Mark Zborowski
Encyclopedia
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
and an NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
agent (Venona codenames TULIP and KANT). He was the NKVD's most valuable mole inside the Trotskyist
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
organization in Paris during the 1930s and in New York during the 1940s.
Childhood in Uman
Zborowski was one of four children born into a Jewish family in UmanUman
Uman is a city located in the Cherkasy Oblast in central Ukraine, to the east of Vinnytsia. The city rests on the banks of the Umanka River at around , and serves as the self-governing administrative center of the Umanskyi Raion ....
, near Cherkasy
Cherkasy
Cherkasy or Cherkassy , is a city in central Ukraine. It is the capital of the Cherkasy Oblast , as well as the administrative center of the surrounding Cherkasky Raion within the oblast...
, in 1908. According to the story Zborowski told friends, his conservative parents moved to Poland in 1921 to escape the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
in Russia. While he was a student, Zborowski disobeyed his parents and joined the Polish Communist Party. His political activity led to imprisonment and he fled to Berlin where he was unsuccessful in finding employment. He moved to France and attended the University of Grenoble
University of Grenoble
University of Grenoble or Grenoble University was a university in Grenoble, France until 1970, when it was split into several different institutions:...
, studying anthropology and working as a waiter.
Early life in Paris
In 1933 the penniless Zborowski turned up in Paris with his wife and was recruited as an NKVD agent by the LeningradSaint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
émigré Alexander Adler. He provided the NKVD with a written background and revealed that his sister and two brothers lived in the Soviet Union. According to historian John J. Dziak, the NKVD had recruited him into a special group who murdered special enemies of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
. Those assassinated included Ignace Reiss (1937), Andrés Nin
Andrés Nin
Andreu Nin i Pérez was a Spanish Communist revolutionary.- Early life :...
(1937), and Walter Krivitsky
Walter Krivitsky
Walter Germanovich Krivitsky was a Soviet intelligence officer who revealed plans of signing Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact before defecting weeks before the outbreak of World War II....
(1941). Members of the group are said to have included Leonid Eitingon
Nahum Eitingon
Nahum Isaakovich Eitingon, or Naum Isaakovič Ejtingon , also known as Leonid Aleksandrovich Eitingon , was a Soviet intelligence officer, who was sometimes described as a major organizer of Stalin's state terrorism system.- Career :Eitingon, a Russian Jew, joined the Cheka in 1920, shortly before...
, Nikolai Vasilyevich Skoblin, Sergei Efron and his wife Marina Tsvetayeva, and David Alfaro Siqueiros
David Alfaro Siqueiros
José David Alfaro Siqueiros was a social realist painter, known for his large murals in fresco that helped establish the Mexican Mural Renaissance, together with works by Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, and also a member of the Mexican Communist Party who participated in an...
, and perhaps the psychoanalyst Max Eitingon.
Embedding with Lev Sedov
The NKVD took steps to infiltrate him into the Paris organization run by Leon TrotskyLeon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
's son Lev Sedov. Known as Etienne, Zborowski befriended Sedov's wife, Jeanne Martin, and she recommended him for the position of Sedov's secretary. Because of his obsequious nature and untiring work, and because he was also a Russian speaker in what was essentially a French group, Etienne soon became indispensable to Sedov. He served as a member of the group's Central Committee, read and answered Sedov's mail, edited the Russian language
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
version of the Bulletin of the Opposition, stored part of the Trotsky archive at his home, and served as Sedov's deputy in his absence. All the while Etienne reported on the activity of Trotsky (codename OLD MAN), Sedov (codename SONNY), and the Trotskyists (codename POLECATS) to his NKVD handlers.
Evidence from NKVD
Etienne’s NKVD file contains several reports which must have strengthened Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
’s resolve to physically destroy the Trotsky family. In a report to the Center on January 1937 Etienne wrote, “SONNY, during our conversation in his apartment on the subject of the second Moscow trial and the role of the different defendants declared, ‘Now we shouldn’t hesitate. Stalin must be murdered.’” In a report dispatched in February 1937 he wrote that Sedov advocated terrorism: “The next time SONNY began talking about terrorism was when I came to his apartment to work. While we were reading newspapers, SONNY said that the whole regime in the USSR was propped up by Stalin; it was enough to kill Stalin for everything to fall to pieces.”
Death of Lev Sedov
On February 8, 1938 the overworked Sedov suffered a severe attack of appendicitisAppendicitis
Appendicitis is a condition characterized by inflammation of the appendix. It is classified as a medical emergency and many cases require removal of the inflamed appendix, either by laparotomy or laparoscopy. Untreated, mortality is high, mainly because of the risk of rupture leading to...
. Etienne convinced him to have the operation secretly at a small private clinic run by Russian emigres in Paris, the location of which Etienne immediately revealed to the NKVD. Sedov was operated on the same evening and appeared, over the next few days, to have a normal recovery. Suddenly he became violently ill and despite repeated blood transfusions he died in great pain on February 16 at the age of thirty-two. Historians differ as to whether or not Sedov was murdered by the NKVD and there is considerable evidence to support either scenario.
Internal investigation by Trotskyists
After Sedov's death, Trotsky initiated an investigation of Etienne and entrusted the matter to Rudolf Klement, his one-time aide and organizer of Trotsky's Fourth InternationalFourth International
The Fourth International is the communist international organisation consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky , with the declared dedicated goal of helping the working class bring about socialism...
. Before Klement could complete the investigation an NKVD agent named Ale Taubman lured him to an apartment on the Left Bank and murdered him with the help of two other agents, the "Turk" and Alexander Korotkov. They cut off Klement's head and legs and stuffed the body parts in a trunk and threw it into the Seine
Seine
The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...
. Several days later the Trotskyists received a typewritten letter from Klement accusing Trotsky of collaboration with Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
. The letter, clearly an NKVD fabrication, was no doubt meant to explain Klement's disappearance and to denounce Trotsky at the same time. However, Klement's headless corpse washed ashore in August 1938 and was identified, from a scar on one hand, by two Trotskyists.
Death of Trotsky
Etienne now became the leader of the beheaded Trotskyist organization in Paris and continued to edit the Bulletin of the Opposition, along with Lilia Estrin DallinLilia Estrin Dallin
Lilia Estrin Dallin was a prominent member of Trotsky's Paris organization in the 1930s, the wife of the anti-Stalinist David Dallin, and a suspected NKVD agent.-Early life:...
(codename NEIGHBOR). He used his skills to play upon the vanities of the remaining Trotskyists and create internal divisions within the faction, especially isolating Victor Serge
Victor Serge
Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...
. In 1939 the defector Alexander Orlov
Alexander Orlov
Alexander Mikhailovich Orlov , born Lev Feldbin, 21 August 1895–25 March 1973), was a General in the Soviet secret police and NKVD Rezident in the Second Spanish Republic. In 1938, Orlov refused to return to the Soviet Union because he realized that he would be executed, and fled with his...
sent Trotsky an unsigned letter warning him that an NKVD agent named "Mark", fitting the description of Zborowski, had infiltrated the Paris organization. Much to her later regret, Dallin convinced Trotsky that the letter was NKVD disinformation meant to create fear within the Trotskyist faction. Meanwhile, Etienne played a small but significant role in the plot to assassinate Trotsky. At the founding conference of the Fourth International in Paris in September 1938, Etienne introduced his friend Sylvia Ageloff, an American Trotskyist and interpreter, to Ramón Mercader
Ramón Mercader
Jaime Ramón Mercader del Río Hernández was a Spanish communist who became famous as the murderer of Russian Communist ideologist Leon Trotsky in 1940, in Mexico...
, the future assassin of Trotsky. The passionate Mercader seduced the unattractive twenty-eight year old woman. She blindly followed him to Mexico and infiltrated him into Trotsky's household. Mercader murdered Trotsky by striking him in the skull with an ice-axe on August 20, 1940.
Tracking of Kravchenko
Zborowski fled to the United States following the Nazi invasion of France. The American Trotskyists David and Lilia Dallin assisted in his emigration and helped him obtain employment at a screw factory in Brooklyn. With money from an unknown source, he rented a fashionable Manhattan apartment in the Dallin's building and once again resumed his former occupation, spying on Trotskyists. His codenames TULIP and KANT appear in nearly two dozen Venona decrypts. He reported to the Soviet controller Jack SobleJack Soble
Jack Soble Jack Soble (birth name:Abromas Sobolevicius, sometimes used Abraham Sobolevicius or Adolph Senin) Jack Soble (birth name:Abromas Sobolevicius, sometimes used Abraham Sobolevicius or Adolph Senin) (born May 15, 1903 in Vilkaviskis, Lithuania - ?, but possibly (1897-1974) was a Jewish...
. Zborowski spied on the Dallins and helped the NKVD search for Victor Kravchenko, a Soviet engineer and mid-level bureaucrat who defected from a trade mission in 1944. Kravchenko published a book, I Chose Freedom (1946), which described the repressions in the Soviet Union, the purges, the collectivizations, and the slave labor camps.
Academia
By 1945 Zborowski's usefulness as an agent had come to an end. He turned his attention to his academic career and found employment, with the aid of Margaret MeadMargaret Mead
Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s....
, as a research assistant at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. In 1952 he published Life is with People (coauthored with Elizabeth Herzog), a groundbreaking study of Jewish life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe before the Second World War. The book received critical acclaim and has been reprinted numerous times. From 1951-1954 he conducted research at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
. He became an American citizen in 1947.
Senate investigation and conviction
The defector Alexander OrlovAlexander Orlov
Alexander Mikhailovich Orlov , born Lev Feldbin, 21 August 1895–25 March 1973), was a General in the Soviet secret police and NKVD Rezident in the Second Spanish Republic. In 1938, Orlov refused to return to the Soviet Union because he realized that he would be executed, and fled with his...
unmasked Zborowski before a hearing of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in September 1955. The FBI already knew that Zborowski was an NKVD agent from information they had obtained from their double-agent Boris Morros
Boris Morros
Boris Morros was an American Communist Party member, Paramount Studios producer, Soviet agent, and FBI double agent.Morros was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and emigrated with his family to America in 1922...
. Zborowski appeared before the Senate Subcommittee in February 1956. Since he was free from prosecution for his activities in France, Zborowski admitted to being an NKVD agent in Paris but he denied working as an agent in America. In his testimony he claimed that the NKVD had tried to enlist him as an agent in New York but he had refused: "At that time, I became almost--I became hysterical and I remember well, I hit my fist on the table and said, 'I will not do anything with you anymore.' And I walked out. Since then, I have not seen anyone." As the Venona decrypts clearly prove, Zborowski lied about this and other parts of his testimony. Zborowski was convicted of perjury and after an appeal and retrial he received a four-year prison sentence in 1962.
Return to academia
Following his release he resumed his academic career and published People in Pain (1969), a study of responses to pain by people of different cultures. He moved to San Francisco where, in time, he rose to the position of Director of the Pain Institute at the Mount Zion Hospital.Confession to Elisabeth Poretsky
When they were both living in the States, Zborowski came twice to the home of Elisabeth Poretsky one day—in the spring of 1955, she believed, according to her memoirs. This followed visits by the FBI, who came to her and inquired about "Etienne" (as she refers to him). During their second visit, the FBI informed her that they believed Zborowski to be an NKVDNKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
agent. When she next saw him, Zborowski barged into her home once the door opened.
About his overall activities, he confessed:
- "I came to tell you that it is all true. I have been an N.K.V.D. agent for more than twenty years"... He did not wait for me to ask him anything, however, but began to tell me how he had been recruited by a fellow worker, a Russian, in Grenoble, who had suggested he go to Paris, where he could find friends and "be useful to the Soviet Union." The story of how Etienne had infiltraded the Trotskyite organizaiton—where, in fact, very little that was of interest to the N.K.V.D. was going on—contained nothing unexpected...
About the murder of Trotsky's son, he said:
- I asked about Sedov who, according to Etienne, had been the main target of his spying. "Do you remember, when I saw you a few days after Sedov's death, what you told me then and how defeated you were?... That was the happiest day of my life... I did not have to spy on him anymore, I did not have to denounce him. My job was finished, or so I thought..."
About his role in the assassination of Poretsky's husband Ludwik (AKA Ignace Poretsky), he said:
- I asked him outright whether it was he who had informed the N.K.V.D. of the contents of Krivitsky's "Krusia" letter to me. "Did Serge [Sedov] show you that letter?" A wry, pitiful smile on his distorted face and a shrug of the shoulders were his only reply. It was neither a confirmation nor a denial, just that helpless smile of his. It as the same with all the questions I asked about Ludwick's murder. Only a shrug of the shoulders. I knew then without a doubt who had informed the N.K.V.D.
Confession in Margaret Mead papers
According to Dr. Steven Zipperstein of Stanford UniversityStanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
:
Zborowski was not given to self-revelation. But amidst the huge body of material about Jews collected for Mead's project... is an interview with Zborowski about his childhood and youth that is probably the most honest statement he ever recorded. He provided the information in 1947, just before anti-communism surfaced as a major post-war preoccupation, two years after his espionage work had ended, and almost a decade before he was unmasked. He seems to have felt safer from detection, freer to talk, than ever before or afterwards.He tells of his childhood in Uman and the social downfall of his middle-class parents. His family left Russia for Poland(first Lvov, then Łódź), then how he himself left for France in 1928 with wife Regina. Communists recruited him while he worked as a busboy in Grenoble. In Paris, his quietude and acquiescence won him constant use and confidence among new Lev Sedov and Trotskyist comrades in Paris.
Sources
- John Costello and Oleg Tsarev, Deadly Illusions : The KGB Orlov Dossier Reveals Stalin's Master Spy, Crown Publishing, 1993. ISBN 0-517-58850-1
- John Earl HaynesJohn Earl HaynesJohn Earl Haynes is an American historian who is a specialist in 20th century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress...
and Harvey KlehrHarvey KlehrHarvey E. Klehr is a professor of politics and history at Emory University; he is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America ....
, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Yale University PressYale University PressYale University Press is a book publisher founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day. It became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but remains financially and operationally autonomous....
, 1999. 504 pages ISBN 0300084625 - Elisabeth K. Poretsky, Our own people: A memoir of 'Ignace Reiss' and his friends, University of Michigan PressUniversity of Michigan PressThe University of Michigan Press is part of the University of Michigan Library and serves as a primary publishing unit of the University of Michigan, with special responsibility for the creation and promotion of scholarly, educational, and regional books and other materials in digital and print...
, 1969. 278 pages ISBN 0472735004 - Jack Soble File, at the Federal Bureau of InvestigationFederal Bureau of InvestigationThe Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
. - Pavel SudoplatovPavel SudoplatovLieutenant General Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov was a member of the intelligence services of the Soviet Union who rose to the rank of lieutenant general...
, Special Tasks, Little, Brown and Company, 1994. 576 pages ISBN 0316821152 - Dmitri VolkogonovDmitri VolkogonovDmitri Antonovich Volkogonov was a Russian historian and officer.-Biography:...
, Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary, Simon and Schuster, 1996. ISBN 0684822938 - Susan Weissman, Victor Serge: The Course is Set on Hope, Verso, 2001. ISBN 1859849873