Spies and Commissars: The Bolshevik Revolution and the West

To Adele, with love and thanks

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Maps

Preface

INTRODUCTION

ONE: REVOLUTION

1. TROUBLING JOURNEYS

2. RUSSIA ON ITS KNEES

3. THE ALLIED AGENDA

4. CHEERING FOR THE SOVIETS

5. REVOLUTION AND THE WORLD

6. IN THE LIGHT OF THE FIRE

7. DIPLOMATIC IMPASSE

8. THE OTHER WEST

TWO: SURVIVAL

9. TALKS AT BREST-LITOVSK

10. BREATHING DANGEROUSLY

11. REVOLTS AND MURDERS

12. SUBVERTING THE ALLIES

13. GERMANY ENTREATED

14. SUBVERTING RUSSIA

15. A VERY BRITISH PLOT

16. THE GERMAN CAPITULATION

THREE: PROBINGS

17. REVOLVING THE RUSSIAN QUESTION

18. THE PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE

19. EUROPEAN REVOLUTION

20. THE ALLIES AND THE WHITES

21. WESTERN AGENTS

22. COMMUNISM IN AMERICA

23. SOVIET AGENTS

24. THE ALLIED MILITARY WITHDRAWAL

FOUR: STALEMATE

25. BOLSHEVISM: FOR AND AGAINST

26. LEFT ENTRANCE

27. THE SPREADING OF COMINTERN

28. TO POLAND AND BEYOND

29. TRADE TALKS ABROAD

30. THE ECONOMICS OF SURVIVAL

31. THE SECOND BREATHING SPACE

32. THE UNEXTINGUISHED FIRE

POSTSCRIPT

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

List of Illustrations

1. Lenin in deep thought. (©
Getty Images
)

2. Trotsky in his Red Army uniform. (©
Getty Images
)

3. An encounter between German and Russian troops in the neutral zone. (
Hoover Institution Archives
)

4. Living quarters of the peace talks delegations at Brest-Litovsk. (
Hoover Institution Archives
)

5. The peace talks at Brest-Litovsk before Trotsky joined them. (
Topfoto
)

6. Sir George Buchanan. (
National Portrait Gallery
)

7. David Francis. (
St Louis Public Library
)

8. Joseph Noulens. (
Roger-Viollet
)

9. Cheka leaders Felix Dzerzhinski and Yakov Peters. (©
Getty Images
)

10. Leaders of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs abroad in Berlin in 1922. (
Roger-Viollet/Rex
)

11. Bukharin. (
By kind permission of Harry Shukman
)

12. John Reed. (©
Getty Images
)

13. Louise Bryant. (©
Getty Images
)

14. Sylvia Pankhurst. (
By kind permission of Harry Shukman
)

15. A 1919 anti-Spartacist and anti-Bolshevik German poster depicting a Spartacist murdering a family. (©
Getty Images
)

16. A poster offering 10,000 marks for the arrest of Karl Radek. (
By kind permission of Harry Shukman
)

17. The Spartacists get themselves organized in January 1919. (
Hoover Institution Archives
)

18. André Marty. (
By kind permission of Harry Shukman
)

19. Kamenev. (
By kind permission of Harry Shukman
)

20. Béla Kun. (©
Getty Images
)

21. Robert Bruce Lockhart. (
Corbis
)

22. Moura Budberg. (©
The Estate of Tania Alexander
)

23. Sidney Reilly. (
Alamy
)

24. Clare Sheridan and son. (©
Getty Images
)

25. A Ukrainian recruitment poster for the Red Cavalry. (©
Getty Images
)

26. A White Army regiment operating in Siberia in early 1920. (©
Getty Images
)

27. An anti-Bolshevik Cossack unit during the Civil War. (©
Getty Images
)

28. General Anton Denikin. (©
Getty Images
)

29. Sir Paul Dukes. (
Hoover Institution Archives
)

30. Agent ST25, also known as Paul Dukes, in one of his operational disguises. (
Hoover Institution Archives
)

31. Food pails being carried for distribution during the Civil War in 1919. (©
Getty Images
)

32. Turin workers rise against capitalism in 1920. (
By kind permission of Harry Shukman
)

33. Leaders and militants of the Communist Party of Great Britain in the early 1920s. (
By kind permission of Harry Shukman
)

34. The Italian delegation to the Second Comintern Congress in July 1920. (
By kind permission of Harry Shukman
)

35. Arthur Ransome. (
Brotherton Collection
)

36. Yevgenia Shelepina. (
Brotherton Collection
)

37. Willie Gallacher. (
By kind permission of Harry Shukman
)

38. Tanks on the streets of Glasgow during the strikes of early 1919. (
By kind permission of Harry Shukman
)

39. Red Army POWs in Finnish captivity. (
By kind permission of Harry Shukman
)

40. Session of the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku in September 1920. (
By kind permission of Harry Shukman
)

41. Leading delegates to the Third Comintern Congress (June–July 1921) gather under the joint statue of Marx and Engels. (
By kind permission of Harry Shukman
)

42. The Soviet delegation to the talks at Genoa and Rapallo in April 1922. (©
Getty Images
)

43. Joseph Stalin speaking in mourning for Lenin, January 1924. (©
Getty Images
)

Preface

Many people have given generous help with this book. Its basic material on all aspects of Russia and the West in the revolutionary period comes from the Hoover Institution Archives, and I am grateful for the support of the Sarah Scaife Foundation in enabling me to work in Stanford on the project over two whole summers. My thanks also go to Hoover Institution Director John Raisian and Senior Associate Director Richard Sousa for the enthusiasm they have shown for the investigations carried out at Hoover. The exceptional conditions for research and writing there were enhanced by the active co-operation of all the staff in the Archives, and I am especially beholden to Linda Bernard, Carol Leadenham, Lora Soroka, Zbig Stanczyk, Brad Bauer and Lisa Miller. Their efficiency and expertise in suggesting boxes and folders unknown to me and in helping with the declassification of valuable files are appreciated. In that respect I must acknowledge my debt to Julian Evans, UK Consul-General in San Francisco until 2010, who persuaded the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office to sanction access to some of Robert Bruce Lockhart’s papers at Hoover.