The meaning of “political intelligence.” A. Political secret intelligence Political intelligence

Counterintelligence Dictionary

Political intelligence

1) type of intelligence activity, the object of which is the political forces, means, plans and secrets of the enemy, as well as his unprotected information of a domestic and foreign policy nature. In addition, the purpose of political intelligence is to undermine the moral and political potential of the enemy. Political intelligence of imperialist states is primarily directed against the main revolutionary forces of our time - socialist countries, the world labor movement, and the people's liberation struggle. At the same time, political intelligence is also used in the internecine struggle of capitalist states. However, here it does not acquire such a comprehensive, total character as in the fight against the main revolutionary forces of our time.

Depending on who (domestic or foreign policy opponents) political intelligence is directed against, it is divided into domestic political intelligence (political investigation) and foreign policy intelligence. Political intelligence is usually carried out by various intelligence services, specializing either in domestic political or foreign policy intelligence, but sometimes these functions are performed by one body (for example, in Nazi Germany - RSHA);

2) Political intelligence in the narrow sense is one of the types of foreign intelligence, existing along with military, economic and scientific-technical intelligence. In this sense, it coincides with the concept of foreign policy intelligence. IN modern conditions there is a significant increase specific gravity political intelligence in the general system of types of intelligence and information activities of imperialist states against Soviet Union and other socialist countries. This process is due to changes in the political strategy of imperialism.

The III Department of His Imperial Majesty's own Chancellery, headed by Adjutant General Count Alexander Khristoforovich Benkendorf, could not help but react to the emergence of this new threat. The fight against the “harmful” influence of Polish emigration, which unfolded in the 1830s, began with attempts to determine its numbers, social composition and areas of settlement in European countries. Next, it was planned to obtain information about the organizations created by refugees from Poland, their political leaders, about their plans and intentions, about emigrant printed publications, about the connections of emigration with government and parliamentary circles of the host countries, and finally, about the sources of funding for Polish organizations. The necessary data had to be collected through all possible channels, in particular with the help of secret agents.

The III department also provided for the organization of various kinds of, as we would now say, counter-propaganda events, the main one of which was considered to be the publication in newspapers and magazines of European countries of articles exposing the inconsistency of the accusations of emigrants against Russia, its emperor and his policies in the Kingdom of Poland. Russian agents looked for and, it must be said, always found flexible editors and journalists in Europe who agreed, for a fee, to publish articles glorifying the good deeds of the Russian Tsar in Poland. At the same time, in St. Petersburg, over time, they came to the conclusion of helping the writing fraternity, who were ready to cooperate not only financially, but also by providing the factual data necessary for writing custom articles, including statistics on the creative Russian policy in the Kingdom of Poland (opening schools, hospitals, building roads).

The leadership of the Third Section began to deal with foreign intelligence issues from the moment this institution was created. Thus, in 1826, Benckendorff sent an Armenian merchant to Turkey with the aim of creating an agent network in this country. In the thirties of the XIX century. The process of creating agent networks in Western Europe began.

From 1826 to 1844, foreign intelligence was led by the head of the Third Department, Benckendorf. Of course, due to the large volume of other cases, the key role in the development and conduct of most intelligence operations was played not by him, but by one of his subordinates, Adam Sagtynsky. We will talk about the latter below.

From 1869 to 1874, foreign intelligence was headed by Konstantin Fedorovich Philippeus. The latter claimed that it was he who attracted many talented intelligence officers to work for the Third Department, while upon taking office he discovered very dubious agents on the staff:

“One wretched scribbler whose duty was to report daily city incidents and gossip. He copied the first ones from newspapers, and the last ones he invented... In addition, they came to me: one count, an idiot and illiterate, one shoemaker from the Vyborg side - he did not know how to write at all, and no one understood what he said... two drunkards, one married woman, not so much an agent in herself as a mistress and employee of one of the agents, one widowed, chronically pregnant colonel from Kronstadt and only two really nimble agents...”

The 3rd expedition of the Third Division was directly involved in organizing political intelligence. Note that at the same time she was responsible for political investigation not only in the vast Russian Empire, but also beyond. It's about on monitoring political emigrants living in Europe and, if necessary, taking active measures against them (for example, forcible removal to their homeland).

Since 1832, numerous business trips of officials of the 3rd expedition to Europe began in order to study the situation, acquire agents and organize a surveillance system in the capitals of the leading European powers of that time. As a result, the largest residencies of the Third Branch were created in Austria-Hungary, Germany, Great Britain and France.

The foreign intelligence of the Third Department was headed by the official for special assignments A. A. Sagtynsky. Before that, he was engaged in similar matters at the General Staff of the Ministry of War, and even earlier he led intelligence activities in Austria and Prussia, while serving in the office of the Viceroy of the Kingdom of Poland, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich. It was Sagtynsky who created an agent network in Europe of the so-called “literary agents”: Yakov Tolstoy, K.F. Schweitzer (resident in Berlin and Vienna), French journalist Charles Durand. In addition to conducting intelligence activities, they also carried out counter-propaganda tasks, refuting with their publications, which regularly appeared on the pages of newspapers, magazines and books, unfavorable reviews of Russia and the regime of Nicholas I.

Abundant information about the foreign policy of England, France, and Austria was given to the Third Section by the sister of the head of the Third Section, Benckendorf, Baroness D. Lieven, the wife of the Russian ambassador to England, who was a member of the court circles of these countries.

In addition to England and France, the Third Section had strongholds in Switzerland, Belgium and Austria.

Yakov Tolstoy managed to create the largest network of agents in the Third Department. In the course of his intelligence activities, in addition to information about France, Yakov Tolstoy was able to regularly receive information about neighboring countries: England, Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland.

Beginning in March 1850, in his reports to St. Petersburg, Yakov Tolstoy pointed out that England’s traditional hostility towards Russia was becoming more and more concrete. Thus, in his report dated March 27, 1850, Yakov Tolstoy reported on England’s plans: “to destroy the Russian fleet and burn Sevastopol.”

The intelligence activities of Yakov Tolstoy in France continued successfully even after the establishment of the military-police regime of the Second Empire in France. He acquires new agents in the inner circle of Napoleon III. One of them becomes the emperor's secretary, a certain Pascal.

After France, together with England, entered the Crimean War on the side of Turkey against Russia in the spring of 1854, Tolstoy was expelled from France and moved to Brussels, the capital of neighboring Belgium, where he continued to manage his agent networks in France and England and other European countries.

Throughout the entire period of the Crimean War, he regularly sent to St. Petersburg a large amount of information necessary for conducting military operations, and then for diplomatic maneuvers and intrigues at the peace conference in Paris, where the Russian delegation was headed by the head of the Third Department, Count Orlov.

If so many senior officials believe that intelligence should not perform the functions of warning and assessing events, that is, to engage in what, in the general opinion, is precisely its direct responsibility, then it is not surprising that there are even more objections and in more decisive forms meets every proposal about the need to bring intelligence closer to politics - to give intelligence the right to study the various opportunities opening up to US policy in certain areas, and to evaluate the correctness of the principles on which the pursued policy is based.

When asked by the author how intelligence can help a statesman assess the likely consequences of pursuing a particular policy course possible for the United States at the present time, one of the responsible officials replied that such a figure, instructing intelligence to study this kind of issue, is practically avoiding fulfilling his duties. direct responsibilities. A statesman, he said, is obliged to make a decision even if he does not have all the facts necessary for this. It is the business of the State Department to see that it is fully supplied with such facts; This is what intelligence agencies are for. Intelligence, he firmly stated, must provide information; nothing more is required of it.

Another official also emphasized that, in his opinion, such functions go beyond the scope of intelligence activities. The business of intelligence is to collect and group facts, and then weigh them and generalize them. If intelligence can pull this off, it will do something useful: it will enable other State Department agencies to check the accuracy of their own work. As for solving certain problems, this is a matter for government officials who have extensive practical experience for this.

Once discussing with one responsible official a review of Far East, I asked what his opinion was on the findings of this review. “About conclusions?” he asked, irritably emphasizing this word, and replied that conclusions were not the business of intelligence. The intelligence officer must ensure that his review uses all the facts available to him. He must provide the necessary material - that is all that is required of him. During the argument, this official agreed that in many cases an intelligence officer cannot help but draw some conclusions, but at the same time he emphasized the danger of an intelligence officer moving away from facts and reality. Intelligence officers tend to build castles in the air, and therefore their conclusions must be carefully checked by those who deal with the problems of a given country on a daily basis. Of course, he said, we are interested in both “prospective” problems and problems of immediate “practice”. Both are important. The only danger is to put too much emphasis on one thing at the expense of the other. There are many areas, he concluded, in which intelligence could work successfully, for example, it could determine how effective the Voice of America's broadcasts are. Intelligence officers should collect materials such as feedback on the work of the Voice of America that are of interest to political leaders.

Similar arguments are repeated whenever statesmen and decision-makers are forced to justify their views on the role of intelligence. Above all, they emphasize the importance of having all the facts. They are afraid that a person involved in politics and solving some problem will unreasonably defend his own decisions. They feel that if the same person is also engaged in collecting facts on the problem of interest to him, he will tend to select facts that confirm his point of view, and therefore will not be able to correctly solve this problem. It should also be borne in mind that information service workers are usually treated with distrust. Since this hardly applies to economists and, obviously, not at all to natural scientists, this distrust can be explained to some extent only by the insufficient development of the social sciences. In any case, to a high-ranking official in the State Department, who feels like a student of a famous magician, faced with the need to quickly solve the problems that arise before him, the informant appears to be some kind of dreamer, a man who spends his whole life poring over dusty books in the gloomy halls of libraries, fenced off from the real world. life. At the same time, statesmen tend to believe that the only source of true knowledge and correct judgment needed to solve problems that arise in the real world, in the thick of life, is most likely to be practical experience rather than academic training in an educational institution.

Apparently, they are convinced that practical experience develops the ability to “feel” a problem, the talent for accurate premonition, and that only such a “sixth sense” can help eliminate all doubts when solving the most complex problems foreign policy and find the most effective course of action.

These views were summed up clearly and convincingly by one of the senior figures, a man of high intelligence and great talent, manifested in the ability to penetrate deeply into the essence of problems and express his thoughts clearly and intelligibly. He said that the view that justifies the current division of activities is based on the idea that only an independent intelligence agency can be objective. Intelligence agents cannot have any other goal other than presenting facts in their pure form. Almost everyone probably has their own political views, especially in the US, where professional politicians24 are not trusted. However, he is convinced of the correctness of the concept that information is more objective when the person collecting it does not decide political issues. According to him, the study of the various possibilities opening up to politics is a political function; If an intelligence officer becomes involved in political issues, he will not be able to be objective.

Allowing statesmen and intelligence officers to explore these possibilities, he continued, would also be a mistake. If intelligence has the best people, you can change the signs on the doors of their offices and make these people responsible leaders. But if you combine both of these functions, you end the very idea of ​​intelligence. And a completely different question: should intelligence be centralized or decentralized?

He further said that the most important thing for a politician is experience. Every capable specialist or scientist knows how to analyze. However, it is one thing to analyze the articles of the Treaty of Versailles, and quite another to assess modern events. When analyzing foreign policy facts that require decision-making, no amount of scientific training will help; experience is needed here. George Kennan, for example, has a better grasp of the meaning of current events than any member of the intelligence community. What is the difference between them? And the difference is that one is used to dealing only with real life, and the other is with libraries. Continuing, this leader stated that he would prefer, if necessary, to go under the knife of a country doctor, than to deal with one of those brilliant medical scientists who know nothing except the laboratory and books. We need professional politicians more than experts and scientists. That's why the State Department prepares professional politicians, giving them the opportunity to gain experience and relevant training. If he had to choose between an experienced historian and a professional politician with experience practical work, he would have chosen the second one. When all the facts are laid out on the table, he said, the responsible official's "sixth sense" will tell him which one is in charge. Such a worker seems to have a kind of antenna (at the same time, my interlocutor put the back of his hand to his forehead and moved his fingers), which lets him know when she accepts the correct facts. This ability comes from experience. To develop it, you need to swim around and around a lot!

To the question, why keep people who have nothing to do with resolving political issues to collect facts, when only responsible officials can give a final assessment of the facts, the answer was that they could be wrong, although in general a responsible official will always assess the fact more correctly, than an intelligence officer. Therefore, someone must collect information so that the responsible official has all the facts before him. Then he can say: “This is, of course, a fact, but it does not deserve attention. But this is a very important fact.” But the responsible official should not collect information himself, since he may miss some important fact or simply ignore it.

When the author, having thanked his interlocutor, was about to leave, the latter detained him and gave another example to confirm what he had said. He said that some time ago he had to draw up a memo regarding intelligence problems. In this memo, he recommended that intelligence information should not be called assessed information, but simply information. The fact is, he said, that by accepting the first definition, we admit the possibility of an insufficiently objective assessment of the facts, since we are moving away from our basis - unvarnished facts.

The center of political secret intelligence is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with its accredited foreign countries representatives: ambassadors, envoys, consuls, etc. Being in foreign states, embassy officials naturally feel the pulse of their people's life, and moving in society, especially in the bureaucracy, they involuntarily notice those subtle at first shifts in their foreign and domestic policies, which can later turn into acts of great importance. Advance, accurate knowledge of these political changes and using them in favor of their state are the main tasks of the embassy officials. To do this, they need special informants - people who maintain contact with those at the helm of power, that is, they need secret agents. Since it is difficult for mission ranks to grasp all the versatility of modern life, they are assigned specialists in the form of military, naval, commercial, and sometimes financial agents. Submitting to the head of the mission in general procedure services, they at the same time directly depend on the relevant ministries: military, naval, trade and industry, finance, working in their specialty and their instructions. The solution to the complex task that falls to political intelligence is greatly facilitated if the deciphering of telegrams received by intelligence, of course, from various missions and local institutions is skillfully organized.

The First Lord of the English Admiralty, that is, Minister of the Navy Fisher (1905–1910), writes about this issue in his memoirs: “It is a pity that not only in the last war, but also especially in the Boer war, our spies and our reconnaissance points were not on high. What the Sultan told me made such an impression on me that I myself took up the matter, and thanks to the patriotism of some Englishmen who occupied a high position in trade on the Mediterranean coast, I was able to create a private secret central intelligence bureau in Switzerland, and Providence so arranged that, thanks to a happy coincidence of circumstances, I was able to receive all the encrypted reports from various foreign embassies and consulates, as well as the keys to the codes” (“Geheime Machte”, Oberst W, Nicolai, p. 13). General Ronge speaks no less definitely about the decoding of the Serbian telegrams. “Thanks to the rich experience of the Balkan War of 1912–1913. and before the Great War,” he writes in his book “Kriegs und Industrie Spionage,” “deciphering Serbian telegrams no longer presented any difficulties.” Is it not the deciphering of Serbian telegrams by the Austrians, especially those sent to St. Petersburg, that should explain the intractability of Austria-Hungary during the period of strained diplomatic relations with Russia before the Great War?

In any case, in the future, scientifically conducted work on deciphering telegrams will be the most reliable and fastest means of illumination in the hands of political intelligence, whose main efforts should be directed either to attracting specialists in solving codes, or agents to purchase them at any cost, keeping in mind, that all the expenses for this will pay off handsomely. Receiving encrypted telegrams from foreign missions or from local postal and telegraph offices will not present much difficulty.

Our political intelligence worked sadly before the Russo-Japanese War, which we entered without asking a question. If we were aware of the unfriendly attitude of both England and S.A.S. States, they would probably find a way to peacefully eliminate political disagreements with Japan. Our political intelligence also worked unsatisfactorily before the Great War. If we had known in advance that as a result of the Great War there would be the collapse of the three middle empires, including ours, to which our allies also had a hand, then we would hardly have started this war, no matter what humane slogans they lured us to. The results of political intelligence in the Volunteer Army are even sadder. For every participant in the White movement, the slogans of the struggle against the Bolsheviks, imprinted with the blood of its countless fallen and tortured heroes for the liberation of the desecrated Motherland, are sacred. But our allies, who supposedly helped us ideologically, looked at our epic struggle from a completely different, purely mercantile, point of view. In July 1919, in response to an inquiry made to the government in the English Parliament regarding English policy towards the Bolsheviks, War Minister Churchill gave the following explanations: “I am asked why we support Admiral Kolchak and General Denikin, when the First Minister (Lloyd George) is of the opinion that our armed intervention would be an act of the greatest stupidity. I will answer Parliament with complete frankness. When the Brest-Litovsk Treaty was concluded, there were provinces in Russia that did not take part in this shameful treaty and they rebelled against the government that signed it.

Let me tell you that they formed an army at our instigation and, no doubt, to a large extent with our money. Such our assistance was an expedient military policy for us, since if we had not organized these Russian armies, the Germans would have seized the resources of Russia and thereby weakened our blockade. They would have access to the grain reserves of the Don, the mineral wealth of the Urals, and the oil of the Caucasus. They would have provided themselves with everything that our blockade deprived them of for almost four years. Thus, we restored the eastern front not on the Vistula, but where the Germans were looking for food. What happened next? Bolshevism wanted to use force of arms to force the outskirts that rebelled against it, who resisted it at our instigation, to obedience.

If, after the insurgent outskirts, at risk, helped us, we would say to them: “Thank you, we are very grateful to you, you served our purposes, but now we no longer need you and let the Bolsheviks slaughter you,” - thereby would we have expressed malice from the moment we asked and promised their help? and especially after they took this step and contributed so much to the victory of the allies. It is our duty to assist them" (Times, July 30, 1919).

In response to the concern expressed by some members of the English Parliament that the assistance provided to Admiral Kolchak would not cost the British too much, the same War Minister Churchill added: “These shells being sent are a surplus of the reserves of the English army; it is impossible to sell this surplus on the market, but if the shells are stored in England, then Parliament will have to allocate money for the construction of sheds and hire caretakers for storage, and therefore such sending of shells cannot be considered unprofitable for the English nation.”

The English Lord Milner almost says the same thing in his letter dated December 1918 to an English correspondent: “You ask what right we have to send our troops to interfere in the internal affairs of Russia and how long will this continue after the armistice? Your question shows that you have a mistaken understanding of the fact and activities of the British government. We wanted to refrain from interfering in Russian affairs for as long as possible. But we had a moral obligation to save the Czechoslovakians, and there was an urgent military need to prevent the vast provinces of Russia that were fighting against the Bolsheviks from being captured by the Bolsheviks and thereby eliminating the possibility of transferring resources to Germany. I'm not even talking about the huge military reserves that belonged to us and were located in Vladivostok and Arkhangelsk, which the Bolsheviks wanted to transfer to Germany. Our intervention was successful. The Czechoslovakians were saved from extermination. The resources of Siberia and Ukraine did not fall into the hands of the enemy, and we prevented the southern ports of Russia from becoming bases for German submarines. These are our results that contributed to the defeat of Germany” (see “Journal de Geneve”, 12/20/1918, London, 12/19/1918).

In 1920, on August 2, when voting in the English Parliament for a loan of 200,000 pounds sterling for the cost of transporting the Czechoslovak corps from Siberia to their fatherland, member of the English Parliament Malon indicated that this corps was used in Siberia for illegal work (illigal work), which remark was immediately stopped by the chairman, who asked Mr. Malin whether Mr. Malon had forgotten his oath of allegiance to the English king

However, there were also truthful Englishmen, such as the author of the book “The Truth of the Intervention in Russia” (“The truth of the intervention in Russia”, Bern, Promachos House, 1918) Philip Price, who among other things says in it: “As a man who lived these four years in Russia and having seen the suffering of the Russian people, I categorically declare that the anarchy and famine now (in 1919) reigning in Russia are the consequences of the deliberate work of European governments, and in this respect the British government, as well as the German one, behaved like vultures the same flock, and what Germany did in Ukraine, England did the same in Siberia and east of the Volga.

The above explanations of the leaders of British politics, Ministers Churchill and Milner, made not in the quiet of diplomatic offices, but published in newspapers and, moreover, during the operations of our White armies, clearly show how poorly our political intelligence was organized.

To understand the true reasons for the assistance to the anti-Bolshevik armies from our allies, it was not even necessary to have expensive secret agents, but only to systematically read foreign newspapers. Having understood the reasons, it was possible to properly use the advantage of our military-political position. In fact, our allies needed the anti-Bolshevik armies more than we needed the latter. This underestimation of oneself lies in the cardinal shortcoming of the political intelligence of the anti-Bolshevik armies. To judge the satisfactory organization of secret political intelligence in Germany in peacetime, a secret report on the military game of General Staff officers in 1905, conducted by Count Schlieffen, can serve as a guide. Political situation it is very close to what took place in the Great War. At that time it was already believed that Italy, as a member of the Triple Alliance, would not take his side, but would remain neutral. Belgium will maintain the same neutrality, but benevolent towards Germany. England will not only be on the side of Russia and France, but will even send its three corps to the continent. But what German political intelligence did not foresee was that English propaganda during the Great War would raise almost the entire world against the Triple Alliance, and even S.A.S. The states will abandon their Monroe formula of non-interference in non-American affairs. German political intelligence also did not foresee that a protracted war and the physical exhaustion of the German people as a consequence of the blockade by our allies would lead to a revolution in the country and to the collapse of the three middle European monarchies.

Even less than that, she was aware of the dangers of Bolshevism for herself, sending agents to Russia led by Lenin, remembering the seemingly wise rule that in war not all means are good. If German political intelligence had been at its proper level on the eve of the Great War and if the Germans had known its approximate consequences, they would never have started it with such a light heart. And the winner - England, who led the political intelligence of the powers of the Agreement, which resulted in the collapse of the middle empires, also did not imagine that 20 years after that she herself would slide into the abyss along an inclined plane, and her politicians would more than once reproach the short-sightedness of their policies , especially during the period when Lloyd George was in power, which destroyed Imperial Russia, is a necessary factor for peace on the Asian continent. And the closer the decline of British power in India and Australia is, the greater will be its disappointment in the foresight of its politicians during the Great War.

In this regard, the English newspaper “Morning Post” was right, writing on August 13, 1918: “Our political figures who supported the revolution and even Bolshevism caused irreparable damage to English interests in Russia” (N. E. Murov, “ The fruits of democracy", Paris, 1923, p. 65).

Just as the army and navy are weapons of strategy, so the word or propaganda in general is a weapon of politics, and both strategy and political propaganda must work hand in hand, having only one goal - victory over the enemy.

Political propaganda has a dual purpose - raising the mood among one’s own population by at least inflating one’s successes and exaggerating the failures of the enemy, and lowering the morale of one’s opponent through direct influence or through neutral countries. This dual task of political propaganda is evident from its organization during the Great War in England. Lord Beaverbrook, who was at the head of all political propaganda of the Allies, had three assistants. One for enemy countries - Lord Nordcliffe, one for neutral countries - Lord Rosenmer and one for propaganda in his own country - Lord Kipling (My War Memoirs. 1914-1918 by Erich Ludendorff, p. 356). The methods of political propaganda must be extremely delicate, so that its slogans do not hit the eyes with their harshness, but seem to float in the air, imperceptibly creating the mood of the masses, that is, a popular movement. Of course, such delicate work is only capable of extraordinary individuals who, for pay or in pursuit of the glory created by their employers, carry out the work of political propaganda, corrupting the masses. Suffice it to say that Count Leo Tolstoy, as the destroyer of the religious and social foundations of the Russian people that existed before him, overshadowed the talented writer and artist, creator of “War and Peace”, “Anna Karenina”, etc. Long before the revolution, the poison of malicious political propaganda spread throughout Russia, thanks to the work of such talented artists as Orlenev, who created the type of weak-willed Tsar Theodore Ioannovich in the tragedy of the gr. Alexei Tolstoy of the same name; the talented artist Chaliapin with his romances “How the King Went to War”, “The Flea”, etc., the artistic execution of which could not help but be carried away. And in the air, meanwhile, the parallel between Tsar Theodore Ioannovich and Emperor Nicholas II seemed to float by itself; a sharp line was drawn between the position of the tsar in war and that of an ordinary mortal, etc. And who among us, as if at the behest of a pike, was not carried away by the idealization of “The Bottom” by Maxim Gorky and the dregs of humanity in general, by the songs of convicts, which have become the favorite numbers of our entertainment! All this was done somehow by itself and there was no way to find the main leaders of this systematically driven destructive work, which tirelessly undermined the main foundations on which the Russian state was built. It was useless to appeal to the press, for it was the main stronghold of these destroyers.

The choice of propaganda objects also presents many difficulties, since in order to destroy the moral foundations of the country, one must take into account the psychology of the people. In this respect, the work of British propaganda deserves great praise. Wanting to break the fighting power of Germany, British propaganda in no way dares to debunk its national hero, Field Marshal Hindenburg, and directs all its arrows at the de facto generalissimo of its army, General Ludendorff, who was in the shadow, mercilessly pouring mud of slander on him.

The same thing was done here long before the revolution. It would be inappropriate to grossly shake the prestige of the monarch in the eyes of the Russian people, and therefore revolutionary propaganda is cautiously approaching this hellish task immediately after the unsuccessful Russo-Japanese War and the small revolution that followed it. To do this, she moves up to the steps of the imperial throne a simple man, a whip in his own way. religious beliefs Rasputin, even providing him with miraculous powers. The book of his secretary, the Jew Aron Simonovich, “Rasputin and the Jews,” describes in detail the meeting of Rasputin, who was returning from a pilgrimage in Jerusalem to his home in the Tobolsk village, with the Grand Duchesses Anastasia and Militsa Nikolaev who came to Kiev to pray. By chance, Rasputin supposedly comes to their courtyard, the Grand Duchess becomes interested in him, they even invite him to drink tea with them and in a conversation they learn that Rasputin knows how to treat hemophilia, an incurable disease that the Heir-Tsarevich suffered from. Thanks to this, out of a mother’s feeling of love for her only son, Rasputin is introduced by them not only into the royal palace, but even captivates the soul of the Empress. With the assistance of bribed persons, miracles are mystified not only over A. A. Vyrubova, but also over the Heir-Tsarevich himself. Having achieved this main victory, propaganda begins to exploit it by spreading vile insinuations about the Empress and her daughters not so much among the common people as in the circles of the intelligentsia, and ultimately achieves its goal - to undermine the people's trust in the monarch. Particularly significant in this regard is the speech of P. N. Milyukov in State Duma November 2, 1916, which agreed almost to high treason of the Empress herself.

The power of this propaganda was so great that even such a seemingly pillar of the right wing of the State Duma as Purishkevich conspires with one of the leaders of the Kadet Party in the State Duma Maklakov to kill Rasputin, this Moor who has already done his job, that is, to a sufficient extent having already shaken the imperial throne in the eyes of the Russian people who revered him. In the interests of revolutionary propaganda, Rasputin should be removed not by the hands of the left parties that created him, but by right-wing figures, for which even a member of the imperial family is invited to the conspiracy Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich.

Rasputin was finally removed from the political arena. But Russia continued to slide into the abyss with the friendly assistance of its allies, who in their blindness did not want to see that they were cutting off the branch on which the guarantee of their victory and their future well-being rested. Suffice it to say that delaying the war for a year and a half forced the Allies to drag S.A.S. into it. States, to pay with the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and billions of money in order to fulfill the desires of their defeated enemy, Germany, in 20 years.

I became personally convinced of the power of revolutionary propaganda at the trial that took place in St. Petersburg in February 1917 against the official Manasevich-Manuylov, who was under the chairman of the Council of Ministers Sturmer, who was also Rasputin’s secretary. This provocative process, established by an investigation on the orders of the Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front, General Ruzsky, was needed by revolutionary propaganda only in order to become convinced of the weakness of the government, and at the same time, over the head of the late Rasputin, to splash mud on the imperial throne. This process was created by the Director of the Police Department, General Klimovich, with the assistance of the Director of the United Bank in Moscow, Count Tatishchev. The luminaries of our legal profession, Karabchevsky, Aronson, and others, appeared at the trial. The benches were crowded with the public allowed into the courtroom only by tickets. I was questioned first as a witness for the defense and boldly, in good conscience, expressed my opinion on this provocative case. The desire of the civil plaintiff Karabchevsky, in turn, to provoke me and thereby annul my testimony found a hot and sharp rebuke on my part, first to him, and then to the chairman of the Petrograd District Court, Reinboth, who took his side. This forced Karabchevsky and his Moscow colleague to stop asking further questions to me, and during the subsequent break in the court session to apologize to the chairman of the court, Reinboth, for the harshness of his behavior.

The defense lawyers, led by Aronson, came up to me to thank me for the proper rebuke to Karabchevsky, who was forced to turn over unused several pages with questions planned for me, with the help of which he would “drive me,” according to Aronson. I did not understand anything about everything that was happening, and only the captain of the 1st rank from Revel, who introduced himself to me after this, whose last name I forgot, explained what kind of terror reigned before my testimony in the courtroom; Only I put Rainbot in his place as chairman, and with my testimony explained the essence of the process, for which he thanked me twice. I could not judge what happened before me in the courtroom, since I was interrogated on the fourth, as far as I remember, day of the hearing, having previously been in a special room for witnesses.

From the above it is clear that even the representatives of our justice, led by its minister Dobrovolsky, who, contrary to the wishes of the Empress, as can be seen from Her letters to the Sovereign, brought this provocative case of Manasevich-Manuylov to trial, were also infected with revolutionary propaganda.

An example of our successful political propaganda is the long-term Slavophil propaganda, the center of which was the Slavic Benevolent Society in St. Petersburg, whose members, along with famous Slavophiles like Professor Lamansky and others, were also military men: General Count Ignatiev, Parensov, etc. The moral and material success of this society rested on the appeal to the Russian loving heart of the idea of ​​protecting the weak, and especially the Slavs, from the violence of the Turks and Austro-Hungarian governments, which led us to a number of complications up to and including the Great War.

This society had significant funds, part of which was used to support Slavophile ideas among our foreign Slavic brothers. I know for sure that the leader of the Slovaks, writer and poet Gurban Vajansky went to Petrograd for subsidies.

This propaganda among the Slavs of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy was extremely fruitful and its results were reflected in hundreds of thousands of prisoners on the Southwestern Front. At the very beginning of the war, however, I was surprised by the relatively small number of captured Czechs compared to other Slavic peoples, which is why I began to be disappointed in the productivity of Slavophile propaganda in the Czech Republic. Soon, however, this gap was corrected.

General Ronge describes in great detail the vicissitudes of the brave struggle of the Slavic leaders like Kramar, Klofac and others with the Austrian government, which ultimately led to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. A significant role in this struggle was played by the Sokol societies, which were the Slavophile cement that tied together national aspirations, mainly the press, and then radio, cinema, theater, variety shows, etc. war time it is very difficult to conduct propaganda directly in an enemy country, especially if measures have not been taken for this in peacetime by establishing their own press organs, cinemas, theaters, etc. In view of this, propaganda must be conducted through the press of neutral countries, where publishing relevant articles is associated with costs large Money. But this work must be carried out with great caution, so as not to arouse suspicion among the enemy. In this regard, we must pay due tribute to English propaganda, which, apart from Sweden, seems to have held in its hands the entire press of neutral countries, sparing no expense. General Ludendorff, on page 370 of his memoirs, puts it this way: “Lord Nordcliffe was right in asserting that the speech of an English statesman cost England £20,000 when the Germans reprinted it, and £100,000 when they didn’t.” answer."

In addition to monetary subsidies, printing can be controlled by controlling the supply of paper, printing inks, renting printing houses, etc., which was the case in the Volunteer Army.

Perhaps the most dangerous means of political propaganda are international societies that allegedly pursue exclusively humane goals, the planting of the Kingdom of God on earth, and not political work, whether it be Masonic lodges - as mixed in composition, French, English, American, etc., or Countless pacifist and other societies, the Society of Christian Youth (the so-called YMCA), etc., which are in one way or another dependent on them.

The documented works of Professor Sapeshko, Vinberg, Nechvolodov, Petrovsky, Ivanov, Markov, Ludendorff, Svitkov and others have established the involvement of Masonic lodges in destructive political propaganda, although covered with humane slogans.

The destructive political, religious and social goals of Freemasonry are vividly, briefly and documentedly depicted in the district message of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in 1932, reprinted in “Church Life” of 1935 No. 2. On page 353 of his war memoirs, General Ludendorff says this characterizes the destructive political work of Freemasonry in the Great War: “The lodges (Masonic) of the whole world, long led by England, worked with the very terrible influence of this most powerful of secret unions, serving Anglo-Saxon and, therefore, international politics.”

The tasks and means of various kinds of international pacifist societies are set out in Anna Nilsson's book ABC der Friedens bewegung, published in 1936 in Vienna and Reval. The goals of this pacifist movement, that is, the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, are not only countless international societies of adults and youth, but even unions of the disabled and religious societies (ecumenical movement).

More radical in this regard is the National Socialist government of Germany, which wages an energetic struggle against the Catholic religion, partly because the highest center of spiritual government of the Catholic part of the German people is not in the country itself, but abroad.

The results of the political propaganda of the Allies during the Great War were so great that not only the inhabitants of neutral countries, but also Germany itself became more and more convinced of its aggressive aspirations, completely forgetting that the cause of the war was the struggle between England and Germany for naval hegemony, while the rest the allies, not excluding Russia, were just extras.

If victory is on the side of the Entente, then this must be attributed mainly to its skillfully conducted political propaganda through the rear of the army, which also destroyed the front. Lloyd George knew what he was doing, says General Ludendorff, when he thanked Lord Northcliffe on behalf of England at the end of the war for his propaganda. He was an artist in influencing the masses (“My War Memoirs,” p. 354). Both the Bolsheviks and the Germans took into account the enormous importance of political propaganda in the collapse of the rear of the middle empires, which led to the collapse at the front. The former spare no expense in using propaganda to keep the truly Russian masses of the people in the dark, making an “earthly paradise” out of Soviet hell, inaccessible to the rest of the bourgeois world, acting according to the saying “slander, slander, something will remain.” Therefore, they assign the same place to political literacy in the training of soldiers as to combat training.

The German National Socialist government was no less talented in using the sad results of political propaganda during the Great War, persistently and systematically re-educating its people under the leadership of the talented Minister of Propaganda Goebbels. Only this mainly propaganda can explain the hitherto unheard of results of popular votes, giving almost 100 percent of the votes for government proposals. This is achieved by the labor of a huge cadre of propagandists, for the training of whom, they say, a special academy was founded in Hamburg with a three-year course for 15,000 students. This unanimity of the German people, together with the brilliant state of the German armed forces, must explain the unprecedented successes of its foreign policy in our days.

From the above it follows that Great War Along with firearms, it also put mental (Correctly psychological. - Note by composition) weapons on an equal footing - the word, which was a powerful means of political propaganda, acting on the moral element of peoples - the main factor, according to Napoleon, of victory over the enemy.

Intelligence is at the heart of war itself. Knowledge of what and how the enemy intends to do remains in wartime the most valuable asset of the military and political leadership of the country. The duty of the intelligence services is to obtain this information by any means, by hook or by crook. In turn, the role of spies and agents is to reveal the enemy's disposition, intentions, strength and weakness in order to take appropriate measures and move their own troops to the best possible positions. It would be a mistake to argue, as some idealists and cynics do, that intelligence is not worth the effort and resources spent on it. It will be shown below that while this view has some merit, it can be dangerous and potentially disastrous in wartime.

Few intelligence services are surrounded by such myths and remain as poorly understood as those of Nazi Germany. Service military intelligence, known as the Abwehr, is hidden behind a veil of lies, falsifications and contradictory facts. This is due in no small part to one figure who towers above Germany's other espionage masters: Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who headed the Abwehr from January 1935 to March (Feb. - Ed.) 1944 An enthusiastic supporter of Hitler at the beginning of his career, he became disillusioned with Nazism during the Second World War. Trying to play the role of a faithful servant of the Fuhrer, Canaris simultaneously tried to stay within the framework of civilized behavior towards opponents and support the opposition movement, which was not particularly active, but still constantly existed. This is one of the amazing paradoxes of the Third Reich, that the organization that zealously sought to realize Hitler’s grandiose ambitions, the Wehrmacht, was at the same time the soul of the anti-Hitler opposition. Within the Wehrmacht, it was the Abwehr that was the part most opposed to the Hitler regime and had in its ranks greatest number conspirators. In the end, Canaris and most of the people loyal to him paid for their opposition to the Fuhrer own life(Canaris was executed on April 9, 1945 in the Flossenbürg concentration camp. – Ed.).

Hitler's National Socialist Revolution did not destroy the traditional pillars of monarchical, conservative Germany after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. Opposition centers, including some elements of the armed forces (until 1935 Reichswehr, from March 16, 1935 Wehrmacht) and the Abwehr, remained intact , ready to take advantage of any opportunity to weaken and undermine the Nazi regime as more and more evidence of its tyrannical nature emerges.

The Nazi domestic intelligence service in action. The man in the center, wearing a hat, is a member of the Gestapo, a state security agency

Hitler never fully trusted the military intelligence service and constantly tried, as in other areas, to be guided by the disastrous Roman maxim of “divide and rule.” Selecting a young and ruthless intelligence officer from the ranks of the SS, he tasked him with forming his own Nazi secret service, the formidable and terrible Sicherheitsdienst, SD. This man, the most terrible and ruthless (according to the author, in fact, there are many candidates for the definition of “the very best.” – Ed.) figure of the Third Reich, was Reinhard Heydrich, who began his career in the German navy under the leadership of Canaris, but ended up worst enemy admiral. By the time of his death in May (June 4. – Ed.) By 1942, Heydrich may have already been plotting a blow against the Abwehr, an organization he feared and hated. Under the leadership of Heydrich, the SD became a kind of “department of dirty deeds”, carrying out any orders of Hitler, participation in which Canaris tried to avoid.

Canaris (third from right) was never part of Hitler's inner circle, and therefore always remained wary in the presence of his rival Himmler (in a black uniform and glasses on the left). The photo taken before the war also shows Joseph Goebbels (in a light jacket in the center)

The SD managed to achieve some success, although the intrigues and intrigues carried out by the SD and the Abwehr against each other had a very negative impact on the effectiveness of German intelligence. When they worked together, as against the British in Holland in 1942, they achieved impressive successes. The overall effect of this secret war between the intelligence services was disgraceful failure in many areas. Triumphant victories - of the SD and Abwehr in Holland, agent Cicero in Turkey and the intelligence organization of Colonel Gehlen on the Eastern Front - are balanced by no less significant failures in other places.

General Kurt von Schleicher (left, in uniform) and Count Franz von Papen. Both were Hitler's predecessors as Chancellor of Germany

"Hitler's Spy Machine" is first and foremost a story of betrayal, conspiracy, deceit, cowardice, double-dealing and treason, but also of heroism, intelligence, insight and composure. If intelligence warfare seems a relatively pleasant experience compared to the brutal, bloody carnage of the battlefield, then it is worth remembering that the average estimated life expectancy of an agent during World War II was extremely short. There was no pity shown to those captured, and most of the agents were sooner or later discovered by the enemy. This book is about them. This book is about a network of Nazi spies and agents who operated throughout the world and spread fear and terror throughout Europe.

Espionage is the second oldest profession and, moreover, as honorable as the first.

Michael J. Barrett, Assistant Director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency

The German intelligence services of World War II were created on the basis of intelligence services that existed during the Prussian and imperial eras. Thus, the intelligence department of the German General Staff (ND - from Nachrichtendienst) was a very formidable weapon long before the First World War. The possibility of German agents infiltrating the country was a serious concern for the British before 1914, and their fears were based on the reputation of the German intelligence service, which was considered - sometimes without good reason - to be omnipotent and supremely effective.

Although British fears were exaggerated, German intelligence did manage to conduct several successful intelligence operations both before and after the First World War, but they occurred against a backdrop of equally spectacular failures. The ND was the predecessor of the Abwehr, whose future chief, Admiral Canaris, was its agent.

Germany's intelligence services have their roots in the Army High Command (OKH), which had the well-known Army General Staff, which housed the core of first Prussian and then German intelligence services from the beginning of the 19th century until the disbandment of the Abwehr and OKH in 1944 (departments and other components of the Abwehr became part of the Main Directorate of Reich Security. Ed.).

In peacetime there was no dedicated intelligence unit in the Prussian army, and General Staff officers traditionally viewed the value of intelligence with distrust. However, the great German commander, General Count Helmuth von Moltke, did not share any doubts about the need for military espionage. He made extensive use of the services of spies in the 1866 war against Austria and demanded that the intelligence department recruit an agent capable of finding out the details of the disposition of the Austrian troops. Such an agent was a young Austrian officer who retired in 1863 and gained access to the Austrian General Staff as a journalist. In April 1866, this agent, Baron August von Schluga, came to Berlin with a complete plan of the combat disposition of the Austrian army, a dossier on the commanders of the troops and the war plans of the Austrians. Moltke defeated the enemy in a brilliant campaign, culminating in the legendary Battle of Königgrätz in July of that year, which finally sealed the Prussian victory. (The Battle of Königgrätz (modern Hradec-Králové) on July 3, 1866 in our historical literature is usually called the battle of Sadovo (a town 14 kilometers from Hradec-Králové). The Austro-Saxon army of General L. Benedek (215 thousand, 770 guns ) was defeated, losing 1313 officers and 41,499 lower ranks killed, wounded and missing (including up to 20 thousand prisoners). The victorious Prussians lost 360 officers and 8812 lower ranks. The superiority of their small arms played a decisive role in the victory of the Prussians (needle gun) and rifled breech-loading Krupp guns (which fired at 3.5 kilometers versus 2 kilometers for rifled guns loaded from the muzzle of Austrian guns). – Ed.)