Walter Krivitsky


Walter Germanovich Krivitsky was a Soviet intelligence officer who revealed plans of signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact before he defected, weeks before the outbreak of World War II.

Early life

Walter Krivitsky was born on June 28, 1899, to Jewish parents as Samuel Ginsberg in Podwołoczyska, Galicia, Austria-Hungary, he adopted the name "Krivitsky," which was based on the Slavic root for "crooked, twisted". It was a revolutionary nom de guerre when he entered the Cheka, Bolshevik intelligence, in around 1917.

Espionage

Krivitsky operated as an illegal resident spy, with false name and papers, in Germany, Poland, Austria, Italy, and Hungary. He rose to the rank of control officer. He is credited with stealing plans for submarines and planes, intercepting Nazi-Japanese correspondence, and recruiting many agents, including Magda Lupescu and Noel Field.
In May 1937, Krivitsky was sent to The Hague, Netherlands, to operate as the rezident, operating under the cover of an antiquarian. It appears that he co-ordinated intelligence operations throughout Western Europe.

Defection

At the time, the General Staff of the Red Army was undergoing the Great Purge in Moscow, which Krivitsky and close friend, Ignace Reiss, both abroad, found deeply disturbing. Reiss wanted to defect, but Krivitsky repeatedly held back.
Finally, Reiss defected, as he announced in a defiant letter to Moscow. His assassination, in Switzerland, in September 1937 prompted Krivitsky to defect the following month.
In Paris, Krivitsky began to write articles and made contact with Lev Sedov, Trotsky's son, and the Trotskyists. There, he also met undercover Soviet spy Mark Zborowski, known as "Etienne," whom Sedov had sent to protect him. Sedov died mysteriously in February 1938, but Krivitsky eluded attempts to kill or kidnap him in France, including flight to Hyères.
As a result of Krivitsky's debriefing, the British were able to arrest John King, a cypher clerk in the Foreign Office. He also gave a vague description of two other Soviet spies, Donald Maclean and John Cairncross but without enough detail to enable their arrest. Soviet intelligence operation in the United Kingdom was thrown into disarray for a time.
At the end of 1938, anticipating the Nazi conquest of Europe, Krivitsky sailed from France to the United States.

Anti-Stalinist

Krivitsky did not stop with defection; he went on to become an anti-Stalinist.

''In Stalin's Secret Service''

With the help of journalist Isaac Don Levine and literary agent Paul Wohl, Krivitsky produced an inside account of Stalin's underhanded methods. It appeared in book form as In Stalin's Secret Service, published on November 15, 1939, after appearing first in sensational serial form in April 1939 in the top magazine of the time, the Saturday Evening Post. The book received a tepid review by the very influential New York Times.
Violently attacked by the American left, Krivitsky was vindicated when the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, which he had predicted, was signed in August 1939.

Testimony

Caught between dedication to socialist ideals and detesting Stalin's methods, Krivitsky believed that it was his duty to inform. That decision caused him much mental anguish, as he impressed on American defector Whittaker Chambers, as he told Chambers, "In our time, informing is a duty".
Krivitsky testified before the Dies Committee in October 1939, and sailed as "Walter Thomas" to London in January 1940 to be debriefed by Jane Archer of British Military Intelligence, MI5. In doing so, he revealed much about Soviet espionage. It is a matter of controversy whether he gave MI5 clues to the identity of Soviet agents Donald Maclean and Kim Philby. It is certain, however, that the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, abbreviated NKVD, learned of his testimony and initiated operations to silence him.

Death

Krivitsky soon returned to North America, landing in Canada. Always in trouble with the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, Krivitsky was not able to return there until November 1940. Krivitsky retained Louis Waldman to represent him on legal matters.
Meanwhile, the assassination of Trotsky in Mexico on August 21, 1940, convinced him that he was now at the top of the NKVD hit list. His last two months in New York were filled with plans to settle in Virginia and to write but also with doubts and dread.
On February 10, 1941, at 9:30 a.m., he was found dead in the Bellevue Hotel in Washington, DC, by a chambermaid, with three suicide notes by the bed. His body was lying in a pool of blood, caused by a single bullet wound to the right temple from a.38-caliber revolver found grasped in Krivitsky's right hand. A report dated June 10, 1941, indicates he had been dead for approximately 6 hours.
According to many sources, he was murdered by Soviet intelligence, but the official investigation, unaware of the NKVD manhunt, concluded that Krivitsky committed suicide.
People with close ties to Krivitsky later recounted opposite interpretations of his death:
In the United States, he had to make a new start in life, without knowing the country or the language. He did find friends, good friends, but among them he realized how frightfully alone he was... He lived in relative security and even affluence from the sale of his articles. His family was safe and well cared for, he had friends, it seemed he could start a new life. But something else had happened. For the first time he had the leisure to see himself in his new situation. He had broken with his old life and had not built a new one. He went to a hotel in Washington, wrote a letter to his wife and one to his friends, and put a bullet through his head... To those who knew his handwriting, his style, his expressions, there could be no doubt that he had written them.

, just a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol, hours before he would appear before another Congressional committee
Victor Serge wrote in his notebook in 1944:
X., arriving from New York, confidentially assures me that the name of the GPU agent who assassinated Walter Krivitsky in a Washington hotel is known, as well as all the details of the affair. Nevertheless, the “suicide” version remains quasi-official.

Speculation persists into the 21st century. For example, in 2017, Anthony Percy's book Misdefending the Realm argued that Krivitsky was the UK's most important source on Soviet plan, did not receive action from MI5 on the intelligence that he supplied, and was assassinated by Soviet intelligence after Guy Burgess informed Soviet superiors about him.
The assassination, Percy argues, cleared the threat of exposure of the Cambridge Five and other moles.

Survivors

At the first news of his death, Whittaker Chambers found Krivitsky's wife, Antonina and son Alek in New York City. He brought them by train to Florida, where they stayed with Chambers's family, which had already fled New Smyrna. Both families hid there several months, fearing further Soviet reprisals. The families then returned to Chambers's farm in Westminster, Maryland. Within a short time, however, Tonia and Alek returned to New York.
His wife and son both lived in poverty for the rest of their lives. Alek died of a brain tumor in his early 30s after he had served in the US Navy and studied at Columbia University. Tonia, who changed her surname legally to "Thomas", continued to live and work in New York City until she retired to Ossining, where she died at 94 in 1996 in a nursing home.

Works