Page "GRU" Paragraph 5

" As originally established, the Registration Department was not directly subordinate to the General Staff ( at the time called the Red Army Field Staff — Polevoi Shtab ).

Administratively, it was the Third Department of the Field Staff's Operations Directorate.

In July 1920, the RU was made the second of four main departments in the Operations Directorate.

Until 1921, it was usually called the Registrupr ( Registration Department ).

That year, following the Soviet-Polish War, it was elevated in status to become the Second ( Intelligence ) Directorate of the Red Army Staff, and was thereafter known as the Razvedupr.

This probably resulted from its new primary peacetime responsibilities as the main source of foreign intelligence for the Soviet leadership.

As part of a major re-organization of the Red Army, sometime in 1925 or 1926 the RU ( then Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenye ) became the Fourth ( Intelligence ) Directorate of the Red Army Staff, and was thereafter also known simply as the " Fourth Department.

" Throughout most of the interwar period, the men and women who worked for Red Army Intelligence called it either the Fourth Department, the Intelligence Service, the Razvedupr, or the RU .[...

] As a result of the re-organization 1926, carried out in part to break up Trotsky's hold on the army, the Fourth Department seems to have been placed directly under the control of the State Defense Council ( Gosudarstvennaia komissiia oborony, or GKO ), the successor of the RVSR.

Thereafter its analysis and reports went directly to the GKO and Politburo, even apparently bypassing the Red Army Staff.