Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution (12 page)

Lockhart’s return to Russia in early 1918 did not bring about a change to his lifestyle: he continued to frequent the decadent cabaret acts staged in the underground bars of the Okhotny Ryad. There were also nights when he would clamber into his horse-drawn troika and drive to the grounds of the Strelna Palace. Here, with stinging cheeks and icicles in his hair, he would carouse with the gypsy singers like the celebrated Maria Nikolaievna.

‘The cynic will say that her task in life was to collect foolish and preferably rich young men, to sing to them, and to make them drink oceans of champagne until their wealth or their father’s wealth was transferred from their pockets to her own,’ he wrote.

Lockhart was never one of the cynics. He would guzzle his way through Maria’s champagne until the drink and the music left him in a state of blissful intoxication.

Lockhart’s posting to Russia was to bring gaiety to many and misery to one. Oliver Wardrop was a humourless career diplomat who had served diligently as British Consul for some years and had remained in the country in the aftermath of Ambassador Buchanan’s departure. He was dismayed to learn of Lockhart’s appointment and telegraphed London to enquire as to his rank in the diplomatic hierarchy.

The reply was evasive. ‘Mr Lockhart will on arrival in Moscow continue to act as unofficial British agent to the Bolshevik government.’

None the wiser, Wardrop pressed on with his work, but found himself continually distracted by Lockhart, who behaved with complete disregard to the conventions of diplomacy.

‘Position of Lockhart is unique,’ complained Wardrop in a sniffy letter to London. ‘He is variously described in official and inspired press as “Ambassador”, “Envoy”, “Official Representative”, “Consul General” and so on.’

What really irked Wardrop was the fact that Lockhart worked in secrecy. ‘He has a staff of some six persons, exact nature of whose duties I am unaware but nevertheless with my ready consent uses my staff for ciphering and deciphering.’

Wardrop was fearful of being sidelined and sent another telegram to the Foreign Office, asking for clarification as to whether or not he was still the ‘senior British official in what used to be called Russia.’

The reply merely thanked him for his ‘loyal attitude’. The unpalatable truth was that Lockhart had been given carte blanche to act in whatever way he saw fit.

Robert Bruce Lockhart and his little team at the embassy were not the only British nationals based in Russia at this time. Among the small number of Englishmen who had made their homes in Petrograd was one who had more experience of Russia than most.

Arthur Ransome had, by this time, been working as a
Daily News
correspondent for several years and was well acquainted with both senior Russian politicians and the British expatriate community.

‘A tall, lanky, bony individual,’ was how George Hill described Ransome, ‘with a shock of sandy hair, usually unkempt, and the eyes of a small inquisitive and rather mischievous boy. He really was a lovable personality when you came to know him.’

But Ransome had become increasingly irritable in the months before the Bolshevik revolution, partly because of his inadequate diet. The lack of fruit and vegetables had begun to affect his health and his recurring haemorrhoids had become so inflamed that he found it impossible to work.

‘I can’t cross a room without nearly collapsing,’ he had written in a letter to his mother, ‘and the day before yesterday I fainted in the street.’

He was eventually forced into the operating theatre, where he went under the knife with only a cocaine paste to dull the agony of having the haemorrhoids cut out and the bleeding veins cauterised. ‘VIOLENT AND ABOMINABLE PAIN,’ he wrote on the day after the operation. For the next sixty hours, the pain remained so excruciating that he could not sleep.

Ransome had returned to England after the operation, intent on taking a fishing holiday that would give him the chance to regain his strength, far from the stresses of Russia. He was joined in Wiltshire by his wife Ivy – with whom he was trapped in a deteriorating relationship – and his young daughter, Tabitha.

The much-needed holiday did not last for long: Ransome’s perch fishing was abruptly interrupted by news of the Bolshevik revolution. By the second week of November he was once again writing for the
Daily News
, not as an eyewitness to the unfolding events but as a London-based commentator with knowledge of many of the key players.

Ransome might have expected a summons to Mansfield Cumming’s offices at this critical juncture. He was, after all, an acknowledged expert on Russia. He also knew many of the men working for the Russian bureau. But instead of being called to Whitehall Court, Ransome was invited to the Foreign Office, where he had several meetings with the Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Lord Robert Cecil.

Ransome never felt comfortable in the presence of patrician grandees and he did not warm to Lord Cecil. ‘He stood in front of the fireplace, immensely tall, fantastically thin, his hawkish head swinging forward at the end of a long arc formed by his body and legs.’ He seemed to personify the aloofness of the ruling elite.

Yet Lord Cecil recognised Ransome as an expert on Russian affairs and expressed a keen interest in hearing his opinions about the new revolutionary rulers. He also solicited information on the forces that opposed the Bolsheviks. When the meeting at long last drew to a close, Ransome surprised Lord Cecil by offering to return to Russia as an unofficial envoy, playing a similar role to that of Robert Bruce Lockhart.

Lord Cecil was by no means averse to the idea: Ransome, after all, could prove extremely useful in reporting on the rapidly changing situation inside Russia. He gave his consent and despatched a telegram to Petrograd alerting the remaining diplomatic staff to Ransome’s appointment.

But just a few hours after sending the telegram, he countermanded it. ‘In view of Athens telegram No. 2191 about Mr Ransome,’ he wrote, ‘if the allegations made against him there are true, he would obviously not be a suitable agent.’

The contents of ‘Athens telegram No. 2191’ are not known and the allegations against Ransome remain a mystery. But they almost certainly painted him as a revolutionary sympathiser, someone whose radical views meant that he could not be trusted.

There was some truth in this. Ransome sincerely hoped that the Bolshevik revolution would sweep away the many injustices of the old regime and offer a brighter future to the country’s downtrodden poor. His political views did not correspond with those of British ministers.

Lord Cecil eventually gave Ransome the benefit of the doubt and agreed to facilitate his return to Petrograd.

‘He gave me his blessing,’ wrote a relieved Ransome, ‘and made things easy for me, at least as far as Stockholm, by entrusting the diplomatic bag for me to deliver to the legation.’

Ransome was back in Petrograd on Christmas Day, crossing the border into Russia with the assistance of the Bolshevik representative in Stockholm. His heavy luggage preceded him, having been forwarded to Petrograd and delivered to the new Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, where it fell into the hands of Karl Radek, a senior Bolshevik commissar in charge of Western propaganda. He was also one of the most devious characters in the revolutionary inner circle.

Radek immediately opened the luggage to see what was inside. He found an eclectic mix: ‘a Shakespeare, a folding chess-board and chessmen and a mixed collection of books on elementary navigation, fishing, chess and folklore.’ Intrigued, he expressed a desire to meet the person ‘who was interested in subjects that seemed incompatible.’

Ransome was summoned to the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs and introduced to the irascible Radek. The two men got along famously from the outset, swapping gossip and continually trying to wrongfoot each other.

Radek spoke in Russian with Ransome, ‘but loved to drag in sentences from English books, which I sometimes annoyed him by being slow to recognise.’ His favourite quotation was ‘Marley was as dead as a doornail’ from
A Christmas Carol
. ‘He loved to apply it to politicians and to political programmes that had been outstripped by events.’

Ransome enjoyed Radek’s irreverent wit, describing him as ‘a little light-haired spectacled revolutionary goblin of incredible intelligence and vivacity.’

Others were less generous. Robert Bruce Lockhart found him ‘a grotesque figure’ whose Norfolk suit ‘with knickers and leggings’ could have been borrowed from the wardrobe of Mr Toad. ‘A little man with a huge head, protruding ears, clean-shaven face . . . with spectacles, and a large mouth with yellow tobacco-stained teeth, from which a huge pipe or cigar was never absent.’

Both Lockhart and Ransome recognised that Radek could provide them with a direct link to the Bolshevik inner circle and they courted him assiduously.

‘Almost every day he would turn up in my rooms,’ wrote Lockhart, ‘an English cap stuck jauntily on his head, his pipe puffing fiercely, a bundle of books under his arm, and a huge revolver strapped to his side. He looked like the cross between a professor and a bandit.’

Radek was particularly fond of Ransome and set up meetings for him with the most important players in the regime, including Trotsky and Lenin. Ransome, wearing his journalistic hat, was keen to introduce the new revolutionary leaders to a British audience. He produced lively pen-portraits of men like Radek and Lenin, bringing them vividly to life.

Unlike most foreign observers, one of whom dismissed Lenin as a ‘provincial green grocer’, Ransome stressed the vital appeal of Russia’s new revolutionary leader.

‘[He] mingled jest and argument in language that tasted of Russian tobacco and the life of the Russian peasantry. It was natural to hear him talk of the principle of his international revolution in the language of the Volga peasants, and in his mouth political theory seemed in no way out of tune with the peasant proverbs.’

Ransome was working principally as a journalist in the early months that followed the revolution. But he was already supplying information to the British government about the Bolshevik leaders and their political goals. This information would prove so valuable that he would eventually find himself on Mansfield Cumming’s payroll. Ransome the revolutionary sympathiser was to become a key agent working inside Russia.

His friendship with Radek, coupled with the widely held belief that he was a closet Bolshevik, was already gaining him access to high-level meetings. He was permitted to attend both the Bolshevik’s Executive Committee and the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

‘My position was immediately behind and above the presidium, looking down on Trotsky’s muscular shoulders and great head and the occasional gestures of his curiously small hands,’ he wrote. ‘Beyond him was that sea of men: soldiers in green and grey shirts, workers in collarless ones, or jerseys, others dressed very much like British workmen, peasants in belted red shirts and high top boots.’

Ransome quickly gained the trust of Trotsky, who never imagined that he was passing information back to the British government.

‘My complete lack of any political past was a help not a hindrance,’ wrote Ransome, ‘and I was soon getting a view of what was happening from much nearer than any regular journalist or politician could approach.’

Alone among the Westerners in Petrograd, he was on intimate terms with the Bolshevik leaders. He saw them ‘every day, drinking their tea, hearing their quarrels, sharing with them such sweets as I had.’

As he penetrated their inner circle, he formed a very different view of their political skills to his English compatriots. He also strongly disagreed with the sentiments of the anti-Bolshevik news-sheets that were being produced in increasing numbers by their enemies.

‘Meeting all these people as human beings, I could not believe the rubbishy propaganda that was being poured out by other Russians who, hoping for their destruction no matter by whom, pretended that they were German agents.’

Ransome was soon so close to the leading revolutionaries that Western diplomats began to wonder if he had ‘unusual channels of information.’ This he did. Unbeknown to anyone in London, he had fallen in love with Trotsky’s personal secretary, Evgenia Shelepina, and was seeing her on a daily basis.

Their relationship was to transform the information he received from the regime: it was Shelepina who typed up Trotsky’s correspondence and planned all his meetings. Suddenly, Ransome found himself with access to highly secretive documents and telegraphic transmissions.