RUSSIA

Soviet Spies

Comintern

The Center for the Study of Intelligence Bulletin, 8 (Spring 1998), reports that GCHQ has released decrypted intercepts of Comintern clandestine radio communications from 1934 to 1937. The decrypts from the MASK project are available at the British Public Records Office and NSA's National Cryptologic Museum. Most of the communications were between Moscow and Communist parties in in Europe and China, but "several hundred messages between Moscow and the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) also are included."

Braun, Otto. A Comintern Agent in China, 1932-1939. Tr., Jeanne Moore. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982. London: Hurst, 1982.

From "Introduction" by Dick Wilson: Braun was "Comintern military adviser to the Chinese Communist Party" and was the only Westerner to take part in the Long March. He "was less accepted in the decision-making circles of the Chinese Communist Party after Mao's ascendancy in 1935."

Brown, Anthony Cave, and Charles B. MacDonald. On a Field of Red: The Communist International and the Coming of World War II. New York: Putnam's, 1981.

Rocca and Dziak: "A grand tour of political action and espionage operations of the Comintern and Soviet intelligence services, and their roles leading to World War II. Despite dust jacket claims to new sources of information, no significant reinterpretations emerge."

Center for the Study of Intelligence Bulletin. Editors. "British Intelligence and the 'Zinoviev Letter.'" 8 (Spring 1998): 3-4.

This article reports the release by British intelligence in August 1997 of documents bearing on the Comintern's aspirations and activities in the United Kingdom in the 1920s. The new documents suggest that the British were getting verbatim transcripts from Soviet Politburo meetings, and that the "letter" was a fabrication by British intelligence based on the actual thrust of Moscow's intentions.

Dobbs, Michael. "Soviet Files Show Kremlin Aid to U.S. Comrades Dates to 1920 Funds for Founder John Reed." Washington Post, 12 Apr. 1995, A6.

Klehr, Harvey, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh I. Firsov. Russian documents tr. Timothy D. Sergay. The Secret World of American Communism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.

According to Anthony Cave Brown, WPNWE, 12-18 Jun. 1995, this is the first book in a projected 18-volume set called the "Annals of Communism," which are to be "documentary histories drawn from the Comintern's archives." The volume examines 92 documents or files about secret work by the Comintern in the United States. The authors are to be congratulated "on their meticulous skill in the production of this first volume." The documents "constitute a rich vein of new information about the nature and the extent of the Soviet political attack on the United States." The material on Armand Hammer is particularly instructive, because it shows Hammer there at both the beginning of the Comintern and the end of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, to the end, Hammer "remained a political riddle."

Glotzer, IJI&C 9.1, notes that many of the incidents and topics contained in the documents "were known in one form or another in past years. But the power of this volume lies in the concentrated documentation from Soviet archives about the secret activities of the American party." To Surveillant 4.2, this work "is proof that, all along, CPUSA was involved in subversive activities." The details about the workings of the party and about those Americans who participated in its clandestine activities are "fascinating."

Koch, Stephen. Double Lives: Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War of Ideas Against the West. New York: Free Press, 1993. Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Münzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals. London: HarperCollins, 1994. Rev. ed. New York: Enigma Books, 2004.

According to Surveillant 2.5, this is the story of the "Soviet secret apparatus that successfully manipulated" Hemingway, Hellman, Dos Passos, Brecht, and others "to work on a propaganda campaign on behalf of the Comintern. One man masterminded the effort -- the German communist publisher Willi Munzenberg." Aldrich, I&NS 11.3, says that Koch "demonstrates effectively the direct Soviet manipulation of ... many important figures in the 1930s." See also, Sean McMeekin, The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willi Münzenberg, Moscow's Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).

Miles, Jonathan. The Dangerous Otto Katz: The Many Lives of a Soviet Spy. London & New York: Bloomsbury, 2010.

Goulden, Washington Times, 8 Feb. 2011, and Intelligencer 18.2 (Winter-Spring 2011), calls this "biography at its readable best: characters who were rogues and charlatans but unfailingly interesting." As a figure on the post-World War I European arts scene, Katz joined forces with Willi Munzenberg to whom the Soviets had "essentially turned over their Western propaganda campaign.... As a Comintern agent, Katz flitted from country to country, using a host of aliases, starting scores of communist-oriented journals, publishing books and providing tainted 'news' to publications and wire services.... But it was in 1930s Hollywood that Katz made his major contribution to world communism." Using the name of Rudolph (or Rudolf) Breda and billing himself as an "anti-fascist freedom fighter," Katz/Breda "exerted a political influence" on a number of Hollywood luminaries. Back in his native Czechoslovakis following World War II, "Katz was among the 11 men hanged at the conclusion" of the show trial of the so-called "Slansky group."

For Peake, Studies 55.1 (Mar. 2011), the author "fills in the colorful details of this extraordinary agent of influence who figured prominently in the promotion of communism in much of the Western world." The book "is a stirring tale of dedicated service that reveals the realities of Soviet espionage."

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