W. G. KRIVITSKY
IN STALIN’S
SECRET
SERVICE
AN EXPOSÉ OF RUSSIA’S
SECRET POLICIES BY THE
FORMER CHIEF OF THE
SOVIET INTELLIGENCE
IN WESTERN EUROPE
COPYRIGHT, 1939, HARPER & BROTHERS. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. ALL RIGHTS IN THIS BOOK ARE RESERVED. NO PART OF THE BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY MANNER WHATSOEVER WITHOUt WRITTEN PERMISSION. FOR INFORMATION ADDRESS HARPER » BROTHERS
11-9
FIRST EDITION
K-O
Introduction
THE evening of May 22, 1937, I boarded a train in Moscow to return to my post in The Hague as Chief of the Soviet Military Intelligence in Western Europe. I little realized then that I was seeing my last of Russia so long as Stalin is her master. For nearly twenty years I had served the Soviet government. For nearly twenty years I had been a Bolshevik. As the train sped toward the Finnish border I sat alone in my compartment, thinking of the fate of my colleagues, my comrades, my friends—arrested, shot or in concentration camps, almost all of them. They had given their entire lives to build a better world, and had died at their posts, not under the bullets of an enemy but because Stalin willed it.
Who is there left to respect or admire? What hero or heroine of our revolution has not been broken and destroyed? I could think of but few. All those whose personal integrity was absolutely above question had gone down as “traitors,” “spies,” or common criminals. Pictures flashed through my mind—pictures of the Civil War when these same “traitors” and “spies” faced death a thousand times without flinching; of the arduous days that followed, of industrialization and the superhuman demands it made upon all of us, of collectivization and famine when we barely had the rations to keep us alive. And then the great purge—sweeping all before it, destroying those who had labored hardest to build a state in which man should no longer exploit his fellow man.
Through the long years of struggle we had learned to repeat to ourselves that a victory over injustices of the old society can only be attained with moral as well as physical sacrifice, that a new world can not come into being until the last vestige of the habits of the old has been destroyed. But could it be necessary for a Bolshevik Revolution to destroy all Bolsheviks? Was it the Bolshevik Revolution that was destroying them, or had that revolution itself long since perished? I did not answer these questions then, but I asked them . . .
At the age of thirteen I had entered the working-class movement. It was a half-mature, half-childish act. I heard the plaintive melodies of my suffering race mingled with new songs of freedom. But in 1917 I was a youngster of eighteen, and the Bolshevik Revolution came to me as an absolute solution of all problems of poverty, inequality and injustice. I joined the Bolshevik Party with my whole soul. I seized the Marxist and Leninist faith as a weapon with which to assault the wrongs against which I had instinctively rebelled.
During all the years that I served the Soviet government I never expected anything more than the right to continue my work. I never received anything more. Long after the Soviet power had been stabilized, I was sent abroad on assignments that exposed me to the danger of death, and that twice landed me in prison. I worked from sixteen to eighteen hours a day, and never earned enough to cover the most ordinary living expenses. I myself, when traveling abroad, would live in moderate comfort, but I did not earn enough, even as late as 1935, to keep my apartment in Moscow heated properly or pay the price of milk for my two-year-old son. I was not in a strategic position, and I had no desire—I was too much absorbed in my work—to become one of the new privileged bureaucrats with a material stake in defending the Soviet order. I defended it because I believed it was leading the way to a new and better society.
The very fact that my work was concerned with the defense of the country against foreign enemies prevented me from thinking much of what was happening within its borders and especially in the small inner world of power politics. As an Intelligence officer I saw the external enemies of the Soviet Union much more closely than its internal conspirators. I knew of separatist and Fascist plots that were being hatched on foreign soil, but I was out of contact with the intrigues inside the Kremlin. I saw Stalin rise to undivided power while Lenin’s closer comrades perished at the hands of the state they had created. But like many others, I reassured myself with the thought that whatever might be the mistakes of the leadership, the Soviet Union was still sound and was the hope of mankind.
There were occasions when even this faith was badly shaken, occasions when, if I could have seen any hope elsewhere, I might have chosen a new course. But always events in some other part of the world would conspire to keep me in the service of Stalin. In 1933, when the Russian people were dying by the millions of starvation, and I knew that Stalin’s ruthless policies had caused it, and that Stalin was deliberately withholding the state’s help, I saw Hitler take power in Germany and there destroy everything that meant life for the human spirit. Stalin was an enemy of Hitler and I remained in the service of Stalin.
In February, 1934, a similar dilemma confronted me and I made the same choice. I was then taking my annual month’s rest at the Marino Sanatorium in the province of Kursk, Central Russia. Marino was once the palace of Prince Buryatin, the conqueror of the Caucasus. The palace was in the resplendent style of Versailles, surrounded by beautiful English parks and artificial lakes. The sanatorium had an excellent staff of physicians, athletic instructors, nurses and servants. Within walking distance of its enclosed grounds was the state farm where peasants labored to provide its guests with food. A sentry at the gate kept the peasants from trespassing on the enclosure.
One morning soon after my arrival I walked with a companion to the village where these peasants lived. The spectacle I beheld was appalling. Half-naked little brats ran out of dilapidated huts to beg us for a piece of bread. In the peasants’ cooperative store was neither food nor fuel—nothing to be had. Everywhere the most abject poverty dismayed my eyes and depressed my spirits.
That evening seated in the brilliantly lighted dining hall of Marino, everyone was chatting gaily after an excellent supper. Outside, it was bitterly cold, but within, a roaring fireplace gave us cosy warmth. By some chance I turned suddenly and looked toward the window. I saw the feverish eyes of hungry peasant children—the bezprizornii—their little faces glued like pictures to the cold panes. Soon others followed my glance, and gave orders to a servant that the intruders be driven off. Almost every night a few of these children would succeed in eluding the sentry and sneak up to the palace in search of something to eat. I sometimes slipped out of the dining hall with bread for them, but I did this secretly because the practice was frowned upon among us. Soviet officials have developed a stereotyped defense against human suffering:
“We are on the hard road to socialism. Many must fall by the wayside. We must be well fed and must recuperate from our labors, enjoying, for a few weeks each year, comforts still denied to others, because we are the builders of a Joyous Life in the future. We are the builders of socialism. We must keep in shape to continue on the hard road. Any unfortunates who cross our path will be taken care of in due time. In the meanwhile, out of our way! Don’t pester us with your suffering! If we stop to drop you a crumb, the goal itself may never be reached.”
So it runs.
