This study focuses on Soviet counterinsurgency strategy. However, it would be incomplete without a brief overview of the tactical tools the security agencies employed to suppress resistance. Counterinsurgents rejecting indiscriminate repressions face three major challenges: They have to spot permanently operating guerrilla bands, separate part-time rebels from civilians, and identify insurgent infrastructure. When these tasks are solved, the military superiority of regular forces makes the destruction of guerrillas easy. Intelligence is vital for the success of counterinsurgency. In rural regions with well-entrenched rebellion, police are usually overstretched and have insufficient manpower to maintain permanent surveillance over suspects. Instead, they receive intelligence from informers, undercover agents, and suspects whom they interrogate. In addition to intelligence acquisition, agents perform a variety of other missions: They assassinate rebel leaders, undermine the morale of rank and file, discredit guerrillas among their comrades and civilians, and help the police in eradicating treason within their structures. Meanwhile, the security forces raid guerrilla bases pinpointed by their agents, arrest members of the insurgent infrastructure identified by informers, and intimidate civilian sympathizers of the resistance into neutrality. The Soviet police employed all these methods with some sophistication, considerable flexibility, and extreme ruthlessness, seeking to focus the repressions on enemies of the regime while sparing apathetic, even unfriendly, “class allies” – the rural majority.