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Acknowledgements
In writing this book on Richard Sorge I am deeply in the debt of many scholars who have explored the subject before me, in conditions far more challenging than I myself have faced. Frederick William Deakin, former Warden of St Antony’s College Oxford, was the first to bring the story to a Western readership and his 1965 book The Case of Richard Sorge was all the more remarkable for having extremely limited access to Soviet sources. My father, Mervyn Matthews, was a fellow of St Antony’s at the time and I was touched to see his name in Deakin’s own acknowledgements – in thanks for translation work, and for obtaining a Soviet four-kopeck stamp with Sorge’s face on it, which illustrated the cover of the first edition. In Tokyo, Professor Gordon Prange could hardly have been more exhaustive in his research on the Japanese career of Sorge. Prange spent thirty years on his great work, Target Tokyo, and his interviews with many people who knew Sorge personally, from his mistress to the policemen who watched him tirelessly, is invaluable. Robert Whymant, a fellow journalist and former Tokyo bureau chief for The T
imes, also interviewed several of the principals in the 1980s for his Stalin’s Spy, the most recent English-language work on the subject.
I must also acknowledge my deep gratitude and admiration for the work of modern Russian scholars Vladimir Chunikhin, Alexander Fesyun and Mikhail Alekseyev, who have done so much to unearth the tragic story of Moscow Centre’s indifference to its star agent in Tokyo.
In the summer of 2016 I was privileged to have been invited to attend the annual conference of Japan’s Sorge society at Tokyo’s Meiji University. I am extremely grateful to Professor Tetsuro Kato of Waseda University, and to Tsutomu Shinozaki for taking the time to meet me and talk on matters Sorge related over sandwiches and tea. I am also grateful to Professor Jeffrey Burds for sharing archival material and for pointing me in the right direction on untapped Soviet sources on Sorge. Professor Hiroaki Kuromiya was also kind enough to share his groundbreaking work on the Nomonhan incident.
In Moscow I am also very thankful to the staff of RGASPI – the former Central Committee Archive – as well as to the librarians at the Central Defence Ministry Archives in Podolsk. In Baku I was able to find Sorge’s house after an afternoon of tireless questioning of the locals of Sabunchi by Fareed Ismailov – who drove me around in a London black taxi, a bizarrely common sight on the streets of Azerbaijan’s capital. I am also grateful to my old university friend Nikolaus Twickel for his translations of German sources. My friend and colleague Alexei Kazakov in Moscow also helped me see the dramatic potential of the Sorge story, and helped me enormously in framing the human story in the sweep of history.
I am also deeply thankful to my agent Natasha Fairweather for her enthusiasm and energy, and to Michael Fishwick, my long suffering editor at Bloomsbury, and to his excellent team.
My wife Ksenia and children Nikita and Theodore have lived with Sorge as a virtual family member for four years, traveling with me to his various haunts and putting up with dinner-table stories of a long-dead spy. I could not have written this book without their support.
Picture Credits
‘From the schoolroom to the slaughterhouse’ – Richard Sorge, aged 20, after being wounded, 1916: © ullstein bild Dtl./Getty Images
Baku days – the oil engineer Wilhelm Sorge and his Russian wife Nina with their children (Richard in white): © Sputnik/Bridgeman Images
The Sorge’s house in the once-affluent Baku suburb of Sabunchi today: © Private Collection
Sorge and his cousin, Erich Correns: © ullstein bild Dtl./Getty Images
Osip Pyatnitsky, the Comintern commissar who recruited Sorge in Frankfurt in 1924: © History and Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo
Sorge’s official Comintern identity photograph, Moscow, 1924: © Private Collection
General Jan Karlovich Berzin, the founder of Red Army Intelligence who headhunted Sorge from the disintegrating Comintern: © Archive PL / Alamy Stock Photo
Sorge’s signature in the Comintern files in Moscow, 1924: © Private Collection
Konstantin Basov, the brilliant Berlin spymaster who launched Sorge for his Fouth Department career: Courtesy of the Sakharov Center
Katya Maximova and her two sisters around the time she met Sorge: © Private Collection
Fourth Department officer Boris Gudz: © Svetlana and Serguey Zlobin private archive
The only surviving photograph of Katya and Sorge together: © ullstein bild Dtl./Getty Images
The Shanghai Bund, 1930: © Gibson Green / Alamy Stock Photo
Alexander Ulanovsky, Sorge’s charming but indiscreet boss in Shanghai: Courtesy of Alexander Yakobson, Grandson of Alexander Ulanovsky.
Swindler, spy and former secret policeman Evgeny Kozhevnikov, aka Captain Pik: © NARA II/Washington DC
Humanitarian, journalist and spy Agnes Smedley, in Chinese uniform. Sorge unchivalrously called his lover ‘a mannish woman’: © Historic Images / Alamy Stock Photo
Ursula Kuczynski, alias Ruth Werner: Courtesy of cia.gov
Hede Massing: © akg-images / TT News Agency / SVT
Hotsumi Ozaki, the idealistic Japanese journalist who worked with Sorge in Shanghai and became his most valuable agent in Japan: © Kyodo News/Getty Images
Yotoku Miyagi, the consumptive painter who became the spy ring’s most indefatigable leg-man: © Kyodo News/Getty Images
Branko Vukelić, the failed Croatian journalist recruited in Paris as the ring’s photographer, with his Japanese wife Yoshiko Yamasaki: © SVF2/Getty Images
Max Clausen, Sorge’s trusty radio man in Shanghai who followed him to Tokyo: © TopFoto
Max’s wife Anna Clausen: © SVF2/Getty Images
Ambassador Major General Eugen Ott, whose unshakeable trust in his friend Sorge enabled a great espionage career: © SZ Photo / Knorr + Hirth / Bridgeman Images
Helma Ott, wife of Eugen and lover of Sorge: © Private Collection
The German Embassy in Tokyo: © Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo
Eugen and Helma visit the palace, Tokyo, 1938: © Hawaii Times Photo Archives Foundation
Hanako Miyake, Sorge’s longstanding Japanese mistress: © Private Collection
Rear-Admiral Paul ‘Paulchen’ Wenneker, one of Sorge’s most devoted bottle-mates and informants: © Hawaii Times Photo Archives Foundation
Prince Albrecht von Urach, Tokyo correspondent of the rabidly anti-semitic Völkischer Beobachter, also joined Sorge on his late night drinking binges in Ginza: © ullstein bild Dtl./Getty Images
‘A face like a ravaged robber baron’ – Sorge after drunkenly crashing his motorcycle: © SZ Photo / Bridgeman Images
Sorge in Japanese clothes at home on Nagasaki street: © ullstein bild Dtl./Getty Images
Sorge at the German Embassy dacha: © Pictures from History / Bridgeman Images
Sorge on one of his regular tours across Japan: © INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo
Eta Harich-Schneider, the celebrated harpsichordist who was Sorge’s last lover: © Max Ehlert/ullstein bild Dtl./Getty Images
Anita Mohr, the glamorous blonde who was best friend to Helma Ott, Eugen Ott’s love object – and Sorge’s mistress: © Private Collection
Aino Kuusinen, the Comintern princess sent to summon Sorge back to Moscow in 1937: Courtesy of Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson
Prince Fumimaro Konoye, three times prime minister of Japan, who brought Ozaki into his inner circle of advisers: © Bettmann/Getty Images
General Hideki Tojo, who masterminded Japan’s invasion of China as well as the attack on Pearl Harbor: ©AFP/Getty Images
The South Manchurian Railway, or Mantetsu, also controlled its own intelligence agency and the army: © Chronicle of World History / Alamy Stock Photo
Gestapo Colonel Joseph Meisinger, the ‘Butcher of Warsaw’ sent to investigate Sorge: Courtesy of Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (GK 166/251)
SS-Brigadeführer and spymaster Walter Schellenberg, who suspected Sorge of being a Soviet agent: ©Bundesarchiv/Bild 101III-Alber-178-04A/Kurt Alber
Joseph Stalin looks on as Soviet and German Foreign Ministers Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop sign the non-aggression pact that secretly divided Eastern Europe between Berlin and Moscow: © Universal images Group/Getty Images
Stalin greets Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka in Moscow in 1939. By the time of his departure Matsuoka was so drunk that he and Stalin sang folk songs together on the platform: © The Asahi Shimbun /Getty Images
General Filip Golikov, whose six predecessors as heads of the Fourth Department had all been executed. Golikov suppressed Sorge’s urgent reports of an imminent German invasion: © Sovfoto/Getty Images
Sorge’s police photograph after his arrest: © SPUTNIK / Alamy Stock Photo
A Soviet four-kopeck stamp produced after Sorge’s official rehabilitation in 1961: © Sputnik / Bridgeman Images
Sorge’s grave in Tokyo, the original humble gravestone paid for by his mistress swamped by the hulking Soviet monument featuring his posthumous Hero of the Soviet Union star: © Sputnik/T
opfoto.co.uk
Monument to Sorge in his native Baku: © Private Collection
All reasonable attempts have been made to contact the copyright holders of all images. You are invited to contact the publisher if your image was used without identification or acknowledgement
Index
Abe Noboyuki, General here
Alighieri, Dante here
Akiyama Koji here, here, here
Alliluyeva, Anna here
Andropov, Yury here
Anti-Comintern Pact here, here, here, here, here
Antonov-Ovseyenko, Anton here
Aoyama Shigeru here, here, here, here, here
Araki Mitsaturo here, here
Araki Sadao, General here, here
Aritomi Mitsukado here, here
Artuzov, Artur here
Asahi Shimbun here, here, here, here, here
Austrian Anschluss here
Babel, Isaac here
Baku here, here
Baldwin, Stanley here
Barbé, Henri here
Barbusse, Henri here
Barmine, Alexander here
Basie, Count here
Basov, Konstantin Mikhailovich here, here, here, here
Beethoven, Ludwig van here, here, here
Beneš, Edvard here
Beria, Lavrenty here, here, here, here
Berlin Mayflies here
Berlin University here, here
Berlin Wall here
Berzin, General Jan Karlovich here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
dismissal and execution here, here
and Japan spy ring here, here, here, here, here
resignation and demotion here, here
Beurton, Len here
Bey, Essad here
Bezymensky, Lev here
Bibikov, Boris here
Bibikov, Isaac here
Bibikov, Major Yakov here
Bickerton, William here
Bir, Izaia here
Bismarck sinking here
‘Black Reichswehr’ here
Blok, Alexandr here
Blomberg, General Werner von here
Blücher, Prince Gebhard Leberecht von here
Blum, Léon here
Blyukher, General Vasiliy here, here, here, here
An Impeccable Spy Page 51