Spies and Commissars

by Robert Service

  Dukes did not stay for long. On 12 August he left again for Archangel on a Russian trip that lasted till early October, when he made for Britain’s intelligence base in Stockholm. After a brief respite it was back into Russia for another assignment until early December. A trip to Helsinki followed before he went on yet another Russian mission.51 One of his jobs was to support the National Centre in Moscow. Its leaders were at first reluctant to accept British money since they wanted their efforts to stay strictly in Russian hands, but the financial assistance from Kolchak had broken down and they agreed to take Dukes’s cash. Dukes also met with the Tactical Centre, a clandestine political body which had formed itself to challenge Bolshevik rule throughout Russia, and made contact with Yudenich’s North-Western Army. Although none of these organizations was effective in its subversive activity, each supplied him with valuable intelligence about conditions in Soviet Russia. This partnership came to an end when the Cheka penetrated the National Centre and the Tactical Centre and arrested many of the leaders.52 His informants obtained illicit material for him from the offices of Sovnarkom.53

  Dukes showed physical courage and, doubtless helped by his theatrical experience, a talent for disguise. Piecing together the stories he told her, his widow later called him the Scarlet Pimpernel of the October Revolution. He even enlisted in the Red Army. By volunteering, he knew he could join a regiment led by a commander who was a secret anti-Bolshevik.54 This was not the quixotic move it might seem:

  Apart from greater freedom of movement and preference over civilians in application for lodging, amusement, or travelling tickets, the Red soldier received rations greatly superior both in quantity and quality to those of the civilian population. Previous to this time I had received only half a pound of bread daily and had had to take my scanty dinner at a filthy communal eating house, but as a Red soldier I received, besides a dinner and other odds and ends not worth mentioning, a pound and sometimes a pound and a half of tolerably good black bread, which alone was sufficient, accustomed as I am to a crude diet, to subsist on with relative comfort.55

  Dukes travelled about Russia under the alias of artillery commander V. Piotrovski.56 The runaway pianist became a Red Army officer who filed regular reports to London from whatever place he was moved to.

  He had just as many adventures as Hill. Whereas Dukes was modest and discreet in his memoirs, it would seem that he personally rescued two of the former emperor’s nieces, making himself into a human bridge across a dyke at one point. A couple of Englishwomen also owed their lives to him, as did a merchant called Solatin who had tumbled from wealth and influence to destitution after 1917. Dukes and his couriers ran fearful risks — at least one of them was trapped and shot by the Cheka. He was once pursued so hotly that he hid in a tomb in a graveyard. The sight of him emerging from it next morning terrified a passer-by.57 But he was not just the Pimpernel. His couriers helped him finance counter-revolutionary enterprises and gather information that was urgently needed in London — and one of his subordinates fondly recorded him as having been a person of great decency.58 The reports that Dukes relayed to the Secret Service Bureau were concise and vivid. He treasured the spectacle of striking workers who sang the Marseillaise while carrying a banner that read: ‘Down with Lenin and horse meat, up with the Tsar and pork!’59

  Whatever may explain the disarray of Western policy and activity in Russia, it was not the absence of efficient spying networks. In 1918 the British were already picking up Soviet cable traffic to Europe — and when in June they came across a message from Trotsky to Litvinov, they kept it for their own information and prevented it from reaching Litvinov.60 In the following year a Government Code and Cypher School was created on Lord Curzon’s recommendation and quickly proved its worth. Among its employees was the leading former Russian Imperial cryptanalyst Ernst Fetterlein, who provided his services after escaping Soviet Russia. Fetterlein was the first director of the School and scarcely any wireless traffic from Moscow was invulnerable to his attention and that of his Russian colleagues.61

  Although it had been the American spy network that suffered worst in the Cheka raids of September 1918, the US never let up in its activity in wireless interception. Chicherin conducted a lively traffic with Baron Rosen in Berlin seeking a rapprochement between Germany and Soviet Russia; he had no inkling that the Americans were regularly scrutinizing these exchanges.62 The German Foreign Office was divided into two factions, one supporting an alliance and the other wanting to postpone any decision. The first faction saw the communist governments of Russia and Hungary as offering good trading opportunities for Germany; its advocates supposed that this was achievable on the agreed basis that communism would not be exported into German cities and that Lenin would come to terms with a ‘social-democratic or democratic government’. At a time when Denikin’s forces were trampling Red resistance in southern Russia and Ukraine it was not implausible to think that Sovnarkom might come to such an accommodation. Against this proposal for foreign policy stood the second faction, which contended that Germany’s future interest lay in supporting the Whites and earning their permanent gratitude for making life difficult for the Bolsheviks.63

  Western intelligence agencies generally offered a sound analysis of conditions in Soviet Russia. They reported that the Red Army, weak in its early months, was getting stronger. This came through the reports of all the British agents. It was also the opinion of people in French intelligence like the wonderfully named Charles Adolphe Faux-Pas Bidet who had helped to expel Trotsky from France in 1916. He was therefore a marked man when undertaking a mission to Russia in 1918 and was swiftly arrested. Trotsky enjoyed the opportunity of interrogating him, using sarcasm rather than threats against his former tormentor. When released on 17 January 1919, Faux-Pas Bidet at his debriefing duly emphasized the growing strength of Soviet rule.64

  While most agents agreed on this burgeoning strength, Arthur Ransome went further and insisted that the Bolsheviks were nowhere near as bloody as they were painted. This caused controversy in British governing circles, and Bruce Lockhart wrote in the London Morning Post that he should keep quiet because he had been out of Russia for half a year.65 Lockhart went round claiming to be a diplomat pure and simple and Ransome — agent S76 — affected to be just a journalist: neither disclosed their work for the Secret Service Bureau. As it happened, the Secret Service Bureau shared Lockhart’s reservations about Ransome but concluded, on balance, that he did ‘quite good work for us’. Ransome was therefore sanctioned to return on the pretext of collecting Bolshevik pamphlets for the British Museum. His British handlers assumed they could filter out the pro-Soviet bias from his reports and obtain something useful for themselves since no one else could get as close to the Kremlin leaders.66 Ransome, resourceful as ever, made the best of a bad job by using Lockhart’s criticism as a sort of passport to secure interviews with the supreme party leadership. He had missed the October Revolution, but no correspondent after 1917 shuttled quite so easily between Russia and the West.67

  The results of Western intelligence activity were mixed, through no fault of the agents themselves. There is in fact no evidence that Churchill or Curzon took up the anti-Soviet cause because they were decisively influenced by the secret reports of Dukes, Reilly and Hill or by the Times articles of Harold Williams. Churchill and Curzon were political militants against the Bolsheviks from the moment they heard of the October Revolution, and their belligerence was only reinforced by material forwarded to them as ministers. Similarly it is impossible to show that Lloyd George softened his treatment of Russia as the result of Ransome’s purrings. Undoubtedly the energetic secret agents and decryption experts of the Allied powers supplied their political masters with information of high quality. In trying to influence politics, they were motivated by patriotism and a sense of adventure (and, in Reilly’s case, by financial greed). All of them but Ransome detested communism — and even Ransome did not want it for Britain. But although they often tried to be backseat
drivers, the holders of supreme public office — Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau — took little notice unless the received advice conformed to what they themselves wanted.

  22. COMMUNISM IN AMERICA

  Europe’s radical socialists, enthused by the October Revolution and the founding of Comintern, broke away from the old parties of the left. In Italy the Socialist Party burst apart over questions of war, international solidarity and revolutionary struggle. The same happened in France as the socialists lost their far-left wing to communism. Out of these ruptures came the French Communist Party and the Italian Communist Party, which were immediately admitted to Comintern.

  Communist organizations also began to sprout across the Atlantic. The US political scene was a peculiar one. No country in the world had more refugees from the Russian Empire. Most of them had no intention of making the long trip back to Russia or its borderlands, but their interest in what happened there was intense. On the east coast, especially in New York, many Russian Jews warmed to a government promising to build a society without social or national discrimination. They were not the only immigrants whose communities provided fertile ground for communist evangelism. Finns, Serbs and Poles too were responding to the appeal to make America a better place for the poor who lived and worked in the industrial cities. The US melting pot had not yet rendered them deaf to militants who suggested that far-left political policies would improve their lives. Although those who joined groups dedicated to communism were a small minority, they made a lot of noise with increasing confidence. The American authorities grew concerned about the possibility that Soviet-style ideas might take root. Conditions in the manufacturing and mining districts could be gruelling. The Socialist Party of Eugene Debs had for years shown the potential that existed to challenge the political establishment, and in June 1918 Debs himself was arrested for campaigning against America’s entry into the Great War. Now that a communist state existed in Russia, there was reason to worry that communists would cause still greater trouble.

  The first steps in American communist organization were taken in August 1919 when the Communist Labor Party was formed after a split in the Socialist Party. A few days later the rival Communist Party of America was set up. Despite alarming the US authorities, the two creations failed to gain Moscow’s complete approval since Comintern liked to be able to deal with a single communist party in each country. The Bolsheviks themselves had been notorious splitters before 1917, but now they put all this behind them and called for centralism and discipline. The American disarray annoyed them. The Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party engaged in ceaseless polemics. At the same time they shared an admiration for Lenin and Trotsky, the October Revolution and Soviet Russia. They praised industrial and agrarian reforms under Sovnarkom’s rule. They depicted Lenin’s foreign policy as being oriented towards peace; they believed that only communists could put a permanent end to war. They showered plaudits on Trotsky and the Red Army and represented the Bolsheviks as innocent victims of reactionary internal and external forces. The American communists regarded dictatorship and terror as a necessity forced on Russian communists by the military situation. They esteemed the way the Soviet authorities had pulled Russia together with centralism, discipline and order.

  Yet from their inception they were consumed by hostility to each other. Charles Ruthenberg, leader of the Communist Party of America, proclaimed: ‘We affirm our opposition to unity with the Communist Labor Party.’1 The two organizations fought a bitter struggle as each carried banners and pasted up posters in defence of Soviet Russia in separation from the other. They celebrated May Day as an occasion to gain support for the Russian communist cause. They sold booklets by Lenin, Trotsky and other Bolshevik leaders. They turned up to hear John Reed and Louise Bryant speaking at Madison Square Garden about their experiences in Petrograd and Moscow. They rejoiced at living in an age which they thought would give birth to a world communist society. But they never considered uniting to help bring that about.

  While the two American communist organizations expended energy on their rivalry, the Finnish Information Bureau in New York led by Ludwig Martens and Santeri Nuorteva since 1918 retained some usefulness for the Soviet government — and in the following year Martens and Nuorteva received instructions from Chicherin to run a Bureau of Information on Soviet Russia from the same offices.2 In truth the Finnish and Soviet Russian Bureaux were a single operation. On 27 May 1919 Maxim Litvinov wrote to Martens: ‘The aim of rapprochement with America has run like a red thread through all our foreign policy this last year.’ The Soviet leadership by then were aiming their economic concessions policy at the US in preference to other countries. Martens and Nuorteva were turning into political salesmen. They even contended that if the Americans were to assume responsibility for Russian state debts, the Kremlin was willing to turn over vast territories to them.3 Obviously this was an initial bargaining ploy: if President Wilson showed the slightest interest, full negotiations could begin. At the same time the Information Bureau maintained its pressure on Boris Bakhmetev to vacate the Russian embassy building in Washington and hand over the funds under its control.4 Things seemed to be looking brighter for the communists when the espionage case against John Reed was abandoned.5 The charges had been linked to his anti-war activity in 1917 and although he remained an irritant for the US authorities he would have brought any court into ridicule if proceedings were instituted against him so long after the end of the war. The better option seemed to be to pull him in when he attempted anything directly subversive on behalf of the American communist movement.

  On 12 June 1919 the Information Bureau suffered a police raid which yielded compromising material on Martens and Nuorteva. Cash had flowed into the Bureau from an unidentified source thought to be the Soviet government — and Martens had been able to replenish the Bureau’s account as expenditure continued, keeping the balance between $5,000 and $9,000. Nuorteva had regular contact with subversive organizations; he also accepted invitations to give public speeches. The Information Bureau sought contact with groups in favour of revolution throughout North America, including Mexico. Martens and Nuorteva simultaneously campaigned for the resumption of full diplomatic and commercial relations between Russia and the US.6

  The police leaked their findings to the press and the New York Times led the attack on the Bureau by reporting that Martens had been registered in England as a ‘Hohenzollern subject’.7 This kind of comment was meant to identify him as a German alien. In fact Martens was a Russian of German descent, born and brought up in the Russian Empire. The same newspaper claimed that the Bureau had compiled a list of Americans to be arrested in Russia. There was also a report that the Bureau had received a letter promising $10,000 for spreading revolutionary propaganda across the Mexican border. As was admitted by the New York Times, the Bureau resisted the offer, suspecting that it came from an agent provocateur. But this did not persuade the newspaper to let up in its campaign and its editorials continued to lambast the Bureau.8 Yekaterina Breshkovskaya, a veteran Socialist-Revolutionary refugee widely known abroad as the ‘grandmother of the Russian Revolution’, received space to assert that Lenin and Trotsky were Germany’s stooges and that the German officer corps was running the Red Army.9 This was complete nonsense, but the editor was hoping to play on the prejudices of those Americans who might have a sneaking sympathy for Russian communists but had become hostile to the Germans since the war.

  The Bureau hit back by beginning court proceedings for the return of its papers — an option that would have been denied them under Bolshevik rule.10 Martens and Nuorteva had lived for years in the US, making considerable careers for themselves as émigrés. Martens had been vice-president of the Weinberg and Posner engineering company; Nuorteva had been a successful journalist and in 1907 had been elected to the Finnish Sejm. They knew the ways of the American establishment and had funds for suitable legal advice in pursuit of Soviet ends.

  Martens and Nuorteva also ma
de commercial approaches to big American firms and were in correspondence with Henry Ford, J. P. Morgan Jr and Frank A. Vanderlip. They promised ready finance, to the value of $200 million, if a deal could be quickly sealed.11 By spring 1919 the Information Bureau had produced its shopping list of Russia’s requirements, presumably on instructions from Moscow, stating that Sovnarkom wanted to enter the US market and purchase railway equipment, agricultural and factory machinery, mining and electrical equipment, cars and lorries, printing presses, tools, typewriters, textile goods, chemicals, shoes, clothing, medicines, canned meats and fats. The only large industrial item missing from their list was military supplies — this must have been thought too likely to provoke a response that would damage the chances of procuring the other items at a time when American troops remained on active service in northern Russia and Siberia. Martens and Nuorteva simultaneously dangled Russian natural and agricultural products before the eyes of American manufacturers. The Soviet authorities, they claimed, had grain, flax, hemp, timber, minerals, furs, hides and bristles for immediate sale. This was an implausible idea in a year of growing food shortages in Russia, and wheat and rye exports in particular would have been hard to organize in the face of peasant revolts. At any rate the Bureau publicized Soviet official willingness to deposit $200 million in gold in European and American banks to cover the initial deals.12