During the Great Patriotic War (from October 1941 till May 1943) Bashkir ASSR was hosting the evacuated Comintern Executive Committee, RV-1 radio station and a number of special Comintern schools.
Comintern Executive Committee was located in Ufa at Pioneers Palace on the cross-roads of Lenin and Revolutsionnaya Str. It was occupied by Georgiy Dimitrov, Comintern Executive Committee General Secretary, Palmiro Togliatti, Wilhelm Pieck, Dolores Ibárruri, Klement Gottwald, Maurice Thorez, Walter Ulbricht, Otto Wille Kuusinen and other well-known heads of foreign communistic parties. Bashkir regional party committee led by P. Anoshin and Bashkir International Red Aid regional party committee led by P. Kagitin placed and facilitated the members of Comintern. Comintern ExCom was secured by means of S. Kolesnikov, officer of NKVD Directorate.
The provision of the Bashkir ASSR People’s Commissars Special Meeting dated the 12th of November 1941 placed a reserve RV No. 1 radio station named after Comintern in the building of the former Forestry Vocation School in Glumilino village. This station had a twin-station in Dmitrievka village of Ufimskiy district of Bashkiria. On the 1st of May Palmiro Togliatti launched broadcasting from Ufa radio station named after Comintern in 18 European languages. Hristo Botev channel was broadcasting in Bulgaria, Tadeusz Kościuszko channel was for Poland, Lajos Kossuth was a channel for Hungary. There also were Free Yugoslavia and German People’s Transmitter channels.
On the 26th of October 1941 a special unified Comintern school was established in Kushnarenkovo village. Its headmaster was Mikhailov (real name - Ruben Levi Abramov). The school was training reconnaissance agents to work in the USSR, Eastern and Western Europe territories occupied by Nazi. The second radio school was in Ufa (Headmaster N. Tyapkin). Between 1941 and 1943 the special school trained over 40 unauthorized reconnaissance agents sent to the opponent’s rear for reconnaissance and sabotage purposes.
Well-known students of the special schools are Marcus Wolf (Head of East Germany Stasi State Security Service), Johann Weingard (Richard Sorge’s radio operator), Yu. Kolesnikov (Hero of Russia, head of guerilla movement), Fransin Fromon (a participant of Soviet-British special operation Ice Axe), Katya Niederkirchner, Theodor Winter, Gerchard Kennen (participants of Red Orchestra communication operation) and others.
