enigma books
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A DEATH IN WASHINGTON ISBN#978-1-929631-25-4 • paper 2004 $ 18.00 “Walter Krivitsky was arguably the first, and one of the most significant examples, of that most remarkable of phenomena, the Soviet intelligence defector. Such individuals have proved exceptionally useful in allowing Western intelligence agencies gain an insight into the Kremlin’s most secret activities, and they have been responsible for the identification of the overwhelming majority of spies and traitors arrested before and during the Cold War.
“Another name that is to be found in one of MI5’s three Krivitsky personal files is that of Kim Philby, who evidently was still sniffing the wind in November 1946 and asking MI5’s John Marriott for certain leads in the case. Was he anxious about his own position? We know from his autobiography, My Silent War, that he was always acutely aware of the Damocles sword hanging over him, in the form of Krivitsky’s reference to the spy sent to Spain during the civil war….” When Krivitsky came to America he thought he’d put Stalin’s goons behind him, an ocean away. But that was not the case and soon after his arrival he was followed and hounded by the Communist and fellow-traveling press that denounced him in every possible way. Yet Krivitsky persisted and testified in London with MI5 and MI6. We now know that his testimony was relayed back to Moscow and from then on he was on Stalin’s and Beria’s death list.
“A Death in Washington: Walter G. Krivitsky and the Stalin Terror therefore combines both history and intrigue, but it does one thing more: it unfolds a dreadful and intense human drama. The man who died in the shadow of the Capitol, whom the District police failed to identify and sent to the morgue, allowing the room to be cleaned, turns out to be a man at the end of an age, one of the so-called Great Illegals, a determined true believer in the Marxist-Leninist dream. He was the spy who always thought ahead and, as such, one of the most restless spirits within that restless tribe known as the Soviet defectors.” Soviet master spy Walter G. Krivitsky was a small, dapper and very nervous man who happened to be the first and one of the key defectors to warn the West early on about the Stalin regime. He became friends with Whittaker Chambers, encouraging him to come forward and thus precipitating the Alger Hiss case. Krivitsky provided the British with clues that would certainly have unmasked the Philby spy group, but following his debriefing in London he was found out by Anthony Blunt, who warned Moscow. And Krivitsky was found dead in the Bellevue Hotel in front of Union Station in Washington, D.C. This is the first book to recover all original documents released by the British archives and the FBI in 2002-2003. This book is not simply the final word on the Krivitsky mystery it is also a model of how exciting and thrilling true espionage history can be when events themselves are allowed to take over and be recounted by a master of the subject.
Gary Kern earned his doctorate in Russian literature at Princeton University. He has published numerous articles and books on Russian literature and history, including studies of Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Leon Trotsky. His eight books of translation from Russian include Lev Kopelev's The Education of a True Believer and Anna Larina-Bukharina's This I Cannot Forget: TheMemoirs of Nikolai Bukharin’s Widow. In 1996, his behind-the-scenes consultation with The Washington Post led to the public exposure of a major atomic spy, Theodore Hall. A Death in Washington, begun in 1985, is the first book on Krivitsky and the first to incorporate his British intelligence files and his suicide notes in the research.
From the Times Literary Supplement
James M. Murphy |