Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence

soldiers told the authorities that Konstantin was the legitimate tsar

and Konstatutsiya—a female noun in Russian—was his wife.

The leaders of the revolt were arrested in the capital and the

provinces. Five of the conspirators were hung and 121 were sen-

tenced to exileor imprisonment in Siberia. The Decembrist revolt

was an important watershed in the history of the Russian internal se-

curity service, convincing the new tsar that the threat to his regime

came not from a peasant revolution, but from young officers con-

taminated with the virus of liberalism. It also convinced the new au-

tocrat to form a security police, the Third Section, to conduct sur-

veillance of those suspected of disloyalty and treason. Russians

honor the Decembrists as the first Russian revolutionaries.

Joseph Stalinwas very conscious of the Decembrists’ example.

He believed that just as the Decembrists had been impressed with the

West during 1812–1814, so Soviet officers exposed to the West dur-

ing World War IIcould also be seduced into rebellion and treason.

For this reason, Stalin and his major security lieutenants carefully

monitored the attitude of soldiers who had served in Germany, from

the rank of marshal down. Shortly after victory over Nazi Germany

in 1945, several leading officers were arrested, and Marshal Georgi

Zhukovwas banished to a military district to rusticate.

DEFECTORS.During the history the Cold War, intelligence officers,

diplomats, military personnel, and ordinary citizens crossed to the

other side. However, for the most part it was Soviet citizens who fled

westward. The Soviet intelligence services suffered a plague of de-

fections, as hundreds of intelligence officers went over to the West

between 1930 and 1991. In the late 1920s, approximately 60 Soviet

officials concerned about the purge of Leon Trotsky’s followers

sought contact with Western governments or with Trotsky himself. In

the late 1930s, Stalin’s purge of the NKVDled several senior officers

to defect, along with two Soviet ambassadors. Unfortunately for the

West, much of their information was not acted on for a decade. Dur-

ing World War II, more Soviet officials defected rather than return

to Moscow. Among them were Walter Krivitsky, Alexander Orlov,

and Ignatz Poretsky.

Despite defections to the West during the Great Patriotic War, no

regular intelligence officer collaborated with the Nazis. During the

DEFECTORS•63

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