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GRU (Soviet Union)

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This article is about the Soviet GRU. For the Russian GRU, see GRU (Russian Federation).

Main Intelligence Directorate
Glavnoje Razvedyvatel'noje Upravlenije
ГРУ СССР
Главное разведывательное управление
Agency overview
Formed5 November 1918
as Registration Agency; GRU since 1942
Preceding agencies
  • Fifth Department of the Russian Imperial Chief of Staff
  • Expedition for Secret Affairs
Dissolved7 May 1992
Superseding agency
Jurisdiction
HeadquartersMoscow
EmployeesClassified
Annual budgetClassified
Parent agencyMinistry of Defense
Child agencies
The emblem of the RVS

Main Intelligence Directorate (Russian: Главное разведывательное управление, romanized: Glavnoye razvedyvatel'noye upravleniye, IPA: [ˈglavnəjə rɐzˈvʲɛdɨvətʲɪlʲnəjə ʊprɐˈvlʲenʲɪjə]), abbreviated GRU (Russian: ГРУ, IPA: [ɡɨ̞‿rɨ̞‿ˈu], [gru]), was the foreign military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces until 1991. For a few months it was also the foreign military intelligence agency of the newly established Russian Federation until 7 May 1992 when it was dissolved and the Russian GRU took over its activities.

History

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Showpiece of exhibition dedicated to 80th anniversary of Russian foreign intelligence service

The GRU's first predecessor in Russia formed on October 21, 1918 by secret order under the sponsorship of Leon Trotsky (then the civilian leader of the Red Army), signed by Jukums Vācietis, the first commander-in-chief of the Red Army (RKKA), and by Ephraim Sklyansky, deputy to Trotsky;[1] it was originally known as the Registration Directorate (Registrupravlenie, or RU). Semyon Aralov was its first head. In his history of the early years of the GRU, Raymond W. Leonard writes:

As originally established, the Registration Department was not directly subordinate to the General Staff (at the time called the Red Army Field Staff – Polevoi Shtab). Administratively, it was the Third Department of the Field Staff's Operations Directorate. In July 1920, the RU was made the second of four main departments in the Operations Directorate. Until 1921, it was usually called the Registrupr (Registration Department). That year, following the Soviet–Polish War, it was elevated in status to become the Second (Intelligence) Directorate of the Red Army Staff, and was thereafter known as the Razvedupr. This probably resulted from its new primary peacetime responsibilities as the main source of foreign intelligence for the Soviet leadership. As part of a major re-organization of the Red Army, sometime in 1925 or 1926 the RU (then Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenye) became the Fourth (Intelligence) Directorate of the Red Army Staff, and was thereafter also known simply as the "Fourth Department." Throughout most of the interwar period, the men and women who worked for Red Army Intelligence called it either the Fourth Department, the Intelligence Service, the Razvedupr, or the RU. […] As a result of the re-organization [in 1926], carried out in part to break up Trotsky's hold on the army, the Fourth Department seems to have been placed directly under the control of the State Defense Council (Gosudarstvennaia komissiia oborony, or GKO), the successor of the RVSR. Thereafter its analysis and reports went directly to the GKO and the Politburo, apparently even bypassing the Red Army Staff.[2]

The first head of the 4th Directorate was Yan Karlovich Berzin, a Latvian Communist and former member of the Cheka, who served until 1935 and again in 1937. He was arrested in May 1938 and subsequently murdered in July 1938 during the so-called "Latvian Operation" of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.

The GRU in its modern form was created by Stalin in February 1942, less than a year after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany. From April 1943 the GRU handled human intelligence exclusively outside the USSR.[3][4]

The GRU had the task of handling all military intelligence, particularly the collection of intelligence of military or political significance from sources outside the Soviet Union. It operated rezidenturas (residencies) all over the world, along with the signals intelligence (SIGINT) station in Lourdes, Cuba, and throughout the Soviet-bloc countries.

The GRU was known in the Soviet government for its fierce independence from the rival "internal intelligence organizations", such as the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB), State Political Directorate (GPU), MGB, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, KGB and the First Chief Directorate (PGU). At the time of the GRU's creation, Lenin infuriated the Cheka (the predecessor of the KGB) by ordering it not to interfere with the GRU's operations.

Nonetheless, the Cheka infiltrated the GRU in 1919. That worsened a fierce rivalry between the two agencies, which were both engaged in espionage. The rivalry became even more intense than that between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency in the US.

The existence of the GRU was not publicized during the Soviet era, but documents concerning it became available in the West in the late 1920s, and it was mentioned in the 1931 memoirs of the first OGPU defector, Georges Agabekov, and described in detail in the 1939 autobiography of Walter Krivitsky (I Was Stalin's Agent), who was the most senior Red Army intelligence officer ever to defect.[5] It became widely known in Russia, and in the West outside the narrow confines of the intelligence community, during perestroika, in part thanks to the writings of "Viktor Suvorov" (Vladimir Rezun), a GRU officer who defected to Great Britain in 1978 and wrote about his experiences in the Soviet military and intelligence services. According to Suvorov, even the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when entering the GRU headquarters, needed to go through a security screening. In Aquarium Suvorov alleges that during his training and service he was often reminded that exiting the GRU (retiring) was only possible through "The Smoke Stack". This was a GRU reference to a training film shown to him, in which he alleges he watched a condemned agent being burned alive in a furnace.,[6][page needed]

Activities

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During the Cold War, the Sixth Directorate was responsible for monitoring Intelsat communication satellites traffic.[7]

GRU Sixth Directorate officers reportedly visited North Korea following the capture (January 1968) of the USS Pueblo, inspecting the vessel and receiving some of the captured equipment.[8]

Heads

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No. Head Term Leader(s) served under
1 Semyon Aralov November 1918 – July 1919 Vladimir Lenin
2 Sergei Gusev July 1919 – January 1920
3 Georgy Pyatakov January 1920 – February 1920
4 Voldemar Aussem February 1920 – August 1920
5 Yan Lentsman August 1920 – April 1921
6 Arvid Zeybot April 1921 – March 1924
Joseph Stalin
7 Yan Karlovich Berzin 1924 – April 1935
8 Semyon Uritsky April 1935 – July 1937
(7) Yan Karlovich Berzin July 1937 – August 1937
9 Alexander Nikonov August 1937 – August 1937
10 Semyon Gendin September 1937 – October 1938
11 Alexander Orlov October 1938 – April 1939
12 Ivan Proskurov April 1939 – July 1940
13 Filipp Golikov July 1940 – October 1941
14 Alexei Panfilov October 1941 – November 1942
15 Ivan Ilyichev November 1942 – June 1945
16 Fyodor Kuznetsov June 1945 – November 1947
17 Nikolai Trusov September 1947 – January 1949
18 Matvei Zakharov January 1949 – June 1952
19 Mikhail Shalin June 1952 – August 1956
Nikita Khrushchev
20 Sergei Shtemenko August 1956 – October 1957
(19) Mikhail Shalin October 1957 – December 1958
21 Ivan Serov December 1958 – February 1963
March 1963 – July 1987
22 Pyotr Ivashutin Leonid Brezhnev
Yuri Andropov
Konstantin Chernenko
Mikhail Gorbachev
23 Vladlen Mikhailov [ru] July 1987 – October 1991

Personnel

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Defectors

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Main article: List of Soviet and Eastern Bloc defectors

Agents

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"Illegals"

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Earl F. Ziemke, Russian Review 60(2001): 130.
  2. ^ Leonard, Secret Soldiers of the Revolution, p. 7.
  3. ^ "Военная разведка: 1941–1945" [Military intelligence: 1941–1945]. hrono.ru.
  4. ^ Главное разведывательное управление Генштаба ВС России. Справка. (tr. "Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. Reference") RIA Novosti, 19 March 2009.
  5. ^ Leonard, Secret Soldiers of the Revolution, p.xiv.
  6. ^ Aquarium (Аквариум), 1985, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, ISBN 0-241-11545-0
  7. ^ "The Technology Acquisition Effort of the Soviet Intelligence Services" (PDF). Central Intelligence Agency. June 18, 1982. p. 23. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 30, 2016.
  8. ^ Newton, Robert E. (1992). "The Capture of the USS Pueblo and Its Effect on SIGINT Operations" (PDF). National Security Archive. p. 177. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 30, 2016. Other collateral sources reported that a group of Soviet military intelligence officers from the Sixth Directorate (responsible for Soviet SIGINT matters) of the Chief Intelligence Directorate (GRU) visited North Korea shortly after the seizure of the ship and inspected the vessel. Later, the North Koreans were reported to have turned over some of the captured equipment to the GRU. Apparently, some of this equipment was taken to Soviet radio plants in Kharkov, Voronezh, and Gorkij for examination by technicians.
  9. ^ Chambers, Whittaker (1952), Witness, New York: Random House, p. 799, ISBN 9780895269157, LCCN 52005149
  10. ^ Richard J. Aldrich, Michael F. Hopkins, Intelligence, Defence and Diplomacy: British Policy in the Post-War World, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2013, p. 211
  11. ^ Nigel West, Historical Dictionary of World War II Intelligence, Scarecrow Press, 2008, p. 6
  12. ^ Hunt, Graeme. "Spies and Revolutionaries – A History of New Zealand subversion" (Auckland: Reed, 2009), p.171
  • Raymond W. Leonard. Secret soldiers of the revolution: Soviet military intelligence, 1918–1933. Westport, Conn.; London: Greenwood Press, 1999. ISBN 0-313-30990-6

Further reading

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