SMERSH (James Bond)


SMERSH is a Soviet counterintelligence agency featured in Ian Fleming's early James Bond novels as agent 007's nemesis. It is a fictionalised version of SMERSH, which existed from 1943 to 1946. The name is a portmanteau of two Russian words: "SMERt' SHpionam" , meaning "Death to Spies".
Though the real SMERSH was officially subsumed by the MGB in 1946, the novels portray SMERSH as a massive counterintelligence organisation which continues operating into later decades. In this it more greatly resembles the real-life KGB. Fleming's SMERSH aims its operatives abroad for the subversion of the West, with the additional goal of killing Western spies, particularly James Bond of SIS. SMERSH's headquarters are variously stated to be in Leningrad or in Moscow, Soviet Union.
In the Bond film series, SMERSH is usually replaced with SPECTRE – a global terrorist organisation.

Departmental overview

The novel Casino Royale breaks SMERSH down into five departments or отделы :

Novels

Within the world of James Bond, SMERSH is a Soviet counterintelligence agency that is a recurring threat to him and the British Secret Service. In Casino Royale, the first Bond novel, SMERSH is described as the most powerful and feared organisation in the Soviet Union, with its main headquarters in Leningrad. It was believed to be under the personal direction of Lavrentiy Beria and was tasked with "the elimination of all forms of treachery and back-sliding within the various branches of the Soviet Secret Service and Secret Police at home and abroad". The organisation was suspected of having carried out Leon Trotsky's assassination in 1940. While it was hugely expanded during World War II to deal with treachery among Soviet forces, it was purged after the war and by the time of Casino Royale was believed "to consist of only a few hundred operatives of very high quality", only one of whom had ever been captured by British agents. By the time of From Russia, with Love, however, Fleming describes SMERSH as having 40,000 agents and being based in Moscow rather than in Leningrad.
SMERSH makes its first impact on Bond in Casino Royale, in which the Communist agent Le Chiffre loses a large sum of money entrusted to him by the organisation. An agent kills him and cuts a Sha, the initial Cyrillic letter of "Špion" into the back of Bond's right hand.. Then, at the end of the novel, Bond's lover and fellow agent Vesper Lynd—in fact a Soviet double agent—commits suicide when she learns that a SMERSH agent has her under surveillance and that the organisation is planning to kill her. As a result of her death, Bond swears vengeance upon SMERSH, which he calls "the threat behind the spies, the threat that made them spy". His revenge begins in the second novel, Live and Let Die, wherein he becomes highly interested in disrupting Mr. Big's financing of Soviet operations upon learning that he is a SMERSH agent. SMERSH retaliates in From Russia, with Love, issuing a death warrant for the immediate execution of James Bond. SMERSH goes to great lengths in an effort to achieve three goals: kill Bond, cause an embarrassing scandal for the British intelligence community, and kill its code-breaking experts with a booby-trapped encryption machine. The first part of From Russia, with Love is presented entirely from SMERSH's point of view, depicting the interplay between various agents and operatives and the meticulous preparations for killing Bond, and a large part of the book passes before Bond confronts any SMERSH personnel directly. Bond faces SMERSH again in Goldfinger after learning that Auric Goldfinger, the agency's treasurer, is planning to steal the gold bullion stored at Fort Knox and defect to the Soviet Union with it.
After Goldfinger, SMERSH is mentioned only fleetingly, usually in reference to having been disbanded. In Thunderball, three former members of SMERSH joined and became top members of the apolitical criminal organization, SPECTRE.
In the continuation novels, however, SMERSH returns as an organisation essentially renamed and reorganised within Soviet intelligence. They are first mentioned again in the novelization of The Spy Who Loved Me, although replaced by KGB in the film. In John Gardner's series of Bond novels, SMERSH is renamed Department V in Icebreaker. They return in a larger role in No Deals, Mr. Bond, renamed Department Eight, Directorate S, a KGB sub-section.

Films

In the film series, Bond's archenemy became SPECTRE, which first appeared in Fleming's novel Thunderball. SPECTRE is introduced in the first film, Dr. No, in which Julius No explains to Bond that it is the acronym for the SPecial Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion, the four great cornerstones of power. Film versions of novels where SMERSH appears substituted either SPECTRE or independent villains.
Although twice referred to, SMERSH never appears in the official film series; first, in From Russia with Love, Bond initially thinks he is fighting SMERSH, only to learn that the villains are from SPECTRE, including Rosa Klebb, the former head of operations for SMERSH who has secretly defected to SPECTRE. Bond's love interest Tatiana Romanova says she knows Klebb as SMERSH's head of operations, and obeys her orders, presuming them from SMERSH. Second, The Living Daylights features a faked SMERSH re-activation. Throughout, it is referred to with its full name, Smiert Spionam, rather than the better-known acronym; General Pushkin, then head of KGB, says it has been inoperative for 20 years. SMERSH is also an element in the 1967 spoofed film adaptation of Casino Royale that centres upon Le Chiffre's attempted recovery of SMERSH monies via baccarat at the Royale casino.
In the 2006 film adaptation of Casino Royale, SMERSH's role in the plot is filled by a terrorist organisation called Quantum which in the later film Spectre was revealed to be a subgroup of SPECTRE.

Appearances

;Novels:
;Films:
Notable villains in the Bond novels who were SMERSH agents or associates, included:
A number of other fictional spy organisations appear to be loosely based on SMERSH, some of them parodies, e.g., THRUSH in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Schlecht in The Intelligence Men, and STENCH in Carry On Spying.