When Life Imitates Art: Éric Rohmer’s Triple Agent (2004) As a Primer for Real-Life Politics

Abstract

This article examines the striking parallel between plans that were discussed in the CIA in 2017 to kidnap and possibly murder Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who was living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and the abduction and murder eighty years earlier in Paris of the head of the White Russian army in exile by the NKVD. The latter, one of the most notorious episodes in the history of espionage and counterespionage in the French capital during the interwar years, was fictionalized by Éric Rohmer in his 2004 film Triple Agent. Fusing the actual events of those years—the Popular Front government in France, the Stalinist Terror in Russia, and the build-up to the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939—with a tragic personal story, Rohmer exposed the human dramas without which the rival intelligence services could not have been as effective as they were. The events of the 1930s are long past, and even the Cold War years of the 1960s and 1970s have receded into the distance. But as this article shows, and Éric Rohmer’s film reminds us, the cloak- and-dagger game of spies and counterspies has not changed that much, the technologies of contemporary intelligence warfare notwithstanding.

Disclosure statement

The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 See, for example, the best-selling novel by Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow (New York: Viking, 2016) that has little to do with espionage as such and everything to do with the environment of false identities, lies, and surveillance that is essential to the genre.

2 Zach Dorfman, Sean D. Naylor, and Michael Isikoff, ‘Kidnapping, Assassination, and a London Shoot-Out: Inside the CIA’s Secret War Plans against WikiLeaks’, yahoo!news, 26 September 2021, https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london-shoot-out-inside-the-ci-as-secret-war-plans-against-wiki-leaks-090057786.html (accessed 12 October 2021).

3 As might be expected, the literature on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks is large and frequently polemical. For a useful introduction, see Mark Fenster, ‘Bullets of Truth: Julian Assange and the Politics of Transparency’, in Stefan Berger, Susanne Fengler, Dimitrij Owetschkin, and Julia Sittmann, eds., Cultures of Transparency: Between Promise and Peril (New York: Routledge, 2021), 63–80.

4 The echo of Alexander Litvinenko’s murder with radioactive poison in London in 2006 has to be noted here. Jonathan Haslam, in Near and Distant Neighbors: A New History of Soviet Intelligence (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015), 3–5 explicitly links Litvinenko’s death with the kidnapping and murder of White Army General A. V. Kutepov in Paris in 1930, arguing that the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1990–1991 ‘appear[s] to have left something fundamental unchanged in Russia’.

5 See, for example, Chris Millington, Fighting for France: Violence in Interwar French Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

6 For a new overview, see Helen Rappaport, After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque through Revolution and War (New York: St. Martin’s, 2022).

7 Tony G. Huang, ‘Eric Rohmer’s Tale of History: Close-Up on “Triple Agent”’, MUBI Notebook, 13 January 2017, https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/eric-rohmer-s-tale-of-history-close-up-on-triple-agent (accessed 15 October 2021).

8 Among recent studies, see James Harris, The Great Fear: Stalin’s Terror of the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Alexander Vatlin, Agents of Terror: Ordinary Men and Extraordinary Violence in Stalin’s Secret Police, trans. Seth Bernstein (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016).

9 More than twenty-five years after its publication Eugen Weber’s The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s (New York: Norton, 1994) continues to define the scholarly discussion. Most recently, see the introduction to Michael S. Neiberg, When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021), 1–16.

10 See, for example, Jonathan Dawson, ‘Stavisky’, Senses of Cinema no. 58 (March 2011), https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2011/cteq/stavisky (accessed 20 October 2021). A lengthy discussion of Resnais’s film serves as an introduction to Dudley Andrew and Steven Ungar, Popular Front Paris and the Poetics of Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 15–51.

11 This is also the case in James Ivory’s The White Countess (2005), set in Shanghai’s Foreign Quarter on the eve of the 1936 Japanese invasion.

12 For an overview, see Andrew Sangster, Secret Services, 1918–1939: Their Development in Britain, Germany, and Russia (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020).

13 Adrian Hänni and Miguel Grossman, ‘Death to Traitors: The Pursuit of Intelligence Defectors from the Soviet Union to the Putin Era’, Intelligence and National Security 53, no. 3 (2020), 403–23. See also Heidi Blake, From Russia with Blood: The Kremlin’s Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin’s Secret War on the West (New York: Mulholland Books, 2019).

14 On Savinkov, see Richard B. Spence, Boris Savinkov: Renegade on the Left (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). Savinkov’s biography—and autobiography (he wrote two semi-fictionalized versions)—became the basis for Karen Shakhnazarov’s 2004 film The Rider Named Death. For his background in the Social Revolutionary Party, see also Nurit Schleifman, Undercover Agents in the Russian Revolutionary Movement: The SR Party, 1902–1914 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988). Most recently, see Vladimir Alexandrov, To Break Russia’s Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks (Cambridge: Pegasus, 2021).

15 The most notorious double agent in the pre-war Russian terrorist underground, Azef is the subject of Anna Geifman, Entangled in Terror: The Azef Affair and the Russian Revolution (Wilmington DE: Scholarly Resources, 2000). See also Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894–1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

16 Here see Fredric S. Zuckerman, The Tsarist Secret Police Abroad: Policing Europe in a Modernising World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 107–11.

17 Spence, Boris Savinkov, 110–49. According to a recent account, the OGPU believed that Savinkov’s organizational efforts were funded by Poland and by Britain and France. See Peter Whitewood, ‘In the Shadow of the War: Bolshevik Perceptions of Polish Subversive and Military Threats to the Soviet Union, 1920–1932’, Journal of Strategic Studies 44, no. 5 (2021), 661–84.

18 Membership figures from Paul Robinson, The White Russian Army in Exile, 1920–1941 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009), 101–02.

19 Here see William T. Murphy, ‘Soviet Intelligence in France between the Wars’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, published online 12 May 2021, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2020.1861581 (copy courtesy of the author).

20 Robinson, The White Russian Army, 144–45; Pavel and Anatoli Sudoplatov, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster (Boston: Little Brown, 1994), 91.

21 Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 40–41.

22 For Miller’s biography, see Vladislav I. Goldin and John W. Long, ‘Resistance and Retribution: The Life and Fate of General E. K. Miller’, Revolutionary Russia 12, no. 2 (1999), 19–40.

23 Robinson, The White Russian Army, 189.

24 Tamara Tracz, ‘Triple Agent: Portrait of the Unknowable Other, Reflection of the Unknowable Self’, Senses of Cinema no. 34 (February 2005), https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2005/on-recent-films-34/triple_agent (accessed 25 October 2021).

25 Pamela A. Jordan, Stalin’s Singing Spy: The Life and Exile of Nadezhda Plevitskaya (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 4–5.

26 See, for example, Tennent H. Bagley, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 111. Other details of Skoblin’s involvements are reported in the dispute between Stephen Schwartz and Theodore Draper in the New York Times Book Review and the New York Review of Books in 1988, with interventions as well by Walter Laqueur and Pierre Broué. While Skoblin is tangential in this exchange, he is by no means irrelevant. See Stephen Schwartz, ‘Intellectuals and Assassins: Annals of Stalin’s Killerati’, New York Times Book Review, 24 January 1988, 3, 30–31; Theodore Draper, ‘The Mystery of Max Eitington’, New York Review of Books, 14 April 1988, 32–43; Stephen Schwartz et al., ‘"The Mystery of Max Eitington": An Exchange’, New York Review of Books, 16 June 1988, 49–55. See also Walter Laqueur, ‘The Strange Lives of Nicholai Skoblin: Some Origins of World War II’, in Laqueur, Soviet Realities: Culture and Politics from Stalin to Gorbachev (New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990), 91–112.

27 In addition to the sources cited above, see Michael B. Miller, Shanghai on the Métro: Spies, Intrigue, and the French between the Wars (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 133–43.

28 See, for example, Enzo Traverso, Fire and Blood: The European Civil War, 1914–1945, trans. David Fernbach (London: Verso: 2016).

29 Robinson, The White Russian Army, 185–88.

30 The Socialist CGT reunified with the Communist CGTU (United General Confederation of Labor) in March 1936, giving the PCF substantially greater influence in the former than had previously been the case. The classic study is Julian Jackson, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934–1938 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

31 While the documentary record is by no means complete, it is clear that manipulation and in-fighting inside the NKVD were characteristic of the Terror from the start. See Olev Klhevniuk, ‘Archives of the Terror: Developments in the Historiography of Stalin’s Purges’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 22, no. 2 (2021), 367–85; Stephen G. Wheatcroft, ‘The Great Terror in Historical Perspective: The Records of the Statistical Department of the Investigative Organs of the OGPU/NKVD’, in The Anatomy of Terror: Political Violence under Stalin, ed. James Harris (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 287–305.

32 Robinson, The White Russian Army, 201–13.

33 On the other hand, in his commentary on the film Ivone Margulies describes Fyodor’s political projections as ‘fantastic’ and ‘outrageous’ and finds him a professional in only one thing: deceit. See ‘Rohmer’s Triple Agent: Theatricality, Archive and the 1930s’, L’Esprit Createur 51, no. 3 (2011), 88–103.

34 Details of Miller’s abduction in Jordan, Stalin’s Singing Spy, 156–60.

35 The echo of Enzo Azef’s escape from his Socialist Revolutionary interrogators in Paris in 1909 is too obvious to go without note here.

36 Here Rohmer’s film departs significantly from the historical record, as the real Skoblins had moved to the suburbs in 1930.

37 Nicolas Lebourg, ‘White Émigrés and International Anti-Communism in France (1918–1939)’, George Washington University, Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, IERES Occasional Papers no. 9 (2020), 15–16, https://hal.umontpellier.fr/hal-03373427 (accessed 22 April 2022).

38 See Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1929 (New York: Penguin, 2014), 354–65.

39 Donald Cameron Watt, ‘Who Plotted against Whom? Stalin’s Purge of the Soviet High Command Revisited’, The Journal of Soviet Military Studies 3, no 1 (1990), 45–65. See also Peter Whitewood, The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Soviet Military (Lawrence KS: University Press of Kansas, 2015), 201–51.

40 Pierre Lethier, ‘Triple Agent: Eric Rohmer and the Tumult of the Interwar Years’, in The Films of Eric Rohmer: French New Wave to Old New Master, ed. Leah Anderst (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 229–41. The combination of ambition and ineptitude figures prominently in Michael Miller’s reconstruction of the White Russian ‘milieu’ in Paris in the 1930s. See Miller, Shanghai on the Metro, 128–44.

41 Goldin and Long, ‘Resistance and Retribution’, 28–40; Sudoplatov and Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 38–39.

42 Jordan, Stalin’s Singing Spy, 156–60; Boris Volodarsky, Stalin’s Agent: The Life and Death of Alexander Orlov (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 268–72. Having defected to the West in 1938, Orlov’s description of Nikolai Skoblin’s fate—as almost all his other assertions—must be read with caution.

43 Robinson, The White Russian Army, 221–26; Jordan, Stalin’s Singing Spy, 189–91.

44 Robinson, The White Russian Army, 188–89. The ‘real’ Yuli Semenov, if the reference is intended, was a reactionary White exile who propagandized in favor of a German-Japanese invasion of the Soviet Union. See Jordan, Stalin’s Singing Spy, 213.

45 Fiona Handyside, ed., Eric Rohmer: Interviews (Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 2013), 176.

46 ‘L’Affaire Miller-Skoblin’, special feature on the DVD edition of Triple Agent (Koch Lorber, 2006).

47 Here see Michael Kellogg, The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

48 Robert W. Stephan, Stalin’s Secret War: Soviet Counterintelligence against the Nazis, 1941–1945 (Lawrence KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 108–17.

49 Lorna L. Waddington, ‘The Anti-Komintern and Nazi Anti-Bolshevik Propaganda in the 1930s’, Journal of Contemporary History 42, no. 4 (2007), 573–94; Jan C. Behrends, ‘Back from the USSR: The Anti-Comintern’s Publications on Soviet Russia in Nazi Germany (1935–1941)’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 19, no. 3 (2009), 527–56.

50 High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division, Administrative Court, ‘In the Matter of an Appeal under S.105 of the Extradition Act 2003, The United States of America v. Julian Assange’, 20 October 2021, https://assangedefense.org/hearing-coverage/defense-appeal-arguments (accessed 7 December 2021), 33. Italics in original. See also Megan Specia, ‘British Court Hears Appeal in Julian Assange Extradition Case’, New York Times, 30 October 2021, A8. In December 2021, the U.S. appeal was granted, but Assange’s defenders will no doubt appeal that decision. Megan Specia and Charlie Savage, ‘U.K. Court Rules Assange, WikiLeaks Founder, Can Be Extradited’, New York Times, 11 December 2021, A9.

51 See David V. Gioe, Michal S. Goodman, and David S. Frey, ‘Unforgiven: Russian Intelligence Vengeance as Political Theater and Strategic Messaging’, Intelligence and National Security 34, no. 4 (2019), 561–75.

52 David V. Gioe, Richard Lovering, and Tyler Pachesny. ‘The Soviet Legacy of Russian Active Measures: New Vodka from Old Stills?’, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 33, no. 3 (2020): 514–539.

53 See, for example, Denis MacShane, ‘Russia in the UK: Theresa May’s Dirty Hands’, The Globalist, 15 March 2018, https://www.theglobalist.com/united-kingdom-theresa-may-russia-oligarchs; Sean O’Neill, ‘How London Became Russians’ Laundromat, No Questions Asked’, The Times, 22 July 2020, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-london-became-russians-laundromat-no-questions-asked-52vhnm9vw (both accessed 8 December 2021).

54 Michael Schwirtz and Ellen Barry, ‘A Spy Story: Sergei Skirpal Was a Little Fish. He Had a Big Enemy’, New York Times, 10 September 2018, A1.

55 Sudoplatov and Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, 86.

56 Ibid., 587.

57 ‘Iz kamery ‘smertnikov’ na Lubianky’, produced by Telekompaniia ‘Sovershenno Sekretno’, 2003, broadcast on NTV Mir, 3 May 2004. A videotape of the program is in the Film and Video Database of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London. I am grateful to Clare Griffin of the SSEES for her assistance in researching this film.

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James J. Ward

James J. Ward is professor emeritus of history at Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pennsylvania where he taught courses in German history, Russian history, urban history, and film and history. He has published articles and reviews in The Journal of Contemporary History, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Central European History, Slavic Review, Journal of Popular Culture, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and Film & History, among others. With Cynthia J. Miller, he co-edited Urban Noir: New York and Los Angeles in Shadow and Light (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).