Russian Roulette
A Deadly Game: How
British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot
Giles Milton
Julia Jones's review appears in the current issue of Mixed Moss - journal of The Arthur Ransome Society
This
story begins at the Finland Station, Petrograd, 16th April
1917. Three Englishmen have been there for several hours already as
the train they are expecting is running late. They know that
something is about to happen: they are not yet sure how significant
it will be. The three Englishmen are William Gibson, an English
adventurer staying with his mother-in-law, Madame Schwatz-Eberhard,
Paul Dukes, a British Embassy courier, and Arthur Ransome, then a
journalist for the Daily News. The man for whom they are
waiting is Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov – Lenin. Finally the train pulls
in to the darkened station. A bright light illuminates the central
figure, a band strikes up the Marseillaise, Lenin speaks to the
waiting crowd: “Dear Comrades, soldiers, sailors and workers. I
greet you as the vanguard of the worldwide proletarian army.”
Ironically
neither Ransome nor Dukes appears to have made much of the event at
the time. Ransome was well aware of the simmering unrest and latent
violence that had intensified in the city since the assassination of
Rasputin at New Year. However he had been instructed by the Daily
News to cut down the length of his despatches so did not include
Lenin's arrival in that evening's round-up. Dukes, though
underwhelmed by Lenin's appearance, sent a message of warning to the
Foreign Office that was widely treated as a joke. Gibson, whose
mother-in-law's house had recently been invaded by rioters, was the
most immediately impressed. “Without one word this seemingly
wretched little figure made his presence felt to the onlookers in a
way they had never before experienced in their lives.” Gibson plays
no further part in the story. Both Ransome and Dukes were directly –
and dangerously – involved.
Within
weeks of his arrival at the Finland Station Lenin had repudiated the
1907 Anglo-Russian Convention which set out spheres of influence in
Central Asia and protected British India's northern frontiers from
attack by Russia. Already the defences were weakened by the
withdrawal of troops for service on the Western Front. Lenin was
convinced that an alliance between Bolshevism and militant Islam with
an attack across the North West Frontier would be the quickest and
most effective ways to attack British imperialism and spread the
world wide revolution. Russian Roulette follows this strand of
history though until March 1921 when the extent of Russia's economic
collapse forced Lenin to sign the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement and
disown Manabendra Nath Roy's bizarre “Army of God” which he had
financed and sent across the border only months previously.
What
has this this new twist in the Great Game to do with Arthur Ransome,
readers may ask? Giles Milton's contention is that
the effective development of British espionage in Russia was the key
ingredient in monitoring and thwarting Bolshevik ambitions as Lenin
and the Comintern plotted to export their revolution. Grigori
Zinoviev, first chairman of the Communist International (Comintern)
had also been on the train that had arrived that at the
Finland Station that April night. In March 1919 when the Comintern was founded and
Lenin pledged global revolution Ransome was once again a witness.
This time he had no doubt that what he was hearing mattered. “I
could not help realising that I was present at something that would
go down in the histories of socialism.” And by this time – March
1919 – he was officially part of Britain's Secret Intelligence
Service (later MI6). Paul Dukes had also been recruited.
After
the killing of the Tsar and his family in July 1918 and the landings
by Allied forces later that summer, diplomatic relationships between
Russian and the outside world were almost non-existent and the
position of any British, French or American national was, at the
least, precarious. The ambassadors left the country: two hundred
Allied nationals were arrested and interned. Official representatives
were expelled. George Hill, a member of the Royal Flying Corps, who
had originally been sent to Russian to train pilots for service on
the Eastern Front, had previously asked Ransome's friend, Karl Radek, what would happen to him if Allied forces landed on Russian soil.
Radek told him that he would either be imprisoned or executed “to
show Bolshevik contempt for officers of a capitalist power.” In the
summer of 1918 Hill realised it was time for him to disappear.
Clandestine
information was the only way that the outside world could have any
idea what was happening inside Russia – or what Russia was planning
beyond its borders. Giles Milton traces the establishment of
effective intelligence systems by the legendary 'C' – Mansfield
George Smith Cumming, the Chief – from the arrival of Lenin in 1917
to the failure of his Indian ambitions in the early 1920s. Both Dukes
and Ransome were recruited by 'C' in the winter of 1918. They were
part of an organisation that included Somerset Maugham (who used his
experience in his Ashenden stories), Sidney Reilly (the “Ace of
Spies”), Augustus Agar who skimmed over the surface or the Baltic
minefields in an ultra-light Coastal Motor Boat and George Hill,
ex-Royal Flying Corps.
Hill
had shared accommodation with Ransome in the Elite Hotel, Moscow.
They had enjoyed heated arguments, frequently in their shared
bathroom, after which Hill described Ransome as “beating himself
dry like an outraged gorilla”. By 1921, when Lenin was finally
forced into trade negotiations with London, British intelligence was
so good that they were eavesdropping on every communication. “That
swine Lloyd George has no scruple of shame in the way that he
deceives,” Lenin instructed his trade envoy. “Don't believe a
word he says and gull him three times as much.” This message,
Milton reports, “was decoded and placed on Lloyd George's desk
within hours of it being sent.”
I
found it extraordinarily interesting to see Ransome as part of this
wider picture. In an odd way Russian Roulette accentuates his
individuality. Many of the agents who worked for the intelligence
services were motivated either by a taste for reckless adventure or a
hatred of Bolshevism. Ransome was neither. He believed he had a
mission to explain each side to the other and he was also a man in
love. He never allowed his sympathy for the Bolshevik ideology to
tempt him to betray his country or his companions – unlike René
Marchand, Bolshevik sympathiser and correspondent for Le Figaro,
who was a trusted part of the British – French – American plan to overthrow
the regime but then told all to Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of the Cheka.
Marchand was a genuine double agent as Ransome never was.
Nevertheless, understanding the tension of the situation and the
potential for damage, it's easy to see how Ransome's personal views
and his relationship with Evgenia Schelpina (Trotsky's secretary) would make him suspect -- as it did
to MI5. He should be “shot like a dog” said Major General Knox,
formerly of the British Embassy in Petrograd. Those who knew the
truth – like Lord Robert Cecil, Arthur Balfour and key players such
as Robert Bruce Lockhart and George Hill – valued Ransome's accurate assessments of the situation. “He was extremely
well-informed, intimate with the Bolsheviks and masterly at summing
up a situation,” said Hill. It was a senior official from 'C's
Secret Information Service (MI6) who pressurised the Daily News
into retaining Ransome when he left Russia in November 1918. His work
was deemed “vital” to British interests. Arthur Ransome was officially
enrolled as agent ST76 and sent back to Petrograd.
The
only quibble I have with Russian Roulette is its title. Yes,
it emphasises recklessness, high stakes, calculation of the odds –
many of the qualities of an outstanding agent – but one of the
most important themes in Giles Milton's book is the importance of
organisation; chains of couriers, safe houses and back-up. 'C'
established bureaux in Stockholm, Helsingfors, Riga, Reval which
provided essential support for Ransome, Dukes and the others. Those extraordinarily brave agents despatched deep into Russian Turkestan
were not employed by the SIS. They therefore had no support network
and frequently no means of sending out the information they had
risked their lives to obtain.
That single niggle aside, Russian
Roulette is an exciting read, well and clearly written,
generously sourced. It's a book that does more than fulfil its brief.
As I read Milton's account of the ease with which the shrewd
propagandist Wilfred Malleson succeeded in pitting Shia Muslims
against Sunnis in Afghanistan, and the shameful episode of
Churchill's use of poison gas in Northern Russia, I felt that Russian
Roulette, like all good history, not only illuminates its period
but has something to say to the present day as well.
Published by Sceptre August 2013
Hardback £20 Kindle edition £10.99
No comments:
Post a Comment