Fialka M 125 Russian Electromechanical Cipher Machine

M-125 Fialka electromechanical wheel cipher machine USSR rotor cipher machine The M-125, code name Fialka (Russian: ФИАЛКА), was an electromechanical wheel cipher machine, developed in the USSR shortly after the Second World War. It was first introduced in 1956 and quickly became a favorite of the Warsaw Pact and some allied countries, like Cuba. The device is similar to the American SIGABA, the KL-7 and, to a lesser extent, the Enigma. For this reason, the machine is sometimes called the Russian Enigma. The original M-125 was replaced by the M-125-3M in the mid-1960s and remained in service until the early 1990s. The machine has 10 cipher rotors, each with 30 contacts on each side. Adjacent rotors move in opposite directions. In addition, the machine has a card reader in which a new punched key card has been installed daily. In addition, it has a printer, a tape reader and a tape punch. Each Warsaw Pact country had its own customized version of Fialka, adapted to the local language. This means that each country had its own keyboard and printhead. In addition, the encoder wheel wiring is different for each country. The rest of the machine is identical. Fialka M-125-3 with open cover Most machines can be used for messages in Latin and Cyrillic (Russian) script. Although the Latin alphabet was different for each country, the Cyrillic alphabet had no punctuation marks and was identical across all machines, making them interoperable when a common wheel set was used. A standard version - only Russian - also existed. It was used by local services of the USSR such as the KGB. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the decline and led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the withdrawal of the Russians from the countries behind the Iron Curtain, the remaining Fialka machines were taken over and later destroyed. Fortunately, some machines miraculously escaped demolition, which allows us to present some details here. Fialka is a Russian word meaning violet; a rather pretty little flower. Around 1956, the Russian army introduced a completely new cipher machine, which received the code name FIALKA. Two basic versions of the machine are known to exist: M-125 and M-125-3M, with country-specific variants of each model. In principle, the machine is called M-125, while Fialka is the name of the encryption procedure. However, as most people call the machine Fialka, we have also used this name on this website. Here are two examples. The one on the left is a basic M-125. The older M-125 and later M-125-3 side-by-side (Polish versions shown here) The design of the Fialka is clearly based on the famous Enigma machine, which was used by the German armed forces during World War II . Like the Enigma, it uses electromechanical cipher wheels to scramble letters typed on the keyboard. Each time a key is pressed, the wheels move to a new position, effectively changing the wiring and, therefore, the substitution of the alphabet for each letter entered. And that's where the similarity to the Enigma ends. Rather than presenting the output on a lamp panel, the Fialka prints the coded letter directly onto a strip of paper. At the same time, it can punch the letter in the same strip of paper in a 5-bit digital code, much like the Baudot code of a teleprinter. In addition, Fialka is equipped with a paper tape transmitter which can be used to transmit or duplicate a message. During World War II, the Russians clearly took notice of the Enigma's design flaws and operating procedures, as they implemented the following improvements: 10 wheels, instead of 3 or 4 on the Enigma , More frequent wheel changes, Adjacent wheels move in opposite directions, Wheel wiring can be changed in the field (from 1978), A punched card is used to replace the Steckerbrett, A letter can be encoded on itself (impossible on Enigma). In addition to this, the following additional features are available: The use of letters, numbers and punctuation marks (M-125-3 only), Ability to duplicate a perforated paper strip, Suitable as a standard teleprinter (in plain text mode), Supports Russian (Cyrillic) and Latin alphabets. models Two basic models of the machine are known. They are often referred to as the old model and the new model. Additionally, country-specific variants were created for each country in which the M-125 was used. For the old model this involved wiring the cipher wheels, but for the new model this also involved the layout of the keyboard (language dependent) and printhead