With the founding of the Fourth International in September 1938, Stalin’s secret police turned all their attention to the assassination of its leader, Leon Trotsky. Barred from residence in almost every European country, the Bolshevik leader and Lenin’s surviving political collaborator was living in exile in Mexico.

The nest of Stalinist agents in Paris now stepped up the infiltration of the newly-formed Fourth International. One of them was to find his way from Paris to Mexico and into Trotsky’s study to deliver the killer blow on August 20, 1940. The agent chosen to carry out Trotsky’s execution was Ramon del Río Mercader, alias Jacques Mornard, alias Frank Jacson. The man responsible for infiltrating Mercader into Trotskyist circles was Mark Zborowski. He was once considered for the job, but his cover was partially blown. It happened this way ...

After Leon Sedov’s murder in a Russian emigre clinic in Paris on February 16, 1938, increasing suspicion began to fall on Zborowski. There was ample substance for this. He was one of only four people entrusted with the name of the clinic that Sedov was admitted to with suspected appendicitis. He was one of only four people who knew that Trotsky’s Russian archives had been secretly placed in Boris Nicolaevsky’s International Institute of Social History in Paris in 1936. On the night of November 6-7, 1936, the GPU raided the institute and stole the 15 bundles of priceless documents. (The only other person to know about both arrangements—the name of the clinic and the relocation of the archives—was Lola Estrine, better known as Mrs. David Dallin, who was a friend of Leon Sedov and Zborowski’s staunchest admirer and closest political collaborator.)

This built up immense distrust of Zborowski in the Paris organization. Fearing that he had outlived his usefulness to the GPU in Paris, Zborowski began writing to Mexico suggesting to Trotsky that he be transferred there to assist with Russian translations and writing assignments. Trotsky showed natural caution and suspicion; he did not know the former member of the Polish Communist Party and he wanted political recommendations other than those supplied by Zborowski himself. Any notions that Zborowski had about joining Trotsky in Mexico were exploded by an unsigned letter sent to Trotsky by a Russian NKVD agent who had defected to the United States.

On July 12, 1938, GPU agent General Alexander Orlov broke from the Stalinist regime and fled to the United States. At the time of his defection, Orlov was a senior economic adviser to the Republican government in Spain. At the same time he doubled as a chief of the NKVD operations there. His most celebrated and notorious assignment on behalf of Stalin was to strip the Spanish government of its gold supplies in return for military aid—which was deliberately kept at strangulation levels by Stalin. He was one of the highest-ranking espionage chiefs to defect: he had previously been deputy chief of the NKVD’s economic department, which meant that he exercised control over the Soviet Union’s trade with foreign countries.

Once in the United States (he arrived on August 13, 1938) Orlov decided to write to Trotsky to warn him about a “secret agent of the NKVD in France who was planted and insinuated into close friendship with Trotsky’s son, Leon Sedov.” It remains unclear why he decided to tip off Trotsky, but it is possible he felt strong bonds with the founder of the Red Army since he had served as an officer in guerrilla detachments during the civil war which followed the October Revolution. In testimony before the Senate judiciary committee on September 28, 1955, Orlov explained how he came to know about the Stalinist fifth columnist in the Paris Trotskyist movement:

I was sent by the Politburo to Spain in September 1936. Before that, I should say approximately in August during the famous Moscow trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev, there was a highly secret agent and highly valued agent in France, who was planted to the Trotskyists and became the closest friend of Trotsky’s son, Leon Sedov. He was so highly valued that even Stalin knew about him. His value, as I understood then, was that he would become the organizer of the assassination of Trotsky or Trotsky’s son any time, because in view of the great trust Trotsky and Trotsky’s son had in him, that Mark could always recommend secretaries to Trotsky, guards to Trotsky, and in that way could help to infiltrate an assassin into Trotsky’s household in Mexico. When I heard about that, in Moscow, I didn’t inquire about the name of that man, neither his first name nor his last name, because immediately in my mind occured a decision that the next opportunity I have to go abroad I will notify Trotsky against that spy ...

Orlov’s knowledge of the GPU agent who was “literally the shadow of Leon Sedov” was considerable. He first learned of Zborowski’s existence when he was in Moscow, but it was not until he was posted to Spain, making frequent visits to France, that he began to build up a more complete dossier on him. He was unwittingly helped by a GPU agent named Alexeev, whom he had known since 1933 in Vienna.

His duties, Orlov explained, were to meet contacts and get from them secret information for the service. Being a junior officer, Alexeev, as is the custom in the service, tried to ingratiate himself with me, to show his usefulness because I was the man who could promote him, arrange a transfer to my office and things like that. Once when I came out of the embassy together with Alexeev, he told me, “I have a man who was planted on Trotsky’s son and became his shadow and if that man falls through, through any negligence of mine, he said my head would be cut off.”

(Cutting off heads is a grisly and unfortunate expression for the mild-mannered anthropologist Zborowski to use. On July 13, 1938, six weeks before the founding conference of the Fourth International, Rudolf Klement disappeared. Three days later his headless, armless and legless body was found in the Seine. Although no definite proof has ever been produced, Mercader is a prime suspect. When he was in Paris he used to spend spare time accompanying surgeons around hospitals watching them perform their skills. He handled a knife with the “gifts necessary for a first class surgeon.”)

Once he had defected to the US, Orlov carried out his private undertaking to Trotsky. On December 27, 1938, he sent a registered letter from Philadelphia to Trotsky in Mexico giving him every morsel of information about the GPU agent inside the Fourth International. These weren’t simply clues; this was an identikit picture of one man—Mark Zborowski.

But the arrival of Orlov’s sensational letter coincided with a visit to Mexico by Lola Estrine. During hearings of the US Senate judiciary committee in 1956, Mrs. Dallin testified about her meeting with Trotsky in Mexico at which the Orlov letter was discussed. Counsel for the committee asked her if she placed a great deal of trust and confidence in Zborowski.

Mrs. Dallin: Absolutely. I trusted him. I never doubted about it. And when once the rumor came out, I defended him, like everybody defends his friend.

Q: When did this rumor first come out?

Mrs. Dallin: The first rumor I heard about it, was in the summer of 1939, when I visited Mr. Leon Trotsky in Mexico. He had received an unsigned letter from a man who told him that the closest friend of his son, not mentioning his name, saying only “Mark,” is an agent of the NKVD. The letter was rather unpleasant because it has so many details, and it was stated in the letter, as far as I remember, that, “You tell somebody of your friends in Paris to follow the man, and you will see where he reports, with whom he meets, what he is doing.”

And when Mr. Trotsky showed me this letter and asked my opinion about him, I felt a little bit uncomfortable, because the details were unpleasant. Too many of them were in the letter. And then I thought it over with him, and I said, “’that is certainly a definitely dirty job of the NKVD, who wants to deprive you of your few collaborators that you have in France.” And at the same time, he had another letter from another unnamed agent, telling him that a woman, meaning me, is coming to visit him, and will poison him. So we both decided, “See how they work? They want that you shall break with the only people that are left, over in France, Russians, let us say, in France, in Paris.” And we decided that it isn’t to be taken seriously, but it was a hoax of the NKVD.

Q : And you so advised him?

Mrs. Dallin: And when I came back to Paris, the first thing I did, I told Mr. Zborowski.

Q: You told Mr. Zborowski?

Mrs. Dallin: Oh, yes; I told him immediately about it.

Q: And what did he say about it?

Mrs. Dallin: Oh, he laughed it off. He said, “You know how the NKVD works. They are trying to smear you. They are trying to smear you.” And it was very convincing. I trusted him, you see.

Zborowski and Mrs. Dallin may have “laughed it off,” but it is certain that Trotsky didn’t. Orlov had asked Trotsky to place an advertisement in the American Socialist Appeal as a way of acknowledging that he had received the letter. Orlov recounted what happened next:

Orlov: Soon after, a month later, I received this frantic ad: “I insist, Mr. Stein, I insist that you go immediately to the editorial offices of the Socialist Appeal and talk to Comrade Martin.” I went there without disclosing my identity. I took just one look at that Martin, and he did not inspire too much confidence and so that was all.

Q: You say he did not inspire any confidence?

Orlov: Yes. After that I tried to call up Trotsky by phone. His secretary spoke to me. Trotsky did not want to come to the phone. He was afraid I was a journalist who just wanted to exploit him for my own purposes. So that was all about it.

Mrs. Dallin’s assurances plus the failure of Orlov to make direct contact left Trotsky without the final proof of Zborowski’s treachery. But it is certain that Trotsky was not about to extend an open invitation to let him into his Mexican household. The GPU was already grooming another agent for that job...

Early in 1938 Miss Sylvia Ageloff, a member of the Trotskyist movement in New York, decided to make a visit to Europe travelling to England and the Continent. The first thing that happened to Miss Ageloff is that a friend, Miss Ruby Weil, joined her excursion. They had known each other in the early 1930s in the American Workers Party, which later split over the question of fusion with the Trotskyists. They had drifted apart, although Miss Ageloff had heard on the grapevine that Miss Weil was joining the Communist Party. “We didn’t see her much at all,” Miss Ageloff related before the US House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee on December 4, 1950, “except that we had been personally friendly in the sense that we met her sometimes to go to the movies.” It must have been something of a surprise when, out of the blue, Miss Weil telephoned to say that she too was going abroad. Miss Ageloff tells the story:

In 1938, when I went to Europe, she (Ruby Weil) called and said she was going to Europe too and that she would go along with me. We went on the boat together, and we went to Paris together. A few weeks before I went to Europe, she said her sister, who lived in England, had sent her money for passage, and since she had free time or was unemployed, wasn’t it wonderful, and she would go along. I said that was all right with me. That was in June 1938.

After sightseeing in London they travelled to Paris, where Miss Ageloff was introduced to Jacques Mornard, alias Frank Jacson.

Q: I would like for you to go into a little further detail about Frank Jacson. Who introduced you to Frank Jacson?

Miss Ageloff: Ruby Weil.

Q: And over what period of time did you know Frank Jacson in Paris?

Miss Ageloff: We got there, I guess, in June. From June until I left in January or February of 1939.

Did Jacon Mornard show any interest in her politics? Ageloff replied:

Miss Ageloff: In the first place, I didn’t tell him I was a Trotskyite. He seemed completely disinterested in politics of any kind. He never even read ordinary news articles. He seemed interested in sports and the theatre and music and things of that sort. He seemed very disinterested in politics.

Q: He didn’t show any interest at all in Trotsky?

Miss Ageloff: No. He seemed completely naive and disinterested.

She was subsequently asked: “Do you feel now that that was a prearranged plan to introduce you to Mornard?” She replied: “I am sure it was, because it couldn’t have just happened.”

How did a Stalinist agent know about Miss Ageloff’s visit and make such unerringly accurate plans to accompany her and lead her to Trotsky’s assassin? For one thing, the Stalinists had an agent as secretary to the American Trotskyist leader, James P. Cannon. Her name was Sylvia Franklin, wife of a GPU agent, Irving Franklin. Louis Budenz, editor of the American Stalinist newspaper, the Daily Worker, revealed the existence of the CP’s penetration inside the Trotskyist movement before the Un-American Activities Committee of the House of Representatives in 1950. Budenz, who became a rabid anti-communist after breaking from Stalinism, told the committee:

By first volunteering to do secretarial work in the national Trotskyite offices in New York, Sylvia Franklin gradually made herself indispensable to James Cannon, then head of the American Trotskyites. She became his secretary and served in that capacity for some time.

Elsewhere he described how:

she had the full run of the Trotskyite offices, became Cannon’s secretary, and made available to the Soviet secret police all the correspondence with Trotsky in Mexico City and with other Trotskyites throughout the world.

It takes little imagination to decide where the information about Sylvia’s trip originated!

Budenz threw further light onto the way the American Stalinists played their role in greasing the machinery which got the assassin from Paris to Mexico. He testified:

Among those whom I introduced to Roberts (Dr. Gregory Rabinowitz, head of the Russian Red Cross in the United States, a GPU agent) was Ruby Weil, whom I had known as a member of the Conference for Progressive Labor Action, of which I had been national secretary prior to becoming a Communist. Miss Weil had secretly joined the Communist Party shortly after I had entered it openly, and had been assigned to a secret training school or unit for infiltration. In addition to her knowledge of infiltration methods, Miss Weil had been on very friendly terms with Hilda Ageloff, sister of Leon Trotsky’s secretary, Ruth Ageloff. Hilda was also sister to Sylvia Ageloff, a Brooklyn social worker who devoted vacation periods and other free time to Trotskyite courier work. Roberts and I agreed that he should be known as ‘John Rich’ to Miss Weil, and as such I introduced him to her.

Before I had introduced him to her, Roberts had given me a considerable sum of money in cash to present to Miss Weil for expenses. This was for the specific purpose of enabling her to be dressed well, and to keep up telephone and other connections. She was reluctant to take the money, but upon learning its purposes, agreed to do so. I learned that she was being sent to Paris and that she had persuaded Sylvia Ageloff to accompany her, or rather that she was accompanying Miss Ageloff. The occasion for the trip was a Trotskyite international congress in the French capital, and Ruby Weil went along on the plea that she was interested in Trotskyism and also that she could visit her sister in England. I was on one occasion specifically requested by Roberts to make a special trip to New York from Chicago, to persuade Miss Weil to go through with this arrangement.

When Miss Weil came to testify in 1950, the congressmen got her name and address, but little else. She could not remember names or dates. On more than one occasion she said that it took place such a long time ago that she had forgotten important details. As she left the witness stand, she protested about being brought into the hearings.

I am women’s editor in the Wide World Photos, which is one of the picture departments, she said. My job is largely in fashions. As a matter of fact, I am missing a very important assignment today by being brought down here, which has disturbed me, because I could do my job well.

The Stalinist net was closing in on Trotsky in Mexico. Zborowski was editing the Bulletin of the Left Opposition. Although his position was shaky, he and Mrs. Dallin and others had succeeded in burying Trotsky’s attempt to have Leon Sedov’s murder probed to the fullest. If that inquiry had done its work the way Trotsky wanted, Zborowski could have been flushed out and the modus operandi of the GPU brought to light as a warning of what was being prepared in Mexico. As planned, Mercader had won his way into the affection of Miss Ageloff in a whirlwind courtship. He had hovered around the fringes of the founding conference of the Fourth International and met such leading lights as James Cannon and Alfred Rosmer. When Miss Ageloff returned to the US early in 1939, he told her he would be visiting soon. She was thrilled.

This is a full transcript of the hitherto unpublished letter which the GPU intelligence officer, General Alexander Orlov, sent to Leon Trotsky in Mexico on December 27, 1938. In the letter Orlov warned Trotsky that a GPU agent provocateur, whom he knew only as “Mark,” was in the Trotskyists’ Paris organization working alongside Leon Sedov. Orlov signed the letter “Mr. Stein” and in the opening paragraphs he did his best to conceal his real identity. The reason? He feared the GPU would discover his presence in the United States and attempt to assassinate him. In his testimony before the Senate judiciary committee, Orlov explained the reason for his subterfuge:

I was aware that Trotsky’s correspondence was being intercepted by agents of the Russian police at the Mexican Post Office, and I knew they would read my letter, and thus find out where I was hiding in the United States, and that would facilitate my assassination. So I had to find some way of transmitting the true message to Trotsky and, at the same time, disguise my identity. I was successful in doing that, thanks to one incident that occurred a few months earlier. There was another person abroad who knew about the identity of that Soviet agent among the Trotskyites. That man was General Lushkov, who had been, before that, deputy to Marshal Blucher.

It happened that General Lushkov, who was one of Stalin’s right-hand men in the preparation of the trials against the Old Bolsheviks, became afraid for his own life and fled to Japan some time in June 1938. So I decided to send that message to Trotsky in such a way that he should think that that information came from General Lushkov, and I knew pretty well that the Russians would read that letter and would then think that Lushkov, who made revelations in Japan before newspapermen, was the man who exposed Mark Zborowski. So I devised a legend and wrote to Trotsky that I was an old immigrant, a Russian immigrant in America, that my “nephew,” General Lushkov, fled to Japan, that I had received a letter from him ... So, I wrote, I learned from Lushkov about the dangerous agent provocateur in their midst, who is close to Trotsky’s son, and who might become instrumental in the assassination of Trotsky.

Dear Lev Davidoch,
I am a Jew who came from Russia. In my youth I was close to the revolutionary movement (the Bund Party). Later I emigrated to America where I have been living for many years. I have close relatives in Russia. Among them there was one by the name of Henry Samoilovich, a prominent Bolshevik and chief of the Cheka. It was the same Lushkov, who, being afraid for his life, fled 8 months ago from Russia to Japan. That story was printed in all newspapers. From there (Japan) he wrote to me in America, asking me to come to Japan and see him. I went there and helped him as much as I could. I found for him a job to make sure that he was not extradited to the Soviets and gave him a little money.

Why am I writing all this to you? Because I have learned from Lushkov that there is within your organization a dangerous agent provocateur. I am no longer a revolutionary, but I am an honest man. And an honest man has a definite attitude toward agents provocateurs. Here is what I learned from Lushkov:

All the work against the old Bolsheviks in Russia was concentrated in the hands of Molchanov, chief of the secret department. He was in charge of the preparation of the Moscow trial against Zinoviev. Lushkov was Molchanov’s assistant. After the arrest of Yagoda, Lushkov was transferred to Khabarovsk as appointed chief of the political police and assistant to General Blucher. Meantime, Molchanov and all other leading police officers, who had served under Yagoda were executed on Stalin’s orders. Lushkov understood that his turn was near and escaped to Japan. From my conversation with Lushkov it has become clear to me that he himself had also taken part in the persecution of revolutionaries and the preparation of the trial against Zinoviev.

Lushkov is now an enemy of Stalin, but he declined my suggestion that he take action to vindicate the revolutionaries imprisoned in Russia, because he is afraid that if he did so the Russian Government would insist on his extradition and might come to terms with Japan on that score. But I think that that’s not the point, and that the real reason for Lushkov’s reluctance lies in the fact that he himself, spurred on by promotions and love of power, took an active part in the crimes committed against the revolutionaries.

When I returned to the United States, I acquainted myself more closely with the tragedy of the Russian revolutionaries and read the books Not Guilty and The Case of Leon Trotsky. Dear L.D., these books arouse indignation at the cruelties which are being conducted in Russia on people who gave their whole lives to the revolution. Under the influence of these books I decided (a little late to my regret) to write to you about the most important thing which I learned from Lushkov: about one important and dangerous agent provocateur, who had been for a long time assistant to your son, Sedov, in Paris.

Lushkov is categorically against publishing the things which are known to him and does not intend to make any public revelations himself, but he does not object to letting you know who the principal agent provocateur of the Stalin Cheka in your party is. Lushkov gave me detailed information about this agent provocateur with the understanding that no one, even you yourself, should know that this information came from him.

In spite of the fact that Lushkov forgot the last name of this provocateur, he supplied enough details to enable you to establish without any error who that man is. This agent provocateur had for a long time assisted your son L. Sedov in editing your Russian Bulletin of Opposition, in Paris, and collaborated with him until the very death of Sedov. Lushkov is almost sure that the provocateur’s name is “Mark.” He was literally the shadow of L. Sedov; he informed the Cheka about every step of Sedov, even his activities and personal correspondence with you which the provocateur read with the knowledge of L. Sedov.

This provocateur wormed himself into the complete confidence of your son and knew as much about the activities of your organization as Sedov himself. Thanks to this provocateur several of the Cheka have received decorations. This provocateur worked till 1938 at the Archive or Institute of the well-known Menshevik, Nikolayevsky, in Paris and, maybe, still works there. It was this Mark who stole a part of your archive (documents) from Nikolayevsky’s apartment (he did it twice if I am not mistaken). These documents were delivered to Lushkov in Moscow and he read them.

This agent provocateur is about 32-35 years old. He is a Jew, originally from the Russian part of Poland, writes well in Russian. Lushkov has seen his photograph. This provocateur wears glasses. He is married and has a baby.

What surprises me more than anything else is the gullibility of your organization. This man had no revolutionary past whatsoever. In spite of the fact that he is a Jew, he was about four years ago a member of the Society for Repatriation to Russia (this is a society of former tsarist officers, in Paris). According to Lushkov this was well-known in Paris even to members of your organization. In that period he acted already as a Bolshevik agent provocateur. After that the Cheka transferred him to your organization, where for some reason, he was trusted. This provocateur represented himself as a former Polish Communist, but it is very unlikely that this was true.

Lushkov said that after the theft of your archive from Nikolayevsky’s Institute they were almost sure in Moscow that you would discover who the provocateur was, because only a few persons worked at the Institute and all of them with the exception of the provocateur Mark, had some revolutionary past. When I asked Lushkov whether this provocateur was in any way responsible for the death of your son L. Sedov, he answered that this was not known to him, but that the archive was definitely stolen by Mark. Lushkov expressed apprehension that now the assassination of Trotsky was on the agenda and that Moscow would try to plant assassins with the help of this agent provocateur or through agents provocateurs from Spain under the guise of Spanish Trotskyite—s. Lushkov said that you knew this provocateur well from letters of L. Sedov’s but that you had never met him personally. Lushkov told me that the provocateur has regular meetings with officers from the Soviet embassy in Paris and Lushkov expressed surprise why your comrades have not discovered this, especially after your documents had been stolen from Nikolayevsky’s Institute.

Dear L.D., this is all that I can tell you now. I hope that in the future I may succeed in learning from him a lot of things, which might be important for the purpose of exposing the frame-ups of the Moscow political police and proving that the executed revolutionaries were innocent.

I ask you not to tell anybody about my letter and, especially, that this letter came from the United States. The Russian Cheka, no doubt, knows that I made the trip to Lushkov, and if they learn in some way about this letter they will understand that Lushkov supplied the information through me. And I have close relatives in Russia to whom I send food parcels and they might be arrested as a reprisal for this letter. Do not tell also that you obtained this information from Lushkov. The main thing, don’t tell anybody about this letter. Ask your trusted comrades in Paris to find out whether Mark belonged to the Union of Repatriation to the Homeland, to check on his past and to see whom he meets. There is no doubt that before long your comrades will see him meet officers from the Soviet Embassy.

You have all the right in the world to check on members of your organization even when you have no information that they are traitors. And besides you are not obliged to believe me. The main thing: be on your guard. Do not trust any person, man or woman, who may come to you with recommendations from this provocateur.

I am not signing this letter and I am not giving my address because I am afraid that the Stalinists might intercept and read this letter at the post office in Mexico. They might even confiscate the letter. In order that I may know that you have received this letter I should like you to publish a notice in the newspaper Socialist Appeal in New York that the editorial office has received the letter from Stein; please, have the notice appear in the newspaper for January and February. To make it safer, I am sending two identical letters: One addressed to you and the other to your wife, N. Sedov. I have learned your address from the book, The Case of L.T.

Respectfully,
your friend