AN ANALYSIS BY the Centre concluded that about 30 percent of King’s material was the same as that provided by Francesco Constantini (DUNCAN), the long-serving OGPU agent in the British embassy at Rome.51 The overlap was, almost certainly, regarded as useful for checking the authenticity of the documents received from both agents. It was a sign of the importance attached to Constantini’s intelligence that Abram Aronovich Slutsky, who succeeded Artuzov as head of INO in 1934, decided to transfer him from the legal residency in Rome to another of the Great Illegals, Moisei Markovich Akselrod (codenamed OST or OSTO), one of the leading Soviet agent controllers. Born into a Jewish family in Smolensk in 1898, Akselrod had been a member of the Russian branch of the Zionist socialist organization Poale Zion, until its dissolution in 1922. He then joined the Bolsheviks and in 1925 began a career in INO.52 Like most of the Great Illegals, Akselrod was a remarkable linguist—fluent in Arabic, English, French, German and Italian—and, according to a fellow illegal, a man of “extraordinary culture” with “a fine indifference to risk.”53 In 1934 he traveled to Rome on an Austrian passport to establish a new illegal residency and act as Constantini’s controller. He had his first meeting with Constantini in January 1935.54
Few—if any—Soviet controllers ever met an agent as frequently as Akselrod saw Constantini. At times they had almost daily meetings. On October 27, 1935 the Centre cabled Akselrod: “Between September 24 and October 14 you met [Constantini] 16 times. There must be no more than two or three meetings a week.” It is not difficult to understand Akselrod’s enthusiasm for agent DUNCAN. Constantini supplied him with a remarkable range of documents and cipher material from embassy red boxes, diplomatic bags, filing cabinets and—probably—the embassy safe. Far from consisting simply of material on British-Italian relations, the documents included Foreign Office reports and British ambassadors’ despatches on a great variety of major international issues, which were sent for information to the Rome embassy. A Centre report noted on November 15, 1935 that no fewer than 101 of the British documents obtained from Constantini since the beginning of the year had been judged sufficiently important to be “sent to Comrade Stalin”: among them the Foreign Office records of talks between Sir John Simon, the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, junior Foreign Office minister (who became Foreign Secretary at the end of the year), and Hitler in Berlin; between Eden and Litvinov, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, in Moscow; between Eden and Joseph Beck, the Polish foreign minister, in Warsaw; between Eden and Edvard Beneš, the Czechoslovak foreign minister, in Prague; and between Eden and Mussolini in Rome.55
A striking omission from the Centre’s list of the most important Foreign Office documents supplied to Stalin was Eden’s account of his talks with him during his visit to Moscow in March 1935—despite the fact that this document was sent to the Rome embassy and was probably among those obtained by Constantini.56 Since this was Stalin’s first meeting with a minister from a Western government, their talks were of unusual significance. The most likely explanation for the Centre’s failure to send the British record of the meeting to the Kremlin is that Slutsky feared to pass on to Stalin some of Eden’s comments about him. INO would have been unembarrassed to report the fact that Eden was impressed by Stalin’s “remarkable knowledge and understanding of international affairs.” But it doubtless lacked the nerve to repeat Eden’s conclusion that Stalin was “a man of strong oriental traits of character with unshakeable assurance and control whose courtesy in no way hid from us an implacable ruthlessness.” The Centre was probably also nervous about reporting some of the opinions attributed by Eden to Stalin—for example, that he was “perhaps more appreciative of [the] German point of view than Monsieur Litvino[v].”57 There was no more dangerous activity in Moscow than repeating criticisms of Stalin or attributing heretical opinions to him.
The British ambassador in Moscow, Viscount Chilston, optimistically reported that, as a result of Eden’s visit, “the Soviet Government appears to have got rid of the bogey in their minds, that we were encouraging Germany against Soviet plans for Eastern security.”58 Stalin, however, rarely—if ever—abandoned a conspiracy theory and remained deeply suspicious of British policy. In a communiqué at the end of his talks in Moscow, Eden had welcomed the Soviet Union’s support for the principle of collective security, following its entry the previous year into the League of Nations (hitherto denounced by Moscow as the “League of Burglars”). But Stalin must have learned from Foreign Office documents that Eden was disinclined to involve the Soviet Union in any collective security arrangements designed to contain Nazi Germany. 59 To Stalin’s deeply suspicious mind, this reluctance was further evidence of a British plot to focus German aggression in the east.60 Though he was content to entrust most day-to-day diplomacy to the efficient and far more pragmatic Litvinov, it was Stalin who determined the strategic thrust of Soviet foreign policy.
The Centre had suspected for some time that its principal source of British diplomatic documents over the last decade, the mercenary agent Francesco Constantini (DUNCAN), had been selling some material to Italian intelligence as well as to the NKVD. It had dramatic confirmation of these suspicions in February 1936, when a British assessment of the Italo-Ethiopian war—purloined by Constantini from the British embassy—was published on the front page of the Giornale d’Italia.61 On being challenged by Akselrod, Constantini was forced to admit that he had supplied some documents to the Italians, but concealed the large scale on which he had done so. Constantini also admitted in 1936 that he had lost his job in the British embassy, though he apparently omitted that he had been sacked for dishonesty. He tried to reassure Akselrod by telling him that he had a former colleague in the embassy who would continue to supply him with classified documents. The colleague was later identified as Constantini’s brother Secondo (codenamed DUDLEY), who had worked as a servant in the embassy Chancery for the previous twenty years. 62
Secondo Constantini, however, took fewer precautions than his brother Francesco. In January he stole a diamond necklace belonging to the ambassador’s wife from a locked red box (normally used for diplomatic documents rather than jewelery) which was kept in the ambassador’s apartment next to the Chancery. The ambassador, Sir Eric Drummond (soon to become Lord Perth), who had previously dismissed the idea that the British diplomatic documents appearing in the Italian press might have been purloined from his embassy, now began to grasp that embassy security might, after all, require serious attention. Since the Foreign Office had no security officer, it was forced to seek the help of Major Valentine Vivian, the head of SIS counter-intelligence. Vivian modestly disclaimed significant expertise in embassy security but, in view of the even greater lack of expertise in the Foreign Office, agreed to carry out an investigation.63 Once in Rome, he quickly discovered an appalling series of basic lapses. The embassy files, safe and red boxes were all insecure and “it would not be impossible or even difficult for unauthorized persons to spend long periods in the Chancery or Registry rooms.”
Vivian quickly identified Secondo Constantini as the man probably responsible for the theft both of the diamond necklace and of at least some of the documents supplied to Italian intelligence:
S. Constantini… has been employed in the Chancery for twenty-one years. He might, therefore, have been directly or indirectly responsible for any, or all, of the thefts of papers or valuables which have taken place, or are thought to have taken place, from this Mission. He was, I understand, not quite free of suspicion of being himself concerned in a dishonest transaction for which his brother [Francesco], then also a Chancery servant, was dismissed a short time ago. Moreover, though the Diplomatic Staff at the time did not connect him with the matter, I am clear in my own mind that the circumstances of the loss of two copies of the “R” Code from a locked press [filing cabinet] in the Chancery in 1925 point towards S. Constantini, or his brother, or both, as the culprits.64
Though Sir Eric Drummond politely welcomed Vivian’s recommendations f
or improvements in the security of his embassy, he took little action.65 In particular, neither he nor most of his staff could credit the charges against Secondo Constantini, whom they regarded as “a sort of friend of the family.”66 Instead of being dismissed, agent DUDLEY and his wife were—amazingly—invited to London in May 1937 as the guests of His Majesty’s Government at the coronation of King George VI, as a reward for his long and supposedly faithful service. 67
When Secondo Constantini returned from his expense-paid junket in London, he was able to resume supplying classified British documents to his brother Francesco, who passed them on for copying by both Akselrod’s illegal residency and Italian intelligence before returning them to embassy files. The Centre regarded the whole improbable story of Constantini’s continued access to embassy files after Vivian’s investigation as deeply suspicious. Unable to comprehend the naivety of the British foreign service in matters of embassy security, it suspected instead some deep-laid plot by British and/or Italian intelligence. Regular meetings with Francesco Constantini were suspended in August 1937.68
THE CIPHER MATERIAL obtained from the Constantini brothers, Captain King and other agents in Western embassies and foreign ministries was passed to the most secret section of Soviet intelligence, a joint OGPU/Fourth Department SIGINT unit housed not in the Lubyanka but in the Foreign Affairs building on Kuznetsky Bridge. According to Evdokia Kartseva (later Petrova), who joined the unit in 1933, its personnel were forbidden to reveal even the location of their office to their closest relatives.69 Like most young women in the unit, Kartseva was terrified of its head, Gleb Ivanovich Boky, who had made his reputation first in conducting the “Red Terror” in Petrograd in 1918, then in terrorizing Turkestan later in the civil war.70 Though in his mid-fifties, Boky still prided himself on his sexual athleticism and arranged group sex weekends at his dacha. Kartseva lived in fear of being invited to the orgies. During the night shift, when she felt most vulnerable, she wore her “plainest and dullest clothes for fear of attracting [Boky’s] unwelcome attention.”71
Despite the personal depravity of its chief, the combined OGPU/Fourth Department unit was the world’s largest and best-resourced SIGINT agency. In particular, thanks to Bystroletov and others, it received more assistance from espionage than any similar agency in the West. The records seen by Mitrokhin show that Boky’s unit was able to decrypt at least some of the diplomatic traffic of Britain, Austria, Germany and Italy.72 Other evidence shows that Boky’s unit was also able to decrypt some Japanese, Turkish73 and—almost certainly—American74 and French75 cables. No Western SIGINT agency during the 1930s seems to have collected so much political and diplomatic intelligence.
The unavailability of most of the decrypts produced by Boky’s unit makes detailed analysis of their influence on Soviet foreign policy impossible. Soviet SIGINT successes, however, included important Japanese decrypts on the negotiation of the Anti-Comintern Pact between Germany and Japan. The published version of the Pact, concluded in November 1936, merely provided for an exchange of information on Comintern activities and cooperation on preventive measures against them. A secret protocol, however, added that if either of the signatories became the victim of “an unprovoked [Soviet] attack or threat of attack,” both would immediately consult together on the action to take and do “nothing to ease the situation of the USSR.” Moscow, unsurprisingly, read sinister intentions into this tortuous formula, though Japan was, in reality, still anxious not to be drawn into a European war and had no intention of concluding a military alliance. Three days after the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact, Litvinov publicly announced in a speech to a Congress of Soviets that Moscow knew its secret protocol. His speech also contained a curious veiled allusion to codebreaking:
It is not surprising that it is assumed by many that the German-Japanese agreement is written in a special code in which anti-Communism means something entirely different from the dictionary definition of this word, and that people decipher this code in different ways.76
The success of Boky’s unit in decrypting Italian diplomatic traffic probably provided intelligence on Italy’s decision to join the Anti-Comintern Pact in the following year.
THANKS TO ITS penetration agents and codebreakers, as well as to primitive Foreign Office security, Soviet intelligence was able to gather vastly more intelligence on the foreign policy of its main Western target, Great Britain, than the much smaller British intelligence community was able to obtain on Soviet policy. Since 1927 British codebreakers had been unable to decrypt any high-level Soviet communications (though they had some success with the less sophisticated Comintern ciphers). SIS did not even possess a Moscow station. In 1936 the British ambassador, Viscount Chilston, vetoed a proposal to establish one on the grounds that it would be “liable to cause severe embarrassment.” But without an SIS presence he despaired of discovering anything of importance about Soviet policy-making.77
The Soviet capacity to understand the political and diplomatic intelligence it collected, however, never approached its ability to collect that intelligence in the first place. Its natural tendency to substitute conspiracy theory for pragmatic analysis when assessing the intentions of the encircling imperialist powers was made worse during the 1930s by Stalin’s increasing tendency to act as his own intelligence analyst. Stalin, indeed, actively discouraged intelligence analysis by others, which he condemned as “dangerous guesswork.” “Don’t tell me what you think,” he is reported to have said. “Give me the facts and the source!” As a result, INO had no analytical department. Intelligence reports throughout and even beyond the Stalin era characteristically consisted of compilations of relevant information on particular topics with little argument or analysis.78 Those who compiled them increasingly feared for their life expectancy if they failed to tell Stalin what he expected to hear. Their main priority as they trawled through the Centre’s treasure trove of British diplomatic documents and decrypts was to discover the anti-Soviet conspiracies which Comrade Stalin, “Lenin’s outstanding pupil, the best son of the Bolshevik Party, the worthy successor and great continuer of Lenin’s cause,” knew were there. The main function of Soviet foreign intelligence was thus to reinforce rather than to challenge Stalin’s misunderstanding of the West.
A characteristic example of the Centre’s distorted but politically correct presentation of important intelligence was its treatment of the Foreign Office record of the meeting in March 1935 between Sir John Simon, Anthony Eden and Adolf Hitler in Berlin. Copies of the minutes were supplied both by Captain King in the Foreign Office and by Francesco Constantini in the Rome embassy.79 Nine days before the meeting, in defiance of the post-First World War Treaty of Versailles, Hitler had announced the introduction of conscription. The fact that the meeting—the first between Hitler and a British foreign secretary—went ahead at all was, in itself, cause for suspicion in Moscow. On the British side the talks were mainly exploratory—to discover what the extent of Hitler’s demands for the revision of the Treaty of Versailles really was, and what prospect there was of accommodating them. Moscow, however, saw grounds for deep suspicion. While disclaiming any intention of attacking the Soviet Union, Hitler claimed that there was a distinct danger of Russia starting a war, and declared himself “firmly convinced that one day cooperation and solidarity would be urgently necessary to defend Europe against the… Bolshevik menace.” Simon and Eden showed not the slightest interest in an anti-Bolshevik agreement, but their fairly conventional exchange of diplomatic pleasantries had sinister overtones in Moscow. According to the Foreign Office record, “The British Ministers were sincerely thankful for the way in which they had been received in Berlin, and would take away very pleasant memories of the kindness and hospitality shown them.”80
The British record of the talks ran to over 23,000 words. The Russian translation circulated by the Centre to Stalin and others in the Soviet leadership came to fewer than 4,000. Instead of producing a conventional précis the Centre selected a series of st
atements by Simon, Eden, Hitler and other participants in the talks, and assembled them into what appeared as a continuous conversation. The significance of some individual statements was thus distorted by removing them from their detailed context. Probably at the time, certainly subsequently, one of Simon’s comments was misconstrued as giving Germany carte blanche to take over Austria.81
Doubtless in line with Stalin’s own conspiracy theories, the Centre interpreted the visit by Simon and Eden to Berlin as the first in a series of meetings at which British statesmen not only sought to appease Hitler but gave him encouragement to attack Russia.82 In reality, though some British diplomats would have been content to see the two dictators come to blows of their own accord, no British foreign secretary and no British government would have contemplated orchestrating such a conflict. The conspiracy theories which were born in Stalin’s Moscow in the 1930s, however, have—remarkably—survived the end of the Soviet era. An SVR official history published in 1997 insists that the many volumes of published Foreign Office documents as well as the even more voluminous unpublished files in the Public Record Office cannot be relied upon. The British government, it maintains, is still engaged in a conspiracy to conceal the existence of documents which reveal the terrible truth about British foreign policy before the Second World War:
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