Harrison George was a senior

Communist Party of the United States The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...

(CPUSA) leader. He is best remembered as the editor of the official organ of the

Profintern The Red International of Labor Unions (russian: Красный интернационал профсоюзов, translit=Krasnyi internatsional profsoyuzov, RILU), commonly known as the Profintern, was an international body established by the Comm ...

Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat The Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat (PPTUS) was a regional subdivision of the Red International of Labor Unions (RILU, commonly known as the Profintern), the trade union organization associated with the Communist International. Established in ...

(PPTUS) as well as the party's West Coast newspaper, ''

People's World ''People's World'', official successor to the ''Daily Worker'', is a Marxist and American leftist national daily online news publication. Founded by activists, socialists, communists, and those active in the labor movement in the early 1900s, th ...

.''

Career

The

(PPTUS) was established by the

Red International of Labor Unions The Red International of Labor Unions (russian: Красный интернационал профсоюзов, translit=Krasnyi internatsional profsoyuzov, RILU), commonly known as the Profintern, was an international body established by the Comm ...

(Profintern) in 1927, with

Earl Browder Earl Russell Browder (May 20, 1891 – June 27, 1973) was an American politician, communist activist and leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Browder was the General Secretary of the CPUSA during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s. Duri ...

as its

General Secretary Secretary is a title often used in organizations to indicate a person having a certain amount of authority, power, or importance in the organization. Secretaries announce important events and communicate to the organization. The term is derived ...

. Documents from the Comintern Archive in Moscow reveal the relationship between Browder and George, who at the time was an

Industrial Workers of the World The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in Chicago in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain. IWW ideology combines genera ...

leader and Communist mole in the Wobblies. The minutes of a PPTUS meeting were signed by George and Tsutomu Yano, who would later recruit people for the

Richard Sorge Richard Sorge (russian: Рихард Густавович Зорге, Rikhard Gustavovich Zorge; 4 October 1895 – 7 November 1944) was a German-Azerbaijani journalist and Soviet military intelligence officer who was active before and during Wo ...

spy ring in Japan. Intercepted

Soviet intelligence This is a list of historical secret police organizations. In most cases they are no longer current because the regime that ran them was overthrown or changed, or they changed their names. Few still exist under the same name as legitimate police fo ...

traffic is alleged to reveal a covert relationship George had as a cutout transmitting information from

James Walter Miller James Walter Miller (1890–1950) was an American citizen and an alleged asset of the San Francisco Office of the KGB from 1943 to 1945. Miller worked in the United States Government wartime mail censorship office. Miller was allegedly Agent han ...

, who worked in the U.S. Post Office's

Office of Censorship The Office of Censorship was an emergency wartime agency set up by the United States federal government on December 19, 1941 to aid in the censorship of all communications coming into and going out of the United States, including its territories ...

to the San Francisco KGB.John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America'' New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999; pg. 229. Harrison's role receives mention in the memoir of

Whittaker Chambers Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938), ...

The "Old Man" is a California businessman and lifelong Communist of Russian birth, very active in party affairs on the West Coast . At the time I met him, he was also connected with my old comrade from the ''
Daily Worker The ''Daily Worker'' was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, attempts were m ...
'', Harrison George, who was then heading the West Coast office of the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat, an international Communist organization, which among other activities, was running couriers on the ships to Australia, Japan and Asiatic mainland ports.

Personal life

George was Earl Browder's brother-in-law.

Works

* "The Mesaba Iron Range," ''International Socialist Review,'' vol. 17, no. 6 (December 1916), pp. 329–332. * "Victory on the Mesaba Range," ''International Socialist Review,'' vol. 17, no. 7 (January 1917), pp. 429–431. * "Hitting the Trail in the Lumber Camps," ''International Socialist Review,'' vol. 17, no. 8 (February 1917), pp. 455–457.

Career

Personal life

Works

References

Further reading