Red Sirens of the Ogpu

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 533, 10 December 1928, Page 12

Red Sirens of the Ogpu

Russia’s Women Spies BEAUTIFUL DECOYS WHO KILL Beautiful spies, decoys and ageiits-provocateurs are not a novelty in Russia. The Czarist secret police, the Okhranka, always employed women in large numbers. Knowing as they did the very depths of human —perhaps I should say Russian —nature, their selection of beauties would make a revue producer green with envy, writes Dr. Edouard Luboff in the “Daily Mail.” I came across many of them In the difficult years of 1905 and 1906, and I can speak from personal observation. But Dzherjinsky, the originator of the Cheka, tne Soviet secret and terrorist police, boasted before his death of having improved the Czarist methods, and he particularly emphasised “the services of the 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,” the private traders working under the reformed policy introduced by Lenin in 1922. They are invariably placed either as clerks or secretaries in these private undertakings, and they generally manage to use their charms in such a manner as to be able to inform .the Lubianka (as the Ogpu is known in Russia) of all that is going on. Others are stationed in Soviet factories and commercial undertakings to watch the officials, particularly those who are entrusted with large sums of Soviet money. There are spies who work in Soviet restaurants and bars, in the State casinos and in the State shops. In the factories, njines, ports, and railway stations the Ogpu women are listening and ' spying. All the telephone operators throughout the country are specially sworn members of the Ogpu; they overhear all conversations and report everything suspicious. “Removing” Their Victims The most beautiful of all are delegated to watch foreign visitors and to help in the discovery of plots agaiost the Soviet. Whether they are enthusiasts or whether they are attracted by the lure of high salaries it is difficult to say. Perhaps it is a mixture of both. The fact remains that they are 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 the suspects they are set to watch, they will steal and lie, and they are not at ail chary of “accidentally” discharging their revolvers in the nape of their victim's neck—should his removal be odered. The depths to which the Soviet have fallen in their system of secret espionage are shown by recent disclosures concerning the activities of women spies in their ports. It appears that the Ogpu has not hesitated to give orders to their local women agents to become ordinary women of the street as a means of catching t lle foreign sailors on shore leave. Outside Russia the woman spy is employed generally in the background; her duty is to come into intimate 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.