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The Administration of Special Tasks was a sub-section within the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, NKVD, charged with eliminating the enemies of Joseph Stalin.

Origins
The concept of killing political dissidents abroad was far from new to the Cheka.

Their security apparatus had long used methods of kidnap, torture and assassination against those it perceived as a threat to the state. Throughout the 1920's onward, various opposition figures to the new Soviet state were brutally killed across the globe. This campaign of targeted killings struck everyone from the Mensheviks to the White Army emigres and nationalists from across the Russian imperial periphery.

Some of the more prominent incidents include the unsolved murders of Russian Cossack leader Alexander Dutov (1921), Soviet trade unionist Isay Khurgin (1925), White Army commander Pyotr Wrangel (1928) and Cuban Communist activist Julio Mella (1929).

, anti-Bolshevik emigre leader Gen. Alexander Kutepov (1930), former Georgian Prime Minister Noe Ramishvili (1930), British Foreign Office informant Ernest Holloway Oldham (1933), NKVD rezident Valentin Markin (1934)

There is also the case of Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist, who had brought international attention to

The Great Terror
Originally established in December of 1936, the AST was created by Nikolai Yezhov as a tool of eliminating those deemed disloyal to the Stalinist view of socialism.

Mikhail Frinovsky would call Slutsky into his office at the Lubyanka.

While Frinovsky was speaking with him, an NKVD officer, Leonid Zakovsky, emerged from behind and covered Slutsky's face with a cloth covered in chloroform. A now incapacitated Slutsky was left in his chair and had prussic acid injected into his right arm.

Seen as a Yezhov loyalist, Spigelglas was placed under arrest on November 2nd, 1938. He would later confess to harboring anti-Soviet sentiments, following months of intense torture. Spigelglas would be tried and sentenced to death on November 2nd, 1940. His execution would not come until January 29th of the following year.

Mobile Group
Due to the sensitive nature of their assignments, AST officers were often collectively deployed in lesser numbers. This unit of wandering killers were known as the 'Mobile Group'. Each one was typically quite small in size, often compromising no more than three to four operatives at any given time.

Comprised of trained assassins and veteran spies, the Mobile Group would be sent throughout the European continent in search of Soviet enemies.

Resistance in WWII
During the outbreak of the Second World War,

Lavrenti Beria had found a new purpose for the Administration of Special Tasks.

The AST deployed hundreds of its operatives behind enemy lines to help train local Soviet partisans and sabotage German forces wherever possible.

Directors

 * Mikhail Frinovsky (1936-1938)
 * ?? (1938-19??)
 * Pavel Sudoplatov (1941-19??)

Operations

 * January 25th, 1937: assassination of Dimitri Navachine
 * ???, 1937: execution of Jose Robles
 * April 9th, 1937: kidnapping of Mark Rein
 * June 3rd, 1937: disappearance of Juliet Stuart Poyntz
 * June 20th, 1937: the torture murder of Andreu Nin Pérez
 * July 28th, 1937: the abduction of Erwin Wolf
 * August ??, 1937: disappearance of Hans David Freund
 * August ??, 1937: killing of Georges Agabekov
 * September 4th, 1937: driveby shooting of Ignace Reiss
 * September 22nd, 1937: kidnapping of Gen. Yevgeny Miller
 * September 23rd, 1937: abduction and murder of Kurt Landau
 * February 16th, 1938: pre-operative mortality of Lev Sedov
 * February 17th, 1938: the poisoning of Abram Slutsky
 * May 23, 1938: Yevhen Konovalets was blown up with a box of explosive chocolates
 * August 13th, 1938: murder of Rudolf Klement
 * July 15th, 1939: killing of Zinaida Reich
 * September 12th, 1939: Fyodor Raskolnikov mysteriously fell out his hospital window
 * May 24nd, 1940: kidnap and killing of Robert Sheldon Harte
 * June ??, 1940: garroting of Willi Münzenberg
 * August 21st, 1940: the assassination of Leon Trotsky
 * December 2nd, 1940: poisoning of Nikolai Koltsov
 * February 10th, 1941: alleged suicide of Walter Krivitsky
 * November 20th, 1941: untimely death of Arkadi Maslow
 * January 8th, 1942: mortal wounding of Konstantin Vokskoboinik
 * May 8, 1942nd: the murder of Sandalio Junco
 * September 20th, 1943: the dual-killing of Hans Gehl and Adolf Winter
 * November 15th, 1943: the abduction and execution of Maj. Gen. Max Ilgen
 * February 12th, 1945: shooting of Dmytro Klyachkivsky
 * August ??, 1945: kidnapping of Konstantin Volkov and Zoya Volkov
 * October 31st, 1947: poisoning of Bishop Theodore Romzha
 * November 17th, 1947: untimely death of Victor Serge from a heart attack
 * December 20th, 1948: alleged suicide of Laurence Duggan
 * February 14th, 1950: alleged suicide of Laird Shields Goldsborough
 * ????, 1950: drowning of Lucy Oldham
 * March 4th, 1953: poisoning of Wolfgang Salus

Known Members

 * 1936-1938 Sergey Spigelglas, Chief of the Mobile Group and deputy Head of the NKVD's Foreign Department
 * 1929-1938 Yakov Serebryansky, Head of the AST's French Section and veteran Soviet assassin
 * 1936-1938 Nikolai Skoblin, former White Army general and anti-Bolshevik dissident
 * 1936-1937 Nadezhda Plevitskaya, famous Russian singer and wife of Nikolai Skoblin
 * 1936-1942 Nahum Eitingon, Soviet intelligence officer and spymaster
 * 1935-1938 Georgy Kosenko, NKVD rezident in Paris
 * 1938-1944 Nikolai Kuznetsov, NKVD field operative and Soviet partisan
 * 1937-1937 Sergei Efron, Russian emigre, poet and ex-White Army officer
 * 1936-1944 Aleksandr Korotkov, Soviet reconnaissance agent
 * 1937-1941 Hans Brusse, Dutch Communist and Soviet spy
 * 1937-1940 Ramon Mercader, Spanish Communist and undercover NKVD operative
 * 1936-1940 Caridad Mercader, Cuban Communist and NKVD agent
 * 1936-1938 Alexander Orlov, NKVD rezident during the Spanish Civil War
 * 1936-1938 Georgy Kosenko, senior-most NKVD operative in Paris
 * 1936-1945 Mark Zborowski, secretary to and personal friend of Lev Sedov
 * 1927-1941 Mustafa Golubić, Yugoslav Communist partisan and NKVD operative
 * 1937-1937 Vladimir Pravdin, Soviet intelligence officer
 * 1940-1940 David Alfaro Siqueiros, Mexican abstract painter and Soviet sympathizer
 * 1937-1940 Iosif Grigulevich, Soviet secret police officer
 * 1936-1942 Vittorio Vidali, Comintern operative and assassin
 * 1937-1938 Getrude Schildbach, German Communist and informant of the NKVD

Suspected

 * 1936-19?? Max Eitingon, renowned psychoanalyst and mental health practitioner
 * 1937-19?? 'The Turk', unknown informant and alleged accomplice in the death of Rudolf Klement
 * 1937-19?? Panteleimon Takhchiyanov, NKVD officer and alleged killer of Dimitri Navachine

Operations

 * September ??, 1954: mysterious drowning of Leonid Karas
 * November 22nd, 1954: garroting of Abdurrahman Fatalibeyli
 * February 23rd, 1957: poisoning of Danylo Skoropadskyi
 * October 10th, 1957: murder of Lev Rebet with a gas-powered pistol
 * October 15th, 1959: killing of Stepan Bandera using that same weapon
 * February 17th, 1961: suspicious car crash, killing Reino Häyhänen
 * October ...., 1964: maiming of Horst Schwinkmann
 * February 25th, 1966: alleged suicide of Victor Kravchenko
 * November 17th, 1970: murder of Alla Horska
 * August 8th, 1971: failed poisoning of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
 * May 10th, 1978: alleged suicide of Leongina Shevchenko
 * September 11th, 1978: killing of Georgi Markov via a Bulgarian umbrella
 * ????, 1982: untimely death of Sean Bourke/ suspected poisoning