Mark Zborowski, Soviet Agent-2
DALLIN, DAVID J.
MARK ZBOROWSKI, SOVIET AGENT By David J. Dallin (Second of two articles) Mark Zborowski arrived in the United States in December 1941. The standing rules of Soviet intelligence would normally...
...Clearly, Zborowski is unwilling to admit that he himself took the initiative in making contact with the NKVD on American soil...
...Interrogated by the FBI in the fall of 1954, he denied everything...
...According to Zborowski's testimony before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, it was the NKVD's American agents who contacted him, rather than the other way around...
...Zborowski's efforts eventually paid off...
...Dallin described Zborowski's prewar activities as a Soviet agent operating within the Trotskyite movement in France...
...Every one of them not only informed the authorities wherever he was living but told his story to the public at large...
...Zborowski now advanced him a sum of money (no doubt obtained from the NKVD) with which, as partners, they might revive this publication...
...His entire testimony is a tissue of clever evasions, well thought out by a good legal mind...
...It is significant that, in his halfhearted "confessions," Zborowski admits little that was not already known to the authorities...
...The situation had changed in one important respect: Trotsky had been murdered, and the Trotskyite groups were now of less interest to Moscow...
...Yet, he cannot produce the photograph, and the whole story of his easy escape from the NKVD fails to hold water...
...In his first article, last week...
...The NKVD, he said, employed the customary methods of conspiracy and barred real names...
...but, thanks to Zborowski, the NKVD was aware of his movements at all times...
...Thus, on one occasion he offered to serve as my secretary: since he knew my funds were very low, he was willing to work "at a very small salary...
...There is less evidence available about Zborowski's subsequent exploits...
...He soon succeeded in penetrating the left-wing Menshevik faction headed by Theodore Dan and Aaron Yugov...
...A short time after, Zborowski informed me that he had succeeded in renting an apartment in the building where I lived...
...Kravchenko's defection was extremely embarrassing to Moscow...
...He denies that he has even been a Communist or that he came to this country as an agent of the NKVD...
...One of them was the late Joseph Shaplen, Russian expert of the New York Times...
...This at once made me somewhat suspicious: after all...
...The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee has already held two public hearings on the ease of Mark Zborowski, first identified as Soviet agent in The New Leader...
...When he was before the Senate subcommittee, Zborowski claimed to have no names or addresses to turn over...
...needless to say, he never registered with the Department of Justice as a "foreign agent...
...the meaning was obvious...
...In the light of his subsequent services to Soviet intelligence, however, and of what we know of the established rules of conspiratorial procedure, this tale seems most unlikely...
...We necessarily demand more proof of good faith from former members of the Soviet secret police, but we welcome them, too, when we are convinced of their sincerity...
...Although in conversation with me he pretended to dislike Kravchenko personally, Zborowski repeatedly invited him to his home, where the latter read him chapters from his forthcoming book...
...I finally suppressed my doubts, though 1 did not accept his offer...
...He did so...
...However, he went on, he ignored the warning and he was not bothered any more...
...If this was to be accomplished, it was essential to prevent him from going underground...
...In the first months after his defection, Kravchenko was very lonely and I tried to introduce him to some Russian-speaking people whom I considered reliable...
...He worked on various projects with the American Jewish Committee, with a Columbia University anthropological group, later in a veteran's hospital on a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation...
...This was the winter of 1944-45, when Soviet Ambassador Gromyko was hammering at Secretary of State Stettinius with demands to surrender Kravchenko...
...Zborowski never elected to make a clean breast...
...One day, when Kravchenko was to take a train to Detroit, I asked Zborowski to see him off at Grand Central Station...
...As an old hand in espionage, he knew the techniques, the nicknames and the passwords...
...political and otherwise...
...Not even his closest friends knew about his role as a spy until Nick Pavlov revealed the facts...
...While he was living in Seagate, he said, a stranger approached him on the beach and, without giving his name, arranged a rendezvous in a cafe...
...Dan, the well-known Socialist leader of the Kerensky period, visited Zborowski and discussed various matters with him...
...It is significant that his attorney at the hearings was Herman A. Greenberg, who once defended Hanns Eisler and was until recently a member of the Communist-party law firm of Greenberg, Forer and Rein...
...That is not the way a man behaves when he has broken his ties with the Soviet secret police...
...at the same time, it was an effective method of breaking out of the obscurity which could only invite NKVD attempts at revenge...
...In this instance, there would have been some delay, since the Germans were then at the gates of Moscow and many of the NKVD departments had been evacuated to the east...
...while in France, had published a statistical review on Russia under the title DOSS...
...It also became evident during the Senate investigation that Zborowski's circle of acquaintances still includes Communists and pro-Communists...
...Even though he was not a top-ranking Soviet official...
...another was Vladimir Zenzinov, the Socialist Revolutionary exile who died several years ago...
...In long years of collaboration, however, even the strictest rules tend to be broken and human relations develop...
...He was ordered to continue his contacts with various Russian emigre groups and report on them...
...this would be impossible had he actually turned his back on Communism and the Soviet Union...
...It is impossible to believe that, after more than a decade of NKVD work in France and the United States, Zborowski has learned no more than the few crumbs he now offers to the FBI and Internal Security Subcommittee...
...At that time, he said, when he was trying to break away, he received a letter with a newspaper photograph showing a man executed by a firing squad...
...However, a reply would surely have been received some time in 1942, confirming Zborowski as a Soviet agent in the United States...
...contact was maintained periodically throughout 1943-45...
...Among the others was Mark Zborowski...
...Later, when rumors began to spread, he was asked point-blank by one of his friends whether they were true...
...We in the West are always ready to extend our hand to Communists who break with Moscow...
...he was a married man with a family to support...
...More than ten years have passed since he allegedly stopped working for the Soviet Government...
...By the late 1940s, the circle of Russian emigres, in the United States seemed to hold less interest for the NKVD, and Zborowski was ordered to shift his activity to the American scene...
...he is clearly trying to protect himself against any legal action...
...One of Zborowski's assignments was Victor Kravchenko, who had defected from the Soviet service in April 1944...
...Zborowski's first assignments in this country were similar to those he had carried out in France...
...Hence, Zborowski's task was to establish relations with the Russian Menshevik leaders who had arrived in the United States a short time before...
...hence, the statute of limitations makes prosecution impossible...
...The next morning at 8, Kravchenko called me from Detroit in great excitement: Four husky men had trailed his car for an hour through the streets, disappearing only when he and his companions finally stopped in front of a police station...
...Zborowski was given the job of discovering Kravchenko's whereabouts and keeping watch on his movements...
...In recent decades, we have seen a number of Soviet intelligence agents who sincerely defected...
...Yet how could I distrust this veteran Trotskyite and friend of Leon Sedoy...
...Here David J. Dallin, who has known Zborowski for almost two decades, concludes his account of the latter's activities...
...The standing rules of Soviet intelligence would normally require him to report at once to an NKVD representative at the Soviet Embassy in Washington or the Consulate General in New York City or to one of their agents...
...He succeeded in the following manner: Among the numerous people on whom Zborowski was assigned to spy were Mrs...
...One need only mention Walter Krivitsky, Alexander Orlov, Elizabeth Bentley, Whittaker Chambers, Hede Massing and Alexander Foote...
...The wartime alliance made an attempt at kidnaping or murder impossible, but the Soviet Government hoped to have Kravchenko extradited by the United States as a deserter from the Red Army...
...this seemed rather astonishing in view of the severe wartime housing shortage in New York and the considerable expense often involved in obtaining an apartment...
...But for those who, after living in our midst and spying on us for years, seek frantically for excuses as soon as they are caught instead of telling us all they know, we can only feel contempt and suspicion...
...Zborowski told the Senate subcommittee that he has not worked for the Soviet secret police since 1945...
...Their behavior was natural and healthy...
...Yugov...
...at a time when sympathy for "our great Soviet ally" was widespread throughout this country, he had published a statement in the New York Times stressing that the Soviet political system was still based on terror and that Soviet foreign policy was aggressive and imperialistic...
...On the advice of his friends, Kravchenko made every effort to conceal himself...
...Dallin and myself: he had reported regularly on us to the NKVD in France, where we were acquainted...
...An excellent actor, he denied it all with a great show of indignation...
...None of this work involved military or diplomatic secrets, but it provided considerable political information of interest to Soviet intelligence...
...In such cases, the newly arrived agent's credentials are checked with Moscow and an answer is quickly received...
Vol. 39 • March 1956 • No. 13
