The Sword and the Shield

by Christopher Andrew

  42. Rees, A Chapter of Accidents, pp. 122-3; Straight, After Long Silence, pp. 94-5, 142.

  43. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 144-5, 159.

  44. vol. 7, ch. 10, paras. 8, 9.

  45. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 24-6. The only foreigners to achieve officer rank were some central European interwar illegals, such as Deutsch, who were used as agent controllers and recruiters.

  46. Philby, My Silent War, p. 13. Emphasis added.

  47. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 24.

  48. vol. 7, ch. 10, app., para. 2. On the misleading references to Klugmann in Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, see above, note 29.

  49. Blunt, “From Bloomsbury to Marxism.”

  50. Boyle, The Climate of Treason, p. 72.

  51. vol. 7, ch. 10, app., para. 2.

  52. The first reference to Klugmann’s recruitment based on material made available by the SVR is in West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, pp. 206, 294.

  53. See below, chapter 17.

  54. Deutsch, who was a decade younger than both Orlov and Maly and had joined the OGPU only in 1932, was evidently considered too junior for the post of resident.

  55. Though some of his agents believed Maly had been a Catholic priest, his operational file shows that he had only deacon’s orders when he volunteered for the army. West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, pp. 113-14.

  56. Poretsky, Our Own People, pp. 214-15; Cornelissen, De GPOe op de Overtoom, ch. 11.

  57. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 211-13, 229-30. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 199ff.

  58. vol. 7, ch. 10, app., item 3.

  59. vol. 7, ch. 10, app., item 6.

  60. Straight, After Long Silence, pp. 101-3, 120-1. The NKVD officer who met Straight did not identify himself, but Straight’s description of him as stocky and dark-haired identifies him as Deutsch rather than the tall Maly, whose height earned him the nickname “der Lange.”

  61. Details of Cairncross’s academic career are in the archives of Glasgow University, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Cambridge University.

  62. Trinity Magazine, Easter Term 1935 and Easter Term 1936.

  63. Cairncross, The Enigma Spy, p. 42.

  64. Colville, The Fringes of Power, p. 30 n.

  65. vol. 7, ch. 10, item 1.

  66. vol. 7, ch. 10, item 23.

  67. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 214. West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, p. 207.

  68. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 23.

  69. Cairncross, The Enigma Spy, pp. 61-2. Cairncross’s account of the sequence of his initiation into the NKVD in successive meetings with Burgess, Klugmann and Deutsch agrees with KGB records both as noted by Mitrokhin and in the documents cited in West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels. The Enigma Spy is, none the less, a textbook case of psychological denial. At almost every stage of his career as a Soviet agent (save for a heroic year at Bletchley Park in 1942-3, when he claims that the intelligence he provided on the eastern front was instrumental in “changing the course of World War Two”), Cairncross seeks to diminish or deny the significance of his role. His version of his career as a Soviet agent, save for the year at Bletchley Park, is comprehensively contradicted by the evidence of the KGB files.

  70. West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, p. 208.

  71. Minute by Cairncross, March 23, 1937, PRO FO371/21287 W7016. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 230-1.

  72. There are very few references to such documents either in Mitrokhin’s notes or in the material from KGB archives made available by the SVR for West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels.

  73. Though there is no positive evidence that this document was provided by Cairncross or Maclean, other sources can be excluded. The Center had recently broken contact with the two other agents who provided it with Foreign Office documents, Francesco Constantini and Captain John King. Since Halifax’s record of his meeting with Hitler was not apparently sent as a telegram, the NKVD copy of it cannot have been obtained by SIGINT. The text of Halifax’s record, together with details of its despatch to the Foreign Office, is published in Medlicott et al., Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, 2nd series, vol. 19, pp. 540-8.

  74. Roberts, “The Holy Fox,” p. 70.

  75. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, pp. 6, 162.

  76. Medlicott et al., Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, 2nd series, vol. 19, pp. 540-8; Roberts, “The Holy Fox,” pp. 70-5; Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, pp. 98-100.

  77. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 216, 232-3.

  78. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 233. Borovik, The Philby Files, p. 80.

  79. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 4.

  80. Borovik, The Philby Files, pp. 90-2.

  81. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 234.

  Chapter Five

  Terror

  1. Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 1901-1941, p. 259.

  2. For the text of the “Ryutin platform,” see Izvestia (1989), no. 6; Ogonek (1989), no. 15.

  3. Volkogonov, Stalin, p. 212.

  4. k-4,198.

  5. Volkogonov, Trotsky, p. 343.

  6. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, ch. 4.

  7. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 171-2; Volkogonov, Trotsky, pp. 334-6. Remarkably, a 1997 SVR official history makes a partial attempt to justify the anti-Trotskyist witch-hunt:

  [Trotskyist] criticism, though apparently aimed at Stalin personally, was essentially defamatory of everything Soviet. Largely thanks to the Trotskyists, a phenomenon developed abroad which became known as anti-Sovietism, which for many years hurt the USSR’s domestic and foreign policy pursued at that time, as well as the international workers’ and communists’ movement… The Trotskyists were a fruitful agent base for the [Western] intelligence services.

  Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, p. 90.

  8. k-4,198,206. Doriot’s emotionally charged oratory caused him to perspire so profusely that after every major speech he was forced to change not merely his shirt but his suit as well. Brunet, Jacques Doriot, pp. 208-9.

  9. k-4,198,206. A recent biography of Eugen Fried, the secret Comintern representative in the leadership of the French Communist Party, reveals that Comintern instructions were that the campaign against Doriot should go through three phases: “maneuverer, isoler, liquider.” Without access to KGB files, the authors assume—reasonably but wrongly—that only “political,” rather than “physical,” assassination was intended. Kriegel and Courtois, Eugen Fried, p. 228.

  10. On Doriot’s break with the Communist Party and move to fascism, see Brunet, Jacques Doriot, chs. 9-12; Burrin, La Dérive Fasciste, chs. 5, 9.

  11. k-4,198,206.

  12. There are a number of examples in the VENONA decrypts of the use of the KHORKI (“Polecat”) codename for the Trotskyists.

  13. k-4,206. The codename of the task force appears in vol. 7, app. 3, n. 15.

  14. k-4,206.

  15. Deutscher, Trotsky, vol. 3, pp. 348-9.

  16. vol. 7, appendix 3, n. 15.

  17. Deutscher, Trotsky, vol. 3, p. 349.

  18. Deutscher, Trotsky, vol. 3, pp. 125-6.

  19. Minute by R. A. Sykes, October 23, 1952, PRO FO 371/100826 NS 1023/29/G.

  20. vol. 6, ch. 12.

  21. Among the growing number of studies of the Terror, the classic account remains that by Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment. There is, however, vigorous controversy over the numbers of the Terror’s victims. In 1995 Colonel Grashoven, head of the Russian security ministry rehabilitation team, estimated that in the period 1935-45 18 million were arrested and 7 million shot. Olga Shatunovskaya, a member of Khrushchev’s rehabilitation commission, gave the figure of those “repressed” (imprisoned or shot) from 1935 to 1941 as 19.8 million (a statistic also found in the papers of Anastas Mikoyan). Dmitri Volkogonov arrived at a total of 21.5 million (of whom a third were shot) for the period 1929-53. Conquest’s own revised estimates are of a similar o
rder of magnitude (Conquest, “Playing Down the Gulag,” p. 8). Recent studies based on incomplete official records suggest considerably lower, but still large figures. Stephen Wheatcroft, one of the leading analysts of the official figures, believes it “unlikely that there were more than a million executions between 1921 and 1953. The labor camps and colonies never accounted for more than 2.5 million prisoners.” What is striking even in the official records is the enormous rise in executions during the Great Terror: 353,074 in 1937 and 328,618 in 1938, as compared with a total of under 10,000 for the five year period 1932-6 (Wheatcroft, “The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930-45”). Controversy over the level of incompleteness in the official records (which do not, of course, include deaths in the camps or the millions who died from famine) will doubtless continue.

  22. vol. 6, ch. 12.

  23. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 149-61.

  24. Radzinsky, Stalin, p. 371.

  25. vol. 6, ch. 12.

  26. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 281.

  27. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 1, n. 1; vol. 7, app. 3, n. 15.

  28. On Wollweber, see Flocken and Scholz, Ernst Wollweber.

  29. k-4,206.

  30. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 267.

  31. See below, chapter 5.

  32. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, chs. 10, 11.

  33. vol. 5, ch. 7. All these episodes are conspicuous by their absence from the official SVR hagiography: Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 21-4.

  34. Castelo’s personal file, archive no. 68312, registration no. 66160, once in the files of the FCD Fifteenth Department of the First Chief Directorate was transferred to the Eighth Department of FCD Directorate S. vol. 5, ch. 7.

  35. After the defection of Orlov in July 1938, Eitingon succeeded him as resident.

  36. vol. 5, ch. 7.

  37. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

  38. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 177-8.

  39. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

  40. k-4,198.

  41. There is, however, one later reference to him being “killed”; vol. 6, ch. 12.

  42. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 179-80. Volkogonov, Trotsky, pp. 359-60. Costello and Tsarev, Dangerous Illusions, pp. 282-4.

  43. Deutscher, Trotsky, vol. 3, pp. 405-10. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 319-21.

  44. vol. 6, ch. 12.

  45. Deutscher, Trotsky, vol. 3, pp. 407-8, 419-20. Sylvia Ageloff later described how, at an apparently “accidental meeting,” the “handsome and dashing” Mercader, posing as a Belgian journalist, had “swept her off her feet with his charm, gallantry and generosity.” Hook, Out of Step, p. 242.

  46. k-4,198,206.

  47. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2, n. 4.

  48. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2, n. 4. Albam’s file does not record his wife’s arrest, so her denunciation of him may have saved her. Acquaintance with Albam was also among the evidence which led to the arrest of the military intelligence officers who had recruited him some years earlier: S. P. Uritsky and Aleksandr Karin. At the time of their arrest in 1937 they were, respectively, head and assistant head of military intelligence. Both were shot.

  49. k-9,75.

  50. k-9,76.

  51. k-9,83. Bukharin was tried and sentenced to death in the last of the great show trials in February 1938.

  52. vol. 6, ch. 8, part 1.

  53. Orlov, The Secret History of Stalin’s Crime, pp. 235-7. Though he had only deacon’s orders when he gave up the monastic life, Maly was regarded within the NKVD as a former priest.

  54. vol. 7, ch. 14, item 1. Cf. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, p. 166.

  55. Information from the son of the late Oscar Deutsch, David Deutsch, who recalls meeting Arnold Deutsch at sabbath dinners in Birmingham.

  56. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

  57. The two most detailed accounts of the assassination of Poretsky, which disagree on some points of detail, are: Poretsky, Our Own People, pp. 1-3, chs. 9, 10; Krivitsky, I was Stalin’s Agent, ch. 8.

  58. vol. 7, ch. 9.

  59. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 22.

  60. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 233.

  61. Rees, A Chapter of Accidents, pp. 110-11.

  62. Rees, Looking for Mr. Nobody, pp. 87-90.

  63. vol. 7, ch. 10, app., item 7.

  64. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 245. Blunt had left Cambridge for the Warburg Institute in London, but returned for meetings of the Apostles and other occasions.

  65. The files noted by Mitrokhin suggest that the intelligence supplied by Rees was of slender importance—items such as information on the correspondence of the Czech newspaper editor Hubert Ripka (later a member of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London) and the unsurprising news that the former British secret agent Sir Paul Dukes was still in touch with SIS. vol. 7, ch. 10, app., item 7.

  66. Orlov, The Secret History of Stalin’s Crime, pp. 237-8. An alternative version has it that Slutsky was smothered in his office; vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 37. The pretense was maintained that he had died from natural causes in order not to alarm other enemies of the people being recalled from foreign postings to retribution in Moscow.

  67. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 156.

  68. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 37.

  69. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, p. 17.

  70. Radzinsky, Stalin, p. 417.

  71. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 36.

  72. Dates of dismissal and arrest from KGB file cited by Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 459, n. 63.

  73. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 36.

  74. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 37.

  75. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 207. Mitrokhin’s notes mention SAM but do not record the month of his arrival in London.

  76. vol. 7, ch. 6, para. 2.

  77. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 208-10.

  78. Foreign Office to Sir Eric Phipps (March 11, 1938), Phipps papers PHPP 2/21, Churchill College Archives Center, Cambridge.

  79. West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, p. 209. Cairncross claimed in his memoirs (The Enigma Spy, p. 69) that, after Deutsch’s recall to Moscow, he “provided no further data until after the Germans invaded Russia”—one of numerous falsehoods comprehensively demolished by his KGB file which Cairncross must have supposed would never be revealed.

  80. Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends, pp. 79-80.

  81. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 23.

  82. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 23. West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, p. 210.

  83. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 15. ADA remained in Paris until Maclean departed with the rest of the British embassy in the summer of 1940, just before the arrival of the victorious German army.

  84. vol. 7, ch. 10, paras. 15, 20. Cf. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 216-17.

  85. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 301-2. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 239-40. Cf. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 8.

  86. vol. 7, ch. 1, para. 16.

  87. Borovik, The Philby Files, p. 135.

  88. vol. 7, ch. 1, para. 15.

  89. Borovik, The Philby Files, p. 131.

  90. Borovik, The Philby Files, pp. 132-3.

  91. vol. 7, ch. 10, app., item 8. Cf. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 241-2.

  92. vol. 7, ch. 10, app., item 9. Cf. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 242.

  93. vol. 7, ch. 10, app., item 4. On Smollett’s wartime career, see Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 334-7.

  94. Rees, Looking for Mr. Nobody, pp. 273-7.

  95. vol. 7, ch. 10, app., item 7.

  96. Rees, A Chapter of Accidents, p. 191.

  97. Borovik, The Philby Files, pp. 140-1.

  98. vol. 7, ch. 1, para. 16.

  99. Borovik, The Philby Files, p. 149.

  100. Mitrokhin notes that “In 1940, when there was no contact with Burgess, he handed over material for the CPGB
through MARY [Litzi Philby] and EDITH [Tudor Hart]”; vol. 7, ch. 10, app., item 4. He appears to have had little success. During a visit to the United States in the summer of 1940 he sought Straight’s help in re-establishing contact, telling him, “I’ve been out of touch with our friends for several months” (Straight, After Long Silence, pp. 142-3).

  101. Sudoplatos, Special Tasks, pp. 58-9. Though sentenced to death, Serebryanksy escaped execution. He was reinstated by the NKVD after the beginning of the Great Patriotic War and given the job of recruiting German POWs. He was re-arrested in 1953 as an alleged co-conspirator with Beria and died in prison in 1956.

  102. Sudoplatos, Special Tasks, pp. 21-8, 68. Sudoplatov himself narrowly escaped arrest in the winter of 1938-9. His formal appointment as head of the Administration of Special Tasks occurred only in 1941. On the complicated administrative history of “special tasks” during the Second World War, see Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, pp. 126-9.

  103. Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, pp. 65-9. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 181-3. The somewhat confused account of the assassination in Volkogonov, Trotsky, bizarrely suggests “the possibility that the American special services were following, and perhaps in some sense influencing, events” (p. 454). On the gaps in the KGB files on operation UTKA, see Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, ch. 8.

  104. Levine, The Mind of an Assassin, p. 221. Though acknowledging Eitingon’s “deserved reputation as a man of many affairs with women,” Sudoplatov argues unconvincingly that his “close” relationship with Caridad Mercader did not involve sex, since this would have been a breach of regulations; Special Tasks, p. 70, n. 2.

  105. On the codenames of Caridad and Ramón Mercader, see Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, ch. 8. After his arrest, Ramón’s codename was changed to GNOM; there are a number of references to him under this codename in the VENONA decrypts.

  106. Levine, The Mind of an Assassin, chs. 1-4. Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, ch. 4.

  107. k-2,369; k-16,518.

  108. k-4,206; t-7,12; k-16,518. A sanitized account of Grigulevich’s career in the Spanish Civil War appears in the 1997 SVR official history of pre-war intelligence operations. No reference, however, is made to his role in the first major attempt to assassinate Trotsky, doubtless for fear of tarnishing his heroic image. Though the chapter on Trotsky’s assassination refers to FELIPE, it gives no indication that FELIPE and Grigulevich were one and the same. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, chs. 8, 12.