網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

high-placed leaders ignore the competent judgment of specialists and as a result sacrifice the very interests of the state trying for one thing—to that much quickly finish the preparation of this or that treaty and light off fireworks in celebration."

The conclusion of Kornienko's book, a shortened version of a case set forth earlier at greater length and in greater detail in Nezavisimaia Gazeta (16 August 1994), is what his argument has been leading to all along: the Gorbachev era as the epitome of unprofessionalism in foreign policy. It is a full-fledged condemnation of almost every action undertaken by Gorbachev and Shevardnadze from 1985 through the final collapse of the Soviet Union. In particular, Kornienko strives to discredit the idea that Gorbachev offered something truly new and revolutionary in international politics. As Kornienko reminds us, it was Lenin who first enunciated the principle of "peaceful coexistence" with the capitalist world (as another form of class struggle), and Stalin actively endorsed the idea of coexistence with the West as late as 1951. Ever since a rough nuclear parity had been achieved in the 1960s, reasonable people on each side had seen the need for an end to the arms race and confrontation. Gorbachev's innovation was not living in peace with the West, but the unilateral "betrayal of the Soviet Union's vital interests."

Kornienko enunciates a number of specific examples of Gorbachev's craven behavior-submission to the United States over the Krasnoyarsk radar station and Soviet acquiescence in the use of force against Iraq but his most substantial comments are reserved for the reunification of Germany. Kornienko, having passed over in silence the Soviet interventions in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, takes pains to emphasize the right of the German people to self-determination, free from outside influence. His objection is to the manner in which this unification took place and the status of the resulting German state. Why, he asks, should Germany remain in NATO and why should NATO troops remain in Germany with Soviet troops completely evacuated from Eastern Europe? The fact that Germany has stayed in NATO he attributes to the absolutely incompetent way in which Gorbachev handled the German question, avoiding the enunciation of any clear policy until too late, insisting on the

unacceptability of German NATO membership to George Bush in Washington only in February 1990 and then conceding Germany's right to remain in NATO without receiving guarantees and concessions in re

turn.

Here Kholodnaia voina particularly suffers by comparison to Kornienko's 1992 collaboration with Marshal Sergei Akhromeev, former Chief of the General Staff and one-time personal aide to Mikhail Gorbachev. This earlier book, Glazami marshala i diplomata [Through the Eyes of a Marshal and a Diplomat] (Moscow, 1992), covers in book-length form the Gorbachev years which Kornienko discusses in a chapter. The lion's share is Akhromeev's work, and he was a much more sensitive and forthcoming observer, on occasion even revealing the details of Soviet tactics in arms control negotiations. While nearly as condemnatory of Gorbachev as Kornienko, Akhromeev as Chief of the General Staff was in a position to truly appreciate the steady decline of the Soviet Union under Brezhnev and the need for radical reform, though he parted company with Gorbachev on how precisely reform needed to be implemented. (Akhromeev killed himself in the wake of the failed coup of August 1991.) What Kornienko misses in his evaluation of the Gorbachev years is precisely how desperate Gorbachev's position was by the end of the 1980s. With opposition to Gorbachev growing on all sides, an economy spiraling into free fall, Soviet troops on hostile ground in Eastern Europe, and the specter of nationalism haunting the Soviet Union, Gorbachev simply had no ground to stand on. It is this last factornationalism that Kornienko (and for that matter Akhromeev) consistently ignores. It seems he imagines that a stable end to the Cold War could have occurred with Eastern Europe still occupied by Soviet troops, and he never noticed that half the Soviet Union's population was non-Russian.

[ocr errors]

Kornienko, then, continues to be a devoted patriot of the collapsed empire he served for four decades. While there is likely some truth to his assertions that Gorbachev might have driven marginally harder bargains with the West than he in fact did, the real significance of any diplomatic triumphs Gorbachev might have achieved is questionable. What can any diplomat achieve when the state he or she represents crumbles away? Kornienko can complain that his voice was

never heard, but the rejection of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet state itself are what truly demolished Soviet foreign policy. It is just these events that Kornienko cannot bring himself to look at, and to ask whether he and his fellow professionals bear any responsibility for them.

David Stone is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department of Yale University.

CHEN HANSHENG'S MEMOIRS AND CHINESE COMMUNIST

ESPIONAGE

by Maochen Yu

Chen Hansheng, My Life During Four Eras [Sige shidai de wo] (Beijing: China Culture and History Press [zhongguo wenshi chupan she], 1988).

Post-Mao China has been marked by a transition from a combination of totalitarianism and socialism to one of authoritarianism and a "socialist market economy." Along with this transition is the gradual "withering away of the state," which in turn has resulted in a looser government control over publication on some historical issues previously considered taboo during the Mao era. One of the most fascinating new academic interests in China is the sudden surge of materials on Chinese Communist intelligence, triggered by a massive "political rehabilitation" of those Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence veterans who were vanquished in Mao's ruthless campaigns. The publication of Chen Hansheng's memoirs, My Life During Four Eras, is just one of the telling examples.

Chen Hansheng became an agent for the Comintern in 1926 while a young professor at Beijing University (p.35). His life as a communist intelligence official spans many decades of the 20th century and involves some of the most important espionage cases. Chen Hansheng's memoirs add some new and revealing dimensions to the present understanding of the much debated history of Chinese and international communism. In an authoritative manner, this publication helps answer many nagging questions long in the minds of historians, chief among which

are the following:

To What Extent Were the Chinese Communists Involved in Soviet-Dominated Communist International Espionage in China in the 20th Century? Recent memoirs in Chinese, notably by Chen Hansheng and Shi Zhe,2 suggest that the Chinese Communists were deeply involved. In the 1930s and 1940s, for example, as the Shi Zhe memoirs reveal, both the NKVD and GRU of the USSR and the Department of International Res. (OMS) of the Comintern ran a large spy training school in Yanan; Chinese Communist spies penetrated deep into the Nationalists' (GMD) wartime intelligence organizations for Moscow.3 Chen Hansheng's story further illustrates this Moscow-Yanan tie. Chen was recruited by the Russians as a Comintern intelligence agent in 1926. One year later, the warlord Zhang Zuolin raided the Soviet Embassy in Beijing which was being used as an intelligence base. This raid exposed a large international espionage scheme controlled by Moscow.4 Chen Hansheng then fled to Moscow and returned to China in 1928 to become a member of the well-known Richard Sorge Spy Ring, then based in Shanghai. When Sorge was reassigned by Moscow to Tokyo, Chen went along and worked closely with Ozaki Hozumi and others of the ring until 1935, when the unexpected arrest of a messenger from Moscow almost exposed Chen's real identity. Chen sensed the danger and fled to Moscow again (pp.61-62). For much of his early life, he was directly controlled by Moscow, and highly active in international intelligence. Chen's identity as a Comintern agent was so important and secret that Richard Sorge, during his marathon interrogation in Tokyo by the Japanese police, never gave out Chen's real name to the Japanese.5

What Was the True Relationship Between the Soviets and the Chinese Communists during WWII? Some historians have minimized the extent and importance of the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the Soviet Union during World War II. Chen Hansheng's memoirs and other recently available documents from various sources fundamentally challenge this interpretation.

Instead, these new publications show that from the very beginning the CCP was intrinsically connected with the international communist movement centered in Moscow. Every major step of the CCP followed orders

from Moscow. In 1935, when the Soviet Union was threatened by rising fascism in Europe and Asia, the CCP followed Moscow's order to adopt a policy of a "United Front" (Popular Front) with the Nationalists in a joint effort to fight Japanese expansion in Asia. Yet, when Stalin stunned the world by signing the Nazi-Soviet Pact in late August 1939, the United Front policy collapsed in China. Mao Zedong followed Stalin most closely among all the Comintern party chiefs, hailing the Hitler-Stalin deal as a major victory against the West and the partition of Poland as necessary for the communist cause.6 In January 1940, Mao Zedong proclaimed that "the center of the Anti-Soviet movement is no longer Nazi Germany, but among the so-called democratic countries."7 The modus vivendi of communism and fascism in late 1939 created such intense friction between the Chinese Nationalists, who had been engaged in an all-out and bitter war with the Japanese imperial army in China, and the Chinese Communists, who were following Stalin's rapprochement with Germany, whose ally was Japan, that in early 1940, an army of communist troops was ambushed by the Nationalists in Southern Anhui, an event which essentially ended the superficial United Front. Yet when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, Stalin reversed his policy on the Popular Front: all member parties of the Comintern, both in Europe and in Asia, were now ordered to fight fascism. Unfortunately, in dered to fight fascism. Unfortunately, in China this did not mean the re-establishment of the former United Front against the Japanese, because the Soviet Union had already signed the notorious Neutrality Pact with Japan. The Chinese Nationalists, not the Japanese, remained the CCP's main enemy.

In fact, a stunning recent discovery at the Japanese Foreign Ministry archives of a secret Soviet-Japanese treaty at the outset of WWII reveals a deeply conspiratorial scheme worked out between Moscow and Tokyo. On 3 October 1940, Soviet and Japanese diplomats reached a secret deal that stipulated, "The USSR will abandon its active support for Chiang [Kai-shek; Jiang Jieshi] and will repress the Chinese Communist Party's anti-Japanese activities; in exchange, Japan recognizes and accepts that the Chinese Communist Party will retain as a base the three (Chinese) Northwest provinces (Shanxi, Gansu, Ningxia)."8

Chen Hansheng's memoirs has made a

significant contribution to reconnecting this CCP-Moscow tie.

Was Agnes Smedley A Comintern Agent? Despite vigorous denials by Smedley herself, Chen Hansheng discloses unequivocally that Smedley was no less than an agent of the Comintern (p.52). (Historian Stephen MacKinnon has only established that Smedley was Sorge's mistress in Shanghai.) Further, we also know from Chen's memoirs that Smedley was involved in every major step of the Sorge group's espionage activities. In fact, it was Smedley herself who recruited Chen into Sorge's Tokyo operations (p.58). Recent Comintern archives also confirm Smedley's identity as a Comintern agent.9

Was Owen Lattimore A Communist Spy? Lattimore topped Senator Joseph McCarthy's list of alleged communist spies in the early 1950s. McCarthy accused Lattimore of not only having manufactured a Far East policy leading to the loss of China to the communists, but also of being a "top Soviet agent. Chen's memoirs provide surprising insights on this matter from the perspective of a communist intelligence agent. After Chen fled from Tokyo to Moscow in 1935 to prevent the Sorge Ring's operations from exposure, Owen Lattimore, then the editor of the New York-based journal Pacific Affairs, the mouthpiece of the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), asked the Soviet Union, a member nation of IPR, for an assistant (p.63). In 1936, Moscow recommended Chen Hansheng to Lattimore, who readily accepted the nomination. Chen then went to New York, this time under the direct control of Kang Sheng, who was also in Moscow, to work with Lattimore from 1936 until 1939, when Chen was reassigned by Kang Sheng to a Hong Kong-based operation.

However, Chen states in his memoirs that Lattimore was kept in the dark as to his true identity as a Communist agent directly dispatched from Moscow (p.64). Lattimore's scholarly activities were only to be used as a cover for Chen. Further, Kang Sheng specifically instructed Chen that while in New York, his position at the IPR should only be used as a means of getting a salary; and that Chen's real task was to help Rao Shushi, a Comintern and CCP chief also in New York, organize underground activities (p.65). Therefore, Chen's memoirs seem to clear Lattimore from any complicity associated with Chen Hansheng's secret operations in

New York.

Was Solomon Adler A Communist? Solomon Adler, chief intelligence agent for the U.S. Treasury Department in China during WWII, was also prominent on McCarthy's communist list. In the 1950s, Elizabeth Bentley, a courier of a Soviet apparatus in Washington, further identified Adler as a member of Soviet intelligence.11 Adler at the time denied Bentley's accusation. Surprisingly, in Chen's memoirs, as well as in some other recent Chinese documents, Adler has resurfaced in Beijing as a bona fide communist intelligence official. 12 According to these sources, Adler moved to Beijing permanently in the late 1950s and has since worked in various capacities in CCP intelligence. Today, he is identified in Chinese documents as an "Advisor" to the External Liaison Department of the Central Committee of the CCP, the department that handles such well-known figures as Larry Wu-tai Ching of the CIA, who was arrested by the FBI in 1983 for espionage, and committed suicide in jail in 1986.

When Intellect And Intelligence Join, What Happens? Chen is a seasoned intelligence officer with high academic accomplishment as an economic historian. While his erudition has provided him with excellent covers for intelligence operations, it was also to become a source of his own demise. Chinese intellectuals are frequently willing to serve the state, to be its ears and eyes, yet in the end the state often turns against the intellectuals without mercy. Chen Hansheng's life thus becomes a classic example of this supreme irony. While in Moscow in 1935 and 1936, Chen witnessed the bloody purge of the intelligence apparatus in the Soviet Union by Stalin. Many of his Soviet comrades, some of them highly respected scholars, including the former Soviet Ambassador to Beijing who originally recruited Chen in China in 1926, were shot by Stalin as traitors and foreign spies. Chen wrote in raw pessimism about the Soviet purge, "I could not understand what was going on then. Yet it was beyond my imagination that some thirty years later, this horrible drama would be replayed in China and I myself would be a target of the persecution” (p.64). During the Cultural Revolution, Chen did not escape the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. From 1966 to 1968, Chen was put under house arrest. His wife was tortured to death in late 1968. By 1971 when Chen was allowed to leave the "thought reform" Cadre School in remote Hunan province, he had become almost completely blind.

1. The most revealing case was the rehabilitation of Pan
Hannian in 1982, after which a large amount of materi-
als on Pan's role as a Comintern intelligence chief in
China and CCP spymaster during WWII became avail-
able for scholars. For more details, see the article by this
author, "OSS in China: New Information About An Old
Role," International Journal of Intelligence and Coun-
terintelligence, Spring 1994, pp.94-95

Were the Chinese Communists Part of the International Communist Movement or Merely "Agrarian Reformers" in the 1930s and 1940s? Chen Hansheng's memoirs provides much new information about the Chinese Communist Party's extensive international connections. Besides the Sorge and Lattimore cases, Chen served as a chief communist intelligence officer in Hong Kong in the late 1930s and early 1940s, running a cover organization funnelling huge amounts of funds-$20 million in two and a half years from outside China to Yanan, mostly for the purpose of purchasing Japanese-made weapons from the "Puppet" troops in North China, with considerable Japanese acquiescence. 13 When wanted in 1944 by the Nationalist secret police for pro-Soviet activities in Guilin (China), Chen was rescued by the British and airlifted to India where he was miraculously put on the payroll of British intelligence in New Delhi. Between 1946 and 1950, while undercover as a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins subsequently worked as Mao's intelligence aid in charge University in Maryland, Chen became Beijing's secret liaison with the Communist Party of the U.S.A. (CPUSA) (p.81).14 After the CCP took over mainland China, Chen was summoned back from America to Beijing by Zhou Enlai in 1950 and has remained a major figure in his own business for much of the rest of his life.

2. Shi Zhe, Alongside the Great Men in History: Mem-
oirs of Shi Zhe [zai lishi juren shengbian: shizhe huiyi lu]
Beijing: Central Documents Press [zhongyang wenxian
chupan she], 1991. Shi Zhe served as an OGPU (NKVD
since 1934) agent for nine years in the Soviet Union until
he was dispatched from Moscow to Yenan in 1940. He

of encoding and decoding the heavy secret communica-
tions between Mao and Stalin during WWII, and as a
Chinese-Russian interpreter. Shi Zhe also was Kang
Sheng's deputy at the Social Affairs Department (SAD)
and the chief liaison in Yenan between the NKVD team
and the SAD.

3. Yan Baohang and others' aggressive intelligence
penetration into the GMD, see the doctoral dissertation
by this author entitled American Intelligence: OSS in

China (Berkeley, California, 1994).

4. For an example of one Western country's exploita-
tion of this raid in uncovering communist spy rings in
England, see Anthony Cave Brown's biography of
Stewart Menzies, “C,” published in Britain as Secret
Servant: The Life of Sir Stewart Menzies, Head of
British Intelligence, 1939-52.

5. Stephen MacKinnon, “Richard Sorge, Agnes
Smedley, and the Mysterious Mr. 'Wang' in Shanghai,
1930-1932," conference paper for the American His-
torical Association, Cincinnati, 29 December 1988.
6. Niu Jun, From Yenan to the World [cong yanan
zouxiang shijie] (Fuzhou: Fujian People's Press, 1992),
64-65; also Mao Zedong, Selected Works of Mao Zedong,
vol. 2. (Beijing: People's Press, 1961), 597-599.
7. Interview with Edgar Snow, in Freta Utley, Odyssey
of A Liberal: Memoirs (Washington, D.C.: Washington
National Press, 1970), 213.

8. Bruce A. Elleman, "The 1940 Soviet-Japanese Se-
cret Agreement and Its Impact on the Soviet-Iranian
Supply Route" (Working Paper Series in International
Studies, I-95-5, Hoover Institution, on War, Revolu-
tion, and Peace), 1-3

9. Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 60-70.

10. Senate floor speech by McCarthy, in Ralph de Toledano, Spies, Dupes, and Diplomats (New York: Arlington House Press, 1967), 185.

11. Text of testimony by Bentley, in Toledano, Spies, Dupes, and Diplomats, 132-133.

12. See Adler's photo in Chen's memoirs, and Selected Shanghai Culture and History Materials [Shanghai wenshi ziliao xuanji] 43 (April 1983), Shanghai People's Press.

13. For more details on this, see Maochen Yu, American Intelligence: OSS in China.

14. Many top leaders of the CPUSA, including Earl Browder and Eugene Dennis, had served as Comintern agents in China. See Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, Secret World of American Communism 8, 12.

Maochen Yu, who teaches history at the U.S. Naval Academy, is completing for publication a revision of his Ph.D. dissertation on the OSS in China during World War II.

THE 1980-1981 POLISH CRISIS: THE NEED FOR A NEW SYNTHESIS

by Mark Kramer

Robert Zuzowski, Political Dissent and Opposition in Poland: The Workers' Defense Committee "KOR" (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992).

Ya. Ya. Grishin, Dramaticheskie sobytiya v Pol'she, 1980-1981 gg (Kazan: Izdatel'stvo Kazanskogo Universiteta, 1993).

Many books about the rise of Solidarity in Poland and the subsequent martial-law crackdown have been published in the West, but nearly all of them appeared in the early to mid-1980s. In recent years, particularly since the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, scholarly interest in the 1980-81 Polish crisis has largely subsided. Although a few laudable books about the origins of Solidarity, notably those by Roman Laba (The Roots of Solidarity), Lawrence C. Goodwyn (Breaking the Barrier), and Michael H. Bernhard (The Origins of Democratization in Poland), were published in the early 1990s, the large majority of Western scholars no longer seem interested in reexamining the dramatic events of 198081. Even in Poland only a handful of experts, mainly those connected with the parliamentary Committee for Constitutional Oversight, are still devoting much effort to a reassessment of the 18-month confrontation that followed the emergence of Solidarity in the summer of 1980. The dearth of academic interest in the Polish crisis is ironic, for it is only now, when the archives in Poland, Russia, and other former Communist countries have become accessible and when a large number of valuable first-hand accounts of the crisis have appeared, that a fuller and more nuanced analysis of the events of 198081 is finally possible.

For that reason alone, the two books under review could have made a far-reaching contribution. Both were completed after several of the former East-bloc archives had been opened and after the initial spate of memoirs and other first-hand accounts of the Polish crisis had appeared. But unfortunately, neither author has made any use of archival sources. Although both draw on at least a few of the new first-hand accounts, the use of this new evidence, especially in

Yakov Grishin's narrative, is often problematic. Robert Zuzowski's volume provides cogent insights into the origins and functions of the Workers' Defense Committee (KOR) and Grishin's monograph has a few bright moments, but neither book offers as much as one might hope.

Zuzowski's study of the origins, activities, and consequences of KOR is enriched by citations from a wide range of open and underground publications. Of necessity, his book relies extensively on (and overlaps with) Jan Jozef Lipski's acclaimed twovolume history of the Workers' Defense Committee, which was first published in 1983. Zuzowski's analysis, however, has three advantages over Lipski's book. First, as one would expect, Zuzowski is more detached and critical than Lipski, whose perspective as one of the co-founders and leading members of KOR was unavoidably reflected in his lengthy account. Second, reflected in his lengthy account. Second, Zuzowski's book extends chronologically Zuzowski's book extends chronologically well beyond Lipski's, which ended with KOR's formal dissolution in September 1981. Third, Zuzowski uses his case study of KOR to derive broader conclusions about the nature and methods of political dissent in highly authoritarian societies. His discussion of the term "intelligentsia" and his overall analytical framework are not always persuasive, but his assessment provides a useful basis for historical and cross-country comparisons.

Hence, the overlap with Lipski's book does not really detract from Political Dissent and Opposition in Poland. A more serious problem arises, however, from the overlap with a recent book by Michael Bernhard (cited above), which was published at almost the same time as Zuzowski's monograph. Bernhard's volume, like Zuzowski's, focuses on the origins and political significance of KOR. Both books depict the Workers' Defense Committee as a crucial factor in the rise of Solidarity and a leading influence on the opposition movement in 1980-81. This view of KOR's importance has been accepted by many scholars, but it has been challenged in recent years by Roman Laba, who has claimed that Polish workers, rather than Polish intellectuals, provided the overwhelming impetus for Solidarity and were themselves responsible for shaping the union's agenda. Laba's publications (including the book cited above) have prompted spirited replies from Bernhard,

and the debate is likely to continue for many years to come.

Zuzowski devotes less attention than Bernhard to Laba's thesis, and as a result his book leaves some key questions unresolved. For example, Zuzowski acknowledges that when the decisive moment came in mid1980, top KOR members were skeptical about the prospects for achieving a genuinely independent trade union. (Some KOR officials even hoped that striking workers would not press too hard for this goal, lest it become a pretext for a harsh crackdown.) This is difficult to square with the author's contention that "KOR significantly contributed to the formation of Solidarity and to its performance, shaping the union's program, structure, and strategy (p. 169). Nor does Zuzowski explain why so many workers who had probably never heard of KOR and never seen its publications were nevertheless ready to demand a wide array of fundamental political changes. It may well be, as both Zuzowski and Bernhard argue, that KOR decisively changed the broader milieu in which the strikes of 1980 occurred and that this helped Polish workers eschew violence and sustain an organized protest movement. But it is not clear that the evidence

produced by Zuzowski is enough to contravene Laba's basic point.

This reservation notwithstanding, the surveys of KOR that Zuzowski and Bernhard provide, combined with Laba's earlier book, are about as far as one can go with nonarchival sources. Both authors have done an admirable job of poring over KOR's publications and other dissident works as well as relevant secondary sources. Both have brought new analytical perspectives to bear on their topic. Now that Zuzowski's and Bernhard's books have appeared, other scholars who wish to write about KOR will have to draw on recently declassified materials in the Archiwum Akt Nowych and other archives in Poland (materials not consulted by Zuzowski or Bernhard) if they are going to add anything of significance to the historical record.

Zuzowski's failure to make use of newly released documentation is regrettable, but by no means wholly unreasonable. Several features of his book (e.g., his frequent use of the present tense to describe things that ceased to exist after 1989) suggest that he wrote most of the text in the 1980s before the continued on page 294

THE SUDOPLATOV CONTROVERSY (CONT.)

1 September 1995

To the Editor:

I read with great interest "The Sudoplatov Controversy" in the CWIHP Bulletin (Issue 5, Spring 1995, pp. 155158). In its own time I also read Special Tasks with no less interest.

I believed earlier and now presume that the appearance of the recollections of such a high-ranking employee of the Stalinist. NKVD is an outstanding event, no matter what they are like in terms of quality. In any case, such recollections better than anything else characterize the era, and the storyteller. We can only be sorry that the recollections, of, for example, Lavrentii Beria, do not exist.

Of course, I cannot read without a smile Pavel Sudoplatov's "assertion" that in the development of my career I am obliged "through KGB connections." This is a desperate (consistent with the time!) lunge, a relic of the past, at a time when it is already impossible, as was done in the Stalinist time, to register innocent people as German, English, and other "spies," and to make short work of them. Now this relapse of the past is nothing more than an expressive coloring on the portrait of Sudoplatov himself. And it is evidence of the fact that my article offended him very much.

In Special Tasks the episode connected with Yaacov Terletskii's mission to Niels Bohr. My critical article, published in the Bulletin (Issue 4, Fall 1994), touched only on that episode. Since I am not a specialist in Sudoplatov's professional element, but do have a definite conception of the Soviet atomic project and its history, in this letter, expressing myself, I will limit myself only to the mission to Niels Bohr.

I assert that nothing in Sudoplatov's version regarding this mission stands up to a comparison with the facts (reason for the trip, significance for the Soviet physicists of the information which was brought; the shadow which Sudoplatov casts on Niels Bohr, etc.), and it is a total hoax. Only the naked fact that the trip to visit Bohr really did take place remains certain. But even here Sudoplatov is not the one who discov

ered it: several years ago already Professor Igor Golovin mentioned this operation of Beria's department in the Soviet press.

I do not believe it possible here to dwell particularly on Sudoplatov's new fantasies, contained in his letter to the Bulletin and which repeat his Appendix Eight of the paperback edition of Special Tasks (p. 491).

In such way as was already, for example, analyzed by me, it was shown that the reader should very, very critically regard Sudoplatov's "improvisations:" the principal defect of the "recollections" was evident even in a "limited space." Here the assistance and co-authorship in the drafting of Special Tasks of such brilliant journalists as Jerrold L. Schecter and Leona P. Schecter, and the fact that the flattering foreward to this book belongs to the pen of the famous historian Robert Conquest, are powerless.

Of course, the point of view of the Schecters is interesting, when they assert that "the battle in Moscow over Sudoplatov's memoirs continues. On one side are Russian scientists who fear the downgrading of their prestige and a threat to the medals they received for building the atomic bomb" (Special Tasks, Addendum, Paperback Edition). And in "The Sudoplatov Controversy," they even introduce a list of former intelligence operatives and historians who, evidently, do not know atomic technology professionally, but who applaud Sudoplatov. The truth, however, is that in the fact of the matter, the "battle in Moscow over Sudoplatov" ended long ago. People understood that only specialists, physicists-atomic scientists, are in a position to resolve whether or not Niels Bohr gave atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

It will be useful to pose still one question. Was the U.S. government decision to publish in the summer of 1945 Henry Smyth's well-known treatise "Atomic Energy for Military Purposes" really dictated by a wish to share atomic secrets with the Soviet Union? Especially since from the point of view of informativeness it exceeded by many times Bohr's responses to Terletskii's questions. Responding to this principal issue, it is easier to understand why the attempts to find nonexistent "flaws," from the point of view of the demands of secrecy, in Niels Bohr's responses, are continuing. And in precisely the same way, it will become clear why the efforts to defend the indefensible fantasies of Sudopatov are continuing.

Finally, let's turn to the eloquent acknowledgment of the former Soviet intelligence officer Col. Mikhail Liubimov (Top Secret 3 (1994), 27): "Reading Sudoplatov, one ought to remember that in intelligence activity (possibly like science) there is an inclination to twist facts, particularly because under the conditions of the totalitarian regime it was easy to do without fear of consequences. An intelligence officer or agent could meet and talk with Oppenheimer or with Fermi, who would not have had any idea to whom they were talking, and then later they could give them a code name and with dispatch submit the information to his superiors and cast their deed in bronze." A trusting man in the street could be misled by the report on the meeting between Terletskii and Bohr. But for Liubimov, who saw that "in every line (of the report) the traditional, old-fashioned character of the operation is revealed," it was as clear as two times two equals four that "Sudoplatov would portray the whole trip to Bohr as a colossal success, Beria would be pleased, and he will report everything to Joseph Vissarionovich (Stalin). And Kurchatov would not dare to articulate any doubts about the success of the operation, [for] like other scientists, he is subordinate to the system. And just try to squeal about the organs."

Then why did the Schecters, while ig-
noring the opinion of Russian physicists, not
wish to listen, for example, to one of the
leading U.S. authorities, the prominent par-
ticipant in the American atomic project, Prof.
Hans A. Bethe? In a recent article in Scien-
tific American together with his co-authors
observed: "Thus, the allegation that Bohr
shared nuclear secrets with the Soviets is
refuted by Beria's own account of the en-
counter between his agent and Bohr." (Sci- Sincerely,
entific American, May 1995, p. 90.) Or does
he too fear for his awards and prestige?

Yuri N. Smirnov (Moscow)

« 上一頁繼續 »