Rafail Illych Bekker

Anti-Soviet Russian forces under German control during World War II suffered from lack of unity and from German suspicion. Consequently, they achieved few successes, and the resulting frustration sometimes counterweighed the motivators that drove defectors to cooperate. Some defectors decided to return to Soviet loyalty even after beginning on the path to German collaboration. Among these was Rafael Ilyich Bekker, who, although he likely began as a genuine defector, fell back on his NKVD training and indoctrination after being assigned German intelligence duties.

Bekker was born in 1904 in the village of Novosokolniki, near Velikie Luki in western Russia.[i] He began as a teenager working as a courier for the local military commandant, and later became an agent of the Sebezh GPU border guard office along the western Russian border. Coincidentally, the Sebezh border guard office was the unit from which Ivan Nikitin defected in 1927, although Bekker and Nikitin probably did not cross paths.

Bekker transitioned from GPU agent to officer in 1920 or 1921. He attended the Leningrad military school in 1928, and was assigned to military counterintelligence duties in the forces under the OGPU General Directorate of Fire Protection. In 1938, he transitioned to the OO of the Moscow NKVD Special Purpose Forces division. In May 1940, he was promoted to senior lieutenant of state security.[ii]

He was captured as a POW in September 1941 while serving as the chief of the OO of the First NKVD motorized rifle division. He was transferred to Berlin for interrogation, where he provided extensive, but not particularly valuable information about the structure of the USSR NKVD-NKGB. He also provided false information during interrogations, claiming to have cooperated with the Abwehr from 1928 to 1936.

In May 1942, Bekker was recruited into real collaboration with the RSHA. Bekker taught intelligence skills in an SD intelligence school for Russian POWs under the auspices of Operation Zeppelin. In this position, Bekker showed the first signs of lingering loyalty to the Soviet Union when he approached one of his students and tried to convince him to make contact with the NKVD after the student was infiltrated into Soviet territory. But the student reported Bekker’s approach, and Bekker was temporarily removed from his duties and placed under investigation in a special block at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The investigation established no clear guilt, so Bekker was reassigned to German intelligence duties.[iii]

From early 1943, Bekker unsuccessfully tried to establish contact with NKVD-sponsored partisans. The Germans were probably unaware of these attempts and assigned him to work for German propaganda organs under the ROA. In November 1944, soon after the KONR Security Directorate was created, Bekker was assigned to the Directorate and transitioned from there into KONR military intelligence service. The KONR officer qualification committee considered him for the rank of lieutenant colonel, but eventually settled on promoting him only to captain.

From January to April 1945, Bekker was chief of the Marienbad KONR intelligence school. However, KONR counterintelligence chief lieutenant colonel Ivan Matveyevich Grachev (see separate entry in this database) ordered that Bekker be relieved of his duties on suspicion of cooperating with the NKVD. The suspicion was justified, first because Bekker, possibly intentionally, caused discord at the school and his assistant, junior lieutenant Elenev, did more as leader than Bekker did. Additionally, Bekker is believed to have passed the questionnaires and application forms of many of the students to the SMERSH counterintelligence directorate of the First Belorussian Front, which led to the neutralization of a KONR intelligence operation.

After the war, he voluntarily accepted repatriation, but his actions in favor of Soviet counterintelligence did not save him from arrest when he arrived in the Soviet Union. He was tried and convicted of betrayal and sentenced to 15 years in a corrective labor camp. He was released on amnesty in 1955. No data is available about his further life after release from prison.

[i] Biographical information from Aleksandrov, Officer Corps of the Army of General Lieutenant Vlasov, 1944-1945, pp. 87-89.
[ii] “Приказ НКВД СССР № 710,” 29.05.1940 (“Order of the USSR NKVD No. 710,” 29 May 1940), Кадровый состав органов государственной безопасности СССР. 1935−1939 (Staff of the Organs of State Security of the USSR, 1935-1939), https://nkvd.memo.ru/index.php/Беккер,_Рафаил_Ильич
[iii] Aleksandrov, General Vlasov’s Army 1944-1945, pp. 53-55.