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Personal Details
- Other Names
- A.A. Petrov
- Birth Date
- 1913-1916
- Defection Date
- Early 1947
Unidentified NKVD major (Germany, 1947)
Also known as: A.A. Petrov
Service Details
Publications
“Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memoirs of a Soviet Agent”) Tribune de Genéve published serially from 12 December 1949 to 14 January 1950.
Biography
From 12 December 1949 to 14 January 1950, a serialized autobiography appeared in the Swiss newspaper La Tribune de Genéve, titled “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”). The series began with the caveat that the name used for the author, A. A. Petrov, was a pseudonym to protect his safety. Petrov was drafted into the NKVD at the beginning of the Purge and remained until early 1947, when he was working as a Soviet repatriation officer in Germany. His autobiographical newspaper series is the only information publicly available about his existence and defection, although a repatriation officer whom the U.S. military expelled from Germany near the end of 1946 fits many of Petrov’s characteristics.
Although Petrov surrendered himself to U.S. forces in Germany, he was not entirely pro-American and his writing criticized the United States and Britain for political naiveté, easily manipulated by the Soviets. Where he ended up after his defection is not known, and nothing further is known of his life after he published his story in 1949-1950.
Petrov was a student in a scientific institute in 1936, where his studies included English, German, and French. He was a young Communist Party member, presumably in his lower 20s, when he was summoned to the Party regional committee and informed that he was being inducted into the NKVD. He initially expressed surprise at the offer, indicating that he would be more useful to the Party if he finished his studies. But the Party official giving him the order countered that the NKVD was understaffed, with many NKVD offices only 30 to 40 percent manned. The Soviet government expected Hitler to make an agreement with Roosevelt and Chamberlain, and the NKVD was unable to complete all of the tasks that Stalin assigned it. The official reminded Petrov, “There is no work more honorable than that of a Chekist.”[i]
Petrov’s first NKVD job was in the Secret Political Directorate, where he witnessed interrogations of political suspects as the Yezhovshchina was just getting started. One of the suspects was a professor from Petrov’s institute who was accused of espionage for Japan. Petrov’s supervisor, whom he gave the name Yevgenyev, explained that he had a quota of bringing forty enemies of the people before a tribunal each month. The quota had previously been thirty, but the Secret Political Directorate had entered into a “socialist competition” with the Counterintelligence Directorate and increased the requirement on each officer.[ii]
Unlike other state security officers, Petrov described no training that he underwent except on-the-job mentoring from a supervisor. However, he was immersed in the “practical” side of NKVD investigative work similar to the training described by Nikolay Potapov, who was recruited into the NKVD at about the same time. Petrov’s first case to handle on his own was an individual who had already been broken, but whose story still needed to be documented. The individual had been denounced as a Trotskyist associated with the German embassy in Moscow. He had admitted to the accusation, but when Petrov questioned him, it was clear that he had no knowledge of Trotsky and did not even know where the German embassy was located.[iii]
Just as Petrov was becoming concerned that he could not meet his quota of arrest warrants, he was informed that there had been a mistake. He was supposed to be assigned to the Counterintelligence Directorate, and another new officer with the same name was destined for the Secret Political Directorate. Petrov was glad to be relieved of the requirement to interrogate suspects, and he was instead assigned to a unit that monitored foreigners in the USSR and recruited them to publish pro-Soviet materials when they returned home.
Petrov ran agents among foreigners, particularly from European countries, who visited the Soviet Union and then returned home to serve as pro-Soviet influence platforms. For example, he was assigned to arrange a trip to the Soviet Union for a prominent French writer and an American professor. The French writer’s visit to the Soviet Union began well; he partook of the grand hospitality that the NKVD afforded him and attended the receptions arranged for him, but then wrote an unflattering article about the Soviet Union upon his return to France. The American professor’s visit was more successful; he readily agreed to facilitate a communist cell at Columbia University.[iv]
In 1939, while Petrov was working at the Counterintelligence Directorate, he was summoned back to the Secret Political Directorate. He was concerned about what the summons might mean until he arrived and was instructed to give a deposition against his former supervisor, Yevgenyev, who had been declared an “enemy of the people.” He gave a statement that Yevgenyev had spoken positively about Yagoda, who had since also been named an “enemy of the people.”[v]
As he was leaving the deposition, Petrov was summoned into the office of Vladimir Georgievich Dekanozov, NKVD chief of foreign intelligence. Dekanozov asked him, “Do you know French?” He answered positively, and he received an immediate assignment to travel to Switzerland via Berlin. It was Petrov’s first trip outside the Soviet Union, and his stop in Berlin shattered the propaganda that he had always heard about the evils of the capitalist world. However, the limitations placed on Soviet citizens abroad kept him from exploring the new world before him. Instead, he was assigned to investigate denunciations against an officer in the military attaché’s office, who committed suicide when he learned he was under investigation.[vi]
Petrov traveled from there to Geneva, Switzerland, where he was assigned to recruit and run agents in the League of Nations. He was to take control of agents that had originally been recruited by an NKVD secret collaborator who held a senior position in the League of Nations. However, because the secret collaborator had been active under Yagoda and Yezhov, his agents were under suspicion by association. Some of the agents held positions in foreign delegations to the League of Nations, including from Latin American countries, others were Swiss left-wing intellectuals, and others were Communist Party members in Switzerland. They provided copies of confidential League of Nations correspondences and information from local political parties. The internal correspondences provided both strategic intelligence about international negotiations and operational targeting information about the senders, which could be pursued even after the League of Nations dissolved.[vii]
The NKVD was particularly interested in collecting information about British and French positions in negotiations for an alliance with the Soviet Union. One of the NKVD’s sources reporting on this topic was the secretary of a British newspaper foreign correspondent in Geneva, who had held a conversation with Seán Lester, an Irish diplomat then serving as Deputy Secretary General of the League of Nations. The correspondent dictated the contents of the conversation to his secretary, who reported to his NKVD handler, which on the same day received another confidential report from a different source about British intentions in future negotiations.[viii]
Petrov also received an order from Moscow to contact agents in the League of Nations secretariat, in foreign delegations, and with Swiss journalists and to feed material and create unfavorable opinions about Finland and the Baltic states. The order from Moscow did not explain the reasons, but it soon became clear that the Soviet Union would move militarily on Finland and politically on the Baltic states.[ix]
During his time in Switzerland, he began to wonder why Western officials agreed to be Soviet agents. He remarked that Soviet citizens often had no choice but to cooperate for fear of losing their job or their lives. But Western officials had no such threat against them. He accounted their willingness to either political naiveté or to greed. He asked himself, do these Westerners really believe in the Soviet Union as the “most democratic country in the world,” or was Marx correct when he asserted that the capitalist world was motivated only by money?[x]
Petrov left Switzerland and reported to Estonia to participate in Soviet operations to convince Baltic leaders to accept Soviet control. He described his participation in a meeting in Moscow June 1940 where Vladimir Georgiyevich Dekanozov, Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinskiy, and Andrey Aleksandrovich Zhdanov met to plan for the annexation of the Baltic republics. The purported reason for the move was to defend the northwest frontier from the incursions of capitalist forces into the Soviet Union, only a short while after Soviet leaders had claimed that “chatter about the Sovietization of the Baltic States benefits only the enemies of the Soviet Union.”[xi]
Petrov claimed to have traveled with Zhdanov to Tallinn, where he witnessed Zhdanov’s interaction with Karl Säre, a leader of the small Estonian communist party, and Johannes Vares, the Socialist Estonian poet whom Zhdanov chose as the prime minister of occupied Estonia. In meetings Petrov described as if he were present, Zhdanov pushed Säre to persuade Estonian communists to accept Soviet dominance, despite Säre’s concerns that they would not be easily persuaded. After this meeting, Zhdanov gave Petrov a list of names of Estonian Communist Party members that the NKVD should eliminate.
Petrov also witnessed a meeting with Johannes Vares, where Zhdanov promised increased Soviet trade with Estonia once it allowed the presence of Soviet troops. Vares agreed to form a new government cooperative with the Soviet Union where Estonian businessmen would benefit from Soviet business. Petrov noted that the exchange with Vares seemed contrary to everything he had been taught: that capitalists wanted only to destroy the Soviet Union, not cooperate with it. But Petrov then noted that, just two months later, those same capitalist who had been willing to cooperate were loaded onto cattle cars and shipped as prisoners to the Soviet far north to cut trees.
Petrov was on the scene at Narva, Estonia, in June 1940 when the order arrived for Estonian forces to allow Soviet troops to enter the country. Petrov referred to this incident as the “assassination of a nation.” He witnessed both pro-Russian demonstrations, manned by Russian peasants brought in from areas of Russia bordering Estonian, beggars hired for the occasion, and prisoners released from prison specifically to participate in the demonstrations; and Estonian demonstrations surrounding the Soviet embassy in Tallinn protesting Soviet control. Petrov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner along with other NKVD officers for “welcoming the Baltic countries into the fraternal family of the Soviet republics.” The following year, when Petrov was in Estonia after the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union, he encountered a series of roughly dug graves, which he learned were filled with the bodies of Estonians killed for resisting Soviet authority in 1940.[xii]
Petrov had reached the rank of major of State Security. After the award ceremony where he received his Order of the Red Banner, he was given a month’s leave at an NKVD resort on Crimea. He noted, as previous defectors like Ginzberg had, the contrast between the luxuries afforded him as an NVKD officer and the poverty in which the ordinary Soviet citizen struggled to exist. He likened the barbed wire that separated the NKVD resort from the local population to an “iron curtain” placed to keep the peasants from intruding on the relaxation of the upper class of Soviet society. Later, after his defection, Petrov asked himself, “Is this what we fought for?”[xiii]
Petrov’s vacation in Crimea was cut short because he was ordered to travel to Baku, Azerbaijan, to monitor a German delegation that had come to negotiate a deal for Soviet oil. Petrov indicated that by 1940 the “honeymoon” between the Soviet Union and Germany that began with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had faded and the Soviet government was growing weary of German demands for raw materials. But the Soviet Union feared Hitler, and made a show of abiding by the pact while underhandedly sabotaging it. Petrov, similar to Akhmedov and Zhigunov, cited a declaration by Stalin that war was likely in the near future, but that the Soviet Union should welcome it, because it would result in the weakening of Germany and the United States to the benefit of the Soviet Union.[xiv]
Petrov’s mission in Baku included watching not only the German trade delegation, but also investigating every Soviet individual who came into contact with the delegation, either intentionally or accidentally. This quickly ballooned into dozens of investigations, for which the NKVD brought in reinforcements from Tbilisi, Rostov, and Moscow. Petrov was one of those reinforcements. In one instance, Petrov arrested a waiter who had served a member of the German delegation at a restaurant, only to find that the waiter was already working as an NVKD secret collaborator. The waiter was one of hundreds of people arrested, and in some cases sentenced to labor camps, for simply having contact with the German delegation during its stay in Baku.[xv]
The German delegation left the Soviet Union suddenly on the eve of Germany’s invasion in June 1941. Petrov made his way back to Moscow and found it in chaos. Despite Stalin’s slogans predicting that the war would never be fought on sacred Soviet soil, German forces quickly captured all of the territory in Poland, the Baltics, and Bessarabia that the Soviet Union had annexed in 1939 and 1940 and continued into Russia itself. Petrov was dispatched with a team of ten NKVD personnel to assist the forces of General Dmitriy Georgyevich Pavlov, which had been encircled in the Battle of Battle of Białystok–Minsk during the first days of the war.[xvi]
Petrov’s first experience on the front was short. His team was dispersed soon after it landed, and he was taken prisoner by German forces. Unlike WWII-era defectors, Petrov did not turn himself over to German forces, but removed all of his NKVD insignia and burned his identity documents before he was captured. Germans never realized who he was, and he succeeded in escaping during a prisoner movement and making his way back to Soviet-held territory. However, rather than being welcomed, he was received with suspicion and arrested. He was held among many other returnees who were suspected of disloyalty.
Petrov fell victim to an edict issued by Stalin that anyone who left his combat position without orders would either be shot or sent back to the front in a disciplinary unit. The order allowed no exceptions, even for POWs. Petrov’s NKVD supervisor came to visit him in prison, but could do nothing for him. Petrov was stripped of his Party membership, assigned to a disciplinary unit, and sent to the front. He gives few details of his time on the front, except to say that he was decorated four times and that he appealed his expulsion from the Party. His appeals were fruitless until the NKVD began to suffer from a severe lack of German linguists. Because of his German language ability, he was reinstated into the Party and assigned to a SMERSH unit subordinate to the Second Ukrainian Front.[xvii]
Petrov’s SMERSH assignment was as a Soviet repatriation officer in Germany, responsible for locating, identifying, and convincing Soviet refugees to return to the Soviet Union. He writes extensively about the Soviet attitude toward Soviet refugees and about his role in rounding them up for shipment to the Soviet Union. His job was to enforce the Yalta Agreement, by which Allies were obligated to repatriate Soviet citizens. Petrov claims that Beria himself drafted the agreement, and that by acceding to it, Roosevelt and Churchill became unwitting collaborators with SMERSH. Just as during the war, the Soviet Union viewed POWs and refugees as traitors who would be tried under the 1934 law that prohibited leaving the Soviet Union without authorization. SMERSH officers under cover as Soviet repatriation officers were supposed to identify all Soviet citizens and collect them into assembly points for transport to the Soviet Union, using force if necessary. This also necessitated working closely with Western Allies to facilitate Soviet access to displaced persons camps and to the refugees housed in them, giving opportunities for occasional penetrations of Western Allied governments.[xviii]
Petrov was assigned to the Soviet repatriation office in Stuttgart, Germany. He specifically targeted members of the former ROA under General Andrey Vlasov, telling them that the Soviet government understood the pressures they were under in German POW camps and would forgive them for collaborating with the Germans. Although Soviet urgings and pamphlets showing a Soviet Union flowing with milk and honey had early success among some Soviet displaced persons who longed to return to their families, the DPs soon began to hear what was really happening to fellow refugees who accepted the Soviet offer. When American forces arrived to repatriate a camp filled with former ROA soldiers, they were greeted by people more willing to commit suicide than to return to the USSR. Petrov cites an American Stars and Stripes article from 23 January 1946 in which American troops found Soviet soldiers slicing themselves with broken glass and pleading with American soldiers to shoot them.[xix]
According to Petrov, Soviet troops in Germany after World War II were handicapped because they were operating in a foreign environment where few of the Soviet troops could communicate with locals or the Allied occupying forces. The NKVD was forced to rely on locally recruited agents and interpreters to do much of their work. The NKVD used food and cigarettes to bribe local residents to reveal Soviet DPs’ hiding places. Because of the devastated economy immediately after the war, food was a strong persuader, and many local Germans were easily swayed by a jar of preserves.[xx]
The NKVD also relied on sympathetic officials in the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), the international organization set up to resolve the refugee crisis in Europe in the late 1940s. Among the UNRRA staff were European communists who willingly cooperated with the NKVD by providing lists of refugees, their addresses in the Soviet Union, and the names of their relatives. The NKVD used this information to recruit sources among the refugee themselves, sometimes with food or alcohol, and sometimes by threatening harm to their families still living inside the Soviet Union. This network of sources, both among UNRRA officials and inside the camps helped to find the Soviet refugees who tried to conceal themselves behind Polish or Baltic nationalities to avoid repatriation.
By late 1946, the environment began to shift against the Soviet Union and the NKVD began to meet resistance from American officials, first because the United States refused to recognize the Soviet annexation of the Baltic republics and thus refused to repatriate refugees of those nationalities. Second, U.S. forces began in 1946 to refuse to forcibly repatriate even those whose Soviet citizenship was certain. But the NKVD countered by manipulating the process by which a refugee was classified as a “displaced person,” which gave rights to live in a DP camp. Without that right, a person was at the mercy of the devastated German economy without identity documents of ration cards. The NKVD tried to ensure that any former Vlasovite soldier or anyone from the Baltic who had collaborated with Germany was refused DP status.[xxi]
As Western policy began to shift from repatriation to “resettlement,” the NKVD received instructions to impede the process of granting legal residency to former Soviet citizens who refused to return. The NKVD damaged the reputation of DPs in general by encouraging black market dealings within the camps, and then stepping back and watching as the DPs were labeled "parasites, rascals and idlers" and shunned in other countries.[xxii]
It was in this environment that Petrov decided to turn himself over to the Americans. His decision was risky, because he recalled another repatriation officer who offered to defect to the Americans the previous year, only to be turned back over to the Soviet government as a deserter. Nevertheless, in early 1947, Petrov packed a suitcase, left his Party card and a resignation letter addressed to Stalin on his table, and approached the Americans. He was initially held in an American prison, but was eventually released to find his own employment and to try to survive in Germany.[xxiii]
Petrov’s real identity is not known. However, a Soviet repatriation officer whom the CIC investigated, and who was expelled from Germany for his aggressive repatriation activities, fits Petrov’s description in many aspects, although it differs in others. Major Petr D. Afonin arrived in Germany as a repatriation officer in August 1945.[xxiv] He was reported to have met with DPs in the Dieburg Camp, near Frankfurt, in September 1945 and told them, “We have completely forgiven all you people who ran away; everything is forgotten. You can come home. I don’t force you to go back, but after three months you will starve here; Germany has no bread. When we annexed Latvia, we gave the people a choice, and 100 percent decided to remain Russian.”[xxv]
In December, Afonin was assigned to work in the Karslruhe and Heilbronn area north of Stuttgart. This differs from Petrov’s articles, in which he indicates that he ran the repatriation efforts in the Wasseralfingen, Ellwangen and Heidenheim DP camps southeast of Stuttgart,[xxvi] although it is plausible the Petrov falsified his operational area similarly to falsifying his name. An observer estimated Afonin’s age as 25 to 30 years old; Petrov’s account would place him at a similar age of about 30 to 33 years old.[xxvii]
Afonin conducted himself in many ways similar to Petrov’s description of Soviet repatriation officers. Afonin came to the attention of CIC as soon as he arrived in Germany when he was accused of kidnapping a woman who had supported the Nazi SS during the war and forcibly sending her to the Soviet Union. This comports with Petrov’s story about the priority for identifying and repatriating refugees who had collaborated with the Nazis. Afonin had reportedly become very close to a UNRRA official in the Pforzheim DP camp near Karlsruhe who gave him access to the full register of DPs in the camp, aligning with Petrov’s information about Soviet officers’ relationships with UNRRA staff. In June 1946, Afonin was caught scanning the register, which was a violation of regulations. When a U.S. officer confronted him, Afonin became indignant and demanded that the U.S. identify all of the Soviet DPs immediately.
The U.S. Army unit to which Afonin was assigned for liaison duties enumerated a series of violations that he had committed, including demanding information beyond what was allowed, including for non-Soviet DPs, such as many who had come from the area of Poland that the Soviet Union annexed in September 1939. Afonin insisted on interviewing DPs even when it as clear that his presence was causing serious disturbances in the camp, and Afonin demanded to enter the Pforzheim DP camp even though the population was openly hostile to him. At one point, when Afonin met with DPs, they reacted to him so violently that the U.S. camp commander feared for Afonin’s safety.[xxviii] Afonin accused a U.S. officer of staging the violence. Afonin was particularly angry with the U.S. camp leadership when DPs slashed the tires of his car.
Repatriation officers were strictly monitored and were required to receive permission to travel. However, Afonin failed to turn in daily activity reports and disappeared from the base without clearance. He also crossed the French border without travel orders.[xxix] The NKVD was wary that repatriation officers would become “bourgeoisified” by life in the West and try to defect. An anonymous author, who signed his work only as A.B.V., writing about Soviet intelligence activities in France in the first few years after the war, indicated that NKVD officers covered as repatriation officers in Germany were rotated into France for only one-month temporary duties to prevent them from becoming too comfortable in the capitalist France. However, despite this precaution, instances of desertion were not unique. A.B.V. recalls, for example, one high-ranking officer who “fled” and whom the A.B.V. assumes fell victim to a hunt organized by the NKVD.[xxx] It is unknown whether this fleeing officer was Afonin or Petrov, although they fit the general description.
U.S. forces first recommended that Afonin be relieved of liaison duties in June 1946. The recommendation was repeated in September. In October, he was relieved and ordered to leave the U.S. Zone and return to Berlin.[xxxi] A U.S. intelligence informant reported in late October that Anofin’s commander was dissatisfied with his productivity for repatriating Soviet refugees and for his “dissolute mode of life.” Anofin left for Berlin in late October and was replaced by another repatriation officer who reportedly focused his efforts on Baltic refugees.[xxxii] This places Afonin in Berlin just a short time before Petrov claimed to have fled from Berlin in early 1947.[xxxiii]
Although information available about Petrov and Anofin is insufficient to conclude that they are the same person, Petrov’s experience was similar to Anofin’s even if they were different people. Anofin’s conduct and targets parallel much of Petrov’s story, providing U.S. counterintelligence with corroboration, if not direct confirmation.
[i] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 14 December 1949.
[ii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 16 December 1949.
[iii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 18 December 1949.
[iv] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 22 December 1949.
[v] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 23 December 1949.
[vi] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 23 December 1949.
[vii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 25 December 1949.
[viii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 25 December 1949.
[ix] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 27 December 1949.
[x ] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 25 December 1949.
[xi] Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 29 December 1949.
[xii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 2 January 1950.
[xiii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 3 January 1950.
[xiv] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 4 January 1950.
[xv] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 4 January 1950.
[xvi] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 5 January 1950.
[xvii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 6 January 1950.
[xviii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 7 January 1950.
[xix] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 9 January 1950.
[xx] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 11 January 1950.
[xxi] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 12 January 1950.
[xxii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 12 January 1950.
[xxiii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 12 Janaury 1950.
[xxiv] HQ U.S. Forces, European Theater order, dated 29 August 1945, NARA, RG 319, Entry 134B, Box 5, Anofin.
[xxv] HQ Detachment G-33, CO B, 2d Mil Government Regt. Memo, dated 12 September 1945, NARA, RG 319, Entry 134B, Box 5, Anofin.
[xxvi] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 11 January 1950.
[xxvii] HQ Third U.S. Army, Foreign Liaison Section memo, dated 2 August 1946, NARA, RG 319, Entry 134B, Box 5, Anofin. Petrov’s age is estimated from his story of having been an institute student when he was drafted into the NKVD in 1936, when he was likely in his lower 20s.
[xxviii] HQ 571st AAA AW Bn (SP) memo, dated 26 June 1946, NARA, RG 319, Entry 134B, Box 5, Anofin.
[xxix] HQ Third U.S. Army, Foreign Liaison Section memo, dated 2 August 1946, NARA, RG 319, Entry 134B, Box 5, Anofin.
[xxx] A. B. V., “Сеть НКВД во Франции” (“NKVD Network in France”), За свободу (For Freedom) [New York], No. 18 (1947), p. 108. A draft copy of this article is in the David J. Dallin Miscellaneous Papers, HIA.
[xxxi] HQ U.S. Forces European Theater Internal routing slip, dated 5 October 1946, NARA, RG 319, Entry 134B, Box 5, Anofin.
[xxxii] HQ Sub-Region Stuttgart, CIC Region I memo, dated 28 October 1946, NARA, RG 319, Entry 134B, Box 5, Anofin.
[xxxiii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 22 December 1949.
Although Petrov surrendered himself to U.S. forces in Germany, he was not entirely pro-American and his writing criticized the United States and Britain for political naiveté, easily manipulated by the Soviets. Where he ended up after his defection is not known, and nothing further is known of his life after he published his story in 1949-1950.
Petrov was a student in a scientific institute in 1936, where his studies included English, German, and French. He was a young Communist Party member, presumably in his lower 20s, when he was summoned to the Party regional committee and informed that he was being inducted into the NKVD. He initially expressed surprise at the offer, indicating that he would be more useful to the Party if he finished his studies. But the Party official giving him the order countered that the NKVD was understaffed, with many NKVD offices only 30 to 40 percent manned. The Soviet government expected Hitler to make an agreement with Roosevelt and Chamberlain, and the NKVD was unable to complete all of the tasks that Stalin assigned it. The official reminded Petrov, “There is no work more honorable than that of a Chekist.”[i]
Petrov’s first NKVD job was in the Secret Political Directorate, where he witnessed interrogations of political suspects as the Yezhovshchina was just getting started. One of the suspects was a professor from Petrov’s institute who was accused of espionage for Japan. Petrov’s supervisor, whom he gave the name Yevgenyev, explained that he had a quota of bringing forty enemies of the people before a tribunal each month. The quota had previously been thirty, but the Secret Political Directorate had entered into a “socialist competition” with the Counterintelligence Directorate and increased the requirement on each officer.[ii]
Unlike other state security officers, Petrov described no training that he underwent except on-the-job mentoring from a supervisor. However, he was immersed in the “practical” side of NKVD investigative work similar to the training described by Nikolay Potapov, who was recruited into the NKVD at about the same time. Petrov’s first case to handle on his own was an individual who had already been broken, but whose story still needed to be documented. The individual had been denounced as a Trotskyist associated with the German embassy in Moscow. He had admitted to the accusation, but when Petrov questioned him, it was clear that he had no knowledge of Trotsky and did not even know where the German embassy was located.[iii]
Just as Petrov was becoming concerned that he could not meet his quota of arrest warrants, he was informed that there had been a mistake. He was supposed to be assigned to the Counterintelligence Directorate, and another new officer with the same name was destined for the Secret Political Directorate. Petrov was glad to be relieved of the requirement to interrogate suspects, and he was instead assigned to a unit that monitored foreigners in the USSR and recruited them to publish pro-Soviet materials when they returned home.
Petrov ran agents among foreigners, particularly from European countries, who visited the Soviet Union and then returned home to serve as pro-Soviet influence platforms. For example, he was assigned to arrange a trip to the Soviet Union for a prominent French writer and an American professor. The French writer’s visit to the Soviet Union began well; he partook of the grand hospitality that the NKVD afforded him and attended the receptions arranged for him, but then wrote an unflattering article about the Soviet Union upon his return to France. The American professor’s visit was more successful; he readily agreed to facilitate a communist cell at Columbia University.[iv]
In 1939, while Petrov was working at the Counterintelligence Directorate, he was summoned back to the Secret Political Directorate. He was concerned about what the summons might mean until he arrived and was instructed to give a deposition against his former supervisor, Yevgenyev, who had been declared an “enemy of the people.” He gave a statement that Yevgenyev had spoken positively about Yagoda, who had since also been named an “enemy of the people.”[v]
As he was leaving the deposition, Petrov was summoned into the office of Vladimir Georgievich Dekanozov, NKVD chief of foreign intelligence. Dekanozov asked him, “Do you know French?” He answered positively, and he received an immediate assignment to travel to Switzerland via Berlin. It was Petrov’s first trip outside the Soviet Union, and his stop in Berlin shattered the propaganda that he had always heard about the evils of the capitalist world. However, the limitations placed on Soviet citizens abroad kept him from exploring the new world before him. Instead, he was assigned to investigate denunciations against an officer in the military attaché’s office, who committed suicide when he learned he was under investigation.[vi]
Petrov traveled from there to Geneva, Switzerland, where he was assigned to recruit and run agents in the League of Nations. He was to take control of agents that had originally been recruited by an NKVD secret collaborator who held a senior position in the League of Nations. However, because the secret collaborator had been active under Yagoda and Yezhov, his agents were under suspicion by association. Some of the agents held positions in foreign delegations to the League of Nations, including from Latin American countries, others were Swiss left-wing intellectuals, and others were Communist Party members in Switzerland. They provided copies of confidential League of Nations correspondences and information from local political parties. The internal correspondences provided both strategic intelligence about international negotiations and operational targeting information about the senders, which could be pursued even after the League of Nations dissolved.[vii]
The NKVD was particularly interested in collecting information about British and French positions in negotiations for an alliance with the Soviet Union. One of the NKVD’s sources reporting on this topic was the secretary of a British newspaper foreign correspondent in Geneva, who had held a conversation with Seán Lester, an Irish diplomat then serving as Deputy Secretary General of the League of Nations. The correspondent dictated the contents of the conversation to his secretary, who reported to his NKVD handler, which on the same day received another confidential report from a different source about British intentions in future negotiations.[viii]
Petrov also received an order from Moscow to contact agents in the League of Nations secretariat, in foreign delegations, and with Swiss journalists and to feed material and create unfavorable opinions about Finland and the Baltic states. The order from Moscow did not explain the reasons, but it soon became clear that the Soviet Union would move militarily on Finland and politically on the Baltic states.[ix]
During his time in Switzerland, he began to wonder why Western officials agreed to be Soviet agents. He remarked that Soviet citizens often had no choice but to cooperate for fear of losing their job or their lives. But Western officials had no such threat against them. He accounted their willingness to either political naiveté or to greed. He asked himself, do these Westerners really believe in the Soviet Union as the “most democratic country in the world,” or was Marx correct when he asserted that the capitalist world was motivated only by money?[x]
Petrov left Switzerland and reported to Estonia to participate in Soviet operations to convince Baltic leaders to accept Soviet control. He described his participation in a meeting in Moscow June 1940 where Vladimir Georgiyevich Dekanozov, Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinskiy, and Andrey Aleksandrovich Zhdanov met to plan for the annexation of the Baltic republics. The purported reason for the move was to defend the northwest frontier from the incursions of capitalist forces into the Soviet Union, only a short while after Soviet leaders had claimed that “chatter about the Sovietization of the Baltic States benefits only the enemies of the Soviet Union.”[xi]
Petrov claimed to have traveled with Zhdanov to Tallinn, where he witnessed Zhdanov’s interaction with Karl Säre, a leader of the small Estonian communist party, and Johannes Vares, the Socialist Estonian poet whom Zhdanov chose as the prime minister of occupied Estonia. In meetings Petrov described as if he were present, Zhdanov pushed Säre to persuade Estonian communists to accept Soviet dominance, despite Säre’s concerns that they would not be easily persuaded. After this meeting, Zhdanov gave Petrov a list of names of Estonian Communist Party members that the NKVD should eliminate.
Petrov also witnessed a meeting with Johannes Vares, where Zhdanov promised increased Soviet trade with Estonia once it allowed the presence of Soviet troops. Vares agreed to form a new government cooperative with the Soviet Union where Estonian businessmen would benefit from Soviet business. Petrov noted that the exchange with Vares seemed contrary to everything he had been taught: that capitalists wanted only to destroy the Soviet Union, not cooperate with it. But Petrov then noted that, just two months later, those same capitalist who had been willing to cooperate were loaded onto cattle cars and shipped as prisoners to the Soviet far north to cut trees.
Petrov was on the scene at Narva, Estonia, in June 1940 when the order arrived for Estonian forces to allow Soviet troops to enter the country. Petrov referred to this incident as the “assassination of a nation.” He witnessed both pro-Russian demonstrations, manned by Russian peasants brought in from areas of Russia bordering Estonian, beggars hired for the occasion, and prisoners released from prison specifically to participate in the demonstrations; and Estonian demonstrations surrounding the Soviet embassy in Tallinn protesting Soviet control. Petrov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner along with other NKVD officers for “welcoming the Baltic countries into the fraternal family of the Soviet republics.” The following year, when Petrov was in Estonia after the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union, he encountered a series of roughly dug graves, which he learned were filled with the bodies of Estonians killed for resisting Soviet authority in 1940.[xii]
Petrov had reached the rank of major of State Security. After the award ceremony where he received his Order of the Red Banner, he was given a month’s leave at an NKVD resort on Crimea. He noted, as previous defectors like Ginzberg had, the contrast between the luxuries afforded him as an NVKD officer and the poverty in which the ordinary Soviet citizen struggled to exist. He likened the barbed wire that separated the NKVD resort from the local population to an “iron curtain” placed to keep the peasants from intruding on the relaxation of the upper class of Soviet society. Later, after his defection, Petrov asked himself, “Is this what we fought for?”[xiii]
Petrov’s vacation in Crimea was cut short because he was ordered to travel to Baku, Azerbaijan, to monitor a German delegation that had come to negotiate a deal for Soviet oil. Petrov indicated that by 1940 the “honeymoon” between the Soviet Union and Germany that began with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had faded and the Soviet government was growing weary of German demands for raw materials. But the Soviet Union feared Hitler, and made a show of abiding by the pact while underhandedly sabotaging it. Petrov, similar to Akhmedov and Zhigunov, cited a declaration by Stalin that war was likely in the near future, but that the Soviet Union should welcome it, because it would result in the weakening of Germany and the United States to the benefit of the Soviet Union.[xiv]
Petrov’s mission in Baku included watching not only the German trade delegation, but also investigating every Soviet individual who came into contact with the delegation, either intentionally or accidentally. This quickly ballooned into dozens of investigations, for which the NKVD brought in reinforcements from Tbilisi, Rostov, and Moscow. Petrov was one of those reinforcements. In one instance, Petrov arrested a waiter who had served a member of the German delegation at a restaurant, only to find that the waiter was already working as an NVKD secret collaborator. The waiter was one of hundreds of people arrested, and in some cases sentenced to labor camps, for simply having contact with the German delegation during its stay in Baku.[xv]
The German delegation left the Soviet Union suddenly on the eve of Germany’s invasion in June 1941. Petrov made his way back to Moscow and found it in chaos. Despite Stalin’s slogans predicting that the war would never be fought on sacred Soviet soil, German forces quickly captured all of the territory in Poland, the Baltics, and Bessarabia that the Soviet Union had annexed in 1939 and 1940 and continued into Russia itself. Petrov was dispatched with a team of ten NKVD personnel to assist the forces of General Dmitriy Georgyevich Pavlov, which had been encircled in the Battle of Battle of Białystok–Minsk during the first days of the war.[xvi]
Petrov’s first experience on the front was short. His team was dispersed soon after it landed, and he was taken prisoner by German forces. Unlike WWII-era defectors, Petrov did not turn himself over to German forces, but removed all of his NKVD insignia and burned his identity documents before he was captured. Germans never realized who he was, and he succeeded in escaping during a prisoner movement and making his way back to Soviet-held territory. However, rather than being welcomed, he was received with suspicion and arrested. He was held among many other returnees who were suspected of disloyalty.
Petrov fell victim to an edict issued by Stalin that anyone who left his combat position without orders would either be shot or sent back to the front in a disciplinary unit. The order allowed no exceptions, even for POWs. Petrov’s NKVD supervisor came to visit him in prison, but could do nothing for him. Petrov was stripped of his Party membership, assigned to a disciplinary unit, and sent to the front. He gives few details of his time on the front, except to say that he was decorated four times and that he appealed his expulsion from the Party. His appeals were fruitless until the NKVD began to suffer from a severe lack of German linguists. Because of his German language ability, he was reinstated into the Party and assigned to a SMERSH unit subordinate to the Second Ukrainian Front.[xvii]
Petrov’s SMERSH assignment was as a Soviet repatriation officer in Germany, responsible for locating, identifying, and convincing Soviet refugees to return to the Soviet Union. He writes extensively about the Soviet attitude toward Soviet refugees and about his role in rounding them up for shipment to the Soviet Union. His job was to enforce the Yalta Agreement, by which Allies were obligated to repatriate Soviet citizens. Petrov claims that Beria himself drafted the agreement, and that by acceding to it, Roosevelt and Churchill became unwitting collaborators with SMERSH. Just as during the war, the Soviet Union viewed POWs and refugees as traitors who would be tried under the 1934 law that prohibited leaving the Soviet Union without authorization. SMERSH officers under cover as Soviet repatriation officers were supposed to identify all Soviet citizens and collect them into assembly points for transport to the Soviet Union, using force if necessary. This also necessitated working closely with Western Allies to facilitate Soviet access to displaced persons camps and to the refugees housed in them, giving opportunities for occasional penetrations of Western Allied governments.[xviii]
Petrov was assigned to the Soviet repatriation office in Stuttgart, Germany. He specifically targeted members of the former ROA under General Andrey Vlasov, telling them that the Soviet government understood the pressures they were under in German POW camps and would forgive them for collaborating with the Germans. Although Soviet urgings and pamphlets showing a Soviet Union flowing with milk and honey had early success among some Soviet displaced persons who longed to return to their families, the DPs soon began to hear what was really happening to fellow refugees who accepted the Soviet offer. When American forces arrived to repatriate a camp filled with former ROA soldiers, they were greeted by people more willing to commit suicide than to return to the USSR. Petrov cites an American Stars and Stripes article from 23 January 1946 in which American troops found Soviet soldiers slicing themselves with broken glass and pleading with American soldiers to shoot them.[xix]
According to Petrov, Soviet troops in Germany after World War II were handicapped because they were operating in a foreign environment where few of the Soviet troops could communicate with locals or the Allied occupying forces. The NKVD was forced to rely on locally recruited agents and interpreters to do much of their work. The NKVD used food and cigarettes to bribe local residents to reveal Soviet DPs’ hiding places. Because of the devastated economy immediately after the war, food was a strong persuader, and many local Germans were easily swayed by a jar of preserves.[xx]
The NKVD also relied on sympathetic officials in the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), the international organization set up to resolve the refugee crisis in Europe in the late 1940s. Among the UNRRA staff were European communists who willingly cooperated with the NKVD by providing lists of refugees, their addresses in the Soviet Union, and the names of their relatives. The NKVD used this information to recruit sources among the refugee themselves, sometimes with food or alcohol, and sometimes by threatening harm to their families still living inside the Soviet Union. This network of sources, both among UNRRA officials and inside the camps helped to find the Soviet refugees who tried to conceal themselves behind Polish or Baltic nationalities to avoid repatriation.
By late 1946, the environment began to shift against the Soviet Union and the NKVD began to meet resistance from American officials, first because the United States refused to recognize the Soviet annexation of the Baltic republics and thus refused to repatriate refugees of those nationalities. Second, U.S. forces began in 1946 to refuse to forcibly repatriate even those whose Soviet citizenship was certain. But the NKVD countered by manipulating the process by which a refugee was classified as a “displaced person,” which gave rights to live in a DP camp. Without that right, a person was at the mercy of the devastated German economy without identity documents of ration cards. The NKVD tried to ensure that any former Vlasovite soldier or anyone from the Baltic who had collaborated with Germany was refused DP status.[xxi]
As Western policy began to shift from repatriation to “resettlement,” the NKVD received instructions to impede the process of granting legal residency to former Soviet citizens who refused to return. The NKVD damaged the reputation of DPs in general by encouraging black market dealings within the camps, and then stepping back and watching as the DPs were labeled "parasites, rascals and idlers" and shunned in other countries.[xxii]
It was in this environment that Petrov decided to turn himself over to the Americans. His decision was risky, because he recalled another repatriation officer who offered to defect to the Americans the previous year, only to be turned back over to the Soviet government as a deserter. Nevertheless, in early 1947, Petrov packed a suitcase, left his Party card and a resignation letter addressed to Stalin on his table, and approached the Americans. He was initially held in an American prison, but was eventually released to find his own employment and to try to survive in Germany.[xxiii]
Petrov’s real identity is not known. However, a Soviet repatriation officer whom the CIC investigated, and who was expelled from Germany for his aggressive repatriation activities, fits Petrov’s description in many aspects, although it differs in others. Major Petr D. Afonin arrived in Germany as a repatriation officer in August 1945.[xxiv] He was reported to have met with DPs in the Dieburg Camp, near Frankfurt, in September 1945 and told them, “We have completely forgiven all you people who ran away; everything is forgotten. You can come home. I don’t force you to go back, but after three months you will starve here; Germany has no bread. When we annexed Latvia, we gave the people a choice, and 100 percent decided to remain Russian.”[xxv]
In December, Afonin was assigned to work in the Karslruhe and Heilbronn area north of Stuttgart. This differs from Petrov’s articles, in which he indicates that he ran the repatriation efforts in the Wasseralfingen, Ellwangen and Heidenheim DP camps southeast of Stuttgart,[xxvi] although it is plausible the Petrov falsified his operational area similarly to falsifying his name. An observer estimated Afonin’s age as 25 to 30 years old; Petrov’s account would place him at a similar age of about 30 to 33 years old.[xxvii]
Afonin conducted himself in many ways similar to Petrov’s description of Soviet repatriation officers. Afonin came to the attention of CIC as soon as he arrived in Germany when he was accused of kidnapping a woman who had supported the Nazi SS during the war and forcibly sending her to the Soviet Union. This comports with Petrov’s story about the priority for identifying and repatriating refugees who had collaborated with the Nazis. Afonin had reportedly become very close to a UNRRA official in the Pforzheim DP camp near Karlsruhe who gave him access to the full register of DPs in the camp, aligning with Petrov’s information about Soviet officers’ relationships with UNRRA staff. In June 1946, Afonin was caught scanning the register, which was a violation of regulations. When a U.S. officer confronted him, Afonin became indignant and demanded that the U.S. identify all of the Soviet DPs immediately.
The U.S. Army unit to which Afonin was assigned for liaison duties enumerated a series of violations that he had committed, including demanding information beyond what was allowed, including for non-Soviet DPs, such as many who had come from the area of Poland that the Soviet Union annexed in September 1939. Afonin insisted on interviewing DPs even when it as clear that his presence was causing serious disturbances in the camp, and Afonin demanded to enter the Pforzheim DP camp even though the population was openly hostile to him. At one point, when Afonin met with DPs, they reacted to him so violently that the U.S. camp commander feared for Afonin’s safety.[xxviii] Afonin accused a U.S. officer of staging the violence. Afonin was particularly angry with the U.S. camp leadership when DPs slashed the tires of his car.
Repatriation officers were strictly monitored and were required to receive permission to travel. However, Afonin failed to turn in daily activity reports and disappeared from the base without clearance. He also crossed the French border without travel orders.[xxix] The NKVD was wary that repatriation officers would become “bourgeoisified” by life in the West and try to defect. An anonymous author, who signed his work only as A.B.V., writing about Soviet intelligence activities in France in the first few years after the war, indicated that NKVD officers covered as repatriation officers in Germany were rotated into France for only one-month temporary duties to prevent them from becoming too comfortable in the capitalist France. However, despite this precaution, instances of desertion were not unique. A.B.V. recalls, for example, one high-ranking officer who “fled” and whom the A.B.V. assumes fell victim to a hunt organized by the NKVD.[xxx] It is unknown whether this fleeing officer was Afonin or Petrov, although they fit the general description.
U.S. forces first recommended that Afonin be relieved of liaison duties in June 1946. The recommendation was repeated in September. In October, he was relieved and ordered to leave the U.S. Zone and return to Berlin.[xxxi] A U.S. intelligence informant reported in late October that Anofin’s commander was dissatisfied with his productivity for repatriating Soviet refugees and for his “dissolute mode of life.” Anofin left for Berlin in late October and was replaced by another repatriation officer who reportedly focused his efforts on Baltic refugees.[xxxii] This places Afonin in Berlin just a short time before Petrov claimed to have fled from Berlin in early 1947.[xxxiii]
Although information available about Petrov and Anofin is insufficient to conclude that they are the same person, Petrov’s experience was similar to Anofin’s even if they were different people. Anofin’s conduct and targets parallel much of Petrov’s story, providing U.S. counterintelligence with corroboration, if not direct confirmation.
[i] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 14 December 1949.
[ii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 16 December 1949.
[iii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 18 December 1949.
[iv] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 22 December 1949.
[v] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 23 December 1949.
[vi] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 23 December 1949.
[vii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 25 December 1949.
[viii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 25 December 1949.
[ix] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 27 December 1949.
[x ] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 25 December 1949.
[xi] Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 29 December 1949.
[xii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 2 January 1950.
[xiii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 3 January 1950.
[xiv] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 4 January 1950.
[xv] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 4 January 1950.
[xvi] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 5 January 1950.
[xvii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 6 January 1950.
[xviii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 7 January 1950.
[xix] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 9 January 1950.
[xx] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 11 January 1950.
[xxi] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 12 January 1950.
[xxii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 12 January 1950.
[xxiii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 12 Janaury 1950.
[xxiv] HQ U.S. Forces, European Theater order, dated 29 August 1945, NARA, RG 319, Entry 134B, Box 5, Anofin.
[xxv] HQ Detachment G-33, CO B, 2d Mil Government Regt. Memo, dated 12 September 1945, NARA, RG 319, Entry 134B, Box 5, Anofin.
[xxvi] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 11 January 1950.
[xxvii] HQ Third U.S. Army, Foreign Liaison Section memo, dated 2 August 1946, NARA, RG 319, Entry 134B, Box 5, Anofin. Petrov’s age is estimated from his story of having been an institute student when he was drafted into the NKVD in 1936, when he was likely in his lower 20s.
[xxviii] HQ 571st AAA AW Bn (SP) memo, dated 26 June 1946, NARA, RG 319, Entry 134B, Box 5, Anofin.
[xxix] HQ Third U.S. Army, Foreign Liaison Section memo, dated 2 August 1946, NARA, RG 319, Entry 134B, Box 5, Anofin.
[xxx] A. B. V., “Сеть НКВД во Франции” (“NKVD Network in France”), За свободу (For Freedom) [New York], No. 18 (1947), p. 108. A draft copy of this article is in the David J. Dallin Miscellaneous Papers, HIA.
[xxxi] HQ U.S. Forces European Theater Internal routing slip, dated 5 October 1946, NARA, RG 319, Entry 134B, Box 5, Anofin.
[xxxii] HQ Sub-Region Stuttgart, CIC Region I memo, dated 28 October 1946, NARA, RG 319, Entry 134B, Box 5, Anofin.
[xxxiii] “Les souvenirs d'un agent Soviétique” (“The Memories of a Soviet Agent”), La Tribune de Genéve, 22 December 1949.