THE OGPU

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6804, 7 January 1929, Page 3

THE OGPU

Russia’s Women Spies Beautiful spies, decoys, and agcntsprovocateurs are not a novelty in Russia. Tlio Tsarist secret police, the Okbranka, always employed women in large numbers. Knowing as they did the very depths of human —perhays I should say Russian—nature, their selection of beauties would make a revue producer green with envy, writes Dr. Erouard Luboff, in the ‘Daily Mail.’ I came across many of them in the difficult years of 1005 and 1900, and I can speak from personal observation. But Dherjinsky, the originator of the Cheka, the Soviet secret and terrorist police, boasted before his death of having improved the Tsarist methods, and he particularly emphasised “the services of tho women.’’ In Cafes and Shops. Women spies are actually in the majority to-day; they work both inside and outside Russia, and they are scientifically organised. Some are engaged in spying on the “Nepmen,” tho private traders working under the reformed policy introduced by Lenin in 1922. They aro invariably placed either as clerks or secretaries in these private undertakings and they generally manage to uso their charms in such a manner as to be able to inform the Lubianka (as tho Ogpu is known in Russia) of all that is going on. Others aro stationed in Soviet factories and commercial uniierta kings to watch the officials, particularly those who arc entrusted with large sums of Soviet money. There are spies who work in Sovietrestaurants and bars, in the State casinos, and in State shops. In the factories, mines, ports, and railway stations the Ogpu women arc listening and spying. All tho telephono operators throughout the country are specially sworn members of" the Ogpu; they overhear all conversations and report everything suspicious. “Removing” the Victims. The most beautiful of all aro delegated to watch foreign visitors and to Help in tho discovery of plots against tho Soviet. Whether they are enthusiasts or whether they aro attracted by the luro. of high salaries it is difficult to say. Perhaps it is a mixture of both. The fact remains that they aro ,not hampered either by moral or ethical consideration in the discharge of their duties. They will at the command of their superiors become the mistresses of tho suspects they arc set to watch; they will steal and lie, and they are not at all chary of “accidentally” discharging their revolvers in tho nape of their victim’s neck —should his removal be ordered.

Tho depths to which the Soviet have fallen in their system of secret espionarc arc shown by recent disclosures concerning tho activities of women spies in their ports. It appears that the Ogpu has not hesitated to give orders to their local women agents io become ordinary women on tho street as a means of catching the foreign sailors on shore leave.

Outside Russiij, the women spy is employed in the background; her duty is to come into intimato relations with people in a position to give useful information on military and naval matters. Recent disclosures on the Continent show that behind every captured spy on behalf of the Soviets was one of the Ogpu Red beauties;