Authority from Stalin’s times
Moscow breathes new life into the Soviet defense service
January 8, 2024, 6:15 p.m
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During World War II, the Soviet intelligence service SMERSh focused on counterintelligence. Now the service appears to be experiencing a resurgence. A hit with Russian war propaganda.
According to information from London, Russia is giving new life to a former Soviet-era intelligence service. “At the end of 2023, Russian politicians claimed that the Soviet counterintelligence organization SMERSh had been re-established,” says the current situation report from the British Ministry of Defense. “In early January 2024, a recording from a public source showed that emergency services appeared to be wearing SMERSch uniform badges.”
London is referring to a video from last week. Russian authorities distributed a video in which a young man publicly apologized for filming a Russian anti-aircraft position in the Belgorod area. In the short clip, the man is flanked by two uniformed men with the word SMERSch written on the back.
The military intelligence service SMERSh was officially founded in April 1943 and existed until May 1946. The name is an abbreviation of the Russian expression “Death to Spies” and is said to go back to the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. It was used during the Second World War primarily for counterintelligence purposes. The service gained notoriety in popular culture through the James Bond books by British writer Ian Fleming. In some of the novels, SMERSch appears as an opponent of the fictional secret agent.
It is unclear whether SMERSch indicates substantial new capabilities or a new role for the Russian intelligence services, or whether it is simply a renaming, according to London sources. However, the emergence is another example of how Russia is reinterpreting the war of aggression against Ukraine in the spirit of the Second World War and is focusing heavily on the alleged penetration of external threats into the country.