Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

THE THIRD STATE in which Soviet agent penetration was assisted by Communist participation in post-war coalition governments was Austria. Though placed under joint occupation until 1955 by the Soviet Union, United States, Britain and France (a cumbersome arrangement likened by Karl Renner, the first post-war chancellor, to “four elephants in a rowing boat”), Austria—unlike Germany—was allowed to govern itself. In Renner’s provisional government, formed in April 1945, the Communists were given three ministries, including the key post of Minister of the Interior taken by Franz Honner. In the November 1945 elections, however, the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ), which had expected to do as well as the French PCF, picked up a mere 5 percent of the vote and was given only the comparatively unimportant ministry of electrification in the new coalition. The KPÖ left government altogether two years later, and its two half-hearted attempts to stage a coup d ’état in 1947 and 1950 failed to gain serious Soviet support. 13

Franz Honner used his seven months in 1945 to pack the Austrian federal police force (Bundespolizei) with Communist Party members. Though many were purged or sidelined by Honner’s socialist successor, Oskar Helmer, 14Soviet penetration of the Austrian police, especially its security service (Staatspolizei or Stapo), continued until the 1980s. In an attempt to evade Helmer’s purge, Communists in the police force were instructed to disavow or conceal their Party membership. 15The files noted by Mitrokhin record the recruitment of a series of major KGB police agents: EDUARD in 1945, 16VENTSEYEV in 1946, 17PETER in 1952, 18two further recruits in 1955, ZAK in 1974 19and NADEZHDIN in 1978. 20There may well have been others; Mitrokhin’s list is probably not exhaustive. At least some of them took part in operations (one of them codenamed EDELWEISS) to remove and copy top secret documents held in the safe of the head of the Stapo. In 1973 Andropov personally authorized the payment to one of its Stapo agents of a reward of 30,000 Austrian schillings. 21

IN THREE OF the four countries of Scandinavia—Denmark, Norway and Finland—Communist ministers also served in post-war coalitions. By far the most influential of the Scandinavian Communist parties was the Finnish SKP. 22Alone among Germany’s eastern allies, Finland was not forced to become part of the Soviet Bloc. At the end of the Second World War, however, Stalin still kept his options open. In 1945, at Soviet insistence, the SKP was given several key positions within the Finnish government, secretly instructed via a “special channel” on their relations with “bourgeois parties,” and held in readiness for a possible coup d’état. That Finland was not in the end forced to become a people’s democracy was probably due chiefly to memories of the Winter War in 1939-40, when the greatly outnumbered Finns had inflicted heavy casualties on the Soviet invaders. Stalin was well aware that the price of Finnish incorporation in the Soviet Bloc might be another blood bath. 23Finland was, however, deprived of 12 percent of its territory, forced to pay enormous reparations (five times those of Italy) and required to sign a non-aggression pact in 1948.

In Finland, as in Austria, the Communists succeeded in 1945 in claiming the key post of minister of the interior. But whereas the Austrian Communist Franz Honner left office after only seven months, his Finnish counterpart, Yrjî Leino, continued in power for three years. Leino’s aim, like Honner’s, was “to deprive the bourgeoisie of one of its most important weapons in supporting reactionary policies, the police force.” By the end of 1945 the security police had been purged and reconstituted as a new force, usually known as Valpo. As Leino later acknowledged, “the new recruits were naturally, as far as possible, Communists.” 24The rapidity of the purges and the inexperience of the new recruits, however, led to a good deal of confusion. According to Leino, “Valpo in SKP hands never became the kind of weapon that had been hoped for… They did not have the skill to use it to advantage in the right way.” Leino himself found it increasingly difficult to cope. By 1947 he was drinking heavily and sometimes absent from his office for days on end. At the end of the year he was summoned to Moscow, given a severe dressing down by two senior members of the Politburo, instructed to resign from the Finnish government and told to go for a health cure in the Soviet Union. Though Leino refused to tender his resignation, he was dismissed by President Paasikivi in April 1948 on the grounds that he no longer enjoyed the confidence of Parliament. His dismissal brought to an end Communist participation in the Finnish government. 25Leino’s memoirs, completed ten years later, caused such embarrassment in Moscow that, at the insistence of the Soviet ambassador in Helsinki, the whole edition was destroyed on the eve of publication, leaving only a few copies in private circulation. 26

THE REMOVAL FROM power by 1948 of all those Western Communist parties which had taken part in post-war coalitions reduced, but did not end, their ability to assist Soviet intelligence penetration of government bureaucracies. By far the biggest disappointment experienced by the Centre at the beginning of the Cold War in its relations with fraternal parties in the West, however, was the dramatic decline in the assistance offered by the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). From the mid-1930s to the onset of the Cold War, Communism had been a major force in the American labor movement, a significant influence on the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and a rite of passage for several hundred thousand young radicals. During the Second World War the Party had played an important part in assisting Soviet penetration of the Roosevelt administration, the MANHATTAN project and the intelligence community. 27The onset of the Cold War, however, dealt the CPUSA a blow from which it never fully recovered.

In 1949 Gene Dennis, the general secretary, and ten other Party leaders were put on trial for advocating the forcible overthrow of the federal government. Dennis and nine of the defendants were sentenced to five years in jail, the eleventh was jailed for three years and all the defense attorneys were found in contempt of court. After the Supreme Court upheld the sentences in 1951, more than a hundred other leading Communists were convicted on similar charges. For most of the 1950s the Party was forced into a largely underground existence. It was deeply ironic that when McCarthyism was at its height the CPUSA was among those Western parties which were least able to give assistance to Soviet espionage. Not till the Supreme Court backed away from its earlier decision in 1957 was the CPUSA able to regroup. By the time the Party had drawn up a new membership list in 1958, there were only 3,000 open members and a much smaller number of undeclared members left. 28

What the CPUSA might have achieved during the 1950s had it been less persecuted was well illustrated by the neighboring Canadian Party, which in 1951-3 assisted the Ottawa residency in the recruitment of Hugh Hambleton, probably the most important Canadian agent of the Cold War, and ten other agents. 29Like most other Western parties, the Canadian Communist Party also provided help in documenting illegals—among them Konon Trofimovich Molody (codenamed BEN), the most celebrated of the Cold War illegal residents in Britain. 30In 1957, with the help of the Canadian Communist Party, the Ottawa residency succeeded in obtaining a new passport for the illegal resident in the United States, “Willie” Fisher (better known as “Rudolf Abel”) in the name of Robert Callan, born on March 10, 1903 in Fort William, Ontario. “Abel,” however, was arrested before he could adopt his new identity. The Ottawa residency was subsequently fearful that the clerk who issued the passport might recognize the photograph of “Abel” published in the press after his arrest in June 1957 as that of “Robert Callan.” Unsurprisingly, the clerk, who doubtless saw—and paid little attention to—many photographs a day, seems not to have noticed. 31