The Secret War Between the Wars: MI5 in the 1920s and 1930s by Kevin Quinlan

Author:Kevin Quinlan [Quinlan, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Great Britain, General, Modern, 20th Century, True Crime, Espionage
ISBN: 9781843839385
Google: MxUABQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Published: 2014-01-15T00:22:37+00:00

British government officials began to arrange for an interview with Krivitsky. In preparation, MI5 also began to assess his character. Krivitsky’s own writings provided the foundation for discerning his motivations and expectations. His explicit motives and self-portrayal told only a part of the story. Although ideology played a decisive role in Krivitsky’s defection, fear and revenge also spurred him on.

In his published memoir, Krivitsky pinpoints the exact moment he broke with the Soviet government. At the height of the Purge in Moscow, Paris-based fellow illegal and close childhood friend Ignace Reiss (alias Ignace Poretsky, alias Ludwig) expressed his ‘crushing disillusionment’ with the Soviet Union following the arrest of the Red Army’s Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a hero of the Revolution. Reiss wrote to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, ‘Up to now I have followed you. From now on, not a step further. Our ways part! He who keeps silent at this hour becomes an accomplice of Stalin, and a traitor to the cause of the working class and of Socialism.’54 Denouncing Stalin was a treasonable offence even at the best of times, but denouncing him during the Purge guaranteed the swiftest retribution. The deputy head of the Foreign Department of the Cheka, Mikhail Shpiegelglass, then in Western Europe with ‘plenipotentiary powers to purge the foreign services’, confronted Krivitsky in Paris with Reiss’s intercepted letter. As Krivitsky later wrote,

To his insistent suggestion that I take a hand in organizing the ‘solution’ of the Reiss case, so as to establish my own loyalty in the eyes of [OGPU head Nikolai] Yezhov and Stalin, I finally replied that I would have nothing to do with any such undertaking. At that moment I realized that my lifelong service to the Soviet government was ended. I would be unable to meet the demands of Stalin’s new era. . . . I had taken an oath to serve the Soviet Union; I had lived by that oath; but to take an active hand in these wholesale murders was beyond my powers.55

Krivitsky’s turn from Stalin, however, was not a turn from either socialism or the spirit of the Revolution. Indeed even his position on liquidation remained ambiguous to the extent that his refusal to take an active part was accompanied by his silence about his own passive contribution to other wet operations that must have taken place. Only just before Reiss sent his denunciatory letter to Moscow, Krivitsky tried to reason with him: ‘The Soviet Union is still the sole hope of the workers of the world. Stalin may be wrong. Stalins will come and go, but the Soviet Union will remain. It is our duty to stick to our post.’56 Krivitsky’s disillusionment was confined to Stalin; he still believed in the Soviet project.

It is difficult to overstate the profundity of what defection must have meant for a professional intelligence officer and committed communist like Krivitsky. He had joined the Comintern when he was roughly twenty years old, operating secretly behind Polish lines during the Russo-Polish War in anticipation of a march on Warsaw by Tukhachevsky.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.