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HIDDEN AGENDAS: SPIES, LIES ANDINTRIGUE SURROUNDING TROTSKY’SAMERICAN VISIT OF JANUARY–APRIL1917Richard B. SpenceVersion of record first published: 03 Jun 2008.

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ISSN 0954-6545 print/ISSN 1743-7873 online/08/010033-23© 2008 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/09546540802085511

Revolutionary Russia, Vol 21, No. 1, June 2008, pp. 33–55

Richard B. Spence

HIDDEN AGENDAS: SPIES, LIES

AND INTRIGUE SURROUNDING

TROTSKY’S AMERICAN VISIT OF

JANUARY–APRIL 1917Taylor and FrancisFRVR_A_308717.sgm10.1080/09546540802085511Revolutionary Russia0954-6545 (print)/1743-7873 (online)Original Article2008Taylor & Francis211000000June 2008RichardSpencerspence@uidaho.edu

Trotsky’s short stay in the USA in early 1917, and his subsequent detention in Canada, hasspawned many stories and left lingering questions. This article is basically a sequel to theauthor’s ‘Interrupted Journey: British Intelligence and the Arrest of Leon Trotskii, April1917’, which appeared in this journal in 2000.1 What follows substantially expands thescope of the earlier article and presents much new information drawn from recent releases byMI5, as well as new American, French and Russian sources. It shows that Trotsky wassurrounded by a web of intrigue and agents of various stripes throughout, and even before,his American stay. He became a pawn, knowingly or not, in assorted plots. Above all, thearticle strengthens the conclusion that Trotsky was the target of a scheme by elements of theBritish intelligence services to secure his cooperation in revolutionary Russia.

In early May 1917, Leon Trotsky landed in Christiania (now Oslo), Norway. He had leftNew York at the end of March bound for Russia. However, his progress had beendelayed for a month by British authorities who took him and several companions off theSS Kristianiafjord in Halifax, Nova Scotia and put them in an internment camp. They didso in response to charges from other British officials that Trotsky had received moneyfrom German sources and was returning to overthrow the new regime in Russia. Giventhis delay, Trotsky was anxious to let persons in Petrograd know that he was almostthere. One of these was not a revolutionary comrade but a businessman and privatebanker, Abram L´vovich Zhivotovskii.2 Why Trotsky contacted this man and the natureof their connection is but one of the mysteries explored in this article.

Trotsky’s later reminiscences about his brief American stay were less than forth-coming and in some cases plainly misleading. The following will show that during thisperiod Trotsky was the recipient of mysterious financial assistance and was a person ofkeen interest to German, Russian and British agents. At the very least, there was moreto his brief stay in the United States than has been recognized heretofore.

In my original article, I mostly focused on the reasons behind Trotsky’s ‘intern-ment’ and his subsequent release. A key question was why the local British intelligencechief, Sir William Wiseman, gave him a green light to leave New York in the first place.My conclusion was that while there was no clear evidence that Trotsky had receivedmoney from German sources, he may have been caught up in a gambit by Wisemanto use him for British purposes. That latter conclusion remains the same, but newly

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available materials provide corroborating details and raise additional questions. Thesenew sources include Trotsky’s declassified MI5 dossier, recently discovered Frenchintelligence documents and ongoing investigations in Russia. What follows will presentnew facts about the persons with whom Trotsky came in contact during this period andwill expose a web of connections and hidden intrigues among those persons. Amongthose involved were the revolutionary arch-conspirator Alexander Helphand-Parvus,Madrid-based émigré Ernst Bark, American socialist Julius Hammer, internationalconfidence-trickster Sidney Reilly and even the British occultist Aleister Crowley.Some of their connections are revealing, others, simply bewildering. In the end, thearticle may raise as many questions as it answers, but it will shed new light on a brief,but not insignificant, episode in Trotsky’s career.

***

Trotsky’s journey to America really begins with his deportation from France to Spain inSeptember 1916. He had come under French suspicion as early as July 1915, when theSûreté pegged him as a ‘Russian journalist of revolutionary stripe and socialistic tenden-cies who has association with suspect persons’.3 That information soon found its wayinto British intelligence files. In Paris, Trotsky edited a radical, Russian-language news-paper, Nashe slovo (subsequently Nachalo). The French authorities regarded the publica-tion as ‘obviously Germanophile’ and its revolutionary, defeatist message became moreworrisome once Russian troops arrived on the Western front in 1916.4 Trotsky attrib-uted his resulting troubles to a conspiracy hatched in the Russian Embassy in Paris whichenlisted as its tools French President Aristide Briand and his socialist Minister of theInterior Louis-Jean Malvy.5 It was Malvy who, on 14 September 1916, signed the orderfor Trotsky’s expulsion to Spain as an ‘undesirable’. However, Briand promptlygranted Trotsky a month’s grace, subsequently extended by another fortnight, duringwhich period Trotsky frantically attempted to secure a visa for Switzerland. That, heclaimed, was blocked by more conspiratorial machinations. Likewise, the British cate-gorically refused to grant him passage to the Netherlands or Scandinavia.6 This lack ofco-operation stands in stark contrast to the attitude of British officials in New York afew months later.

On 30 October 1916, two plainclothes policemen escorted Trotsky across theSpanish frontier at Irun. Temporarily left behind in France were his spouse, NataliaSedova, and their two young sons, Leon (Lev) and Sergei. Trotsky was convinced thatMalvy et al. pushed him into Spain in the hope that Madrid’s conservative authoritieswould ship him off to South America, where he would cease to be any bother to theAllied war effort. Trotsky initially expected that he would not be allowed to sail to NewYork, where, as he put it, ‘I can do harm to the Ally [sic] propaganda’.7 After some10 days in Spain, Madrid police picked up Trotsky and jailed him as a ‘dangerous terror-ist agitator’.8 Behind this too, Trotsky saw the long arm of his tormentors. However,he spent only three and a half days in a rather humane lock-up where one could pay forbetter accommodations and liberties. Moreover, if Trotsky had enemies, he also hadfriends, whether he realized it or not. A mysterious benefactor arranged Trotsky’srelease from the Madrid jail and his transfer, under police supervision, to the southernport of Cadiz. There he waited for another month and a half. On 24 November, Trotskywrote a long and revealing letter to his comrade Moisei Uritskii in Copenhagen.9

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‘At Cadiz’, wrote Trotsky, ‘they wanted to put me straight on a steamer bound forHavana, of course in steerage, with a wolf’s passport [that is, one bearing a ‘black mark’against the holder] handed to the captain’. Trotsky protested to anyone who would listen‘and then there came from Madrid permission for me to be left at Cadiz until the firststeamer sailed for New York’. At the moment, he wrote to Uritskii, he was waiting fora New York bound ship scheduled to leave Cadiz on 30 November. For reasons unex-plained, that did not come to pass and he remained in Cadiz for another month. In themeantime, Trotsky claims that he persisted in efforts to secure passage to Switzerland,again without success. However, the simple fact was that Trotsky lacked the personalfinancial means to travel anywhere. He confessed to Uritskii that when he arrived inCadiz ‘I had only about 40 francs left’.10 In Copenhagen Uritskii was closely associatedwith another revolutionary plotter, Alexander Israel Helphand-Parvus. He assistedParvus by managing a clandestine ‘courier service’.11 That, of course, was an excellentmeans to discreetly transfer messages and money to Spain.

Trotsky and Parvus had a relationship that dated back to 1904. In fact, for severalyears they were the closest of comrades and ‘intellectual partners’.12 Ideologicaldifferences eventually intruded, and in 1915 Trotsky published an ‘Epitaph’ in Nasheslovo in which he proclaimed Parvus politically dead.13 The reason for this denuncia-tion was Parvus’s blatant pro-Germanism. Simply put, Parvus argued that in thecurrent war the best interests of international Socialism would be served by the victoryof the nation with the most advanced proletariat; and that, to his mind, wasGermany.14 He put himself at the disposal of Berlin and persuaded the Kaiser’s men togive him millions of marks to mount a subversive offensive against Russia. Howsuccessful he was in this endeavor is a matter of debate, but there is no doubt that hegave it his best effort. Yet, Trotsky preserved a certain affection for his old friend andit is fair to ask whether his private feelings were the same as his public ones. DidTrotsky’s denunciation, which stopped short of calling Parvus a German agent, mask asecret, ongoing collaboration? Also, even if Trotsky was through with Parvus, it didnot necessarily follow that Parvus was through with him. Despite Trotsky’s and Nasheslovo’s outwardly hostile attitude, Parvus channeled German funds to the paper to abetits defeatist work.15

An important detail about the Trotsky–Uritskii letter is that it somehow ended upin the hands of Britain’s MI5. It would seem that British intelligence had its eyes onTrotsky. In that regard, it is worth noting that British spying in Spain was underthe control of the Admiralty’s Naval Intelligence Division (NID), headed by AdmiralWilliam Reginald ‘Blinker’ Hall. Hall and NID will pop up again later in the story.

Towards the end of December, Trotsky suddenly learned that he was booked to sailfor America, not from Cadiz, but from distant Barcelona. There he was re-united withNatalia and his sons, and the happy family even had time to go sightseeing before depart-ing. The vessel that Trotsky and family boarded in Barcelona was the SS Montserrat.Trotsky remembered that they boarded on Christmas Day, which might have been so,but the ship did not sail until 28 December. He described the Montserrat as ‘an oldtub little suited for ocean voyages’.16 The liner had certainly seen better days and, at amere 4,000 tons, it must have provided a lively ride in the rough weather ahead. Never-theless, the ship had successfully navigated the Atlantic crossing for three decades andwould continue to do so for several years to come. Trotsky also complained about theexorbitant fares charged by the Spanish operators and the ‘bad accommodations and

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even worse food’.17 Of course, he was not paying for any of it. Moreover, even if theMontserrat did not offer top-of-the-range amenities, the Trotskys had the best that itcould offer. The ship could haul more than a thousand passengers, but on this wintercrossing she carried fewer than 350. The Trotskys were among the few score first-classpassengers.18 Four first-cabin passages, even with a discount for the minors, wouldhave cost at least £50.00 and possibly more than £80.00 (in 1917 prices). In either case,this was far beyond the resources of a man who last claimed 40 francs to his name.Moreover, information collected by American immigration showed that the fares hadbeen purchased for him not by him.

This brings us back to the question of who was helping Trotsky in Spain. Themystery is solved, in part, by a late 1917 French intelligence report from Barcelona.This reveals Trotsky’s benefactor as Ernst (also Ernest or Ernesto) Bark or Bark-Soukh,a Russian émigré and cosmopolitan revolutionary.19 According to the report, it was hewho provided Trotsky with ‘the money necessary to pay his passage to America’.20 Thereport also noted that Bark arranged Trotsky’s release from the Madrid lock-up. It isalso likely, therefore, that it was Bark who kept him safely in Cadiz and off a slow boatto Cuba. The Bark connection may also explain Trotsky’s last-minute detour fromCadiz to Barcelona. This would have taken him through Madrid, Bark’s home. The jour-ney otherwise makes no sense because the Montserrat’s first stop upon leaving Barcelonawas Cadiz. Trotsky could simply have stayed put and rendezvoused with his family whenit dropped anchor there on 30 December.

The bigger question, though, is whether Bark provided this help on his own initia-tive, or was acting for someone else – someone like Parvus. Bark was a respectedmember of Spain’s radical-bohemian community. He came from a Baltic German noblefamily in what is today Estonia and attended German universities. This left him withpersonal ties in Germany and a deep admiration of its culture, something he shared withParvus. Bark also championed the liberation of his Baltic homeland from tsarist rule.That not only meshed with Parvus’s support of separatist causes but also may have linkedBark to another pro-German, Estonian revolutionary, Aleksander Kesküla.21 WhileKesküla worked his own angles with Berlin, he had contact with Parvus and Uritskii andcould have served as an intermediary between them and Bark. Bark’s French dossier alsoindicates that his association with Trotsky may have continued after the establishment ofthe Soviet regime: a notation dated 25 January 1919 describes Bark as an ‘Agent bolche-viste’. Last, but by no means least, Ernst Bark was the first cousin of the last Ministerof Finance of Imperial Russia, Petr L´vovich Bark. To all outward appearances, PetrBark was a loyal servant of Nicholas II, but that did not prevent him from engaging OlafAschberg, a Swedish financier with socialist sympathies and German connections, to actas his financial agent, most notably in New York. Aschberg and his Stockholm-basedNya Banken were also tied to Parvus’s network.22

It seems fair to conclude, then, that Bark was Parvus’s cat’s-paw in Spain. But whywould Parvus have wanted to dispatch Trotsky to America? The answer is found in hiscomments to his masters in Berlin that the USA, with its ‘enormous number of Jews andSlavs’, offered a ‘very receptive element for anti-Tsarist agitation’.23 A celebratedRussian-Jewish socialist and veteran propagandist like Trotsky was the ideal man to leadsuch an effort. A report reaching US Military Intelligence from Copenhagen in early1918 declared that Trotsky ‘was bought by the Germans’ and that he had ‘arranged [the]Bolshevik movement together with [Parvus]’.24

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The American scene also offered rich new avenues for fund-raising. An early 1917report to the Okhrana from its man in New York, George Patrick, claimed that Trotskyhad come to America with the specific aim of securing funds to support Nachalo andother revolutionary activities in Europe.25 Trotsky would allegedly confess as much toone of his traveling companions on the Montserrat.

Aboard the liner, Trotsky found himself among a collection of outcasts he describedas ‘not very attractive in its variety’.26 Actually, the Trotskys had some very interestingtraveling companions. Directly following them on the passenger manifest were threeother first-class travelers, a mother and son, Sarah and Moise Raiss, and their friendIsaak Japka. The former pair were Romanian Jews, late of Paris. They apparently cameto Barcelona to meet up with their friend Japka. The latter, like Trotsky, was fromUkraine. Japka, who described himself as a merchant, had been living in Barcelona and,prior to that, Paris. So, had he or the Raisses encountered Trotsky before? And did Japkahave ties to Bark?

A detail which hints that Trotsky’s proximity to the Raisses was more than coinci-dence is that the pair indicated their contact in New York as David Raiss, Moise’sbrother. David Raiss’s address was 324, East 9th St.27 That building lay on the oppositeside of the same East Village block that contained 77, St Marks Place, home of Novyi mir,the radical newspaper for which Trotsky would soon be working. So, Trotsky and theRaisses where not only bound for the same city, but also had connections on the sameblock of that sprawling metropolis – an improbable coincidence to say the least.

One of the few passengers Trotsky deigned to note in his memoirs was ‘a boxer whois also a novelist and cousin of Oscar Wilde’s’.28 Actually, the fellow was a poet andWilde’s nephew. He was a boxer, though: in fact, he was a former amateur championof France at light-heavyweight class. He was traveling to New York under the name ofAvenarius F. Lloyd, but his real name was Fabian Lloyd, although he is best known toposterity as Arthur Cravan, a founding member of the Dadaist fraternity and all-roundcultural subversive. An Englishman raised in Switzerland, Cravan had a habit of assum-ing identities, a contempt for convention and a taste for adventure. These factors wouldhave made him an excellent spy, but if so, whose? He had been hanging out in Barcelonawith a gaggle of ‘pacifist’ artists among whom were one or more suspected Germanagents.29 If Cravan was doing any spying, he likely was doing it for the British, the samepeople who were reading Trotsky’s mail. For months Cravan had talked of going toAmerica but had never mustered the will or money to do so. A little encouragement andcash from the local British consulate would have been enough to get him on his way. Bydesign or accident, the French-speaking Cravan chatted up Trotsky. It was Cravan whoreportedly recalled that Trotsky confessed that he was heading to the States in search ofmoney.30 In New York, Cravan could have reported this and any other useful tidbits toWilliam Wiseman.

***

The Montserrat left Cadiz on 1 January 1917 and arrived in New York Harbor very lateon the night of 13 January. (Trotsky was therefore a bit off on the length of the actuallycrossing, which took 12 days, not the 17 he mentions in his memoirs.) Disembarkationtook place the following morning. The passenger manifest prepared for US immigrationreveals several interesting details.31 Trotsky listed his occupation as ‘Author’ and

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declared himself to be neither an anarchist nor a polygamist. More interesting, he isnoted as carrying at least $500. That would be the equivalent of roughly $10,000 today.This belies Trotsky’s implication and the statement of his German socialist friendLudwig Lore that the ‘Great Exile’ arrived in New York ‘practically penniless’.32

Bark’s, or someone’s, generosity obviously did not stop at buying tickets. Anotherdetail in the same vein is that Trotsky indicated his initial place of stay as the swankyHotel Astor near Times Square. Not only was this one of the more expensive hostelriesin the city, it also had the reputation as the gathering place of the social elite. All in all,it seems a strange place for a revolutionary socialist to take his rest. Of course, giventhat Trotsky had no acquaintance with New York and its amenities, someone must havemade the reservation for him. The question, as usual, is who.

According to Lore, ‘when Trotsky landed here his name was known only to hiscountrymen and to a handful of German Socialists’.33 However, his arrival was notunheralded. Novyi mir announced his forthcoming arrival on 6 December. The editorshad been tipped off by a wire from Trotsky himself, who was still anticipating a depar-ture at the end of November. Information reaching the Okhrana indicated that ‘themajority of Russian and Jewish socialists in New York’ eagerly anticipated his arrival andwelcomed him with a ‘grand reception’ that attracted delegates from ‘other cities’.34

If this was Parvus’s design, things were off to an excellent start.Ludwig Lore, who was to become one of Trotsky’s key American collaborators,

recollects a reception at Cooper Union Hall on the day following Trotsky’s arrival.35

It was hosted by the American Socialist Party and Lore later wondered ‘whether anyonehas ever had a more characteristic reception’. The conclave was chaired by SergiusIngerman, ‘leader of the Russian Socialists in this country’ and ‘an ardent Menshevik’.Ingerman apparently believed Trotsky to be of the same ilk, but ideological differencessoon surfaced and ‘instead of a demonstration of welcome [the meeting] became afierce, though outwardly polite, battle of conflicting opinions’.36 It was the first step inTrotsky’s rapid disillusionment with American socialism.

However, the Trotskys had not been without an immediate welcome of sorts whenthey stepped off the Montserrat. Someone had tipped off the press and the New York Timessent a reporter to the scene. According to the article (which ran on 15 January),Trotsky, the ‘Pacifist editor’ and socialist who had been ‘expelled from four lands’, wasmet on the rain-swept pier by Arthur Concors of the Hebrew Sheltering and ImmigrantAid Society.37 Concors acted as Trotsky’s translator in the brief interview with theTimes, which included details at odds with otherwise ‘established facts’. For instance,Trotsky is quoted as having been ‘in Berlin editing a Jewish paper’, not Vienna, whenthe war began. Also, in this version, following his release from the Madrid jail, he wentto Seville and only reached Cadiz when taken there by Spanish police and forcibly putaboard the Montserrat. There was absolutely no mention of Barcelona or leisurely sight-seeing with his family. Perhaps the fault lies with Concors’s translation or the reporter’srecording of it. Or, was Trotsky deliberately distorting the story and, if so, to whatpurpose?

The Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society was a charitable organizationdedicated to helping Jewish arrivals with food, shelter and jobs. It also sniffed out unde-sirables, promoted ‘Americanization’ and encouraged newcomers to seek work outsidethe major urban areas. Trotsky and his family were not the usual sort of travelers theSociety aided, nor were they interested in such services. Nor was Arthur Concors a

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simple staffer. He was, in fact, ‘superintendent’ of the Society and a member of its boardof directors.38 Someone got Concors out of bed to welcome the wandering revolution-ary, a revolutionary supposedly unknown outside a narrow political sphere. Who mightthat have been? The answer must lie among the men Concors answered to. TheSociety’s advisory board contained several luminaries of the American Jewish establish-ment, among them Julian Mack, Louis Marshall, Oscar Strauss and Dr Stephen Wise.Arguably the most important of the lot, and a main financial backer, was Jacob HenrySchiff, head of the investment banking House of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.39 Rightly orwrongly, to this day, Jacob Schiff is widely cited as the man who supplied Trotsky withcash and sent him back to Petrograd to topple the Provisional Government.40 Beyondthis, Schiff often features as part of the vast Jewish conspiracy and has been alleged tohave instigated and financed the Bolshevik regime.41 Here we come perilously closeto the slippery slope that descends into the toxic realm of the Elders of Zion and theIlluminati. We must be careful not to allow speculation to get out of hand and we mustproceed cautiously. The basic fact is that, despite all the accusations, there is no demon-strable direct link between Trotsky and Schiff, monetary or otherwise. That said, ifSchiff did provide any such assistance, he would not have signed any cheques or left aneat record in any ledger.

While replete with exaggeration, disinformation and outright fabrication, allega-tions of a Schiff–Trotsky tie are, as we shall see, not wholly imaginary. In fact, Schifflater voiced strong displeasure with the Bolsheviks and even offered to work againstthem.42 However, in early 1917, the situation was very different: the tsar was still onthe throne, the United States was a neutral country, and Trotsky was not a Bolshevik.Jacob Schiff was, and long had been, a bitter enemy of the tsarist regime. His oppositionstemmed from the Russian government’s mistreatment of its millions of Jewishsubjects, although he had never experienced this himself nor even set foot in Russia. Inpursuit of his campaign against tsarism, Schiff bankrolled the American activities of theFriends of Russian Freedom, a London-based organization that offered aid and encour-agement to all enemies of Nicholas II. Also, during the Russo-Japanese War Schiff hadarranged the loans that financed Tokyo’s war effort and even financed the printing anddissemination of revolutionary propaganda among Russian POWs.43 More recently, hehad refused to participate in any Allied loan efforts that might benefit Russia.

A factor usually overlooked by those obsessing over Schiff’s Jewishness was hisGermanness. He was German born and retained strong familial and financial ties to thecountry. His two brothers, Ludwig and Phillip Schiff, were bankers in Germany withties to the Kaiser’s court. The same went for Schiff’s friend and key business partnerMax Warburg, a personal friend of Wilhelm II and a financial mainstay of the Germanwar effort. A report reaching the hands of William Wiseman named Max Warburg asthe ‘chief German agent in Russia’.44 Another Warburg brother, Fritz, was Berlin’s‘commercial representative’ in Stockholm, and under that cover he conducted secretpeace talks with Russian representatives in 1916. He also had contact with Parvus.45

Schiff employed two more of Max’s brothers at his firm, Felix and Paul. They, too,allegedly had their hands in pro-German intrigues.46

Information collected by American intelligence showed that as early as 1915 JacobSchiff had contact with a ‘Baron Rapp’ who ‘interested [him] in [a] propaganda move-ment to overthrow the Czar of Russia to free the Russian Jews’.47 As a result, ‘JacobSchiff sent several millions of dollars to Berlin for this purpose and several men, well

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known to the U.S. Secret Service agent, were connected with this matter’.48 Even someof Schiff’s Jewish associates in New York were critical of his German connections. Onewas Columbia University professor and Zionist activist Richard Gottheil, who insistedthat Schiff’s money supported pro-German efforts including ‘using East-Side societiesto spread pacifist propaganda’.49 This much, then, is certain: Schiff was anti-tsarist andpro-German and had a track record of financing revolutionaries. All or some of hisWarburg associates were involved in Berlin-backed, subversive activities against Russia,activities that dovetailed with those of Parvus. Thus, Schiff had good reason to take aninterest in Trotsky and offer him support. Moreover, if there was a link between Schiffand Trotsky, British spymaster Wiseman would surely have been aware of it. Theabove-mentioned Professor Gottheil was one of Wiseman’s stable of informants and heshared his reservations about Schiff and others. Most importantly, Wiseman had a spyright in the board room of Schiff’s House of Kuhn, Loeb & Co: Otto H. Kahn, a manWiseman’s adjutant Major Norman Thwaites later praised as ‘whole-heartedly pro-Allied and especially pro-British’.50

Any connection between Schiff and Trotsky would have necessitated the utilizationof one or more discreet intermediaries (or ‘cut-outs’ in espionage terms). Concors is anobvious candidate. Perhaps it was he, on Schiff’s instructions, who steered Trotsky tothe Hotel Astor. Interestingly, among its residents was one Otto Schwarzschild, whohad recently returned from a trip to German-occupied Poland, a journey that took himthrough Berlin. Schwarzschild ostensibly worked for the Committee for the East, arelief organization established to aid Jews in war-torn Poland. However, it also ‘dissem-inated pro-German propaganda among the Jews’.51 Among its main backers was JacobSchiff. US officials labeled Schwarzschild as a ‘German spy’ and also noted that he had‘visited Jacob Schiff a number of times during 1916–17’.52 Just more coincidence?If not, then Trotsky’s presence at the Astor may have been for the purpose of meetingSchwarzschild, who was acting as a cut-out for Schiff and/or German intelligence.

If Trotsky checked into the Astor, he did not stay long. Other helping hands magi-cally appeared to help him find a three-room (plus kitchen and bathroom) apartment inthe Bronx for a very reasonable $18 per month. Natalia paid three months’ rent inadvance, which belies Lore’s claim that ‘the question of meeting expenses was a seriousproblem’.53 Since the apartment came unfurnished, they purchased the necessaryfurnishings, some $200 worth, on hire purchase. That required no significant outlay,but it did require a guarantor.

Trotsky later insisted that his only job in New York ‘was that of revolutionarysocialist’ and brushed aside claims that he earned extra money as a film extra or cod-fishcleaner.54 Lore also denies such ‘fantastic stories’.55 Fantastic they probably are, butthere are legitimate questions about the amount of money Trotsky received and whereit originated.

After Trotsky’s name burst into the headlines, New York Deputy Attorney GeneralAlfred Becker made an investigation of just what he had been doing in New York,including his sources of income.56 Becker’s agents discovered that Trotsky’s mainemployer, Novyi mir, paid him $20 a week which amounted to a total of some $200.Oddly, Ludwig Lore recollected the pay as being a mere $7 per week.57 Was the salarypadded out after the fact to disguise another source of income? Public lectures broughtin another $280 to $350 and articles penned for Lore’s Volkszeitung reaped $150 to $200more. Finally, a collection taken at Trotsky’s farewell party at the Hudson River Casino

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the night before his sailing netted $226. However, Trotsky recollected that the collec-tion was $310 and claimed that he distributed every cent of it to his cash-strappedcompanions.58

Clearly, an exact determination is impossible, but at minimum Trotsky visiblyearned a bit more than $700 and no more than $1,000. Of course, this did not take intoaccount the $500 he had to start with, something of which he carefully made nomention. Even with that, minus living expenses he would have been hard pressed toafford the $1,394.50 he later handed over for 16 second-class and one first-class passageson the Norwegian line’s Kristianiafjord.59 But Trotsky had not been paying his own waysince Spain, and there is no reason to suppose he was doing so now.

In the end, Becker was forced to declare that ‘I have been unable to verify any indi-cation of Trotzky [sic] receiving money from any German sources’. The radical New YorkCall hailed this as prima facie proof that the ‘German libel’ was false.60 Of course, clan-destine financiers do not give receipts, and, if need be, a small bundle of cash is a simpleenough thing to conceal or slip to another passenger.

Trotsky described his Bronx neighbourhood as a ‘workers’ district’, but it was notenement-filled slum. Thanks to the recent extension of the New York transit system,much of the Bronx had become a ‘subway suburb’. Years later, Trotsky still marveledat the wonders of this modest home: a telephone, electric lights, a refrigerator, a gasrange and even an elevator – amenities some might be tempted to describe as bourgeois.However, these do not explain why Trotsky chose to live miles away from his place ofwork in the East Village. Surely he could have found some suitable apartment in thevicinity. Who or what drew him to the Bronx?

A simple question which defies a simple answer is exactly where Trotsky’s Bronxapartment was. Trotsky recollected that ‘we lived on 164th Street, if I am notmistaken’.61 Once more, he was. Lore and Becker’s investigation agree that the apart-ment was on Vyse Avenue. The specific address seems to have been 1,522, Vyse at 172ndSt.62 The weight of evidence argues that this address is the right one, but to add a furthertwist, a report to the Paris Okhrana in February 1917 states that Trotsky and familywere living at 265, Prospect Avenue.63 The problem is, there was no 265, ProspectAvenue. The nearest thing is 1,265 Prospect, which lay between 167th and 168thStreets. All these locales lay within a relatively small radius, but none was so close thatthey would be easily confused. Nothing indicates that the Trotskys changed addresses.Did he simply forget where he lived, or did he have some other reason to obscure thedetails?

To unravel this, we must return to the intra-party intrigues that followedTrotsky’s reception. Immediately following the Cooper Union reception, Lore recalls‘a meeting in a private home’ in Brooklyn. There Trotsky addressed a more intimategathering of fellow Russians and other left-wing Socialists, Lore included. Trotskyroused them to action against the mainstream Socialist Party, which he dismissed as anorganization fit only for ‘successful dentists’.64 An interesting array of Bolsheviksand future Bolsheviks were present, including Nikolai Bukharin, Grigorii Chudnovskii,V. Volodarskii and Alexandra Kollontai. All were connected with Novyi mir and on thesame day, 15 January, Trotsky formally joined the staff.

British intelligence later singled out Chudnovskii as Trotsky’s ‘right-hand man’ atNovyi mir.65 Equally interesting is that Chudnovskii earlier had worked beside Parvus inSwitzerland and Copenhagen.66 Thus, in Trotsky’s closest collaborator in New York we

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find yet another Parvus man. Trotsky’s association with Kollontai also may have had anadded significance. According to Lore, she came to the USA ‘on a secret mission underthe direction of Lenin to collect funds for Russian revolutionary purposes’.67 ‘It was thismoney’, Lore continued, ‘contributed by well-to-do Russian-Americans, that aided theBolshevik wing … to organize its forces in Russia in preparation for the imminent over-throw of the Tsar.’ Trotsky mentions that Kollontai was in contact with Lenin and kepthim informed of all doings in New York, ‘my own activities included’.68 Up to thispoint, Parvus had little or nothing to show for his attempts to woo Lenin and he wouldhave been at least curious about Kollontai’s activities. While there is no indication of anyTrotsky–Parvus communication in this period, it is not inconceivable that the formerquietly passed on information about Kollontai through Chudnovskii or some otherintermediary.

Lore’s comments about Kollontai’s clandestine fundraising are echoed by twoother Russians in New York, Nikolai Volgar and Pavel Perov. Both were connected tothe Russian wartime purchasing and diplomatic apparatus in the USA, Volgar as secre-tary-treasurer of the Russian–American–Asiatic Corporation and Perov as onetimesecretary to Ambassador Boris Bakhmet´ev. In early November 1917, just before theBolshevik coup, the pair approached American intelligence. Volgar claimed that ‘hecould produce in court, proof of the source through which German funds were paid toLeon Trotsky … which funds financed Trotsky’s mission to Russia’.69 In a relatedmemorandum, Volgar and Perov noted that Trotsky, along with the Estonian socialistBoegelmann/Pogelmann (a Bark tie?), anarchist Bill Shatoff and others ‘receivedthrough a certain artist-writer and socialist “Bolshevik” type, M-me Malmberg, $20,000here and other large sums were transferred through the Swedish and Finnish Banks toM-me Kolonty [sic] in Petrograd’.70 The Swedish bank in question was undoubtedlyAschberg’s. The Malmberg referred to was Aino Malmberg, a Finnish socialist whomade various trips between New York and Scandinavia during the war. She mostrecently returned from Stockholm in early October 1916 and was in New York duringall or most of Trotsky’s visit. Kollontai, too, did her share of traveling. She had last beenin Stockholm in August 1916 where she had dealings with Lenin’s local agent AleksandrShliapnikov.71

Lore claims that Trotsky’s main preoccupation in the ensuing weeks, besides lectur-ing and writing, was forging a true revolutionary, anti-war party out of the left wing ofthe American Socialists. Most of his following came from the party’s Russian and GermanFederations, and among those jumping on the Trotsky bandwagon were Lore, LouisFraina and Julius Hammer. According to Lore, ‘Trotsky was convinced … that theUnited States was ripe for the overthrow of the capitalist system’.72 He ‘urged the callingof general strikes against war as a means of undermining the proud structure of our decay-ing civilization’.73 On 4 March, the Times recorded that Trotsky attended a local Socialistgathering where he introduced a motion calling upon the comrades to foment strikes andresist the draft in event of war.74 This is exactly what Parvus and Berlin would haveordered.

Among Trotsky’s American followers was Julius Hammer, a veteran of the oldSocialist Labor Party and a future founder of the American Communist movement.Also of Russian-Jewish background, Hammer, who was five years Trotsky’s elder, wasone of those not-so-rare creatures, a radical Marxist cum wealthy entrepreneur. Hewas a successful physician and primary owner of the Allied Drug & Chemical Co.

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The resources of the profitable firm strained to support both Hammer’s opulent life-style and his generous support of radical causes. Lenin later hailed Comrade Hammer asan ‘American millionaire’, which may only have been a slight exaggeration.75 He was,without doubt, one of the ‘well-to-do Russian Americans’ who provided Kollontai withfunds. Did his role as financial angel also extend to Trotsky? The answer, to one degreeor another, is yes. Julius Hammer lived in the Bronx, at 1,488, Washington Avenue,less than a mile and an easy drive from Trotsky’s place on Vyse Avenue. In his memoirs,Trotsky cryptically mentions a ‘Dr. M’, a Bronx neighbour who, along with his wife,befriended the Trotskys and gave Natalia and the boys rides in his chauffeured car.76

Oddly, the doctor is one of the few persons Trotsky does not bother to name. Lore alsorecalls the doctor and describes him as ‘an acquaintance’ of the Trotskys who took themon sightseeing trips.77

Bronx historian Lloyd Ultan has skillfully assembled various clues to the identityof this man. First, he had to live somewhere nearby. To converse with Trotsky hewould need to have been fluent in Russian and/or German. Most importantly, hemust have shared Trotsky’s political faith. Considering Trotsky’s contempt for ‘well-to-do dentists’ and their ilk, this well-to-do doctor would have had to have been aman after his own heart. Ultan rightly concludes that ‘only one man could be definedby all these clues. He was Dr Julius Hammer.’78 And Hammer had a car and driveramong his household staff. So, Hammer’s was almost certainly the helping hand thatguided Trotsky to the Bronx and situated him in a home only blocks from his own.Hammer’s hand, too, was probably the one that co-signed for the Trotskys’ furni-ture. Doubtless Hammer would have been willing to provide other help as needed.He might easily have come up with the $10,000 Trotsky was supposed have on himwhen he left New York. The question, as ever, is whether Hammer did such thingsout of the kindness of his socialist heart, or at the behest of Parvus or Schiff or some-one else.

Today, Julius Hammer’s historical role is eclipsed by the flamboyant and deviouscareer of his eldest son, Armand. Along with amassing fame, fortune and influence, theyounger Hammer, faithful to his father’s ideals, was a lifelong servant of Soviet inter-ests.79 Indeed, when Trotsky’s My Life appeared in 1930, Armand was busily involvedin Soviet schemes – schemes which probably would have been jeopardized by anyreminder that the elder Hammer had once been an admirer of Stalin’s arch-enemy. Bydisguising Julius as ‘Dr. M’, Trotsky may have been repaying an old debt, and justmaybe masking an ongoing association.

Armand got his introduction to clandestine affairs in 1921 when Julius, then servingtime in Sing-Sing for manslaughter, dispatched his son to Russia on a ‘business’ trip. Thebackground to this trip yields another clue. Armand’s journey to Russia required a pass-port and the application for that included a letter from one Henry Kuntz. Kuntz, aminor partner in Allied Drug & Chemical, averred that he had known father and son for15 years.80 Kuntz is of no importance himself, but he leads us to another man, one ofhis business partners in New York and Russia during the First World War. This wasSidney G. Reilly. Russian-Jewish despite his assumed Irish name, like Hammer, Parvusand Trotsky, Reilly had an early connection to Odessa. He would go on to earn somenotoriety, mostly undeserved, as a British ‘Ace of Spies’.81 American naval intelligenceprobably came closer to the mark when it described him and his shady pals as ‘interna-tional confidence men of the highest class’.82

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In Russia, Reilly was widely believed to be a German agent and he certainly associ-ated with persons who were. Nevertheless, he had friends in high places and ran in acrowd of equally dubious wheeler-dealers. In New York, he was a director of the AlliedMachinery Company, a firm American investigators linked to secret trade withGermany via Sweden. That definitely entailed a connection to Aschberg and, maybe,Parvus.83 It also is interesting that Allied Machinery engaged in a lively business withSpain and had an office in Barcelona. Reilly came to the USA in 1915 to acquire armsand munitions contacts for the Russian military. His nominal employer in this venturewas Abram Zhivotovskii, the same fellow Trotsky would feel such an urgent need tocontact when he reached Norway. In my original article, I noted stories claiming thatZhivotovskii was Trotsky’s uncle, cousin or brother-in-law, which I dismissed as ‘prob-ably untrue’. I was wrong. Zhivotovskii was Trotsky’s maternal uncle.84 Actually, hewas one of at least four brothers of Trotsky’s mother, each of whom was a successfulbusinessman by the time of the First World War.85 Abram Zhivotovskii was associatedwith various Russian banks and had numerous friends in financial and governmentalspheres. The latter included Petr Bark. But perhaps more important are threads linkingZhivotovskii to Stockholm and Aschberg.86

In March 1915, Zhivotovskii came under investigation in Russia on suspicion oftrading with the enemy.87 Police searched his offices in Petrograd and he spent time incustody. Thanks to his connections, however, by early 1916 Zhivotovskii was out andback in business bigger than ever. US authorities listed him as ‘a grafter … of badreputation’ and a known associate of German agents.88 Information in the hands ofthe US State Department later described Zhivotovskii as a man who was outwardly‘very anti-Bolshevik’ but who in fact had laundered ‘large sums’ for the benefit of theBolsheviks and other revolutionary organizations.89 A similar report from December1918 listed him as a ‘Bolshevist’ and ‘uncle of Leon Trotzky [who was] an importantpurchasing agent for the allies under the Empire [and now] on [a] Bolshevik missionin Stockholm’.90 Another, from 1917 or early 1918, identified ‘Abraham Jivotovoski’as the man who had ‘inaugurated Bolshevist propaganda in Japan’.91 Everythingsuggests that, besides blood, Trotsky and uncle Abram shared politics.

During the war, Zhivotovskii maintained an office and large bank accounts inYokohama under the supervision of another nephew (and Trotsky’s cousin) IosifTimofeiovich Zhivotovskii.92 The latter was at one point Reilly’s secretary. It may besignificant that in October 1916, more or less simultaneous with Trotsky’s appearancein Spain, Reilly made a quick trip to Japan. He was back in New York just about the timeor immediately after Trotsky’s arrival. Reilly’s jaunt would have provided a securemeans to carry messages or even money from Zhivotovskii to Trotsky. It may also meansomething that among Zhivotovskii’s business intimates we find another Chudnovskii,M.P. Chudnovskii, a possible relation of Trotsky’s loyal comrade at Novyi mir.93

Coincidence or conspiracy, the connections just keep coming. Reilly’s two mostintimate cronies in New York were Alexander Weinstein (Vainshtein) and AntonyJehalski. Weinstein had been Zhivotovskii’s man in London, but joined forces withReilly in the summer of 1916. Like Zhivotovskii, he made a public show of loyaltyto Nicholas II, but other sources showed that he was ‘clearly identified with theBolsheviki’.94 An American businessman reported that Weinstein ‘gave a dinner partysoon after the Revolution in celebration of the Czar’s downfall’, and ‘a number ofRussians and Socialists were guests at the dinner’.95 Perhaps Trotsky was one of them.

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The odds on that are increased by the fact that Alexander Weinstein’s brother wasGregory Weinstein, revolutionary and business manager of Novyi mir. American intel-ligence reports name Gregory Weinstein as ‘closely associated with Trotzky while thelatter was in this country’.96

Antony Jechalski was reputedly a ‘most dangerous German spy’ and simultaneouslya confidant of officials in the Russian Consulate and the related Supply Committee.97 Inthe autumn of 1916, he was hanging around Havana on some vague business and rushedback to New York a week before Trotsky’s arrival. Among other things, Jehalski actedas a middleman between pro-German Polish groups and the American pacifist Dr JudahMagnes.98 Magnes was a friend and collaborator of none other that Jacob Schiff andanother of those whom Professor Gottheil considered ‘heart and soul with the Germancause’.99 Last but not least, another of Reilly and Weinstein’s familiars was Benny(Veniamin) Sverdlov, a minor Russian arms broker who was a brother of Lenin’s futureright-hand man, Iakov Sverdlov.100

All this fits with the notion of a ‘German connection’ for Trotsky, but Reilly &Company’s clandestine links also ran in another and contradictory, direction – to Britishintelligence. Wiseman and his deputy, Norman Thwaites, oversaw compartmentalizednetworks, one of which included double agents and persons who ‘have special facilitiesfor getting into the confidence of German agents’.101 Reilly and his pals were part ofthis. Wiseman and Thwaites carefully concealed their dealings with these men not onlyfrom the Germans, but also from the Americans and even from other British services.After the war, Wiseman did business with Reilly and cheerfully acknowledged him asan old chum, while Thwaites praised Reilly and Weinstein for their ‘excellent intelli-gence work’ and ‘valuable services’ to the Allies.102

In mid-April 1917, while Trotsky was still a prisoner in Canada, an interestingmeeting took place in Manhattan between one of Wiseman’s operatives (probablyThwaites) and a trio of Russians. One of these was Evgenii Kuzmin. He had first cometo the USA in late 1915 aboard the same vessel that carried Alexandra Kollontai.Kuzmin worked for the Russian Army’s counter-intelligence and he had been trackingthe activities of German agents and revolutionary exiles in Scandinavia. At the Aprilmeeting, he revealed himself to Wiseman as an agent of the ‘Russian General Staff’ and‘Chief of the Russian Secret Police’ in the USA.103 The gathering took place in theoffice of Ivan Narodny, a Russian businessman, writer and revolutionary activist. Thethird Russian present was Nikolai Kuznetsov, an engineer. He was a ‘most intimatefriend and business associate’ of Alexander Weinstein and Sidney Reilly and a closefriend of Russian-American lawyer Nicholas Alienikoff.104 Alienikoff, in turn,described himself as an ‘intimate’ of Trotsky and Chudnovskii and was one of thosethen agitating for Trotsky’s release from British captivity.105 Just what this odd cabaldiscussed is not recorded, but it is hard to believe that Trotsky’s name did not figure insome way.

The host, Ivan Narodny, was the close collaborator of another Russian radical, IvanOkuntsov, publisher of the anti-tsarist but non-sectarian Russkii golos.106 Okuntsov andNarodny cordially hated and were hated by the Novyi mir crowd, each side accusing theother of malfeasance and consorting with German agents.107 Narodny and Okuntsovpresented themselves as loyal adherents of the new Provisional Government and werepart of the same circle that included the above-mentioned Perov and Volgar. Like thatpair, Narodny later swore to Alexander Kerensky that he could ‘prove that Trotzky …

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and other Socialists who went from here to Russia got money from German agents’.108

Okuntsov would vouch the same.109

The Kuzmin–Narodny–Okuntsov axis hints at a plot cooked up by rival radicals,perhaps acting with the encouragement of persons in Petrograd, to smear Trotsky withthe ‘German libel’. If nothing else, they may have been trying to compound or exploithis difficulty.

One thing that Alienikoff and Narodny had in common is that both passed informa-tion to William Wiseman. So, of course, did Weinstein, Reilly and others. Thus,Sir William was positioned to gather information on Trotsky from many differentangles. In Trotsky’s MI5 dossier there is a tantalizing reference to a ‘C’ (SIS) Report on‘Russian Revolutionaries in New York – Activities & Movements of Trotzki, Leon’.110

The report is missing from the dossier, but it shows that Wiseman was engaged inactive surveillance of his activities – activities that someone in London wanted to knowabout.

Another man who may have played a witting or unwitting part in Wiseman’sTrotsky intelligence-gathering was Irish-American writer Frank Harris. As editor of theanti-war Pearson’s Magazine, Harris was one of the few Americans to entice Trotsky intoan interview. Someone who may have abetted this was George Raffalovitch, who wasemployed by Harris in some vague capacity. Raffalovitch was the son or nephew ofArtur Raffalovitch (Rafalovich), the longtime agent of the Russian Finance Ministry inFrance. Another of George’s kin was Nikolai Raffalovitch, a man later denounced toWiseman as mixed-up in pro-German intrigues in Paris.111 Nikolai was also closelyassociated with the Russo-Asiatic Bank. So was Abram Zhivotovskii. According to otherreports reaching Wiseman and the US Justice Department, George Raffalovitch was notonly involved with Russian revolutionary circles but was also a ‘paymaster of Germanagents’.112 ‘In the month of February [1917]’, said one, ‘he paid out about $18,000.’Thus, Raffalovitch was yet another potential conduit for clandestine funds.

Raffalovitch insisted that his real loyalty lay with the Ukrainian nationalist cause.In that he was aligned with the so-called League for the Liberation of the Ukraine.Interestingly, this was one of the German-sponsored groups subsidized by none otherthan Alexander Helphand-Parvus.113 If nothing more, it is another curious set ofcoincidences.

Another significant thing about Harris and Raffalovitch is their common tie to theflamboyant occultist Aleister Crowley. He was an old friend of both and in 1917 still anactive confidant of Harris. While Crowley publicly acted the part of an anti-Britishpropagandist and freely associated with Germans and pro-Germans, he was a secret‘employee of the British Government’ who supplied information to the men at 44,Whitehall.114 Crowley shared many haunts and acquaintances with the aforementionedArthur Cravan. He had many contacts among in the radical-bohemian community,among them was Ivan Narodny.

But, arguably, Wiseman’s most important Russian source where Trotsky wasconcerned was an ex-Scotland Yard and Okhrana informant, Casimir Pilenas. In theyears before the war, Pilenas, a Lithuanian, kept both agencies abreast of Russian revo-lutionary intrigues in London.115 As a ‘British S.S. agent of the Scotland Yard detach-ment’ he now did the same for Wiseman, reporting directly to Thwaites and navalattaché Guy Gaunt.116 Wiseman allegedly expressed absolute confidence in Pilenas andwas certain that he ‘worked for no other person but [me]’.117 Pilenas was the source for

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Wiseman’s 22 March telegram that Trotsky’s return was being backed by Jewish funds‘behind which are possibly German’.118

***

Meanwhile in Petrograd, an escalating wave of strikes, riots and mutinies culminated inthe abdication of Nicholas II on 15 March 1917. Trotsky seemed to know about thisalmost at once. That very evening, he was interviews at Novyi mir by the New York Timesand expressed his belief that the new Provisional Government ‘would probably beshort-lived’.119 The regime, he proclaimed, ‘did not represent the interests or the aimsof the revolutionists’. It would soon fall to other men, he added, ‘to carry forward thedemocratization of Russia’. However, he was quick to add that the revolutionists – orhis sort of revolutionists, in any case – stood absolutely opposed to a separate peace withGermany.

The Provisional Government promptly issued a general amnesty of political prison-ers on 16 March 1917 and called on all expatriates to come home. Still, it was not until25 March that Trotsky got round to presenting himself at the Russian Consulate toobtain a new passport. His treatment by the confused officials was cool but correct. Lorerecollects that Trotsky made a fuss by refusing a passport that still bore the ImperialEagle and finally obtained ‘a document on plain stationery that certified his right to enterRussia’.120 That same day, Trotsky called on the British Consulate at 44, Whitehall St.Under the rules of the British blockade of Germany, passengers bound for Scandinaviahad to pass inspection at either Halifax, Nova Scotia or the Orkney Islands. Thus,persons passing through those ports needed the appropriate visa. The Passport ControlSection of the Consulate handled this work, and it was under the direct supervision ofWiseman’s deputy Thwaites. In an article written soon after his arrival in Petrograd,Trotsky admitted the helpful attitude of the British consular officials. They assured himthat they would ‘put no obstacle in the way of my return to Russia’, and even allowedhim to phone the Russian Consulate to attest that all the necessary paperwork wasdone.121 It should be kept in mind that this was three days after Wiseman had receivedand passed on Pilenas’s warning.

One thing Becker’s investigation noted but did not pay much attention to was theman from whom Trotsky purchased his return tickets. He was Henry C. Zaro, a ‘steam-ship agent’ operating at 1, 3rd Avenue. Zaro’s office was only a couple of blocks awayfrom the Novyi mir offices, which could mean that Trotsky picked him out of pure conve-nience. However, Zaro also was a radical Polish activist who had written an anti-Russiantract about his recent travels in war-torn Poland, travels which paralleled those of afore-mentioned ‘German spy’ Schwarzschild.122 In fact, Zaro had returned to the USA inlate 1916 on the same ship as Schwarzschild. Moreover, in New York Zaro was part ofthe same pro-German Polish circle as Wiseman’s double agent Antony Jechalski. So,Zaro had threads leading back towards Schiff and British intelligence. A tangled web,indeed.

On 27 March, Trotsky, family and companions boarded the SS Kristianiafjord at theSouth Brooklyn docks. Despite ‘rain … falling in torrents, some three hundred well-wishers, carrying red flags and flowers, showed-up to bid farewell’.123 According toLore, ‘when Trotsky arrived he was lifted to the shoulders of his admirers and withbeaming face and happy smile he bade a last farewell to the comrades…’.124

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Just as with the trip to New York, some of Trotsky’s fellow passengers on thevoyage back to Europe merit attention. Becker’s investigation found that in addition tothe bunch who followed Trotsky to Zaro’s office, the Kristianiafjord carried a dozen orso other Russians. Two of these, Leiba Fisheleff (Fishelev) and Nikita Muchin (Mukhin),were also linked to Trotsky and among the five to be arrested with him in Halifax. Threeothers, all traveling together in first class, are more interesting. The first, RobertJivotovsky (Zhivotovskii) looks to be yet another of Trotsky’s cousins. The secondwas Israel J. Fundaminsky, a man Trotsky accused of helping the British in ‘gatheringinformation’ about him and other passengers.125 The last, and arguably most interest-ing, of the bunch was a former tsarist diplomat/army officer, Andrei Kalpaschnikoff(Kolpashnikov). As noted in my earlier article, Kalpaschnikoff later claimed that he hadacted as translator in the British questioning of Trotsky. Kalpaschnikoff was part of afamiliar crowd in New York. Among his close friends was Vladimir Rogovine, whosimultaneously was a crony of Weinstein and Reilly. Other common links were RussianVice Consul Peter Rutskii and John MacGregor Grant, a friend and business partner notonly of Reilly but also of Olaf Aschberg.126 One must suspect that Kalpaschnikoff’spresence on the Kristianiafjord, and as Trotsky’s mouthpiece, was no accident. Justwhose interests he was looking out for, however, remains uncertain.

On 28 March, with the Kristianiafjord at sea, someone at 44, Whitehall sent a secondcoded wire addressed to Admiral Hall (the aforementioned chief of NID) and to MI5.This read that ‘Trotsky is reliably reported to have $10,000 subscribed by socialists andGermans’.127 The same message added that ‘I am notifying Halifax to hold [Trotsky andassociates] until they receive your instructions’. According to Willert and others, thesender was Wiseman. On closer examination, this is not clear. The telegram lacksWiseman’s usual signature of ‘W.W.’ Also, Admiral Hall’s actual order for Trotsky’sarrest, dated 29 March, credited naval attaché Guy Gaunt as the source.128 As describedin my earlier article, Gaunt nursed deep resentment against Wiseman. Given that healso was privy to Pilenas’s information, Gaunt might have wired London on his initiativewith the hidden aim of embarrassing or discrediting Wiseman.129 However, it seemsmore probable that Gaunt forwarded the information with Wiseman’s knowledge andapproval.

All this raises two critical questions. Why would Wiseman place such faith inPilenas’s rather vague information? And why did he hesitate in acting upon it? One ofPilenas’s main ‘stools’ was a German-American named John Lang. The latter was afamiliar of German socialist circles including Lore’s.130 Lang is a good bet as the originalsource for Pilenas’s accusations, but from whom he may have gleaned it remains an openquestion, along with its basic accuracy.

One person who claimed to smell a rat in Pilenas or, more precisely, ‘an agentprovocateur used by the old Russian Secret Police’, was MI5 officer Claude Dansey.131

Pilenas indeed had been an agent of the Okhrana, but his Russian police file shows thatthey had severed all relations with him before the war, in large part because theydeemed him too close to the British. Moreover, there is nothing to indicate any connec-tion between Pilenas and the Okhrana’s New York resident George Patrick.

Dansey learned of Trotsky’s arrest on 29 March when he was working for MI5’s‘port intelligence’ branch.132 He later claimed that he immediately wired Wisemanasking for more information but did not get any. In mid-April, Dansey arrived in NewYork by way of Halifax, where he made it his business to get to the bottom of the

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Trotsky matter. He quizzed British officials and may have interviewed Trotsky himselfin the Amherst internment camp. Dansey later insisted that he was unconvinced of suffi-cient cause to hold the Russian. ‘Unless [British authorities] were very certain of thesource of information against him’, he wrote, ‘it would be much better to let [Trotsky]go before he got angry.’133 Did he mean that Trotsky, in custody for several days, wasnot angry already?

When Dansey landed in New York, he nominally came as Wiseman’s boss. As such,he supposedly advised Sir William that Pilenas ‘had better be discharged at once’, andWiseman assured him ‘that he was going to do so’.134 In fact, he did nothing of thesort and Pilenas remained on the British payroll until 15 October 1917.135 Even then,Wiseman did not leave him in the lurch. Rather, he gave Pilenas a sterling recommen-dation which landed the Lithuanian a job with American military intelligence. Eventhen, Pilenas continued to channel information to Wiseman and the duo would maintaina secret collaboration for decades to come.136

In my original article, I speculated that Wiseman’s peculiar behavior towardsTrotsky was driven by his desire to enlist the exile in a secret scheme to ‘guide thestorm’ in revolutionary Russia and, above all, to keep Russia in the war.137 The morerecent information, I believe, supports this theory, if it also provides some additionaltwists. The justification for Wiseman’s above-mentioned scheme was his conviction that‘German agents have already been at work in the United States, and are sendingRussian-Jewish Socialists back to Petrograd who are either knowingly or unknowinglyworking in the German cause’.138 Wiseman’s answer was to dispatch selected agentsfrom the USA to exert counter-influence in Russia, especially in revolutionary circles.These agents included ‘international socialists’ and ‘notorious nihilists’.139 The twoabsolutely essential things were that they have no perceptible links to British or Frenchinterests (then highly suspect in Russia), and that they oppose any move towards a separatepeace. As noted, Trotsky had proclaimed his opposition to that shortly before he leftNew York. That made him exactly the sort Wiseman was looking for.

At the heart of my original article was the suggestion that Trotsky’s subsequentarrest was basically a stunt designed to inoculate him against suspicions of pro-Britishconnections and sympathies. At the same time, it could have served as added leverageto obtain his co-operation. The bottom line was that he was not going to get back toRussia soon – or even at all – without British co-operation. Their options, by the way,were not limited to holding him in Amherst or letting him proceed. A third option wasshipping him back to New York and handing him over to the tender mercies of theAmerican authorities. The USA had entered the war on 6 April 1917, and Trotsky’searlier fire-breathing about strikes and draft obstruction would have put him in a precar-ious position and might even have landed him in jail.

From Wiseman’s perspective, it did not matter if Trotsky had been in contact withGerman agents or even if he had taken their money. If so, Wiseman knew about it, andif he was able to document such collaboration it gave him even more leverage. In thisregard, the shifting attitude of Jacob Schiff may be significant. First, with Americaentering the war, the banker had to abandon his pro-German position out of practicalnecessity. Beyond this, Schiff’s real Russian aim, unseating Nicholas II, had beenaccomplished. He promptly voiced his opposition to any Russian move towards a sepa-rate peace.140 In fact, Wiseman soon enlisted Schiff in his secret propaganda campaignin Russia.

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It could be that Pilenas’s denunciation was cooked up by Wiseman to provide apretext for Trotsky’s arrest. It also may have been that Wiseman and Dansey really wereworking in tandem, perhaps doing a kind of ‘good cop, bad cop’ act to bring the Russianinto line.

Finally, we come full circle to Trotsky’s urgent desire to communicate with AbramZhivotovskii upon reaching Christiania. Of course, through Reilly, Weinstein, ‘RobertJivotovsky’ and probably others, Trotsky had long had the means for indirect contactwith his uncle. Was Zhivotovskii’s the ultimate helping hand that had guided the GreatExile in his recent travels? If so, was this driven by a sense of familial obligation or by ashared political agenda?

The full truth about this episode in Trotsky’s career may never be known, and thattruth may be different than the theories sketched above. Nevertheless, the preceding hasdemonstrated that even before he reached America, and throughout his time there,Trotsky was surrounded by spies and informants of one sort or another. Some of theseprovided him with money and other assistance and others may have done the same. Thekey questions are: How aware was Trotsky of these agents and their intrigues, and towhat degree did he cooperate with them? A veteran of the revolutionary underground,he was not naive when it came to such things. His reaction to expulsion from France anddifficulties in Spain show that he was quick to sense conspiratorial currents. Trotsky wasalso enough of a pragmatist to accept that any money, even ‘tainted’ money, was betterthan none at all. Likewise, there was no practical reason to reject the assistance of impe-rialist agents, even competing ones, when they could abet his own interests. Trotskymight even have convinced himself that he was really exploiting them. Finally, ifTrotsky was persuaded to accept a helping hand from the British, and the obligationsthat entailed, is there any evidence that he lived up to the bargain? To explore that willrequire another article.

Notes

1. Spence, ‘Interrupted Journey’.2. Ostrovskii, ‘O rodstevennikakh L.D. Trotskogo’, 105–106, quoting Rossiiskii gosu-

darstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI), f. 4, op. 3, d. 39, l. 14.I offer special thanks to Elena Nikolaevna Chavchavadze, Director of PresidentialPrograms for the Russian Cultural Foundation (RFK), for bringing this and othermaterials to my attention.

3. United Kingdom, National Archives (NA), Records of the Security Service, KV2/502: ‘Bronstein, Trotsky, Leon’ (19 July 1915).

4. NA, KV2/502: ‘Trotzky (Leo Broushein [sic] & Ianoffsky)’, n.d., 1.5. Ibid., ‘Trotsky to Uritsky’ (24 November 1916), 1–2. Interestingly, in the summer

of 1917, Malvy would find himself accused of treason and later stood trial on thecharge. Although acquitted of that charge, the court did find him guilty of criminalnegligence and exiled him from France. He went to Spain.

6. Trotsky, My Life, 200.7. NA, KV2/502: ‘Trotsky to Uritsky’ (24 November 1916), 6.8. Ibid., 5.9. Ibid.

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10. Ibid.11. Zeman and Scharlau, The Merchant of Revolution, 161–62.12. Ibid., 64–67.13. Ibid., 155.14. On this point see also Schurer, ‘Alexander Helphand-Parvus’.15. This money came via another future Soviet luminary, Cristian Rakovski, as the French

and British intelligence services were aware. See NA, KV2/502: ‘Trotzky’, 1. Seealso: Zeman and Scharlau, The Merchant of Revolution, 155; and Senn, ‘The Myth ofGerman Gold’, 89.

16. Trotsky, My Life, 207.17. Ibid.18. All ship and immigration data comes from the online databases available at Ellis Island

Records (hereafter EIR), www.ellisislandrecords.org.19. On Bark see Soriano-Molla, Ernesto Bark.20. France, Archives de Guerre, Deuxieme Bureau (dossiers repatriées), File Z 26610:

Report G15 from Barcelona (26 December 1917).21. On Kesküla see Futtrell, Northern Underground, 40–42 and 119–51.22. Ibid., 224 and passim. On Aschberg’s connections, see also US Department of Justice,

Investigative Case Files of the Bureau of Investigation, 1908–1921 (hereafter BI),244189: ‘In re: Olaf Aschberg’ (18 November 1919); and University of California,Los Angeles, Young Library, Special Collections. Roger Mennevee Collections, Box,915, File 50: ‘Aschberg, Olaf’.

23. Zeman and Scharlau, The Merchant of Revolution, 148; and Moorehead, The RussianRevolution, 111–12.

24. US National Archives, RG 165, Military Intelligence Division (hereafter MID), 2059-109 (4 May 1918).

25. Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, Records of the Paris Okhrana (hereafterOkhrana), XVIIc, folder 2, No. 99 from Paris (27 January/9 February 1917). OnPatrick see ibid., ‘Deep Cover Agents – Russian (L–Z)’.

26. ML, 207.27. EIR.28. ML, 208.29. See Richardson, Cravan, 31. This is a graphic novel which mixes fact (such as it is),

legend and speculation about Cravan. A more detailed biography, which concentrateson his artistic endeavors, is Borras, Arthur Cravan.

30. Richardson, 37.31. EIR. Names in passenger lists are subject to wide variations in spelling and frequent

errors in transcription. Trotsky’s is mistakenly transcribed as ‘Zratsky, Leon’, whilehis sons’ surnames are transcribed ‘Zrotsky’.

32. University of Indiana, Lilly Library, Special Collections, Browne MSS: Ludwig Lore,‘When Trotsky Lived in New York’, 3.

33. Lore, ‘Leon Trotsky’, 8.34. Okhrana, XVIIc, Folder 2, No. 99 (27 January/9 February 1917).35. Lore, ‘When Trotsky Lived in New York’, 1–2.36. Ibid.37. New York Times (15 January 1917), 2.38. BI, 8000–116148: ‘In re: Leon Bronstein Trotzky (Trotsky)’ [hereafter, Becker

Report]; and American Jewish Yearbook, 1914–15, 285.39. American Jewish Yearbook, 1914–15, 285.

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40. A synopsis of such claims and theories can be found at ‘Trotsky and the BillionaireBoy’s Club’, Neuschwabenland Times, Digest No. 1,343 (29 January 2007),www.groups.yahoo.com/group/TheNewschwabenlandTimes. A rather differentperspective on such things can be found in Roberts, ‘Jewish Bankers’, 9–37.

41. For example, in MID, 10110-929: [Boris Brasol], ‘Bolshevism and Judaism’(13 November 1918).

42. US Department of State (DS), Decimal File, 861/51-143: ‘Schiff to Frank Polk [headof State Department intelligence]’ (25 November 1917).

43. New York Times (24 March 1917), 1–2 (’Statement of Friends of Russian Freedomrepresentative George Kennan at Madison Square Garden’).

44. Yale University, Sterling Library, Special Collections, MS 666: Sir William WisemanPapers (hereafter WWP), Box 10, File 257: ‘Summary of Reports Received fromAgent in Petrograd under Date of September 11, 1917’, 3. The author of this and likereports was Wiseman’s special agent, William Somerset Maugham. See also: MID,10080–342/II: ‘Capt. Bruff’ (5 June 1918).

45. MID, 10072–68: ‘British War Office Report’ (29 September 1917). This identifiesFritz Warburg as the ‘chief German agent for negotiations with Russia’. The latterreport links Warburg to Carl (Charles) Perren, a Swiss also connected to Parvus.

46. MID, 10087–22: IO, Philadelphia (20 February 1918).47. Yale University, Sterling Library, Special Collections, Ralph Hayward Isham

Collections (hereafter RIC), Box 2, Files 16–17, British Intelligence Papers:‘Information Gathered in America and Sources of Such Information’.

48. Ibid.49. WWP, 10/255: ‘Interview with Prof. Gottheil’ (29 May 1917).50. Thwaites, Velvet and Vinegar, 255.51. Eli Barnavi, ‘WWI and the Jews’, at www.myjewishlearning.com/history

_community/Modern/Overview_The_Story_19141918/WWI.htm.52. RIC, Ibid.53. Lore, ‘When Trotsky Lived in New York’, 6.54. Trotsky, My Life, 209.55. Lore, ‘Leon Trotsky’, 8.56. BI, Becker Report. Summaries of Becker’s report appear in the New York Times

(18 January 1918) and the New York Call (21 January 1918).57. Lore, ‘When Trotsky Lived in New York’, 6.58. Trotsky, My Life, 234.59. BI, Becker Report.60. New York Call (21 January 1918).61. Trotsky, My Life, 215.62. BI, Becker Report.63. Okhrana, XVIIc, Folder 1, No. 137, (6/22 February 1917).64. Trotsky, My Life, 213.65. NA, FO 371/3009: NID to FO, ‘Russians Detained at Halifax (12 April 1917).66. Zeman and Scharlau, The Merchant of Revolution, 160.67. Lore, ‘When Trotsky Lived in New York’, 3.68. Trotsky, My Life, 212.69. DS, 861.20211: ‘J.G. Phelps-Stokes to Polk’ (2 November 1917), 2.70. Ibid.: [Nikolai Volgar], ‘Memorandum’, 2.71. Futrell, Northern Underground, 228.72. Lore, ‘When Trotsky Lived in New York’, 5.

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73. Ibid.74. New York Times (5 March 1917), 11.75. Gillette, ‘Armand Hammer’, 357.76. Trotsky, My Life, 214.77. Lore, ‘When Trotsky Lived in New York’, 4.78. Ultan, ‘The Mystery of Trotsky’s Bronx Friend’, 76.79. On Armand Hammer’s escapades, see Epstein, The Secret Life of Armand Hammer.80. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Case Files, No. 61-280-7, Hammer, Armand:

‘Memorandum for Mr Hoover’, in ‘re: Armand Hammer’ (19 November 1921), 2.81. Reilly’s convoluted and dubious career is dissected in Spence, Trust No One.82. USNA, Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), 21010-3241:

‘Weinstein and Reilly’ (17 December 1918).83. BI, 8000-39368: ‘Copy[of] Cards’ [Names in the Weinstein Reilly Case], 4–6, 9–10.

These show the intimate relationship between Aschberg and Reilly and Weinstein’sbusiness affiliate in New York, John MacGregor Grant.

84. Ostrovskii, ‘O rodstevennikakh L.D. Trotskogo’, 117–25.85. The other brothers were David, Illarion and Timofei (or Tevel ).86. After the establishment of the Bolshevik regime Zhivotovskii maintained an office in

Stockholm closely connected with the ‘Venya [sic, Nya] Bank’. See BI, 339512: In ‘re:Shivotovsky (Zhivotovsky), Bolshevik Activities’ (8 January 1919). This associationcertainly predated November 1917.

87. Ostrovskii, ‘O rodstevennikakh L.D. Trotskogo’, 121–22.88. ONI, 21010-3241: ‘The Names in the Weinstein Case’ (1 November 1918), 4–5.89. DS, 861.00/4878, 21 July 1919; and Semenov, Russkie banki za granitsei, 61–63.90. DS, 000-909: ‘Who’s Who: A Ready Reference List of Persons in the Public Eye

[prepared by Psychologic Section, MID]’ (28 December 1918).91. MID, 10058-NN-16, n.d. [c. 1918].92. Ostrovskii, ‘O rodstevennikakh L.D. Trotskogo’, 109, 121.93. Ibid., 121.94. MID, 9140-6073: Memorandum No. 2 (23 August 1918), 2.95. Ibid.96. MID, 10110-920/131 (20 January 1919).97. BI, 8000-39368: ‘Copy [of] Cards’, 1.98. MID, 10110-920: ‘Memorandum’ (14 August 1918), 3.99. WWP, 10/255: ‘Interview with Prof. Gottheil’ (29 May 1917).

100. DS, Counselor’s Office, CSA 215: Sharp to Bannerman (13 December 1924), 11.101. WWP 10/255: ‘Russia’, 3.102. Thwaites, Velvet and Vinegar, 181.103. WWP, 10/257 (22 April 1917).104. ONI, 21010-3241: ‘Memorandum for Lt. Irving’ (21 August 1918), 1–2.105. Ibid., 1; and ‘Names in the Weinstein Case’, 3.106. Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 367.107. National Archives of Canada (NAC), C 2051: British Military Mission (New York), in

‘re: Ivan Okuntzov’ (30 July 1918).108. NA, KV2/502: Director of Special Intelligence Report No. 654, Narodny to Lurich

(26 August 1917).109. Ibid., Extract, 19-8-18, Statement of V.S. Ivanko.110. Ibid., No. 174400, n.d.111. WWP, 3/84: Thwaites to Wiseman (18 December 1918), 1.

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112. BI, 8000-39583: in ‘re: George Raffalovitch’ (2 August 1917).113. Zeman and Scharlau, The Merchant of Revolution 132–36.114. MID 10012-112/1 (22 September 1918), 4. Crowley’s espionage career will be

explored in the forthcoming Spence, Secret Agent 666.115. Okhrana, IIIf, Box 24, File 28; and ‘Deep Cover Agents – Russian (L–Z)’.116. BI, 105638: In ‘re: Casimir Pilenas’ (18 December 1917).117. NA, KV2/502: CX 015649 (19 January 1918).118. NA, KV2/502: CX 625 (22 March 1917).119. New York Times (16 March 1917), 4.120. Lore, ‘When Trotsky Lived in New York’, 6.121. Trotsky, ‘In British Captivity’, (1917), reprinted in The Class Struggle, Vol. 2, No. 4

(December 1918), available from www.marxists.org/archives/trotsky/works/1917/1917-captivity.htm.

122. EIR.123. Lore, ‘When Trotsky Lived in New York’, 7.124. Ibid.125. Trotsky, ‘In British Captivity’.126. ONI, 21010-3241: ‘Names in the Weinstein Case’, 3; BI 8000-39368: ‘Cards’, 4, 9–

12; DS, CSA 215: Sharp to Bannerman, 9–10; and New York Times (5 June 1919), 13.127. NAC, Vol. 2543, File H.Q.C., 2051/1.128. NA, FO 371/3009, 86305 (3 April 1917).129. On this, see Spence, ‘Englishmen in New York’; and Troy, ‘The Gaunt–Wiseman

Affair’.130. BI, 105638.131. NA, KV2/502: CX 015649 (19 January 1918).132. This section was MI5(e).133. NA, KV2/502, 252573: Dansey to MI5 (G2) (19 January 1918).134. Ibid.135. BI, 105638: in ‘re: Casimir Pilenas’ (6 December 1917).136. American Jewish Archives, Nathan Isaacs Papers: Isaacs to Pilenas/Palmer (15 May 1933).137. WWP, 10/261: ‘Intelligence & Propaganda Work in Russia, July to December 1917’

(19 January 1918), 1.138. WWP, 10/255: ‘Russia’ (18 May 1917), 1.139. Ibid., 3; and 10/261, 1–2.140. WWP, 10/256: ‘Copies of Cables’, Schiff to Kamenka (15 April 1917).

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