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The Administration of Special Tasks was a sub-section within the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, NKVD, charged with eliminating the enemies of Joseph Stalin.


Origins

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The concept of killing political dissidents abroad was far from new to the Cheka.


Their security apparatus had long used methods of kidnap, torture and assassination against those it perceived as a threat to the state. Throughout the 1920's onward, various opposition figures to the new Soviet state were brutally killed across the globe. This campaign of targeted killings struck everyone from the Mensheviks to the White Army emigres and nationalists from across the Russian imperial periphery.

Some of the more prominent incidents include the unsolved murders of Russian Cossack leader Alexander Dutov (1921), Soviet trade unionist Isay Khurgin (1925), White Army commander Pyotr Wrangel (1928) and Cuban Communist activist Julio Mella (1929).


, anti-Bolshevik emigre leader Gen. Alexander Kutepov (1930), former Georgian Prime Minister Noe Ramishvili (1930), British Foreign Office informant Ernest Holloway Oldham (1933), NKVD rezident Valentin Markin (1934)


There is also the case of Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist, who had brought international attention to

The Great Terror

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Originally established in December of 1936, the AST was created by Nikolai Yezhov as a tool of eliminating those deemed disloyal to the Stalinist view of socialism.







Mikhail Frinovsky would call Slutsky into his office at the Lubyanka.


While Frinovsky was speaking with him, an NKVD officer, Leonid Zakovsky, emerged from behind and covered Slutsky's face with a cloth covered in chloroform. A now incapacitated Slutsky was left in his chair and had prussic acid injected into his right arm.


Seen as a Yezhov loyalist, Spigelglas was placed under arrest on November 2nd, 1938. He would later confess to harboring anti-Soviet sentiments, following months of intense torture. Spigelglas would be tried and sentenced to death on November 2nd, 1940. His execution would not come until January 29th of the following year.

Mobile Group

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Due to the sensitive nature of their assignments, AST officers were often collectively deployed in lesser numbers. This unit of wandering killers were known as the 'Mobile Group'. Each one was typically quite small in size, often compromising no more than three to four operatives at any given time.


Comprised of trained assassins and veteran spies, the Mobile Group would be sent throughout the European continent in search of Soviet enemies.

Resistance in WWII

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During the outbreak of the Second World War,


Lavrenti Beria had found a new purpose for the Administration of Special Tasks.



The AST deployed hundreds of its operatives behind enemy lines to help train local Soviet partisans and sabotage German forces wherever possible.

Directors

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Operations

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Known Members

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Suspected

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References

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1. Sudoplatov, P.; Sudoplatov, A.; Schecter, J.L.; Schecter, L.P. (1994). Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-77352-2.

2. Orlov, A. (1953). The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes. New York: Random House. ISBN 5519435480.

See Also

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The 13th Department was a unit within the KGB dealt with assassination and sabotage against Soviet defectors and political dissidents.

Operations

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