Spies and Commissars

Russia’.²² With the exception of Trotsky and Bukharin, it was a fantastic exaggeration to assert that ex-residents of New York had supplied the vanguard of the October Revolution. But the newspaper did not feel the need to stick to provable facts. Wild claims were the norm.

Although Ruthenberg was soon released from prison, 249 communist and anarchist leaders who were held on Ellis Island were loaded on to an old transport ship, the Buford, and deported on 21 December 1919. The ship was popularly known as ‘The Red Ark’. Their ultimate destination was Soviet Russia and the entire group sang the Internationale before embarkation. They refused to be demoralized, believing that their punishment was yet another sign that the American capitalist class was starting to panic. They elected Berkman as their spokesman, who said that he expected to be greeted by old friends in Moscow. His wife Emma Goldman declared: ‘I do not consider it a punishment to be sent to Soviet Russia. On the contrary, I consider it an honor to be the first political agitator deported from the United States.’ With her flair for publicity she left nobody in doubt about her confidence: ‘Incidentally, I am coming back. The plan we have considered, which I am going to work on particularly, is the immediate organization in Soviet Russia of the Russian Friends of American Freedom. I insist that I am an American. This practice of deportation means the beginning of the end of the United States Government.’²³

Further deportations followed as Palmer, abetted by a young J. Edgar Hoover in the Bureau of Investigation in the Department of Justice, broke up the early communist groupings, and the organization of support for Comintern became downright dangerous for militants even though they succeeded in producing political literature and holding public meetings, albeit on a smaller scale than before. Nobody could be sure that the authorities would not strengthen the measures against the Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party by means of lengthy terms of imprisonment for people who could not easily be deported. The communist Linn A. E. Gale fled to Mexico City and took his Journal of Revolutionary Communism with him. He recommended exile as a way of avoiding ‘the most savage and brutal penalties’ that he predicted would be applied by ‘the minions of capitalism’.²⁴ But somehow the remaining militants reassembled their links and resumed activity; and the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party of America, cajoled by Moscow, agreed in principle to unification with the Communist Labor Party in mid-March 1920.²⁵ The number of members was in the tens of thousands and was geographically patchy — in 1920 the Communist Labor Party had only 4,525 members and most of these lived on the eastern side of the country.²⁶ Discipline, moreover, was shaky. A furore occurred in the same year when Jay Lovestone, a leading young activist, appeared in court as a witness for his friends and forswore any adherence to Leninist principles to save them from a potentially heavy sentence.²⁷

The militants recognized the need to bring order into their affairs. If they wanted to join Comintern they would have to demonstrate a capacity to be as dedicated and dynamic as the Bolsheviks. The Communist Party of America laid down its guidelines as follows:

Don’t betray Party work and Party workers under any circumstances.

Don’t carry or keep with you names and addresses, except in good code.

Don’t keep in your rooms openly any incriminating documents or literature.

Don’t take any unnecessary risks in Party work.

Don’t shirk Party work because of the risk connected with it.

Don’t boast of what you have to do or have done for the Party.

Don’t divulge your membership in the Party without necessity.

Don’t let any spies follow you to appointments or meetings.

Don’t lose your nerve in danger.

Don’t answer questions if arrested, either at preliminary hearings or in the court.²⁸

Gradually a spirit of conspiratorial comradeship was implanted. Recruits were expected to accept the guidelines or risk being shunned or expelled.

The desirability of such precautions was obvious if the communist revolutionaries were going to make any progress in the US. A ‘Red scare’ billowed as newspaper editors united against the spread of ideological contagion from the east. Attorney-General Palmer had displayed his combative disposition, and many groups of employers were delighted. Politicians in the Democratic and Republican parties were equally pleased to support him. Industrial strikes were increasingly treated as tantamount to treason and the police used much violence.

In December 1921 a founding Convention was at last held for the united Workers’ Party of America, bringing together the Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party and placing it under Comintern’s authority. Comintern immediately set out its priorities. American communists were to infiltrate and manipulate as many organizations as possible in the US, including associations of farmers and ‘Negroes’ — indeed the line of recruitment was drawn only at the Ku Klux Klan. Moscow stressed that the Workers’ Party had to break out of the confines of the party’s immigrant ethnic supporters. Key matters for agitation were to involve a campaign against the current legal restrictions on organizing strikes. Illegal activity was not to be abandoned by the Workers’ Party — in fact the undercover leaders and militants were to be regarded as ‘the real Communist Party’ and were to have permanent precedence over the broad open party. No duty was to be regarded as superior to the calls for support for Soviet Russia. While revolution in the US remained the dream for American communists, their primary obligation was to do whatever was required to sustain the October Revolution in Moscow.²⁹ Although factionalism continued to plague the Workers’ Party of America, this served only to strengthen the Russian hold on its affairs. Whenever a dispute arose it was Comintern headquarters which gave the decisive ruling.

The Soviet leaders were not as wise about America as they thought they were; ideas that worked for communism in Russia did not always find a suitable environment in New York. Max Eastman, Trotsky’s admirer and confidant, prepared a memo for him and Lenin, pointing out that capitalism was not on the verge of collapse in America and American workers were not in ‘a revolutionary frame of mind’. He asked for Comintern to take better account of this. Eastman had a number of organizational bugbears. He denied that Comintern’s emphasis on conspiratorial methods was a sensible one. He also objected to the national and ethnic associations that were still permitted in the party. The ‘Slavic federation’ was deeply distasteful for him.³⁰ He jibbed at the endless celebrations of Lenin, the October Revolution and the Red Army and called for American specificities to be analysed and acted upon. He was not alone in sensing that the Workers’ Party of America would get nowhere if it was a ‘hip-hip-hurrah society’ for the celebration of the good news from Russia.³¹ Consequently America had less to fear from American communism than American political leaders thought. It was a paradoxical situation. If he had but known it, Attorney-General Palmer would have been pleased that American communists were doing such an effective job of rendering the Workers’ Party ineffectual.

The Soviet communist leaders in Moscow reinforced the phenomenon. They felt sure that they knew what was best for communism in every country, and they sprayed their advice worldwide. American communists seldom rebelled against Moscow for long. If there was discontent, it was ultimately resolved by forced submission or expulsion from the Workers’ Party. American communism was swaddled from birth in Russian clothing that constricted its growth.

23. SOVIET AGENTS

As the world communist movement emerged into the light in Europe and North America, the Cheka steadily discovered how to operate from the shadows. This was slow work as the Chekists felt their way. But the Politburo had a crucial need for a network of secret agents in the West if it wanted to achieve its political and economic purposes abroad. The Chekist leadership had to start their operations almost from scratch. And the fact that Soviet Russia was the declared enemy of absolutely every other state in the world meant that its foreign activity was under constant close scrutiny. In such an environment it is impressive how much the Chekists managed to achieve.

Intelligence agencies are predictably shy about releasing the names of their employees. This has often opened the door to speculation, and one of the enduring controversies from the early Soviet years is about whether Sidney Reilly was a Cheka agent.¹ Suspicion enveloped him after the temporary destruction of the Allied intelligence networks in autumn 1918. DeWitt Poole, acting consul-general for the Americans in Moscow, had