Nine documents were declassified and published on the Russian FSB (Federal Security Service) website on 1 June 2024, the International Day for the Protection of Children. The documents will be translated and published on this site over the coming weeks. The following is a translation of the introductory FSB article. Subsequent translated documents will be tagged #Deti (Children).
RUSSIAN FSB PUBLISHES ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS ON TRAINING ORPHANED CHILDREN FROM OCCUPIED SOVIET TERRITORIES IN CONDUCTING ACTS OF SABOTAGE
In the first early months of the Great Patriotic War, Special Branches of the USSR NKVD learned of efforts to train and deploy Soviet adolescents to the front line and to the rear of the Red Army on reconnaissance and sabotage missions.
During an investigation, it was discovered that in the temporarily occupied territory, under the guise of orphanages, the German intelligence services were creating intelligence schools.
In a 25 December 1941 memorandum from the head of the Special Branch of the Southwestern Front, senior major of State Security (GB) N.N. Selivanovskiy informed Deputy People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR V.S. Abakumov about one of these “orphanages” in Babruysk:
“…In the younger group, there were as many as 20 children, from 7 to 10 years old, including two girls. In the older group, up to 30 children, aged 11 to 15.
“The children were being taught to carry out intelligence work. During the classes they were instructed on how to draw up a chart of the location of firing points, headquarters, guns, tanks, machine guns, vehicles, and cavalry.
“Moreover, the older group was taught how to handle weapons and grenades and how to mine railway lines…”
During the war, German intelligence services increasingly began to engage adolescents in committing sabotage on railway transport.
On 21 September 1943, the head of the Main Directorate of Counterintelligence “Smersh” of the NKO [People’s Commissariat of Defense] of the USSR reported to the Soviet NKVD [People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs] and NKGB [People’s Commissariat for State Security]:
“In the first third of December, organs from Smersh, NKVD, and NKGB arrested 28 German military intelligence agent saboteurs , aged from 14 to 16 years old, air-dropped by the Germans into Red Army territory.
“Of those arrested, 15 of the saboteurs turned themselves in voluntarily…”
Soviet military counterintelligence managed to take timely measures to identify the locations of the “intelligence schools” and paralyze their subversive activities. The head of one of the schools for training child saboteurs, Yu. Yevtukhovich, who was arrested by the Soviet state security agencies, provided detailed testimony, some of which will be published in the coming weeks.
Translating History 