The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 6, 1927, Page 7

The Story of a British Spy In Russia (Continued from Page 2) 000 francs. I asked him who then amongst the leading Bolshevists did he want put out of the way. He then gave us the names of Krassin, Tchicherin, Radek, Rakovski and Bukharin and perhaps still others. He was particularly inter- ested in getting rid of Krassin. “We commenced with the practical work, and I went to Berlin with Savinkov and Derental. Here we went straight from the station to the house of the monarchist secret agent Orlov who was the chairman of the Wrangel secret service in Berlin. He was closely connected with and completely dependent upon the British secret agent Reilly. Orlov assured us that as far as weapons, passports, photographs and descrip- tions of the Soviet representatives were con- cerned, he could do everything necessary. He had in his possession various tins with poison, bombs, ete. Savinkov ordered five revolvers and photographs and descriptions of Krasin, Tchit- cherin, Radek and Bukharin. “We discovered the stopping place of the Sov- iet delegation to Genoa and made prepartions to carry out an attempt upon its members. I learned in Berlin that Tchitcherin would also come. As I had not sufficient time to get into touch with my co-operators. I went alone to the station, but I found so many police there that I left the station. I got in touch with my co-operators with a view to car- rying out an attempt upon the members of the delegation which included Litvinov, when it set off. We knew that a special train with a saloon- waggon was waiting at Potsdamer Railway Sta- tion, and we succeeded in gaining access, to the platform which was closed to the general pub- lic. All my companions had false passports and sufficient money in case of flight. It turned out that only less important members of the delega- tion were in the saloon-waggon of the train and that the chief members of the delegation were attending a dinner at the German Foreign Office, and so the train Jeft without them. But Tchitcherin and the other members of the dele- gation reached the train by automobile at an- other station. After the delegation departed for Genoa, I remained with my group in Berlin and we intended to carry out terrorist attempts upon the Bolshevist leaders who had remained in Berlin. It was rumored that Rakovski had remained in Berlin. We intended to carry out an attempt against Litvinov, but we found out only too late the waggon in which he was travel- ing. With this failure ended this depressing epic.” q From the statement of Elvengren it is clear that he did everything he could of a technical nature to kill our delegates to Genoa. At the decisive moment, the real “mastermind” in the affair apeared, Sidney George Reilly. Our delegation only escaped death thanks to our own precautions and to the watchful- ness of the Berlin police. Elvengrer writes then about his further activity: “Up till the autumn of 1925 I was in France and met periodically various monarchist person- alities, for instance, the Czar Kyril, the Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovitch, etc. This time was occupied with a search for means to continue the struggle.” In this purely monarchist environment Elvengren directed his attention once again to his chief and favorite weapon against the Soviet Union, i.e., the weapon of terrorism against the Soviet leaders, but Elvengren himself saw the physical impossibility of organizing a wide-spread conspirative activity in- side the Soviet Union. Together with Andrei Viadimirovitch and Aubert, Elvengren organized an attempt upon Comrade Tchitcherin utilizing the circumstance that Tchit- cherin was in the south of France for purpose of reconvalescence. The detailed statement of Elvengren in relation to this attempt may be summed up briefly: “Under the directions of Andrei Vladimiro- vitch an active terrorist group was organized to act independently and without entering into any connection with the other emigrant organi- zations, The financial means were to come through Kyril from Americans, and negotiations for this purpose were going on. Through the White Guardist Madishenski who was a member of the group connection was taken up with Au- bert and the group expected to receive money through the mediation of Aubert from Ford. “When we heard that Tchitcherin was in the south of France, our group decided to carry out an attempt upon him. General Voloshin, Prince Vayasemski, the one-time Chancellor General Kulinevy and myself were entrusted with the carrying out of the attempt. However, we were not successful in discovering the exact place whete Tchitcherin was staying.” After the failure of this plan Elvengren occupied himself up to the time of his arrest with a plan for a campaign of terror on the territory of the Soviet Union itself. The statements of Elvengren alone expose suf- ficiently the work of the White Guardist monarchists and their imperialist masters. The statements of Elvengren are however, only a fraction of the whole material in the hands of the Soviet government. rt A Lynching Party ‘% wever pworkw (Reminiscence from Russia). HE orphan Usik wa$*the terror of the village. He was nicknamed “Driftwood,” and was given to horse-stealing. The village Krasnoe, of which he considered himself a native, as well as other villages of surrounding territory, was eagerly awaiting the day when “Driftwood” will be apprehended. I chanced upon “Driftwood” one July afternoon. Krasnoe was quiet, hot, and fragrant with sweet honeyed clover. All men folks were out in the fields busily harvesting their first crops of oats. Only elderly women and very small chidren could be seen about here and there reposing in a shady birch on the sand near a hut. Usik appeared from his lair smiling and whist- ling. He was a boy of about twenty, and wore a home-spun white blouse girdled by a bright red hand-made cotton belt. He was stocky and short, and had watery blue eyes and a shiny oily face, unlike a White Russian at all. He was like a drop of mud in the White Russian human stream. He had a carefree attitude and approached me with jocularity. He patted my.chestnut-brown horse, and I foolishly inquired whether he was working. He reached down deep in the bulging bosom of his shirt and handed me a large fragrant red apple. It was fragrant with honey and flowers, and “Drift- wood’s” strong young body. “Here boy,” he said smilingly. “Don’t listen to anybody. Work chains one for life. When a man starts working he stops smiling. .” He gave my horse a juicy blue plum and pointed to his, large black tearful eye. “Once a man gets the bad habit of steady hard work he becomes dangerous and is a beast of other men’s burdens, and should be put in jail. . .He is dangerous, I tell you boy.” He bit into a small green very juicy apple and continued: “I tell you boy, I know. I worked once upon a time myself. . .” The sizzling juice ran down his mouth and he went on: “Work makes a man full of sores and anger, like after a beating. . .” He laughed scratching his dishevelled hair: “And besides there’s too much food produced around, that a mortal should have to work on these hot days. Supposing I am a rich man’s son? Come lad, there is the cool Dnieper waiting.” He hopped into my cart and roared like a boy with laughter: “You know it is enough that my three grand- fathers were fools and worked themselves to death to provide a fat living for the kulak in yonder es- tate, and the fat pope who is almost bursting around the belt. . .” As it, happened in his case “Driftwood” only worked when he thought that the surrounding fruit orchards were overladen with ripe juicy fruit, or whenever he knew it was about time that the kulak’s yearling colts were large enough to stil for ten roubles. Work was one thing that life could never convinée Usik the necessity of. However, as it hap- pened that “Driftwood” joined a band of roaming gypsies, and not hesitating to practice his art in horse stealing, he was caught. It was winter. At the end of the village, in a tiny hovel-like hut, where the widow Mary lived with her two pale small daughters, Usik was apprehended and dragged out through the window to the snowy street. A storm was raging furiously, and “Driftwood” was half naked and barefoot. He was dragged about the craggy street and mauled all the while by the enraged mob. Usik was soon beyond recognition. He was one bleeding sore. Soon from someevhere appeared a sled and “Driftwood” was thrown into it. Followed by a cursing mob it disappeared in the distance beyond the village across the snow wastes. All the while the half dead Usik lie thinking how to escape his captors, and suddenly his chance came. Once at a sharp curve “Driftwood” rolled eff of the sled, and as if suddenly awakening from a ter- rible dream, he took off across a storm-swept snowy Rimes of Starvation Al There, little fur picket, don’t you cry, You'll be a jail-bird by and by. Roses are red, violets are blue, The Forward loves a furrier as Ford does a Jew. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust Save the needle unions from the right wing trust. aes eas field, and disappeared in a distanct black wood. When the enraged mob reached the wood it found the bare-footed Usik perched high up on a birch, as if enmeshed in a net. His eyes gleamed with sparks of the cornered beast, and he was trembling with fierce cold. Mercy he never expected from man, much less from an enraged peasant who caught a horse-thief. However. -when the mob saw him painfully trembling it subsided. -And kneeling on the snow before him, several men and women, crossing them- selves, entreated that he had better come down before he perished of cold. But “Driftwood” refused. Only on certain terms would he come down. They were, a good warm sheep-skin fur coat worn by the leader of the lynching party, several good drinks he knew they brought along, and a good supper on returning to the village. The winter sun was setting frosty- red, illuminating bright and dazzling the firm snow around the forest. Jt was glistening fiery as far as the eye could see across the desolate snow-wastes, and almost caught fire around the edge of the wocd. Everything around was dead-still. A blazing winter sky was threatening with a more’severe frost. Nicht was approaching, and a howling cold wind began harping and swaying the birch where “Driftwood” sat bare-foot and trembling. The mob, remorse stricken, was now kneeling before Usik as before the crucified christ, and it agreed to his terms. ‘He climbed down rapidly like a squirrel, and was immediately wrapped in a com- fortable, soft, sheep-skin coat, held ready for him by two peasants. He smiled. He was given a drink. And everybody followed him closely back to the village that lay in the distance under a starry wes- tern horizon. As the party approached the village, an elderly shaggy peasant, who was all the way watching that “Driftwood” was warm, called out loudly to the rear: “Run ahead, Antip, ring the church bells, tell all the folks that a man was saved!” Portrait of a Tired | Radical E usec to be a radical too, 10 or 12 years ago—a radical who sort of specialized in Socialism, the Embattled Farmer, Justice for All, and such semi- bourgeois ideology. But now he is tired. Now he says the Movement is dead. He says it takes a very long time to make.a radical, which is true. But, in his case, it hasn’t taken long to make a@ reactionary. A few times he went on the soapbox. He used to spend night after night arguing Marx- ian theory—dodging Marxian revolutionary tactics. Now, being tired, he says America is too young, too raw, too prosperous for a social revolution. When you come right down to it, he never was a radical at all, at least in the direct-action, proletarian radi- cal sense, he was never a radical. He always had a pretty easy time of it and never succeeded in know- ing what it means to be class-conscious. He probably doesn’t know today that the proletariat is born, not made, and that they have to fight to live and not merely to please the intellectuals and irritate the capitalists. His radicalism was a pale, bloodless creature, but he liked it then. Trouble is, he never could get out of himself. He never succeeded in being detached, objective, with a feeling for the powerful class and social demands on proletarian radical revolutionary tactics. Now, being older and very tired, he gets his pleas- ure in romances and good food. He is able to say too damned decisively even for a tired radical grown bourgeois: “The American working man is the hap- piest and most favored in the world; it has no kick coming. . .Capital has made the lot of the Amer- ican working man better than any other working man knows and that is why he is satisfied. There are no socially oppressed classes in America . .The farmer, even the ‘poor white’, is not so- cially oppressed. He could produce more and more economically if he would buy improved machinery and more land. .Great art is fostered and nour- ished by capital. To have a great art, you must have great wealth. . Marx was one of the profoundest of social economists, but the American working man does not need Marxian doctrine. .When the ma- jority of American workingclasses want a new deal, then—and only then—will there be a social revolu- tion. And not before. . .There is no serious need for a radical press in America, and I do not believe in supporting and subsidizing publications that have no popolar demand.” He confesses that he is making it better now than at any other time in his life. Better pay now. More leisure. ‘A home wife, and kids. He’s satisfied. Smugly content to settle down for his declining years. No kick coming against the fat guys... But as I say, he’s very tired.