Special services of the White movement. Counterintelligence. 1918-1922 Kirmel Nikolai Sergeevich

2. Suppression of reconnaissance and subversive actions of special services and organizations of Soviet Russia and foreign states

After the October Revolution of 1917, the territory of the split Russian Empire became the arena of the struggle for power, spheres of influence, Natural resources and markets for both internal and external forces that sought to dismember the country. Therefore, increased attention to the White Guard public entities, who fought "for a single and indivisible", showed not only Soviet Russia and Germany, but also limitrophe countries and even allies - England, the USA, France and Japan. Virtually all the powers involved in one form or another in the Russian Civil War engaged in espionage against the White Guard regimes.

When creating their own security agencies, the command of the Volunteer Army was guided by the "Temporary Regulations on the Counterintelligence Service" of 1917. The first paragraph of this document defined the task of counterintelligence, which consisted "... exclusively in the detection and examination of enemy spies ...". Spies were called persons who "secretly or under false pretenses collected or tried to collect information of a military nature with the intention of communicating it to the enemy", and espionage was understood as "collecting all kinds of information."

In November 1918, the head of the special department, based on the experience of the first months civil war, in a report to the chief of the General Staff, he explained that “under the concept of“ spy ”and“ enemy ”one cannot understand a subject or agent of a foreign power with which we are at war. Anyone who seeks to harm the unity and power of the state by his activity should be considered an adversary. Colonel V.V. Kreiter rightly believed that in order to "successfully fight enemy reconnaissance, it is necessary to monitor his work, go in parallel with him and prevent his attacks."

However, in the initial period of their existence, Denikin's counterintelligence organs, which were not yet strong, were forced to devote their forces and means, first of all, to the fight against the Bolshevik underground organizations. “The scope of duties of counterintelligence, determined by the “Regulations on the Counterintelligence Service”, does not at all meet the requirements of the time, since the fight against enemy military espionage is now a secondary task,” says the report of the Chief Quartermaster of the headquarters of the commander of the troops of the Southwestern Territory. - Civil war, being political struggle, cannot leave counterintelligence aside from politics.” One can agree with this argument only partially. Documents testify that the Bolshevik underground directed its efforts not only to organizing armed uprisings and propaganda activities, but also infiltrated army headquarters to obtain intelligence data. At the same time, the work of the agents of foreign intelligence services was not limited to "pure" intelligence, but was also aimed at weakening the potential of the Denikin regime: support for opposition forces, propaganda, decomposition military units, sabotage, etc.

Speaking about the priorities in the activities of Denikin's counterintelligence at the initial stage of the Civil War, it should be borne in mind that the special services of the main enemy - Soviet Russia - were in the process of formation. Only on November 5, 1918, the central body of military intelligence was created - the Registration Directorate of the Field Headquarters of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic (RVSR). Experiencing a lack of financial resources and qualified personnel, the Register was not immediately able to create agent networks in the White Guard rear and organize the collection of information needed by the command.

The bodies of the Cheka in 1918 did not have specialized intelligence structures, their main efforts were concentrated on the "fight against counter-revolution" within the country and the suppression of centers of anti-Soviet speeches. The main task of the Special Department of the Cheka, created on December 19, 1918, was to combat espionage and counter-revolution in institutions and units of the Red Army. Only at the end of 1919 did the local special departments take up foreign counterintelligence.

During their formation, the red special services did not actively work in the rear of the White Guard. This circumstance caused some complacency among the officials of Denikin's counterintelligence, which concentrated all its efforts on the fight against the Bolshevik underground organizations. So, the head of the special department of the department of the General Staff of the Military Directorate, Colonel P.G. Arkhangelsky in 1919 wrote about the elimination of counterintelligence "from fulfilling its immediate duty - monitoring the intelligence officers and agents of the enemy."

The peak of the confrontation between Soviet intelligence and the White Guard counterintelligence in the South of Russia fell on 1919, during the period of intensive hostilities.

An analysis of the documents allows us to judge that the Red intelligence services acted in two ways: on the one hand, they sent lone intelligence officers to the White Guard headquarters to collect information of a military nature, and on the other hand, they carried out a massive deployment of agents to carry out reconnaissance and subversive activities behind enemy lines, often in cooperation with underground organizations. Just the latter, for the most part, became the objects of development of Denikin's counterintelligence.

The White Guard security agencies established that in the North Caucasus three Soviet military organizations were conducting reconnaissance against the All-Union Socialist Revolutionary Federation: the Revolutionary Military Council, the headquarters and a special department of the 11th Army. The Soviet command, intending to cut off the oil region from the White Army, launched an attack on Kizlyar. To conduct operational intelligence, commit terrorist acts and agitate among the mountain population and workers, the Bolsheviks sent about 600 inexperienced agents to the North Caucasus. The main mass of intelligence officers, according to the White Guard counterintelligence, went to Kizlyar, Petrovsk, Baku, Grozny, the rest - to Stavropol, Rostov-on-Don, Velikoknyazheskaya, Tsaritsyn, Orenburg, Guryev. The Whites managed to capture some of the agents and find out the plans of the Red Command.

On October 12, 1919, the head of the KRO at the headquarters of the commander-in-chief and commander of the troops of the Terek-Dagestan Territory, captain Novitsky, reported on the disclosure of the entire organization of Soviet intelligence in the rear of the VSYUR.

On October 18, 1919, the captain reported that after the defeat of the Kizlyar and Grozny organizations, the Bolsheviks held a meeting in Baku, at which they decided to form a new intelligence network, sending agents to Tiflis, Batumi, and from there to Sochi, Tuapse, Maikop, Novorossiysk and further to North Caucasus.

Denikin's special services established the goals, objectives, areas of action of some leaders of the Caucasian Communist Committee (KKK), which was engaged in reconnaissance and subversive activities in the rear of the VSYUR. His connection with the British Labor Party in Moscow and the Transcaucasian Peasants' and Workers' Congress in Tiflis was documented. The security agencies of the Armed Forces of Russia managed to find out about the plan for sinking the ships of the Caspian flotilla, which was developed by the KKK together with the command of the Red Army. In October 1919, counterintelligence arrested the main executor of the upcoming act of sabotage and instead introduced its agent into the organization, thanks to which it had reliable information about the impending explosions. Soon the members of the underground were arrested and handed over to the naval court.

In November 1919, the counterintelligence headquarters of the commander of the troops of the North Caucasus noted that the Bolsheviks were spending huge amounts of money on intelligence and agitation. Moreover, in order to lower the exchange rate of the ruble and the living wage, Soviet emissaries flooded foreign markets with all-Russian banknotes, which caused dissatisfaction among the population with the White Guard authorities. The aforementioned Caucasian Communist Committee did not regret Money to attract the ranks of the Volunteer Army to tacit cooperation, organize insurgent movements in the rear of the All-Union Socialist Republic, bribe smugglers and the administration. The leaders of Denikin's special services suggested that the authorities withdraw from circulation those banknotes that were distributed in unlimited quantities by Soviet Russia and Germany.

Since the appearance of English transports with equipment and weapons in the Novorossiysk seaport, counterintelligence officers have recorded an increase in the activity of Soviet agents, accompanied by the destruction of military supplies, systematic inhibition of the supply of artillery shells to the front, theft of uniforms, etc.

Port workers, exposed to Bolshevik agitation, according to secret sources, intended to sabotage the work of supplying the army by holding strikes.

The author is far from thinking that the above facts characterize the activities of all red intelligence officers and agents exposed by Denikin's counterintelligence. It seems that there were several more of them, but the gaps in the source database do not allow us to name specific numbers, surnames, nicknames of agents, reasons and circumstances for their exposure, etc. Much, probably, could be told to researchers by the documents that appeared as a result of the “Instructions for conducting undercover office work by counterintelligence agencies” approved by the quartermaster general of the headquarters of the commander-in-chief of the All-Russian Union of Youth in August 1919. The document was intended to ensure secrecy, systematization, regulation and accounting of search work, and also established the procedure for undercover office work, which is mandatory for all KROs.

All correspondence about the suspects was conducted by the assistant head of the department for the search department or the head of the point, with the involvement of the most trusted officials for assignments. Paragraph 6 of the instructions read: “All secret employees working on assignments from counterintelligence agencies can only be recorded in the personal notebook of the head of the counterintelligence agency, which he must always have with him and destroy it at the slightest danger. The entire entry must consist of three words: the name, patronymic and surname of the employee, without mentioning any words relating to the agency, its place of residence and occupation. The record of employees must be encrypted with a cipher personally invented by the head of the counterintelligence agency. The alphabet book of secret agents was kept only with an indication of their nicknames and marks of those violations of service and cases of negative behavior of agents that are unacceptable and led to the refusal to register the agent and his exclusion. They had to be stored together with ciphers and were available only to the heads of counterintelligence agencies and persons in charge of agents.

Denikin's security agencies lacked material and financial means, experienced staff members and agents to consolidate and develop their success in the fight against reconnaissance and subversive activities of the Reds. A serious obstacle was the daily turnover and bureaucratic routine, the lack of interaction between the counterintelligence agencies of various departmental subordination - the headquarters of the All-Russian Union of Youth and the department of the General Staff of the Military Directorate.

If the white secret services achieved certain results in exposing Soviet intelligence organizations, then identifying lone agents who hunted for secrets in headquarters turned out to be a difficult task for counterintelligence. Bolshevik agents who infiltrated institutions often remained undiscovered.

The fight against espionage at that time was carried out according to the following simple scheme: obtaining primary information, observing individuals, exposing them, arresting and bringing them to trial. These tasks were solved through internal (secret agents) and external (filers) surveillance. Receiving information from various sources, counterintelligence officials systematized all the data, developed the material received, kept records and registered persons suspected of espionage. For all its seeming simplicity, identifying intelligence agents or enemy agents was a difficult task. “The greatest difficulty is obtaining information about persons suspected of military espionage, due to the fact that the spy works alone, not together, as was the case in underground political organizations, where you can always find dissatisfied Azevs,” he writes in his book “Secret Military Intelligence and fight against it "general N.S. Batyushin. - To discover, therefore, a spy, who usually does not stand out in any way from environment, it is not an easy task and is possible only with the broad assistance of not only government bodies knowledgeable in this matter, but mainly of all sections of the population, reasonably brought up in order to preserve the military secrets of the state, that is, in the end result, and their own interests, with the collapse of the state usually suffer and private interests of subjects.

In our opinion, the fight against the agents of the Soviet special services was partly hampered by the fact that the war was fought with their fellow tribesmen, speakers of the same language, culture and mentality. The resulting split in society spread different sections of the population on different sides of the barricades: the intelligentsia, officers, nobility, employees who were secret employees of the Soviet special services and underground Bolshevik organizations. The system for protecting military secrets at the headquarters did not work, moreover, the counterintelligence officers did not have the necessary qualifications to identify lone intelligence officers.

Presumably for this reason, the Whites for a long time failed to uncover the red intelligence officer and underground worker P.V. Makarov, who acted under the cover of the adjutant of the commander of the Volunteer Army, General V.Z. May-Maevsky. Checking the newly arrived officers for loyalty was then simple: they were sent to the front line and only after real active participation in hostilities were they allowed to work in headquarters. Since P.V. Makarov knew the encryption business well, he managed to quickly make a career and gain access to classified information. Taking advantage of his official position, the officer arranged for his brother, the head of an underground organization, to be a telegraph operator at the headquarters of the Volunteer Army, which gave additional opportunities to extract useful information. It was the connection with the underground that led to the failure of the red intelligence officer. Naval counterintelligence arrested members of the organization that was preparing an uprising in Sevastopol, including V.V. Makarov, and then - and "adjutant of his excellency."

As world and domestic experience shows, the most frequent failures of intelligence officers were associated with the leakage of information to the enemy as a result of betrayal or penetration of his agents into the intelligence agency. In other words, in order to expose lone red scouts in the white headquarters, Denikin's counterintelligence had to introduce its agents, for example, into the intelligence department of the headquarters of the Southern Front or the intelligence departments of army headquarters. But, apparently, there were none in 1919, at least the author does not know about them. But something is known about the work of Soviet agents in the White Guard headquarters.

Thus, counterintelligence was unable to hide from enemy intelligence the concentration of Denikin's armies in the area of ​​the Donets Basin in February 1919, which allowed the command of the Southern Front to transfer the main forces to the Donbas direction.

In July 1919, the intelligence agencies of the Southern Front learned about Denikin's impending attack on Kursk-Orel-Tula.

During the siege of Kharkov by the Volunteer Army, the Bolshevik headquarters had absolutely accurate information about the number and location of the White Guard units. During the investigation, it turned out that the agents under the guise of nurses, representatives of the Red Cross or defectors conducted reconnaissance among officers and soldiers, eliciting the necessary information.

It was not a secret for the commander of the South-Eastern Front V.I. Shorin's plan of the White Guard command to break through to Balashov in November 1919. The Whites were then able to break into the defenses on the right flank of the 9th Army, capture Novokhopersk and Art. Povorino. But then they could not consolidate their success - during the battles, the Reds launched a general counteroffensive.

Some Red scouts managed to work for quite a long time (up to six months) in the White Guard rear and remain unexposed, performing an important task. In particular, B.I. Pavlikovsky and A.I. Kholodov established the number of ships and submarines in Sevastopol, the strength of the teams and their mood.

When the Caucasian Front stood on the Manych River, preparing to strike at the troops of A.I. Denikin, red intelligence learned about the disagreements between the Kuban Cossacks and the White Guards, which greatly contributed to the success of the Soviet troops.

Undisclosed was a group of scouts of the Kyiv underground revolutionary committee headed by D.A. Teacher (Kramov), who penetrated the headquarters of Lieutenant General N.E. Bredov and supplied the most important information about the plans of the White Guards to the command of the Red Army and the partisan-insurgent detachments.

In Sevastopol, in the Naval Directorate, the reconnaissance department of the 13th Army of the Southern Front of the Red Army also successfully operated, which transmitted qualified intelligence data on the composition and movement of the White Fleet, artillery, fuel reserves on ships, and the composition of teams. According to the Crimean researcher V.V. Krestyannikov, white "counterintelligence failed to reveal this residency, which worked successfully before the arrival of the Red Army in Sevastopol."

But the intelligence officer-Chekist G.G. Lafar, better known in historical and fiction under the name of Georges de Lafar, was not destined to return from Odessa to Moscow after completing the assignment. At the end of 1918, on the instructions of the Cheka, he was sent to Odessa, occupied by the British and French, with the task of infiltrating the headquarters of the French troops and obtaining information about the plans of the allies, as well as their numbers. Having settled down as a translator at the headquarters of the French expeditionary force under the operational pseudonym "Charles", G.G. Lafar managed to send four written intelligence reports to the Lubyanka (only two of them reached the addressee). Denikin's counterintelligence attacked his trail. Hunt for G.G. Lafar began after the interception by Azbuka of his second report to Moscow on February 12–14. In a message from the Odessa residency of "Azbuka" to the head of the political office under the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, Colonel D.L. On March 4, 1919, Tchaikovsky was told: “This elusive “Charles” from Odessa again sent a (third) letter to Moscow yesterday by a well-known channel, we believe (in) its node on the Lubyanka. When his first letter followed, "Izhe-P" (representative) of the Moscow residency visited the address indicated on the envelope; such Leger Henrietta, who lives at the indicated address, has not been established. Kiselny Lane is located in the immediate vicinity of the Lubyanka ... ". Red scout G.G. Lafar was arrested by the White Guard counterintelligence at the end of March 1919.

The identification of red walker agents was sometimes random. So, on December 4, 1919, the head of the KRO department of the Quartermaster General of the Caucasian Army, Colonel Churpalev, reported to the head of the KRC that a certain N. Chistyakov was detained while crossing to the right bank of the Volga, during a search he was found to have a Bolshevik intelligence officer identity card.

By the end of the war, the intensity of the work of the front-line military intelligence units of the Red Army was growing, as evidenced by intelligence reports regularly received by the Red command.

In May 1920, the White Guard agents working in the Soviet headquarters drew the attention of the leaders of counterintelligence to the awareness of the Reds about the operational plans of the command of the Russian army. In particular, the agents reported that the Bolsheviks had become aware of the planned transfer of the corps of General Ya.A. Slashchev to the Kerch Peninsula. But identifying Red agents in their own headquarters for counterintelligence turned out to be difficult. Only after the departure of the assistant of the 2nd Quartermaster General Colonel Siminsky to Georgia, the disappearance of the cipher and a number of secret documents was discovered. The investigation carried out on this fact showed that the colonel was an agent of the Bolsheviks.

In the fall of 1920, counterintelligence officers identified and arrested two red intelligence agents - Colonel Skvortsov and Captain Demonsky, who were in touch with the military representative of Soviet Russia in Georgia and transmitted information about the Russian army and the plans of its command to him. After this incident, staff officers justifiably attributed the failure of the Kuban landing operation mainly to the activities of these individuals.

Wrangel's counterintelligence was more successful in neutralizing walker agents. “Throwing all their free forces to the south, the red command simultaneously took measures to strengthen its work in our rear,” wrote General P.N. Wrangell. - Per recent times again ... work on military espionage has intensified, led by the registration department (“Register”) of the Caucasian Front ... This “Register” through its registration points Nos. 5 and 13 located in Temryuk (Kuban region) and through special points (“Ortchk”) a number of scouts were sent to the coast of the Taman Peninsula, sending them to Temryuk-Taman, and then through the narrow Kerch Strait to the coast of the Kerch Peninsula and further to the Crimea, and taking them back in the same way. Within a month, six Soviet spies were arrested in the city of Kerch and in the area adjacent to it, and the “communication service” organized by the Bolsheviks on our territory with the Taman coast, which had secret stations equipped with signal rockets, was discovered in Kerch and in the village of Yurgaki (on the Sea of ​​Azov). , spherical mirrors for optical signaling and materials for chemical writing ladies. Among other documents, one of these spies also found an order to “contact Mokrousov” and “appearance”, that is, an indication of how to find this latter. Guided by the experienced hand of General Klimovich, the work of our counterintelligence nipped in the bud the enemy's attempts. Enemy agents invariably fell into our hands, were handed over to the court-martial and were resolutely punished.

Let us note that P.N. Wrangel somewhat exaggerated the role of the special department of his headquarters in ensuring the security of the army and its rear. Soviet sources refute the words of the commander-in-chief. In particular, in September 1920, Red intelligence accurately reported the number of White Guard ground forces in Northern Tavria and naval forces interacting with British, American, French and Italian warships.

At the final stage of the war, counterintelligence personnel and their agents from among local residents were tasked with infiltrating Soviet power. Military revolutionary committees, commissariats, headquarters of the Red Army, tribunals and the Cheka were a special target for penetration into the Bolshevik structures. The development of such work and its plan in detail were reported by the chief of staff of the commander in chief, Lieutenant General P.S. Makhrov to General P.N. Wrangel and were approved by him.

Thus, in addition to solving the tasks of providing assistance to their military units directly in the front line, counterintelligence agencies began to solve strategic tasks of creating a base for a long-term struggle designed for many years.

So, during the Civil War, the struggle between Soviet intelligence and the White Guard counterintelligence in the South of Russia was carried out with varying success and was episodic, since both special services, by and large, were still at the initial stage of their development. But at the same time, the following trend is still visible: with the strengthening of the power of the state, its special services are strengthened, and vice versa. The victories won by the Red Army expanded the potential of Soviet intelligence, and the defeats of the Russian Army, the reduction of territories, human and material resources narrowed the possibilities of Wrangel's counterintelligence. For this reason, the struggle of the White émigré organizations against Soviet Russia was doomed to failure. Further developments convincingly confirm this conclusion.

After the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty Germany occupied Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states. It was important for the Germans to control the Bolshevik government so that they would not be restored against them. Eastern front, to support the separatist-minded national outskirts in order to prevent the unification of Russia and pump out material resources. The head of the German Foreign Ministry, R. von Kühlmann, instructed the ambassador in Moscow: “Please use large sums, since we are extremely interested in the survival of the Bolsheviks ... We are not interested in supporting the monarchist idea that will reunite Russia. On the contrary, we should try to prevent the consolidation of Russia as far as possible, and from this point of view, we should support the far left parties.”

Germany staked on separatism even before the First World War. The notorious Count F. Schullenburg, who arrived in Tiflis in 1911 as a vice-consul, having studied the Transcaucasus well and having established extensive contacts in high society Georgian-Armenian circles, concentrated his efforts on working among Georgian nationalists in order to proclaim the independence of Georgia under the protectorate of Germany.

The war for some time interrupted the active intelligence activities of F. Schullenburg in the territory of Transcaucasia. Two months before it began, he unexpectedly went on vacation to his homeland and soon took an active part in the formation of the Georgian national legion, which later fought on the side of Germany on the Turkish front.

At the end of 1918, F. Schullenburg reappeared in Transcaucasia as the head of a diplomatic mission under the commander of the German occupation forces, General K. von Kresse, and carried out a number of political combinations to conclude agreements between the highlanders and Musavatists in order to unite Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus into a single state system. Again under the protectorate of Germany.

This period also includes the organization by F. Schullenburg of a new residency under the legal name of the "German-Georgian Verein" headed by the German military doctor Merzweller. There is also an attempt to organize a "German-Armenian Verein", but it ended in failure.

According to the German researcher X. Revere, in the First world war Germany made considerable efforts to develop separatism in Ukraine with the aim of tearing it away from Russia. Conspiratorial activities were carried out by diplomatic missions in Bucharest and Constantinople. However, the efforts of the German agents for several years of the war did not bring the desired results. Ukrainian separatism began to manifest itself noticeably only after February 1917.

Even after the revolution of November 1918, having withdrawn its troops from Ukraine and the Crimea, Germany continued to solve its political tasks in a secret way, retaining operational communications and an agent network.

The head of German military intelligence, V. Nicolai, believed that the cessation of hostilities in Europe did not lead to the end of the secret war. He preserved the archives of the Kaiser's intelligence, thereby contributing to the creation of a new secret service, hidden from the victorious states. So, in September 1919, a body of military intelligence and counterintelligence (Abwehr) was created as part of the Military Directorate. As an official field of activity, he was entrusted with the tasks of counterintelligence support of the armed forces. However, in practice, the Abwehr conducted reconnaissance against European countries.

The most far-sighted leaders of the White Guard secret services expressed a reasonable assumption that Germany would not be able to come to terms with the loss of its former economic power, therefore, it needed a weak Russia for its revival and development. On February 13, 1919, the quartermaster of the headquarters of the troops of the Southwestern Territory reported to the head of the special department of the department of the General Staff: “German capital and banks, led by Jewish agents, remained in Russia and, in particular, concentrated in Odessa, there is reason to believe that the direction towards the destruction of the Russian state continues. Therefore, the fight against banks dependent on German capital, the penetration into their secrets - is one of the types of struggle.

The task of dismembering Russia and strengthening influence on the outskirts was carried out through German banks and a Jewish organization of large local financiers headed by A.R. Hari, Getter and Babushkin. As was established by secret surveillance, they set out to support Ukraine through various political directions, sought to impede the implementation of the ideas of the Volunteer Army to recreate a united Russia.

At the same time, Germany tried, through diplomatic combinations, to appoint its henchmen to leadership positions, which were a guarantee of the safety and immunity of German agents. In particular, attorney at law Furman, who had worked for German intelligence before the war, was appointed to the post of Bulgarian consul in Kyiv. The post of Danish consul in Odessa was held by A.R. Hari, director of the local branch of the Russian-Asiatic Bank, through him were money transfers and directives to German spy organizations. Hari, along with other people during the stay of the French in Odessa, bought French currency, which contributed to the depreciation of the ruble. Local counterintelligence knew about this, but did not take any measures. But when the population began to resent, she arrested the entire group. However, the attackers were soon released under the guarantee of a certain Botkin, an adventurer who played a prominent role in the Odessa counterintelligence.

In the South of Russia, the Germans were guided by political forces that did not share allied relations with the Entente countries and stood for an alliance with Germany. In hidden opposition to the command of the Volunteer Army and the All-Union Socialist Revolutionary Federation, there was a monarchist party, which was a significant, although in no way really manifested itself, force. In addition to the aristocracy, it included a significant number of officers and even soldiers. With the help of the monarchists, the Germans hoped to organize a conspiracy to remove the senior command staff of the All-Union Socialist Revolutionary Federation and replace it with persons of German orientation, in order to then conclude an alliance with Russia.

In addition, German intelligence pinned its hopes on Russian officers returning from Germany to their homeland, supplied them with appearances to their agents in Russia and Constantinople to provide money and conduct briefings.

Despite the unsystematic nature of counteracting German espionage, the White Guard counterintelligence revealed German intelligence centers in Constantinople, Novorossiysk, Rostov, Kharkov, Nikolaev, Simferopol and Sevastopol, as well as their agents. According to verified data, there were about 100 German officers in Rostov, Taganrog and Novocherkassk, left by intelligence after the occupation as residents. However, due to the lack of loans for the maintenance of agents and payment for the services of random informants, the counterintelligence unit lost any opportunity to pay attention to the German spy organization. Further observation in this direction was episodic.

Some German-oriented organizations were nevertheless liquidated by the Whites. But for the above reasons, counterintelligence failed to bring the matter to its logical conclusion - to bring the perpetrators to justice. Head of the KRC special department of the department of the General Staff Captain L.S. Dmitriev wrote in August 1919 that, having observed the counterintelligence of the All-Union Socialist Revolutionary Federation for six months, he had not heard of a single espionage liquidation, not a single completed trial, except for lynching.

Nevertheless, German intelligence was never able to realize the political goals of their government - to bring pro-German politicians to power in Russia and conclude an agreement beneficial for Germany with them. However, this can hardly be credited to the White Guard special services. Germany's further policy was influenced by its defeat in the First World War, which ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919, as a result of which the country was deprived of the right to have a General Staff and intelligence, received an economic crisis and domestic political turmoil.

The intention of the leaders of the White movement to preserve the integrity of Russia was considered by the ruling circles of the states formed on the territory of the former empire as great-power Russian chauvinism. Therefore, already in 1918, the newly formed special services of the "independent" Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR)- intelligence and foreign (supervised the work of the military attache) departments of the 1st quartermaster general of the General Staff - began active reconnaissance and subversive activities against the White movement in the South of Russia. The Hetman's special services collected intelligence information about the military potential of the Volunteer Army and the "aggressive" plans of its command regarding the UNR, as well as about political organizations that carried out subversive work in Ukraine in the interests of the White Guards. The work of Ukrainian intelligence was not limited to obtaining important secret information. She began to carry out special operations, in particular, to secretly support the Regional Government of the Kuban in its struggle for independence and maintain the status of a close ally of Ukraine, worked to deepen the antagonism between local politicians and the command of the Volunteer Army, since Hetman P. Skoropadsky planned to annex the Kuban to Ukraine as a separate administrative unit.

With the aim of "annexing" the Kuban was preparing landing operation to Taman by the forces of the Separate Zaporozhye Division, stationed on the southeastern borders of Ukraine. With the close participation of intelligence, heavy and small arms (21 thousand rifles, 8 guns and machine guns), as well as ammunition, were secretly transported from Kyiv to the Kuban.

“The political situation in the Kuban,” noted the first secretary of the UNR embassy in Yekaterinodar, K. Polivan, “requires the Ukrainian embassy to immediately begin the widest and most energetic work possible in spreading the political influence of the Ukrainian state.”

Taking advantage of the favorable counterintelligence regime, the intelligence officers of the UNR, acting under the guise of diplomatic institutions, in the second half of 1918 did a great job of bringing Ukraine closer to the Kuban with a view to the subsequent possible entry of the region into its composition "on the terms of the federation." In December 1918, the intelligence officers presented proposals regarding the expansion of the presence of Ukrainian special services and the preparation of an armed uprising against the Volunteer Army in the Kuban, but the leaders did not always listen to their arguments, and after the fall of the hetmanate, the case was “lost”.

Ukrainian historian D.V. Vedeneev found documents on the activities of the hetman's intelligence service in the Kuban in the central state historical archive in Lvov. K. Polivan, already mentioned above, acted under the guise of the position of the first secretary of the UNR embassy in Yekaterinodar. According to the report submitted in December 1918, the residency he led collected material on the situation in the region, the alignment of political forces. Good knowledge of the situation allowed her to carry out political and propaganda actions aimed at deepening the contradictions between the Volunteer Army and the Kuban Cossacks. Denikin's counterintelligence uncovered and arrested K. Polivan. However, according to the report, he managed to return home. Less fortunate was Ambassador Colonel F. Borzhinsky, who was arrested by the Whites and then shot "for treason against Russia."

In Odessa, counterintelligence discovered a center in which officers who kept in touch with the Petliurists and carried out their reconnaissance missions were grouped. The White Guard secret services had information about the whereabouts and activities of other reconnaissance posts Directories.

Despite the failures, Ukraine continued to maintain covert contacts with the ruling circles of the Kuban Cossacks through its emissaries. So, on the instructions of the supreme authority of the UNR, Yu. Skugar-Skvarsky repeatedly crossed the front line with false documents, collected information about the forces and action plans of the Volunteer Army, and also tried to persuade the authorities of the Kuban to an open armed uprising against A.I. Denikin. In Yekaterinodar, a Ukrainian intelligence officer received information from I. Makarenko, a member of the Special Meeting, about the redeployment of White military units. On September 15, 1919, he took part in a secret meeting of the Kuban Council, where he called for a common struggle for independence against the forces of Russian reaction. At the end of the month, the emissary provided S.V. Petliura detailed report on his journey. However, this case did not receive further development. Let us note that the illegal contacts of the top of the Kuban Cossacks with Ukraine were not a secret for the command of the All-Union Socialist League.

The author has no other information about the vigorous activity of the UNR intelligence in the territory of the White South. Perhaps she was not. Otherwise, historians of the special services of the current "independent" Ukraine, who consider the White Guards to be Russian chauvinists, would have tried to fill this gap.

Very actively acted against the AFSR Makhnovist counterintelligence, combining the functions of counterintelligence and military intelligence. The management of the military department of counterintelligence behind enemy lines was carried out by the operational department of the headquarters of the insurgent army.

The so-called counterintelligence information nodes were located in all cities, towns and large villages of the south and east of Ukraine. The main appearances of counterintelligence were located in Odessa, Kherson, Nikolaev, Poltava, Yuzovka, Taganrog, Rostov-on-Don, Yeysk, Sevastopol, Kharkov, Cherkassy, ​​Kyiv. As a rule, they were placed in hotels, restaurants, canteens, shoemakers or tailors, as well as in factories, factories, mines. From there, information about the state of the rear and the mood of the workers flocked to the headquarters of the Makhnovists. According to some reports, Makhnovist agents worked in all White Guard headquarters and military units.

In all likelihood, Denikin's counterintelligence never managed to get to them. At least, the author did not come across documentary evidence of the identification and arrests of the agents of the “father Makhno” by the White Guard special service.

Researcher V. Azarov provides data on the effective work of agents in the rear of the White troops in September 1919. So, before the decisive battle near Peregonovka, the Makhnovist agents reported to the headquarters of the insurgent army that "there were no regular Denikin units as far as Nikopol."

In the field of view of the counterintelligence unit of the special branch of the department of the General Staff came Polish intelligence ("Military Polish Organization" (VPO), created by Yu.K. Pilsudski back in 1916 with the aim of conducting military-political intelligence. According to counterintelligence data, on the territory of Russia, the VPO recruited agents from among newspaper employees, therefore, in their opinion, Polish newspapers on the territory of Russia could be unmistakably considered as intelligence cells. Such in Kyiv was the newspaper "Kyiv Diary". Here was the center of the Polish organization in Ukraine, headed by Benevsky. Between Kyiv and Warsaw, communication was maintained by couriers (mostly women), reports were transmitted on photographic film. Information from the VPO was received by the information department of the Polish General Staff.

During the stay of the Bolsheviks in Kyiv, the VPO was in close contact with the Kyiv center of the Volunteer Army. Employees of Denikin's special services did not rule out the presence of Polish agents in the All-Union Socialist League, since "the Poles are aware of what is being done with us." However, the KRC of the special department of the General Staff department, apparently, failed to identify Polish agents in the headquarters and institutions, since in the report to the leadership dated November 30, 1919, the head of the counterintelligence unit did not report anything about this.

Worked against the White Guards in the South of Russia and Georgian intelligence service. For example, she managed to obtain secret information from the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the All-Union Socialist Republic, signed by the head of the intelligence department, Colonel S.N. Ryasnyansky and Colonel Melnitsky; secret reports of the Chief of Staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the All-Union Socialist Youth League, General Romanovsky, then published in the Tiflis newspaper Borba; a telegram from the head of the Military Directorate, Lieutenant General V.E. Vyazmitinov regarding Georgia. The White Guard command became aware of this only in the summer of 1919. And in September, agents received information about the recruitment by Georgian special services of officers dismissed from the army and sending them as agents to the White Guard rear. Quartermaster General of the Staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of South Russia, Major General Yu.N. Plushevsky-Plyushchik asked the head of the department of the General Staff of the Military Directorate to order the checkpoints Black Sea coast notify the head of the PKK of the passage of such persons from Georgia, indicating the surnames, names, patronymics.

Between allies and the command of the All-Russian Union of Socialist Relations were not easy, since each of the parties in the Civil War pursued its own interests. The leaders of the White movement advocated a "united and indivisible" Russia. The British adhered to the principle of "divide and conquer". Based on world practice, it can be assumed with a high degree of probability that the interventionists carried out reconnaissance and subversive activities on the territory of the All-Union Socialist Republic. According to the White Guard funds of the central state archives, to judge the scale of intelligence work Western intelligence agencies very difficult, because only a few documents are found on this problem. In particular, it is known that Denikin's security agencies managed to identify the French counterintelligence center in Constantinople, as well as the British intelligence organization operating under the flag of the Red Cross. On July 1, 1920, the representative of the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army in Switzerland, Efremov, did not rule out the possibility of transferring to the Bolsheviks information of a military nature obtained by this mission for reporting to London. Recall that it was at that time that the British demanded that the white governments capitulate to Lenin's "amnesty".

A naval agent in Turkey learned that a junior officer of the British intelligence branch in Constantinople had submitted a report to the commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, outlining the reasons for the decay of the army of the Odessa region and its rapid abandonment of Odessa. The Naval Agent informed the Marine Department of the incident.

In November 1919, foreign counterintelligence reported that the governments of the Great Powers, not content with the activities of their diplomatic, military and other representatives, were forced to use private organizations, such as the International Red Cross, trading societies, etc., for propaganda and intelligence purposes. Christian Union of Young People. From Polyn and Constantinople, counterintelligence received information that representatives of the KhSML intend to arrive at the location of the All-Union Socialist League. Taking into account their sabotage activities, Colonel S.N. Ryasnyansky considered undesirable the admission of these persons to the territory controlled by the VSYUR. In the event of their appearance, he offered to establish control over their activities.

Assuming the growth of intelligence and subversive activities of foreign states against the White South and knowing the level professional qualifications intelligence officers, the head of the department of the General Staff decided to prepare a practical guide for the ranks of the counterintelligence service. To this end, in December 1919, he asked the military representative of the Commander-in-Chief of the All-Russian Union of Youth in Paris to send the following materials: the legal regulation of foreign states on the fight against espionage; description of well-known espionage processes, practical methods of combating espionage and organizing the struggle on the territory of foreign states; printed works on intelligence and counterintelligence; instructions and guidelines for conducting espionage, counter-espionage and political investigation; ciphers, systems of secret writing and transportation of secret correspondence abroad; publications on this topic in periodicals. The telegram emphasized that supplying the department of the General Staff with the indicated information was a permanent task of the military representative. Whether this manual was prepared - there is no evidence. Even if it was possible to publish it, it is unlikely that this work could already be useful to the Wrangel counterintelligence officers, who found themselves in exile after the defeat of the Russian army. They themselves could teach their Western "partners" the experience of fighting Bolshevik intelligence and counterintelligence.

White Guard regimes in Siberia The main threat to their security was not without reason seen in Soviet Russia and Germany, so the efforts of their counterintelligence agencies were aimed at countering the intelligence activities of these countries.

Document titled " General concept on espionage and related phenomena" gave the following definition of military espionage or military intelligence: “... the collection of all kinds of information about the armed forces and the fortified points of the state, as well as the collection of military geographical, topographical and statistical data about the country. This information may be collected for the purpose of transmitting it to a foreign power.” It also defined other types of espionage - economic, diplomatic, political, maritime. An important clarification is made in the appendix that the work of secret agents is not limited to collecting information, but is sometimes aimed at creating "conditions that weaken the enemy's defensive strength" behind enemy lines.

Burovsky Andrey Mikhailovich

RED PROPAGANDA FROM SOVIET RUSSIA On October 28, the new German government breaks off diplomatic relations with the RSFSR: a very terrible ally. The Bolsheviks have already done their job, withdrew the Russian Empire from the war. Now an ally is getting bigger every day