Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence

Washington, and San Francisco, the NKVD had at least six agents

working within Los Alamos, as well as at other classified facilities.

In Canada, the GRU was running Allan Nunn May, who had access

to nuclear secrets.

Stalin personally monitored the collection of information by

agents in the United States, Canada, and Britain. The Soviet leader

picked Beria to head a committee of the GKO(State Defense Com-

mittee) to oversee the nuclear program. On 23 January 1946, Stalin

met with Beria and Kurchatov to discuss the next steps in building a

Soviet atomic bomb. Stalin encouraged Kurchatov to ask for what-

ever was needed. Acting like a Dutch uncle—a side of the dictator

few saw—he told Kurchatov that he was to build a bomb “in the Rus-

sian style.” In 1949, when Kurchatov had built the uranium “pit” for

the first bomb, he presented it (properly shielded in lead) to Stalin.

Stalin was impressed but asked when it was to be exploded.

While Stalin and Beria rewarded Kurchatov and the other scien-

tists who had built the Soviet bomb, intelligence officers received

scant praise. No mention of their success was allowed in the media

for decades, and several of the people who carried out operations in

the United States and Britain died in disgrace. In 1992 the surviving

members of the intelligence service’s nuclear intelligence work fi-

nally received their due in articles in the Russian press. At least one

of them traveled to the United States to discuss operations with the

families of his agents. See alsoFITIN, PAVEL; KVASNIKOV, LEV;

SEMENOV, SEMEN.

EXECUTIONS.The last three decades of the tsarist regime experi-

enced intense persecution of political rebels and anti-Semitic

pogroms, which were often commissioned by agents of the

Okhrana. During 1881–1914, approximately 11,000 subjects of the

tsar were hanged for political crimes, killed in clashes with the secu-

rity forces in urban and peasant risings, or murdered in pogroms. The

term “Stolypin necktie” came from the willingness of Minister of In-

terior Petr Stolypinto sanction execution of rebels following the

Revolution of 1905.

During the Soviet period, capital punishment was officially re-

ferred to by the acronym VM or VMN, for Vyshaya mera

nakazaniya, or Supreme Measure of Punishment. Executions were

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