Lokhova2018SpyWhoChangedHistory.html

The Spy Who Changed History

The Untold Story of How the Soviet Union Won the Race for America's Top Secrets

Lokhova2018SpyWhoChangedHistory.pdf [225-pages, 7.1 MB]

Contents [pdf-6]
Cover
Title Page [pdf-2]
Copyright [pdf-3]
Dedication [pdf-4]
Epigraph [pdf-5]
Maps [pdf-7]
Preface [pdf-9]
Introduction [pdf-14]

1 ‘Son of the Working People’ [pdf-18]
2 ‘We Catch Up or They Will Crush Us’ [pdf-31]
3 ‘What the Country Needs is a Real Big Laugh’ [pdf-43]
4 ‘Agent 001’ [pdf-51]
5 ‘A Nice Fellow to Talk To’ [pdf-65]
6 ‘Is This Really My Motherland?’ [pdf-76]
7 ‘Questionable from Conception’ [pdf-84]
8 ‘The Wily Armenian’ [pdf-95]
9 Whistle Stop Inspections [pdf-106]
10 Glory to Stalin’s Falcons [pdf-119]
11 Back in the USSR [pdf-138]
12 Project ‘AIR’ [pdf-150]
13 ENORMOZ [pdf-166]
14 Mission Accomplished [pdf-180]

Post-scriptum [pdf-187]
Appendix I: Biography of Stanislav Shumovsky [pdf-189]
Appendix II: NKVD and FBI Reports on Stanislav Shumovsky [pdf-191]
Footnotes [pdf-193]
Notes [pdf-197]
Index [pdf-209]
Acknowledgements [pdf-222]
About the Author [pdf-224]
About the Publisher [pdf-225]

Book Review by Will Zuzak:
Lokhova2018SpyWhoChangedHistory.pdf [225-pages, 7.1 MB]

(1) Surprisingly, I had never heard of Stanislav Shumovsky before coming across this book.

(2) A frustrating aspect of the book is that very often Svetlana Lokhova just generalizes the time and location of various events that she describes rather than pinpointing the exact time (year:month:day:hour::minute:second -- as applicable) and location (Edmonton, Husky station, corner of 97 Ave. and 182 St., T5T 3T9).
- Without such designation the book becomes more of a "gossip" medium, rather than a serious academic/historical/legal document.
- She also usually refers to the main characters by their first name, which is often confusing.

(3) The Ctrl-F search function for "Ukrain" yields only 8 hits distributed in various chapters -- Ch. 1 (3), Ch. 6 (3), Ch. 7 (1), Ch.10 (1).

pdf-25 --Despite the danger and vast distance involved, Shumovsky’s mother Amalia overcame her fear of war each summer after the family’s dramatic flight and went back to Volyn (today in the far west of Ukraine) to visit her father. He was still serving as an estate manager. ... In 1918 disaster struck when she failed to return to the family home by the expected date. ... The letter came back, and written on the envelope were the stark words: ‘not delivered owing to the death of the recipient’.
- By his own account, he was already a gifted linguist, speaking Russian, Polish and Ukrainian as well as French and German, although not English.... Shumovsky was turning his back decisively on his Polish and aristocratic roots, a fact clearly indicated when he changed his patronymic from the Polish-sounding Adam to the Russian Anton. On volunteering for the Red Army, indeed, Shumovsky concealed much about his privileged upbringing, telling the recruiters he was the son of a Ukrainian peasant worker who somehow spoke French and German.

(4) The Ctrl-F search function for "Kharkov" yields 28 hits hits distributed in various chapters -- Ch. 1 (19), Ch. 4 (2), Ch.11 (1), Ch. 12 (2), Appendix I (1), Index (3).
- Ch.1 presents a very good sociological, educational and industrial background of Kharkiv.

pdf-18 -- Stanislav Shumovsky was born on 9 May 1902, the eldest of four sons of Adam Vikentevich Shumovsky and his wife, Amalia Fominichna (nee Kaminskaya). His parents were not ethnic Russians but Poles. The family treasured their traditions, practising Catholicism and speaking Polish at home.

(5) The Ctrl-F search function for "Jew" yields 34 hits distributed in various chapters -- Ch.1 (5), Ch. 5 (14), Ch.7 (7), Ch. 8 (1), Ch. 9 (1), Ch. 10 (1), Ch.11 (2), Ch 12 (1).

pdf-21 -- In a country devoid of hope, many gave up their dreams of change and chose to emigrate in order to try their luck abroad, most often in America. The first wave of Russian emigration saw two and a half million former subjects of the Tsar settling in the United States between 1891 and 1914. Many were economic migrants; others escaped anti-Semitic measures inflicted on them by the government; others still were frustrated firebrand revolutionaries. New York and other cities quickly developed large and thriving socialist undergrounds, eventually providing a refuge in the Bronx for Leon Trotsky before the 1917 Revolutions. Trotsky wrote for the radical Socialist Party’s Yiddish newspaper Forverts (Forward), which had a daily circulation of 275,000. Russian emigrants came to dominate areas such as Brighton Beach, Brooklyn and Bergen County, New Jersey, keeping many of their ‘old country’ traditions alive. It was in these exile communities dotted around the US that many future spies found homes or were born. Arthur Adams escaped Tsarist torture to become a founder member of the North American Communist Party and later a successful Soviet Military Intelligence spy. Like Gertrude Klivans and Raisa Bennett, Georgi Koval’s parents emigrated to the US to escape anti-Jewish measures. The families of Harry Gold, Ben Smilg and Ted Hall boarded boats to a new life. Later Shumovsky would find a warm welcome in the Boston émigré circle. Many maintained in secret their radical beliefs and links to international socialist organisations despite their outward embrace of all things American.

pdf-144 -- Unsurprisingly, a high proportion of the active agents of Soviet intelligence at this time in the US were of Jewish origin.

(6) Ctrl-F searches for the last names (augmented with first names) for the various individual spies yields a fascinating insight into how Soviet spies infiltrated the United States -- often strarting out as graduatge students at American Universities.

(7) Concluding comments: The first chapter sets the stage of the sociological situation in the Russian Tsarist Empire (including Kharkiv and Ukraine) before the Bolsheviks took power. The early years of the Soviet Union are described in the next few chapters. The last few chapters detail the infiltration of Soviet agents into American society.

An understanding of this process during the Soviet era should help us understand the methods being utilized by the Putin regime to infiltrate and destabilize North American and European societes as of 2018.

[END]