Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence

GAUCK COMMISSION. Following the collapse of the East German

state, the German government in Bonn established a commission un-

der Joachim Gauck to collect, declassify, and release the records of

the Ministry of State Security (Stasi). The records, more than a mil-

lion linear feet, documented the history of a Leniniststate through

the eyes of the police and their agents. No such publication has ap-

peared in Russia, though in Latvia and Lithuania many of the KGB’s

records have been released. While the publication of the documents

sparked more than a few divorces and assaults as spouses, lovers, and

friends discovered who had been working for the Stasi, it did allow

some degree of closure in Germany. Along with Bishop Desmond

Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, it

demonstrated the need for countries to face the truth of their past.

There has been no Gauck Commission in Russia. Most of the re-

search on repression has therefore been carried out by nonprofit or-

ganizations such as Memorial.

GEHLEN, REINHARD (1902–1979). Gehlen served as the German

military high command chief of intelligence on the Soviet Union

from 1942 until the defeat of Nazi Germany. As chief of Foreign

Armies East (Fremde Herre Ost), Gehlen was repeatedly fooled by

Smersh, which used radio gamesand double agentsto misinform

German intelligence and deceive the Nazi war machine. He miscalled

the Soviet offensive near Stalingrad in November 1942. In 1944 his

organization totally missed the Red Army’s offensive against Minsk,

an error that contributed to the defeat of Army Group Center and

more than 300,000 German casualties. Nevertheless, Gehlen was a

conscientious intelligence officer whose estimates of the Red Army

order of battle angered Adolf Hitler. In early 1945 Hitler fired Gehlen

for his estimates of Soviet military strength.

Gehlen sensed by 1945 that the end of the war would bring a cold

war between the victors. Prior to the German surrender in 1945, he

buried the records of his organization. He then approached the

British and the Americans as the expert on the Red Army and the

Soviet Union. The Western allies needed intelligence on the Red

Army and agreed to finance Gehlen. In the late 1940s, the Gehlen

apparatus ran operations inside the Soviet bloc with the same lack

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