Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Mark ‘Etienne’ Zborowski: Portrait of Deception—Part 1

2011; Routledge; Volume: 39; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03017605.2011.621249

1748-8605

Susan Weissman,

Eastern European Communism and Reforms

Abstract We no longer belong to the future, we belong entirely to this age: It is bloody and vile in its love for mankind, We are bloody and vile like the men of this time. Footnote1 Footnote2 This is one of two parts of an article that draws a portrait of Mark Zborowski, reveals his activities and analyzes the damage he caused as Stalin's 'master' spy in the Left Opposition from Paris to the United States. Known as Etienne in the Trotskyist movement, Zborowski was smart, inconspicuous and dangerous, one of several 'big fish' drawn into Stalin's web of secret spies, charged with rooting out his political and intellectual opponents in the West. Zborowski sowed suspicion and deepened divisions among them, enabled assassinations and played a role in Sedov's death. Etienne even became the editor of the Bulletin of the Left Opposition after Sedov's death, permanently altering Trotsky's articles in subtle, undetectable ways. Zborowski's life was marked by deception, intrigue and luck: he survived and flourished when millions perished. Part two takes up his life in the United States, where he was unmasked, but managed to have two successful careers and an enormous influence in the areas he worked in. 1Part 2 of this article will appear in the next issue. It concerns Zborowski's activities in the United States, where he continued his work for the NKVD, spying on the Menshevik exiles and on the United States and carved out a career as an anthropologist, particularly including the writing up of the life of the Jewish Shtetl on somewhat dubious grounds. (Editor.) 2From 'Confessions' by Victor Serge, 12 October 1938. Keywords: ZborowskiNKVDStalinTrotskySedovagentLeft Opposition Notes 1Part 2 of this article will appear in the next issue. It concerns Zborowski's activities in the United States, where he continued his work for the NKVD, spying on the Menshevik exiles and on the United States and carved out a career as an anthropologist, particularly including the writing up of the life of the Jewish Shtetl on somewhat dubious grounds. (Editor.) 2From 'Confessions' by Victor Serge, 12 October 1938. 3The story is Sholom Aleichem's, but the research was based on Life is With People. Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, Life is With People: The Culture of Shtetl (New York: International Universities Press, 1952). 4Interview at SVR with former KGB Lieutenant-Colonel Oleg Tsarev in Moscow, 4 June 1999. 5General Dmitri Volkogonov donated his files and documents from the KGB to the Library of Congress. Former KGB officer Alexander Vassiliev, who was allowed to take notes of the records of Soviet intelligence operations during the Stalin years and later collaborated with John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr on their book Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), has made his notebooks available in Russian and in English translation at the National Archive, Washington, DC. 6Bundle 28, 3 June 1933 to 2 November 1952, Materials on the activity of the agent Mark Grigorevich Zborovskii (Mac, Tulip, and Kant), KGB file 31660, d. 9067 (top secret). Letter no. 1041 Tulip 10.5.39, 243–244. Note that a slightly different translation is available from the Vassiliev Notebooks at the Library of Congress, White Notebook, no. 1, 29, p. 281. 7Background information from NKVD file, Bundle (Papka) 28, 3 June 1933 to 12 November 1952, F 31660, d. 9067, p. 22; FBI interviews 12/6/54, file 65-58681, Section no. 6, Serials 56x–62. 8Mark Zborowski Testimony, Hearing Committee on the Judiciary, US Senate, 84th Congress, Scope of Soviet Activity in the US, 29 February 1956. To call work in January 'summer work' shows how brazen his fabrications could be. 9NKVD file, op. cit. 10There are no records of his activities in Berlin. 11Vassiliev, White Notebook, no. 1, pp. 8 and 280, C. to Maxim 26.10. 42. 'Tulip' is Mark Grigoryevich Zborovsky … stateless, Jewish … In April 1931 'Tulip' was sentenced to four years in prison, but with the party's assistance he left Poland as a political émigré for Berlin. … Until 1934, as a member of the Polish Communist Party, he continued to conduct active, illegal party work in France. 12They were married by an Orthodox rabbi, but their civil marriage did not take place until 1937 in Paris. Zborowski interview at New York FBI, 14 January 1955, FBI file 65-58681, Section 6, Serials 56x5–62. 13Elizabeth K. Poretsky, Our Own People (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1969), p. 262. 14Testimony, op. cit. Senators question Zborowski further about Afanasiev in the closed Executive Testimony (Vol. 13, US Senate, 2 March 1956, p. 309). 15Poretsky, op. cit. pp. 237–238. 16NKVD file, op. cit. 17Zborowski Testimony, 29 February 1956, p. 89. 18Among the inaccuracies, Zborowski told the FBI that he met Serge in Paris through Sedov in 1935, but Serge was not expelled from the USSR until April 1936 and did not get to Paris for several months after that. 19Letter 4, 23 February 1935, NKVD file. 20Zborowski Testimony, US Senate Hearings, 29 February 1956, Part 4, pp. 88–89. 21GPU was renamed NKVD in 1934, but is often still referred to as GPU in the literature. 22NKVD file, no. 9, bundle 4, 25; 16 March 1935. 23In fact, Tsarev admitted that this singular purpose for Stalin was an embarrassment and undercut the 'professionalism of the Soviet intelligence services'. Interview, Moscow, 4 June 1999. 24Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (New York: Writers and Readers 1984), p. 338. 25Agabekov, a member of the Left Opposition in 1923, was a top functionary of the NKVD in Turkey. He broke with Moscow in 1929 and published a book that compromised Stalin's agents in Iran. He was murdered in Belgium in 1938. His assassination went unnoticed, unlike that of Reissand Krivitsky. His case showed, according to Orlov, that it did not matter 'how much time had elapsed since the refusal of an NKVD officer to return to the USSR, Stalin's men would sooner or later catch up with him and destroy him'. Alexander Orlov, The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes (New York: Random House, 1953), pp. 227–228, also 'The Diary of Victor Serge, II, Reiss, Krivitsky, Rossi, Ciliga, Klement, Brandler', The New International, Vol. XVI, No. 1 (Whole No. 139), January–February 1950, pp. 54–55. 26Erwin Wolf was one of Trotsky's secretaries in Norway. Just prior to going to Spain he told Victor Serge (in Brussels) that he could not bear studying Marxism in comfort while a revolution was fighting for its life. Serge warned him he would be murdered. Wolf went anyway (Serge: 'he had all the pugnacious confidence of youth'), was arrested, released, then kidnapped off the streets and disappeared. Serge, Memoirs, op. cit., p. 337; Victor Serge and Natalia Sedova Trotsky, The Life and Death of Leon Trotsky (New York: Basic Books, 1975), p. 225. See also the author's Victor Serge: The Course is Set on Hope (New York: Verso, 2001), p. 207n. [hereafter SW: VSCSH]. 27An excellent account of the murderous role of the NKVD in Spain is Victor Alba and Stephen Schwartz, Spanish Marxism versus Soviet Communism: A History of the POUM (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1988), chapters 6 and 7. Also SW: VSCSH, pp. 207–223. 28Senate testimony, op. cit., p. 95. In the Confidential Executive Testimony of 29 February 1956, Zborowski was asked about his spying on Krivitsky and Barmine; he admitted to guarding Krivitsky and then reporting to the NKVD on his movements. 29Gary Kern, Death in Washington: Walter G. Krivitsky and the Stalin Terror (New York: Enigma, 2003), chapters 6 and 8. Kern puts forward three scenarios: a faked suicide, a forced suicide and a voluntary suicide. 30Victor Serge, Carnets, Juillard, Paris, 1952 (New York: Actes Sud 1985 [1952]). 31Interview with Roman Bernaut (son of Elsa Poretsky and Ignace Reiss), Paris, May 1999. Also, Poretsky, op. cit., p. 270. 32André Liebich, From the Other Shore (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997) pp. 226–227. Lydia Dan, a Menshevik, was Martov's sister and Fedor Dan's wife. The Dans were in contact with Krivitsky in the first days after he defected. 33Pavel Sudoplatov, Anatoli Sudoplatov et al., Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster (New York: Little, Brown, 1994), p. 49. 34Henry Kasson (pseudonym for David Dallin), New Leader, 21 November 1955, p. 13. 35Rita T. Kronenbitter, 'Leon Trotsky, Dupe of the NKVD', special edition, 1972. Kronenbitter is the pseudonym of an unidentified CIA counterintelligence officer, possibly a collective pseudonym. The report, published in Studies in Intelligence was declassified in 1994 and released in 1996. It is filled with speculation and errors, and there are no citations for the central charges that Zborowski and Estrin acted as a spy duo, although the information is clearly based on Orlov. Repeated attempts to reach 'Kronenbitter' by this author have been unsuccessful. 36Private conversations and email correspondence between Vsevolod (Esteban) Volkov and the author. 37David Dallin's granddaughter via Gail Lapidus (correspondence, 9 and 11 June 2006): the family called her 'Lolla'. She also confirms that Lolla and David Dallin did not actually marry until after 1940, in the United States. 38Liebich, op. cit. p. 228. 39George Vereeken The GPU In the Trotskyist Movement (London: New Park, 1976), p. 96. 40Poretsky, op. cit., p. 263. 41In one case, Trotsky sent a letter from Norway in September 1936 to Jean Rous, the delegate in Barcelona for the International Secretariat of the FI, urging better relations with the syndicalists and POUM in Spain. Vereeken, p. 165. 42Interview with Oleg Tsarev, Moscow KGB-SVR HQ, June 1999. 43Poretsky, op. cit., p. 263. 44Poretsky, op. cit., pp. 244–246. 45Serge, Memoirs, pp. 331–334. 46Zborowski interview with FBI, 14 January 1955, FBI File no. 65-58681, Section no. 6, Serials 56x5–62. 47Vereeken, op. cit., p. 4. 48NKVD file, 104, 19 April 1937, from Oleg-Petr, codename of S.M. Glinsky, aka V. Smirnov, the Paris rezident who ran Tulip. 49NKVD file, 105 [120]. 50 See Weissman, op. cit., pp. 224–229. Victor Serge's son Vlady was certain of Zborowski's hand in the writing of the insert, although there is no proof (private conversation, Mexico). 51Christopher Andres and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), p. 71. 52The other 'Etienne' was Etienne Martignat, part of the Serebryansky group that carried out the assassination of Ignace Reiss. 53Vassiliev's Notebooks and the NKVD files include the note 'with his active participation we removed all the secret archives' (White Notebook no. 1 29, p. 280). This entry is misleading and many subsequent accounts assume that Zborowski engineered the theft of Trotsky's archive. See, inter alia, Robert Service, Trotsky: A Biography (London: Macmillan, 2009), David Price, 'Mark Zborowski in a World of Pain: Part One, The Spy Scholar', Counter Punch, 18:12 (2011), pp. 5–8, to name just two. 54Zborowski lied to the FBI about his status in France. The NKVD file states that Zborowski's French documents were procured for him. 55Lola was by now with David Dallin, although they did not marry until they got to the United States. See note 37. 56Ignace S. Poretsky's pseudonym was Ludwik. Reiss was a remote family name he used once he broke with the NKVD because his wife Elsa was certain the name was unknown in Moscow. She and Sneevliet decided to use the name Reiss for the body of 'Hans Eberhard', the cover name he was using when he was assassinated, and it is by this name that Ignace Poretsky has since been known (Poretsky, op. cit., p. 241). Their stories are well documented in Poretsky, op. cit.; Walter Krivitsky, In Stalin's Secret Service (New York, 1939; also published as I Was Stalin's Agent, London, 1939); Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast, Trotsky: 1929–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963); Serge, Carnets, op. cit.; Alba and Schwartz, op. cit.; Pierre Broué, Trotsky (Paris: Fayard, 1988); Zborowski, Lilia Dallin and Alexander Orlov, Scope of Soviet Activities in the US, Hearings; Kyril Khenkin, (Soviet agent in Paris and Spain) author of L'Espionnage sovietique (Paris: Fagard, 1981); Hede Massing, This Deception (New York: Sloane and Pearce, 1951); Weissman, op. cit.; and in fiction by Tariq Ali, Fear of Mirrors (London: Arcadia Books, 1999). 57Serge, 'Reiss, Krivitsky, Bastich and Others', December 1937, in 'The Diary of Victor Serge', The New International, January–February 1950, p. 51, SW VSCSH, p. 211. 58Reiss sent his open letter to the Central Committee (CC) of the CPSU via the Soviet Embassy in Paris. It was wrapped in the Order of the Red Banner he had earned in 1927. Of course one does not resign from the Soviet Secret Police, as he well knew. 59Serge, Memoirs, op. cit., p. 342. 60There was a plan to kidnap Sedov. Zborowski testified in the closed Executive Session of the US Senate that the reason Sedov did not meet Reiss in Reims was that Zborowski did not show him the letter about the meeting. 61Lilia Dallin's testimony to the Hearing before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, US Senate, 84th Congress, Second Session on Scope of Soviet Activity in the US, 29 February 1956, Part 4. Mrs Dallin cited as her source the French and Swiss police reports. 62Poretsky, op. cit., p. 234. 63Poretsky, op. cit., p. 241. 64Serge, Wullens and Rosmer, L'Assassinat d'Ignace Reiss, op. cit., Les Humbles, April 1938, Paris. 65Serge and Sedova, op. cit., p. 226. See note 88 for the Grozovskys' true identities. 66Thanks to LoicDamilaville for sharing French police files on the Reiss affair. Dossier Ignace Reiss, Archives de la Prefecture de Police, no. E246-731, Police judiciareet E 133.740. 67His reports to Moscow describe Krivitsky as a nervous wreck trying to avoid the NKVD. To the Senate Executive Session, Zborowski testified under oath that he did not report on Barmine's 'movements', but he did report on Barmine's meeting with Mrs Dallin. Zborowski also denied fingering Reiss or knowing what would happen to him in Reims. 68Alexander Barmine, One Who Survived (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1945). 69The FBI notes that Lola also took the dictation from Barmine. (This is not confirmed elsewhere.) 70Max Eastman, Introduction to Barmine, op. cit., p. xi. 71Deutscher, op. cit. (pp. 391–392). Deutscher cites Lyova's letters to his father, 19 November 1937, Trotsky's letter to Lyova, 22 January 1938, and Etienne's correspondence to Trotsky, Harvard Archives. 72Krivitsky to Nicolaevsky, Paris 25 October 1938; thanks to Gary Kern for the text, which he translated. 73Zborowski's testimony, Scope of Soviet Activities in the US, 29 February 1956, Part 4. 74Krivitsky, op. cit., p. 267. 75Weissman, op. cit., pp. 217–220; Poretsky, op. cit., p. 274. Serge himself did not write about his suspicions of Etienne as the NKVD agent in their midst until after Klement's death. Etienne worriedly asked Trotsky what to do about it. Trotsky replied that Serge and Sneevliet should lay their charges before a competent commission, but Trotsky himself did not believe the accusation. Deutscher, op. cit., p. 408. 76Number 16281, Source Tulip 6-7-39, 263. 77FBI Secret Files, Internal Security Act of 1950, titled 'Lydia [sic] Dallin, a.k.a.: Mrs. David J. Dallin, née Lilia Ginzberg, also known as Lilia, Lilly, Lola Estrin, or Mrs. Samuel Estrin', 23 May 1956, 3 pages, no. 240, 376. She was called Lola Paulsen or LolaYakovlev in the movement. 78Kronenbitter, op. cit. The declassified document is now available online. As is often the case, the document reveals more about the writer (CIA Intelligence) than the subject. With its slipshod scholarship and the seriousness of its charges, the CIA document classifies as disinformation. See also note 35. Responding to the Kronenbitter declassified document, Sieva Volkov wrote (in an email to the author, 9 September 2005), 'The information about Lola is disconcerting, she seemed so sincere in her devotion, admiration and affection to our family'. The news that Lola could have been a spy was devastating to Sieva, who remarked that, if true, it was inconceivable that a human could pretend or act so convincingly, challenging his emotional perception and undermining his security 'in any human feeling'. 79Orlov's Testimony to Senate Committee on Scope of Soviet Activities, pp. 3423–3429. 80Testimony of Lilia Dallin, Scope of Soviet Activities in the US, 29 February 1956, Part 4. 81There is no evidence this inquiry was ever done. Georges Vereeken, a Belgian Trotskyist close to Sneevliet and Serge at the time wrote a book attacking the Fourth International for not having carried out the investigation, which could have unmasked Zborowski before he completed his murderous work. See Vereeken, op. cit. 82Leon Trotsky, 'A GPU Stool Pigeon in Paris', 1 January 1939, signed 'Van', in Leon Trotsky, Writings, Supplement 1934–1940 (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1979), pp. 818–819. 83NKVD file, 264, 'top secret report' 21 June 1939. 84It is striking to read through the minutes of the French and Dutch sections (at the Institute of Social History in Amsterdam) and find tedious discussions of internal disputes and suspicions, while the dramatic political conjuncture in Europe of the late 1930s is hardly mentioned. 85Serge described his meetings with Krivitsky in the Memoirs, pp. 343–345, Carnets, entry for December 1937, and in The New International, January–February 1950, pp. 51–55. 86The surgeon was Dr Thalheimer. Jean Michel Krivine and Marcel-Francis Kahn discuss agent-surgeon Girmunsky in 'La mort de Leon Sedov', Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no. 13, March 1983, pp. 25–55. Also, Peter Katel, 'Jacques Katel in the Cold War', World Congress of Jewish Studies, Hebrew University, 3 August 2009. 87Tsarev interview, Moscow. 88General Miller, leader of the White Russian émigrés was abducted by agents Nikolai Skoblin and Nadezhda Plevitskaya, posing as Mr and Mrs Grozovsky. They had also been watching Barmine. Barmine, op. cit., p. 232; Mitrokhin, op. cit., p. 75. 89Broué, Trotsky, op. cit., p. 876. Also, Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no. 13, March 1983, p. 60. In a footnote, Broué notes that Lola Dallin explained in a conversation in 1980 that her sister-in-law Fanny Trachtenberg, a Russian physician without the right to practice in France, examined Sedov and recommended he be hospitalized in the Mirabeau Clinic—where the Russian staff could accept patients without being denounced for illegally practicing medicine. 90Peter Katel's parents Helen and Jacques Katel knew Zborowski both in France and later in the US. Helen's aunt was married to the exile physician Adolf Simkov. Katel, op. cit. 91In Zborowski's testimony to the US Senate, he remembered informing the GPU, but was uncertain he had called the ambulance. He stated that there were mysterious circumstances surrounding Sedov's death, but he concurred with the final autopsy and post-mortem, which gave the cause of death as peritonitis. Scope of Soviet Activities, Zborowski testimony, 29 February 1956, part 4. 92Deutscher wrote that Etienne visited Sedov daily and 'cheered him up: they talked about politics and matters of organization'. Deutscher, op. cit., pp. 395–396. Jeanne Martin, on the other hand wrote ('Lettres de Jeanne Martin', Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no. 4, p. 6), that Etienne did not see Lyova in the hospital, and was offended that Jeanne and Lola saw him daily. When Lyova himself approved Etienne's visit for Monday, he was already in very poor condition, so Etienne and Jeanne sat on the stairs to the reception. 93Conversation with Joel Geier, July 2000. Perhaps—but Zborowski testified that he was not allowed to see Sedov in the hospital. 94Lola Dallin correspondence with George L. Weissman, 4 May 1975. Lola was cooperating with the American Trotskyists at Pathfinder Press in bringing out a new edition of Leon Sedov's 1936 book The Red Book of the Moscow Trial, and her essay on Leon Sedov was to be the introduction, written under the name L. Yakovlev. George Lavan Weissman Collection, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University, Box 1, Folder 47. Lola Dallin's testimony (under the name L. Yakovlev) was published in Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no. 13, March 1983, pp. 56–60. 95Lola suggests that the Mirabeau clinic was simply the closest hospital. The distance from Sedov's apartment on rue Lacretelle to the Mirabeau Clinic on rue Narcisse-Diaz is only 3.7 km, but there was a 160 bed public hospital just a block away from Sedov. 96In 1983, the French surgeon Jean-Michel Krivine (brother of Alain, leader of the French Trotskyists) reviewed the autopsy report and discovered symptoms of postoperative peritonitis (fifth day syndrome), which requires immediate surgery to save the patient. Krivine wrote, 'But Thalheimer, whose incompetence was legendary in the medical community, only operated two days later'. Cahiers, op. cit., pp. 47–50. 97 Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no. 13, March 1983, p. 46. 98Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions: The KGB Orlov Dossier (New York: Crown Publishers, 1993), Appendix III, pp. 406–411. 99Interview with Oleg Tsarev, Moscow, 1 June 1999. Bertrand Patenaude raised the question of incentive—why would the NKVD choose to eliminate Trotsky's son 'when his most trusted comrade was a Soviet police informant'—but adds that Stalin could have ordered Lyova's murder to lash out at Trotsky. Stalin's Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky (London: Faber and Faber, 2009), p. 102. 100Costello and Tsarev, op. cit., pp. 469–470. 101See Venona 594, KGB New York to Moscow, 1 May 1944; Venona 613–614 KGB New York to Moscow, 3 May 1944; Venona 799, 3 June 1944; Venona 951 4 July 1944; Venona 1145, 10 August 1944. Thanks to John Haynes for drawing my attention to these deciphered messages. 102Conversation with Esteban (Sieva) Volkov, and email correspondence 1 May 2009. 103Jean Van Heijenoort, letter to George L. Weissman, 2 November 1981. G.L. Weissman Collection, Box 1, Folder 58, Walter Reuther Library, Wayne State University. 104Serge, Carnet, op. cit., p. 44. 105Pierre Broué described Klement's disappearance in Trotsky, op. cit., p. 878. Georges Vereeken raised the possibility that Klement was killed because he knew who the agent was, or perhaps was an agent himself. Vereeken and Klement opposed each other on many issues, and Vereeken here demonstrates the level of suspicion and agent-baiting in the small Trotskyist circles. Vereeken, op. cit., pp. 238–318. 106Executive Confidential Testimony, US Senate Subcommittee, Scope of Soviet Activity in the US, 29 February 1956, p. 268. 107NKVD file, 162. 108Trotsky may not have seen the letters, and it is also possible that Zborowski reported sending them, but did not. One source claims Van 'rebuffed' them. 109NKVD File, 251, 'to the Scythian', 19 June 1939. 110Serge, Memoirs, op. cit., p. 362. 111Interview with George Novack and Helen Katel, Mexico City, 1986. Novack said they helped Etienne because they believed he was a comrade, and Sedov's closest friend. Also, telephone interview with Helen Katel, July 2000, New York. The IRC material comes from Zborowski's FBI file NY-65 16613.