What Stalin Knew (10 page)

Bukovina and Bessarabia, this briefly independent entity ceased to exist

after the Treaty of Riga in 1921. The Soviet Union retained the eastern and

central areas of Ukraine as the Ukrainian SSR. Czechoslovakia obtained

the Carpatho-Ukraine, Romania occupied Bessarabia and Bukovina, and

western Ukraine, or Galicia, was given to Poland. During the 1920s and

1930s the idea of an independent Ukraine was kept alive in Galicia despite

efforts by the Poles and the Soviets to suppress its adherents. The OUN, at

that time headed by Colonel Yevhen Konovalets, was considered a serious

threat by the Soviet NKVD, which believed he had made contact with the

German Abwehr, had even met with Hitler, and was allowed to train his

followers at the Nazi Party school in Leipzig. According to Pavel A. Su-

doplatov, a veteran NKVD special operations officer, in 1935 he was sent

abroad as an illegal to make contact with Konovalets and penetrate the

OUN; two years later, he briefed Stalin personally. In May 1938 Sudoplatov

assassinated Konovalets, who was replaced in the OUN by his deputy,

Colonel Andrei A. Melnyk. His authority was disputed by Stepan A. Ban-

dera, and by the time Poland was defeated the nationalist movement had

split into two camps, supporters of Melnyk and those of Bandera, referred

to as
Banderivtsi.
Both sides proclaimed that their sole allegiance was to

Ukrainian independence and denied they were subservient to German

interests.10

Evidence of the size of the Ukrainian nationalists’ paramilitary grew.

In December 1940 a member of one of the paramilitary groups, arrested

while trying to cross the border, reported that in Lvov there was a counter-

revolutionary insurgent organization of 2,000 armed members. The group

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SOVIET BORDERS MOVE WESTWARD

also possessed six heavy machine guns and had subordinate units in the

towns of Stanislav, Kolomye, Peremyshl, and Tarnopol. By December 1940

the Ukrainian SSR NKVD knew from its agent ‘‘Ukrainets’’ that Lvov was

the underground center of the OUN in the western Ukraine. It also knew

about the split between Bandera and Melnyk, both of whom were in con-

tact with the Germans.11 The fears developing in Kiev and Moscow over

the strength and intentions of the OUN were not misplaced, as can be seen

in the ‘‘unified general plan of the insurgency staff of the OUN,’’ a response

to Abwehr directives to create an uprising in the Ukraine to disrupt the

rear of the Red Army, an uprising in which the OUN would emerge from

underground to lead the people ‘‘in all Ukrainian lands, in order to achieve

the complete breakdown of the ‘Muscovite, Soviet prison of peoples.’ ’ 12

In mid-April 1941, Pavel Ia. Meshik, commissar for state security of

the Ukrainian SSR, wrote Khrushchev that his organization had con-

cluded that the Germans would be using the OUN as a fifth column in their

planned invasion of the USSR; the group, he said, ‘‘represent a serious

force inasmuch as they are well armed and continue to increase their

weapons stocks through transfers from Germany.’’ The OUN was not con-

tent to wait to act until a war had begun; its units were terrorizing chair-

men of village councils to the point that even pro-Soviet people were afraid

to report them. Meshik recommended actions to deprive the OUN of its

base of support, including the death penalty for members of its organiza-

tions living illegally in the western Ukraine, confiscation of their property,

and exile of members of their families. Because wealthy peasants formed

an important part of the OUN structure, they were to be exiled and their

lands given to collective farms.13

On April 29, Beria sent a directive to the commissars for state security

and internal affairs of the Ukrainian SSR on improving measures for stop-

ping terrorist activity by the OUN in the western oblasts of the republic. He

reported an increase in incidents (there were thirty-eight in April 1941)

and noted that the OUN was even inflicting casualties on members of the

NKGB and NKVD. The NKGB, he emphasized, had ultimate responsibility

for destroying the OUN.14 With this order and previous ones in hand, the

NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR announced on May 23, 1941, that it had

detained and loaded on freight cars for their journey into exile 11,476

persons.15 On May 31 the Third (Secret-Political) Directorate of the USSR

NKGB issued an orientation on anti-Soviet nationalist organizations oper-

ating in the former Polish territories. It named the OUN as the most active

and described its close ties with the Abwehr and Ukrainian emigration in

SOVIET BORDERS MOVE WESTWARD

35

the west. According to the report, after the Soviet absorption of the west-

ern Ukraine, that portion of the OUN under Stepan Bandera transferred its

headquarters from Lvov to Cracow, which was also the site of a large

Abwehr unit that ran training schools for OUN members in espionage,

sabotage, diversion, and the organization of underground activities. After

completing this school, selected graduates were sent to the German Spe-

cial Forces Regiment Brandenburg-800 for additional instruction, after

which they were infiltrated into the Soviet Ukraine either singly or in

groups. This NKGB orientation also accused the Ukrainian Catholic, or

Uniate Church, clergy of supporting the OUN. Because by now the major-

ity of the Ukrainian population of the western oblasts thoroughly detested

Soviet rule and yearned for independence, they, along with the clergy,

would often risk cooperating with the OUN, an organization they saw as

patriotic and proindependence.16

On June 15, 1941, NKVD Commissar Serov reported on the result of

his operations against the OUN for the period January–June 1941. Al-

though sixty-three political and criminal bands were liquidated, with ar-

rests of 273 of their members as well as 212 persons operating in a support

capacity, Serov stated that a significant number of these bands were still

active in Lvov, Rovno, and Drogobych oblasts.17 The same was true of

Tarnopol and Volynsk oblasts. That Serov’s concern was well founded can

be seen in a directive from USSR NKGB head Merkulov issued just hours

before the German attack. Obviously dissatisfied with NKGB attempts to

rein in the OUN, Merkulov proposed a massive new operation aimed at the

arrest and relocation of ‘‘counterrevolutionary elements, especially OUN

members.’’ The directive concluded with this order: ‘ Telegraph immedi-

ately the dates by which you can prepare such an operation.’’ The recipi-

ents never had a chance to consider the order because by the time they

received it German attacks had started. Concurrently, the OUN activists,

were busy causing as much havoc behind Soviet lines as they could.18

Belorussia

A September 12, 1939, report from the Belorussian NKVD on conditions

in Polish-held territory revealed that the only ‘‘partisan’’ activity they ex-

pected was from groups of rural workers who intended to attack landed

estates, wealthy farmers, and commercial enterprises. There was no sug-

gestion that anti-Soviet nationalist organizations would arise to cause the

same problems faced in western Ukraine.19 By May 1941, however, the

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SOVIET BORDERS MOVE WESTWARD

USSR NKGB was able to describe in some detail the history and activities

of significant anti-Soviet groups in the western oblasts of the Belorussian

SSR. The largest was Gromada, the word for a rural assembly in the Be-

lorussian language. Ironically, this organization had been created by Po-

lish intelligence in the 1920s as cover for the recruitment of Belorussian

agents to send into Soviet Belorussia. To their chagrin, the Poles saw Gro-

mada grow into a huge organization, with as many as 100,000 members

among the Belorussian peasantry. Afraid it was losing control, the Polish

service disbanded the organization. Others followed, such as the Christian

Democrats, using Vilnius as a center from which to propagandize Belorus-

sian peasants in Poland. There were also groups who preached ‘‘national

socialism,’’ but the organization with the greatest appeal to Belorussians

was apparently the Belorussian Committee for Self-Help, or BKS, founded

at the end of 1939 after the Soviet takeover. The NKGB report on Belorus-

sian anti-Soviet organizations also included a lengthy section on the Jew-

ish Bund, which existed in Belorussia, Poland, and Russia. According to

the NKGB, it contained many members of Trotskyist persuasion. Although

unlikely, for obvious reasons, to align themselves with German intelli-

gence, Bund members spoke out against measures taken by the Soviets in

Belorussia.20

A long special report by the Belorussian NKGB contains a section on

sabotage of rail lines to be carried out by several Belorussian agents of the

Abwehr at the onset of military operations. On June 17, 1941, a group of

five were arrested by Soviet troops while trying to cross the border. Under

interrogation they revealed that they had undergone training at Lamsdorf,

in the Berlin area. There were fifty agents in their class, one of whom had

left on June 16 to perform an act of sabotage in the area of Luninets in

Brestskaia Oblast, Belorussian SSR. Of those in custody, each team of two

had specific sabotage targets. One was a portion of the rail line between

Baranovichi in Brestskaia Oblast and Stolbtsy in Minskaia Oblast; the

second was a section of track between Lida in Brestskaia Oblast and Mo-

lodechno in Minskaia Oblast. These actions, the agents were told, would

cut off movement of Red Army reserves to the front the moment hostilities

began between Germany and the Soviet Union. The fifth agent was as-

signed to perform acts of sabotage in the Luninets area. Although the

agents were informed that hostilities would begin in early July, they were

to blow up targets of opportunity and return to German territory if war

had not begun by August 1. They were armed with pistols, slabs of gun

cotton, and explosive devices and had been given 1,800 Soviet rubles for

SOVIET BORDERS MOVE WESTWARD

37

expenses, as well as ground panels with which to signal German aircraft.

Theirs were not the only sabotage teams, the agents said. Six others were

to be infiltrated at the same time with the same type of missions.21

Lest one conclude that these preparations were spurred by the young

agents’ vivid imaginations, it might be useful to examine an order from

German Army Group B instructing sabotage agents to destroy targets in

Soviet territory of the Fourth Army either just before or during the army’s

advance. The sabotage unit assigned to the Fourth Army consisted of one

company of Regiment Brandenburg-800, then undergoing training at the

Lamsdorf training site; companies of Brandenburg-800 were divided into

two units of 220 men each. Some of the Fourth Army targets were to be

seized and neutralized by groups of thirty dressed in Red Army uniforms;

timing for this operation was to be just before the main offensive. Other

targets were to be assigned to units of sixty men wearing civilian clothes

over their Wehrmacht uniforms. Still others were to be seized by the re-

mainder of Regiment Brandenburg-800’s unit during the advance of the

first echelon of the Fourth Army. Liaison officers would be appointed from

the Abwehr and the regiment to work with the units of the Fourth Army in

the various target areas. Compare this Army Group B order with the state-

ments made by the persons interrogated by the Soviet border troops and it

is clear that the use of agents drawn from the local population was an

important part of German operational plans for the June 22 invasion.22

Moldavia

As part of the definition of ‘‘German and Soviet spheres of interest’’ covered

in the secret protocol to the nonaggression pact, Stalin had insisted on

receiving Bessarabia, a former Russian province that had been seized by

Romania following World War I. Not until late June 1940, however, did the

Red Army move in and the process of Sovietization begin. The provincial

capital, Kishinev, became the capital of the greatly expanded Moldavian

SSR. Here the Soviets encountered difficulties similar to those that had

plagued them in the western Ukraine and Belorussia.

A USSR NKGB report dated May 11, 1941, alerted Moldavian authori-

ties to German preparations for diversionary operations against targets in

the Bendery area of the Moldavian SSR. On June 19, 1941, the Moldavian

NKGB reported that it had taken action on June 13 to arrest several catego-

ries of potentially anti-Soviet elements and have their families evacuated.

The arrestees were listed by category, and the second-largest group, 1,681,

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consisted of members of counterrevolutionary groups and participants in