Military counterintelligence chief of the Brezhnev era
Leading a breakout from encirclement in 1941: "Comrades, I'm from military counterintelligence! We will organize and make a breakout. If someone is scared and wants to surrender, I will shoot him with the power given to me by the Motherland!"
Soviet military counterintelligence leader. Trained as a medical assistant, he joined the Red Army in 1939 and was assigned to state security just before the German invasion, serving in NKVD Special Departments and SMERSH at the front. After the war he built his career in military counterintelligence, chiefly with the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (GSFG) and the Far Eastern Military District, rising to head the KGB Third Directorate in 1970, commanding the network of Special Departments (osobisty) embedded throughout the Soviet Armed Forces. Removed in 1973 after conflict with KGB deputy chairman Georgy Tsinev, he returned to GSFG as head of its Special Directorate, later serving as security advisor to Gosplan until 1991. He wrote memoirs on the history of military counterintelligence and lived to be 100.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1938–1939Medical worker, North Ural NKVD corrective labour camp
- 1941–1945NKVD Special Dept. & SMERSH operative, Western/Baltic/Belarusian Fronts
- 1951–1957Key posts, MGB/MVD/KGB counterintelligence, GSFG
- 1958–1963Head of KGB Special Dept., 6th Guards Tank Army
- 1963–1968Deputy Head → Head, KGB Special Directorate, Far Eastern MD
- 1968–1970Deputy Head, KGB Third Directorate
- 1970–1973Head, KGB Third Directorate (military counterintelligence chief)
- 1973–1981Head, KGB Special Directorate, GSFG
- 1981–1991Security advisor to Gosplan chairman (KGB active reserve)
Related historical events
Memoirist and witness to the history of military counterintelligence
After retiring in 1991, Ustinov worked as a chronicler and witness of Soviet military counterintelligence. He published memoirs in 2005, reissued under a new title in 2008; the earlier book presents itself as the notes of a veteran military counterintelligence officer, the later one as a record of a turning point in history. The significant point is that he is cited not merely as a memoirist but as a primary source on the institutional history of military counterintelligence. He testified, for example, that Georgy Tsinev, who had a personal channel to Brezhnev, bypassed normal reporting lines and interfered with KGB work, especially in personnel matters, and this testimony is quoted in studies of Tsinev. In interviews he also set out in concrete terms how military counterintelligence differed from its civilian counterpart, how in wartime it handled civilian matters around military units, and how few officers a formation actually had.
These recollections, however, also have the character of self-defence. Ustinov argued that blocking detachments and filtration work during the war were command measures rather than military counterintelligence tasks, while conceding that counterintelligence officers were attached to blocking detachments and that filtration points decided a person's fate through questioning and interrogation. On the common account of the execution of deserters and the use of penal units, he rejected such episodes for his own army while leaving open the possibility that they occurred elsewhere. This record should therefore be read as a document of how Soviet military counterintelligence understood itself, with the accuracy of its statements a matter for checking against other sources. What he called the most valuable asset of his wartime experience was people rather than institutions, and he recalled that inexperienced officers were sent into the field with little training.