A man under arrest by Russian internal security forces was seen confessing to a “crime”, in a video posted on January 2. He had been apprehended after allegedly posting a video on social media that purportedly showed air defences near the Russian city of Belgorod. This city, on the border with Ukraine, was the target of Ukrainian missile attacks on the same day.
What was notable, though, about this confessional was that the man was flanked by two internal security officers who had the word Smersh emblazoned on the backs of their jackets.
Many people in the west remember Smersh from Ian Fleming’s early James Bond novels (and early films). It was the shadowy Soviet spy agency bent on eliminating the fictional British agent.
But there was nothing fictitious about Smersh itself. It was a real counterintelligence agency set up in Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union during the second world war.
Fleming himself was a British agent, and knew SMERSH so well that he put this foreword at the beginning of From Russia With Love:
"Not that it matters, but a great deal of the background to this story is accurate.
SMERSH, a contraction of Smiert Spionam–Death to Spies–exists and remains today the most secret department of the Soviet government.
At the beginning of 1956, when this book was written, the strength of SMERSH at home and abroad was about 40,000 and General Grubozaboyschikov was its chief. My description of his appearance is correct.
Today the headquarters of SMERSH are where, in Chapter 4, I have placed them–at No 13 Sretenka Ulitsa, Moscow. The Conference Room is faithfully described and the Intelligence chiefs who meet round the table are real officials who are frequently summoned to that room for purposes similar to those I have recounted.
I. F."
Well I’ll be damned, thank you for that bit of history.