THE VENONA PROJECT (II)
Today I will discuss another set of stories from the book Venona; Decoding Soviet
Espionage in America, which has been published recently by Yale University Press. Although
the book is bound to raise much anger in the reader, I recommend it highly to those people
uninitiated in the modus operandi of communist regimes.
I was particularly fascinated by the way Stalin dealt with Trotsky and his followers.
Leon Trotsky was the byname of Lev Davidovich Bronstein, one of Lenin’s main assistants and
his expected successor. Soon after Lenin’s death, Stalin was able to outmaneuver Trotsky and the
latter had to go into exile; there, Trotsky tried to develop a new organization that would support a
world-wide communist revolution and that would condemn Stalin.
The authors of the book point out that a long-standing Soviet tactic was to infiltrate and
disrupt dissident organizations abroad. As Trotsky tried to establish his network of followers in
Turkey, where he first went into exile, KGB (the main Soviet intelligence agency) members
already encircled him. Two of them were a pair of communist brothers known later in America
as Jack and Robert Soble. Both were born in Lithuania to a wealthy Jewish family, yet served
the Soviets throughout their lifetimes.
Jack was able to visit Trotsky in various European cities, and both he and his brother
subsequently became well known figures among German Trotskyists; however, Trotsky became
suspicious of them and ousted them from his group in 1932. Beria, the head of the KGB,
personally allowed the entire Soble family to leave Russia in 1940, and the brothers continued
their espionage activities in the US, until 1961, when they were both convicted of espionage.
Another major Soviet agent was Mark Zborowski, who had been born in Russia but had
obtained a degree in anthropology from the Sorborne in France. He immigrated to the US in
1941and soon returned to work for the KGB, also spying on the Trotskyists. After meeting the
well known anthropologist Ruth Benedict, he “became a consultant at Columbia University’s
Institute on Contemporary Culture and obtained a government grant, which led to the publication
in 1952 of Life Is with People, a groundbreaking study of the Jewish shtetls of Eastern Europe.”
Incredibly, he became study director of the American Jewish Committee, and was highly
regarded in the academic world.
However, a defecting Soviet spy ultimately exposed Zborowski in 1954, and the
deciphered Venona messages demonstrated that his statements to a Senate committee were false.
He served almost four years in jail for perjury.
Stalin had become so angry with Trotsky that he decided to eliminate him. In one of
Stalin’s plans, the Mexican painter David Siqueiros gathered a group of twenty Spanish and
Mexican communists who were veterans of the Spanish Civil War and launched an armed raid
on Trotsky’s Mexican villa, in May of 1940. Trotsky was not murdered, but an American
volunteer and bodyguard was killed. Siqueiros, after his arrest and posting of bail, “was spirited
out of the country with the assistance of Pablo Neruda, a Communist and future Nobel Prize
laureate in literature, then a Chilean diplomat in Mexico.”
An alternative plan involved Ramón Mercader, son of a wealthy Spanish communist
named Caridad Mercader, who was to commit the murder. Ruby Weil, a member of he US
communist party, developed a strong friendship with Sylvia Ageloff, a follower of Trotsky. In
1938 Ruby introduced her to a man named “Jacques Mornard” (Mercader), and Mornard pursued
her until they became lovers.
Later, Ageloff traveled to Mexico to do volunteer work for Trotsky. “Mornard then used
Ageloff’s position in the Trotsky household to gain entrance to the residence and became
acquainted with Trotsky’s guards and aids.
Presenting himself as interested in Trotsky’s
ideas… he arranged a private meeting in August of 1940 with Trotsky himself to discuss a
philosophical manuscript he had prepared. Once alone with Trotsky, Mornard used a small ax
to smash in Trotsky’s skull.”
It became known through Venona that Mornard (Mercader) was a Soviet agent. The
Soviets tried various plans to have him escape Mexican jail, after Mercader was convicted for his
crime, but it is clear that the US was able to prevent such escapes by informing the Mexican
authorities of the various plans. Mercader was finally released in 1960, and retired to the Soviet
Union on a KGB pension.
These stories make it painfully clear that opposition groups to communist regimes have
had good reasons to fear both infiltrators and murderers from various communist tyrants in
power. One day, I am sure, another “Venona Project” will let us know who the spies were.