Russian Roulette
Page 32
Abdul Qadir Khan’s experiences with Roy were published in a three-part series in The Times, 25, 26 and 27 February 1930.
The trade agreement was published in The Times under the headline ‘Trade with Red Russia’ on 17 March 1921.
Epilogue
Information on espionage and intelligence gathering in the aftermath of the trade agreement can be found in IOR/L/PJ/12/117; this includes Lord Curzon’s memo to the viceroy. There is a wealth of information in Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence, especially pp. 308–12.
Perhaps the most important intelligence file covering the period immediately after the trade agreement is IOR/L/PJ/12/119; it contains a large amount of top-secret documents acquired by Mansfield Cumming’s Secret Intelligence Service.
Boris Bazhanov’s own account of his work as an inside agent can be found in Avec Staline. Information about Bazhanov can also be found at the NA: see KV3/11 and KV3/12. For more on Bazhanov’s flight from Russia, see Brook-Shepherd, Storm Petrels. Bazhanov’s story was published in the Sunday Telegraph, 19 and 26 September and 3 October 1976.
The concluding paragraphs about all the main players in Russia Roulette are drawn from three principal sources: their own accounts, their obituaries and the Dictionary of National Biography. Judd, Quest, provides an excellent account of Cumming’s final months.
SELECTED READING
The books listed below will prove of interest to anyone who wishes to explore further Britain’s espionage operations inside post-revolutionary Russia.
A full list of books, articles, unpublished documents and Inter-net resources can be found in the Notes and Sources section.
Agar, Augustus, Baltic Episode: A Classic of Secret Service in Russian Waters (London, 1963).
Footprints in the Sea (London, 1959).
Showing the Flag (London, 1962).
Andrew, Christopher, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (London, 1985).
Bailey, Frederick, Mission to Tashkent (London, 1992).
Bazhanov, Boris, Avec Staline dans le Kremlin (Paris, 1930).
Brogan, Hugh, Signalling from Mars: The Letters of Arthur Ransome (London, 1997).
The Life of Arthur Ransome (London, 1992).
Brook-Shepherd, Gordon, Iron Maze: The Western Secret Services and the Bolsheviks (London, 1998).
The Storm Petrels: The First Soviet Defectors (London, 1977).
Bruce Lockhart, Sir Robert, Memoirs of the British Agent (London, 1932).
Diaries, ed. Kenneth Young (London, 1973).
Bruce Lockhart, Robin, Reilly: Ace of Spies (London, 1983).
Brun, Alf Harald, Troublous Times: Experiences in Bolshevik Russia and Turkestan (London, 1931).
Buchanan, Meriel, Ambassador’s Daughter (London, 1958).
Buchanan, Sir George, My Mission to Russia (London, 1923).
Bywater, Hector, Strange Intelligence (London, 1931).
Calder, Robert, Somerset Maugham and the Quest for Freedom (London, 1972).
Chambers, Roland, The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome (London, 2009).
Cook, Andrew, Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly (London, 2004).
Cross, J.A., Sir Samuel Hoare: A Political Biography (London, 1977).
Cullen, Richard, Rasputin: The Role of Britain’s Secret Service in His Torture and Murder (London, 2010).
Deacon, Richard, Spyclopedia: The Comprehensive Handbook of Espionage (New York, 1988).
Degras, Jane, The Communist International, 1919–1943: Documents, 3 vols. (London, 1956–65).
Dukes, Paul, The Story of ST 25: Adventure and Romance in the Secret Intelligence Service in Red Russia (London, 1938).
Red Dusk and the Morrow: Adventures and Investigations in Red Russia (London, 1922).
The Unending Quest: Autobiographical Sketches (London, 1950).
Ellis, Charles, Transcaspian Episode, 1918-1919 (London, 1963).
Eudin, Xenia and Harold Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, vol. 1; Soviet Russia and the East, vol. 2 (Stanford, 1957).
Ferguson, Harry, Operation Kronstadt (London, 2008).
Gaunt, Guy, The Yield of the Years (London, 1940).
Gerhardie, William, Memoirs of a Polyglot (London, 1973).
Gibson, William, Wild Career: My Crowded Years of Adventure in Russia and the Near East (London, 1935).
Gilbert, Martin, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 4 (London, 1977).
Hastings, Selina, The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham (London, 2009).
Hill, George, Go Spy the Land: Being the Adventures of I.K.8 of the British Secret Service (London, 1932).
Dreaded Land (London, 1936).
Hoare, Sir Samuel, Fourth Seal: The End of a Russian Chapter (London, 1930).
Hopkirk, Peter, Setting the East Ablaze (London, 1984).
The Great Game (Oxford, 1991).
Jeffrey, Keith, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, 1909–1949 (London, 2010).
Judd, Alan, The Quest for C: Sir Mansfield Cumming and the founding of the British Secret Service (London, 2000).
Kettle, Michael, Russia and the Allies, 1917–1920, 4 vols.; The Road to Intervention vol. 4 (London, 1981).
Sidney Reilly: The True Story (London, 1983).
Knox, Major-General Sir A., With the Russian Army, 1914–1917, 2 vols. (London, 1921).
Leggett, George, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police (Oxford, 1981).
Ludecke, Winfred, Behind the Scenes of Espionage: Tales of the Secret Service (London, 1929).
Malleson, Major-General Sir Wilfrid, ‘The British Military Mission to Turkestan, 1918-1920,’ Journal of the Central Asian Society (London, 1922).
Maugham, Somerset, Ashenden, or The British Agent (London, 1928).
A Writer’s Notebook (London, 1949).
Molesworth, George, Afghanistan, 1919: An Account of Operations in the Third Afghan War (London, 1962).
O’Brien-Ffrench, Conrad, Delicate Mission (London, 1979).
Occleshaw, Michael, Armour Against Fate: British Military Intelligence in the First World War (London, 1988).
Dances in Deep Shadows: Britain’s Clandestine War Against Russia, 1917–20 (London, 2006).
Orlov, Alexander, The March of Time (London, 2004).
Pearson, Michael, The Sealed Train (London, 1975).
Pethybridge, Roger, (ed.) Witnesses to the Russian Revolution (London, 1964).
Pipes, Richard, The Russian Revolution, 1988–1919 (London, 1990).
Pitcher, Harvey, Witnesses of the Russian Revolution (London, 2001).
Popplewell, Richard, Intelligence and Imperial Defence: British Intelligence and the Defence of the Indian Empire (London, 1995).
Price, Morgan Philips, My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution (London, 1921).
Ransome, Arthur, ‘On Behalf of Russia’, New Republic (1918).
Six Weeks in Russia in 1919 (London, 1919).
The Autobiography of, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (London, 1976).
Rappaport, Helen, Conspirator: Lenin in Exile (London, 2009).
Reilly, Sidney, The Adventures of Sidney Reilly, Britain’s Master Spy (London, 1931).
Ronaldshay, Earl of, The Life of Lord Curzon (London, 1928).
Roy, Manabendra Nath, Memoirs (Bombay, 1964).
Service, Robert, Lenin: A Biography (London, 2000).
Spies and Commissars (London, 2011).
Trotsky: A Biography (London, 2009).
Smith, Michael, Six: A History of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (London, 2010).
The Spying Game: The Secret History of British Espionage (London, 2003).
Soutar, Andrew, With Ironside in Russia (London, 1940).
Swinson, Arthur, Beyond the Frontiers: The Biography of Colonel F. M. Bailey, Explorer and Special Agent (London, 1971).
Teague Jones, Reginald, The Spy Who Disappeared (London, 1990).
Thwaites, Norman, Velvet and Vinegar (London, 1932).
Tyrkova-Wi
lliams, A., Cheerful Giver: The Life of Harold Williams (London, 1935).
Ullman, Richard, Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1917–1921, vol. 2; Britain and the Russian Civil War, November 1918–February 1920 (Princeton and London, 1961–72).
Voska, E. and Irvin, W., Spy and Counterspy: The Autobiography of a Master-Spy (London, 1941).
Walpole, Sir Hugh, The Secret City (New York, 1943).
Wells, H.G., Russia in the Shadows (London, 1920).
West, Nigel, MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations, 1909–45 (London, 1983).
Yusupov, Prince Felix, Lost Splendour (London, 1953).
PERMISSION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Pictures
akg-images/RIA Novosti: 3 above left. The British Library, Bailey Collection: 4. Corbis: 1 above right and below, 2 above right, 3 above right, 7 below right. Paul Dukes The Story of “ST 25” Adventure and Romance in the Secret Intelligence Service In Red Russia, 1938: 5. Imperial War Museums/© IWM Q20636: 6 above. Michael Kettle The Road to Intervention, Russia and the Allies 1917-20 Vol 2, Routledge 1988: 8 below. Gustav Krist Alone Through The Forbidden Land, Journeys In Disguise Through Soviet Central Asia, 1938: 7 above. Reproduced with the permission of Leeds University Library: 2 below left and right. The National Archives/WO 106/1170: 6 below left and right. M. N. Roy Memoirs, 1964: 8 above left and right. TopFoto/RIA Novosti: 1 above left.
Text
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Ian Fleming quote reproduced with permission of the Ian Fleming Estate (taken from Sidney Reilly, The Adventures of Sidney Reilly, Britain’s Master Spy, London, 1931).
Oxford University Press: Mission to Tashkent by F. M. Bailey, © F. M. Bailey 1946 and renewed 1992. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.
The Marsh Agency Ltd and Frontline Books: Memoirs of a British Agent by Robert Bruce Lockhart. Reprinted by permission of Frontline Books on behalf of print rights and The Marsh Agency, on behalf of The Estate of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, on behalf of electronic rights.
The Arthur Ransome Estate and Random House UK: Autobiography by Arthur Ransome. Reprinted by permission of The Arthur Ransome Estate and Random House UK on behalf of print and electronic rights.
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the copyright holders, but if there are any errors or omissions, Hodder & Stoughton will be pleased to insert the appropriate acknowledgement in any subsequent printings or editions.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Giles Milton is a writer and historian. He is the bestselling author of Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, Big Chief Elizabeth, The Riddle and the Knight, White Gold, Samurai William, Paradise Lost and, most recently, Wolfram. His books have been translated into 18 languages. White Gold is currently being piloted as a major Channel 4 series.
He has also written two novels and three children’s books, two of them illustrated by his wife Alexandra.
He lives in South London.
www.gilesmilton.com
Also by Giles Milton
Non-Fiction
The Riddle and the Knight
Nathaniel’s Nutmeg
Big Chief Elizabeth
Samurai William
White Gold
Paradise Lost
Wolfram
Fiction
Edward Trencom’s Nose
According to Arnold