DOI: 10.46726/H.2026.1.12
By introducing unique archival materials into scholarly circulation, previously unknown chapters of the history of the First World War are revealed. Specifically, this concerns the sabotage and propaganda efforts of deserters and sectarians (Baptist Evangelicals) aimed at morally corrupting the front-line and rear-line units of the Russian army and terminating its participation in military operations to defend the Fatherland. Consequently, this research focuses on documentary evidence on certain aspects of the counterintelligence and military censorship activities of army headquarters that were part of the Western and Southwestern Fronts. This article examines the success of deserter-spies from the category of Russian prisoners of war, who were selected and recruited in German (Prussian) and Austrian concentration camps. The author discovered evidence of a “German connection” in the organization of criminal propaganda among the lower ranks of the Russian army, as well as the involvement of Russian revolutionary émigrés in this criminal enterprise, with the goal of relegating the Russian state to a secondary status. It was also concluded that military counterintelligence, operating with its own intelligence and later obtained from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs Police Department, had a timely and complete understanding of the new, hidden military-ideological threat initiated by German intelligence against the armed forces of the Russian Empire. Counterintelligence agents were also aware of German plans to destroy Russian statehood using agents of influence, particularly through the anti-militarist efforts of sectarians, as well as of intelligence-led sabotage tactics. Furthermore, evidence was uncovered and presented of financial support for Russian sectarianism from state and private German funds.
For citation: Zverev V.O. Counterintelligence awareness of propaganda threats on the World War I fronts, Ivanovo State University Bulletin, Series: Humanities, 2026, iss 1, pp. 89—97.