Author Debriefing: Smersh: Stalin's Secret Weapon: Soviet Military Counterintelligence in WWII

SpyCast

History, Education, News

4.4 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2012

⏱️ 63 minutes

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Summary

In the early James Bond novels, the hero battled the villainous forces of Smersh, a shadowy Soviet intelligence organization. Bond was fictional, but Smersh really existed. Drawing its name from smert shpionam Russian for “death to spies,” it was Stalin’s wartime terror apparatus and it cut a bloody swath of death across Eastern Europe. Its job was to “filter” the Red Army for spies and it was responsible for the arrest, torture, and execution of many thousands of innocent people. Listen to historian Vadim J. Birstein as he discusses this bloodthirsty organization and discusses the evidence suggesting that Raoul Wallenberg was one of its victims. This event took place on 12 January 2012.

Transcript

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1:06.2	W s to stay ahead of the curve. You're going to be. Hello and welcome to an author debriefing from the International Spy Museum.
1:36.0	I'm Mark Stout, the Museum's historian.
1:39.0	Here at the museum we get the most interesting authors including journalists, scholars, former spies, and intelligence
1:44.5	officers coming in to speak with our visitors and answer questions about their latest works dealing
1:48.9	with espionage, intelligence, and other national security issues.
1:52.8	Please join me in listening to another of our selected hour-long author debriefings. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to the International Spy Museum today.
2:09.0	I'm Mark Stout, the historian of the museum, and we are really very fortunate today to have for our author debriefing
2:16.0	Dr. Vadim Bierstein, a historian, a human rights activist, and also a scientist, a molecular geneticist I think
2:25.1	fortunately I certainly for me and I suspect for most of you in the room we will not
2:28.7	be talking about molecular genetics today for rather history in human rights
2:32.1	Dr Beersstein was born in Moscow today, but rather history and human rights.
2:33.2	Dr. Beersstein was born in Moscow.
	...

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