Spies and Commissars

by Robert Service

The defendant General Zagryazhski, a former military prosecutor and judge, did not deny his association with Kalamatiano but claimed he had acted as an ‘economic informer’ only. Krylenko pressed home his advantage and concentrated his fire on the absent Reilly. When he came to examine Reilly’s lovers — especially Maria Fride and Olga Starzhevskaya — he represented them less as arch-conspirators than as foolish, deceived women.65

  The trial ended on 3 December 1918. Kalamatiano and Lieutenant Colonel Fride were to be shot within twenty-four hours. Starzhevskaya received a three-month prison sentence. Zagryazhski, Maria Fride and others were sentenced to forced labour for five years. A captured Czech was also to stay in prison until such time as the Czech Corps ceased fighting against Soviet Russia. The absentees were not forgotten — this was, after all, officially the Lockhart Case. Lockhart, Grenard, Verthamont and Reilly were declared ‘enemies of the working people’ and sentenced to death if ever they were found on Soviet territory.66 The authorities in Washington protested that Kalamatiano had had no involvement in spying activity, but did not retaliate or even apply much pressure on his behalf.67 Kalamatiano was not executed but kept in prison. Possibly the protest had been enough to save him because the communist leadership did not want to freeze their already cool relations with the US. Perhaps, too, they hoped to use Kalamatiano in a future prisoner exchange. Whatever their intentions, the experience shattered Kalamatiano’s nerves. While Reilly occupied a suite of rooms at the Savoy Hotel and Lockhart did the rounds of London’s gentlemen’s clubs, the American faced an indeterminate period in gaol.

  The Bolsheviks had broken the British plot against them, but by the time the trial started the situation in the rest of Europe had been transformed. On 11 November 1918 Germany had surrendered on the western front and the Great War was suddenly over. The Soviet authorities had expunged the threat of Allied subversion only to face the still greater potential threat of an Allied invasion. France, Britain and America were masters of the continent. It was uncertain what use they would make of their power — and the rulers of the Kremlin looked nervously westwards as the New Year approached.

  16. THE GERMAN CAPITULATION

  On 11 November 1918 an armistice between Germany and the Allies was signed in a railway carriage in Compiègne forest, putting an end to the fighting on the western front. This was the start of a rolling thunder of events. Berlin was in turmoil. The Chancellor Max von Baden had resigned two days earlier, precipitating the Kaiser into abdicating. The German social-democrats seized the opportunity and proclaimed a new republican government with Friedrich Ebert as President and Philipp Scheidemann as Chancellor. In Moscow, the Bolsheviks had not sat idly by. Their first thoughts had been to work out how best to help the political far left in Germany. Indeed they had been making preparations for a sudden end to the Great War since late September when Sverdlov assembled Radek, Bukharin, Kamenev and others to plan an international communist congress in Russia. They decided to ask the Party Central Committee to issue guiding ‘theses’ for this event and make funds available to contact likely sympathizers abroad — and Bukharin and Rakovski meanwhile set out to join Ioffe in the German capital.1

  The approach to European revolution, they thought, was quickening. Lenin had already ordered grain stocks to be laid aside for shipment to Germany when the revolutionary upsurge occurred. The Red Army undertook a massive additional recruitment so that Soviet forces could render military assistance for the same eventuality.2Pravda declared: ‘The robber claws of the Prussian brute are too deeply embedded in the western front. The robber has been caught in a tight spring-trap.’3 At the same time the Soviet leaders continued to play things cautiously and earned ridicule from the German Independent Social-Democrats, passionate critics of Ludendorff and Hindenburg, for delivering the gold required by the Russo-German treaties of March and August. Lenin stopped shipments of bullion only when the Central Powers collapsed on the Bulgarian front and the Austrians surrendered to the Allies.4 At that point the Bolsheviks felt free at last to render direct help to the German political far left. Civil war in Russia made it unfeasible to divert any forces into central Europe: the Red Army could not reach the Urals, far less Poland and Germany, at that time. But the Bolsheviks wanted to make an impact. Despite the food shortages in Russia, the Soviet authorities offered to deliver grain for the new German government to distribute;5 and the scheme was finalized to establish the Communist International in Moscow.

  The political climate in Germany had been fluid for some weeks before the armistice and the unconditional surrender. Wilhelm II discharged the cabinet installed in 1917, replacing it with ministers willing to work under Chancellor von Baden and negotiate for peace — and the Reichstag was no longer to be treated with public disdain. Even Ludendorff wanted the government to discover what terms might be on offer from the Allies. The last shred of hope among German ministers was that the Americans might moderate the French and British lust for a punitive settlement.

  As a step towards conciliating socialists in the Reichstag, Baden released the Spartacist leader Karl Liebknecht from prison on 23 October. Pale from the lack of daylight, hair turned to the colours of pepper and salt, Liebknecht was, for Lenin and Trotsky, Germany’s revolutionary hero.6 He fervently believed that military defeat offered an opportunity to move the country by revolution to socialism. Two others headed the Spartakusbund with him: Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches. Only Liebknecht was German; Luxemburg was a Polish Jew and Jogiches a Lithuanian one. All three had spent time in prison for denouncing the war effort. Liebknecht now imposed himself upon them as a man of action. Before the Great War he had already been known for his capacity to inspire an audience:

  [Liebknecht], a dark man with lively gestures, shot words at us like darts, words which kindled anger and protest against governments which could drag their peoples into the bloody holocaust of war.

  [He] was a very good speaker. There was not only the art of the orator in what he said but a ring of truth and sincerity which won us over completely.7

  He wanted to take the political struggle on to the streets. Nothing short of insurrection would satisfy him — and he scorned those in the German Social-Democratic Party who urged caution and compromise.

  Germany’s ally Austria-Hungary was falling apart, pressed heavily by the Italians from the south. Revolutions erupted in Vienna and Budapest on 31 October. Austria sued for an armistice, which was granted on 3 November; it took a further ten days for the Hungarians to achieve the same result.8 The German high command had long since lost confidence in the benefits of the military coalition with the Habsburgs. Now Germany was on its own.

  The Soviet mission in Berlin prepared a banquet for Liebknecht with a view to publicizing his revolutionary agenda. Bukharin was delighted to hear that he was ‘in complete agreement with us’.9 Urgent contact with Russia was needed after Ioffe heard that the Germans were about to sue for peace, and he called Moscow on the Hughes telegraph apparatus. Radek rebuked Ioffe for having failed to encode the message: ‘Are you taking account of the seriousness of your communiqué and its possible consequences?’ But when Ioffe simply repeated what he had said, Radek raced to the Sovnarkom offices, where the news made everyone feel suddenly ‘liberated’.10 The embassies that still remained in Moscow were anxious about the news that came through to them. For the moment the talk among diplomats was focused on what kind of territorial and political settlement might be imposed by the Western Allies; and when Radek told the elderly Austrian ambassador De Potere about Italy’s pretensions in the southern Tyrol, he broke down in tears. Lenin and Sverdlov were ecstatic and asked Radek to draft an appeal to the Austrian working class. Since it was a Saturday evening, as Radek pointed out, the printworkers had gone home. The Hungarian communist leader Béla Kun, who was still in Moscow as an ex-POW, volunteered his fellow former prisoners to do the job if bread and sausages were made available. The atmosphere was euphoric. A crowd of Bolshevik supporters gathered next morning outside the Moscow
Soviet on Tverskaya Street and, to their cheers, Lenin appeared on the balcony of the building. The celebrations lasted the entire day.11

  Meanwhile in Berlin on 5 November the supporters of the October Revolution gathered outside the Soviet mission to chant their admiration for Lenin and Trotsky.12 This was too much for German ministers, who knew exactly what the Bolshevik party thought of them after a crate being unloaded as part of the Soviet diplomatic ‘pouch’ was dropped at a railway station and insurrectionary propaganda spilled out.13 Ioffe and his mission, including Bukharin and Rakovski, were given twenty-four hours to leave the country; diplomatic relations were severed.14

  Their train left for the Polish frontier at six o’clock in the morning.15 It had not yet reached Russia when the radio station at Khodynka north of Moscow intercepted a telegram from Kiel indicating that the German naval garrison had mutinied. Radek tried without success to establish contact with the rebel sailors. Then news was picked up from Allied stations of revolution in Germany as Ebert and Scheidemann took over from Baden. Ioffe’s train had by this point pulled into Borisov, still in German-occupied territory. Using the Hughes apparatus, Radek instructed him to stay put while the Soviet authorities attempted to get his deportation revoked. Radek himself desperately tried to get through to the German Foreign Office:

  Radek: Call the people’s plenipotentiary, Mr [Georg] Haase, to the apparatus.

  Civil servant: He’s not in the ministry.

  Radek: Who’s deputizing for him?

  Civil servant: There’s nobody in the ministry. Everyone’s run off.

  Radek: I order you in the name of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee on your responsibility before the Berlin Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies!16

  Silence followed. There was no such thing as a Berlin Soviet and Radek had no authority to tell anyone in Germany what to do. As usual he was trying his luck.

  The German embassy in Moscow later left a message for Radek saying that Berlin had been calling him. Radek consulted Chicherin before sitting down at the Hughes apparatus to communicate with Haase. Unlike Liebknecht, Haase as a leader of the Independent Social-Democrats was no sympathizer with the October Revolution. But he sent courteous greetings and did not rule out the possibility of letting Ioffe back into Germany. Then he added: ‘But knowing that there’s famine in Russia, we ask you to direct the grain which you want to give up for the German revolution for the benefit of the starving in Russia. President of the American Republic Wilson has guaranteed Germany the receipt of grain and fats needed to feed the population in winter.’ It seemed that American capitalist assistance was preferred to proletarian solidarity, which Radek took as a snub. He called Haase the Judas Iscariot of European socialism, and an exchange of insults followed.17 Eventually Haase reverted to practicalities and asked for German embassy staff to be allowed to leave Russia. Radek replied that the German occupation of Ukraine and other territories made Russo-German armed conflict a distinct possibility — and he warned that official diplomatic communications needed to be maintained with Germany if this was going to be avoided.18

  Hoping to guarantee that Ioffe’s party came to no harm at Borisov, Sovnarkom detained Germany’s consul-general Herbert Hauschild in Moscow.19 Agreement was reached to swap diplomats on the Lockhart–Litvinov model. Two trains approached each other at Borisov station, and Ioffe was exchanged for Hauschild before proceeding in a second-class carriage to Orsha eighty miles east in Soviet-ruled Russia. His journey ended in Moscow on 24 November.20

  The Kremlin leadership declared Friedrich Ebert and the new government in Berlin to be hand in glove with the Western Allies. Lenin suspected that German ministers aimed to secure better peace terms by offering to deploy German forces against Soviet Russia. Sovnarkom, in yet another breach of international law, allowed German and Austrian ex-POWs to occupy the embassy buildings of their countries. De Potere, already demoralized, felt grateful that the intruders left him his own office and bathroom. He did not mind if they brought girlfriends back at night, only drawing the line at their use of his suite as a thoroughfare, and even Radek warmed to him.21 German diplomats were of a different mind, wanting nothing to do with leading Bolsheviks. The exception was the military attaché Schubert who asked for copies of The Communist Manifesto and read Lenin’s State and Revolution from start to finish. At the same time, in Berlin the entire political system was being overhauled. These were strange times — and they were about to get stranger. Soviet leaders watched for any sign that the German situation might start moving their way. They had lost their direct source of information with Ioffe’s expulsion and depended on patchy wireless traffic and on German newspapers brought by rail.

  Liebknecht did not let them down as he pressed his arguments in the Spartakusbund in favour of an uprising. At first, Luxemburg and Jogiches took a lot of convincing. Berlin in the winter of 1918–19 was not like Petrograd in October 1917. Ebert and Scheidemann, unlike Kerenski, were not friendless on the political left. What is more, they could call upon the assistance of army regiments as well as of the unofficial armed squads known as the Freikorps. There was still no equivalent of the Russian soviets in Berlin.

  Luxemburg had long objected to Lenin’s authoritarian methods inside the labour movement, and she had never liked his penchant for bringing the peasantry into revolutionary politics. From her wartime prison cell she had quickly formed a severe opinion of the October Revolution. She was against the Brest-Litovsk treaty, thinking it damaged the prospects of revolution in Germany. She also objected to what she saw as Lenin’s compromises on the land question and the national question. On dictatorship and terror she was horrified by the reports she received about the Bolsheviks in power. Liebknecht was less sensitive: ‘One can’t make revolution in white gloves. Whoever sincerely wants it must also want the means which guarantee it; there’s no time to lose. Perhaps it will be necessary to pass through rivers of blood and mud to get to the destination. Anyway the German revolution won’t require so many sacrifices.’22 He believed that the Red terror in Russia would be of short duration,23 and he wore down Luxemburg’s doubts with his enthusiasm. She anyway considered Germany ready for its socialist transformation and had long advocated ‘mass action’ on the streets.

  The Spartakusbund helped to form workers’ councils in Berlin and announced the holding of a congress. The Bolsheviks received an open invitation and chose some of their leaders to attend, including Ioffe, Rakovski, Bukharin and Radek.24 All of them had opposed Lenin throughout the Brest-Litovsk controversy and were itching to foment revolution in Germany. Although all Bolsheviks agreed that Berlin would be the cockpit of ‘European socialist revolution’, Lenin worried that his ex-opponents would behave irresponsibly on their German trip. He had already written a warning note to Ioffe: ‘Bukharin is loyal but has lunged into “left-wing idiocy” to a devilish extent… Prenez garde!’25 Radek was another object of concern. Lenin had a firm word with him before departure and pointed out that if the Allied armies were to decide to march eastwards, the French commander Franchet d’Espèrey would have a clear route across Hungary and Romania into Ukraine and on to Russia. When Radek replied that French war-weariness would deter any such enterprise, Lenin interjected: ‘They’ll deploy coloured forces. How are you going to conduct agitation among them?’ Radek replied by saying that he would use picture cards, though he added that he thought the Russian winter would prove intolerable for soldiers from Africa.26

  Yet Lenin was still determined to assist in the making of a revolution in Germany — and Radek, who had belonged to the German Social-Democratic Party before 1914, was the Soviet leader with the closest acquaintance with the Berlin political scene before the Great War. Lenin told him to behave with caution and avoid forcing the pace.27 Sverdlov handed over 200,000 German marks to cover the delegation’s expenses. He gave little thought to their bodily requirements: they received only kasha (Russian porridge) and honey for the long trip through eastern Europe. Radek was cher
ished among the party leaders for his sense of humour; but when he said the Hebrews had got better conditions in their flight from the Pharaoh, Sverdlov just told him to stop complaining.28

  The first stop for the delegation was an overnight one at Dvinsk where they fraternized with German soldiers from the local soviet and Radek fell asleep with his head resting on Khristo Rakovski’s chest. When the German high command learned of their attempt to suborn its troops, it stopped them from continuing to travel further westwards by train.29 By then the western borderlands of the old Russian Empire were in uproar, and the Bolsheviks were intent on establishing a Soviet republic in Ukraine. Pavlo Skoropadskyi, Germany’s client ruler, was already under threat from nationalists led by Symon Petliura and was overthrown in December. The Soviet leadership in Moscow wanted to resume its revolutionary impetus and, as soon as possible, establish a Red administration in Kiev. Rakovski was chosen to head this attempt, and he abandoned his ambition to make for Berlin.30 Radek, however, was determined to resume the German trip. Getting on a Hughes apparatus in Minsk, he secured permission from Sverdlov and Lenin to proceed in disguise to Berlin. A friend, German communist Felix Wolf, helped with the arrangements, and Radek continued alone on his westward journey by horse-drawn sleigh.31 After crossing Poland he reached Königsberg and jumped on a direct train to Berlin.32

  Arriving at the Schlesinger Bahnhof, he bought a copy of the Spartacist newspaper Die Rote Fahne and took a taxi to his hotel before meeting up with the leaders of the German political far left — not only Liebknecht and Luxemburg but also August Thalheimer and Paul Levi. He made contact, too, with his old mentor Leo Jogiches, with whom he had a warm discussion. Jogiches temptingly asked whether he wanted to remain an observer for the Soviet leadership or become an integral member of the Spartakusbund,33 but Radek stuck to his assignment as a Kremlin emissary. Obviously a lot of work had to be done before the Spartacists could lead an insurrection. There had been only fifty of them at the Kaiser’s abdication and they were also in a small minority at the Congress of Workers’ Councils and had many internal disagreements on policy. Furthermore, Luxemburg continued to attack the Bolsheviks for conducting a terror against their enemies. She asked Radek to relay her comments to Moscow and expressed shame that her former comrade Dzerzhinski had agreed to head the Cheka.34