THE PRISONER OF MORDAVIA

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP88-01315R000400050002-4
Release Decision: 
RIFPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 16, 2016
Document Release Date: 
October 29, 2004
Sequence Number: 
2
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
June 1, 1966
Content Type: 
CIAPER
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PDF icon CIA-RDP88-01315R000400050002-4.pdf150.39 KB
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INTELLIGENCE DIGEST ' r , J ...~,c1a26L. Approved For Release 20/12566A-RDP88-01315Rg4p00~50~=, Labour and Social Democratic Parties of T 14E PRISONER OF MO"AVTA';, western Europei. ,, SPI;CIAL"Cor"iespoiicTent ^lias bccn This is the sort of situation in which 1 The chief NTS headquarters ? is to Ainvestig..ting the case of Mr, Gerald one can usually spot an intelligence Paris, whence it claims to have gent.a Brooke exclusively for this Service. He agent who is immediately disowned by hundred million' newspapers. and. othet reports as follows: his own Government. Mr. Greville items of literature into Russia by variotss On April 29 last year, agcnts'of the Wynne (sentenced for espionage in 1963 means. It also sends cheap plastic and Soviet KGB went to the flat of one Yurii and later exchanged for the Russian spy rubber printing "mats" for,easy use.by Konstantinov in Kropotkin Street, Lansdale) was a good example of this. . underground presses in tilu..? When Moscow, and arrested twenty-six-year, Just as Wynne (whose nerves were Brooke was arrested, some of these were old Gerald Brooke, a tcacher?of Russian shattered by his ordeal) went behind the , found., at Holborn College, London; Iron Curtain on legitimate business, with NTS has .its., own broadcasting Western journalists in' the 'capital a part-time Intelligence assignment,' so station,: Radio Free Russia, which ,is got wind of this two days later, but !Brooke went to Moscow as a bona fide subject to severe jamming but is hieard?a1 Brooke was held incommunicado for nearly !delegate with certain other commissions' far away as Vladivostok. :: i; ?i t1 a fortnight. Not until July 10,E when lie -.but.froi.n a different source ' . Arrest and Torture' 7 was charged with anti-Soviet' activities'.*1' c,:i:ici;I; tit 'c :?..r; i It '. has another headquarters' at I subversion, was the Russian public ~,i.' -t7As itremerged at his trial, specific to Frankfurt. There, in 1954, the M\ D 'and .informed. l a ent N. E. Khokhlov was sent to murder At first, it looked as ii a full-scale the .indictment were char that he one of its leaders, G. S. Okolovich, with show trial was planned. The theatre of acted as a courier and. agent for, the one n die teed a. a cigarette pack. the Central Artists' House was prcpared. Popular Labour .Alliance, ?or.? NTS Khokhlov a di cai se his mind, defected pack. { In the event, what has been described (Narodno Trudoaof Soyu,t):: the West, and mged to ade world headlines. as the first completely political trial In Students'of the cold-war will know Soviet 'police have captured and Russia since that of Bukharin and his that NTS has nothing to'do with British d maan NTS man while the associates in 1938 differed markedly in :,Intelligence.-. Successive;.?.Governments torture many ' that,'wlicn't [oak place on July 22 and ;'.have regarded it with. an edginess akin Russian authorities have', orequently 23, the western Press was excluded: Part to that of the.U.S.. State Department cued. the r nisa oan secret violent bu-a-cis the anti-Castro Cuban exiles..- ' in. 1953, of the roial was held in camera. report .called "Orientation on the Anti- Brooke's wife had suffered'a night= w Nor has NTS s plulosapliy Ynuch"in sviet Organisation NTS" concluded ls ll ectua long secret police interrogation, but was common with that of rebel inte that it was not charged. Brooke told the Court:'"I like Tarsis..and yevtushenko. PPolitically actively functioning totally guilty". He was "dcfcndecl1" by deep-seated, meditative, almost religious . the Soviet Brooke atrial it was claimed the notorious Nikolai' Borovik, 'a ICGB thinking of the late Boris, Pasternak.?And that the KGB had discovered a list with employee who is paid by the staff: and 'it has a long memory. '' .10 NTS ; '0s the names and addresses of 212 people- " ? "`' was formed in the ~arly3 by his client: by alle ed NY s supporters-which he was ~a group of Russian studtrnts from .west to deliver to Konstantinov. Under- Confused -Reports European universities, Infiltration began standelive NTS (writing to its friends Soviet newspapers'' (notably Trod by the formation of small cells in 'the from Frankfurt) claimed that these 212 and Rrasnaya Zbezda), fed colourful and Soviet Union in 1932. Other activitieawere only the names of prospects sometimes contradictory information by included (in 1935) sending lea were selected from directories, and news- the KGB, had a field day. It is no wonder across the border by balloon. papers to receive unsolicited propaganda that somewhat confused reports appeared In zltrator i material. Regrettably, the KGB were. But the'verdict; ?~,....w y,,,..^-?1?" in the western Press. Many and even the sentence, were correctly the mciiiibcrs were iistelligent'andnot likely to swallow this.i?,;,.? predicted dedicated expatriates mall ing "a' serious , ? .. + ^? ?t Found guilty'Brooke was sent to and profound intellectual effort toA Willing Agent gaol for a year, with four further years in produce a set of ideas With greater Why is Gerald Brooke, a sensitive, relevance and with a stronger' power of a labour camp: He has just bccn taken, attraction for the people of Russia than physically dc}icatta young man, his spirit Jweakened by a deplorable prison diet at the dogmas of Communism", They Vladimir, broken I s by c Luyianka nand edthe wca by Vladimir, to Mordovia labour colony on attracted support from many 'people; a diet which has consisted partly of fish- the Volga. including some who had bitter reasons slaving miserably amongst his heads , He was last seen by a British Consul for hatred of Bolshevik Russia. ' ' % : on March 6, when he was given a food i fellow-convicts at a camp. 200 miles arcel. Others have been returned. He is In 1938, the year of some. of Stalin s north-cast of Moscow? - ? ,t, ? p worst purge trials, 'in which thousands Western commentators have sug allowed two a, year at the ? camp. He perished, the OGPU claimed the capture could easily die there, although he is only of several NTS "saboteurs". '-- ?e gested that he is being held to ransom by twenty-seven. ' ? ?' . ` In World War II the' 'Soviets the Russi4ns; that the price is the ' : - , ' f . '. I ' ' I , - V ; found it convenient to charge NTS with Krogers, /Peter and Helen, top Soviet 1 Brooke,s Assignment r agents held in Britain; and that he is In the days be ore the trial virulent I completely sm. But l`TS claimed that it was , anti-Nazi bcfore~ as well iS9 being callously maltreated so that the as their comments were, the Russian after, the 1`folotov-Ribbcntrop pact; British Press will force the Government s newspapers seemed unable to decide I ("Neither Stalin nor Hitler.") The'warts hand in this. whether Brooke was employed by Br}tish confused mass-movements of population There is now no doubt that Brooke Intelligence or by a Russian tmigr8 ; enabled many NTS infiltrators to take up went to Moscow last year as a willing agent of the NTS. He is intelligent, e r orga ' ' strategic positions., :.., V.! .i liticall perhaps rather simple- and po ts R po y 'tended to suggest' that ? he was the 6JVit"Ut torn , ^,w~y,?u, n,::.,an??+?y eeriamiy a*" tucauaa, ua. .. a... w ??, innocent head of a dcle ,ation' of teachers `-"-'-" N`TS?"lbclieves ' in - what : i0; calls untrained for such a dangerous job. But; who had somehow fallen foul of the Soviet Solidarism-Man's cooperation, brother Continuo4 authorities ,and had been selected by , 7 Christian tolerance; and ,charity! , t its an oliciea: at, them as a sea a oa -~ It d p P g tie ~ le t $ 1 / %1315R000400.056002-4