The Great Conspiracy Against Russia

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“AN EXTRAORDINARY BOOK” — Joseph E. Davies
FORMER AMBASSADOR TO THE SOVIET UNION
The GREAT
CONSPIRACY
against
RUSSIA
by
MICHAEL SAYERS AND ALBERT E. KAHN
AUTHORS OF SABOTAGE
Special Introduction by
Senator Claude Pepper
NEW COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED EDITION

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
The authors of this book, Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn,
have won an international reputation for their investigations of se-
cret diplomacy and fifth column operations;
For a number of years Mr. Sayers specialized in investigating
and writing about Axis fifth column intrigue; and the first compre-
hensive exposes of Nazi conspiracy in France, England and Ireland
to be published in the United States were written by Mr. Sayers. Mr.
Sayers is also well known as a short story writer, and Edward J.
O’Brien dedicated one of his famous anthologies to him.
Albert E. Kahn was formerly the Executive Secretary of the
American Council Against Nazi Propaganda, of which the late Wil-
liam E. Dodd, former Ambassador to Germany, was Chairman. As
editor of The Hour, a confidential newsletter devoted to exposing
Axis fifth column operations, Mr. Kahn became widely known for
his exclusive news scoops on German and Japanese conspiratorial
activities in the Americas.
The first book on which Mr. Sayers and Mr. Kahn collaborated,
Sabotage! The Secret War Against America, was one of the out-
standing best-sellers of the war period. Their second book, The Plot
Against the Peace achieved top sales in the early months of the
postwar period. Their current work, The Great Conspiracy Against
Russia, was first published early in February, 1946. Because of its
sensational content, this book has been widely quoted upon both
here and abroad. The book is already being translated into a number
of foreign languages.
•
Professor Frederick Lewis Schuman, Woodrow Wilson Professor of
Government at Williams College, author of Soviet Politics at Home
and Abroad and other books, writes:
“The authors have brilliantly told a story which is more fas-
cinating than any fiction and yet is sober fact, documented
and indisputable even in its most startling and incredible epi-
sodes. Here is the fantastic tale of the long and devious series
of plots against the Soviet Union from the White émigrés,
anti-Bolsheviks and interventionists of 1918 to the Trotsky-
ites and Rightists of the 1920’s and 1930’s, the America
Firsters, anti-Semites and native Nazis of yesterday, and the
contemporary preachers of World War III.”
THE
GREAT CONSPIRACY
AGAINST RUSSIA
BY
MICHAEL SAYERS
AND
ALBERT E. KAHN
With a Special Introduction by

SENATOR CLAUDE PEPPER
First Printing, February, 1946
Second Printing (Paper Edition), June, 1946
Third Printing (paper Edition), September, 1946
CONTENTS
Introduction by SENATOR CLAUDE PEPPER
BOOK ONE: Revolution and Counterrevolution
I. THE RISE OF THE SOVIET POWER 1
1. Mission to Petrograd — 2. Counterrevolution —
3. Revolution — 4. Non-recognition — 5. Secret
Diplomacy
II. POINT COUNTER POINT 18
1. British Agent — 2. Zero Hour — 3. Mission’s End
III. MASTER SPY 29
1. Enter M. Massino — 2. Sidney Reilly — 3. Money
and Murder — 4. The Lettish Plot — 5. Exit Sidney
Reilly
IV. SIBERIAN ADVENTURE 45
l. Aide Memoire —2. Intrigue at Vladivostok —
3. Terror in the East...
V. PEACE AND WAR 56
1. Peace in the West — 2. At the Peace Conference
3. Golovin’s Mission
VI. THE WAR OF INTERVENTION 70
1. Prelude — 2. Northern Campaign —
3. Northwestern Campaign — 4. Southern Campaign
— 5. Eastern Campaign — 6. The Poles and
Wrangel — 7. The Last Survivor
VII. AN ACCOUNTING 90
BOOK TWO: Secrets of the Cordon Sanitaire
VIII. THE WHITE CRUSADE 98
1. The Ferment of the Aftermath — 2. White Russia
Exodus — 3. A Gentleman from Reval — 4. The
Hoffmann Plan
IX. THE STRANGE CAREER OF A TERRORIST 109
1. The Return of Sidney Reilly — 2. “A Business Like
Any Other!”— 3. Sunday at Chequers — 4. Moscow
Trial, 1924
X. TO THE FINNISH FRONTIER 126
1. Anti-Bolshevism on Broadway — 2. Agent B1 —
3. Black Hundreds at Detroit — 4. The Last of
Sidney Reilly
XI. OVERTURE WITH WAR DRUMS 138
XII. MILLIONAIRES AND SABOTEURS 142
1. A Meeting in Paris — 2. Plan of Attack —
3. A Glimpse Behind the Scenes — 4. World’s End
XIII. THREE TRIALS 152
1. The Trial of the Industrial Party — 2. The Trial of
the Mensheviks — 3. The Trial of the Vickers
Engineers
XIV. DEATH OF AN ERA 160
BOOK THREE: Russia’s Fifth Column
XV. THE PATH TO TREASON 164
1. Rebel among Revolutionaries — 2. The Left
Opposition — 3. The Path to Treason —
4. The Struggle for Power — 5. Alma Ata
XVI. GENESIS OF A FIFTH COLUMN 190
1. Trotsky at Elba — 2. Rendezvous in Berlin —
3. The Three Layers
XVII. TREASON AND TERROR 212
1. The Diplomacy of Treason — 2. The Diplomacy of
Terror
XVIII. MURDER IN THE KREMLIN 231
1. Yagoda — 2. The Murder of Menzhinsky —
3. Murder with a Guarantee —
4. “Historical Necessity”
XIX. DAYS OF DECISION 245
1. The War Comes West — 2. A Letter from Trotsky
— 3. A Flight to Oslo — 4. Zero Hour
XX. THE END OF THE TRAIL 265
1. Tukhachevsky — 2. The Trial of the Trotskyite
Parallel Center — 3. Action in May — 4. Finale
XXI. MURDER IN MEXICO 280
BOOK FOUR: From Munich to San Francisco
XXII. THE SECOND WORLD WAR 295
1. Munich — 2. World War II
XXIII. AMERICAN ANTI-COMINTERN 312
1, Heritage of the Black Hundreds —
2. “Saving America from Communism” — 3. Paul
Scheffer: A Case History — 4. The Dies Committee
— 5. Lone Eagle
XXIV. THE CASE OF THE SIXTEEN 350
XXV. UNITED NATIONS 361
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 369
BY
MICHAEL SAYERS
AND
ALBERT E. KAHN
Sabotage!—The Secret War Against America
The Plot Against the Peace
The Great Conspiracy Against Russia
INTRODUCTION
I do not know of a greater contribution which has been made to

world peace through better international understanding of Russia,
her present as influenced by her past, than Albert E. Kahn and Mi-
chael Sayers have made through their great book, The Great Con-
spiracy Against Russia.
If there can be real understanding between Russia on one hand,
Great Britain and the United States on the other, there can be a true
lasting peace. We of the Western world know our own past and see
it in terms of our own experience, of course. But so few of us know
what has been the experience of the people of Russia and, therefore,
most of us do not realize why they happen to have their present
opinions.
What the authors of this book have done is to take the period
beginning with the Revolution in Russia and let us see the world a
bit through Russia’s experience. In short, they have bestowed the
rare gift for which the poet Burns yearned by letting us see our-
selves as the Russians see us—out of their experience.
A continuation of the disastrous policies of anti-Soviet intrigue
so vividly described in this book would inevitably result in a third
world war. That is why this book should be read and studied by all
those eager to see peace durably established in the world. This work
is required reading for every American and British statesman, and,
for that matter, required reading for every citizen of both countries.
Surely, if the major nations and peoples of the earth can look
upon each other with sympathy and genuine understanding, we have
the brightest hope for an enduring peace mankind has ever had in its
heart.
All of us are debtors to Mr. Kahn and Mr. Sayers for their tell-
ing us this story containing so much of pathos and tragedy.
CLAUDE PEPPER
United States Senator from Florida
June, 1946
None of the incidents or dialogue in The Great
Conspiracy Against Russia has been invented by
the authors. The material has been drawn from var-
ious documentary sources which are indicated in
the text or listed in the Bibliographical Notes.
THE GREAT CONSPIRACY AGAINST RUSSIA
BOOK ONE:
Revolution and Counterrevolution
CHAPTER I
The Rise of Soviet Power
1. Mission to Petrograd
In the midsummer of the fateful year of 1917, as the Russian revolu-
tionary volcano seethed and rumbled, an American named Major
Raymond Robins arrived in Petrograd1 on a secret mission of the
utmost importance. Officially, he traveled as Assistant-Chief of the
American Red Cross Division. Unofficially, he was in the service of
the Intelligence Division of the United States Army. His secret mis-
sion was to help keep Russia in the war against Germany.
The situation on the Eastern Front was desperate. The ill-led,
wretchedly equipped Russian Army had been cut to pieces by the
Germans. Shaken by the impact of the war, and rotted from within,
the feudal Czarist regime had tottered and fallen. In March, Czar
Nicholas II had been forced to abdicate and a Provisional Govern-
ment had been established. The revolutionary cry of Peace, Bread
and Land! swept across the countryside, summing up all the imme-
diate longings and ancient aspirations of the war-weary, famished
and dispossessed Russian millions.
Russia’s allies—Britain, France and the United States—feared
the collapse of the Russian Army was at hand. At any moment, a
million German troops might be suddenly released from the Eastern
Front and hurled against the tired Allied forces in the west. Equally
alarming was the prospect of Ukrainian wheat, Donets coal, Cauca-
sian oil, and all the other limitless resources of the Russian land
falling into the rapacious maw of Imperial Germany.
The Allies were striving desperately to keep Russia in the
war—at least until American reinforcements reached the Western
Front. Major Robins was one of numerous diplomats, military men
1
Petrograd was the capital of Czarist Russia. The city, named after
Peter the Great, was originally called St. Petersburg. It was changed to
the more Russian form of Petrograd at the outbreak of the First World
War. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Moscow became the new capital
and, in 1924, after Lenin’s death, the name of the former capital was
changed to Leningrad.
1
and special Intelligence officers who were being hurriedly dis-
patched to Petrograd to do what they could to keep Russia
fighting....
Forty-three years old, a man of boundless energy, extraordinary
eloquence and great personal magnetism, with jet-black hair and
striking aquiline features, Raymond Robins was a distinguished
public figure in the United States. He had given up a successful
business career in Chicago to devote himself to philanthropy and
social work. In politics, he was a “Roosevelt man.” He had played a
leading part in the famous “Bull Moose” campaign of 1912, when
his hero, Theodore Roosevelt, had tried to get to the White House
without the aid of big money or political machines. Robins was a
militant liberal, a tireless and colorful crusader for every cause chal-
lenging reaction.
“What? Raymond Robins? That uplifter? That Roosevelt-
shouter? What’s he doing on this mission?” exclaimed Colonel Wil-
liam Boyce Thompson, head of the American Red Cross in Russia,
when he heard Robins had been appointed as his chief assistant.
Colonel Thompson was a Republican and a standpatter. He had a
considerable personal stake in Russian affairs—in Russian manga-
nese and copper mines. But Colonel Thompson was also a realistic
and clear-headed observer of facts. He had already privately decid-
ed that nothing could be achieved by the conservative approach
which U. S. State Department officials were adopting toward the
turbulent Russian scene.
David Francis, the American Ambassador in Russia that year,
was an elderly, opinionated, poker-playing St. Louis banker and
former Governor of Missouri. He cut an odd figure in the hectic
atmosphere of war-torn, revolutionary Petrograd with his silver hair,
his old-fashioned high stiff collars and his black cutaway coat.
“Old Francis,” a British diplomat remarked, “doesn’t know a
Social Revolutionary from a potato!”
But what Ambassador Francis lacked in knowledge of Russian
politics he made up for in the strength of his convictions. These he
derived mostly from the lurid gossip of the Czarist generals and
millionaires who flocked around the American Embassy in Petro-
grad. Francis was positive that the whole Russian upheaval was the
result of a German plot and that all the Russian revolutionaries were
foreign agents. At any rate, he thought the whole thing would soon
blow over.
2
On April 21, 1917, Ambassador Francis had confidentially tel-
egraphed the United States Secretary of State, Robert Lansing:—
EXTREME SOCIALIST OR ANARCHIST NAMED
LENIN MAKING VIOLENT SPEECHES AND THERE-
BY STRENGTHENING THE GOVERNMENT; DE-
SIGNEDLY GIVING HIM LEEWAY AND WILL DE-
PORT OPPORTUNELY.
But the Russian Revolution, far from subsiding after the over-
throw of the Czar, was only just beginning. The Russian Army was
breaking up, and nobody in Russia seemed capable of stopping it.
Alexander Kerensky, the ambitious Prime Minister of the Provi-
sional Government, toured the Eastern Front making eloquent
speeches to the troops, assuring them that “victory, democracy and
peace” were, just around the corner. Unimpressed, the starved, re-
bellious Russian soldiers continued to desert by the tens of thou-
sands. In ragged, filthy uniforms, they streamed endlessly through
the countryside, across the rain-soaked fields and along the rutted
roads, into the villages, towns and cities.2
In the rear, the homecoming Russian soldiers encountered the
revolutionary workers and peasants. Everywhere soldiers, workers
and peasants were spontaneously forming their own revolutionary
committees, or “Soviets” as they called them, and electing deputies
to voice their demands for Peace, Bread and Land! at government
headquarters in Petrograd....
When Major Raymond Robins reached Petrograd, hungry, des-
perate masses of people were spread like a great dark tide over the
2
For three years the Russian soldiers had fought with great bravery
and skill against overwhelming odds. In the early months of the war, at
the peak of the German aggression, the Russians had invaded East
Prussia, thus drawing off two German army corps and a cavalry divi-
sion, and giving Joffre the chance to close the breach at the Marne and.
save Paris. In its rear, the Russian Army had to contend with treason
and inefficiency. The Minister of War, Sukhoumlinov, was a traitor, in
German pay. The Czar’s court swarmed with German agents and noto-
rious Germanophiles headed by the Czarina and her adviser, the sinister
priest, Rasputin. The Russian troops were wretchedly equipped. By
1917, the Russian Army had suffered more fatal casualties than Great
Britain, France and; Italy, combined. The losses totaled 2,762,064
killed, 4,930,000 wounded, 2,300,000 missing.
3
land. The capital swarmed with, soldier delegations, straight from
the muddy front-line trenches demanding an end to the war. Bread
riots were occurring almost daily. Lenin’s Bolshevik Party—the
organization of the Russian Communists, which had been declared
illegal and driven underground by Kerensky—was rapidly growing
in power and prestige.
Raymond Robins refused to accept the opinions of Ambassador
Francis and his Czarist friends as the truth about Russia. He wasted
little time in the Petrograd salons, but went “into the field,” as he
put it, to view the Russian scene with his own eyes. Robins believed
passionately in what he called “the outdoor mind—that thing that is
common in America among successful businessmen; a mind that
does not take chatter; that constantly reaches out for facts.” He trav-
eled about: the country, inspecting factories, trade-union halls, army
barracks and even the lice-infested trenches on the Eastern Front.
To find out what was happening in Russia, Robins went among the
Russian people.
All Russia that year was like a vast, turbulent debating society.
After centuries of enforced silence, the people had at last found
their tongues. Meetings were being held everywhere. Everyone had
his say. Government officials, pro-Allied propagandists, Bolshe-
viks, Anarchists, Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks—all were
talking at the same time. The Bolsheviks were the most popular
speakers. Soldiers, workers and peasants constantly repeated what
they said.
“Show me what I am fighting for,” demanded a Russian soldier
at one of these hectic mass meetings. “Is it Constantinople or is it
free Russia? Is it democracy or is it the capitalist plunderers? If you
can prove to me that I am defending the Revolution, then I’ll go out
and fight without capital punishment to force me. When the land
belongs to the peasants, and the factories to the workers, and the
power to the Soviets, then we’ll know we have something to fight
for, and we’ll fight for it!”
Robins was in his element in this argumentative atmosphere. At
home in the United States, a familiar platform figure, he had often
debated with American Marxists: why not with Russian Bolshe-
viks? Frequently, Robins asked permission to reply to one of the
Bolshevik speakers. In crowded factories and trenches, the broad-
shouldered, dark-eyed American would get up and talk. Through his
own interpreter, Robins told the Russian audiences about American
4
democracy and the menace of Prussian militarism. Invariably, tu-
multuous applause greeted his words.
At the same time, Robins was not neglecting his Red Cross du-
ties. His job was to get food to the starving cities. Down the Volga,
Robins found immense stores of grain rotting in the storehouses.
The grain could not be moved because there was no transport. Un-
der the hopelessly inefficient Czarist regime, all transport had gone
to pieces, and Kerensky had done nothing to remedy the situation;
Robins proposed getting, a fleet of barges down the Volga to ship
the grain. Kerensky’s officials told him it could not be done. A
peasant came up to Robins and introduced himself. He was the
chairman of the local peasants’ Soviet. He told Robins that barges
would be made available. Next morning the grain began to move
upriver towards Moscow and Petrograd.
Everywhere, Robins saw the same evidence of the confusion
and helplessness of the Kerensky Government, contrasted with the
organization and determination of the revolutionary Soviets. When
a chairman of a Soviet said a thing would be done, it was done....
The first time Robins came to a Russian village and asked to
see the local government official, the peasants had smiled at him.
“Better see the chairman, of the Soviet,” they told him.
“What is this Soviet?” said Robins.
“The workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ deputies.”
“But that’s some sort of revolutionary organization,” Robins
protested. “I want the civil organization—the regular civil power.”
The peasants laughed. “Oh, that! That doesn’t amount to any-
thing. You had better see the chairman of the Soviet!”
Back in Petrograd, after his tour of inspection, Robins made his
preliminary report to Colonel Thompson. Kerensky’s Provisional
Government, said Robins, was a “sort of paper-and-consent affair
superimposed on top, supported by the bayonets in Petrograd and
Moscow and some other places.” The real government of the coun-
try was being exercised by the Soviets. But Kerensky stood for the
continuation of the war against Germany, and for that reason Robins
believed he should be maintained in power. If the Allies were inter-
ested in preventing Russia from slipping into complete chaos, and
so under German domination, they must use all their influence to
make Kerensky recognize the Soviets and come to terms with them.
The United States Government must be made fully aware of the
facts before it was too late.
5
Robins proposed a bold undertaking: the immediate launching
of a gigantic, high-pressure propaganda campaign to convince the
Russian people that Germany constituted the real menace to their
Revolution.
To Robins’s surprise, Colonel Thompson expressed unequivo-
cal agreement with both his report and his proposal. He told Robins
he would cable Washington outlining the propaganda scheme and
asking for authority and funds to carry it out. Meanwhile, since time
was precious, Robins was to go ahead and get started.
“But where’s the money coming from?” asked Robins.
“I’ll stake a million of my own money,” said Colonel
Thompson.
Robins was to be free to draw up to that amount from the Colo-
nel’s own bank in Petrograd....
The main thing, said Colonel Thompson was to keep the Rus-
sian Army on the Eastern Front and Germany out of Russia.
At the same time, the Colonel was well aware of the risks that
might be involved in intervening so actively and personally in Rus-
sian affairs.
“Do you know what this means, Robins?” he said.
“I think it means the only chance to save this situation, Colo-
nel,” Robins replied.
“No, I mean do you know what it means to you?”
“What does it mean?”
“It means that if we fail, you get shot.”
Robins shrugged, “Better men, younger men, are getting shot
every day on the Western Front.” He added after a pause, “Colonel,
if I get shot, you’ll get hung.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re damned right,” said Colonel
Thompson.3
2. Counterrevolution
As the chill, damp autumn winds swept in from the Baltic Sea
and low, rain-filled clouds hung ominously over the city, events in
Petrograd were rushing towards their historic climax.
Pale and nervous, wearing his habitual closely buttoned plain
3
This dialogue between Major Robins and Colonel Thompson, as
all other dialogue throughout the book, is quoted directly from docu-
mentary sources which are listed in the Bibliographical Notes.
6
brown uniform, his eyes protruding and his right arm bent at the
elbow in Napoleonic style, Alexander Kerensky, Premier of the
Provisional Government, paced up and down in his room in the
Winter Palace.
“What do they expect of me?” he shouted at Raymond Robins.
“Half the time I’m forced to talk Western European liberalism to
satisfy the Allies and the rest of the time I have to talk Russian
Slavic socialism to keep myself alive!”
Kerensky had reason to be perturbed. Behind his back his chief
supporters, the Russian millionaires and his Anglo-French allies,
were already conspiring to remove him from power.
The Russian millionaires were openly threatening that, if Brit-
ain and France refused to take action to stop the Revolution, they
would call in the Germans.
“Revolution is a sickness,” Stepan Georgevitch Lianozov, the
“Russian Rockefeller,” told the American correspondent, John
Reed. “Sooner or later the foreign powers must intervene here—as
one would intervene to cure a sick child, and teach it how to walk.”
Another Russian millionaire; Riabushinsky, declared that the
only solution was “...for the gaunt hand of famine, of destitution of
the people, to seize the false friends of the people—the democratic
Soviets and Committees—by the throat!”
Sir Samuel Hoare, the chief of the British diplomatic Intelli-
gence Service in Russia, had talked with these Russian millionaires
and had then returned to London to report that military dictatorship
was the best answer to the Russian problem. According to Hoare,
the most suitable candidates for the post of dictator in Russia were
Admiral Kolchak—who, Hoare said, was the nearest thing to an
“English gentleman” he had found in Russia—and General Lavr
Kornilov, the sinewy, black-goateed Cossack Commander-in-Chief
of the Russian Army.
The British and French Governments decided to back General
Kornilov. He was to be the strong man who would at once keep
Russia in the war, suppress the Revolution and protect Anglo-
French financial stakes in Russia.
When Raymond Robins learned of this decision, he felt the Al-
lies had made a grave mistake. They didn’t understand the temper
of the Russian people. They were simply playing into the hands of
the Bolsheviks who had prophesied from the beginning that Keren-
sky’s regime would turn out to be a mask behind which the coun-
7
terrevolution was being secretly prepared. Major General Alfred
Knox, the British Military Attaché and the chief of the British Mili-
tary Mission in Petrograd, brusquely told Robins to keep his mouth
shut.
The attempted Putsch took place on the morning of September
8, 1917. It began with a proclamation issued by Kornilov as Com-
mander-in-Chief of the Army, who called for the overthrow of the
Provisional Government and the establishment of “discipline and
order.” Thousands of pamphlets, entitled Kornilov, the Russian He-
ro, suddenly appeared on the streets of Moscow and Petrograd.
Years later Kerensky in his book The Catastrophe revealed that
“these pamphlets were printed at the expense of the British Military
Mission and had been brought to Moscow from the British Embassy
in Petrograd in the railway carriage of General Knox, British mili-
tary attaché.” Kornilov ordered twenty thousand troops to march on
Petrograd. French and British officers in Russian uniforms marched
with Kornilov’s troops.
Kerensky was aghast at the betrayal. He was still being hailed
in London and Paris as a “great democrat” and “the hero of the Rus-
sian masses.” Yet here in Russia the Allied representatives were
trying to overthrow him! Kerensky wondered helplessly what to do,
and did nothing.
The Bolshevik-controlled Petrograd Soviet, on its own initia-
tive, ordered an immediate mobilization. Armed workers were
joined by revolutionary sailors from the Baltic fleet and soldiers
from the front. Barricades and barbed-wire entanglements sprang up
in the city’s streets. Artillery pieces and machine guns were rushed
into position. Red Guards—workers in caps and leather jackets,
armed with rifles and hand grenades—patrolled the muddy, cobbled
thoroughfares.
Within four days Kornilov’s army disintegrated. The General
himself was arrested by the Soldiers’ Committee which had been
secretly formed within his own army. Some forty generals of the old
regime, who were involved in Kornilov’s conspiracy, were rounded
up the first afternoon in Petrograd’s Astoria Hotel where they were
waiting for the news of Kornilov’s success. Kerensky’s vice-
Minister of War, Boris Savinkov, was forced from office by popular
clamor for having participated in the conspiracy. The Provisional
Government wobbled....
The Putsch had resulted in the very thing it was designed to
8
prevent: a triumph for the Bolsheviks and a demonstration of Soviet
strength.
The Soviets and not Kerensky held the real power in Petrograd.
“The rise of the Soviets,” said Raymond Robins, “did the job
without any force... this was the power that defeated Kornilov.”
Ambassador Francis, on the other hand, telegraphed the U. S.
State Department:—
KORNILOV’S FAILURE ATTRIBUTABLE TO
BAD ADVICE, MISINFORMATION, IMPROPER
METHODS, INOPPORTUNENESS. GOOD SOLDIER,
PATRIOT, OTHERWISE INEXPERIENCED. GOV-
ERNMENT WAS BADLY FRIGHTENED AND MAY
PROFIT BY ITS EXPERIENCE.
3. Revolution
Events were now moving with lightning speed. Still under-
ground, Lenin had given a new slogan to the revolution: All Power
to the Soviets! Down with the Provisional Government!
On October 7, Colonel Thompson anxiously telegraphed
Washington:—
MAXIMALISTS (BOLSHEVIKS) NOW ACTIVELY
SEEKING TO CONTROL ALL RUSSIAN CONGRESS
OF WORKMEN’S AND SOLDIERS’ DEPUTIES MEET-
ING HERE THIS MONTH. IF THEY SUCCEED WILL
FORM NEW GOVERNMENT WITH DISASTROUS RE-
SULTS LEADING PROBABLY TO SEPARATE PEACE.
WE ARE USING EVERY RESOURCE BUT MUST
HAVE IMMEDIATE SUPPORT OR ALL EFFORTS
WILL BE TOO LATE.
On November 3, a secret conference of the Allied military lead-
ers in Russia was held at Colonel Thompson’s office. What was to
be done to stop the Bolsheviks? General Niessel, head of the French
Military Mission, angrily denounced the Provisional Government
for its ineffectuality and called the Russian soldiers “yellow dogs.”
At this point a Russian general strode from the room, his face red
with anger.
General Knox upbraided the Americans for not getting behind
Kornilov.
9
“I am not interested in stabilizing Kerensky and his govern-
ment,” Knox shouted at Robins. “It is incompetent and inefficient
and worthless. You ought to have been with Kornilov!”
“Well, General,” Robins replied, “you were with Kornilov.”
The British General flushed. “The only thing in Russia today is
a military dictatorship,” he said. “These people have got to have a
whip hand over them!”
“General,” said Robins, “you may get a dictatorship of a very
different character.”
“You mean this Trotsky-Lenin-Bolshevik stuff— this soap-box
stuff?”
“Yes, that is what I mean.”
“Robins,” said General Knox, “you are not a military man; you
do not know anything about military affairs. Military men know
what to do with that kind of stuff. We stand them up and shoot
them.”
“Yes, if you catch them you do,” Robins replied. “I admit, Gen-
eral, I do not know anything about military affairs, but I do know;
something about folk, I have been working with them all my life, I
have been out in Russia, and I think you are facing a folk situation.”
On November 7, 1917, four days after this conference in Colo-
nel Thompson’s office, the Bolsheviks took power in Russia.
The world-shaking Bolshevik Revolution came strangely, at
first almost imperceptibly. It was the most peaceful revolution in
history. Small bands of soldiers and sailors marched casually about
the capital. There were a few, sporadic, scattered shots. Men and
women gathered in the chilly streets, arguing, gesticulating, reading
the latest appeals and proclamations. The usual contradictory ru-
mors were bruited about. Streetcars rumbled up and down the
Nevsky. Housewives wandered in and out of the shops. Petrograd’s
conservative newspapers which came out that day as usual did not
even report that a revolution had taken place.
With scarcely any opposition, the Bolsheviks occupied the Tel-
ephone Exchange, the Telegraph Office, the State Bank and the
Ministries. The Winter Palace, site of Kerensky’s Provisional Gov-
ernment, was surrounded and besieged.
Kerensky himself fled that afternoon in a fast car borrowed
from the American Embassy and flying the American flag. As he
was leaving, he sent hasty word to Ambassador Francis that he
would be coming back with troops from the front and “liquidate the
10
situation in five days.”
At 6 p.m. Ambassador Francis telegraphed Secretary of State
Lansing:—
BOLSHEVIKI APPEAR TO HAVE CONTROL OF
EVERYTHING HERE. CANNOT LEARN WHEREA-
BOUTS OF ANY MINISTER....
Toward the middle of that raw damp night, trucks lumbered
through the muddy streets, slowing down by the periodic street bon-
fires where sentinels stood. From out of the trucks white bundles
were flung. They contained this proclamation:—
TO THE CITIZENS OF RUSSIA!
The Provisional Government is deposed. The State
Power has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petro-
grad Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the Mili-
tary Revolutionary Committee, which stands at the head of
the Petrograd proletariat and garrison.
The cause for which the people were fighting: immedi-
ate proposal of a democratic peace, abolition of landlord
property-rights over the land, labor control of production,
creation of a Soviet Government—that cause is securely
achieved.
LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION OF WORKMEN,
SOLDIERS AND PEASANTS!
Military Revolutionary Committee
Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and
Soldiers’ Deputies
Hundreds of Red Guards and soldiers had gathered in a dark
mass around the brilliantly lit Winter Palace, the last stronghold of
the members of the already nonexistent Provisional Government.
Suddenly, the mass moved forward, poured across the courtyard,
and swarmed over the barricades, into the Winter Palace. Keren-
sky’s former Ministers were arrested in the large, elaborately deco-
rated chamber where they had been sitting all day around a long
table. The table was littered with crumpled sheets of paper, the rem-
nants of never-finished proclamations. One of them read: “The Pro-
visional Government appeals to all classes to support the Provi-
sional Government....”
11
At 10:45 on the night of November 7, the All-Russian Congress
of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies held its opening ses-
sion in the ballroom of the Smolny Institute, which had formerly
been a fashionable academy for daughters of the Czarist aristocracy.
The huge, smoke-filled ballroom, with its marble columns, white
chandeliers and inlaid floor, now housed the elected representatives
of Russian soldiers and workers. Dirty, unshaven, weary, the Soviet
deputies—soldiers with the mud of the trenches still on their uni-
forms, workers in their caps and black crumpled suits, sailors in
their striped sweaters and small, round, beribboned hats—listened
tensely as the members of the Central Executive Committee arose
one after another to speak from the tribune.
The Congress lasted two days. A vast roar and tumult broke out
on the evening of the second day as a short, stocky man in a baggy
unpressed suit stood up on the platform, his bald head gleaming, a
sheaf of papers in his hand...
The uproar lasted several minutes. Then, bending slightly for-
ward, the speaker said: “We shall now proceed to construct the So-
cialist order!”
The speaker was Lenin.
The Congress went on to form the first Soviet Government—
the Council of People’s Commissars, headed by Vladimir Ilyich
Lenin.
4. Non-recognition
The morning after the Soviet Government was formed, Ambas-
sador Francis dispatched a note to his friend, Maddin Summers, the
American Consul General in Moscow.
“It is reported,” Ambassador Francis wrote Summers, “that the
Petrograd Council of Workmen and Soldiers has named a Cabinet
with Lenin as Premier, Trotsky as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and
Madame or Mlle. Kollontai as Minister of Education. Disgusting!—
but I hope that such effort will be made as the more ridiculous the
situation the sooner the remedy.”
To Washington, the Ambassador cabled his opinion that the life
of the new Soviet regime would be a matter of days. He urged the
State Department not to recognize the Russian Government until the
Bolsheviks had been overthrown and their place taken by “patriotic
Russians.”...
That same morning, Raymond Robins entered the office of
12
Colonel Thompson at American Red Cross headquarters in
Petrograd.
“Chief,” said Robins, “we’ve got to move fast! This idea that
Kerensky is going to build up an army somewhere, that the Cos-
sacks are coming up from the Don and the White Guards coming
down from Finland, is all bunk! They’ll never get here. There are
too many peasants with rifles in between! No, this group that’s run-
ning the show at the Smolny is going to run it for quite a while
longer!” Robins wanted permission from his chief to go out to the
Smolny right away and have an interview with Lenin. “These folks
are kindly, worthy people in the main,” said Robins, referring to the
Bolsheviks. “Some of us have been in politics and dealt with Amer-
ican political bosses, and if there is anyone more corrupt or worse in
Smolny than some of our crooks, then they are some crooked, that’s
all!”
By way of reply, Colonel Thompson showed Robins orders he
had just received from Washington. He was to return at once for
consultation. Personally, he agreed with Robins that the Bolsheviks
represented the masses of the Russian people, and when he got back
to America, he would try to convince the State Department of this.
Meanwhile, Robins, promoted to the rank of Colonel, was to take
over as Chief of the American Red Cross Mission in Russia. Colo-
nel Thompson shook hands with his former assistant and wished
him good luck....
Robins wasted no time. He drove out to the Smolny and asked
to see Lenin.
“I was for Kerensky,” said Robins frankly, “but I know a corpse
when I see one and I regard the Provisional Government as dead. I
want to know whether the American Red Cross can serve the Rus-
sian people without injury to our national interests. I am against
your domestic program, but it is none of my business what happens
in domestic Russia. If Kornilov, or the Czar, or anyone else had the
power I would be talking to him!”
Lenin took an immediate liking to the dynamic, outspoken
American. He tried to explain to Robins the character of the new
regime.
“They say I am a dictator,” Lenin declared. “I am for the mo-
ment. I am a dictator because I have behind me the will of the mass
of the peasants and workers. The moment I cease to do their will,
they will take the power from me, and I would be as helpless as the
13
Czar.”
As for the economic aspects of Soviet rule, Lenin went on: “We
are going to challenge the world with a producers’ republic. We are
not putting in the Soviet anybody who simply owns stock, and
simply has ownership. We are putting in the producers. The Donets
coal basin will be represented by producers of coal; the railroad by
producers of transportation; the postal system by producers of that
communication, and so on.”
Lenin described to Robins another essential phase of the Bol-
shevik program: the solution of the “national question.” Under the
Czar, the multiple national groups in Russia had been ruthlessly
suppressed and converted into subject peoples. All of this, said Len-
in, would have to change. Anti-Semitism and other such primitive
prejudices exploited by Czarism to pit one group against another
would have to be wiped out. Every nationality and national minority
in Russia would have to be completely emancipated, given equal
rights and regional and cultural autonomy. Lenin told Robins that
the man who was to cope with this complex and all-important prob-
lem was the leading Bolshevik authority on the national question,
Josef Stalin.4
Robins asked Lenin what were the chances of Russia remaining
in the war against Germany?
Lenin answered with complete candor. Russia was already out
of the war. Russia could not oppose Germany until a new army—a
Red Army—had been formed. That would take time. The whole
rotten structure of Russian industry and transport would have to be
4
“I first knew of Stalin,” Colonel Raymond Robins wrote the au-
thors of this book in November, 1943, “when Lenin talked to me of his
plans for a Federated Socialist Soviet Republic.... He spoke of his and
Stalin’s plans to unite for the common cooperation all the diverse
groups in Soviet Russia, and told me that Stalin had just been elected
Commissar for Nationalities.... Perhaps Stalin’s greatest historic
achievement for the unity and power of the Soviet People was his
matchless work as Commissar of Nationalities. His policies have large-
ly wiped out racial, religious, national and class animosities, and given
to diverse Soviet groups a unity and harmony to fight and die in de-
fense of Leningrad, Stalingrad and the Russian Land.” In the last sen-
tence, of course, Colonel Robins is referring to the historic part played
by the Soviet people in turning back and smashing the Nazi invaders
during the Second World War.
14
reorganized from top to bottom.
The Soviet Government, Lenin went on to say, wanted recogni-
tion and friendship from the United States. He was aware of the
official prejudice against his regime. He offered Robins a practical
minimum program of co-operation. In return for American technical
aid, the Soviet Government would undertake to evacuate all war
supplies from the Eastern Front, where they could not otherwise be
prevented from falling into German hands.
Robins informed General William Judson, the American Mili-
tary Attaché and chief of the American Military Mission in Russia,
of Lenin’s proposal; and General Judson went to the Smolny to
work out the details of the agreement. Judson had an additional re-
quest to make: the hundreds of thousands of German war prisoners
in Russian hands were not to be repatriated until after the war. Len-
in agreed.
General Judson promptly informed Ambassador Francis that it
would be in the interest of the United States to recognize the Soviet
Government.
“The Soviet is the de facto government, and relations with it
should be established,” said General Judson.
But the American Ambassador had other ideas and had already
conveyed them to Washington.
A few days later, a telegram arrived from Secretary of State
Lansing advising Ambassador Francis that American representa-
tives were to “withhold all direct communications with the Bolshe-
vik Government.” The wire added pointedly: “So advise Judson.”
A second telegram, dispatched soon after, recalled General Jud-
son to the United States.
Robins thought of handing in his resignation in protest against
the State Department’s policy. To his surprise, Ambassador Francis
asked him to remain at his post and maintain his contacts at Smolny.
“1 think it’s unwise for you to sever your relations abruptly and
absolutely—that is, I mean, to cease your visits up there,” Ambas-
sador Francis told Robins. “Furthermore, I want to know what they
are doing, and I will stand between you and the fire.”
Robins did not know it, but Ambassador Francis needed all the
information he could get about the Soviet Government for special
reasons of his own.
15
5. Secret. Diplomacy
On December 2, 1917, Ambassador Francis sent Washington
his first confidential report on the activities of General Alexei
Kaledin, Ataman of the Don Cossacks. Francis described the Gen-
eral as “Kaledin, commander-in-chief of the Cossacks, numbering
200,000.” General Kaledin had organized a White counterrevolu-
tionary army among the Cossacks in southern Russia, proclaimed
“the independence of the Don,” and was preparing to match on
Moscow to overthrow the Soviet Government. Secret groups of
Czarist officers in Petrograd and Moscow were acting as anti-Soviet
spies for Kaledin and were maintaining contact with Ambassador
Francis.
At Francis’s request, a more detailed report of the strength of
General Kaledin was sent to the State Department a few days later
by Maddin Summers, the American Consul General in Moscow.
Summers, who had married the daughter of a wealthy Czarist no-
bleman, was even more violently prejudiced against the Soviet re-
gime than the Ambassador himself. According to Summers’s report
to the State Department, Kaledin had already rallied to his person
all the “loyal” and “honest” elements in southern Russia.
Secretary of State Lansing telegraphed the American Embassy
in London recommending a secret loan to finance Kaledin’s cause.
This loan, said the Secretary, was to be made through the agency of
either the British or the French Government.
“I need not impress on you,” added Secretary Lansing, “the ne-
cessity of acting expeditiously and impressing those with whom you
talk of the importance of it not being known that the United States is
considering showing sympathy for the Kaledin movement, much
less of providing financial assistance.”
Ambassador Francis was advised to use great discretion in his
dealings with Kaledin’s agents in Petrograd, so as not to arouse the
suspicions of the Bolsheviks.
Despite the elaborate precautions, the plot was discovered by
the Soviet Government, which was keenly alert to the possibility of
Allied intervention in Russia. In mid-December, the Soviet press
denounced the American Ambassador for secretly plotting with
Kaledin. Francis blandly denied any knowledge of the Cossack
chief....
“I am making a statement to press,” Francis telegraphed Secre-
16
tary Lansing on December 22, “which shall forward en clair deny-
ing all connection or knowledge of Kaledin movement stating your
instructions are definite and emphatic not to interfere in internal
affairs stating I had observed same scrupulously.”
Isolated by Allied hostility, and too weak to face the massive
German war machine alone, the Soviet Government had to protect
itself as best it could. The most immediate menace was Germany.
To save the new Russia, and to gain time in which to effect es-
sential reorganization and create a Red Army, Lenin proposed to
sign an immediate peace on the Eastern Front.
“We will have to conclude peace anyway,” Lenin told his fol-
lowers, after reviewing at length the appalling conditions in Rus-
sia’s transport, industry and army. “We need to grow strong, and for
this time is necessary.... If the Germans begin to advance, we will
be forced to sign any kind of a peace, only then the peace will be
worse.”
On Lenin’s insistence, a Soviet peace delegation hastily left for
Brest-Litovsk, headquarters of the German Eastern Army, to learn
Germany’s peace terms.
On December 23, 1917, the day after the first session of the pre-
liminary Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference, representatives of Great
Britain and France met in Paris and secretly concluded an agree-
ment to dismember Soviet Russia. The agreement was entitled
L’Accord Français-Anglais du 23 Décembre, 1917, définissant les
zones d’action françaises et anglaises. According to its terms, Eng-
land was to receive a “zone of influence” in Russia, giving her the
oil of the Caucasus and control of the Baltic provinces; France a
“zone” giving her the iron and coal of the Donets Basin and control
of the Crimea.
This secret Anglo-French treaty inevitably shaped the policy
these two nations were to pursue towards Russia throughout the
next several years.
17
CHAPTER II
Point Counter Point
1. British Agent
Around midnight on the freezing night of January 18, 1918, a hand-
some young Scot wrapped in furs groped his way by the light of a
lantern across a partly shattered bridge between Finland and Russia.
Civil war was raging in Finland, and rail traffic over the bridge had
been interrupted. The Red Finnish Government had provided the
young Scot with an escort to take him and his luggage across to the
Soviet side, where a train waited to take him to Petrograd. The trav-
eler was R. H. Bruce Lockhart, special agent of the British War
Cabinet.
A product of the exclusive English “public school” system,
Bruce Lockhart had entered the diplomatic service at the age of
twenty-four. He was both handsome and intelligent, and in a short
time he had made a name for himself as one of the most talented
and promising young men in the British Foreign Office. At thirty,
he was British Vice-Consul in Moscow. He spoke Russian fluently
and was equally familiar with Russian politics and intrigue. He had
been recalled to London just six weeks before the Bolshevik Revo-
lution.
Now he was being sent back to Russia at the personal request of
Prime Minister Lloyd George, who had been deeply impressed by
what he had learned about Russia from the homeward-bound Colo-
nel Thompson. Robins’s former chief had fiercely denounced the
Allies’ refusal to recognize the Soviet regime. Following Colonel
Thompson’s conversation with Lloyd George, Lockhart had been
chosen to go to Russia to establish some sort of working relations—
short of actual recognition—with the Soviet regime.
But the handsome young Scot was also an agent of the British
diplomatic Intelligence Service. His unofficial assignment was to
exploit for British ends the opposition movement which had already
arisen within the Soviet Government....
The opposition to Lenin was headed by the ambitious Soviet
Foreign Commissar, Leon Trotsky, who considered himself Lenin’s
inevitable successor. For fourteen years, Trotsky had fiercely op-
posed the Bolsheviks; then, in August, 1917, a few months before
the Bolshevik Revolution, he had joined Lenin’s Party and risen to
18
power with it. Within the Bolshevik Party, Trotsky was organizing,
a Left Opposition to Lenin.
When Lockhart reached Petrograd at the beginning of 1918,
Foreign Commissar Trotsky was at Brest-Litovsk, as head of the
Soviet peace delegation.
Trotsky had been sent to Brest-Litovsk with categorical instruc-
tions from Lenin to sign peace. Instead of following Lenin’s instruc-
tions, Trotsky was issuing inflammatory appeals to the European
proletariat to rise and overthrow their governments. The Soviet
Government, he declared, would on no account make peace with
capitalist regimes. “Neither peace nor war!” Trotsky cried. He told
the Germans that the Russian Army could fight no more, would
continue to demobilize but would not make peace.
Lenin angrily denounced Trotsky’s behavior at Brest-Litovsk
and Trotsky’s proposals—”discontinuance of the war, refusal to
sign peace, and the demobilization of the army”—as “lunacy or
worse.”
The British Foreign Office, as Lockhart later revealed in his
memoirs, British Agent, was extremely interested in these “dissen-
sions between Lenin and Trotsky—dissensions from which our
Government hoped much.”1
1
At Brest-Litovsk, Trotsky, as a “world revolutionist,” objected to
signing peace with Germany, even though he admitted that the Russian
Army could no longer fight, on the grounds that such a peace would
represent a betrayal of the international revolution. On these grounds
Trotsky refused to abide by Lenin’s peace instructions. Later, Trotsky
claimed that he had acted from mistaken judgment. At a Bolshevik Par-
ty meeting on October 3, 1918, after the Germans had attacked Soviet
Russia and very nearly seized Petrograd and smashed the Soviet re-
gime, Trotsky declared: “I deem it my duty to say, in this authoritative
assembly, that at the hour when many of us, including myself, were
doubtful as to whether it was admissible for us to sign the Brest-
Litovsk peace, only Comrade Lenin maintained stubbornly, with amaz-
ing foresight and against our opposition, that we had to go through with
it.... And now we must admit that we were wrong.”
Trotsky’s behavior at Brest-Litovsk was not an isolated event.
While Trotsky was agitating at Brest-Litovsk, his chief personal lieu-
tenant in Moscow, Nicolai Krestinsky, publicly attacked Lenin and
spoke of waging “revolutionary war against German imperialism, the
Russian bourgeoisie and part of the proletariat headed by Lenin.” Trot-
19
As a result of Trotsky’s behavior, the peace negotiations at
Brest-Litovsk fell through. The German High Command had not
wanted to deal with the Bolsheviks in the first place. Trotsky, ac-
cording to Lenin, played into the German hands and “actually
helped the German imperialists.” In the midst of one of Trotsky’s
speeches at Brest-Litovsk, the German General Max Hoffmann put
his boot on the conference table, and told the Soviet delegates to go
home.
Trotsky came back to Petrograd and dismissed Lenin’s
remonstrances with the exclamation: “The Germans will not dare to
advance!”
Ten days after the breaking off of the peace negotiations at
Brest-Litovsk, the German High Command launched a major offen-
sive along the entire Eastern Front from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
In the south, the German hordes swarmed through the flat Ukraine.
In the center, the offensive surged through Poland towards Moscow.
In the north, Narva fell and Petrograd was menaced. Everywhere
along the front the remnants of the old Russian Army cracked and
fell to pieces.
Disaster loomed over the new Russia.
Pouring from the cities, hastily mobilized by their Bolshevik
leaders, the armed workers and Red Guards formed regiments to
halt the German advance. The first units of the new Red Army went
into action. At Pskov, on February 23, the Germans were stopped.2
Temporarily, Petrograd was saved.
A second Soviet peace delegation, this time without Trotsky,
hastened to Brest-Litovsk.
As the price of peace, Germany now demanded domination of
the Ukraine, Finland, Poland, the Caucasus and enormous indemni-
sky’s associate in this opposition movement, Bukharin, sponsored a

resolution which was passed at a special congress of the so-called Left,
Communist group in Moscow and which stated... “in the interests of the
international revolution, we consider it expedient to consent to the loss
of the Soviet power, which has now become purely formal.” In 1923,
Bukharin revealed that behind the scenes during the Brest-Litovsk cri-
sis a plan was actually afoot among the oppositionists to split the Bol-
shevik Party, overthrow Lenin and establish a new Russian Govern-
ment.
2
The date February 23, 1918, when the Russians stopped the Ger-
mans at Pskov, is celebrated as the birthday of the Red Army.
20
ties of Russian gold, wheat, oil, coal and minerals.
A wave of indignation against the “German imperialist brig-
ands” swept across Soviet Russia when those peace terms were an-
nounced. The German High Command, declared Lenin, hoped by
this “robbers’ peace” to dismember Soviet Russia and, smash the
Soviet regime.
In Bruce Lockhart’s opinion, the only sensible thing for the Al-
lies to do in this situation was to support Russia against Germany.
The Soviet Government was making no attempt to conceal its reluc-
tance to ratify the Brest-Litovsk Peace. As Lockhart saw it, the
question the Bolsheviks were asking was: What would the Allies
do? Would they recognize the Soviet Government and come to its
aid, or would they let the Germans force their “robbers’ peace” on
Russia?
At first, Lockhart was inclined to believe that British interests
in Russia dictated a deal with Trotsky against Lenin, Trotsky and
his followers were now attacking Lenin on the grounds that his
peace policy had led to a “betrayal of the Revolution.” Trotsky was
trying to form what Lockhart called a “holy war” bloc within the
Bolshevik Party designed to gain Allied backing and force Lenin
from power.
Lockhart, as he tells in his British Agent, had established per-
sonal contact with Trotsky as soon as the Foreign Commissar re-
turned from Brest-Litovsk. Trotsky granted him a two-hour inter-
view at his private office at Smolny. That same night, Lockhart rec-
orded in his diary his personal impressions of Trotsky: “He strikes
me as a man who would willingly die fighting for Russia provided
there was a big enough audience to see him do it.”
The British agent and the Soviet Foreign Commissar were soon
on intimate terms. Lockhart addressed Trotsky familiarly as “Lev
Davidovich,” and dreamed, as he later said, of “pulling off a big
coup with Trotsky.” But Lockhart reluctantly came to the conclu-
sion that Trotsky simply did not have the power to replace Lenin.
As Lockhart puts it in British Agent:—
Trotsky was a great organizer and a man of immense
physical courage. But, morally, he was as incapable of
standing against Lenin as a flea would be against an ele-
phant. In the Council of Commissars there was not a man
who did not consider himself the equal of Trotsky. There
21
was not a Commissar who did not regard Lenin as a demi-
god, whose decisions were to be accepted without question.
If anything were to be done in Russia, it would have to be done
through Lenin. This conclusion, Lockhart found, was shared by
Raymond Robins.
“I personally have always had a question mark over Trotsky—a
question as to what he will do—a question as to where he will be
found at certain times and places, because of his extreme ego, and
the arrogance, if you please, of the ego,” said Robins.
Lockhart had met Robins shortly after his arrival in Petrograd.
He was immediately impressed by the American’s forthright ap-
proach to the Russian problem. Robins had no sympathy with the
various Allied arguments against recognition. He poured scorn on
the absurd theory, fostered by Czarist agents, that the Bolsheviks
wanted a German victory. With great eloquence, he described to
Lockhart the appalling conditions in old Russia and the marvelous
upsurge of the oppressed millions under Bolshevik leadership.
To complete the picture, Robins took Lockhart out to Smolny to
see the new regime in action. As they drove back to Petrograd
through the softly falling snow, Robins bitterly declared that the
Allied Embassies, with their secret conspiracies against the Soviet
Government, were only “playing the German game in Russia.”
The Soviet Government had come to stay and the sooner the
Allies recognized the fact the better.
Robins frankly added that Lockhart would get a very different
story from other Allied representatives and secret service agents in
Russia, and these persons would produce all sorts of documentary
evidence to back up their claims. “There are more forged papers of
one kind or another in Russia than ever before in human history!”
said Robins. There were even documents to prove that Robins him-
self was a Bolshevik, and, at the same time, secretly interested in
getting Russian commercial concessions for Wall Street.
The two men soon became close, almost inseparable friends.
They began taking breakfast together each morning and consulting
each other regarding the plan of action for the day. Their common
aim was to induce their respective governments to recognize Soviet
Russia and so prevent a German victory on the Eastern Front.3
3
Lockhart and Robins found a valuable ally in the French officer,
22
2. Zero Hour
The situation confronting the Soviet Government in the early
spring of 1918 was this: Germany was preparing to overthrow the
Soviet Government by force if the Russians refused to ratify the
Brest-Litovsk Peace; Britain and France were secretly backing
counterrevolutionary forces which were assembling in Archangel,
Murmansk and on the Don; the Japanese, with Allied approval,
were planning-to seize Vladivostok and to invade Siberia....
In an interview with Lockhart, Lenin told the British agent that
the Soviet Government was to be transferred to Moscow in fear of a
German attack at Petrograd. The Bolsheviks were going to fight, if
necessary, even if they had to withdraw to the Volga and the Urals.
But they would fight on their own conditions. They were “not to be
made a cats-paw for the Allies.” If the Allies understood this, Lenin
told Lockhart, there was an excellent opportunity for co-operation.
Soviet Russia was desperately in need of aid to resist the Germans.
“At the same time,” said Lenin grimly, “I am quite convinced
that your Government will never see things in this light. It is a
reactionary Government. It will co-operate with the Russian
reactionaries.”
Captain Jean Sadoul, a former successful lawyer and Socialist deputy in

Paris. Captain Sadoul served as unofficial liaison between France and
the Soviet Government. He had reached exactly the same conclusions
as Robins and Lockhart. His outspoken criticism of the-Allied attitude
towards Russia had aroused the fierce enmity of the French Ambassa-
dor Noulens, who spread the word that Sadoul, Robins and Lockhart
had all turned “Bolshevik.” Noulens, a bitter reactionary who derived
his political opinions from the French “200 families” and the bond-
holders of the Paris banks, hated, the Soviet regime. He took away
Sadoul’s right to communicate directly with the French Government
and even intercepted Sadoul’s personal letters and messages.
To prevent Robins from influencing the American Ambassador,
David Francis, records Bruce Lockhart in British Agent, Ambassador
Noulens started a whispering campaign against Robins. Noulens had
one of his secretaries pointedly ask in Francis’s presence, “Who is the
American Ambassador in Russia—Francis or Robins?” Such maneu-
vers met with some success. Ambassador Francis began to mistrust
Robins and to fear that Robins was trying to take his place. He even
suspected Robins of having informed the Bolsheviks of his secret deal-
ings with Kaledin.
23
Lockhart cabled the substance of this interview to the British
Foreign Office. A few days later he received a coded message from
London. Hastily, he decoded and read it. The; message conveyed the
view of a “military expert” that all that was needed in Russia was “a
small but resolute nucleus of British officers” to give leadership to the
“loyal Russians” who would soon put an end to Bolshevism.
Ambassador Francis, on February 23, had written in a letter to
his son:—
My plan is to stay in Russia as long as I can. If a sepa-
rate peace is concluded, as I believe it will be, there will be
no danger of my being captured by the Germans. Such a
separate peace, however, will be a severe blow to the Al-
lies, and if any section of Russia refuses to recognize the
authority of the Bolshevik Government to conclude such a
peace, I shall endeavor to locate in that section and encour-
age the rebellion.
After writing this letter, Ambassador Francis had joined the
French Ambassador Noulens and other Allied diplomats in the
small town of Vologda, located between Moscow and Archangel. It
was clear that the Allied Governments had already decided not to
co-operate in any way with the Soviet regime.
Robins discussed the crisis with Trotsky, who, having publicly
admitted his “error” in opposing Lenin at Brest-Litovsk, was now
trying to re-establish himself in Lenin’s eyes.
“Do you want to prevent the Brest treaty from being ratified?”
Trotsky asked Robins.
“Of course!” Robins replied. “But Lenin is for it, and, frankly,
Commissioner, Lenin is running this show!”
“You are mistaken,” said Trotsky. “Lenin realizes that the
threat of the German advance is so great that if he can get co-
operation and support from the Allies he will refuse the Brest peace,
retire if necessary from both Moscow and Petrograd to
Ekaterinburg, re-establish the front in the Urals, and fight with Al-
lied support against the Germans.”
At Robins’s urgent request, Lenin agreed to draw up a formal
note to the United States Government. He had little hope of a favor-
able response; but he was willing to make the attempt.
The note was duly handed to Robins for transmission to the
United States Government. It read in part:—
24
In case (a) the All-Russian Congress of the Soviets will
refuse to ratify the peace treaty with Germany or (b) if the
German Government, breaking the peace treaty will renew
the offensive in order to continue the robbers’ raid...
(1) Can the Soviet Government rely on the support of
the United States of North America, Great Britain, and
France in its struggle against Germany?
(2) What kind of support could be furnished in the
nearest future, and on what conditions—Military equip-
ment, transportation supplies, living necessities?
(3) What kind of support could be furnished particular-
ly and especially by the United States?...
The All-Russian Soviet Congress was to meet on March 12 to
discuss ratification of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty.
Lenin agreed, at Robins’s request, to postpone the convening of
the All-Russian Congress until March 14, giving Robins and Lock-
hart two extra days in which to persuade their governments to act.
On March 5, 1918, Lockhart dispatched a final, imploring tele-
gram to the British Foreign Office pleading for recognition of the
Soviet Government: “If ever the Allies had a chance in Russia since
the Revolution, the Germans have given it to them by the exorbitant
peace terms they have imposed on the Russians.... If His Majesty’s
Government does not wish to see Germany paramount in Russia,
then I would most earnestly implore you not to neglect this oppor-
tunity.”
There was no reply from London, only a letter from Lockhart’s
wife urging him to be cautious and warning him that the word was
being spread in the Foreign Office that he had become a “Red.”.:.
On March 14, the All-Russian Soviet Congress convened in
Moscow. For two days and nights the delegates debated the ques-
tion of ratifying the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Trotsky’s opposition
was out in full force, trying to make political capital out of the un-
popular Peace Treaty; but Trotsky himself, as Robins put it, was
“sulking in Petrograd and refused to come.”
An hour before midnight on the second night of the Congress
Lenin beckoned to Robins, who was sitting on the step below the
platform.
“What have you heard from your government?”
“Nothing!”
25
“What has Lockhart heard?”
“Nothing!”
Lenin shrugged. “I am now going to the platform,” he told Rob-
ins? “I am going to speak for the ratification of the treaty. It will be
ratified.”
Lenin spoke for an hour. He made no attempt to picture the
peace as anything but a catastrophe for Russia. With patient logic,
he pointed out the necessity for the Soviet Government, isolated and
menaced from every side, to gain a “breathing space” at any cost.
The Brest-Litovsk Treaty was ratified.
A statement issued by the Congress declared:—
Under present conditions, the Soviet Government of
the Russian Republic, being left to its own forces, is unable
to withstand the armed onrush of German Imperialism, and
is compelled, for the sake of saving revolutionary Russia,
to accept the conditions put before it.
3. Mission’s End
Ambassador Francis telegraphed the State Department on May
2, 1918: “Robins and probably Lockhart also have favored recogni-
tion of Soviet government but you and all Allies have always op-
posed recognition and I have consistently refused to recommend it,
nor do I feel that I have erred therein.”
A few weeks later Robins received a telegram from Secretary of
State Lansing: “Under all circumstances consider desirable that you
come home for consultation.”
As he traveled across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railroad to
pick up a ship at Vladivostok, Robins received three messages from
the State Department. Each of them carried the same instruction: he
was to make no public statement of any kind.
Back in Washington, D. C., Robins submitted a report to Secre-
tary Lansing, vigorously condemning the idea of any Allied inter-
vention against Soviet Russia; Robins attached to his report a de-
tailed written program for the development of Russian-American
commercial relations. Lenin had personally handed Robins this pro-
gram just before he left Moscow. It was to be given to President
Wilson.
Lenin’s program never reached Wilson.
Robins himself tried to see the President, but in vain. He was
26
blocked at every turn. He tried to get his message into the newspa-
pers. The press either ignored or distorted what he had to say....
Robins was forced to defend himself before a Senate Commit-
tee investigating “Bolshevism” and “German Propaganda.”
“If I told the truth and did not lie and slander folks, did not say
that they are German agents and thieves and murderers, criminals
utterly, then I am a Bolshevist!” Robins declared. “But I had the
best window or outlook of any Allied representative in Russia and I
was trying to keep my feet on the ground. I would like to tell the
truth about men and about movements, without passion and without
resentment, even though I differed from them.... I am perfectly will-
ing that the Russian people should have the kind of government
they want, whether it suits me, or whether it is in accord with my
principles or not.... I think that to know what has actually happened
in Russia is of the very first moment, and for us and for our country
to deal with it honestly and fairly, rather than in passion or on a
statement that is not true... I would never expect to stamp out ideas
with bayonets.... The only answer for the desire for a better human
life is a better human life.”
But Robins’s honest voice was drowned in the rising tide of
misinformation and prejudice.
By the summer of 1918, although the United States was at war
with Germany and not with Russia, the New York Times was al-
ready describing the Bolsheviks as “our most malignant enemies,”
and as “ravening beasts of prey.” The Soviet leaders were being
universally denounced in the American press as “paid agents” of the
Germans. “Butchers,” “assassins and madmen,” “blood-intoxicated
criminals,” and “human scum” were some of the typical terms by
which American newspapers referred to Lenin and his associates. In
Congress, they were called “those damnable beasts.”...
Ambassador Francis remained in Russia until July, 1918. Peri-
odically, he issued proclamations and statements calling upon the
Russian people to overthrow the Soviet Government. Just before
Francis set sail for the United States, he received from Chicherin,
the new Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs, a telegram extending
greetings to the American people. Francis later related what he did
with Chicherin’s message. “This telegram was evidently meant for
consumption by American pacifists,” the ex-Ambassador wrote in
his book, Russia from the American Embassy, “and fearing it would
be given to the American people by the Department of State, I failed
27
to transmit it.”
Bruce Lockhart stayed on in Russia. “I ought to have resigned
and come home,” he said later. Instead, he remained at his post as a
British agent.
“Almost before I had realized it,” Lockhart later confessed in
British Agent, “I had now identified myself with a movement
which, whatever its original object, was to be directed, not against
Germany, but against the de facto government of Russia.”
28
CHAPTER III
Master Spy
1. Enter M. Massino
Revolutionary Petrograd, besieged by foreign enemies without
and menaced within by counterrevolutionary plots, was a terrible city
in 1918. There was little food, no heat, no transport. Ragged men and
women shivered in endless breadlines on the bleak, unswept streets.
The long gray nights were punctuated with the sounds of gunfire.
Gangster bands, defying the Soviet regime, roamed the city, robbing
and terrorizing the population.1 Detachments of armed workers
marched from building to building, searching for the hidden stores of
the food speculators, rounding up looters and terrorists.
The Soviet Government had not yet established complete con-
trol. Remnants of Czarist luxury contrasted weirdly with the mass
destitution. Anti-Soviet newspapers continued to appear, daily pre-
dicting the imminent fall of the Soviet regime. Expensive restau-
rants and hotels were still open, and catering to throngs of fashiona-
bly dressed men and women. At night, the cabarets were packed.
There were drinking and dancing, and, at the crowded tables, Czar-
ist officers, ballet dancers, famous Black Market speculators and
their mistresses whispered excited rumors: The Germans are
marching on Moscow!—Trotsky has arrested Lenin!—Lenin has
gone insane! Wild hopes and lies flowed as freely as the vodka.
Intrigue thrived....
A certain M. Massino had shown up in Petrograd that spring.
He described himself as “a Turkish and Oriental merchant.” He was
a pale, long-faced, somber-looking man in his early forties, with a
high, sloping forehead, restless dark eyes and sensual lips. He
walked with an erect, almost military carriage, and with a rapid,
curiously silent step. He seemed to be wealthy. Women found him
attractive. Amid the uneasy atmosphere of the temporary Soviet
capital, M. Massino went about his business with a peculiar aplomb.
At evenings, M. Massino was a frequent visitor to the small,
1
By firsthand investigation, Raymond Robins and Bruce Lockhart
jointly established that many of these anti-Soviet gangster heads, some
of whom called themselves Anarchists, were actually financed by the
German Military Intelligence to provoke disorders and riots as a pretext
for German intervention in Russia.
29
smoky Baikov Cafe, a favorite haunt of anti-Soviet elements in Pet-
rograd. The proprietor, Serge Baikov, greeted him deferentially. In a
private room at the back of the cafe, M. Massino met mysterious
men and women who spoke to him in low tones. Some of them ad-
dressed him in Russian, others in French or English. M. Massino
was familiar with many languages....
The young Soviet Government was struggling to bring order
out of chaos. Its colossal organizational tasks were still further
complicated by the ever-present, deadly menace of the counterrevo-
lution. “The bourgeoisie, the landlords and all the wealthy classes
are making desperate efforts to undermine the revolution,” wrote
Lenin. A special Soviet counter-sabotage and counter-espionage
organization was set up, at Lenin’s recommendation, to deal with
domestic and foreign enemies. It was called the Extraordinary
Commission to Combat Counterrevolution and Sabotage. Its Rus-
sian initials spelled the word: Cheka2...
In the summer of 1918, when the Soviet Government, fearing
German attack, moved to Moscow, M. Massino followed it. But in
Moscow the appearance of the suave, wealthy Levantine merchant
oddly: changed. He wore a leather jacket and the peaked cap of a
worker. He visited the Kremlin. Stopped at the gates by one of the
young Communist Lettish Guards, who formed the elite corps
guarding the Soviet Government, the erstwhile M. Massino pro-
duced an official Soviet document. It identified him as Sidney
Georgevitch Relinsky, an agent of the Criminal Division of the Pet-
rograd Cheka.
“Pass Comrade Relinsky!” said the Lettish guard.
In another part of Moscow, in the luxurious apartment of the
popular ballet dancer Dagmara K., M. Massino, alias Comrade
Relinsky of the Cheka, was known as Monsieur Constantine, an
agent of the British Secret Service.
At the British Embassy, Bruce Lockhart knew his real identity:
“Sidney Reilly, the mystery man of the British Secret Service and
known... as the master spy of Britain.”
2
In 1922, the Cheka was abolished and its place taken by the
OGPU (the initials of the Russian title meaning United State Political
Administration). In 1934, the OGPU was replaced by the NKVD, the
Department of Public Security under the Soviet Commissariat of Inter-
nal Affairs.
30
2. Sidney Reilly
Of all the adventurers who emerged from the political under-
world of Czarist Russia during the First World War to lead the great
crusade against Bolshevism none was more colorful and extraordi-
nary than Captain Sidney George Reilly of the British Secret Ser-
vice. “A man cast in the Napoleonic mold!” exclaimed Bruce Lock-
hart, whom Reilly was to involve in one of the most dangerous and
fantastic undertakings in European history.
Just how Reilly first came to the British Secret Service remains
one of the many mysteries surrounding that very mysterious and
powerful espionage apparatus. Sidney Reilly was born in Czarist
Russia. The son of an Irish sea captain and a Russian woman, he
grew up in the Black Sea port of Odessa. Prior to the First World
War, he was employed by the great Czarist naval armaments con-
cern of Mandrochovitch and Count Tchubersky in St. Petersburg.
Even then, his work was of a highly confidential character. He
served as liaison between the Russian firm and certain German in-
dustrial and financial interests, including the famous Hamburg ship-
yards of Bluhm and Voss. Just before the outbreak of the First
World War, valuable information concerning the German subma-
rine and shipbuilding program began regularly reaching the British
Admiralty in London. The source of this information was Sidney
Reilly.
In 1914, Reilly showed up in Japan as the “confidential repre-
sentative” of the Banque Russo-Asiatique. From Japan he traveled
to the United States, where he conferred with American bankers and
munition manufacturers. Already, in the files of the British Secret
Service, Sidney Reilly was listed under the code name, I. Esti, and
was known as a secret agent of great daring and resourcefulness.
A fluent linguist, with a command of seven languages, Reilly
was soon summoned from the United States for important work in
Europe. In 1916, he crossed the Swiss frontier into Germany. Pos-
ing as a German naval officer, he penetrated the German Admiralty.
He secured and delivered back to London a copy of the: official
German Naval Intelligence Code. It was probably the greatest secret
service coup of the First World War....
Early in 1918, Captain Reilly was transferred to Russia as Di-
rector of British Secret Intelligence operations in that country. His
many personal friends, wide business connections and intimate
31
knowledge of the inner circles of the Russian counterrevolution,
made him an ideal man for the job. But the Russian assignment also
had a deep personal significance for Reilly. He was consumed by a
bitter hatred for the Bolsheviks and, indeed, for the entire Russian
Revolution. He frankly stated his counterrevolutionary aims:—
“The Germans are human beings. We can afford to be even
beaten by them. Here in Moscow there is growing to maturity the
arch-enemy of the human race. If civilization does not move first
and crush the monster, while yet there is time, the monster will fi-
nally overwhelm civilization.”
In his reports to the British Secret Service headquarters in Lon-
don, Reilly repeatedly advocated an immediate peace with Germany
and an alliance with the Kaiser against the Bolshevik menace.
“At any price,” he declared, “this foul obscenity which has been
born in Russia must be crushed out of existence. Peace with Ger-
many: Yes, peace with Germany, peace with anybody! There is on-
ly one enemy. Mankind must unite in a holy alliance against this
midnight terror!”
On his arrival in Russia, Reilly immediately plunged into anti-
Soviet conspiracy.
His avowed aim was to overthrow the Soviet Government.3
3. Money and Murder
The numerically strongest anti-Bolshevik political party in Rus-
sia in 1918 was the Social Revolutionary Party, which advocated a
form of agrarian socialism. Led by Boris Savinkov, Kerensky’s one-
time war minister who had taken part in the abortive Kornilov
Putsch, the militant Social Revolutionaries had become the pivot of
anti-Bolshevik sentiment. Their extremist methods and propaganda
had attracted considerable support for them among the many anar-
chistic elements which generations of Czarist oppression had bred
3
In this chapter, and elsewhere in The Great Conspiracy, the au-
thors are making use of the picturesque story of Captain Sidney Reilly
as a symbol of the activities of the western anti-Soviet coalition headed
at this period by British Toryism and French reaction. While the opin-
ions and actions ascribed to Reilly are his own, it is quite clear that
Reilly himself was not in a position to originate policies, but was at this
time and later merely the most resolute and audacious instrument of the
anti-Soviet conspiracy directed from outside Russia.
32
in Russia. The Social Revolutionaries had long practiced terrorism
as a weapon against the Czar. Now they prepared to turn the same
weapon against the Bolsheviks.
The Social Revolutionaries were receiving financial aid from
the French Intelligence Service. With funds personally handed to
him by the French Ambassador Noulens, Boris Savinkov had re-
established the old Social Revolutionary terrorist center in Moscow
under the title of League for the Regeneration of Russia. Its aim was
to plan the assassination of Lenin and other Soviet leaders. On Sid-
ney Reilly’s recommendation, the British Secret Service also began
supplying Savinkov with money for the training and arming of his
terrorists.
But Reilly, an ardent pro-Czarist, did not trust the Social Revo-
lutionaries when it came to forming a new Russian Government to
replace the Soviet regime. Apart from Savinkov, whom he regarded
as completely reliable, Reilly felt that the leftist Social Revolution-
aries represented a dangerously radical force. Some of them were
known to be linked with the oppositionist Bolsheviks who followed
Trotsky. Reilly was prepared to use these people for his own pur-
poses, but he was determined to stamp out radicalism in Russia. He
wanted a military dictatorship as the first step to the restoration of
Czarism. Accordingly, while he continued to finance and encourage
the Social Revolutionary terrorists and other radical anti-Soviet
groups, the British spy was at the same time carefully building a
conspiratorial apparatus of his own. Reilly himself later revealed in
his memoirs how it functioned:—
It was essential that my Russian organization should
not know too much, and that no part of it should be in a po-
sition to betray another. The scheme was accordingly ar-
ranged on the “Fives” system, and each participant knew
another four persons only. I myself, who was at the summit
of the pyramid, knew them all, not personally, but by name
and address only, and very useful was I to find the
knowledge afterwards.... Thus, if anything were betrayed,
everybody would not be discovered, and the discovery
would be localized.
Linking up with the Union of Czarist Officers, with remnants of
the old Czarist secret police, the sinister Ochrana, with Savinkov’s
terrorists, and with similar counterrevolutionary elements, Reilly’s
33
apparatus soon mushroomed throughout Moscow and Petrograd. A
number of Reilly’s former friends and acquaintances from Czarist
days joined him and proved of great value. These friends included
Count Tchubersky, the naval armaments magnate who had once
employed Reilly as a liaison with the German shipyards; the Czarist
General Yudenitch; the Petrograd cafe proprietor, Serge Baikov; the
ballet dancer, Dagmara, at whose apartment Reilly set up his Mos-
cow headquarters; Grammatikov, a wealthy lawyer and former un-
dercover agent of the Ochrana, who now became Reilly’s chief con-
tact with the Social Revolutionary Party; and Veneslav Orlovsky,
another former Ochrana agent, who had contrived to become a
Cheka official in Petrograd, and from whom Reilly obtained the
forged Cheka passport under the name of Sidney Georgevitch
Relinsky, which enabled him to travel freely anywhere in Soviet
Russia.
These and other agents, who even penetrated into the Kremlin
and Red Army General Staff, kept Reilly fully informed of every
measure of the Soviet Government. The British spy was able to
boast that sealed Red Army orders “were being read in London be-
fore they were opened in Moscow.” Large sums of money to fi-
nance Reilly’s operations, amounting to several millions of rubles,
were hidden in the Moscow apartment of the ballet dancer,
Dagmara. In raising these funds, Reilly drew on the resources of the
British Embassy. The money was collected by Brace Lockhart and
conveyed to Reilly by Captain Hicks of the British Secret Service.
Lockhart, whom Reilly involved in this business, subsequently re-
vealed in his British Agent how the money was collected:—
There were numerous Russians with hidden stores of
roubles. They were only too glad to hand them over in ex-
change for a promissory note on London. To avoid all sus-
picion, we collected the roubles through an English firm in
Moscow. They dealt with the Russians, fixed the rate of ex-
change, and gave the promissory note. In each transaction
we furnished the English firm with an official guarantee
that it was good for the amount in London. The roubles
were brought to the American Consulate-General, and were
handed over to Hicks, who conveyed them to their destined
quarters.
Finally, overlooking no detail, the British spy even drew up a
34
detailed plan for the government that was to take power as soon as
the Soviet Government was overthrown. Reilly’s personal friends
were to play an important part in the new regime:—
All arrangements had been made for a provisional gov-
ernment. My great friend and ally Grammatikov was to be-
come Minister of the Interior, having under his direction all
affairs of police and finance. Tchubersky, an old friend and
business associate of mine, who had become head of one of
the greatest mercantile houses in, Russia, was to become
Minister of Communications. Yudenitch, Tchubersky and
Grammatikov would constitute a provisional government to
suppress the anarchy which would almost inevitably follow
from such a revolution.
The first blows of the anti-Soviet campaign were struck by
Savinkov’s terrorists.
On June 21, 1918, as he was leaving a workers’ meeting at the
Obuchov factory in Petrograd, the Soviet Commissar for Press Af-
fairs, Volodarsky, was assassinated by a Social Revolutionary ter-
rorist. This was followed within two weeks by the assassination of
the German Ambassador Mirbach in Moscow on July 6. The aim of
the Social Revolutionaries was to strike terror in the Bolshevik
ranks and simultaneously to precipitate a German attack which they
believed would spell the doom of Bolshevism.4
On the day on which the German Ambassador was murdered,
the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets was in session in the
Opera House in Moscow. Allied observers sat in the gilded boxes
listening to the speeches of the Soviet delegates. There was an air of
tension about the proceedings. Bruce Lockhart, sitting in a box with
a number of other Allied agents and diplomats, knew that something
4
The assassin of Mirbach was a Social Revolutionary terrorist
named Blumkin. He gained admission to the German Embassy by pos-
ing as an officer of the Cheka come to warn Mirbach of a plot against
his life. The German Ambassador asked Blumkin how the assassins
were planning to act. “Like this!” cried Blumkin. He whipped out a
pistol and shot the Ambassador. Blumkin escaped by leaping through
the window, and was taken away in a waiting car. Some time later the
assassin Blumkin became the personal bodyguard of Leon Trotsky. See
page 172.
35
eventful had occurred when Sidney Reilly entered. The British spy
looked pale and agitated. In hurried whispers he told Lockhart what
had happened.
The shot that killed Mirbach was to have been a signal for a
general Social Revolutionary rising, backed by dissident Bolshevik
elements, throughout the country. Social Revolutionary gunmen
were to have raided the Opera House and arrested the Soviet dele-
gates. But something had gone wrong. The Opera House was now
surrounded by Red Army soldiers. There was firing in the streets,
but it was clear that the Soviet Government had the situation in
hand.
As Reilly spoke, he was examining his pockets for compromis-
ing documents. He found one, tore it into shreds and swallowed the
pieces. A French secret agent, sitting beside Lockhart, proceeded to
do the same thing.
A few hours later, a speaker rose on the stage of the Opera
House and announced that an anti-Soviet Putsch, designed to over-
throw the Soviet Government by force of arms, had been swiftly put
down by the Red Army and the Cheka. There had been no public
support for the putschists whatsoever. Scores of Social Revolution-
ary terrorists, armed with bombs, rifles and machine guns, had been
rounded up and arrested. Many of them had been killed. Their lead-
ers were either dead, in hiding or in flight.
The Allied representatives in the Opera House were told they
could now safely return to their respective embassies. The streets
were safe.
Later the news came that an uprising at Yaroslav, timed to co-
incide with the Moscow Putsch, had also been put down by the Red
Army. The Social Revolutionary leader, Boris Savinkov, who had
personally led the Yaroslav uprising, had narrowly escaped capture
by the Soviet troops.
Reilly was bitterly angry and disappointed. The Social Revolu-
tionaries had acted with characteristic impatience and stupidity!
Nevertheless, he declared, there was nothing wrong with their basic
idea of starting a coup at a moment when most of the Soviet leaders
were assembled in one place attending some congress or conven-
tion. The thought of seizing all the chief Bolsheviks at one swoop
appealed to Reilly’s Napoleonic imagination....
He began seriously to plan to accomplish this.
36
4. The Lettish Plot
During the climactic month of August, 1918, the secret plans
for Allied intervention in Russia flared into the open. On August 2,
British troops disembarked at Archangel with the proclaimed pur-
pose of preventing “war supplies from falling into the hands of the
Germans.” On August 4 the British seized the oil center of Baku in
the Caucasus. A few days later, British and French contingents
landed at Vladivostok. They were followed on August 12 by a Jap-
anese division, and on August 15 and 16 by two American regi-
ments recently transferred from the Philippines.
Large sections of Siberia were already in the hands of anti-
Soviet forces. In the Ukraine, the Czarist General Krasnov, support-
ed by the Germans, was waging a bloody anti-Soviet campaign. At
Kiev, the German puppet Hetman Skoropadsky had initiated whole-
sale massacres of Jews and Communists.
From north, south, east and west, the enemies of the new Russia
were preparing to converge on Moscow.
The few remaining Allied representatives in Moscow began to
make preparations for their departure. They did not inform the So-
viet Government that they were doing so. As Bruce Lockhart later
wrote in British Agent: “It was an extraordinary situation. There had
been no declaration of war, yet fighting was proceeding on a front
stretching from the Dvina to the Caucasus.” And Lockhart added: “I
had several discussions with Reilly, who had decided to remain on
in Moscow after our departure.”
On August 15, the day the Americans landed at Vladivostok,
Bruce Lockhart received an important visitor. The scene was later
described by Lockhart in his memoirs. He was lunching in his
apartment, near the British Embassy, when the bell rang and his
servant announced that “‘two Lettish gentlemen” wished to see him.
One was a short, sallow-faced youth called Smidhen. The other, a
tall, powerfully built man with clear-cut features and hard, steely
eyes, introduced himself as “Colonel” Berzin, the commander of the
Lettish Kremlin Guard.
The visitors brought Lockhart a letter from Captain Cromie, the
British Naval Attaché in Petrograd, who was extremely active in
anti-Soviet conspiracy. “Always on my guard against agents-
provocateurs,” records Lockhart, “I scrutinized the letter carefully.
It was unmistakably from Cromie.” Lockhart asked his visitors what
37
they wanted.
Colonel Berzin, who had introduced himself as the commander
of the Kremlin Guard, informed Lockhart that, while the Letts had
supported the Bolshevik Revolution, they had no intention of
fighting the British forces under General Poole which had recently
landed at Archangel. They were prepared to talk terms with the
British agent.
Before giving an answer, Lockhart talked the matter over with
the French Consul General, M. Grenard, who as Lockhart records,
advised him to negotiate with Colonel Berzin, but “to avoid com-
promising our own position in any way.” The next day, Lockhart
again saw Colonel Berzin and gave him a paper saying, “Please
admit bearer, who has an important communication for General
Poole, through the English lines.” Lockhart then put Colonel Berzin
in touch with Sidney Reilly....
“Two days later,” records Lockhart, “Reilly reported that his
negotiations were proceeding smoothly and the Letts had no inten-
tion of being involved in the collapse of the Bolsheviks. He put
forward a suggestion that after our departure he might be able, with
Lettish help, to stage a counterrevolution in Moscow.”
Towards the end of August, 1918, a small group of Allied rep-
resentatives gathered for a confidential conference in a room at the
American Consulate General in Moscow. They chose the American
Consulate General because all other foreign centers were under
close Soviet supervision. In spite of the American landings in Sibe-
ria, the Soviet Government still maintained a friendly attitude to-
ward the United States. Throughout Moscow, placards presenting
Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points were prominently displayed.
An editorial in Izvestia had stated that “only the Americans know
how to treat the Bolsheviks decently.” The legacy of Raymond Rob-
ins’s mission was not altogether spent.
The gathering at the American Consulate General was presided
over by the French Consul Grenard. The British were represented
by Reilly and by Captain George Hill, a British Intelligence officer
who had been delegated to work with Reilly. A number of other
Allied diplomatic and secret service agents were present, including
the French newspaperman Rene Marchand, the Moscow corre-
spondent of the Paris Figaro.
Sidney Reilly had called the meeting, according to his own ac-
count in his memoirs, to report on the progress of his anti-Soviet
38
operations. He informed the Allied representatives that he had
“bought Colonel Berzin, the commander of the Kremlin Guard.”
The Colonel’s price had been “two million roubles.” An advance of
500,000 roubles in Russian currency had been paid to Colonel
Berzin by Reilly; the remainder of the sum was to be paid in Eng-
lish pounds when Colonel Berzin had rendered certain services and
had escaped to the British lines in Archangel.
“Our organization is now immensely strong,” declared Reilly.
“The Letts are on our side, and the people will be with us the mo-
ment the first blow is struck!”
Reilly then announced that a special meeting of the Bolshevik
Central Committee was to be held at the Moscow Grand Theater on
August 28. It would bring together in the same building all the key
leaders of the Soviet state. Reilly’s plot was bold but simple....
In the course of their regular duty, the Lettish Guards would be
stationed at all the entrances and exits of the theater during the Bol-
shevik meeting. Colonel Berzin would choose for the occasion men
“absolutely faithful and devoted to our cause.” At a given signal,
Berzin’s guards would close the doors and cover all the people in the
theater with their rifles. Then a “special detachment” consisting of
Reilly himself and his “inner circle of conspirators” would leap on the
stage and arrest the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party!
Lenin and the other Soviet leaders would be shot. Before their
execution, however, they would be publicly paraded through the
streets of Moscow “so that everyone should be aware that the ty-
rants of Russia were prisoners!”
With Lenin and his associates out of the way, the Soviet regime
would collapse like a house of cards. There were “60,000 officers”
in Moscow, said Reilly, “who were ready to mobilize immediately
the signal was given,” and form an army, to strike within the city
while the Allied forces attacked from without. The man to head this
secret anti-Soviet army was the “well-known Czarist officer. Gen-
eral Yudenitch.” A second army under “General” Savinkov would
assemble in north Russia and “what remained of the Bolsheviks
would be crushed between an upper and nether millstone.”
This was Reilly’s plot. It had the backing of both the British
and the French Intelligence Services. The British were in close
touch with General Yudenitch and were preparing to supply him
with arms and equipment. The French were backing Savinkov.
The Allied representatives gathered at the American Consulate
39
General were told what they could do to help the conspiracy by es-
pionage, propaganda and by arranging for the blowing-up of vital
railroad bridges around Moscow and Petrograd in order to cut off
the Soviet Government from any aid which the Red Army might try
to bring from other sections of the country....
As the day of the armed coup drew near, Reilly was meeting
regularly with Colonel Berzin, carefully working out every last de-
tail of the plot and making preparations for all possible exigencies.
They were drawing up the final plans when they learned that the
meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee had been postponed
from August 28 until September 6. “I don’t mind that,” Reilly told
Berzin. “It gives me more time to make my final arrangements.”
Reilly decided to go to Petrograd to make a last-minute check-up on
the apparatus in that city.
A few nights later, traveling by train on the forged passport
which identified him as Sidney Georgevitch Relinsky, agent of the
Cheka, Reilly left Moscow for Petrograd.
5. Exit Sidney Reilly
In Petrograd, Reilly went straight to the. British Embassy to
report to Captain Cromie, the British Naval Attaché. Reilly quickly
outlined the situation in Moscow, and explained the plan for the
uprising. “Moscow is in our hands!” he said. Cromie was delighted.
Reilly promised to write out a full report for secret dispatch to
London.
The following morning Reilly began getting in touch with the
leaders of his Petrograd apparatus; At noon he telephoned the for-
mer Ochrana agent, Grammatikov.
Grammatikov’s voice sounded hoarse and unnatural. “Who is
it?” he asked.
“It’s I, Relinsky,” said Reilly.
“Who?” asked Grammatikov.
Reilly repeated his pseudonym.
“I have somebody with me who has brought bad news,”
Grammatikov said abruptly. “The doctors have operated too early.
The patient’s condition is serious. Come at once if you wish to see
me.”
Reilly hurried to Grammatikov’s house. He found
Grammatikov feverishly emptying his desk drawers and burning
papers in the fire grate.
40
“The fools have struck too early!” Grammatikov exclaimed as
soon as Reilly entered the room. “Uritsky is dead, assassinated in
his office this morning at eleven o’clock!”
As he spoke, Grammatikov went on tearing up papers and burn-
ing the pieces. “It is a terrible risk our staying here. I am, of course,
already under suspicion. If anything is discovered before anything
else it will be your name and mine.”
Calling Captain Cromie at the British Embassy, Reilly learned
he already knew about the assassination. Uritsky, the head of the
Petrograd Cheka, had been shot by a Social Revolutionary terrorist.
Everything, however, was in order at Cromie’s end. Guardedly,
Reilly suggested they meet at the “usual rendezvous.” Cromie un-
derstood. The “usual rendezvous” was the Baikov Café.
Reilly spent the intervening time destroying various incriminat-
ing and unnecessary documents, and carefully hiding his codes and
other papers....
Cromie did not show up at the café. Reilly decided to risk a vis-
it to the British Embassy. As he left, he whispered a warning to
Baikov. “Something may have gone wrong. Be prepared to leave
Petrograd and slip across the frontier into Finland....
In the Vlademirovsky Prospect, Reilly saw men and women
running. They dove into doorways and side streets. There was the
roar of powerful engines. A car shot by, crammed with Red Army
men, then another, and another.
Reilly quickened his pace. He was almost running when he
rounded the corner onto the street where the British Embassy was
situated. He stopped abruptly, In front of the Embassy lay several
bodies. They were dead Soviet police officials. Four cars were
drawn up opposite the Embassy, and across the street was a double
cordon of Red Army men. The Embassy door had been battered off
its hinges.
“Well, Comrade Relinsky, have you come to see our carnival?”
Reilly spun around to see a young grinning Red Army soldier
whom he had met several times, in his guise of Comrade Relinsky
of the Cheka. “Tell me, comrade, what has happened?” Reilly asked
hastily.
“The Cheka were looking for someone called Sidney Reilly,”
replied the soldier.
Later Reilly learned what had happened. Following the murder
of Uritsky, the Soviet authorities in Petrograd had sent Cheka agents
41
to close up the British Embassy. Upstairs, the members of the Em-
bassy staff, under the direction of Captain Cromie, were burning
incriminating papers. Captain Cromie dashed downstairs and bolted
the door in the faces of the Soviet secret police. They broke down
the door, and the desperate British agent met them on the stairs with
a Browning automatic in each hand. Cromie shot and killed a com-
missar and several other officials. The Cheka agents returned his
fire. Captain Cromie had fallen, with a bullet through his head....
Reilly spent the rest of that night at the home of a Social-
Revolutionary terrorist named Serge Dornoski. In the morning he
sent Dornoski out to reconnoiter and learn all he could. Dornoski
returned with a copy of the official Communist newspaper, Pravda.
“The streets will run with blood,” he said. “Somebody has had a
shot at Lenin in Moscow. Missed him unfortunately!” He handed
Reilly the paper. A flaring headline told of the attempt on Lenin’s
life.
On the previous evening, as Lenin was leaving the Michelson
factory, where he had been speaking at a meeting, a Social Revolu-
tionary terrorist named Fanya Kaplan had fired two shots point-
blank at the Soviet leader. The bullets had been notched and poi-
soned. One of them had penetrated Lenin’s lung above the heart.
The other had entered his neck close to the main artery. Lenin had
not been killed, but his life was said to be hanging in the balance.
The gun which Fanya Kaplan had used on Lenin had been giv-
en to her by Reilly’s accomplice, Boris Savinkov. Subsequently,
Savinkov disclosed this fact in his Memoirs of a Terrorist.
With a small automatic pistol strapped under his arm for use in
an emergency, Reilly left immediately by train for Moscow. En
route the next day, he bought a newspaper at the junction of Klin.
The news was the worst possible. There was a detailed account of
Reilly’s whole conspiracy, including the plan to shoot Lenin and the
other Soviet leaders, to seize Moscow and Petrograd, and to set up a
military dictatorship under Savinkov and Yudenitch.
Reilly read on with growing dismay. Rene Marchand, the
French journalist who had been present at the meeting at the Ameri-
can Consulate General, had informed the Bolsheviks of everything
that had transpired there.
But the final blow was yet to come.
Colonel Berzin, the commander of the Lettish Guard, had
named Captain, Sidney Reilly as the British agent who had tried to
42
bribe him with an offer of two million rubles to join in a plot to
murder the Soviet leaders. The Soviet press also published the letter
which Bruce Lockhart had given Berzin to pass him through the
British lines at Archangel.
Lockhart had been arrested in Moscow by the Cheka. Other
Allied officials and agents were being rounded up and taken into
custody.
All over Moscow, Reilly’s description was pasted up. His vari-
ous aliases—Massino, Constantine, Relinsky—were published, to-
gether with the proclamation of his outlawry. The hunt was on.
In spite of the obvious danger, Reilly proceeded to Moscow. He
located the ballet dancer, Dagmara, at the house of a woman named
Vera Petrovna, an accomplice of Lenin’s would-be assassin, Fanya
Kaplan.
Dagmara told Reilly that her apartment had been raided several
days before by the Cheka. She had managed to conceal two million
rubles which she had in thousand-ruble notes, part of Reilly’s con-
spiratorial money. The Cheka agents had not arrested her; she did
not know why. Perhaps they believed she would lead them to Sid-
ney Reilly. But with Dagmara’s two million rubles at his disposal
Reilly was no easy game. Now disguised as a Greek merchant, now
an ex-Czarist officer, now a Soviet official, now a rank-and-file
Communist worker, he kept on the move, eluding the Cheka.
One day he met his former Moscow aide, Captain George Hill
of the British Secret Service, who thus far had also managed to es-
cape the Bolshevik net. The two agents checked lists of names and
addresses. Reilly discovered that a sizable portion of his anti-Soviet
apparatus was still intact. He felt there was still hope.
But unlike Reilly, Captain Hill thought the game was up. He
had heard that an exchange of prisoners was being arranged be-
tween the Soviet and British Governments. The Russians were to
free Lockhart and others in exchange for the safe passage home of
various Soviet representatives, including Maxim Litvinov, whom
the British authorities had arrested in England.
“I’m going to give myself up,” said Captain Hill. He advised
Reilly to do likewise.
Reilly would not admit defeat. “I’ll get back without permission
of the Redskins,” he told Captain Hill. He wagered his accomplice
that they would meet in London in the Savoy Hotel two months
43
5
later.
Reilly remained in Russia for several weeks longer, gathering
espionage material and advising and encouraging the anti-Soviet
elements who were still carrying on. Then, after a series of hair-
breadth escapes, he made his way by means of a forged German
passport to Bergen, Norway. From here, he sailed for England....
Back in London, Captain Reilly reported to his superiors in the
British Secret Service. He was full of regrets for lost opportunities.
“If Rene Marchand had not been a traitor... if Berzin had not shown
the white feather... if the Expeditionary Force had advanced quickly
on the Vologda... if I could have combined with Savinkov....”
But of one thing Reilly was sure. The fact that England was still
at war with Germany was a mistake. There must be an immediate
cessation of hostilities on the Western Front and a coalition against
Bolshevism. Cried Captain Sidney George Reilly:—
“Peace, peace on any terms—and then a united front against
the true enemies of mankind!”
5
Following his return to England, Captain George Hill was as-
signed by the British Secret Service in 1919 to work as a liaison officer
with the White Russian armies of General Anton Denikin during the
war of intervention against Soviet Russia. Later Captain Hill went to
work as a special agent for Sir Henri Deterding, the famous European
oil magnate whose obsession was to destroy Soviet Russia and who
helped finance Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. The British Govern-
ment subsequently used George Hill on important diplomatic assign-
ments in eastern Europe. In 1932 a book by Hill, describing some of his
adventures as a spy in Soviet Russia, was published in London. Its title:
was Go Spy the Land, Being the Adventures of I.K.8 of the British Se-
cret Service.
In the spring of 1945 the Churchill Government selected George
Hill, who by then had risen to the position of Brigadier in the British
Army, to go as a special envoy into Poland. Brigadier Hill, it was ex-
plained, was to serve as a British observer in Poland and was to report
back to London on the then troubled Polish situation. The Warsaw Pro-
visional Government, however, would not permit Brigadier Hill to en-
ter Poland.
44
CHAPTER IV
Siberian Adventure
1. Aide Memoire
On August 2, 1918, the day British troops landed at Archangel,
Major General William S. Graves of the United States Army, com-
mander of the 8th Division at Camp Fremont, Palo Alto, California,
received an urgent coded message from the War Department in
Washington, D.C. The first sentence, when decoded, read:—
You will not tell any member of your staff or anybody
else of the contents of this message.
The message then instructed General Graves to “take the first
and the fastest train out of San Francisco and proceed to Kansas
City, go to the Baltimore Hotel, and ask for the Secretary of War.”
No reason was offered to explain why the General was being
summoned with such dispatch to Kansas City, and no indication of
how long he would be away from his post.
General Graves, a veteran, hard-bitten soldier, was not given to
asking questions which obviously were not wanted. He stuffed a
few belongings into a small traveling bag. Two hours later, he was
aboard the Santa Fe express speeding east from San Francisco.
When the General arrived in Kansas City he found Newton D.
Baker, the Secretary of War, waiting for him at the station.
The Secretary of War was in a hurry. He had to catch a train in
a few minutes, he explained. Hastily, he told General Graves why
he had summoned him to this mysterious meeting. The War De-
partment had selected Graves to take command of an expedition of
American troops which was to leave immediately for Siberia.
Secretary Baker then handed General Graves a sealed envelope,
and said: “This contains the policy of the United States in Russia
which you are to follow. Watch your step; you will be walking on
eggs loaded with dynamite. God bless you and good-by!”
That night, alone in his hotel room in Kansas City, General
Graves opened the sealed envelope. He drew out a seven-page
memorandum entitled Aide Memoire. The memorandum was with-
out signature, but at the conclusion there appeared the words: “De-
partment of State, Washington, D. C., July 17, 1918.”
The Aide Memoire began with a series of broad generalizations
45
about “the whole heart of the American people” being “in the win-
ning of the war.” It was necessary, stated the document, that the
United States “co-operate ungrudgingly” in every possible way with
its allies against Germany; The Aide Memoire then reached its main
subject:—
It is the clear and fixed judgment of the Government of
the United States, arrived at after repeated and very search-
ing considerations of the whole situation in Russia, that
military intervention there would add to the present sad
confusion in Russia, rather than cure it, injure her rather
than help her, and that it would be of no advantage in the
prosecution of our main design, to win the war against
Germany. It cannot, therefore, take part in such interven-
tion or sanction it in principle.
This was a clear and precise statement of policy with which
General Graves heartily agreed. Why then was he being sent to
command American troops on Russian territory? Puzzled, the Gen-
eral read on:—
Military action is admissible in Russia, as the Govern-
ment of the United States sees the circumstances, only to
help the Czecho-Slovaks consolidate their forces and get
into successful co-operation with their Slavic kinsmen....
Czechoslovaks? In Russia?
“I went to bed,” General Graves wrote later, describing the
incident in his book, American Siberian Adventure, “but I could not
sleep and I kept wondering what other nations were doing and why
I was not given some information about what was going on in
Siberia.”
Had General Graves known the answers to the questions that
were keeping him awake, he would have been far more perturbed
that summer night in Kansas City.
2. Intrigue at Vladivostok
Under the feudal rule of the Czar, the vast and fabulously rich
region of Siberia had remained almost entirely undeveloped. Much
of the immense area stretching from the borders of Europe to the
Pacific and from the Arctic to Afghanistan was completely uninhab-
ited. Across this wild uncharted land ran the single-track Trans-
46
Siberian Railroad, the only link between the east and the west.
Whoever controlled this railroad and the territory for a few miles on
either side of it controlled Asiatic Russia, a sub-continent of im-
measurable strategic importance and wealth.
In the midsummer of 1918, as Raymond Robins traveled east-
ward along the Trans-Siberian Railroad, he had seen sidetracked;
trainloads of Czechoslovakian soldiers. Former unwilling members
of the Austro-Hungarian Army, these Czechs had deserted in large
numbers to the Russian lines before the Revolution. The Imperial
Russian High Command had formed them into a Czech Army
fighting side by side with the Russians against the Austro-German
forces. After the downfall of Kerensky, the Soviet Government had
agreed, at the request of the Allies, to transport the Czech troops
across Russia to Vladivostok. They were to sail from this port, cir-
cle the globe and join the Allied forces on the Western Front. More
than 50,000 of these Czech soldiers were strung out along the
5,000-mile stretch of railroad from Kazan to Vladivostok.
The Czech soldiers believed that they were going to fight in Eu-
rope for the independence of Czechoslovakia; but their leaders, the
reactionary Czech Generals Gayda and Sirovy, had other plans. In
connivance with certain Allied statesmen, these generals were plan-
ning to use the Czech troops to overthrow the Soviet Government....
According to the agreement reached between the Allies and the
Soviet Government, the Czechs were to surrender their arms to the
Soviet authorities during their passage through Soviet territory. But
on June 4, 1918, Ambassador David R. Francis had privately in-
formed his son in a letter that he was “planning to prevent if possi-
ble” the disarming of the Czech soldiers. The American Ambassa-
dor added:—
I have no instructions or authority from Washington to
encourage these men to disobey the orders of the Soviet
Government, except an expression of sympathy sent out by
the Department of State. I have taken chances before,
however.
Acting under orders from Generals Gayda and Sirovy, the
Czechs refused to surrender their military equipment to the Soviet
authorities. Simultaneous outbreaks occurred all along the Trans-
Siberian line. The well-trained and amply equipped Czech troops
seized a number of towns where they were stationed, overthrew the
47
local Soviets and established anti-Soviet administrations.
During the first week in July, with the aid of Russian coun-
terrevolutionaries, General Gayda staged a coup in Vladivostok and
set up an anti-Soviet regime in that city. The streets were placarded
with a proclamation signed by Admiral Knight of the United States
Navy, Vice-Admiral Kato of the Japanese Navy, Colonel Pons of
the French Mission, and Captain Badiura of the Czechoslovak Ar-
my, who had become commandant of the occupied city. The proc-
lamation informed the populace that the intervention of the Allied
Powers was being undertaken “in a spirit of friendship and sympa-
thy for the Russian people.”
On July 22, 1918, five days after the U. S. State Department
drew up its Aide Memoire on the need for sending American troops
to Siberia to aid in the disembarkation of the Czech troops, DeWitt
Clinton Poole,1 the American Consul in Moscow, sent the American
Consul at Omsk a cipher telegram which read:—
You may inform the Czecho-Slovak leaders confiden-
tially that pending further notice the Allies will be glad, from
a political point of view, to have them hold their present po-
sition. On the other hand they should not be hampered in
meeting the military exigency of the situation. It is desirable
first of all, that they should secure control of the Trans-
Siberian Railway, and second, if this is assumed at the same
time possible, retain control over the territory which they
now dominate. Inform the French representatives that the
French Consul General joins in these instructions.
The pretext given by the Allied Powers for invading Siberia in
the summer of 1918 was that they were coming to save the Czechs
from unprovoked attacks by Red Army troops and by German war
prisoners armed by the Bolsheviks. Throughout that spring and
summer, British, French and American newspapers were filled with
sensational reports that the Bolsheviks were arming “tens of thou-
sands of German and Austrian prisoners in Siberia” to fight against
the Czechs. The New York Times reported “that in the city of Tomsk
alone, 60,000 Germans had been supplied by the Reds with military
equipment.
1
DeWitt Clinton Poole later became Chief of the State Depart-
ment’s Russian Affairs Division.
48
Captain Hicks of the British Intelligence Service, Captain Web-
ster of the American Red Cross Mission, and Major Drysdale, the
American Military Attaché at Peking, traveled to Siberia, with per-
mission from the Soviet authorities, to investigate the charges. After
weeks of careful investigation, the three men reached the same con-
clusion: there were no armed German and Austrian prisoners in Si-
beria. The charges, the three officers declared, were pure fabrication
propaganda deliberately designed to involve the Allies in interven-
tion against Soviet Russia.2
On August 3, 1918, British troops landed at Vladivostok.
“We are coming,” the British Government informed the Rus-
sian people on August 8, “to help you save yourselves from dis-
memberment and destruction at the hands of Germany.... We wish
to solemnly assure you that we shall not retain one foot of your ter-
ritory. The destinies of Russia are in the hands of the Russian peo-
ple. It is for them, and them alone, to decide their forms of Gov-
ernment, and to find a solution for their social problems.”
On August 16, the first American detachments landed.
“Military action is admissible in Russia now,” declared Wash-
ington, “only to render such protection and help as is possible to the
Czechoslovaks against the armed Austrian and German prisoners
who are attacking them, and to steady any efforts at self-
government or self-defense in which the Russians themselves may
be willing to accept assistance.”
The Japanese landed fresh forces that same month.
“In adopting this course,” announced Tokyo, “the Japanese
Government remains constant in their desire to promote relations of
enduring friendship, and they affirm their policy of respecting the
territorial integrity of Russia and of abstaining from all interference
with her national politics.”
The Japanese soldiers in Siberia were thoughtfully provided by
the Japanese High Command with little Russian dictionaries in
which the word “Bolshevik,” defined as Barsuk (badger or wild
beast), was followed by the notation: “To be exterminated.”
2
The findings of Captain Hicks, Captain Webster and Major Drys-
dale were kept from the British and American publics. Captain Hicks
received a court order to return to London, and then was assigned to
work with Captain Sidney Reilly. The U. S. State Department shelved
the reports of Captain Webster and Major Drysdale.
49
3. Terror in the East
On September 1, 1918, General Graves arrived in Vladivostok
to take over command of the American Expeditionary Force in Si-
beria. “I landed in Siberia,” he later wrote in American Siberian
Adventure, “without any preconceived ideas as to what should or
should not be done. I had no prejudice against any Russian faction
and anticipated I would be able to work harmoniously and in a co-
operative spirit with all the Allies.”
General Graves’s instructions, as set forth in the Aide Memoire,
were to protect the Trans-Siberian Railway, to help the Czech forces
disembark from Vladivostok, and to refrain from interfering in do-
mestic Russian affairs.
He had scarcely established his headquarters when he was visit-
ed by the Czech leader, General Gayda, who proceeded to put
Graves straight on the Russian situation. The Russians, said Gayda,
could not be ruled “by kindness or persuasion, but only by the: whip
and the bayonet.” In order to save the country from utter chaos, it
was necessary to wipe out Bolshevism and put a military dictator in
power. Gayda said he knew just the man for the position: Admiral
Alexander Vassilievitch Kolchak, an ex-Czarist naval commander
who had come from Japan to organize an anti-Soviet army and who
had already rallied considerable forces in Siberia. Meanwhile, Gen-
eral Graves must help the Czechs and the other anti-Soviet armies to
fight the Bolsheviks.
Gayda then presented General Graves with a plan for an imme-
diate march to the Volga and an assault on Moscow from the east.
This plan, Gayda revealed, had been approved by his French and
British advisers and by representatives of the U. S. State Depart-
ment.
General Graves repeated the orders he had received from his
Government and said he intended to stand by them. He told Gayda
that as long as he was in command, no American soldiers would be
used against the Bolsheviks or would interfere in any other way
with internal affairs in Russia....
Gayda left in a fury. A short time after, General Graves re-
ceived another important visitor. This time it was General Knox, the
former supporter of Kornilov and now the commander of the British
forces in Siberia.
“You’re getting a reputation of being a friend of the poor,”
50
Knox warned General Graves. “Don’t you know they’re only
swine?”
General Graves had what Raymond, Robins called “the outdoor
mind.” He was a man who believed in finding out things for him-
self. He decided to secure firsthand information about the actual
state of affairs in Siberia. His intelligence officers were soon travel-
ing about the countryside and bringing back extensive and detailed
reports of their observations. Before long Graves had readied the
conclusion that:—
The word “Bolshevik,” as used in Siberia, covered
most of the Russian people and to use troops to fight Bol-
sheviks or to arm, equip, feed, clothe or pay White Rus-
sians to fight them was utterly inconsistent with “non-
interference with the internal affairs of Russia.”
By the autumn of 1918, there were already more than 7000
English troops in northern Siberia. Another 7000 British and French
officers, technicians and soldiers were with Admiral Kolchak, help-
ing him train and equip his White Russian, anti-Soviet army. Aiding
the British and French were 1500 Italians. There were approximate-
ly 8000 American soldiers under General Graves’s command. By
far the largest force in Siberia was that of the Japanese, who had
high ambitions of taking Siberia over entirely for themselves: the
Japanese soldiers numbered over 70,000....
In November, Admiral Kolchak, with the aid of his British and
French supporters, established himself as dictator of Siberia. The
Admiral, an excitable little man, who was described by one of his
colleagues as a “sick child... certainly a neurasthenic... always under
another’s influence,” set up headquarters at Omsk and gave himself
the title of “Supreme Ruler of Russia.” Announcing that Kolchak
was the “Russian Washington,” the former Czarist Minister
Sazonov promptly became Kolchak’s official representative in Par-
is. Paeans of praise for the Admiral sounded in London and Paris.
Sir Samuel Hoare repeated his opinion that Kolchak was “a gentle-
man.” Winston Churchill described Kolchak as “honest,” “incor-
ruptible,” “intelligent” and “patriotic.” The New York Times saw in
him “a strong and an honest man” with “a stable and approximately
representative government.”
The Kolchak regime was generously supplied by the Allies, es-
pecially by Britain, with munitions, weapons of war and funds. “We
51
dispatched to Siberia,” General Knox proudly reported, “hundreds of
thousands of rifles, hundreds of millions of cartridges, hundreds of
thousands of uniforms and cartridge belts, etc. Every bullet fired
against the Bolsheviks by the Russian soldiers in the course of that
year was manufactured in Great Britain, by British workers, out of
British raw material, and shipped to Vladivostok in British bottoms.”
A popular Russian ditty of the time went:—
Uniforms British,
Epaulettes from France,
Japanese tobacco,
Kolchak leads the dance!
General Graves did not share the Allied enthusiasm for the rule
of Admiral Kolchak. Every day his intelligence officers brought
him new reports of the reign of terror which Kolchak had instituted.
There were 100,000 men in the Admiral’s army, and thousands
more were being recruited on penalty of being shot. Prisons and
concentration camps were filled to overflowing. Hundreds of Rus-
sians, who had had the temerity to oppose the new dictator, dangled
from telegraph poles and trees along the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
Many more reposed in common graves which they had been forced
to dig themselves before Kolchak’s executioners had mowed them
down with machine-gun fire. Rape, murder and pillage were the
rule of the day.
One of Kolchak’s top aides, a former Czarist officer named
General Rozanoff, issued the following instructions to his troops:—
1. In occupying the villages which have been occupied
before by bandits [Soviet partisans], insist upon getting the
leaders of the movement, and where you cannot get the
leaders, but have sufficient evidence as to the presence of
such leaders, then shoot one out of every ten of the people.
2. If, when the troops go through a town, and the popu-
lation will not inform the troops, after having a chance to
do so, of the presence of the enemy, a monetary contribu-
tion should be demanded from all, unsparingly.
3. The villages where the population meet our troops
with arms should be burned down and all the full grown
male population should be shot; property, homes, carts, etc.
should be taken for the use of the Army.
52
Describing the officer who issued these orders, General Knox
told General Graves: “Rozanoff is a bully fellow!”
Along with Kolchak’s troops, terrorist bands, financed by the
Japanese, were ravaging the countryside. Their chief leaders were
Ataman Gregori Semyonov and Kalmikoff.
Colonel Morrow, the commander of the American troops in the
Trans-Baikal sector, reported that in one village occupied by
Semyonov’s troops, every man, woman and child was murdered.
The majority of the occupants, related the Colonel, were shot down
“like rabbits” as they fled from their homes. Men were burned alive.
“Semenov [Semyonov] and Kalmikoff soldiers,” according to
General Graves, “under the protection of Japanese troops, were
roaming the country like wild animals, killing and robbing the peo-
ple.... If questions were asked about these brutal murders, the reply
was that the people murdered were the Bolsheviks and this explana-
tion, apparently, satisfied the world.”
General Graves openly expressed his abhorrence of the atroci-
ties which were being carried out by the anti-Soviet forces in Sibe-
ria. His attitude aroused much hostility among the White Russian,
British, French and Japanese leaders.
Morriss, the American Ambassador to Japan, who was visiting
in Siberia, told General Graves that the State Department had wired
him that American policy in Siberia necessitated support of
Kolchak. “Now, General,” said Morriss, “you will have to support
Kolchak.”
Graves replied that he had received no word from the War De-
partment directing him to support Kolchak.
“The State Department is running this, not the War Depart-
ment,” said Morriss.
“The State Department,” answered Graves, “is not running me.”
Agents of Kolchak launched a propaganda campaign to under-
mine Graves’s reputation and bring about his recall from Siberia.
Lies and rumors were widely circulated describing how the General
had gone “Bolshevik” and how his troops were aiding the “Com-
munists.” Much of the propaganda was anti-Semitic. A typical piece
stated:—
The United States soldiers are infected with Bolshe-
vism. Most of them are Jews from the East Side of New
York who constantly agitate for mutinies.
53
Colonel John Ward, a British M.P. who was acting as Kol-
chak’s political adviser, publicly declared that when he visited the
headquarters of the American Expeditionary Force he found that
“Out of sixty liaison officers and translators, over fifty were Russian
Jews!”
Certain of General Graves’s own countrymen helped spread the
same propaganda. “The American Consul at Vladivostok,” revealed
General Graves, “was cabling to the State Department each day,
without comment, the libelous, false, and scurrilous articles appear-
ing in the Vladivostok press about the American troops. These arti-
cles, and the criticism of the American troops in the United States,
were built around the charge of being bolshevistic. This charge
could not have been based on any act of the American troops... but
the charge was the same that was lodged against every one in Sibe-
ria who did not support Kolchak, by Kolchak adherents, which in-
cluded Consul General Harris.”
When the campaign of slander was at its height, a special mes-
senger came to General Graves’s headquarters from General
Ivanoff-Rinoff, the commander of all Kolchak’s forces in eastern
Siberia. The messenger told General Graves that if he would con-
tribute $20,000 a month to Kolchak’s army, General Ivanoff-Rinoff
would arrange for the propaganda against Graves and his troops to
come to an end....
This General Ivanoff-Rinoff was one of Kolchak’s most savage
and sadistic commanders. His soldiers in eastern Siberia slaughtered
the entire male populations of villages suspected of having harbored
“Bolsheviks.” They made a common practice of raping women and
whipping them with ram-rods. They murdered old men, women and
children.
One young American officer, who had been sent to investigate
the atrocities committed by Ivanoff-Rinoff, was so shaken by what
he saw that after he had finished making his report to Graves, he
exclaimed, “General, for God’s sake never send me on another ex-
pedition like this! I came within an ace of pulling off my uniform,
joining these poor people, and helping them as best I could!”
When General Ivanoff-Rinoff was menaced by a popular
uprising, Sir Charles Eliot, the British High Commissioner, hurried
to General Graves to express alarm over the safety of Kolchak’s
commander.
“As far as I’m concerned,” General Graves grimly told Sir
54
Charles, “the people could bring Ivanoff-Rinoff opposite American
headquarters and hang him to that telephone pole until he was
dead—and not an American would turn his hand!”
In the midst of this ever-spreading civil war and intervention in
Siberia and throughout Soviet Russia, startling events occurred in
Europe. On November 9, 1918, German sailors mutinied at Kiel,
killed their officers and hoisted the Red flag. Mass peace demon-
strations swept Germany. On the Western Front, Allied and German
soldiers fraternized in no-man’s land. The German High Command
sued for an armistice. Kaiser Wilhelm II fled to Holland, surrender-
ing his imperial sword at the frontier to a surprised young Dutch
border guard. On November 11, the Armistice was signed....
The First World War was over.
55
CHAPTER V
Peace and War
1. Peace in the West
The First World War had ended abruptly. As the German officer,
Captain Ernst Roehm, said: “Peace broke out.” Soviets were set up
in Berlin, Hamburg and throughout Bavaria. Workers demonstrated
for peace and democracy in the streets of Paris, London and Rome.
Revolution gripped Hungary. The Balkans were seething with peas-
ant discontent. After the terrible four years’ war, passionate vows
were on all men’s lips: No more war! Nie Wieder Krieg! Jamais
plus de guerre! Never Again!
“The whole of Europe is filled with the spirit of revolution,”
David Lloyd George was to tell the Paris Peace Conference in his
confidential Memorandum of March, 1919. “There is a deep sense
not only of discontent, but of anger and revolt, amongst the work-
men against pre-war conditions. The whole existing order in its po-
litical, social and economic aspects is questioned by the masses of
the population from one end of Europe to the other.”
Two names summed up the aspirations of the masses and the
fears of the few: Lenin and Wilson. In the East, Lenin’s revolution
had swept away Czarism and opened a new era to the oppressed
millions of the old Russian Imperial domains. In the West, Wood-
row Wilson’s dryly phrased Fourteen Points had stirred up a fer-
ment of democratic hope and expectancy.
When the President of the United States stepped onto the blood-
soaked soil of Europe in December, 1918, happy crowds rushed to
kiss his hands and to fling flowers at his feet. The President of the
New World was greeted by the people of the Old World as “King of
Humanity”—”Savior”—”Prince of Peace.” They believed that the
tall, thin professor from Princeton was the Messiah come to herald a
new great age.
Ten million men had died in battle; twenty million were crip-
pled and maimed; thirteen million civilians were dead of famine and
plague; millions more wandered destitute and homeless amid the
smoking ruins of Europe. But now at last the war was over, and the
world listened to words of peace.
“My conception of the League of Nations is just this—that it
shall operate as the organized moral force of men throughout the
56
world,” said Woodrow Wilson.1
Early in January, 1919, the Big Four:—Woodrow Wilson, Da-
vid Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and Vittorio Orlando—sat
down in a conference room at the Quai D’Orsay in Paris to talk
about world peace.
But one-sixth of the earth was not represented at the Peace Con-
ference.
Even as the peacemakers talked, tens of thousands of Allied
soldiers were waging a bloody, undeclared war against Soviet Rus-
sia. Side by side with the counterrevolutionary White Armies led by
Kolchak and Denikin, the Allied troops were fighting the young
Red Army on an immense battlefront that stretched from the bleak
arctic regions to the Black Sea, and from the Ukrainian wheatfields
to the mountains and steppes of Siberia.
A violent and fantastic campaign of anti-Soviet propaganda was
sweeping Europe and America in the spring of 1919. The London
Daily Telegraph reported a “reign of terror” in Odessa accompanied
by a “free love week.” The New York Sun headlined: “U.S. Wound-
ed Mutilated by Reds with Axes.” The New York Times reported:
“Russia Under Reds a Gigantic Bedlam... Escaped Victims say ma-
niacs Stalk Raving through the streets of Moscow... Fight Dogs for
Carrion.” The entire world press, Allied and German alike, pub-
lished fraudulent “authentic documents” showing that in Russia
“young women and girls of the bourgeois classes” were being
“commandeered and delivered to the barracks... for the needs of
artillery regiments!”
Factual reports on the true conditions in Russia, whether they
came from journalists, secret agents, diplomats or even generals like
Judson and Graves, were suppressed or ignored. Anyone who dared
to question the anti-Soviet campaign was automatically denounced
as a “Bolshevik.”
Scarcely two months after the Armistice, the Allied leaders
seemed already to have forgotten the purpose for which the great
1
In his opening address to the Paris Peace Conference, Woodrow
Wilson also said: “There is, moreover, a voice calling for these defini-
tions of principle and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more thrill-
ing and more compelling than any of the many moving voices with
which the troubled air of the world is filled. It is the voice of the Rus-
sian people.”
57
conflict was fought. The “menace of Bolshevism” swept aside every
other consideration. It dominated the Paris Peace Conference.
Marshal Foch, the French Commander-in-Chief of the Allied
Armies, appeared before a secret session of the Peace Conference to
demand a quick settlement with Germany, so that the Allies could
hurl their combined resources against Soviet Russia. The French
Marshal pleaded the case of France’s mortal enemy, Germany.
“The present difficult situation of the German Government is
well known,” said Foch. “At Mannheim, Carlsruhe, Baden and
Dusseldorf, the Soviet movement is rapidly extending. At the pre-
sent moment Germany will therefore accept any terms the Allies
might demand. The German Government only asks peace. That is
the only thing that will satisfy the people and enable the Govern-
ment to master the situation.”
To put down the German revolution, the German High Com-
mand was to be permitted to retain an army of 100,000 officers and
men, as well as the so-called “Black Reichswehr” composed of the
most highly trained and indoctrinated soldiers in Germany. In addi-
tion, the German High Command was allowed to subsidize under-
ground nationalist leagues and terrorist societies to kill, torture and
intimidate the insurgent German democrats. All of this was done in
the name of “saving Germany from Bolshevism.”...2
2
The reason for the failure of the Allied Armies to march to Berlin
in 1918 and permanently disarm German militarism was Allied fear of
Bolshevism, skillfully exploited by German politicians. The Allied
Commander-in-Chief, Marshal Foch, revealed in his postwar memoirs
that from the outset of the peace negotiations the German spokesmen
repeatedly invoked “the threatened Bolshevist invasion of Germany” as
a means of securing favorable peace terms for Germany. General Wil-
son of the British General Staff recorded in his War Diary on Novem-
ber 9, 1918, two days before the Armistice was signed: “Cabinet meet-
ing tonight from 6:30-8. Lloyd George read two telegrams from the
Tiger (Clemenceau) in which he described Foch’s interviews with the
Germans: the Tiger is afraid that Germany may collapse and that Bol-
shevism may gain control. Lloyd George asked me if I wanted that to
happen or if I did not prefer an armistice. Without hesitation I replied:
‘Armistice.’ The whole cabinet agreed with me. For us the real danger
is no longer the Germans but Bolshevism.” In a moment of clarity,
Clemenceau himself warned the Paris Peace Conference that “anti-
Bolshevism” was a device being utilized by the German General Staff
58
General Max Hoffmann, former Commander of the German
Armies on the Eastern Front and the “hero” of Brest-Litovsk, ap-
proached his recent enemy, Marshal Foch, with a Plan whereby the
German Army was to march on Moscow and annihilate Bolshevism
“at its source.” Foch approved the Plan, but proposed that the
French Army, instead of the German, should spearhead the attack.
Foch wanted to mobilize the whole of eastern Europe against Soviet
Russia.
“In Russia at the present moment Bolshevism and complete an-
archy reign,” Foch told the Paris Peace Conference. “My plan
would be to settle all the important outstanding questions on the
Western side in order to enable the Allies to use the resources thus
made available for the solution of the Eastern question.... Polish
troops would be quite able to face the Russians, provided the former
are strengthened by the supply of modern appliances and engines of
war. Great numbers are required, which could be obtained by mobi-
lizing the Finns, Poles, Czechs, Rumanians and Greeks, as well as
the Russian pro-Ally elements still available.... If this is done, 1919
will see the end of Bolshevism!”
Woodrow Wilson wanted a fair deal for Russia. The President
of the United States recognized the absurdity of talking about world
peace when one-sixth of the earth was excluded from the conversa-
tions. Wilson urged the Peace Conference to invite Soviet delegates
to come and sit down with the Allies in an attempt to reach a peace-
ful understanding. Again and again, Wilson returned to this idea,
striving to banish the specter of Bolshevism from the minds of the
peacemakers.
“There is throughout the world a feeling of revolt against the
large vested interests which influence the world both in the econom-
ic and political spheres,” Wilson warned the Council of Ten at one
of the secret peace meetings in Paris. “The way to cure this domina-
tion is, in my opinion, constant discussion and a slow process of
reform; but the world at large has grown impatient of delay. There
to confuse the Allies and to save German militarism. “The Germans are
using Bolshevism,” said Clemenceau in 1919, “as a bogey with which
to frighten the Allies.” Nevertheless, under the influence of Foch, Pe-
tain, Weygand and others, the Tiger forgot his own warning and suc-
cumbed to the anti-Bolshevik hysteria which soon paralyzed all clear
thought and democratic action by the Allied peacemakers.
59
are men in the United States of the finest temper, if not of the finest
judgment, who are in sympathy with Bolshevism because it appears
to them to offer that regime of opportunity to the individual which
they desire to bring about.”
But Woodrow Wilson was surrounded by men determined at all
costs to preserve the status quo. Bound by their secret imperialist
treaties and commercial pacts, these men schemed to outwit, sabo-
tage and frustrate Wilson at every step. There were tense moments
when Wilson rebelled and threatened to take his cause over the
heads of the politicians and militarists to the people.
In Rome, Wilson had planned to make a sensational speech
from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia overlooking the great
square where, only two years later, Benito Mussolini was to ha-
rangue his Blackshirts. The Italian monarchists, fearing the effects
of Wilson’s words on the people of Rome, prevented the crowd
from gathering in the square and broke up the demonstration on the
grounds that it was inspired by “Bolsheviks.” The same thing hap-
pened in Paris, where Wilson waited at his hotel window all morn-
ing to make a promised speech to the Paris workers. He did not
know that French police and soldiers had been called out to stop the
workers from reaching his hotel....
Wherever Wilson went in Europe he was surrounded by secret
agents and propagandists; behind his back, endless intrigue went on.
Each of the Allied powers had organized its own espionage ap-
paratus for use at the Peace Conference. At 4 Place de la Concorde
in Paris the U.S. Military Intelligence established a special Code
Room, where highly trained officers and carefully selected clerks
worked day and night interrupting and deciphering the secret mes-
sages of the other powers. This Code Room was under the charge of
Major Herbert O. Yardley, who later revealed, in his book The
American Black Chamber, how eyewitness reports of American
agents in Europe describing the true state of affairs were deliberate-
ly withheld from President Wilson, into whose ears lurid and fantas-
tic anti-Bolshevik propaganda was ceaselessly dinned.
Frequently, Major Yardley intercepted and decoded secret mes-
sages concerning plots to sabotage Wilson’s policies. On one occa-
sion he decoded a message of an even more startling and sinister
character. Major Yardley disclosed:—
...the reader may well appreciate the shock I received
60
as I deciphered a telegram which reported an Entente plot
to assassinate President Wilson either by administering a
slow poison or by giving him the influenza in ice. Our in-
formant, in whom we had the greatest confidence, begged
the authorities for God’s sake to warn the President. I have
no way of knowing whether this plot had any truth in fact,
and if it had, whether it succeeded. But there are these un-
deniable facts: President Wilson’s first sign of illness oc-
curred while he was in Paris, and he was soon to die a lin-
gering death.
2. At the Peace Conference
At the early sessions of the Paris Peace Conference, President
Wilson found an unexpected ally in his attempt to win fair play for
Russia. The Prime Minister of Great Britain, David Lloyd George,
came to Wilson’s support with a series of stinging attacks on the
anti-Soviet plans of Foch and the French Premier Clemenceau.
“The Germans,” declared Lloyd George, “at the time when they
needed every available man to reinforce their attack on the Western
Front were forced to keep about a million men to garrison a few
provinces of Russia which was a mere fringe of the whole country.
And, moreover, at, that time Bolshevism was weak and disor-
ganized. Now it is strong and has a formidable army. Is any one of
the Western Allies prepared to send a million men into Russia? If I
proposed to send a thousand additional British troops to Russia for
that purpose, the army would mutiny! The same applies to U. S.
troops in Siberia; also to Canadians and French as well. The mere
idea of crushing Bolshevism by a military force is pure madness.
Even admitting it is done, who is to occupy Russia?”
Unlike Wilson, the British Prime Minister was not motivated by
idealistic considerations. He feared revolution in Europe and Asia;
and, as an old politician, the Welsh “Fox” was keenly sensitive to
the popular mood in Britain which was overwhelmingly against
further intervention in Russia. There was an even more cogent rea-
son for opposing the plans of Marshal Foch. Sir Henry Wilson, the
British Chief of Staff, in a recent secret report to the War Cabinet
had stated that the only policy for Britain was “to get our troops out
of Europe and Russia and concentrate all our strength in our coming
storm centers, England, Ireland, Egypt, India.” Lloyd George feared
that Foch and Clemenceau would try to establish French hegemony
61
in Russia while Britain was preoccupied elsewhere.
And so the astute British Prime Minister, believing he could
eventually get what he wanted by simply leaving Russia alone for a
while, supported the President of the United States in demanding
fair play for the Bolsheviks. At secret sessions of the Paris Peace
Conference, Lloyd George minced no words.
“The peasants accepted Bolshevism for the same reason that
peasants accepted it in the French Revolution, namely, that it gave
them land,” Lloyd George declared. “The Bolsheviks are the de fac-
to Government. We formerly recognized the Czar’s Government,
although at the time we knew it to be absolutely rotten. Our reason
was that it was the de facto Government... but we refuse to recog-
nize the Bolsheviks! To say that we ourselves should pick the repre-
sentatives of a great people is contrary to every principle for which
we have fought.”
President Wilson said he did not see how anyone could contro-
vert what Lloyd George had said. He proposed to call a special con-
ference on the Island of Prinkipo, or some other place “convenient
of approach,” to explore the possibilities of peace in Russia. In the
interests of impartiality, delegates of both the Soviet Government
and the White anti-Soviet groups should be invited to attend....
The French “Tiger,” Georges Clemenceau, spokesman for the
French holders of Czarist bonds and the General Staff, rose to reply
on behalf of the advocates of intervention. Clemenceau knew that
Lloyd George’s subtle policy would be supported in British ruling
circles, where the militarists and the Intelligence Service were al-
ready committed to an anti-Soviet war. At the same time, Clemen-
ceau felt it was necessary, for Wilson’s benefit, to break down
Lloyd George’s arguments by a strong statement of the menace of
Bolshevism.
“In principle,” began Clemenceau, “I do not favor conversations
with the Bolsheviks, not because they are criminals, but because we
would be raising them to our level by saying that they are worthy of
entering into conversation with us:” The British Prime Minister and
the President of the United States, if the French Premier might be
permitted to say so, were adopting too academic and doctrinaire an
attitude to the question of Bolshevism. “The Bolshevik danger is very
great at the present moment,” Clemenceau declared. “Bolshevism is
spreading. It has invaded the Baltic Provinces and Poland, and this
very morning we have received very bad news regarding its spread to
62
Budapest and Vienna. Italy also is in danger. The danger is probably
greater there than in France. If Bolshevism, after spreading in Ger-
many, were to traverse Austria and Hungary and to reach Italy, Eu-
rope would be faced with a very great danger. Therefore, something
must be done against Bolshevism!”
Clemenceau did not rely on his own eloquence alone. He asked
permission to introduce “expert witnesses” on the subject of Bol-
shevism. The first of them was Ambassador Noulens, the one-time
friend of Ambassador Francis at Petrograd and the ringleader of the
anti-Soviet intriguers in the diplomatic corps. Noulens was intro-
duced to Wilson and Lloyd George.
“I will confine myself to statements of facts,” said Ambassador
Noulens, and immediately plunged into an amazing recital of “Bol-
shevik atrocities.”
“Not only men, but women have been shot,” said Noulens.
“There have been atrocities, drownings, the cutting off of noses and
tongues, mutilations, burials alive, mock shootings, rape and pillage
everywhere.”
Noulens repeated the feverish gossip of the anti-Soviet diplo-
matic corps and the Czarist émigrés: “A company of professional
torturers is being maintained at the Fortress of Peter and. Paul....
The Bolshevik Army is more a rabble than an army!” “Then there is
the case of Captain Cromie, the British Naval Attaché,” Noulens
continued, “who was killed in defense of the British Embassy, and
whose body was exposed for three days in the window of the Em-
bassy!” Terror, mass murder, degeneracy, corruption, complete con-
tempt for the Allies—these were the distinguishing features of the
Soviet regime....
“Finally,” said Ambassador Noulens, “I wish to point out that
the Bolshevik Government is definitely imperialist. It means to
conquer the world, and to make peace with no Government!”
But for all Noulens’s efforts, the President of the United States
was not greatly impressed. Only a few days before, a special Amer-
ican agent, W. H. Buckler, at Wilson’s request, had held a confiden-
tial talk with Maxim Litvinov of the Soviet Government. In a report
dated January 18, 1919, Buckler informed President Wilson:—
Litvinov stated that the Soviet Government was anx-
ious for permanent peace.... They detest the military prepa-
rations and costly campaigns which are now being forced
63
upon Russia, after four years of exhausting war, and wish
to ascertain whether the United States and the Allies have a
desire for peace.
If such is the case, peace can easily be negotiated, for,
according to Litvinov, the Soviet Government are prepared
to compromise on all points, including protection to exist-
ing foreign enterprises, the granting of new concessions in
Russia, and the Russian foreign debt.... The Soviet Gov-
ernment’s conciliatory attitude is unquestionable.
...In so far as the League of Nations can prevent war
without encouraging reaction, it can count on the support of
the Soviet Government.
Buckler added that there were certain elements within the
Bolshevik ranks who were strongly opposed to the Soviet
Government’s peace policy. These opposition elements, stated
Buckler, “hope for more active Allied intervention,” and, he
warned, “the continuation of such intervention plays into the hands
of those extremists.”
Woodrow Wilson’s peace plan, backed by Lloyd George,
seemed about to go through in spite of Clemenceau and Foch. Wil-
son drew up a. note outlining the terms of his proposal and sent it to
the Soviet Government and to the various White Russian groups.
The Soviet Government promptly accepted Wilson’s plan, and pre-
pared to send delegates to Prinkipo. But, as Winston Churchill later
put it, “the moment was not propitious” for peace in Russia. The
majority of the Allied leaders were convinced that the Soviet regime
would soon be overthrown. On the secret advice of their Allied sup-
porters, the White groups refused to meet with the Soviet delegates
at Prinkipo.
The atmosphere at the Peace Conference changed. Lloyd
George, realizing he was getting nowhere, abruptly returned to
London. In his place, Winston Churchill, the youthful British Secre-
tary of War and Aviation, hurried to Paris to state the case for the
anti-Bolshevik extremists.3
3
At that time, and for many years to come, Winston Churchill was
the leading spokesman for British Tory anti-Sovietism. Churchill feared
the spread of Russian revolutionary ideas through the eastern regions of
the British Empire. Rene Kraus, in his biography Winston Churchill,
writes: “The Big Five in Paris had decided to support the White Rus-
64
It was February 14, 1919, the day before Wilson was to go back
to America to face the isolationist Congressional bloc, beaded by
Senator Lodge, which had undermined his every effort to create a
system of world co-operation and security. Wilson knew he had
failed in Europe, and feared he might fail in the United States. He
was disillusioned, tired and profoundly discouraged.
Winston Churchill was introduced to President Wilson by the
British Foreign Secretary A. J. Balfour who announced that the
British Secretary of War had come over to Paris to explain the pre-
sent views of the British Cabinet on the question of Russia. Church-
ill immediately plunged into an attack on Wilson’s Prinkipo peace
plan.
“There was a Cabinet meeting in London yesterday,” said
Churchill, “at which great anxiety was manifested concerning the
Russian situation, particularly in respect of the Prinkipo meeting....
If only the Bolsheviks are to attend the conference, it is thought that
little good will come of the meeting. The military aspect of the case
must be considered. Great Britain has soldiers in Russia who are
being killed in action.”
Wilson answered Churchill: “Since Mr. Churchill has come
over from London specially to anticipate my departure, I feel I
should express what my personal thoughts on the subject are.
Among the many uncertainties connected with Russia, I have a very
clear opinion about two points. The first is that the troops of the
sian counterrevolution. Churchill was entrusted with the execution of

an action he was not responsible for. But there is no denying that once
the decision was made he was all on fire to carry it out.... In association
with the Chief of Staff, Sir Henry Wilson, he worked out a program to
equip and arm the various White Armies from surplus war stores, and
to help them with expert officers and instructors.”
After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, Churchill recog-
nized that Nazism constituted the real menace to British interests in
Europe and throughout the world. Without hesitation, Churchill re-
versed his stand on Soviet Russia and began calling for an alliance be-
tween Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union to halt the march of
Nazi aggression. In 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded Soviet Russia,
Churchill’s voice was the first to address the world with the declaration
that Russia’s fight was the fight of all free peoples and would receive
Britain’s support. At the conclusion of the Second World War, Church-
ill again raised the cry of the “menace of Bolshevism.”
65
Allied and Associated Powers are doing no sort of good in Russia.
They do not know for whom or for what they are fighting. They are
not assisting any promising effort to establish order throughout Rus-
sia. They are assisting local movements, like, for instance, that of
the Cossacks, who cannot be induced to move outside of their own
sphere. My conclusion, therefore, is that the Allied and Associated
Powers ought to withdraw their troops from all parts of Russian
territory.”
“The second point,” Wilson wearily continued, “relates to
Prinkipo.... What we are seeking is not a rapprochement with the
Bolsheviks, but clear information. The reports received from Russia
from various official and unofficial sources are so conflicting that it
is impossible to form a coherent picture of the state of the country.
Some light on the situation may be obtained by meeting the Russian
representatives.”
When the American President had finished speaking, Churchill
replied:—
“Complete withdrawal of all Allied troops is a logical and clear
polity, but its consequence would be the destruction of all non-
Bolshevik armies in Russia. These number at the present time about
500,000 men and though their quality is not of the best, their num-
bers are nevertheless increasing. Such a policy would be equivalent
to pulling out the linch-pin from the whole machine. There would
be no further armed resistance to the Bolsheviks in Russia, and an
interminable vista of violence and misery would be all that re-
mained for the whole of Russia.”
“But in some areas these forces and supplies would certainly be
assisting reactionaries,” objected Wilson. “Consequently, if the Al-
lies are asked what they are supporting in Russia, they will be com-
pelled to reply that they do not know!”
Churchill listened politely, “I would like to know,” he said,
“whether the Council would approve of arming the anti-Bolshevik
forces in Russia should the Prinkipo Conference prove a failure?”
Dispirited, ill, deserted by Lloyd George, Wilson realized that he
was isolated among a company of men determined to have their
own way.
“I have explained to the Council how I would act if I were
alone,” said the President of the United States. “I will, however, cast
in my lot with the rest.”
Wilson returned to the United States to fight his tragic, losing
66
battle with American reaction.4 Secretary of State Lansing took his
place at the Paris Conference, and the tone of the discussions un-
derwent a notable change. The Allied representatives no longer felt
the need of concealing what was in their minds.
Clemenceau dryly recommended that the Peace Conference
“get out of its troubles as discreetly and simply as possible.” The
Prinkipo question should be dropped entirely, and no further men-
tion made of it. “The Allies got into this Prinkipo business,” said
Clemenceau, “and now they have got to get out of it!”
The British Foreign Secretary Balfour amplified Clemenceau’s
comments. “It is necessary,” he declared, “to take steps to put the
Bolsheviks in the wrong, not only before public opinion, but before
those who hold the view that Bolshevism is democracy gone astray
with large elements of good in it.” Whereupon the Conference set-
tled down to a prolonged discussion of the most effective means of
aiding the White Russian armies against the Soviet Government.
Churchill, who had replaced Lloyd George at the conference ta-
ble, proposed the immediate establishment of a Supreme Allied
4
Woodrow Wilson made one last effort to win fair play for Russia.
On his own initiative he sent William C. Bullitt, then a young State
Department official attached to the American Peace Delegation in Par-
is, to Moscow to contact Lenin and ask the Soviet leader if he really
desired peace. Bullitt was accompanied on his mission by the great
American newspaperman, Lincoln Steffens, who returned with his
eight-word report on Soviet Russia: “I have seen the future—and it
works!” Bullitt himself brought back Lenin’s peace terms both for the
Allies and for the White groups. Lenin was more than willing to make
peace, but his proposals, as Winston Churchill was finally to reveal in
his work The World Crisis: The Aftermath, were “treated with disdain”
and “Bullitt himself was not without some difficulty disowned by those
who had sent him.” Bullitt’s explanation, as he stated to the Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations in September, 1919, of why Lenin’s
peace terms were ignored: “Kolchak made a 100-mile advance, and
immediately the entire press of Paris was roaring and screaming on the
subject, announcing that Kolchak would be in Moscow within two
weeks; and therefore everyone in Paris, including, I regret to say,
members of the American commission, began to grow very lukewarm
about peace in Russia, because they thought Kolchak would arrive in
Moscow and wipe out the Soviet Government.”
For Bullitt’s subsequent career as an antagonist of the Soviet Un-
ion, see Chapter XXIII.
67
Council for Russian Affairs, with political, economic and military
sections. The military section was “to get to work at once” on draw-
ing up the details of a broad program of armed intervention.
3. Golovin’s Mission
With Churchill as the acknowledged but unofficial Command-
er-in-Chief of the Allied anti-Soviet armies, the scene shifted to
London where, during that spring and summer, special White Rus-
sian emissaries streamed into the British Government offices at
Whitehall. They came, as representatives of Admiral Kolchak, Gen-
eral Denikin, and other White Russian leaders, to make the final
arrangements for an all-out drive against the Soviets. Their highly
secretive negotiations were conducted for the most part with Win-
ston Churchill and Sir Samuel Hoare. Churchill, as Secretary of
War, undertook to equip the White Russian armies with materiel
from Great Britain’s accumulation of surplus war supplies. Hoare
supervised the complex diplomatic intrigues.
Among the White Russian representatives were such “demo-
cratic Russians” as the famous Social-Revolutionary terrorist, Boris
Savinkov; the Czarist Prince Lvov; and Sergei Sazonov, the former
Czarist Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had been acting as both
Denikin’s and Kolchak’s representative in Paris. On May 27, 1919,
the London Times reported:—
M. Sazonov met a number of members of Parliament at
the House of Commons last night. Sir Samuel Hoare pre-
sided.... M. Sazonov took a favorable view of the prospects
of an early overthrow of the Bolshevik regime, and said
that recognition of Admiral Kolchak’s Government would
do much to hasten this event. He expressed the deep grati-
tude of Russians not only for the material support which
had been afforded them by Great Britain, but for the ser-
vices of the British Navy in saving a large number of refu-
gees.
The “Official Representative of the White Russian Armies” at
the British War Office was Lieutenant General Golovin. He had
arrived early that spring carrying a personal note of introduction to
Winston Churchill. Shortly after Golovin reached London, he con-
ferred with Sir Samuel Hoare. Among the subjects they discussed
was the question of the Caucasus and, in particular, its great oil de-
68
posits at Grosni and Baku.
On May 5, accompanied by Hoare, Golovin paid his first visit
to the British War Office. On Hoare’s advice, the Russian officer
wore his full-dress uniform. He was received with great cordiality
by the British officers, who listened absorbedly as he outlined the
progress of the various White Russian campaigns.
That same day, at half-past five in the afternoon, Golovin saw
Churchill. The Secretary of War spoke angrily of the opposition of
the British liberals and workingmen to military aid to the White
anti-Soviet armies. Churchill expressed the hope that, in spite of this
obstacle, he would be able to send an additional 10,000 “volun-
teers” for the northern campaign. Reinforcements, he knew, were
badly needed in this area because of the serious demoralization that
had set in among the British and American troops.
Churchill also stressed his eagerness to assist General Denikin
as much as possible. At any event, Denikin could expect 2500 “vol-
unteers” for service as military instructors and technical experts. As
for immediate material help, Churchill told Golovin that
£24,000,000 (approximately $100,000,000) would be allocated to
the various anti-Soviet fronts, and there would be adequate equip-
ment and arms to outfit 100,000 Yudenitch troops for the march on
Petrograd. Arrangements would be made for 500 Czarist officers
who were prisoners of war in Germany to be transferred to Archan-
gel at British expense....
“The result of the interview exceeded all my expectations,”
Golovin stated in the report he submitted to his superiors when he
returned to Russia. “Churchill is not only a sympathizer but an en-
ergetic and active friend. The greatest possible aid is assured us.
Now we have to show the English that we are ready to turn words
into deeds.”5
5
This report, subsequently captured by the Red Army in the secret
archives of the Murmansk White Government, was published in the
Daily Herald in London a short time after, causing a considerable em-
barrassment to anti-Soviet circles in England.
69
CHAPTER VI
The War of Intervention
1. Prelude
By the summer of 1919, without declaration of war, the armed forc-
es of fourteen states had invaded the territory of Soviet Russia. The
countries involved were:—
Great Britain Serbia
France China
Japan ‘ Finland
Germany Greece
Italy Poland
United States Rumania
Czechoslovakia Turkey
Fighting side by side with the anti-Soviet invaders were the
counterrevolutionary White armies1 led by former Czarist generals
striving to restore the feudal aristocracy which the Russian people
had overthrown.
The strategy of the attackers was ambitious. The armies of the
White generals, moving in conjunction with the interventionist
troops, were to converge on Moscow from the north, south, east and
west.
In the north and northwest, at Archangel, Murmansk and in
Baltic States, the forces of the British stood poised alongside the
1
The “Whites,” so-called because of their opposition to the revolu-
tionaries whose symbol was the Red Flag, included, according to
George Stewart’s authoritative account of their struggle in The White
Armies of Russia, all those for whom “Czarism represented the assur-
ance of their status in society, their livelihood, honors, Holy Russia, a
social order built upon privilege and force, pleasant in its rewards to the
fortunate, comfortable to parasitic groups which found their life in serv-
ing it, an ancient system which had its sanction in long centuries when
Russia was building. The term “White Russians” is used in this book to
describe those who fought to retain or restore this ancient order in Rus-
sia. It must not be confused with the name given to inhabitants of the
Soviet Republic of Byelorussia, who are also called White Russians
because of their original native costume: white smock, bast shoes with
white leggings and white homespun coat.
70
White Russian troops of General Nicholas Yudenitch.
In the south, at bases in the Caucasus and along the Black Sea,
were the White armies of General Anton Denikin, amply supplied
and reinforced by the French.
In the east, Admiral Alexander Kolchak’s forces, operating
under British military advisors, were encamped along the Ural
Mountains.
In the west, under the leadership of French officers were Gen-
eral Pilsudski’s newly-organized Polish armies.
Allied statesmen advanced various reasons for the presence of
their troops in Russia. When their soldiers first landed in Murmansk
and Archangel in the spring and summer of 1918, the Allied Gov-
ernments declared the troops had come to prevent supplies from
falling into the hands of the Germans. Later they explained their
troops were in Siberia to help the Czechoslovakian forces withdraw
from Russia. Another reason given for the presence of Allied de-
tachments was that they were helping the Russians to “restore or-
der” in their troubled land.
Repeatedly, Allied statesmen denied any intention of armed in-
tervention against the Soviets, or of interfering with Russia’s inter-
nal affairs. “We do not propose to interfere with the internal ar-
rangements of Russia,” declared Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign
Secretary, in August, 1918. “She must manage her own affairs.”
The ironic and invariably blunt Winston Churchill, who himself
supervised the Allied campaign against Soviet Russia, later wrote in
his book, The World Crisis: the Aftermath:—
Were they [the Allies] at war with Russia? Certainly
not; but they shot Soviet Russians at sight. They stood as
invaders on Russian soil. They armed the enemies of the
Soviet Government. They blockaded the ports and sunk its
battleships. They earnestly desired and schemed its down-
fall. But war—shocking! Interference—shame! It was, they
repeated, a matter of indifference to them how Russians
settled their own affairs. They were impartial—bang!
The young Soviet Government struggled for its life in the face
of desperate odds. The country had been laid waste and exhausted
by the World War. Millions were destitute and starving. The facto-
ries were empty, the land unplowed, transport at a standstill. It
seemed impossible that such a country could survive the fierce on-
71
slaught of an enemy with large, well-equipped armies, vast financial
reserves, ample food and other supplies.
Besieged on all sides by foreign invaders, imperiled by endless
conspiracies at home, the Red Army retreated slowly across the
countryside, fighting grimly as it went. The territory controlled by
Moscow dwindled to one-sixteenth of Russia’s total area. It was a
Soviet island in an anti-Soviet sea.
2. Northern Campaign
In the early summer of 1918 special agents of the British Secret
Service had arrived in Archangel. Their orders were to prepare an
armed uprising against the local Soviet administration in that highly
strategic port. Working under the supervision of Captain George
Ermolaevich Chaplin, an ex-Czarist officer who had been given a
commission in the British Army, and aided by counterrevolutionary
White Russian conspirators, the British Intelligence agents made the
necessary preparations for the rebellion.
The revolt broke out on August 2. The following day Major
General Frederick C. Poole, the British Commander-in-Chief of the
Allied forces in North Russia, occupied Archangel with a landing
force supported by British and French warships. Simultaneously,
Serbian and White Russian troops led by Colonel Thornhill of the
British Secret Service began an overland march from Onega to cut
the Archangel-Vologda line and attack the retreating Bolsheviks
from the rear.
Having overthrown the Archangel Soviet, General Poole orga-
nized a puppet government called the Supreme Administration of
Northern Russia and headed by the elderly politician, Nikolai
Tchaikovsky.
Before long however, even this anti-Soviet administration
seemed too liberal to suit the taste of General Poole and his Czarist
allies. They decided to dispense with the formality of a government
and to set up a military dictatorship.
By September 6, General Poole and his White Russian allies
had carried out their plan. On that day Ambassador David R. Fran-
cis, who was visiting Archangel, was invited to review a battalion of
American troops. As the last ranks of the soldiers marched by, Gen-
eral Poole turned to the American Ambassador and casually re-
marked, “There was a revolution here last night.”
“The hell you say!” exclaimed Ambassador Francis. “Who
72
pulled it off?”
“Chaplin,” said General Poole, pointing to the Czarist naval of-
ficer, who had engineered the original coup against the Archangel
Soviet.
Francis beckoned to Captain Chaplin to come over.
“Chaplin, who pulled off this revolution last night?” asked the
American Ambassador.
“I did,” Chaplin laconically replied.
The coup d’état had taken place on the previous evening. Cap-
tain Chaplin and some British officers, in the dead of night, had
kidnapped President Tchaikovsky and the other members of the
Supreme Administration of the Northern Region and spirited them
away by boat to a lonely monastery on a nearby island. There Cap-
tain Chaplin had left the Russian politicians under armed guard.
Such high-handed measures were a little too crude even for
Ambassador Francis, who, moreover, had been kept completely
unaware of the plot. Francis told General Poole that the American
Government would not stand for the coup d’état.
Within twenty-four hours the puppet Ministers were brought
back to Archangel and their “Supreme Administration” re-
established. Francis cabled the U. S. State Department that, as a
result of his efforts, democracy had been restored.
By the early part of 1919 the British forces in Archangel and
Murmansk numbered 18,400. Fighting side by side with them were
5100 Americans, 1800 Frenchmen, 1200 Italians, 1000 Serbs and
approximately 20,000 White Russians.
Describing Archangel during this period, Captain John Cudahy2
of the American Expeditionary Force later wrote in his book, Arch-
angel: The American War with Russia, that “everyone was an of-
ficer.” There were, Cudahy records, countless Czarist officers
“weighed down with their glittering, ponderous medals”; Cossack
officers with their high gray hats, gaudy tunics and rattling sabers;
English officers from Eton and Harrow; French soldiers with their
2
In 1937 the late John Cudahy, a member of the wealthy Chicago
meat-packing family, was appointed American Minister to Eire and
later, Ambassador to Belgium. An outspoken enemy of Soviet Russia,
he afterwards became a leading member of the isolationist America
First Committee, which in 1940-41 opposed Lend-Lease aid to nations
fighting the Axis.
73
magnificent peaked caps and shining boots; Serbian, Italian and
French officers....
“And, of course,” noted Cudahy, “there were large numbers of
batmen to shine the boots and burnish the spurs and keep all in fine
order, and other batmen to look after the appointments of the offic-
ers’ club, and serve the whiskey and soda.”
The gentlemanly manner in which these officers lived contrast-
ed sharply with the way in which they fought.
“We used gas shells on the Bolsheviki,” Ralph Albertson, a
Y.M.C.A. official who was in North Russia in 1919, wrote in his
book, Fighting Without a War. “We fixed all the booby traps we
could think of when we evacuated villages. Once we shot more than
thirty prisoners.... And when we caught the Commissar of Borok, a
sergeant tells me he left his body in the street, stripped, with sixteen
bayonet wounds. We surprised Borok, and the Commissar, a civil-
ian, did not have time to arm himself.... I have heard an officer tell
his men repeatedly to take no prisoners, to kill them even if they
came in unarmed.... I saw a disarmed Bolshevik prisoner, who was
making no trouble of any kind, shot down in cold blood.... Night
after night the firing squad took out its batches of victims.”
The rank-and-file Allied soldiers had no heart for the anti-
Soviet campaign. They wondered why they should be fighting in
Russia when the war was supposedly over. It was difficult for the
Allied Commands to give an explanation. “At first this was not
thought necessary,” Cudahy recorded. “Then the High Command,
remembering the importance of morale... issued proclamations that
puzzled and confused the soldier more than if a course of silence
had been followed.”
One of the proclamations from British General Headquarters in
northern Russia, which was read to British and American troops,
opened with these words:—
There seems to be among the troops a very indistinct
idea of what we are fighting for here in Northern Russia,
This can be explained in a few words. We are up against
Bolshevism, which means anarchy pure and simple. Look
at Russia at the present moment. The power is in the hands
of a few men, mostly Jews....
The temper of the troops became increasingly strained. Quarrels
between the British, French and White Russian soldiers grew more
74
and more frequent. Mutinies began to break out. When the Ameri-
can 339th Infantry refused to obey orders, Colonel Stewart, who
was in command, assembled his men and read them the Articles of
War specifying death as the penalty for mutiny. After a moment of
impressive silence, the Colonel asked if there were any questions. A
voice from the ranks spoke up:—
“Sir, what are we here for, and what are the intentions of the
United States Government?”
The Colonel could not answer the question.... The British Chief
of Staff, Sir Henry Wilson, made this report, in the official British
Blue Book, regarding the situation in northern Russia in the summer
of 1919:—
On 7th July a determined mutiny took place in the 3rd
Company of the 1st Bn. [Battalion] Slavo-British Legion
and the Machine-Gun Company of the 4th Northern Rifle
Regiment, who were in reserve on the right bank of the
Dvina. Three British officers and four Russian officers
were murdered, and two British officers and two Russian
officers were wounded.
On July 22 news was received that the Russian regi-
ment in the Onega district had mutinied, and had handed
over the whole Onega front to the Bolsheviks.
In the United States there was a rising; popular demand that
American soldiers be withdrawn from Russia. The incessant stream
of propaganda against the “Bolsheviks” failed to still the voices of
wives and parents who could not understand why, with the war
over, their husbands and sons should be waging a lonely, indecisive
and mysterious campaign in the wilds of Siberia and in the grim,
bitter cold of Murmansk and Archangel. Throughout the summer
and fall of 1919, delegations from all parts of the United States
traveled to Washington to see their representatives and demand that
American soldiers in Russia be brought home. Their demand was
echoed in Congress,
On September 5, 1919, Senator Borah arose in the Senate and
declared:—
Mr. President, we are not at war with Russia; Congress
has not declared war against the Russian government or the
Russian people. The people of the United States do not de-
75
sire to be at war with Russia.... Yet, while we are not at war
with Russia, while Congress has not declared war, we are
carrying on war with the Russian people. We have an army
in Russia; we are furnishing munitions and supplies to oth-
er armed forces in that country, and we are just as thor-
oughly engaged in conflict as though constitutional authori-
ty had been invoked, a declaration of war had been made,
and the nation had been called to arms for that purpose....
There is neither legal nor moral justification for sacrificing
these lives. It is in violation of the plain principles of free
government.
The people of England and France shared the American peo-
ple’s disapproval of the war against Soviet Russia. Nevertheless, the
undeclared war against Russia went on.
3. Northwestern Campaign
The-Armistice of November, 1918, between the Allied and
Central Powers contained in Article 12 a little-publicized clause
stipulating that German troops should remain as long as the Allies
considered it expedient in whatever Russian territory they then oc-
cupied. It was understood these troops were to be used against the
Bolsheviks, In the Baltic provinces, however, the Kaiser’s army
swiftly disintegrated. The war-weary and mutinous German soldiers
deserted in droves.
Faced with a rapidly growing Soviet movement in Latvia, Lith-
uania and Estonia, the British High Command decided to concen-
trate its support upon White Guard bands operating in the Baltic
area. The man selected to head these bands and weld them into a
single military unit was General Count Rudiger von der Goltz of the
German High Command....
General von der Goltz had led a German expeditionary corps
against the Finnish Republic in the spring of 1918, shortly after that
country had acquired its independence as a result of the Russian
Revolution. Von der Goltz had undertaken the Finnish campaign at
the express request of Baron Karl Gustav von Mannerheim, a Swe-
dish aristocrat and former officer in the Czar’s Imperial Horse
Guard, who headed the White forces in Finland.3
3
With the aid of von der Goltz’s well-armed troops, Baron Manner-
76
As commander of the White Guard Army in the Baltic area, von
der Goltz now launched a campaign of terror to stamp out the Sovi-
et movement in Latvia and Lithuania. His troops pillaged large sec-
tions of the land and carried out wholesale executions of civilians.
The Latvian and Lithuanian people had little military equipment or
organization with which to resist this savage onslaught. Before long,
von der Goltz was virtual dictator of the two nations.
The American Relief Administration under the direction of
Herbert Hoover placed large food supplies at the disposal of the
regions occupied by the army of the German General von der Goltz.
The Allies were soon confronted with something of a dilemma.
With their aid, von der Goltz dominated the Baltic area; but he was
still a German general, and consequently there was the danger that,
through his influence, Germany would seek to control the Baltic
States.
In June, 1919, the British decided to replace von der Goltz with
a general more directly under their control.
Sidney Reilly’s friend, the fifty-eight-year-old ex-Czarist Gen-
eral Nicholas Yudenitch, was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the
reorganized White forces. The British agreed to furnish the neces-
sary military supplies to General Yudenitch for a march on Petro-
grad. The first shipment of supplies pledged was complete equip-
ment for 10,000 men, 15,000,000 cartridges, 3000 automatic rifles,
and a number of tanks and airplanes.4
heim overthrew the Finnish Government and invited Prince Friedrich von
Hessen, Kaiser Wilhelm’s son-in-law, to occupy the Finnish throne. To
suppress the opposition of the Finnish people, von der Goltz and Man-
nerheim instituted a reign of terror. Within a few weeks Mannerheim’s
White Guards executed some 20,000 men, women and children; tens of
thousands more were thrown in concentration camps and prisons, where
many of them died from torture, starvation and exposure.
4
One of the most active British Secret Service agents in the north-
ern campaign was Paul Dukes, a close colleague of Captain Sidney
Reilly. Dukes succeeded in getting himself a commission in the Red
Army, and served as an anti-Soviet spy and saboteur within the Red
forces opposing Yudenitch. When the White Army was attacking Pet-
rograd, Dukes arranged for the blowing up of bridges vital to the retreat
of the Red Army, and he countermanded orders for the destruction of
communications facilitating the advance of Yudenitch. Dukes kept
Yudenitch informed of every move of the Red forces. He was also in
77
Representatives of Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Admin-
istration promised to make food available to areas occupied by
General Yudenitch’s troops. Major R. R. Powers, Chief of the Esto-
nian Section of the Baltic Mission of the American Relief Admin-
istration, began making a careful survey to estimate the amount of
food necessary to guarantee the seizure of Petrograd by General
Yudenitch’s White Russian Army. Ships loaded with Relief Admin-
istration supplies to be distributed in territory occupied by
Yudenitch’s troops began arriving in Reval.
Under Yudenitch’s command an all-out offensive was launched
against Petrograd. By the third week in October, 1919, Yudenitch’s
cavalry was in the suburbs of the city. The Allied Governments
were convinced that; the fall of Petrograd was only a matter of days,
perhaps hours. The headlines of the New York Times pictured the
victory as won:—
October 18 ANTI-RED FORCES NOW IN PETROGRAD
STOCKHOLM HEARS
October 20 PETROGRAD’S FALL AGAIN REPORTED:
MOSCOW LINE CUT
October 21 ANTI-RED FORCES NEAR PETROGRAD;
NEWS OF FALL OF CITY HOURLY EX-
PECTED IN LONDON
But at the very gates of Petrograd Yudenitch was stopped.
Massing its forces, the revolutionary city struck back. Yudenitch’s
forces reeled before the fierce onslaught.
On February 29, 1920, the New York Times reported:
“Yudenitch Quits Army; Starts for Paris with His Fortune of
100,000,000 Marks.”
Fleeing southward from Estonia in a car flying a British flag,
Yudenitch left behind him the total wreckage of his once proud ar-
my. Scattered bands of his soldiers wandered across the snow-
close touch with the armed terrorists, remnants of Reilly’s organization,

inside Petrograd, who were waiting to aid the Whites the moment they
entered the city. After he returned to London, Dukes was knighted for
his exploits. Later, he wrote a book, Red Dusk and the Morrow, de-
scribing his adventures as a spy in Russia. In collaboration with Sidney
Reilly he translated for propagandist purposes Boris Savinkov’s The
Pale Horse and various other White Russian or anti-Soviet writings.
78
blanketed countryside, dying by the thousands of starvation, disease
and exposure....
4. Southern Campaign
While the forces of Yudenitch drove on Petrograd in the north,
the attack from the south was being led by General Anton Denikin,
a distinguished-looking, forty-five-year-old former Czarist officer
with a grizzled beard and gray mustaches. General Denikin subse-
quently described his White Army as having “one sacred innermost
thought, one vivid hope and desire... that of saving Russia.” But
among the Russian people, Denikin’s army in southern Russia was
better known for its sadistic methods of warfare.
From the beginning of the Russian Revolution, the Ukraine
with its rich wheatlands and the Don Region with its immense coal
and iron deposits had been the scene of savage conflict. Following
the establishment of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in December,
1917, the Ukrainian anti-Soviet leader, General Simon Petlura, had
urged the German High Command to send troops into the Ukraine
and help him overthrow the Soviet regime. The Germans, with hun-
gry eyes on the Ukraine’s vast food resources, needed no second
invitation.
Under the command of Field Marshal Hermann von Eichhorn,
German troops swept into the Ukraine. Von Eichhorn himself had a
considerable personal interest in the campaign: his wife was the
Countess Durnovo, a wealthy Russian noblewoman who had been
one of the largest landowners in the Ukraine. The Soviet forces
were driven from Kiev and Kharkov, and a puppet “Independent
Ukraine,” controlled by the German Army of Occupation, was
formed with General Petlura at its head. Declaring his aim to be the
establishment of “National Socialism,” Petlura instigated a series of
bloody, anti-Semitic pogroms throughout the Ukraine. Ruthless pu-
nitive measures were employed to suppress the revolutionary
Ukrainian workers and peasants.
The revolutionary movement, however, continued to grow. Von
Eichhorn, deciding that Petlura was incapable of handling the situa-
tion, replaced his government with a military dictatorship. The new
puppet regime was headed by von Eichhorn’s brother-in-law, Gen-
eral Pavel Petrovich Skoropadski, a hitherto unrenowned Russian
cavalryman, who could not speak a word of Ukrainian. Skoropadski
assumed the title of Hetman (Head Man) of the Ukraine.
79
Hetman Skoropadski fared little better than Petlura. Before the
end of 1918, disguised as a German private, he fled from the
Ukraine with the German Army of Occupation, which had been
decimated by the Red Army and by the Ukrainian partisans.
The departure of the Germans by no means ended the problems
of the Bolsheviks in the Ukraine. The Allies also had been support-
ing anti-Soviet White Russian movements in southern Russia. Al-
lied aid had gone chiefly to the counterrevolutionary forces which
had been organized into the “Volunteer Army” in the Don Cossack
region under the leadership of Kaledin, Kornilov, Denikin and other
former Czarist generals who had fled south after the Bolshevik
Revolution.
At first the campaign of the Volunteer Army met with serious
reverses. General Kaledin, its original commander-in-chief, com-
mitted suicide. His successor, General Kornilov, was driven from
the Don Region by the Soviet forces and finally killed in a battle on
April 13, 1918. Command of the retreating, desperately harassed
Volunteer Army was assumed by General Denikin.
At this very moment, when the fortunes of the White Russians
appeared to be at their lowest ebb, the first British and French
troops landed in Murmansk and Archangel, and substantial Allied
supplies began pouring across the Russian frontiers to aid the White
Armies. Denikin’s hard-pressed army was saved from destruction.
Replenished and reinforced, the Denikin army was ready, by the fall
of 1918, to assume the offensive against the Soviets....
On November 22, 1918, exactly eleven days after the Armistice
which ended the First World War was signed, a radiogram reached
Denikin’s southern headquarters with the message that an Allied
fleet was on its way to Novorossisk. The following day Allied ves-
sels anchored in the Black Sea port, and French and British emissar-
ies came ashore to inform Denikin that ample war supplies from
France and Great Britain would be coming to his assistance in the
immediate future.
During the last weeks of 1918 French troops occupied Odessa
and Sevastopol. An English flotilla steamed into the Black Sea and
landed detachments at Batum. A British commander was named
Governor General of the region.5
5
British troops had been active in the southernmost portion of
Russia since July, 1918, when the British High Command had sent sol-
80
Under the supervision of the French High Command, and sup-
plied with great quantities of military equipment by the British,
Denikin launched a major offensive against Moscow. Denikin’s
chief aide in this offensive was General Baron von Wrangel, a tall,
lean military man with thinning hair and chill, slate-blue eyes, who
was notorious for his savage cruelty. Periodically Wrangel would
execute groups of unarmed prisoners in front of their comrades and
then give the prisoners who had witnessed the execution the choice
of joining his army or else being shot. When the troops of Denikin
and Wrangel stormed into the captured city of Stavropol, one of
their first acts was to break into a hospital and massacre seventy
wounded Red Army soldiers. Pillage was an official practice in
Denikin’s army. Wrangel himself issued orders to his troops that
loot from their campaign should be “equally divided” among them.
Driving north the forces of Denikin and Wrangel occupied
Tsaritsyn (now Stalingrad) in June, 1919, and by October were ap-
proaching Tula, 120 miles from Moscow. “The entire Bolshevik
structure in Russia appears to be collapsing,” reported the New York
Times. “The evacuation of Moscow, the head center of Bolshevism,
has begun.” The Times described Denikin as “sweeping all before
him,” and the Red Army as retreating in “wild panic.”
But, using a plan of attack drawn up by Stalin as a member of
the Revolutionary Military Committee, the Red Army initiated a
sudden counteroffensive.
Denikin’s forces were taken completely by surprise. Within a
few weeks the Southern White Russian Army was in headlong re-
treat toward the Black Sea: Morale broke down, and Denikin’s
troops fled in panic and disorder. Sick and dying clogged the roads.
Hospital trains were frequently without medical supplies, doctors or
nurses. The army disintegrated into bands of robbers, streaming
toward the south.
On December 9, 1919, General Wrangel sent a panic-stricken
diers from Persia into Turkestan to aid in any anti-Soviet uprising, led
by Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. The “Transcaspian Execu-
tive Committee,” headed by the counterrevolutionary Noi Jordania, had
established a puppet government dominated by the British. An agree-
ment was drawn up by which the British received special rights in the
export of cotton and petroleum from this area, in exchange for their aid
to the counterrevolutionary forces.
81
dispatch to General Denikin, declaring:—
This is the bitter truth. The Army has ceased to exist as
a fighting force.
In the early weeks of 1920 the remnants of Denikin’s army
reached the port of Novorossisk on the Black Sea. White soldiers,
deserters and civilian refugees poured into the city.
On March 27, 1920, while the British warship Emperor of India
and the French cruiser Waldeck-Rousseau stood by and hurled
shells inland at the advancing Red columns, Denikin set sail from
Novorossisk on a French war vessel. Tens of thousands of soldiers
from Denikin’s army crowded onto the docks and watched helpless-
ly while their Commander and officers steamed away.
5. Eastern Campaign
According to the master plan of the interventionists, while
Denikin drove on Moscow from the south, Admiral Kolchak was to
besiege the city from the east. Events, however, did not proceed
according to plan....
During the spring and early summer of 1919, newspapers in
Paris, London and New York carried frequent detailed reports of
devastating Red Army defeats at the hands of Admiral Kolchak.
These were some of the headlines which appeared in the New York
Times:—
March 26 KOLCHAK PURSUES BROKEN RED ARMY
April 20 REDS COLLAPSING IN THE EAST
April 22 RED RULE TOTTERS AS KOLCHAK WINS
May 15 KOLCHAK PLANS MOVE ON MOSCOW
But on August 11 the Times carried a dispatch from Washing-
ton stating,—
The time has come, a high official of the government
stated tonight, to prepare the people of the anti-Bolshevik
world for a possible disaster to the Kolchak regime in
Western Siberia.
By midsummer Admiral Kolchak was fleeing desperately before
the smashing attacks of the Red Army. At the same time his troops
were being ceaselessly harassed behind their lines by a widespread,
rapidly growing guerilla movement. In November, Kolchak evacuat-
82
ed his capital at Omsk. In tattered uniforms and worn-out boots, Kol-
chak’s troops trudged along the roads leading from Omsk. Thousands
dropped from the endless, miserable parade and died in the snow
alongside the roads. The railroad lines from Omsk were clogged with
broken-down locomotives. “The dead,” an observer noted, “were
thrown along the tracks to rot.” Kolchak reached Irkutsk in a train
flying the Union Jack, the Stars and Stripes, the French and Italian
tricolors, and the Rising Sun of Japan.
The people of Irkutsk revolted on December 24, 1919, estab-
lishing a Soviet, and arrested Kolchak. Seized with him was a vast
treasure he had been transporting in a special train: 5143 boxes and
1680 bags of gold bricks, bullion, securities, and valuables, with an
estimated total value of 1,150,500,000 rubles.
Admiral Kolchak was placed on trial by the Soviet regime and
charged with treason. “If a ship sinks, it sinks with all hands,” Kol-
chak told the court, regretting he had not remained at sea. Bitterly
he asserted that he had been betrayed by “foreign elements” which
had deserted him in the crisis.
The court sentenced Kolchak to be shot. He was executed by a
firing squad on February 7, 1920. A number of Kolchak’s aides es-
caped to the Japanese. One of them, General Bakich, sent this final
message to the White Russian Consul at Urga, Mongolia: “Pursued
by the Jews and Communists, I have crossed the frontier!”
6. The Poles and Wrangel
In spite of the catastrophic reversals they had suffered, the An-
glo-French interventionists launched two more offensives against
western Soviet Russia,
In April, 1920, demanding all the territory of the western
Ukraine and the occupation of the Russian town of Smolensk, the
Poles attacked from the west. Generously equipped by the French
and British with war materials and a $50,000,000 loan from the
United States,6 the Poles drove into the Ukraine and occupied Kiev.
6
Herbert Hoover placed millions of dollars worth of American Re-
lief Administration supplies at the disposal of the Poles. On January 4,
1921, Senator James Reed of Missouri charged on the floor of the Sen-
ate that $40,000,000 of the Congressional relief funds “was spent to
keep the Polish army in the field.”
Much of the money raised in the United States for European relief
83
Here they were halted and hurled back by the Red Army,
With the Russian troops hot on their heels, the Poles retreated
frantically. By August, the Red Army stood at the gates of Warsaw
and Lvov.
The Allied Governments rushed fresh loans and supplies to the
Poles. Marshal Foch hurriedly sent his chief of staff, General
Maxime Weygand, to direct Polish operations. British tanks and
planes were rushed to Warsaw. The Red troops, commanded by
General Tukachevsky and War Commissar Leon Trotsky, had dan-
gerously overextended their lines of communications. Now they
suffered the consequences, as the Polish counteroffensive drove
them back along the entire front. The Soviet Government, by the
Peace of Riga, was forced to turn over to the Poles the western por-
tions of Byelorussia and the Ukraine....
The peace with Poland left the Red Army free to deal with Bar-
on Wrangel, who, replacing General Denikin as commander-in-
chief in the south and supported by the French, had driven north-
ward from the Crimea into the Ukraine. By the late fall of 1920,
Wrangel was driven into the Crimea and bottled up by the Red forc-
es. In November the Red Army stormed Perekop and swept into the
Crimea, driving Wrangel’s army into the sea.
7. The Last Survivor
With the smashing of Wrangel’s army and the end of interven-
tion in the west, the only foreign army remaining on Russian soil
was that of Imperial Japan. It seemed that Siberia with all its riches
was destined to fall completely into the hands of the Japanese. Gen-
eral Baron Tanaka, the: Minister of War and Chief of the Japanese
Military Intelligence, exulted: “Russian patriotism was extinguished
with the revolution. So much the better for us! Henceforth the Sovi-
et can be conquered only by foreign troops in sufficient strength.”
Japan still had more than 70,000 troops in Siberia and hundreds
was used to support intervention against the Soviets. Hoover himself

made this clear in his report to Congress in January, 1921. The Con-
gress had originally appropriated $100,000,000 for relief. Hoover’s
report showed that almost all of the $94,938,417 accounted for was
spent in territory immediately adjoining Russia or in those sections of
Russia which were under the control of the White Russian armies and
the Allied interventionists.
84
of secret agents, spies, saboteurs and terrorists. White Guard armies
in the Russian Far East continued to operate under the supervision
of the Japanese High Command. Chief among these anti-Soviet
forces was the bandit army of Japan’s Cossack puppet, Ataman
Semyonov.
American pressure forced Japan to move cautiously; but on
June 8, 1921, the Japanese signed a secret treaty at Vladivostok with
Ataman Semyonov, calling for a new, all-out offensive against the
Soviets. The treaty stipulated that, after the Soviets were liquidated,
Semyonov should assume full civil power. This secret agreement
added:—
When a stable governmental authority is established in
the Far East, Japanese subjects shall receive preferential
rights for obtaining hunting, fishing and forestry conces-
sions... and for the development of mining resources and
gold mines.
One of Semyonov’s chief aides, Baron Ungern-Sternberg, was
assigned a major role in the projected military campaign.
It was to be the last White campaign of the war of intervention.
Lieutenant General Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, a
pale, effeminate-looking Baltic aristocrat with blond hair and a
long, reddish mustache, had entered the Czar’s army as a youth,
fought against the Japanese in 1905, and subsequently joined a Cos-
sack police regiment in Siberia. During the First World War, he
served under Baron Wrangel and was decorated with the Cross of
St. George for valor in combat on the southern front. Among his
fellow officers he was notorious for his wild daring, ferocious cruel-
ty and fits of uncontrollable rage.
After the Revolution, Baron Ungern had made his way back to
Siberia, and assumed command of a Cossack regiment that pillaged
the countryside and carried on sporadic warfare against the local
Soviets. He was finally contacted by Japanese agents, who persuad-
ed him to enter Mongolia. They placed at his disposal a motley ar-
my of White Russian officers, anti-Soviet Chinese troops, Mongoli-
an bandits and Japanese secret service agents.
Living in an atmosphere of feudal banditry and absolutism at his
headquarters in Urga, Ungern began to conceive of himself as a man
of destiny. He married a Mongolian princess, abandoned Western
dress for a yellow silk Mongolian robe, and pronounced himself the
85
reincarnation of Genghis Khan. Incited by the Japanese agents who
always surrounded him, he dreamed of himself as Emperor of a New
World Order emanating from the East, which was to descend on So-
viet Russia and Europe, destroying with fire and sword and cannon
the last traces of “decadent democracy and Jewish Communism.”
Sadistic and half-insane, he indulged in countless acts of barbaric
savagery. On one occasion he saw a pretty Jewish woman in a small
Siberian town and offered a thousand rubles to the man who would
bring him her head; the head was brought and duly paid for.
“I will make an avenue with gallows that will stretch from Asia
across Europe,” Baron Ungern declared.
At the outset of the 1921 campaign, Baron Ungern issued a
proclamation to his men, from his headquarters at Urga, stating:—
Mongolia has become the natural starting-point for a
campaign against the Red Army in Soviet Siberia.
Commissars, Communists and Jews, together with their
families, must be exterminated. Their property must be
confiscated.... Sentences on guilty parties may either be
disciplinary or take the form of different degrees of the
death penalty.
“Truth and mercy” are no longer admissible. Hence-
forth there can be only “truth and merciless cruelty.” The
evil which has fallen upon the land, with the object of de-
stroying the divine principle in the human soul, must be ex-
tirpated root and branch.
In the wild and desolate Russian border country, Ungern’s war-
fare developed as a series of plundering bandit sorties, leaving in
their wake smoking villages and the mutilated bodies of men, wom-
en and children. Towns taken by Ungern’s troops were given up to
rape and pillage. Jews, Communists and all suspected of the mildest
democratic sympathies were shot, tortured to death and burned
alive.
In July, 1921, the Red Army launched a drive to exterminate
Ungern’s army. After a series of sharp, fluctuating engagements, the
Red Army and Soviet guerillas won a decisive victory. Ungern’s
hordes fled, abandoning most of their guns, their supply trains and
their wounded.
In August, Ungern was surrounded. His own Mongolian body-
guard mutinied and handed him over to the Soviet troops. The Bar-
86
on was brought in his silk Mongolian robe to Novo-Nikolayovsk
(now Novo-Sibirsk) and put on public trial before the Siberian So-
viet Supreme Court as an enemy of the people.
It was an extraordinary trial....
Hundreds of workers, peasants, soldiers—Russians, Siberians,
Mongolians and Chinese—jammed the courtroom. Thousands more
stood outside in the street. Many of these people had lived through
Ungern’s reign of terror; their brothers, children, wives and
husbands had been shot, tortured, hurled into the boilers of
locomotives.
The Baron took his place and the indictment was read:—
In accordance with the decision of the Revolutionary
Committee of Siberia, dated September 12, 1921, Lieuten-
ant-General Baron Ungern von Sternberg, formerly com-
mander of the Asiatic cavalry division, is indicted before
the Siberian Revolutionary Court on the charges:
1. Of having lent himself to the annexationist aims of
Japan through his attempts to create an Asiatic State and to
overthrow the government of Transbaikalia;
2. Of having planned to overthrow the Soviet authority
with the object of restoring the monarchy in Siberia and the
ultimate intention of putting Michael Romanov on the
throne;
3. Of having brutally murdered great numbers of Rus-
sian peasants and workers and Chinese revolutionaries.
Ungern did not attempt to deny his atrocities. Executions, tor-
tures and massacres—yes, these were all true. The explanation was
a simple one: “It was war!” But a puppet of Japan? “My idea,” Bar-
on Ungern explained, “was to make use of Japan.” Ungern denied
that he had any treasonable or intimate relations with the Japanese.
“The accused is lying,” said Soviet Prosecutor Yaroslavsky, “if
he claims that he never had any relations with Japan. We hold proof
to the: contrary!”
“I did communicate with the Japanese,” admitted the Baron,
“just as I communicated with Chang Tso-lin.7... Genghis Khan, too,
7
Ungern’s “communication” with Chang Tso-lin, the notorious
Chinese war lord, included a deal whereby the Baron, for staging a “re-
treat” before Chang’s forces, was to get 10 per cent of $10,000,000
87
paid court to Van-Khan before conquering his kingdom!”
“We are not in the twelfth century,” said the Soviet Prosecutor,
“and we are not here to judge Genghis Khan!”
“For a thousand years,” cried the Baron, “Ungerns have given
other people orders! They have never taken orders from anybody!”
He stared haughtily at the upturned faces of the soldiers, peas-
ants and workers in the courtroom.
“I refuse to admit working-class authority! How can a man who
doesn’t even keep a general servant talk about governing? He is
incapable of giving orders!”
Prosecutor Yaroslavsky enumerated the long list of Ungern’s
crimes—the punitive expeditions against Jews and pro-Soviet peas-
ants, the cutting-off of arms and legs, the night rides across the
steppe with flaming corpses for torches, the annihilation of villages,
the ruthless massacres of children....
“They were,” coldly explained Ungern, “too Red for my
liking.”
“Why did you leave Urga?” asked the Prosecutor.
“I decided to invade Transbaikalia and persuade the peasants to
revolt. But I was taken prisoner.”
“By whom?”
“Some Mongols betrayed me.”
“Have you ever asked yourself why those men acted as they
did?”
“I was betrayed!”
“Do you admit that the end of your campaign was the same as
that of all the attempts which have recently been made upon the
workers’ authority? Don’t you agree that, of all these attempts to
attain the objects you had in view, your attempt was the last?”
“Yes,” said Baron Ungern. “Mine was the last attempt. I sup-
pose I am the last survivor!”
In the month of September, 1921, the verdict of the Soviet court
was carried out. Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, “the last sur-
vivor” of the White war lords, was shot by a Red Army firing
squad.
Ataman Semyonov and the remnants of the Japanese puppet
army fled across the Soviet border into Mongolia and China.
Not for more than another year was Soviet soil to be finally rid
(Mex.) which Chang extorted from the Pekin Government.

88
of the Japanese. On October 19, 1922, the Red Army closed in on
Vladivostok. The Japanese in occupation of the city surrendered and
handed over all their military stores. Japanese transports, carrying
the last soldiers of Japan, left Vladivostok the next day. The Red
flag was raised over the city.
“The decision to evacuate,” announced the Japanese Foreign
Office, “is intended to place Japan on record as a non-aggressive
nation, striving to maintain the peace of the world.”
89
CHAPTER VII
An Accounting
The two and a half years of bloody intervention and civil war had
been responsible for the death through battle, starvation or disease
of some 7,000,000 Russian men, women and children. The material
losses to the country were later estimated by the Soviet Government
at $60,000,000,000, a sum far in excess of the Czarist debt to the
Allies. No reparations were paid by the invaders.
Few official figures were given of the cost to the Allied taxpay-
ers of the war against Russia. According to a memorandum issued
by Winston Churchill on September 15, 1919, Great Britain to that
date had spent nearly £100,000,000 sterling and France between
£30,000,000 and £40,000,000 on General Denikin alone. The Brit-
ish campaign in the north cost £18,000,000. The Japanese admitted
the expenditure of 900,000,000 yen on the maintenance of their
70,000 troops in Siberia.
What were the motives behind this futile and costly undeclared
war?
The White generals were frankly fighting for the restoration of
their own Great Russia, for their landed estates, their profits, their
class privileges and their epaulettes. There were a few sincere
nationalists among them, but the White Armies were
overwhelmingly dominated by reactionaries who were the
prototypes of the fascist officers and adventurers who were later to
emerge in Central Europe.
The war aims of the Allies in Russia were less clear.
The intervention was finally presented to the world by Allied
spokesmen, in so far as its motives were publicized at all, as a polit-
ical crusade against Bolshevism.
Actually, “anti-Bolshevism” played a secondary role. Such fac-
tors as north Russian timber, Donets coal, Siberian gold and Cauca-
sian oil carried more weight. There were also such large-scale impe-
rialist interests as the British plan for a Trans-Caucasian Federation
which would seal off India from Russia and make possible exclu-
sive British domination of the oil fields of the Near East; the Japa-
nese plan for the conquest and colonization of Siberia; the French
plan to gain control in the Donets and Black Sea areas; and the am-
bitious long-range German plan to seize the Baltic States and the
Ukraine.
90
One of the very first acts of the Soviet Government on its as-
sumption of power had been to nationalize the great economic trusts
of the Czarist Empire. Russian mines, mills, factories, railroads, oil
wells and all other large-scale industrial enterprises were declared to
be the state property of the Soviet people. The Soviet Government
also repudiated the foreign debts incurred by the Czarist regime,
partly on the grounds that the monies had been advanced as a delib-
erate means of aiding Czarism to suppress the popular revolution.1
The Czarist Empire, for all its outward show of wealth and
power, had actually been a semi-colony of Anglo-French and Ger-
man financial interests. The French financial stake in Czarism
amounted to the sum of 17,591,000,000 francs. Anglo-French inter-
ests controlled no less than 72 per cent of Russian coal, iron and
steel, and 50 per cent of Russian oil. Annually, several hundreds of
millions of francs and pounds in dividends, profits and interest were
drawn from the labor of the Russian workers and peasants by for-
eign interests allied with the Czar.
After the Bolshevik Revolution, the London Stock Exchange
Year Book of 1919 recorded under the heading, “Russian Ac-
counts:” “Interest due, 1918, and since in arrears.”
A British member of Parliament, Lieutenant Colonel Cecil
L’Estrange Malone, told the House of Commons during a somewhat
heated debate on Allied policy in Russia in 1920:—
There are groups of people and individuals in this
country who have money and shares in Russia, and they are
the people who are working, scheming and intriguing to
overthrow the Bolshevik regime.... Under the old regime, it
1
After the terrible anti-Semitic pogroms perpetrated in 1906 by the
Black Hundreds in connivance with the Czarist secret police, Anatole
France vehemently denounced those French financiers who continued
to make loans to the Czar’s regime. “Let our fellow citizens at last have
ears to hear,” declared the famous French author. “They are warned a
very evil day may come for them, if they lend money again to the Rus-
sian Government, in order that it may shoot, hang, massacre, pillage at
will, and kill all liberty and civilization throughout the length of its
immense unhappy empire. Citizens of France, give no more money for
new cruelties and follies; give no more milliards for the martyrdom of
countless peoples.” But the French financiers did not heed Anatole
France’s passionate plea. They continued to invest millions in Czarism.
91
was possible to get ten or twenty per cent out of exploiting
the Russian workers and peasants, but under socialism it
will not be possible to get anything at all probably, and we
find that nearly every great interest in this country in some
way or another is connected with Soviet Russia.
The Russian Year Book for 1918, the speaker went on, had es-
timated combined British and French investments in Russia at ap-
proximately £1,600,000,000 sterling, or close to $8,000,000,000.
“When we talk about... Marshal Foch and the French people be-
ing opposed to peace with Russia,” said Colonel Malone, “we do
not mean the French democracy, and we do not mean the French
peasants or workers, but the French stockholders. Let us be quite
clear about that. We mean the people whose ill-earned savings con-
stitute the £1,600,000,000 which have been sunk in Russia.”
There was the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company, whose Russian
interests had included the Ural Caspian Oil Company, the North
Caucasian Oilfield, the New Schibareff Petroleum Company and
many other oil concerns; there was the great British arms trust of
Metro-Vickers which, together with the French Schneider-Creusot
and the German Krupp, had virtually controlled the Czarist
munitions industry; there were the big banking houses of Britain
and France: the Hoares, Baring Brothers, Hambros, Credit
Lyonnais, Societe Generale, Rothschilds and Comptoir National
d’Escompte de Paris, all of which had invested huge sums in the
Czarist regime....
“All these big interests,” Colonel Malone informed the House
of Commons, “are interwoven with one another. They are all inter-
ested in keeping the war going with Russia.... Behind these interests
and behind the financiers who sit on the other side of the House are
the newspapers and the other influences which go to make up public
opinion in this country.”
Some Allied spokesmen were quite frank as to their motives in
supporting the White Armies in Russia.
Sir Francis Baker, the European manager of Vickers and chair-
man of the Executive Committee of the Russo-British Chamber of
Commerce, addressed a banquet of the British Russia Club attended
by leading industrialists and politicians in London in 1919 with the-
se words:—
We wish success to Admiral Kolchak and General
92
Denikin, and I think I cannot do better than raise my glass
and ask you all to drink to the health of Admiral Kolchak,
General Denikin and General Yudenitch!
Russia is a great country. You all know, because you
are intimately connected with it in your business, what the
potentialities of Russia are, whether it be from the point of
view of manufacture or the point of view of mineral wealth,
or any other thing, because Russia has everything....
As Anglo-French troops and munitions poured into Siberia, the
Bulletin of the British Federation of Industries, the most powerful
association of British industrialists, exclaimed in print:—
Siberia, the most gigantic prize offered to the civilized
world since the discovery of the Americas!
As Allied troops drove into the Caucasus and occupied Baku,
the British business journal The Near East declared:—
In oil Baku is incomparable.... Baku is greater than any
other oil city in the world. If oil is king, Baku is its throne!
As the Allied-supported White Army of General Denikin
swarmed into the Don coal basin, Messrs. R. Martens and Co., Ltd.,
the great British coal combine, announced in their trade publication
Russia:
Russia possesses investigated coal reserves second on-
ly to the United States. According to the estimate published
by the international Geological Congress, she possesses in
the Donetz basin (where General Denikin is operating)
more than three times the reserves of anthracite of Great
Britain and nearly twice the amount at the disposal of the
United States.
And finally the Japan Salesman summed up:—
Russia, with her 180,000,000 of people, with her fertile
soil stretching from Central Europe across Asia to the
shores of the Pacific and from the Arctic down to the Per-
sian Gulf and the Black Sea... market possibilities such as
even the most optimistic dared not dream of.... Russia, po-
tentially and actually—the granary, the fishery, the lumber-
yard, the coal, gold, silver and platinum mine of the world!
93
The Anglo-French and Japanese invaders were attracted by the
rich prizes that awaited the conqueror of Russia. American motives,
however, were mixed. Traditional American foreign policy, as ex-
pressed by Woodrow Wilson and by the War Department, demand-
ed friendship with Russia as a potential ally and counterbalance to
German and Japanese Imperialism. American investments in Czar-
ism had been small: but, on the advice of the State Department, sev-
eral hundreds of millions of American dollars had been subsequent-
ly poured into Russia to prop up the shaky Kerensky regime. The
State Department continued to support Kerensky, and even to sub-
sidize his “Russian Embassy” in Washington for several years after
the Bolshevik Revolution. Certain officials in the State Department
co-operated with the White generals and the Anglo-French and Jap-
anese interventionists.
The most notable American to identify himself with the anti-
Soviet war was Herbert Hoover, the future President of the United
States, who at that time was the American Food Administrator.
A former mining engineer employed by British concerns, prior
to the First World War, Herbert Hoover had had investments in
Russian oil wells and mines. The corrupt Czarist regime swarmed
with high officials and land-owning aristocrats ready to barter their
country’s wealth and labor power in return for foreign bribes or a
share in the spoils. Hoover had become interested in Russian oil as
far back as 1909 when the wells at Maikop were first opened. With-
in a year, he had secured an interest in no less than eleven Russian
oil companies:—
Maikop Neftyanoi Syndicate
Maikop Shirvansky Oil Company
Maikop Apsheron Oil Company
Maikop and General Petroleum Trust
Maikop Oil and Petroleum Products
Maikop Areas Oil Company
Maikop Valley Oil Company
Maikop Mutual Oil Company
Maikop Hadijensky Syndicate
Maikop New Producers Company
Amalgamated Maikop Oilfields
By 1912, the former mining engineer was associated with the
famous British multimillionaire, Leslie Urquhart, in three new com-
94
panies which had been set up to exploit timber and mineral conces-
sions in the Urals and Siberia. Urquhart then floated the Russo-
Asiatic Corporation and made a deal with two Czarist banks where-
by this Corporation would handle all mining prospects in those are-
as. Russo-Asiatic shares rose from $16.25 in 1913 to $47.50 in
1914. That same year the Corporation obtained three new profitable
concessions from the Czarist regime which comprised:—
2,500,000 acres of land, including vast timberlands, and water-
power; estimated gold, copper, silver and zinc reserves of
7,262,000 tons;
12 developed mines;
2 copper smelters;
20 sawmills;
250 miles of railroad;
blast furnaces, rolling mills, sulphuric acid plants, gold refiner-
ies; huge coal reserves.
The total value of these properties was estimated at
$1,000,000,000.
By 1917 Hoover had withdrawn from the Russo-Asiatic Corpo-
ration, and had sold his Russian holdings. After the Bolshevik Rev-
olution all the concessions with which Hoover had formerly been
associated were abrogated and the mines confiscated by the Soviet
Government.
“Bolshevism,” said Herbert Hoover at the Paris Peace Confer-
ence, “is worse than war!”
He was to remain one of the world’s bitterest foes of the Soviet
Government for the rest of his life. It is a fact, whatever his personal
motive may have been, that American food sustained the White
Russians and fed the storm troops of the most reactionary regimes
in Europe which were engaged in suppressing the upsurge of de-
mocracy after the First World War. Thus American relief became a
weapon against the peoples’ movement in Europe.2
2
Herbert Hoover’s activities as Food Relief Administrator were di-
rected toward giving aid to the White Russians and withholding all
supplies from the Soviets. Hundreds of thousands starved in Soviet
territory. When, finally, Hoover bowed to public pressure and sent
some food to the Soviets, he continued—according to a statement by a
Near East Relief official in the New York World in April, 1922—to
95
“The whole of American policy during the liquidation of the
Armistice was to contribute everything it could to prevent Europe
from going Bolshevik or being overrun by their armies,” Hoover
later declared in a letter to Oswald Garrison Villard on August 17,
1921. His definition of “Bolshevism” coincided with that of Foch,
Petain, Knox, Reilly and Tanaka. As Secretary of Commerce, as
President of the United States, and subsequently as a leader of the
isolationist wing of the Republican Party, he fought untiringly to
prevent the establishment of friendly commercial and diplomatic
relations between America and America’s most powerful ally
against world fascism, the Soviet Union.
The armed intervention failed in Russia not only because of the
unprecedented solidarity and heroism of the Soviet peoples who
were fighting to defend their new-won freedom, but also because of
the strong support given the young Soviet Republic by the demo-
cratic peoples throughout the world. In France, England and the
United States, an aroused public opinion had vigorously opposed
the sending of men, arms, food and money to the anti-Soviet armies
in Russia. “Hands Off Russia!” committees were formed. Workers
struck and soldiers mutinied against the interventionist policies of
the General Staffs. Democratic statesmen, journalists, educators and
many businessmen protested against the undeclared and unprovoked
attack on Soviet Russia.
Sir Henry Wilson, British Chief of Staff, frankly acknowledged
the lack of public support of the Allied interventionist policy. On
December 1, 1919, in the official British Blue Book, the Chief of
Staff wrote:—
The difficulties of the Entente in formulating a Russian
“interfere with the collection of funds for famine-stricken Russia.” In

February, 1922, when Hoover was Secretary of Commerce, the New
York Globe made this editorial comment: “Bureaucrats centered
throughout the Department of Justice, the Department of State and the
Department of Commerce for purposes of publicity are carrying on a
private war with the Bolshevist Government.... Washington propaganda
has grown to menacing proportions.... Messrs. Hughes and Hoover and
Dougherty will do well to clean their houses before public irritation
reaches too high a point. The American people will not long endure a
presumptuous bureaucracy which for its own wretched purposes is will-
ing to let millions of innocent people die.”
96
policy have, indeed, proved insurmountable, since in no Al-
lied country has there been a sufficient weight of public
opinion to justify armed intervention against the Bolsheviks
on a decisive scale, with the inevitable result that military
operations have lacked cohesion and purpose.
The victory of the Red Army over its enemies thus represented
at the same time an international victory for the democratic peoples
of all countries.
A final reason for the failure of the intervention was the lack of
unity among the invaders. The instigators of the intervention repre-
sented a coalition of world reaction, but it was a coalition without
genuine co-operation. Imperialist rivalries rended the imperialist
coalition. The British feared French ambitions in the Black Sea and
German ambitions in the Baltic area. The Americans found it neces-
sary to frustrate Japanese aims in Siberia. The White generals quar-
reled among themselves over the spoils.
The war of intervention, begun in secrecy and dishonesty, end-
ed in shameful disaster.
Its legacy of hatred and mistrust was to poison the atmosphere
of Europe for the next quarter of a century.
97
BOOK TWO
Secrets of the Cordon: Sanitaire
CHAPTER VIII
The White Crusade
1. The Ferment of the Aftermath
The first round of the war against Soviet Russia had ended in some-
thing very like a draw. The Soviet Government was in undisputed
possession of most of its own territories; but it was ostracized by the
other nations, bound in by a cordon sanitaire of hostile puppet
states, and cut off from normal political and commercial intercourse
with the rest of the world. Officially, the Soviet one-sixth of the
earth did not exist—it was “not recognized.”
At home, the Soviet Government was confronted with an eco-
nomic wilderness of smashed factories, flooded mines, ruined agri-
culture, wrecked transport, disease, famine, and almost universal
illiteracy. To the bankrupt heritage of the feudal Czarist regime had
been added the debris of seven years of ceaseless war, revolution,
counterrevolution and foreign invasion.
The world outside the Soviet borders was still searching for
peace, and not finding it. The English statesman, Bonar Law, relat-
ing the conditions of the world four years after the signing of the
Versailles Peace, told the House of Commons that no less than
twenty-three wars were still being waged in different parts of the
world. Japan had occupied regions of China and brutally suppressed
the Korean independence movement; British troops were putting
down popular rebellions in Ireland, Afghanistan, Egypt and India;
the French were engaged in open warfare with the Druse tribes in
Syria, who, to French chagrin, were armed with machine guns from
the British factories of Metro-Vickers; the German General Staff,
operating behind the façade of the Weimar Republic, was conspir-
ing to wipe out democratic German elements and to resurrect Impe-
rialist Germany.
Every country in Europe seethed with feverish plots and coun-
terplots of fascists, nationalists, militarists and monarchists, all
promoting their own ends under the general mask of “Anti-
Bolshevism.”
A secret memorandum, drafted in those early postwar years by
98
the British Foreign Office, described the state of Europe in these
words: —
Europe today is divided into three main elements,
namely, the victors, the vanquished, and Russia. The feel-
ing of uncertainty which is sapping the health of Western
Europe is caused to no small extent by the disappearance of
Russia as a power, accountable in the European concert.
The most menacing of our uncertainties.
All our late enemies continue full of resentment at
what they have lost; all our late Allies are fearful of losing
what they have won. One half of Europe is dangerously
angry, the other half is dangerously afraid. Fear begets
provocation, armaments, secret alliances, ill-treatment of
minorities. These in turn beget a greater hatred, and
stimulate a desire for revenge, whereby fear is intensified
and its consequences are enhanced. The vicious circle is
thus established.
Although Germany is at present quite incapable of un-
dertaking aggressive action, it is certain that with great mil-
itary chemical potentialities she will sooner or later again
become a powerful military factor. There are but few Ger-
mans who seriously hope to exert this strength, when reac-
quired, against the British Empire....
While the British Foreign Office was complacently contemplat-
ing the rearmament of Germany and devoting its attention to Russia
as the “most menacing of our uncertainties,” across the Atlantic,
amid the hysteria and confusion of the post-Wilsonian era, the Unit-
ed States was dreaming of “glorious isolation.” The great American
illusion of the time was summed up in the phrase “a return to nor-
malcy.” According to Walter Lippmann, then writing for the New
York World, “normalcy” consisted of the following beliefs:—
That the fate of America is in no important way con-
nected with the fate of Europe.
That Europe should stew in its own juice....
That we can sell to Europe, without buying from
Europe.
...and that if Europe doesn’t like if she can lump it, but
she had better not.
99
Walter Lippmann concluded:—
Out of the fears and in the midst of this disorder a kind
of hysteria has been generated. It has evoked armies, crazy
tariffs, wildcat diplomacy, every variety of morbid nation-
alism, Fascisti and Ku-Kluxers....
In spite of the unrest, war weariness and economic anarchy still
prevailing in Europe, new plans for the military invasion of Soviet
Russia continued to be drawn up and assiduously studied by the
General Staffs of Poland, Finland, Rumania, Yugoslavia, France,
England, and Germany.
The frantic anti-Soviet propaganda went on.
Four years after the great war that was to end all wars, all the
elements existed for the making of a second world war—to be
launched against world democracy under the slogan of “anti-
Bolshevism.”
2. White Russian Exodus
With the debacle of the White armies of Kolchak, Yudenitch,
Denikin, Wrangel and Semyonov, the immense archaic structure of
Czarism had undergone its final collapse, scattering far and wide the
turbid elements of savagery, barbarism and reaction which it had so
long sheltered. The ruthless adventurers, the decadent aristocrats,
the professional terrorists, the bandit soldiery, the dreaded secret
police and all the other feudal and anti-democratic forces that had
constituted the White Counterrevolution now spilled out of Russia
like a muddy, turbulent stream. Westward, eastward and southward,
through Europe and the Far East, into North and South America, it
flowed, bringing with it the sadism of the White Guard generals, the
pogromist doctrines of the Black Hundreds, the fierce contempt of
Czarism for democracy, the dark hatreds, prejudices and neuroses of
old Imperial Russia.
The Protocols of Zion, the anti-Semitic forgeries by which the
Ochrana had incited massacres of the Jews and the bible by which
the Black Hundreds explained all the ills of the world in terms of an
“international Jewish plot,” were now circulated publicly in London
and New York, Paris and Buenos Aires, Shanghai and Madrid.
Wherever the White émigrés went, they fertilized the soil for
the World Counterrevolution—Fascism.
By 1923 there were half a million White Russians living in
100
Germany. More than 400,000 had migrated to France, and 90,000 to
Poland: Other tens of thousands had settled in the Baltic and Balkan
States, in China and Japan, in Canada, the United States and South
America. Three thousand White Russian officers and their families
had settled in New York City alone.
The total number of Russian émigrés was estimated at between
one and a half and two million.1
Under the supervision of a Russian Military Union, which had
its headquarters in Paris, armed units of White Russians were estab-
lished throughout Europe, the Far East, and America. They openly
announced they were preparing for a new invasion of Soviet Russia.
The French Government founded a naval training school for
White Russians at the North African port of Bizerte, where thirty
ships from the Czarist fleet had been dispatched with crews of 6000
officers and men. The Yugoslavian Government established special
academies for the training of former officers of the Czar’s Army
and their sons. Large detachments from Baron Wrangel’s Army
were transferred intact into the Balkans. Eighteen thousand Cos-
sacks and cavalrymen were sent into Yugoslavia. Seventeen thou-
sand White Russian troops went to Bulgaria. Thousands more were
stationed in Greece and Hungary. White Guard Russians took over
entire branches of the secret police apparatus in the anti-Soviet Bal-
tic and Balkan States and moved into key government posts.
With the assistance of Marshal Pilsudski, the Russian terrorist
Boris Savinkov organized a White Army of 30,000 men in Poland.
Ataman Semyonov fled with the remnants of his armies into
Japanese territory. His troops were reorganized into a special White
Russian Army under the supervision of the Japanese High
Command.
Baron Wrangel, General Denikin and the pogromist Simon
Petlura settled in Paris, where they became immediately involved in
1
Not all the refugees were counterrevolutionaries. Thousands of
confused and uprooted people, terrified by an elemental upheaval they
could not comprehend, had joined the mass exodus. Moving from one
country to another, they strove desperately to earn a living in a strange
new world. Some became taxicab drivers, waiters, maids, nightclub
entertainers, cooks, guides. Many, facing starvation in the cities of
western Europe, became beggars. The brothels of Harbin, Shanghai and
Peking teemed with White Russian refugees.
101
diverse anti-Soviet plots.2 Generals Krasnov and the Hetman
Skoropadsky, who had collaborated with the Kaiser’s army in the
Ukraine, went to live in Berlin, and were taken under the wing of
the German Military Intelligence.3
In 1920 a small group of immensely wealthy Russian émigrés,
all of whom had maintained huge investments in France and other
foreign countries, came together in Paris and founded an organiza-
tion which was destined to play a major role in future conspiracies
against Soviet Russia. The organization, which was given the name
of the Torgprom, or Russian Trade, Financial and Industrial Com-
mittee, consisted of former Czarist bankers, industrialists and busi-
nessmen. Among its members were G.N. Nobel, who had held a
controlling interest in Russia’s Baku oil fields; Stepan Lianozov, the
Russian “Rockefeller”; Vladimir Riabushinsky, a member of the
famous family of Czarist merchants; N. C. Denisov, whose im-
mense fortune had been amassed in the steel industry; and other
Russian economic royalists whose names were famous in industrial
and financial circles throughout the world.
Associated with these men in the Torgprom were British,
French and German interests which had not abandoned hopes of
retrieving their lost Russian investments or gaining new concessions
as a result of the overthrow of the Soviet regime.
“The Torgprom,” stated Denisov, the chairman of the organiza-
tion, “has made it its aim to fight the Bolsheviks on the economic
2
In December, 1945, General Anton Denikin was admitted to the
United States as a permanent resident on a visa issued to him in Paris
by officials of the U. S. State Department.
3
The subsequent careers of many of the generals who led the for-
eign armies of intervention against Soviet Russia are of considerable
interest. The Czech generals, Sirovy and Gayda, returned to Prague
where the former became Commander-in Chief of the Czech Army and
the latter Chief of Staff. In 1926 General Gayda participated in an abor-
tive fascist coup d’état and subsequently was involved in other fascist
conspiracies. General Sirovy played the role of the key Czech military
Quisling in 1938. The British General Knox returned to England to
become a Tory member of Parliament, a violent, anti-Soviet agitator
and a founder of the Friends of Nationalist Spain. Foch, Petain, Wey-
gand, Mannerheim, Tanaka, Hoffmann and other interventionist gener-
als became leaders in anti-Soviet and fascist movements during the
postwar period.
102
front in every manner and form.” Torgprom members were interest-
ed, as Nobel phrased it, “in the early resurrection of the fatherland
and in the possibility of soon being able to work in the fatherland.”
The Torgprom’s anti-Soviet operations were not limited to the
economic front. An official statement issued by the Torgprom
announced:—
The Trade and Industrial Committee will continue its
unremitting struggle against the Soviet Government, will
continue to enlighten the public opinion of cultured coun-
tries as to the true significance of the events taking place in
Russia and to prepare for the future revolt in the name of
freedom and truth..
3. A Gentleman from Reval
In June, 1921, a group of former Czarist officers, industrialists
and aristocrats called an International Anti-Soviet Conference at the
Reichenhalle in Bavaria. The conference, which was attended by
representatives from anti-Soviet organizations throughout Europe,
drew up plans for a world-wide campaign of agitation against Sovi-
et Russia.
A “Supreme Monarchist Council” was elected by the Confer-
ence. Its function was to work for “the restoration of the monarchy,
headed by the lawful sovereign of the Romanov house, in accord-
ance with the fundamental laws of the Russian Empire.”
The infant National Socialist Party of Germany sent a delegate
to the Conference. His name was Alfred Rosenberg....
A slender, pale-faced young man with thin lips, dark hair, and a
weary, brooding expression, Alfred Rosenberg had begun frequent-
ing the beer halls of Munich in the summer of 1919. He could usu-
ally be found at the Augustinerbrau or at the Franziskanerbrau,
where he sat alone for hours on end at one of the tables in a corner.
Occasionally companions joined him and then, although he greeted
them with little warmth, his manner would brighten, and his dark
eyes would come to life and gleam in his chalky face as he started
talking in a low, passionate voice. He spoke Russian and German
with equal fluency.
Rosenberg was the son of a Baltic landowner who had owned a
large estate near the Czarist port of Reval. His father claimed de-
scent from the Teutonic Knights who had invaded the Baltic States
103
in the Middle Ages; and young Rosenberg proudly regarded himself
as a German. Before the Revolution in Russia, he had studied archi-
tecture at the Polytechnikum in Moscow. He had fled from Soviet
territory when the Bolsheviks seized power and joined the ranks of
the White Guard terrorists fighting under General Count Rüdiger
von der Goltz in the Baltic area. In 1919 Rosenberg had turned up
in Munich, his mind teeming with the anti-democratic and anti-
Semitic doctrines of the Czarist Black Hundreds.
A small group of White Guard émigrés and dispossessed Baltic
barons began gathering regularly in Munich to hear Rosenberg’s
intense, venomous tirades against the Communists and the Jews.
His audience usually included Prince Avalov-Bermondt, Rasputin’s
former friend, who had been General von der Goltz’s most brutal
White Guard commander in the Baltic area; Barons Schneuber-
Richter and Amo von Schickedanz, two decadent and ruthless Bal-
tic aristocrats; and Ivan-Poltavetz-Ostranitza, a Ukrainian
pogromist, who had been Minister of Communications in the
Ukrainian government of the Kaiser’s puppet, Hetman Paul
Skoropadsky. These men shared Rosenberg’s Black Hundred views
on the decadence of democracy and the international conspiracy of
the Jews.
“At bottom every Jew is a Bolshevik!” was the constant theme
of Rosenberg’s tirades.
Out of Alfred Rosenberg’s dark tortured mind, his pathological
hatred for the Jews and frenzied enmity toward the Soviets, there
was gradually evolving a world philosophy of counterrevolution,
compounded of the fanatical prejudices of Czarist Russia and the
imperialistic ambitions of Germany. The salvation of the world
from “decadent Jewish democracy and Bolshevism,” Rosenberg
wrote in The Myth of the Twentieth Century, was to begin “in Ger-
many” with the creation of a new German state. “It is the duty of the
founder of the new State,” he added, “to form an association of men
on the lines of the Teutonic Order.”
A race of German supermen was to carry out the task of world
conquest: “The meaning of world history has radiated from the
north, borne by a blue-eyed blond race which in several waves de-
termined the spiritual face of the world.”
The idea of a holy crusade against Soviet Russia dominated all
of Rosenberg’s writings. He longed for the apocalyptic day when
the mighty armies of the new “Teutonic Order” would pour across
104
the Russian frontiers and smash the hateful Bolsheviks. “From west
to east is the direction,” he declared, “from the Rhine to the Weich-
sel, from west to east it must resound, from Moscow to Tomsk.”
Germany was passing through its period of bitter postwar crisis,
of mass unemployment, of unprecedented inflation and widespread
hunger. Behind the democratic facade of the Weimar Republic,
which had been established in collusion with the German High
Command after the bloody suppression of the German workers’ and
soldiers’ soviets, a cabal of Prussian militarists, Junkers and indus-
trial magnates were furtively planning the rebirth and expansion of
Imperial Germany. Unknown to the rest of the world, Germany’s
future rearmament program was being carefully mapped out by
hundreds of engineers, draftsmen and special technicians, working
under the supervision of the German High Command, in a secret
research and planning laboratory constructed by the firm of Borsig4
in a forest outside Berlin.
Supposedly, the German Military Intelligence, Section IIIB, had
been disbanded at the conclusion of the war. Actually, it had been
reorganized with lavish funds supplied by Krupp, Hugenberg and
Thyssen, and was busily functioning under the supervision of its old
anti-Semitic chief, Colonel Walther Nicolai.
The plans for Germany’s new war were being elaborately and
diligently prepared....
Among the chief financial contributors to the secret campaign
for rejuvenating German Imperialism was a suave, energetic indus-
trialist whose name was Arnold Rechberg. A former personal adju-
tant of the Crown Prince and a close friend of the members of the
old Imperial High Command, Rechberg was associated with the
great German potash trust. He was one of the chief promoters of the
secret German, nationalist and anti-Semitic leagues. It was this avo-
cation that drew his attention to Alfred Rosenberg.
Rechberg arranged to meet Rosenberg. Taking an immediate
lilting to the counterrevolutionary zealot from Reval, Rechberg in-
troduced him to another of his protégés, a thirty-year-old Austrian
rabble-rouser and Reichswehr spy named Adolf Hitler.
Rechberg was already providing funds to buy the uniforms and
to meet various other expenses of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party. Now
4
For Borsig’s subsidization of subsequent fifth column operations
in the Soviet Union, see page 201.
105
Rechberg and his wealthy friends purchased an obscure newspaper,
the Volkischer Beobachter, and turned it over to the Nazi move-
ment. The publication became the official organ of the Nazi Party.
As its editor, Hitler appointed Alfred Rosenberg....
On New Year’s Day, 1921, ten days after the, Volkischer
Beobachter had become the property of the Nazis, the paper out-
lined the basic foreign policy of Hitler’s Party:—
And when the time comes and the storm is brewing
over the eastern marches of Germany, it will be a case of
collecting a hundred thousand men who are prepared to
sacrifice their lives there.... Those who are determined to
dare all must be prepared for the attitude of the Western
Jews... who will raise woeful voices when the Eastern Jews
are attacked.... What is certain is that the Russian army will
be driven back across its frontiers after a second Dannen-
berg. That is a purely German affair and the real beginning
of our reconstruction.
The editorial was written by Alfred Rosenberg. Out of the mer-
ger of feudal Czarism and the reborn twentieth-century German
Imperialism, Nazism was taking form....
4. The Hoffmann Plan
Alfred Rosenberg was to supply the political ideology of the
German Nazi Party. Another of Rechberg’s friends, General Max
Hoffmann, was to provide the military strategy.
General Max Hoffmann had spent much of his youth in Russia
as an attaché at the Court of the Czar. He had come to speak Rus-
sian more fluently than German. In 1905, as a thirty-five-year-old
captain newly appointed to General von Schlieffen’s staff, he had
served as German liaison officer with the First Japanese Army in
the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Hoffmann never forgot what
he saw on the Manchurian plains—a seemingly limitless front, and
a compact, perfectly trained attacking force cutting “like a knife
through butter” into a far larger defending army that had huge re-
serves, but was cumbersome and ill-led.
At the start of the First World War, Hoffmann was appointed
Chief of Operations of the Eighth German Army stationed in East
Prussia to meet the anticipated Russian blow. The strategy which
brought about the Czarist debacle at Tannenberg was later credited
106
by military authorities not to Hindenburg or Ludendorff, but to
Hoffmann. After Tannenberg, Hoffmann became the commander of
the German forces on the Eastern Front. He witnessed the collapse
of the Imperial Russian Army. At Brest-Litovsk, he dictated Ger-
many’s peace terms to the Soviet delegation.
In two wars, Hoffmann had seen the Russian Army in action,
and each time he had witnessed its crushing defeat. The Red Army,
in Hoffmann’s opinion, was only the old Russian Army “decom-
posed into a rabble.”
In the early spring of 1919, General Max Hoffmann had pre-
sented himself at the Paris Peace Conference with his ready-made
Plan for a march on Moscow to be headed by the German Army.
From Hoffmann’s viewpoint his Plan had a double advantage: it
would not only “save Europe from Bolshevism”; it would at the
same time save the German Imperial Army and prevent its dissolu-
tion. A modified form of Hoffmann’s Plan had been endorsed by
Marshal Foch.
On November 22, 1919, General Hoffmann declared in an in-
terview with the London Daily Telegraph: “During the past two
years I have gradually come to the conclusion that Bolshevism is
the greatest danger that has threatened Europe for centuries....”
Hoffmann’s memoirs, The War of Lost Opportunities, bewailed the
world’s failure to march on Moscow according to the original con-
ception of his Plan.
Following a visit to General Hoffmann in Berlin in 1923, the
British Ambassador Lord D’Abernon recorded in his diplomatic
diary:—
All his opinions are governed by his general concep-
tion that nothing can go right in the world until the civilized
Powers of the West come together and hang the Soviet
Government.... Asked if he believed in the possibility of
any unity between France, Germany and England to attack
Russia, he replied: “It is such a necessity, it must come!”
In the postwar years, after the failure of armed intervention
against Soviet Russia, Hoffmann brought out a new version of his
Plan, and began circulating it, in the form of a confidential Memo-
randum among the General Staffs of Europe. The Memorandum
immediately aroused keen interest in Europe’s growing pro-fascist
circles. Marshal Foch and his Chief of Staff, Petain, both of whom
107
were close personal friends of Hoffmann, expressed their warm ap-
proval of the revised Plan. Among the other personalities who gave
the Plan their endorsement were Franz von Papen, General Baron
Karl von Mannerheim, Admiral Horthy and the British Director of
Naval Intelligence, Admiral Sir Barry Domvile.
The Hoffmann Plan, in its later versions, gained the backing of
a large and powerful section of the German High Command, alt-
hough it clearly represented a radical departure from the traditional
Bismarckian school of German military and political strategy.5 The
new Hoffmann Plan projected a German alliance with France, Italy,
England and Poland, based on a common cause against Soviet Rus-
sia. Strategically, in the words of a prescient European commenta-
tor, Ernst Henri, in his book, Hitler Over Russia, the plan called for
concentration of new armies on the Vistula and the Dvina
on the model of Napoleon; lightning march, under German
command, on the retreating Bolshevik hordes; occupation
of Leningrad and Moscow in the course of a few weeks; fi-
nal clean-up of the country down to the Urals—and so the
salvation of an exhausted civilization through the conquest
of half a continent.
The whole of Europe, under German leadership, was to be mo-
bilized and hurled against the Soviet Union.
5 At first General Hans von Seeckt, commander of the German

Reichswehr, opposed the Hoffmann Plan. Seeckt dreamed of a war of
revanche against the West, in which he hoped to be able to use Russian
raw materials and manpower. He believed he could come to terms with
the opposition elements in the Red Army and Soviet Government. Lat-
er, Seeckt gave his backing to the Hoffmann Plan and became a Nazi.
108
CHAPTER IX
The Strange Career of a Terrorist
1. The Return of Sidney Reilly
Berlin, December, 1922. A German naval officer and a British
Intelligence officer were chatting in the crowded lounge of the fa-
mous Hotel Adlon with a young, pretty, fashionably dressed wom-
an. She was a London musical comedy star, Pepita Bobadilla, oth-
erwise known as Mrs. Chambers, widow of the successful British
dramatist, Haddon Chambers. The subject of espionage came up.
The Englishman began talking about the extraordinary exploits in
Soviet Russia of a British Intelligence agent to whom he referred as
Mr. C. The German was familiar with Mr. C.’s reputation. They
regaled one another with anecdotes of his fabulous adventures. Fi-
nally, unable to restrain her curiosity any longer, Mrs. Chambers
asked, “Who is this Mr. C.?” “Who is he not?” replied the English-
man. “I tell you, Mrs. Chambers, this Mr. C. is a man of mystery.
He is the most mysterious man in Europe. And incidentally I should
say he has a bigger price on his head than any man breathing. The
Bolsheviks would give a province for him dead or alive.... He’s a
man that lives on danger. He has been our eyes and ears in Russia
on many an occasion, and, between ourselves, he alone is responsi-
ble for Bolshevism not being a bigger danger to Western civiliza-
tion than it is at present.”
Mrs. Chambers was eager to hear more about the mysterious
Mr. C. Her companion smiled, “I saw him this afternoon,” the Eng-
lishman said. “He’s staying here in the Adlon Hotel....”
That same evening Mrs. Chambers had her first glimpse of Mr.
C. He was, she later wrote, “a well-groomed and well-tailored fig-
ure” with “a lean, rather sombre face” and “an expression, which
might almost have been sardonic, the expression of a man, who not
once, but many times had laughed in the face of death.” Mrs.
Chambers fell in love with him at first sight.
They were introduced. Mr. C. talked to Mrs. Chambers that
evening “of the state of Europe, of Russia, of the Cheka,” above all,
of the “menace of Bolshevism.” He told Mrs. Chambers his real
name: Captain Sidney George Reilly....
Following the debacle of his 1918 conspiracy against the Sovi-
ets, Sidney Reilly had been sent back to Russia by the British Secre-
109
tary of War, Winston Churchill, to help organize the espionage ser-
vice of General Denikin. Reilly also acted as liaison between
Denikin and his various European anti-Soviet allies. During 1919
and 1920, the British spy had worked diligently in Paris, Warsaw
and Prague, organizing anti-Soviet armies and espionage-sabotage
agencies. Later, he served as a semiofficial agent for some of the
Czarist émigré millionaires, including his old friend and employer,
Count Tchubersky. One of the more ambitious projects Reilly
helped launch during this period was the Torgprom, the cartel of the
Czarist émigré industrialists and their Anglo-French and German
partners.
As a result of his financial operations, Reilly had amassed a
considerable personal fortune and held directorships in a number of
firms formerly associated with Russian big business. He had devel-
oped important international contacts, and counted among his per-
sonal friends Winston Churchill, General Max Hoffmann and the
Finnish Chief of Staff Wallenius.
The British spy’s fanatical hatred of Soviet Russia had not di-
minished. The annihilation of Bolshevism was now the dominating
motive of his life. His passionate interest in Napoleon, the would-be
conqueror of Russia, had led him to become one of the world’s most
enthusiastic collectors of Napoleoniana. The value of his collection
ran into the tens of thousands of dollars. The personality of the Cor-
sican dictator fascinated him.
“A Corsican lieutenant of artillery trod out the embers of the
French Revolution,” said Sidney Reilly. “Surely a British espionage
agent with so many factors on his side, could make himself master
of Moscow?”
On May 18, 1923, Mrs. Chambers was married to Captain Sid-
ney Reilly at the Registry Office in Henrietta Street, Covent Gar-
den, in London. Captain George Hill, Reilly’s old accomplice from
Moscow days, acted as witness.
Mrs. Chambers was soon participating in the fantastic intrigues
of her husband’s life. She later wrote:—
Gradually I was initiated into those strange proceed-
ings which were going on behind the scenes of European
politics. I learned how beneath the surface of every capital
in Europe was simmering the conspiracy of the exiles
against the present tyrants of their country. In Berlin, in
110
Paris, in Prague, in London itself, small groups of exiles
were plotting, planning, conspiring. Helsingfors [Helsinki]
was absolutely seething with counterrevolution, which had
been financed and abetted by several of the governments of
Europe. In this whole movement Sidney was intensely in-
terested and was devoting much time and money to the
cause.
One day a mysterious visitor presented himself at Sidney Reil-
ly’s London apartment. He first introduced himself as “Mr. Warn-
er.” He had a great black beard which almost concealed his entire
face, prominent cheekbones and cold, steely-blue eyes. He was a
huge man, and his long loose arms hung almost to his knees. He
produced his credentials. They included a British passport, a vouch-
er written and signed in Paris by the Social Revolutionary leader,
Boris Savinkov, and a letter of introduction by a prominent British
statesman.
“I shall be in London about a week,” the visitor told Reilly,
“conferring with your Foreign Office.” “Mr. Warner” then revealed
his identity. His real name was Drebkov, and he had been the leader
of one of the “Fives” groups in Reilly’s anti-Soviet conspiratorial
apparatus in Russia in 1918. He now was head of a White Russian
underground organization in Moscow.
“That was a fine organization you had in Russia, Captain Reil-
ly,” said Drebkov. “We picked up the strands again! We have got it
working again. All your old agents ate there. You remember
Baikov? He’s with us.... Some day or other we overthrow the Red-
skins, and the good times begin again. But you know what we Rus-
sians are. We scheme and scheme and scheme, and build wonderful
plot after wonderful plot, and quarrel among ourselves over irrele-
vant details, and golden opportunity after golden opportunity slips
by, and nothing is done. Pah!” Drebkov came to the point of his
visit. “We want a man in Russia, Captain Reilly,” he said, “a man
who can command and get things done, whose commands there is
no disputing, a man who will be master, a dictator, if you like, as
Mussolini is in Italy, a man who will compose the feuds which dis-
unite our friends there with an iron hand and will weld us into the
weapon that will smite the present tyrants of Russia to the heart!”
“What about Savinkov?” asked Sidney Reilly. “He is in Paris,
the very man for you, a really great man, a great personality, a born
111
leader and organizer!”
Mrs. Reilly, recording the interview in her memoirs, wrote:—
I could read in Sidney’s tone how great was the sacri-
fice he was making in handing over this business to
Savinkov, the Russian leader, whom he admired so whole-
heartedly.
2. “A Business Like Any Other!”
Boris Savinkov, who by 1924 was being seriously considered in
the inner policy-making circles at Downing Street and the Quai
d’Orsay as the future Dictator of Russia, was in many ways one of
the most remarkable men to emerge from the chaos of the collapse
of Old Russia. A slight, pallid, baldish, soft-spoken man, who was
usually impeccably dressed in a frock coat and patent-leather boots,
Savinkov looked more like “the manager of a bank,” as Somerset
Maugham once said, than the famous terrorist and ruthless coun-
terrevolutionary he really was. His talents were many and diverse.
Winston Churchill, to whom Savinkov was first introduced by Sid-
ney Reilly, later described the Russian terrorist in his book Great
Contemporaries as displaying “the wisdom of a statesman, the qual-
ities of a commander, the courage of a hero, and the endurance of a
martyr.” Savinkov’s whole life, adds Churchill, “had been spent in
conspiracy.”
As a young man in Czarist Russia, Savinkov had been a leading
member of the Social Revolutionary Party. Together with four other
leaders he headed the Party’s Battle Organization, a special terrorist
committee responsible for arranging the assassination of Czarist
officials: The Grand Duke Sergei, uncle of the Czar, and the Minis-
ter of the Interior, V. K. Plehve, were among the Czarist officials
killed by the Battle Organization in the early 1900’s.1
1
The real leader of the Battle Organization was Ievno Aseff, one
of the most extraordinary agents provocateurs in history. A spy in the
employ of the Czarist secret police, Aseff—while periodically betray-
ing revolutionaries and terrorists—actually drew up the plans for the
assassination of the Grand Duke Sergei, Plehve, and other Czarist offi-
cials. His sole interest was money; he helped arrange these killings be-
cause he knew that such accomplishments would enable him to demand
a larger expense account from the Social Revolutionary Party. Natural-
ly, he kept the Czarist Secret police unaware of the part he was playing
112
After the failure of the first attempt to overthrow Czarism in
1905, Boris Savinkov became somewhat disillusioned with the life
of a revolutionary. He began to devote himself to literature. He
wrote a sensational autobiographical novel, The Pale Horse, in
which he described his role in the assassinations of Plehve and the
Grand Duke Sergei. He related how, disguised as a British agent, he
sat in a little house on a Russian side street, with a forged British
passport in his pocket and “3 kilograms of dynamite under the ta-
ble,” waiting day after day for the Grand Duke’s carriage to pass
down the street.
Years later, during the First World War, when the British nov-
elist, Somerset Maugham, was sent into Russia by the British Secret
Service to establish contact with Savinkov,2 he asked the Russian
terrorist if it had not taken great courage to carry out these assassi-
nations. Savinkov replied:—
“Not at all, believe me. It is a business, like any other. One gets
accustomed to it.”
In June, 1917, Boris Savinkov, professional assassin and novel-
ist, was appointed by Kerensky, on the advice of his Allied advisers,
to the post of Political Commissar of the 7th Army on the Galician
Front. The troops of this army group were mutinying against the
Provisional Government, and it was thought Savinkov’s strong-arm
methods were needed to cope with the situation. Savinkov quelled
the disturbance. On one occasion, he was reported to have shot with
his own hands the delegates from a Bolshevik Soldiers’ Council....
At Savinkov’s insistence Kerensky made General Kornilov
Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armies. Savinkov himself was
appointed Assistant Minister of War. He was already acting as a
in these assassinations.
Another Social Revolutionary leader who worked closely with
Savinkov and Aseff was Victor Chernov. Like Savinkov, Chernov later
became very active in anti-Soviet work. He came to the United States
in 1940, and, at the time of writing, is still in this country, where he
specializes in spreading anti-Soviet: propaganda. See Chapter XXIII for
further details on Chernov’s current activities.
2
In the preface to his book, Ashenden or The British Agent, Som-
erset Maugham describes his chief assignment in Russia as follows: “In
1917 I went to Russia. I was sent to prevent the Bolshevik revolution
and to keep Russia in the war.” Maugham adds: “The reader will know
that my efforts did not meet with success.”
113
secret agent of the French Government and was plotting to over-
throw the Kerensky regime and establish a military dictatorship un-
der Kornilov.
After the Bolshevik Revolution, Savinkov led an anti-Soviet
uprising at Yaroslav secretly financed by the French and timed to
coincide with Sidney Reilly’s attempted coup d’état in Moscow.
Savinkov’s forces were smashed by the Red Army, and he barely
escaped with his life. Fleeing the country, he became one of the dip-
lomatic representatives of the White Russians in Europe. As Win-
ston Churchill wrote about Savinkov in Great Contemporaries:
“Responsible for all the relations with the Allies and with not the
less important Baltic and Border states which formed at that time
the ‘Sanitary Cordon’ of the west, the ex-Nihilist displayed every
capacity whether for command or for intrigue.”
In 1920, Savinkov moved to Poland. With the aid of his good
friend Marshal Pilsudski, he collected some 30,000 officers and
men, armed them and began training them in preparation for another
assault against Soviet Russia.
Subsequently, Savinkov moved his headquarters to Prague.
There, working closely with the Czech fascist General Oayda,
Savinkov created an organization known as the Green Guards,
composed largely of former Czarist officers and counterrevolution-
ary terrorists. The Green Guards launched a series of raids across
the Soviet borders, robbing, pillaging, burning farms, massacring
workers and peasants, and murdering the local Soviet officials. In
this activity Savinkov had the close co-operation of various Europe-
an secret service agencies.
One of Savinkov’s aides, a Social Revolutionary terrorist
named Fomitchov, set up a branch of Savinkov’s conspiratorial and
terrorist apparatus in Vilna, the former Lithuanian capital, which
had been seized by the Poles in 1920. Fomitchov’s group, with the
aid of the Polish Intelligence, began forming secret cells on Soviet
territory to carry on espionage work and to assist terrorist groups
sent in from Poland, equipped with arms, money and forged docu-
ments by the Polish authorities.
‘Later, in a letter to Izvestia on September 17, 1924, Fomitchov
gave this description of the operations carried on by his group:—
When these spies and detachments returned after the
murders which they had been sent to perpetrate, I was the-
114
intermediary between them and the Polish authorities, for it
was I who handed over to the latter the stolen documents
and espionage material. This is how the detachments of
Sergei Pavlovsky, Trubnikov, Monitch, Daniel, Ivanov, and
other smaller detachments, as well as single spies and ter-
rorists were sent to Soviet Russia. Among other things, I
remember how Colonel Svezhevsky was sent to Russia in
1922 with the injunction to kill Lenin....
Savinkov’s ruthless methods, magnetic personality and unusual
organizational talents, held tremendous appeal for those White Rus-
sian émigrés and anti-Soviet European statesmen who still dreamed
of overthrowing the Soviet Government. Occasionally, however,
these persons felt a mild embarrassment because of Savinkov’s rec-
ord. In Paris, in 1919, when Winston Churchill was negotiating with
the former Czarist Prime Minister Sazonov, the question of
Savinkov came up. Churchill later described the incident in his book
Great Contemporaries.
“How do you get on with Savinkov?” asked Churchill.
The Czar’s former chief Minister made a deprecating gesture
with his hands. “He is an assassin! I am astonished to be working
with him! But what is one to do? He is a man most competent, full
of resource and resolution. No one is so good!”
3. Sunday at Chequers
In 1922 famine was raging in the devastated regions of Russia,
and it seemed that the imminent collapse of the Soviet Government
was inevitable. European statesmen, White Russian émigrés and
political oppositionists inside Soviet Russia were busily drawing up
secret pacts and organizing new Russian cabinets ready to assume
office at a moment’s notice. Intensive discussions were going on
regarding a potential Russian dictator. Captain Sidney Reilly
brought Savinkov to Winston Churchill,
Churchill had long been intrigued with the personality of this
“literary assassin,” as he called him. Agreeing with Reilly that
Savinkov was a man “to be entrusted with the command of great
undertakings,” Churchill decided to introduce him to the British
Prime Minister, Lloyd George. A confidential conference was ar-
ranged to take place at Chequers, the country retreat of British
Prime Ministers in office.
115
Churchill and Savinkov motored out to Chequers together. “It
was a Sunday,” relates Churchill in Great Contemporaries. “The
Prime Minister was entertaining several leading Free Church di-
vines, and was himself surrounded by a band of Welsh singers who
had travelled from their native principality to do him choral honors.
For several hours they sang Welsh hymns in the most beautiful
manner. Afterwards we had our talk.”
But Lloyd George was not inclined to be stampeded into having
the British Government sponsor Boris Savinkov. In Lloyd George’s
opinion, the “worst was over” in Russia. The Bolshevik experi-
ment—socialist control of the country’s industries—would, of
course, fail. The Bolshevik leaders, “confronted with the responsi-
bilities of actual government” would give up their Communist theo-
ries or, “like Robespierre and St. Just [sic],” would quarrel among
themselves and fall from power.
As for the “world Communist menace,” about which Churchill
and the British Intelligence Service seemed to be so agitated, it
simply did not exist, said Lloyd George....
“Mr. Prime Minister,” Boris Savinkov observed in his grave,
formal manner, when Lloyd George had finished, “you will permit
me the honor of observing that after the fall of the Roman Empire
there ensued the Dark Ages!”
4. Moscow Trial, 1924
The death of Lenin on January 21, 1924, gave rise to fervent
new hopes in Reilly’s mind. His agents in Russia reported that the
opposition elements within the country were greatly intensifying
their efforts to come to power. Within the Bolshevik Party itself,
acute differences were manifesting themselves, and there seemed to
be the possibility of exploiting a real split. From Reilly’s point of
view, it was a highly strategic moment to strike.
Reilly had made up his mind that his old plans for the restora-
tion of Czarism were outdated. Russia had moved away from Czar-
ism. Reilly believed that a dictatorship would have to be set up
based on the richer peasants (kulaks) and various army and political
forces hostile to the: Soviet Government. He was convinced that
Boris Savinkov was the ideal man to introduce into Russia the sort
of regime which Mussolini headed in Italy. The British spy traveled
from one European capital to another trying to persuade the Intelli-
gence Services and General Staffs to support Savinkov’s cause.
116
One of the most important personalities to be drawn into the an-
ti-Soviet campaign at this time was Sir Henri Wilhelm August
Deterding, Dutch-born Knight of the British Empire and head of the
great British international oil trust, Royal Dutch Shell. Deterding
was destined to become the world’s foremost financial backer and
big-business spokesman of the anti-Bolshevik cause.
Through Reilly’s efforts, the British oil king became interested
in the Torgprom, the organization of the Czarist émigré million-
aires. From Lianozov and Mantashev in Paris, and other Torgprom
members in Europe, Deterding shrewdly bought up the paper rights
to some of the most important oil fields in Soviet Russia. Early in
1924, having failed to gain control of Soviet oil by diplomatic pres-
sure, the British oil king declared himself to be the “owner” of Rus-
sian oil and denounced the Soviet regime as unlawful and outside
the pale of civilization. With all the immense resources of his
wealth, influence and innumerable secret agents, Sir Henri
Deterding declared war on Soviet Russia with the frank intention of
gaining possession of the rich oil wells of the Soviet Caucasus.
Deterding’s intervention placed a new emphasis on Sidney
Reilly’s campaign. The British spy promptly drew up a concrete
plan of attack on Soviet Russia and submitted it to interested mem-
bers of the European General Staffs. The plan, a variant of the
Hoffmann Plan, involved both political and military action.
Politically, Reilly’s plan envisaged a counterrevolution in Rus-
sia started by the secret opposition elements in conjunction with
Savinkov’s terrorists. As soon as the counterrevolution was success-
fully under way, the military phase would begin. London and Paris
would formally denounce the Soviet Government and recognize
Boris Savinkov as the dictator of Russia. The White Armies sta-
tioned in Yugoslavia and Rumania would cross the Soviet border.
Poland would march on Kiev. Finland would blockade Leningrad.
Simultaneously, there would be an armed revolt in the Caucasus led
by followers of the Georgian Menshevik, Noi Jordania.3 The Cauca-
sus would be severed from the rest of Russia, established as an “in-
3
In 1918, Noi Jordania had headed a German puppet regime in the
Caucasus. In 1919, the British drove out the Germans, and Jordania
became head of a British-controlled Transcaucasian Federation. In
1924, his headquarters were in Paris. The French Government had
placed at his disposal a subsidy of 4,000,000 francs.
117
dependent” Trans-Caucasian Federation under Anglo-French auspi-
ces, and the oil wells and pipelines returned to their former owners
and foreign partners.
Reilly’s plan won the approval and endorsement of the anti-
Bolshevik leaders of the French, Polish, Finnish and Rumanian
General Staffs. The British Foreign Office was definitely interested
in the scheme to sever the Caucasus from Russia. The Italian Fascist
dictator, Benito Mussolini, summoned Boris Savinkov to Rome for
a special conference. Mussolini wanted to meet the “Russian dicta-
tor.” He offered to provide Savinkov’s agents with Italian passports
to facilitate their traveling in and out of Russia while preparing for
the attack. In addition, Il Duce agreed to instruct his Fascist lega-
tions and his secret police, the OVRA, to render Savinkov every
possible assistance....
In Reilly’s words, “A great counterrevolutionary plot was near-
ing completion.”
On August 10, 1924, after a long final discussion with Reilly,
Boris Savinkov, equipped with an Italian passport, left for Russia.
He was accompanied by a few trusted aides and lieutenants of his
Green Guards. Once he had crossed the Soviet border, he was to
make the last-minute preparations for the general uprising. Every
precaution had been taken to insure that Savinkov’s identity would
not be disclosed, or his safety endangered. The moment he reached
Soviet territory, he was to be met by representatives of the White
underground movement who had obtained positions as Soviet offi-
cials in the border towns. Savinkov was to send a message by secret
courier to Reilly as soon as he arrived.
Days passed, and no word came from Savinkov. In Paris, Reilly
waited with growing impatience and anxiety, unable to make a
move until the courier arrived. A week elapsed. Two weeks....
On August 28, the planned uprising in the Caucasus broke out.
At dawn, an armed detachment of Noi Jordania’s men attacked the
still sleeping town of Tschiatury in Georgia, murdered the local So-
viet officials and took possession of the town. Acts of terror, kill-
ings and bombings occurred throughout the Caucasus. Attempts
were made to seize the oil fields....
The next day Reilly found out what had happened to Boris
Savinkov. On August 29, 1924, the Soviet newspaper, Izvestia, an-
nounced that “the former terrorist and counterrevolutionary Boris
Savinkov” had been arrested by the Soviet authorities “after he had
118
attempted to make a secret entry across the Soviet border.”
Savinkov and his aides had crossed the border from Poland.
They had been met on Soviet soil by a group of men whom they
believed to be co-conspirators and conducted to a house in Minsk.
No sooner had they arrived than an armed Soviet officer had ap-
peared and announced that the house was surrounded. Savinkov and
his companions had fallen into a trap.
The uprising in the Caucasus encountered an equally unlucky
fate. The mountaineers, on whom the counterrevolutionaries had
counted as allies, rose to the defense of the Soviet regime. Together
with the oil workers, they held the railroads, pipelines and oil fields
until the regular Soviet troops arrived. Fighting went on sporadical-
ly for a few weeks; but it was clear from the start that the Soviet
authorities had the situation in hand. The New York Times reported
on September 13, 1924, that the Caucasian uprising was “being fi-
nanced and directed from Paris” by “powerful financiers” and “for-
mer proprietors of the Baku oil wells.” A few days later the rem-
nants of Jordania’s counterrevolutionary army were rounded up and
captured by the Soviet troops.
The arrest of Savinkov and the collapse of the Caucasian upris-
ing were a bitter enough disappointment for Sidney Reilly and his
friends; but the public trial of Savinkov, which took place shortly
afterwards in Moscow, proved to be the most severe blow of all. To
the horror and amazement of the many prominent personalities who
had been implicated in his plotting, Boris Savinkov proceeded to
relate the details of the whole conspiracy. He calmly informed the
Soviet court that he had known all along he was walking into a trap
when he crossed the Soviet border. “You have done a good job in
getting me into your net,” Savinkov had told the Soviet officer who
arrested him. “As a matter of fact, I suspected a trap. But I decided
to come to Russia anyway. I’ll tell you why... I have decided to quit
my struggle against you!”
Savinkov said that his eyes had finally been opened to the futili-
ty and evil of the anti-Soviet movement. He pictured himself before
the court as an honest but misguided Russian patriot who had been
gradually disillusioned in the character and aims of his associates.
“With horror,” he declared, “I became more and more con-
vinced that they thought not of the fatherland, not of the people, but
only of their own class interests!”
Back in 1918, Savinkov told the court, the French Ambassador
119
Noulens had financed his secret terrorist organization in Russia.
Noulens had ordered Savinkov to begin the revolt at Yaroslav early
in July, 1918, and had promised effective support in the form of the
landing of French troops. The revolt had taken place as arranged,
but the support had not been forthcoming.
“From where did you derive your money at this time and what
was the amount?” asked the president of the court.
“I remember at the time I was in the greatest desperation,”
Savinkov said, “as I did not know from whence we could obtain
money, when without any solicitation we were approached by cer-
tain Czechs, who handed me a sum of over 200,000 Kerensky rou-
bles. This money saved our organization at the time.... They de-
clared as follows: they desired this money should be employed for
terrorist fighting purposes. They knew—I did not conceal the fact—
that I recognized terror as a means of struggle, they knew and gave
us money emphasizing that it should be used chiefly for terrorist
purposes.” In later years, Savinkov continued, it became clear to
him as a Russian patriot that the anti-Soviet elements abroad were
not interested in supporting his movement for its own sake but only
for the sake of obtaining Russian oil wells and other mineral riches.
“They spoke to me very much and very persistently,” said Savinkov
of his British advisers, “as to it being desirable to set up an inde-
pendent South-Eastern Federation consisting of Northern and Trans-
Caucasia. They said this Federation would only be the beginning, as
Azerbaijan and Georgia would be joined to it later. Here one smelt
the odor of petroleum.”
Savinkov described his dealings with Winston Churchill.
“Churchill once showed me the map of South Russia, in which
the positions of Denikin’s and your army were indicated with little
flags. I still remember how shocked I was when I went to him and
he, pointing to the Denikin flags, said suddenly: ‘This here is my
army!’ I did not reply but stood as if rooted to the spot. I was going
to leave the room, but then I thought if I made a scandal here and
shut the door on myself, our soldiers in Russia would be left without
boots.”
“For what reason did the English and French supply you with
these boots, shells, machine-guns, and so forth?” asked the presi-
dent of the court.
“Officially, they had very noble aims,” replied Savinkov. “We
were faithful allies, you were traitors, et cetera. In the background
120
there was the following: as a minimum, well, petroleum is a very
desirable thing. As a maximum: let the Russians squabble among
themselves, the fewer there are left living the better. Russia will be
all the weaker.” Savinkov’s sensational testimony lasted two days.
He told of his whole career as a conspirator. He named the well-
known statesmen and financiers in England, France and other Euro-
pean countries who had give him assistance. He said he had unwit-
tingly become their tool. “I lived, as it were, in a glass cage. I saw
nothing else but my own conspiracy.... I did not know the people. I
loved them. I was prepared to lay down my life for them. But their
interests—their actual desires—could I have any knowledge of
them?”
In 1923 he had begun to have an inkling of “the great world
importance” of the Bolshevik Revolution. He began to yearn to re-
turn to Russia “to see with my own eyes and hear with my own
ears.”
“I thought perhaps what I read in the foreign press is all lies,”
said Savinkov. “I thought it cannot be that people whom nobody
can overcome have done nothing for the Russian people.”
The Soviet court sentenced Boris Savinkov to death as a traitor
to his country, but because of the completeness and candor of his
testimony, the sentence was commuted to ten years’ imprisonment.4
As soon as the news of Savinkov’s arrest, and the even greater
bombshell of his recantation, reached Paris, Sidney Reilly had hur-
ried back to London to confer with his superiors. On September 8,
1924, a lengthy and extraordinary statement by Reilly appeared in
the Morning Post, the organ of British Tory anti-Bolshevism. Reilly
declared that Savinkov’s public trial in Moscow had actually never
4
Savinkov was treated with remarkable consideration by the Sovi-
et authorities while he was in prison. He was allowed special privileges,
given all the books he desired, and granted facilities for writing. But he
pined for liberty. On May 7, 1925, he wrote a long appeal to Felix
Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Cheka. “Either shoot me or give me a
chance to work,” said Savinkov. “I was against you; now I am for you.
I cannot endure the half and half existence of being neither for nor
against you, merely sitting in prison and becoming one of its inhabit-
ants.” He pleaded for pardon and offered to do anything the Govern-
ment would require of him. His plea was rejected. Soon after, Savinkov
committed suicide by throwing himself from a four-story window in
the prison.
121
taken place. He stated categorically that Savinkov had really been
shot while crossing the Soviet frontier, and that the trial was a co-
lossal fraud:—
Savinkov was killed while attempting to cross the Rus-
sian frontier, and a mock trial, with one of their own agents
as chief actor, was staged by the Cheka in Moscow behind
closed doors.5
Reilly vigorously defended Savinkov’s staunchness as an anti-
Soviet conspirator:—
I claim the privilege of having been one of his most in-
timate friends and devoted followers, and on me devolves
the sacred duty of vindicating his honor.... I was one of the
very few who knew of his intention to penetrate into Soviet
Russia.... I have spent every day with Savinkov up to the
day of his departure for the Soviet frontier. I have been in
his fullest confidence, and his plans have been elaborated
conjointly with me.
Reilly’s statement concluded with an appeal to the editor of the
Morning Post:—
Sir, I appeal to you, whose organ has always been the
professed champion of anti-Bolshevism and anti-
Communism, to help me vindicate the name and honour of
Boris Savinkov!
At the same time, Reilly dispatched a private, carefully worded
letter to Winston Churchill:—
Dear Mr. Churchill,
The disaster which has overtaken Boris Savinkov has
undoubtedly produced the most painful impression upon
you. Neither I nor any of his intimate friends and co-
workers have so far been able to obtain any reliable news
5
This was the first of many extravagant “explanations” given by
enemies of the Soviet Union during the years following the Revolution
in an attempt to discredit the admissions made by foreign conspirators
and Russian traitors in Soviet courts of law. These “explanations”
reached their peak during the so-called Moscow Trials (1936-1938).
See Book III.
122
about his fate. Our conviction is that he had fallen a victim
to the vilest and most daring intrigue the Cheka has ever at-
tempted. Our opinion is expressed in the letter which I am
today sending to the Morning Post. Knowing your invaria-
bly kind interest I take the liberty of enclosing a copy for
your information.
I am, dear Mr. Churchill,
Yours very faithfully,
SIDNEY REILLY
The unquestionable authenticity of the trial, however, was soon
established, and Reilly was compelled to send another letter to the
Morning Post. It read:—
The detailed and in many instances stenographic Press
reports of Savinkov’s trial, supported by the testimony of
reliable and impartial eye-witnesses, have established
Savinkov’s treachery beyond all possibility of doubt. He
has not only betrayed his friends, his organization, and his
cause, but he has deliberately and completely gone over to
his former enemies. He has connived with his captors to
deal the heaviest possible blow at the anti-Bolshevik
movement, and to provide them with an outstanding politi-
cal triumph both for internal and external use. By his act
Savinkov has erased forever his name from the scroll of
honour of the anti-Communist movement.
His former friends and followers grieve over his terri-
ble and inglorious downfall, but those amongst them who
under no circumstances will practise with the enemies of
mankind are undismayed. The moral suicide of their former
leader is for them an added incentive to close their ranks
and to “carry on.”
Yours etc.,
SIDNEY REILLY
Shortly afterwards, Reilly received a discreet note from Win-
ston Churchill:—
Chartwell Manor,
Westerham, Kent.
15th September, 1924
Dear Mr. Reilly:
123
I am very interested in your letter. The event has turned
out as I myself expected at the very first. I do not think you
should judge Savinkov too harshly. He was placed in a ter-
rible position; and only those who have sustained success-
fully such an ordeal have a full right to pronounce censure.
At any rate I shall wait to hear the end of the story before
changing my view about Savinkov.
Yours very truly,
W.S. Churchill
The publication of Savinkov’s confession and testimony was
deeply embarrassing to those in England who had supported his
cause. In the midst of the scandal, Reilly was hastily packed off to
the United States. Churchill temporarily retired to his country resi-
dence in Kent. The British Foreign Office maintained a discreet
silenced.
A sensational epilogue was yet to come.
Towards the end of October, 1924, a few days before the Brit-
ish General Elections, banner headlines in Lord Rothermere’s Daily
Mail abruptly announced that Scotland Yard had uncovered a sinis-
ter Soviet plot against Britain. As documentary proof of the plot, the
Daily Mail published the notorious “Zinoviev Letter” purporting to
be instructions sent by Grigori Zinoviev, the Russian Comintern
leader, to the British Communists on how to combat the Tories in
the coming election.
This was the Tory reply to Savinkov’s confession; and it had its
effect. The Tories won the elections on a violently anti-Bolshevik
platform.
Several years later, Sir Wyndham Childs of Scotland Yard stat-
ed that there had never really been any letter by Zinoviev. The doc-
ument was a forgery, and various foreign agents had been involved
in its preparation: It had originally emanated from the Berlin office
of Colonel Walther Nicolai, former head of the Imperial German
Military Intelligence, who was now working closely with the Nazi
Party. Under Nicolai’s supervision, a Baltic White Guard named
Baron Uexkuell, who was later to head a Nazi press service, had
established in the German capital a special bureau for forging anti-
Soviet documents and arranging for these forgeries to receive the
widest possible distribution and the most effective publicity.
The actual introduction of the forged Zinoviev Letter to the
124
British Foreign Office and subsequently to the Daily Mail was said
to have been accomplished by George Bell, a mysterious interna-
tional agent. Bell was on the payroll of the Anglo-Dutch oil mag-
nate, Sir Henri Deterding.
125
CHAPTER X
To the Finnish Frontier
1. Anti-Bolshevism on Broadway
A welcoming delegation of White Russians was at the dock to greet
the Nieuw Amsterdam, the ship which brought Captain Sidney Reil-
ly and his wife to America in the fall of 1924. There were flowers,
champagne, and ardent speeches hailing the “hero of the anti-
Bolshevik crusade.”
Reilly was soon at home in the United States. An American fi-
nancial loan to Soviet Russia was being widely discussed. A num-
ber of prominent American businessmen were for it; and the Soviet
Government, eager to win America’s friendship, and desperately in
need of capital and machinery to reorganize its wrecked economy,
was willing to make concessions to get it.
“The prospects were bright of the Soviet being able to float its
loan,” Mrs. Reilly later recorded, “Sidney was determined that it
should not. A great part of his work in America was to be aimed at
frustrating that loan.”
Reilly immediately flung himself into the struggle against the
proposed loan. He opened a private office on lower Broadway
which rapidly became the headquarters of the anti-Soviet and White
Russian conspirators in the United States. Vast quantities of anti-
Soviet propaganda were soon emanating from Reilly’s office and
being mailed throughout the United States to influential editors,
columnists, educators, politicians and businessmen. Reilly
undertook a cross-country lecture tour to inform the public of the
“menace of Bolshevism and its threat to civilization and world
trade.” He held a number of “confidential talks” with small, select
groups of Wall Street men and wealthy industrialists in a number of
American cities.
“Both by public lectures and by articles in the press,” wrote
Mrs. Reilly, “Sidney fought against the Bolshevik loan. And it is
needless to state how by revelation after revelation, by discovery
after discovery he won a complete victory, and the Soviet loan nev-
er materialized.”1
1
Sidney Reilly could not claim complete credit for the victory over
Soviet Russia. There were others in the United States who were no less
eager and fought no less energetically to prevent the loan. Among them
126
Sabotaging the loan to Russia was not Reilly’s chief anti-Soviet
activity in the United States. His main undertaking was to create on
American soil a branch of the International Anti-Bolshevik League,
which would lend powerful support to the diverse anti-Soviet con-
spiracies which he was promoting in Europe and Russia. Branches
of Reilly’s League were already operating in Berlin, London, Paris
and Rome, as well as throughout the cordon sanitaire Baltic and
Balkan States. In the Far East a branch of the League, financed by
Japan, had been set up in Harbin, Manchuria, under the leadership
of the notorious Cossack terrorist, Ataman Semyonov. In the United
States no organized apparatus of such a nature existed. There was,
however, excellent material from which to create one....
Reilly’s White Russian friends had soon introduced him to their
most influential and wealthy American contacts, who might be
willing to contribute large sums to help finance his anti-Soviet
movement.
“As regards money, the market for this kind of undertaking is
here and only here,” Reilly wrote that year in a confidential letter to
one of his agents in Europe, “but to obtain money one must come
here with a very definite and very plausible scheme, and with very
substantial proof that the minority interest is able within a
reasonable time to undertake and to carry out a reorganization of the
business.”
The “minority interest” to which Reilly referred in his code lan-
guage was the anti-Soviet movement in Russia. The “reorganization
of the business” meant the overthrow of the Soviet Government.
Reilly added:—
With such premises, it would be possible to approach
here in the first instance the largest automobile manufactur-
er, who could be interested in the patents provided proof
(not merely talk) was given him that the patents will work.
Once his interest is gained the question of money can be
considered solved.
was Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, whose animosity

against the Bolsheviks was unabating. “The question of trade with Rus-
sia,” Hoover informed Maxim Litvinov on March 31, 1921, “is far
more a political one than an economic one so long as Russia is under
the control of the Bolsheviki.”
127
According to Mrs. Reilly’s memoirs, her husband was speaking
of Henry Ford.
2. Agent B1
The leader of the anti-Soviet White émigré movement in the
United States was a former Czarist officer, Lieutenant Boris Brasol,
an ex-agent of the Ochrana who had once served as the Prosecuting
Attorney for the St. Petersburg Supreme Court. He had come to the
United States in 1916 as the Russian representative to the Inter-
Allied Conference in New York City, and he had afterwards re-
mained in America as a special Czarist agent.
A small, pallid, nervous, effeminate man, with a slanting fore-
head, prominent nose, and dark, brooding eyes, Brasol was famed
as a violent and prolific anti-Semitic propagandist. In 1913, he had
played a leading role in the notorious Beilis case, in which the Czar-
ist secret police had attempted to prove that Jews practiced ritual
murder and had killed a young Christian boy in Kiev for his blood.2
Following the Revolution, Brasol had formed the first White
Russian conspiratorial organization in the United States. It was
called the Union of Czarist Army and Navy officers and was com-
posed largely of former members of the Blade Hundreds who had
emigrated to America. In 1918, Brasol’s group was in close touch
with the State Department and supplied it with much of the spurious
data and misinformation on which the State Department based its
opinion of the authenticity of the fraudulent “Sisson Documents.”3
2
“I was the second greatest preliminary investigator in Russia,”
Brasol told a journalist who interviewed him after he had arrived in the
United States. “I studied detections of crime all over Europe, under
orders from the government. In Switzerland, Germany, France and
England I had made myself expert in criminal detection.”
The American newspaperman asked Brasol if he believed that
Jews commit ritual murder.
“Why shouldn’t I?” answered Brasol.
Later the American journalist described his own feelings during
the interview. “I shuddered,” he said, “as I sat face to face with this
Russian Black Hundred disciple and heard him, in this twentieth centu-
ry, tell coldly of the medieval cruelty of the Czar’s henchmen.”
3
The so-called Sisson Documents, allegedly proving that Lenin
and other Soviet leaders were in the pay of the German High Com-
mand, were published and distributed in the United States by the State
128
Claiming to be an expert on Russian affairs, Brasol managed to se-
cure a position with the United States Secret Service. As U. S. agent
“B1,” one of Brasol’s first acts was to have Natalie De Bogory, the
daughter of a former Czarist general, make an English translation of
The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, the infamous anti-Semitic
forgery which had been used in Imperial Russia by the Czarist se-
cret police to provoke widespread pogroms against the Jews, and
which the Czarist émigré, Alfred Rosenberg, was currently circulat-
ing in Munich. Brasol introduced the translated Protocols into the
U. S. Secret Service files as an authentic document which would
“explain the Russian Revolution.”
To rally support for the White Russians and convince Ameri-
cans that the Bolshevik Revolution was a part of an “international
Jewish conspiracy,” Brasol began circulating the Protocols of Zion
throughout the United States. He supplemented the Czarist forgeries
with anti-Semitic writings of his own. Early in 1921, a book by
Brasol, entitled The World at the Crossroads, was published in Bos-
ton. The book asserted that the Russian Revolution had been insti-
gated, financed and led by Jews. The overthrow of the Czar and
subsequent international developments, wrote Brasol, were part of a
“sinister movement in which the Jews of the world and Mr. Wilson
have become partners.”
By July 1, 1921, Brasol was able to boast in a letter written to
another White émigré in the United States, Major General Count V.
Cherep-Spirodovich:—
Within the last year I have written three books, which
have done more harm to the Jews than ten pogroms would
have done them.
Cherep-Spirodovich was an outstanding anti-Semitic propagan-
dist in his own right. Moreover he was receiving financial support
from a famous American industrialist. The name of the industrialist
was Henry Ford.
Department after the Bolshevik Revolution. The documents, originally

offered for sale by White Russians, had been rejected by the British
Secret Service as crude forgeries. Edgar Sisson, a State Department
official; purchased the documents and brought them to Washington,
D. C. Subsequently the fraudulency of the documents was conclusively
established.
129
Boris Brasol also was in close touch with Ford Company
agents, and copies of the Protocols were submitted to the auto
magnate....4
3. Black Hundreds at Detroit
A strange and sinister alliance had taken place in the United
States between the feudal-minded Czarist émigrés and the famous
American industrialist who had developed the most modern meth-
ods of production in the world....
The end of the war found Henry Ford a bitter and disillusioned
man. The quixotic project of the Peace Ship, which Ford had sent to
Europe during the war, had turned out to be an absurd fiasco; and
the automobile manufacturer had been widely ridiculed as a result.
He was, moreover, deeply resentful of the fact that he had experi-
enced considerable difficulty in securing a loan from Wall Street for
the contemplated expansion of his business. As uneducated as he
was technically talented, Ford lent a ready ear to the White Russians
when they came to him and told him that the Jews were really to
blame for his problems. In proof of their contention, they produced
The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion. After carefully examining
the Protocols, Ford reached the conclusion that they offered the
explanation for all his troubles. He decided to give the anti-Semitic
forgeries nation-wide circulation by reprinting them in his newspa-
per, the Dearborn Independent.
One result was that anti-Semitic Russian aristocrats, White
Guard terrorists, Black Hundred pogromists and former agents of
the. Czarist Secret Police, who had emigrated to the United States
after the Revolution, put in an appearance at the Ford Motor Plant in
Detroit. They convinced Henry Ford that the United States Gov-
ernment itself was menaced by a revolutionary “Jewish plot” and
that liberal American groups and individuals were really “Jewish
fronts.” Under their expert supervision and nourished and given
respectability by Ford’s position and wealth, a huge, complex and
secret organization was formed to spy upon liberal Americans, to
promote reactionary and anti-Soviet projects, to collect anti-Semitic
gossip and to spread Jew-baiting propaganda in the United States.
The headquarters of this organization were at the Ford Motor
4
For details of Brasol’s subsequent and current activities in the
United States, see Chapter XXIII.
130
Company. Its members had special code numbers. Ford’s private
secretary, E. G. Liebold, was 12IX. W. J. Cameron, the editor of the
Dearborn Independent, was 122X. Natalie De Bogory, who as Bo-
ris Brasol’s assistant had translated the Protocols into English, was
29H.
Ford’s organization penetrated every phase of American life. Its
agents were active on leading newspapers, in famous universities, in
well-known corporations, and even in agencies of the United States
Government. Dr. Harris Houghton, a former member of the; United
States Military Intelligence, headed the so-called Ford Detective
Service, a special division of the conspiratorial apparatus. Dr.
Houghton’s code number was 103A. The chief function of the De-
tective Service was to secure confidential data on prominent Ameri-
can liberals for anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic propaganda purposes.
Among those investigated and blacklisted by the Detective Service
were Woodrow Wilson, Colonel Raymond Robins, Reverend John
Haynes Holmes, Helen Keller, Justices Hughes and Brandeis. Ac-
cording to the secret reports of the Detective Service these individu-
als and scores more like them were being used in the “Jewish plot”
to subvert the American Government.
The findings of the Detective Service were publicized in Ford’s
Dearborn Independent, which, at the same time was serializing the
Protocols of Zion. Here is a typical comment regarding Woodrow
Wilson:—
Mr. Wilson, while President, was very close to the
Jews. His administration, as everyone knows, was predom-
inantly Jewish. As a Presbyterian elder, Mr. Wilson had oc-
casional lapses into the Christian mode of thought during
his public utterances, and was always checked up tight by
his Jewish censors.
A story on William Howard Taft in the Dearborn Independent
concluded with this paragraph:—
That is the story of William Howard Taft’s efforts to
withstand the Jews, and how they broke him. It is probably
worth knowing in view of the fact that he has become one
of those “Gentile fronts” which the Jews use for their own
defense.
Special agents of Ford’s organization were dispatched overseas
131
and traveled thousands of miles to collect new slanders and forger-
ies against the Jews. One of these agents, a White Russian named
Rodionoff, sailed for Japan to obtain special anti-Semitic propagan-
da material from the White Russian colony there. Before departing
from the United States, Rodionoff wired Charles W. Smith, a lead-
ing member of the Ford organization:—
My conditions are following: During six months I will
furnish you exclusively with material agreed upon. You to
advance monthly fifteen hundred American dollars payable
in Yokohama specie bank. You to pay for material already
furnished.
RODIONOFF
Describing the situation which had developed at the Ford Motor
Company, Norman Hapgood, a famous American newspaperman,
later Minister to Denmark, wrote:—
In the atmosphere in which Ford’s detectives worked,
there was talk of actual pogroms to come to this country.
Indeed, within Ford’s circle, there grew up the exact symp-
toms that existed in Russia in the days of the Black Hun-
dreds.... Politically, it meant that history was repeating it-
self. As Brasol was the chief in this country of the expatri-
ate Russians trying to put the Romanovs back on the
throne, it meant that Ford’s persecution had, with the logic
of events, joined with the crusade, centuries old, that the
despots of Europe had stirred up repeatedly, in order to in-
flame, for their own purpose, the ignorant religious pas-
sions of the dark masses.
Like Henri Deterding in England and Fritz Thyssen in Germa-
ny, the American automobile king, Henry Ford, had identified him-
self with world anti-Bolshevism and with the rapidly developing
phenomenon of fascism. According to the February 8, 1923, edition
of the New York Times, Vice-President Auer of the Bavarian Diet
publicly stated:—
The Bavarian Diet has long had information that the
Hitler movement was partly financed by an American anti-
Semitic chief, who is Henry Ford. Mr. Ford’s interest in the
Bavarian anti-Jewish movement began a year ago when one
132
of Mr. Ford’s agents came in contact with Dietrich Eichart,
the notorious Pan-German.... The agent returned to Ameri-
ca and immediately Mr. Ford’s money began coming to
Munich.
Herr Hitler openly boasts of Mr. Ford’s support and
praises Mr. Ford not as a great individualist but as a great
anti-Semite.
In the small, unimpressive office on Cornelius Street in Munich
which was Adolf Hitler’s headquarters, a single framed photograph
hung on the wall. The picture was of Henry Ford.
4. The Last of Sidney Reilly
Soon after his arrival in the United States, Sidney Reilly had
begun working in intimate collaboration with agents of Ford’s anti-
Semitic and anti-Soviet apparatus. With their assistance he com-
piled “a complete list of those who were secretly working for the
Bolshevik cause in America.”5
Through Reilly’s efforts, contact was established between the
anti-Semitic and anti-democratic movement in the United States and
the branches of the International Anti-Bolshevik League in Europe
and Asia. As early as the spring of 1925, the basic framework for an
international fascist propaganda and espionage center operating un-
der the mask of “anti-Bolshevism” had thus been created....
Meanwhile, Reilly maintained close touch with his agents in
Europe. Mail reached him regularly from Reval, Helsinki, Rome,
Berlin and other centers of anti-Soviet intrigue. Much of this mail,
addressed to Reilly at his Broadway office, was written in cipher or
in invisible ink on the back of innocuous-seeming business letters.
The communications contained detailed reports on every new
development in the European anti-Soviet movement. The Savinkov
debacle had temporarily demoralized wide sections of the move-
5
This list, which included the names of every prominent American
who had said anything favorable about Soviet Russia, was to serve as a
useful model for American fascists and Nazi agents in future years. The
anti-Semitic propagandist, Elizabeth Dilling, later drew heavily upon
this and similar lists in compiling her notorious Red Network. George
Sylvester Viereck, Colonel Emerson, Oscar Pfaus and other Nazi
agents or fifth columnists in the United States made similar use of this
data in their propaganda work.
133
ment. The Green Guards had broken up into disconnected small
bands of professional terrorists and bandits. Jealousies and mutual
suspicions were contributing their share to disorganizing the other
anti-Soviet groups. It seemed that the great Counterrevolution
would have to be postponed for some time.
“Sidney rightly saw,” records Mrs. Reilly, “that the counterrev-
olution must start in Russia, and that all his work from the outside
would only result in creating a passive foreign hostility to the Sovi-
et. He was approached several times on behalf of organizations in
Moscow, as he had been approached by Drebkov in London, but he
proceeded warily....”
Early that spring, Reilly received a letter postmarked Reval, Es-
tonia, which greatly excited him. The letter, written in code, came
from an old friend, Commander E., who had served with Reilly in
the British Intelligence Service during the World War, and who was
now attached to the British Consular Service in one of the Baltic
countries. The letter, which was dated January 24, 1925, began:—
Dear Sidney:
There may call on you in Paris from me two persons
named Krashnoshtanov, a man and wife. They will say they
have a communication from California and hand you a note
consisting of a verse from Omar Khayam [sic] which you
will remember. If you wish to go further into their business
you must ask them to remain. If the business is of no inter-
est you will say “Thank you very much, Good Day.”
In the code used by Commander E. and Reilly,
“Krashnoshtanov” meant an anti-Soviet agent named Shultz and his
wife; “California” meant the Soviet Union; and the “verse from
Omar Khayam” meant a special message in secret code. Command-
er E’s letter continued:—
Now as to their business. They are representatives of a
concern which will in all probability have a big influence in
the future on the European and American markets. They do
not anticipate that their business will fully develop for two
years, but circumstances may arise which will give them the
desired impetus in the near future. It is a very big business,
and one which it does not do to talk about....
Commander E. went on to say that a “German group” was very
134
much interested in participating in the “deal,” and that a “French
group” and an “English group” were becoming actively involved.
Referring once more to the “concern,” which he indicated was
operating in Russia, Commander E. wrote:—
They refuse at present to disclose to anyone the name
of the man at the back of this enterprise. I can tell you this
much—that some of the chief persons are members of the
opposition groups. You can therefore fully understand the
necessity for secrecy.... I am introducing this scheme to you
thinking it might perhaps replace the other big scheme you
were working on but which fell through in such a disastrous
manner.
Sidney Reilly and his wife left New York on August 6, 1925.
They arrived in Paris the following month, and Reilly immediately
proceeded to contact the Shultzes about whom Commander E. had
written. They outlined the situation inside Russia, where, since Len-
in’s death, the opposition movement associated with Leon Trotsky
had been organized into an extensive underground apparatus which
aimed at overthrowing the Stalin regime.
Reilly was soon convinced of the major importance of the new
developments. He was eager to make personal contact as soon as
possible with the leaders of the anti-Stalin faction in Russia. Mes-
sages were exchanged through secret agents. It was finally arranged
that Reilly should meet an important representative of the move-
ment on the Soviet frontier. Reilly left for Helsinki to see the Chief
of Staff of the Finnish Army, one of his close personal friends and a
member of his Anti-Bolshevik League, who was to make the neces-
sary arrangements to get Reilly across the Soviet border.
Shortly afterwards, Reilly wrote to his wife, who had remained
in Paris, “There is really something entirely new, powerful and
worthwhile going on in Russia.”
A week later, on September 25, 1925, Reilly dispatched a hasty
note to his wife from Viborg, Finland, saying:—
It is absolutely necessary that I should go for three days
to Petrograd and Moscow. I am leaving tonight and will be
back here on Tuesday morning. I want you to know that I
would not have undertaken this trip unless it was absolutely
essential, and if I was not convinced that there is practically
135
no risk attached to it. I am writing this letter only for the
most improbable case of a mishap befalling me. Should this
happen, then you must not take any steps; they will help lit-
tle but may finally lead to giving the alarm to the Bolshies
and to disclosing my identity. If by any chance I should be
arrested in Russia, it could only be on some minor insignif-
icant charge and my new friends are powerful enough to
obtain my liberation.
That was the last letter to be written by Captain Sidney Reilly
of the British Secret Intelligence Service....
After several weeks elapsed, and Mrs. Reilly still had no word
from her husband, she got in touch with Marie Shultz, Reilly’s con-
federate in Paris. Mrs. Reilly later recorded the interview in her
memoirs.
“When your husband arrived here,” Mrs. Shultz told Mrs. Reil-
ly, “I explained to him the exact state of affairs as far as our organi-
zation was concerned. On our side we have some of the principal
Bolshevik officials in Moscow, who are anxious to bring the present
regime to an end, if only their safety can be guaranteed.”
Captain Reilly, continued Mrs. Shultz, had been inclined to be
skeptical at first. He said that foreign aid for a new venture against
Soviet Russia could be enlisted only if the conspiratorial group in-
side the country had some real strength.
“I assured him,” said Mrs. Shultz, “that our organization in
Russia was powerful, influential and well-knit.”
Mrs. Shultz went on to relate how a meeting between Reilly
and representatives of the Russian conspiratorial apparatus had been
arranged to take place at Viborg Finland. “Captain Reilly was much
impressed by them,” said Mrs. Shultz, “particularly by their leader,
a very highly placed Bolshevik official who beneath the cover of his
office is one of the most ardent enemies of the present regime.”
The following day, accompanied by Finnish patrol guards who
had been especially assigned to the task, Reilly and the Russian
conspirators set out for the frontier. “For my part,” Mrs. Shultz re-
lated, “I went as far as the frontier to wish them Godspeed.” They
remained at a Finnish blockhouse beside a river until nightfall. “For
a long time we waited while the Finns listened anxiously for the
Red patrol, but everything was quiet. At last one of the Finns low-
ered himself cautiously into the water and half swam, half waded
136
across. Your husband followed....”
That was the last Mrs. Shultz saw of Captain Reilly.
When Mrs. Shultz had concluded her story, she handed Mrs.
Reilly a clipping from the Russian newspaper, Izvestia. It read:—
The night of September 28-29, four contrabandists
tried to pass the Finnish frontier with the result that two
were killed, one, a Finnish soldier, taken prisoner and the
fourth so badly wounded that he died....
The facts, as they later came out, were these. Reilly had suc-
cessfully crossed the Soviet border and interviewed certain mem-
bers of the Russian anti-Stalin opposition. He was on his way back
and was nearing the Finnish border when he and his bodyguards
were suddenly accosted by a unit of the Soviet Border Guards. Reil-
ly and the others tried to escape. The Border Guards opened fire. A
bullet hit Reilly in the forehead, killing him instantly.
Not until several days later did the Soviet authorities identify
the “contrabandist” they had killed. When they had done so, they
formally announced the death of Captain Sidney George Reilly of
the British Secret Intelligence Service.
The London Times carried a two-line obituary: “Sidney George
Reilly killed September 28 by G.P.U. troops at the village of Allekul,
Russia.”
137
CHAPTER XI
Overture with War Drums
A violent storm was brewing beneath the seeming calm of the mid-
dle nineteen-twenties. Enormous colonial and semi-colonial areas of
the earth, stirred with new hopes of freedom by the example of the
Russian Revolution, were awakening to nationhood and threatening
to upset the whole top-heavy structure of colonial imperialism....
The storm broke in the spring of 1926. Revolution flared in
China where a united front of Kuomintang and Communist forces
overthrew the corrupt Peking dictatorship, the puppet regime of
Western imperialism, and established a Free China.
The event was heralded by an outburst of horrified and desper-
ate anti-Soviet propaganda throughout Asia and the Western World.
The Chinese Revolution, representing the upsurge of hundreds of
millions of oppressed peoples against foreign and domestic oppres-
sion, was violently attacked as the direct outcome of a “Moscow
plot.”
The Emperor of Japan promptly expressed his willingness to
serve as a “bulwark against Bolshevism” in Asia. Encouraged by
the Western powers, Japan prepared to intervene in China to put
down the Revolution. The Japanese Prime Minister, General
Tanaka, submitted to the Emperor his famous secret Memorial out-
lining the ultimate aims of Japanese imperialism:—
In order to conquer the world, we must first conquer
China; all the other Asiatic countries of the South Seas will
then fear us and capitulate before us. The world will then
understand that Eastern Asia is ours.... With all the re-
sources of China at our disposal, we shall pass forward to
the conquest of India, the Archipelago, Asia Minor, Central
Asia and even Europe. But the first step must be the seizure
of control over Manchuria and Mongolia..... Sooner or later
we shall have to fight against Soviet Russia.... If we wish in
the future to gain control over China, we must first crush
the United States.1
1
The Tanaka Memorial, later to be· known as Japan’s Mein
Kampf, was written in 1927 and first came to light in 1929 after it was
bought from a Japanese agent by Chang Hsueh-liang, the Young Mar-
138
In March, 1927, the Chinese war lord and notorious Japanese
puppet, Chang Tso-lin, staged a raid on the Soviet Embassy in Pe-
king, and announced he had discovered evidence of a Bolshevik
plot against China. It was the signal for the launching of the Chinese
counterrevolution. Encouraged by Japanese and Anglo-French of-
fers of subsidies, arms and recognition, the Kuomintang forces un-
der Chiang Kai-shek suddenly broke the united front and attacked
their revolutionary allies. A massacre followed. Thousands of Chi-
nese workers, students and peasants suspected of liberal or Com-
munist sympathies were seized in Shanghai, Peking and elsewhere
and shot or imprisoned in concentration camps and tortured to
death. Civil war swept China.
But the Chinese Revolution had unleashed the latent freedom
movements throughout Asia. Indonesia, Indo-China, Burma and
India were seething. Seriously alarmed, the imperialists looked to
Japan to protect them from “Bolshevism.” At the same time, in Eu-
rope, the General Staffs again dragged out of their pigeonholes the
old plans for the anti-Bolshevik crusade and the general assault on
Moscow.
At the international diplomatic conference at Locarno, through-
out 1925-1926, the Anglo-French diplomats had been feverishly
negotiating with Germany for joint action against Soviet Russia.
The British Tory spokesman, the Right Honorable W, C. A.
Ormsby-Gore, in a speech at Manchester on October 23, 1924, had
put the issue at Locarno in clear and unmistakable terms:—
The solidarity of Christian civilization is necessary to
stem the most sinister force that has arisen not only in our
lifetime, but previously in European history.
The struggle at Locarno as I see it is this: Is Germany
to regard her future as bound up with the fate of the great
Western powers, or is she going to work with Russia for the
destruction of Western civilization?
The significance of Locarno is tremendous. It means
that, so far as the present Government of Germany is con-
cerned, it is detached from Russia and is throwing in its lot
shal of Manchuria. The China Council of the Institute of Pacific Rela-

tions published the document in the United States and exposed it to the
world.
139
with the Western party.
In France, Raymond Poincare, the French Premier, publicly ad-
vocated a combined military offensive of the European powers, in-
cluding Germany, against Soviet Russia.
In Berlin, the German imperialist and anti-democratic press an-
nounced that the hour had come to smash Bolshevism. After a series
of conferences with Reichswehr generals and industrialists close to
the Nazi Party, General Max Hoffmann hastened to London to sub-
mit his famous Plan to the British Foreign Office and to a select
group of Tory members of Parliament and military men.
On the morning of January 5, 1926, the London Morning Post
published an extraordinary letter signed by Sir Henri Deterding. In
this letter, Deterding proclaimed that plans were afoot to start a new
war of intervention against Soviet Russia. Deterding declared:—
...before many months, Russia will come back to civili-
zation, but under a better government than the Czarist
one.... Bolshevism in Russia will be over before this year
is; and, as soon as it is, Russia can draw on all the world’s
credit and open her frontiers to all willing to work. Money
and credit will then flow into Russia, and, what is better
still, labor.
A well-known French journalist of the Right, Jacques Bainville,
commented in Paris: “If the President of the Royal Dutch has given
a date for the end of the Soviet regime, it is because he has reason
for doing so....”
On March 3, 1927, Viscount Grey told the British House of
Lords: “The Soviet Government is not in the ordinary sense a na-
tional government at all. It is not a Russian Government in the sense
that the French Government is French or the German Government
German.”
On May 27, 1927, British police and secret service agents raid-
ed the offices of Arcos, the Soviet trading organization in London.
They arrested the employees and searched the premises, breaking
into files and strongboxes and even drilling holes in the floors, ceil-
ings and walls in search of “secret archives.” No documents of an
incriminating nature were found; but the Morning Post, the Daily
Mail and other anti-Soviet papers published wild stories of “evi-
dence” of Soviet plots against Britain allegedly uncovered by the
140
Arcos raid.
The British Tory Government broke off diplomatic and trade
relations with the Soviet Union.
That same summer, raids were made on Soviet Consulates and
other official agencies in Berlin and Paris. In June, the Soviet Am-
bassador to Poland, V. I. Voikov, was assassinated in Warsaw.
Bombs were hurled into a Bolshevik Party meeting in Leningrad....2
Marshal Foch, in an interview with the London Sunday Referee
on August 21, 1927, clearly indicated the direction in which all this
violence was heading.
“In February, 1919, in the early days of Leninism,” stated Foch,
“I declared to the Ambassadors’ Conference meeting in Paris that, if
the states surrounding Russia were supplied with munitions and the
sinews of war, I would undertake to stamp out the Bolshevik men-
ace once and for all. I was overruled on the grounds of war-
weariness, but the sequel soon showed I was right.”
To Arnold Rechberg, one of the leading promoters of the Nazi
movement in Germany, Marshal Foch sent a letter, saying:—
I am not foolish enough to believe that one can leave a
handful of criminal tyrants to rule over more than half the
continent and over vast Asiatic territories. But nothing can
be done so long as France and Germany are not united. I
beg you to convey my greetings to General Hoffmann, the
great protagonist of the anti-Bolshevist military alliance.
The stage was set for war.
2
Simultaneously, Trotsky’s opposition movement inside Soviet
Russia was preparing to overthrow the Soviet Government. An at-
tempted Trotskyite Putsch took place on November 7, 1927. A number
of Trotsky’s followers were arrested and Trotsky himself was exiled.
See page 184.
141
CHAPTER XII
Millionaires and Saboteurs
1. A Meeting in Paris
One afternoon, in the late fall of 1928, a few immensely wealthy
Russian émigrés gathered with great secrecy in a private dining
room at a restaurant on the Grand Boulevard in Paris. Every precau-
tion had been taken to prevent outsiders from learning of the affair.
The meeting had been called by the leaders of the Torgprom, the
international cartel of former Czarist millionaires. The names of the
men who: were assembled had been legendary in old Russia: G.N.
Nobel; N.C. Denisov; Vladimir Riabushinsky and other figures of
equal renown.
These émigré millionaires had come together to confer surrepti-
tiously with two distinguished visitors from Soviet Russia.
Professor Leonid Ramzin, one of the visitors, was an outstand-
ing Russian scientist, Director of the Moscow Thermo-Technical
Institute, and a member of the Soviet Supreme Economic Council.
The other visitor, Victor Laritchev, was Chairman of the Fuel Sec-
tion of the State Planning Commission of the U.S.S.R.
Professor Ramzin and Victor Laritchev were supposedly in Par-
is on official Soviet business. The real purpose of their visit to the
French capital, however, was to report to the Torgprom leaders on
the activities of a secret espionage-sabotage organization they head-
ed in the Soviet Union.
The organization headed by Ramzin and Laritchev was called
the Industrial Party. Composed mainly of elements of the old Rus-
sian technical intelligentsia who had comprised a small privileged
class under the Czar, the Industrial Party claimed approximately
two thousand secret members. Most of them held important Soviet
technical posts. Financed and directed by the Torgprom, these In-
dustrial Party members were carrying on wrecking and spying activ-
ities in Soviet industry.
Professor Ramzin was the first to speak at the meeting in the
Paris restaurant. He told his audience that everything possible was
being done to interfere with the vast and ambitious Five-Year Plan,
which Stalin had just launched in an intensive effort to industrialize
Soviet Russia’s one-sixth of the earth. Industrial Party members,
said Ramzin, were active in all branches of Soviet industry and
142
were putting into practice carefully systematized and scientific
techniques of sabotage.
“One of our methods,” the Professor explained to his listeners,
“is the method of minimum standards, that is, the greatest retarding
of the economic development of the country and the holding back of
the pace of industrialization. Secondly, there is the method of creat-
ing a disproportion between the individual branches of national
economy and also between individual sections of one and the same
branch. And finally, there is the method of ‘freezing capital,’ that is,
the investment of capital either in absolutely unnecessary construc-
tion or in that which might have been postponed, not being essential
at the moment.”
Professor Ramzin expressed particular gratification over the re-
sults that had been obtained by the “freezing capital” method. “This
method has meant cutting down the rate of industrialization,” he
said. “Without doubt it has lowered the general level of the econom-
ic life of the country, thus creating discontent among large masses
of the population.”
On the other hand, Professor Ramzin pointed out, there had
been less promising developments. A group of Industrial Party
members who had been carrying on work in the Shakhty Mines had
recently been arrested by the OGPU. Several others who had been
operating in the transport and oil industries had also been appre-
hended. Moreover, since Leon Trotsky had been sent into exile and
his Trotskyite Opposition movement had been broken up, a great
deal of the former inner political strife and dissension had died
down, thus making the operations of the Industrial Party that much
more difficult.
“We need more support from you,” Professor Ramzin said in
conclusion. “But more than anything else we need armed interven-
tion if the Bolsheviks are to be overthrown.”
N.C. Denisov the Chairman of the Torgprom, took the floor. A
respectful hush fell over the small group as he began to speak.
“As you know,” Denisov said, “we have been conferring with
Monsieur Poincare and also with Monsieur Briand. For some time
Monsieur Poincare has expressed his complete sympathy with the
idea of organizing armed intervention against the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics, and at one of our recent conferences with him,
as you may recall, Monsieur Poincare stated that the question had
already been turned over to the French General Staff to be worked
143
out. It is now my privilege to convey to you additional information
of the utmost importance.”
Denisov paused dramatically, while his audience waited with
tense expectancy.
“I bring you the news that the French General Staff has formed
a special commission, headed by Colonel Joinville, to organize the
attack against the Soviet Union!”1
Immediately there was a hubbub of excited comment. Everyone
in the smoke-filled room began talking at once. It was several
minutes before Denisov could continue with his report on the activi-
ties of the Torgprom....
2. Plan of Attack
The date set for the military attack on the Soviet Union was the
late summer of 1929 or, at the latest, the summer of 1930.
The chief military forces were to be provided by Poland, Ru-
mania and Finland. The French General Staff would furnish military
instructors and possibly the use of the French Air Force. Germany
was to supply technicians and volunteer regiments. The British
would lend their navy. The plan of attack was an adaptation of the
Hoffmann Plan.
The first move was to be made by Rumania after the provoca-
tion of some frontier incident in Bessarabia. Then Poland was to
come in, along with the Baltic border states. Wrangel’s White Ar-
my, said to number 100,000 men, would move through Rumania to
join the, southern army of intervention. The British fleet would sup-
port operations in the Black Sea and in the Gulf of Finland. A force
of Krasnov’s Cossacks, who had been quartered in the Balkans
1
This same Colonel Joinville had formerly commanded the French
army of intervention in Siberia in 1918. At the time of the Torgprom
meeting in Paris, the French General Staff included these members:
Marshal, Foch, who had advocated armed intervention against Russia
ever since 1919; Marshal Petain, whose anti-Soviet sentiments were
equaled only by his fear of and contempt for democracy; General Wey-
gand, who had led the Polish forces against the Red Army in 1920 and
had remained ever since a tireless participant in anti-Soviet and anti-
democratic plots. Foch died in 1929; his personal adjutant, René
L’Hopital, subsequently became President of the notorious Comité
Franco-Allemand founded at the end of 1935 by the Nazi agent, Otto
Abetz, to spread Nazi and anti-Soviet propaganda in France.
144
since 1921, would be landed on the Black Sea shore in the
Novorossisk region; they would move on the Don, fomenting upris-
ings among the Don Cossacks and striking into the Ukraine. The
purpose of this blow would be to cut off communications between
the Donets coal fields and Moscow, thus effecting a crisis in the
Soviet supply of metal and fuel. Moscow and Leningrad were to be
simultaneously attacked, while the southern army was to move
through the western districts of the Ukraine, with its flank on the
right bank of the Dnieper.
All attacks were to be carried out without declaration of war,
with startling suddenness. Under such pressure, it was thought, the
Red Army would swiftly collapse and the downfall of the Soviet
regime would be a matter of days.
At a conference arranged by the Torgprom leaders, Colonel
Joinville, on behalf of the French General Staff, asked Professor
Ramzin what possibilities there were of obtaining active military
assistance from the opposition elements within the Soviet Union at
the time of the attack from outside. Ramzin replied that the opposi-
tion elements, although scattered and underground since the expul-
sion of Leon Trotsky, were still sufficiently numerous to play a role.
Colonel Joinville recommended that the Industrial Party and its
allies should establish a special “military branch.” He gave Ramzin
the name of several French secret agents in Moscow who could aid
in the setting up of this sort of organization....
From Paris, still ostensibly on official Soviet business, Profes-
sor Ramzin traveled to London to meet representatives of Sir Henri
Deterding’s Royal Dutch Shell and of Metro-Vickers, the giant Brit-
ish munitions trust dominated by the sinister Sir Basil Zaharoff who
had once controlled large interests in Czarist Russia. The Russian
professor was informed that, while France was playing the leading
part in this plan for intervention against Soviet Russia, Britain was
ready to do her share. The British interests would give financial
support, continue to exercise diplomatic pressure for the isolation of
the Soviets, and lend the use of the British Navy at the time of the
attack....
Back in Moscow, Professor Ramzin reported to his associates
in the conspiracy on the results of his trip abroad. It was agreed that
the Industrial Party would devote itself to accomplishing two tasks:
to bring about the most critical situation possible in industry and
agriculture so as to arouse mass discontent and weaken the Soviet
145
regime; and to develop an apparatus for giving direct aid to the at-
tacking armies by means of acts of sabotage and terrorism behind
the Soviet lines.
Money from the Torgprom, relayed by French agents in Mos-
cow, poured in to finance the sabotage activities in various phases
of industry. The Metal Industry was allotted 500,000 rubles; the
Fuel, Oil and Peat Industry, 300,000 rubles; the Textile Industry,
200,000; the Electrical Industry, 100,000. Periodically, at the re-
quest of French, British or German agents, members of the Industri-
al Party and their allies prepared special espionage reports on Soviet
aviation production, construction of air fields, developments in the
munitions and chemical industries, and conditions on the railroads.
As the time of the invasion drew near, expectation ran high
among the émigré Czarist millionaires. One of the Torgprom lead-
ers, Vladimir Riabushinsky, published on July 7, 1930, an astonish-
ing article entitled “A Necessary War” in the White Russian Paris
newspaper, Vzoroshdenie.
“The coming struggle against the Third International, to secure
the liberation of Russia, will, beyond a doubt, be assigned by histo-
ry to the group of most just and most serviceable of all wars,” de-
clared Riabushinsky. Earlier attempts at intervention in Russia, he
added, had failed or had been abandoned on the grounds that they
were too costly to carry out: “Back in 1920, and up to 1925, special-
ists were prepared to carry out this operation in the space of six
months, with an army of 1,000,000 men. The expenditure was cal-
culated to run to 100,000,000 (British) pounds.”
But now, said the émigré Czarist millionaire, the investment in-
volved in smashing the Soviet regime would be considerably less
because of the internal political and economic difficulties in Soviet
Russia:—
Probably 500,000 men and three to four months would
be sufficient to finish off this work in the rough. The final
crushing of Communist bands would, of course, occupy a
little more time, but that is rather in the nature of police
work than of military operations.
Riabushinsky then proceeded to enumerate the many “business”
benefits that would result from the invasion of Russia. A thriving
Russian economy controlled by men like himself, he asserted,
would result in “the annual influx into the European economic sys-
146
tem of such wealth, in the form of a demand for various types of
goods,” that the result might well be “the wiping out of the five-
million strong army of unemployed of Austria, Germany and Great
Britain.”
The anti-Soviet crusade was, of course, “a grand and sacred un-
dertaking and the moral duty of humanity.” But forgetting all of
that, and looking at it from “the plain, unvarnished, soulless and
purely business point of view,” Riabushinsky, pointed out:—
...we can safely make the assertion that there is not an
enterprise in the world which would be more justified from
the business standpoint, or more profitable, than that of ef-
fecting the emancipation of Russia.
By spending one billion rubles mankind will receive a
return of not less than five billions, i.e., five hundred per
cent per annum, with the prospect of a further increase in
the rate of profit every year by another hundred or two
hundred per cent.
Where could you do better business?
3. A Glimpse Behind the Scenes
A glimpse into some of the fantastic anti-democratic and anti-
Soviet plots that were being hatched in those years in the under-
world of European big business and diplomacy was accidentally
revealed in Germany in the late nineteen-twenties....
German police detectives, in the course of a routine investiga-
tion in the city of Frankfort, had stumbled by chance on a mass of
counterfeit Soviet banknotes (chervonetz) which were lying in a
warehouse, packed in huge bundles and awaiting shipment to Soviet
Russia.
The trial that ensued, known as the Chervonetz Trial, became
an international sensation. Before the trial was over, the names of a
number of the most prominent personages in Europe had been
brought into the court proceedings. Among these personages were
Sir Henri Deterding and his mysterious agent, Georg Bell; the Czar-
ist oil magnate, Nobel; the Bavarian pro-Nazi industrialist, Willi
Schmidt; and the celebrated General Max Hoffmann, who died
shortly before the trial ended.
The defendants at the trial, charged with counterfeiting the So-
viet banknotes, were Bell, Schmidt and two Georgian anti-Soviet
147
conspirators formerly associated with Noi Jordania: Karumidze and
Sadathiorashvili. As the trial progressed, it emerged that the aim of
the defendants was to flood the Soviet Caucasus with the forged
banknotes so as to create political tension and disorder in the Soviet
Union.
“Economic factors,” remarked the judge trying the case, “such
as oil wells and minerals, seem to play a dominant part in the
scheme.”
It soon became clear that the counterfeiting plot was only a
small phase of a gigantic conspiracy. The pro-Nazi industrialist,
Willi Schmidt, testified that he was primarily interested in “sup-
pressing Communism in Germany,” but he believed it would first be
necessary to overthrow the Soviet regime in Russia. He admitted he
had paid the expenses of General Hoffmann when the latter had
gone to London in 1926 to submit to the British Foreign Office a
copy of his Plan for a French-German-British alliance against Rus-
sia. Schmidt told the court that he had “the greatest confidence in
General Hoffmann, both because of his personal character and be-
cause of his alleged association with big oil interests in England.”
The Georgian conspirator, Karumidze, identified “the big oil in-
terests” as those of Sir Henri Detering, who was the chief financial
backer of the plot.
Further testimony established that powerful financial and politi-
cal groups in Germany, France and Britain had worked out an elab-
orate scheme to sever the Caucasus from the Soviet Union as a pre-
liminary move in precipitating a general war against Russia. Syndi-
cates had been formed for the “economic exploitation of the liberat-
ed territories.” Germany was to supply troops, technicians and arms.
The Anglo-French groups were to exert financial and diplomatic
pressure on Rumania and Poland to ensure their participation in the
crusade....
A document “that might endanger the safety of the German
state if it were made public” was read to the court in camera. It was
said to involve the German High Command.
The trial was becoming dangerous. “Although the [German]
Foreign Office and the British Embassy declare that nothing will be
kept from the public,” reported the New York Times on November
23, 1927, “it is an open secret that the police have orders to hush up
the whole affair.”
The Chervonetz Trial came to an abrupt and extraordinary con-
148
clusion. The German court argued that since the banknotes had nev-
er been circulated, having been seized by the police before they
were distributed, no forgery in the strict sense of the term had been
committed. While “counterfeiting of Soviet currency was definitely
proved,” declared the court, the forgers and their associates “were,
however, actuated by unselfish political motives and entitled to an
acquittal.” The accused conspirators left the courtroom as free men.
References to the sensational case vanished from the newspa-
pers after one public statement by Sir Henri Deterding:—
It is true that I knew General Hoffmann. I admired him
as a soldier and leader of men. And unhappily now he is
dead, and cannot defend himself. But I will defend him....
General Hoffmann was an implacable enemy of Bolshe-
vism. He worked for years on a scheme to unite the great
powers to fight the Russian menace.... That he was keen for
a fight with Moscow is-known to every student of post-war
politics. It is a great shame that he is dead, for he would
have had a complete answer to his traducers....
4. World’s End
The projected attack on the Soviet Union was postponed from
1929 to the summer of 1930. The reason given for the postpone-
ment in White Russian circles was “French unpreparedness”; but it
was generally known that disagreements as to “spheres of influence
in the liberated territories” had broken out between the various
groups. The British and the French groups quarreled over control of
the Caucasus and the Donets coal fields; both opposed German
claims to the Ukraine. Nevertheless, Sir Henri Deterding, the real
leader of the movement, remained optimistic that these differences
could be resolved and confidently predicted the beginning of the
war by the summer of 1930.
On June 15, 1930, replying to a letter he had received from a
White Russian, who thanked him for money received, Deterding
wrote:—
If you really desire to express your gratitude, I would
ask you to do the following: Endeavor in the new Russia,
which will rearise within a few months, to be one of the
best sons of your fatherland.
149
The following month Sir Henri Deterding was the main speaker
at a-meeting celebrating the tenth anniversary of the founding of the
Russian Ecole Normale in Paris, a military academy for the sons of
White Russian officers and aristocrats. The function was attended
by Czarist émigré princes and princesses, bishops, generals, admi-
rals and lesser officers. Side by side with them stood high-ranking
members of the French Army, dressed in full parade uniform.
Deterding began his speech by telling those assembled that
there was no need to-thank him for the assistance he was giving
their work, since he was only fulfilling his duty to Western civiliza-
tion. Addressing himself to a group of young uniformed White Rus-
sians in the audience, he said:—
You must rely upon yourselves. You must remember
that all your work and activities will take place on your na-
tive Russian soil. The hope of the early liberation of Rus-
sia—now suffering a national calamity—is growing and
becoming stronger every day. The hour of emancipation of
your great fatherland is at hand.
The entire audience, the French officers no less enthusiastically
than the White Russians, applauded Sir Henri’s next statement:—
The liberation of Russia will take place much sooner
than we all think. It may even be the matter of a few
months!
In the midst of these war preparations came an unexpected and
catastrophic interruption: the World Crisis.
On December 18, 1930, Benito Mussolini summed up the ef-
fects of this unprecedented event on Europe:—
The situation in Italy was satisfactory until the fall of
1929, when the American market crash exploded suddenly
like a bomb. For us poor European provincials it was a
great surprise. We remained astonished, like the world at
the announcement of the death of Napoleon.... Suddenly the
beautiful scene collapsed and we had a series of bad days.
Stocks lost thirty, forty and fifty per cent of their value. The
crisis grew deeper.... From that day we also were again
pushed into the high seas, and from that day navigation has
become extremely difficult for us.
150
Unemployment, hunger, mass demoralization and destitution
were the inevitable accompaniments of the economic crash which,
beginning in Wall Street, soon swept like a hurricane across Europe
and Asia, involving all the nations which were to have composed
the Holy Alliance against Bolshevism.
Great banks and industrial concerns were crashing almost daily;
small investors were ruined; the workers were turned out in the
streets. While the millions starved, wheat rotted in the crammed
silos; surplus corn was plowed back into the earth; coffee was used
for stoking furnaces; fish were thrown back into the sea. The world
could no longer pay for the commodities it had produced in overa-
bundance. An entire system of economic distribution had broken
down.
Early in 1931, Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of Eng-
land, wrote to M. Moret, Governor of the Banque de France: “Un-
less drastic measures are taken to save it, the capitalist system
throughout the civilized world will be wrecked within a year.”
A world had tumbled in ruins and amidst the appalling wreck-
age, whole nations of baffled human beings wandered like lost
souls....
In the Far, East, Japan saw her opportunity. The first phase of
the Tanaka Memorial went into operation.
On the night of September 18, 1931, Japanese military forces
invaded Manchuria. The Chinese Kuomintang armies, still fighting
a civil war against the Chinese Communists, were taken by surprise
and offered little resistance. Japan swept through Manchuria “to
save China from Bolshevism.”...
The Second World War had begun—not quite as it had been
planned.
151
CHAPTER XIII
Three Trials
1. The Trial of the Industrial Party
The only country unaffected by the World Crisis was the one-sixth
of the earth which had been deliberately excluded from world af-
fairs since 1917, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,
While the rest of mankind writhed in the grip of the crisis, the
Soviet Union was embarking on the most grandiose economic and
industrial expansion in all history. Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan was
galvanizing Old Russia into unprecedented feats of creative labor.
Whole cities were rising out of the barren steppes; new mines, mills
and factories were springing up. Millions of peasants were trans-
forming themselves overnight into trained workers, engineers, sci-
entists, doctors, architects and educators. In a few years the progress
of a thousand was achieved, and moujiks whose ancestors from time
immemorial had bent their ragged backs over their primitive
scythes, mattocks and wooden plows now harvested the fructified
soil with tractors and combines, and combated the crop pests with
chemicals sprayed from airplanes. And amidst this gigantic national
and revolutionary effort, a Soviet generation which had never
known the degradation of Czarist tyranny was rising to manhood....
At the same time, the Soviet Government struck hard at its en-
emies within. A series of three trials exposed and smashed the
Torgprom intrigue which represented the last major effort of Anglo-
French imperialism and Czarist counterrevolution in Russia.
On October 28, 1930, Professor Ramzin, along with many other
leaders and members of the Industrial Party, were rounded up and
arrested. Raids by OGPU agents occurred simultaneously through-
out the Soviet Union, and underground members of the Social Rev-
olutionary, Menshevik and White Guard movements were taken
into custody along with a number of Polish, French and Rumanian
secret service agents.
The trial of the Industrial Party leaders took place before the
Soviet Supreme Court in Moscow and lasted from November 25 to
December 7, 1930. The eight defendants, including Professor
Ramzin and Victor Laritchev, were charged with aiding foreign
conspiracies against the Soviet Union; with carrying: on espionage
and sabotage activities; and with plotting to overthrow the Soviet
152
Government. Confronted with the evidence which Soviet Intelli-
gence agents had gathered against them, one by one the accused
broke down and admitted their guilt. Their testimony not only gave
full details of their espionage-sabotage operations, but also impli-
cated Sir Henri Deterding, Colonel Joinville, Leslie Urquhart, Ray-
mond Poincare and other eminent European soldiers, statesmen and
businessmen who had backed the Industrial Party and the
Torgprom.
Five of the defendants, including Professor Ramzin and Victor
Laritchev, were sentenced to the supreme penalty—to be shot as
traitors to their country. The other three defendants, technicians who
had operated under orders, were sentenced to ten years’
imprisonment.1
2. The Trial of the Mensheviks
Shortly after the debacle of the Industrial Party, the Soviet au-
thorities struck again. On May 1931, fourteen leaders of an exten-
sive sabotage ring, made up of former Mensheviks, were placed on
trial before the Soviet Supreme Court in Moscow.2
1
Two days after the completion of the trial, Professor Ramzin and
the four other defendants who had been sentenced to death petitioned
the Soviet Supreme Court for a reprieve. The court granted the petition
and commuted the sentences of death to sentences of ten years’ impris-
onment on the grounds that Ramzin and his colleagues had been the
tools of the real conspirators who were outside the Soviet Union. In the
years following the trial, Professor Ramzin, who was granted every
opportunity by the Soviet authorities for new scientific work, became
completely won over to the Soviet way of life and began making valu-
able contributions to the industrial program of the U.S.S.R. On July 7,
1943, Professor Ramzin was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Jo-
seph Stalin Prize of $30,000 for the invention of a simplified turbo-
generator, said to be better than any other in the world. Under a decree
issued by the Kremlin, the turbo-generator bears the inventor’s name.
2
The Mensheviks were a faction within the Russian Social Demo-
cratic Party, which was the original Russian Marxist organization. At
the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party, held in
London in 1903, the organization split into two rival groups. Subse-
quently, these two groups formed themselves into separate parties. Len-
in’s group were called Bolsheviks (from bolshinstvo, meaning majori-
ty); Lenin’s opponents were called Mensheviks (from menshintsvo,
meaning minority). The Bolsheviks, at Lenin’s suggestion, later took
153
The defendants at the Menshevik Trial included a number of
highly placed officials in vital Soviet administrative and technical
agencies. In the early days of the Soviet regime these Mensheviks
had pretended to renounce their hostility toward the Bolsheviks. Co-
operating with the Industrial Party and other secret anti-Soviet ele-
ments, they had maneuvered their way into key government posts.
One of the Menshevik conspirators, Groman, had secured a high
position in the Soviet industrial planning bureau (Gosplan), and had
tried to sabotage phases of the first Five-Year Plan by drawing up
incorrect estimates and lowering production goals in vital industries.
Between 1928 and 1930 the “All-Union Bureau,” which was
the Central Committee of the secret Menshevik organization, re-
ceived a total of approximately 500,000 rubles from foreign
sources. The largest contributor was the Torgprom, but other anti-
Soviet groups also made sizable donations to the conspirators and
maintained close contact with them. The Mensheviks were strongly
supported by the Second International—the labor organization con-
trolled by the anti-Soviet Social Democrats and Socialists.
According to the defendants, their chief liaison with the foreign
anti-Soviet circles had been the former Russian Menshevik leader
Raphael Abromovitch, who had fled to Germany after the
Revolution. One of the ringleaders of the conspiracy, Vassili Sher,
testified:—
In the year 1928, Abromovitch came from abroad. We
members of the “All-Union Bureau” were previously in-
formed of his journey....
Abromovitch pointed out the necessity of concentrating
the main weight of the work on the groups of responsible
Soviet employees. He also pointed out that these groups
must be united and begin a more decisive tempo of disor-
ganizing activity.
Another of the Menshevik conspirators, Lazar Salkind, told the
court:—
...Abromovitch drew the conclusion that it was neces-
the name of Communists, and the official title of the Bolshevik Party
became: Communist Party of Russia (Bolsheviks). The Mensheviks
corresponded to the European Social Democrats and Socialists, with
whom they formed personal and organizational affiliations.
154
sary to begin with active sabotage of various branches of
the Soviet economic system, to disorganize the Soviet eco-
nomic policy in the eyes of the working class and the peas-
ant masses. The second basis of the struggle against the
Soviet power was military intervention, declared
Abromovitch.3
On March 9, 1931, the Soviet Supreme Court handed down its
decision. The Menshevik defendants were sentenced to prison terms
ranging from five to ten years.
3. The Trial of the Vickers Engineers
Around 9:30 P.M., on the night of March 11, 1933, the Soviet
Government struck its final blow at the remnants of the Torgprom
conspiracy. OGPU agents in Moscow arrested six British engineers
and ten Russians, all employees of the Moscow Office of the British
electrical-engineering concern of Metropolitan-Vickers. The British
subjects and their Russian associates were charged with having car-
ried on espionage and sabotage in the Soviet Union on behalf of the
British Intelligence Service.
The chief Vickers representative in Moscow had been a man
named Captain C. S. Richards. He had hurriedly left for England
just before the arrests. Richards had been a British agent in Russia
since 1917 when, as captain of an Intelligence Service detachment,
he took part in the anti-Soviet intrigues which preceded the Allied
occupation of Archangel. Under Richards’s direction, the Moscow
Office of Metro-Vickers had subsequently become the center of
British secret service operations in Russia.
Among the British “technicians” arrested by the Soviet authori-
ties in Moscow was one of Captain Richards’s former associates in
3
The Second International denounced the trial of the Mensheviks
as “political persecution” by Stalin’s “bureaucratic dictatorship.”
Abromovitch issued a statement denying that he had traveled to the
Soviet Union and participated in secret conferences there. He admitted,
however, that “there has been an illegally active organization of our
Party there, whose representatives or individual members are in com-
munication by letter and from the point of view of organization with
our foreign delegation in Berlin.”
Abromovitch later came to the United States. For his current ac-
tivities in America, see Chapter XXIII.
155
the Archangel expedition, Allan Monkhouse, who served as Rich-
ards’s second-in-command.
Monkhouse, while pleading not guilty to the current charges,
admitted that he had formerly been associated with Richards. He
testified:—
Mr. Richards I met in 1917 in Moscow and later on in
Archangel, where he, as I confirm, occupied the position of
captain of the Intelligence Service. It is known to me that
Mr. Richards was in Moscow in April or May, 1918. I do
not know for what he came to Moscow but I know from
what he told me that he secretly crossed the frontier to Fin-
land at that time. In 1923 he was appointed a director of the
Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Export Company. In the
same year he went to Moscow for “negotiations about sup-
plying of equipment.”
Monkhouse had been sent back to Russia in 1924 to work under
Richards in the Vickers Moscow Office.
Leslie Charles Thornton, another of the arrested Vickers em-
ployees, who had been sent to Moscow as Vickers Chief Erecting
Engineer, was the son of a wealthy Czarist textile manufacturer and
a Russian subject by birth. He had become a British subject after the
Revolution and an agent of the British Intelligence Service. Two
days after his arrest, Thornton wrote and signed a deposition which
stated:—
All our spying operations on U.S.S.R. territory are di-
rected by the British Intelligence Service, through their
agent, C. S. Richards, who occupies the position of Manag-
ing Director of the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Export
Company, Ltd.
Spying operations on U.S.S.R. territory were directed by
myself and Monkhouse, representatives of the above-
mentioned British firm, who are contractors, by official
agreements, to the Soviet Government, for the supply of tur-
bines and electrical equipment and the furnishing of tech-
nical aid agreement. On the instructions of C. S. Richards
given to me this end, British personnel were gradually drawn
into the spying organization after their arrival on U.S.S.R.
territory and instructed as to the information required.
156
The Vickers “engineer” William MacDonald also admitted the
charges and stated:—
The leader of the reconnaissance work in the U.S.S.R.
disguised under the shield of Metropolitan-Vickers was Mr.
Thornton, who worked in Moscow as chief erecting engi-
neer. The head of the representation was Mr. Monkhouse
who also took part in this illegal work of Mr. Thornton.
The assistant of Mr. Thornton for traveling purposes and
his associate in the espionage work was engineer Cushny,
officer of the British army, now an engineer of the firm
Metropolitan-Vickers. This is the main group of reconnais-
sance workers which did the espionage work in the
U.S.S.R.
The arrest of these Vickers “engineers” was the occasion for an
immediate storm of anti-Soviet protest in Britain. Prime Minister
Stanley Baldwin, without waiting to hear the charges and evidence
in the case, categorically declared that the British subjects who had
been arrested were absolutely innocent. Tory members of Parlia-
ment once again demanded severance of all commercial and diplo-
matic relations with Moscow. The British Ambassador to Soviet
Russia, Sir Esmond Ovey, a friend of Sir Henri Deterding, stormed
into the Soviet Foreign Office in Moscow and told Maxim Litvinov
that the prisoners must be immediately released without trial in or-
der to avoid “grave consequences to our mutual relations.”
When the trial finally opened on April 12, in the Blue Hall of the
old Nobles’ Club in Moscow, the London Times of that day spoke of
“a packed court, subservient to their persecutors.” The Observer on
April 16 described the trial as “an ordeal conducted in the name of
justice, but bearing no resemblance to any judicial proceedings that
civilization knows.” The Daily Express on April 18 described the
Soviet Prosecutor Vyshinsky: “The carroty-haired, red-faced Russian
spat insults... pounded the table.” The Evening Standard that same
week described the Soviet Defense Counsel Braude as “the sort of
Jew one might meet any evening in Shaftsbury Avenue.”
The British public was given to understand that no genuine trial
of the accused was taking place, and that the British engineers were
being subjected to the most frightful tortures to exact from them
admissions of their guilt. The Daily Express on March 20 had ex-
claimed: “Our countrymen are undergoing the horrors of a Russian
157
prison!” The Times, on April 17 declared: “Great anxiety is felt as
to what is happening to Mr. MacDonald in prison between the sit-
tings of the Court. Those long acquainted with Chekist methods
think his life is in danger.” Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail, which
within a few months was to become the semi-official organ of Sir
Oswald Mosley’s British Fascist Party, told its readers of a strange
“Tibetan drug” which was being used by the OGPU to sap the will
power of their “victims.”
All the British subjects, however, subsequently revealed that
they had been treated with great politeness and consideration by the
Soviet authorities. None of them had been subjected to any form of
coercion, third-degree methods or force. Allan Monkhouse, who, in
the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary, blandly contin-
ued to deny that he had any knowledge of what his colleagues were
doing, declared of his OGPU examiners in a statement in the Lon-
don Dispatch on March 15:—
They were extraordinarily nice to me and exceedingly
reasonable in their questioning. My examiners seemed first-
rate men who knew their job. The OGPU prison is the last
word in efficiency, entirely clean, orderly and well orga-
nized. This is the first time that I have ever been arrested,
but I have visited English prisons and can attest that the
OGPU quarters are much superior.... OGPU officials...
showed every concern for my comfort.
Nevertheless, the British Government, under Tory pressure,
imposed an embargo on all imports from Soviet Russia. Trade be-
tween the two countries was stopped.
On April 15, after a private interview with British representa-
tives in Moscow, Leslie Thornton abruptly retracted his signed ad-
mission of guilt. In court he admitted that the facts he had written
down were substantially correct; but the word “spy,” he claimed,
was inaccurate: Trying to explain why he had used the word in the
first place, Thornton said that he had been “excited” at the time.
Under public questioning in court by the Soviet Prosecutor
Vyshinsky, he admitted that he had made the admissions of his
“own free will,” “without any pressure or coercion,” and in his own
words:—
VYSHINSKY: Nothing was distorted?
158
THORNTON: No, you did not change anything.
VYSHINSKY: But perhaps [Assistant Prosecutor]
Roginsky did?
THORNTON: No.
VYSHINSKY: Perhaps the OGPU distorted it?
THORNTON: No, I signed it with my own hand.
VYSHINSKY: And with your head? When you were
writing did you consider and think?
THORNTON: (Does not reply.)
VYSHINSKY: And whose head is thinking for you now?
THORNTON: At present I feel different.
William MacDonald, after a private interview with British rep-
resentatives in Moscow, also suddenly retracted his original state-
ments. Then, confronted with the evidence accumulated by the So-
viet authorities, MacDonald again changed his mind and returned to
his original plea of guilty. His last words to the court were: “I have
admitted my guilt and have nothing more to add.”
On April 18, the Soviet Supreme Court handed down its ver-
dict. With one exception all the Russian accomplices were found
guilty and were sentenced to prison terms ranging: from three to ten
years. The British subject, Albert Gregory, was acquitted on the
grounds that the evidence against him was insufficient. The other
five British engineers were found guilty. Monkhouse, Nordwall and
Cushny were ordered to be deported from the Soviet Union. Leslie
Thornton and William MacDonald were sentenced respectively to
two and three years’ imprisonment.
The sentences were light and the case was hastily concluded.
The Soviet Government had accomplished its aim of smashing the
remnants of the Torgprom conspiracy and the center of British In-
telligence operations in Russia. A mutual compromise was effected
between the Soviet and British Governments. Trade was resumed
and the British defendants, including Thornton and MacDonald,
were shipped back to England....
A far more dangerous phenomenon than British Tory hostility
to Soviet Russia had arisen on the international political horizon.
Adolf Hitler had seized supreme power in Germany.
159
CHAPTER XIV
Death of an Era
The propaganda myth of the “menace of Bolshevism” had put Na-
zism in power. Under the pretext of saving Germany from Com-
munism, Adolf Hitler had risen from an obscure Austrian corporal
and Reichswehr spy to become Chancellor of the German Reich. On
the night of February 27, 1933, Hitler rose even higher by means of
a supreme act of provocation: the burning of the German Reichstag.
The fire, set by the Nazis themselves, was proclaimed by Hitler to
be the signal for a Communist uprising against the Government of
Germany. With this excuse, the Nazis declared a state of emergen-
cy, imprisoned or murdered leading anti-fascists, and smashed the
trade-unions. Out of the charred ruins of the Reichstag, Hitler
emerged as Der Fuehrer of the Third Reich.
The Third Reich replaced the White Counterrevolution of Czar-
ism as the world’s bulwark of reaction and anti-democracy. Nazism
was the apotheosis of the Counterrevolution, equipped with the tre-
mendous industrial and military resources of resurgent German Im-
perialism. Its political creed was a resurrection of the dark hatreds
and fanatical prejudices of Czarism. Its Storm Troops were the old
Black Hundreds reborn and raised to the status of a regular military
apparatus. Mass pogroms and extermination of whole peoples were
part of the official program of the Government of the Third Reich.
The Protocols of Zion provided the Nazi ideology. The Nazi leaders
themselves were the spiritual offspring of the Baron Wrangels and
Ungerns of the White Terror in Russia.
The fifteen years of the false peace and the secret war against
world democracy and progress under the slogan of “anti-
Bolshevism” had borne their inevitable fruit. The flames that burned
the Reichstag were soon to spread and multiply until they menaced
the entire globe....
“We start anew where we terminated six centuries ago,” wrote
Hitler in Mein Kampf. “We reverse the eternal Germanic emigration
to the South and West of Europe and look Eastwards. In this way
we bring to an end the colonial and trade policies of the pre-War
times and pass over to the territorial policy of the future. If we
speak of new soil we can but think first of Russia and her subject
border states.”
The lure of “anti-Bolshevism” drew as by a powerful magnet
160
the forces of world reaction and imperialism to the support of Adolf
Hitler.
The same statesmen and militarists who had formerly supported
every White intrigue and conspiracy against Soviet Russia now
emerged as the chief apologists and promoters of Nazism. In
France, the anti-Bolshevik circle which had surrounded Marshal
Foch and his former aides, Petain and Weygand, ignored the men-
ace of Nazism to their own country in their eagerness to ally them-
selves with this new and most powerful of all anti-Bolshevik
movements. Mannerheim of Finland, Horthy of Hungary, Sirovy of
Czechoslovakia, and all the other European puppets of the secret
anti-Soviet war were converted overnight into the vanguard of Nazi
aggression to the east....
In May, 1933, only a few months after Hitler took power in
Germany, Alfred Rosenberg went to England to confer with Sir
Henri Deterding. The Nazi “philosopher” was a guest at the oil
magnate’s country estate at Buckhurst Park near Windsor Castle.
Already there was a powerful and growing pro-Nazi group among
the British Tory advocates of the anti-Bolshevik crusade.
On November 28, 1933, Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail sound-
ed the theme that was soon to dominate British foreign policy:—
The sturdy young Nazis of Germany are Europe’s
guardians against the Communist danger.... Germany must
have elbow room.... The diversion of Germany’s reserves
of energies and organizing ability into Bolshevik Russia
would help to restore the Russian people to a civilized ex-
istence, and perhaps turn the tide of world trade once more
towards prosperity.
Under Nazi leadership, all the scattered forces of world anti-
Bolshevism, anti-democracy and White Counterrevolution were to
be mobilized into a single international force for the smashing of
European democracy, invasion of Soviet Russia and, eventually, for
attempted domination of the world.
But there were far-sighted statesmen in the Western democra-
cies who refused to accept Hitler’s anti-Bolshevism as an extenua-
tion of all Nazi crimes and conspiracies. In Britain and the United
States, there were two outstanding leaders who saw from the begin-
ning that with the triumph of Nazism in Germany an era of world
history had come to an end. The fifteen-year-old secret war against
161
Soviet Russia had reared a Frankenstein in the heart of Europe, a
militarized monster that threatened the peace and security of all free
nations.
As Hitler’s Storm Troops marched through the streets of Ger-
many, swinging their clubs and singing, “Today Germany is Ours,
Tomorrow the Whole World!” an English voice spoke out on a note
of warning and prophetic alarm. Unexpectedly, it was the voice of
Winston Churchill, the former leader of Tory anti-Bolshevism.
In December, 1933, Churchill dramatically broke with his Tory
colleagues and denounced Nazism as a menace to the British Em-
pire. In direct reply to Lord Rothermere’s statement that “the sturdy
young Nazis of Germany are Europe’s guardians against the Com-
munist danger,” Churchill said:—
All these bands of sturdy Teutonic youths marching the
streets and roads of Germany... are looking for weapons,
and, when they have the weapons, believe me they will
then ask for the return of lost territories and lost colonies,
and when that demand is made it cannot fail to shake and
possibly shatter to their foundations every one of the
countries.
Churchill called for an agreement with France and even the So-
viet Union against Nazi Germany. He was denounced as a traitor
and warmonger by the men who had formerly hailed him as a hero
of the anti-Bolshevik cause....
Across the Atlantic another man saw that an era of world histo-
ry had ended. The recently elected President of the United States,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, abruptly reversed the anti-Soviet policy
which his predecessor, President Herbert Hoover, had pursued. On
November 16, 1933, full diplomatic relations were established be-
tween the United States and the Soviet Union. On that same day
President Roosevelt sent a letter to Maxim Litvinov which stated:—
I trust that the relations now established between our
peoples may forever remain normal and friendly, and that
our nations henceforth may co-operate for their mutual
benefit and for the preservation of the peace of the world.1
1
That same year Colonel Raymond Robins had revisited the Soviet
Union on a three months’ tour of inspection of Soviet social and eco-
162
Within a year Nazi Germany had withdrawn from the League of
Nations. Its place in the collective council of the nations was taken
by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The new era had begun. It was to be an era of the most fantastic
and enormous treasons in history; an era of secret diplomacy carried
on by terror, murder, conspiracy, coup d’état, fraud and deceit un-
paralleled in the past.
It was to culminate in the Second World War.
nomic institutions. During this tour Robins covered eight thousand

miles and gathered valuable data on the progress of the country since
the Revolution. Before Robins left Moscow, Stalin granted him a
lengthy private interview in the course of which they discussed Ameri-
can-Soviet relations. On his return to the United States, Robins was
invited to the White House to make a personal report to President Roo-
sevelt, who shortly after announced American recognition of the Soviet
regime.
163
BOOK THREE
Russia Fifth Column
CHAPTER XV
The Path to Treason
1. Rebel among Revolutionaries
From the moment Hitler took power in Germany, the international
counterrevolution became an integral part of the Nazi plan of world
conquest. In every country, Hitler mobilized the counterrevolution-
ary forces which for the past fifteen years had been organizing
throughout the world. These forces were now converted into the
Fifth Columns of Nazi Germany, organizations of treason, espio-
nage and terror. These Fifth Columns were the secret vanguards of
the German Wehrmacht.
One of the most powerful and important of these Fifth Columns
operated in Soviet Russia. It was headed by a man who was perhaps
the most remarkable political renegade in all history.
The name of this man was Leon Trotsky.
When the Third Reich came into being, Leon Trotsky was al-
ready the leader of an international anti-Soviet conspiracy with
powerful forces inside the Soviet Union. Trotsky in exile was plot-
ting the overthrow of the Soviet Government, his own return to
Russia and the assumption of that personal power he had once so
nearly held.
“There was a time,” Winston Churchill wrote in Great Contem-
poraries, “when Trotsky stood very close to the vacant throne of the
Romanovs.”
In 1919-1920, the world press dubbed Trotsky the “Red Napo-
leon.” Trotsky was War Commissar. Dressed in a long smart mili-
tary topcoat, with shining high boots, an automatic pistol on his hip,
Trotsky toured the battlefronts delivering fiery orations to the Red
Army soldiers. He converted an armored train into his private head-
quarters and surrounded himself with a specially uniformed, per-
sonal armed bodyguard. He had his own faction in the Army Com-
mand, in the Bolshevik Party and in the Soviet Government. Trot-
sky’s train, Trotsky’s guard, Trotsky’s speeches, Trotsky’s fea-
tures—his shock of black hair, his little black pointed beard and his
darting eyes behind his glittering pince-nez—were world-famous.
164
In Europe and in the United States, the victories of the Red Army
were credited to “Trotsky’s leadership.”
Here is how War Commissar Trotsky, addressing one of his
spectacular mass rallies in Moscow, was described by the famous
American foreign correspondent, Isaac F. Marcosson:—
Trotsky made his appearance in what actors call a good
entrance... after a delay, and at the right psychological mo-
ment, he emerged from the wings and walked with quick
steps to the little pulpit which is provided for speakers at all
Russian gatherings.
Even before he came on the stage there was a tremor of
anticipation throughout the great audience. You could get
the murmur, “Trotsky comes.”...
On the platform his voice was rich, deep and eloquent.
He attracted and repelled; dominated and domineered. He
was elemental, almost primitive in his fervor—a high-
powered human engine. He inundated his hearers with a
Niagara of speech, the like of which I have never heard.
Vanity and arrogance stood out pre-eminently.
After his dramatic deportation from Soviet Russia in 1929, a
myth was woven by anti-Soviet elements throughout the world
around the name and personality of Leon Trotsky. According to this
myth, Trotsky was “the outstanding Bolshevik leader of the Russian
Revolution” and “Lenin’s inspirer, closest co-worker and logical
successor.”
But in February, 1917, One month before the collapse of Czar-
ism, Lenin himself wrote:—
The name Trotsky signifies: Left phraseology and a
bloc with the right against the aim of the left.
Lenin called Trotsky the “Judas” of the Russian Revolution.1
1
Here are some other comments periodically made by Lenin con-
cerning Trotsky and his activities within the Russian revolutionary
movement:—
1911. “In 1903, Trotsky was a Menshevik; he left the Mensheviks
in 1904; returned to the Mensheviks in 1905, parading around with
ultra-revolutionary phrases the while; and again turned his back on the
Mensheviks in 1906.... Trotsky plagiarizes today from the ideas of one
165
Traitors are made, not born. Like Benito Mussolini, Pierre La-
val, Paul Joseph Goebbels, Jacques Doriot, Wang Ching-wei and
other notorious adventurers of modern times, Leon Trotsky began
his career as a dissident, extreme leftist element within the revolu-
tionary movement of his native land.
The name Trotsky was a pseudonym. He was born Lev
Davidovich Bronstein, the son of prosperous middle-class parents,
in Yariovka, a little farming village near Kherson in southern Rus-
sia, in 1879. His first ambition was to be an author.
“In my eyes,” Trotsky wrote in his autobiography, My Life, “au-
thors, journalists and artists always stood for a world that was more
attractive than any other, a world open to the elect.”
The youthful Trotsky started work on a play, and appeared in
Odessa literary salons in high-heeled boots, wearing a blue artist’s
smock, with a round straw hat on his head, and carrying a black cane.
While still a student, he joined a group of bohemian radicals. At
faction, tomorrow those of the other, and thus he regards himself as

superior to both factions.... I must declare that Trotsky represents his
own faction only.”
1911. “Such people as Trotsky with his puffed up phrases... are
now the disease of the age.... Everyone who supports Trotsky’s group
supports the policy of lies and deception of the workers... it is Trotsky’s
special task... to throw sand in the eyes of the workers... it is not possi-
ble to discuss essentials with Trotsky, for he has no views... we merely
expose him as a diplomatist of the meanest description.”
1912. “This bloc is composed of lack of principle, hypocrisy and
empty phrases.... Trotsky covers them by the revolutionary phrase,
which costs him nothing and binds him to nothing.”
1914. “The old participants in the Marxian movement in Russia
know Trotsky’s personality very well, and it is not worth while talking
to them about it. But the young generation of workers do not know him
and we must speak of him.... Such types are characteristic as fragments
of the historical formations of yesterday, when the mass Labour
Movement of Russia was still dormant....”
1914. “Comrade Trotsky has never yet possessed a definite opinion
on any single, earnest Marxian question; he has always crept into the
breach made by this or that difference; and has oscillated from one side
to another.”
1915. “Trotsky... as always, entirely disagrees with the social-
chauvinists in principle, but agrees with them in everything in
practice.”
166
eighteen, he was arrested by the Czarist police for distributing left-
wing literature and exiled, along with hundreds of other students and
revolutionists, to Siberia. He escaped from Siberia in the fall of 1902,
and went to live abroad, where he was to spend the greater part of his
life as an. agitator and conspirator among the Russian émigrés and
cosmopolitan socialists in the European capitals.
For the first few months of 1903 Trotsky was a member of the
staff of Iskra, the Marxist paper which Lenin was editing in exile in
London. Following the Menshevik-Bolshevik split which took place
in the Russian Marxist movement that summer, Trotsky became
affiliated with Lenin’s political opponents, the Mensheviks. Trot-
sky’s literary talent, flamboyant oratory, dominating personality and
flair for self-dramatization soon won him the reputation of being the
most brilliant young Menshevik agitator. He toured the Russian
radical student colonies of Brussels, Paris, Liege, Switzerland and
Germany assailing Lenin and the other Bolsheviks who called for a
disciplined, highly organized revolutionary party to lead the strug-
gle against Czarism. In a pamphlet entitled Our Political Tasks,
published in 1904, Trotsky accused Lenin of trying to impose a
“barracks-room regime” on the Russian radicals. In language star-
tlingly similar to that which he was later to use in his attacks on
Stalin, the young Trotsky denounced Lenin as “the leader of the
reactionary wing of our party.”
In 1905, following the Czarist defeat in the Russo-Japanese
War, the workers and peasants rose in the abortive “first” Russian
Revolution. Trotsky hastened back to Russia and became a leading
member of the Menshevik-controlled St. Petersburg Soviet. In the
hectic atmosphere of intrigue, the intense political conflict and the
sense of imminent power, Trotsky found his element. At twenty-six,
he emerged from the experience convinced that he was destined to
be the leader of the Russian Revolution. Already Trotsky was talk-
ing in terms of his “fate” and his “revolutionary intuition.” Years
later, in My Life, he wrote:—
I came to Russia in February of 1905; the other émigré
leaders did not come until October and November. Among
the Russian comrades, there was not one from whom I
could learn anything. On the contrary, I had to assume the
position of teacher myself.... In October, I plunged head-
long into the gigantic whirlpool, which, in a personal sense,
167
was the greatest test for my powers. Decisions had to be
made under fire. I can’t help noting here that those deci-
sions came to me quite obviously.... I organically felt that
my years of apprenticeship were over... in the years that
followed I have been learning as a master learns, and not as
a pupil.... No great work is possible without intuition.... The
events of 1905 revealed in me, I believe, this revolutionary
intuition, and enabled me to rely on its assured support dur-
ing my later life.... In all conscientiousness, I cannot, in the
appreciation of the political situation, as a whole and of its
revolutionary perspectives, accuse myself of any serious er-
rors of judgment.
Abroad again, after the defeat of the 1905 revolution, Trotsky
set up his own political headquarters in Vienna and, attacking Lenin
as “a candidate for the post of dictator,” launched a propaganda
campaign to build his own movement and to promote himself as a
“revolutionary internationalist.” From Vienna, Trotsky moved rest-
lessly to Rumania, Switzerland, France, Turkey, enlisting followers
and forming valuable connections with European Socialists and
leftist radicals. Gradually and persistently, among the Russian émi-
gré Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries and bohemian intellectuals,
Trotsky built up a reputation for himself as Lenin’s chief rival with-
in the Russian revolutionary movement.
“The whole construction of Leninism,” wrote Trotsky in a con-
fidential letter to the Russian Menshevik leader Tscheidze, on Feb-
ruary 23, 1913, “is at present built up on lies and contains the poi-
sonous germ of its own disintegration.” Trotsky went on to tell his
Menshevik associate that, in his opinion, Lenin was nothing more
than “a professional exploiter of every backwardness in the Russian
workers’ movement.”
The collapse of the Czar’s regime in March, 1917 found Trotsky
in New York City, editing a Russian radical newspaper, Novy Mir
(New World), in collaboration with his friend and Lenin’s opponent,
Nicolai Bukharin, an ultra-leftist Russian émigré politician whom one
observer described as “a blond Machiavelli in a leather jacket.”2 Trot-
2
Trotsky had arrived in the United States only two months before
the downfall of the Czar, after being expelled from France in the late
fall of 1916. Bukharin had preceded him to the United States from
Austria.
168
sky hastily booked passage for Russia. His trip was, interrupted when
the Canadian authorities arrested him at Halifax. After being held in
custody for a month, he was released at the request of the Russian
Provisional Government and sailed for Petrograd.
The British Government had decided to let Trotsky return to
Russia. According to the memoirs of the British agent Bruce Lock-
hart, the British Intelligence Service believed it might be able to
make use of the “dissensions between Trotsky and Lenin.”3...
Trotsky reached Petrograd in May. At first he tried to create a
revolutionary party of his own—a bloc composed of former émigrés
and extreme leftist elements from different radical parties. But it
was soon clear that there was no future for Trotsky’s movement.
The Bolshevik Party had the support of the revolutionary masses.
In August, 1917, Trotsky made a sensational political somer-
sault. After fourteen years of opposition to Lenin and the Bolshe-
viks, Trotsky applied for membership in the Bolshevik Party.
Lenin had repeatedly warned against Trotsky and his personal
ambitions; but now, in the crucial struggle to establish a Soviet
Government, Lenin’s policy called for a united front of all revolu-
tionary factions, groups and parties. Trotsky was the spokesman for
a sizable group. Outside of Russia his name was better known than
that of any other Russian revolutionary except Lenin. Moreover,
Trotsky’s unique talents as an orator, agitator and organizer could
be used to great advantage by the Bolsheviks. Trotsky’s application
for membership in the Bolshevik Party was accepted.
3
In his memoirs British Agent, Bruce Lockhart expresses the belief
that the British Government at first made a serious mistake in the way it
handled Trotsky. Lockhart writes: “We had not handled Trotsky wisely.
At the time of the first revolution he was in exile in America. He was
then neither a Menshevik nor a Bolshevik. He was what Lenin called a
Trotskyist—that is to say, an individualist and an opportunist. A revo-
lutionary with the temperament of an artist and undoubted physical
courage, he had never been and never could be a good party man. His
conduct prior to the first revolution had incurred the severest condem-
nation by Lenin.... In the spring of 1917 Kerensky requested the British
Government to facilitate Trotsky’s return to Russia.... As usual in our
attitude toward Russia, we adopted disastrous half-measures. Trotsky
was treated as a criminal. At Halifax... he was interned in a prison
camp.... Then, having roused his bitter hate, we allowed him to return
to Russia.”
169
Characteristically, Trotsky made a spectacular entry into the
Bolshevik Party. He brought with him into the Party his entire mot-
ley following of dissident leftists. As Lenin humorously put it, it
was like coming to terms with a “major power.”
Trotsky became Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, in which he
had made his first revolutionary appearance in 1905. He held this
position during the decisive days that followed. When the first So-
viet Government was formed as a coalition of Bolsheviks, left So-
cial Revolutionaries and former Mensheviks, Trotsky became For-
eign Commissar. His intimate knowledge of foreign languages and
wide acquaintance with foreign countries fitted him for the post.
2. The Left Opposition
First as Foreign Commissar and then as War Commissar, Trotsky
was the chief spokesman of the so-called Left Opposition within the
Bolshevik Party.4 Although few in number, the oppositionists were
4
For Trotsky’s, oppositionist activities as Foreign Commissar dur-
ing the Brest-Litovsk Peace crisis, see page 18.
Following his removal from the post of Foreign Commissar, Trot-
sky publicly admitted the error of his opposition to Lenin at Brest-
Litovsk, and again offered unreserved co-operation with Lenin. Trotsky
was given a new post which seemed suited to his organizational and
oratorical talents. He was made War Commissar. The military strategy
and practical leadership of the Red Army was chiefly in the hands of
men like Stalin, Frunze, Voroshilov, Kirov, Shors, and Budyenny. Re-
lying on the advice of a number of former Czarist “specialists” who
surrounded him, War Commissar Trotsky; repeatedly opposed the mili-
tary decisions of the Bolshevik Central Committee and flagrantly ex-
ceeded his authority. In several cases, only the direct intervention of the
Central Committee prevented Trotsky from executing leading Bolshe-
vik military representatives at the front who objected to his autocratic
conduct.
In the summer of 1919 Trotsky, stating that Kolchak was no longer
a menace in the east, proposed shifting the forces of the Red Army into
the campaign against Denikin in the south. This, Stalin pointed out,
would have given Kolchak a much needed breathing spell and the op-
portunity to reorganize and reequip his army and launch a fresh offen-
sive. “The Urals with their works,” declared Stalin as military repre-
sentative of the Central Committee, “with their network of railways,
should not be left in Kolchak’s hands, because he could there easily
collect the big farmers around him and advance to the Volga.” Trot-
170
talented speakers and organizers. They had wide connections abroad,
and among the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries in Russia. In
the early days after the Revolution they secured important posts in the
army, diplomatic corps and executive state institutions.
Trotsky shared the leadership of the Opposition with two other
dissident radicals: Nicolai Bukharin, the slim, blond, self-styled
“Marxist ideologist,” who headed a group of so-called “Left Com-
munists;” and Grigori Zinoviev, the burly, eloquent leftist agitator,
who, together with Trotsky’s brother-in-law, Leo Kamenev, led his
own sect, called “Zinovievites.” Trotsky, Bukharin and Zinoviev
frequently quarreled among themselves on questions of tactics, and
because of personal rivalries and conflicting political ambitions, but
at crucial moments they joined forces in repeated attempts to gain
control of the Soviet Government.
sky’s plan was rejected by the Central Committee, and he took no fur-
ther part in the campaign in the east, which led to the final defeat of
Kolchak’s forces.
In the fall of 1919 Trotsky drew up a plan for a campaign against
Denikin. His plan called for a march through the Don steppes, an al-
most roadless region filled with bands of counterrevolutionary Cos-
sacks. Stalin, who had been sent to the Southern Front by the Central
Committee, rejected Trotsky’s plan and. proposed instead that the Red
Army advance across the Donets Basin With its dense railroad network,
coal supplies and sympathetic working-class population. Stalin’s plan
was accepted by the Central Committee. Trotsky was removed from the
Southern Front, ordered not to interfere with operations in the south,
and “advised” not to cross the line of demarcation of the Southern
Front. Denikin was defeated according to Stalin’s plan.
Among War Commissar Trotsky’s closest associates was the for-
mer Czarist officer, Colonel Vatzetis, who served as commander-in-
chief with Trotsky on the Eastern Front against Kolchak. The Soviet
authorities uncovered the fact that Vatzetis was involved in intrigues
against the Red Army High Command. Vatzetis was removed from his
post. In My Life, Trotsky offered this curious apology for his former
associate: “...Vatzetis in his moments of inspiration would issue orders
as if the Soviet of Commissaries and the Central Executive Committee
did not exist... he was accused of dubious schemes and connections and
had to be dismissed, but there was really nothing serious about the ac-
cusations: Perhaps before going to sleep, the chap had been reading
Napoleon’s biography, and confided his ambitious dreams to two or
three young officers.”
171
Trotsky’s own followers included: Yuri Pyatakov, radical son
of a rich Ukrainian family, who had fallen under Trotsky’s influ-
ence in Europe; Karl Radek, the brilliant Polish “leftist” journalist
and agitator who had become associated with Trotsky in opposition
to Lenin in Switzerland; Nicolai Krestinsky, a former lawyer and
ambitious Bolshevik Duma representative; Grigori Sokolnikov, a
youthful cosmopolitan radical who entered the Soviet Foreign Of-
fice under Trotsky’s auspices; and Christian Rakovsky, the former
wealthy financial backer of the Rumanian Socialists, a Bulgarian by
birth, who had lived in most European countries, taken a medical
degree in France and become one of the leaders of the Ukrainian
Soviet uprising in 1918.
In addition, as War Commissar, Trotsky surrounded himself
with a clique of tough, violent army men who formed a special
“Trotsky Guard” fanatically devoted to their “leader.” A prominent
member of Trotsky’s military faction was Nicolai Muralov, the six-
foot, daredevil commander of the Moscow Military Garrison. Trot-
sky’s personal bodyguard included Ivan Smirnov, Sergei
Mrachkovsky and Ephraim Dreitzer. The former Social Revolution-
ary terrorist, Blumkin, the assassin of Count Mirbach, became chief
of Trotsky’s personal bodyguard.5
Trotsky also allied himself with a number of former Czarist of-
ficers whom he befriended and, despite frequent warnings from the
Bolshevik Party, placed in important military posts. One ex-Czarist
officer with whom Trotsky became intimately associated in 1920,
during the Polish campaign, was Mikhail Nicolayevich
Tukhachevsky, a military leader with Napoleonic ambitions of his
own.
The aim of the combined Left Opposition was to supplant Len-
in and take power in Soviet Russia.
The great issue facing the Russian revolutionaries after the de-
5
In April 1937, Trotsky had this to say about his association with
the assassin, Blumkin: “He was a member of my military secretariat
during the War, and personally connected with me.... His past—he had
a very extraordinary past. He was a member of the Left Social Revolu-
tionary Opposition and had participated in the insurrection against the
Bolsheviks. He was the man who killed the German Ambassador
Mirbach.... I employed him in my military secretariat and throughout,
when I needed a courageous man, Blumkin was at my disposal.”
172
feat of the White Armies and the intervention was: What to do with
the Soviet power? Trotsky, Bukharin and Zinoviev held that it was
impossible to build socialism in “backward Russia.” The Left Op-
position wanted to convert the Russian Revolution into a reservoir
of “world revolution,” a world center from which to promote revo-
lutions in other countries. Stripped of its “ultra-revolutionary verbi-
age,” as both Lenin and Stalin repeatedly pointed out, the Left Op-
position really stood for a wild struggle for power, “bohemian anar-
chism” and, inside Russia, military dictatorship under War Com-
missar Trotsky and his associates.
The issue came to a head at the Congress of Soviets in Decem-
ber, 1920. It was the coldest, hungriest and most crucial year of the
Revolution. The Congress assembled in the Hall of Columns in
Moscow. The city was snowbound, frozen stiff, starved and sick. In
the great hall, unheated because of the fuel crisis, the Soviet dele-
gates were wrapped in sheepskins, blankets and furs, shivering from
the intense December cold.
Lenin, still pale and shaken from the aftereffects of Fanya
Kaplan’s poisoned bullets which had so nearly ended his life in
1918, rose on the platform to give his reply to the Left Opposition.
He described the terrible conditions prevailing in Russia. He called
for national unity to meet the “incredible difficulties” of reorganiz-
ing economic and social life. He announced the New Economic Pol-
icy abolishing the rigid so-called “War Communism” and restoring
a measure of private trade and capitalism in Russia and opening the
way for the beginning of reconstruction. “We take one step back-
ward,” said Lenin, “in order at a later date to take two steps for-
ward!”
When Lenin announced the “temporary retreat” of the New
Economic Policy, Trotsky exclaimed: “The cuckoo has cuckooed
the end of the Soviet Government!”
But Lenin believed that the work of the Soviet Government had
only begun. He told the Congress:—
Only when the country is electrified, when industry,
agriculture and transport are placed on a technical basis of
modern large-scale production—only then will our victory
be complete.
There was a huge map of Russia on the platform. At a signal
from Lenin, a switch was touched and the map was suddenly illu-
173
minated. It showed the Congress how Lenin envisaged the future of
his country. Electric lights sparkled on the map at multitudinous
points, indicating to the frozen and hungry Soviet delegates the fu-
ture power stations, hydroelectric dams and other vast projects from
which streams of electrical energy would one day pour to transform
Old Russia into a modern, industrialized, socialist nation. A murmur
of excitement, applause and incredulity swept the cold, packed hall.
Trotsky’s friend, Karl Radek, watched the prophetic spectacle
through his thick glasses, shrugged his shoulders, and whispered:
“Electro-fiction!” Radek’s witticism became a Trotskyite slogan.
Bukharin said Lenin was trying to fool the peasants and workers
with his “Utopian chatter about electricity!”
Outside Soviet Russia, Trotsky’s international friends and sup-
porters in Socialist and left Communist circles believed that Lenin’s
regime was doomed. Many other observers also believed Trotsky
and the Left Opposition were on the verge of power. The American
foreign correspondent, Isaac F. Marcosson, reported that Trotsky
had “the young Communists, most of the officers, and the rank and
file of the Red Army behind him.” But the outside world, like Trot-
sky himself, overestimated his strength and popularity.
In an effort to rally a mass following, Trotsky toured the coun-
try, making dramatic appearances at public rallies, delivering im-
passioned speeches, accusing the “Old Bolsheviks” of having “de-
generated,” and calling on the “youth” to support his movement.
But the Russian soldiers, workers and peasants, fresh from the vic-
torious struggle against the would-be White Napoleons, were in no
mood to tolerate a “Red Napoleon” arising within their own ranks.
As Sir Bernard Pares wrote in his History of Russia, concerning
Trotsky at this period:—
An acute critic who saw him at close quarters has truly
said that Trotsky by his nature and by his methods be-
longed to pre-revolutionary times. Demagogues were get-
ting out of date....
At the Tenth Bolshevik Party Congress, in March, 1921, the
Central Committee headed by Lenin passed a resolution outlawing
all “factions” in the Party as a menace to the unity of the revolution-
ary leadership. From now on all party leaders would have to submit
to the majority decisions and the majority rule, on penalty of expul-
sion from the Party. The Central Committee specifically warned
174
“Comrade Trotsky” against his “factional activities,” and stated that
“enemies of the State,” taking advantage of the confusion caused by
his disruptive activities, were penetrating the Party and calling
themselves “Trotskyites.” A number of important Trotskyites and
other Left Oppositionists were demoted. Trotsky’s chief military
aide, Nicolai Muralov, was removed as commander of the strategic
Moscow Military Garrison and replaced by the old Bolshevik
Klementi Voroshilov.
The following year, in March, 1922, Josef Stalin was elected
General Secretary of the Party and made responsible for the carry-
ing out of Lenin’s plans.
Following the blunt Party warning, and the demotion of his fol-
lowers, Trotsky’s mass following began to melt away. His prestige
was on the wane. Stalin’s election was a crushing blow to Trotsky’s
faction in the Party apparatus.
Power was slipping from Trotsky’s hands....
3. The Path to Treason
From the beginning, the Left Opposition had functioned in two
ways. Openly, on public platforms, in its own newspapers and lec-
ture halls, the oppositionists brought their propaganda to the people.
Behind the scenes, small clandestine factional conferences of Trot-
sky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Radek, Pyatakov and others mapped out
the over-all strategy and planned the tactics of the Opposition.
With this opposition movement as a base, Trotsky built a secret
conspiratorial organization in Russia based on the “fives system”
which Reilly had developed and which the Social Revolutionaries
and other anti-Soviet conspirators had used.
By 1923, Trotsky’s underground apparatus was already a potent
and far-reaching organization. Special codes, ciphers and passwords
were devised by Trotsky and his adherents for purposes of illegal
communication. Secret printing presses were set up throughout the
country. Trotskyite cells were established in the army, the diplomat-
ic corps, and in the Soviet state and party institutions.
Years later, Trotsky revealed that his own son, Leon Sedov,
was involved at this time in the Trotskyite conspiracy which was
already ceasing to be a mere political opposition within the Bolshe-
vik Party and was on the point of merging with the secret war
against the Soviet regime.
“In 1923,” wrote Trotsky in 1938 in the pamphlet Leon Sedov:
175
Son-Friend-Fighter, “Leon threw himself headlong into the work of
the Opposition.... Thus, at seventeen, he began the life of a fully
conscious revolutionist. He quickly grasped the art of conspiratorial
work, illegal meetings, and the secret issuing and distribution of
Opposition documents. The Komsomol (Communist Youth organi-
zation) rapidly developed its own cadres of Opposition leaders.”
But Trotsky had gone further than conspiratorial work inside
Soviet Russia....
In the winter of 1921-1922, the swarthy, furtive-eyed former
lawyer and leading Trotskyite, Nicolai Krestinsky, had become the
Soviet Ambassador to Germany. In the course of his duties in Ber-
lin, Krestinsky visited General Hans von Seeckt, commander of the
Reichswehr. Seeckt knew from his Intelligence reports that
Krestinsky was a Trotskyite. The German general gave Krestinsky
to understand that the Reichswehr was sympathetic with the aims of
the Russian Opposition led by War Commissar Trotsky.
In Moscow, a few months later, Krestinsky reported to Trotsky
what General Seeckt had said. Trotsky was desperately in need of
funds to finance his growing underground organization. He told
Krestinsky that the Opposition in Russia needed foreign allies and
must be prepared to form alliances with friendly powers. Germany,
Trotsky added, was not an enemy of Russia, and there was no like-
lihood of an early clash between them; the Germans were looking
westward and burning with a desire to revenge themselves on
France and England. Opposition politicians in Soviet Russia must
be prepared to capitalize on this situation....
When Krestinsky returned to Berlin in 1922, he had Trotsky’s
instructions to “take advantage of a meeting with Seeckt during of-
ficial negotiations to propose to him, to Seeckt, that he grant Trot-
sky a regular subsidy for the development of illegal Trotskyite ac-
tivities.”
Here, in Krestinsky’s own words, is what happened:—
I put the question before Seeckt and named the sum of
250,000 gold marks. General Seeckt, after consulting his
assistant, the chief of staff (Haase) agreed in principle and
put up the counter-demand that certain confidential and im-
portant information of a military nature should be transmit-
ted to him, even if not regularly, by Trotsky in Moscow or
through me. In addition, he was to receive assistance in ob-
176
taining visas for some persons whom they would send to
the Soviet Union as spies. This counter-demand of General
Seeckt was accepted and in 1923 this agreement was put in-
to effect.6
On January 21, 1924, the creator and leader of the Bolshevik
Party, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, died.
Trotsky was in the Caucasus recuperating from a mild attack of
influenza. He did not return to Moscow for Lenin’s funeral, but
stayed on at the seaside resort of Sukhum.
“At Sukhum I spent long days lying on the balcony facing the
sea,” Trotsky wrote in My Life. “Although it was January the sun
was warm and bright.... As I breathed the sea air in, I assimilated
with my whole being the assurance of my historical rightness....
4. The Struggle for Power
Immediately after Lenin’s death, Trotsky made his open bid for
power. At the Party Congress in May, 1924, Trotsky demanded that
he, and not Stalin, be recognized as Lenin’s successor. Against the
advice of his own allies, he forced the question to a vote. The 748
Bolshevik delegates at the Congress voted unanimously to maintain
Stalin as General Secretary, and in condemnation of Trotsky’s
struggle for personal power. So obvious was the popular repudiation
of Trotsky that even Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev were com-
pelled to side publicly with the majority and vote against him. Trot-
sky furiously assailed them for “betraying” him. But a few months
later Trotsky and Zinoviev again joined forces and formed a “New
Opposition.”
The New Opposition went further than any previous faction of
its kind. It openly called for “new leadership” in Soviet Russia and
rallied every kind of malcontent and subversive element in a na-
tionwide propaganda and political struggle against the Soviet Gov-
6
Quotations and dialogue throughout Book III, unless otherwise
stated in the text, referring to the secret activities of the Trotskyites in
Russia, are drawn from the testimony at the trials which took place
before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. in
Moscow in August, 1936, January, 1937, and March, 1938. Dialogue
and incidents directly involving Trotsky and his son Sedov, unless oth-
erwise so indicated in the text, are taken from the testimony of the de-
fendants at these trials. See Bibliographical Notes.
177
ernment. As Trotsky himself later wrote:
“In the wake of this vanguard, there dragged the tail end of all
sorts of dissatisfied, ill-equipped and chagrined careerists.” Spies,
Torgprom saboteurs, White counterrevolutionaries, terrorists,
flocked into the secret cells of the New Opposition. The cells began
to store arms. An actual secret Trotskyite army was in process of
formation on Soviet soil.
“We must aim far ahead,” Trotsky told Zinoviev and Kamenev,
as he records in My Life. “We must prepare for a long and serious
struggle.”
From outside Russia, Captain Sidney George Reilly of the Brit-
ish Intelligence Service decided it was the moment to strike. The
would-be Russian dictator and British puppet, Boris Savinkov, was
sent back into Russia that summer to prepare the expected coun-
terrevolutionary uprising.7 According to Winston Churchill, who
himself played a part in this conspiracy, Savinkov was in secret
communication with Trotsky. In Great Contemporaries, Churchill
wrote: “In June, 1924, Kamenev and Trotsky definitely invited him
[Savinkov] to return.”
That same year, Trotsky’s lieutenant, Christian Rakovsky, be-
came Soviet Ambassador to England. Rakovsky, whom in 1937
Trotsky described as “my friend, my genuine old friend,” was visit-
ed in his London office shortly after his arrival by two British Intel-
ligence officers, Captain Armstrong and Captain Lockhart. The
British Government had at first refused to accept a Soviet repre-
sentative in London. According to Rakovsky, the British officers
informed him:—
Do you know why you received your agrément in
England? We have been making enquiries about you from
Mr. Eastman and learn that you belong to Mr. Trotsky’s
faction, and that you are on intimate terms with him. And
only in consideration of this did the Intelligence Service
consent to your being accredited Ambassador to this
country.8
7
See page 118.
8
This statement was made by Rakovsky during the testimony be-
fore the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. in
March, 1938. At the period to which Rakovsky was referring, in the
178
Rakovsky returned to Moscow a few months later.
He told Trotsky what had happened in London. The British In-
telligence Service, like the German, wished to establish relations
with the Opposition.
“This is something to think about,” said Trotsky.
A few days later, Trotsky told Rakovsky that “relations with the
British Intelligence Service should be established.”9
1920’s, the American author and journalist Max Eastman was the offi-
cial translator of Trotsky’s writings and a leading disseminator of Trot-
skyite propaganda in the United States. It was Max Eastman who first
made public the so-called “Lenin Testament” or “Lenin Will,” which
purported to be an authentic document written by Lenin in 1923 and
kept, according to Eastman, “locked in a safe” by Stalin. The alleged
Will stated that Trotsky was more fitted to be General Secretary of the
Bolshevik Party than Stalin. In 1928, Eastman translated a propaganda
work by Trotsky entitled The Real Situation in Russia. In the supple-
ment to the translated edition of this book Eastman included the text of
the so-called Testament and wrote concerning his own role in aiding
the Trotskyite Opposition: “...at the height of a militant effort of the
Opposition... I published the following translation of the full text of the
Testament in the N. Y. Times, using the money received in the further
propagation of Bolshevik [i.e. Trotskyite] ideas....”
Trotsky himself at first admitted that Lenin had left no Testament
or Will. In a letter to the New York Daily Worker on August 8, 1925,
Trotsky wrote:—
“As for the ‘will,’ Lenin never left one, and the very nature of his
relations with the Party as well as the nature of the Party itself made
such a ‘will’ absolutely impossible.
“In the guise of a ‘will’ the émigré and. foreign bourgeois and
Menshevik press have all along been quoting one of Lenin’s letters
(completely mutilated) which contains a number of advices on-
questions of organization.
“All talk about a secreted, or infringed ‘will’ is so much mischie-
vous invention directed against the real will of Lenin, and of the inter-
ests of the Party created by him.”
But to this day the Trotskyite propagandists still refer to Lenin’s
Will as an authentic document establishing the fact that Lenin had cho-
sen Trotsky as his successor.
9
In 1926 Rakovsky was transferred front his London post to Paris.
He saw Trotsky in Moscow before he left for France. Trotsky told him
that the situation in Russia was coming to a crisis and it was necessary to
enlist every possible source of foreign aid. “I have come to the conclu-
179
Captain Reilly, preparing his last coup in Russia, was writing to
his wife: “There is something entirely new, powerful and worth
while going on in Russia.” Reilly’s agent, the British consular offi-
cial Commander E., had reported to him that contacts had been
made with the opposition movement in Soviet Russia....
But that fall, after going into Soviet Russia to meet secretly
with the opposition leaders, Reilly was shot by a Soviet border
guard.
A few months after Reilly’s death, Trotsky developed what he
later referred to in My Life as a “mysterious temperature” which
“Moscow physicians” were “at a loss” to explain. Trotsky decided it
was necessary for him to go to Germany. He records in his
autobiography:—
The matter of my visit abroad was taken up at the
Politbureau, which stated that it regarded my trip as ex-
tremely dangerous in view of the information it had and the
general political situation, but that it left the final decision
sion,” Trotsky told Rakovsky, “that we must give instructions to our con-
federates abroad; ambassadors and trade representatives, to sound out
conservative circles in the capitalist countries to which they have been
accredited to what extent the Trotskyites can count on their support.”
On reaching France, Rakovsky began to sound out French reac-
tionary circles on behalf of the Trotskyite Opposition. France was then
the center of the Torgprom conspiracy, and the French General Staff
led by Foch and Petain was already considering plans of attack on the
Soviet Union. Rakovsky subsequently stated regarding the “negotia-
tions which Trotsky instructed me to conduct”: “I met the deputy Ni-
cole in Roye. Nicole is a very big flax spinner in the north, a factory
owner, and belongs to the Right Republican circles. I asked him then
what opportunities or prospects there were for the opposition—whether
support could be sought among French capitalist circles aggressively
inclined toward the U.S.S.R. He replied: ‘Of course, and to a larger
extent than you perhaps expect.’ But this, he said, would mainly de-
pend on two circumstances. The first circumstance was that the opposi-
tion should become indeed a real force, and the second circumstance
was to what extent the opposition would agree to concessions to French
capital. The second conversation I had in Paris took place in 1927, in
September, and was with the deputy Louis Dreyfus, a big grain mer-
chant. I must say that both the conversation and the conclusion were
analogous to those which I had with Nicole.”
180
to me. The statement was accompanied by a note of refer-
ence from the G.P.U. indicating the inadmissibility of my
trip.... It is possible that the Politbureau was also apprehen-
sive of my taking action abroad to consolidate the foreign
opposition. Nevertheless, after consulting my friends, I de-
cided to go.
In Germany, according to his own story, Trotsky stayed “at a
private clinic in Berlin,” where he was visited by Nicolai
Krestinsky, Trotsky’s liaison with the German Military Intelligence.
While Trotsky and Krestinsky were conferring together at the clinic
a German “police inspector,” according to Trotsky, suddenly ap-
peared and announced that the German secret police were taking
extraordinary measures to safeguard Trotsky’s life because they had
discovered a “plot” to assassinate him.
As a result of this time-honored Intelligence device, Trotsky
and Krestinsky were closeted with the German secret police for
several hours....
A new agreement was reached that summer between Trotsky
and the German Military Intelligence. Krestinsky later defined the
terms of this agreement:—
At that time we had already become accustomed to re-
ceiving sums regularly, in sound currency.... This money
went for the Trotskyite work which was developing abroad
in various countries, for publishing literature and so forth....
In 1928, when the struggle of the Trotskyites abroad
against the Party leadership was at its height, both in Mos-
cow and among the fraternal groups... Seeckt... advanced
the proposal that the espionage information which was be-
ing transmitted to him not regularly but from time to time,
should now assume a more regular character, and, in addi-
tion, that the Trotskyite organization should pledge that in
case it assumed power during a possible new world war,
this Trotskyite government would take into consideration
the just demands of the German bourgeoisie, that is to say,
mainly for concessions and for the conclusion of treaties of
a different kind.
After I consulted Trotsky... I answered General Seeckt
in the affirmative and our information began to assume a
more systematic character, no longer sporadic, as it had
181
been before. Verbally, promises were made with regard to a
future post-war agreement.
...we kept on receiving money. Beginning with 1923
until 1930 we received annually 250,000 German marks in
gold... approximately 2,000,000 gold marks.
Back in Moscow after his trip to Germany, Trotsky launched an
all-out campaign against the Soviet leadership. “During 1926,”
writes Trotsky in My Life, “the party struggle developed with in-
creasing intensity. In the autumn the Opposition even made an open
sortie at the meetings of the party locals.” These tactics failed and
aroused widespread resentment among the workers who angrily
denounced the Trotskyite disruptive activities. “The Opposition,”
wrote Trotsky, “was obliged to beat a retreat....”
With the threat of war hanging over Russia in the summer of
1927, Trotsky renewed his attacks on the Soviet Government. In
Moscow, Trotsky publicly declared:—
“We must restore the tactics of Clemenceau, who, as is well
known, rose against the French Government at a time when the
Germans were 80 kilometers from Paris!”
Stalin denounced Trotsky’s statement as treasonable. “Some-
thing like a united front from Chamberlain10 to Trotsky is being
formed,” said Stalin.
Once again, a vote was taken on the subject of Trotsky and his
Opposition. In a general referendum of all Bolshevik Party mem-
bers the overwhelming majority, by a vote of 740,000 to 4000, re-
pudiated the Trotskyite Opposition and declared themselves in favor
of Stalin’s administration.11
10
Sir Austen Chamberlain, violently anti-Soviet British Foreign
Secretary, then in office.
11
Four thousand votes was the most that the Opposition forces
polled at any one time in the entire course of their agitation. Despite,
the Party ban on “factions” and the official insistence on “revolutionary
unity” as the cornerstone of Soviet domestic politics, an astonishing
measure of freedom of debate, criticism and assembly was granted to
the Trotskyite oppositionists by the Soviet Government. Especially
after Lenin’s death, when the country was going through a period of
domestic and foreign crisis, Trotsky was able to take advantage of this
situation to attempt to build a mass movement in Soviet Russia behind
his own faction. The public propaganda of the Opposition exploited
182
In My Life, Trotsky describes the hectic conspiratorial activity
which followed his stunning defeat at the general referendum: “Se-
cret meetings were held in various parts of Moscow and Leningrad
attended by workers and students of both sexes, who gathered in
groups of from twenty to one hundred and two hundred to hear
some representative of the Opposition. In one day I would visit two,
three and sometimes four of such meetings.... The Opposition clev-
erly prepared a huge meeting in the hall of the High Technical
School, which had been occupied from within.... The attempts of the
administration to stop the meeting proved ineffectual. Kamenev and
I spoke for about two hours.”
Trotsky was feverishly preparing for the coming showdown. By
the end of October his plans were made. An uprising was to take
place on November 7, 1927, the Tenth Anniversary of the Bolshe-
vik Revolution. Trotsky’s most resolute followers, former members
every possible kind of political argument against the Soviet regime.

The social and economic policies of the Stalin administration were sub-
jected to continuous criticism under such slogans as “incompetence in
administration,” “uncontrolled bureaucracy,” “one-man, one-party dic-
tatorship,” “degeneration of the old leadership” and so on. No attempt
was made to suppress Trotsky’s agitation until it had openly exposed
itself as, in fact, anti-Soviet and connected with other anti-Soviet forc-
es! From 1924 until 1927, in the words of Sidney and Beatrice Webb,
in Soviet Communism—A New Civilization?, “There ensued what must
seem surprising to those who believe that the U.S.S.R. lies groaning
under a peremptory dictatorship, namely, three years of incessant pub-
lic controversy. This took various forms. There were repeated debates
in the principal legislative organs, such as, the Central Executive
Committee (TSIK) of the All-Union Congress of Soviets and the Cen-
tral Committee of the Communist Party. There were hot arguments in
many of the local soviets, as well as in the local Party organs. There
was a vast [Oppositionist] literature of books and pamphlets, not
stopped by the censorship, and published, indeed, by the state publish-
ing houses, extending, as it stated by one who has gone through it, to
literally thousands of printed pages.” The Webbs add that the issue
“was finally and authoritatively settled by the Plenum of the Central
Committee of the Party in April, 1926; a decision ratified, after more
discussion, by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Party Conference of Octo-
ber, 1926, and December, 1927,” and “After these decisions, Trotsky
persisted in his agitation, attempting to stir up resistance; and his con-
duct became plainly factious.”
183
of the Red Army Guard, were to head the insurrection. Detachments
were posted to take over strategic points throughout the country.
The signal for the rising was to be a political demonstration against
the Soviet Government during the mass workers’ parade in Moscow
on the morning of November 7. In My Life, Trotsky later stated:—
The leading group of the opposition faced this finale
with its eyes wide open. We realized only too clearly that
we could make our ideas the common property of the new
generation not by diplomacy and evasions but only by an
open struggle which shirked none of the practical conse-
quences. We went to meet the inevitable debacle, confi-
dent, however, that we were paving the way for the triumph
of our ideas in a more distant future.
Trotsky’s insurrection collapsed almost as soon as it started. On
the morning of November 7, as the workers marched through the
Moscow streets, Trotskyite propaganda leaflets were showered
down on them from high buildings announcing the advent of the
“new leadership.” Small bands of Trotskyites suddenly appeared in
the streets, waving banners and placards. They were swept away by
the irate workers.
The Soviet authorities acted swiftly. Muralov, Smirnov
Mrachkovsky, Dreitzer and other former members of the Trotsky
military guard were promptly seized. Kamenev and Pyatakov were
arrested in Moscow. Government agents raided secret Trotskyite
printing presses and arms dumps. Zinoviev and Radek were arrested
in Leningrad, where they had gone to organize a simultaneous
Putsch. One of Trotsky’s followers, the diplomat Joffe who had
been Ambassador to Japan, committed suicide. In some places,
Trotskyites were arrested in the company of former White officers,
Social Revolutionary terrorists, and foreign agents....
Trotsky was expelled from the Bolshevik Party and sent into
exile.
5. Alma Ata
Trotsky was exiled to Alma Ata, capital of the Kazakh Soviet
Republic in Siberia, near the border of China. He was given a house
for himself, his wife Natalie and his son, Sedov. Trotsky was treated
leniently by the Soviet Government, which was as yet unaware of
the real scope and significance of his conspiracy. He was permitted
184
to retain some of his personal bodyguards, including the former Red
Army officer Ephraim Dreitzer. He was allowed to receive and send
personal mail, to have his own library and confidential “archives”
and to be visited from time to time by friends and admirers.
But Trotsky’s exile by no means put an end to his conspiratorial
activities....
On November 27, 1927, the subtlest of all the Trotskyite strate-
gists, the German agent and diplomat, Nicolai Krestinsky, had writ-
ten a confidential letter to Trotsky which laid down the exact strate-
gy followed by the Trotskyite conspirators during the ensuing years.
It was absurd, wrote Krestinsky, for “the Trotskyite Opposition to
try to continue its open agitation against the Soviet Government.
Instead, the Trotskyites must try to get back into the Party, secure
key positions in the Soviet Government, and continue the struggle
for power from within the governmental apparatus itself. The Trot-
skyites, said Krestinsky, must seek “slowly, gradually, and by per-
sistent work within the Party, and the Soviet apparatus, to restore, to
again earn the confidence of the masses and influence over the
masses.”
Krestinsky’s subtle strategy appealed to Trotsky. He soon is-
sued instructions, as Krestinsky later revealed, to his followers who
had been arrested and exiled to “get back into the Party by decep-
tion,” “continue our activities in secret” and “occupy there more or
less independent responsible posts.” Pyatakov, Radek, Zinoviev,
Kamenev and other exiled oppositionists began denouncing Trot-
sky, proclaiming the “tragic error” of their past opposition and
pleading for readmission to the Bolshevik Party.
Trotsky’s house in Alma Ata was the center of intense anti-
Soviet intrigue. “The ideological life of the opposition seethed like a
cauldron at the time,” Trotsky later wrote in the pamphlet Leon
Sedov: Son-Friend-Fighter. From Alma Ata, Trotsky directed a
clandestine nationwide propaganda and subversive campaign
against the Soviet regime.12
12
In Trotsky’s absence, responsibility for directing the remaining
forces of the Opposition temporarily fell into the hands of Nicolai Bu-
kharin who, disagreeing with Trotsky’s leadership, had shrewdly re-
frained from taking any open part in the disastrous attempted Putsch.
Bukharin had come to consider himself, and not Trotsky, as the true
leader and theoretician of the Opposition. At the special “Marxist
185
school” which he headed in Moscow, Bukharin had surrounded himself

with a group of “cadres,” as he called them, recruited from among
young students. Bukharin trained a number of these students in the
technique of the conspiracy. He was also in close touch with members
of the technical intelligentsia who had joined the Industrial Party. Pre-
viously, Bukharin had called himself a “Left Communist”; now, after
Trotsky’s debacle, he began to formulate the principles of what was
soon to be-publicly known as the Right Opposition.
Bukharin believed that Trotsky had acted hastily and that his fail-
ure was largely due to the fact that he had not acted in unison with all
the other anti-Soviet forces at work within the country. Bukharin now
set out to remedy this with his Right Opposition. Following the outlaw-
ing of the Trotskyites, the first Five-Year Plan was about to go into
full-scale operation. The country was facing new hardships, difficulties
and extreme tensions. Together with the government official, Alexei
Rykov, and the trade-union official, M. Tomsky, Bukharin organized
the Right Opposition within the Bolshevik Party in secret cooperation
with the Torgprom agents and the Mensheviks. The Right Opposition
was based on open opposition to the Five-Year Flan. Behind the scenes,
Bukharin formulated the real program of the Right Opposition at con-
spiratorial meetings with Trotsky’s representatives, and with agents of
the other underground organizations.
“If my program stand were to be formulated practically,” Bukharin
later stated, “it would be in the economic sphere, State capitalism, the
prosperous muzhik individual, the curtailment of the collective farms,
foreign concessions, surrender of the monopoly of foreign trade, and, as a
result—the restoration of capitalism in the country.... Inside the country,
our actual program [was] the bloc with the Mensheviks, Social Revolu-
tionists and the like.... A lapse... in the political sense into ways where
there are undoubtedly elements of Caesarism... elements of Fascism.”
Bukharin’s new political line for the Opposition attracted a follow-
ing among high-ranking careerist officials in Soviet Russia who had no
faith in the success of the Five-Year Plan. The leaders of the kulak or-
ganizations which were fiercely resisting collectivization in the coun-
tryside provided Bukharin’s Right Opposition with elements of the
mass base which Trotsky had previously sought in vain. Trotsky at first
resented Bukharin’s assumption of leadership of the movement he had
initiated; but, after a brief period of rivalry and even feuding, the dif-
ferences were reconciled. The public and “legal” phase of the Right
Opposition lasted until November, 1929, when a plenum of the Central
Committee of the Bolshevik Party declared that the propaganda of the
views of the Rights was incompatible with membership in the Party.
186
Trotsky’s son, Leon Sedov, was placed in charge of the secret
communication system by which Trotsky kept in touch with his
own followers and other oppositionists throughout the country. In
his early twenties, with great nervous energy, and already trained as
an expert conspirator, Sedov combined a fierce attachment to the
aims of the Opposition with a continuous, embittered resentment
against his father’s egoistic and dictatorial behavior. In Leon Sedov:
Son-Friend-Fighter, Trotsky revealed the important role which
Sedov played in supervising the secret communication system from
Alma Ata. Trotsky wrote:—
In the winter of 1927... Leon had passed his twenty-
second year.... His work in Alma Ata, during that year, was
truly peerless. We called him our Minister of Foreign Af-
fairs, Minister of Police and Minister of Communications.
And in fulfilling all these functions he had to rely on an il-
legal apparatus.
Sedov served as liaison with the secret couriers who brought
messages to Alma Ata and took back Trotsky’s “directives”:—
Sometimes special couriers also arrived from Moscow.
To meet them was no simple matter.... Outside connections
were handled entirely by Leon. He would leave the house
on a rainy night or when the snow fell heavily, or, evading
the vigilance of the spies, he would hide himself during the
day in the library to meet the courier in a public bath or
among the thick weeds in the outskirts of the town, or in
the oriental market place where the Kirghiz crowded with
their horses, donkeys and wares. Each time he returned
happy, with a conquering gleam in his eyes and the pre-
cious booty under his clothing.
Almost “100 items a week” of a secret character passed through
Sedov’s hands. In addition, great quantities of propaganda and per-
sonal mail were sent out by Trotsky from Alma Ata. Many of the
letters contained “directives” for his followers, as well as anti-
Soviet propaganda. “Between April and October (1928),” Trotsky
boasted, “we received approximately 1000 political letters and doc-
Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky were removed from their high official
positions.
187
uments and about 700 telegrams. In the same period, we sent out
500 telegrams and not fewer than 800 political letters....”
In December, 1928, a representative of the Soviet Government
was sent to visit Trotsky at Alma Ata. He told Trotsky, according to
My Life: “The work of your political sympathizers throughout the
country has lately assumed a definitely counterrevolutionary charac-
ter; the conditions in which you are placed at Alma Ata give you
full opportunity to direct this work....” The Soviet Government
wanted a promise from Trotsky to discontinue his seditious activity.
Failing this, the Government would be forced to take strong action
against him as a traitor. Trotsky refused to heed the warning. His
case was taken up in Moscow by the special collegium of the
OGPU. An extract from the Minutes of the OGPU, dated January
18, 1929, reads as follows:—
Considered: the case of citizen Trotsky, Lev
Davidovich, under article 5810 of the Criminal Code, on a
charge of counterrevolutionary activity expressing itself in
the organization of an illegal anti-Soviet party, whose ac-
tivity has lately been directed towards provoking anti-
Soviet actions and preparing for an armed struggle against
the Soviet power.
Resolved: citizen Trotsky, Lev Davidovich, to be de-
ported from the territory of the U.S.S.R.
On the morning of January 22, 1929, Trotsky was formally de-
ported from the Soviet Union.
It was the beginning of the most extraordinary phase of Leon
Trotsky’s career.
“Exile usually means eclipse. The reverse has happened in the
case of Trotsky,” Isaac F. Marcosson was later to write in Turbulent
Years: “A human hornet while he was within Soviet confines, his
sting is scarcely less effective thousands of miles away. Exercising
remote control he had become Russia’s Public Enemy Number One.
Napoleon had one St. Helena which ended his career as a European
trouble-maker. Trotsky has had five St. Helenas. Each has been a
nest of intrigue. Master of propaganda, he has lived in a fantastic
atmosphere of national and international conspiracy like a character
in an E. Phillips Oppenheim mystery story.”
188
CHAPTER XVI
Genesis of a Fifth Column
1. Trotsky at Elba
On February 13, 1929, Leon Trotsky arrived at Constantinople. He
did not arrive like a discredited political exile. Trotsky came like a
visiting potentate. Headlines in the world press reported his arrival.
Foreign correspondents waited to greet the private motor launch
which brought him to the quay. Brushing them aside, Trotsky strode
to a waiting automobile chauffeured by one of his personal body-
guards, and was whisked away to personal quarters in the city
which had been prepared in advance for his coming.
A political storm broke in Turkey. Pro-Soviet spokesmen de-
manded Trotsky’s expulsion; anti-Soviet spokesmen welcomed him
as the enemy of the Soviet regime. The Turkish Government
seemed undecided. There were rumors of diplomatic pressure to
keep Trotsky in Turkey, near to the Soviet borders. Finally, a com-
promise was reached. Trotsky was to stay in Turkey and yet not in
Turkey. The exiled “Red Napoleon” was to be given a haven on the
Turkish island of Prinkipo. Trotsky, his wife and son, and a number
of his bodyguards moved there a few weeks later....
At Prinkipo, the picturesque Black Sea island where Woodrow
Wilson dreamed of holding an Allied-Soviet peace conference, the
exiled Trotsky established his new political headquarters with his
son, Leon Sedov, as his chief aide and second-in-command. “In
Prinkipo a new group of young co-workers from different countries
had meanwhile been successfully formed in intimate collaboration
with my son,” Trotsky later wrote. A strange, hectic atmosphere of
mystery and intrigue surrounded the small house in which Trotsky
lived. The house was guarded outside by police dogs and armed
bodyguards. Inside, the house swarmed with radical adventurers
from Russia, Germany, Spain and other countries, who had joined
Trotsky at Prinkipo. He called them his “secretaries.” They formed
a new Trotsky guard. There was a constant stream of visitors to the
house: anti-Soviet propagandists, politicians, journalists, hero wor-
shipers of the exile, and would-be “world revolutionists.” Body-
guards stood outside the door of Trotsky’s library while he held
private conferences with renegades from the international Com-
munist or Socialist movements. From time to time, their visits
189
cloaked with secrecy, agents of Intelligence Services and other mys-
terious persons came for interviews with Trotsky.
At first, the head of Trotsky’s armed bodyguard at Prinkipo was
Blumkin, the Social Revolutionary assassin who had followed Trot-
sky with doglike devotion since the early nineteen-twenties. Late in
1930, Trotsky sent him back to Soviet Russia on a special mission.
Blumkin was caught by the Soviet police, put on trial, found guilty
of smuggling arms and anti-Soviet propaganda into the U.S.S.R.,
and shot. Later, Trotsky’s bodyguard was headed by a Frenchman,
Raymond Molinier, and by an American, Sheldon Harte.
With elaborate care, Trotsky sought to maintain his reputation
as a “great revolutionary” in temporary exile. He was in his fiftieth
year. His stocky, slightly humped figure was growing plump and
flabby. His famous shock of black hair and little, pointed beard
were gray. But his movements were still rapid and impatient. His
dark eyes behind the inveterate pince-nez which glittered on his
sharp nose gave his somber, mobile features an expression of pecu-
liar malevolence. Many observers were repelled by his “Mephisto-
phelian” physiognomy. Others found in Trotsky’s voice and eyes an
almost hypnotic fascination.
In maintaining his reputation outside of Soviet Russia, Trotsky
left nothing to chance. He was fond of quoting the words of the
French Anarchist, Proudhon: “Destiny—I laugh at it; and as for
men, they are too ignorant, too enslaved for me to feel annoyed at
them.” But before he granted interviews to important visitors, Trot-
sky carefully rehearsed his role, and even studied appropriate ges-
tures before a mirror in his bedroom. Journalists who visited
Prinkipo had to submit their articles to be edited by Trotsky before
publication. In conversation, Trotsky poured out an unending flow
of dogmatic assertion and anti-Soviet invective, emphasizing every
sentence and gesture with the theatrical intensity of a mass orator.
The liberal German writer, Emil Ludwig, interviewed Trotsky
soon after he settled at Prinkipo. Trotsky was in an optimistic mood.
Crisis was facing Russia, he told Ludwig; the Five-Year Plan was a
failure; there would be unemployment, economic and industrial
disaster; the collectivization program in agriculture was doomed.
Stalin was leading the country to a catastrophe; the Opposition was
growing....
“How large is your following inside Russia?” asked Ludwig.
Trotsky was suddenly cautious. He waved a plump, white, man-
190
icured hand. “It is difficult to estimate.” His following was “scat-
tered,” he told Ludwig, working illegally, “underground.”
“When do you expect to come out into the open again?”
To this, after some consideration, Trotsky replied: “When an
opportunity is presented from the outside. Perhaps a war or a new
European intervention—when the weakness of the government
would act as a stimulus!”
Winston Churchill, still passionately interested in every phase
of the world anti-Soviet campaign, made a special study of the exile
on Prinkipo. “I never liked Trotsky,” Churchill declared in 1944.
But Trotsky’s conspiratorial audacity, his oratorical talents and de-
monic energy appealed to Churchill’s adventurous temperament.
Summing up the whole purpose of Trotsky’s international conspira-
cy from the moment he left Soviet soil, Churchill wrote in Great
Contemporaries: —
Trotsky... strives to rally the underworld of Europe to
the overthrow of the Russian Army.
Also, about this time, the American foreign correspondent John
Gunther visited Trotsky’s Prinkipo headquarters. He spoke with
Trotsky and a number of Trotsky’s Russian and European associ-
ates. To Gunther’s surprise, Trotsky did not behave like a defeated
exile. He behaved more like a ruling monarch or dictator. Gunther
thought of Napoleon at Elba—just before the dramatic return and
the Hundred Days. Gunther reported:—
A Trotsky movement has grown up throughout most of
Europe. In each country there is a nucleus of Trotskyite
agitators. They take orders from Prinkipo direct. There is a
sort of communication between the various groups, through
their publications and manifestos but mostly through pri-
vate letters. The various central committees are linked to an
international headquarters in Berlin.
Gunther tried to get Trotsky to talk about his Fourth Interna-
tional, just what it stood for and what it did. Trotsky was reserved
on the subject. In one expansive moment, he showed Gunther a
number of “hollow books” in which secret documents were con-
cealed and transported. He praised the activities of Andreas Nin in
191
1
Spain. He also had followers and influential sympathizers in the
United States. He spoke of Trotskyite cells being formed in France,
Norway and Czechoslovakia. Their activities, he told Gunther, were
“semi-secret.”...
Gunther wrote that Trotsky had “lost Russia, or at least for a
while. No man knows whether he may not regain it in ten or twenty
years.” Trotsky’s chief aim was “to hold out hope for Stalin’s
downfall in Russia, and meantime bend every bit of energy to un-
ceasing perfection of his counter-Communist organization abroad.”
Only “one thing,” Gunther concluded, could put Trotsky “back
at once in Russia.”
That one thing was “Stalin’s death.”
From Prinkipo during 1930-1931, Trotsky launched an extraor-
dinary anti-Soviet propaganda campaign which soon penetrated
every country. It. was an entirely new kind of anti-Soviet propagan-
da, infinitely more subtle and confusing than anything that had been
devised by the anti-Bolshevik crusaders in the past.
Times had changed. Following the great Crisis, the whole world
was revolutionary-minded in that it did not want a return to the
ways of the past which had brought so much misery and suffering.
The early counterrevolution of Fascism in Italy had been effectively
promoted by its ex-Socialist founder, Benito Mussolini, as the “Ital-
ian Revolution.” In Germany, the Nazis were gaining mass backing,
not only by enlisting anti-Bolshevik reaction, but also by posing,
among the German workers and peasants as “National Socialists.”
As far back as 1903, Trotsky had mastered the propaganda device
of what Lenin called “ultra-revolutionary slogans which cost him
nothing.”
Now, on a world-wide scale, Trotsky proceeded to develop the
propaganda technique he had originally employed against Lenin and
the Bolshevik Party. In innumerable ultra-leftist and violently radi-
cal-sounding articles, books, pamphlets and speeches, Trotsky be-
gan to attack the Soviet regime and call for its violent overthrow—
not because it was revolutionary; but because it was, as he phrased
it, “counterrevolutionary” and “reactionary.”
Overnight, many of the older anti-Bolshevik crusaders aban-
doned their former pro-Czarist and openly counterrevolutionary
1
For Nin’s later connections with the Fascist Fifth Column in
Spain, see footnote on page 259.
192
propaganda line, and adopted the new, streamlined Trotskyite de-
vice of attacking the Russian Revolution “from the Left.” In the
following years, it became an accepted thing for a Lord Rothermere
or a William Randolph Hearst to accuse Josef Stalin of “betraying
the Revolution.”
Trotsky’s first major propaganda work to introduce this new an-
ti-Soviet line to the international counterrevolution was his melo-
dramatic, semi-fictitious autobiography, My Life. First published as
a series of anti-Soviet articles by Trotsky in European and Ameri-
can newspapers, its aim as a book was to vilify Stalin and the Soviet
Union, increase the prestige of the Trotskyite movement and bolster
the myth of Trotsky as the “world revolutionary.” Trotsky depicted
himself in My Life as the real inspirer and organizer of the Russian
Revolution, who had been somehow tricked out of his rightful place
as Russian leader by “crafty,” “mediocre” and “Asiatic” opponents.
Anti-Soviet agents and publicists immediately ballyhooed Trot-
sky’s book into a sensational worldwide best seller which was said
to tell the “inside story” of the Russian Revolution.
Adolf Hitler read Trotsky’s autobiography as soon as it was
published. Hitler s biographer, Konrad Heiden, tells in Der Fuehrer
how the Nazi leader surprised a circle of his friends in 1930 by
bursting into rapturous praises of Trotsky’s book. “Brilliant!” cried
Hitler, waving Trotsky’s My Life at his followers. “I have learnt a
great deal from it; and so can you!”
Trotsky’s book rapidly became a textbook for the anti-Soviet
Intelligence Services. It was accepted as a basic guide for propa-
ganda against the Soviet regime. The Japanese secret police made it
compulsory reading for imprisoned Japanese and Chinese Com-
munists, in an effort to break down their morale and to convince
them that Soviet Russia had betrayed the Chinese Revolution and
the cause for which they were fighting. The Gestapo made similar
use of the book....
My Life was only the opening gun of Trotsky’s prodigious anti-
Soviet propaganda campaign. It was followed by The Revolution
Betrayed, Soviet Economy in Danger, The Failure of the Five-Year
Plan, Stalin and the Chinese Revolution, The Stalin School of Falsi-
fication, and countless other anti-Soviet books, pamphlets and arti-
cles, many of which first appeared under flaring headlines in reac-
tionary newspapers in Europe and America. Trotsky’s “Bureau”
supplied a continual stream of “revelations,” “exposures” and “in-
193
side stories” about Russia for the anti-Soviet world press.
For consumption inside the Soviet Union, Trotsky published his
official Bulletin of the Opposition. Printed abroad, first in Turkey,
then in Germany, France, Norway and other countries, and smug-
gled into Russia by secret Trotskyite couriers, the Bulletin was not
intended to reach the Soviet masses. It was aimed at the diplomats,
state officials, military men, and intellectuals who had once fol-
lowed Trotsky or who seemed likely to be influenced by him. The
Bulletin also contained directives for the propaganda work of the
Trotskyites both within Russia and abroad. Ceaselessly, the Bulletin
drew lurid pictures of coming disaster for the Soviet regime, pre-
dicting industrial crises, renewed civil war, and the collapse of the
Red Army at the first foreign attack. The Bulletin skillfully played
on all the doubts and anxieties which the extreme tensions and hard-
ships of the construction period aroused in the minds of unstable,
confused and dissatisfied elements. The Bulletin openly called upon
these elements to undermine and carry out acts of violence against
the Soviet Government.
Here are some typical examples of the anti-Soviet propaganda
and calls for the violent overthrow of the Soviet regime which Trot-
sky spread throughout the world in the years following his expul-
sion from the U.S.S.R.:—
The policy of the present-day leadership, the tiny group
of Stalin, is leading the country at full speed to dangerous
crises and collapses.—Letter to Members of Communist
Party of the Soviet Union, March, 1930.
The impending crisis of Soviet economy will inevita-
bly, and within the very near future, crumble the sugary
legend [that socialism can be: built in one country] and, we
have no reason to doubt, will scatter many dead.... The
[Soviet] economy functions without material reserves and
without calculation... the uncontrolled bureaucracy has tied
up its prestige with the subsequent accumulation of errors...
a crisis is impending [in the Soviet Union] with a retinue of
consequences such as the enforced shutting down of enter-
prises and unemployment.—Soviet Economy in Danger,
1932.
The hungry workers [in the Soviet Union] are dissatis-
194
fied with the policies of the party. The party is dissatisfied
with the leadership. The peasantry is dissatisfied with in-
dustrialization, with collectivization, with the city.—Article
in the Militant (U.S.A.), February 4, 1933.
The first social shock, external or internal, may throw
the atomized Soviet Society into civil war.—The Soviet
Union and the Fourth International, 1933.
It would be childish to think that the Stalin bureaucracy
can be removed by means of a Party or Soviet Congress.
Normal, constitutional means are no longer available for
the removal of the ruling clique.... They can be compelled
to hand over power to the Proletarian vanguard only by
FORCE.—Bulletin of the Opposition, October, 1933.
The political crises converge toward the general crisis
which is creeping onward.—The Kirov Assassination,
1935.
Inside the Party, Stalin has put himself above all criti-
cism and the State. It is impossible to displace him except
by assassination. Every oppositionist becomes ipso facto, a
terrorist.—Statement from interview with William Ran-
dolph Hearst’s New York Evening Journal, January 26,
1937.
Can we expect that the Soviet Union will come out of
the coming great war without defeat? To this frankly-posed
question, we will answer as frankly: If the war should re-
main only a war, the defeat of the Soviet Union would be
inevitable. In a technical, economic and military sense, im-
perialism is incomparably more strong. If it is not paralyzed
by revolution in the West, imperialism will sweep away the
present regime.—Article in American Mercury, March,
1937.
The defeat of the Soviet Union is inevitable in case the
new war shall not provoke a new revolution.... If we theo-
retically admit war without revolution, then the defeat of
the Soviet Union is inevitable.—Testimony at Hearings in
Mexico, April, 1937.
195
2. Rendezvous in Berlin
From the moment Trotsky left Soviet soil, agents of foreign In-
telligence Services had been eager to contact him and to make use
of his international anti-Soviet organization. The Polish Defensiva,
the Italian Fascist Ovra, the Finnish Military Intelligence, the White
Russian émigrés who directed anti-Soviet secret services in Ruma-
nia, Yugoslavia and Hungary, and reactionary elements with the
British Intelligence Service and the French Deuxieme Bureau were
all prepared to deal with “Russia’s Public Enemy Number One” for
their own purposes. Funds, assistants, a network of espionage and
courier services were at Trotsky’s disposal for the maintenance and
extension of his international anti-Soviet propaganda activities and
for the support and reorganization of his conspiratorial apparatus
inside Soviet Russia.
Most important of all was Trotsky’s growing intimacy with the
German Military Intelligence (Section IIIB) which, under the com-
mand of Colonel Walther Nicolai, was already collaborating with
Heinrich Himmler’s growing Gestapo....
Up to 1930, Trotsky’s agent, Krestinsky, had received approx-
imately 2,000,000 gold marks from the German Reichswehr for
financing Trotskyite activities in Soviet Russia, in exchange for
espionage data turned over to the German Military Intelligence by
the Trotskyites. Krestinsky later revealed:—
Beginning with 1923 until 1930 we received annually
250,000 German marks in gold, approximately 2,000,000
gold marks. Up to the end of 1927 the stipulations of this
agreement were carried out mainly in Moscow. After that,
from the end of 1927 almost to the end of 1928, in the
course of about 10 months there was an interruption in the
money because after Trotskyism had been smashed I was
isolated, I did not know of Trotsky’s plans, I received no
information or instructions from him.... This went on until
October, 1928, when I received a letter from Trotsky, who
at that time was in exile in Alma Ata.... This letter con-
tained Trotsky’s instructions that I was to receive from the
Germans the money, which he proposed to hand over to
Maslow or to Trotsky’s French friends, that is Roemer,
Madeline Paz and others. I got in touch with General
Seeckt. At that; time he had resigned and occupied no post
196
whatever. He volunteered to talk it over with Hammerstein
and to obtain the money. He obtained the money. Hammer-
stein was at that time the Chief of Staff of the Reichswehr,
and in 1930 he became Commander in Chief of the
Reichswehr.
In 1930 Krestinsky was appointed Assistant Commissar of For-
eign Affairs and transferred from Berlin to Moscow. His removal
from Germany, together with the inner crisis which was then going
on within the Reichswehr as a result of the rising power of Nazism,
again temporarily halted the flow of German money to Trotsky. But
already Trotsky was about to enter into a new, extended agreement
with the German Military Intelligence.
In February, 1931, Trotsky’s son, Leon Sedov, rented an apart-
ment in Berlin. According to his passport, Sedov was in Germany as
a “student”; ostensibly, he had come to Berlin to attend a “German
scientific institute.” But there were more urgent reasons for Sedov’s
presence in the German capital that year....
A few months before, Trotsky had written a pamphlet entitled
Germany: The Key to the International Situation. One hundred and
seven Nazi deputies had been elected to the Reichstag. The Nazi
Party had received 6,400,000 votes. As Sedov arrived in Berlin, a
mood of feverish expectancy and tension hung over the German
capital. Brown-shirted storm troopers, singing the “Horst Wessel,”
were parading on the Berlin streets, smashing Jewish stores and
raiding the homes and clubs of liberals and workers. The Nazis
were confident. “Never in my life have I been so well disposed and
inwardly content as in these days,” wrote Adolf Hitler in the pages
of the Volkischer Beobachter.
Officially, Germany was still a democracy. Trade between
Germany and Soviet Russia was at its peak. The Soviet Government
was buying machinery from German firms. German technicians
were getting big jobs in Soviet mining and electrification projects.
Soviet engineers were visiting Germany. Soviet trade representa-
tives, buyers and commercial agents were continually traveling back
and forth between Moscow and Berlin on assignments connected
with the Five-Year Plan. Some of these Soviet citizens were follow-
ers or former adherents of Trotsky.
Sedov was in Berlin, as his father’s representative, on conspira-
torial assignments.
197
“Leon was always on the lookout,” Trotsky later wrote in his
pamphlet Leon Sedov: Son-Friend-Fighter, “avidly searching for
connecting threads with Russia, hunting up returning tourists, Sovi-
et students assigned abroad, or sympathetic functionaries in the for-
eign representations.” Sedov’s chief assignment in Berlin was to
contact old members of the Opposition, communicate Trotsky’s
instructions: to them, or collect important messages from them for
his father. “To avoid compromising his informant” and to “evade
the GPU spies,” wrote Trotsky, Sedov “chased for hours through
the streets of Berlin,”
A number of important Trotskyites had managed to secure posts
on the Soviet Foreign Trade Commission. Among them was Ivan N.
Smirnov, the one-time Red Army officer and former leading mem-
ber of Trotsky’s Guard. After a short period in exile, Smirnov had
followed the strategy of other Trotskyites, denounced Trotsky, and
pleaded for readmission to the Bolshevik Party. An engineer by pro-
fession, Smirnov soon obtained a minor post in the transportation
industry. Early in 1931 Smirnov was appointed as a consultant en-
gineer to a trade mission that was going to Berlin.
Soon after his arrival in Berlin, Ivan Smirnov was contacted by
Leon Sedov. At clandestine get-togethers in Sedov’s apartment and
in out-of-the-way suburban beer halls and cafes, Smirnov learned of
Trotsky’s plans for the reorganization of the secret Opposition in
collaboration with agents of the German Military Intelligence.
From now on, Sedov told Smirnov, the struggle against the So-
viet regime was to assume the character of an all-out offensive. The
old rivalries and political differences between the Trotskyites, the
Bukharinites, the Zinovievites, the Mensheviks, the Social Revolu-
tionaries and all other anti-Soviet groups and factions must be for-
gotten. A united Opposition must be formed. Secondly, the struggle
from now on must assume a militant character. A nation-wide cam-
paign of terrorism and sabotage was to be initiated against the Sovi-
et regime. It would have to be worked out in every detail. By wide-
spread and carefully synchronized blows the Opposition would be
able to throw the Soviet Government into hopeless confusion and
demoralization. The Opposition would then seize power.
Smirnov’s immediate task was to convey Trotsky’s instructions
for the reorganization of the underground work, and the prepara-
tions for terrorism and sabotage, to the most trusted members of the
Opposition in Moscow. He was also to make arrangements for the
198
sending of regular “informational data” to Berlin—to be delivered
by Trotskyite couriers to Sedov, who would then relay the data to
his father. The password by which the couriers were to identify
themselves was: “I have brought greetings from Galya.”
Sedov asked Smirnov to do one more thing while he was still in
Berlin. He was to get in touch with the head of a Soviet Trade Mis-
sion which had recently arrived in Berlin and to inform this person-
age that Sedov was in the city and wished to see him on a matter of
utmost importance.
The head of this Soviet Trade Mission which had just arrived in
Berlin was Trotsky’s old follower and most devoted admirer, Yuri
Leonodovich Pyatakov.
Lean and tall, well-dressed, with a high sloping forehead, pale
complexion and a neat, reddish goatee, Pyatakov looked more like a
scholarly professor than the veteran conspirator he was. In 1927,
following the attempted Putsch, Pyatakov had been the first leading
Trotskyite to break with Trotsky and seek readmission to the Bol-
shevik Party. A man of outstanding ability in business management
and organization, Pyatakov secured several good jobs in the rapidly
expanding Soviet industries even while still in exile in Siberia. At
the end of 1929, he was readmitted to the Bolshevik Party on proba-
tion. He held a succession of board chairmanships on transport and
chemical industrial planning projects. In 1931, he got a seat on the
Supreme Economic Council, the chief Soviet planning institution;
and that same year he was sent to Berlin as head of a special trade
mission to purchase German industrial equipment for the Soviet
Government.
Following Sedov’s instructions, Ivan Smirnov sought out
Pyatakov in his Berlin office. Smirnov told Pyatakov that Leon:
Sedov was in Berlin and had a special message for him from Trot-
sky. A few days later, Pyatakov met Sedov. Here is Pyatakov’s own
account of the meeting:—
There is a cafe known as the “Am Zoo” not far from
the Zoological Gardens on the square. I went there and saw
Lev Sedov sitting at a small table. We had known each oth-
er very well in the past. He told me that he was not speak-
ing to me in his own name, but in the name of his father—
Trotsky, and that Trotsky, learning that I was in Berlin,
gave him categorical orders to look me up, to meet me per-
199
sonally and have a talk with me. Sedov said that Trotsky
had not for a moment abandoned the idea of resuming the
fight against Stalin’s leadership, that there had been a tem-
porary lull owing partly to Trotsky’s repeated movements
from one country to another, but that this struggle was now
being resumed, of which he, Trotsky, was hereby informing
me.... After this, Sedov asked me point-blank: “Trotsky
asks, do you, Pyatakov, intend to take a hand in this fight?”
I gave my consent.
Sedov then proceeded to inform Pyatakov of the lines along
which Trotsky was proposing to reorganize the Opposition:—
...Sedov went on to outline the nature of the new meth-
ods of struggle: there could be no question of developing a
mass struggle of any form, of organizing a mass movement;
if we adopted any kind of mass work we would come to
grief immediately; Trotsky was firmly in favor of the forci-
ble overthrow of the Stalin leadership by methods of terror-
ism and wrecking. Sedov further said that Trotsky drew at-
tention to the fact that a struggle confined to one country
would be absurd and the international question could not
possibly be evaded. In this struggle we must also have the
necessary solution for the international problem, or rather,
inter-state problems.
Whoever tries to brush these questions aside, said
Sedov, relating what Trotsky said, signs his own
testimonium pauperatis.
A second meeting between Sedov and Pyatakov soon followed.
This time Sedov said to him: “You realize, Yuri Leonodovich, that
inasmuch as the fight has been resumed, money is needed. You can
provide the necessary funds for the fight.” Sedov informed
Pyatakov how this could be done. In his official capacity as trade
representative of the Soviet Government in Germany, Pyatakov was
to place as many orders as possible with the two German firms,
Borsig and Demag. Pyatakov was not to be “particularly exacting as
to prices” in dealing with these concerns. Trotsky had an arrange-
ment with Borsig and Demag. “You will have to pay higher prices,”
200
said Sedov, “but this money will go for our work.”2
2
The firms Borsig and Demag were “fronts” for the German Mili-
tary Intelligence. By dealing with these firms, Pyatakov was able to
place considerable sums at the disposal of Trotsky. An independent
witness, the American engineer, John D. Littlepage, personally ob-
served Pyatakov’s dealings with these German firms. Littlepage was
employed by the Soviet Government in the capacity of an expert in the
gold and copper mining industries. In a series of articles concerning his
experiences in Soviet Russia, published in the Saturday Evening Post
in January, 1938, Littlepage wrote:—
“I went to Berlin in the spring of 1931 with a large purchasing
commission headed by Pyatakov; my job was to offer technical advice
on purchases of mining machinery.
“Among other things, the commission in Berlin was buying several
dozen mine hoists, ranging from 100 to 1,000 horsepower.... The com-
mission asked for quotations on the basis of pfennigs per kilogram.
After some discussion, the German concerns [Borsig and Demag]...
reduced their prices between 5 and 6 pfennigs per kilogram. When I
studied these proposals, I discovered that the firms had substituted cast-
iron bases weighing several tons for the light steel provided in the spec-
ifications, which would reduce the cost of production per kilogram, but
increase the weight, and therefore the cost to purchaser.
“Naturally, I was pleased to make this discovery, and reported to
members of the commission with a sense of triumph.... The matter was
so arranged that Pyatakov could have gone back to Moscow and
showed that he had been very successful in reducing prices, but at the
same time would have paid out money for a lot of worthless cast iron
and enabled the Germans to give him very substantial rebates.... He got
away with the same trick on some other mines, although I blocked this
one.”
Later, Littlepage observed several instances of industrial sabotage
in the Urals, where because of the work of a Trotskyite engineer named
Kabakov, production in certain mines, was deliberately kept down. In
1937, states Littlepage, Kabakov was “arrested on charges of industrial
sabotage.... When I heard of his arrest, I was not surprised.” Again, in
1937, Littlepage found further evidence of sabotage in Soviet industry
directed personally by Pyatakov. The American engineer had reor-
ganized certain valuable mines in southern Kazakstan and left detailed
written instructions for the Soviet workers to follow so as to ensure
maximum production. “Well,” writes Littlepage, “one of my last jobs in
Russia, in 1937, was a hurry call to return to these same mines.... Thou-
sands of tons of rich ore already had been lost beyond recovery, and in
201
There were two other secret oppositionists in Berlin in 1931
whom Sedov put to work in the new Trotskyite apparatus. They
were Alexei Shestov, an engineer on Pyatakov’s trade mission, and
Sergei Bessonov, a member of the Berlin Trade Representation of
the U.S.S.R.
Bessonov, a former Social Revolutionary, was a tubby, mild-
appearing, dark-complexioned man in his middle forties. The Berlin
Trade Representation of which Bessonov was a member was the
most central Soviet trade agency in Europe and conducted trade
negotiations with ten different countries; Bessonov himself was
permanently stationed in Berlin. He was therefore ideally equipped
to serve as a “liaison point” between the Russian Trotskyites and
their exiled leader. It was arranged that secret Trotskyite communi-
cations from Russia would be sent to Bessonov in Berlin who would
then relay them to Sedov or Trotsky.
Alexei Shestov was a different personality, and his job was to
be suited to his temperament. He was to become one of the chief
organizers of the German-Trotskyite espionage and sabotage cells
in Siberia where he was a member of the Board of the Eastern and
Siberian Coal Trust. Shestov was in his early thirties. In 1923, while
still a student in the Moscow Mining Institute, Shestov had joined
the Trotskyite Opposition, and in 1927 he headed one of the secret
printing presses in Moscow. A slim, pale-eyed young man with an
intense, violent disposition, Shestov followed Trotsky with fanatical
a few more weeks, if nothing had been done meanwhile, the whole de-
posit might have been lost. I discovered that... a commission came in
from Pyatakov’s headquarters.... My instructions had been thrown in
the stove, and a system of mining introduced throughout those mines
which was certain to cause the loss of a large part of the ore body in a
few months.” Littlepage found “flagrant examples of deliberate sabo-
tage.” Just before he left Russia, and after he had submitted a full writ-
ten report on his findings to the Soviet authorities, many members of
the Trotskyite sabotage ring were rounded up. Littlepage found that the
saboteurs had used his instructions “as the basis for deliberately wreck-
ing the plant” by doing exactly the opposite of what he had instructed.
The saboteurs admitted, Littlepage stated in the Saturday Evening Post,
that “they had been drawn into a conspiracy against the Stalin regime
by opposition Communists, who convinced them that they were strong
enough to overthrow Stalin and his associates and seize power for
themselves.”
202
devotion. “I met Trotsky several times personally,” he liked to
boast. To Shestov, Trotsky was “the leader,” and that was how he
almost invariably referred to him.
“It’s no use sitting around and whistling for fair weather,”
Sedov told Shestov when they met in Berlin. “We must proceed
with all forces and means at our disposal to an active policy of
discrediting Stalin’s leadership and Stalin’s policy.” Trotsky held
that “the only correct way, a difficult way but a sure one, was
forcibly to remove Stalin and the leaders of the Government by
means of terrorism.”
“We have really gotten into a blind alley,” Shestov readily
agreed. “It is necessary to disarm—or to map out a new path of
struggle!”
Sedov asked Shestov if he knew a German industrialist by the
name of “Herr Dehlmann.” Shestov said he knew him by reputation.
Dehlmann was a director of the firm Frölich-Klüpfel-Dehlmann.
Many of the firm’s engineers were employed in the west Siberian
mines where Shestov himself worked.
Sedov then told Shestov that he was to “get in touch with
Dehlmann” before he returned to Soviet Russia. The Dehlmann
firm, explained Sedov, could be very helpful to the Trotskyite or-
ganization in “undermining Soviet economy” in Siberia. Herr
Dehlmann was already helping to smuggle Trotskyite propaganda:
and agents into the Soviet Union. In return, Shestov could supply
Herr Dehlmann with certain information about the new Siberian
mines and industries, in which the German director was particularly
interested....
“Are you advising me to make a deal with the firm?” asked
Shestov.
“What’s so terrible about that?” replied Trotsky’s son. “If they
are doing us a favor, why shouldn’t we do them a favor and furnish
them with certain information?”
“You’re simply proposing that I become a spy!” exclaimed
Shestov.
Sedov shrugged his shoulders. “It’s absurd to use words like
that,” he said. “In a fight it is unreasonable to be as squeamish as
that. If you accept terrorism, if you accept destructive undermining
in industry, I absolutely fail to understand why you cannot agree
with this.”
A few days later, Shestov saw Smirnov and told him what Trot-
203
sky’s son had said to him.
“Sedov ordered me to establish connections with the firm of
Frölich-Klüpfel-Dehlmann,” said Shestov. “He bluntly told me to
establish connections with a firm engaged in espionage and sabo-
tage in the Kuzbas. In that case I’ll be a spy and a saboteur.”
“Stop slinging about big words like ‘spy’ and ‘saboteur’!” cried
Smirnov. “Time is passing and it is necessary to act.... What is there
that surprises you in that we consider it possible to overthrow the
Stalin leadership by mobilizing all the counterrevolutionary forces
in the Kuzbas? What do you find so terrible in enlisting German
agents for this work?... There is no other way. We have to agree to
it.”
Shestov was silent. Smirnov said to him, “Well, how is your
mood?”
“I have no personal mood,” said Shestov. “I do as our leader
Trotsky taught us—stand at attention and wait for orders!”
Before he left Berlin, Shestov met Herr Dehlmann, the director
of the German firm which was financing Trotsky. Shestov was re-
cruited, under the code name of “Alyosha,” into the German Mili-
tary Intelligence Service. Shestov subsequently stated:—
I met the director of this firm, Dehlmann, and his assis-
tant Koch. The essence of the conversation with the heads
of the firm Frölich-Klüpfel-Dehlmann was as follows: first,
on supplying secret information through the representatives
of this firm working in the Kuznetsk Basin and on the or-
ganization of wrecking and diversive work together with
the Trotskyites. It was also said that the firm in its turn
would help us and that they could send more people upon
the demand of our organization.... They would in every
way help the Trotskyites to come to power.3
3
The Germans were particularly concerned about the new indus-
trial base which Stalin was building in far-off West Siberia and in the
Urals. This base was out of range of bombing planes and, in the event
of war, might prove a major factor on the Soviet side. The Germans
wanted to penetrate this base with spies and saboteurs. Borsig, Demag
and Frölich-Klüpfel-Dehlmann, which had contracts with the Soviet
Government whereby they were supplying machinery and technical
assistance for the Five-Year Plan, were used as “fronts” by the German
204
On his return to Soviet Russia, Shestov brought back a letter
which Sedov had given to him for Pyatakov, who had returned to
Moscow. Shestov hid the letter in the sole of one of his shoes. He
delivered it to Pyatakov at the Commissariat of Heavy Industry. The
letter was from Trotsky, himself, written from Prinkipo. It outlined
the “immediate tasks” confronting the Opposition in Soviet Russia.
The first task was “to use every possible means to overthrow
Stalin and his associates.” This meant terrorism.
The second task was “to unite all anti-Stalin forces.” This
meant collaboration with the German Military Intelligence and any
other anti-Soviet force that would work with the Opposition.
The third task was “to counteract all measures of the Soviet
Government and the Party, particularly in the economic field.” This
meant sabotage.
Pyatakov was to be Trotsky’s chief lieutenant in charge of the
conspiratorial apparatus inside Soviet Russia.
Military Intelligence. German spies and saboteurs were sent to Russia

posing as “engineers” and “specialists.”
The German Military Intelligence also recruited agents from
among Soviet engineers in Germany who were susceptible to blackmail
or bribery. One Soviet engineer, Mikhail Stroilov, who was enlisted as
a German spy in Berlin in December, 1930, and was subsequently re-
cruited into the Trotskyite organization in Siberia, told a Soviet court
after his arrest in 1937:
“The thing started gradually with my meeting with [the German spy]
von Berg.... He spoke Russian excellently because he had lived in Russia,
in St. Petersburg, 15 or 20 years before the revolution. This man visited
the Technical Bureau several times and had talks with me on business
matters, in particular about hard alloys manufactured by the firm of
Walram.... Berg advised me to read Trotsky’s My Life.... In Novosibirsk,
German specialists began to come to me with the agreed password. Until
the end of 1934 six men came to see me: Sommeregger, Wurm,
Baumgarten, Maas, Hauer and Flessa [‘engineers’ employed by the Ger-
man firm, Frölich-Klüpfel-Dehlmann].... My first report, made on Janu-
ary, 1932, through engineer Flessa, and telling of the vast plan of devel-
opment in the Kuznetsk Basin, was in effect espionage.... I received in-
structions... that I should proceed to decisive wrecking and destructive
acts... the plan of wrecking and destructive work was drawn up... by the
West-Siberian Trotskyite organization.”
205
3. The Three Layers
Throughout 1932, Russia’s future Fifth Column began to take
concrete shape in the underworld of the Opposition. At small secret
meetings and furtive conferences, the members of the conspiracy
were made aware of the new line and instructed in their new tasks.
A network of terrorist cells, sabotage cells and courier systems was
developed in Soviet Russia. In Moscow and Leningrad, in the Cau-
casus and in Siberia, in the Donbas and in the Urals, Trotskyite or-
ganizers addressed motley secret gatherings of die-hard enemies of
the Soviet regime—Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, leftists,
rightists, nationalists, anarchists and White Russian fascists and
monarchists. The message of Trotsky was spread through the seeth-
ing underworld of Oppositionists, spies and secret agents; a new
offensive against the Soviet regime was under way.
Trotsky’s emphatic demand for the preparation of acts of terror
at first alarmed some of the older Trotskyite intellectuals. The jour-
nalist Karl Radek showed signs of panic when Pyatakov acquainted
him with the new line. In February, 1932, Radek received a person-
al letter from Trotsky conveyed, as were all Trotskyite communica-
tions of a confidential character, by secret courier.
“You must bear in mind,” Trotsky wrote his wavering follower,
Radek, “the experience of the preceding period and realize that for
you there can be no returning to the past, that the struggle has en-
tered a new phase and that the new feature in this phase is that ei-
ther we shall be destroyed together with the Soviet Union, or we
must raise the question of removing the leadership.”
Trotsky’s letter, together with Pyatakov’s insistence, finally
convinced Radek. He agreed to accept the new line—terrorism,
sabotage and collaboration with “foreign powers.”
Among the most active organizers of the terrorist cells which
were now built throughout the Soviet Union were Ivan Smirnov and
his old comrades in the Trotsky Guard: Serge Mrachkovsky and
Ephraim Dreitzer.
Under Smirnov’s direction, Mrachkovsky and Dreitzer began
forming small groups of professional gunmen and former Trotskyite
associates from civil-war days who were ready for violent methods.
“The hopes we’ve placed on the collapse of the Party’s policy,”
Mrachkovsky told one of these terrorist groups in Moscow in 1932,
“must be considered doomed. The methods of struggle used until
206
now haven’t produced any positive results. There remains only one
path of struggle, and that is the removal of the leadership of the Pat-
ty by violence. Stalin and the other leaders must be removed. That
is the principal task!”
Meanwhile, Pyatakov was engaged in seeking out conspirators
in key industrial jobs, especially in the war industries and transport,
and recruiting them for the all-out sabotage campaign that Trotsky
wanted to launch against the Soviet economy.
By the summer of 1932, an agreement to suspend past rivalries
and differences, and to work together, under Trotsky’s supreme
command, was under discussion between Pyatakov, as Trotsky’s
lieutenant in Russia, and Bukharin, the leader of the Right Opposi-
tion. The smaller group headed by the veteran oppositionists, Zino-
viev and Kamenev, agreed to subordinate its activities to Trotsky’s
authority. Describing the hectic negotiations which were going on
between the conspirators at this time, Bukharin later said:—
I had talks with Pyatakov, Tomsky and Rykov. Rykov
had talks with Kamenev, and Zinoviev with Pyatakov. In
the summer of 1932 I had a second conversation with
Pyatakov in the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry.
At that time this was a very simple matter for me, since I
was working under Pyatakov. At that time he was my boss.
I had to go into his private office on business, and I could
do so without arousing suspicion....
In this talk, which took place in the summer of 1932,
Pyatakov told me of his meeting with Sedov concerning
Trotsky’s policy of terrorism... we decided that we would
find a common language very soon and that our differences
in the struggle against Soviet power would be overcome.
The final negotiations were concluded that fall at a secret meet-
ing which was held in a deserted dacha, summer house, on the out-
skirts of Moscow. Sentries were posted by the conspirators around
the house and along all roads leading to it to guard against surprise
and to ensure absolute secrecy. At this meeting something like a
High Command of the combined Opposition forces was formed to
direct the coming campaigns of terror and sabotage throughout the
Soviet Union. This High Command of the Opposition was named
the “Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites.” It was constructed on three
different levels or layers. If one of the layers was exposed, the oth-
207
ers would carry on.
The first layer, the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center,
headed by Zinoviev, was responsible for the organization and direc-
tion of terrorism.
The second layer, the Trotskyite Parallel Center, headed by
Pyatakov, was responsible for the organization and direction of sab-
otage.
The third and most important layer, the actual Bloc of Rights
and Trotskyites, headed by Bukharin and Krestinsky, comprised
most of the leaders and highest-ranking members of the combined
Opposition forces.
The entire apparatus consisted of not more than a few thousand
members and some twenty or thirty leaders who held positions of
authority in the army, Foreign Office, secret service, industry, trade-
unions, Party and Government offices.
From the start, the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites was penetrat-
ed and led by paid agents of foreign Intelligence Services, especial-
ly of the German Military Intelligence. These are some of the for-
eign agents who were leading members of the new conspiratorial
bloc:—
Nicolai Krestinsky, Trotskyite and Assistant Commis-
sar of Foreign Affairs, was an agent of the German Military
Intelligence since 1923, when he first undertook espionage
assignments from General Hans von Seeckt.
Arkady Rosengoltz, Trotskyite and People’s Commis-
sar of Foreign Trade, had been carrying out espionage as-
signments for the German High Command since 1923. “My
espionage activities began as far back as 1923,” Rosengoltz
himself later related, “when, on Trotsky’s instructions, I
handed various secret information to the Commander-in-
Chief of the Reichswehr, Seeckt, and to the Chief of the
German General Staff, Haase.” In 1926 Rosengoltz began
working for the British Intelligence Service, while main-
taining his connections with Germany.
Christian Rakovsky, Trotskyite and former Ambassa-
dor to Great Britain and France, agent of the British Intelli-
gence Service since 1924. In Rakovsky’s own words: “I es-
tablished criminal connections with the British Intelligence
Service in 1924.” In 1934, Rakovsky also became an agent
208
of the Japanese Intelligence Service.
Stanislav Rataichak, Trotskyite and Chief of the Cen-
tral Administration of the Chemical Industry, agent of the
German Military Intelligence. He had been sent into Soviet
Russia by the Germans immediately after the Revolution.
He carried on espionage and sabotage activities in the in-
dustries being built by the Soviet Government in the Urals.
Ivan Hrasche, Trotskyite, executive in the Soviet
chemical industry, came into Soviet Russia as a spy for the
Czechoslovakian Intelligence Service in 1919, disguised as
a returning Russian prisoner of war. Hrasche became an
agent of the German Intelligence Service.
Alexei Shestov, Trotskyite, and member of the Board of
Eastern and Siberian Coal Trust, became an agent of the
German Intelligence Service in 1931, working for it
through the German firm of Frölich-Klüpfel-Dehlmann and
carrying out espionage and sabotage assignments in
Siberia.
Gavril Pushin, Trotskyite, and executive at the Gor-
lovka Chemical Works, became an agent of the German
Military Intelligence in 1935. According to his own subse-
quent admission to the Soviet authorities, he provided the
Germans with: “(1) figures of the output of all Soviet
chemical enterprises during 1934; (2) the program of work
of all Soviet chemical enterprises for 1935; (3) the plan of
construction of nitrogen works which comprised construc-
tion work up to 1938.”
Yakov Livshitz, Trotskyite and official on the Soviet
Far Eastern Railroad Commission, was an agent of the Jap-
anese Military Intelligence and regularly transmitted to Ja-
pan secret Information concerning the Soviet railroads.
Ivan Knyazev, Trotskyite, and executive on the Urals
railroad system, agent of the Japanese Intelligence Service.
Under its supervision, he carried on sabotage activities in
the Urals, and kept the Japanese High Command supplied
with information about the Soviet transport system.
Yosif Turok, Trotskyite, and Assistant Manager of the
Traffic Department on the Perm and Urals Railway; agent
of the Japanese Intelligence Service. In 1935 Turok re-
ceived 35,000 rubles from the Japanese in payment for the
209
espionage and sabotage assignments he was carrying out in
the Urals.
Mikhail Chernov, a member of the Rights, and Peo-
ple’s Commissar of Agriculture of the U.S.S.R.; agent of
the German Military Intelligence since 1928. Under the su-
pervision of the Germans, Chernov carried out extensive
sabotage, as well as espionage assignments, in the Ukraine.
Vasily Sharangovich, a member of the Rights, and Sec-
retary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
Byelorussia, had been sent into Soviet Russia as a Polish
spy in 1921. During the following years he continued to
work under the supervision of the Polish Intelligence Ser-
vice, supplying it with espionage data as well as carrying
on sabotage activities in Byelorussia.
Grigori Grinko, a member of the Rights and an official
of the People’s Commissariat of Finance; agent of the
German and Polish Intelligence Services since 1932. He
was a leader of the fascist Ukrainian nationalist movement,
helped smuggle arms and ammunition into the Soviet Un-
ion and carried on espionage and sabotage work for the
Germans and the Poles.
The conspiratorial apparatus of the Trotskyites, Rights and
Zinovievites was, in fact, the Axis Fifth Column in Soviet Russia.
210
CHAPTER XVII
Treason and Terror
1. The Diplomacy of Treason
In the years 1933-1934, a mysterious malaise seemed to seize the
nations of Europe. One country after another was suddenly shaken
by coups d’état, military Putsches, sabotage, assassinations and
startling revelations of cabals and conspiracies. Scarcely a month
passed without some new act of treachery and violence. An epidem-
ic of treason and terror raced across Europe.
Nazi Germany was the center of infection. On January 11,
1934, a United Press dispatch reported from London: “With Nazi
Germany as the center of the new Fascist movements, agitation and
violence by those who believe the old form of government is
doomed have spread over the continent.”
The term “Fifth Column” was as yet unknown. But already the
secret vanguards of the German High Command had launched their
offensive against the nations of Europe. The French Cagoulards and
Croix de Feu; the British Union of Fascists; the Belgian Rexists; the
Polish POW; the Czechoslovakian Henleinists and Hlinka Guards;
the Norwegian Quislingites; the Rumanian Iron Guards; the Bul-
garian IMRO; the Finnish Lappo; the Lithuanian Iron Wolf; the
Latvian Fiery Cross, and many other newly created Nazi secret so-
cieties or reorganized counterrevolutionary leagues were already at
work paving the way for the German Wehrmacht’s conquest and
enslavement of the Continent and preparing for the attack on the
Soviet Union.
Here is a partial list of the most important acts of Nazi-fascist
terrorism immediately following Hitler’s rise to power:—
October 1933: Assassination of Alex Mailov, Secretary of
the Soviet Embassy, at Lvov, Poland, by
agents of the Nazi-financed OUN, terrorist
organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
December 1933: Assassination of Premier Ion Duca of
Rumania by the Iron Guards, Nazi-
Rumanian terrorists
February 1934 Uprising in Paris, of Croix de Feu, Nazi-
inspired French fascist organization
March 1934: Attempted coup d’état in Estonia by Nazi-
211
financed fascist Liberty Fighters
May 1934: Fascist coup d’état in Bulgaria
May 1934: Attempted Putsch in Latvia by Nazi-
controlled Baltic Brotherhood
June 1934: Assassination of General Bronislav
Pieracki, Polish Minister of Interior, by
agents of the Nazi-financed OUN, terrorist
organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
June 1934: Assassination of Ivan Babiy, head of Or-
ganization for Catholic Action in Poland,
by OUN agents
June 1934: Attempted mass uprising in Lithuania by
Nazi Iron Wolf organization
July 1934: Abortive Nazi Putsch in Austria and as-
sassination by Nazi terrorists of Chancel-
lor Engelbert Dollfuss
October 1934: Assassination of King Alexander of Yu-
goslavia and the French Foreign Minister
Barthou by agents of the Ustachi, Nazi-
controlled Croatian fascist organization
Two men were chiefly responsible for the organization and su-
pervision of these Nazi Fifth Column activities which soon extend-
ed far beyond Europe, penetrating the United States, Latin America,
Africa, and, linking up with the Japanese Intelligence Service, all
the area of the Far East, These two men were Alfred Rosenberg and
Rudolph Hess. Rosenberg headed the Aussenpolitisches Amt der
NSDAP (Foreign Political Office of the Nazi Party) which had the
task of directing thousands of Nazi espionage, sabotage and propa-
ganda agencies throughout the world, with special points of concen-
tration in eastern Europe and Soviet Russia. As Hitler’s deputy, Ru-
dolph Hess was in charge of all secret foreign negotiations for the
Nazi Government.
It was Alfred Rosenberg, the one-time Czarist émigré from
Reval, who first established secret official Nazi relations with Leon
Trotsky. It was Rudolph Hess, Hitler’s deputy, who cemented
them....
In September, 1933, eight months after Adolf Hitler became
dictator of Germany, the Trotskyite diplomat and German agent
Nicolai Krestinsky stopped off in Berlin for a few days on his way
212
to take his annual “rest cure” at a sanatorium in Kissingen.
Krestinsky then held the post of Assistant Commissar in the Soviet
Foreign Office.
In Berlin, Krestinsky saw Sergei Bessonov, the Trotskyite liai-
son agent at the Soviet Embassy. In great excitement, Krestinsky
informed Bessonov that “Alfred Rosenberg, the leader of the For-
eign Affairs Department of the National Socialist Party of Germa-
ny,” had been “making soundings in our circles on the question of a
possible secret alliance between the National Socialists in Germany
and the Russian Trotskyites.”
Krestinsky told Bessonov that he must see Trotsky. A meeting
must be arranged at all costs. Krestinsky would be in the Kissingen
sanatorium until the end of September, then he would go to Merano
in the Italian Tyrol. Trotsky could contact him, with due precau-
tions, in either place.
The meeting was arranged. In the second week of October,
1933, Leon Trotsky, accompanied by his son, Sedov, crossed the
Franco-Italian border on a false passport and met Krestinsky at the
Hotel Bavaria in Merano.1
1
Trotsky was then living at St. Palais, a small village at the foot of
the Pyrenees in the South of France. In July, he had left Prinkipo. (He
soon moved with his retinue of bodyguards and “secretaries” to a
guarded villa hear Paris.)
At the time Trotsky came to France, the French reactionaries and
fascists were desperately striving to prevent the proposed Franco-
Soviet Collective security alliance.
The French Government, which gave Trotsky permission to enter
France and establish his anti-Soviet headquarters in that country, was
headed at the time by Edouard Daladier, whose appeasement policies,
fulfilled at Munich, were to play so important a part in betraying France
and the other anti-fascist nations of Europe into the hands of the Nazis.
The French Radical Deputy Henri Guernot personally sponsored Trot-
sky’s pleas to be admitted to France. The necessary arrangements were
made by the Minister of the Interior, Camille Chautemps, the dubious
French politician who helped quash the investigation of the fascist
Cagoulard conspiracy and later became Vice-Premier of the first Petain
Cabinet. “You have had the kindness to call my attention to Mr. Leon
Trotsky, exile of Russian origin, who has asked for reasons of health,
authorization to live in the Departments of the South...” Minister of
Interior Chautemps wrote Deputy Guernot. “I have the honor to inform
213
The conference which followed covered almost all the major is-
sues concerning the future development of the conspiracy inside
Soviet Russia. Trotsky began by stating flatly that “the seizure of
power in Russia could be consummated only by force.” But the
conspiratorial apparatus alone was not strong enough to carry out a
successful coup and to maintain itself in power without outside aid.
It was therefore essential to come to a concrete agreement with for-
eign states interested in aiding the Trotskyites against the Soviet
Government for their own ends.
“The embryo of such an agreement,” Trotsky told Krestinsky,
“was our agreement with the Reichswehr; but this agreement in no
way satisfied either the Trotskyites or the German side for two rea-
sons: first, the other party to this agreement was only the
Reichswehr and not the German Government as a whole.... Second,
what was the substance of our agreement with the Reichswehr? We
were receiving a small sum of money and they were receiving espi-
onage information which they would need during an armed attack.
But the German Government, Hitler particularly, wants colonies,
territory and not only espionage information. And he is prepared to
be satisfied with Soviet territory instead of the colonies for which he
would have to fight England, America and France. As for us, we do
not need the 250,000 gold marks. We need the German armed forc-
es in order to come to power with their assistance. And it is towards
this end that the work should be carried on.”
The first thing, said Trotsky, was to reach an agreement with
the German Government. “But the Japanese are also a force with
you that... the interested party will obtain without difficulty, when he
makes the request, a passport visa for France.”
Among Trotsky’s numerous other influential friends and sympa-
thizers in France were: Jacques Doriot, the renegade French Com-
munist and Nazi agent; and Marcel Déat, the one-time Socialist profes-
sor, Nazi agent, and, after the downfall of France, leading collabora-
tionist.
Trotsky’s presence in France was also approved by anti-Soviet el-
ements in the French Intelligence Service and secret police. In April,
1937, at the Hearings in Mexico, Trotsky declared: “...Monsieur Thome
and Monsieur Cado, the general secretary of the police and the prefec-
ture of the Department of Charente Intérieure—all the summits of the
police were very well acquainted with my situation. It was the secret
agent of the police who was informed of every step of mine.”
214
which it is necessary to come to terms,” Trotsky added. It would be
necessary for the Russian Trotskyites to initiate “soundings” with
the Japanese representatives in Moscow. “In this connection,”
Trotsky instructed Krestinsky, “use Sokolnikov, who is working in
the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, in charge of Eastern
Affairs....”
Trotsky went on to give Krestinsky instructions about the inner
organization of the Russian conspiratorial apparatus.
“Even if the Soviet Union is attacked, let us say, by Germany,”
said Trotsky, “that does not as yet make it possible to seize the ma-
chinery of power unless certain internal forces have been pre-
pared.... It is necessary to have strongholds both in the towns and in
the countryside among the petty bourgeoisie and the kulaks, and
there it is the Rights who have the connections. Finally, it is neces-
sary to have a stronghold, an organization in the Red Army among
the commanders, in order, with our united effort, to seize the most
vital places at the necessary moment and to come to power, to re-
place the present Government, which must be arrested, by a Gov-
ernment of our own which has been prepared beforehand.”
On his return to Russia, Krestinsky was to get in touch with
General Tukhachevsky, Assistant Chief of Staff of the Red Army—
“a man,” as Trotsky told Krestinsky, “of a Bonapartist type, an ad-
venturer, and ambitious man, who strives not only for a military but
also for a military-political role, and who will unquestionably make
common cause with us.”
Trotsky’s followers in Russia were to give every assistance to
General Tukhachevsky, while at the same time taking care to place
their own men in strategic positions, so that, when the coup d’état
came, the ambitious Tukhachevsky would not be able to control the
new government without the aid of Trotsky.
Before the conference broke up, Trotsky gave Krestinsky spe-
cific orders for Pyatakov on the carrying out of the terrorist and
sabotage campaigns in Soviet Russia. In speaking of this, Trotsky
declared that the “diversionist acts and acts of terrorism” must be
considered from two points of view. First, “of applying them in time
of war for the purpose of disorganizing the defensive capacity of the
Red Army, for disorganizing the Government at the moment of the
coup d’état.” But secondly, said Trotsky, it must be realized that
these acts would make his, Trotsky’s, position “stronger” and would
give him “more confidence in his negotiations with foreign gov-
215
ernments” because he “would be able to refer to the fact that his
followers in the Soviet Union were both sufficiently strong and suf-
ficiently active.”
Back in Moscow, Krestinsky delivered a full report on his
meeting with Trotsky before a secret meeting of the Russian Trot-
skyites. A few of the conspirators, particularly Karl Radek who was
supposed to be Trotsky’s “Foreign Minister,” were nettled by the
fact that Trotsky had entered into such important negotiations with-
out having first consulted them.
After hearing Krestinky’s report, Radek sent off a special mes-
sage to Trotsky asking for “further clarification on the question of
foreign policy.” Trotsky’s reply, written from France, was handed
to Radek a few weeks later by Vladimir Romm, a young foreign
correspondent of the Soviet news agency Tass who was serving as a
Trotskyite courier. Romm had received the letter from Trotsky in
Paris and had smuggled it into Russia concealed in the cover of the
popular Soviet novel, Tsuslma.2 Radek later described the contents
of this letter as follows:—
Trotsky put the question in this way: the accession of
Fascism to power in Germany had fundamentally changed
the whole situation. It implied war in the near future, inevi-
table war, the more so that the situation was simultaneously
becoming acute in the Far East. Trotsky had no doubt that
this war would result in the defeat of the Soviet Union. This
2
Vladimir Romm had been Tass correspondent in Tokyo, Geneva
and Paris. He met Trotsky in Paris in 1933 by special appointment at a
café in the Bois de Boulogne. After telling Romm that only “extreme
measures” would enable the conspirators to gain their ends, Trotsky
quoted a Latin proverb: “What medicine cannot heal, iron will heal,
and what iron cannot heal, fire will heal.” In 1934 Romm was appoint-
ed Tass correspondent in the United States. Before he left for America,
Romm saw Sedov in Paris. Romm subsequently stated: “Sedov told me
that in connection with my going to America, Trotsky had asked to be
informed in case there was anything interesting in the sphere of Soviet-
American relations. When I asked why this was so interesting, Sedov
told me: ‘This follows from Trotsky’s line on the defeat of the U.S.S.R.
Inasmuch as the date of the war of Germany and Japan depends to a
certain extent on the state of Soviet-American relations, this cannot fail
to be of interest to Trotsky’.”
216
defeat, he wrote, will create favorable conditions for the
accession to power of the bloc.... Trotsky stated that he had
established contacts with a certain Far Eastern state and a
certain Central European state, and that he had openly told
semi-official circles of these states that the bloc stood for a
bargain with them and was prepared to make considerable
concessions both of an economic and a territorial character.
In the same letter, Trotsky informed Radek that the Russian
Trotskyites working in diplomatic posts would be approached in the
near future by certain foreign representatives and that, when this
took place, the Trotskyite diplomats were to confirm their loyalty to
Trotsky and to assure the foreign representatives that they stood
behind Trotsky in every way....
Grigori Sokolnikov, the Trotskyite Assistant Commissar for
Eastern Affairs, hurried into Radek’s office at Izvestia a short time
later. “Just imagine,” Sokolnikov burst out nervously as soon as the
door was closed. “I am conducting negotiations at the People’s
Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. The conversation comes to a
close. The interpreters have left the room. The Japanese envoy sud-
denly turns to me and asks: am I informed about the proposals Trot-
sky has made to his Government?”
Sokolnikov was highly perturbed by the incident. “How does
Trotsky visualize this?” he asked Radek. “How can I, as Assistant
People’s Commissar, conduct such negotiations? This is an abso-
lutely impossible situation!”
Radek tried to calm his agitated friend. “Don’t get excited,” he
said. “Trotsky obviously doesn’t understand the situation here.”
Radek went on to assure Sokolnikov that it would not happen again.
He had already written to Trotsky telling him that it was impossible
for the Russian Trotskyites to carry on negotiations with German
and Japanese agents—”under the eyes of the OGPU.” The Russian
Trotskyites, said Radek, would have to “put their mandate on Trot-
sky’s visa” to go ahead with the negotiations on his own, so long as
he kept them fully informed of his progress....
Soon after, Radek himself was attending a diplomatic function
in Moscow when a German diplomat sat down beside him and qui-
etly said: “Our leaders know that Mr. Trotsky is striving for a rap-
prochement with Germany. Our leader wants to know, what does
this idea of Mr. Trotsky signify? Perhaps it is the idea of an émigré
217
who sleeps badly? What is behind these ideas?”
Describing his reaction to this unexpected Nazi approach,
Radek later said:—
Of course, his talk with me lasted only a couple of
minutes; the atmosphere of a diplomatic reception is not
suited to lengthy perorations. I had to make my decision
literally in one second and give him an answer.... I told him
that realist politicians in the U.S.S.R. understand the signif-
icance of a German-Soviet rapprochement and are prepared
to make the necessary concessions to achieve this rap-
prochement.
On the night of June 30, 1934, the Nazi terror struck within its
own ranks in Germany when Hitler liquidated dissident elements
within his movement. Within twenty-four hours, Captain Ernst
Roehm, Chief of, Staff of Hitler’s Storm Troops; Edmund Heines,
Supreme Group Leader in Eastern Germany; Karl Ernst, Chief
Leader of the Berlin Storm Troops; and scores of their friends and
associates fell before the bullets of Hitler’s gunmen in Munich and
Berlin. Intense anxiety and fear gripped the whole Nazi movement.
From Paris, Trotsky immediately dispatched one of his most
trusted “secretaries,” an international spy named Karl Reich, alias
Johanson, to contact Sergei Bessonov, the Trotskyite liaison in Ber-
lin. Bessonov was summoned to Paris to make a detailed report to
Trotsky on the situation inside Germany.
Bessonov was unable to get to Paris immediately; but at the end
of July he managed to leave Berlin. After meeting Trotsky in a Paris
hotel and making his report on the German situation, he returned to
Berlin that same evening. Trotsky was in a state of great nervous
excitement when Bessonov saw him. The events in Germany, the
elimination of the “radical Nazis” headed by Roehm, might bring
about some hitch in his plans. Bessonov assured Trotsky that Hitler,
Himmler, Hess, Rosenberg, Goering and Goebbels still held the
state power firmly in their hands.
“They will come to us yet!” cried Trotsky. He went on to tell
Bessonov that he would have important assignments for him to car-
ry out in Berlin in the near future. “We must not be squeamish in
this matter,” said Trotsky. “In order to obtain real and important
help from Hess and Rosenberg, we must not stop short at consent-
ing to big cessions of territory. We shall consent to the cession of
218
the Ukraine. Bear that in mind in your work and in your negotia-
tions with the Germans, and I shall also write about it to Pyatakov
and Krestinsky.”
A web of treason was already being spun through the various
offices of the Soviet Diplomatic Corps. Ambassadors, secretaries,
attachés and minor consular agents were involved in the conspirato-
rial network, not only in Europe, but also in the Far East....
The Soviet Ambassador to Japan was taking part in the conspir-
acy. His name was Yurenev. He had been a secret Trotskyite since
1926. On instructions from Trotsky, he established connections with
the Japanese Intelligence Service. Assisting Yurenev in his dealings
with Japan was Trotsky’s old friend, Christian Rakovsky, the one-
time Ambassador to England and France. Rakovsky no longer held
any important post in the Soviet Foreign Office. He worked as an
official on various public health commissions. But he was still an
important personality in the underground conspiracy.
In September, 1934, Rakovsky went to Japan with a Soviet del-
egation to attend the international conference of Red Cross societies
which was to take place in Tokyo in October. Before leaving for
Japan, Rakovsky received an envelope from the Commissariat of
Heavy Industry in Moscow. It was from Pyatakov and it contained a
letter which Rakovsky was to deliver to Ambassador Yurenev in
Tokyo. Ostensibly, the letter expressed a routine request for official
trade information. On the back of the letter, written in invisible ink,
there was a message to Yurenev informing him that Rakovsky was
to be “utilized” in the negotiations with the Japanese.
The day after Rakovsky arrived in Tokyo he was contacted by a
Japanese agent. The encounter took place in a corridor of the Japa-
nese Red Cross building in Tokyo. Rakovsky was told that the aims
of the Russian Trotskyite movement “fully coincided” with those of
the Japanese Government. The Japanese agent added that he was
sure Rakovsky would be able to provide Tokyo with valuable in-
formation concerning the “situation” inside Soviet Russia.
That same evening Rakovsky told Yurenev about his conversa-
tion with the Japanese agent. “The idea is to enlist me as a spy,”
said Rakovsky, “as an informer for the Japanese Government.”
“There is no need to hesitate,” replied the Trotskyite Ambassa-
dor. “The die is cast.”
A few days later, Rakovsky dined by appointment with a high
officer of the Japanese Intelligence Service. The Japanese officer
219
began the conversation boldly. “We are aware that you are a very
close friend and adherent of Mr. Trotsky,” he told Rakovsky, “I
must ask you to write to him that our government is dissatisfied
with his articles on the Chinese question and also with the behavior
of the Chinese Trotskyites. We have a right to expect a different line
of conduct on the part of Mr. Trotsky. Mr. Trotsky ought to under-
stand what is necessary. There is no need to go into details, but it is
clear that an incident provoked in China would be a desirable pre-
text for intervening in China.”
The Japanese officer then went on to tell Rakovsky the sort of
confidential information the Japanese Government would be inter-
ested in receiving from the Russian Trotskyites: data concerning
conditions in collective farms, railroads, mines and industries, espe-
cially in the Eastern sections of the U.S.S.R. Rakovsky was given
various codes and spy names for his use in delivering this infor-
mation. It was arranged that Dr. Naida, a secretary of the Red Cross
delegation, would act as liaison between Rakovsky and the Japanese
Intelligence Service....
Before he left Tokyo, Rakovsky had a final chat with Yurenev.
The Trotskyite Ambassador was depressed. “We have gotten into
such a mess that sometimes one does not know how to behave!” he
said gloomily. “One is afraid that by satisfying one of our partners
we may offend another. For instance, here at present, antagonism is
arising between Great Britain and Japan in connection with the Chi-
nese question, while we have to maintain connections both with the
British and the Japanese Intelligence Services.... And here I have to
find my bearings in all this!”
Rakovsky replied: “We Trotskyites have to play three cards at
the present moment: the German, the Japanese, and the British....
What we are doing is a policy of putting everything at stake, of eve-
rything for everything; but if a risky venture succeeds, the adventur-
ers are called great statesmen!”3
3
On February 20, 1937, the Tokyo newspaper Miyako carried a
report on a secret session of the “Planning and Budget Commission” of
the Japanese Government. At this meeting, Deputy Yoshida asked
General Sugiyama, Minister of War, whether he or the army had any
information concerning the carrying capacity of the Soviet Siberian
Railway. The War Minister answered in the affirmative, saying that the
carrying capacity of the strategic Soviet railway was known to the Jap-
220
2. The Diplomacy of Terror
While the Russian conspirators were cementing their treasona-
ble ties with the representatives of Germany and Japan, another
phase of the secret offensive against the Soviet Government was
already under way. Treason was being supplemented by terror....
In April, 1934, a Soviet engineer named Boyarshinov walked
into the office of the construction chief at the vital Kuznetsk coal
mines in Siberia to report that something was very wrong in his de-
partment. There were far too many accidents, underground fires,
mechanical breakdowns. Boyarshinov suspected sabotage.
The construction chief thanked Boyarshinov for the infor-
mation. “I will inform the right people,” he said. “In the meantime
don’t say anything to anybody about this.”
The construction chief was Alexei Shestov, German spy and
chief organizer of Trotskyite sabotage in Siberia.
A few days later Boyarshinov was found dead in a ditch. A
speeding truck had hit him as he was going home from work along a
lonely strip of country road. The driver of the truck was a profes-
sional terrorist named Cherepukhin. Shestov had given him the as-
signment of murdering Boyarshinov and paid him 15,000 rubles for
the job.4
In September, 1934, V. M. Molotov, Chairman of the Council
of People’s Commissars of the U.S.S.R., arrived in Siberia on an
inspection tour of the mining and industrial areas. Molotov was re-
turning from a visit to one of the mines at the Kuznetsk coal basin
when the car in which he was driving suddenly went off the road,
anese High Command in full detail. General Sugiyama went on to say:

“In Russia there are elements in opposition to the present government
and it was precisely from them that we learned it.” The publication of
this statement in the newspaper Miyako was the occasion of a severe
shakeup in Tokyo press circles. The newspaper was fined heavily by
the Government for betraying confidential information and its chief
news editor, Yaguchi Gilei, was forced to resign at the request of the
War Department.
4
The money paid by Shestov to Boyarshinov’s murderer was part
of a secret fund of 164,000 rubles which Trotskyite gunmen, operating
under Shestov’s directions, had stolen from the Anzherka State Bank.
The fund had been established to help finance sabotage and terrorist
activities in Siberia.
221
careened down a steep embankment and stopped just at the edge of
a steep gully. Severely shaken and bruised, but otherwise unhurt,
Molotov and his companions scrambled from the overturned car.
They had narrowly escaped death....
The driver of the car was Valentine Arnold, the manager of the
local garage. Arnold was a member of the Trotskyite terrorist appa-
ratus. Shestov had instructed him to murder Molotov; and Arnold
had deliberately driven the car off the road, intending to kill himself
along with Molotov. The attempt failed only because at the last mi-
nute Arnold lost his nerve and slowed down as he approached the
embankment where the “accident” was scheduled to have taken
place....
By the autumn of 1934, Trotskyite and Right terrorist groups
were functioning throughout the Soviet Union. These terrorist
groups included among their members former Social Revolutionar-
ies, one-time Mensheviks, professional gunmen and ex-agents of
the Czarist Ochrana. In the Ukraine and Byelorussia, in Georgia and
Armenia, in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and the Maritime Region of the
Far East, anti-Soviet nationalists and fascists were recruited into the
terrorist apparatus. In many places, Nazi and Japanese agents direct-
ly supervised the operations of these groups.
A list had been compiled of the Soviet leaders who were to be
assassinated. At the head of the list was the name of Josef Stalin.
Among the other names were Klementi Voroshilov, V. M. Molotov,
Sergei Kirov, Lazar Kaganovich, Andrei Zhdanov, Vyacheslav
Menzhinsky, Maxim Gorky and Valerian Kuibyshev.
The terrorists periodically received messages from Leon Trot-
sky stressing the urgency of eliminating the Soviet leaders. One of
these messages reached Ephraim Dreitzer, Trotsky’s former body-
guard, in October, 1934. Trotsky had written it in invisible ink on
the margins of a German motion picture magazine. It was brought
to Dreitzer by his sister, who had been given the magazine by a
Trotskyite courier in Warsaw. Trotsky’s message to Dreitzer
read:—
Dear friend. Convey that today we have the following
main tasks before us:
1) To remove Stalin and Voroshilov.
2) To unfold work for organizing nuclei in the army.
3) In the event of war, to take advantage of every set-
222
back and confusion to capture the leadership.
The message was signed Starik (“Old Man”), which was Trot-
sky’s code signature.
In one case, the conspirators, after prolonged observation, es-
tablished the route along which Commissar of Defense Voroshilov
usually drove in Moscow. Three terrorists, armed with revolvers,
were stationed for a number of days on Frunze Street, one of the
thoroughfares along which Voroshilov’s car passed. But the car
always traveled at a high speed, and the terrorists decided, as one of
them reported afterwards, that “It was useless firing at the fast run-
ning car.”
Several plots to kill Stalin also miscarried. A Trotskyite terror-
ist, assigned to shoot Stalin at an important Party conference in
Moscow, managed to get into the meeting but was unable to ap-
proach close enough to the Soviet leader to use his revolver. Anoth-
er time, terrorists fired with high-powered rifles at Stalin as he was
passing in a motorboat along the shore of the Black Sea, but the
shots missed. “A pity,” said Leo Kamenev, when the terrorist Ivan
Bakayev reported the failure of one of his plots to kill Stalin. “Let’s
hope the next time we’ll be more successful.”5
5
The inner atmosphere of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist
Center, despite its “political” façade, was reminiscent of New York’s
Murder, Inc., and similar gangs.
Bakayev, a former political assistant of Zinoviev in the Petrograd
Soviet, was responsible for keeping the gunmen of the Terrorist Center
in line. He had the job, given him by Zinoviev, of silencing any indi-
viduals who might betray the organization. In mid-1934, when an at-
tempt to kill Stalin failed because the appointed assassin, Bogdan, lost
his nerve at the decisive moment, Bakayev undertook to silence
Bogdan. He visited Bogdan at the latter’s apartment and spent the night
with him. In the morning, after Bakayev left, Bogdan lay dead on the
floor of his living room with a bullet in his head and a gun beside his
body. A letter, which Bakayev had forced him to write, was found in
the room. It stated that Bogdan had committed suicide because of the
“persecution” of the Trotsky-Zinoviev Opposition by the Soviet Gov-
ernment.
A member of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center, Isak
Reingold, later testified that “both Zinoviev and Kamenev” had decided
that when they took power they would place Bakayev in a key job in
the OGPU. “By use of the OGPU machinery,” testified Reingold, “he
223
Trotsky became more and more impatient. The tone of his
communications to his followers in Russia underwent a sharp
change. He angrily berated them for being “all the time engaged in
organizational preparations and conversations” and for not having
accomplished “anything concrete.” Trotsky began sending special
agents of his own into the Soviet Union to help organize and to ex-
pedite terrorist acts. These agents, who were either Russian émigrés
or German Trotskyites, traveled on false passports provided for
them by the conspirators in the Soviet diplomatic service or by the
German Military Intelligence and the Gestapo!
The first of these special agents was a German Trotskyite
named Nathan Lurye. He was followed by two more of Trotsky’s
men: Konon Berman-Yurin and Fritz David, alias Ilya-David
Kruglyansky. In March, 1933, Trotsky sent a fourth and fifth agent:
Valentine Olberg and Moissei Lurye, alias Alexander Emel
(Moissei Lurye was no relative of Nathan Lurye).
Before Nathan Lurye left Berlin, he was instructed that in Mos-
cow he was to operate under the supervision of a German engineer
and architect named Franz Weitz, who was then employed in the
Soviet Union. Franz Weitz was not one of Leon Trotsky’s follow-
ers. Weitz was a member of the National Socialist Party of Germa-
ny. He had been sent into the Soviet Union as a secret emissary of
Heinrich Himmler, director of the Nazi Gestapo. Himmler had giv-
en Weitz the assignment of organizing terrorist and espionage oper-
ations in the Soviet Union in collaboration with the Trotskyite-
Zinovievite Terrorist Center.
When one of Zinoviev’s followers questioned this direct tie-up
with a Nazi agent, Zinoviev replied: “What is there in this disturb-
ing to you? You are an historian. You know the case of LaSalle and
Bismarck, when LaSalle wanted to use Bismarck in the interests of
the revolution. Why cannot we today utilize Himmler?”
was to assist in covering the traces, in doing away with, in killing, not
only the employees of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs,
the OGPU, who might be in possession of any threads of the conspira-
cy, but also the direct perpetrators of terrorist acts against Stalin and his
immediate assistants. By the hand of Bakayev, the Trotskyite-
Zinovievite organization was to destroy its own activities, its own
gunman, who were involved in this matter.
224
Shortly before they left for Russia, Trotsky’s emissaries, Konon
Berman-Yurin and Fritz David, were summoned to special confer-
ences with Trotsky himself. The meetings took place in Copenha-
gen toward the end of November, 1932. Konon Berman-Yurin later
stated:—
I had two meetings with him [Trotsky]. First of all he
began to sound me on my work in the past. Then Trotsky
passed to Soviet affairs. Trotsky said: “The principal ques-
tion is the question of Stalin. Stalin must be physically de-
stroyed.” He said that other methods of struggle were now
ineffective. He said that for this purpose people were need-
ed who would dare anything, who would agree to sacrifice
themselves for this, as he expressed it, historic task....
In the evening we continued our conversation. I asked
him how individual terrorism could be reconciled with
Marxism. To this Trotsky replied: problems cannot be
treated in a dogmatic way. He said that a situation had aris-
en in the Soviet Union which Marx could not have fore-
seen. Trotsky also said that, in addition to Stalin it was nec-
essary to assassinate Kaganovich and Voroshilov.....
During the conversation he nervously paced up and
down the room and spoke of Stalin with exceptional ha-
tred....
He said that the terrorist act should, if possible, be
timed to take place at a plenum or at the congress of the
Comintern, so that the shot at Stalin would ring out in a
large assembly. This would have a tremendous repercus-
sion far beyond the borders of the Soviet Union.... This
would be an historical political event of world significance.
To Fritz David, his other emissary, Trotsky said: “Terror
against Stalin—that is the revolutionary task. Whoever is a revolu-
tionary—his hand will not tremble.” Trotsky spoke of the “growing
discontent” in Soviet Russia. David asked him, “Do you think this
discontent will disappear in the event of a war between the Soviet
Union and the Japanese?” Trotsky replied, “No, on the contrary,
under these conditions the forces hostile to the regime will try to
unite and take the lead of these discontented masses, to arm them
and lead them against the ruling bureaucrats.”
The Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center was to carry out the
225
first major blow of the conspiracy against the Soviet Government.
This first blow was the assassination of Sergei Kirov, Secretary of
the Leningrad Party, and one of Stalin’s closest co-workers in the
Soviet Government....
Early in November, 1934, Zinoviev, who was in Moscow, sent
his follower, Bakayev, to check up on the organization of terrorist
cells in Leningrad.
The Leningrad terrorists, who had made repeated attempts to
get close to Kirov, were not too pleased to receive Zinoviev’s emis-
sary. “So Grigori Eveseyevich [Zinoviev] doesn’t trust us,” one of
the gunmen said to Bakayev. “He sends people here to check up on
our mood and our work. Well, we’re not a proud lot!”
A conference of the Leningrad terrorist cells, attended by seven
terrorists, acquainted Bakayev with the latest developments.
Bakayev was informed that a regular watch had been established
along the route which Kirov took from his home to his office at the
Smolny Institute. Bakayev was introduced to the man who had been
selected to carry out the actual assassination: Leonid Nikolayev, a
pale, slender, thirty-year-old former bookkeeper who had been dis-
missed from his post for irregularities in his accounts and expelled
from the Komsomol [Communist youth organization] for general
unreliability.
Nikolayev told Bakayev that he planned to shoot Kirov either
near his home or in the Smolny Institute. He added that he had al-
ready tried to get an appointment with Kirov, but that so far he had
failed.
Bakayev repeated the instructions which Zinoviev had given
him in Moscow:—
The principal task is to organize the terroristic work so
secretly as to preclude our being compromised in any
way....
When under examination, the main thing is to persis-
tently deny any connection with the organization. If ac-
cused of terroristic activities, you must emphatically deny it
and argue that terror is incompatible with the views of Bol-
sheviks-Marxists....
Zinoviev was satisfied with developments in Leningrad. Both
he and Kamenev were confident that the assassination of Kirov
would soon take place. They believed that this act would throw the
226
Soviet Government into confusion and be a signal for similar acts
against Soviet leaders throughout the country. “Heads are peculiar,”
remarked Kamenev, “in that they do not grow again....”
On December 1, 1934, at 4:27 P.M., Sergei Kirov left his office
in the Smolny Institute. He walked down the long marble-lined cor-
ridor leading to a room where he was to deliver a report on the deci-
sion of the Central Committee to abolish the bread-rationing sys-
tem. As Kirov passed an intersecting corridor, a man sprang out,
thrust a revolver at the back of Kirov’s head and fired.
At 4:30 P.M. Sergei Kirov was dead.
The assassin was Leonid Nikolayev. He tried to get away and
then to turn the gun on himself, but he was seized before he could
do either.
On December 28, 1934, Leonid Nikolayev was placed on trial
before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R.
“When I shot Kirov,” Nikolayev testified, “I reasoned as follows:
Our shot must be a signal for an explosion, a revolt within the coun-
try against the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and against the
Soviet Government.”
The Military Collegium sentenced Nikolayev to be shot.6
Nikolayev did not divulge the fact that Zinoviev, Kamenev and
the other leaders of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center had
been directly involved in the plot to murder Kirov.
But it was clear to the Soviet Government that the careful plan-
ning and preparation behind the assassination involved a far more
elaborate and dangerous organization than Nikolayev’s terrorist
group. The Bolshevik Party appointed a special investigator to
probe into the Leningrad affair. His name was N. I. Yezhov, a
member of the Central Committee of the Party and head of the Con-
trol Commission.
6
The assassination of Kirov was enthusiastically hailed by the
Russian fascists, as well as by the Rights and Trotskyites. “Count”
Anastase Vonsiatsky, ex-Czarist officer and Japanese agent in the Unit-
ed States, declared in the March, 1935, issue of his paper, the Fascist,
which was published in Thompson, Connecticut, U.S.A.: “Kirov is fin-
ished! Next shot must be turned at Stalin—a signal to insurrection....
Not loud was the shot of our brother Nikolayev but it resounded
throughout the world.... Hats off, Russian people, before Nikolayev’s
grave.... Long live the immortal hero, Nikolayev!” For further details
concerning Vonsiatsky and White Russian fascism, see Chapter XXIII.
227
Two weeks after the trial of Nikolayev, Grigori Zinoviev, Leo
Kamenev and several of their known associates, including Bakayev,
faced a Leningrad court, charged with complicity in the assassina-
tion of Kirov. Throughout the trial Zinoviev and Kamenev followed
a course of conduct carefully planned in advance. Admitting noth-
ing that the Soviet Government had not established by its own in-
vestigation, they feigned deep remorse and “confessed” that the po-
litical oppositionist activities in which they had been involved had
“created an atmosphere” conducive to “anti-Soviet activities.” They
said they were leaders of a “Moscow Center” of political opposi-
tion, and they accepted “moral responsibility” for Kirov’s murder,
since they had headed the seditious political movement from which
the crime had sprung. But they fervently denied they themselves
had any foreknowledge of the plot to assassinate Kirov.
“I am accustomed to feel that I am a leader,” Zinoviev declared,
“and it goes without saying that I should have known everything....
This outrageous murder has thrown such an ominous light upon the
whole previous anti-Party struggle, that I recognize that the Party is
absolutely right in speaking of the political responsibility of the
former anti-Party Zinoviev group for the murder committed.”
Kamenev played the same role. “I must say that I am not a
coward by nature, but I never counted on fighting with arms,” he
said. “I always expected that a situation would arise in which the
Central Committee would be compelled to negotiate with us, that it
would move up and make room for us.”
The ruse succeeded. The trial failed to establish that Zinoviev
and Kamenev had participated directly in the plot to kill Kirov. In-
stead, they were found guilty only of carrying on anti-Soviet sedi-
tious activities. The verdict of the court stated:—
The trial did not bring to light any facts furnishing
grounds for qualifying the acts of the members of the
Moscow center in connection with the assassination of
Comrade S. M. Kirov on December 1, 1934, as being a
direct incitement to this heinous crime; nevertheless, the
trial has completely confirmed the fact that the members of
the counterrevolutionary Moscow center were aware of the
terrorist sentiments of the Leningrad group and inflamed
these sentiments....
Zinoviev was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, and Kame-
228
nev to five, for their conspiratorial activity.
The trial had only scratched the surface of the conspiracy.
Among the many facts which the Leningrad trial failed to bring
to light, perhaps the strangest were these:—
When Zinoviev and Kamenev were arrested, four agents of the
Soviet secret police had brought them to NKVD headquarters.7 The
agents were Molchanov, Chief of the Secret Political Department of
the NKVD; Pauker, Chief of the Operations Department; Volovich,
Assistant Chief of the Operations Department; and Bulanov, Assis-
tant to the Chairman of the NKVD.
In arresting Zinoviev and Kamenev, the four NKVD agents act-
ed in a most extraordinary fashion. They not only failed to search
the apartments of the suspects for incriminating material; they actu-
ally permitted Zinoviev and Kamenev to destroy a number of in-
criminating documents.
Still more remarkable were the records of these four NKVD
agents.
Molchanov and Bulanov were themselves secret members of
the Trotskyite-Right conspiratorial apparatus.
Pauker and Volovich were German agents. These men had been
specially picked to make the arrests by Henry G. Yagoda, the
Chairman of the NKVD.
7
At the end of 1934, the NKVD (Department of Public Security)
replaced the OGPU as the agency responsible for internal security af-
fairs in the U.S.S.R.
229
CHAPTER XVIII
Murder in the Kremlin
1. Yagoda
In May, 1934, six months before the assassination of Sergei Kirov,
a heart attack caused the death of Vyacheslav R. Menzhinsky, the
long-ailing Chairman of the OGPU. His post was filled by the forty-
three-year-old OGPU Vice-Chairman, Henry G. Yagoda, a short,
quiet, efficient-looking man with a receding chin and a trim little
mustache.
Henry Yagoda was a secret member of the Bloc of Rights and
Trotskyites. He had joined the conspiracy in 1929, as a member of
the Right Opposition, not because he believed in Bukharin’s or
Trotsky’s program, but because he thought the oppositionists were
destined to come to power in Russia. Yagoda wanted to be oh the
winning side. In his own words:—
I followed the course of the struggle with great atten-
tion, having made up my mind beforehand that I would join
the side which emerged victorious from this struggle...
When measures of repression began to be taken against the
Trotskyites, the question as to who would come out the vic-
tor—the Trotskyites or the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union—was as yet not fi-
nally settled. In any event, that was what I thought. There-
fore I, as Assistant Chairman of the OGPU, in carrying put
the punitive policy, did it in such a way that it would not
arouse the anger of the Trotskyites against me. When I was
sending Trotskyites into exile, I created for them such con-
ditions in their places of exile as enabled them to carry on
their activity.
Yagoda’s role in the conspiracy was at first known only to the
three top leaders of the Rights: Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky. In
1932, when the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites was formed,
Yagoda’s role became known to Pyatakov and Krestinsky.
As Vice-Chairman of the OGPU, Yagoda was able to protect
the conspirators from exposure and arrest. “I took all measures, in
the course of a number of years,” he later stated, “to guard the or-
ganization, particularly its center, against exposure.” Yagoda ap-
230
pointed members of the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites as special
agents in the OGPU. In this way, a number of agents of foreign In-
telligence Services were able to penetrate the Soviet secret police
and, under Yagoda’s protection, carry on espionage activities for
their respective governments. The German agents, Pauker and
Volovich, whom Yagoda sent to effect the arrest of Zinoviev and
Kamenev, were appointed to their, OGPU positions by Yagoda
himself. “I considered them,” Yagoda said later, referring to the
foreign spies, “as a valuable force in the realization of the conspira-
torial plans, particularly along the lines of maintaining connections
with foreign Intelligence Services.”
In 1933, Ivan Smirnov, the leading Organizer of the Trotskyite-
Zinovievite Terrorist Center, was unexpectedly arrested by Soviet
Government agents. Yagoda could not prevent the arrest. On pretext
of examining the prisoner, Yagoda visited Smirnov in his cell and-
”coached him” on how to behave under questioning.
In 1934, before the murder of Kirov, the terrorist Leonid Niko-
layev was picked up by OGPU agents in Leningrad. In his posses-
sion they found a gun and a chart showing the route which Kirov
traveled daily. When Yagoda was notified of Nikolayev’s arrest, he
instructed Zaporozhetz, assistant chief of the Leningrad OGPU, to
release the terrorist without further examination. Zaporozhetz was
one of Yagoda’s men. He did what he was told.
A few weeks later, Nikolayev murdered Kirov. But the murder
of Kirov was only one of a number of murders carried out by the
Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites with the direct aid of Henry
Yagoda....
Behind his quiet, efficient exterior, Yagoda concealed an inor-
dinate ambition, ferocity and cunning. With the secret operations of
the Bloc Of the Rights and Trotskyites depending more and more on
his protection, the Vice-Chairman of the OGPU began to conceive
of himself, as the central figure and dominating personality of the
entire conspiracy. Yagoda had dreams of becoming Russia’s Hitler.
He read Mein Kampf. “It is a worthwhile book,” he confided to his
devoted henchman and secretary, Pavel Bulanov. He was particular-
ly impressed, he told Bulanov, by the fact that Hitler had “risen
from a top sergeant to be the man he is.” Yagoda himself had start-
ed-his career as a, top sergeant in the Russian Army.
Yagoda had his own ideas about the kind of government which
would be set up after Stalin was overthrown. It would be modeled
231
on that of Nazi Germany, he told Bulanov. Yagoda himself would
be the Leader; Rykov would replace Stalin as secretary of a reor-
ganized Party; Tomsky would be chief of the trade unions, which
would come under strict military control like the Nazi labor battal-
ions; the “philosopher” Bukharin, as Yagoda put it, would be “Dr.
Goebbels.”
As for Trotsky, Yagoda was not sure if he would permit Trot-
sky to return to Russia. It would depend on circumstances. Mean-
while, however, Yagoda was prepared to make use of Trotsky’s
negotiations with Germany and Japan. The coup d’état, said
Yagoda, must be timed to coincide with the outbreak of war against
the Soviet Union.
“All means will be required for the achievement of this coup—
armed action, provocation and even poisons,” Yagoda told Bulanov.
“There are times when one must act slowly and extremely cautious-
ly, and there are times when one must act quickly and suddenly.”
The decision of the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites to adopt ter-
rorism as a political weapon against the Soviet regime had
Yagoda’s endorsement. The decision was communicated to him by
Y. S. Yenukidze, a former soldier and official of the Kremlin secre-
tariat, who was the chief organizer of terrorism for the Rights.
Yagoda had only one objection. The terrorist methods employed by
the conspirators seemed to him too primitive and dangerous.
Yagoda set out to devise a more subtle means of political murder
than the traditional assassin’s bombs, knives or bullets.
At first, Yagoda experimented with poisons. He set up a secret
laboratory and put several chemists to work. His aim was to con-
trive a method of killing which made exposure impossible. “Murder
with a guarantee,” was the way Yagoda put it.
But even poisons were too crude. Before long, Yagoda devel-
oped his own special technique of murder. He recommended it as a
perfect weapon to the leaders of the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites.
“It is very simple,” said Yagoda. “A person naturally falls ill, or he
has been ill for some time. Those who surround him become accus-
tomed, as is also natural, to the idea that the patient will either die or
recuperate. The physician who treats the patient has the will to facil-
itate the patient’s recovery or his death.... Well? All the rest is a
matter of technique.”
One had only to find the right physicians.
232
2. The Murder of Menzhinsky
The first physician Yagoda involved in his unique murder
scheme was Dr. Leo Levin, a corpulent, middle-aged, obsequious
man, who liked to boast of his disinterest in political affairs. Dr.
Levin was Yagoda’s own physician. More important to Yagoda was
the fact that Dr. Levin was a prominent member of the Kremlin
Medical Staff. Among his regular patients were a number of promi-
nent Soviet leaders, including Yagoda’s superior, Vyacheslav
Menzhinsky, the Chairman of the OGPU.
Yagoda began showering special favors on Dr. Levin. He sent
him imported wines, flowers for his wife and various other gifts. He
placed a country home, free of charge, at the doctor’s disposal.
When Dr. Levin traveled abroad, Yagoda permitted him to bring
back foreign purchases without paying the regular customs duty.
The physician was flattered and a bit puzzled at these unusual atten-
tions from his influential patient.
Soon, under Yagoda’s manipulations, the unsuspecting Dr.
Levin had accepted what amounted to a number of bribes and had
committed some minor infractions of Soviet laws. Then Yagoda
came bluntly to the point. He told Dr. Levin that a secret opposition
movement, of which he himself was one of the leaders, was about to
come to power in the Soviet Union. The conspirators, said Yagoda,
could make good use of Dr. Levin’s services. Certain Soviet lead-
ers, among them some of Dr. Levin’s patients, had to be put out of
the way.
“Have in mind,” Yagoda told the terrified doctor, “-that you
cannot help obeying me, you cannot get away from me. Once I
place confidence in you with regard to this thing, you must appreci-
ate this and you must carry this out. You cannot tell anybody about
it. Nobody will believe you. They will believe; not you, but me.”
Yagoda added: “Let us now drop this conversation; you think it
over at home, and I shall call you in a few days.”
Dr. Levin subsequently described his reaction to Yagoda’s
words. He stated:—
I do not have to convey the psychological reaction,
how terrible it was for me to hear this. I think that this is
sufficiently understood. And then the ceaseless mental an-
guish... He further said: “You are aware who is talking to
you, the head of what institution is talking to you!”... He re-
233
iterated that my refusal to carry this out would spell ruin for
me and my family. I figured that I had no other way out,
that I had to submit to him.
Dr. Levin helped Yagoda to enlist the services of another phy-
sician who also frequently treated Menzhinsky. This physician was
Dr. Ignaty N. Kazakov, whose distinctly unorthodox therapeutic
methods were the cause of some heated controversy in Soviet medi-
cal circles during the early 1930’s.
Dr. Kazakov claimed to have discovered an almost infallible
cure for a wide range of illnesses by means of a special technique
which he called “lysatotherapy.” The OGPU Chairman Menzhinsky
who suffered from angina pectoris and bronchial asthma had great
faith in Kazakov’s treatments and took them regularly.1
On Yagoda’s instructions, Dr. Levin went to see Dr. Kazakov.
Dr. Levin said to him: “Menzhinsky is a living corpse. You’re really
wasting your time.” Dr. Kazakov looked at his colleague in aston-
ishment.
“I’ll have to have a special talk with you,” said Dr. Levin.
1
On December 23, 1943, Dr. Henry E. Sigerist, Professor of the
History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University and outstanding
American authority on medical history, wrote the authors of this book
regarding Dr. Ignaty N. Kazakov:—
“I spent a whole day with Professor Ignaty N. Kazakov at his clinic
in 1935. He was a big man with a wild mane who looked more like an
artist than a scientist and who reminded you of an opera singer. Talking
to him, he gave you the impression that he was either a genius or a
crook. He claimed to have discovered a new method of treatment which
he called lysatotherapy but refused to disclose how he was preparing
the lysates with which he treated a great variety of patients. He moti-
vated his refusal with the argument that the method might be discredit-
ed if it were used carelessly or uncritically by others before it had been
fully tested. The Soviet health authorities took a most liberal attitude
and gave him all possible clinical and laboratory facilities to test and
develop his method.
“Professor Kazakov expected my visit and the day I came he had
invited a large number of his former patients in order to demonstrate
them to me.... It was a regular circus and made a very bad impression. I
had seen miracle cures performed by quacks in other countries.... A few
years later it was evident that his method was no good and that he was
not only a crook but a criminal.”
234
“About what?” asked Dr. Kazakov.
“About Menzhinsky’s health.”...
Later, Dr. Levin came to the point. “I thought you were clever-
er. You still haven’t understood me,” he told Kazakov. “I’m sur-
prised you’ve undertaken Menzhinsky’s treatment with so much
zeal and you have even improved his health. You should never have
allowed him to get back to work.”
Then, to Dr. Kasakov’s mounting amazement and horror, Dr.
Levin went on:—
“You must realize that Menzhinsky is actually a corpse, and, by
restoring his health, by allowing him to get back to work, you are
antagonizing Yagoda. Menzhinsky is in Yagoda’s way and Yagoda
is interested in getting him out of the way as soon as possible.
Yagoda is a man who doesn’t stop at anything.”
Dr. Levin added:—
“Not a word of this to Menzhinsky! I am warning you that, if
you tell Menzhinsky about it, Yagoda will destroy you. You’ll not
escape him no matter where you hide yourself. He would get you
even if you were underground.”
On the afternoon of November 6, 1933, Dr. Kazakov received
an urgent call from Menzhinsky’s home. When Dr. Kazakov arrived
at the home of the OGPU Chairman, he was met by a heavy, stifling
odor of turpentine and paint. Within a few minutes he found himself
gasping for breath. One of Menzhinsky’s secretaries informed him
that the house had been freshly painted and that “a special sub-
stance” had been added to the paint to “make the paint dry more
quickly.” It was this “special substance” which caused the pungent,
overwhelming odor.
Dr. Kazakov went upstairs. He found Menzhinsky in great ago-
ny. His bronchial condition had been terribly aggravated by the
fumes. He was sitting in a cramped, awkward position, his face and
body swollen, barely able to whisper. Dr. Kazakov listened to his
breathing. It was labored and rasping, with greatly prolonged exha-
lation, characteristic of a serious attack of bronchial asthma. Dr.,
Kazakov immediately gave Menzhinsky an injection to relieve his
condition. He then flung open all the windows in the room and or-
dered Menzhinsky’s secretary to open all doors and windows
throughout the house. Gradually the odor died away. Dr. Kazakov
stayed with Menzhinsky until his patient was feeling better. When
the attack had passed, Dr. Kazakov went home.
235
He had scarcely entered his house when the telephone rang. It
was a call from OGPU headquarters. Dr. Kazakov was informed
that Henry Yagoda wished to see him at once. A car was already on
its way to pick up Dr. Kazakov and bring him to Yagoda’s office....
“Well, how do you find Menzhinsky’s health?” was the first
thing Yagoda said when he and Dr. Kazakov were alone in his of-
fice. The short, neat, dark Vice-Chairman of the OGPU was sitting
behind his desk, coldly watching Dr. Kazakov’s expression.
Dr. Kazakov replied that with the sudden renewal of the asth-
matic attacks, Menzhinsky’s condition was serious.
Yagoda was silent for a moment.
“Have you spoken to Levin?”
“Yes, I have,” replied Dr. Kazakov.
Yagoda abruptly rose from his seat and began pacing back and
forth in front of his desk. Suddenly, he whirled on Dr. Kazakov,
furiously exclaiming, “In that case, why are you fiddling about?
Why don’t you act? Who asked you to butt into somebody else’s
affairs?”
“What do you want of me?” asked Dr. Kazakov. “Who asked
you-to give medical aid to Menzhinsky?” asked Yagoda. “You’re
fussing with him to no purpose. His life is of no use to anybody.
He’s in everybody’s way. I order you to work out with Levin a
method of treatment whereby it will be possible to bring about a
quick end to Menzhinsky’s life “ After a pause, Yagoda added: “I
warn you, Kazakov, if you make any attempt to disobey me I’ll find
means of getting rid of you! You’ll never escape me....”
For-Dr. Kazakov, the days that followed were full of terror, fear
and nightmarish events. He went about his work in a daze. Should
he or should he not report what he knew to the Soviet authorities?
To whom could he speak? How could he be sure that he was not
talking to one of Yagoda’s spies?
Dr, Levin, who saw him frequently during this period, told
Kazakov of the existence of a vast undercover conspiracy against
the Soviet Government. Famous, powerful state officials like
Yagoda, Rykov and Pyatakov were in the conspiracy; brilliant writ-
ers and philosophers like Karl Radek and Bukharin had joined it;
men in the army were secretly behind it. If he, Dr. Kazakov, per-
formed some valuable service for Yagoda now, Yagoda would re-
member it when he came to power. There was a secret war going on
within the Soviet Union, and doctors, like other people, had to
236
choose sides. Dr. Kazakov succumbed. He told Levin that he would
carry out Yagoda’s orders.
Here, in Dr. Kazakov’s own words, is the technique he and Dr.
Levin used for the assassination of the Chairman of the OGPU,
Vyacheslav Menzhinsky:—
I met Levin and together with him worked out a meth-
od which consisted of the following. We took advantage of
two main properties of albumen and albumenous products.
First: the products of the hydrolytic decomposition of al-
bumen possess the property of stimulating; the effect of
medicines. Second: lysates increase the sensitivity of the
organism. These two properties were taken advantage of.
Thirdly, advantage was taken of the peculiarities of
Menzhinsky’s organism, of the combination of bronchial
asthma and angina pectoris. It is a well-known fact that in a
case of bronchial asthma the so-called parasympathetic sec-
tion of the vegetative nervous system is excited. Therefore,
in cases of bronchial asthma, substances are prescribed
which excite the corresponding section, that is to say, the
sympathetic, the thyroid gland. Such a preparation is the
extract of the suprarenal gland, a preparation of the medulla
stratum. In cases of angina pectoris it is just the sympathet-
ic section which starts from the sub jugular plexus of the
sympathetic ganglion that is excited. That was the fine
point which was taken advantage of....
Gradually, one set of preparations was introduced,
while another was put aside.... It was necessary to introduce
a number of heart stimulants—digitalis, adonis,
atrophanthus—which stimulated the activity of the heart.
These medicines were administered in the following order.
First, lysates were administered; then there was an interval
in the treatment with lysates; then heart stimulants were
administered. As a result of this sort of treatment, a thor-
ough weakening was brought about....
On the night of May 10, 1934, Menzhinsky died. The man who
took his place as chief of the OGPU was Henry Yagoda.
“I deny that in causing the death of Menzhinsky I was guided
by motives of a personal nature,” Yagoda later stated. “I aspired to
the post of head of the OGPU, not out of personal consideration, but
237
in the interests of our conspiratorial organization.”
3. Murder with a Guarantee
The murder list of the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites included
the following top Soviet leaders: Stalin, Voroshilov, Kirov,
Menzhinsky, Molotov, Kuibyshev, Kaganovich, Gorky and Zhda-
nov. These men were well guarded. The Soviet Government had
long, bitter experience in dealing with terrorists, and few chances
were taken. Yagoda knew this very well. When the Right terrorist
organizer, Yenukidze, communicated to him the decision of the
Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center to commit a public assassi-
nation of Sergei Kirov, Yagoda at first objected. As Yagoda put
it:—
I expressed my apprehension that a direct terrorist act
might expose not only myself, but the whole organization
as well. I pointed out to Yenukidze that there was* a less
dangerous method and I reminded him, Yenukidze, how
Menzhinsky’s death was brought about with the help of
physicians. Yenukidze replied that the assassination of Ki-
rov must be carried out the way it was planned, that the
Trotskyites and Zinovievites took it upon themselves to
commit this murder, and that it was-our business not to
place any obstacles. As for the safe method of causing
death with the help of physicians, Yenukidze said that in
the near future the center would discuss the question as to
who exactly of the leaders of the Party and Government
should be the first to be done to death by this method.
One day, towards the end of August, 1934, a young secret
member of the Right Opposition was summoned to Yenukidze’s
Kremlin office. His name was Venyamin A. Maximov. In 1928, as a
student, Maximov had attended the special “Marxist School” which
Bukharin then headed in Moscow. Bukharin had recruited him into
the conspiracy. A clever, unscrupulous youth, Maximov had been
carefully trained by the Right leaders and, after his graduation,
placed in various secretarial posts. At the time he was summoned to
Yenukidze’s office, Maximov was the personal secretary of Valeri-
an V. Kuibyshev, Chairman of the Supreme Council of National
Economy, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party,
and an intimate friend and co-worker of Stalin.
238
Yenukidze informed Maximov that “whereas formerly the
Rights calculated that the Soviet Government could be overthrown
by organizing certain of the more anti-Soviet minded strata of the
population, and in particular the kulaks, now the situation had
changed... and it is necessary to proceed to mote active methods of
seizing power.” Yenukidze described the new tactics of the conspir-
acy. In agreement with the Trotskyites, he said, the Rights had
adopted a decision to eliminate a number of their political oppo-
nents by terrorist means. This was to be done by “ruining the health
of the leaders.” This method, said Yenukidze, was “the most con-
venient because of the fact that on the surface it would appear in the
nature of an unfortunate issue to an illness and thereby make it pos-
sible for this terrorist activity, of the Rights to be camouflaged.”
“Preparations for it have already begun,” Yenukidze added. He
told Maximov that Yagoda was, behind all this, and the conspirators
had his protection. Maximov, as Kuibyshev’s secretary, was to be
used in connection with the assassination of the Chairman of the
National Supreme Economic Council. Kuibyshev suffered from a
serious heart, condition, and the conspirators planned to take ad-
vantage of it.
Maximov, startled at this assignment, showed some signs of
hesitation.
A few days later, Maximov was again called-to Yenukidze’s of-
fice. This time, while the assassination of Kuibyshev was discussed
in more detail, a third man sat in a corner of the room. He did not
utter a word during the entire conversation; but the implication of
his presence was not lost on Maximov. The man was Henry
Yagoda....
“What is demanded of you,” Yenukidze told Maximov, “is,
first, to give them [Yagoda’s physicians] the opportunity of being
unhindered so that they can be in frequent attendance on the patient,
so that there should be no hitch in their so-called visits to the pa-
tient; and, secondly, in the event of acute illness, attacks of any
kind, not to hurry in calling in the doctor, and if it is necessary, to
call in only those doctors who are treating him.”
Toward the fall of 1934, Kuibyshev’s health suddenly took a
sharp turn for the worse. He suffered intensely, and could do little
work.
Dr. Levin later described the technique which, on Yagoda’s in-
structions, he employed to bring about Kuibyshev’s illness:—
239
The vulnerable spot in his organism was his heart, and
it was this at which we struck. We knew that his heart had
been in a poor condition over a considerable period of time.
He suffered from an affection of the cardiac vessels, myo-
carditis, and he had slight attacks of angina pectoris. In
such cases, it is necessary to spare the heart, to avoid potent
heart stimulants, which would excessively stimulate the ac-
tivity of the heart and gradually lead to its further weaken-
ing.... In the case of Kuibyshev we administered stimulants
for the heart without intervals, over a protracted period, up
to the time he made his trip to Central Asia. Beginning with
August, until September or October, 1934, he was given in-
jections without a break, of special endocrine gland extracts
and other heart stimulants. This intensified and brought on
more frequent attacks of angina pectoris.
At two o’clock on the afternoon of January 25, 1935, Kuiby-
shev suffered a severe heart attack in his office at the Council of
People’s Commissars in Moscow. Maximov, who was with Kuiby-
shev at the time, had previously been told by Dr. Levin that in the
event of such an attack the correct thing for Kuibyshev to do was to
lie down and remain absolutely quiet. Maximov was told that his
job was to see that Kuibyshev did exactly the opposite. He persuad-
ed the desperately ill man to walk home.
Ghastly pale and moving with extreme difficulty, Kuibyshev
left his office. Maximov promptly called Yenukidze and told him
what had happened! The Right leader instructed Maximov to keep
calm and not to call any doctors.
;
Kuibyshev painfully made his way home from the building of the
Council of People’s Commissars to the house where he lived. Slow-
ly and with increasing agony, he climbed the stairs to his apartment
on the third floor. His maid met him at the door, took one look at
him and immediately telephoned his office, that he was in urgent
need of medical attention.
By the time the doctors arrived at the house, Valerian Kuiby-
shev was dead.
4. “Historical Necessity”
The most brutal of all the murders carried out under Yagoda’s
supervision were those of Maxim Gorky and his son, Peshkov.
240
Gorky was sixty-eight years old at the time of his murder. He
was known and revered throughout the world not only as Russia’s
greatest living writer but also as one of the world’s outstanding hu-
manists. He suffered from tuberculosis and a bad heart condition.
His son Peshkov had inherited an extreme susceptibility to respira-
tory infections. Both Gorky and his son were patients of Dr. Levin.
The murders of Gorky and his son, Peshkov, were carried out
by Yagoda following a unanimous decision of the upper leaders of
the Bloc of the Rights and Trotskyites. In 1,934 Yagoda communi-
cated this decision to Dr. Levin and ordered him to carry it out.
“Gorky is a man who is very close to the highest leadership,”
Yagoda told Dr. Levin, “a man very much devoted to the policy
which is being carried out in the country, very devoted personally to
Stalin, a man who will never tread our road. Then again, you know
what authority Gorky’s words have both in our country and far be-
yond its borders. You are, aware of the influence he enjoys and how
much harm he can cause our movement by his words. You must
agree to undertake this and you will reap the fruits of it when the
new government comes to power.”
When Dr. Levin showed some perturbation at these instruc-
tions, Yagoda went on: “There is no need for you to be so upset,
you should understand that this is inevitable, that this is a historical
moment, that it is a historical necessity, a stage of the revolution
through which we must pass, and you will pass, through it with us,
you will be a witness of it, and you must help us with the means you
have at your disposal.”2
2
Despite his age, Gorky was hated and feared by the Trotskyites.
Sergei Bessonov, the Trotskyite courier, related that as early as July,
1934, Leon Trotsky told him: “Gorky is very intimate with Stalin. He
plays an exceptional role in winning sympathy for the U.S.S.R. among
the democratic opinion of the world and especially of Western Eu-
rope.... Our former supporters among the intelligentsia are leaving us
very largely under the influence of Gorky. From this I draw the conclu-
sion that Gorky must be put out of the way. Convey this instruction to
Pyatakov in the most categorical form; Gorky must be physically ex-
terminated at all costs.”
The fascist Russian émigrés and terrorists, who were working with
the Nazis, had also placed Gorky On the list of those Soviet leaders
they planned to assassinate. The November 1, 1934, issue of Za
Rossiyu, the organ of the fascist Russian National League of New Re-
241
Peshkov was murdered before his father. Dr. Levin later said:—
There were three systems in his organism which could
very easily be taken advantage of: they were the exception-
ally excitable cardiac-vascular system, his respiratory or-
gans, inherited from his father, not in the sense of suffering
from tuberculosis, but in the sense of weakness, and finally
the vegetative nervous system. Even a small quantity of;
wine affected his organism, whereas, despite this, he drank
wine in large quantities....
Dr. Levin worked methodically on the weaknesses in Peshkov’s
“organism.”
In the middle of April, 1934, Peshkov caught a serious chill.
Croupous pneumonia set in.
When it seemed that Peshkov might recover, Yagoda was furi-
ous. “Damn it all,” he exclaimed, “they are able to kill healthy peo-
ple by their treatment, and here they cannot do the trick on a sick
man!”
But finally Dr. Levin’s efforts achieved the desired results. As
he himself later reported:—
The patient was very much enfeebled; his heart was in
an abominable Condition; the nervous system, as we know,
plays a tremendous role during infectious diseases. He was
altogether overwrought, altogether weakened and the ail-
generation, published in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, declared: “Kirov in

Leningrad must be removed. We must also do away with Kossior and
Postyshev in the South of Russia. Brothers, fascists, if you can’t get to
Stalin, kill Gorky, kill the poet Demiyan Bieni, kill Kaganovich....”
Yagoda’s motive in murdering Gorky’s son, Peshkov, was not only
political. Previous to the murder, Yagoda told one of the conspirators
that Peshkov’s death would be a “heavy blow” to Gorky and would
turn him into a “harmless old man.” But at his trial in 1938, Yagoda
asked permission of the court to refrain from publicly revealing his
reasons for having Peshkov killed. Yagoda asked that he be allowed to
give this testimony at one of the in camera sessions. The court granted
his wish. Ambassador Davies, in his book Mission to Moscow, gives
this possible explanation for Peshkov’s murder: “Beneath it runs the
tale that Yagoda... was infatuated with young Gorky’s beautiful
wife....”
242
ment took an exceptionally grave turn.
...The progress of the sickness was aggravated by the
fact that the medicines capable of bringing great benefit to
the heart were eliminated, while, on the contrary, those that
weakened the heart were applied. And finally... on May 11
he died of pneumonia.
Maxim Gorky was murdered by similar methods. During 1935,
Gorky’s frequent trips away from Moscow, which took him out of
Dr. Levin’s hands, temporarily saved his life. Then, early in 1936,
came the opportunity for which Dr. Levin was waiting. Gorky con-
tracted a serious case of grippe in Moscow. Dr. Levin deliberately
aggravated Gorky’s condition, and, as in Peshkov’s case, croupous
pneumonia set in. Once again, Dr. Levin murdered his patient:—
As regards Alexei Maximovich Gorky, the line was as
follows: to use such medicines, which were in general indi-
cated, against which no doubt or suspicion could arise and
which could be used to stimulate the activity of the heart.
Among such, medicines were camphor, caffeine, cardiosol,
digalen. We have the right to apply these medicines for a
group of cardiac diseases. But in his case they were admin-
istered in tremendous doses. Thus, for example, he received
as many as forty injections of camphor... in twenty-four
hours. This dose was too heavy for him.... Plus two injec-
tions of digalen.... Plus four injections of caffeine.... Plus
two injections of strychnine.
On June 18, 1936, the great Soviet writer died.
243
CHAPTER XIX
Days of Decision
1. The War Comes West
By 1935, plans for the joint German-Japanese attack on the So-
viet Union were well advanced. The Japanese armies in Manchuria
were staging repeated “probing” raids and sorties across the Soviet
eastern border. The German High Command was carrying on secret
negotiations with fascist Polish military circles for an anti-Soviet
military alliance. The Nazi Fifth Columns were being readied in the
Baltic and Balkan countries, in Austria and Czechoslovakia. Reac-
tionary British and French diplomats were eagerly promoting Hit-
ler’s promised Drang nach Osten....
On February 3, following discussions between the French
Premier Pierre Laval and the British Foreign Secretary Sir John Si-
mon, the French and British Governments announced their joint
agreement to release Nazi Germany from certain of the disarma-
ment provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.
On February 17, the London Observer commented:—
Why is Tokio diplomacy so busy at this moment in
Warsaw and in Berlin?... Moscow supplies the answer....
The relations between Germany, Poland and Japan become
closer every day. In an emergency they would amount to an
anti-Soviet alliance.
In the expectation that the arms were to be used against Soviet
Russia, Nazi Germany’s rearmament program was aided in every
possible way by anti-Soviet statesmen in Great Britain and
France....
On March 1, after a plebiscite preceded by an intensive Nazi
terror and propaganda campaign among the residents of the district,
the Saar with its vital coal mines was handed over from France to
Nazi Germany.
On March 16, the Government of the Third Reich formally re-
pudiated the Treaty of Versailles and communicated to the French,
British, Polish and Italian Ambassadors in Berlin a Nazi decree pro-
claiming “universal military service” in Germany.
On April 13 Berlin announced its intention of creating an air
fleet of heavy bombers.
244
On June 18, eleven days after Tory Stanley Baldwin became
British Prime Minister, an Anglo-German naval accord was an-
nounced. Nazi Germany was given the right to construct a new navy
and “to possess a submarine tonnage equal to the total submarine
tonnage possessed by the Members of the British Commonwealth of
Nations.” The agreement was reached following an exchange of
letters between Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and
the new British Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare.
On November 3, L’Echo de Paris reported a conference which
had taken place between the Nazi banker, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, the
Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Montagu Norman, and the
Governor of the Banque de France, M. Tannery. According to the
French journal, Dr. Schacht declared at the conference:—
We have no intention to change our Western frontiers.
Sooner or later Germany and Poland will share the Ukraine,
but for the moment we shall be satisfied with making our
strength felt over the Baltic provinces.
On November 11, the New York Herald Tribune observed:—
Premier Laval, who is also Foreign Minister, is a
strong partisan of an agreement between the French Third
Republic and the Nazi Third Reich, and is reported to be
willing to scrap the Franco-Soviet pact, which has been
signed but not ratified by the French Parliament for an
agreement whereby the Hitler regime would guarantee
France’s eastern frontier in exchange for complete freedom
of action in the Memel region and in the Ukraine.
In face of the growing war threat, the Soviet Government re-
peatedly called for united action by all countries menaced by fascist
aggression. Again and again, before the League of Nations and in
the capitals of Europe, Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov
urged collective security and alliances between the non-aggressor
nations. On May 2, 1935, the Soviet Government signed a Treaty of
Mutual Assistance with the Government of France, and on May 16,
a similar treaty with the Government of Czechoslovakia.
“War must appear to all as the threatening danger of tomor-
row,” Litvinov told the League of Nations. “The organization of
peace, for which thus far very little has been done, must be set
against the extremely active organization of war.”
245
In October, 1935, with the diplomatic blessing of Pierre Laval
and Sir Samuel Hoare, the Italian Fascist armies of Mussolini in-
vaded Ethiopia....
The Second World War, which had started when Japan attacked
Manchuria in 1931, was coming West.1
On Soviet soil the secret fascist vanguard had already launched
a major offensive against the war potential of the Red Army. In alli-
ance with German and Japanese agents, the Bloc of Rights and
Trotskyites had begun their carefully planned, systematic campaign
against Soviet industry, transport and agriculture. The objective was
the undermining of the Soviet defense system in preparation for the
coming war.
1
Trotsky instructed his followers inside Russia to make every ef-
fort to undermine the attempts of the Soviet Government to achieve
collective security. Early in 1935, Christian Rakovsky, the Trotskyite
and Japanese agent who had formerly been the Soviet Ambassador to
London and Paris, received in Moscow a letter from Trotsky emphasiz-
ing the necessity “of internationally isolating the Soviet Union.” In
dealing with foreign countries, wrote Trotsky, the Russian conspirators
must take into account the various political elements. In the case of the
“Left elements abroad,” it was necessary “to play on their pacifist sen-
timents.” With the “Right elements abroad,” the problem was simpler:
“Their sentiments against the Soviet Union are quite clear and defi-
nite,” declared Trotsky. “With them we can speak frankly.”
In May, 1935, a French delegation visited Moscow to discuss the
Franco-Soviet Pact. Accompanying the mission was Emil Bure, the
editor of the influential right-wing Paris newspaper L’Ordre, with
whom Rakovsky had been friendly when he was Ambassador to
France. Rakovsky went to see Bure at the Hotel Metropole in Moscow.
He told Bure that the Franco-Soviet Pact was fraught with danger and
might easily lead to a “preventive war on the part of Germany.” He
added that this was not only his opinion but that of a large number of
high placed diplomats and other officials in the Soviet Union.
To Rakovsky’s chagrin, Bure told him that he was unshakably op-
posed to any attempt to appease Nazi Germany. “France,” Bure told
Rakovsky, “cannot remain isolated in the face of the growing militari-
zation of Germany. The aggressor must be put in a strait-jacket; that is
the only means to crush war.”
But the Bures, unfortunately, were not entirely in control of French
foreign policy. The head of the French mission in Moscow was Pierre
Laval....
246
The campaign of total sabotage was being carried on under the
expert supervision of Pyatakov, the Trotskyite Vice-Commissar of
Heavy Industry.
“Terror is a drastic method,” Pyatakov told a secret meeting of
Rights and Trotskyites in Moscow, “but it is far from enough. It is
necessary to undermine the achievements gained by the Soviet
power, to undermine the prestige of Stalin’s leadership, and to dis-
organize economic life.... Activities must be developed in the most
energetic fashion. We must act with the utmost determination. We
must act energetically and persistently, and stop at nothing. All
means are useful and fair—such is Trotsky’s directive, which the
Trotskyite Center subscribes to!”
By the fall of 1935, the operation of the sabotage units in stra-
tegic localities throughout the Soviet Union had been galvanized
into an all-out effort. In the new heavy industries in the Urals, in the
coal mines of the Donbas and Kuzbas, on the railroads, in the power
plants and on construction jobs, the Trotskyite saboteurs under
Pyatakov’s direction were striking simultaneous and powerful
blows at the most vital branches of Soviet production. Similar
wrecking activities, supervised by Bukharin and other leaders of the
Rights, were under way on the collective farms, in the co-
operatives, and in government trade, finance and commerce agen-
cies. German and Japanese Intelligence agents were directing many
phases of the sabotage campaign.
These were some of the sabotage operations carried out by the
German and Japanese agents, Rights and Trotskyites, as later de-
scribed by the saboteurs themselves:—
Ivan Knyazev, Trotskyite and Japanese agent, executive on the
Urals railroad system:—
With regard to developing diversive and wrecking ac-
tivities on the railways and the organization of the wreck-
ing of trains I carried out instructions in full, since in this
matter the instructions of the Japanese military intelligence
service fully coincided with the instructions I had received
somewhat earlier from the Trotskyite organization....
On October 27... a train wreck took place at
Shumikha... a troop train... this was the work of our organi-
zation.... The train, travelling at high speed, about 40 or 50
kilometres an hour, sped off down the eighth track, on
247
which a freight train of ore was standing. Twenty-nine Red
Army men [were killed], and twenty-nine were also in-
jured.... From thirteen to fifteen wrecks were organized di-
rectly by us....
The Japanese intelligence service strongly stressed the
necessity of using bacteriological means in time of war
with the object of contaminating troop trains, canteens and
army sanitary centres with highly virulent bacilli....
Leonid Serebryakov, Trotskyite, Assistant Chief of the Rail-
roads Administration:—
We set ourselves a very concrete and definite task: to
disrupt freight traffic, to reduce daily loadings by increas-
ing the runs of empty cars, by refraining from increasing
the very low running norms for cars and engines, and by re-
fraining from making full use of the traction power and ca-
pacity of engines, and so forth... on Pyatakov’s proposal
Livshitz [a Trotskyite and Japanese agent] came to see me
at the Central Road Motor Transport Administration. He
was the Chief of the Southern Railway.... He informed me
that on the Southern Railway he had an assistant, Zorin,
who could develop this activity.... Livshitz and I discussed
the matter and came to the conclusion that in addition to the
actions of the organizations in the center and in the prov-
inces, the effect of which would be to cause confusion and
chaos on the railways, it was also necessary to insure the
possibility of blocking the most important railway junctions
in the first days of mobilization by creating on them such
jams as would lead to the dislocation of the transport sys-
tem and reduce the capacity of the railway junctions.
Alexei Shestov, Trotskyite and Nazi agent, member of the Board
of Eastern and Siberian Coal Trust:—
In the Prokopyevek mines the chamber-and-pillar sys-
tem was employed without filling in the worked-out cavity.
As a result of this system we had over 50 per cent loss of
coal instead of the usual 15-20 per cent. Secondly, as a re-
sult of this, we had about sixty underground fires in the
Prokopyevek Mines up to the end of 1935.
...deepening of the shafts was begun at the wrong time,
248
in particular in the Molotov Pit; the hundred-metre level of
the “Koksovaya” Pit was deliberately left unworked from
1933 onwards, and the deepening of the “Meneakha” Pit
was not begun at the right time... in the installation of the
equipment and in the installation of the underground power
station and of other machinery, disruptive work was per-
formed on a large scale....
Stanislav Rataichak, Trotskyite and Nazi agent, chief of the
Central Administration of the Chemical Industry:—
In accordance with my instructions... three breakdowns
were arranged, one diversive act at the Gorlovka Works
and two other breakdowns—one at the Nevsky Works and
the other at the Voskressenski Combined Chemical
Works....
Yakov Drobnis, Trotskyite, Assistant Chief at the Kemerovo
Works:—
Since the end of July, 1934, I was put in charge of all
the wrecking and diversive activities in the whole of the
Kuzbas.... I lived in Central Asia throughout 1933 and left
in May, 1934, because the Trotskyite center decided to
transfer me to Western Siberia. Since Pyatakov was in a
position to transfer me from one job in industry to another,
this problem could be solved very easily....
One of the wrecking tasks in the plan was to diffuse
funds on measures of secondary importance. Another was
to delay construction work in such a way as to prevent the
launching of important departments on the dates fixed by
the government....
The district power plant was put into such a state that,
if it were deemed necessary for wrecking purposes, and
when the order was given, the mine could be flooded. In
addition, coal was supplied that was technically unsuitable
for fuel, and this led to explosions. This was done quite de-
liberately... a number of workers were seriously injured.
Mikhail Chernov, member of the Rights, agent of German Mili-
tary Intelligence, Commissar of Agriculture of the U.S.S.R.:—
The German intelligence service made a special point
249
of the organization of wrecking activities in the sphere of
horse-breeding in order... not to provide horses for the Red
Army. As regards seed, we included in our program mud-
dling-up seed affairs, mixing up assorted seed and thus
lowering the harvest yield in the country....
As regards stock breeding, the aim was to kill off pedi-
gree breed-stock and to strive for high cattle mortality to
prevent the development of fodder resources and especially
to infect cattle artificially with various kinds of bacteria....
In order to cause heavy cattle mortality in Eastern Si-
beria, I instructed Ginsburg, Chief of the Veterinary De-
partment, who belonged to the organization of the Rights...
not to supply anti-anthrax serum to Eastern Siberia... when
there was an outbreak there of anthrax in 1936 it turned out
that no serum was available, with the result that I cannot
say how many exactly, but at any rate over 25,000 horses
perished.
Vasily Sharangovich, member of the Rights, Polish secret
agent, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
of Byelorussia:—
I engaged in wrecking activities chiefly in the sphere of
agriculture. In 1932 we, and I personally, developed exten-
sive wrecking work in this sphere. Firstly, by slowing down
the pace of collectivization....
Furthermore we arranged for the undermining of the
grain collection plans... we took measures to spread plague
among pigs, which resulted in a high pig mortality; this was
done by inoculating pigs against plague in a wrecking
fashion.
...In 1936 we caused a wide outbreak of anemia among
horses in Byelorussia. This was done intentionally, because
in Byelorussia horses are extremely important for defense
purposes. We endeavored to undermine this powerful base
in case it should be needed in connection with war.
As far as I can remember, 30,000 horses perished ow-
ing to this measure....
2. A Letter from Trotsky
At the end of 1935, with war looming ever closer, a long-
250
awaited letter from Trotsky was delivered by special courier to Karl
Radek in Moscow. It came from Norway.2 With great anticipation
Radek unfolded and began to read the letter. On eight pages of fine
English paper, Trotsky outlined the details of the secret agreement
he was at last about to conclude with the Governments of Germany
and Japan.
After a preamble stressing the “victory of German fascism” and
2
In June, 1935, the Popular Front Government of France expelled
Leon Trotsky from French soil. Trotsky went to Norway, where he set
up his third headquarters-in-exile in a remote, guarded mansion on the
outskirts of Oslo. The Workers’ Party of Norway, a. secessionist group
from the Comintern, was a powerful political factor in Norway at the
time and facilitated Trotsky’s entry. Trotsky’s own followers in Nor-
way were conducting an intensive anti-Soviet propaganda campaign.
On the extreme right in Norwegian politics at this time, the anti-
Communist Nasjonal Samling (National Unity Party), headed by the
ex-War Minister Major Vidkun Quisling, was carrying on similar, vio-
lent anti-Soviet agitation.
Major Vidkun Quisling had once served as the Norwegian Military
Attaché in Leningrad. In 1922-1923, he was sent on “diplomatic” as-
signments in the Ukraine and the Crimea. He married a White Russian
woman. In 1927, when the British Government broke off relations with
Soviet Russia, Major Quisling, then secretary of the Norwegian Lega-
tion in Moscow, was placed in charge of British interests in Russia. For
his services at that time, Quisling was subsequently made an Honorary
Commander of the British Empire.
In 1930 the Soviet Government refused to permit Quisling to re-
enter Soviet Russia on the grounds that he had been carrying on sub-
versive activities on Soviet soil.
After an end had been put to his “diplomatic” activities in the So-
viet Union, Quisling began organizing a pseudo-radical group in Nor-
way, which soon became openly fascist. Before long, Quisling himself
was a secret agent of the German Military Intelligence, and the leader
of Norway’s Fifth Column, which included as one of its important ele-
ments the Trotskyites.
In Norway, as in every other country where Trotskyite cells were
organized, many of the rank-and-file Trotskyites had no knowledge of
the secret links between the Trotskyite leadership and the Axis Intelli-
gence Services. To the end, Trotsky managed to attract numbers of
“world-revolutionists” who believed in his integrity: These individuals
were very useful to Trotsky both as anti-Soviet propagandists and or-
ganizers and as apologists for the Trotskyite cause.
251
the imminence of “international war,” the letter reached its main
topic:—
There are two possible variants of our coming into
power. The first variant is the possibility of our coming into
power before a war, and the second variant, during a war.
It must be admitted that the question of power will be-
come a practical issue for the Bloc only as a result of the
defeat of the U.S.S.R. in war. For this the Bloc must make
energetic preparations....
From now on, wrote Trotsky, “the diversive acts of the Trotsky-
ites in the war industries” would have to be carried out under the
direct “supervision of the German and Japanese High Commands.”
The Trotskyites must undertake no “practical activity” without first
having obtained the consent of their German and Japanese allies.
To secure the full backing of Germany and Japan, without
which “it would be absurd to think we can come to power,” the
Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites must be prepared to make consider-
able concessions. Trotsky named them:—
Germany needs raw materials, foodstuffs and markets.
We shall have to permit her to take part in the exploitation
of ore, manganese, gold, oil, apatites, and to undertake to
supply her for a definite period with foodstuffs and fats at
less than world prices.
We shall have to yield the oil of Sakhalin to Japan and
to guarantee to supply her with oil in case of a war with
America. We shall also have to permit her to exploit gold-
fields.
We shall have to agree to Germany’s demand not to
oppose her seizure of the Danube countries and the Bal-
kans, and not to hinder Japan in her seizure of China.... We
shall inevitably have to make territorial concessions. We
shall have to yield the Maritime Province and Amur region
to Japan, and the Ukraine to Germany.
Trotsky’s letter then outlined the kind of Russian regime which
would be established after the overthrow of the Soviet Govern-
ment:-—
It must be understood that without to a certain extent
252
bringing the social structure of the U.S.S.R. in line with
that of the capitalist states, the government of the bloc will
be unable to maintain itself in power....
The admission, of German and Japanese capital for the
exploitation of the U.S.S.R. will create important capitalist
interest on Soviet territory. Those strata in the villages
which have not outlived the capitalist psychology and are
dissatisfied with the collective farms will gravitate towards
them. The Germans and the Japanese will demand that we
relieve the atmosphere in the rural districts; we shall there-
fore have to make concessions and allow the dissolution of
the collective farms or withdraw from the collective farms.
Politically, as well as territorially and economically, there
would have to be drastic changes in the new Russia:—
There can be no talk of any kind of democracy. The
working class has lived through eighteen years of revolu-
tion, and it has vast appetites; and this working class will
have to be sent back partly to privately owned factories and
to state-owned factories which will have to compete with
foreign capital under the most difficult conditions. That
means that the living standards of the working class will be
drastically lowered. In the countryside the struggle of the
poor and middle-class peasants against; the kulaks will be
renewed. And then, in order to hold power, we shall need a
strong government, irrespective of what forms are em-
ployed to veil it.
Trotsky’s letter concluded:—
We have to accept everything, but if we remain alive
and in power, then owing to the victory of these two coun-
tries (Germany and Japan) and as a result of their plunder
and profit a conflict will arise between them and others,
and this will lead to our new development, our “Revanche.”
Radek read Trotsky’s letter with mixed feelings. “After I read
these directives,” he later said, “I thought them over at night... it
was clear to me that although the directives contained all the ele-
ments which had formerly been present, yet these elements had now
so matured that... what Trotsky proposed was without any limits....
253
We ceased to be in any degree master of our own actions.”
The following morning Radek showed Trotsky’s letter to
Pyatakov. “It is necessary to meet with Trotsky by one way or an-
other,” said Pyatakov. He himself was about to leave the Soviet Un-
ion on official business, and would be in Berlin for a few days.
Radek should send off an urgent message informing Trotsky of
Pyatakov’s trip and asking Trotsky to contact him in Berlin as soon
as possible.
3. A Flight to Oslo
Pyatakov reached Berlin on December 10, 1935. Radek’s mes-
sage to Trotsky had preceded him, and a courier was waiting to con-
tact Pyatakov as soon as he arrived in the Nazi capital. The courier
was Dmitri Bukhartsev, a Trotskyite who was the Izvestia corre-
spondent in Berlin. Bukhartsev told Pyatakov that a man named
Stirner was bringing word from Trotsky. Stirner, the courier ex-
plained, was “Trotsky’s man” in Berlin.3
Pyatakov went with Bukhartsev to one of the lanes in the
Tiergarten. A man was waiting for them. It was “Stirner.” He hand-
ed Pyatakov a note from Trotsky. It read: “Y. L. [Pyatakov’s ini-
tials], the bearer of this note can be fully trusted.”
In a manner as terse as the note he delivered, Stirner stated that
Trotsky was very anxious to see Pyatakov and had instructed him to
make the necessary arrangements. Was Pyatakov prepared to travel
by airplane to Oslo, Norway?
Pyatakov fully understood the risk of exposure involved in such
a trip. However, he had made up his mind to see Trotsky at all costs.
He said he was willing to make the flight. Stirner told Pyatakov to
be at the Tempelhof Airport the following morning.
When Pyatakov asked about a passport, Stirner replied, “Don’t
worry. I will arrange the matter. I have connections in Berlin.”
At the appointed hour, next morning, Pyatakov went to the
Tempelhof Airport. Stirner was waiting at the entrance. He indicat-
ed that Pyatakov was to follow him. As they walked towards the
airfield, Stirner showed Pyatakov the passport which had been pre-
pared for him. It was issued by the Government of Nazi Germany.
At the airfield, a plane was waiting, ready to take off....
3
“Stirner” was merely another pseudonym for Trotsky’s “secre-
tary,” the international spy Karl Reich, alias Johanson.
254
That afternoon the plane settled down over a landing field near
the city of Oslo in Norway. An automobile was waiting for
Pyatakov and Stirner. They were driven in the car for half an hour,
until they reached a country suburb in the environs of Oslo. The car
stopped in front of a small house.
Inside the house, Trotsky was waiting to receive his old friend.
The years of embittered exile had changed the man whom
Pyatakov regarded as his leader. Trotsky looked older than his fifty-
odd years. His hair and beard were gray. He stooped. Behind his
pince-nez his eyes glittered with an almost maniacal intensity.
Few words were wasted on greetings. At Trotsky’s orders, he
and Pyatakov were left alone in the house. The conversation which
followed lasted two hours,
Pyatakov began by making a report on the state of affairs inside
Russia. Trotsky continually interrupted him with sharp, sarcastic
comments.
“You can’t break away from Stalin’s navel cord!” he ex-
claimed. “You take Stalin’s construction for socialist construction!”
Trotsky berated Pyatakov and his other Russian followers for
talking too much and accomplishing too little. “Of course,” said
Trotsky angrily, “you over there are spending too much time dis-
cussing international problems; you would do better to devote your-
selves to those affairs of yours which are going so badly! As for
international affairs, I know more about these things than you do!”
Trotsky repeated his conviction that the collapse of Stalin’s
state was inevitable. Fascism would not tolerate much longer the
development of Soviet power.
The Trotskyites in Russia were faced with this choice: either
they would “perish in the ruins of the Stalin state,” or they must
immediately galvanize all their energies in an all-out effort to over-
throw the Stalin regime. There must be no hesitation about accept-
ing the guidance and assistance of the German and Japanese High
Commands in this crucial struggle.
A military clash between the Soviet Union and the Fascist
Powers was inevitable, Trotsky added, not at some remote time in
the future, but soon—very soon. “The date of the outbreak of the
war has already been fixed,” said Trotsky. “It will be in 1937.”
It was clear to Pyatakov that Trotsky had not invented this in-
formation. Trotsky now revealed to Pyatakov that for some time
past he had been “conducting rather lengthy negotiations with the
255
Vice-Chairman of the German National Socialist Party—Hess.”
As a result of these negotiations with Adolf Hitler’s deputy,
Trotsky had entered into an agreement, “an absolutely definite
agreement,” with the Government of the Third Reich. The Nazis
were ready to help the Trotskyites to come to power in the Soviet
Union.
“It goes without saying,” Trotsky told Pyatakov, “that such a
favorable attitude is not due to any particular love for the Trotsky-
ites. It simply proceeds from the real interests of the fascists and
from what we have promised to do for them if we come to power.”
Concretely, the agreement which Trotsky had entered into with
the Nazis consisted of five points. In return for Germany’s assis-
tance in bringing the Trotskyites to power in Russia, Trotsky had
agreed:—
(1) to guarantee a generally favourable attitude towards the
German government and the necessary collaboration
with it in the most important questions of international
character;
(2) to agree to territorial concessions [the Ukraine];
(3) to permit German industrialists, in the form of conces-
sions (or some other forms), to exploit enterprises in
the U.S.S.R. essential as complements to German
economy (iron ore, manganese, oil, gold, timber, etc.);
(4) to create in the U.S.S.R. favourable conditions for the
activities of German private enterprise;
(5) in time of war to develop extensive diversive activities
in enterprises of the war industry and at the front. The-
se diversive activities to be carried on under Trotsky’s
instructions, agreed upon with the German General
Staff.
Pyatakov, as Trotsky’s chief lieutenant in Russia, was con-
cerned that his out-and-out deal with Nazism might be difficult to
explain to the rank-and-file members of the Bloc of Rights and
Trotskyites.
“Program questions must not be put before the rank-and-file
members of the Bloc in all their scope,” Trotsky impatiently de-
clared. “It would only scare them.”
The organization as a whole was to know nothing about the de-
tailed agreement which had been reached with the Fascist Powers.
256
“It is neither possible nor expedient to make it public,” said Trotsky,
“or even to communicate it to any considerable number of Trotsky-
ites. Only a very small, restricted group of people can be informed
about it at this time.”
Trotsky kept stressing the urgency of the time factor.
“It is a matter of a comparatively short period,” he insisted. “If
we miss this opportunity, the danger will arise, on the one hand, of
the complete liquidation of Trotskyism in the country, and, on the
other hand, of the existence of that monstrosity, the Stalin state, for
decades, supported by certain economic achievements, and particu-
larly by the new, young cadres who have grown up and have been
brought up to take this state for granted, to regard it as a socialist,
Soviet state—they don’t think of any other state and they cannot
conceive of any! Our task is to oppose ourselves to that state.”
“Look,” concluded Trotsky as the time for Pyatakov’s departure
drew near, “there was a time when we Socialist Democrats all re-
garded the development of capitalism as a progressive, as a positive
phenomenon.... But we had different tasks, namely, to organize the
struggle against capitalism, to rear its grave-diggers. And so now
we should go into the service of the Stalin state, not however to help
build that state, but to become its grave-diggers—therein lies our
task!”
At the end of two hours, Pyatakov left Trotsky in the small
house on the outskirts of Oslo and returned to Berlin as he had
come—by privately chartered plane, and carrying a Nazi passport.
4. Zero Hour
The Second World War, which Trotsky predicted would strike
Soviet Russia in 1937, had already reached Europe. Following Mus-
solini’s invasion of Ethiopia, events had moved swiftly. In June,
1936, Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland. In July, the Fascists struck
in Spain with a Putsch of Spanish officers against the Republican
Government. Under the pretext of ‘combating Bolshevism” and
suppressing a “Communist revolution,” German and Italian troops
landed in Spain to aid the officers’ revolt. The Spanish Fascist lead-
er, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, marched on Madrid. “Four col-
umns are marching on Madrid,” boasted the drunken Fascist Gen-
eral Quiepo de Llano. “A Fifth Column is waiting to greet us inside
the city!” It was the first time the world heard the fateful phrase—
257
’Fifth Column.”4
Adolf Hitler, addressing thousands of troops at the Nuremberg
Nazi Party Congress on September 12, publicly proclaimed his in-
tention of invading the Soviet Union.
“We are ready at any hour!” cried Hitler. “I cannot permit ru-
ined states on my doorstep!... If I had the Ural Mountains with their
incalculable store of treasures in raw materials, Siberia with its vast
forests, and the Ukraine with its tremendous wheat fields, Germany
and the National Socialist leadership would swim in plenty!”
4
At the time of the Axis-supported Franco uprising in Spain, 1936-
1938, Andreas Nin headed an ultra-leftist, pro-Trotsky Spanish organi-
zation called the Partido Obrero de Unification Marxista, or P.O.U.M.
Officially, the P.O.U.M. was not affiliated with Trotsky’s Fourth Inter-
national. Its ranks, however, were permeated with Trotskyites; and on
major issues, such as its attitude toward the Soviet Union and the Popu-
lar Front, the P.O.U.M. strictly adhered to the policies of Leon Trotsky.
At the time of the Franco revolt, Trotsky’s friend Nin was Minister
of Justice in Catalonia. While giving lip-service to the anti-fascist
cause, Nin’s P.O.U.M. carried on endless propaganda and agitation
against the Spanish Republican Government during the hostilities in
Spain. At first it was believed that Nin’s oppositionist activities were of
a purely “political” character, since P.O.U.M. members advanced “rev-
olutionary” explanations for their opposition to the Spanish Govern-
ment. But when the P.O.U.M. staged an abortive revolt in Barcelona
behind the Loyalist lines in the crucial summer of 1937 and called for
“resolute action to overthrow the Government,” it was discovered that
Nin and the other P.O.U.M. leaders were actually fascist agents work-
ing with Franco and that they had been carrying on a systematic cam-
paign of sabotage, espionage and terrorism against the Spanish Gov-
ernment.
On October 23, 1937, the Chief of the Barcelona Police, Lieuten-
ant Colonel Burillo, made public the details of the P.O.U.M. conspiracy
which had been uncovered in Catalonia. Secret documents seized by-
the Barcelona police established that P.O.U.M. members had been car-
rying on extensive espionage for the fascists; that they had interfered
with the transport of supplies to the Spanish Republican Army; and that
they had sabotaged military operations at the front. “The attempts
against the lives of outstanding figures in the People’s Army were still
under consideration,” Lieutenant Colonel Burillo went on to say in his
report: “In addition, the organization was being continued for a planned
attempt against the life of a Minister of the Republic...
258
On November 25, 1936, the Nazi Foreign Minister Ribbentrop
and the Japanese Ambassador to Germany, M. Mushakoji, signed
the Anti-Comintern Agreement in Berlin, pledging their combined
forces to a joint attack against “World Bolshevism.”
Aware of the imminent war danger, the Soviet Government ini-
tiated a sudden counteroffensive against the enemy within its own
borders. During the spring and summer of 1936, in a series of star-
tling raids throughout the country, the Soviet authorities swooped
down on Nazi spies, secret Trotskyite and Right organizers, terror-
ists and saboteurs. In Siberia a Nazi agent named Emil Stickling
was arrested, and found to have been directing sabotage activities in
the Kemerovo mines in collaboration with Alexei Shestov and other
Trotskyites. In Leningrad, another Nazi agent, Valentine Olberg,
was seized. Olberg was not only a Nazi agent, he was one of Trot-
sky’s special emissaries. He had contact with Fritz David, Nathan
Lurye, Konon Berman-Yurin and other terrorists. One after another,
the leaders of the first “layer” of the conspiracy were being tracked
down.
A coded message which Ivan Smirnov had smuggled out of
prison to his: co-conspirators was intercepted by the Soviet authori-
ties. The Trotskyite terrorists Ephraim Dreitzer and Sergei
Mrachkovsky were arrested.
A mood of feverish anxiety gripped the Russian conspirators.
Now everything depended on the attack from without.
Yagoda’s efforts to hamstring the official investigation were
becoming increasingly reckless. “It looks as if Yezhov is getting at
the bottom of the Leningrad affair!” Yagoda furiously told his sec-
retary, Bulanov.
One of Yagoda’s own men, NKVD agent named Borisov, was
abruptly summoned to the special investigation headquarters, at the
Smolny Institute in Leningrad for questioning. Borisov had played a
leading part in the prearrangements for the murder of Kirov.
Yagoda acted in desperation. While driving to the Smolny Institute,
Borisov was killed in an “automobile accident.”...
But the elimination of a single witness was not enough. The of-
ficial investigation went on. Daily, new arrests were reported. Piece
by piece the Soviet authorities were fitting together the intricate
jigsaw of conspiracy, treason and murder. By August, almost all the
leading members of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center
were under arrest. The Soviet Government announced that sensa-
259
tional new evidence had been brought to light as the result of the
special investigation into Kirov’s murder. Kamenev and Zinoviev
were to stand trial again.
The trial began on August 19, 1936, in the October Hall of the
House of Trade-Unions in Moscow, before the Military Collegium
of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. Zinoviev and Kamenev,
brought from prison where they were still serving their terms on
previous convictions, faced the court along with fourteen of their
former associates on charges of treason. The other accused included
the one-time leaders of Trotsky’s Guard, Ivan Smirnov, Sergei
Mrachkovsky and Ephraim Dreitzer; Zinoviev’s secretary, Grigori
Evdokimov, and his aide, Ivan Bakayev; and five of Trotsky’s spe-
cial terrorist emissaries, Fritz David, Nathan Lurye, Moissei Lurye,
Konon Berman-Yurin and Valentine Olberg.
The trial—the first of the so-called “Moscow Trials”—exposed
and smashed the Terrorist Center, the first layer of the conspiratorial
apparatus. At the same time it established that the plot against the
Soviet regime went much further and involved far more important
forces than the Trotskyite-Zinovievite terrorists on trial.
As the trial proceeded, the public got its first glimpse of the in-
timate relationship that had developed between Leon Trotsky and
the leaders of Nazi Germany. The examination by Soviet Prosecutor
A. Y. Vyshinsky of Valentine Olberg, the German Trotskyite who
had been sent into the Soviet Union by Trotsky himself, brought
some startling facts to light:—
VYSHINSKY. What do you know about Friedmann?
OLBERG. Friedmann was a member of the Berlin Trotskyite
organization who was also sent to the Soviet Union.
VYSHINSKY. Are you aware of the fact that Friedmann was
connected with the German secret police?
OLBERG. I had heard about that.
VYSHINSKY. Connections between the German Trotskyites
and the German police—-was that systematic?
OLBERG. Yes, it was systematic and it was done with Trot-
sky’s consent.
VYSHINSKY. How do you know that it was done with Trot-
sky’s knowledge and consent?
OLBERG. One of the lines of connection was maintained by
myself. My connection was established with the sanction of
260
Trotsky.
VYSHINSKY. Your personal connection with whom?
OLBERG. With the fascist secret police.
VYSHINSKY. SO it can be said that you yourself admit con-
nections with the Gestapo?
OLBERG. I do not deny this. In 1933 there began organized
systematic connection between the German Trotskyites and the
German fascist police.
Olberg described to the court how he had obtained the forged
South American passport with which he had entered the Soviet Un-
ion. He had, he said, obtained it through “Tukalevsky,5 an agent of
the German secret police in Prague.” Olberg added that in getting
this passport he had received some assistance from his brother, Paul
Olberg.
“Did your brother have any connection with the Gestapo?”
asked Vyshinsky.
“He was Tukalevsky’s agent.”
“An agent of the fascist police?”
“Yes,” said Olberg.
Trotsky’s emissary, Nathan Lurye, told the court how he had
received instructions before leaving Germany that upon his arrival
in the Soviet Union he should work with the German engineer-
architect, Franz Weitz.
“Who is Franz Weitz?” asked Vyshinsky.
“Franz Weitz was a member of the National Socialist Party of
Germany,” said Lurye. “He arrived in the U.S.S.R. on the instruc-
tions of Himmler who at that time was chief of the S.S. and subse-
quently became chief of the Gestapo.”
“Franz Weitz was his representative?”
“Franz Weitz arrived in the U.S.S.R. on the instructions of
Himmler for the purpose of committing terroristic acts.”
But it was not until Kamenev testified that the leaders of the
Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites realized their situation was desper-
ate. Kamenev betrayed the existence of the other “layers” of the
conspiratorial apparatus.”
“Knowing that we might be discovered,” Kamenev told the court,
“we designated a small group to continue our terroristic activities. For
5
Not to be confused with General Tukhachevsky.
261
this purpose we designated Sokolnikov. It seemed to us that on the
side of the Trotskyites this role could be successfully performed by
Serebryakov and Radek.... In 1932, 1933 and 1934 I personally main-
tained relations with Tomsky and Bukharin and sounded their politi-
cal sentiments. They sympathized with us. When I asked Tomsky
about Rykov’s frame of mind, he replied: ‘Rykov thinks the same as
you do.’ In reply to my question as to what Bukharin thought, he said:
‘Bukharin thinks the same as I do but is pursuing somewhat different
tactics: he does not agree with the line of the Party, but is pursuing
tactics of persistently enrooting himself in the Party and winning the
personal confidence of the leadership.’”
Some of the accused pleaded for mercy. Others seemed re-
signed to their fate. “The political importance and the past of each
of us were not the same,” said Ephraim Dreitzer, a former lender of
Trotsky’s bodyguard. “But having become assassins, we have all
become equals here. I, at any rate, am one of those who have no
right to expect or to ask for mercy.”
In his last words, the terrorist Fritz David cried out: “I curse
Trotsky! I curse that man who ruined my life and pushed me into
heinous crime!”
On the evening of August 23 the Military Collegium of the So-
viet Supreme Court handed down its verdict. Zinoviev, Kamenev,
Smirnov, and the thirteen other members of the Trotskyite-
Zinovievite-Terrorist Bloc were sentenced to be shot for their terror-
ist and treasonous activities.
A week later, Pyatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov and Serebryakov
were arrested. On September 27, Henry Yagoda was removed from
his post as Chairman of the NKVD. His place was taken by N. I.
Yezhov, the head of the special investigatory committee of the Cen-
tral Control Commission of the Bolshevik Party. The day before he
was moved out of the NKVD offices, Yagoda made a last wild at-
tempt to poison his successor, Yezhov. The attempt failed.
It was zero hour for the Russian conspirators. The Right lead-
ers, Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky, were expecting their own arrests
daily. They demanded immediate action without waiting for war.
The panic-stricken Right trade-union chief, Tomsky, proposed an
immediate armed attack on the Kremlin. It was dismissed as too
risky. The forces were not ready for such an open venture.
At a final meeting of the chief leaders of the Bloc of Rights and
Trotskyites, just before Pyatakov and Radek went to prison, it was
262
decided to prepare for an armed coup d’état. The organization of
this coup, and direction of the entire conspiratorial apparatus, were
placed in the hands of Nicolai Krestinsky, the Assistant Commissar
of Foreign Affairs. Krestinsky had not exposed himself as the others
had, was unlikely to be suspected, and had maintained close con-
nections with Trotsky and the Germans. He would be able to carry
on even if Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky were arrested.
As his deputy and second-in-command, Krestinsky selected
Arkady Rosengoltz, who recently had returned to Moscow from
Berlin where for many years he had headed the Soviet Foreign
Trade Commission. A tall, fair, athletic-looking man, who had held
important posts in the Soviet administration, Rosengoltz had kept
his Trotskyite affiliations a careful secret. Only Trotsky and
Krestinsky knew Rosengoltz’s role as a Trotskyite and as a paid
agent of the German Military Intelligence since 1923....6
From this time on, direct control of the Bloc of the Rights and
Trotskyites was in the hands of two Trotskyites who were both
German agents: Krestinsky and Rosengoltz! After a lengthy discus-
sion, they both decided that the time had come for the Russian Fifth
Column to play its last card.
The last card was the military Putsch. The man who had been
chosen to lead the armed rising was Marshal Tukhachevsky, Assis-
tant Defense Commissar of the U.S.S.R.
6
Rosengoltz had served as a Red Army commander during the war
of intervention. After the war, he had been sent to Berlin as a commer-
cial agent at the Soviet Embassy. In 1923, Trotsky put him in touch
with the German Military Intelligence. In return for money, which went
to finance the illegal Trotskyite work, Rosengoltz supplied the Ger-
mans with secret data concerning the Soviet air force to which Trotsky,
as War Commissar, then had access. Rosengoltz took no open part in
the Trotskyite Opposition. In 1934, Bessonov brought him a message
from Trotsky advising him that the time had come to act less cautiously
and to begin “active wrecking work in the sphere of foreign trade.”
Rosengoltz was Commissar of Foreign Trade at the Soviet Trade
Commission in Berlin. For a short period, he was able to steer Soviet
trade into channels beneficial to Nazi Germany and later, to Japan. Ear-
ly in 1936, Rosengoltz had been recalled to Moscow.
263
CHAPTER XX
The End of the Trail
1. Tukhachevsky
Again, the phantom of the Corsican was haunting Russia. The new
candidate for the role was the portly, moody Red Army Marshal,
Mikhail Nicolayevich Tukhachevsky, the former Czarist officer and
son of titled landowners, who had become one of the leaders of the
Red Army.
As a young man, graduating from the exclusive Alexandrovsky
Military Academy, Tukhachevsky predicted: “I’ll either be a gen-
eral at thirty or commit suicide!” He fought as an officer in the
Czar’s Army in the First World War. In 1915 he was taken prisoner
by the Germans. A French officer, Lieutenant Fervaque, who was a
fellow prisoner with Tukhachevsky, later described the Russian of-
ficer as reckless and ambitious. His head was stuffed with
Nietzschean philosophy. “I hate Vladimir the Saint who introduced
Christianity in Russia, thus handing over Russia to Western civiliza-
tion!” Tukhachevsky exclaimed. “We should have kept our crude
paganism, our barbarism. But they will both come back; I am sure
of it!” Speaking about revolution in Russia, Tukhachevsky said:
“Many desire it. We are a slack people but deeply destructive.
Should there be a revolution, only God knows where it will end. I
think that a constitutional regime would mean the end of Russia.
We need a despot!”
On the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, Tukhachevsky escaped
from German captivity and returned to Russia. He joined his fellow
officers from the Czar’s Army who were organizing the White ar-
mies against the Bolsheviks. Then, abruptly, he changed sides. To
one of his friends, the White Captain Dmitri Golum-Bek,
Tukhachevsky confided his decision to desert the White cause. “I
asked him what he was going to do,” Golum-Bek later recorded.
“He said: ‘Frankly, I am going with the Bolsheviks. The White Ar-
my can’t do anything. We haven’t a leader.’ He paced around a few
minutes and then he cried: ‘Don’t follow me if you don’t want to,
but I think I am doing right. Russia is going to be different!’”
In 1918, Tukhachevsky joined the Bolshevik Party, He soon
found his place among the military adventurers who surrounded
War Commissar Trotsky; but he was careful not to become too in-
264
volved in Trotsky’s political intrigues. A trained and experienced
army man, Tukhachevsky rose rapidly in the inexperienced Red
Army ranks. He commanded the First and Fifth Armies on the
Wrangel Front, participated in the successful offensive against
Deniken and, together with Trotsky, led the unsuccessful counterof-
fensive against the invading Poles. In 1922, he became head of the
Red Army Military Academy. He was one of the leading Russian
officers to take part in the military negotiations with the German
Weimar Republic which followed the Rapallo Treaty of that year.
In the years that followed, Tukhachevsky headed a small group
of professional militarists and ex-Czarist officers in the Red Army
General Staff who resented the leadership of the former Bolshevik
guerillas, Marshal Budyenny and Marshal Voroshilov.
Tukhachevsky’s group included the Red Army generals, Yakir,
Kork, Uborevitch and Feldman, who had an almost slavish admira-
tion for German militarism. Tukhachevsky’s closest associates were
the Trotskyite officer, V. I. Putna, who was military attaché in Ber-
lin, London and Tokyo, and General Jan B. Gamarnik, a personal
friend of the Reichswehr Generals Seeckt and Hammerstein.
Together with Putna and Gamarnik, Tukhachevsky soon
formed a small, influential pro-German clique within the Red Army
General Staff. Tukhachevsky and his associates knew of Trotsky’s
deal with the Reichswehr, but they considered it a “political” ar-
rangement. It was to be balanced by a military alliance between
Tukhachevsky’s Military Group and the German High Command.
The coming to power of Hitler in no way altered the secret under-
standing between Tukhachevsky and the German military leaders.
Hitler, like Trotsky, was a “politician.” The military men had their
own ideas....
Ever since the organization of the Bloc of Rights and Trotsky-
ites, Trotsky had regarded Tukhachevsky as the trump card of the
whole conspiracy, to be played only at the ultimate, strategic mo-
ment. Trotsky maintained his relations with Tukhachevsky chiefly
through Krestinsky and the Trotskyite military attaché, Putna. Later,
Bukharin appointed Tomsky as his personal liaison with the Mili-
tary Group. Both Trotsky and Bukharin were fully aware of
Tukhachevsky’s contempt for “politicians” and “ideologists,” and
they feared his military ambitions. Discussing with Tomsky the
possibility of calling the Military Group into action, Bukharin
said:—
265
“This is to be a military coup. By the very logic of things, the
Military Group of the conspirators will have extraordinary
influence... hence a peculiar Bonapartist danger may arise. And
Bonapartists-—I am thinking particularly of Tukhachevsky—will
start out by making short shrift of their allies and so-called inspirers
in the Napoleonic style. Tukhachevsky is a potential little
Napoleon.\—and you know how Napoleon dealt with the so-called
ideologists!”
Bukharin asked Tomsky:—
“How does Tukhachevsky visualize the mechanism of the
coup?”
“That’s the business of the military organization,” Tomsky re-
plied. He added that the moment the Nazis attached Soviet Russia,
the Military Group planned to “open the front to the Germans”—
that is, to surrender to the German High Command. This plan had
been worked out in detail and agreed upon by Tukhachevsky, Putna,
Gamarnik and the Germans.
“In that case,” said Bukharin thoughtfully, “we might be able to
get rid of the Bonapartist danger that alarms me.”
Tomsky did not understand. Bukharin went on to explain:
Tukhachevsky would try to set up a military dictatorship; he might
even try to get popular support by making scapegoats of the politi-
cal leaders of the conspiracy. But, once in power, the politicians
could turn the tables on the Military Group. Bukharin told Tomsky:
“It might be necessary to try those guilty of the ‘defeat’ at the front.
This will enable us to win over the masses by playing on patriotic
slogans....”
Early in 1936, Tukhachevsky went to London as Soviet military
representative at the state funeral of King George V of England.
Before he left, he received the coveted title of Marshal of the Soviet
Union. He was already convinced that the hour was at hand when
the Soviet regime would be overthrown, and a new Russia in mili-
tary alliance with Germany and Japan would strike for the domina-
tion of the world.
En route to London, Tukhachevsky stopped over briefly in
Warsaw and Berlin, where he held conversations with Polish “colo-
nels” and German generals. His mood was so confident that he
scarcely made any attempt in public to conceal his admiration of the
German militarists.
In Paris, at a formal dinner at the Soviet Embassy after his re-
266
turn from London, Tukhachevsky astounded European diplomats by
openly attacking the Soviet Government’s attempts to arrive at col-
lective security with the Western democracies. Tukhachevsky, who
was sitting at a table with Nicholas Titulescu, the Minister of For-
eign Affairs of Rumania, told the Rumanian diplomat:—
“Monsieur le Ministre, you are wrong in linking your career
and the fate of your country to countries that are old and ‘finished’
such as Great Britain and France. It is to the new Germany that we
should turn. For a certain time, at least, Germany will be the country
that will take the lead of the European continent. I am sure that Hit-
ler will help to save us all.”
Tukhachevsky’s remarks were recorded by the Rumanian dip-
lomat and Chief of the Press Service at the Rumanian Embassy in
Paris, E. Schachanan Esseze, who also attended the banquet at the
Soviet Embassy. Another of the guests, the famous French political
journalist, Genevieve Tabouis, subsequently related in her book,
They Call Me Cassandra:—
I was to meet Tukhachevsky for the last time on the
day after the funeral of King George V. At a dinner at the
Soviet Embassy, the Russian general had been very conver-
sational with Politis, Titilescu, Herriot, Boncour.... He had
just returned from a trip to Germany, and was heaping
glowing praise upon the Nazis. Seated at my right, he said
over and over again, as he discussed an air pact between the
great powers and Hitler’s country: “They are already invin-
cible, Madame Tabouis!”
Why did he speak so trustfully? Was it because his head
had been turned by the hearty reception he had found among
German diplomats, who found it easy to talk to this man of
the old Russian school? At any rate I was not the only one
that evening who was alarmed at his display of enthusiasm.
One of the guests—an important-diplomat—grumbled into
my ear as we walked away from the Embassy:
“Well, I hope all the Russians don’t feel that way.”
The sensational disclosures at the trial of the Trotskyite-
Zinovievite Terrorist Bloc in August, 1936, and the subsequent ar-
rests of Pyatakov and Radek, gravely alarmed Tukhachevsky. He
got in touch with Krestinsky and told him the plans of the conspira-
tors would have to be drastically changed. Originally, the Military
267
Group was not to go into action until the Soviet Union was attacked
from outside. But international developments—the Franco-Soviet
Pact, the unexpected defense of Madrid—were continually cropping
up to postpone outside action. The conspirators inside Russia, said
Tukhachevsky, must expedite matters by staging the coup d’état
ahead of schedule. The Germans would immediately come to the
aid of their Russian allies.
Krestinsky said he would get off a message to Trotsky immedi-
ately, informing him of the necessity of speeding up action.
Krestinsky’s message to Trotsky, which he sent off in October,
read:—
“We think that quite a large number of Trotskyites have been
arrested, but nevertheless the main forces of the Bloc are not as yet
affected. Action can be taken; but for this purpose it is essential for
the center that foreign action should be hastened.” By “foreign ac-
tion,” Krestinsky meant the Nazi attack on Soviet Russia....
Shortly after the message was sent, Tukhachevsky took
Krestinsky aside at the Extraordinary Eighth Congress of Soviets in
November, 1936. The arrests were continuing, Tukhachevsky said
excitedly, and there seemed no reason to believe that they would
stop on the lower levels of the conspiratorial apparatus. The Trot-
skyite military liaison, Putna, had already been arrested. Stalin
clearly suspected the existence of an extensive plot and was pre-
pared to take drastic measures. He already had enough evidence to
convict Pyatakov and the others. The arrest of Putna and the remov-
al of Yagoda from the Chairmanship of the NKVD meant that the
Soviet authorities were getting at the roots of the plot. There was no
telling where the trail might lead. The entire undertaking hung in
the balance.
Tukhachevsky was for immediate action. The Bloc must reach a
decision in this matter without further delay, and prepare all forces
to back up the military coup....
Krestinsky discussed the matter with Rosengoltz. The two Trot-
skyite German agents agreed that Tukhachevsky was right. Another
message was dispatched to Trotsky. In it, besides telling Trotsky of
Tukhachevsky’s determination to go ahead without waiting for war,
Krestinsky raised some important questions of political strategy. He
wrote:—
We will have to conceal the true purposes of the coup.
268
We will have to make a statement to the population, to the
army, and to foreign states... firstly, it would be the proper
thing in our statements to the population not to mention that
our coup was designed for the overthrow of the existing
Socialist order... we [should] pose in the guise of Soviet re-
bels; we would overthrow a bad Soviet government and re-
establish a good Soviet government.... In any case, we
should not be too outspoken on this question.
Trotsky’s reply reached Krestinsky toward the end of Decem-
ber. The exiled leader agreed completely with Krestinsky. As a mat-
ter of fact, following Pyatakov’s arrest, Trotsky had independently
reached the conclusion that the Military Group should be called into
action without further delay. While Krestinsky’s letter to him was
still en route, he had written Rosengoltz advocating immediate mili-
tary action....
“After this reply was received,” Krestinsky later stated, “we be-
gan to make more direct preparations for the coup. Tukhachevsky
was given a free hand, he was given carte blanche to get on with the
job directly.”
2. The Trial of the Trotskyite Parallel Center
The Soviet Government was also moving into action. The reve-
lations at the Zinoviev-Kamenev Trial had established beyond
doubt that the conspiracy in the country went far beyond mere se-
cret “left” opposition. The real centers of the conspiracy were not in
Russia at all; they were in Berlin and Tokyo. As the investigation
continued, the true shape and character of the Axis Fifth Column
was becoming clearer to the Soviet Government.
On January 23, 1937, Pyatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov, Shestov,
Muralov and twelve of their fellow conspirators, including key
agents of the German and Japanese Intelligence Services, went on
trial for treason in Moscow before the Military Collegium of the
Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R.
For months the leading members of the Trotskyite Center had
denied the charges brought against them. But the evidence against
them was complete and overwhelming. One by one they admitted
they had directed sabotage and terrorist activities, and maintained
connections, on Trotsky’s instructions, with the German and Japa-
nese Governments. But, at the preliminary interrogation as at the
269
trial, they still did not divulge the whole picture. They said nothing
about the existence of the Military Group; they did not mention
Krestinsky or Rosengoltz; they remained silent about the Bloc of
Rights and Trotskyites, the final and most powerful “layer” of the
conspiracy, which, even as they were being cross-examined, was
feverishly preparing to seize power.
In prison, Sokolnikov, the former Assistant Commissar in
charge of Eastern Affairs, had revealed the political aspects of the
conspiracy; the deal with Hess, the dismemberment of the U.S.S.R.,
the plan to set up a fascist dictatorship after the: overthrow of the
Soviet regime. In court, Sokolnikov testified:—
We considered that fascism was the most organized
form of capitalism, that it would triumph and seize Europe
and stifle us. It was therefore better to come to terms with
it.... All this was explained by the following argument: bet-
ter make certain sacrifices, even very severe ones, than lose
everything.... We reasoned as politicians... we figured we
had to take certain chances.
Pyatakov admitted that he was the leader of the Trotskyite Cen-
ter. Speaking in a quiet, deliberate voice, choosing his words care-
fully, the former member of the Supreme National Economic Coun-
cil testified to the established facts of the sabotage and terrorist ac-
tivities which he had been directing up to the moment of his arrest.
Standing in the dock, his long, thin, pallid face absolutely impas-
sive, he looked, according to the American Ambassador Joseph E.
Davies, “like a professor delivering a lecture.”
Vyshinsky tried to get Pyatakov to reveal how the Trotskyites
and the German and Japanese agents made themselves known to
each other. Pyatakov parried the questions:—
VYSHINSKY. What gave the German agent Rataichak reasons
for disclosing himself to you?
PYATAKOV. Two persons had spoken to me...
VYSHINSKY. Did he disclose himself to you, or did you disclose
yourself to him?
PYATAKOV. Disclosures may be mutual.
VYSHINSKY. Did you disclose yourself first?
PYATAKOV. Who first, he or I—the hen or the egg—I don’t
know.
270
As John Gunther later reported in Inside Europe:—
The impression held widely abroad that the defendants
all told the same story, that they were abject and grovelling,
that they behaved like sheep in the executioner’s pen, isn’t
quite correct. They argued stubbornly with the prosecutor;
in the main they told only what they were forced to tell....
As the trial proceeded, and the testimony of one defendant after
another remorselessly exposed Pyatakov as a cold-blooded and cal-
culating political assassin and traitor, a note of doubt and digression
began to creep into his hitherto calm and balanced voice. Some of
the facts in the possession of the authorities came as an obvious
shock to him. Pyatakov’s attitude changed. He pleaded that, even
before his arrest, he had begun to question Trotsky’s leadership. He
said he did not approve of the deal with Hess. “We had got into a
blind alley,” Pyatakov told the court. “I was seeking a way out....”
In his last plea to the court, Pyatakov exclaimed:—
Yes, I was a Trotskyite for many years! I worked hand
in hand with the Trotskyites.... Do not think, Citizen Judg-
es... that during these years spent in the suffocating under-
world of Trotskyism, I did not see what was happening in
the country! Do not think that I did not understand what
was being done in industry. I tell you frankly: at times,
when emerging from the Trotskyite underworld and engag-
ing in my other practical work, I sometimes felt a kind of
relief, and of course, humanly speaking, this duality was
not only a matter of outward behavior, but there was also a
duality within me.... In a few hours you will pass your sen-
tence.... Do not deprive me of one thing, Citizen Judges. Do
not deprive me of the right to feel that in your eyes, too, I
have found strength in myself, albeit too late, to break with
my criminal past!
But, to the last, not a word of the existence of the remaining
“layer” of the conspiracy passed Pyatakov’s lips....
Nicolai Muralov, the one-time Commander of the Moscow Mil-
itary Garrison and leading member of the old Trotsky Guard, who
since 1932 had directed the Trotskyite cells in the Urals along with
Shestov and German “technicians,” pleaded for mercy from the
court, asking that his “frank testimony” be taken into consideration.
271
A towering man, bearded and gray-haired, Muralov stood as if at
attention while testifying. He declared that, after his attest, and fol-
lowing a protracted inner struggle, he had decided to “lay every-
thing on the table.” His words, according to Walter Duranty and
other observers, had a ring of real honesty as he stated from the
dock:—
I refused counsel and I refused to speak in my defense
because I am used to defending myself with good weapons
and attacking with good weapons. I have no good weapons
with which to defend myself.... It would be unworthy of me
to accuse anyone of having drawn me into the Trotskyite
organization.... I do not dare blame anyone for this. I my-
self am to blame. This is my guilt. This is my misfortune....
For over a decade I was a faithful soldier of Trotsky....
Karl Radek, peering through his thick glasses at the crowded
courtroom, was in tarn humble, ingratiating, impertinent and arro-
gant under the cross-examination of the Prosecutor Vyshinsky. Like
Pyatakov, but more fully, he admitted his treasonable activities,
Radek also claimed that, before his arrest, and as soon as he re-
ceived Trotsky’s letter outlining the deal with the Nazi and Japanese
Governments, he had made up his mind to repudiate Trotsky and to
expose the conspiracy. For weeks, he debated what to do.
VYSHINSKY. What did you decide?
RADEK. The first step to take would be to go to the Central
Committee of the Party, to make a statement, to name all
the persons. This I did not do. It was not I that went to the
G.P.U., but the G.P.U. that came for me.
VYSHINSKY. An eloquent reply!
RADEK. A sad reply.
In his final plea, Radek presented himself as a man torn with
doubts, perpetually vacillating between loyalty to the Soviet regime
and to the Left Opposition, of which he had been a member since
the earliest revolutionary days. He was convinced, he said, that the
Soviet regime could never withstand the hostile pressure from with-
out. “I dissented on the main question,” he told the Court, “on the
question of continuing the fight for the Five Year Plan.” Trotsky
“seized on my profound perturbations.” Step by step, according to
his own account, Radek was drawn into the inner circles of the con-
272
spiracy. Then came the connections with the foreign Intelligence
Services and, finally, Trotsky’s negotiations with Alfred Rosenberg
and Rudolph Hess. Trotsky, said Radek, “confronted us with the
accomplished fact of his agreement....”
Explaining how he had finally come to plead guilty and to ad-
mit all the facts he knew about the conspiracy, Radek said:—
When I found myself in the People’s Commissariat of
Internal Affairs, the chief examining official... said to me:
“You are not a baby. Here, you have fifteen people testify-
ing against you. You cannot get out of it, and as a sensible
man you cannot think of doing so....”
For two and a half months I tormented the examining
official. The question has been raised here whether we were
tormented while under investigation. I must say that it was
not I who was tormented, but I who tormented the examin-
ing officials and compelled them to perform a lot of useless
work. For two and a half months I compelled the examin-
ing official, by interrogating me and by confronting me
with the testimony of the other accused, to open up all the
cards to me, so that I could see who had confessed, who
had not confessed, and what each had confessed....
And one day the chief examining official came to me
and said: “You are now the last. Why are you wasting time
and temporizing? Why don’t you say what you have to
say?” And I answered: “Yes, tomorrow I shall begin my
testimony.”
The verdict was handed down on January 30, 1937.
The accused were found guilty of treason—of being “an
agency of the German and Japanese fascist forces for espi-
onage, diversive and wrecking activities” and of plotting to
assist “foreign aggressors to seize the territory of the
U.S.S.R.”
The Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court sentenced
Pyatakov, Muralov, Shestov, and ten others to be shot. Radek,
Sokolnikov and two minor agents were sentenced to long prison
terms.
In his summing-up speech on January 28, 1937, the State Pros-
ecutor Vyshinsky declared:—
273
By their espionage work, the people who under the di-
rection of Trotsky and Pyatakov established connections
with the German and Japanese Intelligence Services, strove
to achieve results which would have very gravely affected
the interests, not only of our state, but also the interests of a
number of states, which, with us, desire peace, and which,
with us, are fighting for peace.... We are keenly interested
that the N government of every country which desires
peace, and is fighting for peace, should take the most de-
termined measures, to put a stop to every attempt at crimi-
nal, espionage, diversive, terrorist activities organized by
the enemies of peace, by the enemies of democracy, by the
dark fascist forces which are preparing for war, which are
preparing to wreck the cause of peace, and consequently,
the cause of the whole of advanced, the whole of progres-
sive humanity.
Vyshinsky’s words received little publicity outside of Soviet
Russia; but they were heard and remembered by certain diplomats
and journalists.
The American Ambassador in Moscow, Joseph E. Davies, was
profoundly impressed by the trial. He attended it daily and, assisted
by an interpreter, carefully followed the proceedings. A former cor-
poration lawyer, Ambassador Davies stated that the Soviet Prosecu-
tor Vyshinsky, who was being currently described by anti-Soviet
propagandists as a “brutal Inquisitor,” impressed him as being
“much like Homer Cummings, calm, dispassionate, intellectual and
able and wise. He conducted the treason trial in a manner that won
my respect and admiration as a lawyer.”
On February 17, 1937, Ambassador Davies reported in a confi-
dential dispatch to Secretary of State Cordell Hull that almost all the
foreign diplomats in Moscow shared his opinion of the justice of the
verdict. Ambassador Davies wrote:—
I talked to many, if not all, of the members of the Dip-
lomatic Corps here and, with possibly one exception, they
are all of the opinion that the proceedings established clear-
ly the existence of a political plot and conspiracy to over-
throw the government.
But these facts were not made public. Powerful forces
274
conspired to hide the truth about the Fifth Column in Soviet Russia.
On March 11, 1937, Ambassador Davies recorded in his Moscow
diary:—
Another diplomat, Minister ——, made a most illumi-
nating statement to me yesterday. In discussing the trial, he
said that the defendants were undoubtedly guilty; that all of
us who attended the trial had practically agreed upon that;
that the outside world, from the press reports, however,
seemed to think that the trial was a put-up job (façade, as
he called it); that while he knew it was not it was probably
just as well that the outside world should think so.1
1
Trotsky’s followers and admirers in Europe and America poured
out an endless stream of statements, pamphlets, leaflets and articles
describing the Moscow trials as “Stalin’s vengeance on Trotsky” and
the product of “Stalin’s Oriental vindictiveness.” The Trotskyites and
their allies had access to many prominent publications. In the United
States, their statements and articles appeared in Foreign-Affairs Quar-
terly, Reader’s Digest, Saturday Evening Post, American Mercury,
New York Times and other well-known and widely read newspapers
and periodicals. Among those friends, followers or admirers of Leon
Trotsky whose interpretations of the trials were prominently featured in
the. American press and radio were: Max Eastman, Trotsky’s former
American representative and official translator; Alexander Barmine, a
Soviet renegade who at one time had been in the Soviet Foreign Office;
Albert Goldman, Trotsky’s lawyer who was convicted by a Federal
court in 1941 of taking part in a seditious conspiracy against the U. S.
armed forces; “General” Krivitsky, a Russian adventurer and Dies wit-
ness who posed as a former key figure in the OGPU and subsequently
committed suicide leaving a note explaining his act as atonement for
his “great sins”; Isaac Don Levine, a veteran anti-Soviet propagandist
and feature writer for the Hearst press; and William Henry Chamberlin,
also a Hearst feature writer, whose views about the trials appeared un-
der the title “The Russian Purge of Blood” in the Tokyo propaganda
organ Contemporary Japan.
The prominent American Trotskyite James Burnham, subsequently
author of the widely promoted The Managerial Revolution, represented
the Moscow Trials as an insidious attempt on Stalin’s part to enlist the
aid of France, Great Britain and the United States in a “holy war”
against the Axis, and to bring about the international persecution of “all
those who... stand for the policies of revolutionary defeatism [i.e., the
275
3. Action in May
The conspiracy was still far from being smashed. Like
Pyatakov, Radek also withheld important information from the So-
viet authorities despite the seeming fullness of his testimony. But on
the second day of the trial, Radek had made a dangerous slip. His
glib tongue betrayed him. Parrying one of Vyshinsky’s searching
questions, he mentioned the name of Tukhachevsky. “Vitaly Putna,”
said Radek, “came to see me with some request from
Tukhachevsky.” He went on rapidly and did not repeat
Tukhachevsky’s name.
Next day, Vyshinsky read aloud Radek’s testimony of the pre-
vious session: “I want to know in what connection you mention
Tukhachevsky’s name?” he asked Radek.
There was a brief pause. Then Radek’s answer came smoothly,
without hesitation. Tukhachevsky, he explained, required “some
material on government business,” which Radek had at the Izvestia
offices. The military commander had sent Putna to get it. That was
all. “Of course,” Radek added, “Tukhachevsky had no idea of my
role.... I know Tukhachevsky’s attitude to the Party and the Gov-
ernment to be that of an absolutely devoted man!”
No more was said about Tukhachevsky at the trial. But the re-
maining conspirators were convinced that any further delay of the
final coup would be suicidal.
Krestinsky, Rosengoltz, Tukhachevsky and Gamarnik held a se-
ries of hurried secret conferences. Tukhachevsky began assigning
officers in the Military Group to special “commands,” each of
which would have specific tasks to carry out at the moment of the
attack.
By the end of March, 1937, the preparations for the military
Trotskyites].” On April 15, 1937, in an introduction to a Trotskyite

pamphlet on the Pyatakov-Radek trial, Burnham wrote. “Yes: the Trials
are an integral and an outstanding part of the preparations of Stalinism
for the coming war. Stalinism aims to enlist the masses of France,
Great Britain and the United States in the armies of their own imperial-
ist governments, in a holy war against the attack which Stalin expects
to be launched against the Soviet Union by Germany and Japan.
Through the Trials, operating on a world-wide scale, Stalinism thus
attempts to eliminate every possible center of resistance to this social-
patriotic betrayal.”
276
coup were in their final stages. At a meeting with Krestinsky and
Rosengoltz, in the latter’s Moscow apartment, Tukhachevsky an-
nounced that the Military Group would be ready for action within
six weeks. The date for action could be set for the early part of May,
at any rate before May 15. There were “a number of variants” for
the actual means of seizing power under discussion among the Mili-
tary Group, he said.
One of these plans, the one on which Tukhachevsky “counted
most,” Rosengoltz later stated, was “for a group of military men, his
adherents, gathering in his apartment on some pretext or other, mak-
ing their way into the Kremlin, seizing the-Kremlin telephone ex-
change, and killing the leaders of the Party and the Government.”
Simultaneously, according to this plan, Gamarnik and his units
would “seize the building of the People’s Commissariat of Internal
Affairs.”
Other “variants” were discussed; but this plan, Krestinsky and
Rosengoltz agreed, seemed the boldest and therefore the most likely
to succeed....
The meeting at Rosengoltz’s apartment concluded on an opti-
mistic note. The plan of the coup, as outlined by Tukhachevsky,
held high promise of success. In spite of the loss of Pyatakov and
others, it seemed that the day for which the conspirators had long
waited and prepared was at hand.
April passed swiftly with the hectic last-minute preparations for
the coup.
Krestinsky began drawing up lengthy lists “of people in Mos-
cow to be arrested and removed from their posts at the outbreak of
the coup, and lists of people-who could be appointed to these va-
cancies.” Gunmen under Gamarnik’s command were assigned to
kill Molotov and Voroshilov. Rosengoltz, in his capacity of Foreign
Trade Commissar, talked of getting an appointment with Stalin on
the eve of the coup and murdering the Soviet leader in his Kremlin
headquarters....
It was the second week in May, 1937.
Then, swiftly and devastatingly, the Soviet Government struck.
On the eleventh of May, Marshal Tukhachevsky was demoted from
his post as Assistant Commissar of War and assigned to a minor
command in the Volga district. General Gamarnik was removed
from his post as Assistant War Commissar. Generals Yakir and
Uborevitch, associated in the plot with Tukhachevsky and
277
Gamarnik, were also demoted. Two other Generals, Kork and
Eideman, were arrested and charged with having secret relations
with Nazi Germany.
“I began to get ready for my arrest,” Krestinsky later stated. “I
talked matters over with Rosengoltz. Rosengoltz did not expect to
come to grief, and undertook to maintain connections with Trot-
sky.... A few days later I was arrested.”
An official communiqué disclosed that Bukharin, Rykov and
Tomsky, who had been under close surveillance and investigation,
were now charged with treason. Bukharin and Rykov had been tak-
en into custody. Tomsky, evading arrest, committed suicide. On
May 31, General Gamarnik followed Tomsky’s example and shot
himself. It was reported that Tukhachevsky and a number of other
high-ranking army officers had been arrested by the NKVD. A short
time later, Rosengoltz was arrested. The nation-wide roundup of
suspected fifth columnists was continuing.
At eleven o’clock on the morning of June 11, 1937, Marshal M.
N. Tukhachevsky and seven other Red Army generals faced a spe-
cial Military Tribunal of the Soviet Supreme Court. Because of the
confidential military character of the testimony to be heard, the trial
was held behind closed doors. It was a military court-martial. The
accused were charged with conspiring with enemy powers against
the Soviet Union. Standing in the courtroom with Tukhachevsky—
facing Marshals Voroshilov, Budyenny, Shoposhnikov and other
leaders of the Red Army—were these seven generals:—
General V. I. Putna, former military attaché at London,
Tokyo and Berlin
General I. E. Yakir, former Commander of the Lenin-
grad Military Garrison
General I. P. Uborevitch, former Commander of the
Red Army in Byelorussia
General R. P. Eideman, former head of the
Osoaviakhim (voluntary military defense organization)
General A. I. Kork, former head of the Frunze Military
Academy
General B. M. Feldman, former Chief of the Personnel
Section of the General Staff
General V. M. Primakov, former Commander of the
Kharkov Military Garrison
278
An official communiqué stated:—
Investigation established the participation of the de-
fendants as well as General Jan Gamarnik, in anti-State
connections with leading military circles of one of the for-
eign countries which is carrying on an unfriendly policy
toward the U.S.S.R.
The accused were in the service of the Military Intelli-
gence of this country.
The defendants systematically supplied secret infor-
mation about the position of the Red Army to military cir-
cles of this country.
They carried on wrecking activities for weakening the
Red Army to prepare for the defeat of the Red Army in
case of attack on the Soviet Union....
On June 12, the Military Tribunal announced its verdict. The
accused were found guilty as charged and sentenced to be shot as
traitors by a Red Army firing squad. Within twenty-four hours, the
sentence was carried out.
Once again, wild anti-Soviet rumors and propaganda swept
through the rest of the world. The entire Red Army was said to be
seething with revolt against the Soviet Government; Voroshilov was
“marching on Moscow” at the head of an anti-Stalin army; “mass
shootings” were going on throughout Soviet Russia; from now on,
the Red Army, having lost its “best generals,” was “no longer a se-
rious factor in the international situation.”
Many honest observers were profoundly disturbed by the events
in Soviet Russia. The character and techniques of the Fifth Column
were still generally unknown. On July 4, 1937, Joseph E. Davies,
the American Ambassador in Moscow, had an interview with the
Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov. He told Litvinov frankly
that the reaction in the United States and Europe to the execution of
the generals and the Trotskyite trials was bad.
“In my opinion,” the American Ambassador informed the Sovi-
et Foreign Minister, “it has shaken the confidence of France and
England in the strength of the U.S.S.R. vis-a-vis Hitler.”
Litvinov was equally frank. He told Ambassador Davies that
the Soviet Government had to “make sure” through these trials and
executions that there was no treason left which would co-operate
with Berlin or Tokyo at the outbreak of the inevitable war.
279
“Some day,” said Litvinov, “the world will understand what we
have done to protect our government from menacing treason.... We
are doing the whole world a service in protecting ourselves against
the menace of Hitler and Nazi world domination, and thereby pre-
serving the Soviet Union strong as a bulwark against the Nazi
threat.”
On July 28, 1937, having conducted personal investigations in-
to the actual situation inside Soviet Russia, Ambassador Davies sent
“Dispatch Number 457, Strictly Confidential,” to Secretary of State
Cordell Hull. The Ambassador reviewed the recent events and dis-
missed the wild rumors of mass discontent and imminent collapse
of the Soviet Government. “There were no indications (as per
newspaper stories) of Cossacks camped near the Kremlin or moving
about in the Red Square,” he wrote. Ambassador Davies summed
up his analysis of the Tukhachevsky case as follows:—
Barring assassination, or a foreign war, the position of
this government and the present regime looks impregnable
for the present, and probably for some time to come. The
danger of the Corsican for the present has been wiped out.
4. Finale
The last of the three famous Moscow Trials opened on March
2, 1938, in the House of Trade Unions, before the Military Collegi-
um of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. The proceedings, includ-
ing morning, afternoon and: evening sessions, and in camera ses-
sions at which testimony involving military secrets was heard, last-
ed seven days.
The accused numbered twenty-one. They included the former
OGPU chief, Henry Yagoda, and his secretary, Pavel Bulanov; the
Right leaders, Nicolai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov; the Trotskyite
leaders and German agents, Nicolai Krestinsky and Arkady
Rosengoltz; the Trotskyite and Japanese agent Christian Rakovsky;
the Right leaders and German agents, Mikhail Chernov and Grigori
Grinko; the Polish agent, Vasily Sharangovich; and eleven other
conspirators, members of the Bloc, saboteurs, terrorists and foreign
agents, including the Trotskyite liaison man, Sergei Bessonov, and
the physician murderers, Doctors Levin, Pletnev and Kazakov.
The American correspondent, Walter Duranty, who attended
the trial, wrote in his book, The Kremlin and the People:—
280
It was indeed the “Trial to end all Trials” because at
this time the issues were clear, the Prosecution had mar-
shaled its facts and learned to recognize enemies, at home
and abroad. Earlier doubts and hesitations were now dis-
pelled, because one case after another, especially, I believe,
the case of the “Generals,” had gradually filled in the pic-
ture which was so hazy and incomplete at the time of Ki-
rov’s murder....
The Soviet Government had painstakingly prepared its case.
Months of preliminary investigation, collation of evidence and tes-
timony from previous trials, confrontation of witnesses and accused,
and thorough cross-examination of the arrested conspirators, had
gone into the framing of the Indictment. The Soviet Government
charged:—
(1) that in 1932-33, on the instructions of intelligence services
of foreign states hostile to the U.S.S.R., a conspiratorial
group named the “bloc of Rights and Trotskyites” was
formed by the accused in the present case with the object of
espionage on behalf of foreign states, wrecking, diversion-
ist and terrorist activities, undermining the military power
of the U.S.S.R., provoking a military attack by these states
on the U.S.S.R., working for the defeat of the U.S.S.R.,
dismembering the U.S.S.R....
(2) that the “bloc of Rights and Trotskyites” entered into rela-
tions with certain foreign states with the purpose of receiv-
ing armed assistance from them for the accomplishment of
their criminal designs;
(3) that the “bloc of Rights and Trotskyites” systematically en-
gaged in espionage activities on behalf of these states, sup-
plying foreign intelligence services with highly important
state secret information;
(4) that the “bloc of Rights and Trotskyites” systematically
performed wrecking and diversionist acts in various
branches of Socialist construction (industry, agriculture,
railways, in the sphere of finance, municipal development,
etc.);
(5) that the “bloc of Rights and Trotskyites” organized a num-
ber of terrorist acts against leaders of the C.P.S.U. [Com-
munist Party of the Soviet Union] and the Soviet Govern-
281
ment and perpetrated terrorist acts against S. M. Kirov, V.
R. Menzhinsky, V. V. Kuibyshev and A. M. Gorky.
The trial of the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites made public for
the first time in history the detailed workings of an Axis Fifth Col-
umn. All the techniques of the Axis method of secret conquest—the
propaganda, the espionage, the terror, the treason in high places, the
machinations of Quislings, the tactics of a secret army striking from
within—the whole story of the Fifth Column strategy by which the
Nazis were already undermining Spain,-Austria, Czechoslovakia,
Norway, Belgium, France and other nations of Europe and America,
were fully exposed. “The Bukharins and Rykovs, Yagodas and
Bulanovs, Krestinskys and Rosengoltzes...” declared the Soviet
Prosecutor, Vyshinsky, in his summing-up address on March 11,
1938, “are the very same as the Fifth Column.”
Ambassador Joseph E. Davies, who attended the proceedings,
found the trial “terrific” in legal, human and political drama. He
wrote to his daughter on March 8:—
All the fundamental weaknesses and vices of human
nature—personal ambitions at their worst—are shown up in
the proceedings. They disclose the outlines of a plot which
came very near to being successful in bringing about the
overthrow of this government.
Some of the, accused, pleading for their lives, tried to wriggle
out of the full responsibility for their crimes, to shift the blame on
others, to pose as sincere, misguided politicians. Others, without
apparent emotion or expectation of escaping the death sentence,
related the grim details of the “political” murders they had commit-
ted, and the espionage and sabotage operations they had carried on
under the direction of the German and Japanese Military Intelli-
gence Services.
In his final plea to the court, Bukharin, who had described him-
self in court as the “ideologist” of the conspiracy, gave a vivid psy-
chological picture of the inner tensions and doubts which, after their
arrest, had begun to afflict many of the one-time radicals who had
turned traitors and, together with Trotsky, conspired with Nazi
Germany and Japan against the Soviet Union. Bukharin said:—
I already said when giving my main testimony during
the trial, that it was not the naked logic of the struggle that
282
drove us, the counter-revolutionary conspirators into this
stinking underground life, which has been exposed at this
trial in all its starkness. This naked logic of the struggle was
accompanied by a degeneration of ideas, a degeneration of
psychology, a degeneration of ourselves, a degeneration of
people. There are well-known historical examples of such
degeneration. One need only mention Briand, Mussolini
and others. And we too degenerated....
I shall now speak of myself, of the reasons for my re-
pentance. Of course it must be admitted that incriminating
evidence plays a very important part. For three months I re-
fused to say anything. Then I began to testify. Why? Be-
cause while in prison I made a revaluation of my entire
past. For when you ask yourself: “If you must die, what are
you dying for?”—an absolutely black vacuity suddenly ris-
es before you with startling vividness. There was nothing to
die for, if one wanted to die unrepented.... And when you
ask yourself: “Very well, suppose you do not die; suppose
by some miracle you remain alive, again what for? Isolated
from everybody, an enemy of the people, in an inhuman
position, completely isolated from everything that consti-
tutes the essence of life....” And at once the same reply
arises. And at such moments, Citizen Judges, everything
personal, all the personal incrustation, all the rancour,
pride, and a number of other things, fall away, disappear....
...I am perhaps speaking for the last time in my life.... I
may infer a priori that Trotsky and my other allies in crime,
as well as the Second International... will endeavor to de-
fend us, and particularly myself. I reject this defence.... I
await the verdict.
The verdict was announced on the morning of March 13, 1938.
All of the accused were found guilty. Three of them, Pletnev,
Bessonov and Rakovsky, were sentenced to terms of imprisonment.
The others were sentenced to be shot.
* * *
Three years later, in the summer of 1941, following the Nazi
invasion of the U.S.S.R., Joseph E. Davies, former American Am-
bassador to the Soviet Union, wrote:—
283
There was no so-called “internal aggression” in Russia
co-operating with the German High Command. Hitler’s
march into Prague in 1939 was accompanied by the active
military support of Henlein’s organizations in Czechoslo-
vakia. The same thing was true of his invasion of Norway.
There were no Sudeten Henleins, no Slovakian Tisos, no
Belgian De Grelles, no Norwegian Quislings in the Russian
picture....
The story had been told in the so-called treason or
purge trials of 1937 and 1938 which I attended and listened
to. In re-examining the record of these cases and also what
I had written at the time.... I found that practically every
device of German Fifth Columnist activity, as we now
know it, was disclosed and laid bare by the confessions and
testimony elicited at these trials of self-confessed “Quis-
lings” in Russia....
All of these trials, purges, and liquidations, which
seemed so violent at the time and shocked the world, are
now quite clearly a part of a vigorous and determined effort
of the Stalin government to protect itself from not only rev-
olution from within but from attack from without. They
went to work thoroughly to clean up and clean out all trea-
sonable elements within the country. All doubts were re-
solved in favor of the government.
There were no Fifth Columnists in Russia in 1941—
they had shot them. The purge had cleansed the country
and rid it of treason.
The Axis Fifth Column in Soviet Russia had been smashed.
284
CHAPTER XXI
Murder in Mexico
The chief defendant at all of the three Moscow Trials was a man
five thousand miles away.
In December 1936, following the Zinoviev Kamenev Trial and
the arrests of Pyatakov, Radek and other leading members of the
Trotskyite Center, Trotsky was forced to leave Norway. He crossed
the Atlantic and reached Mexico on January 13, 1937. Here, after a
brief stay, at the home of the wealthy Mexican artist, Diego Rivera,
Trotsky set up a new headquarters in a villa in Coyoacan, a suburb
of Mexico City. From Coyoacan, during the following months,
Trotsky looked on helplessly while piece by piece the intricate and
powerful Fifth Column in Russia fell apart under the hammer blows
of the Soviet Government....
On January 26, 1937, Trotsky gave a signed statement to the
Hearst press in the United States on the trial of Pyatakov and Radek.
“Inside the Party, Stalin has put himself above all criticism, and
above the state,” said Trotsky, commenting on the testimony at the
trial. “It is impossible to displace him except by assassination.”
An American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky, en-
gineered by Trotsky’s followers in the United States, but nominally
headed by anti-Soviet Socialists, journalists and educators, was es-
tablished in New York City. The Committee originally included a
number of prominent liberals. One of them, Mauritz Hallgren, au-
thor and associate editor of the Baltimore Sun, withdrew from the
Committee as soon as its real purpose as an anti-Soviet propaganda
agency became clear to him. On January 27, 1937, Hallgren made
public a statement to the Committee which read in part:—
I am... convinced, as I must be under the circumstanc-
es, that the American Committee for the Defense of Leon
Trotsky has, perhaps unwittingly, become an instrument of
the Trotskyites for political intervention against the Soviet
Union.... You will, therefore, withdraw my name as a
member of the committee.
The Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky undertook an
intensive propaganda campaign picturing Trotsky as the martyred
“hero of the Russian Revolution” and the Moscow Trials as “frame-
ups by Stalin.” One of the Committee’s first acts was to set up a
285
“Preliminary Commission of Inquiry” to “inquire into the charges
made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials of August, 1936,
and January, 1937.” The members of the Commission were the ag-
ing philosopher and educator, John Dewey; the author, Carleton
Beals; the former Socialist, member of the German Reichstag, Otto
Ruehle; the former American radical and anti-Soviet journalist,
Benjamin Stolberg; and the fervently pro-Trotsky journalist, Su-
zanne La Follette.
With much fanfare and publicity the Commission of Inquiry
began holding hearings in Coyoacan, Mexico, on April 10. The only
witnesses were Leon Trotsky and one of his secretaries, Jan
Frankel, who had first become a member of Trotsky’s personal
bodyguard in Prinkipo in 1930. Acting as legal counsel for Trotsky
was his American attorney, Albert Goldman.1
The hearings lasted for seven days. Trotsky’s “testimony,”
which was widely publicized in the American and European press,
consisted chiefly of violent denunciations of Stalin and the Soviet
Government, and of extravagant self-praise of his own role in the
Russian Revolution. The detailed evidence presented against Trot-
sky at the Moscow Trials was, for the most part, completely ignored
by the Commission of Inquiry. On April 17, Carleton Beals re-
signed from the Commission. Beals issued a public statement which
read in part:—
...The hushed adoration of the other members of the
committee for Mr. Trotsky throughout the hearings has de-
feated all spirit of honest investigation.... The very first day
I was told my questions were improper. The final cross-
examination was put in a mold that prevented any search
for the truth. I was taken to task for quizzing Trotsky about
his archives.... The cross-examination consisted of allowing
Trotsky to spout propaganda charges with eloquence and
wild denunciations, with only rare efforts to make him
prove his assertions.... The commission may pass its bad
check on the public if it desires, but I will not lend my
name to the possibility of further childishness similar to
1
On December 1, 1941, Albert Goldman was convicted in a Fed-
eral Court in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on charges of having conspired
to undermine the morale of the United States Army and Navy. (See
footnote, page 291.
286
that already committed.
Under the auspices of the American Committee for the Defense
of Leon Trotsky, a campaign was started to bring Trotsky into the
United States. Books, articles and statements by Trotsky were wide-
ly circulated throughout the United States, while the truth about the
Moscow Trials remained locked in the State Department files or in
the minds of correspondents in Moscow who believed, as Walter
Duranty later wrote, in the “extreme reluctance of American readers
to hear anything but ill of Russia.”2
2
Trotsky offered various “explanations” for the admissions made
at the trials by his former intimate friends, chief lieutenants and allies.
At first, he had explained the trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev by declar-
ing that the accused had been promised their lives by the Soviet Gov-
ernment on condition they made false accusations against him. “That is
the minimum that the G.P.U. could not renounce,” Trotsky had written,
“it will give its victims a chance for their lives on condition it obtains
this minimum.” After Zinoviev and Kamenev and their accomplices in
the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center were shot, Trotsky declared
they had been double-crossed. But this explanation became hopelessly
inadequate when Pyatakov, Radek and the others accused at the second
Moscow Trial also pleaded guilty and made even more damaging ad-
missions. Now Trotsky asserted the testimony of the accused was the
product of fiendish torture and mysterious, potent “drugs.” He wrote:
“The G.P.U. trials have a thoroughly inquisitorial character: that is the
simple secret of the confessions!... Perhaps in this world, there are
many heroes who are capable of bearing all kinds of tortures, physical
or moral, which are inflicted on themselves, their wives, their children.
I do not know....”
In one article Trotsky would describe the defendants at the trials as
men of “noble character,” ardent and sincere “Old Bolsheviks” who
had taken the path of opposition because of Stalin’s “betrayal of the
revolution,” and who accordingly had been liquidated by Stalin. In an-
other article, Trotsky would violently denounce Pyatakov, Radek, Bu-
kharin and the others as “despicable characters,” men of “weak will,”
and “puppets of Stalin.”
Finally, in answer to the question as to why, if they were not
guilty, veteran revolutionaries should make such admissions and why
not one of the accused had taken advantage of the open court to
proclaim his innocence, Trotsky declared at the Hearings in Mexico in
1937: “In the nature of the case, I am not obliged to answer these
questions!”
287
In Mexico, as in Turkey, France, Norway and everywhere else
he had lived, Trotsky rapidly gathered around himself a coterie of
disciples, adventurers and armed guards. Again, he lived in a fantas-
tic atmosphere of intrigue.
The villa at Coyoacan where Trotsky made his Mexican head-
quarters was a virtual fortress. A wall twenty feet high surrounded
it. In towers at the four corners sentinels armed with tommy guns
stood watch day and night. In addition to the Mexican police unit
specially detailed to duty outside the villa, Trotsky’s armed body-
guards kept his headquarters under unceasing patrol. All visitors
had to identify themselves, going through examinations as formida-
ble as those at frontier posts. Their passes had to be signed and
countersigned. After gaining admittance through the gates in the
high wall, they were frisked for concealed weapons on entering the
villa itself.
Inside, the atmosphere was one of tense activity. A considerable
staff was at work taking instructions and carrying out assignments
from the leader. Special secretaries were preparing anti-Soviet
propaganda, Trotsky’s proclamations, articles, books and secret
communications in Russian, German, French, Spanish and English.
As at Prinkipo, Paris and Oslo, many of Trotsky’s “secretaries” had
guns on their hips, and the same fantastic mood of intrigue and mys-
tery surrounded the anti-Soviet conspirator.
Mail was heavy, pouring into the Mexican headquarters from
all parts of the world. Not infrequently the mail required chemical
treatment, the actual messages being written in invisible ink be-
tween innocuous visible lines. There was continuous telegraphic
and cable correspondence with Europe, Asia and the United States.
An endless stream of journalists, celebrities, politicians, mysterious
incognito visitors, came to interview or confer with the “revolution-
ary” leader of the anti-Soviet movement. There were frequent dele-
gations of foreign Trotskyites—French Trotskyites, American Trot-
skyites, Indian Trotskyites, Chinese Trotskyites, agents of the Span-
ish P.O.U.M.
Trotsky received his visitors with the air of a ruling despot. The
American journalist Betty Kirk, who interviewed Trotsky in Mexico
and had him photographed for Life magazine, described his histrion-
ic and dictatorial manner:—
Trotsky looked at his watch and autocratically said he
288
would give us exactly eight minutes. As he commanded his
Russian secretary to sit for the picture of him dictating, he
shrilled at her slowness. He commanded Bernard Wolfe,
his North American secretary, to sit also, and while Wolfe
was crossing the room, Trotsky stood beating on the edge
of the table with his pencil, exclaiming, “Quick, don’t
waste time!”
From the fortified Coyoacan villa, Trotsky directed his world-
wide anti-Soviet organization, the Fourth International.
Throughout Europe, Asia, and North and South America, inti-
mate ties existed between the Fourth International and the Axis
Fifth Column network:—
In Czechoslovakia: Trotskyites were working in col-
laboration with the Nazi agent Konrad Henlein and his Su-
deten Deutsche Partei (German Sudeten Party). Sergei
Bessonov, the Trotskyite courier who had been a counselor
at the Soviet Embassy in Berlin, testified when he was on
trial in 1938 that in the summer of 1935 he had established
connections in Prague with Konrad Henlein. Bessonov stat-
ed that he personally had acted as an intermediary between
Henlein’s group and Leon Trotsky.
In France: Jacques Doriot, Nazi agent and founder of
the fascist Popular Party, was a renegade Communist and
Trotskyite. Doriot worked closely, as did other Nazi agents
and French fascists, with the French section of the Trotsky-
ite Fourth International.
In Spain: Trotskyites permeated the, ranks of the
P.O.U.M., the Fifth Column organization which was aiding
Franco’s Fascist uprising. The head of the P.O.U.M. was
Andreas Nin, Trotsky’s old friend and ally.
In China: Trotskyites were operating under the direct
supervision of the Japanese Military Intelligence. Their
work was highly regarded by leading Japanese Intelligence
officers. The chief of the Japanese espionage service in
Peiping stated in 1937: “We should support the group of
Trotskyites and promote their success, so that their activi-
ties in various parts of China may benefit and advantage the
empire, for these Chinese are destructive to the unity of the
country. They work with remarkable finesse and skill.”
289
In Japan: Trotskyites were called the “brain trust of the
secret service.” They instructed Japanese secret agents at
special schools on the techniques of penetrating the Com-
munist Party in Soviet Russia and of combating anti-fascist
activities in China and Japan.
In Sweden: Nils Hyg, one of the leading Trotskyites,
had received a financial subsidy from the pro-Nazi financi-
er and swindler, Ivar Kreuger. The facts of Kreuger’s sub-
sidization of the Trotskyite movement were made public af-
ter Kreuger’s suicide, when the auditors found among his
papers receipts from all sorts of political adventurers, in-
cluding Adolf Hitler.
Throughout the world, the Trotskyites had become the
instruments by which the Axis intelligence services sought
to penetrate the liberal, radical and labor movements for
their own ends.3
3
Even after Trotsky’s death, the Fourth International continued to
carry on its Fifth Column activities.
In Great Britain, in April, 1944, Scotland Yard and police officials
raided the Trotskyite headquarters in London, Glasgow, Wallsend and
Nottingham, after-discovering that Trotskyites were fomenting strikes
throughout the country in an attempt to disrupt the British war effort.
In the United States, On December 1, 1941, eighteen leading
American Trotskyites were found guilty in a Federal District Court in
Minneapolis of conspiring to undermine the loyalty and discipline of
American soldiers and sailors.
Convicted along with Trotsky’s lawyer, Albert Goldman, were
James P. Cannon, national secretary of the Socialist Workers’ Party
(the name under which the Trotsky movement operated in the United
States); Felix Morrow, editor of the Trotskyite newspaper, the Militant,
Jake Cooper, one of Trotsky’s former bodyguards in Mexico; and four-
teen other leading members of the American Trotskyite movement.
They received prison sentences ranging from a year and a day to six-
teen months.
Grant Dunne, one of the chief Trotskyites in the American labor
movement, who had been named in the Federal indictment, committed
suicide three weeks before the trial began.
In March, 1943, the Trotskyite organ, the Militant, was barred
from the U. S. mails on the grounds that the publication was seeking
“to embarrass and defeat the government in its effort to prosecute the
290
The final debacle of the Russian Fifth Column at the Moscow
trial of the Bloc of the Rights and Trotskyites was a stunning blow
to Trotsky. A note of desperation and hysteria began to dominate
his writings. His propaganda against the Soviet Union grew increas-
ingly reckless, contradictory and extravagant. He talked incessantly
about his own “historical rightness.” His attacks against Josef Stalin
lost all semblance of reason. He wrote articles asserting that the So-
viet leader derived sadistic pleasure from “blowing smoke” in the
faces of infants. More and more, his consuming personal hatred of
Stalin became the dominating force in Trotsky’s life. He set his sec-
retaries to work on a massive, vituperative Life of Stalin.4
war to a successful termination.” After an investigation of the Militant,

the Department of Justice issued a statement which read in part: “Since
December 7, 1941, this publication has openly discouraged participa-
tion in the war by the masses of the people.... The lines of this publica-
tion also include derision of democracy... and other material... appear-
ing to be calculated to engender opposition to the war effort, as well as
to interfere with the morale of the armed forces.”
The American foreign correspondent, Paul Ghali of the Chicago
Daily News, reported from Switzerland on September 28, 1944, that
Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Gestapo, was making use of the Euro-
pean Trotskyites as part of the planned Nazi underground for postwar
sabotage and intrigue. Ghali reported that fascist youth organizations
were being trained in Trotskyite “Marxism,” supplied with false papers
and arms and left behind Allied lines with orders to infiltrate the Com-
munist Parties in the liberated areas. In France, Ghali revealed, mem-
bers of Joseph Darnand’s fascist Militia were being armed by the Nazis
for terrorism and postwar Fifth Column activities. “This scum of the
French population,” Ghali’s report added, “is being now trained for
Bolshevik activity in the tradition of Trotsky’s International under the
personal orders of Heinrich Himmler. Their work is to sabotage allied
communication lines and assassinate De Gaullist French politicians.
They are being instructed to tell their fellow-countrymen that the pre-
sent-day Soviet represents only a bourgeois deformation of Lenin’s
original principles and that it is high time to return to sound Bolshevik
ideology. This formation of groups of red terrorists is Himmler’s most
recent policy, aimed at creating a fourth international, amply contami-
nated by Nazi germs. It is aimed against both British and Americans
and Russians, particularly the Russians.”
4
Trotsky’s friends in the United States made arrangements to have
this book published by Harper Brothers of New York. Although the
291
In 1939, Trotsky was in contact with, the Congressional Com-
mittee headed by Representative Martin Dies of Texas. The Com-
mittee, set up to investigate un-American activities, had become a
forum for anti-Soviet propaganda. Trotsky was approached by
agents of the Dies Committee and invited to testify as an “expert
witness” on the menace of Moscow. Trotsky was quoted in the New
York Times of December 8, 1939, as stating he considered it his
political duty to testify for the Dies Committee. Plans were dis-
cussed for Trotsky’s coming to the United States. The project, how-
ever, fell through....
In September, 1939, a European Trotskyite agent, traveling un-
der the name of Frank Jacson, arrived in the United States on the
French liner Ile de France.5 Jacson had been recruited into the Trot-
skyite movement by an American Trotskyite, Sylvia Ageloff, while
he was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1939 he was contacted
in Paris by a representative of the secret “Bureau of the Fourth In-
ternational” and told he was to go to Mexico to serve as one of
Trotsky’s “secretaries.” He was given a passport which had origi-
nally belonged to a Canadian citizen, Tony Babich, a member of the
Spanish Republican Army, who had been killed by the Fascists in
Spain. The Trotskyites had obtained Babich’s passport, removed his
photograph and inserted Jacson’s in its place.
Jacson was met on his arrival in New York City by Sylvia
Ageloff and other Trotskyites, and taken to Coyoacan, where he
went to work for Trotsky. Subsequently Jacson informed the Mexi-
can police:—
Trotsky was going to send me to Russia with the object
of organizing a new state of things in the U.S.S.R. He told
book was set up in print, Harper decided at the last minute not to dis-
tribute the book, and the few copies that had been sent out were with-
drawn from circulation. Sections of the book had previously been pub-
lished in article form by Trotsky. The last article to be published before
his death appeared on August, 1940, in Liberty magazine; the article
was entitled, “Did Stalin Poison Lenin?” In April, 1946, amidst a new
upsurge of anti-Soviet propaganda in the United States, Harper Broth-
ers reversed their original decision and published Trotsky’s tirade
against Stalin.
5
Frank Jacson’s real name was Jacques Mornard van den Dresche.
Among his other aliases were Leon Jacome and Leon Haikys.
292
me I must go to Shanghai, on the China Clipper, where I
would meet other agents in some ships, and together we
would cross Manchukuo and arrive in Russia. Our mission
was to bring demoralization to the Red Army, commit
different acts of sabotage in armament plants and other
factories.
Jacson never went on-his terroristic mission to the Soviet Un-
ion. Late in the afternoon of August 20, 1940, in the heavily forti-
fied villa at Coyoacan, Jacson murdered his leader, Leon Trotsky,
by smashing his head in with an Alpine pickax.
Arrested by the Mexican police, Jacson said he had wanted to
marry Sylvia Ageloff, and that Trotsky had forbidden the marriage.
A violent quarrel, involving the girl, broke out between the two
men. “For her sake,” said Jacson, “I decided to sacrifice myself
entirely.”
In further statements, Jacson declared:—
...in place of finding myself face to face with a political
chief who was directing the struggle for the liberation of
the working class, I found myself before a man who desired
nothing more than to satisfy his needs and desires of
vengeance and of hate and who did not utilize the workers’
struggle for anything more than a means of hiding his own
paltriness and despicable calculations.
...in connection with this house, which he said very
well had been converted into a fortress, I asked myself,
very often, from where had come the money for such
work.... Perhaps the consul of a great foreign nation who
often visited him could answer this question for us....
It was Trotsky who destroyed my nature, my future and
all my affections. He converted me into a man without a
name, without country, into an instrument of Trotsky. I was
in a blind alley.... Trotsky crushed me in his hands as if I
had been paper.
The death of Leon Trotsky left only one living candidate for the
Napoleonic role in Russia: Adolf Hitler.
293
BOOK FOUR
From Munich to San Francisco
CHAPTER XXII
The Second World War
1. Munich
“The fateful decade 1931-1941,” the U. S. State Department de-
clared in its official publication, Peace and War: United States For-
eign Policy, “began and ended with acts of violence by Japan. It
was marked by the ruthless development of a determined policy of
world domination on the part of Japan, Germany and Italy.”
The Second World War began in 1931 with the Japanese inva-
sion of Manchuria on the pretext of saving Asia from Communism.
Two years later, Hitler overthrew the German Republic on the pre-
text of saving Germany from Communism. In 1935 Italy invaded
Ethiopia to save it from “Bolshevism and barbarism.” In 1936 Hitler
remilitarized the Rhineland; Germany and Japan signed the Anti
Comintern Agreement; and German and Italian troops invaded
Spain on the pretext of saving it from Communism.
In 1937 Italy joined Germany and Japan in their Anti-
Comintern Agreement; Japan struck again in China, seizing
Peiping, Tientsin and Shanghai. The following year, Germany
seized Austria. The Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis was formed “to save
the world from Communism.”...
Addressing the Assembly of the League of Nations in Septem-
ber, 1937, the Soviet Foreign Minister, Maxim Litvinov said:—
We know three states which in recent years have made
attacks on other states. With all the difference between the
regimes, ideologies, material and cultural levels of the ob-
jects of attack, all three states justify their aggression by
one and the same motive—the struggle against Com-
munism. The rulers of these states naively think, or rather
pretend to think, that it is sufficient for them to utter the
words “anti-Communism,” and all their international felo-
nies and crimes will be forgiven them!
Under the mask of the Anti-Comintern Agreement, Germany,
Japan and Italy were marching towards the conquest and enslave-
294
ment of Europe and Asia.
Two possible courses faced the world: unity of all nations op-
posed to the Nazi, Fascist and Japanese aggression and the halting
of the Axis war menace before it was too late; or disunity, the
piecemeal surrender to aggression, and inevitable Fascist victory.
The Axis Propaganda Ministries, the agents of Leon Trotsky,
French, British and American reactionaries all combined in the in-
ternational Fascist campaign against collective security. The possi-
bility of unity against aggression was attacked as “Communist
propaganda”; dismissed as a “utopian dream”; assailed as an “in-
citement to war.” In its place was offered the policy of Appease-
ment, the scheme of turning the inevitable war into a united on-
slaught against Soviet Russia. Nazi Germany, made the most of this
policy.
The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, the hero of
appeasement, said collective security would divide Europe into
“two armed camps.”
The Nazi newspaper Nachtausgabe declared in February,
1938:—
We know now that the English Premier, like ourselves,
regards Collective Security as nothing but nonsense.
Speaking in Manchester on May 10, 1938, Winston Churchill
replied:—
We are told that we must not divide Europe into two
armed camps. Is there then to be only one armed camp?—
the Dictators’ armed camp and a rabble of outlying peoples,
wandering around its outskirts, wondering which of them is
going to be taken first and whether they are going to be
subjugated or merely exploited?
Churchill was called a “war-monger.”...
In September, 1938, the policy of Appeasement reached its
culmination. The Governments of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy,
Great Britain and France signed the Munich Pact—the anti-Soviet
Holy Alliance of which world reaction had been dreaming since
1918.
The Pact left Soviet Russia without allies. The Franco-Soviet
Treaty, cornerstone of European collective security, was dead. The
Czech Sudetenland became part of Nazi Germany. The gates of the
295
East were wide-open for the Wehrmacht.1
1
On September 24, 1938, with the Nazis moving on Czechoslo-
vakia, the leading editorial in the Socialist Appeal, New York Trotsky-
ite newspaper declared: “Czechoslovakia is one of the most monstrous
national abortions produced by the labors of the infamous Versailles
conference.... Czechoslovakia’s democracy has never been more than a
shabby cloak for advanced capitalist exploitation.... This perspective
necessarily entails the firmest revolutionary opposition to the Czecho-
slovakian bourgeois state, under any and all circumstances.”
Under such pseudo-revolutionary slogans, the Trotskyites through-
out Europe and America carried on an incessant campaign against the
defense of small nations from Axis aggression and against collective
security. As Abyssinia, Spain, North and Central China, Austria and
Czechoslovakia were invaded one after: another by Germany, Italy and
Japan, the members of Trotsky’s Fourth-International spread through-
out the world the propaganda that collective security was an “incite-
ment to war.” Trotsky asserted “the defense of the national State” was
really “a reactionary task.” In his pamphlet, The Fourth International
and the War, which was used as basic propaganda material by the Trot-
skyites in their fight against collective security, Trotsky wrote:—
“The defence of the national State, first of all in Balkanized Eu-
rope—is in the full sense of the word a reactionary task. The national
State with its borders, passports, monetary system, customs and the
army for the protection of customs has become a frightful impediment
to the economic and cultural development of humanity. Not the defence
of the national State is the task of the proletariat but its complete and
final destruction.”
Trotsky’s followers and sympathizers in Europe and America con-
ducted a bitter struggle against the Popular Front in France, the Spanish
Republican Government and other patriotic, anti-Fascist mass move-
ments which were trying to achieve national unity within their own
countries and collective security agreements with the Soviet Union.
The Trotskyite propaganda declared these movements would only in-
volve their countries in war. “The Stalinist version of the United
Front,” declared C. L. James, a leading British Trotskyite, “is not unity
for action but unity to lead all workers into imperialistic war.”
Trotsky himself ceaselessly “warned” against the “dangers” in-
volved in an Axis defeat at the hands of the nonaggressor nations. “A
victory of France, of Great Britain and the Soviet Union over Germany
and Japan,” Trotsky declared at the Hearings in Mexico in April, 1937,
“could signify first a transformation of the Soviet Union into a bour-
geois state and the transformation of France into a fascist state, be-
296
“The Munich Agreement,” wrote Walter Duranty in The Krem-
lin and the People, “seemed to mark the greatest humiliation which
the Soviet Union had suffered since the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.”
The world awaited the Nazi-Soviet war.
Returning to England, waving a scrap of paper in his hand, with
Hitler’s signature on it, Neville Chamberlain cried:—
“It means peace in our time!”
Twenty years before, the British spy, Captain Sidney George
Reilly had cried: “At any price this foul obscenity which has been
born in Russia must be crushed.... Peace with Germany! Yes, peace
with anybody!... Peace, peace on any terms—and then a united front
against the true enemies of mankind!”
On June 11, 1938, Sir Arnold Wilson, Chamberlain’s supporter
in the House of Commons, declared:—
Unity is essential and the real danger to the world
today does not come from Germany or Italy... but from
Russia.
But the first victims of the anti-Soviet Munich Pact were not the
Soviet peoples. The first victims were the democratic peoples of
Europe. Once again, the anti-Soviet façade covered a betrayal of
democracy.
In February, 1939, the British and French Governments recog-
nized the Fascist dictatorship of Generalissimo Franco as the legiti-
mate government of Spain. In the last days of March, after two and
a half years of epic, agonizing struggle against overwhelming odds,
Republican Spain became a Fascist province.
On March 15, Czechoslovakia ceased to be an independent
state. Nazi Panzer divisions rumbled into Prague. The Skoda muni-
tions works and twenty-three other arms factories, comprising an
armaments industry three times as great as that of Fascist Italy, be-
cause, for a victory over Hitler it is necessary to have a monstrous mili-

tary machine.... A victory can signify the destruction of fascism in
Germany and the establishment of fascism in France.”
In this way Trotsky and his fellow propagandists worked hand-in-
glove with the appeasers and with the Axis Propaganda Ministries to
persuade the people of Europe that collective security was war-
mongering and that those agencies attempting to achieve it were “Sta-
linist” tools.
297
came Hitler’s property. The pro-Fascist General Jan Sirovy, one-
time leader of the Czech interventionist armies in Soviet Siberia,
handed over to the German High Command the arsenals, store-
houses, a thousand planes and all the first-rate military equipment of
the Czechoslovakian Army.
On March 20, Lithuania surrendered its only port, Memel, to
Germany.
On Good Friday morning, April 7, Mussolini crossed the Adri-
atic and invaded Albania. Five days later, King Victor Emmanuel
accepted the Albanian crown.
From Moscow, even as Hitler was moving into Czechoslovakia,
Stalin warned the appeasement politicians of England and France
that their anti-Soviet policy would end in a disaster for themselves.
Stalin spoke in Moscow on March 10, 1939, before the Eighteenth
Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The undeclared war, said Stalin, which the Axis powers were
already waging in Europe and Asia, under the mask of the Anti-
Comintern Pact, was directed not only against Soviet Russia but
also, and now in fact primarily, against the interests of England,
France and the United States.
“The war is being waged,” said Stalin, “by aggressor states,
which in every way infringe upon the interests of the non-
aggressive states, primarily England, France and the U.S.A., while
the latter drew back and retreated, making concession after conces-
sion to the aggressors... without the least attempt at resistance and
even with a certain amount of connivance. Incredible but true.”
The reactionary politicians in the Western democracies, particu-
larly in England and France, said Stalin, had rejected the policy of
collective security. Instead, they still dreamed of an anti-Soviet coa-
lition camouflaged by diplomatic phrases like “appeasement” and
“non-intervention.” But this policy, said Stalin, was already
doomed. Stalin added: “...certain European and American politi-
cians and newspaper writers, having lost patience waiting for the
march on the Soviet Ukraine, are themselves beginning to disclose
what is really behind the policy of non-intervention. They are say-
ing quite openly, putting it down in black and white, that the Ger-
mans have cruelly ‘disappointed’ them, for instead of marching far-
ther east, against the Soviet Union, they have turned west, you see,
and are demanding colonies. One might think that the districts of
Czechoslovakia were yielded to Germany as the price of an under-
298
taking to launch war on the Soviet Union, and now the Germans are
refusing to meet their bills....
“Far be it from me,” said Stalin, “to moralize on the policy of
non-intervention, to talk of treason, treachery and so on. It would be
naive to preach morals to people who recognize no human morality.
Politics is politics, as the old, case-hardened bourgeois diplomats
say. It must be remarked, however, that the big and dangerous polit-
ical game started by the supporters of the policy of non-intervention
may end in a serious fiasco for them.”
The Soviet Union still wanted international cooperation against
aggressors and a realistic policy of collective security; but, Stalin
made clear, such cooperation must be genuine and wholehearted.
The Red Army had no intention of becoming a cat’s-paw for the
appeasement politicians of England and France. Finally, if the worst
came, the Red Army was confident of its own strength and of the
unity and loyalty of the Soviet people. As Stalin put it:
“...in the case of war, the rear and front of our army... will be
stronger than those of any other country, a fact which people be-
yond our border who love military conflicts would do well to re-
member.”
But Stalin’s blunt, significant warning was ignored.
In April, 1939, a poll of British public opinion showed that 87
per cent of the English people were in favor of an Anglo-Soviet
alliance against Nazi Germany. Churchill saw the Anglo-Soviet
rapprochement as “a matter of life or death.” In a speech on May
27, Churchill sharply declared:—
If His Majesty’s government, having neglected our de-
fenses, having thrown away Czechoslovakia with all that
Czechoslovakia means in military power, having commit-
ted us to the defense of Poland and Roumania, now rejects
and casts away the indispensable aid of Russia, and so
leads in the worst of ways into the worst of wars, they will
have ill-deserved the generosity with which they have been
treated by their fellow countrymen.
On July 29 David Lloyd George backed up Churchill’s pleas
with these words:—
Mr. Chamberlain negotiated directly with Hitler. He
went to Germany to see him. He and Lord Halifax made
299
visits to Rome. They went to Rome, drank to Mussolini’s
health and told him what a fine fellow he was. But whom
have they sent to Russia? They have not even sent the low-
est in rank of a Cabinet minister; they have sent a clerk in
the Foreign Office. It is an insult.... They have no sense of
proportion or of the gravity of the whole situation when the
world is trembling on the brink of a great precipice....
The voices of the British people and of English statesmen like
Churchill and Lloyd George went unheeded.
“A hard and fast alliance with Russia,” observed the London
Times, “would hamper other negotiations.”...2
As the summer of 1939 drew to a close and war in Europe
loomed ever nearer, William Strang, a minor Foreign Office official
whom Chamberlain had sent to Moscow, remained the only British
representative carrying on direct negotiations with the Soviet Gov-
ernment. Public pressure forced Chamberlain to make another show
of negotiations with Russia. On August 11, a British military mis-
sion arrived in Moscow to conduct joint staff talks. The British mis-
sion had traveled from London on a thirteen-knot vessel, the slowest
possible means of transport. When the mission arrived, the Russians
learned, it had no more authority than Strang to sign any agreement
with the Soviet Government....
Soviet Russia was to be isolated and left alone to face a Nazi
2
On the day that the Nazi Army entered Prague, a delegation of
the Federation of British Industries was in Dusseldorf drawing up the
final details of a comprehensive agreement with German big business.
In July the British press carried the sensational disclosure that Robert
S. Hudson, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, had been
with Dr. Helmuth Wohlthat, Hitler’s economic adviser, to discuss the
possibility of a British loan of £51,000,000 to Nazi Germany.
By no means all British big businessmen were in sympathy with
the policy of appeasing the Nazis. On June 8, the banker and coal mag-
nate Lord Davies declared in the House of Lords: “The Russian Gov-
ernment know perfectly well that in certain quarters in this country
there is lurking a hope that the German Eagles would fly eastwards and
not westwards, as it was apparently intended they should do at the time
when Hitler wrote Mein Kampf.”... Regarding Chamberlain’s negotia-
tions with the Soviet Government, Lord Davies said, “Sometimes I
wonder whether, even now, the Cabinet are really in earnest or whether
these negotiations are not merely another sop to public opinion.”
300
Germany passively, if not actively, supported by the Munich-
minded governments of Europe.
Joseph E. Davies later described the choice that the Soviet
Government was forced to make. Writing to President Roosevelt’s
advisor, Harry Hopkins, the former Ambassador to the Soviet Union
stated on July 18, 1941:—
From my observations and contacts, since 1936, I be-
lieve that outside of the President of the United States alone
no government in the world saw more clearly the menace
of Hitler to peace and the necessity for collective security
and alliances among non-aggressive nations than did the
Soviet government. They were ready to fight for Czecho-
slovakia. They cancelled their non-aggression pact with Po-
land in advance of Munich because they wished to clear the
road for the passage of their troops through Poland to go to
the aid of Czechoslovakia if necessary to fulfill their treaty
obligations. Even after Munich and as late as the spring of
1939 the Soviet government agreed to join with Britain,
and France if Germany should attack Poland or Roumania,
but urged that an international conference of non-aggressor
states should be held to determine objectively and realisti-
cally what each could do and then serve notice on Hitler of
their combined resistance.... The suggestion was declined
by Chamberlain by reason of the objection of Poland and
Roumania to the inclusion of Russia....
During all the spring of 1939 the Soviets tried to bring
about a definite agreement that would assume unity of ac-
tion and co-ordination of military plans to stop Hitler.
Britain... refused to give the same guarantees of protec-
tion to Russia with reference to the Baltic states which Rus-
sia was giving to France and Britain in the event of aggres-
sion against Belgium or Holland. The Soviets became con-
vinced, and with considerable reason, that no effective, di-
rect and practical, general arrangement could be made with
France and Britain. They were driven to a pact of nonag-
gression with Hitler.
Twenty years after Brest-Litovsk, the anti-Soviet politicians of
Europe had again forced Soviet Russia into an undesired, self-
defensive treaty with Germany.
301
On August 24, 1939, the Soviet Union signed a Nonaggression
Pact with Nazi Germany.
2. World War II
On September 1, 1939, Nazi mechanized divisions invaded Po-
land at seven points. Two days later, Great Britain and France de-
clared war on Germany. Within two weeks, the Polish regime,
which under the influence of the anti-Soviet “Colonels’ clique” had
allied itself with Nazism, refused Soviet aid and opposed collective
security, fell to pieces, and the Nazis were mopping up the scattered
remnants of their former ally.
On September 17, as the Nazi columns raced across Poland and
the Polish Government fled in panic, the Red Army crossed the
prewar Polish eastern border and occupied Byelorussia, the western
Ukraine and Galicia before the Nazi Panzers could get there. Mov-
ing swiftly westward, the Red Army occupied all the territory which
Poland had annexed from Soviet Russia in 1920.
“That the Russian armies should stand on this line was clearly
necessary for the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace...” de-
clared Winston Churchill in a radio broadcast on October 1. “An
Eastern Front has been created which Nazi Germany does not dare
assail. When Herr von Ribbentrop was summoned to Moscow last
week it was to learn the fact, and accept the fact, that the Nazi de-
signs upon the Baltic states and upon the Ukraine must come to a
dead stop.”
The advance of the Red Army to the west was the first of a se-
ries of moves by the Soviet Union counterbalancing the spread of
Nazism and designed to strengthen Soviet defenses in preparation
for the inevitable showdown with the Third Reich....
During the last week in September and the first days in Octo-
ber, the Soviet Government signed mutual assistance pacts with
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. These agreements specified that Red
Army garrisons and Soviet airports and naval bases were to be es-
tablished in the Baltic States.
But to the north, Finland remained as a potential military ally of
the Third Reich.
The Finnish military leader, Baron Karl Gustav von Manner-
heim, was in close and constant communication with the German
High Command. There were frequent joint staff talks, and German
officers periodically supervised Finnish army maneuvers. The Finnish
302
Chief of Staff, General Karl Oesch, had received his military training
in Germany, as had his chief aide, General Hugo Ostermann, who
served in the German Army during the First World War.
Political relations between Finland and Nazi Germany were al-
so close. The Socialist Premier Risto Ryti regarded Hitler as a “ge-
nius”; Per Svinhufrud, the wealthy Germanophile who had been
awarded the German Iron Cross, was the most powerful behind-the-
scenes figure in Finnish politics.
With the aid of German officers and engineers, Finland had
been converted into a powerful fortress to serve as a base for the
invasion of the Soviet Union. Twenty-three military airports had
been constructed on Finnish soil, capable of accommodating ten
times as many airplanes as there were in the Finnish Air Force. Nazi
technicians had supervised the construction of the Mannerheim
Line, a series of intricate, splendidly equipped fortifications running
several miles deep along the Soviet border and having heavy guns at
one point only twenty-one miles from Leningrad. Unlike the Magi-
not Line, the Mannerheim Line had been designed not only for de-
fensive purposes but also for garrisoning a major offensive force.
As the Mannerheim Line neared completion in the summer of 1939,
Hitler’s Chief of Staff, General Haider, arrived from Germany and
gave the massive fortification a final inspection....
The Soviet Government proposed a mutual assistance pact with
Finland. Moscow offered to cede several thousand square miles of
Soviet territory on central Karelia in exchange for some strategic
Finnish islands near Leningrad, a portion of the Karelian Isthmus
and a thirty-year lease on the port of Hango for the construction of a
Soviet naval base. The Soviet leaders regarded these latter territo-
ries as essential to the defense of the Red naval base at Kronstadt
and the city of Leningrad.
In the middle of November, the pro-Nazi clique dominating the
Finnish Government abruptly broke off the negotiations.
By the end of November, the Soviet Union and Finland were at
war.
The anti-Soviet elements in England and France believed that
the long-awaited holy war was at hand. The strangely inactive war
in the west against Nazi Germany was the “wrong war.” The real
war lay to the east. In England, France and the United States, an
intense anti-Soviet campaign began under the slogan of “Aid to
Finland.”
303
Prime Minister Chamberlain, who only a short time before had
asserted his country lacked adequate arms for fighting the Nazis,
quickly arranged to send to Finland 144 British airplanes, 114 heavy
guns, 185,000 shells, 50,000 grenades, 15,700 aerial bombs,
100,000 greatcoats and 48 ambulances. At a time when the French
Army was in desperate need of every piece of military equipment to
hold the inevitable Nazi offensive, the French Government turned
over to the Finnish Army 179 airplanes, 472 guns, 795,000 shells,
5100 machine guns and 200,000 hand grenades.
While the lull continued on the Western Front, the British High
Command, still dominated by anti-Soviet militarists like General
Ironside, drew up plans for sending 100,000 troops across Scandi-
navia into Finland, and the French High Command made prepara-
tions for a simultaneous attack on the Caucasus under the leadership
of General Weygand, who openly stated that French bombers in the
Near East were ready to strike at the Baku oil fields.
Day after day the British, French and American newspapers
headlined sweeping Finnish victories and catastrophic Soviet de-
feats. But after three months of fighting in extraordinarily difficult
terrain and under incredibly severe weather conditions, with the
temperature frequently falling to sixty and seventy degrees below
zero, the Red Army had smashed the “impregnable” Mannerheim
Line and routed the Finnish Army.3
Addressing the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. on March 29,
1940, Molotov declared:—
The Soviet Union, having smashed the Finnish Army
and having every opportunity of occupying the whole of
Finland, did not do so and did not demand any indemnities
for its expenditures in the war as any other Power would
have done, but confined its desires to a minimum.... We
pursued no other objects in the peace treaty than that of
safeguarding the security of Leningrad, Murmansk and the
Murmansk railroad....
The undeclared war of Nazi Germany against Soviet Russia
went on....
3
In June, 1940, the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in New York
City reported: “The American press told less truth and retailed more
fancy lies about the Finnish war than about any recent conflict.”
304
On the day that Finnish-Soviet hostilities ceased, General Man-
nerheim declared in a proclamation to the Finnish Army that “the
sacred mission of the army is to be an outpost of Western civiliza-
tion in the east.” Shortly afterwards, the Finnish Government began
to construct new fortifications along the revised frontier. Nazi tech-
nicians came from Germany to supervise the work. Large armament
orders were placed with Sweden and Germany. German troops be-
gan arriving in considerable numbers in Finland. The Finnish and
the German Commands set up joint headquarters and held joint ar-
my maneuvers. Scores of Nazi agents swelled the staffs of the Ger-
man Embassy at Helsinki and the eleven consulates around the
country....
The lull in the west came to a sudden end in the spring of 1940.
On April 9 German troops invaded Denmark and Norway. Denmark
was occupied in a single day without resistance. By the end of the
month the Nazis had crushed organized Norwegian resistance, and
the British troops, which had come to aid the Norwegians, were
abandoning their few precarious footholds. A puppet Nazi regime
was set up in Oslo under Major Vidkun Quisling.
On May 10, Chamberlain tendered his resignation as Prime
Minister, having brought his country to possibly the most desperate
situation in its long history. That same day, as the King asked Win-
ston Churchill to form a new cabinet, the German Army invaded
Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. By May 21, the Germans had
smashed their way through crumbling opposition, reached the
Channel and cut off the Allies in Flanders.
Panic swept through France. Everywhere, the Fifth Column was
at work. French troops were deserted by their officers. Whole divi-
sions found themselves without military supplies. Paul Reynaud
told the Senate that French Army chiefs had committed “unbelieva-
ble errors.” He denounced “traitors, defeatists and cowards.” Doz-
ens of top-ranking French officers were suddenly arrested. But the
arrests came too late. The Fifth Column was already in control of
France.
The former French Minister of Aviation, Pierre Cot, later wrote
in Triumph of Treason:—
...the Fascists had their own way in the country at large
and in the Army. The anti-Communist agitation was a
smoke screen behind which was being prepared the great
305
political conspiracy that was to paralyze France and facili-
tate Hitler’s work.... The most efficient instruments of the
Fifth Column... were Weygand, Petain and Laval. At the
Council of Ministers which was held at Cangé, near Tours,
on June 12, 1940, General Weygand urged the government
to end the war. His principal argument was that a Com-
munist revolution had broken out in Paris. He stated that
Maurice Thorez, General Secretary of the Communist Par-
ty, was already installed in the Presidential Palace. Georges
Mandel, Minister of the Interior, immediately telephoned to
the Prefect of Police in Paris, who denied Weygand’s
statements; there was no disturbance in the city, the popula-
tion was quiet.... As soon as they had seized power amid
the confusion of the collapse, Petain and Weygand, with
the help of Laval and Darlan, hastened to suppress all polit-
ical liberties, gag the people, and set up a Fascist regime.
With every hour, confusion mounted and the debacle grew, as
the French soldiers fought on desperately, hopelessly, and the world
watched the betrayal of a nation on a scale never witnessed
before....
From-May 29 through June 4, the British Army evacuated its
troops from Dunkirk, heroically rescuing 335,000 men.
On June 10, Fascist Italy declared war on France and England.
On June 14, Paris fell, and Petain, Weygand, Laval and the
Trotskyite Doriot became the Nazi puppet rulers of France.
On June 22, an armistice between Germany and France was
signed in the Compiègne Forest in the very same railroad car in
which Marshal Foch had dictated the terms of surrender to the de-
feated Germans twenty-two years before....
* * *
As France crumbled, the Red Army again moved swiftly to
strengthen the defenses of the Soviet Union.
In the middle of June, forestalling an imminent Nazi Putsch in
the Baltic States, Soviet armored divisions occupied Estonia, Latvia
and Lithuania.
On June 27, the Red Army moved into Bessarabia and northern
Bukovina, which Rumania had snatched from the Russians after the
Revolution.
306
The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany now faced one another on
their future battle lines.
Toward the end of July, the Nazis launched mass air raids over
London and other English cities, pouring down tons of explosives
upon the civilian population. The raids, which increased in ferocity
throughout the next month, were intended to terrify and paralyze the
whole nation, and swiftly bring an already gravely weakened Eng-
land to her knees.
But profound changes were taking place within Great Britain.
The confusion and division which had resulted from Chamberlain’s
leadership had given way to determination and growing national
unity. Across the narrow Channel the British people saw the work-
ings of the Fifth Column. Churchill’s Government acted swiftly and
with resolution. Scotland Yard and British Intelligence swooped
down on Nazi agents, British Fascists and leaders of secret Fifth
Column intrigues. In a sudden raid on the London headquarters of
the British Union of Fascists, the authorities seized important doc-
uments and arrested many Fifth Columnists. The leader of the Brit-
ish Fascist Party, Sir Oswald Mosley, was arrested in his own
apartment. More sensational arrests followed. John Beckett, a for-
mer Member of Parliament and founder of the anti-Soviet and pro-
Nazi People’s Party; Captain A. H, Ramsay, Tory Member of Par-
liament for Peebles; Edward Dudley Elan, an official in the Ministry
of Health, his wife Mrs. Dacre Fox, and other prominent pro-Nazis
and Fascists were arrested. A Treachery Bill was passed, providing
the death penalty for traitors.
Showing that it had learned well the lesson of France and of the
Moscow Trials, the British Government in July, 1940, announced
the arrest of Admiral Sir Barry Domvile, former Director of Naval
Intelligence. Domvile, a friend of Alfred Rosenberg and of the late
General Max Hoffmann, had been involved in most of the anti-
Soviet conspiracies since 1918. At the time of his arrest, Domvile
was the head of a secret pro-Nazi society in England called The
Link which was organized with the aid of Heinrich Himmler, Chief
of the Gestapo....
Assured against treachery from within, the British people faced
the ordeal of the Nazi air blitz without flinching, and defended
themselves. On the single day of September 17, 1940, the RAF
downed no less than 185 German planes over England.
Meeting such fierce and unexpected resistance, and mindful of
307
the Red Army on his eastern borders, Hitler paused at the Channel.
He did not invade the British Isles....
The year was 1941. An air of tense expectancy hung over the
whole of Europe as Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, the two
greatest military powers in the world, prepared to lock in battle.
On March 1, the Germans entered Sofia, and Bulgaria became a
Nazi base.
On April 6, after a popular revolt had overthrown Regent Prince
Paul’s Yugoslavian regime and Nazi agents were forced to flee the
country, the Soviet government signed a nonaggression pact with
the new Yugoslavian Government that same day. Nazi Germany
declared war on Yugoslavia and invaded it. On May 5, Stalin be-
came Premier of the U.S.S.R.4
4
At 10:30 P.M. on the night of Saturday, May 10, 1941, a German
Messerschmitt plane plummeted earthward over Lanarkshire, Scotland,
and buried its nose in a field near Dungavel Castle, property of the
young Duke of Hamilton. A former employee on the Duke’s estate saw
the flare of the fallen plane and then the slow, white plume of a de-
scending parachute. Armed with a pitchfork he ran out to find a man
lying on the ground with a broken ankle. The man was Rudolph Hess,
Adolf Hitler’s Deputy.
“Take me to the Duke of Hamilton,” said Hess, speaking in Eng-
lish. “I have come to save humanity!”
Hess hoped through Hamilton and his friends to gain British Tory
backing for the Nazi attack on Soviet Russia.
Sir Patrick Dolan, Lord Provost of Glasgow, Scotland, said on
June 11, 1941: “Hess came here... in the belief that he could remain in
Scotland two days, discuss his peace proposals with a certain group and
be given a supply of petrol and maps to enable him to return to Germa-
ny and tell them the results of his conversation.”
Referring to the Hess Mission in his speech of November 6, 1941,
Stalin declared: “The Germans knew that their policy of playing upon
the contradictions between the classes in separate states, and the con-
tradictions between these states and the Soviet Union, had already pro-
duced results in France, the rulers of which had allowed themselves to
be intimidated by the spectre of revolution, had refused to resist, and
terror-stricken had placed their native land under the heel of Hitler. The
German fascist strategists thought the same thing would occur with
Great Britain and the United States of America. The notorious Hess
was sent to Britain by the German fascists for this very purpose, in or-
der to persuade the British politicians to join the general campaign
308
* * *
At four o’clock on the morning of June 22, 1941, without any
declaration of war, Hitler’s tanks, air force, mobile artillery, motor-
ized units and infantry were hurled across the borders of the Soviet
Union on a stupendous front stretching from the Baltic to the Black
Sea.
Later that morning Goebbels broadcast Hitler’s war proclama-
tion. It read in part:—
German people! At this moment a march is taking
place that, as regards extent, compares with the greatest the
world has hitherto seen. United with their Finnish com-
rades, the fighters of the victory of Narvik are standing in
the Northern Arctic. German divisions commanded by the
conqueror of Norway, in co-operation with the heroes of
Finnish freedom, under their marshal, are protecting Finn-
ish soil. Formations of the German eastern front extend
from East Prussia to the Carpathians. German and Rumani-
an soldiers are united under Chief of State Antonescu from
the banks of the Pruth along the lower reaches of the Dan-
ube to the shores of the Black Sea. The task of this front,
therefore, no longer is the protection of single countries,
but the safeguarding of Europe and thereby the salvation of
all.
Italy, Rumania, Hungary and Finland joined the Nazi war on
Soviet Russia. Special Fascist contingents were raised in France and
Spain. The united armies of a counterrevolutionary Europe had
launched a Holy War against the Soviets. The Plan of General Max
Hoffmann was being tested in action....
On December 7, 1941, without warning, Japanese bombing
planes and battleships attached the United States of America. Nazi
Germany and Fascist Italy declared war on the United States....
On December 9, in an address to the American people, Presi-
dent Roosevelt said:—
The course that Japan has followed for the past ten
years in Asia has paralleled the course of Hitler and Musso-
against the U.S.S.R. But the Germans gravely miscalculated. Rudolph

Hess became a prisoner of the British Government.”
309
lini in Europe and Africa. Today, it has become far more
than a parallel. It is collaboration so well calculated that all
the continents of the world, and all the oceans, are now
considered by the Axis strategists as one gigantic battle-
field.
In 1931, Japan invaded Manchukuo—without warning.
In 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia—without warning.
In 1938, Hitler occupied Austria—without warning.
In 1939, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia—without
warning.
Later in 1939, Hitler invaded Poland—without
warning.
In 1940, Hitler invaded Norway, Denmark, Holland,
Belgium and Luxembourg—without warning.
In 1940, Italy attacked France and later Greece—
without warning.
In 1941, Hitler invaded Russia—without warning.
And now Japan has attacked Malaya and Thailand—
and the United States-—without warning.
It is all of one pattern.
The masks were off. The secret war of the Axis Anti-Comintern
against Soviet Russia had merged with the world war against all
free peoples.
On December 15, 1941, in a Message to Congress, President
Roosevelt declared:—
In 1936 the Government of Japan openly associated it-
self with Germany by entering the anti-Comintern Pact.
This pact, as we all know, was nominally directed against
the Soviet Union; but its real purpose was to form a league
of fascism against the free world, particularly against Great
Britain, France and the United States.
The Second World War had entered its final decisive phase as a
global conflict between the forces of international Fascism and the
united armies of progressive mankind.
310
CHAPTER XXIII
American Anti-Comintern
1. Heritage of the Black Hundreds
The chief aim of Axis secret diplomacy after June 22, 1941, was to
prevent at all costs the United States from joining the Anglo-Soviet
Alliance against Nazi Germany. The isolation of America was vital-
ly essential to the master plan of the German and Japanese High
Commands.
America became a focal point of Axis anti-Soviet propaganda
and intrigue.
Ever since 1918, the American people had been subjected to a
continuous stream of false propaganda about Soviet Russia. The
Russian Revolution was portrayed as the work of “wild, unruly
mobs” incited by “cutthroats, criminals and degenerates”; the Red
Army was an “undisciplined rabble”; Soviet economy was “un-
workable” and Soviet industry and agriculture were “in a hopeless
state of anarchy”; the Soviet people were just waiting for war to rise
in rebellion against their “ruthless masters in Moscow.”
The moment Nazi Germany attacked Soviet Russia, a chorus of
voices in the United States predicted the immediate collapse of the
U.S.S.R. Here are some typical statements made by Americans fol-
lowing the invasion of Soviet Russia:—
Hitler will be in control of Russia in thirty days.—
Congressman Martin Dies, June 24, 1941.
It will take a miracle bigger than any seen since the Bi-
ble was written to save the Reds from utter defeat in a very
short time.—Fletcher Pratt, New York Post, June 27, 1941.
Russia is doomed and America and Great Britain are
powerless to prevent her swift destruction before the Blitz-
krieg hammering of the Nazi Army.—Hearst’s New York
Journal-American, June 27, 1941.
...in staff work and leadership, in training and equip-
ment they [the Russians] are no match for the Germans;
Timoshenko and Budyenny and Stern are not the same cal-
iber as Keitel and Brauchitch. Purges and politics have hurt
the Red Army.-—Hanson W. Baldwin, New York Times,
311
June 29, 1941.
There need be no excuses and no explanations, except
that incompetence, despotism, lack of managerial capacity,
lack of initiative, government by fear and purge left the gi-
ant helpless and incapacitated. Soviet Russia had bluffed
the world for a quarter of a century and the bluff has been
called.... We must be prepared for the shock of the elimina-
tion of Soviet Russia from the war altogether.—George E.
Sokolsky, June 26, 1941.
On November 20, 1941, an editorial entitled “Ignorance of Rus-
sia” appeared in the Houston Post. It posed a question that was up-
permost in many American minds. The editorial stated:—
Something that has not been satisfactorily explained is
why the people of the United States for the last twenty
years have been kept largely in ignorance of the material
progress of Soviet Russia.
When Hitler attacked Russia, the almost unanimous
opinion in this country was that Stalin could not last long.
Our “best minds” had no hope for Russia. They looked
forward to a quick conquest of the country by the Nazis....
Russia was expected by most Americans to fold up as the
Nazis advanced....
How and why was this information kept from the
American people for so long?
A barrier had been raised between the American people and the
people of Soviet Russia ever since 1918. Artificial hatred and fear
of Soviet Russia had been stimulated in America by reactionary
politicians and businessmen, by White Russian émigrés and coun-
terrevolutionary agents, and, finally, by representatives of the Axis
Propaganda Ministries and Intelligence Services.
Immediately after the Russian Revolution, White Russian émi-
grés began flooding America with anti-Soviet forgeries and stirring
up suspicion and hostility against Soviet Russia. From the start, the
anti-Soviet campaign of the Czarist émigrés in the United States
merged with a fascist secret war against America itself.
The first Nazi cells were formed in the United States in 1924.
They operated under Fritz Gissibl, head of the Nazi Teutonia
Society in Chicago. That same year Captain Sidney George Reilly
312
and his White Russian associates formed a branch of his
International League against Bolshevism in the United States.
Throughout the nineteen-twenties, Nazi agents like Fritz Gissibl and
Heinz Spanknoebel, operating under orders from Rudolph Hess and
Alfred Rosenberg, carried on their anti-democratic and anti-Soviet
work in America in intimate collaboration with the anti-Soviet
White Russians.
The White Russian Peter Afanassieff, alias Prince Peter
Kushubue, alias Peter Armstrong, arrived in San Francisco in 1922,
aided in the American distribution of The Protocols of Zion, and, in
collaboration with the former Czarist officer, Captain Victor de
Kayville, began publishing a pro-Nazi, anti Semitic propaganda
sheet, The American Gentile. In this work, Afanassieff was associ-
ated with the Nazi agents Fritz Gissibl and Oscar Pfaus.
Nicolai Rybakoff, a former colonel in the Japanese-controlled
White Russian Army of Ataman Grigori Semyonov, arrived in the
United States in the early nineteen-twenties and carried on anti-
Soviet and anti-Semitic propaganda. In 1933, when Hitler came to
power in Germany, Rybakoff founded Rossiya, a pro-Nazi Russian
newspaper in New York City. The Japanese agent Semyonov and
his aide-in-chief, Rodzaevsky, maintained contact with Rybakoff
from Manchukuo, where they commanded a Japanese-financed ar-
my of White Russians. Japanese propaganda from Manchukuo was
regularly featured in Rossiya, along with Nazi propaganda. In 1941,
after Hitler’s attack on Russia, Rybakoff’s New York paper de-
scribed the Nazi Wehrmacht as “a fiery sword of the justly punish-
ing Providence, the Christian patriotically anti-bolshevik white vic-
torious legions of Hitler.”1
1
Associated with Rybakoff as a contributor to Rossiya was the ex-
agent of the Ochrana and anti-Semitic propagandist, Boris Brasol, who
bad set up the first anti-Soviet White Russian organization in the Unit-
ed States shortly after the Russian Revolution and who had obtained
wide distribution in America for The Protocols of Zion. (See page 130.)
Brasol had never lost hope in the restitution of Czarism in Russia.
During the 1920’s and 1930’s he campaigned tirelessly in the United
States against the Soviet Union, organizing White Russian anti-Soviet
societies, writing articles and books attacking Soviet Russia, and sup-
plying U. S. Government agencies with anti-Soviet forgeries. On No-
vember 15; 1935, at a small secret meeting in New York City of lead-
ing representatives of anti-Soviet White Russian organizations, Brasol
313
The chief liaison between the Nazis and the White Russians in
the United States was James Wheeler-Hill, national secretary of the
German-American Bund. Wheeler-Hill was not a German; he was a
White Russian, born in Baku. He had gone to Germany after the
defeat of the White armies in Russia, and then came to the United
States. In 1939, Wheeler-Hill was arrested as a Nazi spy by the FBI.
The most important German and Japanese agent among the
White Russians in the United States was “Count” Anastase A.
Vonsiatsky. On September 25, 1933, the Nazi agent Paul A. von
Lilienfeld-Toal wrote in a letter to William Dudley Pelley, chief of
the pro-Nazi American Silver Shirts:—
This is to give you a report about my contacts with the
White Russians.... I am in touch with the “General Staff of
the Russian Fascists” (Box 631, Putnam, Conn.). Their
spent more than an hour reporting on his “anti-Soviet work” since his
arrival in the United States in 1916; at this meeting he referred with
special pride to his “own modest work” in helping prevent recognition
of the Soviet Union by the United States before 1933.
. Promoting himself as an authority on Russian law, Brasol became
a legal consultant for the law firm of Coudert Brothers of New York
City. He was employed by the U. S. Government agencies to give “ex-
pert advice” on matters relating to Soviet Russia. He gave lectures on
Russian literature and similar subjects at Columbia University and oth-
er well-known American educational institutes. In every way, Brasol
used his many influential contacts to promote suspicion and hostility
against Soviet Russia.
When the isolationist and anti-Soviet America First Committee
was formed in the fall of 1940, Brasol immediately became one of its
most active supporters. He prepared large amounts of anti-Soviet prop-
aganda literature for distribution by the Committee, and his articles
were featured in America First publications. Among the propaganda
material provided by Brasol to the America First Committee, and wide-
ly circulated by that organization, was a leaflet published after the Nazi
invasion of the U.S.S.R., in protest against American Lend-Lease aid to
Russia. The leaflet featured a “Declaration of the Russian Emigrant
Colony in Shanghai,” signed by twenty-one White Guard organizations
in the Far East, all of which were operating under the supervision of the
Japanese Government. Among the organizations listed was the Russian
Fascist Union, headed by Konstantin Rodzaevesky, aide-in-chief to
Ataman Grigori Semyonov.
314
leader, Mr. A. A. Vonsiatsky, is abroad just now, but his
assistant, Mr. D. I. Kunle, wrote me a nice letter and mailed
me several copies of their paper, Fascist.
“Count” Vonsiatsky of Thompson, Connecticut, was an ex-
Czarist officer who had fought in Denikin’s White Army. After
Denikin’s defeat, Vonsiatsky headed a White terrorist band in the
Crimea which kidnapped Russian citizens, held them for ransom,
and tortured them to death if the money was not forthcoming.
Vonsiatsky came to the United States in the early nineteen-twenties
and married Mrs. Marion Buckingham Ream Stephens, an Ameri-
can multimillionairess who was twenty-two years older than him-
self. Vonsiatsky became an American citizen and settled down on
the luxurious Ream estate in Thompson.
With his wife’s fortune at his disposal, Vonsiatsky began to en-
tertain grandiose visions of creating an anti-Soviet army which he
would personally lead into Moscow. He started traveling extensive-
ly in Europe, Asia and South America, meeting with representatives
of the Torgprom, the International League against Bolshevism, and
other anti-Soviet Agencies.
In August, 1933, Vonsiatsky founded the “Russian Fascist Na-
tional Revolutionary Party” in the United States. Its official emblem
was the swastika. Its headquarters was at the Ream estate in
Thompson, where Vonsiatsky set up a private arsenal of rifles, ma-
chine guns and other military equipment and began drilling squads
of uniformed, swastika-wearing young men.
In May, 1934, Vonsiatsky visited Tokyo, Harbin and other Far
Eastern centers, and conferred with members of the Japanese High
Command and fascist White Russians, including Ataman
Semyonov. From Japan, Vonsiatsky went to Germany where he met
with Alfred Rosenberg, Dr. Goebbels and representatives of the
German Military Intelligence. Vonsiatsky undertook to keep Ger-
many and Japan regularly supplied with espionage data from the
United States.
Branch offices of Vonsiatsky’s party were established in New
York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and in
Harbin, Manchukuo. These branch offices worked directly under
the supervision of the German and Japanese Military Intelligence
Services.
In addition to its espionage operations in the United States, the
315
organization financed and headed by Vonsiatsky carried on a cam-
paign of sabotage and terror against the Soviet Union. The Febru-
ary, 1934, issue of Vonsiatsky’s The Fascist, published in Thomp-
son, Connecticut, reported:—
On October 7 the Fascist Trio No. A-5 caused the crash
of a military train. According to information received here
about 100 people were killed.
In the Starobinsk district, thanks to the work of the
“brothers,” the sowing campaign was completely sabo-
taged. Several Communists in charge of the sowing cam-
paign mysteriously disappeared!
On September 3, in the District Ozera Kmiaz, the
Communist Chairman of a collective farm was killed by
“brothers” Nos. 167 and 168!
In April, 1934, The Fascist stated that its editorial office was
“in receipt of 1,500 zlotys to be delivered to Boris Koverda when he
is discharged from prison. The money is a present from Mr.
Vonsiatsky.” At the time, Boris Koverda was serving a prison sen-
tence in Poland for having assassinated Soviet Ambassador Voikov
in Warsaw.
The official program of the Russian National Fascist Revolu-
tionary Party stated:—
Arrange the assassination of Soviet military instructors,
military correspondents, political commanders, as well as
the most outstanding Communists.... Assassinate, first, of
all, the Party secretaries....
Sabotage all orders of the Red authorities.... Hamper
communication of the red power.... Hack down telegraph
poles, cut wires, interrupt and destroy all telephone com-
munications....
Remember firmly, brother fascists: We have been
wrecking, we still wreck and in the future we shall continue
to wreck!2
Immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, “Count”
2
In June, 1940, Vonsiatsky informed a reporter from the newslet-
ter, the Hour, that he and Leon Trotsky had “parallel interests” in their
struggle against the Soviet regime.
316
Anastase Vonsiatsky was arrested by the FBI. He was tried for vio-
lation of the Espionage Act, found guilty of divulging United States
military information to the German and Japanese governments, and
sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.3
3
Fascist White Russians were not the only Russian émigrés carry-
ing on anti-Soviet agitation in the United States. A number of former
Russian Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries and other anti-Soviet po-
litical elements had come to America and had made the United States
the headquarters for their continued intrigue or propaganda activities
against Soviet Russia. Typical of these émigrés were Victor Chernov,
Raphael Abramovitch, Nikifor Grigorieff and Nathan Chanin.
In Czarist Russia, Victor Chernov had been one of the leaders of
the Social Revolutionary movement. As such, he had been intimately
associated with two other Social Revolutionary leaders: the extraordi-
nary Czarist agent provocateur and assassin, Ievno Aseff; and the anti-
Soviet conspirator and assassin Boris Savinkov. In his book Memoirs of
a Terrorist, Savinkov describes how he went to Geneva in 1903 to con-
sult with Chernov about the plans for assassinating the Czarist Minister
of Interior, Von Plehve. Savinkov also tells how he and Aseff went
before the Central Committee of the Social Revolutionary Terrorist
Brigade in 1906 to get out of their assignment to assassinate Premier
Stolypin. “The Central Committee,” writes Savinkov, “declined to
grant our request and ordered us to continue the work against
Stolypin.... Present, in addition to Aseff and myself, were Tchernov
(Chernov), Natanson, Sletov, Kraft and Pankratov.” After the collapse
of Czarism, Chernov became Minister of Agriculture in the first Provi-
sional Government. He carried on a bitter fight against Lenin and the
Bolsheviks. Following the establishment of the Soviet Government, he
helped organize Social Revolutionary plots against the Soviet regime.
Leaving Russia in the early 1920’s, he became one of the most active
anti-Soviet propagandists among the Russian émigrés and a leader of
anti-Soviet activity in Prague, Berlin, Paris and other European capi-
tals. At the beginning of the Second World War, he came from France
to the United States. In America, he continued his anti-Soviet propa-
ganda and organizational operations. He worked closely with anti-
Soviet Socialist elements in the American labor movement. On March
30, 1943, David Dubinsky, President of the International Ladies’ Gar-
ment Workers, introduced Chernov as a guest of honor at a rally in
New York City protesting the execution by the Soviet authorities of
Henry Erlich and Victor Alter, two Polish Socialists who had been
found guilty by the Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court of
spreading disruptive propaganda in the Red Army and urging the Sovi-
317
2. “Saving America from Communism”
et troops to make peace with the Germans.

Associated with Victor Chernov in his anti-Soviet activity in the
United States was Raphael Abramovitch, the former Russian Menshe-
vik leader who, according to testimony given at the Menshevik trial in
March, 1931, was a leading member of the espionage-sabotage ring
then plotting the overthrow of the Soviet Government. (See page 154.)
After carrying on anti-Soviet activities in Berlin and London,
Abramovitch came to the United States and settled down in New York
City, where he, like Victor Chernov, formed close working relations
with David Dubinsky and other anti-Soviet Socialist labor leaders. His
violent attacks on Soviet Russia appeared in the New Leader, the New
York Forward and other anti-Soviet publications.
Nikifor Grigorieff, an anti-Soviet Ukrainian émigré and former
leading member of the Ukrainian Social Revolutionary Party, came to
the United States in 1939. As a prominent anti-Soviet propagandist in
émigré circles in Europe, Grigorieff had worked closely with Victor
Chernov. In Prague, Grigorieff was an editor of a magazine called
Suspilstvo (Community), which published propaganda claiming that
“Soviet Russia and the Soviet Ukraine are in the hands of the Jews” and
advocating a “great anti-Jewish struggle... on the territory of the
Ukraine, White Russia, Lithuania and Poland.” After he came to the
United States, Grigorieff continued his anti-Soviet propaganda. Follow-
ing the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Grigorieff and Chernov
helped form a “Committee for the Promotion of Democracy” in New
York City, which called for the “liberation” from the U.S.S.R. of the
Ukraine and other Soviet republics. Among the propaganda material
distributed by Grigorieff in the United States was a booklet entitled
Basic Principles of Independent Ukrainian Political Action, which con-
tained “statistics” to show that Jews “dominate” industry, finance and
politics in the Soviet Ukraine. In this same booklet Grigorieff advocat-
ed the desertion of soldiers from the Red Army, urging that they “not
risk their lives for their oppressors.”
Also prominent among the “left-wing” anti-Soviet Russian émigrés
in the United States was Nathan Chanin, Educational Director of the
Workmen’s Circle and regular contributor to the anti-Soviet Forward.
In the early 1930’s Chanin published propaganda appealing for funds to
finance “the secret Social Democratic cells now at work in Russia” and
“the difficult struggle our comrades carry on in Russia against Bolshe-
vism.” In January, 1942, Chanin wrote, “The last shot has not yet been
fired.... And the last shot will be fired from free America—and from
that shot the Stalin regime, too, will be shot to pieces.”
318
In 1931, a “Plan for an International Movement to Combat the
Red Menace” was sponsored in the United States by an organization
called the National Civic Federation. The founder and head of this
organization, which specialized in anti-Communist and anti-labor
agitation, was a former Chicago newspaperman, Ralph M. Easley.
In 1927, Norman Hapgood wrote an expose of Easley’s “profes-
sional patriotism” in which he declared:—
Soviet Russia is, of course, Mr. Easley’s chief abomi-
nation. He has freely sponsored the cause of the Czarists,
with Mr. Boris as his chief adviser.
The membership of Easley’s National Civic Federation includ-
ed Representative Hamilton Fish of New York; Harry Augustus
Jung, a former labor spy and anti-Semitic propagandist in Chicago;
George Sylvester Viereck, the ex-agent of the Kaiser and future
Nazi agent; Matthew Woll, reactionary vice-president of the Ameri-
can Federation of Labor and acting president of the National Civic
Federation, who publicly referred to Soviet Russia as “this Red
Monster—this Madman”; and a number of other prominent Ameri-
cans interested in the anti-Bolshevik crusade.
Early in 1933, Easley became chairman of an organization
called the American Section of the International Committee to
Combat the World Menace of Communism. The international head-
quarters of this organization was in Europa House, Berlin. Many
members of the National Civic Federation joined Easley in the new
organization.4
The American Section of the International Committee to Com-
bat the World Menace of Communism sponsored the first official
Nazi propaganda document to be circulated in the United States. It
took the form of an anti-Soviet book, printed in English, and enti-
4
In 1933 a central agency to direct the International anti-Soviet ag-
itation was set up by Alfred Rosenberg in Berlin. It was called the In-
ternational Committee to Combat the Menace of Bolshevism—the orig-
inal form of the Anti-Comintern. Affiliates included:—
General League of German Anti-Communist Associations
Anti-Communist Bloc of South America
Anti-Communist Union of the Province of North China
European Anti-Communist League
American Section of the International Committee to Combat the
World Menace of Communism.
319
tled Communism in Germany. The book was published in Germany
by the firm of Eckhart-Verlag. Thousands of copies were shipped
across the Atlantic for distribution in America. Through extensive
mailings and at “patriotic” rallies in New York, Los Angeles, Chi-
cago and other cities, the book was widely circulated free of charge.
A nationwide campaign of newspaper articles, lectures, meetings
and form letters was arranged to promote the book in the United
States.
The book was prefaced by this quotation:—
At the beginning of this year there were weeks when
we were within a hair’s breadth of Bolshevik chaos!
Chancellor Adolf Hitler,
in his proclamation of the 1st
September, 1933.
The next page of the book featured the following statement:—
WHY AMERICANS SHOULD READ THIS BOOK
The question of Communist propaganda and activities
is of immediate concern to the American people in view of
the consideration now being given to the question of recog-
nition of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by the
Government of the United States.
Here is a challenging book. It should be read by every
thoughtful citizen because it presents the history of the life-
and-death struggle Germany has been waging against
Communism. It reveals that the subversive methods and
destructive objectives of the Communists in Germany are
the same as are employed in the United States by those en-
emies of civilized nations....
The value of this German exposé as an object lesson to
other countries has led our committee to place it in the
hands of leaders of public opinion throughout the United
States.
Directly underneath this announcement there followed a list of
names of leading members of the American Section of the Interna-
tional Committee to Combat the World Menace of Communism:—
Walter C. Cole (chairman, Council of National Defense,
Detroit Board of Commerce)
320
John Ross Delafield (commander-in-chief, Military Order
of the World War)
Ralph M. Easley (chairman, National Civic Federation)
Hamilton Fish (United States Congressman)
Elon Huntington Hooker (chairman, American Defense So-
ciety)
F. O. Johnson (president, Better America Federation)
Orvel Johnson (Lieutenant-Colonel, R.O.T.C. Association
of the United States)
Harry Jung (chief, American Vigilante Intelligence Associ-
ation)
Samuel McRoberts (banker)
C. G. Norman (chairman, Building Trades Employers’ As-
sociation)
Ellis Searle (editor, the United Mine Worker)
Walter S. Steele (editor, National Republic)
John B. Trevor (chairman, American Coalition)
Archibald E. Stevenson (former member, United States
Military Intelligence)
For the American Section of the International Committee to
Combat the World Menace of Communism
These are the records of some of the American sponsors of the
Nazi propaganda book, Communism in Germany:—
Harry Augustus Jung, former labor spy, headed the an-
ti-democratic Chicago organization called the American
Vigilante Intelligence Federation. Its organ the Vigilant was
listed as recommended reading by the official Nazi propa-
ganda agency, World Service. Among Jung’s early associ-
ates in anti-Soviet activities was the White Russian Peter
Afanassieff, who supplied Jung with a translated version of
the Protocols for distribution in “quantity lots” throughout
the United States. Jung was subsequently befriended by
Colonel Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the isolationist
and violently anti-Soviet Chicago Tribune, and set up of-
fices in the Tribune Tower in Chicago.
Walter S. Steele, editor of the National Republic, car-
ried on an incessant anti-Soviet propaganda campaign in-
tended to influence American businessmen. Steele collabo-
rated with Jung in the distribution of The Protocols of Zion.
321
James B. Trevor was head of the American Coalition,
an organization which in 1942 was listed by a Department
of Justice indictment as an agency which had been used in
a conspiracy to undermine the morale of the United States
armed forces. Trevor was intimately associated with anti-
Soviet White Russians, and his organization constantly
spread anti-Soviet propaganda.
Archibald E. Stevenson, a onetime member of the Mili-
tary Intelligence Division of the United States Army, was
one of the leading instigators of anti-Soviet agitation in the
United States throughout the period prior to the Second
World War. A close associate of Ralph M. Easley, Steven-
son subsequently became public relations counsel for the
New York State Economic Council, an anti-labor and anti-
democratic propaganda agency whose chairman was
Merwin K. Hart, a notorious propagandist for the Spanish
Fascist dictator, Generalissimo Franco.
Representative Hamilton Fish, of New York, visited
Soviet Russia in 1923, when he was head of the firm Ham-
ilton Fish & Company, Exporters and Importers. After his
return to the United States he introduced a resolution into
Congress calling for the establishment of commercial rela-
tions with Soviet Russia. Subsequently, he became one of
the most bitter anti-Soviet propagandists in the United
States. In the early 1930’s, as chairman of a Congressional
committee to investigate “American communism,” Fish
was the chief spokesman of the White Russian anti-Soviet
émigrés in the United States and other inveterate foes of
Soviet Russia. Among the “experts” who supplied Fish’s
committee with material were the former Ochrana agent,
Boris Brasol, and the German propagandist, George Syl-
vester Viereck. After Hitler came to power in Germany,
Fish hailed the Nazi leader as the man who had saved Ger-
many from Communism. As a key exponent of isolationism
and appeasement, Fish shared platforms with notorious
American pro-Nazis and inserted their propaganda in the
Congressional Record. In the fall of 1939 Fish conferred in
Nazi Germany with Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi Foreign
Minister; Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Foreign Minister;
and other Axis leaders. Fish toured Europe in a German
322
plane, urging a second Munich and claiming that “Germa-
ny’s claims” were “just.” In February, 1942, it was dis-
closed at the trial of the Nazi agent Viereck that Fish’s
Washington office had been used as the headquarters of a
Nazi propaganda ring and that Fish’s secretary, George
Hill, was one of the key members of the German propagan-
da network in the United States.
At the time of America’s entry into the Second World War,
scores of American fascist organizations describing themselves as
“anti-Communist” were active, throughout the United States. These
organizations had received guidance and, many of them, financial
support from Berlin and Tokyo. Paid agents of Nazi Germany had
founded a number of the organizations. Some of the organizations,
like the German-American Bund and the Kyffhauser Bund, made
little attempt to conceal their foreign affiliation; others, like the Sil-
ver Shirts, the Christian Front, American Guards, American Nation-
alist Confederation, and the Crusaders for Americanism masquerad-
ed as patriotic societies which were “saving America” from the
“menace of Communism.”
By 1939, no less than 750 fascist organizations had been
formed in the United States, and were flooding the country with
pro-Axis, anti-Semitic and anti-Soviet bulletins, magazines, news-
letters and newspapers. In the name of saving America from Com-
munism, these organizations and publications called for the over-
throw of the Government of the United States, the establishment of
an American fascist regime, and an alliance with the Axis against
Soviet Russia.
On November 18, 1936, William Dudley Pelley, chief of the
Nazi-inspired Silver Shirts, declared:—
Let us understand thoroughly that if a second civil war
comes to this country, it will not be a war to overthrow the
American government, but to overthrow the Jew-
Communist usurpers who have seized the American gov-
ernment and bethought themselves to make it a branch of-
fice of Moscow....
After the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia, Father Charles E.
Coughlin, leader of the pro-Nazi Christian Front, declared in the
July 7, 1941, issue of his propaganda organ Social Justice:—
323
Germany’s war on Russia is a battle for Christianity....
We remember that atheistic Communism was conceived
and brought to birth in Russia chiefly through the instru-
mentality of godless Jews.
The same propaganda was disseminated throughout the United
States by Gerald B. Winrod’s Defender of Wichita, Kansas; Wil-
liam Kullgren’s Beacon Light of Atascadero, California; Court Ash-
er’s X-Ray of Muncie, Indiana; E. J. Garner’s Publicity of Wichita,
Kansas; Charles B. Hudson’s America in Danger! Omaha, Nebras-
ka; and many similar pro-Axis, anti-Soviet publications.
After Pearl Harbor, a number of these persons were indicted by
the Department of Justice on charges of spreading seditious propa-
ganda and plotting with Nazi agents to overthrow the United States
Government. Nevertheless, throughout the war, they continued to
spread the propaganda that the Axis Powers were waging a “holy
war” and that the United States had been tricked into the conflict by
the connivance of “Jewish Communist conspirators in Washington,
London and Moscow.”
3. Paul Scheffer: A Case History
A few days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, agents of
the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested a dapper,
middle-aged German journalist who was living in a fashionable
apartment house in New York City. His name was Paul Scheffer.
He was listed in the State Department files as the American corre-
spondent for Das Reich, the official publication of the Nazi Propa-
ganda Ministry.
The career of Paul Scheffer is a striking illustration of how Nazi
agents were able to operate in the United States under the mask of
anti-Sovietism....5
5
Japanese agents were also active in spreading anti-Soviet propa-
ganda in the United States. A typical case was that of John C. Le Clair,
assistant personnel director of the International Telephone Company
and former history instructor at New York City College and St. Francis
College in Brooklyn. As an accepted authority on the Far East, Le Clair
wrote numerous articles for well-known American periodicals, in
which he praised Japan and declared that Soviet Russia represented the
real menace to the United States. He also edited a column called
“Comments and Forecasts,” which contained similar propaganda and
324
At one time, Paul Scheffer had been a journalist of international
renown. As the Moscow correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt
from 1922 until 1929, Scheffer acquired the reputation of being “the
best-informed man on Soviet Russia.” His colorfully written dis-
patches from the Soviet Union were reprinted in a dozen languages.
His friends and admirers included eminent statesmen, celebrated
literary figures and leading industrialists and financiers in Europe
and America.
In the fall of 1929 Scheffer’s career as a Moscow correspondent
came to an abrupt, unexpected conclusion. During one of his peri-
odic visits to Germany, the Soviet authorities suddenly forbade him
to return to the U.S.S.R. There was a furor of indignant protests
among Scheffer’s many distinguished friends. They demanded to
know what possible reason there could be for such action on the
part of the Soviet Government. The answer to that question was
locked in the files of the Soviet secret police.
Some of the facts were made public eight years later, on March
2, 1938, when Mikhail Chernov, the Right conspirator and former
Commissar of Agriculture of the Soviet Union, testified before the
Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R.
Chernov admitted he had received 4000 rubles a month from
the German Military Intelligence for providing them with Russian
military and trade secrets and for organizing extensive sabotage. He
named the German agent under whose supervision his first espio-
nage-sabotage assignments had been carried out. The German
agent, Chernov said, was “Paul Scheffer, correspondent of the Ber-
liner Tageblatt.”
On March 13, 1938, a Soviet firing squad executed Mikhail
Chernov. Only a few days before the execution, Paul Scheffer ar-
rived in the United States as the American correspondent for the
Berliner Tageblatt....
was distributed to 200 newspapers and periodicals throughout the coun-

try. Characteristic of Le Clair’s articles was one which appeared in the
September 1940 issue of the magazine America under the title “No
Friendship Wanted Between the United States and the USSR.” Arrested
by FBI agents in the fall of 1943, Le Clair pleaded guilty in a New
York Federal court on September 8 to having served as a secret paid
propaganda agent of the Japanese Government for a three-year period
ending a few months prior to Pearl Harbor.
325
After being barred from the Soviet Union in 1929, Scheffer had
become one of Europe’s most prolific and highly paid anti-Soviet
propagandists. Scarcely a week elapsed without one of his articles,
fiercely attacking the Soviet Government and predicting its immi-
nent collapse, appearing in some outstanding European or American
periodical.
In 1931, Scheffer, who had married a former Russian countess,
visited the United States to campaign against American recognition
of the Soviet Government. “If America decides upon recognition,”
Scheffer gravely warned in an article in Foreign Affairs, which was
reprinted in the Reader’s Digest, “it may hereafter be said that in
1931 she made her deliberate choice between bourgeois Europe and
the Soviets... recognition by America could only provoke Com-
munist Russia to greater aggressiveness and enterprise in its attacks
on bourgeois European countries.”
When Hitler came to power, Scheffer was the London corre-
spondent of the Berliner Tageblatt. He immediately returned to
Germany and was appointed editor-in-chief of the paper, which had
now come under the supervision of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry.6
In the winter of 1937, Scheffer was ordered to take up residence
in the United States. He was soon cabling dispatches to the Berliner
Tageblatt from New York City, which were a skillful mixture of
anti-American propaganda and information which might be of in-
terest to the German military authorities. Before long Scheffer was
promoted to the position of American correspondent for Das Reich,
the official organ of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. In this capacity,
6
To those of his influential friends abroad who still considered
him a liberal journalist and who were deeply surprised at his return to
Germany, Scheffer confidentially explained that he was undertaking
some mysterious anti-Nazi mission in the Third Reich. With an eye
toward his future work, Scheffer wanted to maintain his useful associa-
tions in foreign circles. Strangely enough, many of his friends believed
his story.
Among those whom Scheffer failed to convince of his anti-Nazi
sentiments was the anti-fascist American Ambassador to Germany, the
late William E. Dodd. On November 15, 1936, Dr. Dodd wrote in his
diary the following notation about Scheffer: “I have been watchful of
this Scheffer who was a Social Democrat a few years ago, was several
years in the United States as correspondent for the German press and is
now a good Nazi.”
326
Scheffer was Dr. Goebbels’s special representative in the United
States. One of his chief functions was to stir up sentiment against
Soviet Russia in the United States. Anti-Soviet articles by “the Rus-
sian expert” Scheffer appeared regularly in well-known American
magazines and newspapers. One of Scheffer’s favorite subjects was
the Moscow Trials. For his numerous American readers Scheffer
interpreted the trials, at which he himself had been exposed as a
German agent, as “gigantic frame-ups.” He described Bukharin,
Pyatakov, Radek and the other Russian fifth columnists as “the real
Bolshevik leaders.” His most extravagant praise, however, was re-
served for Leon Trotsky.
In a typical article, “From Lenin to Stalin,” which appeared in
the April 1938 issue of the well-known American quarterly, For-
eign Affairs, Scheffer explained that Stalin was a “cunning Orien-
tal” motivated by greed, jealousy and lust for power, and that he had
arranged the execution of the Trotskyites only because they stood in
the way of his personal ambitions.
Scheffer’s propaganda work in the United States did not end
with his arrest after Pearl Harbor. On September 13, 1943, the Sun-
day edition of the New York Times featured on the front page of its
magazine section an article on Germany carrying the byline, “Con-
rad Long.” The author was described in an editorial note as “a close
student of German affairs in the present war.” The article contained
the information that “the crops of the Ukraine” had been “allegedly
doubled this summer by German methods.”
In reality, there was no “Conrad Long.” That was a pseudonym.
The author of the Times article was Paul Scheffer.
Following Scheffer’s arrest, certain of his influential American
friends had managed to secure his release from internment. They
arranged for him to write under a pen name for the Times. They
even obtained employment for Scheffer as an expert adviser on
German affairs, in the U. S. Office of Strategic Services.
In the spring of 1944 Scheffer was rearrested by agents of the
Department of Justice. It was understood that this time Dr. Goeb-
bels’s former special representative would be kept in confinement
for the duration of the war.
4. The Dies Committee
In August 1938, just before the signing of the Munich Pact, a
Special Congressional Committee to investigate un-American activ-
327
ities was formed in the United States. The Chairman of this Com-
mittee was Representative Martin Dies of Texas.
When the Dies Committee was formed, it was assumed the
Committee would combat Axis intrigue in the United States.
Instead, the “investigation” carried on by Congressman Dies
concentrated on one thing: convincing the American people that
their chief and most deadly enemy was Soviet Russia.
The first Chief Investigator appointed by the Dies Committee
was a little-known former labor spy and anti-Soviet propagandist
named Edward F. Sullivan. Before coming to work for Dies, Sulli-
van had been associated with the anti-Soviet Ukrainian nationalist
movement in America, which took its directives from Hetman
Skoropadski and other White Ukrainian émigrés in Berlin. As a
young, penniless newspaperman in Boston, Sullivan had been hired
to help build anti-Soviet sentiment among Ukrainian-Americans.
Although he could not speak one word of Ukrainian, Sullivan began
spreading propaganda for an “independent Ukraine.”
Martin Dies’s future Chief Investigator soon became an out-
standing figure in the fascist Ukrainian-American movement. As
spokesman for the movement, he came into close association with
Nazi agents and propagandists, collaborated with them and even
publicly identified himself with their cause. On June 5, 1934, Sulli-
van addressed a meeting of German-American Bund members and
uniformed Storm Troops at Thurnhall, Lexington Avenue and 85th
Street, New York City. Sullivan was reported to have shouted,
“Throw the lousy Jews into the Atlantic Ocean!”
In August 1936, Sullivan was featured as a main speaker at a
national conference attended by leading American anti-Semitic and
pro-Nazi propagandists which was held at Asheville, North Caroli-
na. Other speakers at the conference were William Dudley Pelley,
chief of the Silver Shirts; James True, who was publisher of a fas-
cist bulletin in collaboration with Sullivan; and Ernest F. Elmhurst,
alias E. F. Fleischkopf, a Bund member and Nazi agent. The speak-
ers violently attacked Soviet Russia and denounced the Roosevelt
Administration as part of a “Jewish Communist plot.” The Ashe-
ville press reported that Sullivan’s speech was “what Hitler would
have said had he been speaking.”7
7
American taxpayers who paid Sullivan’s salary while he was
Chief Investigator of un-American activities for the Dies Committee
328
When liberal America organizations uncovered some of the
facts about Sullivan’s unsavory record, Congressman Dies reluc-
tantly dropped Sullivan as his Chief Investigator. “For reasons of
economy,” said Dies. Sullivan then rejoined the fascist Ukrainian
movement and founded the Ukrainian-American Educational Insti-
tute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This organization, which special-
ized in promoting anti-Soviet agitation among the one million
Ukrainian-Americans, was in touch with the German Embassy in
Washington. Sullivan continued to cooperate with pro-Nazi and
anti-Soviet propagandists throughout the country. “July Fourth will
be a good date for your party,” wired Coughlin regarding an affair
he and Sullivan were arranging together.
Despite his official separation from the Dies Committee, Sulli-
van remained in touch with it as one of its “anti-Communist ex-
perts.” On July 27, 1939, Sullivan received a letter from his friend
might have been interested in Sullivan’s police record:—

Offense Place of Date Disposition
Offense
Drunkenness Charlestown, 9/7/20 Released
Mass.
Driving so as to Roxbury 12/18/23 Fined $25
endanger
Driving without Suffolk 2/11/24 Fined $25
license
Driving so as to Suffolk 6/27/24 Placed on file
endanger
Larceny Malden 2/4/32 6 mos. House
of Correction;
appealed
Larceny Middlesex 4/12/32 Nol-prossed
Superior Court
Operating after Lowell 2/11/32 Filed
license suspended
Violation of Section New York City 12/20/33 Acquitted
690 of the penal law
(Sodomy)
Arrested on charges Pittsburgh 12/11/39 Charges
of impersonating dropped
FBI officer
329
Harry Jung, anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic propagandist in Chicago.
Jung wrote:—
One of the Committee investigators has been here for
some little while and he has been spending some time with
us and we have loaded him up with a lot of startling
information.
I really hope that the cooperation between our respec-
tive offices will be complete, satisfying and reciprocal....
Sullivan’s place as Dies’s chief aide and adviser on the Com-
mittee to investigate un-American activities was taken by J. B. Mat-
thews, a renegade from the American radical movement. Mat-
thews’s writings were widely publicized and distributed by leading
American fascists and Axis agents. The Nazi Propaganda Ministry
recommended his work. Articles by Matthews appeared in Contra-
Komintern, an organ of Alfred Rosenberg’s Aussenpolitisches Amt.
Week after week, in the marble-columned caucus room in the
old House Office Building in Washington, a macabre procession of
ex-convicts, labor spies, foreign agents and racketeers were solemn-
ly paraded before the Dies Committee as “expert witnesses” to testi-
fy that Moscow agents were plotting to overthrow the government
of the United States. These were some of the “anti-Communist”
witnesses:—
Alvin Halpern: on the second day of his testimony, a
District of Columbia Court sentenced him to a term of two
years’ imprisonment for the crime of larceny; his testimony
was included, nevertheless, in the public records of the
Dies Committee.
Peter J. Innes: a labor spy who had been expelled from
the National Maritime Union for stealing $500 from the un-
ion treasury; he was subsequently sentenced to eight years’
imprisonment for attempted rape of a small child.
William C. McCuiston: an organizer of strong-arm
squads for attacking trade-unionists; he testified before the
Dies Committee while under indictment for the murder of
Philip Carey, a labor leader who was shot and clubbed to
death in New Orleans; subsequently acquitted on murder
charge.
William Nowell: a labor spy, who was confidential ad-
330
viser to the fascist leader, Gerald L. K. Smith, ex-Silver
Shirter No. 3223.
Richard Krebs, alias Jan Valtin: ex-convict and con-
fessed former Gestapo agent.8
8
In January, 1941, when the German High Command was com-
pleting its preparations for the attack on the Soviet Union, a sensational
anti-Soviet book was published in the United States entitled Out of the
Night. The author’s name was given as Jan Valtin.
“Jan Valtin” was one of the several aliases of Richard Krebs, a
former Gestapo agent. His other aliases were Richard Anderson, Rich-
ard Peterson, Richard Williams, Rudolf Heller and Otto Melchior.
Krebs’s book, Out of the Night, purported to be the confession of a
Communist, “Jan Valtin,” who had been traveling about the world car-
rying out sinister assignments for Moscow. The author described in
lurid detail the criminal conspiracies which had supposedly been engi-
neered by “Bolshevik agents” against world democracy. The author
related how after ten years of criminal service “for the Comintern,”
including an attempted murder in California in 1926, he had begun to
have “doubts in the desirability and the purpose of the Communist Par-
ty.” Finally, so his story went, he had decided to make a complete
break with Moscow and tell all....
Krebs arrived in the United States in February, 1938. He brought
with him from Europe the manuscript of Out of the Night, which bore a
startling resemblance to an anti-Soviet propaganda book which was
being currently circulated in Nazi Germany. In preparing the book for
publication in the United States, Krebs was assisted by the American
journalist Isaac Don Levine, a veteran anti-Soviet propagandist and a
regular contributor to the Hearst press.
Aided by an unprecedented promotional campaign, Out of the
Night became a sensational best-seller. The Book-of-the-Month Club
distributed 165,000 copies among its readers. Reader’s Digest pub-
lished a lengthy condensation with the comment that the autobiography
had been “carefully authenticated by the publishers.” In two consecu-
tive issues Life magazine quoted extensive sections from the book. Few
books in the history of American publishing received the promotional
ballyhoo and expensive advertising lavished on Out of the Night.
While a number of book reviewers were openly skeptical about the
book, others, well-known for their anti-Soviet sentiments, showered
praises on Krebs’s work. Freda Utley, anti-Soviet newspaperwoman
writing in the Saturday Review of Literature, described the book in
these words: “No other book more clearly reveals the aid which Stalin
gave to Hitler before he won power, and which he must be giving him
331
“General” Walter G. Krivitsky, alias Samuel Ginsberg,
today.” Sidney Hook, an admirer of Trotsky, declared in the New Lead-

er, organ of the so-called Social Democratic Federation: “As a sheer
story it is so compelling in its breathtaking sequences that it could nev-
er be accepted as fiction, for it violates all the canons of fictional credi-
bility.” William Henry Chamberlin, whose anti-Soviet interpretation of
the Moscow Trials had appeared in the Tokyo propaganda organ, Con-
temporary Japan, urged in the New York Sunday Times Book Supple-
ment that “Valtin” become “a valuable assistant to those United States
agencies which are engaged in combating espionage, sabotage and oth-
er illegal, foreign-inspired activities.” Max Eastman, Eugene Lyons,
and others of the anti-Soviet, pro-Trotsky literary clique in America
excitedly hailed the “historic exposé” by the former Gestapo agent.
“Jan Valtin” became a national figure. He was invited to testify as
an anti-Soviet expert before the Dies Committee. On March 28, 1941,
Krebs was served with a warrant of arrest as an undesirable and deport-
able alien. The subsequent Federal hearings established that Krebs had
been found guilty of attempted murder in California in 1926 and had
served thirty-nine months in San Quentin. The Los Angeles court rec-
ords showed that this crime, which Krebs had portrayed in Out of the
Night as a Comintern assignment, had resulted from an argument over a
bill which Krebs owed a small merchant. Explaining in court why he
had tried to kill the merchant, Krebs said, “The Jew made me mad.”
The Federal hearings also revealed that Krebs had been deported
from the United States in December, 1929, and that in 1938, as in 1926,
he had entered the United States illegally. In addition, the hearings
established that in 1934 Krebs had acted as a witness for the Nazi
Government in securing a treason conviction against a fellow seaman.
As for his connection with the German Communist Party, from which
he had been expelled, Krebs admitted that he had “penetrated the
organization.”
The U. S. Immigration Court stated in its findings: “Within the
past five years the subject has been considered an agent of Nazi Ger-
many. On the record before us it appears he has been completely un-
trustworthy and amoral.”
The exposure of Krebs as a former Nazi agent and convicted crim-
inal received little publicity. Later, endorsed and vouched for by his
influential anti-Soviet American friends, Krebs was given a clean bill
of health by U. S. Immigration authorities as a reformed individual and
was granted American citizenship papers. Out of the Night remained on
public library bookshelves throughout the country and continued to
spread its anti-Soviet message among tens of thousands of Americans.
332
a self-styled “GPU agent” under Yagoda, who had fled to
the United States, where he published a lurid anti-Soviet
autobiography.9
The files of Martin Dies soon overflowed with the names of
supposedly dangerous “Bolsheviks.” At frequent intervals the Con-
gressman from Texas would dramatically announce that he had un-
covered a nationwide Fifth Column operating under directions from
Moscow.
In 1940, Congressman Dies published a book to popularize the
“findings” of his Committee. Entitled The Trojan Horse in Ameri-
ca: A Report to the Nation, Dies’s book was chiefly devoted to anti-
Soviet propaganda. While German-American Bundists and Chris-
tian Fronters were staging pro-Nazi mass demonstrations in Ameri-
can cities as spearheads of the Nazi Fifth Column, Congressman
Dies pictured Stalin “at the head of 150 divisions of uniformed So-
viet troops” invading the United States.
Dies declared that, in fact, “Moscow agents” had already begun
“the Soviet invasion of the United States.”10
9
According to Louis Waldman, who was Krivitsky’s American at-
torney, Krivitsky’s entry into the United States had been sponsored by
William C. Bullitt, Ambassador to France. For comment on Bullitt’s
anti-Soviet activities, see Chapter XXIII.
10
Pro-Axis and anti-Soviet elements in the United States enthusi-
astically supported the work of Congressman Martin Dies. On Decem-
ber 8, 1939, Merwin K. Hart, the leading spokesman for the Spanish
Fascist regime of Generalissimo Franco, gave a banquet in New York
City at which Dies was the guest of honor. Among those attending the
banquet were John B. Trevor, Archibald E. Stevenson and Fritz Kuhn,
head of the German-American Bund. When newspapermen asked Kuhn
what he thought of the Dies Committee, he replied: “I am in favor of it
being appointed again, and I wish them to get more money.”
Here are some other comments by anti-Soviet agitators on the
work of the Dies Committee:—
I have the highest respect for the Dies Committee and sympathize
with its program.—George Sylvester Viereck, Nazi agent, sentenced on
February 21, 1942, to serve eight months to two years in prison.
I founded the Silver Legion in 1933... to propagandize exactly the
same principles that Mr. Dies and his Committee are engaged in prose-
cuting right now.—William Dudley Pelley, leader of the pro-Nazi Sil-
ver Shirts, sentenced on August 13, 1942, to fifteen years’ imprison-
333
Two days after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, Dies pre-
dicted, “Hitler will be in control of Russia in thirty days.” The Con-
gressman denounced the idea of sending aid to the Red Army.
“American aid to Russia is foolish,” he declared, “because Germans
will only get the equipment anyway.” He warned that “the very
great danger exists that our government, by its aid to Russia, has
opened up for Stalin a new Western Front right here in the capital of
America.”
In a letter to President Roosevelt, written on October 2, 1941,
shortly after the President had proclaimed that the defense of the
Soviet Union was vital to the defense of America, Dies announced
his intention of continuing his anti-Soviet propaganda campaign. “I
intend, Mr. President,” wrote Dies, “to seize every opportunity to let
the American people know that the similarities between Stalin and
Hitler are far more striking than their differences.”
Even after the United States and Soviet Russia became military
allies, Martin Dies continued his anti-Soviet campaign. On March
29, 1942, Henry Wallace, Vice-President of the United States,
declared:—
If we were at peace, these tactics could be overlooked
as the product of a witchcraft mind. We are not at peace,
however. We are at war, and the doubts and anger which
this and similar statements of Mr. Dies tend to arouse in the
public mind might as well come from Goebbels himself as
ment for criminal sedition; again indicted in 1944 on charges of partici-

pating in a Nazi conspiracy against America.
In your appreciation of the work accomplished by Dies employ
some of your leisure moments to write him a letter of encouragement.
In fact, a million letters, brought to his desk would be an answer to
those who are bent on destroying him and the legislative body he repre-
sents.—Father Charles E. Coughlin, pro-Nazi propagandist, founder of
the Christian Front and of Social Justice, which in 1942 was banned
from the U. S. mails as seditious.
Berlin itself openly expressed enthusiastic approval of Dies’s anti-
Soviet work in the United States. The short-wave monitoring system of
the Federal Communication Commission reported in the winter of 1941
that Representative Martin Dies was the American “most frequently
and approvingly” quoted on Axis short-wave-broadcasts beamed to the
Western Hemisphere.
334
far as their practical effect is concerned. As a matter of fact,
the effect on our morale would be less damaging if Mr.
Dies were on the Hitler payroll.... We Americans must face
the implications of this ugly truth.
5. Lone Eagle
Late in 1940, as Hitler was completing the enslavement of Eu-
rope and preparing for his coming showdown with the Red Army, a
strange phenomenon appeared on the American political scene. It
was called the America First Committee. During the following year,
on a national scale, through the medium of press, radio, mass rallies,
street-corner meetings and every other kind of promotional device,
the America First Committee energetically spread anti-Soviet, anti-
British and isolationist propaganda among the American people.
The original leaders of the America First Committee included
General Robert E. Wood; Henry Ford; Colonel Robert R. McCor-
mick; Senators Burton K. Wheeler, Gerald P. Nye and Robert Rice
Reynolds; Representatives Hamilton Fish, Clare E. Hoffman and
Stephen Day; and Katherine Lewis, the daughter of John L. Lewis.
The leading woman spokesman for the Committee was the ex-
aviatrix and socialite Laura Ingalls; she was subsequently convicted
as a paid agent of the Nazi Government. Behind the scenes, another
Nazi agent, George Sylvester Viereck, was writing: much of the
propaganda which America First publicists were circulating. Ralph
Townsend, later convicted as a Japanese agent, headed a branch of
the America First Committee on the West Coast and was a member
of the editorial board of the Committee’s propaganda organs, Scrib-
ner’s Commentator and the Herald.11 Werner C. von Clemm, later
convicted of smuggling diamonds into the United States in collusion
with the German High Command, served as an incognito strategist
11
The editors of the Herald operated short-wave receivers which
were kept tuned day and night to Hitler-dominated Europe and to Ja-
pan. Official Axis propaganda, received in this manner, was incorpo-
rated into the Herald and into Scribner’s Commentator.
The Herald and Scribner’s Commentator were distributed
throughout the United States free of charge, handed out at America
First Committee rallies, and circulated on a mass scale to specially pre-
pared America First mailing lists supplied by Charles E. Lindbergh,
Hamilton Fish, Charles E. Coughlin, Senator Burton K. Wheeler, and
the Nazi agents Frank Burch, George Sylvester Viereck and others.
335
and financial supporter of the New York branch of the America
First Committee. Frank B. Burch, subsequently convicted of having
received $10,000 from the Nazi Government for illegal propaganda
services in the United States, was one of the founders of the Akron,
Ohio, branch of the Committee.
In July, 1942, a Department of Justice indictment listed the
America First Committee as an agency which had been used in a
conspiracy to undermine the morale of the United States armed
forces....
By far the most prominent leader and spokesman of the Ameri-
ca First Committee was the famous American aviator, Charles A.
Lindbergh, who had already distinguished himself as a pro-Nazi and
anti-Soviet agitator in Europe and America.
Lindbergh had paid his first visit to Germany in the summer of
1935. He traveled as a guest of the Nazi Government. The Nazis
held impressive ceremonies in Lindbergh’s honor and extended
many special favors to him. High Nazi officials personally conduct-
ed him on a private “inspection tour” of German war plants and air
bases. Lindbergh was deeply impressed with Nazi Germany.
At the lavish parties given for him by Field Marshal Hermann
Goering and other Nazi bigwigs, Lindbergh expressed his convic-
tion that the German Air Force was unbeatable. “German aviation
ranks higher than that in any other country,” he told the Luftwaffe
ace, General Ernst Udet. “It is invincible!”
“Wonder what the hell is the matter with that American?” the
German air commander, General Bruno Loerzer, remarked to the
political journalist, Bella Fromm. “He’ll scare the wits out of the
Yankees with his talk about the invincible Luftwaffe. That’s exactly
what the boys here want him to do.”
“He’s going to be the best promotion campaign we could possi-
bly invest in,” said Axel von Blomberg, the son of the Nazi Minister
of War, after attending a party given for Lindbergh in 1936.
Two years later, in the crucially decisive days preceding the
Munich Pact, Lindbergh visited the Soviet Union. He was there on-
ly a few days. On his return, he immediately began spreading the
word that the Red Army was hopelessly ill-equipped, badly trained
and wretchedly commanded. He asserted that Soviet Russia would
be useless as a partner in any military alliance against Nazi Germa-
ny. In his opinion, Lindbergh declared, it was necessary to co-
operate with, not against, the Nazis.
336
Lindbergh’s black and orange plane became a familiar sight on
the airfields of Europe’s anxious capitals as he flew from one coun-
try to another, advocating the formation of political and economic
alliances with the Third Reich....
As the Munich negotiations got under way, small select groups
of anti-Soviet British businessmen, aristocrats and politicians gath-
ered at Lady Astor’s estate at Cliveden to hear Lindbergh’s views
on the European situation. Lindbergh spoke of Germany’s vast air
power, swiftly expanding war production and brilliant military lead-
ership. The Nazis, he repeated again and again, were invincible. He
recommended that France and Great Britain come to terms with
Hitler and “permit Germany to expand eastward into Russia without
declaring war.”12
A series of intimate conferences were arranged for Lindbergh
with British Members of Parliament and various key political fig-
ures. Among them was David Lloyd George, who subsequently had
this to say about the American flyer:—
He was in Russia, I think, about a week. He had not
seen any of the great leaders of Russia, he could not have
seen much of the air force, and he came back and told us
that the Russian army was no good, that Russian factories
were in an awful mess. And there were a great many who
believed it—except Hitler.
Lloyd George’s conversation with Lindbergh left the former
Prime Minister with the conviction, as he put it, that the American
flyer was “the agent and the tool of much more astute and sinister
men than himself.”
From the Soviet Union came the same accusation in more spe-
cific language. A group of outstanding Soviet flyers published a
statement in Moscow accusing Lindbergh of circulating the “colos-
sal lie” that Germany possesses such a strong air force it is capable
12
Describing his activities during this period, Lindbergh told an
America First Committee rally in the United States on October 30,
1941: “By 1938 I had come to the conclusion that if a war occurred
between Germany on the one side and England and France on the other
it would result either in a German victory or in a prostrate and devastat-
ed Europe. I therefore advocated that England and France... permit
Germany to expand eastward into Russia without declaring war.”
337
of defeating the combined air fleets of England, France, Russia and
Czechoslovakia.” The Soviet airmen went on to say:—
Lindbergh plays the role of a stupid liar, lackey and
flatterer of German Fascists and their English aristocratic
protectors. He had an order from English reactionary cir-
cles to prove the weakness of Soviet aviation and give
Chamberlain an argument for capitulation at Munich in
connection with Czechoslovakia.
Three weeks after the signing of the Munich Pact, the Govern-
ment of the Third Reich demonstrated its official appreciation of the
services Lindbergh had rendered Nazi Germany. On the evening of
October 18, 1938, at a dinner given in Lindbergh’s honor in Berlin,
Field Marshal Goering conferred on the American flyer one of
Germany’s highest decorations, the Order of the German Eagle....
Having lived abroad for three and a half years, Lindbergh re-
turned to the United States shortly before the outbreak of war in
1939.
As soon as the Nazis invaded Poland, and Great Britain and
France declared war on Germany, Lindbergh rushed into print with
an urgent pronunciamento: the war against Germany was the wrong
war; the right war lay to the east. In an article entitled “Aviation,
Geography and Race,” in the November issue of Reader’s Digest, in
language startlingly reminiscent of Alfred Rosenberg, Lindbergh
declared:—
We, the heirs of European culture, are on the verge of a
disastrous war, a war within our own family of nations, a
war which will reduce the strength and destroy the treas-
ures of the white race.... Asia presses toward us on the Rus-
sian border, all foreign races stir relentlessly.... We can
have peace and security only so long as we band together
or preserve that most priceless possession our inheritance
of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves
against attack by foreign armies, and dilution by foreign
races.
During 1940 Lindbergh identified himself more and more
closely with the isolationist, anti-Soviet, and frequently pro-Axis
movement that was then mushrooming on the American scene. He
became the leading spokesman for the isolationist No Foreign Wars
338
Committee and the idol of the U. S. Fifth Column.13
That fall Lindbergh addressed a small group of students at Yale
University. “We must make our peace with the new powers in Eu-
rope,” Lindbergh told them.
The meeting at Yale University had been arranged by a wealthy
young student named R. Douglas Stuart, Jr., who was heir to the
Quaker Oats fortune. Shortly afterwards, Stuart’s group was incor-
porated in Chicago, Illinois, under the name of the America First
Committee...
Speaking at huge rallies staged throughout the country by the
America First Committee and over coast-to-coast radio hookups,
Lindbergh told the American people that Soviet Russia and not Nazi
Germany was their real enemy. The war “between Germany on the
one side and England and France on the other side,” warned Lind-
bergh, could only result “either in a German victory or in a prostrate
and devastated Europe.” The war must be converted into a united
offensive against the Soviet Union.14
The entire America First publicity apparatus was put to work in
a nationwide campaign protesting the sending of Lend-Lease aid to
the Soviet Union. Charles E. Lindbergh, Representative Hamilton
13
In 1937, John C. Metcalfe, a reporter for the Chicago Daily
Times and later a Federal agent, had recorded the following statement
made to him by Hermann Schwarzmann, leader of the Astoria, Long
Island, unit of the German American Bund: “You know who might
become the Fuehrer of our great political party? Lindbergh! Yes, that is
not so far-fetched as you might think. You know he could carry the
public with him very easily. The Americans like him..... Yes, there are
a lot of things being planned the public knows nothing about as yet.”
14
The Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia was enthusiastically hailed
by the America First Committee. The America First mouthpiece, the
Herald, carried this headline:—
Europe Masses to Fight Russian Communists. Seven-
teen Nations Join the German Reich in Holy Crusade
against the U.S.S.R.
Soviet Russia’s defeat by Nazi Germany was pictured as being in
the interest of the United States. The August 1, 1941, issue of the
America First Research Bureau Bulletin stated:—
“Did you know that even if Nazi Germany conquers Communist
Russia, the enlarged German economy may be weakened rather than
strengthened?”
339
Fish, Senators Burton K. Wheeler and Gerald P. Nye, and other
Congressional spokesmen for the America First Committee de-
nounced aid to the Red Army and declared that the fate of Soviet
Russia was of no concern to the United States.
Herbert Hoover took a part in the campaign. On August 5, to-
gether with John L. Lewis, Hanford MacNider, and thirteen other
leading isolationists, the former President issued a public statement
protesting the “promise of unauthorized aid to Russia and... other
such belligerent moves.” The statement declared:—
Recent events raise doubts that this war is a clear-cut
issue of liberty and democracy. It is not purely a world con-
flict between tyranny and freedom. The Anglo-Russian al-
liance has dissipated that illusion.15
15
On October 30, 1941, with the Nazis nearing Moscow, an Amer-
ica First Rally at Madison Square Garden, New York City, was ad-
dressed by John Cudahy, the former captain with the American inter-
ventionist army in Archangel who, subsequently, as American Ambas-
sador to Belgium, adopted a pro-German stand which forced his recall
from that post. Cudahy urged that the United States Government initi-
ate an international “peace conference” which would include Nazi
Germany. Cudahy declared that “those in positions of authority in the
Nazi Government realize the great threat of American potential war
power. Von Ribbentrop told me this when I saw him in Berlin five
months ago.” Cudahy added that this would be a good bargaining point
in “peace negotiations” with the Nazis. “They say there can be no peace
with Hitler. But Hitler is only a passing phase...” said Cudahy. “We
have in this country a great European expert and a man of purest patri-
otic motives, Herbert Hoover.... Let us put Mr. Hoover to work on a
plan for a permanent peace settlement.
The invocation at the America First Rally which Cudahy addressed
was given by a Reverend George Albert Simons. Before the Russian
Revolution, this Reverend Mr. Simons had been a pastor at a Protestant
missionary church in St. Petersburg. There he had become friendly with
Boris Brasol, the anti-Semitic propagandist who was to play a major
role in distributing the Protocols of Zion in America. In February,
1919, Mr. Simons testified before the Senate Committee investigating
“Bolshevism.” Here is an excerpt from Mr. Simons’s testimony: “More
than half of the agitators in the so-called Bolshevik movement were
Yiddish. This thing [the Russian Revolution] is Yiddish and one of its
bases is to be found in the East Side of New York.” Mr. Simons rec-
340
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the America First
Committee was officially disbanded. Its chairman, General Wood,
pledged the support of the America First membership to the United
States war effort against Germany and Japan. Lindbergh retired
from the American public scene, and entered the employment of
Henry Ford as a technical consultant to the Ford Motor Company.
But the anti-Soviet America First propaganda went on....
When the Red Army began its great counteroffensives in Rus-
sia, the former America First spokesmen, who had shortly before
announced that Russia was smashed, now declared that Moscow
and its “Comintern agents” were about to “communize” all of Eu-
rope.16 When the Red Army approached its western borders, the
ommended the Protocols of Zion as a valuable source of information

about the Revolution. He said: “...it shows what this secret Jewish soci-
ety has been doing to make a conquest of the world... and finally to
have the whole world, if you please, in their grip, and now, in that book
ever so many things are said with regard to their program and methods
which dovetail into the Bolshevik regime.”
16
On May 22, 1943, the Comintern, or Communist International,
was formally dissolved. In a special article for the United Press, the
former American Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies,
summed up the dissolution of the Comintern as follows: “To the well-
informed in the Foreign Offices of the world this action did not come as
a surprise. It was simply placing the cap on the pedestal, to complete
and close a chapter in the development of Soviet foreign policy. This
can be best understood from a brief survey of the historical facts in
connection with the Comintern.... It was organized in 1919 when the
young revolutionary government was being attacked on all sides....
Under Stalin, however, it finally became a clearinghouse for the work-
ing-class movement of other countries. In the democratic countries the-
se [Communist] parties were advised to seek lawful status and to con-
duct their activities through peaceful and constitutional methods. In
these countries, they generally became vociferous but non-violent mi-
norities. Only in aggressor or hostile countries was it probable that
Comintern support was actively given to revolutionary class warfare
and internal subversive attacks upon governments.... The enemy—the
Nazis, Fascists, and Japs—have done their utmost to scare us with the
bogy of the Communist threat to our Western civilization. It was done
under the disguise of a so-called anti-Comintern pact that they original-
ly got together in 1936, 1937, 1939 and 1940, in their conspiracy to
conquer us, as well as the rest of the world.... At one stroke, on May 22
341
America Firsters predicted that Soviet troops would not cross the
frontier but would make a “separate peace” with Nazi Germany,
leaving Britain and the United States to fight on alone. When the
Red Army crossed its border, the America Firsters again raised the
cry of a Europe “dominated by Moscow.”...
Three of the most influential newspaper publishers in the Unit-
ed States, who had formerly sponsored the America First Commit-
tee, continued to spread vicious anti-Soviet propaganda even after
the United States and Soviet Russia were allied in the war against
Nazi Germany. These three publishers—William Randolph Hearst,
Captain Joseph M. Patterson, and Colonel Robert R. McCormick—
printed for their many millions of readers an endless series of arti-
cles and editorials designed to arouse suspicion and antagonism
against America’s ally, the Soviet Union.
Here are some typical passages from their newspapers during
the war:—
You know we cannot expect too much of Russia. The
bear that walks like a man does not always think like a
man. There is always in the Russian mental processes the
suggestion of the brutal selfishness and utter untrustworthi-
ness of this wild animal which is her symbol.—Hearst’s
New York Journal-American, March 30, 1942
Summarizing the various war fronts, matters seem to
be progressing very favorably in Russia—for RUSSIA. Of
course, Russia is not a full partner of the United Nations.
She is a semi-partner of the Axis.—Hearst’s New York
Journal-American, March 30, 1942
[1943], Stalin and his associates in Moscow spoiled Hitler’s game....

When they abolished the Comintern, they spiked the last big gun of
Hitler’s propaganda.... The abolition of the Comintern, moreover, was a
definite act, confirming their expressed purpose to co-operate with, and
not to stir up trouble for, their neighbors, with whom they are pledged
to collaboration to win the war and the peace.... The abolition of the
Comintern contributes to the cementing of confidence between fighting
allies in the war effort. It is also a contribution to postwar construction,
in the building of a decent world community of nations, who, realisti-
cally, seek to build that world by co-operating and working together as
good neighbors.”
342
What Stalin is getting at is this: He is preparing the
way for a separate peace with Germany at the moment
when he considers that this is good policy. He lays the
ground for it by accusing the allies of not living up to their
agreements. Therefore he is released from any that he may
have made. He may not need this excuse. It is there if he
wants it. He has prepared the ground.—McCormick’s Chi-
cago Tribune, August 10, 1943
If Stalin can get more out of Germany with less trouble
than he can get from his so-called allies later, what would a
supremely self-centered man, to whom perfidy is a natural
habit, choose? The whole career of the Georgian tenant of
the Kremlin has been a turbulent stream of self-interest un-
scrupulously flowing from sources of natural cupidity to
the objects desired.—McCormick’s Chicago Tribune, Au-
gust 24, 1943
Which will smell better—a Russian Europe or a Ger-
man Europe?—Patterson’s Daily News, August 27, 1943
It is ridiculous to plan to preserve peace with the aid of
Russia. Russia invaded poor Finland and Poland, and was
ready to pounce on Germany with England’s sanction, only
Hitler beat her to it.—Letter of November 2, 1943, from a
series of similar letters printed regularly in Patterson’s New
York Daily News
President Roosevelt warned on April 28, 1942, that the war ef-
fort “must not be impeded by a few bogus patriots who use the sa-
cred freedom of the press to echo the sentiments of the propagan-
dists in Tokyo and Berlin.”
On November 8, 1943, at a Madison Square Garden meeting
celebrating the tenth anniversary of U.S.-Soviet diplomatic rela-
tions, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes issued a scathing
denunciation of the anti-Soviet propaganda campaign which was
still being carried on without interruption by Hearst, Patterson and
McCormick. The outspoken Secretary of the Interior declared:—
Unfortunately there are powerful and active forces in
this country that are deliberately fostering ill will toward
Russia.... Let me simply mention, as an example, the Hearst
343
press and the Patterson-McCormick newspaper axis, par-
ticularly the latter.... If these newspaper publishers hate
Russia and Great Britain, their hate of their own country is
more than libertine.... They must hate their own country
and despise its institutions if, deliberately, they pursue an
intention to stir up hate for the two nations whose help we
must have if we are to defeat Hitler....
In the fall of 1944, as Nazi Germany faced imminent defeat as a
result of the combined offensives of the armies of the United States,
Great Britain and the Soviet Union, a renewed call to arms against
Soviet Russia was heard in the United States.
From Rome, the recently liberated capital of Italy, William C.
Bullitt, the former Ambassador to Moscow and Paris, called for a
new anti-Soviet alliance to save Western civilization from the men-
ace of “Soviet imperialism.”
The career of William C. Bullitt had followed a familiar
pattern....
In 1919, Bullitt had been one of Woodrow Wilson’s emissaries
to Soviet Russia. Fifteen years later, in 1934, he became the first
American Ambassador to Soviet Russia. Wealthy, ambitious, with a
flair for diplomatic intrigue, Bullitt formed friendly relations with a
number of the Russian Trotskyites. He began to talk of the necessity
for Soviet Russia to surrender Vladivostok to Japan and to make
concessions to Nazi Germany in the West. In 1935, Bullitt visited
Berlin. William E. Dodd, then American Ambassador to Germany,
recorded in his diplomatic diary:—
Coming through Berlin in the spring or summer of
1935, he (Bullitt) reported to me that he was sure Japan
would attack eastern Russia within six months and he ex-
pected that Japan would take all the Far Eastern end of
Russia.
Bullitt said Russia had no business trying to hold the
peninsula which projects into the Japanese sea at Vladivos-
tok. That is all going to be taken soon by Japan. I said: You
agree that if the Germans have their way Russia with
160,000,000 people shall be denied access to the Pacific,
and be excluded from the Baltic? He said: “Oh, that makes
no difference.”... I was amazed at this kind of talk from a
responsible diplomat....
344
At luncheon with the French Ambassador, he repeated
his hostile attitude and argued at length with the French for
the defeat of the Franco-Soviet peace pact then being nego-
tiated, which the English Ambassador reported to me was
the best possible guarantee of European peace.... Later, or
about the same time, when the new Italian Ambassador
came here directly from Moscow, we were told that Bullitt
had become attracted to Fascism before leaving Moscow.
On January 27, 1937, Ambassador Dodd recorded:—
Recently reports have come to me that American banks
are contemplating large new credits and loans to Italy and
Germany whose war machines are already large enough to
threaten the peace of the world. I have even heard, but it
seems unbelievable to me, that Mr. Bullitt is lending en-
couragement to these schemes.
In 1940, after the fall of France, Bullitt returned from France to
the United States to announce that Marshal Petain was a “patriot”
who, by surrendering to Nazism, had thereby saved his country
from Communism.
Four years later, as the Second World War was drawing to its
close, Bullitt reappeared on the European continent as a “corre-
spondent” for Life magazine. From Rome he sent a sensational arti-
cle to Life, which was published in that periodical on September 4,
1944. Purporting to give the opinions of certain anonymous “Ro-
mans,” Bullitt repeated the anti-Soviet propaganda which for twenty
years had been utilized by international Fascism in its drive for
world conquest. Bullitt wrote:—
The Romans expect the Soviet Union to dominate Fin-
land, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria,
Hungary and Czechoslovakia.... They expect that, besides
eastern Poland, the Russians will also annex East Prussia, in-
cluding Konigsberg.... A sad joke going the rounds in Rome
gives the spirit of their [the “Romans”] hope: What is an op-
timist? A man who believes that the third world war will
begin in about 15 years between the Soviet Union and west-
ern Europe backed by Great Britain and the U.S. What is a
pessimist? A man who believes that western Europe, Great
Britain and the U. S. will not dare to fight.
345
Bullitt asserted that the menace against which Western civiliza-
tion must unite was Moscow and its “Communist agents.”
It was the same cry with which, a quarter of a century before, at
the close of the First World War, Captain Sidney George Reilly had
sought to rally counterrevolution throughout the world.17
17
The same cry was re-echoed, even after the final defeat of Nazi
Germany by the Anglo-American-Soviet coalition, when Congress-
woman Clare Luce, wife of the publisher of the magazines Time, Life;
and Fortune, returned from a European tour early in 1945 to inform
Americans that Bolshevism was threatening to engulf the whole of Eu-
rope because of the Red Army’s defeat of Nazi Germany. Mrs. Luce
called on the United States to give its support to all anti-Soviet forces in
Europe. This, of course, had been the chief hope of the Nazis and the
main theme of the Nazi Propaganda Minister, Dr. Goebbels, during his
last broadcasts from besieged Berlin.
Again, the same cry was raised when one of a group of American
Senators visiting Rome in the spring of 1945 was said to have asked a
gathering of American soldiers if they would not be willing to go on
“and finish the job” by fighting against Soviet Russia. The soldiers
were reported to have received the Senator’s anti-Bolshevik crusading
with obvious disapproval. Many of them walked out of the room.
At the same time, anti-Soviet propaganda continued to be spread in
the United States by a number of books similar in style and content to
Jan Valtin’s Out of the Night. Among the most widely circulated of
these books published in 1945 were Report on the Russians by William
L. White and One Who Survived by Alexander Barmine.
The American journalist William L. White wrote his Report on the
Russians after a hasty, six-weeks’ tour of the Soviet Union. From be-
ginning to end White’s book, which originally appeared in condensed
form in the Reader’s Digest, was a tirade against the Soviet people,
their leaders and even against their war effort. Hailed as a “rich objec-
tive report” by such anti-Soviet journals as the Social-Democratic New
Leader and enthusiastically quoted by the Patterson-McCormick and
Hearst press, White’s book was vigorously condemned by those sec-
tions of the American press concerned with the maintenance of good
relations between the United Nations. A group of distinguished Ameri-
can correspondents who had worked in the Soviet Union during the
war, including John Hersey, Richard Lauterbach, Ralph Parker and
Edgar Snow, issued a public statement sharply denouncing White’s
book as “a highly biased and misleading report, calculated to prolong
the oldest myths and prejudices against a great ally, whose sacrifices in
this war have saved us incalculable bloodshed and suffering.” The
346
statement of the foreign correspondents pointed out that “White was

ignorant not only of the language but evidently, of this history and cul-
ture [of Russia] as well,” that White’s book’s “fundamental dishonesty
lies in the total absence of either foreground or background detail,” and
that “the book has to be linked with the significance of ignorant and
inimical groups here and in Europe, who seek to sharpen distrust and
suspicion among the Allies.” Nevertheless, Report on the Russians,
promoted by a lavish high-pressure publicity campaign, continued to
reach tens of thousands of American readers.
Alexander Barmine’s book, One Who Survived, purported to be the
“inside story” of Soviet politics and leadership by a former “Soviet
diplomat” and “specialist” in Soviet affairs. Like the Report on the
Russians, Barmine’s book virulently attacked everything connected
with the Soviet Union, declaring that Stalin was the leader of “a trium-
phant counterrevolution” which had become “a reactionary dictator-
ship.” At the time of the exposure and liquidation of the Russian fifth
column, Alexander Barmine was serving as the Soviet charge d’affaires
in Athens, Greece. Barmine promptly left his post and refused to return
to the Soviet Union. In One Who Survived, Barmine relates that a num-
ber of the Soviet conspirators who were executed had been among his
closest “friends” and “colleagues.” Regarding General Tukhachevsky,
who was found guilty of plotting with the German General Staff against
the Soviet Union, Barmine states, “In Moscow I had worked in intimate
collaboration with him,” and adds that the Russian general “had been in
the last years my close friend.” Barmine also remarks that he “carried
out” a “few jobs” under the direction of Arkady Rosengoltz, who ad-
mitted in 1938 to having been a paid agent of the German Military In-
telligence; and that he, Barmine, had been visited in Paris by the “keen-
witted” Leon Sedov Trotsky. The book One Who Survived contained a
eulogistic introduction by Max Eastman, and was vigorously promoted
by other anti-Soviet persons in the United States. Like William L.
White’s book, Barmine’s One Who Survived was praised and publi-
cized with special enthusiasm by the New Leader, the editors of which
included Eugene Lyons, whose anti-Soviet writings were periodically
quoted by official agencies of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry; William
Henry Chamberlin, whose anti-Soviet articles were featured by the
Hearst press and whose interpretation of the Moscow trials appeared in
the Japanese propaganda organ, Contemporary Japan; Sidney Hook,
former follower of Trotsky; John Dewey, former Chairman of the
“Commission of Inquiry” at the Trotsky hearings in Mexico; and Max
Eastman, Trotsky’s former close collaborator, friend and translator.
In Europe, both W. L. White’s and Alexander Barmine’s writings
347
But profound changes had taken place in the world.
Even as William C. Bullitt was calling for a new crusade
against Soviet Russia, the armies of Great Britain and the United
States and the Soviet Union were converging from east, west, north
and south upon the citadel of counterrevolution—Berlin.
In the face of the threat of Fascist slavery and against the most
reactionary force which the world had ever seen, the Western de-
mocracies had found their most powerful ally in the state which had
been born out of the Russian Revolution. The alliance was no acci-
dent. The inexorable logic of events, after a quarter of century of
tragic misunderstanding and artificially incited hostility, had inevi-
tably brought together and forged into a fighting unity the freedom-
loving peoples of the world. Out of the unparalleled bloodshed and
suffering of the Second World War emerged the United Nations.
were used by the Nazis in their propaganda campaign against the Soviet
Union. The publication of White’s Report on the Russians was hailed
in an enthusiastic front-page article in the January 30, 1945, issue of
Der Westkaempfer (West Front Fighter), official organ of the Nazi
Reichswehr; the article asserted that White’s book proved the possibil-
ity of division in the ranks of the United Nations. In March 1945,
American troops in Italy were bombarded by the Nazis with shells con-
taining pamphlet reprints of an article by Barmine which had previous-
ly been published in the Reader’s Digest under the title “The New
Communist Conspiracy.”
The end of the Second World War in Europe found the voices of
the anti-Bolshevik crusaders no less shrill than after 1918, but far less
potent in their influence on Americans and other peoples, who had
learned much since the death of Woodrow Wilson.
348
CHAPTER XXIV
The Case of the Sixteen
In the last months of the Second World War, the chief propagandist
issue of anti-Soviet agitation in Great Britain and the United States
centered on the question of Poland. As the Red Army drove west-
ward, crossing the Polish frontiers and liberating ever greater sec-
tions of Poland from the Nazi invaders, British Tories and American
isolationists charged that “Polish freedom” was now endangered by
the Soviet Union. Week after week, the; Hearst and Patterson-
McCormick press in the United States called for anti-Soviet action
to save Poland from “Bolshevism.” In the United States Congress
and the British Parliament, speakers rose repeatedly to denounce
“Red Imperialistic aims in Poland” and to accuse the Soviet Gov-
ernment of betraying the principles of the United Nations. Much of
this anti-Soviet propaganda was based on statements and material
officially released by the Polish Government-in-Exile in London
and by its representatives in Washington, D. C. The London Polish
Government-in-Exile was composed of Polish militarists, spokes-
men of Poland’s feudal landlords, some Polish fascists and a few
socialists and peasant leaders, who had found haven in England af-
ter Poland’s collapse in 1939.1
1
The London Polish Government-in-Exile considered itself the le-
gitimate heir to the Pilsudski regime whose traditional policy was based
on opposition to Soviet Russia. As Raymond Leslie Buell wrote in his
book Poland: The Key to Europe: “Pilsudski believed that Poland had
to have a large territory. For historical reasons it was easier to get this
base at the expense of Russia than of Germany.” Prewar Polish diplo-
macy, under the direction of the former anti-Soviet Intelligence officer
Colonel Josef Beck, was directed not against Nazi Germany but against
Soviet Russia. The Polish Army, with the largest percentage of cavalry
of any army in the world, was organized for operations on the Ukraini-
an plains. Polish industries were concentrated on the German border;
Polish military fortifications on the Soviet frontier. Since its formation,
the Poland dominated by the militarists and feudal landlords was a cor-
nerstone of the anti-Soviet cordon sanitaire, and a rendezvous for in-
ternational agents plotting the overthrow of the Soviet Government.
Boris Savinkov established his headquarters in Poland after fleeing
from Russia and, with the- direct aid of Pilsudski, built a White Army
in Poland of 30,000 men for use against Soviet Russia. In the late
349
At the time, there were actually two Polish governments. Be-
sides the émigré regime in London, a Provisional Polish Govern-
ment, the so-called Warsaw regime, existed within Poland itself.
The Warsaw Government, based on an alliance of Polish anti-fascist
parties, repudiated the 1935 Pilsudski fascist constitution which the
London Poles upheld. The Warsaw Government stood for sweeping
economic and political reforms inside Poland, the abolition of the
feudal estates, and close friendly relations with the Soviet Union.
At the Yalta Conference, in February 1945, Roosevelt, Church-
ill and Stalin discussed the question of the future of Poland at
length, and agreed that the Warsaw regime was to be “reorganized
on a broader democratic basis with the inclusion of democratic
leaders from Poland itself and from Poles abroad,” and then recog-
nized as the legitimate Provisional Government of the country.
The Yalta agreement met with strenuous opposition from the
1920’s, the Torgprom conspirators came to an understanding with the

Polish High Command that Poland was to be one of the chief bases in
the new war of intervention they were plotting against Soviet Russia.
The Polish Intelligence Service established intimate working relations
with all anti-Soviet forces, including the Trotskyite-Bukharinist under-
ground organization. In 1938, the Munich Pact brought the anti-Soviet
character of the Polish rulers clearly into the open. When the Nazis
served their ultimatum on Czechoslovakia and the Czechs were prepar-
ing to resist, the Polish Government mobilized its army and placed it
directly in the way of any possible assistance to the Czechs from the
Soviet Union. As a reward, Hitler permitted the Poles to seize the
Teschen district from the Czechs at the time of the partition of Czecho-
slovakia. In 1939, on the eve of the Nazi attack on Poland, the Polish
militarists still refused to revise their suicidal anti-Soviet policy, reject-
ed a proposed military agreement with Soviet Russia; and would not
permit the Red Army to cross Polish boundaries to meet the Nazi
Wehrmacht. The consequences of this policy for Poland were disas-
trous, and almost immediately after the Nazi invasion the Polish Gov-
ernment fled abroad, taking with it the Polish gold reserves. First in
France and subsequently in England, representatives of this Polish
Government, constituting themselves the Polish Government-in-Exile,
continued the anti-Soviet intrigues which had brought their nation to
ruin. They were supported in these intrigues by powerful elements in
international economic, political and religious circles which regarded
victory for Soviet Russia in the war against Nazi Germany as a menace
to their own interests.
350
London Polish émigrés and their American and British allies. It was
denounced as a “betrayal of Poland.” Diplomatic intrigues were set
afoot to prevent the fulfillment of the Yalta decision.
The anti-Soviet agitation and intrigues around the Polish issue
reached their height when in May 1945 the Soviet Government an-
nounced that it had arrested sixteen Polish agents of the London
Government-in-Exile on charges of anti-Soviet conspiracy. This
action on the part of the Soviet Government, declared the Polish
émigrés in London, was the most extreme example of Moscow’s
program to stifle “Polish democracy” and impose a “Red dictator-
ship” upon the Polish people....
The best-known name among the sixteen Poles arrested by the
Soviet Government was that of General Leopold Bronislaw
Okulicki, former Chief of Staff of the Polish army in exile. This
army had played a key role in the anti-Soviet campaign of the
Polish émigrés....
This Polish army was originally organized on Soviet soil in
1941 by joint Polish-Soviet agreement, to fight side by side with the
Red Army against the Germans. It was headed by General
Wladislaw Anders, a former member of the “colonels’ clique”
which had dominated Poland under the Pilsudski dictatorship. To
train and equip Anders’s army for military action against Germany,
the Soviet Government granted a loan without interest of
300,000,000 rubles, and gave the army facilities for recruiting and
encampment. However, General Anders, Okulicki and other Polish
militarists secretly opposed the alliance with the Red Army. They
believed that Soviet Russia was doomed to speedy defeat by Nazi
Germany and were acting accordingly.
A report by Lieutenant Colonel Berling, subsequently leader of
the armed forces of the Warsaw regime, revealed that in 1941,
shortly after the formation of the first Polish units on Soviet soil,
General Anders held a conference with his officers at which he
stated: —
When the Red Army collapses under German blows,
which will be no later than within a few months, we will be
able to break through to Iran via the Caspian Sea. Since we
will be the only armed power in this territory, we will be in
a position to do whatever we please.
When, contrary to General Anders’s expectations,. the Red Ar-
351
my failed to collapse before the Nazi blitzkrieg, the Polish com-
mander informed his officers that they need not be concerned about
meeting the terms of the Polish-Soviet military agreement to fight
jointly against Germany. “There is no need to hurry,” Anders told
General Borucie-Spiechowiczow, commander of the Polish 5th In-
fantry Division.
Anders and his officers, according to Lieutenant Colonel
Berling, “did everything possible to drag out the training and arm-
ing of the divisions” so that they would not have to go into action
against Germany. The Polish Chief of Staff, General Okulicki, ac-
tively sabotaged the equipping of the Polish troops. In Berling’s
words:—
Okulicki sabotaged the organization of the base on the
Caspian Sea for receiving English arms and provisions
from Iran. Soviet authorities built a special railway branch
and warehouses on the shores of the Caspian Sea, but Gen-
eral Anders’s command prevented a single rifle, tank or
sack of supplies from coming through.
Polish officers and men who were eager to accept the Soviet
help and to take up arms against the German invaders of their
homeland were terrorized by the reactionary clique headed by Gen-
erals Anders and Okulicki. Lists were compiled of “friends of the
Soviet” who were “traitors to Poland.” A special index known as
File B contained the names and records of all those said to be “sym-
pathetic to the Soviets.” Fascist anti-Semitic propaganda was pro-
moted by the Polish command. “There was,” reported Berling,
“open talk about the need ‘to square accounts with the Jews,’ and
there were frequent cases of Jews being beaten up.” The Dwojka,
espionage service of Anders’s army, began secretly accumulating
data about Soviet war plants, state farms, railroads, army depots and
positions of the Red Army troops.
By the spring of 1942, Anders’s army in Russia had still failed
to fight a single engagement against the German enemy. Instead,
Polish officers and men were being intensively indoctrinated with
the anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic ideology of their generals. Finally
the Polish command requested that its army be evacuated to Iran
under British auspices. By August, 1942, 75,491 Polish officers and
men and 37,756 members of their families had left Soviet territory,
without ever having struck one blow for their native land.
352
On March 13, 1944, the Australian correspondent James Al-
dridge cabled the New York Times an uncensored report on the fas-
cist behavior of the émigré Polish army leaders in Iran. Aldridge
stated that he had wanted to make public the facts about the Polish
émigrés for over a year, but the Allied censorship would not permit
him to do so. One Allied censor told Aldridge: “I know it’s all true,
but what can I do? We recognize the Polish Government, you
know.”
Here are a few of the facts reported by Aldridge:—
The Polish camp was divided into classes. At the camp
conditions got progressively worse as one’s situation was
lower. The Jews were separated into a ghetto. The camp
was run on totalitarian lines.... A continuous campaign
against Russia was conducted by the more reactionary
groups.... When more than 300 Jewish children had been
fixed up to go to Palestine, the Polish elite, who were very
anti-Semitic, put pressure on the Iraqui authorities not to al-
low the Jewish children to pass through....
I have heard many Americans say they would like to
tell the real story about the Poles, but that it was useless be-
cause the Poles have such a powerful lobbying bloc in
Washington....
From Iran, the Polish émigrés moved to Italy, where, under the
direction of the British High Command, and supported by the Vati-
can, the Polish émigré army established its headquarters. The ambi-
tion of Generals Anders, Okulicki and their associates, which they
made little attempt to conceal, was to convert this Polish émigré
army into the nucleus of a new White Army for eventual action
against Soviet Russia.
As the Red Army neared the Polish border in the spring of
1944, the London Polish émigrés intensified their anti-Soviet cam-
paign. “An essential condition both for our victory and our very
existence is at least the weakening, if not the defeat, of Russia,”
declared Penstwo Polski, one of the underground newspapers circu-
lated in Poland by agents of the Government-in-Exile. Secret in-
structions from the London Poles to their underground agents stat-
ed: “At all costs an effort must be made to keep on the best terms
with all German civil authorities.”
The Polish Government-in-Exile was preparing for armed ac-
353
tion against the Soviet Union. The agency which was to carry out
this action was the Armia Krajowa, or AK, an underground military
apparatus inside Poland organized and controlled by the London
émigrés. The Armia Krajowa or AK was headed by General Bor-
Komorowski.
Early in March, 1944, General Okulicki was summoned to the
headquarters of General Sosnkowski, military representative of the
London Polish émigrés. Later, General Okulicki gave this descrip-
tion of this secret conference:—
...when I was received by General Sosnkowski, before
flying to Poland, he said that in the near future we could
expect a Red Army offensive which would result in routing
the Germans in Poland. In that case, Sosnkowski said, the
Red Army would occupy Poland and would not permit the
existence of the Armia Krajowa on Polish territory as a
military organization subordinated to the London Polish
government.
Sosnkowski proposed that the Armia Krajowa should carry out
a sham dissolution after the Red Army drove the Nazis from Po-
land, and that a secret “reserve headquarters” be established for op-
erations in the rear of the Red Army:—
Sosnkowski stated that these reserve headquarters
would have to direct the struggle of the Armia Krajowa
against the Red Army.
Sosnkowski asked that these instructions be conveyed
to the commander of the Armia Krajowa in Poland, General
Bor-Komorowski....
Shortly after, General Okulicki was mysteriously flown into
German-occupied Poland, where he promptly contacted General
Bor-Komorowski, and delivered Sosnkowski’s instructions. The
commander of the Armia Krajowa told Okulicki that he would set
up a special apparatus to carry out the following tasks:—
1. Preserve arms for underground activities and for the
preparation of an uprising against the U.S.S.R.
2. Create armed combat detachments, of not more than
sixty men each.
3. Form terrorist, “liquidation” groups for assassinating
354
the enemies of the AK and representatives of the Soviet
military command.
4. Train saboteurs for operations behind the Soviet
lines.
5. Carry on military intelligence and espionage activi-
ties in the rear of the Red Army.
6. Preserve the radio stations already set up by the AK
and maintain radio communications with the central com-
mand of the AK in London.
7. Conduct printed and oral propaganda against the So-
viet Union.
In the fall of 1944, the Red Army reached the banks of the Vis-
tula and halted before Warsaw to regroup its forces and bring up
fresh supplies after its prolonged summer offensive. The strategy of
the Soviet High Command was not to launch a frontal attack upon
the Polish capital but to take it by sudden encirclement, thus pre-
serving the city and its population. But, without the knowledge of
the Soviet High Command and acting on orders from London, Gen-
eral Bor-Komorowski initiated a general uprising of the Polish pa-
triots in Warsaw, declaring that the Red Army was about to move
on the city. With the Red Army completely unprepared to cross the
Vistula at this time, the Nazi High Command was able systematical-
ly to bomb and shell every section of the city held by the insurgent
Polish patriots. Here is General Okulicki’s own account of General
Bor-Komorowski’s role in the ultimate surrender of the Polish forc-
es in Warsaw:—
At the close of September, 1944, the commander of the
Armia Krajowa, General Bor-Komorowski, negotiated re-
garding surrender with the commander of the German
troops in Warsaw—SS. Obergruppenfuehrer von Den-
Bach. Bor-Komorowski appointed the deputy chief of the
second (intelligence) department of headquarters, Colonel
Boguslawski, to conduct negotiations as representative of
the chief of staff of the Armia Krajowa. Reporting to Bor-
Komorowski in my presence on the terms of surrender ad-
vanced by the Germans, Boguslawski said that von Den-
Bach thought it necessary for the Poles to cease armed
struggle against the Germans because it was the Soviet Un-
ion that was the common enemy of Poland and Germany.
355
On meeting Bor-Komorowski on the day of the surrender I
told him that von Den-Bach was possibly right and Bor-
Komorowski agreed with me on this.
Throughout the fall and winter months of 1944 and the spring
of 1945, with the Red Army waging gigantic offensives aimed at
the final smashing of the German military power on the Eastern
Front, the Armia Krajowa under General Okulicki’s leadership car-
ried on a widespread campaign of terrorism, sabotage, espionage
and armed raids in the rear of the Soviet armies.
“Measures of the Soviet military command in the zone of hos-
tilities were sabotaged,” later declared Stanislaw Jasiukowicz, Vice-
Premier in Poland of the London Government-in-Exile and one of
Okulicki’s confederates. “Our press and radio stations engaged in
slanderous propaganda. The Polish people were being incited
against the Russians.”
Detachments of Okulicki’s AK dynamited trains carrying Red
Army troops, destroyed Soviet supply depots, mined roads along
which Russian troops were passing, and disrupted Soviet transport
and communication lines in every possible manner. An order issued
on September 17, 1944, by one of Okulicki’s aides, read as
follows:—
The operations must be universal—blowing up military
trains, trucks, railway tracks, burning of bridges, destruc-
tion of stores and village soviets. It must be carried out in
secret.
A commander of an AK detachment named Lubikowski, who
conducted a special secret school for spies and saboteurs, later re-
ported regarding some of the assignments carried out by his
agents:—
I received a written report on the execution of my or-
der... from Ragner who informed me that he carried out
twelve acts of sabotage, derailed two trains, blew up two
bridges and damaged a railway track in eight places.
Specially trained groups of AK terrorists waylaid and murdered
Red Army soldiers and spokesmen for the Warsaw regime. Accord-
ing to incomplete data subsequently made public by the Soviet mili-
tary authorities, AK terrorists killed 594 Red Army officers and
356
men over a period of eight months and wounded an additional
294....
At the same time, acting under instructions received by radio
from the Polish command in London, General Okulicki’s agents
carried on extensive intelligence operations behind Soviet lines. A
directive of the London Polish Government, addressed to General
Okulicki and dated November 11, 1944, No. 7201-1-777, read as
follows:—
Since the knowledge of the military intentions and pos-
sibilities... of the Soviets in the east is of basic importance
for foreseeing and planning further developments in Po-
land, you must... fill the gap by transmitting intelligence
reports in accordance with the instructions of the intelli-
gence department of headquarters.
The directive went on to request detailed information regarding
Soviet military units, supply trains, fortifications, airdromes, arma-
ments and war industry.
Week after week coded intelligence reports were dispatched to
the Poles in London from a network of illegal radio stations
operating in the rear of the Red Army. A typical radiogram, No.
621-2, sent from Cracow to the chief command in London, and
intercepted and deciphered by the Soviet Military Intelligence, read
as follows:—
In the latter half of March an average of 20 trains with
troops and munitions (artillery, American tanks, infantry, of
whom one third were women) were passing daily in a west-
ern direction.... An order on the urgent conscription of
1895-1925 age classes has been posted in Cracow. A cere-
mony of commissioning 800 officers brought from the east
took place in Cracow with the participation of General
Zymierski....
On March 22, 1945, General Okulicki summed up the ultimate
hopes of his superiors in London in a secret directive addressed to
Colonel “Slavbor,” the commandant of the western district of the
Armia Krajowa. Okulicki’s extraordinary directive read:—
In the event of the victory of the U.S.S.R. over Germa-
ny this will not only threaten Britain’s interests in Europe
357
but the whole of Europe will be frightened.... Considering
their own interests in Europe, the British will have to pro-
ceed to the mobilization of the forces of Europe against the
U.S.S.R. It is clear that we shall take our place in the front
ranks of this European anti-Soviet bloc; it is also impossi-
ble to visualize this bloc without the participation of Ger-
many which will be controlled by the British.
These plans and hopes of the Polish émigrés were short-lived.
Early in 1945, the Soviet Military Intelligence began rounding up
the Polish conspirators behind the Soviet lines. By the summer of
1945, the ringleaders were in Soviet hands. Sixteen of them, includ-
ing General Okulicki, faced trial before the Military Collegium of
the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R.
The trial began on June 18 in the House of Trade Unions in
Moscow. It lasted three days. The testimony clearly established that
the Polish émigrés and their underground apparatus had been led by
their hatred for Soviet Russia into giving substantial aid to the Nazi
invaders of their own country.
During the trial, the following exchange took place between the
Soviet Prosecutor, Major General Afanasiev, and the short, tight-
lipped leader of the anti-Soviet Polish underground, General
Okulicki:—
AFANASIEV. Did your action interfere with the Red
Army’s operations against the Germans...?
OKULICKI. It interfered.
AFANASIEV. Whom did it help?
OKULICKI, Naturally, it helped the Germans.
Major General Afanasiev told the court that he would not de-
mand the death sentence for any of the defendants because they
were “mere puppets” of the Polish émigrés in London and because
“we are now experiencing the joyful days of victory and they are no
longer dangerous.” The Soviet Prosecutor added:—
This trial sums up the activities of the Polish reaction-
aries who for years have fought the Soviet Union. Their
policy led to the occupation of Poland by the Germans. The
Red Army fought for freedom and independence against
barbarism.... The Soviet Union, with the help of the Allies,
played the decisive role in Germany’s defeat. But Okulicki
358
and the others wanted to knife the Red Army in the back....
They prefer a cordon sanitaire around Russia-to friendship
with her....
On June 21, the Soviet Military Collegium handed down its
verdict. Three of the accused were acquitted. General Okulicki and
eleven of his confederates were found guilty and sentenced to pris-
on terms ranging from ten years to four months.2
Following the trial, the United States and Great Britain with-
drew their recognition of the London Polish Government-in-Exile.3
The Warsaw regime, reorganized in accordance with the terms of
the Yalta agreement, was formally recognized as the Provisional
Government of Poland.
2
The trial of the sixteenth individual named in the indictment, An-
ton Paidak, was postponed because of his illness. When these sixteen
Poles had originally been arrested by the Soviet authorities, the Ameri-
can Secretary of State, Edward R. Stettinius, and the British Foreign
Secretary, Anthony Eden, had vigorously protested, declaring the ar-
rested men were important Polish “democratic leaders.” After the trial,
Stettinius and Eden maintained a discreet silence.
3
The Soviet Government had severed diplomatic relations with the
Polish Government-in-Exile two years previously, on April 25, 1943,
because of the London regime’s anti-Soviet conspiratorial activities.
Since its inception, the Polish Government-in-Exile had been
chiefly sponsored and financed by the British Government. After the
recognition of the Warsaw regime, if was understood that some of the
Polish émigrés would be offered British citizenship, and perhaps given
police jobs in the British colonies. On learning of the Allied decision to
recognize the Warsaw regime, General Anders and his aides issued
public statements declaring that the Polish émigré troops under their
command would never accept the Allied decision, would remain loyal
to the “government” in London, and would return to their native land
only “with arms in their hands.” By the fall of 1945, however, large
numbers of the Polish émigré troops were deserting the cause of their
reactionary leaders, and, on the invitation of the Warsaw regime, were
returning to Poland to participate in its reconstruction.
359
CHAPTER XXV
United Nations
In a struggle for existence, people learn to know their friends and to
recognize their enemies. In the course of the Second World War,
many illusions and lies were stripped bare.
The war presented the world with many surprises. The world
was stunned at first when the Fifth Columns emerged out of the
underworld of Europe and Asia to seize power with the aid of the
Nazis and the Japanese armies in many countries. The speed with
which the early victories of the Axis were won astonished all those
who had not known of the long years of secret Axis preparations,
intrigue, terror and conspiracy.
But the greatest of all surprises of the Second World War was
Soviet Russia. Overnight, it seemed, a thick false fog was torn apart,
and through it emerged the true stature and meaning of the Soviet
nation, its leaders, its economy, its army, its people and, in Cordell
Hull’s words, “the epic quality of their patriotic fervor.”
The first great realization which came out of the Second World
War was that the Red Army, under Marshal Stalin, was the most
competent and powerful fighting force on the side of world progress
and democracy.
On February 23, 1942, General Douglas MacArthur of the
United States Army informed his fellow countrymen concerning the
Red Army:—
The world situation at the present time indicates that
the hopes of civilization rest on the worthy banners of the
courageous Russian Army. During my lifetime I have par-
ticipated in a number of wars and have witnessed others, as
well as studying in great detail the campaigns of outstand-
ing leaders of the past.
In none have I observed such effective resistance to the
heaviest blows of a hitherto undefeated enemy, followed by
a smashing counterattack which is driving the enemy back
to his own land.
The scale and grandeur of the effort mark it as the
greatest military achievement in all history.
The second great realization was that the economic system of
the Soviet Union was amazingly efficient and capable of sustaining
360
mass production under unprecedentedly adverse conditions,
On his return from an official mission to Moscow in 1942, the
Vice-Chairman of the United States War Production Board, William
Batt, reported:—
I went with a somewhat uncertain feeling about the
Russians’ ability to stand up to an all-out war; I became
convinced very quickly, however, that the entire population
was in the fight to the last woman and child.
I went rather doubtful of the Russians’ technical skill; I
found them extraordinarily hard-headed and skillful at run-
ning their factories and turning out the machines of war.
I went very much perplexed and troubled by accounts
circulated here of disunity and arbitrariness in the Russian
Government; I found that Government strong, competent
and supported by immensely popular enthusiasm.
In a word, I went with a question to be answered: is
Russia a dependable, a competent ally?... And my question
was answered for me in a ringing affirmative.
The third great realization was that the multinational peoples of
the Soviet Union were united behind their government with a patri-
otic fervor unique in history.
At Quebec, on August 31, 1943, Prime Minister Winston
Churchill, declared concerning the Soviet Government and its
leadership:—
No government ever formed among men has been ca-
pable of surviving injuries so grave and cruel as those in-
flicted by Hitler on Russia.... Russia has not only survived
and recovered from those frightful injuries but has inflicted,
as no other force in the world could have inflicted, mortal
damage on the German army machine.
The fourth great realization was that the alliance of the Western
democracies with Soviet Russia opened up the realistic promise of a
new international order of peace and security among all peoples.
On February 11, 1943, the New York Herald Tribune stated in
an editorial:—
There are but two choices before the democracies now.
One is to co-operate with Russia in rebuilding the world—
361
as there is an excellent chance of doing it, if we believe in
the strength of our own principles and prove it by applying
them. The other is to get involved in intrigues with all the
reactionary and anti-democratic forces in Europe, the only
result of which will be to alienate the Kremlin.
In New York City on November 8, 1943, the Chairman of the
United States War Production Board, Donald Nelson, reported on
his visit to Soviet Russia:—
I have come back from my journey with a high faith in
the future of Russia, and in the benefit which that future
will bring to the entire world, including ourselves. So far as
I can see, once our victory is won and we have put this war
behind us, we shall have nothing to fear except suspicion of
each other. Once we are working in collaboration with the
other United Nations to produce for peace and to raise the
living standards of peoples everywhere, we shall be on our
way toward new levels and prosperity and greater human
satisfactions than we have ever known.
On December 1, 1943, at the historic Conference of Teheran,
the answer was given to the anti-democratic and anti-Soviet con-
spiracy which for twenty five years had kept the world in an inces-
sant turmoil of secret diplomacy, counterrevolutionary intrigue, ter-
ror, fear and hatred, and which had culminated inevitably in the Ax-
is war to enslave humanity.
The leaders of the three most powerful nations on earth, Presi-
dent Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the United States of America,
Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain, and Marshal
Joseph Stalin of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, met to-
gether for the first time, and after a series of military and diplomatic
conferences issued the Declaration of the Three Powers.
The Declaration of Teheran guaranteed that Nazism would be
wiped out by the united action of the three great allies. More than
that, the Declaration opened up to the war-torn world a perspective
of enduring peace and a new era of amity among the nations,
stating:—
We recognize fully the supreme responsibility resting
upon us and all the nations to make a peace which will
command good will from the overwhelming masses of the
362
people of the world and banish the scourge and terror of
war for many generations.
With our diplomatic advisors we have surveyed the
problems of the future. We shall seek the co-operation and
active participation of all nations, large and, small, whose
peoples in heart and in mind are dedicated, as are our own
peoples, to the elimination of tyranny and slavery,
oppression and intolerance. We will welcome them as they
may choose to come into the world family of democratic
nations.
The Teheran Accord was followed by the decisive Crimea De-
cisions of February, 1945. Once again the three statesmen, Roose-
velt, Churchill and Stalin, came together, this time at Yalta in the
Crimea, where they agreed upon their joint policies for the final
defeat of Nazi Germany and the complete elimination of the Ger-
man General Staff. The Yalta discussions looked forward to the
period of peace that was to come, and laid the groundwork for the
epoch-making United Nations Conference at San Francisco at
which the Charter of a world security organization, rooted in the
alliance of the three greatest powers, was to be promulgated in
April.
On the eve of the San Francisco Conference, on April 12, 1945,
Soviet Russia lost a great friend and the whole world lost a great
democratic leader: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died. But
the work he had initiated went on. President Harry S. Truman, im-
mediately on taking office, pledged himself to carry on the war
against Axis aggression to a victorious conclusion in alliance with
the other members of the United Nations, and to fulfill Roosevelt’s
postwar program for lasting peace in firm accord with Great Britain
and Soviet Russia.
On May 8, 1945, the representatives of the German High
Command, in the presence of the chief American, British and Soviet
generals, signed in ruined Berlin the final act of unconditional sur-
render of the forces of the Nazi Wehrmacht. The war in Europe was
concluded. Winston Churchill, in a message to Marshal Stalin, said:
“Future generations will acknowledge their debt to the Red Army as
unreservedly as do we who have lived to witness these proud
achievements.”
No war in history had been fought so fiercely as the war be-
363
tween Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. For one thousand four
hundred and eighteen days, forty-seven months, four years, battles
of unprecedented scope and violence raged on the gigantic battle-
fields of the Eastern Front. The end came on May 2, 1945, when
armored troops of the Red Army stormed and captured the heart of
the Nazi citadel—Berlin. An anonymous Red Army man hoisted the
Red Flag over the Reichstag.
The flags of freedom flew everywhere in Europe.1
Yet after the creation of the United Nations, based on the con-
cept of postwar unity among the anti-Axis powers and the complete
elimination of fascism, a sudden new upsurge of anti-Soviet propa-
ganda and intrigue threatened the very foundations of the peace.
Again, as after the First World War, the peoples of Europe were
demanding the realization of their democratic goals; again the sub-
ject colonial peoples were reaching toward freedom and nation-
hood; and again, the forces of international reaction and imperialism
rallied to maintain their own vested interests and to frustrate the
peoples’ aspirations. And once again, linked with the struggle
against world democracy, a counterrevolutionary cry for war against
“Bolshevist Russia” was heard.
Barely six months after the conclusion of the Second World
War, Winston Churchill reassumed his role as chief herald of the
anti-Soviet crusade. Following the overwhelming defeat of his Tory
Party in England, and faced with the mounting crisis of British im-
perialist control of the colonial world, Churchill rediscovered the
1
The Anglo-American war in the Far East, against the third partner
of the Axis, Imperial Japan, continued. Here, too, Soviet Russia showed
its strength and its identity of interest with the democratic cause.
Throughout the period when the Red Army was battling the Nazi
Wehrmacht in the West, the Far Eastern Red Army continuously im-
mobilized a massive Japanese army, reportedly composed of more than
500,000 of the best mechanized troops at Tokyo’s command, on the
Manchurian border. On August 9, 1945, the Soviet Union entered the
war against Japan, thus fulfilling a pledge made at the Yalta Confer-
ence in January, 1943, to enter the Far Eastern war within ninety days
after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Following the Soviet war declaration
and the American atomic bombing of two Japanese industrial centers,
the Japanese Government capitulated and sued for peace. On Septem-
ber 2, Japan acknowledged her defeat and signed the act of uncondi-
tional surrender. East and West, the Second World War was over.
364
“menace of Bolshevism.” In a widely publicized speech delivered at
Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946, and addressed to the American
people, Churchill called for an anti-Soviet alliance between Great
Britain and the United States against “the growing challenge and
peril to Christian civilization” of Russian Communism.
In America and Britain the anti-Soviet campaign was again un-
der way. Fear of a third world war gripped the peoples of the world.
Speaking in the United States Senate on March 20, 1946, Sena-
tor Claude Pepper of Florida forcefully warned of the grim danger
of another war. The Soviet Union had particular reason to fear war.
In the words of Senator Pepper:
Denied the atomic bomb, denied warm-water outlets,
denied the common courtesy of economic negotiations with
her greatest ally, believing that her philosophy is such that
she will never be accepted by nations dominated by cartel-
ists, reactionaries, or Russophobes, Russia is beset with
many fears....
Russia knows what war is. Hence her fear is not imagi-
nary. It grows out of anguish and suffering. It rises from the
smoking, battered ruins of her devastated areas, from the
15,000,000 men, women, and children—50 times our loss-
es—she lost in this war, from the 25,000,000 whom that
war left homeless and starving, from all those who went
hungry, poorly clothed, and wretchedly housed, to defeat
those enemies who with fierce barbarity and unspeakable
atrocity invaded her soil and attacked her people....
Russia’s fear is aggravated by her memory of the past.
She remembers the summer of 1919, when the armies of 14
nations, including Britain, France, China, the United States,
Germany, and Japan were waging war against the new So-
viet Union upon Soviet soil....
Russia remembers the Red-baiting, the articulated and
open conspiracy against her among the major capitalistic
powers of the world, which went on after foreign military
forces were withdrawn or driven from the Soviet Union,
and the long period when she was feared and hated by all
and recognized by none....
She remembers how Hitler was built up against her and
how she was denied an invitation to Munich, where it was
365
made virtually certain that Hitler would strike her.
She remembers the German-Japanese-Italian conspira-
cy to destroy Russia under the hypocritical pretense of the
Anti-Comintern Pact, and that no nation of strength and
power protested against such proposed aggression....
Senator Pepper stressed the danger of Churchill’s proposed An-
glo-American alliance against Russia:
The United Nations Organization is wrecked if two of
the Big Three under the cloak of the United Nations Organ-
ization form another cordon sanitaire around the third of
the big trinity....
What, then, is the way out of the crisis of fear? And
how can the United Nations Organization and the peace be
saved?
I venture to suggest that the only way is to carry out the
grand conception of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who, more
than any other, is responsible for the United Nations Organ-
ization, and to reestablish the unity of Great Britain, Russia,
and the United States, and to bring about a whole new men-
tal and spiritual attitude on the part of these powers toward
peace and plenty.
As this book went to press, the authors interviewed the man
with whose story this book begins: Colonel Raymond Robins. A
few years ago, Colonel Robins retired from public affairs to live
quietly on his 2000-acre estate at Chinesgut Hill, Florida, which he
has deeded to the United States Government as a wild-life refuge
and agricultural experimental station. Colonel Robins has retained
his “outdoor mind,” his passionate concern for the welfare of the
common man, his impatience with prejudice and greed, and his
keen interest in the nation whose birth amid the turmoil of revolu-
tion he personally witnessed.
Here is what Colonel Robins said:—
“The greatest hour I shall ever know was to see the
light of hope for freedom from age-long tyrannies and op-
pressions in the eyes of the workers and peasants of Russia
as they responded to the appeals of Lenin and other leaders
of the Soviet Revolution.
“Soviet Russia has always wanted international peace.
366
Lenin knew that his great domestic program would be de-
flected if not destroyed by war. The Russian people have
always wanted peace. Education, production, exploitation
of a vast and rich territory engage all their thoughts and
energies and hopes. The greatest Minister of Foreign Af-
fairs in our generation, Commissar Maxim Litvinov,
worked ably and steadily for collective security until the
Anglo-French appeasement policies towards Mussolini and
Hitler made collective security impossible.
“Soviet Russia exploits no colonies, seeks to exploit
none. Soviet Russia operates no foreign trade cartels, seeks
none to exploit. Stalin’s policies have wiped out racial, re-
ligious, national and class antagonisms within the Soviet
territories. This unity and harmony of the Soviet peoples
point the path to international peace.”
367
Bibliographical Notes
In the preparation of this book, the authors have drawn heavily
upon the official records of the U. S. State Department; the Hear-
ings and Reports of various U. S. Congressional Committees; offi-
cial documents published by the Government of Great Britain; and
the verbatim reports published by the Soviet Government of the
proceedings at the espionage, sabotage and treason trials which
have taken place in Soviet Russia since the Revolution.
We have also made extensive use of the published memoirs of
leading personages mentioned in this book. All of the dialogue in
this book is drawn from these memoirs, from official records or
other documentary sources.
The Index of the New York Times, The Readers’ Guide to Peri-
odical Literature and the International Index to Periodicals were
invaluable reference sources.
We wish to express our appreciation in particular to Harper and
Brothers for permission to quote at length from Britain’s Master
Spy, Sidney Reilly’s Narrative written by Himself, edited and com-
piled by His Wife.
We also wish to record our special indebtedness to Cedric
Belfrage for his editorial and research assistance during the early
stages of the work on this book.
The following is a list of the chief source references for The
Great Conspiracy. It is by no means an exhaustive bibliography,
being merely intended as a record and acknowledgment of those
sources which the authors have found particularly useful and, in
some cases, indispensable.
CHAPTERS I-II
The basic material for the account of Raymond Robins’s mis-
sion has been drawn from Robins’s own testimony before the
Overman Committee in 1919, as recorded in German and Bolshevik
Propaganda; Report and Hearings of the Subcommittee of the Judi-
ciary of the United States Senate, 65th Congress, Volume III
(Washington, Government Printing Office, 1919), and from Wil-
liam Hard’s Raymond Robins’s Own Story (New York, Harper and
Brothers, 1920). The dialogue between Robins and such persons as
his chief, Colonel William Boyce Thompson, Alexander Kerensky,
Major General Alfred Knox and Lenin is as Robins himself reported
368
it. Robins’s testimony before the Senate Subcommittee provides one
of the richest, most comprehensive and most vivid eyewitness pic-
tures of the Bolshevik Revolution, and is well worth the attention of
any student interested in this period. For the historical background
to this period the authors have drawn upon a number of sources,
including the Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the Unit-
ed States, 1918, Russia, Vols. I, II and III (Washington, Govern-
ment Printing Office, 1931); John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the
World (New York, Boni & Liveright, Inc. 1919); The History of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, edited by a Commission of
the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (New York, International
Publishers, 1939) ; Albert Rhys Williams, The Soviets (New York,
Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1937); James Bunyan and H. H.
Fisher, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1918, documents and mate-
rials (Stanford University, California, 1933); Vladimir I. Lenin, A
Political Biography Prepared by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute
(New York, International Publishers, 1943); Lenin, V. I. Ulyanov
(Ogiz, State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1939)—an
extremely interesting collection of unusual documents and photo-
graphs; Frederick L. Schuman, American Policy Toward Russia
Since 1917 (International Publishers, 1938). Of all the written ac-
counts of the Revolution, John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the
World remains after twenty-seven years the most exciting and en-
lightening. It is not difficult to understand why Lenin himself said
that he read this classic of reportage with “the greatest interest and
with never slackening attention.” The facts regarding Ambassador
David Francis’s secret dealings with the counterrevolutionary forces
and the various anti-Soviet intrigues in which he became involved
are drawn from his own confidential reports to the State Depart-
ment, subsequently published in Papers Relating to the Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1918, Russia; and also from Fran-
cis’s autobiographical account, Russia From the American Embassy
April, 1916–N ovember, 1918 (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1931), Other useful sources describing the intrigues of the period
include Sir Samuel Hoare’s The Fourth Seal (London, W. Heine-
mann, Ltd., 1930); Alexander F, Kerensky’s, The Catastrophe and
The Crucifixion of Liberty (New York, John Day, 1934); and Boris
Viktorovich Savinkov’s Memoirs of a Terrorist (New York, A. C.
Boni, 1931). Each of these three books gives an interesting picture
of the diverse elements among the forces fighting against the Sovi-
369
ets at the time of the Revolution. A fascinating and scholarly exam-
ination of the Brest-Litovsk peace controversy, with much interest-
ing material on the activities of Trotsky and the Left Opposition at
this time, is John Wheeler-Bennett’s The Forgotten Peace, Brest-
Litovsk, March, 1918 (New York, Morrow, 1939). Brace Lockhart
has written his own account of his mission and his experiences in
Russia during the Revolution in British Agent (New York, Garden
City Publishing Company, 1933). Additional firsthand material may
be found in Captain Jacques Sadoul’s The Socialist Republic of
Russia (London, People’s Russian Information Bureau, 1918). The
notorious so-called “Sisson Documents,” which purported to show
that the Bolshevik Revolution was a plot engineered by the German
High Command and certain German banks, were first published in
the United States as The German Bolsheviks Conspiracy (U. S. Pub-
lic Information Committee, Washington, Government Printing Of-
fice, 1918). Leon Trotsky’s account of the Brest-Litovsk negotia-
tions and a polemical justification of his conduct throughout the
revolutionary period may be consulted in Trotsky’s The History of
the Russian Revolution, translated from the Russian by Max East-
man (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1932).
CHAPTER III
For the basic material in this chapter dealing with the career and
exploits of Captain Sidney George Reilly of the British Secret Intel-
ligence Service the authors have drawn extensively on Reilly’s per-
sonal narrative as contained in Britain’s Master Spy, Sidney Reilly’s
Narrative written by Himself, edited and compiled by His Wife
(New York, Harper and Brothers, 1933). Although written in a style
reminiscent of the lurid British “penny dreadfuls,” this account by
the British master spy of his own conspiracy against the Soviet
Government remains the most complete record of its kind available
in print. Additional material on Reilly’s career and personality may
be found in Winfried Ludecke’s Secrets of Espionage (New York, J.
B. Lippincott Company, 1929); Richard Wilmer Rowan’s Terror in
Our Time (New York, Longmans, Green and Company, 1941) ; R.
H. Bruce Lockhart’s British Agent (New York, Garden City Pub-
lishing Company, Inc., 1933); and in the accounts of British Secret
Intelligence Operations in Soviet Russia written by Reilly’s friend
and colleague, George Hill: Go Spy the Land, Being the Adventures
of I.K.8 of the British Secret Service (London, Cassell & Company,
370
Ltd., 1932) and Dreaded Hour (London, Cassell & Company, Ltd.,
1936). The dialogue in this chapter, unless otherwise so indicated in
the text, is quoted from Reilly’s own narrative.
CHAPTER IV
The basic material for the account of the American Expedition
in Siberia is drawn from General William S. Graves’s American
Siberian Adventure, 1918–1920 (New York, Jonathan Cape and
Harrison Smith, 1931). No other book gives so vivid a picture of
this phase of the war of intervention against Soviet Russia. Of con-
siderable interest is the foreword to Graves’s book by the former
Secretary of War, Newton D. Baker. Material supplementing
Graves’s account of the Siberian expedition is to be found in the
Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918
(Russia); David Francis’s Russia From the American Embassy,
April, 1916–November, 1918; Lansing Papers, 1914–1920, 2 vol-
umes; and George Stewart, The White Armies of Russia (New York,
The Macmillan Company, 1933).
CHAPTER V
Contemporary periodicals and newspapers offer valuable mate-
rial on public sentiment and the general mood in Europe and the
United States at the time of the Versailles Treaty. The authors have
consulted in particular the New York Times, the Nation, the New
Republic and the Literary Digest. Of special interest is Walter
Lippmann’s and Charles Merz’s A Test of the News, Supplement to
the August 4, 1920, issue of New Republic. Other useful sources are
George Seldes, World Panorama, 1918–1935 (New York, Blue
Ribbon Books, Inc., 1935); Roger Burlingham and Alden Stevens,
Victory Without Peace (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company,
1944); The Bullitt Mission to Russia (New York, B. W. Huebsch,
1919). A remarkable description of the various inter-Allied intrigues
in Paris at the time of the Versailles Peace Conference appears in
Herbert O. Yardley’s The American Black Chamber (New York,
Blue Ribbon Books, Inc. 1931; published in England under the title
of Secret Service in America, Faber and Faber, Limited, 1931). For
the discussions at the Paris Peace Conference the authors have
drawn heavily upon the Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of
the United States: The Paris Peace Conference 1919, Volumes III
and IV. Material of interest regarding Churchill’s role is included in
371
Rene Kraus’s popular biography Winston Churchill, (New York, J.
B. Lippincott Company, 1940).
CHAPTER VI
There is extensive material dealing with the war of intervention
against Soviet Russia. The authors have drawn chiefly upon these
sources: William Payton Coates and C. Z. Coates, Armed Interven-
tion in Russia, 1918–22 (London, Victor Gollancz, Ltd., 1935);
George Stewart, The White Armies of Russia; Captain Sergei N.
Koumakoff, Russia’s Fighting Forces (New York, International
Publishers, 1942); History of the Civil War in the U.S.S.R., Edited
by Gorky, Molotov, Voroshilov and others (London, Lawrence and
Wishart, Ltd., 1937); V. Parvenov, The Intervention in Siberia
(New York, Workers Library Publishers, 1937); History of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York, International
Publishers, 1939); Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis: The
Aftermath (New York, Doubleday, Page and Company, 1922); and
Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918,
Russia, Vols. I, II and III. Among the numerous personal accounts
dealing with this period, the authors have made particular reference
to the following: Ralph Albertson, Fighting Without a War, An Ac-
count of Military Intervention in North Russia (New York, Har-
court, Brace and Howe, 1920); John C. Cudahy, Archangel: The
American War with Russia, by A Chronicler (Chicago, S. C.
McClure Company, 1924); and Sir Paul Dukes, Red Dusk and the
Morrow (New York, Doubleday, Page and Company, 1922). David
Francis’s Russia From the American Embassy, April, 1916-
November 1918, includes a most interesting description of the situa-
tion in Archangel during the early days of intervention, as does
Francis’s testimony in 1919 before the Senate Subcommittee inves-
tigating German and Bolshevik Propaganda. General William S.
Graves’s American Siberian Adventure, 1918–1920, is an indispen-
sable source of material on intervention in Siberia. The character of
the White Guard counterrevolutionary forces in Eastern Russia and
the type of warfare they waged are impressionistically described in
Vladimir Pozner’s Bloody Baron, The Story of Baron Roman von
Ungern Sternberg (New York, Random House, 1936).
CHAPTER VII
For the details of Herbert Hoover’s financial investments in
372
Czarist Russia and for material on his anti-Soviet activities as Food
Relief Administrator, the authors have drawn largely from three
biographies of Hoover: John Knox, The Great Mistake (Washing-
ton, D. C, National Foundation Press, Inc., 1930); Walter Liggett,
The Rise of Herbert Hoover (New York, the H. U. Fly Company,
1932); and John Hamill, The Strange Career of Herbert Hoover
Under Two Flags (New York, William Faro, Inc., 1931). General
material regarding foreign investments in Czarist Russia is to be
found in Colonel Cecil L’Estrange Malone’s speech in the House of
Commons on foreign investments in Czarist Russia as quoted in the
November 13, 1920, issue of Soviet Russia, the official organ of the
Russian Soviet Government Bureau, published in New York City.
Further material on this subject is contained in Colonel Malone’s
The Russian Republic (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Howe,
1920).
CHAPTER VIII
The phrase “ferment of the aftermath” which the authors have
used as the subtitle to the opening section of this chapter is bor-
rowed from Winston Churchill, and the material illustrating the
worldwide uncertainty, unrest and insecurity of the postwar period
is drawn from the excellent compilation of newspaper clippings and
contemporary comment published by George Seldes, under the title
World Panorama, 1918-1935 (New York, Blue Ribbon Books, Inc.,
1935). The authors have also made reference to contemporary
newspapers and magazines. The revealing British Foreign Office
memorandum quoted in this chapter was first made public by the
newspaperman and dramatist John L. Balderstone; it is reproduced
in more detail in the Seldes book. Material on the little-known and
extraordinary story of the great exodus of the defeated White armies
from Soviet Russia may be found in George Stewart’s The White.
Armies of Russia (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1933) and
in the memoirs written by some of the persons involved, Wrangel,
Denikin, Krasnov, etc. A full account of the establishment, charac-
ter and composition of the Torgprom may be found in Wreckers on
Trial, A Record of the Trial of the Industrial Party, held in Moscow,
November–December, 1930 (New York, Workers Library Publish-
ers, 1931). The most interesting and complete account of the early
development of Nazi ideology and the role of Alfred Rosenberg and
his White Russian associates is contained in Konrad Heiden’s Der
373
Fuehrer (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1944). The authors
are also indebted to Heiden’s A History of National Socialism (New
York, Alfred A, Knopf, 1935) and National Socialism, a document
published by the U. S. State Department (Washington, Government
Printing Office, 1943). The part played by General Max Hoffmann
in the White Russian and German imperialist conspiracies which
preceded and led up to the triumph of Nazism is brilliantly ex-
pounded in Ernst Henri’s Hitler Over Russia? (New York, Simon
and Schuster, 1936). The authors have also consulted Hoffmann’s
The War of Lost Opportunities (New York, International Publishers,
1925) and War Diaries and other Papers (London, M. Lecker,
1929) and the famous diplomatic diary of the British Ambassador
Lord D’Abernon, The Diary of an Ambassador: Versailles to Ra-
pallo, 1920–1922 (New York, Doubleday, Doran and Company,
1929). Additional valuable material on the collaboration of early
Nazism with the anti-White Russian émigrés may be found in The
Brown Network (New York, Knight Publications, Inc., 1936).
CHAPTER IX
The material concerning the activities of Captain Sidney Reilly
and his wife, including the dialogue and letters quoted in this chap-
ter, is drawn from Mrs. Reilly’s memoirs which form the second
part of the book Britain’s Master Spy (see note to Chapter III). Mrs.
Reilly’s memoirs contain an account of the anti-Soviet conspiracy
in which she became involved following her marriage to Sidney
Reilly and in which, by her own account, she continued to partici-
pate for some time after his death. For our account of the personali-
ty and career of Boris Savinkov we have drawn on Savinkov’s
Memoirs of a Terrorist (New York, A. C. Boni, 1931); Boris
Nikolajewsky’s Aseff, the Spy (New York, Doubleday, Doran and
Company, 1934); and on the vivid and candid biographical sketch
of Savinkov written by Winston Churchill in Great Contemporaries
(New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1937). Somerset Maugham’s im-
pressions of Boris Savinkov may be found in Maugham’s article
“The Strangest Man I Ever Knew,” Red Book magazine, October,
1944. The description by Savinkov’s aide, Fomitchov, of the organ-
ization of anti-Soviet terrorist cells financed and armed by the
Polish Intelligence Service is quoted from Fomitchov’s letter of
September 17, 1924, to Izvestia, as reprinted in the October 2, 1924,
issue of International Press Correspondence (English Edition, Vol.
374
4, No. 70, Vienna).
For a full and enlightening account of the secret war waged at
this period by international oil interests against the Soviet Govern-
ment see Glyn Roberts’s The Most Powerful Man in the World
(New York, Covici-Friede, 1938). Roberts’s book, a biography of
Sir Henri Deterding, devotes considerable attention to Deterding’s
crusade against Soviet Russia; and traces the influence of Deterding
through such notorious anti-Soviet incidents in British politics as
the Arcos Raid, Zinoviev Letter, etc. Additional material concerning
the attitude of the oil interests toward Soviet Russia may be found
in Francis Delaisi’s Oil: Its Influence on Politics (London, Labour
Publishing Company, 1922) and R. Page Arnot’s The Politics of Oil
(London, Labour Publishing Company, 1924). There are also nu-
merous references to the subject in reports in the London Times,
Morning Post, Daily Mail and the New York Times concerning the
negotiations at the Genoa and the Hague economic conferences of
the period 1922–1924. An inside picture of the intrigues of the oil
interests during this period is to be found in George Hill’s Dreaded
Hour (London, Cassell & Company, Ltd., 1936). A detailed account
of the Noi Jordania uprising in the Caucasus, including quotations
from secret communications between the conspirators which were
seized by the Soviet authorities, may be found in the October 9,
1924, issue of International Press Correspondence (Vol. 4, No, 72).
An interesting report of the trial of Boris Savinkov and his sensa-
tional testimony to the court can be found in the September 11,
1924, issue of International Press Correspondence (Vol. 4, No. 65).
CHAPTER X
The facts regarding Captain Sidney Reilly’s anti-Soviet opera-
tions in the United States and his last secret mission in Soviet Rus-
sia are taken from Britain’s Master Spy, Sidney Reilly’s Narrative
written by Himself, edited and compiled by His Wife. The material
on Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic and anti-democratic activities in the
early 1920’s is drawn largely from the sensational series of articles
by Norman Hapgood which appeared under the title “The Inside
Story of Henry Ford’s Jew Mania” in the June–November, 1922,
issues of Hearst’s International. The files of Henry Ford’s Dear-
born Independent are replete with anti-Semitic and anti-democratic
propaganda. The intrigues in which Boris Brasol was involved in
the early 1920’s are also described in Norman Hapgood’s articles in
375
Hearst’s International, The sort of anti-democratic and anti-Semitic
propaganda which Brasol spread in the United States is amply illus-
trated by his own books, such as The World at the Crossroads (Bos-
ton, Small, Maynard and Company, 1921). An interesting account
of the origin and record of The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion,
which Brazol distributed in the United States, appears in Konrad
Heiden’s Der Fuehrer (New York, Lexington Press, 1944).
CHAPTERS XI-XII
Material and comment on the diplomatic atmosphere in Europe
and Asia throughout this period may be found in R. Palme Dutt’s
World Politics (New York, Random House, 1936), and in F. L.
Schuman’s International Politics, Third Edition (New York,
McGraw-Hill, 1941). The Tanaka Memorial has been reprinted in
the pamphlet Japanese Imperialism Exposed, The Secret Tanaka
Document (New York, International Publishers, 1942). Glyn Rob-
erts’s biography of Sir Henri Deterding contains many revelations
of the hectic anti-Soviet intrigues in which Deterding, Hoffmann
and their associates were involved during this period. The account
of the meeting in Paris in 1928 attended by Professor Ramzin at
which Denisov announced that the French General Staff had drawn
up a plan of attack against Soviet Russia is drawn from the court
testimony of Professor Ramzin and others before the Military Col-
legium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. as recorded in Wreck-
ers on Trial, A Record of the Trial of the Industrial Party, held in
Moscow November–December, 1930 (New York, Workers Library
Publishers, 1931). This record also contains the details of the plan
of attack on the U.S.S.R. and testimony regarding the various nego-
tiations carried on by Ramzin and others with French, British and
German political and industrial personalities. The mysterious affair
of the Chervonetz Trial is dealt with by Glyn Roberts in his biog-
raphy of Deterding; see also the New York Times reports on the Tri-
al in 1927 and Ernst Henri’s Hitler Over Russia? (New York, Si-
mon and Schuster, 1936).
CHAPTERS XIII-XIV
The facts regarding the trial of the Industrial Party conspirators
in the winter of 1930 are taken from contemporary newspaper ac-
counts and from the record of the trial as published in Wreckers on
Trial, A Record of the Trial of the Industrial Party, held in Moscow,
376
November–December, 1930 (New York, Workers Library Publish-
ers, 1931). Testimony from the Menshevik Trial in March 1931 is
recorded in The Menshevik Trial (New York, Workers Library Pub-
lishers, 1931). A collection of contemporary statements regarding
the Menshevik trial by émigré Russian Mensheviks and their asso-
ciates in the Second International is presented in the pamphlet The
Moscow Trial and the Labour and Socialist International (London,
The Labour Party, 1931); this pamphlet includes an article by Raph-
ael Abramovitch entitled.”My Journey to Moscow,” in which he
denies certain of the accusations made against him at the trial but
admits the existence of a secret conspiratorial Menshevik apparatus
in Soviet Russia. A verbatim record of the trial of the Vickers engi-
neers in April 1933 is given in the Trial of the Vickers Engineers:
Official Verbatim Report: Proceedings of Special Session of the
Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. in Moscow, April 12-19, 1933, three
volumes (Moscow, State Law Publishing House, 1933). A very in-
teresting and outspoken account of the discussions between the Brit-
ish Ambassador to Russia, Sir Esmond Ovey, and the Soviet Com-
missar of Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, regarding the arrest and
trial of the Vickers engineers may be found in the Red Paper issued
in Moscow by the Soviet Government on April 16, 1933. Allan
Monkhouse’s own version of his arrest and trial by the Soviet Gov-
ernment is contained in his book Moscow, 1911–1933 (Boston, Lit-
tle, Brown and Company, 1934). A brief but comprehensive ac-
count of the reaction of the British press to the trial of the Vickers
engineers can be found in Maurice Dobb’s The Press and the Mos-
cow Trial (London, Friends of the Soviet Union, 1933). For the de-
scription of Hitler’s coming to power in Germany the authors have
made special reference to Konrad Heiden’s A History of National
Socialism (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1935). Material has also
been drawn from Adolf Hitler, My New Order, edited with com-
mentary by Raoul de Roussy de Sales (New York, Reynal and
Hitchcock, 1941). Hitler’s Mein Kampf offers the most vivid exam-
ple possible of the employment by the Fascist Counterrevolution of
the propaganda device of the “menace of Bolshevism.” Useful
sources of material for the period immediately following the estab-
lishment of the Third Reich are: Roosevelt’s Foreign Policy, 1933-
1941 (New York, William Funk, Inc., 1942); Frederick L. Schu-
man’s Europe on the Eve (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1939); The
Brown Network (New York, Knight Publications, 1936); and Ernst
377
Henri’s two remarkable and prophetic books, Hitler Over Europe
(New York, Simon and Schuster, 1934) and Hitler Over Russia?
(New York, Simon and Schuster, 1936).
CHAPTERS XV-XVI
Trotsky’s own account of his early career may be found in his
autobiography, My Life (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1931),
and in his own early political writings. Firsthand impressions of
Trotsky in 1918 may be found in Bruce Lockhart’s British Agent
and in Raymond Robins’s testimony before the Overman Commit-
tee in 1919. For Lenin’s estimate of Trotsky we have consulted in
particular Lenin’s Selected Works (New York, International Pub-
lishers) and Vladimir I. Lenin, A Political Biography Prepared by
the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Moscow (New York, International
Publishers, 1943). The best Soviet account available in English of
the development of the Bolshevik Party and. the significance of
Trotsky’s struggle against Lenin and Stalin is N. Popov’s Outline
History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, two volumes
(Moscow-Leningrad, Co-Operative Publishing Society of Foreign
Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1934). A later Soviet history containing
the new material made available as a result of the Moscow Trials is
the official History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(Bolsheviks), Edited by a Commission of the Central Committee of
the C.P.S.U. (B) (New York, International Publishers, 1939). Very
interesting material on Trotsky’s political career before and after the
Russian Revolution may be found in the speeches by various Soviet
officials, including Stalin, Krupskaya, Zinoviev and Kamenev, col-
lected in The Errors of Trotskyism (London, Centropress, 1925). A
lively report of an interview with Trotsky in Moscow in 1924 and
other journalistic material on Trotsky is contained in Isaac F.
Marcosson’s Turbulent Years (New York, Dodd, Mead and Com-
pany, 1938). Winston Churchill’s acid portrait of Trotsky in Great
Contemporaries is valuable, among other things, for the light it
sheds on Churchill’s attitude towards Trotsky. Additional historical
material covering the period of Trotsky’s factional struggle within
the Bolshevik Party may be found in Sir Bernard Pares’s Russia
(New York, Penguin Books, 1943) and a dispassionate estimate of
the political program of the Trotskyite faction is contained in the
second volume of Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s Soviet Communism,
A New Civilization? (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937).
378
(In a later edition of their book, the Webbs have omitted the ques-
tion mark in the subtitle.) Material concerning Trotsky’s conspirato-
rial intrigues against the Soviet Government while Lenin was still
alive and after Lenin’s death may be found in the little-known pam-
phlet written by Trotsky on the death of his son in Paris in 1938:
Leon Sedov, Son-Friend-Fighter (New York, Young People’s So-
cialist League—Fourth International—1938). This pamphlet also
contains material on Trotsky and Sedov in Alma Ata, including an
account of the organization of the underground Trotskyite courier
system which Sedov supervised. There are numerous journalistic
records of Trotsky in exile at Constantinople and Prinkipo which
may be found in the newspapers and magazines of the period. Three
articles of major interest are S. Saenger’s “With Trotsky in Constan-
tinople,” Living Age, July 1929; Emil Ludwig’s “Trotsky in Exile,”
Living Age, February 1930; and John Gunther’s “Trotsky at Elba,”
Harper’s Magazine, April 1932. A documented examination of
Trotsky’s political career, with a polemical account of the evolution
of Trotsky’s faction into a conspiratorial anti-Soviet organization, is
J. R. Campbell’s Soviet Policy and Its Critics (London, Victor
Gollancz, Ltd., 1939). Unless otherwise so indicated in the text, the
material—quotations, dialogue and incidents—concerning the se-
cret intrigues of the Trotskyite and Right conspirators and their
connections with foreign Intelligence Services is drawn directly
from the official records of the three Moscow Trials held before the
Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. in August
1936, January 1937 and March 1938. For example, the details of
Krestinsky’s negotiations with General Seeckt and of Rakovsky’s
dealings with the British Intelligence Service in the 1920’s are
drawn from Krestinsky’s and Rakovsky’s testimony before the
Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court in 1938. Similarly,
the account of the meetings and negotiations in Berlin between
Sedov, Pyatakov, Shestov, Smirnov, etc. are drawn from the testi-
mony of Smirnov in 1936 and Piatakov, Shestov and others in 1937.
Statements by Trotsky and his son, Sedov, are given here and in
subsequent chapters as quoted by their fellow conspirators testifying
at the trials. The records of the trials are available in three volumes:
Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Trotskyite-
Zinovievite Terrorist Center, August 19-24, 1936 (Peoples Commis-
sariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., Moscow, 1936); Verbatim Report
of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Cen-
379
ter, January 23-30, 1937 (Peoples Commissariat of Justice of the
U.S.S.R., Moscow, 1937); Verbatim Report of Court Proceedings in
the Case of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites, March 2-
13, 1938 (Peoples Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., Mos-
cow, 1938). These volumes are a source of basic material on anti-
Soviet intrigue, especially during the period of Trotsky’s exile from
Soviet Russia and Hitler’s coming to power in Germany. The offi-
cial public records of these trials, comprising more than 1500 pages
of detailed testimony, are not only fascinating reading but also rep-
resent the most comprehensive public expose ever made of a con-
temporary secret state conspiracy. In addition, these records contain
the first full disclosures of the inner workings of an Axis Fifth Col-
umn. They are an invaluable source of material for this period in
world history, in which the Axis Fifth Columns played a major role.
CHAPTERS XVII-XX
Material on Nazi-fascist terrorism and the organization of the
Fifth Column in Europe during the years immediately following
Hitler’s rise to power may be found in such books as The Brown
Network; Ernst Henri’s Hitler Over Europe and Hitler Over Rus-
sia?: Konrad Heiden’s History of National Socialism; and in nu-
merous newspaper reports and magazine articles. An excellent ac-
count of Axis preparations for conquest by “internal aggression” is
given in Elwyn F. Jones’s The Battle, for Peace (London, Victor
Gollancz, Ltd., 1938). The basic material on the operations of the
Trotskyite and Right conspirators in Soviet Russia is drawn here as
in the preceding chapters from the official records of the three Mos-
cow Trials held before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court
of the U.S.S.R. in August 1936, January 1937 and March 1938.
Firsthand reports of evidence of underground conspiracy and sabo-
tage in Soviet Russia during This period may be found in the dis-
patches of Walter Duranty in the New York Times, in those of Jo-
seph E. Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune and in other con-
temporary newspaper reports. Eyewitness accounts of the three
Moscow Trials may he found in the New York Times, New York
Herald Tribune, the Manchester Guardian and other American and
British newspapers and magazines. The files of Soviet Russia Today
contain many firsthand impressions of the three trials and discus-
sions of their political implications: Walter Duranty’s The Kremlin
and the People (New York, Reynal and Hitchcock, 1941) recapitu-
380
lates his personal reactions as an American newspaperman in Mos-
cow at the three trials. Additional firsthand data is contained in D.
N. Pritt’s At the Moscow Trial (New York, Soviet Russia Today,
1937) and other writings by Pritt. John Gunther’s Inside Europe,
Revised Edition (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1938), also con-
tains a summary and evaluation of the trials. Material on the inter-
national diplomatic intrigue against collective security during the
1930’s may be found in Genevieve Tabouis’s They Call Me Cas-
sandra (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942) and in Bella
Fromm’s Blood and Banquets, A Berlin Social Diary (New York,
Harper and Brothers, 1942). Both of these books contain interesting
information on Tukhachevsky’s relations with foreign diplomats
and militarists. An indispensable source of material is Joseph E.
Davies’s Mission to Moscow (New York, Simon and Schuster,
1941); this unique book is based on the personal observations of the
American Ambassador to the Soviet Union and on his official re-
ports to the U. S. State Department.
CHAPTER XXI
Trotsky’s reaction to the 1936 and 1937 trials may be found in
the pamphlet I Stake My Life, Trotsky’s Address to the N. Y. Hippo-
drome Meeting (New York, Pioneer Publishers, 1937) and more
elaborately in The Case of Leon Trotsky (Harper and Brothers,
1937), which is the record of the hearings staged in Mexico by the
Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky. Further Trotskyite ma-
terial on the trials is contained in Max Schachtman’s Behind the
Moscow Trials (New York, Pioneer Publishers, 1936). Articles in
contemporary American periodicals by Max Eastman, William
Henry Chamberlin, Eugene Lyons and other anti-Soviet writers re-
peat, according to the individual styles of the authors, the basic ar-
guments and propaganda put forth by Trotsky. Contemporary peri-
odicals may also be referred to for descriptions of Trotsky’s mode
of life in his Mexican exile. Examples of Trotskyite propaganda
circulated in America may be found in The Fourth International
and The Militant. A documented account of the role of the Trotsky-
ites during the Spanish Fascist revolt in Spain is to be found in the
pamphlet by George Soria, Trotskyism in the Service of Franco, A
Documented Record of the Treachery by the P.O.U.M. in Spain
(New York, International Publishers, 1938). Material on the role of
the Trotskyites in China may be found in Agnes Smedley’s Red
381
Flood Over China (Moscow-Leningrad, Cooperative Publishing
Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1934) and Battle Hymn
of China-(New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1943); and in Anna Louise
Strong’s One-Fifth of Mankind, China Fights for Freedom (New
York, Modern Age Books, 1938). Josef Stalin’s famous report to
the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, published as Mastering Bolshevism (New York,
Workers Library Publishers, 1937), deals in some detail with the
character and activities of the Trotskyites in Russia and makes ref-
erence to the activities of the Fourth International in Norway,
France, Germany and the United States. Material on Trotsky’s ne-
gotiations with the Dies Committee is contained in August Ray-
mond Ogden’s The Dies Committee (Washington, The Catholic
University of America Press, 1943). The New York Times of the
period contains detailed reports on the murder of Trotsky and the
“Jacson” case. The Trotskyite version of the murder as an “act of
Stalin’s vengeance” may be found in Albert Goldman’s The Assas-
sination of Leon Trotsky (New York, Pioneer Publishers, 1941); in
contemporary articles in the American Trotskyite newspaper the
Militant and in the article in the Militant by Betty Kuehn, Trial of
Trotsky’s Murderer (April, 1943).
CHAPTER XXII
A general survey of the period 1931-1941, with regrettably
sparse reference to Soviet Russia, is contained in the official U. S.
State Department publication, Peace and War: United States For-
eign Policy (Washington, Department of State, 1943). Two invalua-
ble books covering this period of latent war and endless diplomatic
intrigue are Frederick L. Schuman’s Europe on the Eve (New York,
Alfred A. Knopf, 1939) and Night Over Europe (New York, Alfred
A. Knopf, 1941). Further material on the period may be found in
John Gunther’s Inside Europe, Revised Edition (New York, Harper
and Brothers, 1938); F. Elwyn Jones’s The Attack from Within, The
Modern Technique of Aggression (London, Penguin Books, Ltd.,
1939); Joseph E. Davies’s Mission to Moscow (New York, Simon
and Schuster, 1941); Ambassador Dodd’s Diary (New York, Har-
court, Brace; and Company, 1941); R. Palme Dutt’s World Politics;
and, especially, the files of the New York Times of this period. A
historic Soviet document of the period is Stalin’s Report on the
Work of the Central Committee to the Eighteenth Congress of the
382
C.P.S.U. (B), March 10, 1939 (New York, International Publishers,
1939). A valuable book on Soviet relations with the Baltic States is
Gregory Meiksins’s The Baltic Riddle (New York, L. B. Fischer,
1943). General material on the Red Army’s march into the Baltic,
the Balkans and Finland will be found in the files of Soviet Russia
Today. Of the very many books written about the fall of France the
authors have drawn on Pierre Cot’s Triumph of Treason (Chicago-
New York, Ziff Davis Publishing Company, 1944) and Pertinax’s
The Gravediggers of France (New York, Doubleday, Doran and
Company, 1944). The files of the New York Times and other news-
papers and magazines of the period are an indispensable source of
material.
CHAPTER XXIII
An excellent summary of the reaction of the American press to
the invasion of Soviet Russia by Nazi Germany in June, 1941, is
contained in George Seldes’s The Facts Are, A Guide to Falsehood
and Propaganda in the Press and Radio (New York, In Fact, Inc.,
1942). For material dealing with the anti-Soviet activities of fifth
columnists and White Russian émigrés, the authors have drawn ex-
tensively upon their own files. Sources of published data on pro-
fascist “anti-Bolshevik” operations of subversive individuals and
agencies in America include Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn,
Sabotage: The Secret War Against America (New York, Harper and
Brothers, 1942); John Roy Carlson, Under Cover (New York, E. P.
Dutton & Company, 1943); and the newsletter The Hour, April,
1939–May, 1943. One of the most interesting pieces of Nazi-
sponsored “anti-Communist” propaganda distributed in the United
States is Communism in Germany, The Truth About the Communist
Conspiracy on the Eve of the National Revolution (Berlin, Europa
House, 1933), which contains a commendatory foreword signed by
various Americans including Representative Hamilton Fish. One
could list endlessly sources of anti-Soviet propaganda in books,
newspapers and magazines published in the United States. Typical
of the myriad pro-Nazi and “anti-Communist” propaganda publica-
tions that appeared in the United States following Hitler’s rise to
power in Germany are Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter, the offi-
cial organ of the German-American Bund; Father Charles E.
Coughlin’s Social Justice; William Dudley Pelley’s Liberator; Ger-
ald Winrod’s Defender; Court Asher’s X-Ray; and E. J. Garner’s
383
Publicity. Interesting material on the relationship between Repre-
sentative Hamilton Fish and the German agent George Sylvester
Viereck is contained in the testimony of Fish’s secretary, George
Hill, during the Federal trial of Viereck in February, 1942 in Wash-
ington, D. C.; the most detailed reports of this trial may be found in
a series of articles by Dillard Stokes in the Washington Post. Wil-
liam E. Dodd’s views regarding the activities of the German propa-
ganda agent Paul Scheffer are expressed in the published diary of
the American Ambassador to Germany: Ambassador Dodd’s Diary,
Edited by William E. Dodd, Jr., and Martha Dodd (New York, Har-
court, Brace and Company, 1941). Ample evidence of Scheffer’s
anti-Soviet propaganda work in the United States can be found in
his own articles in Living Age, Foreign Affairs, Fortnightly Review
and other such periodicals. The published records of Martin Dies’s
Special Committee on Un-American Activities contain a vast
amount of anti-Soviet propaganda. Other important examples of
anti-Soviet propaganda are Martin Dies’s Trojan Horse in America
(New York, Dodd Mead & Company, 1940) and Jan Valtin’s Out of
the Night (New York, Alliance Book Corporation, 1941). An inter-
esting analysis of the reactionary use of “anti-Communistic” propa-
ganda in the United States may be found in George Seldes’s
Witchhunt (New York, Modern Age, 1940). The extensive anti-
Soviet propaganda circulated by the America First Committee is
amply illustrated in the bulletins of the America First Research Bu-
reau and in the Herald and Scribner’s Commentator, two publica-
tions sponsored by the Committee, as well as in the public addresses
before America First rallies of such America First spokesmen as
Representative Hamilton Fish, Senator Gerald P. Nye and Senator
Burton K. Wheeler, whose speeches are quoted at length in the New
York Times and other newspapers. Particularly interesting accounts
of Charles A. Lindbergh’s pro-appeasement activities in Great Brit-
ain and in Central Europe during the summer of 1938 are contained
in the English newsletter, the Week, and in Bella Fromm’s Blood
and Banquets. The files of the Chicago Tribune, the New York Dai-
ly News, the Washington Times-Herald, and the Hearst press are an
especially abundant source of propaganda against the Soviet Union.
Pertinent information on the anti-Soviet sentiments of William C.
Bullitt is contained in Ambassador Dodd’s Diary.
384
CHAPTER XXIV
Documented evidence of the Polish anti-Soviet conspiracy is to
be found in the Soviet Government’s indictment of the sixteen
agents of the Polish Government-in-Exile tried in Moscow in June,
1945; the translated text of this indictment is published in the pam-
phlet, The Case of the 16 Poles (New York, The National Council of
American-Soviet Friendship, Inc., 1945). Additional details of the
conspiracy, made public in the testimony of the Polish conspirators
during their trial in Moscow, appear in the cabled dispatches of
American foreign correspondents to the New York Times, New York
Herald Tribune and PM. A comprehensive account of earlier anti-
Soviet intrigues of Polish émigrés in Russia is contained in the
lengthy statement released on May 18, 1943, to the British and
American press by the Soviet Vice Commissar of Foreign Affairs,
A. Y. Vyshinsky. Raymond Leslie Buell’s Poland: Key to Europe
(New York, A. A. Knopf, 1939) contains useful background materi-
al on Poland.
CHAPTER XXV
A source of basic material on Soviet affairs during the war
against Nazi Germany is the excellent Information Bulletin issued
three times weekly by the Soviet Embassy at Washington, D. C.
There are numerous books by American correspondents, such as
Henry C. Cassidy, Larry Lesueur, Maurice Hindus, Leland Stowe,
Quentin Reynolds, Richard Lauterbach, Edgar Snow and Ralph
Parker, who visited the Soviet Union during the conflict and
brought back their eyewitness reports. The cabled dispatches of
Maurice Hindus to the New York Herald Tribune and those of Ralph
Parker to PM are especially vivid in their record of what the Soviet
people endured during the war years and what they expect of future
co-operation with their allies. Wendell Willkie’s One World (New
York, Simon and Schuster, 1943) is a great American’s personal
statement of the ideals summed up in the Teheran Proclamation. A
similar American statement is to be found in Walter Lippmann’s
study of American foreign policy, U. S. Foreign Policy: Shield of
the Republic (Boston, Little, Brown and Company and Atlantic
Monthly Press, 1943).
385
HENRY A. WALLACE says:
“Everyone who is interested in the present and future welfare
of the world should read
The GREAT CONSPIRACY Against RUSSIA
•
In a thoroughly documented story that reads with the pace of a thrilling
novel, the authors reveal for the first time the record of international
intrigue against Soviet Russia since the Revolution of 1917 up to the
present minute. It is a sensational story filled with spies, saboteurs and
assassins. This is the great conspiracy which has already cost the lives
of millions; which caused World War II and now threatens to plunge
the world into another war.
Senator Claude Pepper, at the; Madison Square Garden Vet-
erans Rally, on May 16, 1946, said:
“There is one book on Russia which I think is the most im-
portant book of the day. It should have the widest possible dis-
tribution. It is required reading for every American and British
statesman, and for that matter required reading for every citi-
zen of both countries. The title of the book is The Great Con-
spiracy Against Russia.”
•
Here are some other comments about The Great Conspiracy

Against Russia:
“A strange and frightening story, backed up with a vast array of
documented evidence, of intrigue, sabotage and terror.... Sayers and
Kahn name names and spare nobody, from ex-Prime Minister Churchill
and ex-President Hoover down.... The Great Conspiracy reads like an
E. Phillips Oppenheim thriller, peopled with international spies and
secret-service operatives.” —Newsweek
•
“This is a real thriller. The characters are such spies as the amaz-
ing Captain Sidney Reilly of the British Intelligence, terrorists like
Savinkov, and conspirators like Sir Henri Deterding.” —Chicago News
•
“The excitement of this narrative should not overshadow its seri-
ous contribution to a better understanding of the obstacles that still
stand in the way of full confidence between Russia and the United
States.” —New York Herald Tribune
The Honorable Joseph E. Davies, former Ambassador to the Soviet
Union, and author of Mission to Moscow, wrote the following letter
after reading the galley proofs of The Great Conspiracy Against Russia.
Thanks for letting me see the advance galley proofs of Michael
Sayers’ and Albert Kahn’s extraordinary book, “The Great Con-
spiracy Against Russia.”
Nothing is more important to Peace than that the public... should
know the facts which, in the past, have justified Soviet suspicions
of the Western Powers. This work—exhaustive, authentic, and ful-
ly documented, [presents] this record....
I hope that every American will read this book. It is a very valua-
ble contribution as the background for an understanding of one of
the most serious situations which probably has ever confronted us,
namely, the preservation of good relations with the Soviet Union.
Sincerely yours,
(signed) Joseph E. Davies
•
Other Comments
“It is about as thrilling a book as the Commentator remembers to
have read!” W. K. Kelsey, Detroit News
•
“The result makes for stimulating and informative reading of a
chapter unique in history and cannot be but helpful to a better under-
standing between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R.”
Barron’s Financial Weekly
•
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The Great Conspiracy Against Russia

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p.

NEW COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED EDITION

With a Special Introduction by

I do not know of a greater contribution which has been made to

sky’s associate in this opposition movement, Bukharin, sponsored a

Captain Jean Sadoul, a former successful lawyer and Socialist deputy in

sian counterrevolution. Churchill was entrusted with the execution of

close touch with the armed terrorists, remnants of Reilly’s organization,

was used to support intervention against the Soviets. Hoover himself

(Mex.) which Chang extorted from the Pekin Government.

“interfere with the collection of funds for famine-stricken Russia.” In

5 At first General Hans von Seeckt, commander of the German

was Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, whose animosity

Department after the Bolshevik Revolution. The documents, originally

shal of Manchuria. The China Council of the Institute of Pacific Rela-

nomic institutions. During this tour Robins covered eight thousand

faction, tomorrow those of the other, and thus he regards himself as

every possible kind of political argument against the Soviet regime.

school” which he headed in Moscow, Bukharin had surrounded himself

Military Intelligence. German spies and saboteurs were sent to Russia

anese High Command in full detail. General Sugiyama went on to say:

generation, published in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, declared: “Kirov in

Trotskyites].” On April 15, 1937, in an introduction to a Trotskyite

war to a successful termination.” After an investigation of the Militant,

cause, for a victory over Hitler it is necessary to have a monstrous mili-

against the U.S.S.R. But the Germans gravely miscalculated. Rudolph

et troops to make peace with the Germans.

was distributed to 200 newspapers and periodicals throughout the coun-

might have been interested in Sullivan’s police record:—

today.” Sidney Hook, an admirer of Trotsky, declared in the New Lead-

ment for criminal sedition; again indicted in 1944 on charges of partici-

ommended the Protocols of Zion as a valuable source of information

[1943], Stalin and his associates in Moscow spoiled Hitler’s game....

statement of the foreign correspondents pointed out that “White was

1920’s, the Torgprom conspirators came to an understanding with the

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