GRU

GRU (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoe Upravleniye), the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army, has a history which goes back to 1918. In the period immediately before the outbreak of the German–Soviet war it had, like the NKVD, suffered severely in the purges. Indeed the head of the organization, air force General I. I. Proskurov, who had fought with distinction in Spain, was shot in June 1940, apparently because of his doubts about the wisdom of Stalin's German policy (see Nazi–Soviet Pact). Under his successor, General Golikov, the GRU revived, although Golikov did not dare to disabuse Stalin of his belief that intelligence of aggressive German intentions was merely ‘English provocation’. From October 1941 to March 1942 the organization was headed by General A. P. Panfilov, who was also shot. Panfilov had been effective head from July 1941 when Golikov went to the UK and the USA as part of a military Lend-Lease delegation. Indeed, Golikov was the only head of the GRU to receive public exposure and in 1961 became a Marshal of the Soviet Union. Panfilov's last wartime successors were I. I. Ilyichev to the summer of 1943 and finally F. F. Kuznetzov to April 1946.

The task of the GRU was to collect strategic, technical, and military intelligence. During the Second World War it may also have been active in sabotage behind German lines and co-operation with partisan units. However, intelligence activity at the front was the responsibility of army commanders and conducted by them through intelligence departments (Razvedy vatelnyi Otdel, or RO) although it was integrated and closely supervised by the GRU. Although there is little evidence of co-operation with SMERSH, which was founded in April 1943, the two organizations had great success in penetrating the German military structure on the Eastern Front. Together with the NKVD it was active in foreign intelligence although as the weaker institution it was probably subject to the NKVD. Richard Sorge in Japan, and in Germany and German-occupied Europe, Leopold Trepper, Arvid Harnack, Rudolf von Scheliha, and Harro Schulze-Boysen, all members of the Rote Kapelle, were some of the more spectacular agents recruited by the GRU, but its most important network was the Rote Drei which operated from Switzerland.

H. Hanak

Bibliography

Akhmedov, I. , In and out of Stalin's GRU: A Tatar's Escape from Red Army Intelligence (London, 1984.)
Glantz, D. M. , Soviet Military Intelligence in War (London, 1990).
Villemarest, P. de (in collaboration with C. A. Kiracoff ), GRU, le plus secret des services soviétiques, 1918–1988 (Paris, 1988).