Text taken from the Telegram, account of prorivists
Commentary by Russian military journalist is in italics.
[ColonelCassad] In one squabble with anti-Soviets regarding the "innocently repressed Japanese spies", the constant refrain was "I think" that there could not have been so many spies, and they could not have been engaged in minor sabotage such as driving spikes into logs to break blades for a sawmill.
I would like to say the following on this account.
1. Japanese intelligence already at the beginning of the 20th century put forward the principle of "total espionage", that is, the exceptional mass nature of agents.
2. All other intelligence services of large capitalist countries came to this principle during the First World War - the huge territory of combat zones required mass agents.
3. After the Civil War in the USSR there was enough mass material for recruitment - the state security agencies caught those who had compromised themselves by shooting Red Army soldiers, handing over Red partisans, and banditry up until the 1970s, until this contingent died out for natural reasons. And this was after large-scale purges, after the Great Patriotic War, when the "heroes of the White cause" again crawled out in the uniform of Vlasovites and policemen, having decided that the Reich was forever.
4. The mass nature of the personnel naturally resulted in their extremely low quality. Such agents had zero training, they were of little value as expendable material. Most did not have access to any important information.
5. As follows from the above, they were used by intelligence extremely wastefully, and often one-time. They were not seriously cared about covering them when handing out assignments. Therefore, they also poured out en masse, to the delight of the OGPU and NKVD.
6. Since managing mass agents is a very complex matter, a significant part of them did not have clear instructions from the intelligence service for which they worked, but had a very vague direction of activity - such as, "in the event of a conflict with the Mikado's troops, conduct sabotage activities."
Due to the low training and low education of the mass personnel, this was interpreted very freely. Therefore, a recruited peasant could unscrew nuts from railroad tracks, and at interrogation, with full right to say that he did it on the instructions of Japanese intelligence, and, most importantly, everything will be true, depending on the imagination of the person. Someone, working as an accountant, mixed up the accounting, someone hammered spikes into logs at a sawmill, someone drew a swastika on bread.
7. Finally, among the mass agents there were such categories as support agents with tasks that did not contain anything openly spy-like (for example, simply bringing food to a taiga hut on the "path" along which the supply goes, from time to time, such an agent could be used blindly), canned agents, and finally, just agents who got lost in the accounting or did not maintain contacts.
8. The main direction of foreign intelligence work against the USSR in the 20-30-40s was the organization of an armed uprising, from this, in particular, followed the mass recruitment of agents, including those incapable of intelligence work. For example, a man plows the land in the wilderness, stupid and illiterate, he will not be able to find out a secret. But for the "rebellion" it is just right - he knows the taiga, has combat experience, shoots like a god, loves money, Soviet power - on the contrary.
In a word, the capitalist intelligence services in the USSR recruited "cannon fodder" quite comparable to the mass of those repressed for espionage.
I. Shevtsov
What the mass recruitment of disposable agents looks like could be clearly seen after the beginning of the SVO, when the public suddenly realized that enemies of the people, mass sabotage and sabotage and foreign agents are not figures of speech.