Double lives: three Australian fellow-travellers in the Cold War.

This article examines the role of three pro-Soviet fellow-travellers during the Cold War: journalist, historian and civil libertarian activist Brian Fitzpatrick; the controversial historian Professor Manning Clark; and Clement B. Christesen, editor of the literary journal Meanjin, much favoured by fellow-travellers, from the perspective of their relationship with the Soviet Union.

Fellow-travellers claimed progressive beliefs and were active in communist front organisations, but were not members of the Communist Party. They were masters of qualified support: "I am not a communist, but ...." (1) From his perspective as former head of counter-intelligence in the First Chief Directorate of the Soviet security and intelligence agency, the KGB, Oleg Kalugin, described fellow-travellers as "dupes who would support any Soviet action in the face of even obvious criminality". (2)

The Russian "experiment" in the 1930s attracted a wide spectrum of fellow-travellers: utopian idealists who believed that Stalin had solved the world's problems; scientists who believed that, in the USSR, their profession enjoyed greater prestige and government support; trade unionists who regarded the Soviet Union as the first "workers' state"; the so-called peace parsons who were collectively deluded in their belief that the Soviet Union was "unmaterialistic", tolerant of religious freedom and "peace-loving"; economists who favoured centralised planning, as opposite to "anarchical" capitalism; peace-lovers who echoed Soviet disinformation depicting the Soviet Union as the sole source of world peace and encircled by hostile capitalist warmongering countries. To the alienated intellectual, painter, writer manque, with free-floating aggression and subject to anomie, the Soviet experiment provided "meaning" and "purpose" to otherwise mundane lives.

In the early stages of the regime, the Soviets assessed that they needed supporters in the West. Trained in conspiratorial traditions, the Bolsheviks developed a "legal" covert apparatus and specialised forms of information and influence: Disinformation (dezinformatsia) and Active Measures (aktivinyye meropriatia), both of which were designed to influence and manipulate Western media, public opinion and policy, and the favoured target group--Western intellectuals. Fellow-travellers played a vital role as disinformation channels. Disinformation and Active Measures were defined by the KGB as follows: (3)

  "Disinformation is regarded as one of the instruments of CPSU policy;
  it is an integral, indispensable and secret element of intelligence
  work.... KGB disinformation operations are progressive ... they
  promote peace and social progress ....
  "The main value of all Active Measures lies in the fact that it is
  difficult to check the veracity of information conveyed and to
  identify the real source. Their effectiveness is expressed as a
  coefficient of utility, when minimum expenditure and effort achieves
  maximum end results. Forms of disinformation basically fall into three
  groups--documentary (written), non-documentary (oral), and
  demonstrative."

The Soviet leadership treated the fellow-travellers as "friends" and as a means of ensuring the foreign legitimacy of the Soviet "experiment". Above all, they could be influenced by a guided tour by trained interpreters who dutifully reported to the Soviet intelligence service. Fellow-traveller visits seldom exceeded three weeks.

As early as 1922, G. V. Chicherin, Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs, submitted a series of proposals to the Genoa conference for immediate and general disarmament. "Peace" was the critical Soviet disinformation and active measures project which lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

WILLI MUNZENBERG: THE PATRON SAINT OF FELLOW-TRAVELLERS

In the early 1920s, Willi Munzenberg (1889-1940), accurately described by his wife Babette Gross as "the patron saint of fellow-travellers", (4) wrote: (5)

  "We must penetrate every conceivable milieu, get hold of artists,
  professors, make use of culture and theatres, and spread abroad the
  doctrine that Russia is prepared to sacrifice everything to keep the
  world at peace".

Munzenberg stressed to a Comintern meeting: "We must organise the intellectuals.... We must avoid being a purely communist organisation.... We must bring in other names, other groups."

Influential "independents" were not only sought as an operational ideal--for cover purposes--but were targeted for manipulation by the Munzenberg apparatus. Munzenberg-inspired "Innocents' Clubs", or front organisations--including so-called friendship societies, supported by prominent Western personalities--pioneered the mass petition demanding Western governments support pro-Soviet initiatives.

Stephen Koch has shown how "Munzenberg organised and ran the great network of fronts and fellow-travellers ... the claim to political 'independence' was the sine qua non of all fellow-travelling, all fronts". (6) Munzenberg's work was co-ordinated, with Stalin's watchful approval, by the Comintern's secret service, the OMS (Otdel Mezhdunarodnykh Svyazey, or "International Liaison Department"). (7) Munzenberg's fronts, manipulating "innocents", provided operational cover for parallel secret work: espionage, covert action and agents of influence. (8)

Czech journalist and agent Egon Kisch joined the Munzenberg network in 1925 and was assigned the Australian mission as part of Stalin's new popular front strategy (9) to strengthen the Soviet Union's "peace credentials" and forge links with progressives. (10) Kisch was a case-hardened Comintern agent who boasted, "I do not think; Stalin does my thinking for me." (11)

SOVIET METHODS OF RECRUITMENT

In the 1930s, Soviet intelligence recruiters cultivated prospective agents by claiming they would be "working for peace". Many agents were recruited through Soviet "friendship organisations".

Ian George Milner--the so-called Rhodes Scholar spy, and a long-time friend and correspondent of Professor Manning Clark--emerged from the "New Zealand Friends of the Soviet Union" and was a fellow-traveller to the Soviet Union in 1934 where he witnessed "that most people were happy and saw their place in it". In 1941, he was prominently involved in the Australian-Soviet Friendship League and was elected a member of the league at a conference on 24 April 1941. (12)

Professor Manning Clark travelled to the Soviet Union four times and, most controversially, in 1970 under the auspices of the Australia-USSR Friendship Society.

The British-educated H.A.R "Kim" Philby--a communist and spy for the Soviet Union's NKVD and KGB who became a senior officer in the UK Secret Intelligence Service (MI6)--was originally guided to Paris by Maurice Dobb, a Cambridge economist and advisor to the Munzenberg-created "League against Colonialism". Philby also travelled to Vienna where he established contact with the Munzenberg-created "World Committee for the Relief of Victims of German Fascism", demonstrating his potential for later work with Soviet Intelligence. (13)

German-born scientist Klaus Fuchs, who betrayed British atomic secrets to the Soviets, was a member of the Society for Cultural Relations with the Soviet Union in Germany prior to his recruitment. There were many other such agents.

The "All-Union Society for Cultural Ties Abroad" (VOKS) was the principal organising mechanism for fellow-travellers. VOKS managed "societies of friends" of the Soviet Union in Western target states and organised and managed visits of fellow-travellers as well as more trivial matters such as book exchanges. (14)

The favoured "specialists" were given access to high-ranking members of the political elite. In 1927 VOKS established a training course for guides' rehearsed answers: A critical theme was that any Soviet weakness should be blamed on the "tsarist legacy and heritage from the past". (15)

After 1930 the VOKS guide was re-written and Intourist guides were to become more active as 'helpers'. Surveillance and information-gathering increased. The VOKS mission focused on the "intelligentsia", as a VOKS report noted in 1928, since "the intelligentsia in bourgeois societies plays a dominant role". (16) In 1929 the head of VOKS emphasized that "the left intelligentsia can be useful in our work". In the early 1930s VOKS officials referred to "reception and reworking of foreign travelers" and "methods of influence". (17) The guided tour offered to fellow-travellers was a journey into an "imagined community", guided by VOKS. (18)

BRIAN FITZPATRICK: THE MYTH OF THE INDEPENDENT RADICAL

Brian Fitzpatrick (1905-1965), journalist, historian and civil libertarian, is described by his sympathetic biographer Don Watson as an "independent radical". However, even Watson cannot deny that "in many ways he was a fellow-traveller". (19)

Watson fails to understand Fitzpatrick's value as a propaganda asset. Watson redefines fellow-travelling "as part of a humanist tradition" and somehow justified by "the logical and compelling circumstances of the era", (20) a definition which would have delighted many fellow-travellers. Watson claims Fitzpatrick believed that the Soviet Union was "an experiment worth supporting" and was convinced the regime "saved Western democracy". (21)

Fitzpatrick was a lifelong supporter of the Soviet Union. Fitzpatrick's biography was written by Watson before the release of ASIO archives, which place Fitzpatrick in the correct perspective: a pro-Soviet fellow-traveller and propagandist. (22) Watson concedes that Fitzpatrick was "friendly with the leadership of the CPA [Communist Party of Australia]" and "helped them when they were under threat and he supported their actions on most occasions until at least 1958" but "could not suffer party discipline". (23)

Fitzpatrick did not need to accept party discipline; he was a covert communist who was reflexively pro-Soviet. However, Fitzpatrick's hedonistic life-style and heavy drinking ensured he would have been assessed as a security risk by the Party's control commission responsible for Party security.

Watson claims: "If the atrocities of Stalinism were spelled out alongside his own professed ideals, Fitzpatrick's Soviet blind spot could be made to seem an irredeemable flaw" (emphasis added). Thus Watson turns an historical fact--Fitzpatrick's record as a pro-Soviet fellow-traveller--into a questionable hypothesis.

Fitzpatrick's ASIO personal files record his life-long commitment to the Soviet Union, exemplified in his address to the Australian-Soviet Friendship League on 18 April 1941 when he criticised Western misrepresentation of the Soviet Union. (24)

In 1949, he was closely associated with the newly-launched front organisation, the Australian Peace Council (local arm of the Soviet-controlled World Peace Council), becoming a committee member. From 1950, Fitzpatrick's Australian Council for Civil Liberties was the propaganda vehicle for the Communist Party in opposing any anti-communist legislation. In February 1951, Ian George Milner, secret Communist Party member and Soviet agent, was listed as a member of the ACCL's executive committee. (25)

In 1953, Fitzpatrick reviewed a propaganda biography of the pro-Soviet and pro-Vietnamese agent and journalist Wilfred Burchett, entitled He Chose Peace: (26)

  "In 26 years ... I have known, I suppose, thousands of publicists ...
  and none I consider more worthy of respect and admiration than Wilfred
  Burchett."

Like many other fellow-travellers, Fitzpatrick suffered cognitive deficits and transient amnesia. He reportedly said, before the 1950-1951 Lowe Royal Commission on Communist Activities, that he "could not remember writing anything attacking the Communist Party". He admitted writing before World War II for "the Communist Review but could not recall the subjects". He claimed, "I have never advocated the communist cause or any platform of the Communist Party." (27) He lied.

In 1952 Fitzpatrick wrote a glowing foreword to the book The Myth of Soviet Imperialism: Soviet Foreign Policy Explained, written by life-long Communist Party member Lloyd Churchward of the Melbourne University Politics Department. (28) Fitzpatrick's introduction is curiously omitted from Watson's biography. The classic Soviet propaganda theme on the front cover depicts two children, dressed as altar-boys in white, stroking white doves and surrounded by fluttering birds of peace. (29)

Fitzpatrick describes The Myth of Soviet Imperialism as "documented, factual, and scrupulously reasoned". (30) But Churchward is more frank: "All figures are taken from official Soviet sources": (31) Soviet News, Soviet Weekly, Foreign Languages Publishing Press (Peking), Foreign Languages Publishing House (Moscow), Stalin's radio broadcasts, Stalin on the national colonial question, and Stalin's Problems of Leninism.

Fitzpatrick's introduction expresses his pro-Stalinist fervour:

  "If one examines the 'repeated instances' of Moscow's intervention
  since 1941 ... months of searching will find no worthwhile evidence to
  substantiate the charges."

Stalinist Russia is praised for "observing international agreements in contrast to the infidelity of our side.... Soviet policy is ... non-intervening". The Soviet Union is "by its nature non-aggressive, not a potential disturber of the peace". (32)

Fitzpatrick's indignation was always selective. He was never intrinsically concerned with civil liberties and accepted the Soviet position on international affairs throughout his life. An example of Fitzpatrick's reliance on Soviet and Eastern bloc sources was revealed in January 1953 when his pro-Soviet Australian Peace Council claimed that "attacks on Jews are not the result of anti-Semitism, but are simply anti-Zionist". (33) Commenting in his capacity as secretary of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, Fitzpatrick evasively stated: "We don't condemn anything until we know the facts. In this case we don't know the facts yet." He added that "the only news available was from Czechoslovakia--semi-official comment and newspaper reports". (34)

Three months before he died, in September 1965, Fitzpatrick claimed: "The socialist hope is that the Viet Cong would win." (35) His hope did not express his continuing radicalism, as Watson claims. Fitzpatrick's drunken and convivial persona concealed a fervid pro-Soviet fellow-traveller.

Fitzpatrick had a gift for tradecraft. ASIO observed him in May 1954 in clandestine meetings with leading Communist Party members making a "dead drop" (i.e., leaving a container in a designated position) and swapping briefcases in Sydney on 12 May 1954. ASIO telephone intercepts revealed Fitzpatrick and the Communist Party were conspiring to undermine the legitimacy of the Petrov Royal Commission. (36) The conspiracy-obsessed Dr H.V. Evatt was the target. As Robert Manne points out, "Fitzpatrick ... the most talented polemicist for the anti-Petrov cause--showered him [Evatt] with advice and flattery". (37) Further research may clarify Fitzpatrick's role as one of the most sinister fellow-travellers.

PROFESSOR MANNING CLARK

In 1996, the late Professor Charles Manning Hope Clark (1915-1991) was the centre of a national controversy. The Brisbane Courier-Mail (24 August 1996) revealed that he had proudly worn a Lenin medal awarded to "fighters for peace" after attending a function at the Soviet Embassy in Canberra. More significantly, the lengthy story defined Clark as a Soviet agent of influence. (38)

Clark first came to security notice in 1941. After he moved to Canberra in 1949, the ASIO regional office in Canberra tracked Clark for decades, primarily through routine surveillance of his contacts with the Soviet Embassy and Soviet intelligence officers. These contacts resulted in Clark being assigned an ASIO HQ file PF/C/8/10 on 17 July 1953. An ASIO Report of 1963 noted: "Clark has continued to come to notice through association with members of the Soviet Embassy and other persons of security interest." (39) As Desmond Ball and David Horner have pointed out, Clark's 30-year relationship with, and visits to, Ian Milner in Prague, in 1958, 1964 and 1970, would have been approved by Moscow. Details of his four visits to the Soviet Union, particularly one in 1938, remain a mystery--or a secret. (40)

ASIO monitoring revealed Clark was invited to the homes of leading Soviet officials and intelligence officers and was a regular visitor to the Soviet embassy where his wife taught English. Clark taught himself Russian and became a fluent Russian speaker. According to Evdokia Petrov's debriefing, by ASIO, Clark taught the Soviet Ambassador Lifanov English. (41)

Clark had operational contacts with numerous Soviet intelligence officers (some were KGB/GRU co-optees) whom he met at their residences and his residence, at his office at the Australian National University and at many Soviet embassy functions. Clark's contacts, subsequently identified as Soviet intelligence officers, included: Oleg N. Anichkin and Ivan S. Andrienko (who, on 7 November 1961, had the responsibility of taking an inebriated Clark from the Soviet embassy to his residence); Evgenij Nikolayevich Klimenko (1961); Viktor V. Gamazejshchikov (1961); Boris Yakovlevich Dorofeev (May 1962); Igor Alexandrovich Volkov, Second Secretary Cultural and Scientific (1966); Boris Yakovlevich Dorofeev (1962); Alexei Pavlovich Makarov (1963); Anatoli Vladimirovich Sofronov (1963); Yuri Nikalayevich Yasenev (1964); Ilya Ivanovich Safronov (1965); Yuri Nikolayevich Yasnev (1967); Igor Alexandrovich Volkov, First Secretary, Scientific and Cultural (1962/1966); Leonid Semenovich Ponomarev, Tass correspondent (1968); and Michael Ivanovich Dedyurin (1973). Clark was particularly close to Adolph Vasilievich Gorev, First Secretary (1970), who organised his trip to the USSR in 1970. (42)

A secret telephone intercept in 1964 reveals that Clark's close friend Judah Waten had been in contact with Victor Ivanovich Cherkashin at the Soviet embassy. (43) If Clark had operational contact with Cherkashin, he must have been assessed as a high-value agent, as Cherkashin was later stationed in Washington in charge of Line KR (counterintelligence), which included the handling of Soviet moles Robert Hansen, in the FBI, and Aldrich Ames, in the CIA. (44)

In 1964, while on study leave, Clark phoned Judah Waten and told him he had "seen Ian Milner whilst he was overseas--he had met him in Prague and London--he said that he would tell Waten all about it when he called to visit him". Clark considered a face-to-face meeting was necessary to describe his meeting with Milner who had been friendly with Waten for 30 years. The intercept report demonstrates Clark's security awareness, which he ridiculed in others, but observed strictly himself. (45)

Clark's indebtedness to Milner extended back to 1941 when Milner appointed Clark as lecturer in the school of political science at the University of Melbourne. Clark undoubtedly knew of Milner's true allegiances and they became life long friends, bound by a "shared secret".

Clark's book Meeting Soviet Man was based on his three-week visit, from 30 October 1958, to the Soviet Union as guest of the Union of Soviet Writers, and a week in Prague as guest of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Culture. (46)

Clark did not refer to meeting his valued friend and former academic colleague, Soviet and Czech agent Ian Milner, although the week-long celebration of cultural events culminated on 3 December 1958 with a dinner at Milner's house. Clark also visited Milner in Prague in 1964, 1970 and 1984. (47)

Clark declared his hope that his book would be "read in the spirit in which it is written--as the comments of a boy from the bush on Soviet man" (this "boy from the bush" was educated at elite schools and Balliol College, Oxford, and became professor of history at University College, Canberra). (48) Meeting Soviet Man was "written to persuade people in Australia to take Soviet man seriously.... Three weeks in the Soviet Union were enough to convince me that he should be taken seriously". (49)

In the book, Clark described Lenin as having had "Christ-like compassion ... the loveable Lenin,... the lover of humanity,... the man who was gentle with women and children and who wanted us to be nice to one another". (50) Clark pondered "whether we were all being asked to struggle for such things, so that we could become like Lenin, or want to be like him". (51) On returning to Australia, Clark grew a beard and wore a bush hat. He did not wear a belt but tied his trousers with rope. His physical resemblance to Lenin was striking and undoubtedly cultivated. (52)

Clark was so overcome from meeting "Soviet man" that he wrote to his family: "It (the Soviet Union) could be the first to create equality and brotherhood. I believe they will." (53) He added: "Soviet Man does not judge.... The Soviet Union was based on compassion for man. A very Russian conception of Christ-like compassion." (54)

On 22 June 1970, Clark addressed the Soviet Presidium. (55) The text of the speech was located in the Soviet archives by an Australian researcher and would otherwise have remained secret. Clark realised that the public release of such a document, which warrants a detailed study, would have been extremely damaging to his reputation as an historian and may have caused cover problems, an assessment no doubt shared by Soviet authorities. (56)

Clark's pathological identification with Lenin has been noted even by his most fervent supporters. In his secret speech to the Soviet Presidium, on 22 June 1970, which he delivered in Russian, Clark praised Lenin in terms of which his audience would have approved. To Clark, Lenin was "a statesman", "a Jacobin ... with the ability and desire to tear out the old order, tear it out of its roots, despite the cost of human suffering" (emphasis added).

Lenin is praised as the founder of the Comintern, a man of political genius, a skilled creator of political slogans, the usher-in of a glorious future. "Lenin was convinced that this could be attained when communism conquered the world. We are lucky to live in a time when this tenet is being verified by life" (emphasis added). (57)

Clark's tradecraft is captured in fictional form in the former French intelligence officer and academic Vladimir Volkoff's novel The Set-Up, in which the Soviet agent operates under the persona of literary agent Alexandr D. Psar. His case officer informs him that he will operate as an agent of influence and agent of decomposition against the target society, emphasising: "The Soviet agent of influence will never pass for a communist. Now with the Left, now with the Right, he will systematically saw away at the existing order." (58) (Emphasis added).

The critical question is: did the Russian intelligence services regard Clark as an asset? Oleg Gordievsky, the most important KGB defector in the postwar period, pointed out: "That Clark is the only one on the (22) June list from Australia underlines his importance to Moscow". (59)

There are too many recorded instances of Clark's distortion of history to note here, but his status obsessions were revealed in the early 1970s. Clark was alarmed that a proposed--and brilliant--staff member could threaten his status and he asked a former student and friend to contact ASIO for an evaluation of the person. ASIO advised Clark's friend that the staff member was a "trouble maker" and the ASIO assessment was forwarded to Clark. (60)

In 1938, Clark reportedly visited the Soviet Union with the pro-Soviet communist Judah Waten as part of the first Fellowship of Australian Writers delegation. Waten's claim of a visit to the Soviet Union with Clark requires further research, although it may have been black (i.e., undeclared). Clark never publicly referred to his 1938 visit. However, his later travels, activities and contacts with the Soviet Embassy were meticulously recorded in his voluminous ASIO personal files. (61)

CLEMENT CHRISTESEN AND MEANJIN, THE FELLOW-TRAVELLERS' JOURNAL

Australian fellow-travellers during the Cold War had their own journal--Meanjin, edited by professional fellow-traveller Clement Byrne Christesen (1911-2003), a contact from as early as 1944 of Fedor Andreevich Nosov, a NKGB/KI co-optee and cadre worker. The most detailed study of Soviet espionage in Australia has noted: "The Christesens were his main social acquaintances in Melbourne." (62)

Christesen was an activist in the Soviet-sponsored "peace" movement throughout the 1950s and was distressed that many people withdrew from the peace movement "because of the Big Smear" or fear of being identified or associated with communist and pro-Soviet peace movements. (63)

Christesen suffered from political amnesia during the 1954 Royal Commission on Espionage (the so-called Petrov Royal Commission) and claimed that he and his wife Nina had met Nosov in 1945 or 1946 and "could not remember the name of the hotel.... How he came to invite us we cannot recall". (64) The Christesens first met Nosov on 12 July 1944. On 12 July 1945, Nosov wrote to Christesen, referring to the "last time I saw you in Melbourne", and offered to forward his correspondence to the Soviet Writers' Committee. (65) In February 1946, Christesen wrote to the Soviet Embassy to obtain a copy of "Mr Stalin's recent address in Moscow". (66)

Nina Christesen visited the Soviet Embassy on 6 December 1949. An ASIO report described her paying the taxi fare, tipping the driver and asking him to wait. A few minutes later she emerged from the Embassy, tipped the driver again and told him "they would take her back". Another ASIO source observed that she made a separate visit to the Embassy later in the evening. (67) Nina Christesen's operational history has yet to be documented, but she repeated the "party line" when she wrote to her mother-in-law claiming that the Royal Commission into Espionage was a conspiracy and an attempt to destroy the Labor Party. (68)

After the 1954 Petrov defection, Clement Christesen incorrectly claimed that "my wife and I were admitted to deal exclusively with VOKS matters", (69) but the Christesen files reveal a long record of contact with the Soviet embassy.

On 18 November 1954, Christesen and his wife were interviewed in the ASIO public office for one and a half hours. Christesen falsely claimed: "The interrogation (interview) was to frighten us out of any non-conformist views in the future." (70) However, the official record of the interview reveals the Christesens as febrile and submissive--he described himself as "very politically minded" and "obsessed" with civil liberties. Christesen was informed that, according to Petrov, Christesen's KGB code-name was the curiously appropriate "Crab". Christesen's reaction was to state to ASIO that he hoped his code-name would not be published. (71)

Nina Christesen admitted to ASIO that she had met socially with Soviet identities Mikhenev, Nosov, Sadnivokov and Petrov. (72) The Christesens made disparaging comments on Soviet art and literature--they "appeared to be most anxious to give us all the information in their possession ... and were most co-operative" (73). Christesen, however, continued corresponding with Ian Milner, then living in Prague, and they became "friends". Milner thanked Christesen for informing him of "his experience with the commission". (74) In 1954, Christesen wrote to Milner complaining that "the main trouble is to find local reviewers who are sufficiently progressive.... I very much welcome support from you. Please keep in touch". (75) In August 1956, Milner wrote to Christesen tasking him to supply information concerning his case. (76) Professor Petr Hruby, the eminent historian, has revealed through archival research that Milner was recruited as a Soviet agent in Melbourne in 1944 under the code name BUR. (77)

After the Royal Commission report found "grave suspicion" in regard to Milner, Christesen offered to publish a refutation. Milner agreed that "a vital principle of civil liberty" was involved, but tactfully declined. (78) Christesen visited Milner in Prague in August 1957, but in 1972 he wrote to Margot Miller that it was "odd that I didn't hear from him again". Christesen did not realise he had lost his operational value to Milner, who had few friends--only contacts. (79)

Christesen had never written a significant original work and was renowned for malevolence to non-fellow-travellers. However, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society, the Britannica Australia Award for the Humanities, a gold medal for the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies, an honorary Fellowship of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, an Emeritus Fellowship of the Australia Council, and a D. Litt conferred by Monash University.

He was particularly pleased to accept the OBE "with delight". (80) Rarely has a fellow-traveller been rewarded with such undeserved honours.

CONCLUSION

The rapidity of the collapse of the Soviet Union ensured that many archives remained intact. The release of Soviet archives has enabled a re-examination of the role of fellow-travellers and their relationship with Soviet intelligence for the first time in 75 years. In 1995, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) released the Venona Project decrypts relating to the Canberra-Moscow link in Australia from 1943-1948. Regrettably, for technical reasons, only a fraction of the 200 messages could be decrypted and translated.

The release of intelligence archives in Australia through the Australian National Archives, (81) in the USA, (82) in the former Soviet Union, (83) and in former Eastern European regimes (84) provides researchers with the necessary documentation to examine the evidence on Cold-War issues previously regarded as "unprovable" and "controversial". The question of the degree of Soviet support for international terrorism caused many divisions in the CIA, but the widespread nature of that support is now regarded as proven. The Bulgarian and Stasi role in the papal assassination attempt in 1980 has also been disclosed. (85)

The claim that the U.S. used germ warfare in the Korea War, promoted by Australian journalist and communist agent Wilfred Burchett, (86) has been revealed to be a Soviet disinformation and active measures campaign. (87)

Scholars now have access to archives relating to: Soviet payments to fellow-travellers; illegal transfer of arms to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Irish Republican Army (IRA); inciting demonstrations; clandestine training and falsification of passports; funding of foreign communist parties and groups; organisation and planning of secret radio communications; payment for travel to the Soviet Union; financial assistance to pro-Soviet business ventures; conducting anti-Semitic campaigns in Western countries; providing publishing equipment and funding newspapers for disinformation purposes; subsidising front organisations, communist parties, terrorist groups and agents of influence; the Soviet role in installing Kim Il-Sung as dictator of North Korea; Stalin's supply of arms to North Korea and Stalin's approval of Kim Il-Sung's invasion plans in 1949; and myriad clandestine Soviet assets throughout the globe. (88)

1. David Caute, The Fellow-Travellers (London: Quartet Books, 1973). Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China and Cuba (New York: Harper, 1983). Paul Hollander, "The Ideological Pilgrim", Encounter, Vol. 41 (5), November 1973. Patrick O'Brien, The Saviours: An Intellectual History of the Left in Australia (Melbourne: Drummond, 1977), pp. 79-80, 84, 115. Stuart Macintyre, The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality (Melbourne: Allen and Unwin, 2005), pp. 366-378. J. McNair, "Visiting the Future: Australian (Fellow) Travellers in Soviet Russia", Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol. 46, No 4, 2000, pp. 463-470.

2. AIM Report 8 November 1993. XXI, 22.

3. Vasili Mitrokhin, "Active Measures in South East Asia in 1980-82", Cold War International History Project Collection: The Mitrokhin Archive (KGB, April 2004), supplied by former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin.

4. Christopher Andrew and Vasily Mitrokhin, The KGB and the World--The Mitrokhin Archive II (London: Penguin Books, 2006), p. 2.

5. Richard H. Shultz and Roy Godson, Dezinformatsia: Active Measures in Soviet Strategy (New York: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1984), p. 112.

6. Stephen Koch, Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals (London: HarperCollins, 1995), p. 337.

7. Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990), pp. 56-57. Note: Comintern refers to an international organisation of communist parties established by Lenin in 1919.

8. Koch, op. cit., p.337.

9. H. Zogbaum, Kisch in Australia--The Untold Story (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2004), pp. 20-23.

10. Ibid.

11. Arthur Koestler, The Invisible Writing (London: Collins, 1954), pp. 283-285.

12. R.V. Hall, The Rhodes Scholar Spy (Sydney: Random House 1991). CIS Report, dated 5 April 1943.

13. C. Andrew and O. Gordievsky, op. cit., p.198.

14. M. David-Fox, "The Fellow-Travellers Revisited: The Cultured West through Soviet Eyes", The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 75, June 2003, pp. 300-335.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ludmilla Stern, "The All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries and French Intellectuals", The Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol. 45, 1999, pp. 99-109. M. David-Fox, "From Illusory Society to Intellectual Public: VOKS, international travel and party-intelligentsia relations in the inter-war period", Cambridge Journal of History, Vol. 11, 2002, pp. 7-32.

19. Don Watson, Brian Fitzpatrick--A Radical Life (Sydney: Hale and Ironmonger, Sydney, 1979), p. xvii.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. ASIO, Brian Fitzpatrick, PF A6119, National Archives of Australia. His ASIO personal files are voluminous.

25. Promotional sheet, The Australian Council for Civil Liberties, February 1941, Ian George Milner, A 6119 Vol. 5, F. 17.

26. The Guardian (Melbourne), 22 April 1953. The Guardian was the Australian Communist Party's weekly newspaper.

27. Don Watson, op. cit., p. 219.

28. Lloyd Gordon Churchward (1919-1998), obituary, Labour History (74), May 1998.

29. B. Fitzpatrick, "Foreword" to Lloyd Churchward, The Myth of Soviet Imperialism: Soviet Foreign Policy Explained (Melbourne: Coronation Press, 1952), pp. 1-2.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid. (Churchward is referring to Soviet budget figures.)

32. B. Fitzpatrick, op. cit.

33. Jewish Herald, 30 January 1953.

34. Ibid.

35. Don Watson, op. cit., p. 281.

36. ASIO Reports AA CRS A 6238/11 fff.14-18.

37. R. Manne, The Petrov Affair (Sydney: Pergamon, 1987), p. 251.

38. Wayne Smith, "Manning Clark and the Courier-Mail", Quadrant (349) Vol. 42 (9), September 1998, pp. 40-43. W. Maley, "Dangerous Liaisons", Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 7 September 1998, p. 27. Christopher Pearson, "Without doubt an agent of the Left", Courier-Mail, 24 May 1996.

39. ASIO, Top Secret, 25 June 1964, Regional Director, ASIO Headquarters, National Archives of Australia.

40. Desmond Ball and David Horner, Breaking the Codes: Australia's KGB Network 1944-1950, (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998), p. 256. Ball and Horner claim Clark also visited Milner in Prague in 1984.

41. ASIO Brief No. 4, "Professor Manning Clark: Discussion with Evdokia Petrov, in Safe House", 5 December 1956, National Archives of Australia.

42. The Soviet officers' list has been compiled from intercepts of the Soviet Embassy and Clark's ASIO personal files (1949-1973), Australian National Archives. In 1963, Clark renewed his passport in order to visit the UK, the USA, Europe, USSR, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria Hungary, Romania and East Germany, according to an ASIO extract from Passport Application List, ACT Memo C/1/3 (1614), 25 June 1963.

43. ASIO telephone intercept of Judah Leon Waten, 10 November 1964.

44. Victor Cherkashin and Gregory Feifer, Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer (New York: Perseus Press, 2005).

45. ASIO secret intercept report on Clark-Waten contact. Vic W 223/125 incoming call.

46. C.M.H. Clark, Meeting Soviet Man (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1960), passim.

47. Ball and Horner, op. cit., p. 256.

48. Clark, op. cit., back cover. The publishers record Clark's qualifications.

49. Ibid., p. 6.

50. Ibid., passim.

51. Ibid., p. 48.

52. Clark's change of appearance was recorded by his publisher and fellow academics who believed he had undergone a form of conversion. He had not.

53. Ibid., p. 68.

54. Ibid., p. 116.

55. Patrick O'Brien, Extract from "The Ideology Man", Amity, Feb. 2003, pp. 25-32. The complete text of Clark's speech, located in Government Archive of the Russian Federation, fond 9576, Opis 7, Delo 346, pp. 47-53, is included in the article.

56. Peter Charlton, "Manning: His Own Words", Courier-Mail, 24 May 1997, on Clark's secret speech to the 1970 Lenin celebrations in Moscow.

57. Clark's "Secret Speech", passim.

58. Vladimir Volkoff, The Set-Up, A. Sheridan trans. (London: Methuen, 1985), p. 75. I. Adie, "The Set-Up", Quadrant, January-February 1984, pp. 113-114. H. Colebatch, "The literature of disinformation: a review of The Set-Up" Quadrant, April 1986, pp. 53-54.

59. Patrick O'Brien, op. cit. Gordievsky was interviewed by the Brisbane Courier-Mail on Clark's status.

60. Information from confidential ACT sources.

61. Judah Leon Waten, VPF 1181 ASIO telephone intercept report: 19 November 1964.

62. Desmond Ball and David Horner, op. cit.

63. Correspondence located in Melbourne University Archives--Meanjin collection.

64. Christesen to J. Meagher, 23 November 1954.

65. Nosov to Christesen, 27 July 1945.

66. Christesen to Secretary Legation of the USSR, Canberra.

67. Nina Christesen, ASIO PF. AA 6119 Item 94. F4.

68. N. Christesen to her mother-in-law Susan Christesen, 8 February 1955.

69. Statement to reporter by Clement Christesen, Dr Ascot, 2 May 1955.

70. Christesen to Dymphna Cusack, 15 December 1954.

71. Three-page ASIO memorandum for Deputy-Director General (Operations) 12/181, dated 25 November 1954.

72. Ibid.

73. Ibid.

74. Ian Milner to Christesen, 22 August 1856.

75. C. Christesen to Milner, 7 May 1954.

76. I. Milner to Christesen, 29 August 1956.

77. Petr Hruby, "Agent Jansky--an Australian in the employ of the StB and KGB", Securitas Imperii, No. 8, Prague: Office of the Documentation and the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism, Police of the Czech Republic, no date. The complete text can be accessed at www.mvcr.cz/policie/udv/securita/sbornika8/jnsky.html

78. Milner to Meanjin secretary, 3 December 1956.

79. Christesen to Margot Miller, 16 February 1972.

80. "The OBE was for our best editor", Sydney Morning Herald, 5 July 2003.

81. The voluminous files held by the Australia National Archives are a national treasure. The dedicated archive staff sets the standard for service to the public.

82. Ball and Horner's study of Soviet espionage in Australia derives from VENONA transcripts of decrypted cables released by the U.S. Government in 1995.

83. Sean McMeekin's study, The Red Millionaire: a Political Biography of Willi Munzenberg, was based on material discovered in the Russian Government Archive of Social Political History (RGASPI). See The Red Millionaire: "A note on the Archives". Stephen Koch's Double Lives, op. cit., pp. 333-338, refers to his use of the archives held by the Russian Centre for the Preservation and Study Documents of Modern History in Moscow which is also the central repository for the Comintern archives.

84. Dr Petr Hruby's research in Czech archives identified Ian Milner as a KGB and StB agent. "The Secret Life of Agent 9006", Courier-Mail, 30 November 1996. Based on documentation located in the archives of the Prague Ministry of the Interior. PF 9006 from 25 10 1957 and PF 621743 from 29 11 1960 with later additions. Dr Hruby has also established that Milner's second wife Jarmilia was recruited on 7 February 1951 under the cover-names HALBICH and JULIE. Manning Clark later acted as her sponsor to visit Adelaide.

85. Correspondence between KDS and Stasi regarding the "Bulgarian Connection", 1982-1985, Federal Service for STASI archives.

86. Assessing Burchett's relationship to the Vietnamese, Hungarian, Czech and Chinese intelligence services, as well as the KGB, remains a challenge for researchers.

87. Explanatory note from Lieutenant Selianov to L.P. Beria, 14 Aril 1953. This describes Selianov's role in falsifying an outbreak and blaming it on American biological weapons. Cold War International History Project. Virtual Archive.

88. Vladimir Bukovsky's website INFORUSS: "Soviet Archives contain many lists of Soviet subventions". On Soviet financing of global subversion, see Andrew Campbell, "Moscow's gold: Soviet financing of global subversion", National Observer, Issue 40, Autumn 1999.