Immersed In Red

by Mike Shotwell

  Each of these agents not only provided classified documents to Soviet intelligence, but was involved in political influence operations as well. Membership was highly secretive, with many enrollees eventually infiltrating into higher levels of the United States government during World War II.

  Another close political ally in the Farmer-Labor Party (later the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, DFLP) was James “Jim” Youngdale. Along with Nat Ross and Orville, the three were the chief political strategists for the DFLP. Youngdale was described as a “protégé” of Elmer Benson. He ran in Minnesota’s 7th District as a DFLP candidate for the US House of Representatives in the 1948 elections and was narrowly defeated, receiving 47.5% of the vote. He was a professor at Mankato State College (now known as Minnesota State University, Mankato), and wrote books on populism and Minnesota radical politics. Orville always referred to Jim as a person he mentored. He was young, vigorous and likeable, and struck me as one of the more congenial persons in Orville’s crowd of friends.

  Youngdale’s political fortunes were pretty well shattered after the 1948 Minnesota elections when Hubert Humphrey emerged dominant with a strong anti-communist platform. Nevertheless, he remained a committed leftist for the rest of his life. I’m uncertain whether Youngdale had a Communist Party affiliation; however, it bears repeating that I cannot remember a single close friend of Orville’s who did not have some kind of association with the Party and the left.

  Harold and Faye Glasser had frequent contact with Orville and my mother, and though I have little personal recollection of them, Harold and Faye were always held in high esteem and were frequently mentioned in conversation. The Venona decryptions state that Harold, who worked in the US Treasury Department under Soviet agent Harry Dexter White, was a “Soviet source/ agent,” whose KGB code name was “Ruble.” Orville was described in the Vassiliev Notebooks as being “a contact of Harold Glasser.”

  Elizabeth Bentley further identified Harold as a member of the Perlo espionage group. The Vassiliev Notebooks also state that Harold’s wife, Faye, was a Soviet courier between the KGB Station and her husband.

  In 1945, Pavel Fitin, the deputy head of the NKVD and director of Soviet Intelligence during WWII, stated that Glasser felt slighted when others he worked with received Stalin’s Order of the Red Star; however, it is quite possible he received the honor later.

  Fitin stated in Soviet records, “Our agent RUBLE, drawn to work for the Soviet Union in May, 1937, passed initially through the military ‘neighbors’ and then through our station, valuable information on political and economic issues.”

  Glasser’s intelligence found its way into thirty-four special reports to Joseph Stalin and other top Kremlin leaders. Fitin continued, “To our work RUBLE gives much attention and energy (and) is a devoted and disciplined agent.”

  Glasser also worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Sometime in 1937, while still working for the UNRRA, Glasser was clandestinely transferred to the underground Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate GRU (Glavnoe Razvedyvatel’noe Upravlenie) to report on US government activities.

  Glasser’s transfer was affected by a Hungarian, Alexander Goldberger, known by the various aliases, “J. (Joseph) Peters,” “Sandor Goldberger,” “Isador Boorstein,” “Steve,” and “Alexander Stephens.” He became involved in communism during the Russian revolution, and emigrated to the US in 1924 where he became an organizer for the Communist Party. J. Peters, as he was commonly referred to, established and directed the CPUSA underground apparatus in the US from the early 1930s to 1938. His specialties were in surveillance, exposing infiltrators, protecting Party records from seizure, disrupting leftist movements not loyal to Stalin, and maintaining contact with the embedded Ware espionage group. Peters was a delegate to the 6th Congress of the Communist International. Rather than answer to a summons by the HCUAA in 1948, Peters defected to Communist Hungary, where he died in 1990.

  Solomon “Sol” Lischinsky: Orville met Sol and his wife Melva in 1939 in Washington, DC, where he went seeking work after the defeat of the Benson administration in 1938. Their strong friendship lasted until their deaths in California in the 80s. Along with my mother, the four were considered best friends. Sol was a warm, kind, humorous man, and had a smile that lit up his face. Of all of my parents’ friends, Sol was the one I most looked forward to seeing, both at our home and at his family’s Spanish-style apartment in the Fairfax area of Los Angeles. A mathematician by training, he tutored me a few times in my high school years, and was patient in dealing with my frustrations in that realm. He loved tennis, playing frequently, and was also a casual businessman who at one point purchased a small business that manufactured plastic weaning cups for babies. I recall him grousing about having to go to the casting factory and staple cellophane bags for shipment.

  Sol was the least overtly political of all of Orville’s friends, or so it appeared to me as a young man. As an adult, I was able to have political discussions with him that were blessedly not bound up in party doctrine. In fact, during one discussion, he volunteered that he was grateful that there were “bright men in Washington that were able to manage the country’s finances.” It was quite a shock to hear something positive about the US government from any of Orville’s and my mother’s friends.

  I had only been aware of one politically related incident involving Sol, and that was his move, with Melva, to a dirt farm in Virginia to escape the Washington political scene. He had also worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and served as the head of the Balkan Department of the UNRRA during the FDR administration.

  Although he was out of the limelight of politics when I knew him, the revelations I was uncovering about the rest of our family friends made me decide to look further into Sol’s background. I discovered that his early years, during which he became friends with Orville, were every bit as taken up with communism as the others. I discovered his name in the Venona Project archives, which stated that in 1942 he worked for the Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration of the US House of Representatives (the Tolan Committee). The Dies Committee discovered that practically all staff members on the Tolan Committee, excluding the congressmen, were either members of the CPUSA or followers of the Communist Party line. In his Washington years, Sol was a member of the Perlo group of Soviet spies. His KGB code name was “Rock” (ROK) which was appropriate, as he was a thick, strong man.

  When Sol and Melva left the farm in Virginia for Los Angeles in the early 50s, they retained ownership of the property and turned the land over to sharecroppers. When the first phase of Dulles International Airport was built on land adjacent to Sol’s, he didn’t sell. However, when his property was needed for an expansion runway, he relented, making a financial killing which allowed him to live comfortably for the rest of his life.

  My mother remained close friends with Sol long after her divorce from Orville. They even became business partners in the ownership of an apartment building in Hollywood (a decidedly capitalist venture). Their camaraderie was evident in their years-long ritual of working on crossword puzzles together over the phone. I know she missed his company greatly after his death, as did I.

  John Toussaint Bernard was yet another close friend and associate of Orville and my mother. He was a former congressman from Minnesota (1937–39), and a native of the French Island of Corsica. Bernard was born in 1893 and was Orville’s senior by 15 years. He did not run for office until 1936, when he was elected as a member of the Farmer-Labor Party and served only one two-year term. He was known during his brief tenure for casting the sole vote against the US resolution banning arm sales to both national and rebel forces in Spain during the Spanish Civil War when the US government was attempting to remain neutral.

  Bernard’s personal secretary in Washington was Marion Bachrach of the Ware Espionage Group, who was the sister of communist John Abt. Marion later rose to the next-to-highest rank in the Communist
Party (CPUSA).

  During his time in politics, Bernard steadfastly denied being a communist or a sympathizer, even though at the time, the outspoken freshman congressman was inserting Daily Worker articles into the congressional record. The truth came out later in life when in 1977, at a party in Minnesota honoring Bernard and attended by CPUSA leader Gus Hall, Bernard accepted his Communist Party card. Nat Ross, the Minnesota communist leader, claimed he was the person who convinced Bernard to run for office.

  A photo taken by Orville when John Bernard was visiting in 1952 shows the family and a few friends out on the sand in Hermosa Beach, California. I recall Bernard’s visit was a joyful reunion. Later, in retirement, Bernard moved to Long Beach, California. Bernard’s name was often mentioned by Orville as a stalwart who stood tall against Fascism and US foreign policy.

  Also included in the photo are Orville’s and my mother’s close friends Harry Highkin and his wife Elspeth. Their son, Johnny, Orville’s interviewer, informed me his parents met at a Communist Party meeting in Minnesota. Highkin was a professor at Cal State Northridge, and a fellow leftist who idolized Orville. In addition, during the 1948 Progressive Party Campaign, Highkin made a lasting friendship with Henry Wallace, their mutual interest being horticulture.

  Many years later, as a favor to Orville, Highkin agreed to take in my younger brother, Bjorn, following severe family difficulties at home. He was trying to help, but it proved to be an uneasy task. Harry mentioned to me that it was the biggest mistake of his life. By that time, Bjorn was into heavy drug usage. Highkin died in his home in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, at age 89. His seven-line obituary made it clear that he was a “devout atheist.”

  Frank Carlson was another close friend of Orville’s who was a district organizer and Chairman of the Communist Party’s Defense Committee for the Los Angeles CPUSA. Orville spoke about him to me often and also mentioned in his oral interviews that he had hired him at Prudential Upholstery Supply Co., another example of his habit of employing fellow communists who were having a difficult financial time during the 50s. Carlson, a Polish immigrant whose given name was Solomon Kolnick, emigrated to the US, Americanized his name, and in 1946 and ’47 became the top man in the Wisconsin Communist Party. He also founded a communist newspaper, The People’s Voice, which the Milwaukee Journal (Sept. 1, 1951) described as targeting the black populace with the aim to “incite to class and race hatred.”

  In 1951, Carlson was arrested by the FBI, along with twelve other leading West Coast Communist Party leaders, including Dorothy Ray Healey (Connelly) and were charged and convicted of “conspiracy to overthrow the government by force.” Healey, who was dubbed “The Red Queen of Los Angeles,” was another favorite of Orville’s whose friendship and support of the USSR was strong throughout the 50s, but who fell out of Orville’s favor by 1974 when she resigned from the CPUSA and joined the “New American Movement,” and later in 1982, the “Democratic Socialists of America,” the party of Bernie Sanders. Healy stated in her later years during a Los Angeles Times interview, “My hatred of capitalism, which degrades and debases humans, is as intense now as it was when I joined the Young Communist League in 1928.” In 1957, technicalities regarding the Fifth Amendment resulted in the Supreme Court overturning the convictions for all twelve, much to the pleasure of the communist movement.

  Carl Ross was another close friend and confidant of Orville’s, and the two remained in contact for years after their Minnesota political days together. Ross, a self-educated author and leftist historian, interviewed Orville in California in 1984 in conjunction with the Minnesota Historical Society’s program to document the state’s radical political past. The interview centered on Orville’s personal history, but was more focused on the workings of the pre-war Benson administration and the manipulation by the powerful leftist factions on Minnesota politics; they also discussed the political conditions that brought the demise of the Progressive Party following the 1948 elections.

  Ross was deeply embedded in communist activities. During an interview with John Earl Haynes in 1977, Ross described himself as “the chairman of the Minnesota Young Communists in the mid-30s, head of the National Young Communists League during World War II, and led the Minnesota Communist Party in the late 40s.” He left the Communist Party in the mid-1950s shortly after the death of Stalin.

  Vincent Ray Dunne was another political associate of Orville’s albeit with complications, as he was the head of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a Trotskyite faction of the Communist Party that was opposed to Stalin. Dunne was, at the same time, strongly committed to perpetual communist revolution against capitalism and the US. During an interview in 1959 by the leftist magazine, The Militant New York, Dunne described how he was stirred by the radical movement shortly after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and joined the Communist Party. Within the next ten years, he was elected to two terms on the Minnesota District Committee of the Communist Party. He became a cause célébre in 1941 when he was convicted under the Smith Act, along with seventeen other SWP leaders. The law forbade membership in any organization that advocated the violent overthrow of the government. Dunne served sixteen months in prison for his treasonous actions, but when released he continued his outspoken views against the “evils of capitalism and the desirability of socialism.” He mentioned that reading Darwin was a “big factor in his thinking,” strongly affecting his decision to becoming a revolutionary, a topic that will be addressed later.

  John Abt, a self-described communist for fifty years, spent most of his mid to late career as chief counsel to the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). In prior years, he was the chief of litigation for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) from 1933 to 1935; assistant general counsel of FDR’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1935; chief counsel to Senator Robert La Follette Jr.’s Civil Liberties Committee from 1936 to 1937; and special assistant to the United States Attorney General from 1937 to 1938. He was also an attorney for the then leftist-infiltrated Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). After 1940 the CIO made moves to dampen the powerful Communist Party influence on the union’s political agenda.

  During his legal career, Abt was also an important figure in the covert CPUSA Ware Espionage Group. This ring had been engaged for some time in espionage for Communist Party head, Earl Browder, and as described earlier held regular clandestine meetings at Abt’s apartment with other members, including Victor Perlo, Charles Kramer, Harry Magdoff, Edward Fitzgerald, and Abt’s sister, Marion Bachrach, who became a high-ranking CPUSA official. John Abt’s KGB code name was “Bat,” and he was considered an espionage risk by US intelligence. He was also described in KGB records as a Soviet intelligence contact/agent.

  After the death of Harold Ware in an automobile accident in 1935, Abt married Ware’s widow, Jessica Smith, further emphasizing his ongoing connection with the espionage community. Interestingly, due to Abt’s prominence for defending leftists, Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald unsuccessfully attempted to have John Abt represent him.

  Lee Pressman also worked hard for Farmer-Labor Party activities. Orville described Pressman as “a very bright man who I knew well.” He also was a member of the Ware Espionage Group, with the code name of “Vig.” He was general counsel for the CIO from 1933– 1948. In 1950, Pressman testified before the HCUAA that he had been a secret member of the Communist Party USA in 1934 and 1935 and, although no longer officially a party member, he was a firm ideological Communist from 1936 to 1950.

  In his testimony, he named Charlie Kramer, Nathan Witt, and John Abt as communists, and also members of the Ware Group. On the surface he appeared to have abruptly changed his political allegiance; however, recent KGB documents point to the fact that he secretly continued cooperation with the KGB long after his testimony.

  The Marxist scholar and economist, Abe Harris, was an important working associate of Orville’s through the Benson administration and the later Progressive Party years. He had been a close friend of former Minnesota governor Fl
oyd Olson from childhood. After the death of Olson, Harris was instrumental in the political rise and transition to the governorship of Elmer Benson.

  Orville stated in his oral interview that Harris was an economist, and had been a former boxer who came from a tough Jewish neighborhood in North Minneapolis. He also became the general editor of the Farmer-Labor Association newspaper, the Minnesota Leader, which was used to promote Benson’s Popular Front policies, a loose coalition of left-wing elements including communists, radicals and socialist organizations. Harris hired Ruth Shaw, wife of one of Minnesota’s leading communists, as his secretary; she spent much of her time organizing a Popular Front faction among Farmer-Labor women’s groups which dove-tailed with Orville’s and John Jacobson’s interests. In later years, Harris modified his far-left position, but his previous significant influence was valuable to the leftist battles of the era.

  Additional associates: The transcripts of Orville’s interviews divulge many additional names of associates, acquaintances, and political confederates. Some among them include Louis Budenz, a former editor of the Daily Worker whom Orville originally lauded, but later angrily denounced as “selling out the communists”; John Coffee, leftist congressman from Washington State; and Rex Tugwell, the most influential ideologue of economic planning of the Roosevelt administration (New Deal) and a leading liberal proponent of the welfare state; Clarence Hathaway, prominent longtime member of the Communist Party’s governing Central Committee from the 1920s through the early 1940s, and an editor of the Daily Worker.

  Also mentioned at length in the interviews was Orville’s buddy and poker-playing friend, Leo Huberman, who was the co-founder of the Marxist publication Monthly Review, along with his close friend, economist Paul Sweezy. Huberman taught at Columbia University and Sweezy at Harvard (later fired for his political extremism). Sweezy was considered the dean of radical economics, and more than any other single person kept Marxist economics alive in North America. His book, Monopoly Capital, written with Paul Baran, is considered the cornerstone to his contribution to Marxian economics.