Sir Paul Henry Dukes (10 February 1889 – 27 August 1967) was a British
MI6
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 ...
officer and author.
Early life and family
Paul Henry Dukes was born the third of five children on 10 February 1889 in
Bridgwater
Bridgwater is a large historic market town and civil parish in Somerset, England. Its population currently stands at around 41,276 as of 2022. Bridgwater is at the edge of the Somerset Levels, in level and well-wooded country. The town lies alon ...
,
Somerset
( en, All The People of Somerset)
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, coordinates =
, region = South West England
, established_date = Ancient
, established_by =
, preceded_by =
, origin =
, lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset
, lord_ ...
, England. He was the son of the
Congregationalist clergyman, Rev. Edwin Joshua Dukes (1847-1930), of
Kingsland, London, and his wife, the former Edith Mary Pope (1863-1898), of
Sandford, Devon
Sandford is a village and civil parish in the Mid Devon district, within Devon, England. ''Sandford'' is part of the electoral ward named ''Sandford'' and Creedy. The ward population at the 2011 Census was 3,429.
History
The Grade II listed ...
. Edith was an academically gifted woman, the daughter of a schoolteacher, who obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree by correspondence course at the age of 20. In 1884, she married Edwin, who had returned from missionary work in China. She died from a disease of the thyroid gland, and in 1907, Edwin remarried to a 40-year-old widow named Harriet Rouse.
Paul's siblings included the playwright
Ashley Dukes (1885-1959) and the renowned physician
Cuthbert Dukes
Cuthbert Esquire Dukes OBE (24 July 1890 – 3 February 1977) was an English physician, pathologist and author, for whom the Dukes classification for colorectal cancer is named.
Career
Dukes was educated at Caterham School. He graduated with a ...
(1890-1977). He had an elder sister, Irene Catherine Dukes (1887-1950), who led a life plagued by illness, and yet another, younger brother, Marcus Braden Dukes (1893-1936), who died in
Kuala Lumpur
, anthem = '' Maju dan Sejahtera''
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, pushpin_map = Malaysia#Southeast Asia#Asia
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, su ...
while working as a government official. His sister-in-law was the renowned ballet dancer
Marie Rambert. Paul Dukes was also the great-uncle of poet
Aidan Andrew Dun, who is the grandson of his brother Ashley.
Paul was educated at
Caterham School
(Truth without Fear)
, established =
, closed =
, type = Public schoolIndependent day and boarding school
, religious_affiliation = Protestant (United Reformed Church)
, president =
, head_label = Headmaste ...
before going on to pursue a career in music at the
Petrograd Conservatoire in Russia.
Career
As a young man he took a position as a language teacher in
Riga
Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...
,
Latvia
Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...
. He later moved to
St. Petersburg, having been recruited personally by
Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the first "C" of MI6 (SIS), to act as a
secret agent in
Imperial Russia
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the List of Russian monarchs, 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 th ...
, relying on his fluency in the Russian language. At the time, he was employed at the Petrograd Conservatoire as a
concert pianist and deputy conductor to
Albert Coates. In his new capacity as sole British agent in Russia, he set up elaborate plans to help prominent
White Russians escape from the
Gulag
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
and smuggled hundreds of them into Finland.
Known as the "Man of a Hundred Faces," Dukes continued his use of disguises, which aided him in assuming a number of identities and gained him access to numerous
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 ...
organizations. He successfully infiltrated the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
"Hymn of the Bolshevik Party"
, headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow
, general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first) Mikhail Gorbachev (last)
, founded =
, banned =
, founder = Vladimir Lenin
, newspaper ...
, the
Comintern
The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet Union, Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to ...
, and even the
political police, or
CHEKA
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə), abbreviated ...
. Dukes also learned of the inner workings of the
Politburo
A politburo () or political bureau is the executive committee for communist parties. It is present in most former and existing communist states.
Names
The term "politburo" in English comes from the Russian ''Politbyuro'' (), itself a contraction ...
, and passed the information to British intelligence.
He returned to Britain a distinguished hero, and in 1920 was
knighted
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the Christian denomination, church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood ...
by
King George V
George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.
Born during the reign of his grandmother Que ...
, who called Dukes the "greatest of all soldiers." To this day, Dukes is the only person knighted based entirely on his exploits in espionage.
He briefly returned to
active service in 1939, helping to locate a prominent Czech businessman who had disappeared after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. He referred to the businessman as Alfred Obry in his later book about the search, entitled ''An Epic of the Gestapo''. According to ''A History of the British Secret Service'' (1969), "Paul Dukes was always a meticulous agent in paying attention to detail. He combed all the Czech papers and in one found this paragraph: 'A thirteen-year-old boy found on the railway line to Tuschkau the completely unrecognizable corpse of a man. The body was mutilated beyond recognition and the right hand was missing. The police pronounced a verdict of suicide. From papers found on the body it appeared the person was Friedrich Sweiger, a tailor of Prague.' Dukes immediately suspected Sweiger was in fact Obry, especially since this was the route Obry was to have taken on his escape. He built up a strong case against the Gestapo of murdering Obry and not only demanded exhumation of the body but succeeded in persuading the Germans to do this. The corpse was undoubtedly that of Obry."
Dukes was also a leading figure in introducing
yoga
Yoga (; sa, योग, lit=yoke' or 'union ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consciou ...
to the Western World.
Writing
His book ''Red Dusk and the Morrow'' chronicles the rise and fall of Bolshevism and he toured the world extensively giving lectures pertaining to this subject.
Dukes' other books are listed below.
Personal life
In 1922,
Dukes was first married to
Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd (1891–1976), former wife of
Ogden Livingston Mills, the
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury
The United States secretary of the treasury is the head of the United States Department of the Treasury, and is the chief financial officer of the federal government of the United States. The secretary of the treasury serves as the principal a ...
.
Margaret was the daughter of
Anne Harriman, the second wife of
William Kissam Vanderbilt, and her second husband,
Lewis Morris Rutherfurd, Jr., son of the astronomer
Lewis Morris Rutherfurd
Lewis Morris Rutherfurd (November 25, 1816 – May 30, 1892) was an American lawyer and astronomer, and a pioneering astrophotographer.
Early life and work
Rutherfurd was born in Morrisania, New York to Robert Walter Rutherfurd (1788–1852) a ...
.
[. Margaret was the daughter of Anne Harriman, the second wife of William Kissam Vanderbilt, and her second husband, Lewis Morris Rutherfurd, son of the astronomer ]Lewis Morris Rutherfurd
Lewis Morris Rutherfurd (November 25, 1816 – May 30, 1892) was an American lawyer and astronomer, and a pioneering astrophotographer.
Early life and work
Rutherfurd was born in Morrisania, New York to Robert Walter Rutherfurd (1788–1852) a ...
. After divorcing Dukes, Margaret Rutherfurd successively married Charles Michel Joachim Napoléon, Prince Murat, and Frederick Leybourne Sprague They divorced in 1929,
and Dukes later married Diana Fitzgerald in 1959.
He died on 27 August 1967 in
Cape Town
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...
, South Africa, aged 78.
Works
* (1921)
"What Russia Thinks of the Bolsheviki,"''The World's Work'', Vol. XLII, pp. 100–104.
* (1921)
"Sovietism's Effect on Russia's Young,"''The New York Times'', 17 July, p. 27.
* (1921)
"The Secret Door,"''The Atlantic Monthly'', Vol. CXXVIII, pp. 1–13.
* (1922)
''Red Dusk and the Morrow: Adventures and Investigations in Red Russia'' London: Williams and Norgate.
* (1938). ''The Story of "ST 25": Adventure and Romance in the Secret Intelligence Service in Red Russia''. London: Cassell and Co.
* (1940)
''An Epic of the Gestapo: The Story of a Strange Search'' London: Cassell and Co.
* (1947). ''Come Hammer, Come Sickle!'' London: Cassell and Co.
* (1950). ''The Unending Quest: Autobiographical Sketches''. London: Cassell and Co.
* (1958)
''Yoga for the Western World'' Students of Western Yoga.
* (1960). ''The Yoga of Health, Youth and Joy: A Treatise on Hatha Yoga Adapted to the West''. London: Cassell and Co.
References
;Notes
;Sources
* ''Operation Kronstadt'' by Harry Ferguson, Hutchinson, 2008
* ''Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot'' by
Giles Milton
Giles Milton FRHistS (born 15 January 1966) is a British writer who specialises in narrative history. His books have sold more than one million copies in the UK. and been published in twenty-five languages. He has written twelve works of non-fi ...
, Sceptre, 2013.
Further reading
* Andrew, Christopher (1986). ''Her Majesty's Secret Service. The Making of the British Intelligence Community''. New York: Viking.
* Smith, Michael (2010). ''Six: A History of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service. Murder and Mayhem 1909–1939'', London: Dialogue,
External links
*
A British Spy Among the BolshevikiPortraits of Sir Paul Dukes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dukes, Paul
1889 births
1967 deaths
20th-century British writers
British people of the Russian Civil War
Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Secret Intelligence Service personnel
People educated at Caterham School
People from Bridgwater
Pre–World War I spies
World War I spies for the United Kingdom