tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3138728502354978457.post1458711128667597342..comments2013-04-28T14:44:48.079+02:00Comments on JEREMY DUNS: SMERSH vs SMERSHUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3138728502354978457.post-58901146774054139302010-11-01T16:59:42.542+01:002010-11-01T16:59:42.542+01:00Very interesting, Moor, thank you!
Sinevirsky'...Very interesting, Moor, thank you!<br /><br />Sinevirsky's book Smersh was published in the US on October 1 1950, just a few days after that article appeared in The Milwaukee Sentinel. By 1950 the organization had already been disbanded, but it had been active for several years, and I seem to remember Smersh agents found Hitler's body. Having served in Naval Intelligence during the war, Ian Fleming could very easily have known that the Russians had an organisation of that name - they were also at Lienz, for example, and it may well be that 30AU came across them. But in Casino Royale Fleming discussed the group's name, Death To Spies, and so on, and went into quite a lot of detail about Smersh's structure, right down to what each department did. That's not the sort of thing it's easy to discover about a Soviet espionage agency. So where did he discover it? Secret sources? I don't think so, because his clear use of Cookridge's book later on shows him relying on a readily available non-fiction book about espionage that was riddled with holes, and misunderstanding the basics of it to boot. And Pearson says he simply read about it in a magazine and embroidered the information. I think Sinevirsky's book was the only publicly available information at that time, and I don't think he had access to this sort of information otherwise. And a lot of the information in Sinevirsky is in Casino Royale, but embroidered, as Pearson said he had done. I suspect Fleming read a review of the book in a magazine and then bought the book.<br /><br />Yes, I've read the other article you linked to, thanks. Unfortunately, it's very dependent on five sources, three of which I would discount: one's a Bond novel and the other two are unreliable (Cookridge and Seth). So I don't think it goes very far. There probably aren't any very accurate publicly available accounts about Smersh, for obvious reasons. :)Jeremy Dunshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14442728222534667107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3138728502354978457.post-22179451485160084912010-11-01T16:29:45.414+01:002010-11-01T16:29:45.414+01:00Hopefully this google link will take you to the ri...Hopefully this google link will take you to the right place.<br /><br />http://news.google.co.uk/newspapers?id=F7EVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6w0EAAAAIBAJ&dq=smersh&pg=3661%2C460673<br /><br />Granted it's an American 'paper, but I imagine that this sort of story would spread throughout the newspaper world. I would guess also that the Smersh book you reference in your article is most likely the ultimate source.<br /><br />I jut recently got a copy of the Soviet Spy Net book, but first noticed it via this article, <br /><br />https://www.msu.edu/~riestere/spy.htm<br /><br />which you may know already and after that, came across your blog.Moor Larkinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05275057917684784541noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3138728502354978457.post-37195290347323541692010-10-27T11:42:48.226+02:002010-10-27T11:42:48.226+02:00Thanks for the comment, Moor. That's intriguin...Thanks for the comment, Moor. That's intriguing about Smersh being mentioned in newspaper articles about Fuchs and the atom spies - do you have any particular articles in mind? In what way were they connected? I've never come across any newspaper article that mentioned Fuchs and Smersh, but would be interested in reading any, especially if it's more than a mere mention but discusses some of the objectives and structure of the organization. As far as I can tell, Mondich's book was easily the most in-depth source about Smersh published before Casino Royale, and it seems to me that Fleming used the information in it to work up his own fictionalized version of Smersh for that novel. But I'd be very interested to know of other articles or material about this published prior to 1952.Jeremy Dunshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14442728222534667107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3138728502354978457.post-72662360559911554172010-10-27T11:24:53.230+02:002010-10-27T11:24:53.230+02:00Furtherto the note about Fleming reading about the...Furtherto the note about Fleming reading about the SMERSH book in a *magazine*; SMERSH also gets mentioned in the newspapers of the day. The Canadian *Atom* spy ring involving Fuchs was major front page news and SMERSH gets mentioned in that connection too. Fleming had been at Camp X I believe so the whole Canadian schtick must have intrigued him.Moor Larkinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05275057917684784541noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3138728502354978457.post-51166706824782729982010-05-05T18:56:16.575+02:002010-05-05T18:56:16.575+02:00Thanks, John - delighted you liked it! Please have...Thanks, John - delighted you liked it! Please have a look around the site, as there may be other articles you enjoy.Jeremy Dunshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14442728222534667107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3138728502354978457.post-65069235052054364642010-05-05T17:02:00.242+02:002010-05-05T17:02:00.242+02:00This is the longest blog post I have ever read. An...This is the longest blog post I have ever read. And it is very interesting. I shan't besmersh the quality of this expert forum by saying more, but thank you.John Mhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02749153293336581947noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3138728502354978457.post-2250457364093194742010-05-05T00:59:44.577+02:002010-05-05T00:59:44.577+02:00Thanks very much, Matthew – I hoped you might enjo...Thanks very much, Matthew – I hoped you might enjoy it. Nights Are Longest There is a strange book, but there are some intriguing aspects to it. One is that the English translation was by Gerald Brooke! That does make one wonder how accurate it is, but on the whole I think it's rather more convincing than other books on SMERSH I've read, if only because great chunks of it are so undramatic.<br /><br />Incidentally, quite a bit of John Gardner's information about Soviet espionage in his latter Bond novels came from Aquarium by Viktor Suvorov (the pseudonym of GRU defector Vladimir Rezun). The stuff about the Robinsons in No Deals, Mr Bond is from there, for instance, but there are others. Reading Aquarium is rather an eerie experience if you've read any of Gardner's Bond novels, in fact.Jeremy Dunshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14442728222534667107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3138728502354978457.post-32310775154784850332010-05-05T00:05:22.932+02:002010-05-05T00:05:22.932+02:00It certainly does, Jeremy; what an enjoyable artic...It certainly does, <b>Jeremy</b>; what an enjoyable article to read. Shame that none of the latter Bond writers picked up <i>"Romanov"</i>'s book as useful backstory for a possible Russian Bond villain...Matthew Blanchettehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03829163626544348823noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3138728502354978457.post-32955587044341848862010-05-04T11:47:25.416+02:002010-05-04T11:47:25.416+02:00Thanks very much, Nicholas. Henry Chancellor revea...Thanks very much, Nicholas. Henry Chancellor revealed that EH Cookridge's Soviet Spy Net was a source for Fleming in his book, James Bond: The Man and His World. I thought I'd look closely at just how he did it.<br /><br />As far as I know, nobody has previously identified Sinevirsky/Mondich's book as a source for Casino Royale. John Pearson wrote that Fleming first heard about SMERSH when he read about it in a magazine after the war. I think Fleming read about Mondich's book and either used the information in the magazine or, more likely, bought the book. It seems very unlikely that Pearson was wrong and that Fleming knew the details of the organization's structure through his espionage experience during the war. That would mean that Fleming was simultaneously extremely knowledgeable about the inner workings of a very obscure Soviet intelligence group when writing Casino Royale, and yet so ignorant of the same group that when it came to writing From Russia, With Love later, he took much of his authoritative-sounding information about it from a very unreliable defector (Pearson felt that Tokaty invented everything he gave Fleming) and a very unreliable and publicly available book published a couple of years earlier about an entirely different group. I think the way Fleming used Cookridge's book makes it clear that the information on SMERSH in Casino Royale was very unlikely to have been from first-hand knowledge. As Mondich's book was the only published source of information on the organization prior to Casino Royale, I think it must have been his source. <br /><br />I hope that made sense!Jeremy Dunshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14442728222534667107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3138728502354978457.post-69792663295414082492010-05-04T11:08:50.362+02:002010-05-04T11:08:50.362+02:00What a pleasure to read Jeremy with painstaking re...What a pleasure to read Jeremy with painstaking research. Fleming had me convinced about SMERSH you know. A testament to his sometimes underestimated ability as a storyteller. It makes me want to read From Russia with Love again. It’s been to long. <br /><br />It’s Amazing that you have tracked down Fleming’s highly likely source material, that can’t of been easy. As he didn’t let too much fact get in the way of his stories perhaps this is why he responded to letters pointing out mistakes in his books with such good spirits.Nick Meadowshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03328019045417555028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3138728502354978457.post-44608262273353506482010-05-04T09:25:44.881+02:002010-05-04T09:25:44.881+02:00Thanks very much, Ihsan - so glad you enjoyed it.
...Thanks very much, Ihsan - so glad you enjoyed it.<br /><br />I hadn't seen Malcolm Gladwell's article on Operation Mincemeat - thank you for pointing me towards it! I have read the book, and Gladwell's review of it started me thinking about something I hadn't fully considered before. I'll write it up and post it here when I can.Jeremy Dunshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14442728222534667107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3138728502354978457.post-79940222117770353262010-05-04T00:47:21.112+02:002010-05-04T00:47:21.112+02:00Fascinating article as always, and it's great ...Fascinating article as always, and it's great to see how you've collected the fruits of the research you've shown us at the CBn forums. Speaking of "The Man Who Never Was," have you seen Malcolm Gladwell's article on Operation Mincemeat? It's the latest issue of The New Yorker and can be read here: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/05/10/100510crat_atlarge_gladwellUnknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06905195863291708921noreply@blogger.com