One of the most prominent traits of the USSR internal politics in the 1930s is a change of the concept of public enemies. They were converted to be defined in ethnical way, in contrast to the Marxist-Leninist approach of class. The reason for this change is the idea of ‘capitalist encirclement’ of the Soviet Union, which led to the fusion of domestic and foreign enemies. This change contributed to the struggle against ‘fifth columnists’ and in such a way it was used as a reason for terror policy against the Soviet national minorities, primarily those who lived near the borders of the state. This is how the Great Terror of Stalin became an ethnic one.
In prewar period, the struggle against ‘fifth columnists’ with a broad whistleblowing determined the social moods and life in the country. For instance, there was a big increase in a number of people arrested for espionage (from 10.02% in 1937 to 26.8% in 1938). The overwhelming majority of all these people was accused in collaboration with Poland (37.3%), Japan (19.8%) and Germany (14.6%).
The key reason for these actions was a creation of the atmosphere of fear in the Soviet society and paranoia of the state leaders, but there were also growing number of facts about real espionage threat to the USSR.
After the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the espionage work against the USSR was done mostly by Japan. They collaborated with Polish intelligence, for instance, decrypting Soviet signals. The Japanese intelligence in collaboration with Poland, Finland, Estonia and Latvia, infiltrated many Russian-speaking agents into the USSR.
So, the Soviet state security bodies during the prewar period were convinced of a growing threat of espionage. And the place where the Soviet security was rather vulnerable was the northern Caucasus, especially in Chechnya. This region provided the transit of the most part of the Soviet oil from Baku. Despite this, the strategic Chechnya was not a calm place. The period between world wars was characterized by armed resistance of local population. Whereas in other regions of the Soviet Union, the main enemies were wealthy people, in Chechnya it was hard to label them in adequate way. Thus, the Soviet power seem the region as a unique case of a nation mostly bandit by its customs and posed it as a threat to Soviet strategic interests.
Incidentally, the first genuine risk to Soviet engages in the Caucasus would come not from Germany or Japan, however from the Soviet Union's future wartime partners. The rapprochement between Germany and the Soviet Union meant by the Non-Aggression Treaty marked on 23 August 1939 in a broad sense modified the geopolitical scene of the Caucasus locale.
French–british organizers assessed that a little constrain of only two Blenheim squadrons, flying two fights a week, could annihilate each of the three essential targets in only 5–12 weeks. French and British organizers accepted that vital air strikes in the Caucasus would crush any chance that the Soviets could join the German side, and besides the assaults would render Soviet vitality assets occupied for abuse by the Germans for months or even years.
In expansion to immediate military activity, the British and French planned to debilitate long haul Soviet prospects in the Caucasus by giving backing to separatist developments among the locale's non-Russian indigenous populaces. Like the Germans and the Japanese, the British and French looked for to endeavor the interests and aptitudes of hostile to Soviet émigré bunches to explode rebellions all through the Caucasus.
Yet the French and the British depended upon the same center gathering of irritated against Soviet émigrés as had the Japanese and the Germans: émigré bunches from among the Soviet Union's national minorities united for the liberation of their countries from Soviet oppression. With such a variety of contending countries enrolling from the same base, interests and plots flourished. Thus excessively did the simplicity with which Soviet discernment infiltrated these different remote plots. Regardless of French and British endeavors to bring war to the Caucasus, utilizing Iran and Turkey, the effective German raid against France in May 1940 intruded on these arrangements.
In any case, the net impact of Soviet counter-insurrection strategies in Soviet borderland districts in the interwar period helped to manufacture a bound together against Soviet development from among these various different crook bunches. That was unquestionably the case in the Northern Caucasus, where the fast decrease in Soviet power was tangible. Generally two-thirds of areas first secretaries abandoned their posts amid the initial eight months of the war. Of the 80,000 man rang to arms between 1941 and 1944, 70,000 (87.5 percent) neglected to serve.
Chechens began to make a guerrilla base in the mountains development to plan an outfitted rebellion against the Soviets. The fundamental pioneer of this development was Hassan Israilov. Working under the rubric of the 'Temporary People's Revolutionary State of Checheno-Ingushetia', by midsummer 1941, they numberd in excess of 5000 furnished guerrillas.
The arranged insurgence never happened — to a great extent owing to the further delay of the German progress, and the need of powerful interchanges to arrange the many guerrilla units spread all through the locale. Apparently, the hilly territory that frustrated a powerful and composed quick Soviet counter-revolt exertion moreover undermined a brought together insurrection development: correspondences between guerrilla units were excessively moderate and untrustworthy to maintain a brought together, facilitated fast strike energy.
Frail in focal organization or association, Israilov's endeavors regardless offered an arrangement for non-collaboration with Soviet power that spread like rapidly spreading conflagration all through the Northern Caucasus before the end of 1941. On 28 January 1942 Israilov shaped the Special Party of Caucasus Brothers (OPKB), embracing the image of the falcon (the Caucasus) against a background of a sparkling sun (flexibility) with 11 brilliant pillars, symbolizing the 11 overwhelming ethnic gatherings of the Caucasus. Their point? A dish Islamic 'equipped battle with Bolshevik brutality and Russian tyranny'.
In the months heading up to the German intrusion of the North Caucasus district, hundreds of Caucasians had been selected and prepared by the Abwehr to work as specialists behind Soviet lines. Code-named Operation Shamil, after the famous nineteenth-century rebel pioneer, their destination was to compose insurgences behind Soviet lines, and to destabilize Soviet interchanges and transport. In Chechnya-Ingushetia, five bunches (56 persons) were dropped behind Soviet lines in July–august 1942 to encourage the German propel; three more gatherings (20 persons) were dropped in August 1943 to abate the Soviet counter- hostile.
It will be clear from accessible reports that the Germans endeavored coordinated endeavors to reach an assention with Hassan Israilov. Anyhow Israilov's diligent refusal to cede control of his progressive development to the Germans, and his emphasis on German distinguishment of Chechen statehood, checked him among the Germans as questionable.
In the event that German help for indigenous autonomy developments inside the Northern Caucasus was constrained through mid-1943, German help for their own particular operators in the field was truly broad. Dropped with Abwehr Lieutenant Gert Reichert into Chechnya in August 1942, Abwehr-prepared Chechen guerrilla Rasul Sakhabov delighted in colossal achievement. Sakhabov was told to incite a mass uprising in his local domain. Working for about every month to light an uprising in the zone, Sakhabov got impressive German air help — including 10 arms shipments that contained more than 500 weapons, 10 substantial machine firearms and considerable ammo. With the assistance of Islamic religious pioneers, the group oversaw to select more than 400 guerrillas for back activities against the Soviets.
Be that as it may soon, the declining fortunes of the Germans in the east after Stalingrad had driven numerous guerrillas to look for a rapprochement with the Soviets, officers from the first class Soviet counter-rebellion unit, the Main Directorate for the Struggle against Banditry. In October 1942, working with the Soviets in exchange for reprieve, guerillas oversaw to draw Sakhabov into a trap, where Sakhabov was curtailed down with tommy-guns.1 Soon after, 32 parts of Sakhabov's band were executed or caught, Abwehr Lieutenant Reichert was slaughtered, and the Ossetian head of an alternate German damage bunch, Dzugaev, had additionally been captured.
Despite the fact that any genuine German danger to the Northern Caucasus had finished by the close of 1943, the encounters of the going before years had taught the Stalinist administration simply how helpless Soviet fuel holds could be: the isthmus that connected northern Iran and European Russia was excessively deliberately essential to leave defenseless to assault from the south through the Middle East, from the west through Turkey, or more all from inside by separatist developments, who could serve as fifth journalists in the occasion of an alternate war. At first arranged in late 1943, the "Chechevitsa" — the plan to extradite the whole indige- nous local populace of the Northern Caucasus to Central Asia — was done from mid-February until mid-March 1944.
At the time of the dispatch of the Chechevitsa in mid-February 1944, no less than eight composed equipped groups of Chechen guerrillas were still on the loose. By June, the Soviet police enrolled the backing of Muslim religious pioneers to guarantee the collaboration of those few "brigands" who remained. Among the Chechen units still everywhere was the biggest band and its most persuasive Chechen guerrilla pioneer, Hassan Israilov, who had overseen to dodge the Soviets for more than three years. Stripped by the mass extradition of his divided base of help, Israilov was rendered greatly helpless to catch.
Hassan Israilov used the most recent 10 months of his life an outlaw from Soviet law, pounded by the weight of the extradition of his kin from their local country, urgently moving from cavern to surrender to evade catch. The Chechen furnished safety did not end with Israilov's destruction. Exceptional counter-rebellion units of the Soviet mystery police would proceed with to chase the remainders of Chechen guerrilla restriction in the Northern Caucasus until 1953.
Source:
Burds, J. "The Soviet War Against `Fifth Columnists': The Case Of Chechnya, 1942--4."Journal of Contemporary History: 267-314. Print.
