Paradoxically, in the USSR, speech encoders appeared before the technique for classifying text telegraph messages. The pioneers in this area were still engineers from Ostechbyuro, who were the first to create a layout of a disk encoder. The first copies of operating encryption machines, which in many respects differ from foreign samples, were proposed by the domestic engineer Ivan Pavlovich Volosk in 1932.
Ivan Pavlovich Volosok. Head of the 2nd section of the 8th department of the headquarters of the Red Army, chief designer of the first domestic serial encryption equipment V-4 in 1935-1938, laureate of the Stalin Prize
One of them was a cumbersome and not very reliable technique that received the sonorous name ShMV-1 (the Volosk 1 encryption machine). Its work was based on the principle of imposing a gamma (a random sequence of characters) on a combination of plain text characters, which ultimately created an illegible cryptogram, which at that time was almost impossible to crack. On the punched tape were marked signs of a random scale, which was made on a special device under the code "X". All work on this topic was carried out in the 8th department of the General Staff of the Red Army, which was organized in 1931. To replace ShMV-1, on which new solutions were mostly tested, in 1934 came the V-4 cipher machine. After four years of improvements and trial operation at the plant No. 209 named after. AA Kulakova (a carpenter of the plant, who died a hero in clashes with the White Guards on the Don), the first serial copies were assembled. In this regard, IP Volosok wrote: "The complexity of the task ahead was that, since previously there was no encryption technology in the country at all, they had to be guided only by themselves." The production was launched, but already in 1939 the engineer Nikolai Mikhailovich Sharygin carried out a serious modernization of Volosk's brainchild. The new device was named M-100 "Spectrum" and since 1940 was produced in parallel with the prototype. The complete M-100 weighed an impressive 141 kg and consisted of three key assemblies: a keyboard with a contact group, a tape pulling mechanism with a transmitter, and a special keyboard attachment. The energy consumption level of all these mechanics is very clearly displayed by the mass of the batteries - 32 kg. Despite such gigantic mass-dimensional parameters, "Spectrum" was quite tolerably used in real hostilities: in Spain in 1939, on Lake Khasan in 1938, on Khalkin-Gol in 1939 and during the Soviet-Finnish war. The level of awareness of contemporaries regarding the domestic school of encryption is evidenced by the fact that the combat use of the M-100 and B-4 has not yet been fully declassified. In this regard, there is an assumption that the first use on the battlefield of the Soviet encryption technology survived only in 1939. Of course, such "monsters" saw the battlefield very conditionally - encrypted communication was carried out between the General Staff and the headquarters of the armies. The experience of using in the troops was comprehended (Volosok personally supervised the operation) and it was decided to increase the mobility of the encryption units at the front. In 1939, 100 Studebaker buses were purchased in the United States at once, which later became mobile special devices of the encryption service. Receiving and receiving telegrams in such "rooms" became possible even during the march of units.
Rytov Valentin Nikolaevich. Chief designer of nine encryption-coding machines and equipment with disk encoders in the period from 1938 to 1967. Stalin Prize Laureate
Plant No. 209 also became the ancestor of a new direction of domestic encryption technology - the production of disk encryptors. In this connection, engineer Valentin Nikolaevich Rytov worked on the problem of replacing manual ciphers in the operational link army-corps-division. It was possible to create a compact device weighing 19 kg, working on multi-alphabetic encryption. The name of the new product was given to K-37 "Kristall" and was launched into series in 1939 with a production plan of 100 units per year. They produced a typewriter in Leningrad, then evacuated to Sverdlovsk (plant number 707), and in 1947 they discontinued production.
K-37 "Crystal"
The total number of text encryption machines before the war in the USSR was about 246 copies, of which 150 were of the K-37 type, the rest of the M-100. 1857 people of the encryption service personnel worked with this technique. On average, the speed of transmission and processing of encoded information on the war fronts increased 5-6 times, and there are no documented facts of hacking of this equipment by the Germans.
This is not the end of the history of text encoders, since in 1939, in the bowels of the mentioned plant No. 209, prototypes of equipment for coding telegraph messages were developed. It was the S-308 (the most massive later) for the Bodo apparatus and the S-309 for the Soviet telegraph ST-35, the production of which was transferred to Sverdlovsk at the mentioned plant # 707 during the war. The C-307 was also developed as a field coding attachment for a battery-powered telegraph machine and the C-306 for connection to the classic Morse code (mains power). This whole story was the result of a technical assignment that came to the plant in December 1938 from the Research Institute of Communications and Special Equipment of the Red Army named after V. I. K. E. Voroshilov. Also, just before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, in 1940, a group of design engineer P. A. Sudakov developed a military direct-printing start-stop telegraph apparatus with a removable encryption unit NT-20.
Telegraph direct-printing apparatus Bodo (2BD-41) double telegraphy. Distributor table. USSR, 1940s
Telegraph direct-printing apparatus Bodo (2BD-41) double telegraphy. Office equipment table. USSR, 1940s
Telegraph direct-printing apparatus Bodo (2BD-41) double telegraphy. Transmitter table. USSR, 1934
Telegraph direct-printing apparatus Bodo (2BD-41) double telegraphy. Receiver table. USSR, 1940s
It was used in accordance with the order of the NCO # 0095, which directly prohibited the transmission of plain text through the Bodo apparatus. Particularly difficult was the device under the code "Owl", developed at the Institute No. 56 of the People's Commissariat of the Electrical Industry in 1944. The scheme was based on the use of special coding, which was intended to close the HF channels formed by the NVChT-42 "Falcon" technique in the spectrum up to 10 kHz. NVChT-42 is a field channel-forming equipment that allows organizing high-frequency communication via copper and iron circuits, as well as via cable. This class also includes the "Neva" vehicles, which have been classified on the Moscow-Leningrad line since the summer of 1944. The beauty of the "Neva" was that it could be used on the entire network of government communications, since it was interfaced with all types of HF channel-forming equipment.
In what operating conditions did text encryption technology work during the war years? For example: the 8th Directorate of the Red Army alone processed more than 1600 thousand cipher telegrams and codograms in four years! The daily load on the front headquarters was considered normal within 400 cipher programs, and the army headquarters - up to 60. The Cipher Service Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army sent over 3200 thousand sets of ciphers to the fronts for the entire period of the Great Patriotic War.
Specialists of the 8th Directorate of the General Staff, in addition to creating new types of equipment, were engaged in training encryptors at the fronts. So, only the designer M. S. Kozlov was sent to the troops 32 times during the war. The designer became famous even before the war, when in 1937 he took part in the development of the M-101 "Izumrud" encryption machine, which favorably differed from its predecessors in its compactness and lightness. Later, it was Kozlov's group that took out in May 1945 from Karlhorst and Potsdam, as part of reparations, three wagons of special equipment, which were later used in workshops for the repair of domestic encryption and coding equipment. It is noteworthy that after the war, diving units were created in the navy, exclusively engaged in examining sunken German ships in order to search for everything related to encryption of communication. Comprehension of the cipher experience of Nazi Germany became a definite milestone in the Russian engineering school of cryptographers.
