USSR and repression
SMERSH
Smert shpionam ('Death to spies')
Soviet military counter-intelligence in 1943–1946, headed by Viktor Abakumov. It followed the front, hunting spies and 'enemies'; in Poland it arrested Home Army soldiers.
SMERSH was created in April 1943 as three separate counter-intelligence directorates: in the People's Commissariat of Defence, directly under Stalin, in the navy and in the NKVD. The largest was headed by Viktor Abakumov. SMERSH hunted German agents and collaborators, but also deserters and 'anti-Soviet elements' in the Red Army itself, and after the war it screened returning prisoners of war.
In Poland SMERSH worked with the NKVD to disarm and arrest Home Army units in 1944–1945; its officers directed the Augustów roundup of July 1945, after which several hundred people disappeared. It was a SMERSH team that found and identified Hitler's remains in May 1945. In May 1946 SMERSH was absorbed into the Ministry of State Security.
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In the chronicle
(13)13 articles use this term.