Alexander Barmine
Encyclopedia
Alexander Gregory Barmine was an officer in the Soviet Army
who fled the purges of the Joseph Stalin
era. After settling in France, he later moved to the United States where he enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private during World War II
as an anti-aircraft gunner, later joining the Office of Strategic Services
. After the war, Barmine became an employee of the Voice of America
during the Harry S. Truman
administration. He later became a senior adviser on Soviet affairs at the United States Information Agency
(USIA).
, Mogilev Government, Russia (Russian Empire
) (now Belarus
). As a young man, he participated in the Russian Civil War
that followed the Russian Revolution
. Sent to a Red Army officer's academy, he served in several battles. By the age of 22, he had risen to the rank of brigadier general in the Red Army
. After attending the Red Army's general staff school, he was eventually assigned to the Soviet Foreign Office and Commissariat of Trade. He married a widow with prominent connections in the Communist Party, Olga Federovna, and the two traveled to Soviet Turkestan
to work in the party apparatus. There they both became ill with severe cases of malaria. Returning to Moscow, the couple had two twin boys, but his wife died in childbirth.
, Barmine was assigned in 1935 to work abroad under diplomatic cover with the Soviet Foreign Office and Trade Ministry Commissariat under various diplomatic and trade representative titles. Late that same year, Barmine moved to Athens, Greece to take up an appointment as chargé d'affaires
to the Soviet Embassy in Athens, Greece.
According to Barmine, Stalin's Great Purge
began with the assassination of the Leningrad party leader Sergei Kirov. Kirov was widely admired in the Communist party for his efficiency as administrator of the Leningrad District, and his willingness to stand up to Stalin (Kirov gave orders that Leningrad party dissidents were not to be persecuted by the police). As a result, he drew the unwelcome attention of Stalin. Viewing Kirov's growing popularity as a threat to his hold on power, Stalin ordered the Soviet Secret police, the NKVD
, to arrange Kirov's assassination; the GPU used a fanatic with a history of mental illness to accomplish the deed, Leonid Nikolaev
. On December 1, 1934, Nikolaev shot Kirov in the Smolny Institute in Leningrad. After his funeral, Stalin blamed Kirov's assassination on reactionary elements within the Communist party. Later, in an act of supreme irony, Stalin had the Stalinist Opposition and many other party officials executed on the grounds that they had plotted with the assassin to kill Kirov. This act began the series of prosecutions, assassinations, and disappearances of Soviet military and government officials at Stalin's direction, known as the Great Purge
.
Barmine had been a protege, co-worker, subordinate, or confidant of many of the Soviet Union's leading generals, diplomats, and government officials, nearly all of whom were arrested, imprisoned, and shot during the Stalin's purges during the late 1930s. Later, Barmine served in the Foreign Office, and was posted to the Soviet legation in Athens, Greece. When Barmine's immediate superiors in the military and diplomatic corps began to disappear, or were announced to have been arrested and shot, Barmine began to fear that a similar fate was in store for himself. In July 1937, after discovering co-workers rifling his desk and searching his offices in the dead of night, he received a letter from his 14-year-old son Boris, who wrote his father that he, his brother, and Barmine's mother were going "far, far away to bathe in the sea." Boris also wrote:
That same month, Barmine received an insistent invitation to dine aboard a Soviet ship, the Rudzutak, that suddenly docked at Piraeus
(Athen's port), without prior notification to the Soviet legation. Barmine declined an invitation to go aboard, but agreed to dine with the captain at a local restaurant, where he was strongly urged to return home. Constantly followed by NKVD agents, Barmine decided to defect to the West. He wrote in One Who Survived that "if I should be imprisoned as the result of some vile, lying charge...[My family] would believe the official communiqué. Nobody would dare speak for me, and I would never be able to clear myself. I would lose them as sons forever."
spent 300,000 French francs to accomplish the wet business.
Barmine decided he had to take action. A book Barmine wrote during this period based on his experiences in the Soviet Union under Stalin's Terror, titled Memoirs of a Soviet Diplomat, was published in 1938. By making his revelations public, Barmine felt the book might help frustrate Stalin's immediate desire to silence him. Upon its release, the Soviet government made no comment on Barmine's revelations, though they had denounced earlier works by other Soviet émigré authors. After the assassinations and questionable accidental deaths of several exiled Soviet citizens in Western Europe, including Trotsky's own son, Lev Sedov, the couple left Europe for the United States in 1940. Barmine's aging mother and his two sons remained behind in the Soviet Union; unable to get them out of the country, he never saw them again.
, Barmine does not appear to have been debriefed at all by the United States government regarding his extensive knowledge of Soviet leaders and policies. Barmine joined a U.S. Army anti-aircraft unit as a 42-year old private soldier in 1941. A year later, he obtained his U.S. citizenship. In 1943-44, Barmine worked for the U.S.Office of Strategic Services
, the wartime agency responsible for external intelligence and sabotage against Axis countries.
In 1945, Barmine wrote a more complete autobiography, entitled One Who Survived. He said of writing it:
After a period of writing articles for various journals, Barmine joined the Voice of America
in 1948, serving for sixteen years as chief of its Russian branch. On 14 December 1948, after an interview with Federal Bureau of Investigation
agents, Barmine revealed that Soviet GRU
Director Janis Berzin
had informed him prior to his 1937 defection that American professor and former Office of War Information director Owen Lattimore
was a Soviet agent. In 1952, Barmine testified under oath before a Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security (McCarran Committee) that he was told by Soviet GRU Director Berzin that Lattimore was "one of our men".
In his 1973 memoirs, Barmine related how he and fellow members of the Soviet GRU were surprised to learn of the burgeoning support for Soviet communism among intellectuals in the Western democracies after release of Soviet propaganda on the Five Year Plan, just when he and other commanders had begun to lose hope in the Bolshevist revolution. This revelation soon inspired a massive espionage and propaganda effort worldwide, with particular emphasis on nations with democratic governments.
From 1964 to 1972 Barmine served as senior adviser on Soviet affairs at the U.S. Information Agency. Barmine won three awards for outstanding public service while in the federal government.
In 1948, Barmine was married to Edith Kermit Roosevelt, granddaughter of President Theodore Roosevelt
; they were divorced in 1952, and the union produced one daughter, Margot Roosevelt
.
He died at age eighty eight on 25 December, 1987 in Rockville, Maryland
.
Soviet Army
The Soviet Army is the name given to the main part of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1992. Previously, it had been known as the Red Army. Informally, Армия referred to all the MOD armed forces, except, in some cases, the Soviet Navy.This article covers the Soviet Ground...
who fled the purges of the Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
era. After settling in France, he later moved to the United States where he enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
as an anti-aircraft gunner, later joining the Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
. After the war, Barmine became an employee of the Voice of America
Voice of America
Voice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...
during the Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
administration. He later became a senior adviser on Soviet affairs at the United States Information Agency
United States Information Agency
The United States Information Agency , which existed from 1953 to 1999, was a United States agency devoted to "public diplomacy". In 1999, USIA's broadcasting functions were moved to the newly created Broadcasting Board of Governors, and its exchange and non-broadcasting information functions were...
(USIA).
Early career
Barmine was born in 1899 in MogilevMogilev
Mogilev is a city in eastern Belarus, about 76 km from the border with Russia's Smolensk Oblast and 105 km from the border with Russia's Bryansk Oblast. It has more than 367,788 inhabitants...
, Mogilev Government, Russia (Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
) (now Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
). As a young man, he participated in the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
that followed the Russian Revolution
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
. Sent to a Red Army officer's academy, he served in several battles. By the age of 22, he had risen to the rank of brigadier general in the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
. After attending the Red Army's general staff school, he was eventually assigned to the Soviet Foreign Office and Commissariat of Trade. He married a widow with prominent connections in the Communist Party, Olga Federovna, and the two traveled to Soviet Turkestan
Turkestan
Turkestan, spelled also as Turkistan, literally means "Land of the Turks".The term Turkestan is of Persian origin and has never been in use to denote a single nation. It was first used by Persian geographers to describe the place of Turkish peoples...
to work in the party apparatus. There they both became ill with severe cases of malaria. Returning to Moscow, the couple had two twin boys, but his wife died in childbirth.
Soviet Foreign Office
Barmine was later educated in Kiev and Moscow at the Frunze General Staff College and at the Oriental Languages Institute. As a member of the Soviet GRUGRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
, Barmine was assigned in 1935 to work abroad under diplomatic cover with the Soviet Foreign Office and Trade Ministry Commissariat under various diplomatic and trade representative titles. Late that same year, Barmine moved to Athens, Greece to take up an appointment as chargé d'affaires
Chargé d'affaires
In diplomacy, chargé d’affaires , often shortened to simply chargé, is the title of two classes of diplomatic agents who head a diplomatic mission, either on a temporary basis or when no more senior diplomat has been accredited.-Chargés d’affaires:Chargés d’affaires , who were...
to the Soviet Embassy in Athens, Greece.
According to Barmine, Stalin's Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
began with the assassination of the Leningrad party leader Sergei Kirov. Kirov was widely admired in the Communist party for his efficiency as administrator of the Leningrad District, and his willingness to stand up to Stalin (Kirov gave orders that Leningrad party dissidents were not to be persecuted by the police). As a result, he drew the unwelcome attention of Stalin. Viewing Kirov's growing popularity as a threat to his hold on power, Stalin ordered the Soviet Secret police, the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
, to arrange Kirov's assassination; the GPU used a fanatic with a history of mental illness to accomplish the deed, Leonid Nikolaev
Leonid Nikolaev
Leonid Nikolaev was the assassin of Sergei Kirov, the first secretary of the Leningrad branch of the Communist Party.-Early life:...
. On December 1, 1934, Nikolaev shot Kirov in the Smolny Institute in Leningrad. After his funeral, Stalin blamed Kirov's assassination on reactionary elements within the Communist party. Later, in an act of supreme irony, Stalin had the Stalinist Opposition and many other party officials executed on the grounds that they had plotted with the assassin to kill Kirov. This act began the series of prosecutions, assassinations, and disappearances of Soviet military and government officials at Stalin's direction, known as the Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
.
Barmine had been a protege, co-worker, subordinate, or confidant of many of the Soviet Union's leading generals, diplomats, and government officials, nearly all of whom were arrested, imprisoned, and shot during the Stalin's purges during the late 1930s. Later, Barmine served in the Foreign Office, and was posted to the Soviet legation in Athens, Greece. When Barmine's immediate superiors in the military and diplomatic corps began to disappear, or were announced to have been arrested and shot, Barmine began to fear that a similar fate was in store for himself. In July 1937, after discovering co-workers rifling his desk and searching his offices in the dead of night, he received a letter from his 14-year-old son Boris, who wrote his father that he, his brother, and Barmine's mother were going "far, far away to bathe in the sea." Boris also wrote:
- "Dear Papa, they read to us in school the sentence passed on the Trotskyist spies, TukhachevskyMikhail TukhachevskyMikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky was a Marshal of the Soviet Union, commander in chief of the Red Army , and one of the most prominent victims of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.-Early life:...
, YakirIona YakirIona Emmanuilovich Yakir was the Red Army commander and one of the world's major military reformers between World War I and World War II.-Early years:...
, Kork, UborevichIeronim UborevichIeronim Petrovich Uborevich was a Soviet military commander of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, and eventually attained the rank of Army Commander, 1st Rank, equivalent to General of the Army after old Imperial ranks were reintroduced in 1940....
, and Feldman... Wasn't it Feldman who used to live in our apartment house?."
That same month, Barmine received an insistent invitation to dine aboard a Soviet ship, the Rudzutak, that suddenly docked at Piraeus
Piraeus
Piraeus is a city in the region of Attica, Greece. Piraeus is located within the Athens Urban Area, 12 km southwest from its city center , and lies along the east coast of the Saronic Gulf....
(Athen's port), without prior notification to the Soviet legation. Barmine declined an invitation to go aboard, but agreed to dine with the captain at a local restaurant, where he was strongly urged to return home. Constantly followed by NKVD agents, Barmine decided to defect to the West. He wrote in One Who Survived that "if I should be imprisoned as the result of some vile, lying charge...[My family] would believe the official communiqué. Nobody would dare speak for me, and I would never be able to clear myself. I would lose them as sons forever."
Defection
Barmine fled Athens in 1937 to Paris. It was at this time that Soviet agents assassinated the former chief of the Soviet intelligence service in Western Europe, Ignace Reiss; It was later revealed that the Soviet NKVD under Nikolai YezhovNikolai Yezhov
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov or Ezhov was a senior figure in the NKVD under Joseph Stalin during the period of the Great Purge. His reign is sometimes known as the "Yezhovshchina" , "the Yezhov era", a term that began to be used during the de-Stalinization campaign of the 1950s...
spent 300,000 French francs to accomplish the wet business.
Barmine decided he had to take action. A book Barmine wrote during this period based on his experiences in the Soviet Union under Stalin's Terror, titled Memoirs of a Soviet Diplomat, was published in 1938. By making his revelations public, Barmine felt the book might help frustrate Stalin's immediate desire to silence him. Upon its release, the Soviet government made no comment on Barmine's revelations, though they had denounced earlier works by other Soviet émigré authors. After the assassinations and questionable accidental deaths of several exiled Soviet citizens in Western Europe, including Trotsky's own son, Lev Sedov, the couple left Europe for the United States in 1940. Barmine's aging mother and his two sons remained behind in the Soviet Union; unable to get them out of the country, he never saw them again.
Life in the United States
In New York City, Barmine applied for political asylum and citizenship as one of the earliest high-ranking Soviet government defectors to the United States. In the days before the formation of the U.S. Central Intelligence AgencyCentral Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
, Barmine does not appear to have been debriefed at all by the United States government regarding his extensive knowledge of Soviet leaders and policies. Barmine joined a U.S. Army anti-aircraft unit as a 42-year old private soldier in 1941. A year later, he obtained his U.S. citizenship. In 1943-44, Barmine worked for the U.S.Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
, the wartime agency responsible for external intelligence and sabotage against Axis countries.
In 1945, Barmine wrote a more complete autobiography, entitled One Who Survived. He said of writing it:
- "When I work on my book, I feel as though I were walking in a graveyard. All my friends and life associates have been shot. It seems to be some kind of a mistake that I am alive."
After a period of writing articles for various journals, Barmine joined the Voice of America
Voice of America
Voice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...
in 1948, serving for sixteen years as chief of its Russian branch. On 14 December 1948, after an interview with Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
agents, Barmine revealed that Soviet GRU
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
Director Janis Berzin
Janis Berzinš
Jānis Bērziņš also Ian Karlovich Berzin or Yan Karlovich Berzin , Latvian and Soviet communist military official and politician.-Early years:...
had informed him prior to his 1937 defection that American professor and former Office of War Information director Owen Lattimore
Owen Lattimore
Owen Lattimore was an American author, educator, and influential scholar of Central Asia, especially Mongolia. In the 1930s he was editor of Pacific Affairs, a journal published by the Institute of Pacific Relations, and then taught at Johns Hopkins University from 1938 to 1963...
was a Soviet agent. In 1952, Barmine testified under oath before a Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security (McCarran Committee) that he was told by Soviet GRU Director Berzin that Lattimore was "one of our men".
In his 1973 memoirs, Barmine related how he and fellow members of the Soviet GRU were surprised to learn of the burgeoning support for Soviet communism among intellectuals in the Western democracies after release of Soviet propaganda on the Five Year Plan, just when he and other commanders had begun to lose hope in the Bolshevist revolution. This revelation soon inspired a massive espionage and propaganda effort worldwide, with particular emphasis on nations with democratic governments.
From 1964 to 1972 Barmine served as senior adviser on Soviet affairs at the U.S. Information Agency. Barmine won three awards for outstanding public service while in the federal government.
In 1948, Barmine was married to Edith Kermit Roosevelt, granddaughter of President Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
; they were divorced in 1952, and the union produced one daughter, Margot Roosevelt
Margot Roosevelt
Margot Roosevelt is an American journalist. She worked for 13 years at The Washington Post, for 20 years at TIME, and was at the Los Angeles Times from 2007 to 2011. Her fields have included foreign affairs, US Congress, and the environment, including climate change and air pollution...
.
He died at age eighty eight on 25 December, 1987 in Rockville, Maryland
Rockville, Maryland
Rockville is the county seat of Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is a major incorporated city in the central part of Montgomery County and forms part of the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area. The 2010 U.S...
.