Walter Krivitsky
Encyclopedia
Walter Germanovich Krivitsky (Ва́льтер Ге́рманович Криви́цкий; June 28, 1899–February 10, 1941) was a Soviet intelligence officer who revealed plans of signing Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact before defecting weeks before the outbreak of World War II.
, then Galicia
, Austria-Hungary
), he adopted the name "Krivitsky" (a name based on the Slavic root for "crooked, twisted") as a revolutionary nom de guerre when he entered the Bolshevik intelligence
around 1917.
He operated as an "illegal" (agent with false name and papers) in Germany
, Austria
, Italy
and Hungary
, and rose to the rank of control officer. He is credited with stealing plans for submarines and planes, intercepting Nazi
-Japanese correspondence, and recruiting many agents, including Madame Lupescu and Noel Field
.
In May 1937, after the GRU
was taken over by the civil State Security, the NKVD
(later KGB
), Krivitsky was sent to The Hague
to operate as the rezident, or regional control officer, operating under cover of an antiquarian
. It appears that he coordinated intelligence operations throughout Western Europe.
was undergoing a purge in Moscow
, which Krivitsky and close friend, Ignace Poretsky
(also known as Ignace Reiss), both abroad, found deeply disturbing. Poretsky wanted to defect, but Krivitsky repeatedly held back.
Finally Poretsky did defect, which he announced in a defiant letter to Moscow. Poretsky's assassination in Switzerland in September 1937 prompted Krivitsky to defect the following month.
In Paris
, Krivitsky began to write articles and made contact with Lev Sedov (Trotsky's son) and the Trotskyists. There he also met undercover Soviet spy Mark Zborowski
, known as "Etienne," whom Sedov sent to protect him. Sedov died mysteriously in February 1938, but Krivitsky eluded attempts to kill or kidnap him while in France.
At the end of 1938, anticipating the Nazi conquest of Europe, Krivitsky sailed from France to the United States
. With the help of journalist Isaac Don Levine
and literary agent Paul Wohl
, he produced an inside account of Stalin's underhanded methods called In Stalin's Secret Service (also published as I Was Stalin's Agent), published in 1939 after appearing first as a series in the Saturday Evening Post. (Note: the title appeared as a phrase in an article written by Reiss' wife on the first anniversary of her husband's assassination: "Reiss... had been in Stalin’s secret service for many years and knew what fate to expect.") The book received a tepid review by the very influential New York Times.
Violently attacked by the Left in America, Krivitsky was vindicated when a Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact
(which he predicted) was signed in August 1939.
Caught between dedication to socialist
ideals and detest of Stalin's methods, Krivitsky believed that it was his duty to inform. This decision caused him much mental anguish, as he impressed on American defector Whittaker Chambers
. Krivitsky told Chambers, "In our time, informing is a duty" (recounted in Chambers in his autobiography, Witness).
Krivitsky testified before the Dies Committee (later to become the House Un-American Activities Committee
) in October 1939, and sailed as "Walter Thomas" to London
in January 1940 to reveal secrets to British Military Intelligence, MI5
. It is a matter of controversy whether he gave MI5 clues to the identity of Soviet agents Donald Maclean
and Kim Philby
. There is no doubt, however, that the NKVD learned of his testimony and initiated operations to silence him.
He soon returned to North America, landing in Canada. Always in trouble with the US Immigration and Naturalization Service
, Krivitsky was not able to return to the United States until November 1940.
Krivitsky retained Louis Waldman
to represent him on legal matters. (Waldman was a long-time friend of Isaac Don Levine.)
According to most sources, (including Krivitsky himself) he was murdered by Soviet intelligence, but the official investigation, unaware of the NKVD manhunt, concluded that Krivitsky committed suicide.
Chambers recounted the death in his memoirs:
Both wife and son lived in poverty for the rest of their lives. Son Alek died of a brain tumor in his early 30s, after serving in the US Navy and studying at Columbia University. Wife Tonia (who changed her surname legally to "Thomas") continued to live and work in New York City until retiring to Ossining
, where she died aged 94 in 1996.
Early life
Born to Jewish parents as Samuel Ginsberg in Podwołoczyska (PidvolochyskTernopil Oblast
Ternopil Oblast is an oblast' of Ukraine. Its administrative center is Ternopil, through which flows the Seret River, a tributary of the Dnister.-Geography:...
, then Galicia
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria was a crownland of the Habsburg Monarchy, the Austrian Empire, and Austria–Hungary from 1772 to 1918 .This historical region in eastern Central Europe is currently divided between Poland and Ukraine...
, Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
), he adopted the name "Krivitsky" (a name based on the Slavic root for "crooked, twisted") as a revolutionary nom de guerre when he entered the Bolshevik intelligence
Cheka
Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...
around 1917.
He operated as an "illegal" (agent with false name and papers) in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, and rose to the rank of control officer. He is credited with stealing plans for submarines and planes, intercepting Nazi
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
-Japanese correspondence, and recruiting many agents, including Madame Lupescu and Noel Field
Noel Field
Noel Field , was an American citizen. While employed at the United States Department of State in the 1930s, he was a Soviet spy...
.
In May 1937, after the 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...
was taken over by the civil State Security, 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....
(later KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
), Krivitsky was sent to The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
to operate as the rezident, or regional control officer, operating under cover of an antiquarian
Antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...
. It appears that he coordinated intelligence operations throughout Western Europe.
Defection
At that time the General Staff of the Red ArmyRed 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...
was undergoing a purge in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, which Krivitsky and close friend, Ignace Poretsky
Ignace Poretsky
Ignace Reiss, AKA "Ignace Poretsky," "Ignatz Reiss," "Ludwig," "Ludwik", "Hans Eberhardt," "Steff Brandt," and Nathan Poreckij was one of the "Great Illegals" or Soviet spies who worked in third party countries where they weren't nationals in the late 1920s and 1930s...
(also known as Ignace Reiss), both abroad, found deeply disturbing. Poretsky wanted to defect, but Krivitsky repeatedly held back.
Finally Poretsky did defect, which he announced in a defiant letter to Moscow. Poretsky's assassination in Switzerland in September 1937 prompted Krivitsky to defect the following month.
In Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Krivitsky began to write articles and made contact with Lev Sedov (Trotsky's son) and the Trotskyists. There he also met undercover Soviet spy Mark Zborowski
Mark Zborowski
Mark Zborowski was an anthropologist and an NKVD agent...
, known as "Etienne," whom Sedov sent to protect him. Sedov died mysteriously in February 1938, but Krivitsky eluded attempts to kill or kidnap him while in France.
At the end of 1938, anticipating the Nazi conquest of Europe, Krivitsky sailed from France to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. With the help of journalist Isaac Don Levine
Isaac Don Levine
Isaac Don Levine was a Russian-born American journalist and writer.-Biography:Born in Mozyr, Russia, Levine came to the United States in 1911. He finished high school in Missouri, and found work with The Kansas City Star and later The New York Herald Tribune, for which he covered the revolution of...
and literary agent Paul Wohl
Paul Wohl
-Life:Born in Berlin, Wohl came to the United States as a correspondent for Czechoslovak newspapers. He worked for the Christian Science Monitor from 1941 until 1979, when he retired. He also contributed to the New York Herald Tribune....
, he produced an inside account of Stalin's underhanded methods called In Stalin's Secret Service (also published as I Was Stalin's Agent), published in 1939 after appearing first as a series in the Saturday Evening Post. (Note: the title appeared as a phrase in an article written by Reiss' wife on the first anniversary of her husband's assassination: "Reiss... had been in Stalin’s secret service for many years and knew what fate to expect.") The book received a tepid review by the very influential New York Times.
Violently attacked by the Left in America, Krivitsky was vindicated when a Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...
(which he predicted) was signed in August 1939.
Caught between dedication to socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
ideals and detest of Stalin's methods, Krivitsky believed that it was his duty to inform. This decision caused him much mental anguish, as he impressed on American defector Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers , was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury and espionage trial...
. Krivitsky told Chambers, "In our time, informing is a duty" (recounted in Chambers in his autobiography, Witness).
Krivitsky testified before the Dies Committee (later to become the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
) in October 1939, and sailed as "Walter Thomas" to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in January 1940 to reveal secrets to British Military Intelligence, MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
. It is a matter of controversy whether he gave MI5 clues to the identity of Soviet agents Donald Maclean
Donald Duart Maclean
Donald Duart Maclean was a British diplomat and member of the Cambridge Five who were members of MI5, MI6 or the diplomatic service who acted as spies for the Soviet Union in the Second World War and beyond. He was recruited as a "straight penetration agent" while an undergraduate at Cambridge by...
and Kim Philby
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
. There is no doubt, however, that the NKVD learned of his testimony and initiated operations to silence him.
He soon returned to North America, landing in Canada. Always in trouble with the US Immigration and Naturalization Service
Immigration and Naturalization Service
The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service , now referred to as Legacy INS, ceased to exist under that name on March 1, 2003, when most of its functions were transferred from the Department of Justice to three new components within the newly created Department of Homeland Security, as...
, Krivitsky was not able to return to the United States until November 1940.
Krivitsky retained Louis Waldman
Louis Waldman
Louis Waldman was a leading figure in the Socialist Party of America from the late 1910s and through the middle 1930s, a founding member of the Social Democratic Federation, and a prominent New York labor lawyer.-Early years:...
to represent him on legal matters. (Waldman was a long-time friend of Isaac Don Levine.)
Death
The August 1940 assassination of Trotsky in Mexico convinced him that he was now at the top of the NKVD hit list. His last two months in New York were filled with plans to settle in Virginia and to write, but also with doubts and dread. On February 10, 1941, at 9:30a.m. he was found dead in the Bellevue Hotel (now The George) in Washington D.C. by a chambermaid, with three suicide notes by the bed. His body was lying in a pool of blood, caused by a single bullet wound to the right temple from a .38-caliber revolver found grasped in Krivitsky's right hand. A June 10, 1941, report indicates he had been dead for approximately 6 hours.
According to most sources, (including Krivitsky himself) he was murdered by Soviet intelligence, but the official investigation, unaware of the NKVD manhunt, concluded that Krivitsky committed suicide.
Chambers recounted the death in his memoirs:
One night one of my close friends burst into my office at Time. He was holding a yellow tear-off that had just come over the teletype.
"They have murdered the General," he said . "Krivitsky has been killed."
Krivitsky's body had been found in a room in a small Washington hotel a few blocks from the Capitol . He had a room permanently reserved at a large downtown hotel where he had always stayed when he was in Washington. He had never stayed at the small hotel before. Why had he gone there?
He had been shot through the head and there was evidence that he had shot himself. At whose command? He had left a letter in which he gave his wife and children the unlikely advice that the Soviet Government and people were their best friends. Previously, he had warned them that, if he were found dead, never under any circumstances to believe that he had committed suicide. Who had forced my friend to write the letter? I remembered the saying: "Any fool can commit a murder, but it takes an artist to commit a good natural death."...
Krivitsky also told me something else that night. A few days before, he had taken off the revolver that he usually carried and placed it in a bureau drawer. His seven-year-old son watched him.
"Why do you put away the revolver?" he asked. "In America," said Krivitsky, "nobody carries a revolver." "Papa," said the child, "carry the revolver."
Survivors
At first news of his death, Whittaker Chambers found Krivitsky's wife Antonina ("Tonia" according to Kern, "Tonya" according to Chambers) and son Alek in New York City. He boarded them on a train to Florida, where they stayed with Chambers's family (who had already fled New Smyrna). Both families hid there several months, fearing further Soviet reprisals. The families then returned to Chambers's farm in Westminster, Maryland. Within a short time, however, Tonia and Alek returned to New York.Both wife and son lived in poverty for the rest of their lives. Son Alek died of a brain tumor in his early 30s, after serving in the US Navy and studying at Columbia University. Wife Tonia (who changed her surname legally to "Thomas") continued to live and work in New York City until retiring to Ossining
Ossining (village), New York
Ossining is a village in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 25,060 at the 2010 census. As a village, it is located in the Town of Ossining.-Geography:Ossining borders the eastern shores of the widest part of the Hudson River....
, where she died aged 94 in 1996.
See also
- List of Eastern Bloc defectors
- List of KGB defectors
- Ignace Reiss (Ignace PoretskyIgnace PoretskyIgnace Reiss, AKA "Ignace Poretsky," "Ignatz Reiss," "Ludwig," "Ludwik", "Hans Eberhardt," "Steff Brandt," and Nathan Poreckij was one of the "Great Illegals" or Soviet spies who worked in third party countries where they weren't nationals in the late 1920s and 1930s...
) - Whittaker ChambersWhittaker ChambersWhittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers , was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury and espionage trial...
- Louis WaldmanLouis WaldmanLouis Waldman was a leading figure in the Socialist Party of America from the late 1910s and through the middle 1930s, a founding member of the Social Democratic Federation, and a prominent New York labor lawyer.-Early years:...