10Christiane Sorge, ‘Mein Mann – Dr. R. Sorge’, Die Weltwoche, 11 December 1964. According to Weltwoche, Christiane Sorge’s article was written ten years earlier.
11Heinrich August Winkler, Der lange Weg nach Westen, Munich, 2000, p. 55.
12Carlos Caballero Jurado and Ramiro Bujeiro, The German Freikorps 1918–23, Oxford, 2001.
13Heinrich August Winkler, Weimar 1918–33, Taschenbuch, 2005, p. 58.
14Sorge Memoir, Pt 1, ‘My past history as a German Communist’, pp. 91–8.
15Hagan Schulze, Weimar: Germany 1917–1933, Severin und Siedler, 1982, p. 158.
16Sorge Memoir, Pt 1, ‘My past history as a German Communist’, pp. 91–8.
17C. Sorge, ‘Mein Mann’, Die Weltwoche.
18Elisabeth K. Poretsky, Our Own People, quoted in Robert Whymant, Stalin’s Spy: Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Espionage Ring, London, 1996, p. 325n.
19Stephen Koch, Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Münzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals, New York, 2004, p. 11.
20Sayle, London Review of Books, 22 May 1997.
21Poretsky quoted in Whymant, Stalin’s Spy, p. 325n.
22Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, and Andrzej Paczkowski, The Black Book of Communism, Cambridge, MA, 1997, p. 282; Marxist Internet Archive.
23‘Der Märzaufstand 1920’, Deutsches Historisches Museum: https://www.dhm.de/lemo/kapitel/weimarer-republik/innenpolitik/maerzaufstand.
24Prange et al., Target Tokyo, chapter 2.
25Mader, Dr Sorge-Report, Berlin, 1985, p. 45.
26Erich Correns, 29 October 1919, quoted in Whymant, Stalin’s Spy, p. 22.
27Sorge Memoir, Pt 2, p. 32.
28Sorge Memoir, Pt 2, p. 33.
29Toshito (ed.), Gendai-shi Shiryo, Vol. 3, p. 5.
30Gerlach never formally took up the post, dying suddenly of diabetes in October 1922. See Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought), Cambridge, MA, 1995.
31Prange et al., Target Tokyo, p. 33.
32Hede Massing, This Deception: KBG Targets America, New York, 1951, p. 71.
33‘I read about the Russian Revolution, about Lenin and Vera Figner, who became my idol; and I learned to love the idea of socialism the idea of a better life for everyone. True, I never faced the reality of everyday work within the movement,’ she wrote (Massing, This Deception, p. 29).
34Unlike Sorge, Massing was able to escape from the secret world. After the Second World War she defected from the Soviet underground and came to prominence by testifying in the second case of Alger Hiss in 1949; later, she published sensational accounts about her life as a Soviet intelligence operative.
35Sorge Memoir, Pt 1, ‘My past history as a German Communist’, pp. 91–8.
36David North and Joe Kishore, The Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party, World Socialist Website (wsw.org), 2008, p. 13.
37Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography, London, 2010, p. 262.
38See William Henry Chamberlin, Soviet Russia: A Living Record and a History, London, 1931, chapter 11; Max Shachtman ‘For the Fourth International!’ New International, Vol. 1, No.1, July 1934; Walter Kendall, ‘Lenin and the Myth of World Revolution’, Revolutionary History, Vol. 3 (3), 1991.
39Koch, Double Lives, p. 16.
40Koch, Double Lives, p. 11.
41Koch, Double Lives, p. 17 note 20.
42Koch, Double Lives, p. 17.
43P. Broue, The German Revolution: 1917–1923, Chicago, 2006, p. 516.
44Courtois et al., Black Book of Communism, pp. 277–8.
45Sorge Memoir, Pt 1, ‘My past history as a German Communist’, pp. 91–8.
46Viktor Suvorov, Spetsnaz: The Story Behind the Soviet SAS, trans. David Floyd, London, 1987, chapter 3.
47‘Sorge Memoir’, Pt. 2, p. 23.
48As also detailed by Nikolai Bukharin in his brochure Can We Build Socialism in One Country in the Absence of the Victory of the West-European Proletariat?, April 1925. The position was finalised as the state policy after Stalin’s January 1926 article ‘On the Issues of Leninism’ (David Priestland, The Red Flag: A History of Communism, New York, 2009, p. 124).
49Sorge Memoir, Pt 3, ‘The Comintern and the Soviet Communist Party’, pp. 102–17.
50Sorge, Die Weltwoche, 11 December 1964.
51‘Sorge Memoir’, Pt. 2, p. 28.
52Sorge, Die Weltwoche, 11 December 1964.
53‘Sorge Memoir’, Pt 1, p. 55.
CHAPTER 3
1John le Carré, Progress magazine, 1966.
2Renamed after the writer Maxim Gorky in 1935.
3Alexander Cammann, ‘Müde Kalauer im roten Bunker’, Die Zeit, 23 October 2011.
4Comrade Sorge: Documents and Memoirs, Moscow, 1965, p. 8, written by journalists from Sovietskaya Rossiya, this was the book on Sorge published in Russia.
5Agnes Smedley, quoted by J. R. and S. R. MacKinnon, The Life and Times of an American Radical, Berkeley, 1988.
6Krivitsky, I Was Stalin’s Agent, London, 1940, p. 78.
7Sorge Memoir, Pt 3, ‘The Comintern and the Soviet Communist Party’, pp. 102–117.
8Whymant, Stalin’s Spy, p. 23.
9Whymant, Stalin’s Spy, p. 43.
10The Soviets did not seem to be in a hurry to bring her to Russia. Sorge wrote to the party apparatus in Germany from Moscow on 6 October 1924, worrying that he had heard nothing about Christiane’s transfer to the USSR despite having put in an official request in mid-August (1924) for the German party’s permission to allow her to work in Moscow. Sorge noted that Ryazanov of the Institute of Marxist–Leninism had expressed a desire for Christiane to reorganise his library as ‘she knows the latest techniques’, A. G. Fesyun, Delo Rikharda Zorge: Neisvestnye Dokumenty, Moscow, 2000, (henceforth, Fesyun, Documents), ‘The Unknown Sorge’, Doc. 5.
11Sorge, Die Weltwoche, 11 December 1964.
12Sorge, Die Weltwoche, 11 December 1964.
13Massing, This Deception, p. 74.
14Deakin and Storrey, Case of Richard Sorge, p. 43.
15Whymant, Stalin’s Spy, p. 44.
16Comrade Sorge: Documents and Memoirs, p. 12.
17Kollontai was the most prominent woman in the Soviet administration and was best known for founding the Zhenotdel or ‘Women’s Department’ in 1919. In 1923 the Soviet authorities, perhaps finding her philosophy of free love a little too much even for their liberated sensibilities, appointed her ambassador to Norway.
18Der Spiegel, 27 June 1951, p. 25. From 13 June to 3 October 1951, this West German magazine ran a series of articles entitled ‘Herr Sorge sass mit zu Tische: Porträt eines Spions’.
19Sorge reported delightedly to his mother and sisters in Berlin with news that the old acacia tree in the garden was still standing (Comrade Sorge: Documents and Memoirs, p. 13).
20Sorge, Die Weltwoche, 11 December 1964. Nevertheless, Christiane kept a soft spot for Sorge. Eventually she emigrated to the United States, but she did not marry again and maintained a warm correspondence with him. Although there is no evidence of a divorce, Sorge considered himself a bachelor and wrote-off family life as ‘not for him’ (see Alain Guerin and Nicole Chatel, Camarade Sorge, Paris, 1965, pp. 16, 274).
21Comrade Sorge: Documents and Memoirs, p. 3.
22A list of works by Richard Sorge in the Communist International journal for ‘Sonder R’ 1926–29 reviews and articles ‘the material situation of the German proletariat at the end of 1927’ shows eight reviews and twelve learned articles (see Fesyun, Documents).
23‘While in Moscow, I published The Economic Provisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty and the International Labour Class, and in 1927 I published German Imperialism. I believe that these were competent pieces of work. Both were read widely in Germany and translated into Russian,’ Sorge Memoir, Pt 2, p. 42.
24Deakin and Storrey, Case of Richard Sorge, p. 40.
25Comrade Sorge: Documents an
d Memoirs, p. 12.
26In 1925 he also published a brochure in Germany 1925 under the name I. K. Sorge, ‘The Dawes Plan and Its Consequences’, Fesyun, Documents, p. 24.
27RGASPI, Fond 495, opis. 165, doc. 23, pp. 48–9.
28RGASPI, Fond 495, opis. 166, doc. 15, p. 9.
29RGASPI, Fond 495, opis. 25, doc. 107, pp. 166, 206.
30Fesyun, Documents, 25.10.26, 06.04.27, p. 25.
31Fesyun, Documents, 27.09.27, p. 25.
32Massing, This Deception, p. 95.
33Fesyun, Documents, Doc. 12, 22.04.27, p. 26.
34Deakin and Storrey, Case of Richard Sorge, p. 47.
35‘I remember Sorge as if it were yesterday – now I know that he and Johann were one and the same,’ recalled Richard Jensen, a member of the Danish Communist Party. Danish CP leaders at the time seemed to think Sorge’s mission was from Berlin, but ‘when he had carried out his assignment in this country [Denmark] we travelled together to Moscow at the end of 1928 or the beginning of 1929’. Jensen says that Sorge advised the party to switch from small street cells to factory cells. Sorge was ‘a tall slender and very intelligent man’. Jensen took him on a tour of the port and seamen’s clubs of Copenhagen (‘I Saw Sorge Last’, Politiken, 27 December 1964).
36Fesyun, Documents, Doc. 13, 19.12.27, p. 27.
37Fesyun, Documents, Doc. 13.
38‘Where the master spy drank beer in Copenhagen’: Jensen, ‘I Saw Sorge Last’.
39Massing, This Deception, p. 96.
40Sorge Memoir, Pt 3, ‘The Comintern and the Soviet Communist Party’, pp. 102–17.
41Yury Georgiyev, ‘Rikhard Sorge, Biografichesky Ocherk’ in Yaponiya Segodnya, 2002, p. 91.
42Fesyun, Documents, No. 17. On 10 October 1928, Sorge sent a cable justifying to unidentified colleagues in the Comintern why he had spent over $500 in six weeks; he explained that his ticket from Moscow to Berlin alone cost $100.
43Sorge Memoir, Pt 2, p. 44.
44Fesyun, Documents, No. 20, p. 30.
45Fesyun, Documents, No. 19, p. 30.
46Sorge Memoir, Pt 2, p. 44.
47The phrase was the poet Osip Mandelstam’s – he would pay for it with his life.
48Comrade Sorge: Documents and Memoirs, p. 5.
49Comrade Sorge: Documents and Memoirs, p. 6.
50Comrade Sorge: Documents and Memoirs, p. 6.
51Comrade Sorge: Documents and Memoirs, p. 7.
52Comrade Sorge: Documents and Memoirs, p. 13.
53General Charles Willougby, the resolute cold war warrior who investigated Sorge as a case study in the making of a Soviet spy, took a less charitable view of these Moscow days. He found Sorge’s prison confession ‘a rare opportunity to see the development of a patriotically inclined young man into a tool of the Kremlin’ and claimed that in Moscow ‘the open, good-hearted youth learned to hate’, Willoughby, Shanghai Conspiracy, p. 18. See also Comrade Sorge: Documents and Memoirs, p. 9.
54Comrade Sorge: Documents and Memoirs, p. 7.
55Comrade Sorge: Documents and Memoirs, p. 15.
56Deakin and Storrey, Case of Richard Sorge, p. 47.
57Sorge Memoir, Pt 3, ‘The Comintern and the Soviet Communist Party’, pp. 102–17.
58Sorge Memoir, Pt 2, p. 47.
59Sorge Memoir, Pt 3, ‘The Comintern and the Soviet Communist Party’, pp. 102–17.
60Jane Degras, The Communist International, Selected Documents, Oxford, 1960, p. 367.
61Vladimir Mikhailovich Chunikhin, Richard Sorge: Notes on the Margins of a Legend, Moscow, 2008, p. 34.
62RGASPI, Fond 508, opis. 1, doc. 79, p. 1; Fond 495, opis. 7, doc. 8, p. 1.
63Sorge Memoir, Pt 2, p. 47.
64Deakin and Storrey, Case of Richard Sorge, p. 52.
65Deakin and Storrey, Case of Richard Sorge, p. 50.
66Gill Bennett, ‘A Most Extraordinary and Mysterious Business’: The Zinoviev Letter of 1924, series: ‘Historians LRD’, No. 14, London, January 1999, p. 1.
67TNA: KV 2/770 PRO KV, Records of the Security Service KV 2, the Security Service: Personal (PF Series) Files Subseries within KV 2 – Communists and Suspected Communists, including Russian and Communist Sympathisers.
68Deakin and Storrey, Case of Richard Sorge, p. 49.
69Geoff Layton, Access to History: From Kaiser to Führer: Germany 1900–45, London, 2009, p. 98.
70Sorge, Die Weltwoche, 11 December 1964.
71In Wright’s book Spycatcher he describes how Ellis fell under suspicion: ‘Within a year of [Kim] Philby’s falling under suspicion Ellis took early retirement, pleading ill-health. He travelled to Australia, and took up a job as a consultant to ASIS, the Australian overseas intelligence-gathering organisation. While there he was briefed by the Australians on the impending defection of Vladimir Petrov, an [NKVD] henchman who opted to stay in the West rather than take his chances in Moscow. Almost immediately Ellis returned to Britain and contacted Kim Philby, despite being specifically warned against doing so by [MI6 chief] Maurice Oldfield … The reasons for Ellis’s hasty flight from Australia have never been clear, but I have always assumed that he thought that Petrov, who was about to defect, was the same “Von Petrov” with whom [Ellis] had been involved in the 1920s, and who must have known the secret of his treachery’ (Peter Wright, Spycatcher, New York, 1988, p. 325). Wright seems to be referring to the Comintern agent David Petrovsky, alias A. J. Bennett, who served as Soviet consul in London and was the official liaison between the British Communist Party and Moscow. See Dr Sharman Kadish, Bolsheviks and British Jews: The Anglo-Jewish Community, Britain and the Russian Revolution, London, 21 August 2013.
72James Dalrymple has claimed that Ellis sold ‘vast quantities of information’ about the British secret service to the Germans during the Second World War. However, Ellis’s biographer, Frank Cain, has argued that he was not guilty of spying: ‘Experts have dismissed these claims, if only because important information held by Ellis was known not to have been transmitted to the Soviet Union.’ Ernest Cuneo, who worked for Ellis during the Second World War argues: ‘If the charge against Ellis is true … it would mean that the OSS, and to some extent its successor the CIA, in effect was a branch of the Soviet KGB.’ Benjamin de Forest Bayly worked with Ellis at British Security Coordination. ‘Dickey Ellis was MI6 and the only professional … in the office. He had been for years and years in MI6. He’s the one they thought must be a Russian or German agent, I regard as entirely unproved, because I had known him quite well. He visited us in our apartment in New York quite often. He was a musician and he just didn’t ever give an indication that he was that way concerned.’ William Stephenson was convinced that Ellis was not a spy and offered to sue the journalists who were writing these articles about him. See article by John Simkin at spartacus-educational.com (September 1997).
73Wright, Spycatcher, p. 326.
74Fesyun, Documents, No. 22.
75Though the apparat does not seem to have taken the arrest too seriously. When Sorge’s personal files were examined for signs of treachery – including personally by Stalin – there was no suggestion that he may have been recruited after his arrest by British intelligence, a classic charge for any foreign communists who had been detained by the authorities.
76Fesyun, Documents, No. 24, Protocol No. 18, Delegation of the VKPb in IKKI 16 August 1929, ‘One copy sent to comrade Stalin, present: Molotov, Manuilsky, Pyatnitsky, Vasiliyev, Lovitsky’.
77RGASPI, Fond 508, opis. 1, doc. 31, p. 2.
78RGASPI, Fond 495, opis. 18, doc. 666, p. 59.
79Paul R. Gregory, Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin’s Kremlin: The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina, Stanford, CA, 2010, chapter 17.
80Deakin and Storrey, Case of Richard Sorge, p. 51.
81Deakin and Storrey, Case of Richard Sorge, p. 51.
82Chunikhin, Richard Sorge: Notes, Doc. 25, Pismo v Tsentr reddotsenta K. Basova ot 16 September 1929 г. (sent from Berlin).
83Chunikhin, Richard Sorge: Notes, Doc.
27, Pismo v Tsentr reddotsenta K. Basova ot 16 September 1929.
84The Bolshevik Party – and particularly the secret police – was dominated by members of the Russian Empire’s ethnic minorities such as Latvians, Jews, Poles and Georgians.
85Boris Volodarsky, Stalin’s Agent: The Life and Death of Alexander Orlov, Oxford, 2015, p. 528.
86Fesyun, Documents, No. 23.
87Chunikhin, Richard Sorge: Notes, Doc. 25.
88Chunikhin, Richard Sorge: Notes, Chunikhin, Doc. 25.
89RGASPI, Fond 546, Opis. 1, Doc. 112, l54, 60–3.
90RGASPI, Fond 546, Opis. 1, Doc. 112, l54, 60–3.
91Sorge’s own account in his prison confession gives some clues about why he needed ‘no introduction’ from Basov. ‘General Berzin, who was at that time head of the Fourth Department, and also a close friend of Pyatnitsky, knew me from my time in the Comintern.’ But Sorge’s telling of his transition from the Comintern to the Fourth Department – apparently a civilised handover from one boss to another – doesn’t track with the trail of telegrams between Basov and Moscow Centre describing Sorge’s desperation and abandonment in Berlin. It seems that, even fifteen years later, Sorge still smarted from his humiliating expulsion from the Comintern. ‘On my return from England, discussing with Pyatnitsky my future work in the Comintern, I told him that I wished to expand my sphere of activity, but it was unlikely to be possible as long as I remained in the Comintern. Pyatnitsky told Berzin about this conversation. In Berzin’s opinion, such a plan could be realised through the Fourth Department. A few days later Berzin invited me to see him and we had an extensive discussion of the problems of intelligence work in Asia,’ Chunikhin, Richard Sorge: Notes, Doc. 26.
CHAPTER 4
1According to Berzin’s former subordinate, Walter Krivitsky (Krivitsky, I Was Stalin’s Agent, p. 115).
2Deakin and Storrey, Case of Richard Sorge, p. 58.
3Viktor Suvorov, Inside Soviet Military Intelligence, New York, 1984.
4Koch, Double Lives, p. 9.
5Comrade Sorge: Documents and Memoirs, p. 13.
6Massing, This Deception, p. 333.
7Comrade Sorge: Documents and Memoirs, p. 14.
8Fesyun, Documents, No. 28.
An Impeccable Spy Page 44