The Latvian Bolshevik who built Soviet military intelligence and was consumed by the purges
When the secret residents' conference in Denmark was uncovered in February 1935 and four senior officers of the central apparatus were seized at once, Berzin submitted his resignation.
Born in 1889 into a Latvian farm-labourer family, born Pēteris Ķuzis, and executed in 1938. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1905, led guerrilla activity in Latvia, and after serving a katorga sentence for killing a policeman escaped from Siberian exile in 1914. Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of Soviet Latvia in 1919 and in Red Army intelligence from 1920, he headed the Fourth (Intelligence) Directorate from 1924 to 1935 and built the Soviet military-intelligence system. Chief military adviser to the Spanish Republic in 1936, he returned as intelligence chief in 1937, was arrested that November and executed on 29 July 1938; rehabilitated in 1956.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1905–07Joined the RSDLP; at 16 took part in armed activity in Latvia
- 1907–14Sentenced to eight years' katorga for killing a policeman (reduced to two for his minority); after prison exiled to Irkutsk, escaped in 1914
- 1917Took part in the storming of the Winter Palace; worked in the Cheka from December
- 1919.1–5Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Soviet Latvia
- 1920–24Served in Red Army intelligence, the future GRU
- 1924–35Chief of the Fourth (Intelligence) Directorate; built the Soviet military-intelligence system
- 1935.4–1936.6Resigned after the Copenhagen failure; deputy commander of the Far Eastern Army (OKDVA)
- 1936.10–1937.5Chief military adviser to the Spanish Republic as 'General Grishin'; awarded the Order of Lenin
- 1937.6–8Reappointed GRU chief; dismissed and arrested within two months
- 1937.11–1938Arrested on 27 November in the 'Latvian National Centre' case, shot on 29 July 1938, rehabilitated in 1956
Related historical events
- 1905–1907The Revolution of 1905Latvian guerrilla unit commanderHe commanded guerrilla units known as the 'Forest Brothers' in Latvia in 1905–1907, fighting tsarist troops and police, and was a key organizer of the armed struggle in the Baltic region.
- 1917.10–1918.01The October RevolutionWinter Palace assault participantHe took part in the storming of the Winter Palace in 1917.
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionFounder and operative of Red Army intelligence
- 1936–1939The Spanish Civil WarChief Soviet military adviser, General GrishinDirected the advisory mission; recalled in 1937 and shot the following year
- 1937–1938The Great Purgearrested in 1937, executed in 1938
Building the GRU: Architecture and Intelligence Doctrine
When Berzin took charge of the Fourth (Intelligence) Directorate in 1924, Soviet military intelligence was still a patchwork of Civil War-era partisan networks. Over the next eleven years, he transformed it into a modern intelligence service with systematic operational networks spanning Europe, Asia, and North America.
His recruitment philosophy was unusual for a Bolshevik institution. As the British journalist Tariq Ali observed, the Fourth Directorate 'sought cultured people with intellectual qualities, knowledge of languages, the ability to think strategically, and to observe meticulously.' Richard Sorge (Germany/Japan), Leopold Trepper (France/Belgium), Yan Chernyak (Germany), and Lev Manevich (Italy) were all recruited under this standard. Under Berzin, GRU agents went far beyond political and military reporting: they obtained blueprints and test data for aircraft, tanks, submarines, and artillery systems, fueling a technological leap in Soviet defense industry. In the United States, agents acquired John Walter Christie's latest tank design and shipped it to the USSR disguised as a tractor with its turret removed; a new V-11 bomber was flown in under the cover of a mail plane.
Berzin was interested in the theory of intelligence as much as its practice. In the late 1920s, under a pseudonym and with a subordinate officer, he published a pamphlet predicting that the coming war would begin without a formal declaration, would be a 'war of motors,' and would turn into a protracted struggle demanding the total mobilization of the state. This was a prescient analysis roughly a decade before the Second World War. The Latvian journalist Jānis Zvers described Berzin's agents as 'a group bound by disciplined idealism and the conviction that they were working to change the world, a reliable cohort that few twentieth-century states could boast.'