When Stalinist agent Mark Zborowski resumed his espionage activities against the Trotskyists and the Mensheviks in the United States in 1941, he needed an introduction to these circles. This was provided by Lola Estrine, wife of the writer Dr. David J. Dallin. She had befriended Zborowski in Paris in the 1930s, protected him when he fell under suspicion inside the French section of the Left Opposition, wangled a visa for him to travel to the US when the war broke out, and helped pay his fare. On the arrival of the Zborowski family in New York, she found them lodgings and got him his first job through a Trotskyist contact.

Soon, however, Zborowski enjoyed the considerable financial backing of the GPU and was able to find a place of his own—an apartment in the same Manhattan block where the Dallins lived. Until now, little has been written about the precise political and personal relations between Zborowski and the Dallins. In this article we have drawn from the court testimony of some of the principal characters in the GPU spy network, as well as the verbal accounts of Mrs. Dallin herself. It is first necessary to establish who David Dallin was. He was an American author whose major book was a study of Soviet espionage.

During Senate judiciary subcommittee hearings into the “Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States” in 1956, Mrs. Dallin testified about her husband’s work. Although he was alive at the time he did not give evidence.

Q: Now, Mrs. Dallin, are you the wife of David Dallin, the author?

Mrs. Dallin: Yes, I am.

Q: What is Mr. Dallin’s latest book?

Mrs. Dallin: On Soviet espionage.

Q: I see. He has written that book during the period of the last three or four years, has he not?

Mrs. Dallin: Yes. And I was helping him in his work.

Q: Pardon? You assisted him in his work?

Mrs. Dallin: Yes.

Q: Now, has Mr. Dallin written any other books?

Mrs. Dallin: Oh, Mr. Dallin has written altogether nine books.

Q: And he is generally considered to be an expert on Soviet affairs?

Mrs. Dallin: On Soviet affairs. That is right.

Q: And you helped him in all this work?

Mrs. Dallin: That is right.

This exchange establishes beyond any doubt that Mrs. Dallin actively collaborated with her husband in his career as a writer on “Soviet affairs.” At the same time she was active in both Trotskyist and Menshevik circles. In a catalogue of American authors Dallin is listed as having written books and articles under the names: David J. Dallin, David Dallin, D. Yu Dallin, S. Dalin, David Lewin and D.D., and S.D. His books are: Soviet Foreign Policy 1939-1942, 1942; Russia and Post-War Europe, 1943; The Real Soviet Russia, 1944; The Big Three: The United States, Britain, Russia, 1945; Forced Labor in Soviet Russia, 1947, written in conjunction with Boris Nikolaevsky; Soviet Russia and the Far East, 1948; The Rise of Russia in Asia, 1949; The New Soviet Empire, 1951; Soviet Espionage, 1955; The Changing World of Soviet Russia, 1956. All these titles were published by Yale University. In 1963 Dallin wrote his last work. It was Volume II of the Facts on Communism series. It was entitled The Soviet Union from Lenin to Khruschev. He changed publishers, however. This one was published by the US Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.

In late spring or early autumn 1943, GPU spy controller Jack Soble took over from Mikhail Chaliapin as Zborowski’s handler. The changeover took place at a restaurant in the 40th Streets of Manhattan. At that time, Zborowski had firmly established his credentials with the Trotskyists and was feeding regular reports to the GPU. Chaliapin left the restaurant allowing the two agents to discuss how and where they would meet.

Soble recalled their first meeting: “Zborowski told me in short a part of his biography, that he worked in France, that he knows French very well, and he worked for the Trotskyites among the Trotskyites in France, and that he is here connected not only with the Trotskyites, but with the Russian Mensheviks, that he came through Mrs. Dallin’s affidavit in the United States, that he was very friendly with them.” The two agents met at least 40 times, according to Soble. “I mean I cannot say it exactly,” he said. “Between 40 and 50 meetings.”

Q: And how long on the average did each of these meetings take?

Soble: How long? Sometimes a half hour and sometimes for hours.

What did Stalin’s two top anti-Trotskyist agents talk about during their long meetings in Manhattan restaurants? Soble gave glimpses in his evidence. “We used to exchange—I mean about the Menshevik movement here, and he used to make long conversations. He liked their philosophy of Marxism, as I did—I don’t deny it—and he said that this war is not the last war. After this war, this war will be followed by a chain of other wars, minor and small wars, and there will be no peace in the world, and he sees where the fate of mankind will be decided one day between capitalism and communism.”

Q: Did he tell you who was going to win?

Soble: That he—

Q: Did he tell you who was going to win?

Soble: Yes, that he, Zborowski, and I had the same opinion, that communism is going to win.

Later in his testimony, Soble returned to his conversations with Zborowski: “I said before there were so many topics to which I don’t pay attention. There were topics of world politics, world economics, the situation in America, the situation in Russia, the future of Europe and the future of America, the relationship between Russia and America.”

Q: Do you know any other events in his personal life?

Soble: He used to read novels. He used to study economics. He liked languages. I mean, I don’t—

Q: Do you know if Zborowski was a citizen of the United States?

Soble: Of course.

Q: How do you know that?

Soble: He became a citizen in 1947. I know it exactly, and he was very happy about it, as I was very happy about it.

Q: Did you talk to him about it?

Soble: Yes, and he wanted to go to visit Europe and to then visit Poland, and I say only that he is also a split personality, you know, because I don’t want to accuse him. He likes to work for the Russians and live in America. This is why I say split personality because he liked personal life and personal comfort in America more than over there.

They also discussed some of the GPU operations in Europe and the United States. The fate of Trotsky’s son, Leon Sedov, had always intrigued Soble. He told the court:

He was always well informed about things and matters which I never asked him for. For instance, about Sedov, that Sedov was operated in France in the Thirties, and that his operation, that this was an appendix operation, and that it was very normal, and he was already recovering and suddenly there was a certain doctor at the hospital and he died. This doctor must have been a GPU man.

On another occasion they talked about General Walter Krivitsky, the NKVD agent, who defected from the Stalinist regime in October 1937. On February 11, 1941, he was found in the room of a Washington hotel with a bullet in his temple. The police said it was suicide, when in fact it always had the makings of a GPU execution. Zborowski confirmed this. Soble testified: “I knew, for instance, he told me about General Krivitsky’s strange death, that he does not believe that he committed suicide.”

During Soble’s fourth day in the witness box in the Zborowski perjury trial in 1958, cross-examination centered on a series of meetings between the two agents outside the New York Public Library, where information and instructions changed hands. It is crucial to get the setting correct. Soble had given testimony for the US government and he was now being cross-examined by Zborowski’s defense counsel, Mr. Nathan. He first of all established that Soble and Zborowski were holding frequent meetings outside the library in the early spring of 1944.

Mr. Nathan: Do you recall who picked the Public Library as the place for that meeting?

Soble: No, I don’t recall it but we had reserved meetings also to meet each other before the Public Library.

Q: On more than one occasion?

Soble: Yes.

Q: Do you recall any discussion with Mr. Zborowski as to the suitability of the Public Library for these meetings?

Soble: No, I don’t recall, I recall only that it was very convenient for him and me to meet there before the Public Library.

Q: Well, did anybody—

Soble: Because there are so many people there.

Q: Well, was it also convenient for Mr. and Mrs. David Dallin? Withdrawn. Did anybody tell you that either Mr. or Mrs. Dallin was working in the Public Library during 1944?

Soble: No.

Q: If you had known, assuming that this was the fact, and if you had known the fact, namely that the Dallins were working in the Public Library, would you have permitted this meeting to take place there?

Assistant US Attorney Herbert C. Kantor (for the US government): Objection, your honor.

Judge John M. Cashin: I will overrule it.

Soble: Still I would have permitted that because this doesn’t mean anything. Dallins don’t know me.

Nathan: They know Mr. Zborowski, don’t they?

Soble: Yes, but they don’t know me.

Q: At this time, did you know whether or not the Dallins knew that Mr. Zborowski was infiltrating the Trotsky movement?

Mr. Kantor: Objection, your honor.

Judge Cashin: He can’t answer that question in the form that you asked it, Mr. Nathan. You are asking him for his characterization of this. The only person who would know that would be Zborowski.

Mr. Nathan: I will withdraw the question, your honor. During this year of 1944 had you previously testified that Mr. Zborowski brought you reports on the Dallins?

Soble: Yes.

Q: So if you knew that the Dallins were working in the Public Library, would you have nevertheless allowed this meeting to take place in the vicinity of the Public Library?

Soble: Yes.

Q: That is good espionage practice?

Soble: I am sorry. I would still—I wonder very much about your previous question which you did not repeat, that the Dallins knew about Zborowski was infiltrating the Trotsky movement. I never said anything like that.

Q: That question has been withdrawn, Mr. Soble, let me rephrase the question that has not been answered. In the light of your experience with the NKVD would you tell me whether it is good practice under the custom of the NKVD to meet your informers in the place where the people who are being informed against are working?

Mr. Kantor: Objection, your honor.

Judge Cashin: I don’t see the materiality or the competency of that question.

Mr. Nathan: I will withdraw it, your honor.

And that is how far it got. Nathan changed his line of cross-examination following the objections of the assistant US attorney and the “guidance” of the judge. But in the brief exchange he had opened up a sinister new twist to the Zborowski affair. Here was Zborowski’s own defense lawyer revealing that while his client was meeting the GPU on the steps of the New York Public Library, his closest friends, and the people he was informing on, were inside the library. He then asked Soble “did you know whether or not the Dallins knew that Mr. Zborowski was infiltrating the Trotsky movement?”

Soble never got a chance to answer the question, though he was clearly puzzled by it. It is a question that remains unanswered to this day. If the Dallins did know Zborowski was a Stalinist spy in the Trotskyist movement, they never let on until much later. About ten years later. And then they reacted with shock and indignation. Mr. and Mrs. Dallin said that they first got wind that Zborowski was a GPU agent in 1954. “He lived for about a year in the same building,” Mrs. Dallin told the Senate subcommittee in 1956, “and, you see, naturally, I didn’t suspect him of being an agent. And the first time when I found out really that he was an agent was the beginning of 1954, when this same ex-high ranking official of the NKVD had met Mr. Dallin and told him. When Mr. Dallin came home, I refused to believe. I said, ‘It can’t be. It must be a misunderstanding’.”

In the concluding stages of his testimony against Zborowski in the New York Federal Court, Soble made an extraordinary claim about what Zborowski had told him. He was testifying about Zborowski’s “psychological attitudes,” when he said:

I want to psychologically explain these things why I was mined up by Zborowski’s attitude. He gave plenty of information, but abundant information he gave about the Menshevik here, about Professor Dallin, and Professor Dallin’s wife. He was close friends, I mean, through coming in here, as I understand, an affidavit that he was already friendly with them in France, and so on, and then he informed about all the discussions and wings, different wings among the Mensheviki, and the some thing among the communists, about the Mensheviki and the left-wing of the Mensheviki, and Dan.

Q: Is that Theodore Dan?

Soble: I think the late Theodore Dan.^[1] And he informed about Boris Nicolaevsky.^[2] He informed about Professor Dallin with a special angle where he insisted a few times—nobody asked him about it. Toward Dallin he had a special angle, I say. He, Zborowski, said that he is only a Menshevik but he is working with the Secret Service in Washington. Nobody asked him for this information, nobody thought about it. He, Zborowski, said that he is sure of it, but he knows the Dallin family very well and was very close to them, and he knows that he is going very often on trips to Washington. I still asked myself, and the Russians asked even why, when a man makes, I mean trips to Washington, does this prove that he is working with the Secret Service? I mean, everybody can make a trip to Washington and not have anything to do with it. He said he knows better, that they should take this into consideration.