Soviet regime to raise funds and popular support in the United States
during World War II. Following the war, Mikhoels and his col-
leagues in the Jewish theater came under suspicion for Zionism. In
late 1947 Joseph Stalinordered MGBofficers to murder Mikhoels
and make his death look like an accident. On the evening of 13 Jan-
uary 1948, Mikhoels was beaten to death and his body repeatedly run
over by a truck. Mikhoel’s death marked an upswing in Soviet anti-
Semitism and the beginning of a widespread purge of Jews from the
security service, the foreign ministry, and the army. In 1953
Lavrenty Beria announced that Mikhoels had been murder by Vik-
tor Abakumov, Beria’s rival. In 1956 Nikita Khrushchevgave fur-
ther details about Mikhoels’s murder, placing the blame where it de-
served to be, with Stalin.MILITARY ATTACHÉS. Military officers were assigned to diplo-
matic missions as attachés from the time of Petr I (1689–1725), to act
as representatives of the Russian army and navy and to collect sensi-
tive military information. In tsarist times, military attachés were ex-
pected to collect intelligence on their hosts’ military and military
technology. Military attachés were encouraged to take sabbaticals to
travel inside foreign countries to collect intelligence. (This was the
usual practice in the 19th century; for example, British, French,
Prussian, and Austrian officers attached themselves to the northern
and southern armies during the American Civil War.) They also re-
cruited and ran agents in certain circumstances. Alfred Redl, for ex-
ample, was run from 1908 to 1913 by Colonel Mitofan Marchenko,
military attaché in Vienna.
In the Soviet period, all military attachés were officers of the Chief
Intelligence Directorate, the GRU. Attachés had combat arms expe-
rience and were trained at the Military-Diplomatic Academy in lan-
guages, history, politics, and intelligence tradecraft. From the
1930s, military attachés played an important role in Soviet clandes-
tine human intelligence activities, serving as case officers and run-
ning agents. In the 1940s military attachés recruited and ran agents
engaged in penetrating the American, Canadian, and British nuclear
weapons labs. Soviet military attachés were also assigned to military
diplomatic missions. A special military mission was established in
both East and West Germany by NATO and the Soviet Union.160 •MILITARY ATTACHÉS06-313 G-P.qxd 7/27/06 7:56 AM Page 160