Robert Service - Spies and Commissars

Other Western prisoners in Moscow did not receive the courtesies accorded to Lockhart. And in Petrograd the treatment was still rougher. Captain Francis Cromie, left behind to protect the British embassy residence in Petrograd, barred the way to intruders on 31 August. He killed two of them before himself falling victim to the third. 31The other British and French officials in the city were dragged off to the Peter-Paul Fortress. The cells were already crowded and the sanitary arrangements were abysmal. Rats scurried around the floors; the food was no better than when the Romanian ambassador had been held there. The prisoners suffered from diarrhoea and lack of medicines. The Petrograd Cheka expressed indifference to Allied complaints, but governments of neutral countries in the Great War were horrified by the murder of Russian citizens and soon indicated that they would expel all known Bolsheviks if the executions were not immediately halted. 32The Swiss minister M. Odier became dean of the diplomatic corps after the Allied ambassadors’ departure for Vologda. While asserting that he did not want to interfere in Russian politics, he protested to Zinoviev and Chicherin against the Red terror in Moscow and Petrograd; and he believed that only his vigorous intervention prevented Lockhart from being executed on 4 September. 33

The German government was unconcerned about these events. When its Ukrainian puppet administration expressed outrage about the killings, Hintze blandly replied that he did not regard the repressive Soviet measures as terror and anyway did not wish to poke his nose into Russia’s internal affairs: 34the reality was that it suited the Germans that the Soviet leadership were at last turning on Allied officials.

The British government had at first reacted merely by increasing the surveillance over Litvinov in London. When he arrived at the tube station at Charing Cross, respectful policemen would ask: ‘Going home, sir? Goodnight.’ Then they queued for tickets and followed him home to Hampstead. 35A few days later he was arrested and taken off to Brixton prison. The Defence of the Realm Act authorized the arrest without warrant of any person ‘whose behaviour is of such a nature as to give reasonable grounds for suspecting that he has acted, or is acting, or is about to act in a manner prejudicial to the public safety or the defence of the realm’. Seized at the same time were his secretary Mr Wintin and his military adviser Captain Oshmyanski; Nikolai Klyshko, a party comrade and a draughtsman at Vickers Ltd’s engineering business in Croydon, was also imprisoned. 36They were effectively held as hostages to deter maltreatment of Lockhart. No decision was made about what to do if Lockhart was shot. Although Litvinov did not appear very disturbed, it was a truly shocking situation. European politics for centuries had regarded hostage-taking as behaviour only savages indulged in. The British in autumn 1918 felt they had no alternative if they were to keep their officials safe. Taking a diplomat captive was bad enough. But by implicitly threatening to retaliate physically against Litvinov if anything happened to Lockhart and his colleagues, Britain shattered the international consensus.

Lloyd George’s tactic had a rapid impact as Chicherin announced a willingness to exchange Litvinov and others for the arrested Britons. 37Karakhan and Peters made a last-minute attempt to secure Lockhart for the Soviet cause and asked him to consider staying on in Soviet Russia. Sadoul and Marchand were staying, and it would be a great success for Sovnarkom if an official of the British Foreign Office defected. They played on Lockhart’s love affair with Moura. He saw what they were up to, as he was to confide to his notebooks over two decades later: ‘Tempted. But this time heard the referee’s whistle.’ 38

Lockhart was released from the Kremlin on 1 October. Karakhan and Peters amicably bade him goodbye, and Peters offered to replace the broken valuables in Lockhart’s apartment. 39Lockhart rejected the promise of monetary compensation. He had hardened his heart. Bolshevik Russia was no longer safe for him and he made arrangements to leave — without Moura. First, though, he had to secure the freedom of Major Hicks and get permission for him to marry ‘the Russian lady of his heart’. 40Lockhart’s right-hand man had taken refuge in the American consulate and wanted to take Lyubov Malinina out of Russia with him. This could happen only if they were man and wife. Peters agreed, being ‘highly entertained by the request’; 41he then made a request of his own: ‘I have a favour to ask of you. When you reach London, will you give this letter to my English wife?’ He handed over snapshots to help to identify her before second thoughts occurred to him: ‘No, I shan’t trouble you. As soon as you’re out of here you’ll blaspheme and curse me as your worst enemy.’ Lockhart told him not to be a fool and took the letter, which he duly delivered to its addressee. 42

Negotiations proceeded for the safe exit of all Western official personnel from Moscow. It was a tense situation. By then the British and French diplomats had taken refuge in the Norwegian legation. But even though the Bolsheviks were unlikely to attack the building, they held it under siege. The Allied diplomats stiffened their resolve: when water supplies were cut off, a Frenchman adroitly caught the rainwater, which enabled everyone to have a drink. 43

Eventually an agreement was reached with the assistance of Swiss diplomats and the Swedish government; 44and Arthur Ransome explained that it would be easier to promote the Soviet cause among British workers if Lenin showed mercy. 45Lockhart and his party left the Russian capital by train in the first week of October; Litvinov had already been released from prison and was living at home with his wife and children. A policeman in ‘a long rubber raincoat’ was posted at their garden gate — he touched his peaked hat on sight of Litvinov. 46As Litvinov finalized his arrangements to return to Russia, he bluntly told Ivy: ‘You would just be a burden to me. I would have to waste days trying to get you settled.’ Ivy felt it hard to disagree even though her uncle Sidney opined: ‘I always said that fellow would abandon her.’ 47Having given birth to their second child just months earlier, she was in no physical condition to travel, and Maxim and Ivy agreed that Russia in the middle of civil war and being subjected to foreign military intervention was not an appropriate place for a young family.

The bartering of Lockhart for Litvinov prefigured situations in the Cold War when captured Soviet intelligence agents walked over the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin as their Western counterparts proceeded simultaneously from the other side. The Times in London reported that Litvinov and about thirty of his compatriots departed for Scandinavia on 25 September 1918. They were not to be allowed to reach Russia until Lockhart and the other Allied officials crossed the Russian frontier. 48

With Major Hicks and his new wife in the British party at the Finland Station in Petrograd was George Hill, who appeared in uniform for the first time in months; he needed to leave the country in order to arrange a fresh source of funds for his work. 49Lockhart stayed impassive as he bade goodbye to Moura, perhaps so as to avoid transgressing public politesse, and she left the platform an hour before departure. 50When the full group of thirty-one British and twenty-five French nationals crossed into Finland, preparations were made to convey Litvinov and his friends up to the Swedish–Finnish frontier. The British and French arrived in groups. When everyone was assembled the Allied representatives walked over the bridge across the river from Tornio to Haparanda where they boarded a train to Stockholm, arriving there on 9 October. 51Others remained under guard in Russia until Chicherin heard confirmation that Litvinov had reached neutral Norway, but soon the full exchange of officials was completed.