The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

1. As late as 1990 Valentin Falin, head of the International Department of the Central Committee, which was largely responsible for determining foreign intelligence requirements, claimed that intelligence reports in 1943 showed that some in Washington as well as in London were considering “the possibility of terminating the coalition with the Soviet Union and reaching an accord with Nazi Germany, or with the Nazi Generals, on the question of waging a joint war against the Soviet Union”:

Therefore when we talk about Stalin’s distrust with regard to Churchill, at a certain stage towards those surrounding Roosevelt, not so much towards Roosevelt himself, we should pay attention to the fact that he based this mistrust on a very precise knowledge of specific facts.

The “facts” produced by the Center were, in all probability, mere conspiracy theories of the kind which, in greater or lesser degree, distorted Soviet intelligence assessment throughout, and even beyond, the Stalinist era. (Interview by Christopher Andrew with Valentin Falin in Moscow for BBC2, December 12, 1990.)

2. On CPUSA operations against Trotskyists and heretics, see Klehr, Haynes and Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism; quotation from p. 89.

3. vol. 6, ch. 12. On the FBI bugging of Nelson, see also Klehr, Haynes and Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism, pp. 216-17. The disappointingly discreet account of Nelson’s career, Steve Nelson, American Radical, by Nelson, Barrett and Ruck, makes a brief reference to his work on the secret Party control commission (p. 242).

4. vol. 6, ch. 12. On Hopkins, see above, chapter 7.

5. See above, chapter 7.

6. Benson and Warner (eds.), VENONA, p. xviii, n. 30 and document 10. The authors suggest the author of the letter to Hoover “might have been” Mironov. One of the files noted by Mitrokhin makes Mironov’s authorship virtually certain. While imprisoned by the NKVD in 1945, Mironov tried to smuggle to the American embassy in Moscow information about the massacre of the Polish officer corps similar to that contained in the letter to Hoover in 1943 (vol. 5, section 11). A study of the letter by Ben Fischer, written without access to Mitrokhin’s notes on KGB files, seeks to make sense of Mironov’s bizarre claim that Zarubin and his wife were working for, respectively, Japanese and German intelligence, as a way “to grab FBI attention” and ensure that Hoover acted against them. But Mr. Fischer also acknowledges evidence that Mironov “may have been mentally disturbed” (Fischer, “‘Mr. Guver,’” pp. 10-11.). KGB files suggest both an obsessional hostility to Zarubin from Mironov and a determination that the West should learn the truth about the massacre of the Polish officer corps. In the letter to Hoover, Mironov claimed that his real name was Markov; Mitrokhin’s notes, however, refer to him as Mironov.

7. Zarubin to Center, June 3, 1943: VENONA decrypts, 2nd release, pp. 157-8. Zarubin moved to Washington during June.

8. Following the corrupt governorships of Huey and Earl Long, Sam Jones established a reputation for scrupulous honesty. On his term as governor, see Dawson, The Louisiana Governors, pp. 255-9.

9. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. The US “military intelligence officer” may have had knowledge of the information on Zarubin’s involvement in the massacre of Polish officers contained in Mironov’s letter to Hoover.

10. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

11. Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, pp. 196-7.

12. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

13. Samolis (ed.) Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 53-5. This SVR hagiography predictably makes no mention of Zarubin’s various misadventures in the United States.

14. vol. 5, sec. 11. Sudoplatov wrongly claims that Mironov was simply “hospitalized and discharged from the service” on the grounds of schizophrenia; Special Tasks, p. 197.

15. VENONA decrypts, 4th release, part 4, pp. 115-16.

16. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2; vol. 6, app. 2, part 7. Zarubin’s immediate successor as resident in New York in the summer of 1943, probably on a temporary basis, had been Pavel Klarin (codenamed LUKA); VENONA decrypts, 2nd release, pp. 180ff. On Abbiate’s previous career see above, chapter 4.

17. VENONA decrypts, 3rd release, part 2, pp. 205-6.

18. VENONA decrypts, 3rd release, part 3, p. 175. The telegram from the Center appointing Abbiate as resident refers to him by his codename SERGEI, identified in the NSA decrypt as Pravdin (Abbiate’s alias in the USA). Apresyan’s transfer to San Francisco was not necessarily a demotion in view of the forthcoming organizing conference of the United Nations, attended by NKGB agent Harry Dexter White and presided over by the GRU agent Alger Hiss.

19. vol. 7, ch. 2, 1; app. 3, n. 21.