Russian Roulette

by Giles Milton

  Ransome had returned to England after the operation, intent on taking a fishing holiday that would give him the chance to regain his strength, far from the stresses of Russia. He was joined in Wiltshire by his wife Ivy – with whom he was trapped in a deteriorating relationship – and his young daughter, Tabitha.

  The much-needed holiday did not last for long: Ransome’s perch fishing was abruptly interrupted by news of the Bolshevik revolution. By the second week of November he was once again writing for the Daily News, not as an eyewitness to the unfolding events but as a London-based commentator with knowledge of many of the key players.

  Ransome might have expected a summons to Mansfield Cumming’s offices at this critical juncture. He was, after all, an acknowledged expert on Russia. He also knew many of the men working for the Russian bureau. But instead of being called to Whitehall Court, Ransome was invited to the Foreign Office, where he had several meetings with the Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Lord Robert Cecil.

  Ransome never felt comfortable in the presence of patrician grandees and he did not warm to Lord Cecil. ‘He stood in front of the fireplace, immensely tall, fantastically thin, his hawkish head swinging forward at the end of a long arc formed by his body and legs.’ He seemed to personify the aloofness of the ruling elite.

  Yet Lord Cecil recognised Ransome as an expert on Russian affairs and expressed a keen interest in hearing his opinions about the new revolutionary rulers. He also solicited information on the forces that opposed the Bolsheviks. When the meeting at long last drew to a close, Ransome surprised Lord Cecil by offering to return to Russia as an unofficial envoy, playing a similar role to that of Robert Bruce Lockhart.

  Lord Cecil was by no means averse to the idea: Ransome, after all, could prove extremely useful in reporting on the rapidly changing situation inside Russia. He gave his consent and despatched a telegram to Petrograd alerting the remaining diplomatic staff to Ransome’s appointment.

  But just a few hours after sending the telegram, he countermanded it. ‘In view of Athens telegram No. 2191 about Mr Ransome,’ he wrote, ‘if the allegations made against him there are true, he would obviously not be a suitable agent.’

  The contents of ‘Athens telegram No. 2191’ are not known and the allegations against Ransome remain a mystery. But they almost certainly painted him as a revolutionary sympathiser, someone whose radical views meant that he could not be trusted.

  There was some truth in this. Ransome sincerely hoped that the Bolshevik revolution would sweep away the many injustices of the old regime and offer a brighter future to the country’s downtrodden poor. His political views did not correspond with those of British ministers.

  Lord Cecil eventually gave Ransome the benefit of the doubt and agreed to facilitate his return to Petrograd.

  ‘He gave me his blessing,’ wrote a relieved Ransome, ‘and made things easy for me, at least as far as Stockholm, by entrusting the diplomatic bag for me to deliver to the legation.’

  Ransome was back in Petrograd on Christmas Day, crossing the border into Russia with the assistance of the Bolshevik representative in Stockholm. His heavy luggage preceded him, having been forwarded to Petrograd and delivered to the new Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, where it fell into the hands of Karl Radek, a senior Bolshevik commissar in charge of Western propaganda. He was also one of the most devious characters in the revolutionary inner circle.

  Radek immediately opened the luggage to see what was inside. He found an eclectic mix: ‘a Shakespeare, a folding chess-board and chessmen and a mixed collection of books on elementary navigation, fishing, chess and folklore.’ Intrigued, he expressed a desire to meet the person ‘who was interested in subjects that seemed incompatible.’

  Ransome was summoned to the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs and introduced to the irascible Radek. The two men got along famously from the outset, swapping gossip and continually trying to wrongfoot each other.

  Radek spoke in Russian with Ransome, ‘but loved to drag in sentences from English books, which I sometimes annoyed him by being slow to recognise.’ His favourite quotation was ‘Marley was as dead as a doornail’ from A Christmas Carol. ‘He loved to apply it to politicians and to political programmes that had been outstripped by events.’

  Ransome enjoyed Radek’s irreverent wit, describing him as ‘a little light-haired spectacled revolutionary goblin of incredible intelligence and vivacity.’

  Others were less generous. Robert Bruce Lockhart found him ‘a grotesque figure’ whose Norfolk suit ‘with knickers and leggings’ could have been borrowed from the wardrobe of Mr Toad. ‘A little man with a huge head, protruding ears, clean-shaven face . . . with spectacles, and a large mouth with yellow tobacco-stained teeth, from which a huge pipe or cigar was never absent.’

  Both Lockhart and Ransome recognised that Radek could provide them with a direct link to the Bolshevik inner circle and they courted him assiduously.

  ‘Almost every day he would turn up in my rooms,’ wrote Lockhart, ‘an English cap stuck jauntily on his head, his pipe puffing fiercely, a bundle of books under his arm, and a huge revolver strapped to his side. He looked like the cross between a professor and a bandit.’

  Radek was particularly fond of Ransome and set up meetings for him with the most important players in the regime, including Trotsky and Lenin. Ransome, wearing his journalistic hat, was keen to introduce the new revolutionary leaders to a British audience. He produced lively pen-portraits of men like Radek and Lenin, bringing them vividly to life.

  Unlike most foreign observers, one of whom dismissed Lenin as a ‘provincial green grocer’, Ransome stressed the vital appeal of Russia’s new revolutionary leader.

  ‘[He] mingled jest and argument in language that tasted of Russian tobacco and the life of the Russian peasantry. It was natural to hear him talk of the principle of his international revolution in the language of the Volga peasants, and in his mouth political theory seemed in no way out of tune with the peasant proverbs.’

  Ransome was working principally as a journalist in the early months that followed the revolution. But he was already supplying information to the British government about the Bolshevik leaders and their political goals. This information would prove so valuable that he would eventually find himself on Mansfield Cumming’s payroll. Ransome the revolutionary sympathiser was to become a key agent working inside Russia.

  His friendship with Radek, coupled with the widely held belief that he was a closet Bolshevik, was already gaining him access to high-level meetings. He was permitted to attend both the Bolshevik’s Executive Committee and the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

  ‘My position was immediately behind and above the presidium, looking down on Trotsky’s muscular shoulders and great head and the occasional gestures of his curiously small hands,’ he wrote. ‘Beyond him was that sea of men: soldiers in green and grey shirts, workers in collarless ones, or jerseys, others dressed very much like British workmen, peasants in belted red shirts and high top boots.’

  Ransome quickly gained the trust of Trotsky, who never imagined that he was passing information back to the British government.

  ‘My complete lack of any political past was a help not a hindrance,’ wrote Ransome, ‘and I was soon getting a view of what was happening from much nearer than any regular journalist or politician could approach.’

  Alone among the Westerners in Petrograd, he was on intimate terms with the Bolshevik leaders. He saw them ‘every day, drinking their tea, hearing their quarrels, sharing with them such sweets as I had.’

  As he penetrated their inner circle, he formed a very different view of their political skills to his English compatriots. He also strongly disagreed with the sentiments of the anti-Bolshevik news-sheets that were being produced in increasing numbers by their enemies.

  ‘Meeting all these people as human beings, I could not believe the rubbishy propaganda that was being poured out by other Russians who, hoping for their destr
uction no matter by whom, pretended that they were German agents.’

  Ransome was soon so close to the leading revolutionaries that Western diplomats began to wonder if he had ‘unusual channels of information.’ This he did. Unbeknown to anyone in London, he had fallen in love with Trotsky’s personal secretary, Evgenia Shelepina, and was seeing her on a daily basis.

  Their relationship was to transform the information he received from the regime: it was Shelepina who typed up Trotsky’s correspondence and planned all his meetings. Suddenly, Ransome found himself with access to highly secretive documents and telegraphic transmissions.

  He had first set eyes on Evgenia when he interviewed Trotsky on 28 December 1917, but he did not speak to her until later that evening, when he visited the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. He poked his head into a room and, amid a group of unfamiliar faces, immediately recognised her.

  ‘This was Evgenia,’ he would write, ‘the tall, jolly girl whom later on I was to marry and to whom I owe the happiest days of my life.’

  Ransome had been looking for the official censor to stamp his despatch: Evgenia offered to help him find the right person. She also said she would try to find them both some food in the censor’s office. ‘Come along,’ she said, ‘perhaps he has some potatoes. Potatoes are the only thing we want. Come along.’

  They eventually found both the censor and his potatoes: the latter were in the process of burning on an overheated primus stove. Evgenia rescued them from the pot and shared them out.

  Ransome, trapped in his unhappy marriage with Ivy, was smitten by Evgenia. She was no beauty; she was tall, ungainly and big-boned. ‘She must have been two or three inches above six feet in her stockings,’ wrote George Hill, who preferred his women to be petite, young and sexually alluring. Yet even Hill eventually accepted that feminine charm was not all about surface beauty.

  ‘At first glance, one was apt to dismiss her as a very fine-looking specimen of Russian peasant womanhood, but closer acquaintance revealed in her depths of unguessed qualities.’

  The Americans in Petrograd called her ‘The Big Girl’ because, explained one, ‘she was a big girl’. She played an important role in the months that followed the revolution for she controlled the visitors who wished to get Trotsky’s ear. She was far more than a secretary; she could provide (or deny) access to all of the Bolshevik leaders.

  ‘She was methodical and intellectual,’ wrote Hill, ‘a hard worker with an enormous sense of humour. She saw things quickly and could analyse political situations with the speed and precision with which an experienced bridge player analyses a hand of cards.’

  She was ruthlessly efficient in her work. ‘I do not believe she ever turned away from Trotsky anyone who was of the slightest consequence, and yet it was no easy matter to get past that maiden unless one had that something.’

  Ransome took the new Bolshevik leadership very seriously and his reports on their activities – often sympathetic – caused him increasing difficulties with officials in London. His relationship with Evgenia did not help matters. In the British Embassy in Petrograd, there were whispered rumours that far from serving the British government, he was actually working as a double agent.

  Ransome did little to discourage these rumours for they only served to boost his credentials amongst the leading Bolsheviks. Besides, he shared some of the views of the revolutionary leaders and genuinely hoped that Lenin and Trotsky would drag Russia into a brighter future.

  Mansfield Cumming was quick to realise that the change of regime in Russia required a whole new approach to espionage. His team of agents were no longer working in a friendly country. The new government was overtly hostile and it was extremely likely to expel all those who had previously been working for the Russian bureau. If Cumming were to retain an intelligence-gathering team inside the country, it would have to change its modus operandi.

  A Secret Service booklet produced in the aftermath of the revolution tackled the difficulties of agents having to work undercover in a hostile land. Entitled ‘Notes on Instruction and Recruiting of Agents’, it covered many aspects of spy-craft, from writing in code to the adoption of disguises.

  This latter point was to prove of great importance to Cumming’s agents. The ‘Notes’ warned that the adoption of a wholly new persona carried considerable dangers and had to be completely believable if it was not to be unmasked. The guise of commercial traveller was recommended, but the ‘Notes’ warned that this was ‘a hopeless business unless the agent really knows & understands the article he is supposed to sell and also really transacts business in such article.’

  The ‘Notes’ also provided information on infiltrating enemy organisations, notably their secret services. This, it confes-sed, was ‘one of the most fascinating branches of S[ecret] S[ervice] work.’ It said that ‘clever agents’ could cause immense damage and ‘lead to the complete disorganisation of the service against which they are working.’

  The most important instruction was for agents not to compromise their fellow spies in the event of them being captured. ‘If you do get caught, keep your mouth shut and don’t give anybody away.’

  The remnants of Samuel Hoare’s team had been allowed to remain in Petrograd in the weeks that followed the Bolshevik revolution, although they were no longer able to work at the Russian War Office. Cumming now took the bold decision to place his Russian headquarters outside the country. It would henceforth be based in Stockholm, at arm’s length from Lenin’s Bolsheviks. The bureau was to be run by an ex-army officer named Major John Scale, one of the men implicated in the murder of Rasputin.

  ‘Tall, handsome, well-read, intelligent,’ wrote one who knew him, ‘with a debonair manner which endeared him to everyone.’ Major Scale was to prove an efficient operator in the months ahead.

  He was given ostensible employment as British attaché to Sweden, but this was merely a cover for his work as the Stockholm bureau chief. He was tasked with providing Cumming’s agents inside Russia with money, information and logistical support.

  Cumming also needed a link man in Moscow, someone who could simultaneously be in contact with both John Scale and the agents working undercover inside the country. This job was to be performed by Ernest Boyce, a silver-haired lieutenant with considerable experience in military sabotage.

  The idea of creating bureaux outside the frontiers of Russia was a good one. It was to work so well, indeed, that the system was soon expanded with offices in Helsingfors (today’s Helsinki), Riga and Libau (in Latvia), Kaunas (in Lithuania) and Reval (in Estonia).

  There were also smaller offices at various frontier posts on Russia’s borders with the Scandinavian countries. The men who worked at these posts had intimate knowledge of the local area and were able to help Cumming’s agents smuggle themselves in and out of Russia.

  They also supplied his men with the necessary forged papers and stamps, thereby increasing their chances of reaching Petrograd or Moscow without risk of arrest.

  At the same time as Cumming was restructuring his Russian operations, Lenin was creating his own Bolshevik intelligence service.

  The Cheka (the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage) was established within six weeks of the Bolsheviks seizing power. From the outset, it was viewed as a means of ruthlessly crushing dissent, whether it came from Russian citizens or from the agents of foreign powers.

  Cheka agents would soon become the deadly rivals of Cumming’s men in Russia and would devote much of their time to tracking them down and unmasking them. With all the resources of the state at their disposal, they were to prove a formidable foe.

  ‘It is war now – face to face, a fight to the finish,’ said Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first chief of the Cheka. He was known to his comrades as Iron Felix, with good reason. Lenin’s chief henchman was ruthless and devoid of pity: indeed, he seemed to be devoid of any human emotion whatsoever.

  ‘A man of correct manners and quiet speech,’ wrote Lockha
rt, ‘but without a ray of humour in his character.’ He had a sallow face with a thick black moustache and his jet hair was worn en brosse.

  ‘The most remarkable thing about him was his eyes. Deeply sunk, they blazed with a steady fire of fanaticism. They never twitched. His eyelids seemed paralysed.’

  His chilling appearance struck fear into all who met him. In both manner and temperament he could not have been more different from the avuncular Mansfield Cumming.

  Dzerzhinsky’s name would later become a byword for terror and he would leave the streets of Russia awash with blood. Yet his early life betrayed no inkling of what was to come. He was neither Russian and nor was he a member of Lenin’s much vaunted proletariat. Rather, he was the son of a Polish nobleman and was brought up in a devout Catholic household.

  Dzerzhinsky loved the fervour of the faith and his early dream was to become a Catholic priest. When he eventually came to revolt against his background, he did so with equal fervour. By the time the Bolsheviks came to power, he had spent more than a decade in Siberian prisons. Now, he saw the chance of having his revenge. He would become the Bolshevik’s most assiduous executioner.

  The charter of the new Cheka made it clear that it would strike against any enemy of Bolshevism, even if that enemy came from abroad. Its goal was ‘to suppress and liquidate all attempts and acts of counter-revolution and sabotage throughout Russia, from whatever quarter.’

  The Cheka was to function as secret service with a military wing attached; it would rapidly expand as the enemies of Bolshevism became more numerous. In the first few weeks of its existence, it had just a handful of staff and its entire records fitted into Dzerzhinsky’s briefcase. By mid January 1918, the staff had already topped one hundred and its powers had been extended to include the right to conduct the summary trial and execution of suspected counter-revolutionaries.

  It was also given a contingent of Red Guards to undertake the liquidation of enemies. By the time the Cheka’s headquarters moved to Moscow, which was made the new Bolshevik capital in March 1918, staffing levels had risen to 600.