The Confrontation between Soviet Intelligence and Japanese Special Agencies on the Eve of the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation (1945)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the confrontation between Soviet intelligence and Japanese counterintelligence agencies on the eve of the Manchurian Strategic Offensive operation (1945). According to the point of view officially accepted in Russian historical science, the Soviet military, naval and foreign intelligence agencies were able to provide the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command and the General Staff of the Red Army with reliable information about the state of the Japanese grouping of troops in Manchuria and Korea. This became one of the factors of the rapid defeat of the Kwantung army during the Manchurian strategic offensive operation in August 1945. However, the documents put into circulation indicate that, despite the efforts made by the Soviet command to collect intelligence information about the enemy, it had a distorted idea of the combat composition, deployment, number and operational plans of the Japanese troops. The reason for this was the strict counterintelligence and administrative-police regime that Japan established on the territory of Manchuria and Korea that it captured. By the beginning of 1945 there was a passport system, a special regime for staying in the border zone, and military and agent protection of the Soviet-Manchurian border was organized. The diplomatic institutions of the USSR were under close surveillance by Japanese counterintelligence, measures were taken to identify unreliable elements among Russian white emigrants, as a result of punitive operations, the anti-Japanese partisan movement was practically destroyed by 1941. In addition, several well-equipped radio counterintelligence services operated on the territory of Manchuria, which, in cooperation, identified Soviet radio-equipped intelligence groups and, after the arrest of radio operators, conducted radio games.