидий Александрович Горчаков: Ян Берзин - командарм ГРУ (Owidii ​​Alexandrovich Gorchakov: Jan Bersin - commander of the GRU ); Neva Publishing House Saint Petersburg 2004; ISBN 978-5-7654-3383-9
  • Walter Germanowitsch Kriwitzki : I was Stalin's agent ; Nevertheless-Verlag Grafenau-Döffingen 1990; ISBN 3-922209-33-5
  • Александр Колпакиди, Александр Север: ГРУ. Уникальная энциклопедия (Alexander Kolpakidi, Alexander Sewer: GRU: Unique Encyclopedia ); Publishing house Jausa-Exmo Moscow 2009; ISBN 978-5-699-30920-7
  • В.М.Лурье, В.Я.Кочик: ГРУ: дела и люди (WM Lure, W. Ja. Kotschik: GRU: activity and personnel ); Neva Publishing House Saint Petersburg; ISBN 978-5-7654-1499-0
  • Alexander Mikhailovich Orlow : Kremlin secrets ; Marienburg-Verlag Würzburg 1953
  • Norman Polmar, Thomas B. Allen: Spy Book. The Encyclopedia of Espionage ; Greenhill Books London 1997; ISBN 1-85367-278-5
  • Lennart Samuelson: Plans for Stalin's War Machine - Tukhachevskii and Military-Economic Planning, 1925-1941 ; St. Martins Press Inc. New York 2000; ISBN 0-312-22527-X
  • Viktor Suworow : GRU - The spearhead ; Barett-Verlag Solingen 1995; ISBN 3-924753-18-0
  • Viktor Suvorov: Soviet Military Intelligence ; Grafton 1986; ISBN 0-586-06596-2
  • Witold S. Sworakowski (ed.): World Communism: A Handbook, 1918-1965 ; Hoover Institution Press Stanford, 1973
  • Pierre de Villemarest: GRU, le plus secret des services soviétiques 1918–1988 ; Éditions Stock Paris 1988; ISBN 2-234-02119-7
  • Jeanne Vronskaya, Vladimir Chuguev: A biographical dictionary of the Soviet Union 1917–1988 ; London u. a. KG Saur 1989; ISBN 0-86291-470-1
  • Soviet Military Encyclopedia ; Moscow 1932–1933 (unpublished, only contemporary mention of Bersin in an encyclopedia until 1956) ( online )
  • Они руководили ГРУ. Сборник биографических очерков (you headed the GRU. Collection of Biographies); Издательский дом "Русская Разведка" (Publishing House "Russian Enlightenment") Moscow 2005; ISBN 5-94013-032-X

Web links

Commons : Jan Karlowitsch Bersin  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ A rank in the Red Army from 1935 to 1940 that corresponded to that of an army general. (→ Soviet general ranks )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Gorchakov: Jan Bersin , p. ???
  2. ↑ a b c Memorial : Biographical directory of the people murdered in Kommunarka in July 1938 [1] (accessed on November 20, 2010)
  3. ↑ Besymensky: Stalin and Hitler - The dictators ' poker game , p. ???
  4. ^ Gortschakow: Jan Bersin , p. 5
  5. ↑ Gortschakow: Jan Bersin , p. 5: The literal translation of Gortschakow is "partisan tactics". Since there was no war in the Russian Empire in 1906, such practices in peacetime can be described as terrorist.
  6. ↑ Soviet military encyclopedia, p. ???
  7. ↑ Vronskaya, Chuguev: A biographical dictionary of the Soviet Union 1917-1988 , p 40
  8. ↑ a b c d e Villemarest: GRU , p. ???
  9. ↑ a b Suvorov: Soviet Military Intelligence , pp. 226-227
  10. ↑ Sworakowski: World Communism , p. 297
  11. ^ A b c d Polmar, Allen: Spy Book. The Encyclopedia of Espionage , p. 63
  12. ↑ Lure, Kotschik: GRU: activities and personnel , p 106
  13. ^ The letters from the Staatl. Russian Military Archives (Российский государственный военный архив - РГВА) Fund 4 Or. 3 Doc. 33 and Fund 6 Or. 12 Doc. 8 pp. 38–39 are cited in Gortschakow 2004 in detail.
  14. ↑ Sworakowski: World Communism , p. 124
  15. ↑ Kriwitzki: I was Stalin's agent , p. 64
  16. ↑ a b c d Kriwitzki: I was Stalin's agent , S. ???
  17. ↑ a b Besymensky: Stalin and Hitler - The dictators ' poker game , p. ???
  18. ↑ Samuelson: Plans for Stalin's War Machine , p. 36
  19. ↑ Kriwitzki: I was Stalin's agent , pp. 17-18
  20. ↑ Suworow: GRU - Die Speerspitze , p. 20
  21. ↑ Fischer: Russia's Road from Peace to War , pp. 277-278
  22. ↑ Orlov: Kremlin Secrets , p. 279
  23. ↑ Kriwitzki: I was Stalin's agent , p. 113
  24. ↑ Kriwitzki: I was Stalin's agent , pp. 116–117
  25. ↑ [2] Copy of the transfer order (accessed on November 21, 2010)
  26. ↑ a b c d e [3] Jewgeni Alexandrowitsch Gorbunow: Closer consideration Bersin, Nesawisimaja Gazeta December 7, 2007, (accessed on August 30, 2008)
  27. ↑ a b Great Soviet Encyclopedia ; Lemma БЕРЗИН (Берзинь; наст. Фам. И имя Кюзис Петерис; парт, псевд. Папус) Ян Карлович ; Retrieved August 30, 2008
  28. ^ A. Ostrowski: Top Secret. Of special interest. ; Sovietsky Voin, December 1990
personal data
SURNAME Bersin, Jan Karlowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Берзин, Ян Карлович (Russian); Kjusis, Peteris; Ivanovich, Pavel; Papus (party name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chief of the Red Army Military Reconnaissance Service
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Kligen near Jaunpils , Livonia Governorate , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH July 29, 1938
Place of death Kommunarka near Moscow