Spies and Commissars

by Robert Service

  One of the great worries of communist leaders was that their enemies might find a way to disrupt the Brest-Litovsk treaty. The anarchists were always out to cause trouble. Four of their number had seized the car of Raymond Robins in April 1918. Robins drew his Browning pistol on them only to be confronted by their own four Brownings. The anarchists stole the vehicle, forcing the chauffeur to do the driving for them. Robins, stranded on the pavement, contacted the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and demanded the return of his car as well as an apology. Chicherin met his indignation with the less than reassuring comment that ‘he had had the same thing happen to himself only a week before’. This infuriated Robins, who said that no other foreign minister in the world would talk so complacently. Robins went next to the Cheka, which is what he should have done in the first place. Dzerzhinski’s people promised that the American’s property would be back with him within a week, and this is exactly what happened.11 On the night of 11–12 April 1918 the Cheka and the Red Army moved decisively against the anarchist strongholds in Moscow. Twenty-six premises were attacked. Sovnarkom used the Latvian Riflemen to carry out a thorough suppression of resistance. By the end of the action they had killed forty anarchists and taken five hundred prisoners.12

  Dzerzhinski, humiliated by having been captured in the Left Socialist-Revolutionary rising, resigned as Chairman of the Cheka on 8 July and agreed to resume his post only on 22 August. Eight days later Lenin was wounded in an assassination attempt that came very close to success. Dzerzhinski’s morale again crumbled. In September he took himself off to Berlin. He travelled under the alias of a courier called Felix Damanski, leaving the Cheka in the care of Yakov Peters. Getting away from the scene of his embarrassment, he hoped to do something useful for the international communist cause. Adolf Ioffe refused to go easy on him and asked how the Chekists could mess things up so badly as to let Lenin be shot.13 Another purpose of Dzerzhinski’s trip was to retrieve the shreds of his private life. His wife Zofia had not seen him since before the Great War. After her release from Russian custody, she had moved to Switzerland with their son; from 1918 she was employed in Berne by the Soviet mission. Dzerzhinski slipped over the border to visit his family. He took them to the zoo in Berne and on a boat trip on Lake Lugano. Zofia was later to write a less than reliable account, claiming that her husband unexpectedly came face to face with the British diplomat Robert Bruce Lockhart on the same pleasure steamer.14 In fact Lockhart at that time was in London recuperating from the Spanish influenza.15

  The Soviet authorities were not yet making much effort to infiltrate agents into foreign political establishments. If they had looked for a candidate as their master spy in the West it would surely have been Theodore Rothstein, who wrote for the Manchester Guardian in wartime and worked in the War Office press office as a translator.16 Rothstein, an emigrant from the Russian Empire, was one of Lenin’s old acquaintances in London and had taken his side in the original split between Bolshevism and Menshevism. He was also a veteran supporter of causes on the political far left in his country of refuge; no Russian Marxist had a better command of English. When the Bolsheviks took power in Petrograd he became a spirited advocate of their ideas. His journalism for the Call newspaper marked him out as a fanatical Bolshevik as he justified communist dictatorship and called for a Revolutionary World War.17 This was never going to make Rothstein popular in the War Office after Sovnarkom had announced that Russia would not continue in the war,18 and it was no surprise when his employment was terminated. According to Basil Thomson of Special Branch, Rothstein’s duties had anyway never given him access to anything of use to an enemy power.19 Rothstein expressed no regret about leaving the civil service. As a revolutionary he was reserving his energy for disseminating Soviet propaganda and money.

  Although the Cheka had yet to set up a comprehensive operational network in Europe, there was another ‘abroad’ where Chekists were hard at work. When the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd in October 1917 it was not long before rival governments were established in those territories of the former Russian Empire where resistance to Bolshevism was strong. Sovnarkom took it for granted that such places should come under Moscow’s authority. Chekists were trained to infiltrate with a view to subverting the current rulers and preparing a situation that would make the tasks of the Red Army easier to accomplish.

  Activity in Europe was restricted to a few Cheka operatives, Vladimir Menzhinski in Berlin being one of them. Germany and Switzerland were easier places for communication than the Allied countries. Indeed, the breakdown of postal communication with the United Kingdom reduced Yakov Peters to asking friendly Allied intelligence officers to get a British diplomatic courier to carry letters to his wife in London.20 Foreign intelligence operations were anyway not the monopoly of the Cheka. A confusion of agencies sprang up, involving the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and sundry communists returning from Moscow to their native countries. The Russian Communist Party as well as Sovnarkom was plagued by overlaps in functional tasks. Soviet rulers wanted results. They were practical zealots, and as long as it looked as if something positive might come out of their plans they did not bother about institutional propriety. Dzerzhinski was pictured as the spider at the centre of a vast web of international intelligence. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Cheka, Sovnarkom and the Central Committee operated alongside each other in energetic activity and no single institution had a monopoly in the tasks of intelligence.

  In fact Dzerzhinski and his comrades did not get round to setting up an illegal operations department for work abroad until June 1919: the emergencies in Russia were the priority to be dealt with. (On a point of detail, it must be remembered that none of the Cheka’s operations in Soviet Russia were beyond the law for the simple reason that Sovnarkom had intentionally freed Chekists from legal restraints.)21 But intelligence about foreign governments was vital for the formation of policy. Germany and the Allies constituted a dire threat to Sovnarkom’s survival. Either of them might at any moment invade. Plots by Russians too had to be stamped out or prevented all over the territories under Soviet rule. White conspiracies sprouted up with Allied support. The communist leaders scrabbled around to improve their knowledge of what was going on in Washington, London and Paris. Litvinov and Rothstein ably discharged this task in the United Kingdom for the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. In America, Nuorteva and Martens went around canvassing support for the Bolsheviks through the Finnish Information Bureau, and help continued to be made available by sympathizers like Felix Frankfurter.

  Probably the best conduit of inside news, though, were informal diplomatic channels. Karakhan and Radek in the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs talked at length to influential foreigners in Moscow. Both were charming in their individual ways. Despite offending many people with his brashness and extreme opinions, Radek seemed decidedly winsome to Arthur Ransome, who had his ear to the ground as he sought to track down Allied intentions. Ransome’s pro-Bolshevism was an open secret and agents of the Allies had learned to be cautious in what they said in front of him; indeed his letters and movements were kept under close review even though he was simultaneously working for British intelligence.22 Karakhan was anyhow always the more congenial acquaintance for Allied representatives since he did not disguise his wish for some kind of deal between Soviet Russia, as it was starting to be called,23 and the Western Allies. Lockhart claimed that his favourite commissar was known to like turning up ‘begloved and armed with a box of coronas’.24

  The gentlemanly pleasantries disguised the savagery of international relations. While Karakhan and Lockhart puffed on their cigars, they exchanged opinions frankly about the situation. Karakhan rebuked the British for failing to assist the Bolsheviks; he claimed that the Red terror had acquired its wildness because the Allies had isolated and threatened Soviet Russia. Lockhart retorted that Sovnarkom had itself to blame after jeopardizing the Allies by closing down the eastern front. While Brit
ain and France were fighting for national survival, Lenin had chosen to relieve the military pressure on Germany. If the Soviet intelligence effort abroad was frail in the year after the October Revolution, the Bolshevik leadership did not lack access to information about what the Allied powers thought of them. Radek and Karakhan were adept at picking up titbits useful for the formulation of foreign policy. They took what they discovered back to their comrades in the Kremlin. As yet it made little difference to Bolshevik actions. Sovnarkom’s room for manoeuvre between Germany and the Allies was minuscule; and Bolsheviks anyway saw the world around them through ideological spectacles: they assumed the worst in everything communicated to them by Allied diplomats about the intentions of foreign capitalist powers. This was a prudent tactic in the circumstances of the time.

  13. GERMANY ENTREATED

  Archangel had acquired strategic importance early in the war when the German submarine fleet turned the Baltic Sea into the most dangerous waters for shipping in the northern hemisphere. The old timber quays on the east bank of the River Dvina became the main destination for cargoes to Russia from Britain; and in summer 1918, when German forces encroached on northern Russia from Finland, the War Department in London gave approval for the British expeditionary force to leave its station in Murmansk and seize Archangel. General Frederick Poole, who commanded the operation, saw it as the first step towards the overthrow of Sovnarkom.

  The city was Russia’s oldest port for international commerce. Since the sixteenth century, when England’s Queen Elizabeth I ordered the creation of the Muscovy Company, it had supplied timber and furs to the rest of Europe. Its fortunes dipped in the early eighteenth century when Peter the Great privileged St Petersburg, his new capital, on the Gulf of Finland, and by the outbreak of the Great War Archangel’s population had dwindled to 38,000. Its estuary was navigable for only half the year from May to the end of September. In the winter, temperatures could drop to minus 13° centigrade and wealthy local families put triple glazing in their windows. In the ‘white nights’ of the summer, when there were long hours of daylight, the mosquitoes were a torment for everyone. But Archangel remained a bustling entrepôt and its administration increased the number of quays to the physical limit in the interests of intensifying activity. Ships with draughts as deep as sixty feet could find a berth there. A road ran the length of the city — a whole five miles — parallel to the Dvina. Traders built their mansions and sawmills between the road and river, near enough to the quays to watch over their interests. The pavements were of timber and the industry was timber. Although other goods like tar, pitch, fish and flax were also traded, Archangel was well described as a ‘wooden metropolis’.1

  General Poole’s plan was to use the entire province of Archangel as his base for an invasion. The plan was to send a force south up the Dvina to Kotlas which was the terminal of the rail line to Vyatka and the Trans-Siberian railway. His objective was to form an attacking semi-circle pointed at Petrograd and Moscow from the north and east.2 After combining with the Czech Corps in the Urals and the Volunteer Army in southern Russia, he expected to tip the military balance against Sovnarkom.3 The plan had French blessing; and although the Americans wanted no direct part in it, they discreetly indicated that they would not object to anything the British did.4 Optimism was peaking. The Admiralty in London shared Poole’s assumption that he could easily recruit and train an army of Russian volunteers to fight the unpopular and vulnerable regime in Moscow.5

  On 26 July 1918 the Allied contingent sailed from Murmansk for Archangel. Poole issued an ultimatum and, more by bluff than anything else, the city fell to him on 2 August as the Red garrison and its political commissar Mikhail Kedrov made a hasty departure.6 Nikolai Chaikovski, the septuagenarian revolutionary who had lived in London until the February Revolution, had agreed to head the Supreme Government of North Russia. (The word ‘supreme’ appeared obligatory for anti-Bolshevik enterprises.) Poole had taken little account of Russian geography and society and Chaikovski was already less than wholly confident. Peasants failed to greet the new administration with enthusiasm and the civil service was weak. The Allies attempted a little economic reform. It was agreed that the anti- Soviet authorities should have access to the funds in Western banks left behind by the Provisional Government and currently claimed by the Bolsheviks. John Maynard Keynes, then working as a Treasury consultant in London, submitted a memorandum explaining how to establish a stable currency in areas outside Soviet control; he recommended a fixed exchange rate between sterling or gold and Archangel rubles.7

  The British press hardly mentioned northern Russia beyond noting that ‘a considerable force’ had been landed there.8 When a Labour MP complained about the lack of public disclosure, the government simply refused to comment.9 Months later, Douglas Young, Britain’s consul in Archangel, was to go to the London press and denounce the subterfuge and the violence he had witnessed. While disliking Bolshevism, he contended that the way to deal with Soviet Russia was through diplomacy. Young denied that a few thousand troops seven hundred miles from Moscow could bring down Sovnarkom.10 But at the time a curtain of mystery was drawn over the Archangel operation. The US embassy, having fled Vologda, made its base there as soon as Poole pronounced it safe for Allied personnel.11 A degree of diplomatic fussiness was involved. The Americans still wanted the Soviet government to know that they had not taken part in the occupation of the city. They were merely going there after Poole had seized it. In this way the door was kept open for the US to negotiate with Sovnarkom if a suitable opportunity arose. These nuances had little influence on how the Bolsheviks reacted to Poole’s military action. In their view, the Western Allies had committed a flagrant violation of Soviet Russia’s sovereignty — and they feared that Poole would continue his advance.

  Without being reinforced by fresh units, however, Poole could not expand his operations beyond Archangel province. The British government, before sanctioning the seizure of Archangel, had received advice from naval intelligence in Petrograd that at least two army divisions were necessary if the Bolsheviks were to be overthrown. Anything less than that would ‘lead to the impression that operations were not being undertaken seriously’. By contrast, a truly substantial contingent would have an instant strategic impact since the Germans would no longer be able to transfer troops from east to west but would have to move them in the opposite direction, and this would be of benefit to the Allies on the western front.12

  But it took the maximum of Allied human and material resources to repel the great German offensive that had begun in March. Poole had to sit tight and pray for victory in northern France. It had appeared that his hopes might be fulfilled on 18 July when the Germans, exhausted by months of attacking, had to fall back at Villers-Cotterêts. The French Army had shown that Germany was not invincible. Celebrations were in order and church bells rang throughout France that Sunday. But the German forces regrouped and the Allied commanders did not believe that two whole divisions could be spared at that crucial moment. Poole disappointedly dropped the idea of attempting a breakthrough to Vyatka. Instead he settled his men in Archangel until such time as the military situation should change either in Russia or in France. He had angered Sovnarkom without endangering its survival, and his force got used to enduring the insect bites in the long summer days.

  For weeks, however, the German Foreign Office had been agitating for the communists to take back northern Russia and get rid of the British. Ioffe reported from Berlin that the Germans had offered to undertake a joint military operation.13 Germany’s high command continued to worry that the Allies might succeed in restoring the eastern front — and a war on two fronts was the last thing that Ludendorff and Hindenburg could cope with. Sovnarkom resisted the German invitation until Archangel capitulated to Allied power. On 1 August Chicherin asked Karl Helfferich, who had headed the embassy since Mirbach’s death, about collaborating in an attack on the British in Archangel and Murmansk. Concern about the potential threat from Poole
intensified. On 13 August Chicherin put a request to the Germans to carry out an aerial bombardment of Archangel. Moisei Uritski, head of the Cheka in Petrograd, talked to German diplomats about the need to crush the British military platform in the north. Uritski’s stipulation was that German troops should not go via Petrograd. He claimed to be nervous about Russian working-class opinion. More likely he did not entirely trust the Germans despite wanting help from them. If German troops were allowed into Petrograd there was no guarantee that they would leave Soviet rule intact.14

  Germany’s intentions were a source of constant worry to the Soviet leaders, and they were right to be concerned. Ruling circles in Berlin had never discounted the notion of invading Russia and throwing out the Bolsheviks. The war party was constantly tempted by this option. As late as June 1918 Ludendorff was saying: ‘We can expect nothing from this Soviet government.’ Enquiries were put in hand about practicalities.15