Lyushkov and the Japanese Plan to invade Russia

JCFalkenbergIII · #1 (**permalink**) March 15th, 2008, 05:54 AM

When looking for information on the Japanese plan to invade Russia (Haichi- Go) I came upon this and found it interesting.

"And thus we come to prewar Japan, and to Genrikh Samoilevich Liushkov, an NKVD commissar who defected to Japan in June 1938 as Stalin’s net closed around him. At that time Liushkov was commissar of the Far Eastern Regional NKVD directorate. At Stalin’s orders he had led the purge of the Far Eastern NKVD organization and the Far East army command. After Manchurian police detained Liushkov on the border, the Japanese Korea Army quickly took custody of him and sent him to Tokyo, where he was debriefed by the Russian section of the Army’s Intelligence Department. Liushkov lived until 1945 in Tokyo, more or less under house arrest, working for the Japanese Army’s intelligence and propaganda apparatus. In 1945 the Japanese military sent him back to Manchuria to advise the Kwantung Army, which faced a massive Soviet assault in August 1945. There a young Japanese intelligence officer shot him."

"The American Japan specialist Alvin Coox and Japanese journalist Nishino Tatsukichi (Nazo no bomeisha Riyushikofu) have chronicled Liushkov’s life in Japan. According to Japanese intelligence officers who handled Liuskhov’s case, the defector was passionately anti-Stalin and wrote reams of memoirs and commentary on Soviet affairs while in Tokyo. Unfortunately the Japanese military burnt most or all of his manuscripts at the end of World War II. However, there remain the articles that Liushkov published in Japanese journals and newspapers, and one English translation of a Japanese interrogation of Liushkov released secretly to the US embassy in 1938 by Japanese diplomats in Moscow.
The information Liushkov provided the Japanese about NKVD insider politics, number of executions during the Great Terror, Soviet military dispositions, and other matters correlates extremely well with newly released archival documents. This applies, for example, to his account of the purges of the Far Eastern NKVD and military commands. Unlike defectors such as Alexander Orlov, Liushkov was well-informed and provided very accurate data both in his interrogations and in his published articles.
In April of 1939 the Japanese journal Kaizo published a Japanese translation of an article by Liushkov entitled “An Open Letter to Stalin” (Sutarin e no kokaijo) which was largely about the Kirov assassination and its deployment by Stalin against his former political competitors. The article confirms in remarkable detail the picture of the murder and subsequent investigation that has emerged in recent years from the newly released archival documents. Nikolaev was a psychologically unbalanced lone assassin who longed to go down in history as a hero. The bodyguard’s death really had been an accident, caused by a broken spring in the steering mechanism of the truck he rode in. Stalin used the murder to put his rivals out of the way.
Liushkov’s evidence is of great importance because it provides independent confirmation of the archival documents released by the KGB-FSB since 1989. This confirmation is of an early date – 1939, and from a reliable source. Liushkov had direct inside knowledge of the Kirov investigation and of NKVD leadership politics. He wrote outside the Soviet Union from an anti-Stalin perspective. He certainly was not trying to whitewash the dictator (his whole article is an anti-Stalin polemic), nor did he accept the official version of Kirov’s assassination."

Key to the Kirov Murder on the Shelves of Hokkaido University Library

JCFalkenbergIII · #2 (**permalink**) March 15th, 2008, 05:55 AM

From Wiki,

At this time the Great Purge was near its peak and NKVD boss Nikolai Yezhov was gradually losing power. Lyushkov received a summons to return to Moscow, but strongly suspected that this would mean his own arrest and execution. His own two predecessors in his post, Deribas and Balitsky, had both been purged. On June 13, 1938 Lyushkov defected by crossing the border into Manchukuo with valuable secret documents about Soviet military strength in the region, which was much higher than the Japanese had realized. As a "third-rank commissar of state security" (комиссар госбезопасности 3-го ранга), Lyushkov was the highest ranking secret-police official to successfully defect, and he had the most inside knowledge about the purges within the Soviet Red Army due to his own participation in carrying them out.
Before defecting, Lyushkov had previously arranged for his wife Inna and 11 year old daughter to leave the Soviet Union in order for his daughter to receive medical treatment abroad. After receiving a pre-arranged code-phrase telegram from his wife, he defected a few days later believing that his family was safe, but in fact they had vanished without a trace. It was later reported that his wife had been tortured and shot at Lubyanka prison, and his parents and all his relatives were sent to Siberia. His mother and brother died, however, his sister survived the Siberian camp. The daughter's fate remains unknown.
A month after his defection, he gave a press conference at a Tokyo hotel. He published a number of articles and interviews about the Soviet purges, and served as an intelligence advisor to the Japanese. He proposed and planned a detailed assassination plot to be carried out against Stalin in Sochi in January 1939, and the Japanese attempted to smuggle six Russian emigrant agents across the Soviet-Turkish border to carry out this suicide mission. However the group had been infiltrated by a Soviet agent and the attempt to cross the border failed. Lyushkov also served as a military advisor and warned the Japanese not to underestimate Soviet military strength, estimating that at least 4000 tanks would be needed for an attack on the Soviet Union. This was an impossible figure for the Imperial Japanese Army to achieve.
Lyushkov worked for the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchukuo until he disappeared in August 1945, at the beginning of Operation August Storm near the very end of World War II. His fate is uncertain, but according to one version he was shot at the Japanese military mission in Dairen, by the head of the mission, a Japanese counterintelligence officer named Takeoka, to prevent him falling into the hands of the Soviets and his body secretly cremated.

Genrikh Lyushkov - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Skipper · #3 (**permalink**) March 15th, 2008, 07:21 AM

killing Stalin as early as 1939? This would be a nice "what if topic". However Japan was not in a position to do so. They did not attempt it in 1939, neither after Barbarossa. This is probably when they missed their chance, with a weakened Soviet Union in 1941. The legend says Lyushkov was shot by the Japanese. It doesn't really make a diference, he would have been killed by the Soviets too, so his fate was sealed. I doubt Stalin would have forgiven a defector who wished to kill him.

JCFalkenbergIII · #4 (**permalink**) March 15th, 2008, 07:59 AM

Sounds somewhat similar to the later German attempt. Just wouldn't work out. And it would be an interesting "What if?" to some of us. Im really surprised that such a high ranking Soviet defected to the Japanese. You don't hear about this. And I have no doubt Stalin wouldn't have wasted anytime in having him killed.

Skipper · #5 (**permalink**) March 15th, 2008, 08:15 AM

Not so surprising, considering being a high rank Officer exposed you to purges. He did bet on the wrong horse though.