Sidney George Reilly (; – 5 November 1925)—known as "Ace of Spies"—was a Russian-born adventurer and secret agent employed by Scotland Yard's Special Branch and later by the Foreign Section of the British Secret Service Bureau, the precursor to the modern British
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
(MI6/SIS). He is alleged to have spied for at least four different
great power
A great power is a sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability and expertise to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength, as well as diplomatic and soft power inf ...
s, and documentary evidence indicates that he was involved in espionage activities in 1890s London among Russian émigré circles, in Manchuria on the eve of the
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...
(1904–05), and in an abortive 1918 ''coup d'état'' against
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...
's Bolshevik government in Moscow.
Reilly disappeared in
Soviet Russia
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...
in the mid-1920s, lured by Cheka's
Operation Trust
Operation Trust (Russian: операция "Трест", tr. Operatsiya "Trest") was a counterintelligence operation of the State Political Directorate (GPU) of the Soviet Union. The operation, which was set up by GPU's predecessor Cheka, ran fro ...
. British diplomat and journalist
R. H. Bruce Lockhart
Sir Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart, KCMG (2 September 1887 – 27 February 1970) was a British diplomat, journalist, author, secret agent and footballer. His 1932 book ''Memoirs of a British Agent''Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, ''Memoirs of a Br ...
publicised his and Reilly's 1918 exploits to overthrow the Bolshevik regime in Lockhart's 1932 book ''Memoirs of a British Agent.'' This became an international best-seller and garnered global fame for Reilly. The memoirs retold the efforts by Reilly, Lockhart, and other conspirators to sabotage the Bolshevik revolution while still in its infancy.
The world press made Reilly into a household name within five years of his execution by Soviet agents in 1925, lauding him as a peerless spy and recounting his many espionage adventures. Newspapers dubbed him "the greatest spy in history" and "the
Scarlet Pimpernel
''The Scarlet Pimpernel'' is the first novel in a series of historical fiction by Baroness Orczy, published in 1905. It was written after her stage play of the same title (co-authored with Montague Barstow) enjoyed a long run in London, having ...
of Red Russia". The London ''Evening Standard'' described his exploits in an illustrated serial in May 1931 headlined "Master Spy".
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer who is best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., a ...
used him as a model for
James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
in his novels (set in the early
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
). Reilly is considered to be "the dominating figure in the mythology of modern British espionage".
Birth and youth
The true details about Reilly's origin, identity, and exploits have eluded researchers and intelligence agencies for more than a century. Reilly himself told several versions of his background to confuse and mislead investigators. At different times in his life, he claimed to be the son of an Irish merchant seaman, an Irish clergyman, and an aristocratic landowner connected to the court of Emperor
Alexander III of Russia
Alexander III ( rus, Алекса́ндр III Алекса́ндрович, r=Aleksandr III Aleksandrovich; 10 March 18451 November 1894) was Emperor of Russia, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland from 13 March 1881 until his death in 18 ...
. According to a Soviet secret police dossier compiled in 1925, he was perhaps born Zigmund Markovich Rozenblum on 24 March 1874 in
Odessa
Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrativ ...
, a Black Sea port of Emperor
Alexander II's Russian Empire. His father Markus was a doctor and shipping agent, according to this dossier, while his mother came from an impoverished noble family.
Other sources claim that Reilly was born Georgy Rosenblum in Odessa on 24 March 1873.
[Lockhart 1986] In one account, his birth name is given as Salomon Rosenblum in
Kherson
Kherson (, ) is a port city of Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers appr ...
Gubernia
A governorate, gubernia, province, or government ( rus, губе́рния, p=ɡʊˈbʲɛrnʲɪjə, also romanized ; uk, губернія, huberniia), was a major and principal administrative subdivision of the Russian Empire. After the empir ...
of the Russian Empire, the illegitimate son of Polina (or "Perla") and Dr. Mikhail Abramovich Rosenblum, the cousin of Reilly's father Grigory Rosenblum. There is also speculation that he was the son of a merchant marine captain and Polina.
Yet another source states that he was born Sigmund Georgievich Rosenblum on 24 March 1874, the only son of Pauline and Gregory Rosenblum, a wealthy Polish-Jewish family with an estate at Bielsk in the Grodno Province of Imperial Russia. His father was known locally as George rather than Gregory, hence Sigmund's patronymic Georgievich. The family seems to have been well-connected in Polish nationalist circles through Pauline's intimate friendship with
Ignacy Jan Paderewski
Ignacy Jan Paderewski (; – 29 June 1941) was a Polish pianist and composer who became a spokesman for Polish independence. In 1919, he was the new nation's Prime Minister and foreign minister during which he signed the Treaty of Versaill ...
, the Polish statesman who became Prime Minister of Poland and also Poland's foreign minister in 1919.
Travels abroad
According to reports of the tsarist political police the
Okhrana
The Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order (russian: Отделение по охранению общественной безопасности и порядка), usually called Guard Department ( rus, Охранное отд ...
, Rosenblum was arrested in 1892 for political activities and for being a courier for a revolutionary group known as the Friends of Enlightenment. He escaped judicial punishment, and he later was friends with Okhrana agents such as Alexander Nikolayevich Grammatikov, and these details might indicate that he was a police informant even at this young age.
After Reilly's release, his father told him that his mother was dead and that his biological father was her Jewish doctor Mikhail A. Rosenblum. Distraught by this news, he faked his death in Odessa harbor and stowed away aboard a British ship bound for South America. In Brazil, he adopted the name Pedro and worked odd jobs as a dock worker, a road mender, a plantation laborer, and a cook for a British intelligence expedition in 1895. He allegedly saved both the expedition and the life of Major Charles Fothergill when hostile natives attacked them. Rosenblum seized a British officer's pistol and killed the attackers with expert marksmanship. Fothergill rewarded his bravery with 1,500 pounds sterling, a British passport, and passage to Britain, where Pedro became Sidney Rosenblum.
However, the record of evidence contradicts this tale of Brazil. Evidence indicates that Rosenblum arrived in London from France in December 1895, prompted by his unscrupulous acquisition of a large sum of money and a hasty departure from
Saint-Maur-des-Fossés
Saint-Maur-des-Fossés () is a commune in Val-de-Marne
Val-de-Marne (, "Vale of the Marne") is a department of France located in the Île-de-France region. Named after the river Marne, it is situated in the Grand Paris metropolis to the southea ...
, a residential suburb of Paris. According to this account, Rosenblum and his Polish accomplice Yan Voitek waylaid two Italian anarchists on 25 December 1895 and robbed them of a substantial amount of revolutionary funds. One anarchist's throat was cut; the other, named Constant Della Cassa, died from knife wounds in Fontainebleau Hospital three days later. The French newspaper ''L'Union Républicaine de Saône-et-Loire'' reported the incident on 27 December 1895:
Police learned that the physical description of one assailant matched Rosenblum's, but he was already en route to Britain. His accomplice Voitek later told British intelligence officers about this incident and other dealings with Rosenblum. Several months prior to this murder, Rosenblum had met
Ethel Lilian Boole, a young Englishwoman who was a budding writer and active in Russian émigré circles. The couple developed a rapport and began a sexual liaison, and he told her about his past in Russia. After the affair concluded, they continued to correspond. In 1897, Boole published ''
The Gadfly
''The Gadfly'' is a novel by Irish-born British writer Ethel Voynich, published in 1897 (United States, June; Great Britain, September of the same year), set in 1840s Italy under the dominance of Austria, a time of tumultuous revolt and upris ...
'', a critically acclaimed novel whose central character was allegedly based on Reilly's life as Rosenblum. In the novel, the protagonist is a bastard who feigns his suicide to escape his illegitimate past, and then voyages to South America. He later returns to Europe and becomes involved with Italian anarchists and other revolutionaries.
For decades, certain biographers had dismissed the Reilly-Boole liaison as unsubstantiated. However, evidence was found in 2016 among archived correspondence in the extended Boole-Hinton family confirming that a relationship transpired between Reilly and Boole around 1895 in Florence. There is some question of whether he was truly smitten with Boole and sincerely returned her affections, as he might have been a paid police informant reporting on her activities and those of other radicals.
In London: 1890s
Reilly continued to go by the name Rosenblum, living at the Albert Mansions, an apartment block in Rosetta Street, Waterloo, London in early 1896. He created the Ozone Preparations Company, which peddled patent medicines, and he became a paid informant for the émigré intelligence network of
William Melville
William Melville (25 April 1850 – 1 February 1918) was an Irish law enforcement officer and the first chief of the British Secret Service Bureau.
Birth
William Melville was born into a Roman Catholic family in Direenaclaurig Cross, Sneem, Co ...
, superintendent of Scotland Yard's
Special Branch
Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security and Intelligence (information gathering), intelligence in Policing in the United Kingdom, British, Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth, ...
. (Melville later oversaw a special section of the British Secret Service Bureau founded in 1909.)
In 1897, Rosenblum began an affair with Margaret Thomas (née Callaghan), the youthful wife of Reverend Hugh Thomas, shortly before her husband's death. Rosenblum met Rev. Thomas in London through his Ozone Preparations Company because Thomas had a kidney inflammation and was intrigued by the miracle cures peddled by Rosenblum. Rev. Thomas introduced Rosenblum to his wife at his manor house, and they began having an affair. On 4 March 1898, Hugh Thomas altered his will and appointed Margaret as an executrix; he was found dead in his room on 12 March 1898, just a week after the new will was made. A mysterious Dr. T. W. Andrew, whose physical description matched that of Rosenblum, appeared to certify Thomas's death as generic influenza and proclaimed that there was no need for an inquest. Records indicate that there was no one by the name of Dr. T. W. Andrew in Great Britain circa 1897.
Margaret Thomas insisted that her husband's body be ready for burial 36 hours after his death. She inherited roughly £800,000. The
Metropolitan Police
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and ...
did not investigate Dr. T. W. Andrew, nor did they investigate the nurse whom Margaret had hired, who was previously linked to the
arsenic
Arsenic is a chemical element with the symbol As and atomic number 33. Arsenic occurs in many minerals, usually in combination with sulfur and metals, but also as a pure elemental crystal. Arsenic is a metalloid. It has various allotropes, but ...
poisoning of a former employer. Four months later, on 22 August 1898, Rosenblum married Margaret Thomas at
Holborn
Holborn ( or ) is a district in central London, which covers the south-eastern part of the London Borough of Camden and a part ( St Andrew Holborn Below the Bars) of the Ward of Farringdon Without in the City of London.
The area has its roots ...
Registry Office in London. The two witnesses at the ceremony were Charles Richard Cross, a government official, and Joseph Bell, an Admiralty clerk. Both would eventually marry daughters of Henry Freeman Pannett, an associate of
William Melville
William Melville (25 April 1850 – 1 February 1918) was an Irish law enforcement officer and the first chief of the British Secret Service Bureau.
Birth
William Melville was born into a Roman Catholic family in Direenaclaurig Cross, Sneem, Co ...
. The marriage not only brought the wealth which Rosenblum desired but provided a pretext to discard his identity of Sigmund Rosenblum; with Melville's assistance, he crafted a new identity: "Sidney George Reilly". This new identity was key to achieving his desire to return to the Russian Empire and voyage to the Far East. Reilly "obtained his new identity and nationality without taking any legal steps to change his name and without making an official application for British citizenship, all of which suggests some type of official intervention." This intervention likely occurred to facilitate his upcoming work in Russia on behalf of British intelligence.
Russia and the Far East
In June 1899, the newly endowed Reilly and his wife Margaret travelled to
Emperor
An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereignty, sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), ...
Nicholas II's Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
using Reilly's (forged) British passport—a travel document and a cover identity both purportedly created by
William Melville
William Melville (25 April 1850 – 1 February 1918) was an Irish law enforcement officer and the first chief of the British Secret Service Bureau.
Birth
William Melville was born into a Roman Catholic family in Direenaclaurig Cross, Sneem, Co ...
. While in
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
he was approached by Japanese General
Akashi Motojiro
Baron was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army and the 7th Governor-General of Taiwan from 6 June 1918 to 26 October 1919.
Early life and career
A native of Fukuoka, Fukuoka, Fukuoka and a graduate of the 1889 class of the Imperial Japanese ...
(1864–1919) to work for the
Japanese Secret Intelligence Services. A keen judge of character, Motojiro believed the most reliable spies were those who were motivated by profit instead of by feelings of sympathy towards Japan and, accordingly, he believed Reilly to be such a person.
As tensions between Russia and Japan were escalating towards war, Motojiro had at his disposal a budget of one million yen provided by the Japanese Ministry of War to obtain information on the movements of Russian troops and naval developments. Motojiro instructed Reilly to offer financial aid to Russian revolutionaries in exchange for information about the Russian Intelligence Services and, more importantly, to determine the strength of the Russian armed forces, particularly in the Far East. Accepting Motojiro's recruitment overtures, Reilly now became simultaneously an agent for both the British
War Office
The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from ...
and the Japanese Empire. While his wife Margaret remained in
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
, Reilly allegedly reconnoitred the
Caucasus
The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically ...
for its oil deposits and compiled a resource prospectus as part of "
The Great Game
The Great Game is the name for a set of political, diplomatic and military confrontations that occurred through most of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century – involving the rivalry of the British Empire and the Russian Empi ...
". He reported his findings to the
British Government
ga, Rialtas a Shoilse gd, Riaghaltas a Mhòrachd
, image = HM Government logo.svg
, image_size = 220px
, image2 = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government).svg
, image_size2 = 180px
, caption = Royal Arms
, date_es ...
, which paid him for the assignment.
Shortly before the
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...
, Reilly appeared in
Port Arthur,
Manchuria
Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer Manc ...
, in the guise of a timber company owner. Here he remained for four years, familiarising himself with political conditions in the Far East and obtaining a degree of personal influence in the ongoing espionage activities in the region. At the time he was still a
double agent
In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...
for the British and the Japanese governments. The Russian-controlled Port Arthur lay under the ever-darkening spectre of a Japanese invasion, and Reilly and his business partner Moisei Akimovich Ginsburg turned the precarious situation to their benefit. By purchasing and reselling enormous amounts of foodstuffs, raw materials, medicine, and coal, they made a small fortune as
war profiteers
A war profiteer is any person or organization that derives profit from warfare or by selling weapons and other goods to parties at war. The term typically carries strong negative connotations. General profiteering, making a profit criticized a ...
.
Reilly would have an even greater success in January 1904, when he and Chinese engineer acquaintance
Ho Liang Shung allegedly stole the Port Arthur harbour defence plans for the
Japanese Navy
, abbreviated , also simply known as the Japanese Navy, is the maritime warfare branch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, tasked with the naval defense of Japan. The JMSDF was formed following the dissolution of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) ...
. Guided by these stolen plans, the Japanese Navy navigated by night through the Russian minefield protecting the harbour and launched a
surprise attack on Port Arthur on the night of 8–9 February 1904 (Monday 8 February – Tuesday 9 February). However, the stolen plans did not help the Japanese much. Despite ideal conditions for a surprise attack, their combat results were relatively poor. Although more than 31,000 Russians ultimately perished defending Port Arthur, Japanese losses were much higher, and these losses nearly undermined their war effort.
According to writer Winfried Lüdecke
( de), Reilly quickly became an obvious target of suspicion by Russian authorities at Port Arthur. Thereafter, he discovered one of his business subordinates was an agent of Russian counter-espionage and chose to leave the region. Upon departing
Port Arthur, Reilly travelled to
Imperial Japan
The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent forma ...
in the company of an unidentified woman where he was handsomely paid by the Japanese government for his prior intelligence services. If he made a detour to Japan, presumably to be paid for his espionage, he could not have stayed very long, for by February 1905 he appeared in Paris. By the time he had returned to Europe from the Far East, Reilly "had become a self-confident international adventurer" who was "fluent in several languages" and whose intelligence services were highly desired by various great powers. At the same time, he was described as possessing "a foolhardy adventurous nature" prone to taking unnecessary risks. This latter trait would later result in him being nicknamed "reckless" by other British agents.
Continental exploits
D'Arcy affair
During the brief time Reilly spent in Paris he renewed his close acquaintance with
William Melville
William Melville (25 April 1850 – 1 February 1918) was an Irish law enforcement officer and the first chief of the British Secret Service Bureau.
Birth
William Melville was born into a Roman Catholic family in Direenaclaurig Cross, Sneem, Co ...
whom Reilly had last seen just prior to his 1899 departure from London. While Reilly had been abroad in the Far East, Melville had resigned in November 1903 as Superintendent of Scotland Yard's Special Branch and had become chief of a new intelligence section in the
War Office
The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from ...
. Working under commercial cover from an unassuming flat in London, Melville now ran both counter-intelligence and foreign intelligence operations using his foreign contacts which he had accumulated during his years running Special Branch. Reilly's meeting with Melville in Paris is most significant, for within a matter of weeks Melville was to use Reilly's expertise in what would later become known as the
D'Arcy Affair.
In 1904 the
Board of the Admiralty
The Admiralty was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for the command of the Royal Navy until 1964, historically under its titular head, the Lord High Admiral – one of the Great Officers of State. For much of i ...
projected that petroleum would supplant coal as the primary source of fuel for the
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
. As petroleum was not abundant in Britain, it would be necessary to find—and secure—sufficient supplies overseas. During their investigation the British Admiralty learned that an Australian mining engineer
William Knox D'Arcy
William Knox D'Arcy (11 October 18491 May 1917) was a British businessman who was one of the principal founders of the oil and petrochemical industry in Persia (Iran). The D’Arcy Concession was signed in 1901 and allowed D'Arcy to explore, o ...
—who founded the
Anglo-Persian Oil Company
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was a British company founded in 1909 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Persia (Iran). The British government purchased 51% of the company in 1914, gaining a controlling number ...
(APOC)—had obtained a
valuable concession from
Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar
Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar ( fa, مظفرالدین شاه قاجار, Mozaffar ad-Din Ŝāh-e Qājār; 23 March 1853 – 3 January 1907), was the fifth shah of Qajar Iran, reigning from 1896 until his death in 1907. He is often credited with t ...
regarding oil rights in southern
Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
. D'Arcy was negotiating a similar concession from the
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
for oil rights in
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
. The Admiralty initiated efforts to entice D'Arcy to sell his newly acquired oil rights to the British Government rather than to the French
de Rothschilds.
Reilly, at the British Admiralty's request, located William D'Arcy at
Cannes
Cannes ( , , ; oc, Canas) is a city located on the French Riviera. It is a communes of France, commune located in the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department, and host city of the annual Cannes Film Festival, Midem, and Cannes Lions I ...
in the
south of France
Southern France, also known as the South of France or colloquially in French as , is a defined geographical area consisting of the regions of France that border the Atlantic Ocean south of the Marais Poitevin,Louis Papy, ''Le midi atlantique'', A ...
and approached him in disguise. Dressed as a Catholic priest, Reilly gate-crashed the private discussions on board the Rothschild yacht on the pretext of collecting donations for a religious charity. He then secretly informed D'Arcy that the British could give him a better financial deal. D'Arcy promptly terminated negotiations with the Rothschilds and returned to London to meet with the British Admiralty. However, biographer
Andrew Cook has questioned Reilly's involvement in the D'Arcy Affair since, in February 1904, Reilly might still have been in Port Arthur. Cook speculates that it was Reilly's intelligence chief,
William Melville
William Melville (25 April 1850 – 1 February 1918) was an Irish law enforcement officer and the first chief of the British Secret Service Bureau.
Birth
William Melville was born into a Roman Catholic family in Direenaclaurig Cross, Sneem, Co ...
, and a British intelligence officer, Henry Curtis Bennett, who undertook the D'Arcy assignment. Yet another possibility advanced in ''
The Prize'' by writer
Daniel Yergin
Daniel Howard Yergin (born February 6, 1947) is an American author, speaker, energy expert, and economic historian. Yergin is vice chairman of S&P Global. He was formerly vice chairman of IHS Markit, which merged with S&P in 2022. He founded Ca ...
has the British Admiralty creating a "
syndicate
A syndicate is a self-organizing group of individuals, companies, corporations or entities formed to transact some specific business, to pursue or promote a shared interest.
Etymology
The word ''syndicate'' comes from the French language, Frenc ...
of patriots" to keep D'Arcy's concession in British hands, apparently with the full and eager co-operation of D'Arcy himself.
Although the extent of Reilly's involvement in this particular incident is uncertain, it has been verified that he stayed after the incident in the
French Riviera
The French Riviera (known in French as the ; oc, Còsta d'Azur ; literal translation " Azure Coast") is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France. There is no official boundary, but it is usually considered to extend fro ...
on the
Côte d'Azur
The French Riviera (known in French as the ; oc, Còsta d'Azur ; literal translation " Azure Coast") is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France. There is no official boundary, but it is usually considered to extend fro ...
, a location very near the Rothschild yacht. At the conclusion of the D'Arcy Affair, Reilly journeyed to
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
, and, in January 1905, he returned to
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
, Russia.
Frankfurt Air Show
In ''Ace of Spies'', biographer
Robin Bruce Lockhart
Robert Norman Bruce Lockhart (13 April 1920 – 20 February 2008), known as Robin, was a British journalist, stock broker, and author.
Biography
Bruce Lockhart was the only son of R. H. Bruce Lockhart, a British diplomat, secret agent, journalis ...
recounts Reilly's alleged involvement in obtaining a newly developed German
magneto
A magneto is an electrical generator that uses permanent magnets to produce periodic pulses of alternating current. Unlike a dynamo, a magneto does not contain a commutator to produce direct current. It is categorized as a form of alternator, ...
at the first
Frankfurt International Air Show ("Internationale Luftschiffahrt-Ausstellung") in 1909. According to Lockhart, on the fifth day of the air show in
Frankfurt am Main
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...
, a German plane lost control and crashed, killing the pilot. The plane's engine was alleged to have used a new type of magneto that was far ahead of other designs.
Reilly and a British
SIS agent posing as one of the exhibition pilots diverted the attention of spectators while they removed the magneto from the wreck and substituted another. The SIS agent quickly made detailed drawings of the German magneto, and when the airplane had been removed to a hangar, the agent and Reilly managed to restore the original magneto. However, later biographers such as Spence and Cook have countered that this incident is unsubstantiated. There is no documentary evidence of any plane crashes occurring during the event.
Stealing weapon plans
In 1909, when the
German Kaiser was expanding the war machine of
Imperial Germany
The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...
,
British intelligence
The Government of the United Kingdom maintains intelligence agencies within three government departments, the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. These agencies are responsible for collecting and analysing foreign and do ...
had scant knowledge regarding the types of weapons being forged inside Germany's war plants. At the behest of British intelligence, Reilly was sent to obtain the plans for the weapons. Reilly arrived in
Essen
Essen (; Latin: ''Assindia'') is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and D ...
, Germany, disguised as a
Baltic
Baltic may refer to:
Peoples and languages
* Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian
*Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originati ...
shipyard worker by the name of Karl Hahn. Having prepared his cover identity by learning to weld at a Sheffield engineering firm, Reilly obtained a low-level position as a welder at the
Krupp
The Krupp family (see pronunciation), a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, is notable for its production of steel, artillery, ammunition and other armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG (Friedrich Krup ...
Gun Works plant in Essen. Soon he joined the plant
fire brigade
A fire department (American English) or fire brigade (Commonwealth English), also known as a fire authority, fire district, fire and rescue, or fire service in some areas, is an organization that provides fire prevention and fire suppression se ...
and persuaded its foreman that a set of plant schematics were needed to indicate the position of fire extinguishers and hydrants. These schematics were soon lodged in the foreman's office for members of the fire brigade to consult, and Reilly set about using them to locate the plans.
In the early morning hours, Reilly picked the lock of the office where the plans were kept and was discovered by the foreman whom he then strangled before completing the theft. From Essen, Reilly took a train to a
safe house
A safe house (also spelled safehouse) is, in a generic sense, a secret place for sanctuary or suitable to hide people from the law, hostile actors or actions, or from retribution, threats or perceived danger. It may also be a metaphor.
Histori ...
in
Dortmund
Dortmund (; Westphalian nds, Düörpm ; la, Tremonia) is the third-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne and Düsseldorf, and the eighth-largest city of Germany, with a population of 588,250 inhabitants as of 2021. It is the la ...
. Tearing the plans into four pieces, he mailed each separately so that if one were lost, the other three would still reveal the essence of the plans. Biographer Cook questions the veracity of this incident but concedes that German factory records show a Karl Hahn was indeed employed by the Essen plant during this time and that a plant fire brigade existed.
In fact, before the First World War, he is alleged to have operated in Russia (from September 1905 to April 1914, assistant naval attaché of Great Britain), then in Europe. By April 1912 Reilly returned to St. Petersburg where he assumed the role of a wealthy businessman and helped to form the Wings Aviation Club. In the reference book "All Petersburg" he was listed as "antique dealer, collector". Here he took a new wife, Nadezhda, without dissolving his marriage to Margaret. He resumed his friendship with Alexander Grammatikov who was an Okhrana agent and a fellow member of the club. Writers Richard Deacon and Edward Van Der Rhoer assert that Reilly actually was an
Ochrana
The Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order (russian: Отделение по охранению общественной безопасности и порядка), usually called Guard Department ( rus, Охранное отд ...
double agent at this point. Deacon claims he was tasked with befriending and profiling Sir
Basil Zaharoff
Sir Basil Zaharoff, GCB, GBE (born Vasileios Zacharias; el, Βασίλειος Zαχαρίας Ζαχάρωφ; October 6, 1849 – November 27, 1936) was a Greek arms dealer and industrialist. One of the richest men in the world during his ...
, the international arms salesman and representative of
Vickers
Vickers was a British engineering company that existed from 1828 until 1999. It was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by Edward Vickers and his father-in-law, and soon became famous for casting church bells. The company went public in 18 ...
-Armstrong Munitions Ltd. Another Reilly biographer, Richard B. Spence, claims that during this assignment Reilly learned "''le systeme''" from Zaharoff — the strategy of playing all sides against each other to maximise financial profit. However, biographer Andrew Cook asserts there is scant evidence of any relationship between Reilly and Zaharoff.
First World War activity
In earlier biographies by Winfried Lüdecke and Pepita Bobadilla, Reilly is described as living as a spy in
Wilhelmine
The Wilhelmine Period () comprises the period of German history between 1890 and 1918, embracing the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II in the German Empire from the resignation of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck until the end of World War I and Wilhelm' ...
Germany from 1917 to 1918. Drawing upon the latter sources, Richard Deacon likewise asserted that Reilly had operated behind German lines on a number of occasions and once spent weeks inside the
German Empire
The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...
gathering information about the next planned thrust against the
Allies
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
. (In one version by Lockhart Reilly he is alleged to have been a part of a German War meeting involving Kaiser Wilhelm II). However, most later biographies concur that Reilly's activities in the United States between 1915 and 1918 precluded any such escapades on the European Front. Later biographers believe that Reilly, while lucratively engaged in the munitions business in New York City, was covertly employed in British intelligence in which role he may well have participated in several acts of so-called "German sabotage" deliberately calculated to provoke the United States to enter the war against the
Central Powers
The Central Powers, also known as the Central Empires,german: Mittelmächte; hu, Központi hatalmak; tr, İttifak Devletleri / ; bg, Централни сили, translit=Tsentralni sili was one of the two main coalitions that fought in ...
.
Historian
Christopher Andrew notes that "Reilly spent most of the first two and a half years of the war in the United States". Likewise, author Richard B. Spence states that Reilly lived in New York City for at least a year, 1914–15, where he engaged in arranging munitions sales to the
Imperial German Army
The Imperial German Army (1871–1919), officially referred to as the German Army (german: Deutsches Heer), was the unified ground and air force of the German Empire. It was established in 1871 with the political unification of Germany under the l ...
and its enemy the
Imperial Russian Army
The Imperial Russian Army (russian: Ру́сская импера́торская а́рмия, tr. ) was the armed land force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian Ar ...
. However, when the
United States entered the war in April 1917, Reilly's business became less profitable since his company was now prohibited from selling ammunition to the Germans and, after the
Russian revolution occurred in October 1917, the Russians were no longer buying munitions. Faced with unexpected financial hardship, Reilly sought to resume his paid intelligence work for the British government while in New York City.
This is confirmed by papers of Norman Thwaites,
MI1(c) Head of Station in New York, which contain evidence that Reilly approached Thwaites seeking espionage-related work in 1917–1918. Formerly a private secretary to newspaper magnate
Joseph Pulitzer
Joseph Pulitzer ( ; born Pulitzer József, ; April 10, 1847 – October 29, 1911) was a Hungarian-American politician and newspaper publisher of the ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' and the ''New York World''. He became a leading national figure in ...
and a police reporter for Pulitzer's ''
The New York World
The ''New York World'' was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers. It was a leading national voice of the Democratic Party. From 1883 to 1911 under pub ...
'', Thwaites was keen on obtaining information concerning radical activities in the United States; in particular, any connections between
American socialists
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
with Soviet Russia. Consequently, under Thwaites' direction, Reilly presumably worked alongside a dozen other British intelligence operatives attached to the British mission at 44 Whitehall Street in New York City. Although their ostensible mission was to coordinate with the U.S. government in regards to intelligence about the German Empire and Soviet Russia, the British agents also focused upon
obtaining trade secrets and other commercial information related to American industrial companies for their British rivals.
Thwaites was sufficiently impressed with Reilly's intelligence work in New York that he wrote a letter of recommendation to
Mansfield Cumming
Captain (Royal Navy), Captain Sir Mansfield George Smith-Cumming (1 April 1859 – 14 June 1923) was a British naval officer who served as the first Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).
Orig ...
, head of
MI1(c). It was also Thwaites who recommended that Reilly first visit
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
to obtain a military commission which is why Reilly enlisted in the
Royal Flying Corps Canada
The Royal Flying Corps Canada (RFC Canada) was a training organization of the British Royal Flying Corps located in Canada during the First World War. It began operating in 1917.
Background
As the war progressed, Great Britain found that i ...
. On 19 October 1917, Reilly received a commission as a temporary
second lieutenant
Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces, comparable to NATO OF-1 rank.
Australia
The rank of second lieutenant existed in the military forces of the Australian colonies and Australian Army until ...
on probation. After receiving this commission, Reilly voyaged to London in 1918 where Cumming formally swore Lieutenant Reilly into service as a staff Case Officer in His Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), prior to dispatching Reilly on counter-Bolshevik operations in Germany and Russia. According to Reilly's wife Pepita Bobadilla, Reilly was sent to Russia to "counter the work being done there by German agents" who were supporting radical factions and "to discover and report on the general feeling".
Thus Reilly arrived on Russian soil via
Murmansk
Murmansk (Russian: ''Мурманск'' lit. "Norwegian coast"; Finnish: ''Murmansk'', sometimes ''Muurmanski'', previously ''Muurmanni''; Norwegian: ''Norskekysten;'' Northern Sámi: ''Murmánska;'' Kildin Sámi: ''Мурман ланнҍ'') i ...
prior to 5 April 1918 where he contacted the former Okhrana agent Alexander Grammatikov, who believed the Soviet government "was in the hands of the criminal classes and of lunatics released from the asylums". Grammatikov arranged for Reilly to receive a private interview with either Reilly's longtime friend General
Mikhail Bonch-Bruyevich or
Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich
Vladimir Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich (russian: Владимир Дмитриевич Бонч-Бруевич; sometimes spelled Bonch-Bruevich; in Polish Boncz-Brujewicz; – 14 July 1955) was a Soviet politician, revolutionary, historian ...
, secretary of the
Council of People's Commissars
The Councils of People's Commissars (SNK; russian: Совет народных комиссаров (СНК), ''Sovet narodnykh kommissarov''), commonly known as the ''Sovnarkom'' (Совнарком), were the highest executive authorities of ...
. With the clandestine aid of Bonch-Bruyevich, he assumed the role of a Bolshevik sympathizer. Grammatikov further instructed his niece Dagmara Karozus—a dancer in the
Moscow Art Theatre
The Moscow Art Theatre (or MAT; russian: Московский Художественный академический театр (МХАТ), ''Moskovskiy Hudojestvenny Akademicheskiy Teatr'' (МHАТ)) was a theatre company in Moscow. It was f ...
—to allow Reilly to use her apartment as a "safe house", and through
Vladimir Orlov, a former Okhrana associate turned Cheka official, Reilly obtained travel permits as a Cheka agent.
Ambassadors' plot
The attempt to assassinate
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...
and to depose the Bolshevik government is considered by biographers to be Reilly's most daring exploit. The Ambassadors' Plot, later misnamed in the press as the Lockhart-Reilly Plot, has sparked considerable debate over the years: did the Allies launch a clandestine operation to overthrow the Bolsheviks in the later summer of 1918 and, if so, did
Felix Dzerzhinsky
Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky ( pl, Feliks Dzierżyński ; russian: Фе́ликс Эдму́ндович Дзержи́нский; – 20 July 1926), nicknamed "Iron Felix", was a Bolshevik revolutionary and official, born into Poland, Polish n ...
's
Cheka
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə), abbreviated ...
uncover the plot at the eleventh hour or did they know of the conspiracy from the outset? At the time, the dissembling American Consul-General
DeWitt Clinton Poole DeWitt Clinton Poole (1885–1952) was an American intelligence officer. He served as U.S. Consul General in Moscow, and acted as America's spymaster in Revolutionary Russia.
1918 Ambassadors plot to assassinate Lenin
Poole arrived in Moscow in ...
publicly insisted the Cheka orchestrated the conspiracy from beginning to end and that Reilly was a Bolshevik
agent provocateur
An agent provocateur () is a person who commits, or who acts to entice another person to commit, an illegal or rash act or falsely implicate them in partaking in an illegal act, so as to ruin the reputation of, or entice legal action against, the ...
. Later,
Robert Bruce Lockhart
Sir Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart, KCMG (2 September 1887 – 27 February 1970) was a British diplomat, journalist, author, secret agent and footballer. His 1932 book ''Memoirs of a British Agent''Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, ''Memoirs of a Brit ...
would state that he was "not to this day sure of the extent of Reilly's responsibility for the disastrous turn of events."
In January 1918, the youthful Lockhart—a mere junior member of the British Foreign office—had been personally handpicked by British Prime Minister
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. He was a Liberal Party politician from Wales, known for leading the United Kingdom during t ...
to undertake a sensitive diplomatic mission to Soviet Russia. Lockhart's assigned objectives were: to liaise with the Soviet authorities, to subvert Soviet-German relations, to bolster Soviet resistance to German peace overtures, and to push Soviet authorities into recreating the
Eastern Theater. By April, however, Lockhart had hopelessly failed to achieve any of these objectives. He began to agitate in diplomatic cables for an immediate full-scale Allied military intervention in Russia. Concurrently, Lockhart ordered Reilly to pursue contacts within anti-Bolshevik circles to sow the seeds for an armed uprising in Moscow.
In May 1918,
Lockhart Lockhart may refer to:
*Lockhart (surname)
Places
Australia
*Lockhart, New South Wales
*Lockhart River, Queensland
*Lockhart River, Western Australia
United States
*Lockhart, Alabama
*Lockhart, Florida
*Lockhart, Minnesota
*Lockhart, Sout ...
, Reilly, and various agents of the Allied Powers repeatedly met with
Boris Savinkov
Boris Viktorovich Savinkov (Russian: Бори́с Ви́кторович Са́винков; 31 January 1879 – 7 May 1925) was a Russian writer and revolutionary. As one of the leaders of the Fighting Organisation, the paramilitary win ...
, head of the counter-revolutionary Union for the Defence of the Motherland and Freedom (UDMF). Savinkov had been Deputy
War Minister
A defence minister or minister of defence is a cabinet official position in charge of a ministry of defense, which regulates the armed forces in sovereign states. The role of a defence minister varies considerably from country to country; in som ...
in the
Provisional Government
A provisional government, also called an interim government, an emergency government, or a transitional government, is an emergency governmental authority set up to manage a political transition generally in the cases of a newly formed state or f ...
of
Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky, and a key opponent of the
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
s. A former
Socialist Revolutionary Party
The Socialist Revolutionary Party, or the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (the SRs, , or Esers, russian: эсеры, translit=esery, label=none; russian: Партия социалистов-революционеров, ), was a major politi ...
member, Savinkov had formed the UDMF consisting of several thousand Russian fighters, and he was receptive to Allied overtures to depose the Soviet government. Lockhart, Reilly, and others then contacted
anti-Bolshevik groups linked to Savinkov and Socialist Revolutionary Party cells affiliated with Savinkov's friend Maximilian Filonenko. Lockhart and Reilly supported these factions with SIS funds. They also liaised with DeWitt Clinton Poole and
Fernand Grenard, the Consuls-General of the United States and France respectively. They also coordinated their activities with intelligence operatives affiliated with the French and U.S. consuls in Moscow.
Planning a coup
In June, disillusioned elements of Colonel
Eduard Berzin
Eduard Petrovich Berzin (russian: Эдуа́рд Петро́вич Бе́рзин, lv, Eduards Bērziņš; 19 February 1894 – 1 August 1938) was a Soviet Union, Soviet soldier، Chekism, Chekist and NKVD officer that set up Dalstroy, which ...
's
Latvian Rifle Division (''Latdiviziya'') began appearing in anti-Bolshevik circles in Petrograd and were eventually directed to a British naval attaché
Captain Francis Cromie and his assistant Mr. Constantine, a Turkish merchant who was actually Reilly. In contrast to his previous espionage operations which had been independent of other agents, Reilly worked closely while in Petrograd with Cromie in joint efforts to recruit Berzin's Latvians and to equip anti-Bolshevik armed forces. At the time, Cromie purportedly represented the British
Naval Intelligence Division and oversaw its operations in northern Russia. Cromie operated in loose coordination with the ineffectual Commander Ernest Boyce, the
MI1(c) station chief in Petrograd.
As Berzin's Latvians were deemed the
Praetorian Guard
The Praetorian Guard (Latin: ''cohortēs praetōriae'') was a unit of the Imperial Roman army that served as personal bodyguards and intelligence agents for the Roman emperors. During the Roman Republic, the Praetorian Guard were an escort fo ...
of the Bolsheviks and entrusted with the security of both
Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...
and the
Kremlin
The Kremlin ( rus, Московский Кремль, r=Moskovskiy Kreml', p=ˈmɐˈskofskʲɪj krʲemlʲ, t=Moscow Kremlin) is a fortified complex in the center of Moscow founded by the Rurik dynasty, Rurik dynasty. It is the best known of th ...
, the Allied plotters believed their participation in the pending coup to be vital. With the aid of the Latvian Riflemen, the Allied agents hoped to "seize both Lenin and
Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian M ...
at a meeting to take place in the first week of September".
Reilly arranged a meeting between Lockhart and the Latvians at the British mission in Moscow while purportedly expending "over a million rubles" to bribe the Red Army troops guarding the Kremlin. At this stage, Cromie, Boyce, Reilly, Lockhart, and other Allied agents allegedly planned a full-scale coup against the Bolshevik government and drew up a list of Soviet military leaders ready to assume responsibilities on its demise. Their objective was to capture or kill Lenin and Trotsky, to establish a provisional government, and to extinguish Bolshevism. Lenin and Trotsky, they reasoned, "''were'' Bolshevism", and nothing else in their movement had "substance or permanence". Consequently, "if he could get them into
heir
Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Officiall ...
hands there would be nothing of consequence left of Sovietism".
As Lockhart's diplomatic status hindered his open engagement in clandestine activities, he chose to supervise such activities from afar and to delegate the actual direction of the coup to Reilly. To facilitate this work, Reilly allegedly obtained a position as a sinecure within the criminal branch of the Petrograd Cheka. It was during this chaotic time of plots and counter-plots that Reilly and Lockhart became further acquainted. Lockhart later posthumously described him as "a man of great energy and personal charm, very attractive to women and very ambitious. I had not a very high opinion of his intelligence. His knowledge covered many subjects, from politics to art, but it was superficial. On the other hand, his courage and indifference to danger were superb." Throughout their backroom intrigues in Moscow, Lockhart never openly questioned Reilly's loyalty to the Allies, although he privately wondered if Reilly had made a secret bargain with Colonel Berzin and his Latvian Riflemen to later seize power for themselves.
In Lockhart's estimation, Reilly was a limitless "man cast in the Napoleonic mold" and, if their counter-revolutionary coup had succeeded, "the prospect of playing a lone hand
sing Berzin's Latvian Riflemenmay have inspired him with a Napoleonic design" to become the head of any new government. However, unbeknownst to the Allied conspirators, Berzin was "an honest commander" and "devoted to the Soviet government". Although not a Chekist, he nonetheless informed Dzerzhinsky's Cheka that he had been approached by Reilly and that Allied agents had attempted to recruit him into a possible coup. This information did not surprise Dzerzhinsky as the Cheka had gained access to the British diplomatic codes in May and were closely monitoring the anti-Bolshevik activities. Dzerzhinsky instructed Berzin and other Latvian officers to pretend to be receptive to the Allied plotters and to meticuously report on every detail of their pending operation.
The plot unravels
While Allied agents militated against the Soviet regime in Petrograd and Moscow, persistent rumors swirled of an impending Allied military intervention in Russia which would overthrow the fledgling Soviet government in favor of a new regime willing to rejoin the ongoing war against the Central Powers. On 4 August 1918, an
Allied force landed at
Arkhangelsk
Arkhangelsk (, ; rus, Арха́нгельск, p=ɐrˈxanɡʲɪlʲsk), also known in English as Archangel and Archangelsk, is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative center of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. It lies o ...
, Russia, beginning a famous military expedition dubbed
Operation Archangel. Its professed objective was to prevent the German Empire from obtaining Allied military supplies stored in the region. In retaliation for this incursion, the Bolsheviks raided the British
diplomatic mission
A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually deno ...
on 5 August, disrupting a meeting Reilly had arranged between the anti-Bolshevik Latvians, UDMF officials, and Lockhart. Unperturbed by these raids, Reilly conducted meetings on 17 August 1918 between Latvian regimental leaders and liaised with Captain
George Alexander Hill, a multilingual British agent operating in Russia on behalf of the Military Intelligence Directorate.
Hill later described Reilly as "a dark, well-groomed, very foreign-looking man" who had "an amazing grasp of the actualities of the situation" and was "a man of action". They agreed the coup would occur in the first week of September during a meeting of the
Council of People's Commissars
The Councils of People's Commissars (SNK; russian: Совет народных комиссаров (СНК), ''Sovet narodnykh kommissarov''), commonly known as the ''Sovnarkom'' (Совнарком), were the highest executive authorities of ...
and the Moscow Soviet at the
Bolshoi Theatre
The Bolshoi Theatre ( rus, Большо́й теа́тр, r=Bol'shoy teatr, literally "Big Theater", p=bɐlʲˈʂoj tʲɪˈatər) is a historic theatre in Moscow, Russia, originally designed by architect Joseph Bové, which holds ballet and ope ...
. On 25 August, yet another meeting of Allied conspirators allegedly occurred at DeWitt C. Poole's American Consulate in Moscow. By this time, the Allied conspirators had organized a broad network of agents and saboteurs throughout Soviet Russia whose overarching ambition was to disrupt the nation's food supplies. Coupled with the planned military uprising in Moscow, they believed a chronic food shortage would trigger popular unrest and further undermine the Soviet authorities. In turn, the Soviets would be overthrown by a new government friendly to the Allied Powers which would renew hostilities against
Kaiser Wilhelm II's German Reich
German ''Reich'' (lit. German Realm, German Empire, from german: Deutsches Reich, ) was the constitutional name for the German nation state that existed from 1871 to 1945. The ''Reich'' became understood as deriving its authority and sovereignty ...
. On 28 August, Reilly informed Hill that he was immediately leaving Moscow for Petrograd where he would discuss final details related to the coup with Commander Francis Cromie at the British consulate. That night, Reilly had no difficulty in traveling through picket lines between Moscow and Petrograd due to his identification as a member of the Petrograd Cheka and his possession of Cheka travel permits.
On 30 August,
Boris Savinkov
Boris Viktorovich Savinkov (Russian: Бори́с Ви́кторович Са́винков; 31 January 1879 – 7 May 1925) was a Russian writer and revolutionary. As one of the leaders of the Fighting Organisation, the paramilitary win ...
and Maximilian Filonenko ordered a military cadet named
Leonid Kannegisser
Leonid Joakimovich Kannegisser (russian: Леони́д Иоаки́мович (Аки́мович) Кáннегисер, Leonid Ioakimovich (Akimovich) Kannegiser; March 1896 – October 1918) was a Russian Empire poet and military cadet, k ...
—Filonenko's cousin—to shoot and kill
Moisei Uritsky
Moisei Solomonovich Uritsky ( ua, Мойсей Соломонович Урицький; russian: Моисей Соломонович Урицкий; – 30 August 1918) was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader in Russia. After the October Revol ...
, head of the
Petrograd
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
Cheka
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə), abbreviated ...
. Uritsky had been the second most powerful man in the city after
Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev, . Transliterated ''Grigorii Evseevich Zinov'ev'' according to the Library of Congress system. (born Hirsch Apfelbaum, – 25 August 1936), known also under the name Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky (russian: Ов ...
, the leader of the Petrograd Soviet, and his murder was seen as a blow to both the Cheka and the entire Bolshevik leadership. After killing Uritsky, a panicked Kannegisser sought refuge either at the English Club or at the British mission where Cromie resided and where Savinkov and Filonenko may have been temporarily in hiding. Regardless of whether he fled to the English Club or to the British consulate, Kannegisser was compelled to leave the premises. After donning a long overcoat, he fled into the city streets where he was apprehended by
Red Guards
Red Guards () were a mass student-led paramilitary social movement mobilized and guided by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 through 1967, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted.Teiwes According to a Red Guard lead ...
after a violent shootout.
On the same day,
Fanya Kaplan—a former anarchist who was now a member of the
Socialist Revolutionary Party
The Socialist Revolutionary Party, or the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (the SRs, , or Esers, russian: эсеры, translit=esery, label=none; russian: Партия социалистов-революционеров, ), was a major politi ...
—shot and wounded Lenin as he departed the Michelson arms factory in Moscow. As Lenin exited the building and before he entered his motor car, Kaplan called out to him. When Lenin turned towards her, she fired three shots with a Browning pistol. One bullet narrowly missed Lenin's heart and penetrated his lung, while the other bullet lodged in his neck near the jugular vein. Due to the severity of these wounds, Lenin was not expected to survive. The attack was widely covered in the Russian press, generating much sympathy for Lenin and boosting his popularity. As a consequence of this assassination attempt, however, the meeting between Lenin and Trotsky—where the bribed soldiery would seize them on behalf of the Allies—was postponed. At this point, Reilly was notified by fellow conspirator Alexander Grammatikov that "the
ocialist Revolutionary Partyfools have struck too early".
Chekist reprisal
Although it is unknown if Kaplan either was part of the Ambassadors' Plot or was even responsible for the assassination attempt on Lenin, the murder of Uritsky and the failed assassination of Lenin were used by Dzerzhinsky's Cheka to implicate any malcontents and foreigners in a grand conspiracy that warranted a full-scale reprisal campaign: the "
Red Terror
The Red Terror (russian: Красный террор, krasnyj terror) in Soviet Russia was a campaign of political repression and executions carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police. It started in lat ...
". Thousands of political opponents were seized and "mass executions took place across the city, at
Khodynskoe field,
Petrovsky Park
Petrovsky Park (russian: Петровский парк) is a station on the Bolshaya Koltsevaya line of the Moscow Metro. It served the eastern terminus of the line until 30 December 2018, when the extension of Bolshaya Koltsevaya to Savyolovsk ...
and the
Butyrki prison, all in the north of the city, as well as in the Cheka headquarters at
Lubyanka". The extent of the Chekist reprisal likely foiled much of the inchoate plans by Cromie, Boyce, Lockhart, Reilly, Savinkov, Filonenko, and other conspirators.
Using lists supplied by undercover agents, the Cheka proceeded to clear out the "nests of conspirators" in the foreign embassies and, in doing so, they arrested key figures vital to the impending coup. On 31 August 1918, believing Savinkov and Filonenko were hiding in the British consulate, a Cheka detachment raided the British consulate in Petrograd and killed Cromie who put up an armed resistance. Immediately prior to his death, it is possible that Cromie may have been trying to communicate with other conspirators and to give instructions to accelerate their planned coup. Before the Cheka detachment stormed the consulate, Cromie burned key correspondence pertaining to the coup.
According to press reports, he made a valiant last stand on the first floor of the consulate armed only with a revolver. In close quarters combat, he dispatched three Chekist soldiers before he was in turn killed and his corpse mutilated. Eyewitnesses, such as the sister-in-law of
Red Cross
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...
nurse Mary Britnieva, asserted that Cromie was shot by the Cheka while retreating down the consulate's grand staircase. The Cheka detachment searched the building and, with their rifle butts, repelled the diplomatic staff from getting close to the corpse of Captain Cromie which the Chekist soldiers had looted and trampled. The Cheka detachment then arrested over forty persons who had sought refuge within the British consulate, as well as seizing weapon caches and compromising documents which they claimed implicated the consular staff in the forthcoming coup attempt. Cromie's death was publicly "depicted as a measure of self-defence by the Bolshevik agents, who had been forced to return his fire".
Meanwhile, Lockhart was arrested by Dzerzhinsky's Cheka and transported under guard to
Lubyanka Prison
The Lubyanka ( rus, Лубянка, p=lʊˈbʲankə) is the popular name for the building which contains the headquarters of the FSB, and its affiliated prison, on Lubyanka Square in the Meshchansky District of Moscow, Russia. It is a large Ne ...
. During a tense interview with a pistol-wielding Cheka officer, he was asked "Do you know the Kaplan woman?" and "Where is Reilly?" When queried about the coup, Lockhart and other British nationals dismissed the mere idea as nonsense. Afterwards, Lockhart was placed in the same holding cell as Fanya Kaplan whom their watchful Chekist jailers hoped might betray some sign of recognizing Lockhart or other British agents. However, while confined together, Kaplan showed no sign of recognition towards Lockhart or anyone else. When it became clear that Kaplan would not implicate any accomplices, she was executed in the
Kremlin
The Kremlin ( rus, Московский Кремль, r=Moskovskiy Kreml', p=ˈmɐˈskofskʲɪj krʲemlʲ, t=Moscow Kremlin) is a fortified complex in the center of Moscow founded by the Rurik dynasty, Rurik dynasty. It is the best known of th ...
's
Alexander Garden
Alexander Gardens (russian: Александровский сад) was one of the first urban public parks in Moscow, Russia. The park comprises three separate gardens, which stretch along all the length of the western Kremlin wall for between ...
on 3 September 1918, with a bullet to the back of the head. Her corpse was bundled into a rusted iron barrel and set alight. Lockhart was later released and deported in exchange for
Maxim Litvinov
Maxim Maximovich Litvinov (; born Meir Henoch Wallach; 17 July 1876 – 31 December 1951) was a Russian revolutionary and prominent Soviet statesman and diplomat.
A strong advocate of diplomatic agreements leading towards disarmament, Litvinov wa ...
, an unofficial Soviet attaché in London who had been arrested by the British government as a form of diplomatic reprisal. In stark contrast to Lockhart's good fortune, "imprisonment, torture to compel confession,
nddeath were the swift rewards of many who had been implicated" in the prospective coup against Lenin's government. Yelizaveta Otten, Reilly's chief courier "with whom he was romantically involved," was arrested as well as his other mistress Olga Starzheskaya. After interrogation, Starzheskaya was imprisoned for five years. Yet another courier, Mariya Fride, likewise was arrested at Otten's flat with an intelligence communiqué that she was carrying for Reilly.
Escape from Russia
On 3 September 1918 the ''
Pravda
''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, "Truth") is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most influential papers in the co ...
'' and ''
Izvestiya
''Izvestia'' ( rus, Известия, p=ɪzˈvʲesʲtʲɪjə, "The News") is a daily broadsheet newspaper in Russia. Founded in 1917, it was a newspaper of record in the Soviet Union until the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991, and describes i ...
'' newspapers sensationalised the aborted coup on their front pages. Outraged headlines denounced the Allied representatives and other foreigners in Moscow as "Anglo-French Bandits". The papers arrogated credit for the coup to Reilly and, when he was identified as a key suspect, a dragnet ensued. Reilly "was hunted through days and nights as he had never been hunted before," and "his photograph with a full description and a reward was placarded" throughout the area. The Cheka raided his assumed refuge, but the elusive Reilly avoided capture and met Captain Hill while in hiding. Hill later wrote that Reilly, despite narrowly escaping his pursuers in both Moscow and Petrograd, "was absolutely cool, calm and collected, not in the least downhearted and only concerned in gathering together the broken threads and starting afresh".
Hill proposed that Reilly escape from Russia via Ukraine to
Baku
Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world a ...
using their network of British agents for safe houses and assistance. However, Reilly instead chose a shorter, more dangerous route north through Petrograd and the Baltic Provinces to Finland to get their reports to London as early as possible. With the Cheka closing in, Reilly, carrying a
Baltic German
Baltic Germans (german: Deutsch-Balten or , later ) were ethnic German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today are Estonia and Latvia. Since their coerced resettlement in 1939, Baltic Germans have markedly declined ...
passport supplied by Hill, posed as a legation secretary and departed the region in a railway car reserved for the German Embassy. In
Kronstadt
Kronstadt (russian: Кроншта́дт, Kronshtadt ), also spelled Kronshtadt, Cronstadt or Kronštádt (from german: link=no, Krone for "crown" and ''Stadt'' for "city") is a Russian port city in Kronshtadtsky District of the federal city of ...
, Reilly sailed by ship to
Helsinki
Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...
and reached
Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
with the aid of local Baltic smugglers. He arrived unscathed in London on 8 November.
While safely in England, Reilly, Lockhart and other agents were tried ''
in absentia
is Latin for absence. , a legal term, is Latin for "in the absence" or "while absent".
may also refer to:
* Award in absentia
* Declared death in absentia, or simply, death in absentia, legally declared death without a body
* Election in absen ...
'' before the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal in a proceeding which opened 25 November 1918. Approximately twenty defendants faced charges in the trial, most of whom had worked for the Americans or the British in Moscow. The case was prosecuted by
Nikolai Krylenko
Nikolai Vasilyevich Krylenko ( rus, Никола́й Васи́льевич Крыле́нко, p=krɨˈlʲenkə; May 2, 1885 – July 29, 1938) was an Old Bolshevik and Soviet politician. Krylenko served in a variety of posts in the Sovie ...
, an exponent of the theory that political considerations rather than criminal guilt should decide a case's outcome.
Krylenko's case concluded on 3 December 1918, with two defendants sentenced to be shot and various others sentenced to terms of prison or forced labour for terms up to five years. Thus, the day before Reilly met
Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming ("C") in London for debriefing, the Russian ''
Izvestia
''Izvestia'' ( rus, Известия, p=ɪzˈvʲesʲtʲɪjə, "The News") is a daily broadsheet newspaper in Russia. Founded in 1917, it was a newspaper of record in the Soviet Union until the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991, and describes ...
'' newspaper reported that both Reilly and Lockhart had been sentenced to death ''
in absentia
is Latin for absence. , a legal term, is Latin for "in the absence" or "while absent".
may also refer to:
* Award in absentia
* Declared death in absentia, or simply, death in absentia, legally declared death without a body
* Election in absen ...
'' by a
Revolutionary Tribunal
The Revolutionary Tribunal (french: Tribunal révolutionnaire; unofficially Popular Tribunal) was a court instituted by the National Convention during the French Revolution for the trial of political offenders. It eventually became one of the ...
for their roles in the attempted coup of the Bolshevik government. The sentence was to be carried out immediately should either of them be apprehended on Soviet soil. This sentence would later be served on Reilly when he was caught by Dzerzhinsky's
OGPU
The Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление) was the intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union f ...
in 1925.
Activities from 1919 to 1924
Russian Civil War
Within a week of their return debriefing, the British
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
and the
Foreign Office
Foreign may refer to:
Government
* Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries
** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government
** Foreign office and foreign minister
* Unit ...
again sent Reilly and Hill to South Russia under the cover of British trade delegates. Their assignment was to uncover information about the
Black Sea
The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Roma ...
coast needed for the
Paris Peace Conference of 1919
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
. At that time the region was home to a variety of anti-Bolsheviks. They travelled in the guise of British merchants, with appropriate credentials provided by the Department of Overseas Trade. Over the next six weeks or so Reilly prepared twelve dispatches which reported on various aspects of the situation in South Russia and were delivered personally by Hill to the Foreign Office in London.
Reilly identified four principal factors in the affairs of South Russia at this time: the Volunteer Army; the territorial or provincial governments in the Kuban, Don, and Crimea; the Petlyura movement in Ukraine; and the economic situation. In his opinion, the future course of events in this region would depend not only on the interaction of these factors with each other, but "above all upon Allied attitude towards them". Reilly advocated Allied assistance to organise South Russia into a suitable ''place d'armes'' for decisive advance against Petlurism and Bolshevism. In his opinion: "The military Allied assistance required for this would be comparatively small as proved by recent events in Odessa. Landing parties in the ports and detachments assisting Volunteer Army on lines of communication would probably be sufficient."
Reilly's reference to events in Odessa concerned the successful landing there on 18 December 1918 of troops from the French 156th Division commanded by General Borius, who managed to wrest control of the city from the Petlyurists with the assistance of a small contingent of Volunteers.
Urgent as the need for Allied military assistance to the Volunteer Army was in Reilly's estimation, he regarded economic assistance for South Russia as "even more pressing". Manufactured goods were so scarce in this region that he considered any moderate contribution from the Allies would have a most beneficial effect. Otherwise, apart from echoing a certain General Poole's suggestion for a British or Anglo-French Commission to control merchant shipping engaged in trading activities in the Black Sea, Reilly did not offer any solutions to what he called a state of "general economic chaos" in South Russia. Reilly found White officials, who had been given the job of helping the Russian economy get better, "helpless" in coming to terms with "the colossal disaster which has overtaken Russia's finances, ... and unable to frame anything, approaching even an outline, of a financial policy". But he supported their request for the Allies to print "500 Million roubles of Nicholas money of all denominations" for the Special Council as a matter of urgency, with the justification that "although one realises the fundamental futility of this remedy, one must agree with them that for the moment this is the only remedy". Lack of funds was one reason offered by Reilly to explain the Whites' blatant inactivity in the propaganda field. They were also said to be lacking paper and printing presses needed for the preparation of propaganda material. Reilly claimed that the Special Council had come to appreciate fully the benefits of propaganda.
Final marriage
While on a visit to postwar Berlin in December 1922, Reilly met a charming young actress named Pepita Bobadilla in the
Hotel Adlon
The Hotel Adlon Kempinski Berlin is a luxury hotel in Berlin, Germany. It is on Unter den Linden, the main boulevard in the central Mitte district, at the corner with Pariser Platz, directly opposite the Brandenburg Gate.
The original Hotel Adlon ...
. Bobadilla was an attractive blonde who falsely claimed to be from South America. Her real name was Nelly Burton, and she was the widow of
Charles Haddon Chambers
Charles Haddon Spurgeon Chambers (22 April 1860 – 28 March 1921) was an Australia-born dramatist, active in England.
Early life
Chambers was born in Petersham, Sydney, the son of John Ritchie Chambers, who had a good position in the New South ...
, a well-known British playwright. For the past several years Bobadilla had gained notoriety both as Chambers' wife and for her stage career as a dancer. On 18 May 1923, after a whirlwind romance, Bobadilla married Reilly at a civil Registry Office on Henrietta Street, in Covent Garden, Central London, with
Captain Hill acting as a witness. As Reilly was already married at the time, their union was bigamous. Bobadilla later described Reilly as a sombre individual and found it strange that he never entertained guests at their home. Except for two or three acquaintances, hardly anyone could boast of being his friend. Nevertheless, their marriage was reportedly happy as Bobadilla believed Reilly to be "romantic", "a good companion", "a man of infinite courage", and "the ideal husband". Their union would last merely 30 months before Reilly's disappearance in Russia and his execution by the Soviet OGPU.
Zinoviev scandal
![Sidneyolder](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Sidneyolder.gif)
One year later Reilly was involved—possibly alongside
Sir Stewart Graham Menzies—in the
Zinoviev Letter scandal. Four days before the
British general election on 8 October 1924, a Tory newspaper printed a letter purporting to originate from
Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev, . Transliterated ''Grigorii Evseevich Zinov'ev'' according to the Library of Congress system. (born Hirsch Apfelbaum, – 25 August 1936), known also under the name Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky (russian: Ов ...
, head of the
Third Communist International. The letter claimed that the planned resumption of diplomatic and trade relations by the
Labour party with Soviet Russia would indirectly hasten the overthrow of the British government. Hours later, the British Foreign Office responded to the letter with a note of protest to the Soviet government. Soviet Russia and British Communists denounced the letter as a forgery by British intelligence agents, while Conservative politicians and newspapers maintained that it was genuine. Recent scholarship argues that the letter was indeed a forgery.
Amid the uproar following the printing of the letter and the Foreign Office protest,
Ramsay MacDonald
James Ramsay MacDonald (; 12 October 18669 November 1937) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the first who belonged to the Labour Party, leading minority Labour governments for nine months in 1924 ...
's Labour Government lost the general election. According to
Samuel T. Williamson, writing in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' in 1926, Reilly may have served as a courier to transport the forged
Zinoviev letter into the United Kingdom. Reflecting upon these events, the journalist Winfried Lüdecke posited in 1929 that Reilly's role in "the famous Zinoviev letter assumed a world-wide political importance, for its publication in the British press brought about the fall of the
Macdonald ministry">amsayMacdonald ministry, frustrated the realization of the proposed Anglo-Russian commercial treaty, and, as a final result, led to the signing of the
treaties of Locarno, in virtue of which the other states of Europe presented, under the leadership of Britain, a united front against Soviet Russia".
Career with British intelligence
Throughout his life, Reilly maintained a close yet tempestuous relationship with the British intelligence community. In 1896, he was recruited by Superintendent
William Melville
William Melville (25 April 1850 – 1 February 1918) was an Irish law enforcement officer and the first chief of the British Secret Service Bureau.
Birth
William Melville was born into a Roman Catholic family in Direenaclaurig Cross, Sneem, Co ...
for the
émigré
An ''émigré'' () is a person who has emigrated, often with a connotation of political or social self-exile. The word is the past participle of the French ''émigrer'', "to emigrate".
French Huguenots
Many French Huguenots fled France followi ...
intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can b ...
network of
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London's ...
's
Special Branch
Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security and Intelligence (information gathering), intelligence in Policing in the United Kingdom, British, Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth, ...
. Through his close relationship with Melville, Reilly would be employed as a
secret agent
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...
for the
Secret Service Bureau, which the
Foreign Office
Foreign may refer to:
Government
* Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries
** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government
** Foreign office and foreign minister
* Unit ...
created in October 1909. In 1918, Reilly began to work for
MI1(c), an early designation for the British
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
, under
Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming. He was allegedly trained by the latter organization and sent to Moscow in March 1918 to assassinate
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...
or attempt to overthrow the Bolsheviks. He had to escape after the
Cheka
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə), abbreviated ...
unraveled the so-called
Lockhart Plot
Sidney George Reilly (; – 5 November 1925)—known as "Ace of Spies"—was a Russian-born adventurer and secret agent employed by Scotland Yard's Special Branch and later by the Foreign Section of the British Secret Service Bureau, the pre ...
against the Bolshevik government. Later biographies contain numerous tales about his espionage deeds. It has been claimed that:
* In the
Boer War
The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the Sou ...
he masqueraded as a Russian
arms merchant to spy on Dutch weapons shipments to the Boers.
* He obtained intelligence on Russian military defences in Manchuria for the
Kempeitai
The , also known as Kempeitai, was the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1881 to 1945 that also served as a secret police force. In addition, in Japanese-occupied territories, the Kenpeitai arrested or killed those suspecte ...
, the Japanese
secret police
Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of a ...
.
* He procured
Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
n oil concessions for the British Admiralty in events surrounding the
D'Arcy Concession.
* He infiltrated a
Krupp
The Krupp family (see pronunciation), a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, is notable for its production of steel, artillery, ammunition and other armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG (Friedrich Krup ...
armaments plant in prewar Germany and stole weapon plans for the
Entente Powers
The Triple Entente (from French '' entente'' meaning "friendship, understanding, agreement") describes the informal understanding between the Russian Empire, the French Third Republic, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as well a ...
.
* He seduced the wife of a Russian minister to glean information about German weapons shipments to Russia.
* He participated in missions of so-called "German sabotage" designed to draw the United States into World War I.
* He attempted to overthrow the Russian
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
government and to rescue the imprisoned
Romanov family
The House of Romanov (also transcribed Romanoff; rus, Романовы, Románovy, rɐˈmanəvɨ) was the reigning imperial house of Russia from 1613 to 1917. They achieved prominence after the Tsarina, Anastasia Romanova, was married to th ...
.
* Prior to his demise, he served as a courier to transport the forged
Zinoviev letter into the United Kingdom.
British intelligence adhered to its policy of publicly saying nothing about anything. Yet Reilly's espionage successes did garner indirect recognition. After a formal recommendation by
Sir Mansfield "C" Smith-Cumming, Reilly, who had received a military commission in 1917, was awarded the
Military Cross
The Military Cross (MC) is the third-level (second-level pre-1993) military decoration awarded to officers and (since 1993) other ranks of the British Armed Forces, and formerly awarded to officers of other Commonwealth countries.
The MC i ...
on 22 January 1919, "for distinguished services rendered in connection with military operations in the field". This vaguely-worded citation misled later biographers such as
Richard Deacon to wrongly conclude that Reilly's medal was bestowed for valorous military feats against the
Imperial German Army
The Imperial German Army (1871–1919), officially referred to as the German Army (german: Deutsches Heer), was the unified ground and air force of the German Empire. It was established in 1871 with the political unification of Germany under the l ...
during the
Great War of 1914–1918 however most later biographers agree the medal was bestowed due to Reilly's anti-Bolshevik operations in southern Russia.
Reilly's most skeptical biographer, Andrew Cook, asserts that Reilly's SIS-specific career has been greatly embellished as he wasn't accepted as an agent until 15 March 1918. He was then discharged in 1921 because of his tendency to be a rogue operative. Nevertheless, Cook concedes that Reilly previously had been a renowned operative for
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London's ...
's
Special Branch
Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security and Intelligence (information gathering), intelligence in Policing in the United Kingdom, British, Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth, ...
and the
Secret Service Bureau which were the early forerunners of the British intelligence community. Historian
Christopher Andrew, a professor at the
University of Cambridge
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
with a focus on the history of the
intelligence services
An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security
National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of ...
, described Reilly's secret service career overall as "remarkable, though largely ineffective".
Execution
According to Reilly's wife Pepita Bobadilla, Reilly was perpetually determined "to return to Russia to see if he could not find and succor some of his friends whom he believed to be still alive. This he did in 1925—and never came back." In September 1925 in Paris, Reilly met Alexander Grammatikov, White Russian General
Alexander Kutepov
Alexander Pavlovich Kutepov ( rus, Алекса́ндр Па́влович Куте́пов; 28 September 1882 in Cherepovets, Novgorod Governorate, Russian Empire – 26 January 1930 in Paris, France) served as an officer in the anti-communi ...
, counter-espionage expert
Vladimir Burtsev
Vladimir Lvovich Burtsev (russian: Владимир Львович Бурцев; November 17, 1862August 21, 1942) was a revolutionary activist, scholar, publisher and editor of several Russian language periodicals. He became famous by exposing ...
, and Commander Ernest Boyce from British Intelligence. This assembly discussed how they could make contact with a supposedly pro-Monarchist, anti-Bolshevik organisation known as "
The Trust" in Moscow. The assembly agreed that Reilly should journey to
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
to explore the feasibility of yet another uprising in Russia using The Trust apparatus. However, in reality The Trust was an elaborate
counter-espionage deception created by the
OGPU
The Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление) was the intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union f ...
, the intelligence successor of the
Cheka
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə), abbreviated ...
.
Thus, undercover agents of the OGPU lured Reilly into
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
Russia, ostensibly to meet with supposed anti-Communist revolutionaries. At the Soviet-Finnish border Reilly was introduced to undercover OGPU agents posing as senior Trust representatives from Moscow. One of these undercover Soviet agents, Alexander Alexandrovich Yakushev, later recalled the meeting:
Reilly was brought across the border by
Toivo Vähä, a former Finnish
Red Guard
Red Guards () were a mass student-led paramilitary social movement mobilized and guided by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 through 1967, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted.Teiwes According to a Red Guard le ...
fighter who now served the
OGPU
The Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление) was the intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union f ...
. Vähä took Reilly over the
Sestra River to the Soviet side and handed him to the OGPU officers. (In the 1973 book ''
The Gulag Archipelago
''The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation'' (russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, ''Arkhipelag GULAG'') is a three-volume non-fiction text written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr So ...
'', Russian novelist and historian
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repress ...
states that Richard Ohola, a Finnish Red Guard, was "a participant in the capture of British agent Sidney Reilly". In the biographical glossary appended to the latter work, Solzhenitsyn incorrectly speculates that Reilly was "killed while crossing the Soviet-Finnish border.")
After Reilly crossed the Finnish border, the Soviets captured, transported and interrogated him at
Lubyanka Prison
The Lubyanka ( rus, Лубянка, p=lʊˈbʲankə) is the popular name for the building which contains the headquarters of the FSB, and its affiliated prison, on Lubyanka Square in the Meshchansky District of Moscow, Russia. It is a large Ne ...
. On arrival Reilly was taken to the office of
Roman Pilar, a Soviet official who had arrested and ordered the execution of a close friend of Reilly,
Boris Savinkov
Boris Viktorovich Savinkov (Russian: Бори́с Ви́кторович Са́винков; 31 January 1879 – 7 May 1925) was a Russian writer and revolutionary. As one of the leaders of the Fighting Organisation, the paramilitary win ...
, the previous year; Reilly was reminded of his own death sentence by a 1918 Soviet tribunal for participation in a
counter-revolutionary
A counter-revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary is anyone who opposes or resists a revolution, particularly one who acts after a revolution in order to try to overturn it or reverse its course, in full or in part. The adjective "counter-revoluti ...
plot against the Bolshevik government. While Reilly was being interrogated, the Soviets publicly claimed that he had been shot trying to cross the Finnish border. Whether Reilly was tortured while in OGPU custody is a matter of debate by historians; Cook contends that Reilly was not tortured other than psychologically, through mock executions designed to shake the resolve of prisoners.
During OGPU interrogation Reilly prevaricated about his personal background and maintained his charade of being a British subject born in
Clonmel
Clonmel () is the county town and largest settlement of County Tipperary, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. The town is noted in Irish history for its resistance to the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Cromwellian army which sacked the towns of Dro ...
, Ireland. Although he did not abjure his allegiance to the United Kingdom, he also did not reveal any intelligence matters. While facing such daily interrogation, Reilly kept a diary in his cell of tiny handwritten notes on cigarette papers which he hid in the plasterwork of a cell wall. While his Soviet captors were interrogating Reilly he in turn was analysing and documenting their techniques. The diary was a detailed record of OGPU
interrogation techniques
Interrogation (also called questioning) is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful informa ...
, and Reilly was understandably confident that such unique documentation would, if he escaped, be of interest to the British SIS. After Reilly's death, Soviet guards discovered the diary in Reilly's cell, and photographic enhancements were made by OGPU technicians.
Reilly was executed in a forest near Moscow on Thursday, 5 November 1925. Eyewitness
Boris Gudz
Boris Ignatyvich Gudz (; 1902 – 27 December 2006) was a veteran of the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War, an OGPU security agent, and at the time of his death the last surviving Cheka, Chekist of the first generation.
Biography
Gudz ...
claimed the execution was supervised by an OGPU officer, Grigory Feduleev, while another OGPU officer, Grigory Syroezhkin, fired the final shot into Reilly's chest. Gudz also confirmed that the order to kill Reilly came from Stalin directly. Within months after his execution, various outlets of the British and American press carried an obituary notice: "REILLY—On the 28th of September, killed near the village of Allekul, Russia, by S. R. U. Troops. Captain Sidney George Reilly, M. C., beloved husband of Pepita Reilly." Two months later, on 17 January 1926, ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' reprinted this obituary notice and, citing unnamed sources in the intelligence community, the paper asserted that Reilly had been somehow involved in the still ongoing scandal of the ''
Zinoviev Letter'', a fraudulent document published by the British ''
Daily Mail
The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) publish ...
'' newspaper a year prior during the
general election in 1924.
After Reilly's death there were various rumours about his survival; Reilly's wife Pepita Bobadilla claimed to possess evidence indicating that Reilly was still alive as late as 1932. Others speculated that the unscrupulous Reilly had defected to the opposition, becoming an adviser to
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 ...
. Despite such unfavourable rumours the international press quickly turned Reilly into a household name, lauding him as a masterful spy and chronicling his many espionage adventures with numerous embellishments. Contemporary newspapers dubbed him "the greatest spy in history" and "the
Scarlet Pimpernel
''The Scarlet Pimpernel'' is the first novel in a series of historical fiction by Baroness Orczy, published in 1905. It was written after her stage play of the same title (co-authored with Montague Barstow) enjoyed a long run in London, having ...
of Red Russia". In May 1931, The ''
London Evening Standard
The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format.
In October 2009, after be ...
'' published an illustrated serial headlined "Master Spy" which sensationalised his many exploits as well as outright invented others.
Fictional portrayals
Soviet cinema
As one of the principal suspects in the Ambassador's Plot and a key figure in the
counter-revolutionary
A counter-revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary is anyone who opposes or resists a revolution, particularly one who acts after a revolution in order to try to overturn it or reverse its course, in full or in part. The adjective "counter-revoluti ...
activities of
White Russian émigrés, Reilly accordingly became a recurring villain in
Soviet cinema
The cinema of the Soviet Union includes films produced by the constituent republics of the Soviet Union reflecting elements of their pre-Soviet culture, language and history, albeit they were all regulated by the central government in Moscow. M ...
. In the latter half of the 20th century, he frequently appeared as a historical character in films and television shows produced by the Soviet Union and
Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
countries. He was portrayed by many different actors of various nationalities including: Vadim Medvedev in ''The Conspiracy of Ambassadors'' (''Zagovor Poslov'') (1966); Vsevolod Yakut in ''Operation Trust'' (''Operatsiya Trest'') (1968);
Aleksandr Shirvindt
Aleksandr Anatolyevich Shirvindt (russian: Александр Анатольевич Ширвиндт, born July 19, 1934) is a Soviet and Russian stage and film actor, screenwriter and voice actor. People's Artist of the RSFSR (1989). Since 2000 ...
in ''Crash'' (''Krakh'') (1969); Vladimir Tatosov in ''
Trust
Trust often refers to:
* Trust (social science), confidence in or dependence on a person or quality
It may also refer to:
Business and law
* Trust law, a body of law under which one person holds property for the benefit of another
* Trust (bus ...
'' (1976),
Sergei Yursky
Sergei Yurievich Yursky (russian: Серге́й Ю́рьевич Ю́рский, 16 March 1935 – 8 February 2019) was a Soviet and Russian stage and film actor, theatre director and screenwriter. His best known film role is Ostap Bender in '' T ...
in ''Coasts in the Mist'' (''Mglistye Berega'') (1986), and Harijs Liepins in ''Syndicate II'' (''Sindikat-2'') (1981).
''Reilly: Ace of Spies''
In 1983, a
Thames Television
Thames Television, commonly simplified to just Thames, was a Broadcast license, franchise holder for a region of the British ITV (TV network), ITV television network serving Greater London, London and surrounding areas from 30 July 1968 until th ...
miniseries
A miniseries or mini-series is a television series that tells a story in a predetermined, limited number of episodes. "Limited series" is another more recent US term which is sometimes used interchangeably. , the popularity of miniseries format h ...
, ''
Reilly, Ace of Spies
''Reilly, Ace of Spies'' is a 1983 British television programme dramatizing the life of Sidney Reilly, a Russian-born adventurer who became one of the greatest spies ever to work for the United Kingdom and the British Empire. Among his exploits, ...
'', dramatised the historical adventures of Reilly. Directed by
Martin Campbell
Martin Campbell (born 24 October 1943) is a New Zealand film and television director based in the United Kingdom. He is known for having directed ''The Mask of Zorro'' as well as the James Bond in film, James Bond films ''GoldenEye'' and ''Cas ...
and
Jim Goddard
Jim Goddard (2 February 1936 – 17 June 2013) was an English film and TV director who was born in Battersea, London. He directed episodes of many UK TV series such as ''Public Eye'', ''Callan'', ''Special Branch'', ''The Sweeney'', ''The Ruth R ...
, the series was based on
Robin Bruce Lockhart
Robert Norman Bruce Lockhart (13 April 1920 – 20 February 2008), known as Robin, was a British journalist, stock broker, and author.
Biography
Bruce Lockhart was the only son of R. H. Bruce Lockhart, a British diplomat, secret agent, journalis ...
's book, ''Ace of Spies'', which was adapted by
Troy Kennedy Martin
Troy Kennedy Martin (15 February 1932 – 15 September 2009) was a Scottish-born film and television screenwriter. He created the long-running BBC TV police series ''Z-Cars'' (1962–1978), and the award-winning 1985 anti-nuclear drama ''Edge of ...
. The programme won the 1984
BAFTA TV Award
The BAFTA TV Awards, or British Academy Television Awards are presented in an annual award show hosted by the BAFTA. They have been awarded annually since 1955.
Background
The first-ever Awards, given in 1955, consisted of six categories. Until ...
. Reilly was portrayed by actor
Sam Neill
Sir Nigel John Dermot "Sam" Neill (born 14 September 1947) is a New Zealand actor. Neill's near-50 year career has included leading roles in both dramas and blockbusters. Considered an "international leading man", he has been regarded as one o ...
who was nominated for a
Golden Globe Award
The Golden Globe Awards are accolades bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association beginning in January 1944, recognizing excellence in both American and international film and television. Beginning in 2022, there are 105 members of t ...
for his performance.
Leo McKern
Reginald "Leo" McKern, Order of Australia, AO (16 March 1920 – 23 July 2002) was an Australian actor who appeared in numerous British, Australian and American television programmes and films, and in more than 200 stage roles. His notabl ...
portrayed Sir
Basil Zaharoff
Sir Basil Zaharoff, GCB, GBE (born Vasileios Zacharias; el, Βασίλειος Zαχαρίας Ζαχάρωφ; October 6, 1849 – November 27, 1936) was a Greek arms dealer and industrialist. One of the richest men in the world during his ...
.
In a review of the programme, Michael Billington of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' noted that "pinning Reilly down in 12 hours of television is difficult precisely because he was such an enigma: an alleged radical, yet one who helped to bring down Britain's first Labour government in 1924 by means of a
forged letter, supposedly from the Bolshevik leader
Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev, . Transliterated ''Grigorii Evseevich Zinov'ev'' according to the Library of Congress system. (born Hirsch Apfelbaum, – 25 August 1936), known also under the name Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky (russian: Ов ...
, instructing the British Communists to form cells in the armed forces; a Lothario and two-time bigamist who was yet never betrayed by any of the women he was involved with; an avid collector of Napoleona who wanted to be the power behind the throne rather than to rule himself."
James Bond
In ''Ian Fleming, The Man Behind James Bond'' by
Andrew Lycett
Andrew Michael Duncan Lycett (born 1948) FRSL is an English biographer and journalist.
Early life
Born at Stamford, Lincolnshire to Peter Norman Lycett Lycett and Joan Mary Duncan (née Day), Lycett spent some of his childhood in Tanganyika, wher ...
, Reilly is listed as an inspiration for James Bond. Reilly's friend, former diplomat and journalist
Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, was a close acquaintance of
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer who is best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., a ...
for many years and recounted to Fleming many of Reilly's espionage adventures. Lockhart had worked with Reilly in Russia in 1918, where they became embroiled in an SIS-backed plot to overthrow Lenin's Bolshevik government.
Within five years of his disappearance in Soviet Russia in 1925, the press had turned Reilly into a household name, lauding him as a master spy and recounting his many espionage adventures. Fleming had therefore long been aware of Reilly's mythical reputation and had listened to Lockhart's recollections. Like Fleming's fictional creation, Reilly was multi-lingual, fascinated by the Far East, fond of fine living, and a compulsive gambler. When queried on whether Reilly's colourful life had directly inspired Bond, Ian Fleming replied: "James Bond is just a piece of nonsense I dreamed up. He's not a Sidney Reilly, you know."
''The Gadfly''
In 1895, Reilly encountered author
Ethel Lilian Voynich, née Boole. Boole was a well-known figure in the late Victorian literary scene and later married to Polish revolutionary
Wilfrid Voynich
Wilfrid Voynich (born Michał Habdank-Wojnicz; Telšiai, Деятели революционного движения в России: Био-библиографический словарь: От предшественников декабри ...
. She and Reilly had a sexual liaison in Italy together. During their affair, Reilly supposedly "bared his soul" to Ethel and revealed to her the peculiar story of his revolutionary past in the Russian Empire. After their affair had concluded, Voynich published in 1897 ''
The Gadfly
''The Gadfly'' is a novel by Irish-born British writer Ethel Voynich, published in 1897 (United States, June; Great Britain, September of the same year), set in 1840s Italy under the dominance of Austria, a time of tumultuous revolt and upris ...
'', a critically acclaimed historical novel set in Italy under Austrian rule in the 1840s, whose central character is allegedly based on Reilly's early life. Alternatively, Reilly modelled himself on the revolutionary hero of Voynich's novel, although historian
Mark Mazower
Mark Mazower (; born 20 February 1958) is a British historian. His expertise are Greece, the Balkans and, more generally, 20th-century Europe. He is Ira D. Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University in New York City
Early life
Mazowe ...
observed "separating fact from fantasy in the case of Reilly is difficult". For years, the existence of this purported relationship was doubted by sceptical historians until confirmed by new evidence in 2016. Archived communication between
Anne Fremantle
Anne Jackson Fremantle (born Anne-Marie Huth Jackson; 1909–2002) was an English-American journalist, translator, poet, novelist and biographer.[The Gadfly Suite
''The Gadfly Suite'', Op. 97a, is a suite for orchestra arranged by Levon Atovmyan from Dmitri Shostakovich's score for the 1955 Soviet film ''The Gadfly'', based on the novel of the same name by Ethel Lilian Voynich. Atovmyan's suite differs ...]
'' (Op. 97a), Levon Atovmian’s arrangement of
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, , group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich), First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throug ...
's music for the 1955 Soviet film adaptation of the novel.
See also
*
List of people who disappeared mysteriously: 1910–1990
*
Xenophon Kalamatiano
Xenophon de Blumenthal Kalamatiano (14 July 1882 – 9 November 1923) was an American intelligence agent recruited from the University of Chicago to serve in Russia as part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.
He became the chief ...
References
Notes
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External links
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Sidney Reilly – Ace of Spies , J-Grit.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reilly, Sidney
1870s births
1920s missing person cases
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Year of birth uncertain
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Deaths by firearm in Russia
Double agents
Executed spies
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James Bond
Bigamists
Confidence tricksters
Male murderers
Okhrana informants
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People murdered in the Soviet Union
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Recipients of the Military Cross
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