The Ludwig Martens–Maxim Litvinov Connection, 1919–1921

Abstract

Research began when the author realized that Antony Sutton had misidentified the author of a key document published in his Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (1974). This article reports on the interception by federal agents of the document (a letter) brought from the Copenhagen office of Soviet diplomat Maxim Litvinov and intended for Kenneth Durant who was employed by Ludwig Martens, Lenin's unrecognized representative in New York City. Analysis of the letter revealed the true author and opened a research channel for learning more about the backgrounds of three Soviet agents: Bornett Bobroff, Nora Hellgren, and Wilfred Humphries.

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the contributions of Archivist Jeffrey Monseau of Springfield College (MA) for providing materials regarding Wilfred R. Humphries, and of Section Chief David M. Hardy, Federal Bureau of Investigation, for providing the Ludwig Martens Papers on compact disk under the Freedom of Information/Privacy Act.

Notes

¹ Three versions of the courier letter were discovered. The original, photographed at the time of a custom inspection of the courier, is shown below in Figures 1 and 2. A typescript version may be found in a US House of Representatives document noted below. A third appeared in a widely distributed publication, Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House 1974) pp.204–9, hereafter WSBR. Technically, the courier letter was not official correspondence. ‘Bill’, an unknown author in Litvinov's office, addressed the letter to Kenneth Durant, an employee of Martens.

² An agent is a person who acts for another, e.g., a Soviet courier, a communist agent, or a Russian propaganda agent.

³ Kazimierz Grzybowski, Soviet Public International Law: Doctrines and Diplomatic Practice (Durham, NC: Rule of Law Press 1970) p.289.

⁴Polpred is shorthand for Polnomochny predstavitel (Representative plenipotentiary), a title held by Soviet ambassadors from June 1918 to May 1941, when diplomatic ranks were introduced.

⁵ Walter Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain, 1900–21: The Origins of British Communism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1969) pp.80–1.

⁶ Joseph L. Sanders, The Moscow Uprising of December 1905: A Background Study (New York, NY: Garland Publishing Inc. 1987) p.178.

⁷ Zinovy Sheinis, Maxim Litvinov, trans. Vic Schneierson (Moscow: Progress Publishers 1990) pp.47–48; Michael Kort, Leonid Krasin: Engineer of Revolution, 1870–1908, DPhil dissertation (New York University 1973) p.306.

⁸ Sheinis, Maxim Litvinov, p.127.

⁹ Eugene L. Magerovsky, The People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, 1917–1946, Vol. 1, DPhil dissertation (Columbia University 1975) pp.113–14.

¹⁰ Sheinis, Maxim Litvinov, p.127.

¹¹ Theodore Draper wrote: ‘Couriers constituted the only method of communication, but they were so slow and uncertain that it took two months for Martens to get in touch with the Soviet government’; The Roots of American Communism (New York: Viking 1957) p.162. Although couriers were slow to deliver materials (paper, cash, and contraband), they were not the only method of communication.

¹² Letter 5 May 1921, L. J. Baley, Chief, Bureau of Investigation, to T. M. Reddy, Acting Division Superintendent (New York), Section 4, p.18, Ludwig Martens Papers, FOIPA No. 1164235-000 (Processed on CD from FBI Headquarters, File 61-640), US Department of Justice, FBI, Washington, DC, hereafter ‘The Martens File’. The use of wireless and Western Union by Soviet agents was one of seven items covered at a secret meeting held in the office of Kenneth Durant about 1 April 1921, reported by Allen O. Myers, assistant manager of the detective agency and head of its radical department, Letter, 23 April 1921, W. L. Hurley to J. E. Hoover, Bureau of Investigation. This document was enclosed with letter of 16 April 2012 from Sheryl L. Walter, Office of Information Programs and Services, US Department of State, to the author.

¹³ Herbert O. Yardley, The American Black Chamber (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill 1931) pp.239–49. The first Russian documents deciphered came from the Baltic region and were obtained from occupants of a German airplane forced to land in Latvia while en route to Soviet Russia, p.242.

¹⁴ Durant retired from TASS in January 1944: ‘… the American office and the agreements with the United Press and the Associated Press were in the name of ROSTA. Durant made no change in personnel or policies as the result of ROSTA'S absorption by TASS. The name ROSTA remained on the office door as late as 1929’. See Theodore E. Kruglak, The Two Faces of TASS (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1962) p.91.

¹⁵ Sheinis, Maxim Litvinov, p.143.

¹⁶ Teddy J. Uldricks, Diplomacy and Ideology: The Origins of Soviet Foreign Relations, 1917–1930 (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage 1979) pp.108–9.

¹⁷ Ibid., p.109. The estimated number of foreigners in NKID from 1917–1930 was 32 or 5 per cent of 614 employees, p.105.

¹⁸ The Comintern (Communist International), formed in March 1919 for the overthrow of ‘international bourgeois’ governments, had a network of agents. It dissolved in 1943.

¹⁹ Copy of typed letter, 20 October 1920, F. Cole to S. N. Harper, Box 8, F12, Samuel N. Harper Papers, University of Chicago. Walker stated that he had frequent and very friendly talks with Martens' former diplomatic secretary Santeri Nuorteva who, after leaving Denmark, was appointed to head the Department of Entente Countries and Scandinavia, NKID.

²⁰ Uldricks, Diplomacy, p.140n61.

²¹ Ibid., p.167. The GPU (State Political Administration, 6 February 1922–15 November 1923) succeeded the OGPU (United State Political Directorate) successor to the Cheka, the first Soviet secret police.

²² Robert Service, Spies and Commissars: The Early Years of the Russian Revolution (New York: Public Affairs 2012) p.135.

²³ Viktor L Kheifets and Lazar Kheifets, ‘The Mexican Link in Spanish Communism: Michael Borodin's Mission to the Western Hemisphere 1919–1920 and the Creation of the Communist Party in Spain’, The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online 17 (2010) No. 2379, p.79 < newsletter.icsap.de/onlinenewsletter.html>(accessed 10 November 2010).

²⁴ ‘Michael Gruzemberg [sic]’, Agent Report, 22 January 1920, Investigative File 1908–1922, Bureau of Investigation, National Archives, College Park, Maryland, hereafter NACP. The agent claimed his report was based on an interview with confidential informant No. 11 and F. [Fanny] Gruzenberg, Borodin's wife.

²⁵ US Senate, Russian Propaganda, Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations Pursuant to SR 263, 66th Cong., 2nd sess., 1920, p.42, hereafter ‘Senate, Russian Propaganda’.

²⁶ ‘Suffrage Women Threaten Wilson’, New York Times, 12 November 1917, p.1.

²⁷ B. H. T. [Basil H. Thomson], ‘The Russian Soviet Bureau in the United States’, Special Report No. 5 (Secret) 14 July 1919, enclosed with memorandum of 18 July 1919 from John W. Davis (London) to Secretary of State, DF 861.00/50677, RG 59, NACP. Assuredly, Robert N. Nathan of MI5, chief of the British Secret Service in America, prepared Report No. 5. He had access to documents obtained in the raid on the Soviet Bureau. For more on Smedley, see Ruth Price, The Lives of Agnes Smedley (New York: Oxford University Press 2005). On Sorge, see Robert Whymant, Stalin's Spy: Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Espionage Ring (New York: St Martin's Press 1996).

²⁸ ‘Regarding Mrs. George Helgren [sic], the Division of Russian Affairs of the Department of State saw fit to enclose the following biographical sketch as addendum, to a dispatch [USD/S NA: 861.021 Reval: Albrecht No. 1115, 26 January 1921], “Mrs. George Helgren [sic], formerly Mrs. Nora Smitheman, also having had a number of previous husbands, is a party Socialist, an instructor at Rand School, and finally a clerk in Martens office at New York”'; cited in Magerovsky, ‘People's Commissariat’, p.154n96.

²⁹ BACM Research, ‘Hollywood /Film Industry Surveillance FBI File’, Compact Disc, File No. 100-138754, Part 1, Serial 4, Frames 28–29. File aka Communist Infiltration-Motion Picture Industry (COMPIC), hereafter ‘BACM, Hollywood/Film’. For access information see < www.paperlessarchives.com>.

³⁰ Testimony of William W. Kimple, US Congress, House Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings on Investigation of Communist Activities in Los Angeles, California, Area, Part 3, 84th Cong., 1st Sess. (Washington 1955) p.1733, hereafter ‘House, Investigation of Communist Activities’.

³¹ ‘Martens Predicts Full Recognition’, New York Times, 31 January 1920, p.3.

³² Walter Duranty, ‘Seize Red Courier on His Way Here’, New York Times, 25 December 1919, p.1, and ‘Red Courier Tells Conflicting Story’, New York Times, 31 December 1919, p.1, are but two examples. For a critique of his overwritten stories, see S. J. Taylor, Stalin's Apologist: Walter Duranty, The New York Times's Man in Moscow (New York: Oxford 1990) pp.89ff.

³³ Beverly Gage, The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror (New York: Oxford 2009) pp.160–1.

³⁴ Kenneth D. Ackerman, Young J. Edgar: Hoover, the Red Scare, and the Assault on Civil Liberties (New York: Carroll & Graf 2007) p.66.

³⁵ M. J. Davis, ‘Report on Boris Bobroff, Alleged Bolshevik Courier’, encl. n.d., Letter 17 September 1920, U-H [W. L. Hurley] to L. Lanier Winslow, American Embassy, London, Department of State, RG 84, NACP, hereafter Davis, ‘Report on Boris Bobroff’. ‘U-H’ designated the section and last initial of the person sending the message, in this instance Hurley. Such designations were used within the unofficial, extra-legal Secret Intelligence Bureau (SIB), created by Secretary of State Robert Lansing and located in the Office of the Counselor. For a brief description of the formation of SIB, see Bureau of Diplomatic Security, United States Department of State, History of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security of the United States Department of State (Washington, DC: Global Publishing Solutions 2011) pp.6–7, hereafter ‘Bureau, Diplomatic Security’.

³⁶ An appraisers' store is a storeroom or building where US customs officials held goods for appraisal prior to disposal.

³⁷ A copy of the original letter shows that the author penned the letter and note in script, see Section 5, pp.82–8, ‘The Martens File’. Antony Sutton mentioned all six items and identified his source as ‘US State Department Decimal File, 316-119-458/64’. Sutton reproduced only item (2) in its entirety. He did not make clear that his reference to item (4) was a direct quote, WSBR, pp.207–8.

³⁸ ‘Charlton William Hardy’ likely was a misreading or misspelling of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, a suburban area of the city of Manchester, England, and so identified by Sutton.

³⁹ RUSOVREP was the New York cable address of Martens. Litvinov received Martens' cables at the upscale Cosmopolite Hotel, Copenhagen, Denmark, but he was forced to conduct diplomatic relations with the British from ‘a small third-class hotel with a bad reputation’; Arthur Upham Pope, Maxim Litvinov (New York: L. B. Fischer 1943) p.159.

⁴⁰Sovnarkom is the acronym for Sovet Narodnykh Komissarov (Council of People's Commissars), the government of the early Soviet republic.

⁴¹Norske Handelsbank Kristiania: Norwegian Commercial Bank of Christiania (the name of Oslo from 1624–1924).

⁴² Section 5, pp.82–83, 85, ‘The Martens File’.

⁴³ Erland Gjessing, ‘Report on Conditions in Russia’, encl., 9 August 1920, Letter 13 September 1920, William L. Hurley, Department of State to L. Lanier Winslow, American Embassy, London, RG 84, NACP. Hurley wrote that the consul report was included in a dispatch from Copenhagen dated 21 August 1920. Therefore, Special Agent Davis was likely not aware of the Gjessing interview with Bobroff.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ US Congress, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Conditions in Russia, Hearings on HR 635, 66th Cong., 3rd sess., 1921, pp.75–7. Hereafter ‘House, Conditions in Russia’. J. E. Hoover sent typed copies of the blue envelope's contents to the Hon. Walter H. Newton a member of the committee. Copies of the cables apparently were not included.

⁴⁶ Ibid., pp.33–57.

⁴⁷ The Military Intelligence Division (MID) viewed Bobroff as an agent of Martens, see report of Castle M. Brown, 2 October 1919, ‘Agents of Ludwig Martens’, Department Intelligence Office (Chicago), DF 10110-1194, Microfilm, Reel 13, Frame 921, MID, US War Department, NACP.

⁴⁸ The Bornett L. Bobroff Papers (1904–1946), Archives Division, Wisconsin Historical Society (Madison).

⁴⁹ Bobroff, an efficiency engineer, previously testified before the US Congress, see House Committee on Accounts, Electrical and Mechanical System for Voting, Hearings on HR 223, 64th Cong., 1st sess., 1916, pp.9–17.

⁵⁰ House, Conditions in Russia, pp.34, 45.

⁵¹ In 1922, Meyer Bloomfield, an American lawyer, had audiences on two occasions with Litvinov and recorded that the diplomat said, ‘In confidence let me tell you that though we like Martens and trust him, we think he has poor judgment. He mislead us into thinking that America would recognize us two years ago’. Letter, 11 October 1922, Meyer Bloomfield to D. C. Poole, Division of Russian Affairs, DF 711.61/64, Department of State, RG 59, NACP. For more of Litvinov's criticism of Martens, see Katherine A. S. Siegel, Loans and Legitimacy: The Evolution of Soviet-American Relations, 1919–1923 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky 1996) pp.37–8.

⁵² Anne Bobroff-Hajal, ‘Grandfather Boris and tapestries of Ryazan’ < http://www.jewishgen.org/jewishgen/testimonials/pages/Bobroff2011Jan.html>(accessed 13 May 2011). Boris was the given name of Bobroff who adopted the name of Bornett when he came to the United States.

⁵³ ‘Wilfred Rushton Humphries 1913’, Springfield College (Massachusetts) Archives (SCA), hereafter ‘Humphries, 1913, SCA’. Permission to publish granted by Springfield College, Babson Library, Archives and Special Collections.

⁵⁴ Ibid.

⁵⁵ ‘Wilfred Rushton Humphries, Digest’, encl., Letter, 23 April 1921, J. E. Hoover, Department of Justice, to W. L. Hurley, DF 801.0-454, Department of State, RG 59, NACP, p.10, hereafter ‘Hoover, Humphries Digest’. The enclosure is 12 pages in length. William L. Hurley, Special Assistant to Undersecretary of State from 1919–1923 held the ‘Wilfred R. Humphries File’.

⁵⁶ Bullard, a journalist, served with divisions in Washington, Western Russia, and Siberia from 1917 to 1919, and headed the Russian Division of the US Department of State from 1919 to 1921.

⁵⁷ ‘Socialist Meeting in Boston’, Letter (Confidential) of 14 November 1919, Rear Admiral A. P. Niblack, Director of Naval Intelligence to Justice [Bureau of Investigation] and MID, DF 10110-913, Microfilm Roll 11, Frame 807, MID, US War Department, NACP.

⁵⁸ David W. McFadden, Alternative Paths: Soviets & Americans, 1917–1920 (New York: Oxford 1993) pp.79–124.

⁵⁹ A personnel roster of the YMCA listed Humphries with the Russian Army-Europe from 1917 to 1918 and with American and other Allied Forces in Siberia; Ethan T. Colton, Forty Years with Russians (NY: Association 1940) p.190.

⁶⁰ Hoover, ‘Humphries Digest’, p.4.

⁶¹ Max Horn, The Intercollegiate Socialist Society, 1905–1921: Origins of the Modern American Student Movement, Replica ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview 1979) p.175.

⁶² After Nuorteva closed the Finnish Information Bureau (FIB), he opened the Russian Information Bureau (RIB), aka the Soviet Russian Information Bureau (SRIB), the Information Bureau of Soviet Russia (IBSR), and the American Bolshevik Bureau of Information (ABBI), housed at 299 Broadway, New York.

⁶³ N. Lenin, Lessons of the Revolution (1918) and Leon Trotsky, What is a Peace Program? (1918).

⁶⁴ House, Conditions in Russia, p.75. The Springfield College Archives record that Humphries was ‘with the Russian Soviet Government, Russia’ during his time with the Martens Bureau.

⁶⁵ Hoover, ‘Humphries Digest’, pp.4, 11. According to Hoover, this reported arrival date in the spring could have been erroneous.

⁶⁶ ‘Statement by L. C. A. K. Martens (19 June 1920)’, Soviet Russia, 26 June 1920, p.635.

⁶⁷ Hoover, ‘Humphries Digest’, pp.11–12.

⁶⁸ Clare Sheridan, My American Diary (NY: Boni and Liveright 1922) pp.70–1.

⁶⁹ Wilfred R. Humphries, The Structure of Soviet Russia: Economic and Political (Chicago, IL: Charles H. Kerr 1920). Articles by Humphries appeared in a number of periodicals, including the New York Call, Asia, and One Big Union Monthly. See Wilfred R. Humphries, ‘The Scaffolding of the New Russia’, Asia 20 (1920) pp.200–7.

⁷⁰ Hoover, ‘Humphries Digest’, p.12.

⁷¹ Humphries, ‘1913, SCA’.

⁷² ‘Bornett L. Bobroff’, Evening Independent [Florida], 31 December 1945, p.2.

⁷³ ‘Nora A. Hellgren’, Passport Applications, 2 January 1906–31 March 1925, ARC Identifier 583830/ MLR No. A1 534, NARA Series: M1490, Roll No. 2199 < Ancestry.com>(accessed 6 June 2011). She took an oath of allegiance on 23 February 1923 to defend the US Constitution and applied in Berlin for an amendment or extension of her passport on 17 March 1924.

⁷⁴ According to undercover Agent Kimple, Nora confessed to him about the mail pouches. For a well-documented study of the courier system and the diplomatic pouch, see Bureau, Diplomatic Security, pp.10–22.

⁷⁵ The Hellgrens may have returned to the US in 1924, in which case their return in 1927 indicates a different trip.

⁷⁶ House, Investigation of Communist Activities, pp.1731–3.

⁷⁷ BACM, ‘Hollywood /Film’, Frames 34–35; Franklin Folsom, Days of Anger, Days of Hope: A Memoir of the League of American Writers, 1937–1942 (Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado 1994) p.294; Virginia H. Marquardt, ‘New Masses and John Reed Club Artists, 1926–1936: Evolution of Ideology, Subject Matter, and Style’, The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, 12 (1989) pp.56–75.

⁷⁸ See ‘Amazing Great Granny: A Comedy in 3 Acts’, Library of Congress, Catalogue of Copyright Entries, 3 (Washington 1930) p.81.

⁷⁹ BACM, ‘Hollywood /Film’, Frames 28–29; California Legislature, Communist Front Organizations, 4^th Report of the Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, (Sacramento 1948) p.276.

⁸⁰ BACM, ‘Hollywood /Film’, Part 7, Serial 251x1, Frame 43.

⁸¹ American Foreign Service, ‘Report of the Death of an American Citizen’, 9 March 1955, Entry 205, Box 1059, 1955–1959, Sweden A-Z, RG 59, NARA, cited in Reports of Deaths of American Citizens Abroad < Ancestry.com>(accessed 6 June 2011).

⁸² James K. Libbey, Alexander Gumberg and Soviet-American Relations, 1917–1933 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky 1977) pp.121–135.

⁸³ GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff).

⁸⁴ David J. Dallin, Soviet Espionage (New Haven, CT: Yale 1955) p.401.

⁸⁵ This was the popular name for the National Committee on Law Observation and Enforcement, headed by George W. Wickersham who was charged with identifying the causes of criminal activities and making recommendations for public policy. Wickersham was the US attorney general from 4 March 1909 to 4 March 1913. Ironically, in 1909 Wickersham named the Bureau of Investigation, one of the federal agencies that tracked Soviet agent Humphries; Ronald Kessler, The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI (New York: St Martin's Press 2002) p.10.

⁸⁶New York Times, 6 December 1964, p.89.

⁸⁷ Historically, classification of agents by US intelligence agencies appears not to have been as sharply drawn as it was by Soviet counterparts, see Vasiliy Mitrokhin, KGB Lexicon: The Soviet Intelligence Officer's Handbook (Portland, OR: Frank Cass 2002).

⁸⁸ Inherently clandestine, spying or espionage is the obtaining of classified information by a government agent or other individual without permission of the holder of the information. A subset of intelligence gathering, it is usually illegal and punishable by law.

⁸⁹ C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (with ‘Screwtape Proposes a Toast’) (NY: HarperCollins Publishers 2001) p.200.

⁹⁰ Quoted in Jennet Conant, The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington (NY: Simon & Schuster 2008) p.143. Stephenson was head of the British Security Coordination during the Second World War.

⁹¹ Katherine A. S. Sibley, Red Spies in America: Stolen Secrets and the Dawn of the Cold War (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas 2004); Earl Latham, The Communist Controversy in Washington: From the New Deal to McCarthy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard 1966), p.78.

⁹² Siegel, Loans, p.7.

⁹³ For diplomatic and economic studies of the Martens Bureau, see Siegel, Loans, pp.6–38; McFadden, Alternative Paths, pp.270–335; Robert P. Savitt, To Fill a Void: Soviet Diplomatic Representation in the US Prior to Recognition, DPhil dissertation (Georgetown University 1983) pp.12–165; Todd J. Pfannestiel, ‘The Soviet Bureau: A Bolshevik Strategy to Secure US Diplomatic Recognition through Economic Trade’, Diplomatic History, 27 (2003) pp.171–92.

⁹⁴ G. Yanov, ‘An Interview with Comrade Martens’, Pravda, 23 February 1921, a translation from Office of the Commissioner of the United States, Riga, Latvia, to Secretary of State, DF 701.6111/537, RG 59, 1910–1929, NACP.

⁹⁵ See Antony Sutton's magnum opus a three-volume work, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development 1917 to 1930 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace 1968); Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development 1930 to 1945 (1971); and Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development 1945 to 1965 (1973).

⁹⁶ Senate, Russian Propaganda, p.42. For more on the society, see Donald J. Evans, ‘Society for Technical Aid to Soviet Russia (STASR)’, Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet HistoryVol. 36 (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press 1984) pp.105–7.

⁹⁷ ‘Arthur Adams’ < www.documentstalk.com/wp/adams-arthur-alexandrovich-1885-1969>(accessed 23 September 2010).

⁹⁸ A. S. Sibley, 'Soviet Military-Industrial Espionage in the United States and Emergence of an Espionage Paradigm in US-Soviet Relations 1941–45', American Communist History 2/1 (2003) pp.21–51.

Additional information

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Donald James Evans

Dr Donald J. Evans is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Strategic Studies Association in Alexandria, Virginia, a contributor to its journal Defense and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, and Senior Editor and Contribution Editor of its Defense and Foreign Affairs Handbook, respectively, of the 15th and 16th editions. A multiple contributor to The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, Colonel Evans (Ret., USA) served as a Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Specialist. Following his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (Illinois), he earned a Master's degree in Political Science from Michigan State University and a doctorate in higher education from the George Washington University. He has a longstanding interest in early diplomatic relations between the United States and Soviet Russia.