Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution (49 page)

14: The Lethal M Device

There is an excellent account of Churchill’s policy towards Soviet Russia in Gilbert,
Churchill
(vol. 4). This also explains internal divisions within the government. More detailed – and equally fascinating – is Antoine Capet’s ‘ “The Creeds of the Devil”: Churchill between the Two Totalitarianisms, 1917–1945.’ This sets out Churchill’s rabid anti-communist views. It is available on-line at:
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/support/the-churchill-centre/publications/finest-hour-onlineon-line/725-the-creeds-of-the-devil-churchill-between-the-two-totalitarianisms-1917-1945#sdfootnote34sym

See also Ullman’s Anglo-Soviet Relations for detailed coverage of the war in Russia.

Hill,
Go Spy
and
Dreaded Hour
cover his mission to General Denikin. But there is also much of interest in the NA, notably FO/371/3962 and FO/371/3978 which contain Sidney Reilly’s despatches and reports about General Denikin and his advisors, sent from Sebastopol, Ekaterinodar and elsewhere.

The story of Churchill’s deployment of chemical weapons is little known. The best scholarly article was published by the
Imperial War Museum Review
, 12 (1999): ‘ “The Right Medicine for the Bolshevist”: British Air-Dropped Chemical Weapons in North Russia, 1919’ by Simon Jones. But the full story of the research and development of chemical weapons in the immediate aftermath of the First World War remains to be told.

Many of the original documents, including reports by the War Office and medical reports into the effects of the chemical gas, are to be found in NA. There are also a number of photographs contained in the NA files. I found the following most useful: WO/32/5749, ‘The Use of Gas in North Russia’; WO/33/966
European War Secret Telegrams
, Series H, vol. 2, Feb–May 1919; WO/32/5184 and WO/32/5185 (Churchill and the use of chemical gas); WO/158/735; WO/142/116; WO/95/5424 and AIR/462/15/312/125 (these all contain reports about the dropping of gas); WO/106/1170 (the case of Private Leeposhkin); T/173/830 (Grantham’s evidence). See also J.B.S. Haldane,
Callinicus: A Defence of Chemical Warfare
(London, 1925).

15: Agent in Danger

The best general account of Agar’s rescue mission is in Ferguson,
Operation Kronstadt.

The material about Dukes is gathered from his published accounts,
ST25
and
Red Dusk
, and from his intelligence reports to London, some of which are in the NA: ADM/223/637.

Agar wrote three books about his adventurous life. The most relevant to the Paul Dukes rescue mission is
Baltic Episode
. There is also an account of Admiral Cowan’s service:
Sound of the Guns: Being an Account of the Wars and Service of Admiral Sir Walter Cowan
by Lionel Dawson (Oxford, 1949).

The NA has several files on Agar’s mission: ADM/1/8563/208 and ADM/137/16879 (an account by Agar of his raid). The files also contain maps of the Baltic.

16: Dirty Tricks

Published accounts include Bailey,
Mission
; Hopkirk,
Setting the East
; Swinson,
Beyond
. There is also a wealth of material in the India Office Archives. See IOR/L/PS/10/722 and IOR/L/PS/10/741. Bailey’s papers are also in the IOR: see Mss EurD 658 and Mss EurD 157/178, 157/180, 157/182, 157/183, 157/232 and 157/275.

The principal published account of Malleson’s mission is Wilfrid Malleson, ‘The British Military Mission in Turkestan, 1918–1920’ published in the
Journal of the Central Asian Society
, vo. 9, no. 2 (1922). There is also useful background material: ‘British Secret Missions in Turkestan’ by L.P. Morris in the
Journal of Contemporary History
, vol. 12, no. 2 (1977); Alexander Park’s
Bolshevism in Turkestan
(New York, 1957); G.L. Dmitriev,
Indian Revolutionaries in Central Asia
(India, 2002);
The Transcaspian Episode
by C.H. Ellis (London, 1963) and
British Military Involvement in Transcaspia
by Michael Sergeant (Camberley, 2004).

But most of the material is unpublished and kept in the India Office Records at the British Library. I found the following the most useful: IOR/L/MIL/17/14/91/2 ‘Bolshevik Activities in Central Asia’; IOR/L/PS/10/836 ‘Bolshevik Activities in Central Asia’; IOR/L/PS/10/886, this file includes the important ‘Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Bolshevism as a menace to the British Empire’; IOR/L/PS/11/159, containing Bolshevik propaganda; IOR/L/PS/11/201 ‘Bolshevik Activities in Central Asia’; IOR/L/PS/10/741 contains lots of reports from Malleson and Etherton. The Kashgar consular diaries (IOR/L/PS/825 and IOR/L/PS/976) give Etherton’s perspective.

See also the aforementioned on-line monograph by Waugh,
Etherton at Kashgar.

17: Army of God

M.N. Roy’s time in Moscow and his designs on India are detailed in his autobiography,
Memoirs
. There is a great deal of additional information about the threat to be found in the India Office (see notes pertaining to Malleson, above) and in two books published for internal distribution by the Intelligence Bureau in Simla:
Communism in India
by Sir Cecil Kaye and its sequel
Communism in India
by Sir David Petrie. The latter is particularly useful and gives a real insight into the scale and reach of the Intelligence Bureau in Simla.

Of interest, too, is IOR/L/PS/10/886, the aforementioned report into the threat of Bolshevism to India. This incorporates a great deal of material obtained from the Secret Intelligence Service.

L/PJ/12/99 is one of the many files on Roy and his various aliases.

The Baku conference is well documented. For general background, see Hopkirk,
Setting the East
. For documents, transcripts of speeches and background material, see Eudin and Fisher,
Soviet Russia
, and Degras,
Communist International
. H.G. Wells also wrote about the congress in his
Russia in the Shadows
(London, 1920).

The speeches of the congress are on-line at
http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/baku/ch01.htm

18: Winner Takes All

Roy,
Memoirs
; Judd,
Quest
; Jeffrey,
MI6
; Andrew,
Secret Service
; Smith,
Six
. I also found Paul Dukes’s reports in
The Times
a useful source: his report published on 15 January 1920, ‘Bolshevik Interests in the East’, contains a copy of one of Karakhan’s memoranda.

The best general discussion of the Anglo-Soviet trade talks is in Andrew,
Secret Service
. Andrew has written extensively (and informatively) on the subject. See ‘The British Secret Service and Anglo-Soviet Relations in the 1920s: Part 1: From the Trade Negotiations to the Zinoviev Letter’ published in
The Historical Journal
, vol. 20, no. 3 (1977).

Also of great interest is ‘The Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement, March 1921,’ by M.V. Glenny,
Journal of Contemporary History
, vol. 5, no. 2 (1970); ‘Engaging the World: Soviet Diplomacy and Foreign Propaganda in the 1920s’ by Alistair Kocho-Williams, on-line at
http://www.academia.edu/720588/Engaging_the_World_Soviet_Diplomacy_and_Foreign_Propaganda_in_the_1920s1 Kocho-Williams
also wrote the interesting ‘Comintern Though a British Lens’, also on-line at
http://www.academia.edu/720580/The_Comintern_through_a_British_lens

Beyond the scope of this book, but worthy of further reading, is the work of the cryptologists. Andrew,
Secret Service
, provides an outline of their work. See also
Action this Day
, edited by Ralph Erskine and Michael Smith (London, 2001) and an article on the work of Brigadier John Tiltman in ‘Brigadier John Tiltman: One of Britain’s Finest Cryptologists’, published in
Cryptologia
, vol. 27, no. 4 (October 2003).

Abdul Qadir Khan’s experiences with Roy were published in a three-part series in
The Times
, 25, 26 and 27 February 1930.

The trade agreement was published in
The Times
under the headline ‘Trade with Red Russia’ on 17 March 1921.

Epilogue

Information on espionage and intelligence gathering in the aftermath of the trade agreement can be found in IOR/L/PJ/12/117; this includes Lord Curzon’s memo to the viceroy. There is a wealth of information in Popplewell,
Intelligence and Imperial Defence
, especially pp. 308–12.

Perhaps the most important intelligence file covering the period immediately after the trade agreement is IOR/L/PJ/12/119; it contains a large amount of top-secret documents acquired by Mansfield Cumming’s Secret Intelligence Service.

Boris Bazhanov’s own account of his work as an inside agent can be found in
Avec Staline
. Information about Bazhanov can also be found at the NA: see KV3/11 and KV3/12. For more on Bazhanov’s flight from Russia, see Brook-Shepherd,
Storm Petrels
. Bazhanov’s story was published in the
Sunday Telegraph
, 19 and 26 September and 3 October 1976.

The concluding paragraphs about all the main players in
Russia Roulette
are drawn from three principal sources: their own accounts, their obituaries and the
Dictionary of National Biography
. Judd,
Quest
, provides an excellent account of Cumming’s final months.

SELECTED READING

The books listed below will prove of interest to anyone who wishes to explore further Britain’s espionage operations inside post-revolutionary Russia.

A full list of books, articles, unpublished documents and Inter-net resources can be found in the
Notes and Sources
section.

Agar, Augustus,
Baltic Episode: A Classic of Secret Service in Russian Waters
(London, 1963)
.

Footprints in the Sea
(London, 1959)
.

Showing the Flag
(London, 1962).

Andrew, Christopher,
Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community
(London, 1985)
.

Bailey, Frederick,
Mission to Tashkent
(London, 1992)
.

Bazhanov, Boris,
Avec Staline dans le Kremlin
(Paris, 1930)
.

Brogan, Hugh,
Signalling from Mars: The Letters of Arthur Ransome
(London, 1997).

The Life of Arthur Ransome
(London, 1992).

Brook-Shepherd, Gordon,
Iron Maze: The Western Secret Services and the Bolsheviks
(London, 1998).

The
Storm Petrels: The First Soviet Defectors
(London, 1977).