Under the heading "Secret"
During the First World War, the Balkan Peninsula was not only the field of the bloody battles of the Serbian-Austrian (1914 – 1915), Thessaloniki (1915 – 1918), Dobrudjan (1916) and Romanian (1916 – 1917) fronts, but also the scene of an invisible hard fight between the secret services of the Entente countries and the camp of the Central Powers. The key participant in this dangerous game was the military intelligence of the Russian Empire, whose officers in the region had tasks of truly strategic importance.
Our intelligence officers studied the political plans and military preparations of the Balkan states, observed the fighting in the local theater of war, counteracted enemy military smuggling from Austria-Hungary and Germany to Turkey and Bulgaria, and ensured the transit of goods between Russia, Serbia and Western allies on the Danube (until the fall of 1915), participated in the outreach campaign.
Unfortunately, with the exception of the conspiracy theories about the alleged involvement of the military intelligence of the Russian Empire in the Sarajevo murder and the July crisis 1914, story the work of the Russian special services in the Balkans is still little known to the general public. But this activity abounded with bright, fascinating, sometimes adventurous episodes. We will tell about some of them in this article, relying mainly on previously unknown documents from the funds of the Russian State Military Historical Archive (RGVIA) and other archives.
At the beginning of the First World War, the key problem for the Russian military intelligence, as well as for the special services of other states, was the lack of previously prepared illegal residencies and agent networks in the countries of the Balkan Peninsula and other parts of Europe.
Therefore, the main burden fell on the shoulders of official military attaches or, as they were called in the Russian Empire, “military agents”. In addition to performing traditional military-diplomatic and representational functions, they had to deal with secret intelligence work, as well as participate in propaganda and even sabotage and subversive activities.
The official status made the Russian military agents the objects of close observation of the police and counterintelligence of the host countries, as well as the staff of the hostile special services.
Nevertheless, even in these difficult conditions, Russian intelligence officers successfully solved the tasks before them, sometimes using non-standard and innovative techniques for that time. Representatives of Russian intelligence in Sofia and Bucharest have achieved particular success in this work.
In Bulgaria, the military agent of Russia from September 1914 and until the break of diplomatic relations with this country in September 1915 was the General Staff Colonel Alexander Alexandrovich Tatarinov (1880 – 1946). Later from December 1915 to September 1916, he held a similar position in Romania. An experienced intelligence officer, Tatarinov, at the beginning of World War, quite accidentally came to the Balkan region, which he was unfamiliar with before, to Bulgaria, where a coalition of Russophobic forces was in power since the summer of 1913. revenge over allied Russia Serbia. However, in just one year of his stay in Bulgaria, Tatarinov managed to achieve important results in the field of intelligence. According to his cash report, during 9 months of 1915, he had agents for various purposes, including entire agent organizations, in his 48 network of agents. Undoubtedly, this total number included secret internal agents informers, and agents of external supervision, stationary and mobile. For the maintenance of his entire network during this period, the Tatars spent 163 347 Bulgarian levs. However, the most valuable informants of the Russian military agent in Bulgaria cooperated with him not out of greed, but from sincere Russophile convictions. Even in 1915, the major guest at Colonel Tatarinov’s house was Major Stoichev, a Russian pupil who served in the intelligence department of the Bulgarian Army Headquarters. In the face of harsh persecution by the authorities of officers Russophile, Stoichev was the last one who was not afraid to openly visit the Russian military agent and transfer part of the official information to him, for which, in the end, he was temporarily arrested. Another agent of Tatarinov was a member of the Bulgarian National Assembly from the ruling Russophobic Radoslavist Liberal Party, who sympathized with Russia in his heart. Back in early August, 1915, a month before the start of the Bulgarian mobilization, handed over to the Russian mission what he heard directly from Prime Minister V. Radoslavov news on the upcoming entry of Bulgaria into the war on the side of the Central Powers.
In 1915, Colonel Tatarinov’s agents also managed to carry out a number of sabotage and sabotage actions in order to prevent the transit of military cargo to Turkey.
In April 1915, the Russian envoy in Sofia A.A. Savinsky reported to the Foreign Ministry that Tatarinov’s agents in the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Burgas had blown up a cargo of gasoline, which otherwise would have been taken to Turkey.
Colonel Tatarinov reported on less significant achievements in the field of combating enemy smuggling. For example, on August 27 of 1915, he telegraphed to the General Staff: “On August 10, another ten wagons loaded with ambulances were sent from Ruschuk to Turkey. The Armenian movers, among whom were my people, cut almost all the rubber tires and tried to spoil the cars. ” In this case, the organizers of smuggling into Turkey and their Bulgarian accomplices clearly blundered, allowing the Armenian workers to valuable military items for the Ottoman army. It is known that Tatarinov had a valuable agent in the Armenian colony of Constantinople. The head of the German military intelligence Colonel Walter Nikolai recalled: "The Armenians were very determined and terrible as spies." Agents of Tatarinov committed daring sabotage acts on the territory of enemy Turkey. 24 September 15, a few days before his departure from Bulgaria, Tatarinov reported: “My people killed the son of Adrianople wali (governor. - V.К.) near Lozengrad. Himself wali on the car slipped the ambush. "
At the end of January 1915, the leadership of the Russian naval department decided to send a naval officer to Sofia as a representative of the Russian fleet. On February 6, the authorities agreed to appoint Senior Lieutenant V.V. Yakovleva. As a result of the creation of a maritime agent position in Bulgaria, the Black Sea Fleet intelligence received its resident near the borders of Turkey. Vasily Vasilievich Yakovlev 6th, a participant in the Russian-Japanese war, on the eve of World War II served as clerk of the Naval General Staff, and after its beginning he worked in the Naval Administration of the Stavka. On February 15, 1915, he was officially appointed to the newly established post of naval agent in Bulgaria. Yakovlev’s appointment to Bulgaria directly coincided with the intensification of Russia's preparations for an airborne operation in the Bosphorus area in the spring of 1915.
According to Yakovlev himself, arriving in Sofia and starting to get acquainted with local conditions, he received the widest assistance from the Russian envoy A.A. Savinsky. Representatives of the highest Bulgarian clergy, which traditionally have been the bearer of sincere Russophile feelings and an ardent supporter of the idea of the union of two fraternal Orthodox countries, have also provided valuable assistance to the Russian naval agent. Yakovlev wrote: “I managed to obtain the disposition of the late Exarch (Joseph I. - VK), who repeatedly received me. Such a kind attitude of the head of the Bulgarian church, of course, made it easier for me to create intimacy with many representatives of the clergy, but I became especially close to the Exarch’s protosingel, Archimandrite Stephen. I owe the clergy precisely that useful acquaintances that gave me the opportunity to send agents to Turkey as early as March (1915 - V.K.), and also because I was given an office in the Synod where I could freely receive the right people. ".
Arriving in Sofia, Yakovlev immediately launched an active undercover work. In a short time, he established an intelligence organization, the purpose of which was to study the western coast of the Black Sea, as well as the area of the Bosphorus and the fighting near Constantinople. The head of the intelligence agency and the chief assistant of Yakovlev was Bulgarian Nedelko Zelenogorov, 45 years old, a lawyer and lieutenant colonel in artillery from Sofia. He led a group of agents from the first months of 1915, conducted encrypted correspondence, distributed cash, received from Yakovlev and handed over maps and assignments for intelligence to his staff.
The right hand of Zelenogorov was Anton Prudkin, a former agent of the secret police, while the captain of Boris, the largest steamship of the Bulgarian shipping company. He was an active member of the Zelenogorov group since April 1915. The whole mess of the ship “Boris” consisted of staunch Russophiles, moreover, brave people.
Back in January, 1915, the first officer of Boris, Sotir Dimitriev, who graduated from nautical courses in Nikolaev and was married to the daughter of a Russian colonel in 1902, turned to the vice-consul of Russia in Varna K.L. Ragozin with a proposal to make a secret statement of mines in the Bosporus. He was prepared to support the second and third officers of Boris, Alexander Sakharov (37 years, born in Tirnov, graduated from the Kronstadt nautical classes in 1901) and Ivan Panayotov (a Trieste pupil). All of them were midshipmen of the reserve of the Bulgarian Navy, were able to equip and place sea mines. Dimitriev told Ragozin that “Boris”, who regularly made flights to the Bosphorus, always left the strait in the evening, without any accompaniment. The Bulgarian sailor volunteered to place dozens of anchored mines in the dark at the narrowest point of the Bosporus For loading mines, he asked to lift the ban on the entry of “Boris” to Odessa; the steamer could go there under the pretext of buying painting materials, and the mines could be loaded without the knowledge of the rest of the crew. This bold project, apparently, was not implemented, but soon it was the steamer Boris that became the main mobile observation post of Russian intelligence in the heart of the Ottoman Empire.
In early March, Captain Prudkin told Ragozin that the Bulgarian military attache in Constantinople, Colonel Markov, had given him the defense scheme of the Bosphorus, ordered him to put all new fortifications on it and take photographs. 8 March “Boris” left Varna for the next flight to the Bosphorus, and Prudkin promised Ragozin six days later to return and provide him with a copy of the scheme with all the notes, photos and a written report. Soon after, Prudkin began to cooperate directly with V.V. Yakovlev and Russian naval intelligence. Together with him and Alexander Sakharov, another member of Zelenogorov’s organization - Bulgarian Hristo Silyanov, 35 years old, a journalist from Constantinople who lived in Sofia, carried out reconnaissance of the coast from Constantinople to Bourgas from the steamer “Boris”. By joint works of these people, a detailed coast plan was drawn up and handed over to Yakovlev, indicating the coastal fortifications and their armaments.
Sailors from the "Boris" were not limited to the exploration of Turkey alone. In May, 1915 Sakharov, by the way, who also worked as a secret agent of the Russian consulate in Bucharest, brought to Sofia a defense plan for the Bay of Varna. In July, 1915, the town of Prudkin, agreed with Yakovlev about conducting reconnaissance of the defense of Varna and Burgas and successfully carried out this assignment. In Burgas, he organized the observation of the ships going to Constantinople with Romanian kerosene and gasoline. Prudkin also maintained contact with agents in Constantinople itself. Finally, not content with this, the indomitable and desperate "Bombagi" Prudkin suggested organizing an explosion with a dynamite bridge between Constantinople and Galata.
He also planned sabotage against the famous German cruisers “Göben” and “Breslau”, which constituted the main strike force of the Ottoman fleet. In his work, Prudkin resorted to the help of the Russian consuls in Varna and Bourgas.
For example, when returning from a regular flight to Constantinople, he gave 13 on June 1915 to the vice-consul in Burgas Udintsov on the Bosporus plan and text report he had taken off; Udintsov immediately sent them to the commander of the naval forces in the Black Sea.
In addition to the sailors of Varna, Zelenogorov’s agent group included two more people. A Bulgarian journalist and former member of the National Assembly, Kosta Spisarevsky, 36 years old, born in Dobrich and a resident of Sofia, went to Constantinople in April 1915, receiving a cipher and instructions for organizing intelligence of the Ottoman capital and the Bosphorus. On this trip, he stayed 20 days, until the beginning of May, and sent 10 telegrams and 4 letters with intelligence data during this time. He corresponded through the apartment of the Bulgarian consul, with whom he was friendly. He hired several agents in Constantinople and organized the receipt of information from them, he returned to Bulgaria.
Finally, since May 1915 a Bulgarian Vladimir Angel Tsvetkov, 48 years, a Sofia trader from Sistov, became a member of the Nedelko Zelenogorov group. He transmitted correspondence from Yakovlev to Sakharov and served as the last casual agent in Constantinople. From there, he reported information on the movement of troops, ships, submarines.
In the first days of October, 1915, the entire Zelenogorov agent group in full was arrested by Bulgarian counterintelligence and put before the military field court. Evidence of guilt served as a letter to Sakharov from Silyanov Silnova from 28 in May of 1915, in which the author proposed, with another person, to map new coastal batteries and fortifications, as well as the testimony of three witnesses. The process began in Sofia in March 1916 and caused a wide public response as a “case against the Russophiles”. The defense insisted that the defendants conducted intelligence against Turkey, and not against Bulgaria, according to which V.V. Yakovlev allegedly did not ask them (as we know, this was not quite the case). Nedelko Zelenogorov protested against torture, with which he was beaten out of testimony. The prosecution, in turn, cynically stated that Bulgaria was already in secret union with Turkey during the activity of the group, which means that espionage against her was treason against Bulgaria. The defendants were also accused of receiving secret instructions from Yakovlev and non-reporting of this to the Bulgarian military authorities. According to the testimony of the witnesses, seaman captain Anton Georgiev and coastal artillery striker Strashimir Kutsarov, a former steering sailor from the Boris, Anton Prudkin questioned them about the placement of mines in the Gulf of Burgas and the location of batteries near Varna. The prosecutor demanded the death penalty for the first four members of the group, and life penal servitude for the rest. As a result, all six were sentenced to life imprisonment (of course, it lasted no longer than 1918, the time of the defeat of Bulgaria in the world war).
Kavtorang V.V. After the break in Russian relations with Bulgaria, Yakovlev left for Romania and continued his intelligence activities there as an unofficial second naval agent. In his own words, while in Bucharest, he was able to maintain regular, including telegraphic communication with an extensive agent organization in Bulgaria and Turkey, despite all the efforts of the local counterintelligence. Also, Yakovlev’s intelligence services were provided by members of the Dashnaktsutyun Party Committee in Romania, Russian sect members-koptsy. Yakovlev succeeded in attracting the cooperation of a dragoman who served as secretary to the Romanian mission in Constantinople, who regularly handed him valuable information about the situation in the Ottoman capital with diplomatic mail.
The Russian military agent in Bucharest, the General Staff, Colonel Boris Anatolyevich Semenov, in 1914 – 1915, despite the interference from the Romanian police, also achieved a number of successes in his intelligence work on the territory of Romania. In particular, he managed to recruit a number of officers of active duty and a reserve of the Romanian army. One of his most valuable agents was the informant at the headquarters of the Romanian IV Army Corps (Iasi) - captain of the General Staff Ilya Parteni. This officer was repeatedly sent by his superiors for reconnaissance in Bukovina, and on his return he privately shared copies of his reports with the Russian military agent. Instructions to Captain Partiya Semyonov sent through his agent Kamensky to a conditional postal address at the Burduzhen station in Moldova.
In addition, Romanian aviation officers, a lieutenant of the infantry battalion Cantacuzene and a lieutenant of the navy Mihayescu, collaborated with Colonel Semyonov. They gave Semenov important information, but the military agent rarely used their services for fear of compromising these people.
He also mentioned Semenov about the presence of a valuable informative agent from among the employees of the Romanian secret police. Also, Colonel Semenov managed to recruit one of the employees of the Bucharest arsenal, who in December 1914 provided him with accurate data on the number of ammunition and artillery shells stored there. This valuable information allowed Semenov to conclude that the Romanian authorities intentionally underestimated the amount of ammunition available in Romania in order to mislead public opinion and delay Romania’s entry into the war on the side of the Entente.
A valuable employee of Semyonov was engineer Franz Kral, a Czech by nationality who had previously lived in Bulgaria and who started cooperation with Russian intelligence there. Semyonov characterized him as follows: “Engineer Kral is an indispensable employee-organizer in such a demanding business as secret intelligence in wartime, and, moreover, being notable for his enormous ability to work, dexterity and reliability, this agent possesses such rare special talents for secret intelligence ".
Engineer Krall had his own wide network of agents from among the Czechs and Slovaks who lived in Romania. Chief among them was the Czech Freisberger, the former chief controller of the International Sleeping Car Society. He provided communication between Colonel Semyonov and Kral's agents throughout Romania, located in the border areas with Austria-Hungary - in Turnu-Severin, Verchiorov, Kaineni, Predyale, Gimeshe, Burduja, and Romanian Danube ports. In his work, Freisberger used the services of several inspectors and conductors of the sleeper carriage company to transmit intelligence reports to Bucharest. The Austro-Hungarian citizen, Slovak Godina, a former journalist who once served as a conductor of the society of sleeping cars, was a communication agent and assistant of Krall, the person, according to Semyonov, intelligent and reliable, but demanding experienced leadership.
At the border station Predeal in the Transylvanian Alps, Semenov had an agent in the person of a railway employee, Durand, half French in origin. Semyonov spoke of him this way: “A very modest, but intelligent man. He worked for me to monitor the Austrian-Hungarian border garrisons, as well as to determine the Romanian military activities on the Hungarian border. Gave very truthful and accurate information. It should certainly be encouraged. ”
The network of agents on the Romanian railways was a particularly valuable tool for Russian intelligence, since it could effectively monitor the transit of military contraband from Austria-Hungary and Germany to Turkey and the export of strategic goods from Romania (grain and oil products) to the Central Powers and Turkey .
One of the most valuable agents of Krall, who collaborated with Colonel Semyonov, was a French Jew Goldberg, an employee of the Bucharest branch of the Vienna transport company Schenker and Co. During the First World War, this office was the largest organizer of transporting military contraband from Austria-Hungary and Germany to Turkey through the Balkans and carried out other unofficial instructions from the secret services of the Central Powers. Not without reason, Semenov called Schenker the "main Austro-German espionage bureau." He initially used Agent Goldberg to fight the German military smuggling, then completely switched him to counterintelligence work. Thanks to the “invaluable services” of Goldberg Semyonov in the winter of 1915 – 1916. I was able to compile a complete list of Schenker correspondents in Russia, individuals and companies. During the war, correspondence to the address of “Schenker” was delayed on the Russian border in Ungheni, so that the Bucharest branch of this company kept its correspondence through a front office - the expeditionary firm “Sartiya” in Bucharest. All letters to the address of this company, Colonel Semyonov, recommended not to intercept, but to secretly open and photograph.
With the help of Goldberg, Semenov received a list of the personal correspondents of Mr. Jacobi, the head of the Schenker office in Bucharest, who kept him in a drawer of his desk. Letters from individuals and companies from this list Jacobi always opened himself and personally typed on a typewriter, while all the other business correspondence was opened by the company's staff. With good reason, Semyonov claimed that these personal correspondents of Jacobi were agents of enemy intelligence who were to be monitored. The cells of this network were located in Petrograd, Moscow, Warsaw, Odessa, Kherson and Kharkov. In addition, Jacobi kept secret correspondence at six addresses in Italy and one in France. From the office of Schenker, Semyonov also obtained a list of names and addresses of 16 from the main agents of the new German spy organization in Bucharest, transmitted to Jacobi from the German mission.
Colonel Semyonov in general attached great importance to the collection of information about the activities of the secret services of hostile states in Russia, i.e. "Counter espionage".
Back in December 1914, he reported to the General Staff: “Thanks to its proximity to Russia and the neutral position of Romania and the comparative ease of crossing the border, Austro-German espionage directed against Russia made a strong nest in Bucharest.”
In the study of Austro-German espionage in Romania, Colonel Semyonov achieved some success. In a special detailed report from April 1916, he listed all the main undercover intelligence agencies of enemy intelligence in Romania, named the main agents of the German and Austro-Hungarian secret services in Bucharest and other major Romanian cities, and described in detail the mechanism of their functioning. Upon delivery of the post of military agent to Colonel A.A. 1 Tatarinov February 1916 g. Semenov gave him an alphabetical list of 100 names of agents of the German, Austrian and Bulgarian intelligence services in Bucharest; Later in Petrograd, he compiled an additional list, which also included 150 names of persons involved in enemy espionage.
With the help of his filing agents, Semenov managed to establish an effective system of external surveillance of the Austrian and German military attaches in Romania, Lieutenant Colonel Maximilian Rand and Lieutenant Colonel Günther Bronzart von Schellendorf. Their houses, located respectively at the addresses of the Comet country, 49, and the country of Putsu de Piatra, 10, were under the vigilant supervision of the people of Semenov, which provided valuable information about the activities and designs of the enemy. The enemy showed a clear imperfection of the methods of undercover work: some secret agents of the Austro-Hungarian military attache of Lieutenant Colonel Randa came directly to his house, which was monitored by colonel Semyonov. By the way, the latter was well known to the Austrian intelligence service, whose boss Max Ronge later admitted: “Colonel Semyonov worked for Russia as if at home: he not only made the Romanian police and customs bodies obedient to himself, but organized a special observant opposite to the home of our military attache room for detectives (i.e. filing agents. - V.K.) to keep a constant eye on its activities. ” Austrian intelligence's main safe house was located at the address to Poparus, 22, where Lieutenant Colonel Rand came daily. This house Semyonov was also monitored.
An important organ of enemy espionage since the end of 1914 was the bureau of Albert Werner, who lived in Bucharest at Calia Victoria, number 159. As Semenov managed to find out, Werner was an officer of the Reichswehr and was not part of the German mission, but was subordinated to her military attache Bronzart von Schellendorf and was his main secret agent. According to external signs reported by Semyonov, Werner was a man of 35 years old, of short stature, with a long light mustache and bald patch. Werner constantly met with Bronzart at 86 house for the same Kalya Victoria. Semyonov established a constant external surveillance of him, despite the fact that Werner was accompanied everywhere by two of his own agents.
The Russian military agent was not limited to just watching Werner, but also took active and rather adventurous actions against him.
So, they found out that a German resident makes trips to the Kaineni station on the Hungarian border, where they smuggle some bales. Shortly thereafter, Colonel Semyonov reported: “Assuming the possibility of secret transportation of dynamite to Russia and wanting to stop Werner’s harmful activities even for a while, I was forced to resort to extreme measures to take Werner’s baggage from Kaini to Galati. Having taken all precautionary measures so as not to be mixed up in it, I succeeded with all my success in organizing the simulated theft of Werner's luggage from the train between Bucharest and Kitila stations on the night of April 19. On the train’s course, Werner’s suitcase and coat, which was sitting in the dining car, was thrown out of the window. One of my men, jumping from a train, crashed heavily. There are no traces or evidence. In Werner’s suitcase, weighing about two and a half pounds, it turned out to be about the 100 000 proclamations for our army of the most outrageous content. ” Naturally, Werner chose not to report his disappearance to the police.
Colonel Semenov continued to monitor the head of the German espionage bureau. The figure of his main assistant German Gebel, according to some data, also an officer of the German army, also got into the field of view of the Russian military intelligence. Goebel maintained a grain office in Bucharest. It was he who was recruited for Werner by the Italian Jew Herman (Erman) Joseph Schwartz, 50 for years, the ruined owner of a clothing store in Alexandria. In March, 1915, Goebel and Werner, sent Schwartz to Russia to collect information on the number of troops in the Odessa Military District and on the number of ships in Odessa. At that time, this information was of particular importance for the Central Powers, who were awaiting the start of operations by the Russian forces against the Bosphorus. In Russia, Schwartz was immediately supervised. During his trip, Schwartz, ostensibly to buy dry guts and peas, visited Kiev and Odessa. March 21 on the way back was arrested by Russian counterintelligence at the Ungheni customs. When it was found, a spying instruction in German and a report on 28 sheets written in invisible ink were found. Schwartz gave a confession and 19 on November 1915 was hanged by the verdict of the Odessa Military Court.
Colonel A.A., who replaced Semenov as a military agent in Bucharest Tatarinov had little time and energy at his disposal to deploy new agent networks. Having received extensive powers and instructions personally from the emperor and M.V. Alekseeva, Tatarinov immediately joined in the discussion of the conditions for Romania’s entry into the war.
According to the valuable recognition of the head of the Austro-Hungarian military intelligence, Major General Max Ronge, Colonel Tatarinov "managed under the guise of Don Juan, a gambler and a heel who is not interested in military matters, completely unnoticed with the Romanians about the conditions of their performance on the side of the Entente."
On behalf of Russia, Tatarinov had the opportunity to put his signature under the fateful military convention between Romania and the Consent States 4 (17) of August 1916.
This important military-diplomatic mission took Tatarinov a significant part of his official time and energy. In addition, in the spring and summer of 1916, the operational situation in Romania began to favor the secret services of the Accord more and more and less - to representatives of the Fourth Union. As Romania approached the Entente, the pressure of its police and counterintelligence agencies, on which Semyonov and other Russian intelligence officers so complained, began to be transferred to agents of the opposite camp.
8 June 1916 of Tatarinov telegraphed to Headquarters: “I was under surveillance by Colonel Gamershtein and all the German officers, besides, the head of the Romanian secret police Panahtesko and the intelligence department of the Romanian general staff help me to monitor them and their activities and in the case of compromise expelled from Romania. "
While in Bucharest, Colonel Tatarinov regularly received valuable information about the situation in Austria-Hungary from Captain Stirch, the Romanian military attache in Vienna. The latter, a native of Bukovina, did this not because of sympathy for Russia and the Entente, but, rather, because of mercenary motives: he, in particular, asked Tatarinov to petition for the protection of the houses of his relatives in Chernivtsi occupied by the Russian troops.
Reports from the military attache in Vienna were given to Tatarinov to read directly in the Romanian military ministry, where the number of supporters of Russia was large at that time and continued to grow as the armies of the South-Western Front, A.A. Brusilov in Galicia and Bukovina.
Romania’s entry into the war as an ally of Russia led to the cessation of the covert intelligence work of the Russian secret services in this country. On August 21, Tatarinov reported to the Headquarters: "All sorts of intelligence and information service in Romania, starting on August 14, has been stopped by order of Nashtaverha". The report of the Chief of Staff of the Odessa Military District to the General Staff also said: "Since the time of the performance of Romania, the agent network of the District Headquarters has been operating within the kingdom has been eliminated." After that, the activities of Russian intelligence in Romania were mainly limited to reconnaissance support of the operations of the Allied forces in Dobrudja and on the newly formed Romanian front.
In general, the Russian Empire failed to achieve strategic success in the Balkans during the First World War, despite the stubborn and selfless work of the officers of the Russian military intelligence. Nevertheless, their activity in the protection of the interests of Russia deserves the grateful attention of descendants and professional study by specialists.
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