A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy (62 page)

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Authors: Deborah McDonald,Jeremy Dronfield

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical

BOOK: A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy
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5
   
Lockhart,
British Agent
, pp. 191–2.
  
6
   
Lockhart,
British Agent
, pp. 198–200.
  
7
   
Kettle,
The Allies and the Russian Collapse
, p. 164. Col. John Buchan (the novelist) was at this time an assistant director in the Ministry of Information.
  
8
   
Lockhart,
British Agent
, pp. 198–200. Colonel Byrne had recommended that Lockhart be sent to Kiev, and that Gen. Frederick C. Poole (who had previously been responsible for British supplies to the Russian Army) be put in charge in Petrograd (Kettle,
The Allies and the Russian Collapse
, p. 166). Lloyd George disagreed. Poole was instead tasked with an ongoing scheme to buy up Russian banks and use them as a means of channelling funds to anti-Bolshevik movements (Kettle, pp. 204ff.).
  
9
   
Maxim Litvinov (born Meir Wallach-Finkelstein) was a socialist who came from a Russian Jewish banking family. His appointment as Bolshevik Ambassador was said by some to be Trotsky’s joke – an insult to Britain (Garstin, letter, 8 Dec. 1917, in Walpole, ‘Denis Garstin’, p. 596). However, Litvinov took it entirely seriously, and went on to have a distinguished diplomatic career, serving as Soviet Ambassador to the United States and as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs.
10
   
Lyons’ Corner Houses were a chain of large, popular restaurants founded by the food conglomerate J. Lyons & Co in 1909. The Lockhart–Litvinov meeting most likely occurred in the one at the corner of Coventry St and Rupert St (near Piccadilly Circus) or Strand/Craven St (off Trafalgar Square).
11
   
Lockhart,
British Agent
, pp. 201–3. Reginald ‘Rex’ Leeper worked for the Ministry of Information during the First World War, and headed the Political Intelligence Dept in the Second World War. Rothstein was a Russian émigré journalist who wrote for the
Manchester Guardian
; he later returned to Russia, joined the Party and became a diplomat.
12
   
Lockhart,
British Agent
, p. 204.
13
   
Lockhart,
British Agent
, pp. 76–8; editor’s note in Lockhart,
Diaries vol. 1
, p. 22.
14
   
Kettle,
The Allies and the Russian Collapse
, p. 190.
15
   
Lockhart,
British Agent
, pp. 204–5.
16
   
Lockhart,
British Agent
, pp. 211–12; Buchanan,
Ambassador’s Daughter
, pp. 195–200.
17
   
Lockhart,
British Agent
, p. 115.
18
   
Lockhart, memoranda to Sir George Buchanan, 12 Aug. 1915, quoted in Hughes,
Inside the Enigma
, p. 66. Lockhart’s diary entries from late 1915 (
Diaries vol. 1
, pp. 25–6) also indicate his awareness of the growing popular unrest and how dangerous it could be.
19
   
Lockhart
, British Agent
, pp. 221–2.
20
   
Lockhart
, British Agent
, p. 224. In his unpublished diaries, Lockhart gives the address as 10 Dvortsovoy Naberezhnoy (Russian for Palace Quay), and the moving-in date as 10 February (NS).
21
   
Lockhart, unpublished essay, ‘Baroness Budberg’, p. 3. Their first recorded encounter took place on Sunday 17 February, whereas in his
Memoirs of a British Agent
(pp. 243–4) he implies that he first met Moura in March. Interestingly, he is more discreet about her in his private diary than in his published memoir, referring to her always as ‘Mme Benckendorff’ and giving no hint that there was any personal involvement between them. Possibly he was wary of his diary falling into Bolshevik hands; when he wrote his memoir in the early 1930s, his relationship with Moura was too well known for him to gloss over it.
22
   
Lockhart, unpublished diary entry for 17 Feb. 1918.
23
   
Rabinowitch,
Bolsheviks in Power
, pp. 157–60.
24
   
Lockhart, diary entry for 15 Feb. 1918, reproduced in
British Agent
, pp. 226–7.
25
   
Lockhart,
British Agent
, p. 227.
26
   
Hughes,
Inside the Enigma
, pp. 122–3; Kettle,
The Allies and the Russian Collapse
, pp. 122–3.
27
   
Hughes,
Inside the Enigma
, p. 123.
28
   
Rabinowitch,
The Bolsheviks in Power
, pp. 160–61.
29
   
Lockhart, diary entry for 18 Feb. 1918,
Diaries vol. 1
, p. 33;
British Agent
, p. 228.
30
   
Figes,
People’s Tragedy
, p. 545.
31
   
Lockhart, unpublished essay, ‘Baroness Budberg’, pp. 3–4.
32
   
Lockhart,
British Agent
, pp. 243–4.
 
 

Chapter 5: ‘What Children We Were’

  
1
   
Moura, letters to Lockhart, 31 Oct. and 16 Dec. 1918, LL.
  
2
   
Lockhart,
British Agent
, p. 242.
  
3
   
Lockhart,
British Agent
, p. 76.
  
4
   
Moura, letter to Lockhart, 31 Oct. 1918, LL.
  
5
   
Wells,
H. G. Wells in Love
, p. 168; Hughes,
Inside the Enigma
, p. 130.
  
6
   
Wells,
H. G. Wells in Love
, pp. 165–6.
  
7
   
Moura, letter to Lockhart, 31 Oct. 1918, LL.
  
8
   
Figes,
People’s Tragedy
, pp. 741–2. Alexandra Kollontai advocated (and practised) free ‘marriage’ throughout her adult life, in speeches and in pamphlets such as ‘The Social Basis of the Woman Question’ (1909) and ‘Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle’ (1921) – see Kollontai,
Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollonta
. Her ideas were badly misunderstood at the time, sometimes with tragic results for women. When a call for the ‘socialisation of women’ was given out in early 1918, in some districts it resulted in mass rapes, with women being forcibly turned into unpaid prostitutes for soldiers (Smith,
Former People
, p. 133). As a radical socialist Kollontai initially rose high in the Bolshevik movement, and campaigned for women’s education and working conditions. Placing her socialist principles and the interests of the workers above the political interests of the Party, she was later sidelined by Lenin.
  
9
   
The measured pace of Moura’s relationship with Lockhart (evidenced by her letters of the time) tends to contradict the lurid, lascivious reputation that was retrospectively attached to her by people who didn’t actually know her personally at this time (e.g. Sir Michael Postan, interview by Andrew Boyle).
10
   
Moura, letter to Lockhart, 31 Oct. 1918, LL.
11
   
Lockhart,
British Agent
, pp. 229–32.
12
   
Michael Kettle (
The Allies and the Russian Collapse
, pp. 220–22) traces the origin of these papers to the summer of 1917. The documents were intended to discredit the Bolsheviks and prevent them overthrowing the Kerensky government. They were commissioned by Russian Military Intelligence and created by a Pole called Anton Ossendowski, a professional propagandist, and a Russian newspaper editor called Semenov. The ‘Sisson papers’ (named after an American agent who bought copies and disseminated them) were part of a larger campaign of disinformation, and were promoted by British interests, including the head of the Secret Intelligence Service office in Petrograd, Cdr E. T. Boyce. The US government continued to believe in the documents, and was still publicising them as late as September 1918.

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