Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution (45 page)

It was one thing to gather intelligence, quite another to know how to exploit it. Wilfrid Malleson had proved that espionage could be used to devastating effect: his Machiavellian exploits had seriously undermined Soviet plans for an alliance with Afghanistan in the summer of 1919.

But subtlety, too, could reap rich dividends. In the dangerous game of Russian Roulette, playing an unexpected hand could upset the best laid plans.

It so happened that the establishment of Roy’s Army of God coincided with economic collapse inside Soviet Russia. The country found itself in meltdown, with a slump in industrial production and a catastrophic decline in grain supplies. The much heralded policy of War Communism had proved a disaster, one that left millions of Russians on the verge of starvation.

In the spring of 1921, Lenin replaced War Communism with his New Economic Policy. Limited private trade was to be sanctioned and enterprise encouraged. So, too, was international trade. It was this quest for trade that brought two of Lenin’s senior commissars to London: Leonid Krasin (Commissar for Trade and Industry) and Lev Kamenev (Head of the Congress of Soviets).

The ensuing talks were to preoccupy British ministers for many months. They were often acrimonious and broke down completely on several occasions. The British had good reason not to trust the Russian negotiating team: they were eavesdropping on every wire, telegraph and communication that was passing between Moscow and London.

‘That swine Lloyd George has no scruple or shame in the way he deceives,’ said Lenin to Krasin in one telegraphic exchange. ‘Don’t believe a word he says and gull him three times as much.’

The message was decoded and placed on Lloyd George’s desk within hours of it being sent. It was one of numerous intercepts that shed light on Soviet methods and intentions. Lloyd George confessed to his Cabinet colleagues that eavesdropping was providing ‘real insight into Bolshevik interests and policy.’

By the spring of 1921, the Soviet economy was in such dire straits that Lenin was desperate for the agreement to be signed. International trade was deemed to be the only way to lift Russia from its economic woes.

In a speech to the Congress of Soviets, he publicly voiced his fears that the British Government was divided between those who wanted an agreement and those who vehemently opposed it.

‘It is in our direct interest, and it is our direct duty to give all our support to whatever can help to fortify those parties and groupings [in London] who are striving for the signature of this treaty with us.’

Lord Curzon had long been urging his colleagues to seize the golden opportunity presented by Lenin’s need for an agreement. ‘We know from a great variety of sources that the Russian Government is threatened with complete economic disaster,’ he said, ‘and that it is ready to pay almost any price for the assistance which we . . . are in a position to give.’

The price that Curzon wanted them to pay had nothing to do with trade: his thoughts were focused on the Army of God. ‘It seems to me that [the] price can far better be paid in a cessation of Bolshevik hostility in parts of the world important to us than the ostensible exchange of commodities.’

He wanted the immediate disbanding of Roy’s army.

There was one drawback to this strategy. The only way to force a showdown with the Soviet Government was to reveal intelligence that had been obtained by espionage. But this carried the risk of compromising the British agents still working undercover in Moscow and Tashkent.

An additional sticking point was the fact that the British public remained wholly unaware of the existence of Mansfield Cumming’s organisation. Nor did people have any inkling of the extent of the espionage and eavesdropping that had been taking place over many years.

The Cabinet Secretary, Maurice Hankey, warned his colleagues that the undercover work had been so secret that even many in Whitehall had no notion of what had been taking place. ‘Public opinion may experience a shock if it realises what has been going on,’ he said.

Winston Churchill urged ministers to throw caution to the wind. He favoured confronting the Soviet commissars with all the secret information that had been obtained by British agents. He wanted to disclose decrypted telegrams as well, even though it would alert the Soviet government to the fact that their codes had been cracked.

In the end, wiser counsel prevailed. Ministers decided to use carefully selected morsels of intelligence in their quest to force the Soviet Government into a climb-down.

A blistering covering note was attached to the proposed trade agreement, one which revealed that British ministers had ‘for a long time past been aware of the intrigues in which the Soviet Government, with their agents, subordinates and associates have been engaged.’

They admitted to knowing a great deal about the Indian revolutionaries in Central Asia; they even named Roy as the principal conspirator. ‘Were nothing known of the present activities of these self-convicted traitors, the fact of their employment by the Russian Government would be enough to cast the gravest suspicion on the good faith of the Soviet government towards Great Britain in the East.’

A few choice items of intelligence about Roy’s military training camp were also dropped into the covering note. ‘At Tashkent is established the advance base for Indian work, with a political department and a military technical centre: here is provided instruction in revolutionary tactics for all Indians arriving in Turkestan from whatever direction.’

And so it went on. Carefully selected examples of Soviet treachery were cited, all of them gleaned from operators working for either Mansfield Cumming or for his colleagues in Simla.

Such activities would now have to cease, and cease with immediate effect, if the British were to sign the trade agreement. The planned invasion of India had to be permanently put on ice. The complete cessation of hostilities was to be ‘an essential corollary of the conclusion of any agreement between the two countries.’

The British revelations left no one in Moscow in any doubt that the Soviet plot against India stood compromised and hopelessly exposed. It was hard to see how Roy’s invasion could now take place, given that the British had been alerted to so many strategic details. Besides, in the final reckoning Lenin needed trade with Britain more than he needed Roy’s Army of God.

After much debate, Moscow reluctantly concluded that it had been forced into a corner: it had no option but to abandon its planned assault on British India’s North-West Frontier. It also consented to all the other terms of the British covering note. Lenin and his senior commissars promised to refrain ‘from any attempt, by military or propaganda, to encourage any of the peoples of Asia in any form of hostile action against British interests or the British Empire, especially in India.’

News of the Russian climb-down was the cause of private jubilation in Whitehall: it was a triumphant vindication of the value of professional espionage. The threat to the Raj had been trounced not by armed force, nor by aerial bombardment, but by a small team of spies and code-breakers working undercover in Moscow and Tashkent.

The Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement was finally signed on Wednesday, 16 March 1921, a typically damp and overcast day in London. There was no fanfare of trumpets and precious little publicity:
The Times
relegated its report to page eleven of the following day’s newspaper.

Yet ministers in both London and Moscow had no doubts as to the importance of what had just been agreed. ‘This diplomatic document, though modest in scope, is of truly historic significance,’ wrote the Soviet diplomat, Ivan Maisky, who would later serve as ambassador to London.

It was a formal acknowledgment that a vicious undeclared war had been ongoing between Soviet Russia and Great Britain for more than three years. It also made public Russia’s intention of destroying British India, the first step in its quest to engulf the world in violent revolution. Although it was not a peace treaty, it was tantamount to one.

The dry prose of the agreement gave little hint of the deception, subterfuge and intrigue that lay behind it. Undercover agents, infiltrators and code-breakers hiding out in the Pamir Mountains had all played a role in unmasking the Soviet plot to sow mayhem and revolution in British India.

Both sides would claim victory in the aftermath of the agreement, for both sides had to justify it to the sceptics at home. But there was one definite loser and that was the Army of God.

Roy knew that there was no hope of pressing on with his planned invasion. There were too many hidden eyes watching his every movement. Besides, he was sent a curt order from Moscow to abandon his training camp and disband his army.

Roy himself broke the news to his troops. At a specially convened meeting he informed them that all of the various battalions were being dissolved with immediate effect.

The news came as a bombshell to the soldiers. The hardship, camaraderie and gruelling military training had all come to nothing. The dream of carrying armed revolution deep into India was over before it could become a reality. It was the cruellest defeat. The Army of God, established with such bravado, had been vanquished without a single shot being fired.

A few of the soldiers ventured to ask what the future held for them. Roy could do little more than shrug his shoulders. In truth, he did not know the answer. He promised each one a small sum of money and told them to go on their way.

Most drifted off to Persia or Afghanistan while others remained in Turkestan. A few struggled across the dangerous territory to the east of Bokhara and eventually managed to re-enter the Raj by way of the North-West Frontier.

One of these, Abdul Qadir Khan, was later interviewed about his attempt to return home. He explained how he and a few companions had scaled the freezing Baroghil Pass in the teeth of a biting gale and entered India near the frontier town of Chitral. They were immediately arrested.

‘It is clear that the authorities in India knew for weeks that we were making for the Indian frontier,’ said Khan. ‘The Political Officer showed no surprise at our arrival . . . He said that the Intelligence Department had issued instructions regarding the possibility of Russian agents entering from that side of the border.’

By the time of Abdul Khan’s arrest, Roy had packed his bags and headed back to Moscow, along with a handful of his most promising recruits. He was depressed by the fact that all his dreams of invading India had come to such an inglorious end. ‘A year and a half ago, I had left Moscow with great expectations,’ he wrote.

Now, those expectations had come to nothing. ‘So I closed an exciting chapter of my life with the experience of failure, but without regret. Now, I must discover other ways to my goal and to help the Indian Revolution.’

Roy would persist in his revolutionary dreams for years to come, but they became increasingly desperate and forlorn. Spurned by the Comintern and ditched by the Soviet leadership, he would launch a final bid for revolution in 1930, slipping back across the frontier into India.

Intelligence agents were soon on his trail. On 21 July 1931, he was arrested in Bombay. Soon afterwards, he was charged under Section 121A of the Indian Penal Code with ‘conspiring to deprive the King-Emperor of his sovereignty in India.’

His attempt to overthrow British India, begun with such high hopes, ended in a squalid Indian jail.

Epilogue

In the aftermath of the disbanding of the Army of God, Lord Curzon took the opportunity to reflect on the role played by the spies and code-breakers.

They had infiltrated Soviet organisations, eavesdropped on communications and played a skilful game of cat and mouse in the citadels and back-lands of Central Asia, often in situations of extreme danger. More than this, they had transformed the means by which the government could now operate. Old-fashioned diplomacy had been shown to have serious limitations in times of crisis. A spy, working undercover and in disguise, could achieve more in a day than a frock-coated ambassador could hope to do in a year.

Lord Curzon was deeply impressed by their work; it had proved a highly efficient way to neutralise a serious threat. Now he wrote to the viceroy asking if Indian intelligence operations needed to be expanded yet further. If so, money would be made available.

‘I should emphasise the importance of selecting the very ablest and most discreet investigating agents . . .’ he wrote. ‘The matter is of worldwide interest to all governments and this explains my anxiety that all that is possible should be done.’