Mokroye delo

(Wet Work)

   The NKVD used the terms mokroye delo (wet work, or wet affair) and chornaya rabota (black work) to describe executions and assassinations. Later the KGB used mokroye delo for foreign assassinations. In the 1930s the NKVD’s Administration for Special Tasks assassinated a number of enemies abroad. Those killed include Ukrainian and Russian nationalists, two leaders of the Russian émigré community in Paris, and Leon Trotsky. At least one American, Juliette Poyntz, was kidnapped in New York and then murdered for political deviation. After World War II, Joseph Stalin ordered the assassination of Josef Tito. In fact, at the last meeting of Stalin’s presidium, the Soviet leader demanded information about plans for Tito’s death.

   The KGB continued to plan assassinations into the late 1950s. Two leading Russian émigrés, Lev Rebet and Stefan Bandera, were killed in West Germany. Bogdan Stashinskiy, the assassin of Bandera, was personally decorated by KGB Chair Aleksandr Shelepin. Plans for further assassinations were disrupted when Stashinskiy and Nikolay Khokhlov, who had been selected for assassination missions abroad, defected to the West. Stashinskiy and Khokhlov revealed details about the scope of the KGB’s plans in books and media interviews. Embarrassed by the defections, the KGB shut down the organization responsible for assassinations. A further blow to plans for further political violence was the defection of Oleg Lyalin in 1971.