SMERSH (short for SMERt' SHpionam, or "death to spies") was the name of counterintelligence departments in the Soviet Union.
War historians claim Stalin gave this office such a sinister name when it was created in 1943. Officers of the notorious NKVD were drilled for months and later sent to battalions, regiments and divisions to "catch spies."
The jealous Stalin would have been unpleasantly surprised if he had known that, many centuries ago, Cossack veterans with grey moustaches taught all their warriors to interpret traces, attack riding horsemen by surprise or lasso an enemy while sitting on a branch.
The timely liquidation of spies and saboteurs helped the Zaporizhzhya Sich, this island of freedom on the Dnipro, surrounded by hostile steppes, survive for decades.
Ukraine's six-year liberation war against Poland (1648-1654) demonstrated Bohdan Khmelnitsky's military talent. His other commanders and ordinary Cossacks displayed remarkable courage. These facts are well known.
Recent research papers have revealed a new facet of Khmelnitsky's military gift. The Ukrainian leader relied largely on facts and accounts collected by his predecessors during land and sea battles. The hetman's actions to collect or neutralize information were so large-scale that historian Valery Stepankov quite justifiably dubbed him the father of psychological warfare, having deprived the twentieth century of this title.
The secrets of a secret room
The small town of Chyhyryn in the center of Ukraine was Khmelnitsky's fortress, capital, and military headquarters.
Foreign ambassadors said his modest room had an oak table, plain benches and a sofa with leather cushions. There were smoking pipes and a coffee set on the table and a bandura and sabers on the wall. Such an interior gave rise to no analytical thoughts. No surprise, diplomats complained that Khmelnitsky kept all his plans
"in excessive secrecy."
They would have been hugely surprised to learn there was a secret room where counterintelligence officers, guarded by the most loyal Cossacks, were preparing an "antidote for Poles."
Historian Stepankov believes Khmelnitsky worked with his agents face-to-face and thus never recorded their names and details of military plans, with only a few facts and oblique references preserved in archives.
In 1651, his Warsaw agent helped prevent one of many ideological provocations carried out by the Polish royal court. The Poles had sent letters to Ukrainian colonels who uncompromisingly opposed the Turkish Empire. They wrote that Hetman Khmelnitsky had sold Ukraine to the Muslims. Soon these colonels were commissioned to bring the forged letters to his headquarters. They sent messengers to Chyhyryn, being surprised "father Khmel sees everything."
Khmelnitsky's analysts were collecting information in the secret room. They were also his loyal bodyguards and many times helped prevent his assassination and forced abdication.
Holy lies vs. Holy revenge
In the April of 1648, a suborned Cossack, who was tortured in a Polish military camp, swore Bohdan Khmelnitsky's army had been greatly reinforced. Martzyn Kalinovski and Nikolai Pototski, two Polish commanders, grew nervous and anxious. They were also afraid of losing their German mercenaries, who cost Poland's budget lots of money. They ordered their 20,000-soldier army to leave advantageous positions near the fortress of Korsun and retreat. Their guide was a disguised Cossack who led the Poles into a trap.
Bohdan captured the two commanders, 80 nobles, 127 officers, 40 cannons and over ten thousand soldiers.
In the fall of 1648, Prince Jeremiah Vyshnevetski, whose army had been in a humiliating war for months, decided to nip the Ukrainian peasants' uprising in the bud. He ordered his regiments to secretly move to the right bank of the Dnipro in order to attack the rear of Khmelnitsky's army. Someone disclosed his plans. Cossack intelligence officers blew up all the ferries and then mockingly set a few Polish cannons on fire.
Pilgrims with bags
Khmelnitsky encouraged discipline in his regiments. The Cossacks were not allowed to roam freely, risking capture by the Poles as "tongues." However, one day the Hetman personally blessed his loyal comrades to become vagrants.
He is said to be the author of Europe's most grandiose intelligence operation of the 17th century. About two thousand people with different bags and different legends were wandering Poland, pursuing one goal. These sham beggars, cripples, musicians, acrobats, pilgrims and monks were requested to look at everything with Khmelnitsky's eyes.
It is difficult to say whether he fully used the information obtained by his pilgrims. What we know is that on May 1, 1652, his army devastated the Poles in a battle near the village of Batig on the border with Moldova, avenging their defeat near Berestechko in 1651. Khmelnitsky's Tatar allies betrayed him and left the battlefield at the most crucial moment. The Cossack intelligence department had failed to foresee the unexpected withdrawal, for the khan changed his position during the battle.
There were Poles, Gypsies, Jews, Armenians and even one German among the Ukrainian intelligence agents. However, the department was not typically multinational. The Ukrainian Cossacks bore the burden of the most challenging tasks. Many of them consciously chose to die as "tongues." Being tortured inhumanly, they persistently repeated legends they had discussed in detail in the secret room.
The French writer Prosper Me’rime’e believed Bohdan Khmelnitsky was so authoritative that he could easily find people who were eager to sacrifice their lives to fulfill his military goals.
SMERSH gradually disclosed the names of those who died for Stalin. Many cities and streets were named after those heroic wreckers, who blew up bridges and burned villages and monuments. Khmelnitsky's intelligence agents ascended to Heaven nameless.
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