Was Stalin an OKHRANA agent?

by John W

"Was Joe Stalin an OKHRANA agent?"

Here, at great risk and peril [mainly of my dying through sheer boredom as I speed-read the book!], is the evidence from STALIN:THE HISTORY OF A DICTATOR [H. Montgomery Hyde, Popular Library, N.Y., 1971, ISBN 445- 08260-195] of Stalin's employment as an informer by the Okhrana:

"Some further evidence by way of corroboration has been provided by Alexander Orlov, a high ranking Soviet Secret police (NKVD) officer who defected to the West in 1938. According to this source, Vissarionov had a secret file which contained reports and letters in Stalin's handwriting addressed to the Vice-Director on his activities as an "agent provocateur", 'who had worked assiduously for the tsarist secret police'. As will be related later, this file survived the Revolution and unexpectedly turned up during the purge trials in the late 1930's, where it was to play a sinister part in the fate of Marshal Tukachevsky and other leading Soviet military commanders".[p.117].....

"In the the course of his search Stein is supposed to have come across a secret file kept by Vissarionov, the Vice-Director of the St Petersburg Okhrana who was later executed by the Bolsheviks. The file contained letters and reports in Stalin's handwriting addressed to Vissarionov which clearly established Stalin's role before 1912 as a police "agent provocateur". Stein, so the story goes, was afraid to show such explosive material to Yagoda. Instead he flew with it to Kiev, where he immediately handed it over to Balitsky, who was his closest person friend in the service. Balitsky then called in his deputy Katsnelson, and after they had examined the file together and had satisfied themselves of the genuineness of the documents, they confided in Yakir and Kossior, the two leading public figures in the Ukraine at this time.

Afterwards Orlov wrote:

The circle of horrified initiates widened. General Yakir flew to Moscow and conferred with his friend Tukachevsky, supreme commander of the Red Army, whose personal dislike of Stalin was well known. Tukachevsky took into his confidence the deputy commissar of defence, Gamarnit, a man revered by his intimates for his moral integrity. General Kort was also briefed. These were the men Zinovy [Katsnelson] named to me. Other army men were apparently told later. Out of this there developed a conspiracy headed by Marshal Tukachevsky to end the reign of Stalin. The nightmare of the blood purges then in progress created a climate of distress, moral disgust and soul-searching conducive to conspiracy against Stalin. The sudden realisation that the tyrant and murderer responsible for the piled-up horror was not even a genuine revolutionary but an imposter, a creature of the hated Okhrana, galvanised the conspirators into plans for action. Together they decided to stake their lives to save their country by ridding it of the enthroned "agent provocateur".

At their meeting in Paris, which took place in mid- February 1937, Katsnelson told Orlov that Tukachevsky and the generals were still in the process of 'gathering forces', as he put it. It must be said, however, that it is hardly likely that the conspiracy was the result of the discovery of Stalin's connection with the Okhrana. Tukachevsky and the others were much more concerned with Stalin's present crimes than with his past, although it is just conceivable that they might have used the discovery to justifiy their action in liquidating Stalin had they succeeded in their plan to capture the Kremlin - if indeed there ever was such a plan." [pp. 358-359]....

"Interesting unpublished recollections of two Okhrana officers, Col. A. Martynov and Lt. N.V. Veselago, are also preserved in the Hoover library, independently of the Ohkrana archive [ed.- also stored in the Hoover Institution at Stanford]. Vaselago's recollections, which were recorded on tape and transcribed by Edward Ellis Smith, afford strong proof that Stalin was an Okhrana agent between 1906 and 1912." [p.618]

These are just a few of the references concerning Stalin's work for the Tsarist Secret Police scattered throughout this monumental work; other convincing proofs are given on pages 34, 67, 72-73, 80-81, 96-97, 100, 114-115 and 135. About the only thing that *isn't* covered is any reference to Stalin getting his traffic tickets "fixed"!

There goes another Marxist "idol"!

Cheers!

John W.