Mercenary agent (also assassin agent)
The task of the agents working for the state security organs was to murder the leaders of the Forest Brothers’ groups or more active individual Forest Bothers, or their physical liquidation. According to the KGB such agents were usually recruited from among the ‘Soviet patriots’. In Western Ukraine and the Baltic countries between 1940 and 1950, however, they were mostly recruited among the Forest Brothers themselves, or in other words – ‘members of nationalist underground organisations’. Compromising material was often used, for example if the person or his close relative had served in the Defence League, German army, Home Guard etc. Refusing to cooperate could mean persecution.
The mercenaries usually acted on their own. They infiltrated a group of Forest Brothers or gained the trust of an individual Forest Brother. At a convenient moment the target was killed, often while he was asleep, having been drugged before with sleeping pills in vodka or something similar.
The Soviet security organs in Estonia were requested to constantly recruit and use the assassins, but their number was nevertheless quite modest. In its heyday in 1952 the Estonian SSR State Security Ministry had 23 such agents on its payroll. According the archive documents, it is probable that in the post WW II decade, about 50-60 hired KGB assassins operated in Estonia.
