Inner Line

The Inner Line (Russian: Внутренняя Линия) was a secret counter-intelligence branch of the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS), the leading Russian White émigré organization. General Alexander Kutepov is credited with setting it up in the mid-1920s.^[1]^[2] An alternative account sees the Inner Line as a group secretly established by Soviet intelligence within the ROVS.^[3]^[4]

Whatever its origin, the Inner Line became subject to severe penetration by OGPU/NKVD.^[5] It was seriously discredited after Soviet agents kidnapped the ROVS chairman General Yevgeny Miller in 1937, and following the subsequent disappearance of Nikolai Skoblin (Miller's aide and Inner Line senior operative), who, as a covert NKVD agent, lured Miller into the abduction operation.

References

^ ″Оснивање белогвардејских тајних служби: Из тајних архива УДБЕ: РУСКА ЕМИГРАЦИЈА У ЈУГОСЛАВИЈИ 1918–1941.″ // Politika, 13 December 2017, p. 18.
^ Miller, Michael B. (2021-01-08) [1994]. Shanghai on the Métro: Spies, Intrigue, and the French Between the Wars. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 137-138. ISBN 9780520356597. Retrieved 22 October 2022. [...] a White counterintelligence network known as the inner line. Kutepov had established the network in the late twenties to root out GPU police spies camouflaged as exiles.
^ Smele, Jonathan D (2015-11-19). Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926. Volume 2 of Historical Dictionaries of War, Revolution, and Civil Unrest. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 954. ISBN 9781442252813. Retrieved 22 October 2022. The Soviet intelligence services also instituted a secret provocative and diversionary group within ROVS, known as the Inner Line.
^ Robinson, Paul F. (2002). The White Russian Army in Exile, 1920-1941. Oxford historical monographs. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 203. ISBN 9780199250219. Retrieved 22 October 2022. They were also convinced that [Squadron Commander A. N.] Komorovskii was connected with the Inner Line, which they now came to believe was a Soviet provocation.
^ ″Неоткривене ћелије советских агената: Из тајних архива УДБЕ: РУСКА ЕМИГРАЦИЈА У ЈУГОСЛАВИЈИ 1918–1941.″ // Politika, 14 December 2017, p. 25.