History: Somerset Maugham Sought to Enlist Jews Against the Bolsheviks

By Alex Gordon  

HAIFA, Israel — Jewish historian Shimon Dubnov feared that the active participation of Jews in the Bolshevik Revolution would lead to a tremendous outbreak of anti-Semitism. He wrote: “We [Jews] will never be forgiven for the role played by Jewish revolutionary figures in the Bolshevik terror. Lenin’s associates – the Trotskys and Uritskys – cast a shadow even over him. […] Then everyone will talk about it openly, and antisemitism will become deeply rooted in all strata of Russian society.”

But state antisemitism in the USSR was born 30 years after Dubnov’s prediction. In the early days of Soviet power, the large role of Jews in Russian state and public life was exploited not by “strata of Russian society” but by foreigners.

In 1917 an attempt was made to turn dissent among the Jews into a clash between them and to pit Russian Jews who were not socialists against Russian Jews who were socialists. The idea of this scheme was born in the mind of the resident of British intelligence in Russia and one of the most famous English writers of the twentieth century.

In Great Britain, the ruling circles feared the Russian Revolution and the Russian army’s cessation of hostilities on the side of the Entente in the First World War. These fears are reflected to some extent in a collection of short stories by the famous English writer William Somerset Maugham, Ashenden, or the British Agent (1928).

Maugham, M.D., author of the famous novel Of Human Bondage (1915), Of Human Bondage – the title of the fourth chapter of Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics – was an agent of British intelligence in Russia in 1917. Maugham was one of the most popular writers of his time and reputedly the highest paid author of the 1930s. Officially, he was in Russia as a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, a London newspaper. Maugham mentions his mission in the preface to Ashenden:

“In 1917 I went to Russia with the task of preventing the Bolshevik revolution and preventing Russia’s withdrawal from the war. The reader will see that my efforts were not successful.” Maugham was sent to Russia by the then head of the Intelligence Service, Sir William Wiseman. How serious was Maugham’s role as a secret British agent in Russia in 1917 became clear after the publication of Wiseman’s archive in the 1960s. The archive shows that Maugham was an important agent whose mission was hidden even from the British ambassador to Russia. Maugham met with Alexander Kerensky, chairman of the Provisional Government, and other ministers. One of his goals was to prevent revolution and persuade Russia to continue fighting on the side of the Entente states.

Maugham’s portrait of Kerensky does not look very attractive: “He looks sickly. Everyone knows that he is not well; he himself, not without some bravado, says that he has not long to live. He has a large face, his skin is of a strange yellowish hue, when he is nervous, it turns green; his features are not bad, his eyes are large, very lively; but at the same time he is not a good-looking man. He is dressed rather unusually – he is wearing a protective-colored suit, not quite military, and not civilian, unremarkable and dull. […] I have never understood, thanks to what properties he has lightning ascended to such an incredible height. His conversation did not testify not only to great enlightenment, but also to ordinary education. I sensed no special charm in him. Nor was there any sense of special intellectual or physical power emanating from him.”

Maugham describes Kerensky’s painful condition. His description is colorful, vivid and erroneous, for Kerensky lived another 53 years and four and a half years outlived the writer himself. Maugham assured Kerensky of the West’s support: they were willing to sponsor his government and even provide military forces, so long as Russia did not withdraw from the war. Kerensky did not give any definite answer, but instead launched into lengthy arguments. He was, as Maugham pointed out, an outstanding demagogue.

On October 31, 1917, Kerensky handed Maugham a secret note to be delivered into the hands of British Prime Minister Lloyd-George. The Chairman of the Provisional Government begged the British Prime Minister to send arms and ammunition that the Russian army desperately needed. All this, according to Kerensky, was necessary to continue the war with Germany and repel the Bolshevik attack that was expected any day now.

Maugham did not trust the transfer of information to the British ambassador, and therefore himself immediately left Russia. He went to Norway, from there Scotland, and then the train arrived in London. The meeting with Lloyd George was brief. The Prime Minister read the message and returned the note to Maugham with the words, “I cannot do it.” It soon became known that Kerensky’s government had been defeated and he himself had fled abroad. Maugham’s mission was a failure.

Nevertheless, in his autobiography, The Summing Up (1938), he claims that had he arrived in Russia six months earlier, he would have succeeded in preventing the Bolshevik Revolution. During his mission, Maugham tried to play the Jewish card. He operated through the Jewish channel according to the classic views of British leaders about the exaggerated role of the Jews in history.

In a letter dated July 7, 1917, Maugham wrote to his chief: “Dear Wiseman! Yesterday I met with Dr. Weise. When he is next in New York, he will arrange for me to meet with two influential Russian Jews. I said that I would like to become acquainted with Jewish circles in opposition to the Jewish Socialists, and he promised to give me letters of introduction for that purpose. My idea is that there must be wealthy and influential Jews whose views are diametrically opposed to those of their Socialist countrymen; and that it is quite possible to utilize them in the struggle against the latter. They must have far more effective means of fighting them than we have.”

Somerset Maugham, a British secret agent, exploited the “Jewish” concept. He expressed the view of the British upper classes that the revolution in Russia was or could be carried out by Jews and that the best method of fighting Jews was to use other Jews against them. Maugham was an accomplished writer and an unsuccessful scout.

In his autobiography, the writer alludes to another purpose of his mission in Russia, designed to prevent revolution. Apparently, Maugham is referring to the assassination of Lenin. Lenin had long been regarded by British intelligence as a great enemy of the Empire. The internment of Trotsky by the British on his way from the United States to Russia shows that Russian revolutionary internationalists were the subject of their close attention.

In his memoirs, the British intelligence resident in Russia, Bruce Lockart, actually confirmed the preparation of the anti-Bolshevik coup in 1918, indicating that its main driving force was his confidant, the English intelligence officer Sidney Reilly. Maybe since the assassination of Russian Emperor Paul I, organized by the British in 1801 in the interests of the Empire, they considered the assassination of the leader as a reliable means of changing power and preventing roadblocks for the British Empire policy.

The essence of the plan was as follows: the British hoped to get in touch with the commanders of the 9th Latvian Rifle Regiment, which guarded the Moscow Kremlin to which the Soviet government had relocated from Petrograd.

For a generous fee, Lockart hoped to persuade the Latvians to stage a military coup with the assassination of Lenin, after which it was planned to bring to power a government in favor of continuing the war. By August 1918, Reilly had managed to establish close contacts with Eduard Berzin, commander of the 1st Light Artillery Division of the Latvian Riflemen. The latter, after some hesitation, agreed to implement the plan.

At three meetings, Reilly handed Berzin 1.2 million rubles, which were intended to bribe the regiment’s personnel. Lockart was delighted – his plan was realized in the most successful way. The Briton did not know that Berzin comes to meetings under the control of the VChK, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, that is, the secret security service. It is possible that Maugham attributed to himself ex post facto what Reilly later tried to do, and what was in the air in the corridors of the Intelligence Service.

On August 30, 1918, the chairman of the local branch of the Cheka, Moses Uritsky, a prominent Bolshevik Jew, was assassinated in Petrograd. On the same day Lenin was wounded in Moscow. At first the Bolsheviks were horrified that British intelligence was on the way to overthrowing their power. But it soon became clear that the assassins had nothing to do with British intelligence, but belonged to the Jewish people: Uritsky was killed by the Jewish poet Leonid Kannegiser, who did not belong to any political organization, and Lenin was shot by a former Socialist-Revolutionary, also of Jewish origin, Fanny Kaplan. It was later revealed that Reilly was also a Jew.

Sidney Reilly, an Odessa Jew from a wealthy family named Rosenblum, hated the Bolsheviks and apparently considered the elimination of Lenin to be the elimination of Bolshevism. The three Jews, Reilly, Kannegiser and Kaplan failed to overthrow the newly established Bolshevik power. They organized plots against the Soviets, but none of them were Jewish. Maugham fantasized about assassinating Lenin, but was far from realizing this fantasy. He returned to Britain and took up writing, in which he excelled much more than in espionage.

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Alex Gordon is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the academic college of education, and the author of 10 books.