Category Archives: Communism

The Man Behind the Rosenbergs

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the-man-behindThis is a fascinating book written by retired KGB agent Alexander Feklisov with Sergei Kostin. The book begins with an interesting description of Feklisov’s life in the Soviet Union as a youngster and his eventual acceptance into the INO, or Soviet Foreign Intelligence. He is sent to the United States early in World War II and spends four years sending and receiving messages without being involved in espionage. He is a capable and loyal employee and he eventually enters the world of the “illegals” with the assignment of recruiting spies from the many Americans who sympathized with the Communism and the Soviet cause. I found it interesting that Feklisov ardently defended his contacts as being “anti-fascist activists” and not Communist spies.

Feklisov’s advancement in Soviet intelligence was enhanced by the remarkable fact there were few older agents when he began his training. Feklisov was surprised there “…was only one older officer in our section…” He “…later learned that the Stalinist purges had not spared the intelligence services. The leadership of the INO had been decimated as much as the Red Army by the end of the 1930s.” It is difficult to understand Feklisov’s dedicated loyalty to the Stalinist system after such a revelation.

Feklisov was almost prohibited from receiving a foreign assignment because he wasn’t married. He was told, “How can you recruit any agents if you can’t even recruit a wife?” His immediate supervisor praised his abilities and recommended him for an overseas assignment. He even complimented him with the comment, “If you want my opinion, it’s rather good that he didn’t get married on command. It goes to prove he’s a serious sort of fellow.” That and the fact the NKVD was short of people in the United States led to his assignment in New York as a communication specialist.

He became Alexander Fomin with the code name “Kalistrat” and was assigned to establish a clandestine radio link. The announcement of the Nazi attack on the USSR revealed some attitudes that disturbed Feklisov, or Fomin. Senator Harry Truman announced that Russia should be helped if the Germans were winning or the Germans should be helped if the Russians were winning. “The first prize for bluntness would go to the New York Daily News, which published a cartoon depicting the USSR and Germany as two snakes fighting each other. The caption read, ‘Let’s let them eat each other!’” Feklisov felt Roosevelt was fairer in his assessment. “His attitude toward the USSR in general, now that it was bearing the brunt of the war effort was favorable.” (My reading of history says that FDR’s attitude went far beyond “favorable.) Continue reading →

Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb

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dark-sun book cvrThe first several chapters of this book by Richard Rhodes contain a detailed description of Soviet spying on the Manhattan Project. The value of what was provided to the Soviets is well documented. The U.S. only identified and convicted some of the spies. Some escaped detection and others managed to make it to the Soviet Union before they were captured.

The Prologue demonstrates the rich dialogue of the book. “The Hiroshima bomb, Little Boy, was a uranium gun. It used sixty-four kilograms of rare uranium 235, all of that dense, purple-black metal the United States had been able to accumulate up to the end of July 1945.” Luis Alvarz was an American experimental physicist who worked in the Manhattan Project and invented a device for measuring the yield of the Hiroshima burst. The devices were dropped by parachute ahead of the bomb radioed their readings to Alvarez in a backup plane. “Alvarez had seen the bright flash of the Hiroshima explosion, had watched (the) pressure gauges register on the oscilloscopes…(and) felt the two sharp slaps of direct and ground-reflected shock waves slamming the plane like flak explosions…”Alvarez searched for the city below the rising mushroom cloud. “Alvarez could not see the city because the city had been destroyed.” A second atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki three days later and the Japanese surrendered a few days later with the emperor referring to the “terrible bomb.” Continue reading →

Brotherhood of the Bomb

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brotherhood of the bombThe subtitle of this book by Gregg Herken is “The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller.” Another book by the author, “The Winning Weapon” (a review was posted October 1) concluded that too much was made of Soviet espionage of the Manhattan Project. “Brotherhood of the Bomb” reaches an entirely different conclusion. A footnote on page 126 states “Near the end of the war, because of Fuchs and other spies at Los Alamos, the Russians had a precise description of the component parts of Fat Man, including such engineering details as the makeup and design of the explosive lenses use to compress the plutonium core and the exact dimensions of the bomb’s polonium initiator. The device that the Soviets exploded in their first nuclear test, in August 1949, was essentially a copy of Fat Man.” “The Winning Weapon” was published in 1980 and “Brotherhood of the Bomb” in 2002. Much was learned about the extent of Soviet spying after the first book was published in 1980. For example, the Venona Project that revealed the massive extent of Soviet spying was declassified in 1995. Both books have value to someone interested in the atomic bomb and its impact on the Cold War, and the first gives a good idea of how much of the media looked at the issue of Soviet spying in 1980.

“Brotherhood of the Bomb” gives detailed insight into the scientists who became famous as the result of discovering what could be accomplished, mostly in the form of weapons, with atomic energy. Lawrence had announced in 1932 that “…heavy particles not only disintegrated readily but in the process seemed to release more energy than it took to break them apart.” He proposed a vista of cheap, reliable, and virtually limitless energy…” His “disintegration hypothesis” was greeted with skepticism verging on ridicule. Rutherford made his now famous statement that “anyone who looked for a source of power in the transformation of atoms was talking moonshine.” Continue reading →

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

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present-at-creationThis autobiography by Dean Acheson, who was President Harry S. Truman’s trusted Secretary of State, is filled with information that would be interesting to anyone wanting to know more about the people and policies of the Truman administration. It is a very long book (over 700 pages excluding notes, references, and the index), and it is in small font. The title is derived from a quote from King of Spain Alphonso X, the Learned, 1252-1284, “Had I been present at the creation I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.” I certainly had the impression that Mr. Acheson had no lack of confidence in his ability to make wise decisions about solutions to problems or making accurate judgments about people. There were a few cases where he writes that decisions proved to be a mistake, but those were the exception. He either writes with admiration and often affection for people or with open contempt. I don’t recall anyone being described other than in the two extremes. I also don’t recall a single circumstance where he describes Harry S. Truman with anything other than admiration. I have read in other sources that the respect was mutual; Harry considered Acheson his “second in command.” The office of the Vice President was vacant until Truman and his running mate, Alben Barkley took office in 1949 after winning the election in 1948. I don’t recall Barkley being prominently mentioned.

The book follows Acheson’s State Department career chronologically from being an Assistant Secretary of State 1941-1945, Under Secretary of State 1945-1947, to his tumultuous years of Secretary of State 1947-1953.  My primary interest in reading the book was the decisions of the Truman administration in containment of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and whether Acheson and others in the State Department were, as described by critics, “in the pocket of the Soviets.” To the contrary, Acheson describes relations with the Soviets in a non-flattering manner beginning early in the book. He says the Soviet diplomats “…cultivated boorishness as a method of showing their contempt for the capitalist world, with which they wanted minimum contact…” He mentions one Soviet diplomat named Oumansky who was killed in “…a plane crash of suspicious cause…” and that “…we felt no sense of loss.” Acheson would eventually come under constant attack and suspicion during the “red scare era,” but I never found an instance in the book where he displayed anything but distrust of Stalin and the Soviets. Continue reading →

Darkness at Noon

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darkness at noonThis book was written by Arthur Koestler in German and was translated into English by his companion, Daphne Hardy. It is considered a classic novel, and was considered in the selection of the “greatest legal novels.” The book gives an insight into the Stalin show trials that resulted in the execution of his enemies, most of his friends, and a large number of people who were just trying to stay out of trouble and alive. Very few members of the “first Congress of the Communist Party” who were included in a group photograph from early in the revolution were still alive by the beginning of the book. The efforts to erase those who had been executed had ended, and the only remaining evidence was the light rectangle on the walls where the picture had once been displayed. Comrade Nicholas Salmanovitch Rubashov was a senior official of the Party, but his time had run out. He had demonstrated willingness to sacrifice lovers, friends, and comrades who were designated by central authorities as the enemy. The book begins with his arrest and imprisonment, and he knew and accepted that his years of loyalty would not save him from charges that he had violated official edicts of the Party. Continue reading →

A Family History of the Soviet Union

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mastering soviet cookingMastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya Von Bremzen

“This is a work of non-fiction, woven from family anecdotes and historical facts spanning ten decades”, the author’s note begins.  Von Bremzen’s family was diverse, including Muslims and Jews, a Turkistan feminist, a preservationist at Lenin’s tomb, a dissident, and a spy.

The Soviet Union was also wildly diverse, a group of nations and ethnicities forced together: “Such was the bomb of diversity that began to explode in the [1990s].”

Von Bremzen’s mother brought her to the U.S. at the age of 11, long before the fall of the Soviet state.  They arrived in 1974 thanks to American-Jewish sponsors.  Today she is a travel and cookbook writer who visits Russia and other former Soviet republics regularly.  Von Bremzen decided to cook a meal to represent each decade of the Soviet Union and this forms a framework for her book.  She heard family tales from her mother as they cooked together.  Recipes for each decade are included in the back of the book, except for the 1940s, which is represented only by a war-time ration card.

Mother and daughter begin their cooking with the final decade of the czarist era.  The main course is a fish dish: a rich, multi-layered pie of fish liver, sturgeon, onions, eggs, giblets, mushrooms, and dilled rice, all dripping with butter.  Von Bremzen compares it to the Soviet version she remembered as a child in Moscow: a loaf of bread with a thin layer of ground meat or cabbage inside.  This is typical of the book.  Although organized by decade, Von Bremzen uses an informal, personal style and moves backwards and forwards through her own memories, family stories, and Soviet history. Continue reading →