The Konnov/Mikhailov/Bakourskii espionage crises of July–August 1947 and the Vyshinskii note on Raoul Wallenberg

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the causes and motives behind the Soviet decision to hand over the Vyshinskii note to the Swedish government in August 1947. In this note, signed by Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Ia. Vyshinskii, it was falsely claimed that the whereabouts of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who had been arrested by the Soviet military counterespionage death to the spies (Smersh) on 17 January 1945, were unknown to the Soviet government. Wallenberg had presumably, the note laid down, died during the battle of Budapest in January 1945. On the basis of Soviet and Swedish documents, including recently declassified Soviet encrypted cables, this article examines the chain of events that preceded the decision to hand over the note. New findings among the Soviet encrypted cables suggest that the note may have had no link whatsoever to Wallenberg’s purported death on 17 July 1947. Instead a series of incidents, in particular a crisis in the relations between Sweden and the USSR following the disclosure in late July and early August 1947 of two cases of suspected Soviet military espionage in Sweden, may have been of critical importance for the decision to hand over the note.

KEYWORDS:

• Raoul Wallenberg
• Soviet foreign intelligence
• Soviet foreign policy
• Swedish foreign policy

Introduction: why did Stalin decide hand over the Vyshinskii note in August 1947?¹

Among the many puzzling and still unresolved aspects pertaining to the Soviet arrest and imprisonment of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, the note signed by the Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Ia. Vyshinskii and handed over to the Swedish government on 18 August 1947 stands out as particularly enigmatic.² The note’s message was shortly stated that despite ‘meticulous investigations and inquiries’, no Wallenberg had been found in the USSR and that it only remained to be assumed that the Swede had ‘died during the battle of Budapest or [had] been taken prisoner by the adherents of [Ferenc] Szalasi'.³ This note constituted a sequel to two earlier Soviet communications to the Swedes, first, a note sent two and a half years earlier, on 16 January 1945, by the deputy commissar for foreign affairs, Vladimir G. Dekanozov, to the Swedish envoy in Moscow, Staffan Söderblom, reporting that Wallenberg had been found in the eastern half of the Hungarian capital, i.e. Pest, and that he was now under the protection of Soviet troops,⁴ and second, a promise by Dekanozov to Söderblom of 25 April 1945, to have the whereabouts of Wallenberg (who had now been reported missing) investigated.⁵ Dekanozov’s promise was followed by at least 26 Swedish approaches before the Soviets reminding them of the investigation.⁶ Although Stalin himself repeated Dekanozov’s pledge during a meeting with Söderblom in June 1946, it was took yet another year before the Soviets provided the Swedish government with the abovementioned note.⁷

Why and when did the Soviets decide to hand over the Vyshinskii-note? The Swedes had lived with evasive answers to their requests for news on Wallenberg for more than two years. Couldn’t the note have waited for another six months, or even a year, or even two years? What caused Stalin to answer the Swedes precisely by August 1947? I have, in another article, suggested that the note could possibly be understood in the context of a campaign of disinformation that had failed to deliver its intended goal, namely to have the Swedes stop asking for Wallenberg in Moscow.⁸ This campaign, I argue, began shortly after Wallenberg’s arrest, by the turn of the months February–March 1945, and consisted in the recurrent delivery of messages through various channels to the Swedes, all presenting slightly different narratives on Wallenberg’s death. Wallenberg had been murdered by Gestapo agents or members of the Arrow Cross, he had been blown up by a roadside bomb on his way to Debrecen (where the Soviet military headquarter was located), his body had been dumped into the Danube, he had starved to death in a war prisoner’s camp, etc. Aside from leaving no doubts as to his death, these narratives, which always proved to appear at certain critical junctures in the early history of the Wallenberg case, shared the common theme of Hungary as the site where the Swedes should look for clues into his fate. In other words, Swedish approaches in Moscow were to yield no results. Since the Swedes nonetheless continued to bring the matter up through its legation in Moscow, the Soviets were left with no other choice than to hand over an official answer to the Swedes. The Vyshinskii note was thus an extraordinary, possibly even a desperate measure, to get the message of Wallenberg’s death through to the Swedes. While plausible, this hypothesis helps us however little when it comes to explaining the timing of its appearance.

Some ten years later, in February 1957, the Soviets presented the Swedes with a new note on Wallenberg, signed by the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, which entirely reversed the message of the Vyshinskii note. Wallenberg had indeed been arrested in Budapest and brought to Moscow where he had spent more than two years imprisoned, until his death from cardiac arrest in the Lubianka prison on 17 July 1947.⁹ To validate the claim on Wallenberg’s death, the Soviets referred to a short written statement signed by the Head of the Lubianka prison’s medical center A. Smoltsov, dated 17 July 1947 and addressed to the Minister for Security Viktor Abakumov, reporting that the prisoner ‘Walenberg [sic], with whom you are familiar, in the early hours of today, in his room, suddenly passed away in what seems to have been a myocardial infarction’.¹⁰ When going through the Russian foreign ministry’s archive in the early 1990s, the Swedish–Russian Working Group found a reference to a letter concerning Wallenberg which Abakumov, on this same day (i.e. 17 July 1947), had sent to Foreign Minister Viacheslav Molotov.¹¹ Although the letter itself has never been retrieved, its subject and its correspondence in time with Smoltsov’s report clearly seems more than coincidental. Coupled with the testimonies given by Wallenberg’s and his driver Vilmos Langfelder’s cellmates to the effect that they were questioned on their knowledge of Wallenberg on 27–28 July, and thereafter put in solitary confinements, in some cases for months, it seems reasonable to hold that Smoltsov’s report, Abakumov’s letter and the ensuing interrogations all belong to one and the same chain of events, beginning with Wallenberg’s death and ending with the presenting of the Vyshinskii’s note.¹²

Weaknesses to the Smoltsov scenario

The Smoltsov scenario suffers nonetheless from two major weaknesses. First, as became evident with the 2012 declassification of the Soviet encrypted correspondence between the NKID/MID¹³ and the Soviet legation in Stockholm, one might in fact distinguish an alternative chain of events where Abakumov’s letter was prompted not by any message from Lubianka’s chief medic but rather by two encrypted cables from the Soviet chargé d’affaires in Stockholm, Semion Bazarov, the first of which was sent in the evening of 16 July (8.30 p.m.) and the second in the early hours of 17 July (2.50 a.m.), and both having Abakumov’s name on the list of recipients (to be found on the head of each cable).¹⁴

Bazarov’s cables reported of a visit on 16 July to the Soviet legation in Stockholm by representatives of the popular front the Raoul Wallenberg movement who wanted to hand over a letter to Stalin demanding clarity regarding Wallenberg’s fate.¹⁵ The second of the two cables contained an in-depth analysis into the political consequences of the Wallenberg case on the relations between Sweden and the USSR.¹⁶ Noting that the case was being used by what the Bazarov referred to as ‘reactionary elements’ within Sweden to launch attacks on the Social democratic government, he recommended that Moscow should provide the Swedes with an answer as regards Wallenberg. Moreover, such an answer might even, Bazarov suggested, prove helpful when it came to having Soviet refugees in Sweden extradited back to the USSR.¹⁷ In other words, Abakumov had presumably read Bazarov’s cables that exclusively addressed the Wallenberg case the same day that he had sent his letter to Molotov. Aside from Smoltsov’s own handwritten remark on his report saying that he ‘had personally informed the minister’ [i.e. Abakumov] and that ‘an order had been issued to have the corpse cremated without an autopsy’, there is no written or other evidence to substantiate the claim that Abakumov in fact received Smoltsov’s message on 17 July. When it comes to Bazarov’s cables by contrast, there is unquestionable evidence that Abakumov was on the list of recipients of Bazarov’s cables and that he, in effect, most probably received, and possibly or even likely, read them on this very day. We may also note that Vyshinskii, in a letter of 22 July to Abakumov, referring to ‘the renewed activities in Sweden on account of the question of the fate of […] R. Wallenberg’, urged Abakumov to reply as soon as possible to a letter that he had sent to Abakumov on 7 July 1947 (and to which we will return below).¹⁸ There can be little doubt that ‘the activities’ in Sweden referred to by Vyshinskii’s were the ones reported on by Bazarov.¹⁹

Does this disqualify the Smoltsov report as a possible independent variable behind his letter to Molotov? No. But the notion of a causal chain beginning with Bazarov’s cables and ending with Vyshinskii’s note must be considered equally, if not a more, plausible scenario to the causal chain suggested above beginning with Wallenberg’s death and Smoltsov’s report. The Smoltsov scenario suffers however from yet another and more serious weakness. On 7 July 1947, Vyshinskii sent a letter to Abakumov, asking for answers to a number of questions pertaining to the arrest of Wallenberg in order ‘to come to a decision on the question of an answer [to the Swedes] and its content’:

It would be important to acquire information on when Wallenberg was taken under the protection of the Soviet military authorities, where Wallenberg was kept, where he was taken, if Wallenberg was allowed to move about freely or if he was under constant custody, but also if Wallenberg at this point maintained contacts with members of the Swedish legation in Vienna [sic] or with any other foreigners.²⁰

As is evident here, more than two weeks before the purported date of Wallenberg’s death, Vyshinskii had evidently begun contemplating the wording of a written answer to the Swedes. Moreover, the questions posed by Vyshinskii seem designed at putting together a narrative very much akin to the one that was later to appear in his note. It is hard, one might even say impossible, to fit this letter into the causal chain beginning with Wallenberg’s purported death on 17 July. If dubious as a result of the declassification of Bazarov’s cables, Vyshinskii’s letter arguably either invalidates the Smoltsov scenario altogether (i.e. in its literal sense, that Wallenberg died from cardiac arrest), or, in case Wallenberg was murdered on 17 July 1947, reduces it to little more than one in a series of links (albeit possibly a very important one), in the wider causal chain that eventually led to the Vyshinskii note. The same goes however also for our suggested alternative Bazarov scenario. If the Soviets were seriously contemplating already by early July (as suggested by Vyshinskii’s letter) to hand over a note to the Swedes with a message to the effect that Wallenberg had died in one or another way, Bazarov’s cables can likewise at best be understood as one out of several links (albeit, again, possibly a crucial one) of the causal chain preceding the note. This wider chain of events must subsequently have encompassed one or more important incidents and/or decisions pertaining to Wallenberg preceding Vyshinskii’s 7 July 1947 letter. But how can we identify these incidents? And is it the case that we may identify additional incidents also in the wake of 17 July that were in one way or another pivotal for the decision to hand over the note?

Possible additional links in the chain of events leading to the Vyshinskii note

Somewhat simplified there are (at least judging from the material retrieved through the archival reviews of the Swedish–Russian Working Group) four instances of internal communication within the Soviet government regarding Wallenberg in the period between early February and July 1947.²¹ The first two instances came about in the course of the preparations before the planned upcoming meetings of the Swedish envoys Gunnar Hägglöf (in February 1947) and his successor Rolf Sohlman with Molotov (in April 1947) (neither of these two meetings came about however) and consisted in memos for Molotov authored by the head of the MID’s Scandinavian Department, Mikhail S. Vetrov.²² The third instance consisted in a letter written by Vyshinskii for Molotov of 14 May, wherein Vyshinskii summarized the history of the Wallenberg case and urged Molotov to ask ‘Comrade Abakumov to present a memo on the essence of this case with suggestions on how to have it liquidated.’ ²³ In his letter, Vyshinskii referred to the ‘lack of progress to the matter’ as the reason for why he wanted the matter sorted out with Abakumov. This may however not have been the full truth. By late April and early May 1947, Wallenberg’s half-brother Guy von Dardel had visited the US for some weeks, writing letters on Wallenberg’s disappearance to a number of prominent US politicians, including the chairman of the Senate’s foreign relations committee, Arthur Vandenberg, who in turn brought von Dardel’s letter to the attention of the Secretary of State Dean Acheson.²⁴ As was mentioned in Bazarov’s cables, by late March the Swedish press had reported that von Dardel had pleaded with President Truman to cooperate on Wallenberg, and Bazarov’s reference to this is a strong indication that it had already been reported to Moscow via the legation’s press reports.²⁵ Von Dardel’s later approaches in the US generated an open letter from the journalist Dorothy Thompson to the former Secretary of Commerce, Henry Wallace, published in the paper The Boston Daily Globe, with a plea to intervene with the Russian government on behalf of Wallenberg. Vyshinskii was most probably made aware of this through the Soviet embassy in the US.²⁶

Although Vyshinskii’s request to Molotov evidently went unheeded it was nonetheless, as is clear from a handwritten remark on his letter, forwarded to Abakumov, and this may in turn explain an enigmatic episode that took place some three weeks later, in early June 1947, involving the two Hungarian government officials Litpe and Jankovich and the Swedish envoy Rolf Sohlman and his daughter, Inger Sohlman. On 3 June Sohlman reported to the Swedish foreign ministry (Utrikesdepartementet, UD) that his daughter had been approached during a visit to Leningrad by a Hungarian by the name Litpe, allegedly a secretary of the Hungarian minister of finance, who claimed to have a friend who, in turn, had claimed to have seen Wallenberg’s corpse in a war prisoners’ camp in Gödöllö in Hungary. A few days later, Litpe, together with the head of the Hungarian national bank, Jankovich, met with Sohlman, confirmed his earlier statement and added that his friend had even specified the causes of Wallenberg’s death.²⁷ Regardless of the origins of this false account, which undoubtedly matches well with the abovementioned narratives to the effect that Wallenberg had died in Hungary, it failed to have much effect on the Swedes. On 12 June, Sohlman handed over a note to the Deputy Soviet Foreign Minister Jakov Malik, renewing the Swedish demand for clarity as regards Wallenberg.²⁸ In his letter to Abakumov of 7 July (and here we come to the fourth instance of internal communication), Vyshinskii referred to a cable from the Soviet envoy in Washington D.C. Nikolai Novikov, reporting on an approach by Henry Wallace on account of Wallenberg, as the primary reason to why he turned straight to Abakumov with his questions on Wallenberg. It seems however possible Sohlman’s note and, possibly, the (suspected Soviet) failed attempt to misinform the Swedes through Litpe and Jankovich constitute additional reasons his approach.

To sum up, we can thus distinguish three and possibly four additional links in the chain leading to the Vyshinskii’s note that took place before the Wallenberg movement’s visit and the sending of Bazarov’s cables: von Dardel’s visit to the US, Sohlman’s note, Wallace’s approach before Novikov and, possibly, the failed attempt to have the Swedes believe that Wallenberg had died in Gödöllö. But did this chain of events enter into a critical stage with Bazarov’s cables of 16 and 17 July (or Smoltsov’s message for that matter)? Is it reasonable to hold that the appearance of one or both of these messages was the final straw that prompted Stalin to hand over the note? Additional findings among the Soviet encrypted cables, more precisely a number of cables sent by Bazarov to Moscow by late July and early August 1947, provide us in fact with reasons to believe that this was not the case.

Before going in to these findings, we should not that on 9 August 1947, the so-called proiekt otveta (i.e. the project of formulating an answer to the Swedes) had reached the stage where Vyshinskii could present Molotov with an almost finished draft version of the note.²⁹ In his cover letter to Molotov, Vyshinskii mentioned that he had added a sentence taken from the Deputy Foreign Minister Kirill N. Novikov’s minutes from his talk with Hägglöf on 30 January 1947. The sentence consisted in a statement made by Novikov to the effect that it must be taken into account that Wallenberg had been encountered by the Red Army at a time when there was harsh fighting going on in Hungary, when almost anything could have happened to [him], he could have escaped, there could have been attacks by hostile aircrafts etc.³⁰

The wording of Vyshinskii’s letter indicates that Molotov had read one or more early drafts, looked through old reports from talks with the Swedes, come across Novikov’s abovementioned report and explicitly asked Vyshinskii to include Novikov’s statement. The work on preparing the note had thus presumably been going on for some time; two or three days at the least and possibly up to a week at most. This in turn could indicate that Vyshinskii had begun working on his first draft by turn of the months July–August 1947.

Whereas the idea of the note thus seems to have constituted one alternative (out of a number of alternative courses of actions?) in Vyshinskii’s letter of 7 July, by early August this idea had evidently materialized into a concrete project, where Molotov and Vyshinskii were practically engaged in the actual putting together of the note’s text. Given the fact that the Bazarov scenario, as mentioned, appears equally or even more plausible than the Smoltsov scenario, it seems justified to claim that Bazarov’s cables (possibly) constitute the single most important factor determining the decision to hand over the note. As is evident from the new findings among the encrypted cables however, the initiation of Molotov’s and Vyshinskii’s proiekt otveta corresponds in time to the outbreak of another and far more serious crisis to the relations between Sweden and the USSR, involving Swedish accusations against the two Soviet deputy military attachés in Sweden Vasilii Konnov and Alexis Bakourskii, and the interpreter Georgii Mikhailov, for having conducted illegal intelligence activities within Swedish military restricted areas, and Soviet accusations of a secret Baltic government-in-exile operating in Sweden, ‘engaged in espionage against the USSR’ and other anti-Soviet activities.³¹

Our knowledge into the Soviet leadership’s thinking on Wallenberg is, as evident above, very scarce. There is nothing in the documentation released from Soviet archives indicating a causal relationship between the outbreak of this espionage crisis and the initiation of the proiekt otveta, aside from the proximity in time. One may however note that a Swedish official, very well acquainted with the Wallenberg case and directly involved in handling the Konnov/Mikhailov/Bakourskii-espionage affair, the head of UD’s political department, Sven Grafström, on 22 August 1947, i.e. a mere four days after the handing over of Vyshinskii’s note, pointed to such a parallel in his diary:

If the government could only understand that the Russians are afraid of us, perhaps their foreign policy could become a little more rational in this era when each and every of our steps means so much. The Russians are obviously not afraid of us from a military point of view, but from a psychological. Sweden maintains a key position not only in relation to Finland and the Nordic countries in general but also to countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia. The Russians fear that we will take any step that would appear to the surrounding world as an inclination to the west. Let us then for God’s sake without taking this step use this opportunity in our policy. After we have taken firm stance on the issue of taking part in Paris [i.e. the Marshall-plan negotiations] and regarding the Russian spies [i.e. Konnov/Mikhailov/Bakourskii], the Russians have given us an answer on Wallenberg, allowed a Swedish citizen, who had been held for two years in a concentration camp, and whose existence was unknown to us, to leave the USSR, as well as allowing our military attaché to visit an area which is restricted for foreigners. These are perhaps minor issues. I am however quite certain, that nothing of this would have happened, had Sweden stayed away from Paris or had given in to the threatening language of the Russian press in the espionage affair.³²

Grafström thus distinguished a link between Sweden’s firm stance ‘on the issue [of the] Russian spies’ and the handing over of the Vyshinskii note. As shown by internal Soviet documentation released in the 1990s, as well as the newly declassified encrypted cables, Soviet concerns over a tilting balance of power in northern Europe in favor of the western powers had led to a major redirection of Soviet policy towards Sweden in March–April 1946, involving a range of measures to accomplish a swift rapprochement between the two countries. The Soviet demand, recurrently made ever since late 1944 to have all of the 30,000 Baltic refugees in Sweden deported to the USSR was abandoned and the Swedish proposal for a trade and credit agreement was accepted.³³ The element of power concerns in the Soviet stance towards Sweden in general and in the decision to hand over the Vyshinskii note, more specifically, as suggested by Grafström, is therefore highly intriguing and well worth taking into account.³⁴ One may hereby also note that right in the midst of Konnov/Mikahilov/Bakourskii crises, Vyshinskii instructed Bazarov to come back with a report on Scandinavian international cooperation and how to increase Soviet influence in this region. On 12 August 1947, Bazarov reported that,

The most important role in this regard is the increase and strengthening of our influence in each of the northern countries and, in particular in Sweden, in its capacity of the most important country in Scandinavia.³⁵

In accordance with this line of reasoning, Bazarov listed a series of recommendations ranging from issues of trade (the USSR was to buy Swedish iron ore and Sweden was to be offered Soviet oil, in order to lessen its dependence on the West), to the field of propaganda and culture (the Swedish–Russian society was to be reactivated, there was to be a Swedish-language issue of the journal Novoie Vremia, etc.). Less than a month earlier, the same Bazarov had, as mentioned, urged the Soviet leadership to present the Swedes with an answer on Wallenberg, and six days after the sending his list of suggested ways to improve the interstate relations, Vyshinskii’s note on Wallenberg was presented before the Swedes (i.e. on 18 August). Vyshinskii’s instruction to Bazarov to report on the international politics of Scandinavia and Soviet influence in the region analyzed at this particular point arguably signals some degree of concern, possibly also linked to the espionage affairs. The question we should need to ask then is whether Vyshinskii’s note on Wallenberg was partly or even primarily aimed at the swift normalization of the relations between the two countries.

The outbreak of the Konnov/Mikhailov crisis

On 26 July 1947, the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, headed by one of the foremost liberal profiles in Sweden, Herbert Tingsten, reported that a Soviet deputy military attaché Vassilii Konnov, for more than a week had been travelling in the Far North province of Norrbotten, along the river Torne älv, which marks the border between Sweden and Finland, where he had more than once strayed into military restricted areas. This was all the more remarkable, the paper noted, since all foreign legations routinely receive information from the county administrative boards regarding the location of the restricted zones.³⁶ ‘The least that can be said of Mr. Konnov’s trip’, the paper laid down in its editorial, is that it ‘testifies to an unpleasant disregard’ of Swedish military regulations.³⁷ Later in the day, the headline of evening paper Expressen declared that ‘Russians on vacation’ had been taking photos of Swedish military defense installations and that UD had received a secret report from the police in the city of Luleå on a ‘bicycle vacation’ by Konnov and ‘another Russian officer’ along the valley of the Torne älv. The two, Expressen noted, had cycled through the valley in its entirety, they had taken photographs and made notes in their maps, and displayed a liking for taking their breaks in the vicinity of Swedish military installations. They had been shadowed by the police and it was expected, the paper concluded, that Konnov’s ‘remarkable’ trip would result in a serious reproach from UD.³⁸

The following day, 27 July, Dagens Nyheter reported that Konnov and his companion (who was now named for the first time), Georgii Mikhailov, had continued their trip during Saturday 26 July, from the village of Råneå to another village, Niemisel, and then along a ‘military road’ leading to the city of Boden, the site of the largest military fortress in Scandinavia, the Bodens fästning. From this point onwards, major dailies such as Svenska dagbladet, Stockholmstidningen and Aftontidningen all began covering the subject. On 28 July, Dagens Nyheter reported that the two had visited the village of Karungi, situated by the Torne river, ‘equipped with a camera’, before buying tickets for a train bound back to Stockholm. The paper had also asked UD whether the police report had arrived in Stockholm but the ministry had declined to confirm. Criticism now began to be voiced over how the authorities had handled the affair. Aftontidningen noted jokingly that the county police superintendent in Luleå, Anders Vanäs, had not found it worthwhile to pay for an express delivery of his report to UD, as a result of which UD ‘would not have to undertake the unpleasant task of requesting the legation to have the cyclists brought back to the, from a military point of view, not so classified capital’.³⁹ In an editorial of 29 July, Dagens Nyheter scathingly criticized UD’s ‘passivity’ and ‘obscurantism’ over what the paper referred to as ‘legalized espionage’, questioning the ministry’s interpretation of the concept of diplomatic immunity, as well as its negligence to request the Soviet legation to have the two brought back to Stockholm. The police was also criticized for having done nothing but ‘trying to observe the activities of the two’. Moreover, the paper issued a stern warning that the government seemed intent on carrying on ‘the paternalistic policy’ (i.e. the heavily criticized censorship policy) of the war years.⁴⁰ The issue had thus acquired a domestic political edge.

Suspected spies: Konnov and Mikhailov

As specified in a police report of October 1947, Konnov had arrived in Sweden on 5 January 1945 from the UK, together with his wife. To begin with, he had served as secretary to the Soviet military attaché (Serafim Piniugin), but was later, in connection with ‘a significant increase of the personnel subordinate to the military attaché’, in March 1946, promoted to deputy military attaché. Police surveillance of his movements in Stockholm throughout 1945 had revealed nothing extraordinary, but in 1946 he made two journeys – one to the province of Värmland and another to the northern cities of Skellefteå, Piteå and Umeå where he, by all accounts, the investigator laid down, was scouting for military purposes.⁴¹ From April 1947 onwards, there are a number of memos in his file providing various details on his position. In a memo from the Military Headquarter (Försvarsstaben) of 1 April 1947, it was stated that Konnov had been named Major in the summer of 1946, that he probably worked for the MGB⁴² and that he had a superior rank than his colleague, another deputy military attaché by the name Alexis Bakourskii (to whom we will return below).⁴³ In a memo of 19 May 1947, by the Commissar Erik Lönn, it was reported, based on information from the Military Headquarter, that the British considered Konnov to be ‘’a shady character’, i.e. a prominent character of the Soviet espionage in Sweden’.⁴⁴ In a memo of 6 June 1947, again provided by the Military Headquarter, Konnov was seen as very important, probably with the MGB rather than the military intelligence (GRU) and superior to all other staffers at the legation, including the military attaché Piniugin.⁴⁵

Konnov’s partner on his trip to Norrbotten, Georgii Mikhailov, arrived in Sweden in January 1946 and his official position was interpreter to the military attaché. In September 1946, he attracted the attention of the police when spending some two weeks together with the abovementioned Bakourskii, bicycling in the province of Jämtland, close to the Swedish–Norwegian border. According to reports the two had been denied entry into Norway since they had no passports and falsely claimed to be Englishmen, at a visit to a mountain hotel in Anjan, situated close to the border, they had asked the owner what the police referred to as ‘several insidious questions’ regarding the thickness of the ice in the nearby lake, on the weather conditions in the area and details regarding the surrounding terrain, etc.⁴⁶ As a result, on 16 September 1946, detective chief inspector Wilhelm Ahlberg in the city of Östersund notified Stockholm on his suspicions that the two were out to ‘collect intelligence in the areas along the Swedish-Norwegian border’.⁴⁷ Ahlberg was ordered to have the two shadowed and from Mikahilov’s return to Stockholm on 20 September 1946 onwards he was put under at least sporadic surveillance. Aside from a number of visits to a phone booth situated some hundred meters from the Soviet legation, which the police found hard to explain, nothing suspicious emerged.⁴⁸ On 17 October 1946, the police handed over a number of memos to Minister of Social Affairs, Eije Mossberg, detailing inter alia Mikhailov’s and Bakourskii’s trip to Jämtland. No diplomatic measures in relation to the USSR were however taken.⁴⁹ Mikhailov’s position as interpreter was later put under question, inter alia, in a memo by the Commissar Martin Lundin, who, while shadowing Konnov and Mikhailov in the city of Haparanda (during their trip in Norrbotten in July 1947) had noted that Mikhailov ‘seemed to be the one in charge’ and that Konnov was always the one assigned with ‘keeping a look out and rendering assistance’.⁵⁰

‘Two Russians in Norrbotten’⁵¹

On 7 July 1947, the police shadowed Konnov through the streets in Stockholm. He was spotted visiting a sports shop and a bicycle shop and since this was, in the eyes of the agent assigned to follow him (who obviously had no idea what was in the offing), quite innocent activities, the surveillance was halted.⁵² It was to take more than two weeks before Konnov was heard of again. On 21 July, the district police superintendent Otto Stenberg reported to the county police superintendent Anders Vanäs in the military restricted zone Kalix in Norrbotten that the two Soviet citizens Konnov and Mikhailov were staying in a hotel in the village Bränna just outside the small city of Överkalix. A decision was taken by Vanäs to launch an investigation into what the two were up to. Vanäs notified Stockholm and dispatched a policeman, Nils Lidén, to shadow the two when they left Överkalix on the same day by bus, heading for the town of Övertorneå, situated right by the Torne älv and the border to Finland.⁵³ Interrogations were also held with the manageress of the hotel in Överkalix, Ms Agnes Katarina Lindgren and the forest officer Karl Ernfrid Olausson, who had brought Konnov and Mikhailov along in his car to Överkalix. Lindgren told the police that the two had arrived on Saturday 19 July and that they only on 21 July got to know that they were inside a military restricted zone (as a result of which they left for Övertorneå the same day). Olausson testified that he, when passing the ferry-station at Narken on 18 July had been asked to bring with him a left behind coat belonging to a passenger who had allegedly headed for the village of Korpilombolo. The coat belonged to Mikhailov and when entering the hotel in Korpilombolo, Mikhailov and Olausson had got to talk and spent the rest of the evening together in the company of Konnov and another forest officer by the name Johansson. On the following day, 19 July, Konnov and Mikhailov had been offered a lift to Överkalix in Olausson’s car. They were believed to have crossed the border of the restricted zone at 10 a.m.⁵⁴

The police investigation continued and on 26 July, Commissar Martin Lundin, had compiled a detailed 15-pages report, detailing Konnov’s and Mikhailov’s trip through Norrbotten, which had begun in the city of Gällivare, situated in the heart of Norrbotten, on 11 July and ended on 28 July in the city of Boden by the Gulf of Bothnia. On 12 July, the two headed westwards from Gällivare by bus to the town of Pajala, right by the Torne älv. On 13–14 July, they travelled by bike and a rented car by way of the villages of Muedoslompolo to Karesaundo, situated some 195 kilometers to the north of Pajala, then on 15 July leaving the Torne älv basin heading southwards by way of the villages Vittangi, Anttis, Tärendö, Korpilombolo (where they met with Olausson and Johansson), arriving, as mentioned, in Överkalix on 19 July. On 20 July they went to Naisjärv, situated north of Överkalix (a site of barracks and a military airfield), over the day. From Överkalix they travelled (now under police surveillance) westwards to Övertorneå, from where they went by bus, on 22 July, northwards again along Torne älv, stopping immediately south of Pajala, at Kengis. When returning to Övertorneå later the same day, they displayed, according to the agent shadowing them, significant interest when passing through the military fortifications in Kuivakangas (to which they paid a visit on the next day, 23 July). From Övertorneå they went southwards to Haparanda, reportedly examining at length a chapel that had earlier been used as a military barrack, as well as a fortlet at Palovaara, where there were permanent military installations. They left Haparanda on 25 July, heading west to Råneå, where they stayed for one night, leaving on 26 July for Niemisel to the north, where they also stayed for one night and were seen bicycling, as was later reported by Dagens Nyheter, along a military road towards the city of Boden (along which there were several military warehouses). On 27 July they suddenly turned 120 kilometers eastwards again, by train, to the village of Karungi, situated north of Haparanda, by Torne älv, before boarding a train to Boden, on 28 July, that ultimately brought at least Mikhailov back to Stockholm (on 29 July).⁵⁵ Konnov had left the train somewhere along the way and returned to Stockholm only later.⁵⁶

To sum up, Konnov’s and Mikhailov’s visit to Norrbotten displays a truly complicated pattern of trips and sudden, unexpected and at times very long detours in virtually all directions, covering, as was reported in the papers, the better part of the Torne älv and its hinterland. Interestingly, on receiving the notification from Vanäs in Norrbotten, on Konnov's and Mikhailov's visit to Överkalix, Commissar Österdahl in Stockholm, in a memo of 22 July, noted:

On the Finnish side of the border river there have been observations lately of some activities, probably in order to investigate and map the basin of Torne älv. The military headquarters – Captain Palmstierna – have more knowledge on this. It might be suspected that Konnov’s and Mikhailov’s trips are connected to these activities and that the trips are aimed at investigating means of communication but also defence installations in the eastern part of Norrbotten.⁵⁷

As regards the observations on the Finnish side, the Swedish military headquarter, reported, in a memo of 24 July, that three unknown airplanes had crossed the Finnish–Swedish border on 16 July 1947 ‘around the Bäverbäck station’ – planes that were unknown to the Finnish military as well, and that the Soviet envoy to Finland, Alexander N. Abramov, had visited the Finnish cities of Rovaniemi, Kemi and Tornio in the period 7–12 July 1947, all situated within a distance of maximum 120 kilometers (Rovaniemi) to just a few hundred meters (Tornio) from the Finnish–Swedish border.⁵⁸

Konnov and Mikhailov declared personae non Gratae, Bazarov’s reporting to Moscow, the Baltic espionage affair

On Monday 28 July, Vanäs report reached Stockholm. Foreign Minister Östen Undén, who incidentally happed to return to Stockholm from his vacation on this very day, could thus personally take the decision to have Konnov and Mikhailov expelled.⁵⁹ On Tuesday 29 July, the same day that Mikhailov arrived in Stockholm, Bazarov was summoned to the State Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Hans Beck-Friis, who declared that the Swedish government no longer considered Konnov and Mikhailov to be personae gratae in Sweden.⁶⁰ While it was welcome, Dagens Nyheter noted, ‘that UD had published a statement on the Russians’ espionage’, the paper again voiced serious criticism against the government for not having openly communicated that the two had been declared personae non gratae but merely noted that their trip had been criticized. The paper also criticized that the police had not been authorized to neither examine nor confiscate any of the photos that had been taken within the restricted zones. ‘Major Konnov is free to return to his homeland with the information and pictures that he had acquired illegally’, it was noted. Moreover, the foreign minister himself came under fire:

Undén belong to the ones who most outspokenly reacted against the culture of secrecy during the war and who emphasized that this system did damage to our confidence in the leadership of the state and its ability to stand firm in the face of foreign pressure. Mr. Undén in power has unfortunately proved to be another Undén than Mr. Undén the free observer and critic.⁶¹

Just hours after the 26 July 1947 articles in Dagens Nyheter and Expressen, wherein Konnov’s and Mikhailov’s trip was first made publicly known, the Soviet legation in Stockholm sent an encrypted cable to Moscow detailing the accusations of espionage against the two.⁶² Three days later, on 30 July, Bazarov sent yet another encrypted cable, this time marked with the highest degree of urgency and secrecy; osobaia (i.e. particularly important/secret), reporting what had been said during his talk with Beck-Friis, together with a word for word account of the Swedish note on why the two had been expelled.⁶³ This same day the first hint of what the Soviet response would be was published in the Swedish communist and loyal-to-Moscow paper Ny Dag. In an article titled ‘Two Russians in Norrbotten’, the paper noted that Konnov and Mikhailov had been misinformed by a tourist agency in Stockholm on the question of restricted zones in the area where they were planning their holiday, that no barriers block the entries of the restricted zones and that, as a result, foreigners often unwittingly find themselves inside these areas and that once Konnov and Mikhailov had got to know they were inside a military zone, they had immediately left the area. Moreover, Dagens Nyheter was accused of double standards since the paper had, Ny Dag maintained, kept silent on Nazi-German espionage activities in Sweden during the war. In addition, there was a certain purpose behind it all:

Tingsten’s sounding of the alarm at this precise point has evidently a very specific reason. He has namely been anxious to silence the Baltic espionage affair in Sweden, which has now been played down through the release of all the ones involved. It is well known that this faction was a tiny part of the Baltic fascist leagues in Sweden that are conspiring and conducting espionage against the Soviet Union. This affair is of significantly bigger dimensions than the two Russians’ sleepover in Överkalix. The government has dealt with this latter affair. When is it going to deal seriously with the big affair, which Tingsten wants forgotten, of the Baltic fascists’ conspiratorial activities on Swedish territory?⁶⁴

The Baltic espionage affair, referred to by Ny Dag, had erupted just days before the news on Konnov’s and Mikhailov’s trip. On 23 July Expressen’s top story was that ‘five foreigners had been arrested in a delicate espionage affair’. The silence of the police indicated, the paper noted, that this was a very sensitive affair, and indeed it was.⁶⁵ Grafström described in his diary how this arrest of a number of Latvian citizens (in all there were eight people), who had been charged with having an illegal radio transmitter through which they had maintained contacts with a station in the vicinity of Riga, put the government in a slightly precarious situation. The transmitter had primarily been used to organize a transfer by boat of some Latvians to Sweden, relatives to refugees in Sweden, but also, as Grafström noted, ‘for the exchange of messages of a military nature’.⁶⁶ The question facing the Swedes was now whether the Latvians were to be indicted on charges of illegal intelligence activities, in which case the Soviets, Grafström anticipated, would see their accusations on Baltic anti-Soviet activities in Sweden (that had been voiced ever since 1944 and the arrival of the 30,000 Baltic refugees in Sweden), being verified (which in turn could possibly put the relations between Sweden and the USSR at some degree of risk), or merely for having illegally disposed and used a radio transmitter. Since this decision concerned foreign relations it could not be taken without the consent of the government. Whereas Grafström favored the latter option, based on his opinion that ‘these Balts are fighting in a quite legitimate resistance movement’, Undén took the opposite view, claiming that an indictment based on charges of illegal intelligence activities would make the Russians understand that ‘we were keeping a close check on the Balts here […] quite in line with the strict posture of the Swedish government’ not to heed the Soviet demands for the extradition of the Baltic refugees in Sweden.⁶⁷

In the meantime, Expressen continued reporting on the Baltic affair, declaring, on 24 July, that ‘prominent Estonians’ in Stockholm – politicians, lawyers, professors and former militaries – had formed an Estonian government-in-exile that received significant financial support from ‘wealthy Baltic expatriates in the US’, money that was used inter alia to conduct anti-Soviet propaganda. This exile government maintained contacts with the underground resistance movements in the Baltics through a radio transmitter.⁶⁸ On the day after, 25 July, Expressen held that sources in the US had confirmed ‘the existence in our country of Baltic juntas who, supported financially from abroad, are conducting secret national activities, i.e. political activities oriented against the present regime in their home countries, consisting in anti-Soviet propaganda’.⁶⁹ Expressen’s claims were later denied by members of the Baltic diaspora in Stockholm and by 26 July, the police had released all of the arrested Latvians.⁷⁰

Expressen’s reporting was however to acquire a prominent place in the Soviet reaction to the Swedish decision on Konnov and Mikhailov. Ny Dag evidently, as mentioned above, used it for leveling accusations against Tingsten and on 31 July, Bazarov, in an encrypted cable addressed straight to Molotov, reported on what he referred to as an ongoing anti-Soviet press campaign on account of the Konnov–Mikhailov affair, listing a number of measures that should preferably to be taken in relation to Sweden. A ‘campaign should be initiated in our press as soon as possible’, Bazarov recommended, ‘addressing the Swedish police’s recent disclosure of the Baltic espionage in Sweden against the USSR’. More, the USSR should ‘demand that the Swedish government take immediate measures to halt the anti-Soviet activities of the Balts in Sweden.’⁷¹ Things were however to deteriorate even further. On 1 August, Bazarov reported that several major Swedish dailies were continuing ‘their anti-Soviet campaign connected to Konnov and Mikhailov’, and that some papers, such as Dagens Nyheter had brought up an entirely new espionage affair, namely Bakourskii’s abovementioned September 1946 visit to Jämtland (together with Mikhailov).⁷² Bazarov laid down that,

In our answer to UD we must make them understand that they are in part to blame for this anti-Soviet campaign and that it is also in the interest of Sweden, whose economic, cultural and other relations with the USSR are becoming increasingly vivacious, to have this campaign cut short as soon as possible.⁷³

That same day, Bazarov reported that Grafström had told him that Konnov and Mikhailov should leave Sweden as soon as possible.⁷⁴ Adding to an already precarious situation, the top story of Stockholmstidningen, on 1 August 1947 was that the Soviet envoy to Sweden, Il’ia Chernyshev, according to ‘well-informed circles in Stockholm’, had been recalled to Moscow since one and a half month and even arrested under charges of ‘having maintained too friendly relations with certain Western diplomats’, in particular an unnamed diplomat of a South American country. The paper also reported that the Soviet envoy in Norway, Kuznetsov, judging by all, had likewise been recalled under similar charges, i.e. of being too forthcoming towards ‘the Western democracies’.⁷⁵ 1 August 1947 is also the day of the first instruction on the matter from Moscow. In a cable signed by Vyshinskii, Bazarov was ordered to

warn and make sure that Konnov and Mikhailov moved about carefully and did not leave the premises of the legation or their apartments without being accompanied by a member of the legation having a diplomatic passport, until further instructions had been issued by the MID.⁷⁶

Bazarov reported back on 2 August, that ‘all necessary measures had been taken.’⁷⁷ At this point however, yet another crisis connected to suspected Soviet military espionage had erupted. On 1 August at 11 a.m. Commissar Erik Lönn phoned Grafström and told him that Soviet deputy military attaché Alexis Bakourskii, on 25–28 July, had visited the islands of Ornö and Utö, both situated in the archipelago some 50 kilometers south of Stockholm and both within a military restricted zone where foreigners were not allowed to stay, and that his visit was now under investigation by the police. Grafström asked to have a report on what had emerged on the matter so far.⁷⁸ In his diary, Grafström noted the following:

The police reported today, that another deputy Russian military attaché, Bakourski, had spent a number of days on the islands of Ornö and Utö, where foreigners are not allowed to stay without permission. Undén looked rather pale when I told him about the matter. He did not want us to declare B. persona ingrata, but authorized me to summon chargé d’affaires Basarov and unofficially advice him to let B. leave as soon as possible. Yesterday I had Basarov here to tell him that we expected there not to be too long time from when the two gentlemen Konnov and Mikhailov were declared non desirable until they left and today I had yet a new talk with him. He seemed rather upset and asked if this was my personal advice. I told him that I obviously acted on the orders of the government, but that my demarche should be seen as unofficial. Basarov told me that he would immediately report this case to his government too.⁷⁹

Bakourskii and his visit to the islands of Utö and Ornö

Alexis Bakourskii arrived in Sweden in late March 1946 and in a ‘surprisingly short period of time’, the police noted, he acquired good knowledge of Stockholm and its surroundings. He attracted the interest of the police very early on, and in contrast to Konnov, he was kept him under surveillance for the better part of 1946 and 1947 (until his departure in August 1947), implying that he was being shadowed, at least for some periods, more or less a daily basis. Aside from his trip to Jämtland which, as mentioned was reported to the police on 16 September 1946 (and was reported all the way to the government), a number of ‘strange circumstances’ were observed when Bakourskii was shadowed in Stockholm in the summer of 1946, that were ‘known to be characteristic to the Soviet espionage technique’, seemingly indicating that ‘he acted as a middleman between agents and the Soviet legation’.⁸⁰

So for example, on 13 July 1946, Bakourskii was spotted during a walk north of Stockholm where he moved about in a wooded area ‘as if he was intentionally trying to hide himself’, on 15 July 1946 he was shadowed in woodlands not far from the Stockholm City Centre where was spotted ‘creeping out of the bushes and wiping dirt from his right knee’, on 23 July 1946 he was shadowed while walking on the street Kungsgatan in central Stockholm, when an unknown man, standing on the other side of the street, was observed acting in a way that had the police agent to suspect that he and Bakourskii were engaged in what was referred (according to the police’s espionage vocabulary) to as ‘an ongoing “display”, i.e. a demonstration without the taking of a personal contact’. Such displays, the police noted ‘had been observed on several occasions between the heads of Russian espionage missions and their agents.’ The unknown man had crossed the street when he saw Bakourskii and was then seen walking some two meters ahead of him, before the two parted ways. Bakourskii then continued his walk, now and then trying to ascertain that he was not being followed, ending up in a small park, which was known to have been used as point of contact some three years earlier, in 1944, between a member of the Soviet legation and an agent.⁸¹

Aside from a number of reported attempts to approach Swedish military officers (and of course his trip to Jämtland), the ensuing months of surveillance, until July 1947, yielded little of interest to the police.⁸² On 14 July 1947, he was reported to have left for Helsinki and, interestingly, he returned to Stockholm by way of Haparanda (i.e. going all the way around the Gulf of Bothnia), where he was reported to have arrived from Finland on 17 July 1947, i.e. at a point when his two colleagues Konnov and Mikhailov were moving about in the area (they arrived in Korpilombolo some 132 kilometers north of Haparanda on this day). Although Bakourskii’s rather unexpected choice of route back to Stockholm may support the abovementioned notion that Konnov’s and Mikhailov’s trip to Norrbotten was part of larger Soviet intelligence reconnaissance mission, involving agents on Finnish territory as well, the police was obviously unaware of any such possible connections at this point (as Konnov’s trip to Norrbotten only became known to the police on 21 July).⁸³

On 18 July, Bakourskii was seen back in Stockholm and ten days later, on 28 July, the officer on duty with the State police received a phone call from Ms Jöhnk, the wife of the captain of the shuttle Bore, operating the route from the Stockholm city harbor, to the harbor of Dalarö (located in the southern part of the archipelago outside Stockholm) and the islands of Ornö and Utö (just outside Dalarö). Jöhnk reported that on Thursday 24 July, a fairly meager Russian man in his 40s, wearing brown trousers and a straw hat, had gone with the shuttle from Dalarö to Ornö. In light of the intense reporting in the papers on Konnov and Mikhailov over the following week (which as mentioned began two days later, on 26 July), Jöhnk became suspicious and decided to contact the police.⁸⁴ The ensuing investigation showed that Bakourskii had arrived in Dalarö on 23 July and that he had gone to Ornö aboard Bore (i.e. when he was spotted by Ms Jöhnk) on the day after, 24 July. He bicycled across Ornö and was seen by Ms Lindgren outside a grocery store in Kyrkviken, on the east side of the island. Having missed the evening shuttle back to Dalarö, he happened to run into Ms Lindgren again, who offered him to come along in a private boat with her, two girls and Mr Westerberg going to Dalarö. Bakourskii had told his helpers that he was French and that he was employed with the company Skandiaverken. He had offered biscuits and spoke some Russian with the girls. The following day, Friday 25 July, he ran into Mr Westerberg again, asking to be brought to Utö. Westerberg however, whose boat was short of fuel, could only bring him to Ornö, where Bakourskii rented a room at the farmstead Södergården for three nights (until 28 July).

He had told the owners and another guest at Södergården that he was French and that he was employed with the French trade commission in Stockholm. By the outbreak of World War II he had been in France, fighting the Germans, but later escaped on a boat that brought him to the USSR. He had eventually ended up in Moscow where he had been asked to enroll with the Soviet army, with which he served for four years, for a period of time commissioned to a Russian artillery battery. He had spoken laudatory about Russia and its army and said that the Russians was ‘a very mighty and great people.’⁸⁵ Bakourskii’s much talking and frequent references to Russia had the son in the house, Torsten Karlsson, to suspect that Bakourskii was in fact of Russian origin. On Saturday 26, Bakourskii had accompanied Karlsson to Dalarö to pick up a musician who was to play at the Ornö dance pavilion later in the evening (they also met with some of Karlsson’s friends with whom they ate and drank in a restaurant), whereafter they returned to Ornö for the dance. Later in the evening Karlsson spotted one of Bakourskii’s new friends wearing Bakourskii’s hat. On the day after, Karlsson brought Bakourskii to Utö in his boat, where Bakourskii stayed for two nights, before returning to Stockholm on 29 July.⁸⁶

As for Bakourskii’s activities in Utö, little is known. Judging from the testimony of the head waiter at Utö Hotel restaurant, Karl Ingvar Nordin, whose bed Bakourskii had rented, Bakourskii was asleep both when he left for work in the morning of 29 July at 8 a.m. and when he returned at 2 p.m. (this pattern was, Nordin claimed, repeated on the following day). The warrant officer and commander of the Utö military shooting range, Mr Persson, claimed however that he may have seen Bakourskii by noon on 28 July, walking on a road one or two kilometers south of the Utö Hotel. Regardless of his activities (or lack thereof), Utö, as well as Ornö, were military restricted zones (crucial to the coast artillery defense of the capital) and foreigners were subsequently not allowed to stay there without permission from the military authorities.

Bazarov’s reporting and the ‘nest of white guards in Stockholm’

The eruption of the Bakourskii crisis prompted a cascade of reports from Bazarov to Moscow over the next few days. On 2 August, Bazarov reported (in a cable marked as srochno, i.e. urgent) that the papers had begun to question why Konnov and Mikhailov were still in the country,⁸⁷ on 3 August he sent a long report, marked with two priority markings (osobaia and vnie ocheredi, i.e. to be treated outside the regular queue of incoming cables) detailing his talk with Grafström and his ‘unofficial advice’ that Bakourskii should return,⁸⁸ and, also on 3 August, he sent a report from a talk with State Secretary Beck-Friis, who had again emphasized that Konnov and Mikhailov must leave as soon as possible. He also provided his superiors with a long analysis into the developments of the last few days:

I have to say that three days before the Swedish UD made their declaration [i.e. on Konnov and Mikhailov], an unruly anti-Soviet campaign was initiated in Sweden, during which the papers used Konnov’s and Mikhailov’s trip as an excuse to launch a series of defamatory and insulting attacks against the Soviet envoy in Sweden. It should be noted that this quite unprecedented campaign directed against the official representative of a country with which Sweden aspires to have normal diplomatic relations, did not begin without the knowledge of the Swedish UD, which not only failed to take any measures to halt it, but even contributed to its development.⁸⁹

On 4 August, Bazarov met with Undén and handed over a note in which the Soviet Union repudiated the Swedish government’s handling of the affair and held that the accusations against Konnov and Mikhailov were fabricated. Undén, on his part, had read aloud from a statement by the Swedish King Gustav V, who lamented this incident and hoped that nothing similar would occur again.⁹⁰ This was however merely the first part of the Soviet answer. On 5 August, the Soviet daily Izvestiya scathingly criticized the Swedish ‘reactionary press’, as well as UD for having fabricated the accusations against Konnov and Mikhailov. Among other things, the paper maintained that the two forest officers, Olausson and Johansson, who, as mentioned had offered Konnov and Mikhailov a lift from Korpilombolo to Överkalix, had in fact tricked the two Russians to enter into the military restricted zone. Moreover, Izvestiya held, in a language bearing some significant resemblance to Bazarov’s recommendations in his 31 July 1947 cable, that ‘the Swedish government had decided to support the campaign of the reactionary press’ whose mendacity had been revealed by the fact that ‘the official at UD [i.e. Beck-Friis] had failed to come up with any evidence whatsoever.’⁹¹ On the day after, 6 August, Pravda published an article (‘A nest of white guards in Stockholm’) which was also very much in line with the recommendations given in Bazarov’s advice. Referring to the abovementioned articles in Expressen on the Baltic espionage affair, which were recited almost in their entirety, the paper concluded that,

Anti-Soviet organizations have actively and they are, by all accounts, still actively, on Swedish territory and under the protection of the Swedish government, engaged in espionage against the USSR. This leads us to the obvious question: What has the Swedish government done, with these facts at hand, to put an end to this? What measures have been taken against this band of White Guards who have settled on Swedish territory, which they have chosen as a deployment zone for turning their criminal ideas into practice?⁹²

In an ensuing article in the English language edition of the journal Novoe Vremia (New Times) the same day, the themes of the two articles were brought together:

Some of the reactionary papers, as for example the Dagens Nyheter, actually attempt to defend the exposed organization. Its disgraceful activities, however, being too patent for denial, this section of the press attempts to mislead public opinion by means of new anti-Soviet canard. A vacation-time bicycle trip undertaken by an assistant of the Soviet military attaché, accompanied by an interpreter, is presented in these papers as an attempt to penetrate into the zone of defense works in Northern Sweden. The absurdity of this slander is sufficiently exposed by the admission of the Swedish press that employees of the Soviet mission when on vacation were hedged in by a solid wall of police agents. The evil intent behind this fabrication is obvious. It was slapped together with the evident purpose of distracting public attention from the disgraceful activities of the international nest of spies just exposed in Stockholm.⁹³

Mikahilov left Sweden on 7 August, Bakourskii on 10 August and Konnov on 13 August. Less than a week later, on Monday 18 August, Sohlman received the Vyshinskii note.

Concluding remarks

The declassification of the encrypted cables has allowed for a more nuanced understanding of the period immediately preceding the handing over of the Vyshinskii note. Although our knowledge into the Soviet leadership’s objectives when it comes to Wallenberg remains scarce and fragmentary, the encrypted cables provide us with new perspectives both on how officials within in the Soviet MID perceived and pursued the case, as well as the international political context within which the Wallenberg case was handled. It is clearly an intriguing fact that while occupied exchanging draft versions of the note on Wallenberg, Vyshinskii and Molotov received one report after another from the Soviet legation in Stockholm detailing the latest developments of the espionage crisis. The way in which Bazarov’s cables on the crisis informed the two, as well as Stalin, is obviously not known. A number of circumstances indicate however that it may have contributed to a sense of urgency among them, possibly pivotal for the decision to have the note finalized and handed over.

First, the only draft version of the note retrieved by Swedish–Russian Working Group is dated 9 August 1947. If Bazarov’s cables of 16 and 17 July were pivotal for the decision on the note (or Smoltsov’s report for that matter), we would have expected to find draft version(s) in the period from 17 July until say 27 July. Instead, the only draft version found was written three weeks after 17 July and right in the midst of the Konnov/Mikhailov/Bakourskii crises. While this may of course be a mere coincidence, it is still an interesting fact.

Second, Vyshinskii’s early August 1947 request to Bazarov for a review regarding international relations in Scandinavia and Soviet influence in the region signals both an interest in this particular area, as well as some degree of concern over political developments (possibly and at least partly connected to the espionage crisis). In the alarm following the disclosure of the suspected military espionage, it seems reasonable to hold that the Soviets considered the possible long-term political consequences the crisis might have. Vyshinskii’s request to Bazarov arguably renders further support to such an understanding.

Third, the restraint shown by the Soviets when it came to Bakourskii – his case received no mention in any of the articles published in Izvestiya, Pravda and Novoie Vremia – also indicates that the Soviets were anxious not to let things get out of hand.

Fourth, when presenting Molotov with the draft version of 7 August, the note bore the name of the deputy foreign minister Jakov Malik. This made sense since Malik was the recipient of Sohlman’s abovementioned note of 12 June 1947. When the note was handed over to the Swedes on 18 August however, it was signed by Vyshinskii, an act that can arguably be understood as an attempt by the Soviets to render more ‘weight’ to the note. Although both were deputy foreign ministers, Vyshinskii was obviously the more senior of the two.

A more general conclusion here is also that the Smoltsov report appears to be something of a superfluous link in the causal chain leading to the Vyshinskii note. The series of incidents and crises, ranging from von Dardel’s visit to the US through to the Wallenberg movement’s visit and the espionage crisis, seem quite sufficient to have the Soviet leadership reach the conclusion that the situation was untenable and, quite in accordance with Bazarov’s advice, needed to be dealt with. This in turn implies that we have a scenario which is quite independent of whether Wallenberg was alive or not in the evening of 17 July 1947. It also adds to the impression, voiced recurrently over the years, that the Smoltsov report is a little too good to be true.⁹⁴ In short, the Vyshinskii note must not have had anything to do with anything going on inside the Lubianka prison. Wallenberg may have died in May 1947, July 1947 or lived on for an undetermined period of time thereafter. It seems quite possible that there would have been, if not a Vyshinskii note, at least a Malik note on Wallenberg, at some point in or around August 1947 either way.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Johan Matz

Johan Matz was awarded a Ph.D. at the Department of Government, Uppsala University, in 2001 and wasnamed Associate Professor of Politics in 2015. He has published in International History Review and Journal of Intelligence History. He is currently senior lecturer at Department of Politics, Lund university and affiliated researcher with the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies (IRES), Uppsala university, Sweden.

Notes

¹ Generous funding for this article has been provided by the Swedish Institute’s grant for research on Raoul Wallenberg. The author also wishes to extend his sincere gratitude to the Swedish Defence College’s Delegation for Research on Military History for help in funding his participation in the 22nd Annual Conference of the International Intelligence History Association (IIHA) (‘Military Intelligence’), Dresden, Germany, April 2016, where parts of this article were presented.

² All Soviet documents referred to in this article are filed in the Russian foreign ministry’s archive (Arkhiv Vneshnei Politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii, AVP RF). All Swedish documents pertaining to Wallenberg are stored in the archive of the Swedish Foreign Ministry, filed under UD, P 2 EuI. The police files on the two Soviet deputy military attachés Vassilii Konnov, Alexis Bakourskii and the interpreter Georgii Mikhailov are filed in RA (Säpo) 130:162/P14 (Mikahilov), 130:162/P15 (Bakourskii) and 130:162/P16 (Konnov).

³ Vyshinskii’s note is filed in UD, P 2 EuI, 18 August 1947. Ferenc Szalasi, i.e. the leader of the Hungarian fascist movement Arrow Cross.

⁴ Dekanozov’s note is filed in AVP RF, f. 0140, op. 30, d. 10, p. 129, l. 1, 16 January 1945, and letter from Söderblom to Stockholm, UD, Hp 80 Ea, nr. 22, 17 January 1945.

⁵ Dekanozov’s report, ‘Priem shvedskogo poslannika Sederblioma’, in AVP RF, f. 012, op. 6, p. 89, d. 349, l. 10, 25 April 1945.

⁶ Swedish diplomats approached the Soviets on behalf of Wallenberg during talks with, or via letters to, Soviet officials on 12 and 20 March, 25 and 28 April, 18 May, 7 June, 3 and 30 November, 22 and 26 December (all in 1945), 26 and 27 January, 9 February, 30 April, 11 and 15 June, 12 and 25 July, 12, 13 and at some point in late December (all in 1946), 13 and 30 January, 9 April, 12 June and 15 July (all in 1947). All reports are filed in UD, P 2 EuI (i.e. the Raoul Wallenberg file). On the diplomatic negotiations, see Matz, “Analogical Reasoning and the Diplomacy of the Raoul Wallenberg Case 1945–47,” International History Review 37, no. 3 (2015): 582–606.

⁷ Söderblom’s report from the meeting with Stalin is filed in UD, Hp 1 Er, 18 June 1946, nr. 430.

⁸ Matz, ”‘All Signs Indicate that Gestapo Agents Murdered Him’: Soviet Disinformation, the Katyn Massacre and the Raoul Wallenberg Case,” International History Review, 38, no. 1 (2016): 148–173. On Soviet disinformation regarding Wallenberg, see also the report of the inquiry into the Swedish government’s handling of the Raoul Wallenberg case (the Eliasson-Inquiry), Ett diplomatiskt misslyckande (A failure of diplomacy), SOU 2003:18 (Stockholm: Elanders gotab, 2003), 249–250.

⁹ The Gromyko note is reprinted in the Swedish Working Group’s report, Raoul Wallenberg: Redovisning från den svensk-ryska arbetsgruppen, Aktstycken utgivna av Utrikesdepartementet, ny serie, UD II:52 (Stockholm; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2000), 308.

¹⁰ The Smoltsov report is reprinted in the Swedish Working Group’s report, 316. According to a handwritten note on the report, Smoltsov personally informed Abakumov of its content. The report in its written form was thus never sent to Abakumov.

¹¹ The Swedish–Russian Working Group was formed by the governments of Sweden and the USSR in 1991 and commissioned with investigating Raoul Wallenberg’s fate. The group presented separate reports, one Swedish and one Russian. The Russian report is filed in UD P 2 EuI, 20 January 2001.

¹² Swedish Working Group’s report, 145–148.

¹³ The Soviet Foreign Ministry, Narodnyi kommissariat innostrannykh del (NKID) established in 1923 was renamed in March 1946 as Ministerstvo innostrannykh del (MID).

¹⁴ Bazarov’s cables in AVP RF, f. 059, op. 18, p. 54, d. 351, ll. 161–162, nr. 725, 16 July 1947 and AVP RF, f. 059, op. 18, p. 54, d. 351, ll. 168–170, nr. 728, 729, 17 July 1947. With some minor exceptions, I was granted access to the entire encrypted correspondence between Moscow and the Soviet legation in Stockholm for the years 1944–1947. See Matz, ‘Cables in Cipher, the Raoul Wallenberg Case and Swedish-Soviet Diplomatic Communication 1944–47, Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 38, issue 3, 2013, 344–366 and Matz “Sweden, the USSR and the Early Cold War 1944–1947: De-Classified Encrypted Cables Shed New Light on Soviet Diplomatic Reporting about Sweden in the Aftermath of World War II,” Cold War History 15, no. 1 (2015): 27–48.

¹⁵ Bazarov had been assigned chargé d’affairs in the absence of the Soviet envoy Il’ia Chernyshev (who was vacationing).

¹⁶ Bazarov’s cable nr 728, 729 of the ones referred in the footnote nr. 14 above.

¹⁷ I have addressed the question of the possible impact of the refugee question on the decision to hand over the Vyshinskii note in Matz, “Soviet Refugees to Sweden 1941–1947 and the Raoul Wallenberg case,” Journal of Baltic Studies 46, no. 4 (2015): 435–457.

¹⁸ Vyshinskii’s letter of 7 July 1947, ‘Pis’mo zam. ministra innostrannykh del SSSR A. Ia. Vyshinskogo ministru gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR V. S. Abakumovy,’ Photocopy in UD, P 2 EuI, 21 November 1991, Vyshinskii’s letter of 22 July ‘Pis’mo A Ia: Vyshinskogo V S. Abakumovy, Photocopy in UD, P 2 EuI, 21 November 1991. The mere mentioning of Abakumov’s letter to Molotov in Vyshinskii’s 22 July 1947 letter which referred to the events in Sweden is arguably yet another indication that Abakumov’s letter came about in reaction to Bazarov’s cables.

¹⁹ In his cable nr. 728, 729 (17 July) Bazarov referred, aside from the Wallenberg movement’s visit and von Dardel’s plea with Truman, to an approach by the Swedish Red Cross before the Soviet equivalent on account of Wallenberg. One may also note that the liberal paper Göteborgs handels- och sjöfartstidning, on 19 July 1947, sent a telegram to the former Soviet envoy to Sweden, Aleksandra Kollontai, saying that ‘in February 1945 you declared to the mother of Raoul Wallenberg that her son was living in good Russian care. Would you kindly confirm if you are still maintaining this. If not please explain what has happened’. Kollontai’s answer was prepared within the MID. Photocopies in UD, P 2 EuI, 21 November 1991.

²⁰ Vyshinskii’s letter to Abakumov, Photocopy in UD, P 2 EuI, 21 November 1991.

²¹ Judging from Soviet archival documentation, the perception of a need to provide the Swedes with an answer was first voiced in December 1946 and January 1947, following the publication in November 1946 of Austrian emigre author Rudolph Philipp’s book on Wallenberg, which in turn had prompted UD to instruct the Swedish legation in Moscow to bring the matter up with the Soviets.

²² Memo for Molotov by Vetrov, 8 February 1947 and Dokladnaia zapiska zam. zavieduioshchego 5 evropeiskim otdelom M. S. Vetrova zamestitelio ministra innostrannykh del SSSR A. Ia. Vyshinskomu, 2 April 1947. Photocopies of these documents can be found in RA P 2 EuI, 21 November 1991. Reprints can also be found in the Swedish Working Group’s report, 262–265.

²³ ‘Dokladnaia zapiska’ by Vyshinski for Molotov, 14 May 1947, f. 06, op. 9, p. 81, d. 1280. Photocopy in UD, P 2 EuI, 21 November 1991.

²⁴ Von Dardel received answers from both Vandenberg and Acheson. The US position was however, as formulated by Acheson, that ‘in view of the fact that Mr. Wallenberg acted as a member of the Swedish diplomatic mission in Budapest, the initiatives in inquiries directed toward the Soviet Government rests with Swedish authorities’. The Swedish legation in the US reported on von Dardel’s visit in a letter to Grafström, filed in UD, P 2 EuI, nr. 695, 14 May 1947.

²⁵ Bazarov’s cable nr. 728, 729, 17 July 1947.

²⁶ Dorothy Thompson, “The Wallenberg affair may seem small, but you would not call it insignificant,” The Boston Daily Globe, April 18, 1947.

²⁷ Sohlman’s reports in UD, P 2 EuI, nr. 789, 3 June 1947 and P 2 EuI, nr. 806, 5 June 1947.

²⁸ Sohlman’s report in RA UD P 2 EuI, nr. 212, 14 June 1947, Malik’s report, ’Priem shvedskogo poslannika Rolfa Sohlmana’, 12 June 1947 in AVP RF, f. 0140, op. 38, d. 6, p. 141, ll. 9–11. Sohlman’s note came about as a result of the MP Elis Håstad’s interpellation to Foreign Minister Undén regarding UD’s investigation into Wallenberg’s fate, submitted on 7 June 1946.

²⁹ Vyshinskii’s draft note in “Dokladnaia zapiska A. Ia. Vyshinskogo narkomu V. M. Molotovu, 9 August 1947. Photocopy in UD, P 2 EuI, 21 November 1991. See also Working Group’s report, 97.

³⁰ Novikov’s report in ‘Zapis’ besedy so shvedskim poslannikom G. Chegglefom’, 30 January 1947, in AVP RF, f. 0140, op. 38, d. 6, p. 144, ll. 1–2. Strangely however, this statement can only be found in Novikov’s report Hägglöf’s report is filed in UD, Hp 80, 30 January 1947, nr. 80.

³¹ As formulated by Pravda in the article ‘Belogvardeiskoie gnezdo v Stokgol’me’, 6 August 1947.

³² Sven Grafström, Anteckningar 1945–1954 (Stockholm: Kungliga samfundet för utgivande av handskrifter rörande Skandinaviens historia, 1989), 826.

³³ During 1944 some 30,000 Balts (primarily Estonians and Latvians) escaped across the Baltic Sea to Sweden. Despite repeated Soviet demands to have all of them extradited, the Swedes refused to have them deported back. On the Baltic refugees, see Wilhelm M. Carlgren, Sverige och Baltikum (Stockholm, Publica), 1993 and Carl Göran Andrae, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland 1943–1944 (Uppsala: Kungl. Gustav Adolfs akademien för svensk folkkultur 2004).

³⁴ See Matz, ‘Sweden, the USSR and the Early Cold War…’. See also the Soviet memo ‘Vneshnaia politika Shvetsii i shvedsko-sovietskie otnosheniia’, 15 March 1947 in AVP RF, f. 0140, op. 38, d. 44, p. 145, ll. 50–54.

³⁵ Bazarov’s cable in AVP RF, f. 059, op. 18, p. 54, d. 351, nr. 892–895, 12 August 1947.

³⁶ Dagens Nyheter, “Rysk diplomat på cykelfärd i Bodentrakten,” July 26, 1947.

³⁷ Dagens Nyheter, “Förbudet för utlänningar att vistas i skyddsområden,” July 26.

³⁸ Expressen, “Ryssar på semester fotograferade svenskt försvar,” July 26, 1947.

³⁹ Aftontidningen, “Ryssturisterna startade den 11, polisrapporten alltjämt på väg, July 28, 1947.

⁴⁰ Dagens Nyheter, “Legaliserat spioneri,” July 29, 1947. Expressen voiced similar criticism in “Ryssarna och Sveriges försvar,” Expressen, July 29, 1947.

⁴¹ Memo by Erik Lönn, 1 November 1946, in Konnov’s file 130:162/P16.

⁴² Ministerstvo gosudarstvennyi bezopasnosti (MGB), i.e. the Ministry of State Security.

⁴³ Memo by Försvarsstaben, 1 April 1947, in Konnov’s file.

⁴⁴ Memo by Lönn, 19 May 1947, in Konnov’s file.

⁴⁵ Memo by the Försvarsstaben, 6 June 1947, in Konnov’s file. Glavnoe razveyvatel’noie upravleniie (GRU), i.e. the Soviet military’s Main Intelligence Directorate. Foreign intelligence was also conducted by the MGB’s first Main Directorate and Konnov may possibly, as suggested by the Swedish military, have belonged here rather than with the GRU. It remains however unclear, at least judging from the memo cited here, on what grounds the Swedes reached this conclusion. For an overview of the history and organizational structure of the Soviet intelligence, see Vadim Birshtein, Smersh: Stalin’s Secret Weapon (London, Biteback 2011).

⁴⁶ Memo by Wilhelm Ahlberg, 14 October 1946 in Bakourskii’s file.

⁴⁷ Memo by Lönn, 16 September 1946 in Mikhailov’s file.

⁴⁸ Memo by T. Sjöstedt, 1 October 1947 in Mikhailov’s file. See also N. E. Nilsson’s memo on the phone booth, 23 November 1946 in Mikhailov’s file.

⁴⁹ Cover letter with memos from Georg Thulin to Mossberg, 17 October 1946 in Bakourskii’s file.

⁵⁰ Memo by Martin Lundin, 26 Juy 1947 in Konnov’s file and memo by T. Sjöstedt, 1 October 1947 in Mikahilov’s file. See also articles in Aftonbladet, ‘Tolken Michailov tjänsteman i GPU?” and Dagens Nyheter,’ Halvdunkel kring spioneri, 31 July 1947.

⁵¹ This was the title of the paper Ny Dag’s article on Konnov’s and Mikhailov’s trip (‘Två ryssar i Norrbottten’), published on 30 July 1947. See note 64.

⁵² Memo by Bergman, 7 July, in Konnov’s file.

⁵³ See memo by Österdahl, 22 July 1947, in Konnov’s file.

⁵⁴ Report by Commissar Nils Lidén, 23 July 1947, in Konnov’s file.

⁵⁵ Memos by Martin Lundin, 26 and 29 July 1947 in Konnov’s file.

⁵⁶ Expressen, “Ryssarna slutade med kurragömma – ny turistresa?,” July 29, 1947.

⁵⁷ Memo by Österdahl, 22 July 1947, in Konnov’s file.

⁵⁸ On these activites, see ‘VPM angående vissa händelser i Tornedalen juni-juli 1947’, in RA UD, P 53 Er/Konnov.

⁵⁹ In his diary, Undén noted that he had received ‘a report on two Russian military attachés’ trip in Norrbotten, partly within restricted military zones. Reached the decision that they should be recalled. Beck-Friis will to summon ch. D’aff. Basarov on Tuesday’, Östen Undén, Anteckningar 1918–1952, Kungl. Samfundet för utgivande av handskrifter rörande Skandinaviens historia, Handlingar del 24, Stockholm 2002, 204.

⁶⁰ Beck-Friis’ report in UD, P 53 Er/Konnov, 29 July 1947.

⁶¹ Dagens Nyheter, “Det är glädjande att utrikesdepartementet…,” July 30, 1947.

⁶² Bazarov’s cable in AVP RF, f. 059, op. 18, p. 54, d. 351, nr. 778, 27 July 1947.

⁶³ AVP RF, f. 059, op. 18, p. 54, d. 351, nr. 797, 798 and 804–806, 30 July 1947. On the different classifications of the encrypted cables, i.e. in terms of ‘osobaia’, ‘vnie ocheredi’ etc., see Matz, ‘Cables in cipher…’.

⁶⁴ Ny Dag, “Två ryssar i Norbotten,” July 30, 1947.

⁶⁵ Expressen, “Fem utlänningar anhållna i delikat spionaffär,” July 1947.

⁶⁶ Grafström, 819.

⁶⁷ Grafström, 820.

⁶⁸ Expressen, “Hemlig estregering i Sverige. Pengar från USA finansierar underjordisk press och radio,” July 24, 1947.

⁶⁹ Expressen, “’Baltkanaler i Sverige’ får bekräftelse i Amerika,” July 25, 1947.

⁷⁰ Dagens Nyheter, “Exilregering inget för ester,” July 24, 1947 and Dagens nyheter, “Spionhistorien får magert slut,” July 25, 1947.

⁷¹ AVP RF, f. 059, op. 18, p. 54, d. 351, nr. 810–812, 31 July 1947.

⁷² AVP RF, f. 059, op. 18, p. 54, d. 351, nr. 817–818, 1 August 1947. On press reporting on Bakourskii’s trip, see for example Dagens Nyheter, ‘Halvdunkel kring spioneri, 31 July 1947 and ’Major Bakourskii åter i Sverige”, 1 August 1947 and Göteborgs handels- och sjöfarts tidning, ‘Ryska resenärerna väntas få semester’, 1 August 1947.

⁷³ AVP RF, f. 059, op. 18, p. 54, d. 351, nr. 817, 818, 1 August 1947.

⁷⁴ AVP RF, f. 059, op. 18, p. 54, d. 351, nr. 824, 1 August 1947. See also Grafström’s report in RA UD, P 53 Er/Konnov, 1 August 1947.

⁷⁵ “Rysslands minister här föll i onåd, kallades hem,” Stockholmstidningen, August 1, 1947.

⁷⁶ AVP RF, f. 059, op. 18, p. 54, d. 177, nr. 817, 1 August 1947. Vyshinskii’s order is somewhat enigmatic. In the case of Vassilii Sidorenko, Head of the Soviet Intourist bureau in Stockholm, who was arrested on charges of espionage in September 1942, one may note that Moscow, in an encrypted cable (nr. 705) to the Soviet legation in Stockholm, de-ciphered by the Venona and titled ‘request for details of Stege’s arrest’ (Stege was the codename of Sidorenko), asked for a ‘priority telegram of the precise circumstances of Stege’s arrest’, asking ‘why [he] was not kept in the metro’ (a codename for any Soviet embassy or legation). See the Woodrow Wilson’s centre, John Earl Haynes, transcription of Venona cables, available online at https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Venona-Stockholm-GRU.pdf). Vyshinskii’s concern over Konnov and Mikhailov may, in light of the cable on Sidorenko, indicate that the Soviet leadership to some extent feared that the two would be arrested and tried in a Swedish court (which nonetheless seems very far-fetched since both enjoyed diplomatic immunity).

⁷⁷ AVP RF, f. 059, op. 18, p. 54, d. 351, nr. 825, 2 August 1947.

⁷⁸ Memo by Erik Lönn, 1 August 1947, in Bakourskii’s file.

⁷⁹ Grafström, 821–822.

⁸⁰ See undated memo ‘Iakttagelser vid övervakning av B…’ in Bakourskii’s file.

⁸¹ Memos by Håkansson and Sjöstedt, 15 July 1947, memo by Bogefeldt, 23 July and the two undated memos ‘Iakttagelser vid övervakning av B…’ and ‘Sammandrag beträffande anmärkningsvärda omständigheter…’ in Bakourskii’s file.

⁸² See for example memo of 26 April 1947 by G. Danielsson’s reports from his shadowing of Bakourskii’s dinner at restaurant Rosenbad together with the Swedish captain Grafström on 25 April 1947 and memo by Lönn (15 May 1947) on Bakourskii’s visit to the Swedish military society (Militärsällskapet) where he reportedly had tried to get in touch with the officers. Both memos in Bakourskii’s file.

⁸³ Memo by Lindström, 17 July 1947, in Bakourskii’s file.

⁸⁴ Memo by Sjöstedt, 28 July 1947 in Bakourskii’s file.

⁸⁵ P.M. angående bitr. ryske mil. Att. Alexis Bakourskis vistelse på Dalarö, Ornö och Utö under tiden 23–29 Juli 1947, 5 August 1947, in Bakourskii’s file.

⁸⁶ Ibid.

⁸⁷ AVP RF, f. 059, op. 18, p. 54, d. 351, nr. 826–827, 2 August 1947.

⁸⁸ AVP RF, f. 059, op. 18, p. 54, d. 351, nr. 829–830, 831, 3 August 1947.

⁸⁹ Ibid.

⁹⁰ The Soviet note was published in Ny Dag, ‘Not från Sovjet…’ 5 August 1947. Bazarov’s report in AVP RF, f. 059, op. 18, p. 54, d. 351, nr. 847, 848, 5 August 1947.

⁹¹ Izvestiya, “Provokatsiia shitaia belymi nitkami,” August 5, 1947.

⁹² Pravda, ‘Belogvardeiskoie gnezdo v Stokgol’me’, 6 August 1947. See also cable from Swedish legation in Moscow in RA UD P 40 R, nr. 159, 6 August 1947.

⁹³ Novoie Vremia (New Times), ‘A nest of spies in Sweden’, nr. 32, August 1947, 20–21.

⁹⁴ On the Smoltsov report, see The Swedish Working Group’s report, 127–132.