There was a lapse of five years between the first time that the FBI’s heat came on Stalinist agent Mark Zborowski, in 1953, and when he finally appeared before the court for perjury in 1958. His unmasking did not take place immediately or dramatically. It moved at an incredibly lethargic pace, aided by those who were in a position to know exactly what he was.
The existence of an agent named “Mark” first came to the attention of the FBI in April or May 1953 when General Orlov surfaced in the United States to publish his articles on Stalin’s crimes in Life magazine. At that stage Orlov could only repeat what he had already told Trotsky in an anonymous letter which he sent to Mexico in 1938 after he made his getaway from the GPU in Spain. During his secret testimony before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee in 1955, Orlov repeated what he had told the FBI two years earlier. He told the senators how his junior colleague, Alexeev, boasted about the agent he had inside the French Trotskyist movement who was “the right-hand man” of Trotsky’s son, Leon Sedov.
One day Alexeev said to Orlov: “Would you like to see that man?” Orlov agreed at once.
We got into the car and drove to the railroad station called Gare d’Austerlitz. There we got out of the car and separated. He went into a large park. I don’t remember the name of that park, adjacent to that railway station. And I followed him at a distance. Soon I saw him meet a short man of about, I should say—it is very difficult for me to judge—but I should say about 35 years old, about 5 foot 5, swarthy, wearing dark-rimmed glasses, that means the rims are dark, not the glasses. They sat down on a bench.
I strolled a little bit and took a seat, a distant seat on another bench. I saw some papers pass and it took probably not more than three or four or five minutes and they parted. That man Mark went his way to the other end of the park and Alexeev walked out from the opposite direction. I followed Alexeev and then I joined him. I got a little bit more information at that time.
Excuse me. I would like to stress that I took pains to try to remember his features, to know his description in order to notify Trotsky, but I didn’t know his last name and I didn’t ask about it. That was in 1937, sometime in the summer. He told me, Alexeev told me, that Mark was married to a young girl and that they had a baby. Another thing he said, and now I found out that reason why they met at that park, that that man Mark lived at the edge of that park, in one of those bystreets. I also learned that that man, Mark, wrote in Trotsky’s Bulletin of the [Left] Opposition. This is the name of Trotsky’s journal which was published in France in Russian. That man Mark wrote there under the pen name of Etienne.
On coming into the public eye in 1953, Orlov mentioned “Mark’s” role as a Stalinist provocateur to Raphael Abramovitz, the 76-year-old leader of the Russian Socialist Party, who was living in exile in France. Abramovitz admitted that he knew of “Mark,” but he did not tell Orlov where he was or what he was doing. But the next time he saw Mrs. David Dallin, Lola Estrine, Abramovitz told her that a former NKVD chief “is exposing that man Mark.” It is reasonable to suppose that by the time Mr. Dallin wrote to Orlov asking for a discussion—July 6, 1954—he already knew what Orlov was saying about their family friend.
In her testimony to the Senate subcommittee in 1955, Mrs. Dallin said:
The first time when I found out really that he was an agent was the beginning of 1954, when this ex-high ranking official of the NKVD had met Mr. Dallin and told him. Mr. Dallin asked about how well the Russian Socialists were covered by the NKVD, and he said: “I don’t know anything about the Socialists, but I knew that the Trotskyites were covered, excellently, because the closest friend of Trotsky’s son was an agent.” When Mr. Dallin came home, I refused to believe him.
Mrs. Dallin testified that this was at the beginning of 1954; General Orlov stated quite categorically it was on July 6, 1954, at the Longchamps Restaurant. The Dallins didn’t rush energetically to confirm Orlov’s story about Zborowski, although they had heard it from Abramovitz and now Orlov himself. It was another five months before Mr. Dallin wrote to him to arrange a further meeting on December 25, 1954.
Why hadn’t Mrs. Dallin, a lifelong associate of the Trotskyist movement, taken immediate steps to confront Orlov or Zborowski? Did she warn the leadership of the Fourth International or the Socialist Workers Party? There are two versions of the conversation that took place at the Dallins’ apartment in December—Mrs. Dallin’s and General Orlov’s. We are printing both in full.
Mrs. Dallin: And he sat down and he told me such small details, nobody could have known it; what Sedov wrote to his father in a letter, which nobody knew except me and Zborowski, because I was typing the letter and we were discussing the letter.
Mr. Morris: And this former Soviet agent knew all of these intimate details?
Mrs. Dallin: All these in detail. And he knew all these addresses, and names. Let’s say, for instance, he told me a little story that only I knew, of Zborowski and Sedov, that when Sedov bought the paper in Paris in August 1936, and found out that Zinoviev and Kamenev were executed—this was the first big public Moscow trial in August 1936—Sedov bought the paper and found out they were executed, and in the street, started to cry. They came both together to my house, and Sedov didn’t say a word about it, but Zborowski immediately called me out of the room and told me, “Did you see? He cried like a child.” And he reported that to the NKVD, because the NKVD man told me the same story. “Is it true,” he said, “that Sedov cried like a child when he bought a paper and found out so-and-so?”
There were so many details that I couldn’t doubt any longer.
Mr. Morris: You could not doubt it any longer?
Mrs. Dallin: Oh, no. That was the end.
Mr. Morris: Now, here was a man, a former Soviet intelligence man, telling you intimate, detailed stories?
Mrs. Dallin: Many. You know, he told me where Krivitsky spent this night and where he went to look for his things. You see, he can’t know it unless—and he said that he read the reports from Zborowski. Therefore, he knew all the names and all the details.
Mr. Morris: Did he tell you that he had read Zborowski’s reports in Moscow?
Mrs. Dallin: No; in Paris.
Mr. Morris: In Paris, while he was NKVD chief?
Mrs. Dallin: While he was an NKVD chief there. And he read it, and he told me.
General Orlov testified:
Now returning to that visit to Dallin’s apartment: Mrs. Dallin told me, “You know your letter that you wrote to Trotsky arrived there when I was in Trotsky’s household in Mexico. When I learned later that you were the author of that letter and what you were telling about Mark Zborowski, I told them this is not true.” Surely I was nettled. How come? Why should I, immediately after I received word about myself from Stalin’s assistant and came to America, write a letter to Trotsky in Mexico and warn him against them? I gave the facts where he lived, that he had a baby, that he was recently married, that he worked at Nicolaevsky’s Institute, that he wrote under the name of Etienne in the Trotsky’s Bulletin.
She said, that was also strange to me. There were two Etiennes writing. I became incensed. It is a little magazine and there was only one Etienne. I said: No, there was only one Etienne. She wanted to contradict, but David Dallin motioned to her to become calm and said there was one Etienne. I thought why should she try to cover him up. Must friendship go so far as to really try to shield a man? I couldn’t understand that. But still she said: It is untrue. Then I mobilized my memory because I want to add that since the time I saw Mark with Alexeev, I used to read some of his reports and I said: “Well: you were a close friend of Mark, and what if I give you date here which will knock the down?” She said, “What, for instance?” I said, “Well, was there such an occurrence or not?”
Chairman Eastland: What was that?
Mr. Orlov: Was there such an occurrence or not?
Chairman Eastland: I don’t understand.
Mr. Orlov: I told her: “Here is one case in point. On the day in August 1936, during the first Moscow trial. Trotsky’s son Lev Sedov was walking in the streets of Paris with Mark and suddenly Sedov’s son caught sight of a newspaper on the stand: ‘All the 16 leaders of the revolution shot.’ And he started crying without shame, walking and crying without covering his face loudly. People looked at him and Mark wrote that in his report.” I said, “Did you hear about that?” She said, “Yes, indeed. I remember he told me about it.”
Mark told her about it. The effect was overwhelming. “Now,” I told her, “was it true or not true that Sedov from Paris wrote to his father Leon Trotsky in Mexico that he met a Russian, a man who came from Russia, probably a Bolshevik who told him that in Moscow, in the Kremlin, they consider Sedov no less important and able than Trotsky himself? And that was written in one of the reports of Mark. She said, “Yes, that is true.”
Now, I saw one of the reports, written by Mark, that Trotsky’s son Sedov, in spite of all the friendship, sometimes fell under the spell of mistrust toward Mark. And such a spell used to last for about 5 or 6 days and then the friendship was set again. She said, “That is also true, Mark told me.” “Now do you believe?” “Yes,” she said, “Now I believe.”
At last! December 25, 1954, Mrs. Dallin is convinced! But there is still an element of strangeness in the next steps taken by the Dallins. It is in sharp contrast with what Orlov did. Having confirmed that “Mark” was Zborowski, he arranged a meeting over Christmas with US attorney B. Atterbury at Foley Square in New York to put the FBI onto him. But what did the Dallins do? Mrs. Dalin testified that one thing she didn’t do was tell Mrs. Elsa Bernaut, the widow of Ignace Reiss. She told the senators:
You see, Mrs. Bernaut is our friend, a mutual friend, a very good friend of mine, and a friend of Zborowski’s, but much closer to me than to him. So when I found out from the NKVD man (Orlov) that he is an agent, I wanted to tell her, but they insisted, Mr. Dallin and the rest, I shall not tell her. Nobody is supposed to know.
Why did “Mr. Dallin and the rest” decide to “insist” that Mrs. Bernaut be kept in the dark? Who are “the rest”? Why was “nobody supposed to know”? Mrs. Bernaut eventually found out, but it was not until the spring of 1955, the following year. She was approached by the FBI and asked some questions about Zborowski. Still feeling loyalties to him, she met him on the university campus where they both worked and told him the FBI was nosing around asking questions about his past.
“I told him the story and asked what kind of job he had applied for,” Mrs. Bernaut wrote later in her book Our Own People. “He seemed surprised and disturbed. He had not applied for a government post, and had no idea what the investigation was about.”
Some time later the FBI visited Mrs. Bernaut again and asked her if she had seen Zborowski. She had no interest in helping the FBI and she replied: “‘No.’ The agents then astonished her by saying that they knew she had seen Zborowski because they were following him. They had seen the pair of them leave a cafe and depart in a car together. Fearing that she might be in trouble, she telephoned Washington to tell Mrs. Dallin. It was then that Mrs. Dallin told her, “You know we suspect that he is an agent.” Notice that she didn’t inform her “very good friend” that Zborowski was an agent, but only that “we suspect” that he is. Yet by this time the Dallins had cast-iron proof that he was a GPU agent.
The FBI had an inkling that Zborowski was a GPU agent in 1953; they were sure in 1954; and they must have been certain by 1955. Still nothing happened. On February 29 and March 2, 1956, Zborowski took the witness stand in the Senate building in Washington, D.C., to unfold his career in the service of Stalinism. Mrs. Dallin testified immediately after Zborowski. Her evidence left the Senators gawking. At one point the sub-committee’s chief counsel, Mr. Robert Morris, asked: “Now, at the outset, did he tell you at this time (1955) that he had been a communist?”
Mrs. Dallin: You see, he told you yesterday it was a lie. And I don’t know when it was a lie and when it was not a lie. He told me his story, that he was—
Mr. Morris: Let me be sure I understand that. You do not know whether the fact of the matter was a lie, but you do know that what he told you was the truth?
Mrs. Dallin: Yes. That is it. But I don’t know when he was lying. That I can’t tell you, because nobody else told me the same story; only he.
At this stage of interrogation, the exasperated Mr. Morris obviously thought the better of it, and moved on ... But her testimony impressed Senator William E. Jenner from Indiana. As she left the witness box he told her: “Mrs. Dallin, this committee wants to thank you for coming forward and telling your story. We wish more Americans would cooperate with this committee in the fashion that you have this morning. Thank you very much.”
Mrs. Dallin: Thank you.
Although Mrs. Dallin testified, Mr. Dallin didn’t. Instead he submitted a memorandum to the Senate subcommittee some time in 1955. Although never published in full, parts of his document were read out when General Orlov was in the witness stand during the secret session on September 25, 1955. There is something very odd about Mr. Dallin’s memorandum. It contains a commentary of General Orlov’s secret testimony to the Senate subcommittee. How could he have got hold of it? It was given in executive session and wasn’t available to anyone outside the committee. It was only “released from the injunction of secrecy” by order of the US Senate seven years later on November 15, 1962.
For a humble author, Mr. Dallin had phenomenal influence in Washington to get a transcript of Orlov’s testimony and then write a commentary on it and thus avoid being called in person to testify. In his memo Dallin passed off their relationship with Zborowski in five brisk sentences:
Mrs. Dallin was an acquaintance (!) of Zborowski since 1935. I met him a few years later in Paris. Our acquaintanceship continued also during Zborowski’s stay in this country until 1953. Zborowski and his family still lived in France when the German army occupied half of the country. Mrs. Dallin and myself agreed to help the Zborowski family to escape from France, supplied the necessary affidavits and in December 1941 Zborowski, his wife and son landed at Philadelphia, Pa.
For an expert on Soviet affairs and Soviet espionage, this is a remarkably slender report on their “acquaintanceship” with Zborowski. On March 19, 1956, Mr. Dallin began the first of a two-part series of articles in The New Leader entitled “Mark Zborowski—Soviet Agent.” Again, the hallmark of these articles is not what they contain but what Mr. Dallin left out of them. In part one, for example, he completely omits to mention that he even knew Zborowski. And dealing with the agent’s journey from war-torn France to the United States, he says:
“Nor can there be any doubt that in the spring of 1941, when Zborowski arranged to emigrate to the United States, he received the assent of the NKVD together with the names and addresses of contacts in America.”
He thus glided over the fact that his wife travelled especially into Nazi invaded France to meet Zborowski to arrange visa documents for him on a fraudulent basis, helped pay his fare, met him on his arrival in Philadelphia, found him lodgings and got him his first job. In part two he first recalls his own personal relations with Zborowski in another throwaway sentence:
“Among the numerous people on whom Zborowski was assigned to spy were Mrs. Dallin and myself; he had reported regularly on us to the NKVD in France, where we were acquainted.”
Mr. Dallin went out of his way to belittle Zborowski’s penetration of the Trotskyist movement—the Fourth International and the Socialist Workers Party—in the United States. He wrote:
The situation had changed in one important respect: Trotsky had been murdered, and the Trotskyite groups were now of less interest to Moscow. Hence, Zborowski’s task was to establish relations with the Russian Menshevik leaders who had arrived in the United States a short time before.
Dallin’s statement contradicts all the evidence; from other testimony throughout this series it has been established beyond doubt that the Stalinists’ anti-Trotskyist penetration and disruption continued after Trotsky’s murder. If anything, it was stepped up.
Mr. Dallin’s view of Zborowski’s testimony to the Senate sub-committee?
His entire testimony is a tissue of clever evasions, well thought out by a good legal mind.