In Ian Fleming’s James Bond
novels the Russian phrase
Smyert Shpionam (‘Death to Spies’) provides a
conjunction to form the name for the Soviet organ of death, SMERSH. A close
reading of the Bond novels bears out the fact that the spelling of this Russian
phrase varies throughout Fleming’s work. In Fleming’s first novel, CASINO
ROYALE (1953) the reader is first introduced to SMERSH through ‘
Appendix B,
a note on SMERSH,’ which is attached to the file from Head of S for ‘the
destruction of Monsieur Le Chiffre.’ This appendix reveals that:
“SMERSH is a conjunction of two
Russian words:
‘Smyert Shpionam’, meaning
roughly: ‘Death to Spies’.
Ranks above MWD (formerly NKVD)
and is believed to come under the personal direction of Beria.”
(‘Casino Royale,’ Ian Fleming,
Pan Books Ltd., London, 1965, p. 21)
After Bond was saved from a
savage torture and death at the hands of Le Chiffre by a SMERSH executioner, he
recalls to his French ally, René Mathis in hospital how the assassin had carved
a ‘calling card’ onto the back of his hand:
“‘What’s that?’ asked Mathis.
‘The doctor said the cuts looked like a square M with a tail on the top. He
said they didn’t mean anything.’
‘Well, I only got a glimpse
before I passed out, but I’ve seen the cuts several times while they were being
dressed and I’m pretty certain they are the Russian letter for SH. It’s rather
like an inverted M with a tail. That would make sense; SMERSH is short for
SMYERT SHPIONAM – Death to Spies – and he thinks he’s labelled me a SHPION.
It’s a nuisance because M will probably say I’ve got to go to hospital again
when I get back to London and have new skin grafted over the whole of the back
of my hand.’” (‘Casino Royale,’ Ian Fleming, Pan Books Ltd., London, 1965, p.
141)
Here Fleming uses the spelling ‘Smyert
Shpionam’ which looks more accurately Russian than some of the spellings of
the phrase that he later uses.
After successfully completing the
‘Casino job’ Bond, at the wheel of his 1933 4 ½- litre grey Bentley convertible
at the start of LIVE AND LET DIE (1954), bitterly recalls that SMERSH assassin
who branded him as a spy with a stroke of his stiletto knife in CASINO ROYALE:
“The hand had been fixed,
painlessly but slowly. The thin scars, the single Russian letter which stands
for SCH, the first letter of Spion, a spy, had been removed and as Bond
thought of the man with the stiletto who had cut them he clenched his hands on
the wheel.
What was happening to the brilliant
organization of which the man with the knife had been an agent, the Soviet
organ of vengeance, SMERSH, short for Smyert Spionam – Death to Spies?
Was it still as powerful, still as efficient?” (‘Live and Let Die,’ Ian
Fleming, Pan Books Ltd., London, 1963, p. 12)
Fleming has made a mistake in
this passage by claiming that the scar on Bond’s hand had read ‘SCH’ for
‘shpion,’ when in fact in CASINO ROYALE Fleming tells us that the Cyrillic
letters were ‘SH,’ which appears more accurate as these are indeed the first
two letters of ‘shpion.’ The next noticeable change to the spelling of the
Russian words which form the name SMERSH is that the second word ‘Shpionam’ in
CASINO ROYALE has changed its spelling to ‘Spionam’ in Fleming’s second novel,
LIVE AND LET DIE. The passage from LIVE AND LET DIE also contains the word
‘Spion,’ meaning spy, but as this is how Fleming has also now spelled
‘Spionam,’ is the reader to conclude that this is an anglicised version of a
Russian word which may be more difficult to pronounce with the ‘h’ added to it?
At the beginning of the fourth
chapter of Fleming’s fifth Bond novel, FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE (1957), entitled
‘The Moguls of Death’ there is another introduction to SMERSH:
“SMERSH is the official murder
organization of the Soviet government. It operates both at home and abroad and,
in 1955, it employed a total of 40,000 men and women. SMERSH is a contraction
of ‘Smiert Spionam’, which means ‘Death to Spies’. It is a name used only among
its staff and among Soviet officials. No sane member of the public would dream
of allowing the word to pass his lips.” (‘From Russia, With Love,’ Ian Fleming,
Pan Books Ltd., London, 1964, p. 27)
The spelling of the Russian words
which when contracted form the title SMERSH have changed here again. In CASINO
ROYALE the words were spelt ‘Smyert Shpionam,’ then in LIVE AND LET DIE the
spelling changed slightly to ‘Smyert Spionam’, and finally in FROM RUSSIA, WITH
LOVE it has changed to ‘Smiert Spionam.’ The ‘y’ in ‘Smyert’ and the ‘h’ in ‘Sphionam’
have both been lost gradually through the course of these two subsequent
novels. In his ‘Author’s Note’ to FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE Fleming writes the
following:
“Not that it matters, but a great
deal of the background to this story is accurate.
SMERSH, a contraction of Smiert
Spionam – Death to Spies – exists and remains today the most secret department
of the Soviet government.” (‘From Russia, With Love,’ Ian Fleming, Pan Books
Ltd., London, 1964)
Perhaps these changes in spelling
can be explained by Fleming either having got the spelling of the name
incorrect or by anglicising the name to make it easier to pronounce. Of course,
mistakes like this had slipped into the Bond novels before. In DR. NO (1958),
for instance, Major Boothroyd replaces Bond’s Beretta .25 with a Walther PPK
7.65 mm pistol, to be worn in a Berns Martin Triple-draw holster. However, in
the later novels the holster has become Burns-Martin, a clear spelling
error either on the part of Fleming or the publishers.
In Fleming’s seventh Bond novel,
GOLDFINGER (1959) there is further confirmation that Fleming has now adopted a
new spelling of the Russian words:
“SMERSH, Smiert Spionam,
Death to Spies – the murder Apparat of the High Praesidium!” (‘Goldfinger,’ Ian
Fleming, Pan Books Ltd., London, 1965, p. 66)
When John Gardner took over the
Bond mantle as continuation author, his first Bond novel LICENCE RENEWED (1981)
made mention of Bond’s experience with the SMERSH assassin of Le Chiffre in
CASINO ROYALE:
“In the back of his mind, he
remembered, quite clearly, all the circumstances which had led to the plastic
surgery, that showed now only as a white blemish, after the Cyrillic letter Щ – standing for
SH – had been carved into the back of his hand in an attempt by SMERSH to brand
him as a spy.” (‘Licence Renewed,’ John Gardner, Coronet Books, London, 1982,
p. 52)
This clearly implies that Gardner
believed that ‘Smyert Shpionam’ was the correct spelling of SMERSH’s full name.
It could be said that he was just taking the spelling of the Russian phrase
‘Death to Spies’ from the original spelling given in CASINO ROYALE, however.
In THE JAMES BOND DOSSIER (1965)
Kingsley Amis reveals the history of the changing names of the real-life SMERSH
in Soviet Russia:
“Between 1953 and 1959 Bond’s
opponents tended to belong to, or to work on behalf of, a Russian
counter-espionage organization called SMERSH (‘a conjunction of two Russian
words “Smyert Shpionam”, meaning roughly: “Death to Spies”’). An organization
did exist under this name during the Second World War, but was redesignated
O.K.R. (Otdely Kontrrazvedki, Counter-intelligence Sections) in 1946. In
fact, thanks to the Soviet passion for renaming bodies while leaving their
functions much as they were, both SMERSH and O.K.R. were simply two of the
various labels successively attached to what had originally (1921) been founded
as Special Sections (Osobye Otdely) of the main U.S.S.R. Internal
Affairs apparatus, the Cheka […] The Special Sections are presumably still
continuing their work, but this has never been concerned with Western agents
outside Russia and the territories she has conquered or occupied. Perhaps Mr
Fleming was thrown off by the vague and misleading use of the word shpion.”
(‘The James Bond Dossier,’ Kingsley Amis, Pan Books, Ltd., London, 1966, pp.
121-2)
Amis clearly believes that
‘Smyert Shpionam’ is indeed the correct spelling, and perhaps the implication
that can be taken from this passage is that if Fleming gave a defunct name and
an inaccurately defined function to the dark core at the centre of Soviet
counter-intelligence, he may also have become confused about the translation of
the Russian words. However, Amis seems to get the feeling that Fleming believed
SMERSH was still functioning after the war under that title. SMERSH of course
did exist under that particular title during World War II and Fleming
accurately described its real-life function in the file on the organisation in
CASINO ROYALE:
“SMERSH was next heard of when
Hitler attacked Russia. It was then rapidly expanded to cope with treachery and
double agents during the retreat of the Soviet forces in 1941. At that time it
worked as an execution squad for the NKVD and its present selective mission was
not so clearly defined.
The organisation itself was
thoroughly purged after the war and is now believed to consist of only a few
hundred operatives of very high quality divided into five sections” (‘Casino
Royale,’ Ian Fleming, Pan Books Ltd., London, 1965, p. 21)
Of course, Fleming was not
writing a serious study of espionage services throughout the world when he
wrote the Bond novels. As well as SMERSH the functioning role of the Secret
Intelligence Service (MI6), with its attendant ‘OO Section’ is of course also
inaccurate and fantastical. It could be said that the OO Section bears some
resemblance to Fleming’s ‘Red Indians’ in the wartime Special Operations
Executive (SOE), which sent British trained agents behind enemy lines to commit
acts of sabotage in Hitler’s ‘Fortress Europe.’ Similarly, the Deuxième Bureau (or ‘The Second Office
of the State Major General’), of which René Mathis becomes the head in FROM
RUSSIA, WITH LOVE, was at a time the old French army’s military intelligence
organisation, but not at the time of Fleming’s writing. The Deuxième Bureau
was created in 1871, at the time of the Franco-Prussian War in which France was
defeated and the German states unified into the new country of Germany. The Deuxième Bureau was charged
with the task of informing the French army about the situation of the enemy
troops. The Second Directorate of the National Defence Staff, which combined
the formerly separate army, navy and air force specialists, would have been the
true successor to the Deuxième
Bureau. The Second Directorate was certainly influenced by the
traditions and doctrines of the Deuxième
Bureau, which was France’s Military Intelligence. General Charles de Gaulle, as
the leader of the Free French was partly responsible for the post-war shake-up
in French intelligence and counter-intelligence. Collaborative Vichy France had
dissolved the Deuxième
Bureau during the Second World War. The Deuxième Bureau features in Fleming’s CASINO ROYALE, at the end
of FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE and is mentioned in passing in THUNDERBALL.
THUNDERBALL also mentions that there was a Polish Deuxième Bureau before that country’s
defeat at the beginning of the Second World War in September 1939. If Fleming
had wanted to be strictly accurate and up-to-date with French intelligence, he
would have placed Mathis in the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de
Contre-Espionnage (“External Documentation and Counterespionage Service”) (SDECE)
which existed from 1947 until 1981, well within the boundaries of the timeline
of Fleming’s Bond novels. Colloquially known as “The Pool,” the SDECE was
replaced with the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE). Such inaccuracy and sometimes-deliberate
concealment of the real facts is the very nature of fiction. Such
considerations aside, ‘the Deuxième
Bureau’ has certainly got a much more romantic sound to it.
In the Bond novels of the 1950s
Fleming’s villains tended to be working for SMERSH or on behalf of the Soviets
in either a sponsored [i.e. Sir Hugo Drax] or freelance capacity [i.e. Dr.
Julius No]. The only notable exception to this general rule in the early novels
would be DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1956) which featured an American crime syndicate
(‘the Spangled Mob’), led by the brothers Spang, involved in a diamond
smuggling pipeline, which was Fleming’s foray into the territory of American
gangsterism. In the Bond novels of the 1960s, however, Fleming averted his
focus from the Soviets, as he rightly sensed that there would be changes in the
relationship between the Soviets and the Western powers, and he no longer
wished to go down that political route. Instead he created the international
terrorist organisation SPECTRE (The Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence,
Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) headed by Ernst Stavro Blofeld and introduced
it in THUNDERBALL (1961). ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (1963) and YOU ONLY
LIVE TWICE (1964) completed the ‘SPECTRE/Blofeld Trilogy,’ with THE SPY WHO
LOVED ME (1962) in between, being loosely a part of what could be called the
‘SPECTRE/Blofeld Quartet’ as in the chapter entitled ‘Bedtime Story’ Bond
relates his last mission in Canada on the trail of SPECTRE to Vivienne Michel,
the first-person narrator of the novel.
The subsequent films of the
novels, beginning with DR. NO, which was released in October 1962, took their
lead from Fleming’s change in the composition of his villains and replaced all
of the SMERSH and Russian backed villains of the novels of the 1950s with
either SPECTRE membership or independent status. As the Cold War thawed
slightly in the post-Cuban missile crisis détente after the events of the ‘13
days’ in October 1962 Russia was no longer seen as being in the ‘doghouse’ so
much. The Bond films therefore reflected the new political mood, and made
international terrorism in the form of SPECTRE the new villainous threat to the
world.
Despite this, SMERSH and the
attendant ‘Smiert Spionam’ made three appearances in the Bond films. Firstly,
Tatiana Romanova believes that she is working for the good of Mother Russia
when she reports to Colonel Rosa Klebb of SMERSH in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
(1963), but what she doesn’t know is that Klebb has defected to make her
services available to SPECTRE instead. Thus, the producers have avoided making
SMERSH the villains, as they were in the original novel and have instead carried
on from DR. NO where SPECTRE were the villains of the piece. SMERSH next makes
an appearance in Charles K. Feldman’s elaborate spoof of Fleming’s first novel
and Bond in general, CASINO ROYALE (1967). However, as SMERSH in the film are
responsible for the killing of sixteen KGB agents, and Fleming’s SMERSH was of
course a Soviet organisation, SMERSH is here presented as a SPECTRE-type
organisation under another name. The silhouetted presentation of SMERSH’s
leader, Dr. Noah (a.k.a. Jimmy Bond) adds to the attempt to ape Blofeld as he
had appeared in silhouette in the film THUNDERBALL (1965) under a half-closed
shutter.
The most important mention of
SMERSH, however, is made in a film where they have been disbanded for years. In
Timothy Dalton’s first outing as Bond, THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (1987), ‘Smiert
Spionam’ makes its only appearance in the Bond films as a phrase. However, the
keen observer will note that the spelling of this phrase has again changed,
this time surely due to inaccuracy. The KGB ‘defector’ General Georgi Koskov
tells M, Frederick Gray (the Minister of Defence) and Bond at the safe house in
Blayden that the new head of the KGB, General Leonid Pushkin was the reason
behind his ‘defection.’ Koskov maintains that Pushkin has a new ‘secret directive,’
namely ‘Smiert Spionom,’ which Bond explains to the Minister of Defence means
‘Death to Spies.’ Koskov says that this directive will mean the assassination
of British and American agents and that murder will follow murder. At his
following briefing from M for the assassination of Pushkin, Bond is shown the
brown paper tag that was found near 004’s body. An assassin in the employ of
American arms dealer Brad Whitaker had killed 004, and slid a tag with the
words ‘Smiert Spionom’ written in black marker pen onto the OO agent’s climbing
rope before abruptly severing it. Later in the film, in the scene where
Saunders is assassinated by being crushed in the path of an automatic door,
Bond finds a blue balloon with the words ‘Smiert Spionom’ again written in
black marker pen on it, floating towards him. The scriptwriters (Richard
Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson in this case) have obviously used the amended
spelling ‘Smiert Spionam’ featured in the novels FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE and
GOLDFINGER but have mistakenly transcribed it as ‘Smiert Spionom,’ replacing
the ‘a’ which was in all three versions of Fleming’s spelling of the Russian
word with an ‘o.’
When Bond holds Pushkin at
gunpoint in his hotel room, Pushkin says, “‘Smiert Spionom’ was a Beria
operation in Stalin’s time. It was deactivated twenty years ago.” It is unclear
whether Pushkin is here referring to the ‘real-world’ SMERSH or the SMERSH of
the ‘Bond universe.’ If he were referring to the ‘real-world’ SMERSH, then as
it was deactivated in 1946 and Pushkin is speaking in 1987, it would have been
more historically accurate for him to say that it was deactivated forty years
ago rather than twenty. However, if he is referring to the ‘Bond universe’
SMERSH of the Fleming Bond novels it is still actually thirty years before
1987. In THUNDERBALL we are told that SMERSH disbanded in 1958 in the list
detailing the SPECTRE membership, therefore SMERSH was not disbanded in the
time of Stalin’s leadership [he died in March 1953] but during the leadership
of his immediate successor, Nikita Khrushchev:
“three former members of SMERSH,
the Soviet organization for the execution of traitors and enemies of the State
that had been disbanded on the orders of Khrushchev in 1958, and replaced by
the Special Executive Department of the MWD…” (‘Thunderball,’ Ian Fleming, Pan
Books Ltd., London, 1963, p. 52)
General Pushkin’s comments in THE LIVING
DAYLIGHTS about Beria heading the SMERSH operation are true to the ‘Bond
universe’ as in CASINO ROYALE Fleming had wriiten in the dossier on SMERSH:
“Ranks above MWD (formerly NKVD)
and is believed to come under the personal direction of Beria.”
Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, whom General Pushkin
claims originated the ‘Smiert Spionom’ operation, was indeed the director of
the Soviet secret police, a forerunner of SMERSH called the People’s
Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), from 1938 to 1953, and he played a
large role in the purges of Stalin’s opponents. Soon after Stalin’s death in
March 1953 Beria, as one of the four deputy prime ministers and as Minister of
Internal Affairs, attempted to use his position as chief of the secret police
to succeed Stalin as the sole dictator of the Soviet Union. By July 1953 he had
been defeated in this aim by an anti-Beria coalition. He was then arrested,
deprived of all his government and party posts and convicted of being an
“imperialist agent” and of conducting “criminal antiparty and anti-state
activities.” He was executed after his trial in December 1953. In Fleming’s
FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE there is a telling reference made to Beria. Fleming
describes the scene inside SMERSH headquarters at No. 13 Stretenka Ulista:
“On the walls are four large pictures in gold
frames. In 1955, these were a portrait of Stalin over the door, one of Lenin
between the two windows and, facing each other on the other two walls,
portraits of Bulganin and, where until January 13th, 1954, a
portrait of Beria had hung, a portrait of army General Ivan Aleksandrovitch
Serov, Chief of the Committee of State Security.” (‘From Russia, With Love,’
Ian Fleming, Pan Books Ltd., London, 1964, pp. 27-8)
In the following chapter there is more
information given on Beria:
“Serov,
A Hero of the Soviet Union and a veteran of the famous predecessors of the MGB
– the Cheka, the Ogpu, the NKVD and the MVD – was in every respect a bigger man
than Beria. He had been directly behind the mass executions of the 1930s when a
million died, he had been meteur en scene of most of the great Moscow
show trials, he had originated the bloody genocide in the Central Caucasus in
February 1944, and it was he who had inspired the mass deportations from the
Baltic States and the kidnapping of the German atom scientists who had given
Russia her great technical leap forward after the war.
And Beria and all his court had gone to the
gallows, while General G. had been given SMERSH as his reward. As for Army
General Ivan Serov, he, with Bulganin and Khrushchev, now ruled Russia. One
day, he might even stand on the peak, alone. But, guessed General Vozdvishensky,
glancing up the table at the gleaming billiard-ball skull, probably with
General G. not far behind him.” (‘From Russia, With Love,’ Ian Fleming, Pan
Books Ltd., London, 1964, p. 34)
By providing accurate background information on
the various Soviet secret intelligence and military organizations, Fleming can
introduce and expand the role of SMERSH as a useful fictional device, and carry
his readers along on the fantasy. This fits in with Fleming’s belief in
deploying real place names and brand names throughout his novels to make the
sometimes more fantastical elements of the plot seem more real. It is a clear
sign of Fleming’s skill as a writer that he can use this literary device to
invoke such a great amount of verisimilitude. Nikolay Aleksandrovitch Bulganin,
mentioned in the quoted passages above, was, for example, the premier of the
Soviet Union from 1955 until 1958. The real SMERSH would have fitted into the
Russian KGB’s Third Chief Directorate. It had as its chief assignment the
maintenance of security within the armed forces and watching for any potential
traitors within the military and intelligence services. This was the actual
function that SMERSH had carried out during the Second World War, as Fleming
rightly noted in the file on SMERSH in CASINO ROYALE. This also fits in with
the mention of the ‘secret directive,’ Smiert Spionom of General
Pushkin, the head of the KGB, referred to by the ‘defecting’ General Koskov.
The KGB, or Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (“Committee of State
Security”) was the last of the major Soviet intelligence services created. Its
role resembled the American CIA and the FBI combined with the British Secret
Intelligence Service (MI6). The KGB was ordered into three directorates. The
First Chief Directorate was charged with carrying out counter-intelligence
missions to maintain internal security. Fleming’s description of SMERSH would
have probably fitted more aptly into the Second Chief Directorate, as it was
responsible for foreign intelligence and had a wide variety of subsections
dealing with different geographical areas and specific functions, such as that
of psychological warfare. By making Colonel General Grubozaboyschikov (‘General
G.’) the Head of SMERSH and Army General Ivan Aleksandrovitch Serov the Chief of
the Committee of State Security (i.e. Beria’s old job), Fleming is
acknowledging that there was not one centralized Soviet organ of
counter-espionage and terror like SMERSH, but actually a competing network of
military and secret counter-intelligence organizations under many different
titles. Fleming was clearly aware of the labyrinthine nature of Soviet
intelligence and the ever-changing series of names for organizations with much
the same role as their predecessors. Fleming explained away some of these
complexities in Soviet counter-intelligence in his Bond novels by saying that
SMERSH ranked “above MWD (formerly NKVD)” in CASINO ROYALE.
As an interesting endnote the new
spelling of Smiert Spionom for SMERSH used in THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS is
itself actually incorrectly spelt in the section on the film in Virgin Film’s
BOND FILMS (2002). In the entry for THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS under the heading ‘In
The Real World’ the history of SMERSH as a real-life organisation is briefly
outlined:
“Koskov terms his operations
against British agents Smiert Spionem, the Russian for ‘Death to Spies’.
When questioned General Pushkin claims that Smiert Spionem is an
abandoned operation dating ‘from Stalin’s time’.
He is correct, as in 1943 this
phrase, contracted to SMERSH, became the new name given to a new Soviet
military counter-intelligence service. The organisation was disbanded in 1946,
although there are countless examples – including the use of the name on
official paperwork – of Soviet personnel referring to themselves as working for
SMERSH into the mid-1950s.
SMERSH’s responsibilities
included the internal security of the Russian state, and its official duties
were roughly equivalent to those of MI5 in Britain, although its unsavoury
working methods invite comparisons with the Gestapo. SMERSH became infamous in
the West for its actions in the satellite communist countries of Eastern
Europe, especially Germany, immediately after World War Two. Ian Fleming used a
fictionalised version of the organisation as the main adversary of the literary
Bond. SMERSH agents appear in the novels Casino Royale, Live and Let
Die, Moonraker, From Russia with Love, Doctor No and Goldfinger.”
(‘Virgin Film: Bond Films,’ Jim Smith and Stephen Lavington, Virgin Books Ltd.,
London, 2002, p. 220)
In the same book in the section
on the 1967 spoof version of CASINO ROYALE under the heading of ‘The
Opposition’ there is another description given of SMERSH:
“SMERSH: SMERSH were the
villains of Fleming’s earliest Bond novels, including this one. In those it was
– as in reality – a branch of the Russian Secret Service whose name was a
contraction of the Russian for ‘Death to Spies’ – Smiert Spionem (see
The Living Daylights). Here SMERSH is presented as an international
criminal organisation more like SPECTRE than anything else. Presumably SPECTRE
was avoided in order to prevent Kevin McClory becoming involved in the murky
legal quagmire surrounding this project.” (‘Virgin Film: Bond Films,’ Jim Smith
and Stephen Lavington, Virgin Books Ltd., London, 2002, p. 71)
By incorrectly labelling SMERSH
as derived from the Russian phrase ‘Smiert Spionem’ instead of the
spelling Smyert Shpionam used in the novel of CASINO ROYALE on which the
spoof is ‘suggested,’ the writers of BOND FILMS have clearly become confused
with the incorrect spelling used in THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS film, namely that of Smiert
Spionom, which is evidently derived from Fleming’s later adapted spelling
of the phrase, Smiert Spionam, used in the later novels which feature
SMERSH, namely FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE and GOLDFINGER. The writers incorrect
spelling of the Russian phrase is therefore not just a one-off confined to the
incorrect copying of the spelling used in THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS film, but also
to refer to the spelling of the phrase in Fleming’s novels. This confusion over
the spelling of the Russian for ‘Death to Spies’ aptly illustrates the
complexities surrounding the phrase’s use throughout the whole literary and
cinematic Bond canon, and even in Bond commentaries and criticism.
According to a source on the
Internet, the phrase from which SMERSH actually derives its name is, in
Russian, “C myert shpionam!” and this was the motto of the NKVD, a forerunner
of the KGB, officially known as “Voyenna Kontra Razvedka” (Military Counter-Intelligence).
As the poster “Jevez” explains on the file on SMERSH on the Bond website
‘Universal Exports’:
“The word, “shpionam” is both the
plural (“shpion” is the singular), and has the case-ending which denotes its
use as the object of a preposition. Since no preposition occurs immediately
prior to the word “shpionam”, it is understood that the preposition “to” is
intended. Hence, the motto has a translation of “with death to spies”. When it
is spoken in Russian, it is said so quickly that, to non-Russian trained ears,
it appears to sound like “smyert shpionam”, and that is how Fleming
wrote it. He wasn’t alone in that, as both our CIA, and the British Ministry of
Intelligence listed the radical branch of the VKR by that name. It was a very
real organization, until the fellows from SMERSH got a little out of hand and
began killing foreign spies in wholesale lots – very much against the typical
method of operation of intelligence units on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
Both the CIA and the MI began massive retaliations, until Khrushchev kicked up
a fuss about it. When told by our ambassadors what was actually going on, he
ordered the VKR entirely disbanded, immediately.”
This seems to fit with the theory
expounded above that Fleming might have anglicised the spelling of the Cyrillic
phrase meaning ‘Death to Spies’. It could also be that he misheard it or read a
report in which it was spelt “Smyert Shpionam.”
A Greek monk, now called St. Cyril (who features as a p[lot point in the
1981 film FOR YOUR EYES ONLY) who went over the Caucasus Mountains to bring the
gospel of Jesus Christ to the peoples there, created the Russian, or Cyrillic
alphabet. The monks that went there found that although the people had a
well-developed spoken language they had no comparable form of writing. They
therefore took the Greek and Roman letters and revised them to represent the
different phonetic sounds of the spoken Russian language. This explains why
some of the letters in the Russian alphabet look almost identical to the Greek
letters. For example, the letter carved by the SMERSH executioner onto the back
of Bond’s hand in CASINO ROYALE was the Cyrillic letter for SH – denoting
‘shpion,’ a spy. This letter resembles an inverted M with a tail. As the
Russian letter ‘C’ is always pronounced softly and is also a preposition
meaning either “to” or “with,” it is easy to see why Fleming mistakenly thought
that the three-word phrase “C myert Shpionam!” meaning “With Death to Spies!”
was spelt in only two words, “Smyert Shpionam” and meant “Death to Spies.”
Interestingly, Khrushchev’s
disbandment of the VKR, which contained the radical branch, called SMERSH at
its core, after the reports of the killings of foreign spies, neatly matches
Fleming’s passage in THUNDERBALL on the complexion of SPECTRE quoted above
where he reveals that SMERSH “had been disbanded on the orders of Khrushchev in
1958, and replaced by the Special Executive Department of the MWD…” It appears
that there was a contemporary precedent for Fleming’s decision to disband
SMERSH and replace it with the international terrorist organisation SPECTRE,
quite beside the fact that Russia was by then (1961) starting to come out of
the ‘doghouse’ a little.
Overall then, throughout
Fleming’s novels, the continuation novels and the films, there have been four
separate spellings of the Russian for the phrase ‘Death to Spies,’ with no real
indication as to why changes in the spelling of the phrase were made or which
spelling is taken to be the most accurate, although the spelling ‘Smiert
Spionam’ turns up most throughout the novels, despite being spelt
incorrectly in the film of THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS. All of the confusion over the
accurate spelling of the phrase that gives its name to SMERSH may have in fact
been down to Ian Fleming’s initial mishearing and misspelling of the words. The
history of the spelling of the Russian phrase in the Bond novels, films and
film guidebooks certainly reveals some interesting and unexplained
inconsistencies.
TBB Article No. 12
© The Bondologist Blog, 2007.
