The army of any state, before starting hostilities, conducts intelligence activities. These are elementary truths. Yan Berzin is the creator and leader of the military intelligence of the Soviet Union.
Fighting youth
The fact that soldiers are not born is known to every literate person. However, the profession of defender of the Fatherland has to be mastered under circumstances that develop independently of a person’s desires. Peter Ciusis did not think and did not imagine that he would manage to lead military operations in Europe. The boy was born on November 25, 1889 in a farm laborer. Parents and five children lived in a remote farm in Courland Province. Each member of the family from an early age was endowed with feasible duties. The younger ones looked after the ducks, the older ones grazed the cows. Lived, like everyone else in the district, subsistence farming.
In the summer, Peter grazed cows, worked on haymaking. In winter, when free time appeared, he attended elementary school. When revolutionary unrest began in the province in 1905, the teenager took an active part in them. The rumble of bloody events in St. Petersburg has reached the Riga seaside. The impoverished peasants tried to remove the official authorities and establish their own self-government. The current regime severely suppressed the beginnings of the uprising. In one of the fighting, Peter was wounded and fell into the hands of law enforcement officers. Under current laws, he was entitled to a death sentence. But after his youth, the execution was replaced by eight years of hard labor.
In 1909 he was released, but Peter could no longer return to slavery. He became a member of the Bolshevik party and continued the struggle to free the working class from the exploiters. Two years later, he was arrested and exiled to the infamous Alexander Central near Irkutsk. It was here that the future chief of military intelligence received an elementary education in conspiracy. The escape was prepared quickly and secretly. The comrades sent the fugitive a passport in the name of Jan Karlovich Berzin. Since that time, this surname has become a party pseudonym.
When the First World War began, Berzin was mobilized into the army. However, he did not shed blood for the interests of the exploiting class. At the risk of his life, the young revolutionary made his way to Petrograd and engaged in underground work. Distributed leaflets urging to overthrow the autocracy. He organized strikes and rallies. In October 1917, Berzin was elected to the Council of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies of the Vyborg District. And a few months later they were transferred to the Extraordinary Commission under the leadership of Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky.
Invisible front
During the Civil War, Yan Berzin actively participated in counter-revolutionary events. Thanks to his initiative and resourcefulness, in a short time it was possible to suppress the rebellion of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries in Yaroslavl. In 1920, through a collegial decision, Berzin was appointed deputy head of the Intelligence Directorate at the headquarters of the Red Army. From this moment, painstaking and purposeful work begins on the creation of an agent network within the country and beyond. Activities of this kind do not tolerate haste and public events. At the risk of his life, Jan Karlovich traveled to Germany, Poland and England.
In order to timely deliver important information to the General Staff of the Red Army, it was necessary to create several main departments. Undercover intelligence solved one task. Military-technical and radio intelligence operated on a different plane. To ensure that information does not get to extraneous structures, the encryption department functioned. Only a person with outstanding organizational skills can create, run and debug such a mechanism.
Business trip to Spain
It will not be superfluous to say that on the side of the probable adversary there were specialists trained no less than the Soviet intelligence. Serious damage to Berzin's career was caused by a serious failure of the intelligence network that occurred in 1935. Then, in one of the European capitals, four residents of Soviet intelligence were arrested at once. Jan Karlovich was hard pressed by this blow. Organizational findings followed immediately. He was demoted. Then Berzin asked to send him as military adviser to Spain, where a civil war erupted.
Hiding his name under a pseudonym, Berzin energetically began to engage in military affairs. Including the construction of defensive structures, the production of ammunition, the training of reconnaissance and saboteurs, and other problems. According to modern scholars, the Spanish Republic would not have lasted three months without the help of military advisers from the Soviet Union. However, the forces were unequal. At this stage, the Nazis prevailed. Berzin returned to his homeland and continued to engage in his direct duties.
