Nikolai Skoblin - Life As Soviet Agent

Life As Soviet Agent

Skoblin and his wife moved to Paris at the end of the Civil War. To outward appearances he was an anticommunist White émigré. Skoblin soon became a leader in a White counterrevolutionary organization dedicated to overthrowing the Soviet government, the Russian All-Military Union (in Russian, Русский Обще Воинский Союз, or ROVS). The ROVS, a collection of former Tsarist officers, constantly planned the fall of Joseph Stalin's government and the unlikely restoration of the Russian monarchy while engaged in petty rivalries and subterfuges. Skoblin penetrated the highest level in this group, becoming the intimate of General Evgenii Miller, its leader. It is a testament to Skoblin's skill as an informer and intriguer that he would remain Miller's confidant despite repeated warnings that he was a double-agent.

A series of articles published in the White émigré newspaper The Latest News (Posledniye Novosti) in February 1935 accused Skoblin of being a Soviet agent. The source of this information was a former member of the Kornilov Division, Lieutenant Colonel Magdenko, who had been recruited to work for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU) in Berlin. Skoblin insisted upon having his case reviewed by a ROVS court of honor. Lacking any evidence other than hearsay, the court of honor duly exonerated Skoblin.

In the labyrinthine affair which preceded the arrest and execution of the Soviet Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Skoblin is alleged to have played the role of a triple-agent, working for the Russian white counterrevolutinaries (ROVS), Stalin's secret police (NKVD), and the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD). A review of Soviet archives after the fall of the Soviet Union established without doubt that Skoblin was in the employ of the NKVD.

At the behest of the NKVD, Skoblin began a whisper campaign to slander Tukhachevsky. He informed Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of the Gestapo and SD, that Stalin believed Tuchachevsky was planning a coup d'État with the help of the Wehrmacht. Skoblin's deputy, Nikolai Alekseyev, simultaneously revealed this information to French intelligence, the Deuxième Bureau. Heydrich saw an opportunity to implicate both the Wermacht and the Soviet Red Army in a treasonous plot. Heydrich's aide, Walter Schellenberg, claims that Heyrich brought Skoblin's information to Hitler in the beginning of 1937. Confronted with a choice, Hitler decided to back Stalin instead of Tukhachevsky and agreed with Himmler and Heydrich to create a forgery. The Abwehr retained in their files numerous documents written by Tukhachevsky and other Red Army commanders in the 1920s when they had been allies with the Wermacht. The documents were needed for the forgery but Hitler did not want the German Army Staff to know of the plot. Heydrich staged a burglary of Abwehr headquarters and stole the documents. The Gestapo used the harmless documents to forge new ones establishing the guilt of Tukhachevsky and other Red Army commanders. Depending upon the source, the dossier thus produced was either "sold" to the NKVD or passed to Stalin through several third-party sources, including Edvard Beneš. The dossier was not introduced at Tukhachevsky's trial on June 11, 1937, known as the Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization, and a copy of the "red folder" has never been found. It was not needed. The defendants had already pleaded guilty.

Judging by events which followed, it is possible that Skoblin's reward from the NKVD for his role in Tukhachevsky affair was the leadership of the ROVS. On September 22, 1937 Skoblin led the former White General and ROVS leader Evgenii Miller to a meeting with two German Abwehr agents to discuss the beginning of a secret collaboration between the ROVS and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris.

In reality, the agents were not Germans, but rather operatives of the Soviet NKVD. They drugged Miller, smuggled him aboard a Soviet ship in Le Havre, and carried him back to Moscow, where he was tortured and finally executed on May 11, 1939. (Copies of letters written by Miller while he was imprisoned in Moscow are in the Dimitri Volkogonov papers at the Library of Congress.)

However, Skoblin's ambition to become the leader of the ROVS was thwarted. Miller left behind a note to be opened if he failed to return from the meeting. Skoblin had not counted upon Miller's foresight and, with his cover blown, he fled to the Soviet embassy in Paris. The French police launched a manhunt, but Skoblin had vanished.