Chapter Two—Sergei Zorin: Alexander Gumberg—Hide in Plain Sight and Admit Nothing: Counter-intelligence Analysis of the first Bolshevik Influence Agent
Book One: Refuting James Libbey’s Gumberg Biography
James K. Libbey's biography, Alexander Gumberg & Soviet-American relations, 1917-1933, published in 1977, is the only full-length reference work on an important, but astonishingly ignored historical personality. From 1917 until his death in 1939, Alexander Gumberg played a crucial and pivotal role in relations between revolutionary Bolsheviks, and then the Soviet regime, and U.S. business, society, and government. From the early days of the Bolshevik coup/revolution, to the first decades of the Soviet government, Gumberg was a Gump-like figure, popping up at many crucial points in the first two decades of Soviet-American relations.
This four-part examination of Libbey’s Gumberg book provides factual and critical analysis of Libbey’s grievously misguided research and errors in analytical conclusions, in an attempt to correct the historical record. As the only full-length examination of Alexander Gumberg’s life and role in Russian-American relations, Libbey’s book badly distorts the historical record. Libbey failed to find, ignored, or down-played massive evidence of Gumberg’s status as an agent of first, revolutionary international socialism, then as a (relatively) covert agent of the Bolsheviks, and then as an agent of the Soviet Union.
For a more complete introduction to this series, please see Part One and the Introduction.
Libbey’s Treatment of Zorin (aka Josef Gumberg)
This part of the series considers Libbey’s treatment of Alex Gumberg’s brother, Josef Gumberg (alternate spelling Joseph is also seen in some sources), who adopted the Bolshevik pseudonymn Sergei Zorin. Zorin was an important key to Gumberg’s success as an influence agent.
Zorin’s position near the pinnacle of Bolshevik power, and his close relationship with Alex, are the ingredients that empowered Alex’s operations. Combined with Alex’s own covert work with Bolshevik leaders, Alex’s likely covert training and work with, and for, the highest levels of Bolshevik/Soviet intelligence, Zorin’s role in Bolshevik leadership is fundamental to understanding the truth of Alex’s operational affiliations.
Thus, a full and honest examination of Zorin, his relationship with Alex, and his role in the Bolshevik, and later Soviet power structure is imperative to understanding Alex’s ability to gain unfettered access to the highest Bolsheviks and to act as an intermediary for these communist leaders and Alex’s American targets, feeding them the desired Bolshevik influence payload.
In this chapter, we’ll analyze Libbey’s assertions about Zorin. Following that, we’ll present sources that support the factual details used to refute Libbey’s distorted picture of Zorin, and to further reveal details of Zorin’s life that Libbey chose to ignore or hide.
Libbey’s Assertions Regarding Zorin
…Sergei [sic] [Note: Josef Gumberg, brother of Alexander] …assumed the revolutionary pseudonym Zorin, briefly visited the United States. Zorin, the ardent Bolshevik in the family, did not find life in America appealing. He worked as an unskilled laborer and left the United States in 1917 with Trotsky and other Russian-American emigres. Although never a public figure, Zorin's name and form loom up again and again as a troubleshooter within the inner circles of the Bolshevik party. This brotherly relationship would later facilitate Gumberg's movement among the Bolshevik elite even though he never joined the party.
(Libbey, page 15)
Of Libbey's nine assertions in this excerpt, one is fully true, two are totally false, and six are half-truths.
Libbey’s Truth
First the truth.
Libbey: …Sergei…assumed the revolutionary pseudonym Zorin…
Yes, Josef Gumberg did assume the revolutionary pseudonym of Zorin. It appears that he only began using Zorin after his return to Russia in 1917. But even in this seemingly simple recitation of fact, Libbey’s only fully true assertion about Zorin, falseness creeps in. There’s no record of Josef Gumberg using the name Sergei before 1917. So, when Josef Gumberg assumed the revolutionary pseudonym Zorin, he also assumed the first name Sergei. Sergei did not assume the pseudonym. Josef Gumberg assumed the pseudonym Sergei Zorin. Maybe Libbey missed the sources on Josef Gumberg’s activities in the U.S. because he did not know Alex’s brother’s true name?
Libbey’s Half-truths
Libbey: …Zorin, the ardent Bolshevik in the family…
Zorin was definitely an ardent Bolshevik. Libbey’s half-truth is hidden in his use of the definite article the. This implies that there were no other Bolsheviks in the family. Or that there were other Bolsheviks, but there were not ardent Bolsheviks. Either way, this is obfuscation, a half-truth. Both Alex and Veniamin Gumberg worked ardently for the cause of the Bolsheviks and socialist revolution, both for more than 20 years.
Libbey: …did not find life in America appealing….
Libbey makes this assertion apparently to support his thesis that Zorin was just a low-level goombah looking for a fulfilling role loading trucks, or something, and did not find that fulfillment in the U.S. The fact is that Zorin spent eight years in America honing his skills as a socialist/Bolshevik/communist agitator and revolutionary. His years in America built his network among American socialists, Russian diaspora revolutionaries, and the international socialist movement.
Zorin was on the editorial board of Novy Mir, a prominent Russian language socialist journal published in New York City, with offices in Greenwich Village. At Novy Mir, Josef worked with the highest level of Bolshevik revolutionaries.
Josef participated in leadership roles in American labor unrest and at least one violent strike. His work in the U.S. prepared him for his role in the Bolshevik coup, and for his managerial role in the new Russian Bolshevik empire, and the Comintern. So, maybe Zorin’s activities in the U.S. were not appealing, but only when compared with his activities as a leading member of the Bolshevik elite after 1917.
Libbey: He worked as an unskilled laborer…
This is a half-truth, at best. Zorin might have worked, at some point during his eight years of residence in the U.S. as an unskilled laborer (or maybe it's better to say that he may have pretended to work as a laborer). Evidence shows that Zorin was an active socialist agitator and organizer while in the U.S., and was a high-level member of the editorial staff of the Novy Mir. Not coincidentally, Zorin's editorial stint at the paper coincided with his brother Alex's work as the publisher, or business manager of the communist paper. And both of them shared tenure at the paper with future Bolshevik commissars of the highest level, including Trotsky, Bukharin, Kollontai, and others.
Libbey: …and left the United States in 1917 with Trotsky and other Russian-American emigres.
Another half-truth. Yes, Zorin did leave the U.S., at roughly the same time as Trotsky in 1917, to return to Russia to take part in the revolution, but not with Trotsky. Alex Gumberg revealed in a letter to Esther Siebel that Zorin left New York on a train, taking the western route with Alex. Zorin did not leave New York by ship to the east via Canada and Europe as did Trotsky and his group of revolutionaries.
Saturday, April 14,1917
[Letterhead]: Canadian Pacific Ocean Services Ltd.
R.M.S. "Empress of Russia
….
I feel very much like in the Novy Mir aboard this ship. I have sitting next to me all the gang - my brother, both Lizas, the little Jacka [sic], Mr. Newson [sic], Mr. Rolinabo, Mr. Agareff, and many others whom you know and don't know.
We had quite a scare on the day our ship sailed. All the newspapers had big glaring headlines about "submarines in the Pacific." Our ship sailed 11 p.m. instead of 11 a.m. All lights were put out, all life boats were ready. It made a gloomy sight. It made our ship change its course, and I expect it will take our ship a few days extra to get to Japan. The danger is not yet over. And everybody is looking out for submarines. As soon as we got out in the open sea yesterday it became very rough and almost everybody got sick. Through the pull that I have with the C.P.R. [Note: probably Canadian Pacific Railroad] I got for myself a first class cabin, which would cost me otherwise $400.00. I paid only $75.00. It was given entirely to myself, although it is supposed to accommodate 3 people. Not to be lonesome I took in the Englishman I met aboard the train. My brother [Note: Josef Gumberg, Zorin] got also a separate first class cabin for him and his spouse. All the other Russians got second-class cabins, and naturally they were sore at us first.
Source: Siebel letters, Gumberg to Edith.
The Gumberg brothers and other Novy Mir and associated Russian socialist revolutionaries traveled via Canada, Japan, Vladivostok, and then the trans-Siberian railroad en route to Petrograd to apply their energies to the coming coup and join their revolutionary comrades, including Trotsky. From Gumberg’s boasting of his own and Zorin’s first-class travel, and the prices for the cabins for himself, Zorin, and all the other Russians, we can infer that Gumberg was coordinating the travel of the revolutionaries, and likely doling out the funds. This would be fully in keeping with Alex Gumberg’s “business” cover story (to be discussed fully later), and with both the Gumbergs’ high-level roles in the Russian socialist pecking order.
Libbey: …Zorin's name looms up…as a troubleshooter within the Bolshevik party.
Another half-truth, in fact it’s not even half true, more like one-tenth true. Libbey’s economical use of the truth is actually a lie. A lie apparently intended to minimize Alexander Gumberg’s family and home-town connections to the highest levels of the Bolshevik regime.
Yes, Zorin could have done troubleshooting in the Bolshevik party. However, Libbey's version seems to be an attempt to minimize Zorin's role to some sort of low-level functionary fixer. Which is false, as the extensive historical faces, presented later in this chapter, including a timeline of the high-level Bolshevik/Soviet leadership positions Zorin held, shows.
Deep dives into hidden Soviet archives are not required to discover that Zorin was a high-level leader within the Bolshevik and Soviet Communist Party, and the government of the USSR. From the fall of 1917 till Lenin’s death, Zorin was publicly hailed as an active participant in leadership meetings that created the foundation for Bolshevik rule, the Comintern, and all other communist governance. Zorin was not a lowly trouble-shooter. Zorin was a Bolshevik, Communist, Soviet leader until his repression, as a Zinovievite and Trotskyite.
Alexander Gumberg’s brother operated at the highest levels of the USSR’s terrorist regime, all while Alex Gumberg pretended he was just a Russian-American businessman who could bridge the gap between his “two beloved countries.” Contemporaries of Gumberg knew of Zorin’s status as a communist leader, and many contemporary sources, including newspaper reporting, books, government reports, and others, provide details of Zorin’s status.
Researching from a distance of thirty-plus years after Zorin and Alex’s deaths, Libbey could have found numerous sources to flesh out Zorin’s actual status. Instead, Libbey waved his hands and turned Zorin, a powerful Bolshevik/Soviet leader, into a failed laborer who went back to Russia to do a bit of trouble-shooting. This half-truth may be the most egregious of Libbey’s attempts to obfuscate the truth of Gumberg’s status as an operative of the Bolshevik/Communist/Soviet machine with wide and deep connections to the very top of that machine.
Libbey: This brotherly relationship would later facilitate Gumberg's movement among the Bolshevik elite even though he never joined the party.
Even when Libbey makes a true statement, a denialist addendum, and feigned ignorance of Alex’s actual role in the Bolshevik organization, pre- and post-revolution, reduces it to half-truth.
Yes, Alex’s brother Zorin was a key to Alex’s power as an influence operator. Unmentioned, and ignored, is the fact that Alex himself, for years before the revolution was known to be a powerful figure in the Bolshevik/Menshevik/Socialist power structure in the U.S. His managerial role at Novy Mir was high-level and visible, with Alex appearing in American media as the publisher, with serious responsibilities for supporting and advancing the national and international goals of socialist revolution in the U.S., Russia, and the world. This is another minimization of Alex’s true background.
In addition, the qualifying assertion that Alex never joined the party again creates a half-truth. What Libbey might mean with this assertion is that Libbey never saw a Communist Party membership card with the name Alexander Gumberg on it. Or maybe what he means is that Alex himself said, I never joined the Party. Or maybe he means that others vouched for Alex, asserting that he had never joined the Party. Regardless of what he actually meant by that assertion, it reveals another example of incurious and willful ignorance.
The history of the operating techniques, strategies, and tactics of Bolsheviks, and international socialist and communist parties, is well known. During the era of Alex’s prime operational activities (1910-1939), it is well known that the international socialist/communist conspirators used what they called illegal operations to infiltrate their operators into areas where overt acknowledgement of Party affiliation would doom the operator. Bolshevik operators before the revolution were highly trained and skilled in espionage tactics and techniques, including using aliases, hiding their true affiliations, secret membership in the Party, and other covert tradecraft (McKnight, 2001).
A most effective mode of operation, in fact, is to avoid any public affiliation with the Communist party. Especially for influence operations, keeping a veneer of plausible deniability can empower an operator to move in circles that would be closed to him if he was publicly affiliated with a party, or was an overt member. Regardless, Soviet covert operatives’ response to exposure was to deny everything.
Thus, we do not know, and probably never will, whether or not Alex was a card-carrying Communist. But whether he was, or was not, a card-carrying member of a Communist Party does not matter. Libbey’s half-truth here can be ignored. Instead, we’ll focus on Alex’s actions, associates, affiliations, and deeds. Those facts provide a true picture of who and what Alex Gumberg was.
Instead of relying on the Lilley’s willfully naïve assertion, that Gumberg never joined the party, I use a counter-intelligence-informed lens to consider Gumberg’s actions. I also consider the testimony and descriptions of Gumberg and his actions provided by his contemporaries: before, during, and after the Bolshevik Revolution. Later parts of this series will undertake that full examination.
Libbey’s Falsehoods
As for Libbey's totally false assertions:
Libbey: …[Zorin] briefly visited the United States….
Zorin arrived in the U.S., as recorded by U.S. immigration, and confirmed by Siebel eyewitness descriptions, in 1908. Media and other descriptions, as well as Russian biographic profiles of Zorin, show him active in Russian revolutionary and American socialist circles in the U.S., from his arrival in 1908 until he left America on his revolutionary hegira back to Russia in April, 1917. Zorin spent a full eight years in the U.S. This is not a brief visit.
Libbey: Although not a public figure…
Just one picture punctures this bald-faced lie. Delegates to the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, in March 1919, gathered for a photo. Zorin is front and center, sitting at Lenin's feet.
First row, left to right: I. Smilga, V. Schmidt, S. Zorin. Middle row, left to right: G. Evdokimov, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, M. Kalinin, P. Smorodin. Upper row, left to right: ?, P. Malkov, E. Rahja, S. G. Said-Galiev, P. Zalutsky, J. Drobnis, M. Tomsky, M. Kharitonov, A. Joffe, D. Ryazanov, A. Badaev, L. Serebryakov, M. Lashevich.
(Source: Wikipedia.commons.org)
Zorin operated at the highest levels of the Bolshevik party--from its beginnings in the coup of 1917, till his comrades put a bullet in his head in 1937. From the revolution, through every twist and turn of Bolshevik/Soviet political events, Zorin was there—beside, in front of, behind the Bolshevik/Soviet leaders: Trotsky, Lenin, Zinoviev, Stalin, Bukharin, Kollontai, Serebriakov, et al.
Details of Zorin's twenty years of active and public exposure as a high-level Bolshevik/Soviet Commissar, including articles in the smallest of local American newspapers, have been available for any researcher interested in documenting the truth. [Note: See sections in this chapter, below, reproducing clippings from American newspaper articles, from 1917 to the 1930s, featuring Zorin.]
Why would Libbey, a professional researcher, ignore Zorin’s true role, and minimize Zorin’s Bolshevik pedigree? Doing so obscures the true nature of the role Zorin’s brother, Alexander Gumberg, played in Bolshevik operations.
While today's online research environment makes finding the evidence summarized above, and below, a bit easier, Libbey, in the 1970s, could also have found and shared nearly all of the details of Zorin's (and Alex's) activities and affiliations in the U.S. with communist/socialist/revolutionary organizations, publications, and individuals. There are even clues in Gumberg’s archived papers to his covert role.
That Libbey chose not to find and/or share and analyze honestly the clues to the Gumbergs’ obvious roles as high-level Bolsheviks is a damning indictment of Libbey’s entire Gumberg work, and its resultant conclusions. The historical record deserves to be corrected.
Analytical Conclusion: Libbey Obfuscated Zorin’s Profile to Obscure Alexander Gumberg’s True Role in Bolshevik Operations
While the evidence and sources for this analytical conclusion are presented below, it is important to put the conclusion up front, so that it is not lost in the blizzard of corroborating details.
Libbey's minimizing the importance of Zorin's American sojourn (life in America [not] appealing, and unskilled laborer) appears to be brush-strokes in Libbey's attempt to whitewash Alexander Gumberg as a disinterested observer of the Bolshevik cause.
If Zorin was tightly integrated into Alexander's life in America; and if Alexander and Zorin worked together at the Bolshevik newspaper, Novy Mir, with Trotsky and multiple other Bolshevik elites; and if Zorin was active in high-level socialist circles in America and later was in the highest levels of Bolshevik leadership; and if Alex worked for the Bolshevik elite and nascent intelligence services in Russia during the revolution, and in America afterwards, then the foundation of the façade of Alexander, the American uninterested in communism crumbles to dust.
Evidence shows incontrovertibly that all those factors are true, and that Zorin was an elite Bolshevik leader, in the U.S. and in Russia; and that Alex Gumberg worked for, and with, Bolshevik/Soviet intelligence operators and management—from the top leaders of the Cheka—including, but not limited to, Dzerzhinsky and Jacob Peters—to undercover operatives in his later years operating in America—including, but not limited to, Serebriakov and Skivirsky. All the while, Alex Gumberg hid in plain sight, denying the obvious truth of his affiliation, backed by a chorus of American willing accomplices singing the same song.
Zorin's Biography and Story: Documents and Evidence
Zorin's Background
Records indicate that he was born Josef Gumberg, and later adopted the Bolshevik revolutionary name of Sergei Zorin (in Russian: Сергей Зорин). In some sources his patronymic is included: Sergei Semyonovich Zorin (in Russian: Сергей Семёнович Зорин). He may have used other names, and there are alternative spellings in English of all his names, but the birthdate, physical description, and contemporary photographs all are clues to his real identity.
There appears to be confusion in some sources between Alexander and Zorin (as well as confusion between Alexander and other Bolshevik operators--of which, more later). However, birthdates, photos, contemporary sources, and applied analysis reveal the true identities of the brothers.
Zorin was born sometime between 1890 and 1892 (sources differ). His older brother Alex was born in 1888. Like all the Gumberg siblings, they were born in Elizavetgrad, Kherson region, in the Jewish Pale of Settlement (later to be Ukraine), in the Russian empire. The Gumbergs were born citizens of Russia.
Zorin was the third son (after Veniamin and Alexander) of Shlemo-Zelman “Semen” Binyaminovich Gumberg, and Sosie Shneerovna Blumkin. The father of the Gumberg brothers, Semen Gumberg, is shown in some records to have been some sort of religious scholar, but that detail is not supported by documents or other evidence.
Searches revealed no records or indications of Zorin's education, or work experience, before he immigrated to the U.S. in 1908.
Zorin followed Alex's arc of migration. Alex preceded Zorin to New York, arriving in 1903. Alex was welcomed into the American branch of the Elizavetgrad network, and lived with the Elizavetgrad-native Siebel family, recent immigrants to the Lower East Side of Manhattan. So, too, was Zorin welcomed into the network of Elizavetgrad natives in the U.S. in 1908.
As evidence reveals, the Elizavetgrad network provided contacts and a ready-made path to the top of the Bolshevik elite--in both overt and covert roles.
Sources Documenting Zorin’s Activities and Associations
Sources below are presented, as nearly as possible, in the chronological order of Zorin’s life. These sources illuminate some events in Zorin’s life.
Dec 17, 1908: Zorin’s Arrival in the U.S.
On December 17, 1908 Josef Gumberg arrived in New York City on the Red Star Line's SS Vaderland. U.S. immigration recorded Josef Gumberg’s birthdate as about 1892, making him about 16 years old on arrival [Note: this conflicts with most other records of Zorin's birth year, which date his birth in 1890, making him eighteen on arrival].
Transcribed details from U.S. Immigration Record of Zorin’s Arrival in New York, {Source: Ancestry.com}
Copy of U.S. Immigration Record of Zorin’s Arrival in New York,
Source: Ancestry.com
The immigration officer noted Josef's Hebrew ethnicity. Misunderstanding the Russian pronunciation of his hometown, the immigration officer recorded a garbled version of Elizavetgrad, Russia as his birthplace. In response to the immigration officer's request for details of who he was joining in the U.S. Josef responded: Brother, Alex Gumberg, New York, 1480 Madison Ave. As for information on his closest relative in his country of origin, Josef responded: Brother, Beny Gumberg, Elizavetgrad.
When asked if he had $50, Zorin answered “No,” and claimed to have $8.00 in his pocket.
The Madison Avenue address for Alex Gumberg was the home of the Siebels, the Elizavetgrad-native family which plays a large role in the Gumberg saga, as do two other Elizavetgrad natives--Trotsky and Zinoviev.
The Gumberg brother, Beny, back home in Elizavetgrad is the eldest Gumberg brother, Veniamin, who left less documentary or other evidence than Alex and Zorin.
Siebel Family Correspondence about Josef Gumberg
The Siebel family was in the thick of socialist revolutionary activities in New York, and Alex and Josef Gumberg were right there with them. The mother, Katia Poberesky Siebel, was a firebrand socialist organizer and agitator. She shared the stage with Emma Goldman at a socialist anti-conscription event in New York City (see ad reproduced below).
(Source: advertisement in socialist magazine, The Blast, 1917)
When Goldman and her terrorist paramour, Alexander Berkman, were deported from the U.S. in 1921 as undesirable aliens, after Berkman served his prison sentence for an attempted murder, their official greeter and handler upon arrival in Bolshevik Russia was commissar Zorin (nee Josef Gumberg), their old acquaintance from New York’s socialist milieu. [Note: See newspaper articles below.]
As detailed in Part One of this series (Introduction and Overview), the Siebel family personal correspondence is a rich primary source of details on the Gumbergs, and the Russian revolutionary socialist milieu in the USA in the early twentieth century. Letters between members of the Siebel family, and letters from Alex Gumberg contain details of Zorin and Alex Gumberg’s lives, personalities, and activities. Although these sources were not available to Libbey during his research, the weight of other evidence refutes Libbey’s analysis and conclusions about the Gumbergs.
The Cannata-discovered cache of Siebel correspondence is an important historical find that illuminates the Gumbergs’ deep commitments to the Russian socialist/Bolshevik/communist cause. The Siebel correspondence alone is cause enough to correct the faulty historical record wrought by Libbey.
December 26, 1908: Joseph Gumberg just arrived; Good-looking, but cannot speak English
Nine days after Zorin arrived in New York, Siebel family correspondence records Josef's resilience in adapting to his new city. This Siebel letter mentions Josef Gumberg’s arrival, and provides a visual portrait. Esther Siebel also provides evidence that Josef Gumberg could not speak English when he arrived in the USA.
Did I ever tell you that Alex Gumberg's brother came to America from Russia? He is good looking all right. Big ears like Sosha's [Note: Affectionate Russian nickname for Alexander] though. He is here only one week or even less than that and he came from Blum's house in Brownsville to our house all alone. Oh, you ought to hear ME talk Russian. When he came here I wanted to say to him Drosvitse (long e at the end), meaning hello, and I said dosvidonia, meaning good-bye. He at first looked at me in surprise and then he understood MY language & began to laugh. I would just as much have said to him good-bye, go home, here's your hat, what's your hurry.
(Source: Siebel correspondence; Esther to Peter)
In the same letter, Esther Siebel advised her brother that the Siebel household planned to attend the Russian Revolutionists' ball on New Year's Eve 1908-09.
January 5, 1909: Joseph Gumberg at the Russian Revolutionists Ball in New York
The next week, Esther Siebel followed up with a report on Josef’s activities at the Russian Revolutionists Ball:
Joseph Gumberg (Alex’s brother) helped to fix the buffet & entirely fixed the wheel of fortune. Gee but he worked hard alright. I nearly broke my tongue trying to talk to him in Russian, but I managed to let him understand what I was saying to him though...
(Source: Siebel correspondence Esther to Peter)
March 12, 1909: Joseph Gumberg is a fine young chap
In a 1909 letter to her brother, Esther Siebel mentions Josef (“Alex’s brother”) in passing, as she discussed Alex Gumberg's activities in more detail. Alex lived with the Siebels in New York City for several years before Zorin arrived.
Alex Gumberg's foot is much better. He comes here nearly every day to play checkers or chess, and his brother [Note: Josef Gumberg] is a fine young chap. Alex lives with grandpa [Note: Meyer-Leib Siebelewsky, father of Alter Siebel], 1576 Lexington Ave., NYC. Do you ever write to him? He said he would write, if you write.
(Source: Siebel correspondence; Edith to Peter)
Russian Language Sources on Zorin
Zorin’s high-profile role in Bolshevik leadership is evident in the details of his life found on Russian-language websites. These sources present Zorin’s life as an active Bolshevik leader, at the highest levels of the Russian Communist Party. He started in Bolshevik leadership, and rose quickly. In 1918, early in the life of the Bolshevik state, he was Chairman of the Revolutionary Tribunal in Petrograd (the body which formalized summary trials and executions), and Executive Secretary of the Petrograd City Committee. He held other leadership positions, and by 1924 was a candidate member of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party in 1924.
Zorin was a leading figure in the Bolshevik Party, and an active administrator at the highest levels. The truth of Zorin’s career arc bears no resemblance to Libbey’s mendacious description of a troubleshooter or failed manual laborer.
Zorin's Profile on Alexander Yakovlev's Archive Website
Alexander Yakovlev was a Soviet Communist Party official. He lost faith in the communist party through the 1970s and 1980s, and became an internal dissident, even as he continued working in the system. He compiled records of atrocities and injustice committed by the Soviets. He created a Foundation, after the fall of the USSR, committed to discovery and publicizing the truth of Soviet crimes. His Foundation maintains a website with links to digitized versions of KGB and other Soviet documents. Yakovlev's work included a biographical index of victims and perpetrators of Soviet crimes. The documents are in Russian.
A lightly edited, machine-translated from Russian language, version of Yakovlev's biographical entry for Zorin follows:
Zorin (Gomberg) Sergey Semenovich
(Born: March, 1890. Died: Sept. 10, 1937)
Party and economic figure. Born in Yelisavetgrad, Kherson Governorate.
1906–1917: In exile (France, USA).
1911–1917: Member of the editorial board of the newspaper "New World" (USA).
May 1917: Returned to Russia and joined the RSDLP [Russian Socialist Democratic Labor Party].
1918: Chairman of the Petrograd Revolutionary Tribunal, commissar for foreign affairs of the Union of Communes of the Northern Region.
1919–1920: Executive secretary of the Petrograd City Committee of the RCP (Bolshevik) [Russian Communist Party].
1920–1921: Executive secretary of the Petrograd Gubkom [Gubernatorial Committee] of the RCP (Bolshevik).
1921–1922: Executive secretary of the Bryansk Gubkom of the RCP (Bolshevik).
1922–1923: Referent of the Executive Committee of the Comintern.
1923–1925: Executive secretary of the Ivanovo-Voznesensky Gubkom of the RCP (Bolshevik).
1924–1925: Candidate member of the Central Committee of the RCP (Bolshevik). Member of the Board of the Russian-Persian Bank.
December 18, 1927: Expelled from the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
1928: In construction organizations (Moscow), head of the Construction Department of the Supreme Soviet Union of the Economy of the USSR.
September 1930: Restored to the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
1931: Member of the board of "Standardzhilstroy".
January 1, 1935: Arrested. At the time of his arrest, director of the Research Institute for the Industrialization of Housing Construction.
March 26, 1935: Sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment with detention in a special regime camp (Suzdal). [Note: After the revolution the Spaso-Yevfimiev Monastery in Suzdal was used by the KGB to house political prisoners. The Suzdal prison was one of five "political isolator" prisons.]
Shot.
Cm. Documents: From minutes No. 61 of the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars on the delimitation of the functions of the investigative bodies
Zorin's Profile on Russian Language Wikipedia
Zorin’s entry in the Russian-language Wikipedia provides a full picture of Zorin’s life. But, as in some other sources, the writers confuse Josef Gumberg with Alex Gumberg. Otherwise, the facts appear to be well-founded. The version below is machine-translated, lightly edited for language and clarity.
Sergei Semyonovich Zorin
(Real name Alexander [sic] Gombarg, 1890, Elisavetgrad - September 10, 1937, Suzdal )
Biography
In 1911-1917 he emigrated to the United States, participated in the activities of the United States Socialist Party.
In March 1917 he returned to Russia (together with Trotsky), adopting the name "Sergei Semyonovich Zorin". In the same year (in May) he joined the RSDLP (b) {Note: Russian Socialist Democratic Labor Party (Bolshevik)].
Member of the establishment of Soviet power in Petrograd.
In 1918 - Chairman of the Revolutionary Tribunal in Petrograd, Commissioner for Foreign Affairs of the Northern Commune.
Birth: 1890; Elisavetgrad, Kherson province, Russian Empire
ZORIN (GOMBARG) SERGEY SEMENOVICH (1891 (sic) -1937)
1921 - 1922: Executive Secretary of the Bryansk Provincial Committee of the RCP (Bolshevik)
1924-1925: Soviet party and statesman, candidate member of the Central Committee of the RCP (b).
1923 - 1927: Executive Secretary of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Provincial Committee of the RCP (Bolshevik)
1931: Member of the Board of Standardzhilstroy, then worked as director of the Research Institute for the industrialization of housing construction.
January 1, 1935: Arrested
March 26, [1935]: Sentenced to 5 years in prison in the Suzdal political isolator [Note: the Suzdal “concentrator” prison was in Suzdal, Ivanovo region, RSFSR, USSR.]
September 10, 1937: Shot
Posthumously rehabilitated.
Family and Children
First wife - Elizaveta Yakovlevna Volgina. Daughters Natalia and Olga.
Second wife - Antonina Pavlovna Malinovskaya.
S. Zorin at the Second Congress of the Comintern (1920). Portrait by I. Brodsky. (Source: Wikipedia, Russia)
Zorin in the News (1916 to 1935)
Libbey claims that Zorin was not a public figure. Even when Libbey begrudgingly admits that Zorin had access to the inner circle of Bolsheviks, Libbey still minimizes Zorin as a trouble-shooter whose name and form loom up again and again. It’s not really clear what Libbey’s point is, but it is clear that Libbey is attempting to twist the truth about Zorin and portray him as a minor, unimportant, personality in the Bolshevik arena.
This effort is key to Libbey’s attempts to support his conclusions: Alex Gumberg’s Bolshevik profile and connections were minimal and unimportant, and Alex had no incentive or reason to work for the Bolsheviks; he was a Russian-American businessman doing the right thing, and above any suspicions that he was a Bolshevik agent.
Libbey's attempts to minimize Zorin is particularly obvious and egregious, because Zorin, and his role in the Bolshevik coup and the subsequent Bolshevik and Communist Parties were well-known from 1917 until his death in 1937, as contemporary sources show. Apparently, Libbey thought no one would notice. And apparently, few to none did; that is, until now.
Historical records and documents; books written by contemporary Americans, Europeans, and Russians; periodicals; journals; and other sources reflect Zorin's high-level status in the Bolshevik/Soviet apparatus. Most of these sources were available to Libbey. Why did Libbey either ignore, hide, or minimize these sources?
Below, I explore a range of sources, nearly all of which would have been available to Libbey in his research in the 1970s. At the end of this review of sources, ask yourself if you would be comfortable portraying Zorin as not a public figure, and a minor trouble-shooter. And follow that up with: Should we consider Zorin’s brother, Alex, who charmed and talked his way into the highest levels of American political, diplomatic, and business circles, advocating for the benefit of his Bolshevik handlers, as a neutral Russian-American businessman? Or should history reflect that Alex was a Russian citizen tightly connected to Bolshevik leaders by family ties, shared regional roots, shared experience in one of the foundational organizations of Bolshevik propaganda, and more, all pointing to the conclusion that Alex was an agent of the Bolsheviks?
Zorin in the News: 1916
April, 1916: Joseph Gumberg—Editor of Russian Newspaper, Strike Mediator in New York
The April, 1916 Information Quarterly, A Digest of Current Events, reported that Joseph Gumberg, the editor of a Russian Newspaper, was one of the key negotiators in ending a strike in a munitions plant in Hastings, New York. Is this the sort of thing an unemployed laborer would do?
Munitions strike, Hastings, N.Y.
Two thousand employees of the National Conduit and Cable Company at Hastings, N.Y. who had been on strike since Apr 13, returned to work Apr 27, having accepted the increase of two cents an hour originally offered. The settlement was effected through the efforts of Thomas J. Goodwin, village president; Michael J. Regan of the State Board of Mediation and Arbitration, and Joseph Gumberg, editor of a Russian newspaper.
Zorin is the editor of a Russian newspaper. This is clearly a reference to Novy Mir, the Greenwich Village-published paper for which Alex Gumberg worked as a manager, and for which a dazzling array of future Bolshevik leaders wrote while they enjoyed refuge from European and Russian law: including Trotsky, Kollontai, Bukharin, and Kamenev, as well as Joseph Gumberg.
These are not the actions or jobs of a sad sack laborer who did not find life in America appealing. Zorin was a Russian socialist activist operating in the U.S.A. as a member of the tightly knit covert and overt network of the soon-to-be-triumphant international Bolshevik elite.
The records of Zorin's professional life in the U.S.A. are not extensive. Yet, the reporting from the Hastings munitions plant strike from 1916 refutes Libbey's evidence-free assertion that Zorin was just a laborer in America. Since their entire political philosophy was based on a theory of the laboring class leading a global revolution, Bolsheviks valued laborers. Many Bolsheviks performed logical gyrations and twisted their life histories to claim they had been laborers, although only a tiny fraction of the communist leaders had been part of the working class they deified.
It is unclear what sources Libbey used in his faulty characterization of Zorin's actual activities in the U.S. Zorin played an active role as a high-level negotiator in a major labor action that resulted in martial law being declared and the National Guard deployed.
Zorin in the News: 1917
August 23, 1917: Joseph Gumberg—Returned to Russia from America; We Returnees are in Leadership Positions
Arno Dosch-Fleurot reported attending a meeting of workingmen in Petrograd on August 20, 1917. He was told that many Bolshevik leaders are Russian exiles returning from New York.
He interviewed Joseph Gumberg, president of a union in the leading Bolshevik factory, the Sestroretsk rifle factory. Gumberg told him that the Bolsheviks returned from America brought skills in organizing and striking, which they’d learned in the U.S. Gumberg explained that is why so many Bolsheviks returned from America, like himself, were in leadership positions.
Russians from U.S. Fighting Kerensky
Four of the most important Bolsheviks positions are held by radicals returned from New York.
Joseph Gumberg is president of the Council of Workmen in the Sistreretsk rifle factory, the leading Bolsheviks factory.
I asked Gumberg what the feeling toward America is among the American Bolsheviks.
"We learned in America how to organize and conduct strikes," Gumberg answered. "That is why so many of those who have returned from America are in important labor positions."
(Source: Newspapers.com)
August 28, 1917: Joseph Gumberg—Returned to Russia from America; Leading Trouble Maker
The report, surely also published in the New York World and likely picked up by newspapers other than in Fargo, said that Gumberg and his ilk were worth a million troops to the Germans. The report quoted the four as denigrating America as an autocracy worse the dethroned tsar.
Their experience in America seemed to be their bona fides, as they averred: We have been in America and we know.
Joseph Gumberg, soon to be known as Zorin, splashed all over American papers, even in the frozen tundra of North Dakota. Americans, hungry for information on the distant revolution, surely ate up any such tidbit published. Later researchers should have had no trouble finding evidence of Zorin as a Bolshevik leaders, putting the lie to claims that such leaders quoted and profiled in the American press were not public figures.
This article cites a report by the New York World correspondent in Russia [Note: Likely Arno Dosch-Fleurot, who arrived in Russia in November, 1916]. The report put Joseph Gumberg first in a list of “leading trouble makers” returned to Russia from America.
Russian political exiles are returning to Russia as fast as they can find their way back, and more than 1,000 of them are said to have left American in the last four months. These men are the leading trouble makers for the new government. They are the men who are agitating for peace, for a new revolution, and for anarchy.
The New York World correspondent tells of some of these returned exiles, and mentions four of them who now occupy leading positions with the Bolsheviki.
Joseph Gumberg, Liebachoff, Volovarsky and Malenko hold respectively the positions of president of the council of workmen in the leading rifle factory, secretary of the Petrograd Bolsheviki, secretary of the Moscow Bolsheviki and secretary of the Kronstad Bolsheviki.
These 1,000 firebrands are worth more to the German emperor than a million fresh troops. They are the men who have disorganized the great Russian army and have thrown on America double and treble the burden it would otherwise have had to bear.
They are telling their countrymen that America…is in effect a worse autocracy than Russia under the old regime.
"We have been in America and we know," is their cry.
(Source: Newspapers.com)
Zorin in the News: 1919
February-March, 1919: Zorin Discussed in U.S. Congressional Committee Hearing on Bolshevik Propaganda
Bolshevik propaganda. Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on the judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-fifth Congress, third session and thereafter, pursuant to S. Res. 439 and 469. February 11, 1919, to March 10, 1919.
In late 1918, as WW1 wound down, a US Senate committee held hearings on suspected German propaganda in the US brewing industry. This broadside attack against German-Americans led nowhere. But in early 1919, after Russia had concluded a separate peace with Germany, public attention turned to the results of the Bolshevik coup in Russia.
In February, 1919, the Senate committee added another area of inquiry: Bolshevik propaganda. They explored several areas of interest, including German influence on the Bolsheviks, but the issue most relevant to Gumberg and Zorin was Russian exiles who had lived in America and who returned to Russia to join the Bolsheviks.
Many Americans who lived through the revolution had returned from Russia and were called to testify. These returnees told hair-raising stories of the Bolsheviks and their beliefs and policies. One of the common threads in many of their narratives was that the Bolsheviks intended to infiltrate and destroy American society, government, and the economy.
The committee questioned more than two dozen witnesses who had experience or knowledge of the Bolsheviks. One of the topics the committee explored was the issue of Russian revolutionists returning to their country after spending time in the USA. Trotsky’s time in the US was of great interest, and other Russians who had lived in the US were also highlighted. Zorin came up in this line of inquiry several times.
Zorin’s relationship to Alex Gumberg was also mentioned by several witnesses. Alex’s activities and relationships were also explored (Note: Testimony about Alex and his activities will be dealt with in detail in later chapters of this work).
Committee witnesses who mentioned Zorin in their testimony included Rev. George A. Simons, Raymond Robins, John Reed, Robert Leonard, and Louise Bryant.
Testimony before the committee was widely reported across the US. Quotes and gists of testimony appeared in wire service reports published even in the most remote locations across the country. The official government transcripts of the committee hearings were published and disseminated in 1919. These were available to researchers in the 1970s, and are easily available online today.
Below are excerpts of testimony before the committee that mention Zorin.
1919: Zorin vows Bolsheviks will conquer America soon
Reverend George A. Simons was a Methodist missionary in Russia. He arrived in Russia in 1907, and remained until the Bolsheviks expelled him in late 1918. He spoke Russian, and observed the events of the 1917 revolutions in Petrograd. The Senate committee called Simons to testify, and he appeared before the subcommittee in early February, 1919.
Simons testimony described his interactions with Sergius Zorin, who Simons said he knew quite well. Simons called Zorin the Commissar of the Post and Telegraph. Simons’ testimony described Zorin’s experiences in America, where Simons said he spent eight years.
From his descriptions of Zorin’s beliefs, it appears that Simons spent time debating, or maybe discussing, comparative politics with Zorin. And Zorin clearly held his own in these discussions. Simons related how Zorin compared American socialism and Bolshevism. Simons described Zorin’s disputes, while in the US, with American religious leaders.
In Russian political developments, Zorin told Simons that the Bolsheviks now had Gorky on their side. Zorin also told Simons that now the Bolsheviks had Russia, the rest of the world was sure to follow. The Bolsheviks planned to conquer America soon. Zorin also told Simons that Raymond Robins was a great man, and should be the first American ambassador to Bolshevik Russia.
On a personal note, Zorin requested Simons to help him find his brother, Alex Gumberg, in the US. Simons said that he had tried, but failed to contact Gumberg, through a letter to Robins.
Simons related a tale of leaving Russia with a sum of cash. When a border guard found the cash, and attempted to extort it from Simons, Simons invoked the name of Zorin. The guard visibly paled at the mention of the name, and relented, returning Simons’ cash.
Overall, Simons’ account of Zorin describes man who was a Bolshevik leader and policy-maker, clearly not a lowly troubleshooter. Simons’ descriptions of Zorin’s experiences in America are also clearly not those of a failed manual laborer.
TESTIMONY OF REVEREND MR. GEORGE A. SIMONS.
(The witness was sworn by the chairman.)
Maj. Humes. Doctor, where do you reside?
Mr. Simons. At the present time, in the parsonage of the Washington Square Methodist Episcopal Church, 121 West Fortieth Street, New York City, of which church I am pastor.
Maj. Humes. When did you return from Russia?
Mr. Simons. On October 6, 1918.
Maj. Humes. In what work were you engaged in Russia?
Mr. Simons. As superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Petrograd, Russia.
Maj. Humes. For how long a period of time had you been in Russia?
Mr. Simons. Since the fall of 1907.
….
Mr. Simons. Some weeks before I left Petrograd I became quite well acquainted with one member of the Soviet government, who was the commissar of the post and telegraph, Sergius Zorin, and I tried to get a dictum from him as to what would happen to me if I stayed there, inasmuch as a decree had been issued by the Soviet government that all subjects of allied countries remaining in Russia, from 18 to 45 years of age, would be considered as prisoners of war. Our embassy had urged all Americans residing in Russia, in the fall of 1917 and the winter of 1918, to leave that territory. Finally, Consul Poole, who was in Moscow up to about the middle or end of September, 1918, wrote a letter to me stating that the American Government demanded that all American citizens should leave Russia immediately, and that I should use whatever influence I had with the other Americans in Petrograd to have them leave also.
Mr. Simons. Zorin was very enthusiastic about that proposition. Then he asked me if I could get in touch with his brother, Alexander Gumberg, who was supposed to be with Col. Robins somewhere in America; but when I came here, I did not find him. I was told that he had gone back to Europe, and possibly was going to Russia.
….
Senator King. Doctor, you have read and heard of and come in contact with the I.W.W.'s of this country, and their destructive creed, their advocacy of the destruction of our form of government. I will ask you whether or not, from your observations of the Bolshevik and the I.W.W., you see any difference?
Mr. Simons. I am strongly impressed with this, that the Bolshevik and the I.W.W. movements are identical. Zorin told me, the commissar of the post and telegraph
Senator King. He had been an American?
Mr. Simons. He had been eight years in New York, and knew some of our leaders here in our own Methodist Church.
Maj. Humes. Had he been naturalized in this country?
Mr. Simons. He had not; no. But he said he had been eight years in New York, and had been in religious disputes with some of our own leaders. Zorin said to me, “We have now made our greatest acquisition, Maxim Gorky, who used to be against us, has come over to our side. He is now with us and has taken charge of our literary work. You know we have conquered Russia. We next propose to conquer Germany and then America.”
….
Mr. Simons. When we reached the Russian-Finnish border, we were held up by a Bolshevik official, who took out his own pocketbook, opened it, and began to count out in kerenki 2,000 rubles. They made a very thorough search of my sister and myself, such as had never been made under the provisional government, or even under the old regime, and they discovered that we had this amount. They wanted me to sign up on certain blanks, and what not, and when they discovered that we had 2,000 rubles of good old Russian money the officer began to count out the kerenki and said to us, "You cannot take out that old money. That is against the law." I said to him, “Is not that regular Russian money?" " Yes, it is; but we cannot let you take it out, and here you have 2,000 in kerenki.'' I looked at him — he was a young man about 20 or 21, and looked like a rogue — and I said, “Young man, I have been told by Zorin, the Commissar of the Post and Telegraph, that if any disagreeable things happened to me on the border, I might
telephone or telegraph him and he would straighten things out.“ He then grew pale, and telephoned to a gentleman higher up, who was on the next floor, and said that he had a difficult case here, and this was an American clergyman who had 2,000 rubles in Russian money, which he said he could not take out, but then this clergyman had said that Zorin was going to come to his assistance if there was any trouble; and quick as a flash he took back his kerenki and he says, "You can have your money."….
(Source: Bolshevik propaganda. Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on the judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-fifth Congress, third session and thereafter, pursuant to S. Res. 439 and 469. February 11, 1919, to March 10, 1919.)
Excerpts from Simons’ testimony mentioning Zorin; pp 116-119; 138.
1919: Zorin, Commissar of Posts and Telegraph; Zorin, Chief Commissar of Northern Commune
John Reed was a rich boy from Portland, Harvard graduate, poetry-writer, who became a communist thrill-seeker and Bolshevik wannabe posing as a journalist. In the socialist society of pre-Bolshevik Revolution New York City’s Greenwich Village, he was a member of Alexander Gumberg’s socialist salon.
In the spring and summer of 1917, as the Russian members of the socialist/Bolshevik clique from New York, including Gumberg and Zorin, left to join the party in Petrograd, Reed and his wife, Louise Bryant, decided they couldn’t miss what looked like the culmination of Marx’s proletarian uprising. They arranged for roles as correspondents for American publications—Reed for the communist New Masses, and Bryant for a newspaper syndicate. Lacking Russian language skills, Reed and Bryant traveled to Petrograd. Reed published his experiences in Petrograd in the cheerleading pro-Bolshevik book that defined the revolution for many Americans, Ten Days that Shook the World.
Reed knew Gumberg prior to their time in revolutionary Petrograd. Although Reed is loathe to mention Gumberg in his later writings, it appears that Gumberg was the key to Reed’s access to Bolshevik leaders and to the details available only to Russian language speakers. As he did for many American influencers, Gumberg served as Reed and Bryant’s guide and translator during the tumultuous times in Petrograd. In the 1980s hagiographic movie based on Reed’s writings, Reds, Gumberg appears briefly, welcoming Reed to Petrograd in one scene. In another scene, Gumberg introduces Reed to a mob of Russian workers, and translates Reed’s communist exhortations.
Only a few months into the Bolshevik regime, however, Gumberg, working for the Bolsheviks, told the communists that he had seen a document that revealed Reed’s plan to be a Bolshevik ambassador to the USA. Alarmed, the Bolsheviks reduced Reed’s role. After losing his dreamed-of role in America, Reed turned on Gumberg, and was hostile to Gumberg for the rest of his life. Reed called Gumberg a counter-revolutionary, and seems to have energetically denounced Gumberg to any comrade who would listen.
This background is crucial context to Reed’s testimony to the Senate subcommittee. Reed’s relationship with Gumberg will be explored in much greater detail in later chapters of this work. Reed’s attitude before the subcommittee was cynical, combative, and uncooperative. He answered questions, but shaded his answers to obfuscate as much as to respond truthfully. The Senators and their staff, mixed up the two Gumbergs, and tried to get Reed to clarify who was who, and what their roles were. Reed’s answers highlight Zorin’s high-level Bolshevik roles.
In a bombshell revelation (which is only apparent in retrospect) Reed also told the Senate that Alex Gumberg was the man who provided the fake Sisson Documents to Sisson, while Gumberg worked as Sisson’s secretary. That issue will be explored in greater detail in later chapters.
Reed told the Senators that Zorin, a Russian Jew, was the Bolshevik Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs. Although he had very likely known, or known of Josef Gumberg in New York, Reed told the subcommittee that Zorin was only in the USA for a few months, and that Zorin can hardly speak English at all.
Reed continued to half-clarify and half-muddle the subcommittee’s understanding of the Gumbergs. A Senator confused another of Zorin’s Bolshevik roles with Zinoviev’s role. Reed replied that Zorin was the Chief Commissar of [the] Northern Commune.
TESTIMONY OF MR. JOHN REED.
….
Mr. Humes. Whom did you find in Russia that had formerly been residents in the United States, and what were their names?
….
Mr. Reed. Of course, there was Trotsky, but Trotsky was only here about a year; and Eisenstein, and Zorin, who was commissar of posts and telegraphs.
Mr. Humes. What was his other name?
Mr. Reed. Gumberg.
Mr. Humes. Was he a Russian?
Mr. Reed. He is a Russian Jew.
Mr. Humes. How long had he been in this country?
Mr. Reed. I think he was only here a few months; I am not sure; I know he can hardly speak English at all.
….
Mr. Humes. Who else?
Mr. Reed. Well, Alexander Gumberg, the man who got the Sisson documents for Sisson.
Mr. Humes. What was his position over there in the government?
Mr. Reed. He did not have any position in the government.
….
Senator Wolcott. Who was the commissar of the northern Petrograd commune?
Mr. Reed. At the present time?
Senator Wolcott. Who was when you were there?
Mr. Reed. There was no such thing when I was there. That was established afterwards; it was established in about April, I think; April or May.
Senator Wolcott. Do you know who, he was?
Mr. Reed. Zinoviev.
Senator Wolcott. My recollection is that some witness testified who he was, and, as I remember, he was secretary to Mr. Robins.
Mr. Reed. Zorin was meant. Zorin may have been chief commissar of the northern commune at one time. Zorin is the man whose name I said was Gumberg; but, of course, it was his brother who was working with Robins. And that Gumberg was not working with Raymond Robins at that time; he was translator to Sisson.
Mr. Humes. When had he been secretary to Robins, before or after he became engaged by Sisson?
Mr. Reed. Before.
Mr. Humes. When did Sisson go to Russia?
Mr. Reed. Sisson turned up there — let me see — the end of December, I believe; I think just about the middle of December.
Mr. Humes. December, 1917?
Mr. Reed. Probably.
Mr. Humes. Well, December, 1917.
Mr. Reed. Yes; sure.Mr. Humes. Prior to that time Gumberg had been secretary to Robins?
Mr. Reed. Translator, not secretary.
Mr. Humes. Well, employed by him?Mr. Reed. Of course, I do not want to comment on Mr. Robbins’s or Mr. Sisson’s personal affairs in regard to Gumberg, but that is my understanding.
Mr. Humes. We are only trying to identify the man. that is all.
Mr. Reed. Yes.….
(Source: Bolshevik propaganda. Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on the judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-fifth Congress, third session and thereafter, pursuant to S. Res. 439 and 469. February 11, 1919, to March 10, 1919.)
1919: Zorin Foreign Minister of the Petrograd Government
Robert F. Leonard was an employee of the American Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). He traveled to Russia for the YMCA, arriving in August, 1917. His original mission was to work with the soldiers in the field. After some months in Bolshevik Russia, as the diplomatic corps evacuated, Leonard became an American Vice Consul.
While serving as an American diplomat, Leonard was arrested by the Bolshevik Cheka (secret police, later KGB), and imprisoned. He spent a few months in various Cheka prisons. He was released and left Russia in November, 1918.
He was called to testify before the Senate subcommittee just months after release from the Bolshevik prisons and return to the USA. Leonard told the Senators that Zorin was the Foreign Minister of the Petrograd government. And that Zorin, who had been in America, was a real Russian…neither a German nor Hebrew.
Testimony of Robert F. Leonard
…
Senator Nelson: Are there many of those Bolshevik leaders who have lived here in this country?
Mr. Leonard: … The foreign minister of the Petrograd government has been in America.
What is his name?
Mr. Leonard: Zorin
Senator Nelson: What is his real name?
Mr. Leonard: I do not know.
Senator Nelson: Is he a German or a Hebrew?
Mr. Leonard: No. He is a real Russian, as far as I could say.
Senator Nelson: He is a real Russian.
Mr. Leonard: He is neither a German nor a Hebrew.
(Source: Bolshevik propaganda. Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on the judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-fifth Congress, third session and thereafter, pursuant to S. Res. 439 and 469. February 11, 1919, to March 10, 1919.)
1919: Zorin, Commissar from America
Louise Bryant, as noted above in the introduction to John Reed’s testimony, was Reed’s wife and fellow communist posing as a journalist. She published her account of their time in Russia upon returning to the USA in Six Red Months in Russia.
Unlike Reed, Bryant provided details about Alex Gumberg’s assistance to the American journalists friendly to the communists. While Reed’s book only mentions, in passing the five of us who traipsed about Petrograd the night of the Bolshevik coup, without revealing that Gumberg was the fifth (in addition to Reed, Bryant, Albert Rhys-Williams, and Bessie Beatty) person. Nor does Reed mention that Gumberg was the one who used his influence and connections, and Russian language to gain access to each Bolshevik office, guard post, or other challenge faced by the group. Bryant spells out Gumberg’s presence, and his guidance of the naïve Americans.
Before the subcommittee, like Reed, Bryant was a hostile witness. Her answers tended to be sarcastic, sparring, and obfuscating. She claimed that she did not know Zorin, even though she admitted mentioning him in her book. She claimed she did not remember what that mention entailed. But she did agree that Zorin was a Commissar, and that he had been in America.
Testimony of Louise Bryant
…
Senator Wolcott: Did you know a man over there by the name of Zoren [sic]?
Miss Bryant: I did not know him. I heard he was there. I believe in Kronstadt. Let me see---
Senator Wolcott: He was a commissar, was he not?
Miss Bryant: Yes. I mentioned him in my book, I believe, but I do not remember in what connection now.
Senator Wolcott: He was from America?
Miss Bryant: Yes. He had been in America.
(Source: Bolshevik propaganda. Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on the judiciary, United States Senate, Sixty-fifth Congress, third session and thereafter, pursuant to S. Res. 439 and 469. February 11, 1919, to March 10, 1919.)
April 15, 1919: Zorin, Minister of Posts and Telegraphs
The Senate subcommittee hearings on Bolshevik propaganda were widely reported across the country. Media commentary and reports featured Zorin as a major player. The Harrisburg Telegraph highlighted George Simons relaying Zorin’s promise that the Bolsheviks had their sights set on bringing their communist revolution to America. The paper quoted Simons correct version of Zorin’s time in America: eight years.
…Minister of Posts and Telegraphs Zorin, who lived eight years on the east side, told me once that they expected to get Germany after Russia, and after Germany they would tackle the United States.
(Source: Newspapers.com)
December 28, 1919: Zorin, Presidium of Petrograd Soviet, Russian Communist Party, Right-hand Man to Zinoviev
In 1920 the British Parliament formed a committee to investigate the Bolsheviks detention and imprisonment of British citizens. The committee also examined political and economic issues in Bolshevik Russia. In 1921, the committee published its Report (political and economic) of the Committee to Collect Information on Russia.
On page 36 of the report an article from the Russian language Social Revolutionary newspaper, Narod, translated to English, described recent labor union elections at the workshops of a Petrograd railway, one in a wagon workshop, and one in a locomotive workshop. The article reported that Zorin appeared to speak on behalf of the Communists, who were actively repressing attempts by the Social Revolutionaries to counter Communist control.
The article describes Comrade Zorin as a …member of the Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet, member of the Petrograd branch of the Russian Communist Party and one of the right-hand men of Zinoviev, president of the Petrograd Soviet and president of the Communist International) ….
The first mention of Zorin in the article is footnoted. The text of the footnote reads, Zorin formerly lived many years in America and experienced conditions of great poverty and hardship.
When Zorin spoke to the workers of the locomotive workshop, and attacked the Social Revolutionaries, he was shouted down by the workers. Down with him! they shouted.
The elections in the waggon (sic) workshops took place on Tuesday, the 23rd December [1919]. Comrade Zorin (member of the Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet, member of the Petrograd branch of the Russian Communist Party and one of the right-hand men of Zinoviev, president of the Petrograd Soviet and president of the Communist International), made a speech at the election meeting on behalf of the Communists….
…
The representative of the party in power [Note: Zorin] again made the time-worn attacks against the Social Revolutionaries. The representative of the Social Revolutionary Party replied. When Comrade Zorin attempted to retort, cries of ' down with him ' were raised among the workers.
Source: Report (political and economic) of the committee to collect information on Russia
Zorin in the News: 1920
January 1920: Zorin, Head of Soviet Committee, Welcomes Emma Goldman to USSR; Zorin Speaks English, Explains Revolution to Goldman
Emma Goldman published a book covering her two years in Bolshevik Russia, My Disillusionment in Russia, in 1923. The title says it all. Her time under the terror of the communists seems to have forced her to realize that her life, focused on destruction of the American system that had nurtured and welcomed her, was wasted. The implementation of socialism that she witnessed in Russia left her disgusted and disillusioned.
However, she was still a true believer when she first arrived, and was greeted by Zorin and his wife. The next few days she was hosted and toasted by the Zorins, and accompanied the Zorins to a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet. Goldman describes the speakers, including Zinoviev and Radek, but notes that Zorin was the best of them all.
This intimate, eye-witness account, from one of the most celebrated and prominent American socialists, was published in 1923, widely available to any half-competent researcher interested in the truth of the Gumberg family and their Bolshevik pedigree. Why ignore it?
Finally, we reached Finland, across which we were forced to journey in sealed cars. On the Russian border we were met by a committee of the Soviet Government, headed by Zorin. They had come to greet the first political refugees driven from America for opinion's sake.
It was a cold day, with the earth a sheet of white, but spring was in our hearts. Soon we were to behold revolutionary Russia. I preferred to be alone when I touched the sacred soil: my exaltation was too great, and I feared I might not be able to control my emotion. When I reached Beloostrov the first enthusiastic reception tendered the refugees was over, but the place was still surcharged with intensity of feeling. I could sense the awe and humility of our group who, treated like felons in the United States, were here received as dear brothers and comrades and welcomed by the Red soldiers, the liberators of Russia.
….
Presently the automobile came to a halt. "The First House of the Soviets," said Zorin, "the living place of the most active members of our Party." Zorin and his wife occupied two rooms, simply but comfortably furnished. Tea and refreshments were served, and our hosts entertained us with the absorbing story of the marvellous defence the Petrograd workers had organized against the Yudenitch forces. How heroically the men and women, even the children, had rushed to the defence of the Red City! What wonderful self-discipline and cooperation the proletariat demonstrated. The evening passed in these reminiscences, and I was about to retire to the room secured for me when a young woman arrived who introduced herself as the sister-in-law of "Bill" Shatov. She greeted us warmly and asked us to come up to see her sister who lived on the floor above. When we reached their apartment I found myself embraced by big jovial Bill himself. How strange of Zorin to tell me that Shatov had left for Siberia! What did it mean? Shatov explained that he had been ordered not to meet us at the border, to prevent his giving us our first impressions of Soviet Russia. He had fallen into disfavour with the Government and was being sent to Siberia into virtual exile. His trip had been delayed and therefore we still happened to find him.
In Petrograd our group again received an ovation. Then the deportees were taken to the famous Tauride Palace, where they were to be fed and housed for the night. Zorin asked Alexander Berkman and myself to accept his hospitality. We entered the waiting automobile. The city was dark and deserted; not a living soul to be seen anywhere. We had not gone very far when the car was suddenly halted, and an electric light flashed into our eyes. It was the militia, demanding the password. Petrograd had recently fought back the Yudenitch attack and was still under martial law. The process was repeated frequently along the route. Shortly before we reached our destination we passed a well-lighted building "It is our station house," Zorin explained, "but we have few prisoners there now. Capital punishment is abolished and we have recently proclaimed a general political amnesty."
Presently the automobile came to a halt. "The First House of the Soviets," said Zorin, "the living place of the most active members of our Party." Zorin and his wife occupied two rooms, simply but comfortably furnished. Tea and refreshments were served, and our hosts entertained us with the absorbing story of the marvellous defence the Petrograd workers had organized against the Yudenitch forces. How heroically the men and women, even the children, had rushed to the defence of the Red City! What wonderful self-discipline and cooperation the proletariat demonstrated. The evening passed in these reminiscences, and I was about to retire to the room secured for me when a young woman arrived who introduced herself as the sister-in-law of "Bill" Shatov. She greeted us warmly and asked us to come up to see her sister who lived on the floor above. When we reached their apartment I found myself embraced by big jovial Bill himself. How strange of Zorin to tell me that Shatov had left for Siberia! What did it mean? Shatov explained that he had been ordered not to meet us at the border, to prevent his giving us our first impressions of Soviet Russia. He had fallen into disfavour with the Government and was being sent to Siberia into virtual exile. His trip had been delayed and therefore we still happened to find him.
We spent much time with Shatov before he left Petrograd. For whole days I listened to his story of the Revolution, with its light and shadows, and the developing tendency of the Bolsheviki toward the right. Shatov, however, insisted that it was necessary for all the revolutionary elements to work with the Bolsheviki Government. Of course, the Communists had made many mistakes, but what they did was inevitable, imposed upon them by Allied interference and the blockade.
A few days after our arrival Zorin asked Alexander Berkman and myself to accompany him to Smolny. Smolny, the erstwhile boarding school for the daughters of the aristocracy, had been the centre of revolutionary events. Almost every stone had played its part. Now it was the seat of the Petrograd Government. I found the place heavily guarded and giving the impression of a beehive of officials and government employees. The Department of the Third International was particularly interesting. It was the domain of Zinoviev. I was much impressed by the magnitude of it all.
After showing us about, Zorin invited us to the Smolny dining room. The meal consisted of good soup, meat and potatoes, bread and tea. Rather a good meal in starving Russia, I thought.
Our group of deportees was quartered in Smolny. I was anxious about my travelling companions, the two girls who had shared my cabin on the Buford. I wished to take them back with me to the First House of the Soviet. Zorin sent for them. They arrived greatly excited and told us that the whole group of deportees had been placed under military guard. The news was startling. The people who had been driven out of America for their political opinions, now in Revolutionary Russia again prisoners-three days after their arrival. What had happened?
We turned to Zorin. He seemed embarrassed. "Some mistake," he said, and immediately began to make inquiries. It developed that four ordinary criminals had been found among the politicals deported by the United States Government, and therefore a guard was placed over the whole group. The proceeding seemed to me unjust and uncalled for. It was my first lesson in Bolshevik methods.
….
Much of my first knowledge and impressions of the October Revolution and the events that followed I received from the Zorins. As already mentioned, both had lived in America, spoke English, and were eager to enlighten me upon the history of the Revolution. They were devoted to the cause and worked very hard; he, especially, who was secretary of the Petrograd committee of his party, besides editing the daily Krasnaya Gazetta, and participating in other activities.
It was from Zorin that I first learned about that legendary figure, Makhno. The latter was an Anarchist, I was informed, who under the Tsar had been sentenced to katorga. Liberated by the [general political amnesty of the] February revolution, he became the leader of a peasant army in the Ukraina, proving himself extremely able and daring and doing splendid work in the defence of the Revolution. For some time Makhno worked in harmony with the Bolsheviki, fighting the counter-revolutionary forces. Then he became antagonistic, and now his army, recruited from bandit elements, was fighting the Bolsheviki. Zorin related that he had been one of a committee sent to Makhno to bring about an understanding. But Makhno would not listen to reason. He continued his warfare against the Soviets and was considered a dangerous counter-revolutionist.
I had no means of verifying the story, and I was far from disbelieving the Zorins. Both appeared most sincere and dedicated to their work, types of religious zealots ready to burn the heretic, but equally ready to sacrifice their own lives for their cause. I was much impressed by the simplicity of their lives. Holding a responsible position, Zorin could have received special rations, but they lived very poorly, their supper often consisting only of herring, black bread, and tea. I thought it especially admirable because Lisa Zorin was with child at the time.
….
The day arrived when I was given a chance to attend the meeting of the Petro-Soviet. It was to be a double celebration in honour of the return of Karl Radek to Russia and Joffe's report on the peace treaty with Esthonia. As usual I went with the Zorins. The gathering was in the Tauride Palace, the former meeting place of the Russian Duma. Every entrance to the hall was guarded by soldiers, the platform surrounded by them holding their guns at attention. The hall was crowded to the very doors. I was on the platform overlooking the sea of faces below. Starved and wretched they looked, these sons and daughters of the people, the heroes of Red Petrograd. How they had suffered and endured for the Revolution! I felt very humble before them.
Zinoviev presided. After the "Internationale" had been sung by the audience standing, Zinoviev opened the meeting. He spoke at length. His voice is high pitched, without depth. The moment I heard him I realized what I had missed in him at our first meeting-depth, strength of character. Next came Radek. He was clever, witty, sarcastic, and he paid his respects to the counter-revolutionists and to the White Guards. Altogether an interesting man and an interesting address.
….
Last spoke Zorin, by far the ablest and most convincing that evening. Then the meeting was thrown open to discussion. A Menshevik asked for the floor. Immediately pandemonium broke loose. Yells of "Traitor!" "Kolchak!" "Counter-Revolutionist!" came from all parts of the audience and even from the platform. It looked to me like an unworthy proceeding for a revolutionary assembly.
On the way home I spoke to Zorin about it. He laughed. "Free speech is a bourgeois superstition," he said; "during a revolutionary period there can be no free speech." I was rather dubious about the sweeping statement, but I felt that I had no right to judge. I was a newcomer, while the people at the Tauride Palace had sacrificed and suffered so much for the Revolution. I had no right to judge.
(Source: Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment in Russia, 1923)
Jan. 20, 1920: Zorin, All Soviet Executive Committee Member Welcomes Goldman and Berkman
The Tonopah, Nevada, Daily Bonanza printed an Associated Press article quoting Zorin, as he welcomed Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman to Bolshevik Russia. The most interesting part of this article is the position in Bolshevik leadership the AP ascribes to Zorin: All Soviet Executive Committee Member. Not a lackey troubleshooter.
Zorin told the reporters that the exiles would have work, homes, and food.
[Goldman and Berkman] were met…by M Zorien (sic), member of the all soviet executive committee…. Zorien said: “We will give them work, but they must be provided with comfortable homes and we will feed them well.”
Zorin said that Petrograd condistion were considerably improved…. There is comparitivelly little idleness, and wood, and fuel are more abundant.
(Source: Newspapers.com)
Jan. 24, 1920: Zorin, All Soviets Executive Committee, Agrees to Allow Party of Exiles to Enter Bolshevik Russia
Another version of the AP story describes Zorin officially welcoming Goldman and Berkman to Russia.
(Source: Newspapers.com)
Feb. 28, 1920: Zorin, Petrograd Bolshevik Commission, Lies about Hunger
Another correspondent met Zorin at the train-station reception for Goldman and Berkman, and reported on Zorin’s rosy view of the famine and degradation residents or Petrograd were facing. This report compares Zorin’s lies with objective reporting from sources in Petrograd.
[Objective] information about conditions in Petrograd is wholly at variance with the cheerful account given…by Sergius Zorin, a member of the Bolshevik commission from Petrograd that came to the frontier to receive the Russians deported from the United States. Zorin said that every resident was obtaining one and one-quarter pounds of bread daily…[objective reports claim] that two ounces of flour is all that can be supplied even to the favored classes….
Zorin declared that there was no scarcity now of food, fuel and that some coal had been received from the south. [Objective reports say] “Wood is so difficult to get that the people are not permitted to burn it in stoves.”
(Source: Newspapers.com)
July 18, 1920: Zorin, Head of Petrograd District, on Party Discipline
Between 1919 and 1921, it appears that Zorin was probably tasked with handling American reporters. These reporters, and others, appear to be charmed by Zorin, whose English seems flawless.
In this article, an American foreign correspondent in Russia reported:
Discipline in the party is absolute. No open charges or quarrels are permitted to pass the doors of meeting halls, and once a decree is passed by the party no member opposes it. I was talking of this discipline with Zorin, head of the Petrograd district, who spent some time In New York.
"Yes, if you will send Boss Murphy over here, we'll give him a few lessons in party discipline," he said.
(Source: Newspapers.com)
September to October 1920: Zorin a Likeable Human, Humorous Popular Speaker in Petrograd Soviet; Leader in the Commune of the North
Between September and October, 1920, H.G. Wells, the British writer, commentator, and socialist manipulator took a trip to Bolshevik Russia to see if utopia had actually arrived. Wells wrote newspaper articles that were published during his trip. The articles were later compiled into a book, Russia in the Shadows.
In another example of Zorin’s apparent role as a middle-man for English-speaking high-profile visitors to the Bolshevik state, Zorin appears to have been at Wells’ side throughout much of his trip. Zorin is mentioned several times in Wells’ articles.
Wells was impressed with Zorin, describing him as one of the leaders of the [Petrograd] Commune [Soviet]. Wells was enchanted by Zorin’s personality, “a very likeable human being and a humorous and very popular speaker in the Petersburg Soviet.” Zorin spun a version of Libbey’s poor-little-socialist-worker story of being an unskilled laborer to Wells, who noted that Zorin was a young man who has come back from unskilled work in America…. The two found common ground with their stories of mistreatment at the hands of the capitalist system, with Zorin complaining of brutal incivility…when applying for a job as packer in a big dry goods store in New York….
Quite a rich whine from Zorin, when you consider that he was, at the time he met Wells, serving as a leader in bloodiest of the bloody areas of the Red Terror—the Bolshevik response to opposition—which arrested, tortured, starved, imprisoned and shot thousands for daring to oppose the brutal Bolsheviks. Incivility indeed!
There would have been Marxists if Marx had never lived. When I was a boy of fourteen I was a complete Marxist, long before I had heard the name of Marx. I had been cut off abruptly from education, caught in a detestable shop, and I was being broken in to a life of mean and dreary toil. I was worked too hard and for such long hours that all thoughts of self-improvement seemed hopeless. I would have set fire to that place if I had not been convinced it was over-insured.
I revived the spirit of those bitter days in a conversation I had with Zorin, one of the leaders of the Commune of the North. He is a young man who has come back from unskilled work in America, a very likeable human being and a humorous and very popular speaker in the Petersburg Soviet. He and I exchanged experiences, and I found that the thing that rankled most in his mind about America was the brutal incivility he had encountered when applying for a job as packer in a big dry goods store in New York. We told each other stories of the way our social system wastes and breaks and maddens decent and willing men. Between us was the freemasonry of a common indignation.
(Source: H.G. Wells; Russia in the Shadows.)
Wells noted that the Bolshevik leaders, including Zorin, were harnessed to the Marxist theory of the inevitable evolution of all human governments via social revolution to communism, following their lead. Wells called them “simple-minded,” incompetent, and ignorant. Wells, accorded access to the highest levels of Bolsheviks, reported that Lenin, Zinoviev, and Zorin all asked him when England would follow the Bolshevik lead:
This Bolshevik Government is at once the most temerarious and the least experienced governing body in the world. In some directions its incompetence is amazing. In most its ignorance is profound. Of the diabolical cunning of "capitalism" and of the subtleties of reaction it is ridiculously suspicious, and sometimes it takes fright and is cruel. But essentially it is honest. It is the most simple-minded Government that exists in the world to-day.
Its simple-mindedness is shown by one question that I was asked again and again during this Russian visit. "When is the social revolution going to happen in England?" Lenin asked me that, Zenovieff, who is the head of the Commune of the North, Zorin, and many others.
Because it is by the Marxist theory all wrong that the social revolution should happen first in Russia. That fact is bothering every intelligent man in the movement. According to the Marxist theory the social revolution should have happened first in the country with the oldest and most highly developed industrialism, with a large, definite, mainly propertyless, mainly wages- earning working class (proletariat). It should have begun in Britain, and spread to France and Germany, then should have come America's turn and so on. Instead they find Communism in power in Russia, which really possesses no specialised labouring class at all, which has worked its factories with peasant labourers who come and go from the villages, and so has scarcely any "proletariat"—to unite with the workers of the world and so forth—at all. Behind the minds of many of these Bolsheviks with whom I talked I saw clearly that there dawns now a chill suspicion of the reality of the case, a realisation that what they have got in Russia is not truly the promised Marxist social revolution at all, that in truth they have not captured a State but got aboard a derelict.
(Source: H.G. Wells; Russia in the Shadows.)
Wells was dumbfounded by the Bolsheviks’ attempts to prod the Asian nationalities, to the east of Russia, into joining the Marxist proletarian revolution. Wells tried to get Zinoviev and Zorin, both, to explain to him what their actual objectives were in the Baku Conference, but found they could not.
Zorin did, however, provide Wells with a copy of the five-part film the Bolsheviks made of the conference.
Zenovieff, assisted by Bela Kun, our Mr. Tom Quelch, and a number of other leading Communists, has recently gone on a pilgrimage to Baku to raise the Asiatic proletariat. They went to beat up the class-conscious wage slaves of Persia and Turkestan. They sought out factory workers and slum dwellers in the tents of the steppes. They held a congress at Baku, at which they gathered together a quite wonderful accumulation of white, black, brown, and yellow people, Asiatic costumes and astonishing weapons. They had a great assembly in which they swore undying hatred of Capitalism and British imperialism; they had a great procession in which I regret to say certain batteries of British guns, which some careless, hasty empire-builder had left behind him, figured; they disinterred and buried again thirteen people whom this British empire-builder seems to have shot without trial, and they burnt Mr. Lloyd George, M. Millerand, and President Wilson in effigy. I not only saw a five-part film of this remarkable festival when I visited the Petersburg Soviet, but, thanks to Zorin, I have brought the film back with me. It is to be administered with caution and to adults only. There are parts of it that would make Mr. Gwynne of the Morning Post or Mr. Rudyard Kipling scream in their sleep. If so be they ever slept again after seeing it.
I did my best to find out from Zenovieff and Zorin what they thought they were doing in the Baku Conference. And frankly I do not think they know.
(Source: H.G. Wells; Russia in the Shadows.)
Wells declared that he had “a real friendship” with Zorin, and hoped that his denigration of the Baku Conference as preposterous did not offend his friend, Zorin.
Wells’ analysis of these activities highlights Zorin’s high-level position among the Bolshevik leaders. Zorin, on near-equal footing with Zinoviev, at the top of the Comintern, and other Bolshevik ruling groups.
I hope I shall not offend Comrade Zorin, for whom I have a real friendship, if I thus confess to him that I cannot take his Baku Conference very seriously. It was an excursion a pageant, a Beano. As a meeting of Asiatic proletarians it was preposterous. But if it was not very much in itself, it was something very important in its revelation of shifting intentions. Its chief significance to me is this, that it shows a new orientation of the Bolshevik mind as it is embodied in Zenovieff.
(Source: H.G. Wells; Russia in the Shadows.)
Wells attended a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet with Zorin and Zinoviev. Sitting in the important visitors section, with the Bolshevik rulers, Wells presented a speech he had written. For the first time, Wells notes that Zorin was his interpreter. Wells notes that Zorin, following his own speech, was a witty and humorous speaker who got the audience into an excellent frame of mind.
Wells was highly impressed with Zorin, who worked at the highest levels of Bolshevik leaders, and who acted as his English-Russian interpreter. No lackey trouble-shooter, Zorin was at the top.
On Thursday the 7th of October [1920] we attended a meeting of the Petersburg Soviet. We were told that we should find this a very different legislative body from the British House of Commons, and we did. Like nearly everything else in the arrangements of Soviet Russia it struck us as extraordinarily unpremeditated and improvised. Nothing could have been less intelligently planned for the functions it had to perform or the responsibilities it had to undertake.
The meeting was held in the old Winter Garden of the Tauride Palace, the former palace of Potemkin, the favourite of Catherine the Second. Here the Imperial Duma met under the Tsarist régime, and I visited it in 1914 and saw a languid session in progress. I went then with Mr. Maurice Baring and one of the Benckendorffs to the strangers' gallery, which ran round three sides of the hall. There was accommodation for perhaps a thousand people in the hall, and most of it was empty. The president with his bell sat above a rostrum, and behind him was a row of women reporters. I do not now remember what business was in hand on that occasion; it was certainly not very exciting business. Baring, I remember, pointed out the large proportion of priests elected to the third Dumas; their beards and cassocks made a distinctive feature of that scattered gathering.
On this second visit we were no longer stranger onlookers, but active participants in the meeting; we came into the body of the hall behind the president's bench, where on a sort of stage the members of the Government, official visitors, and so forth find accommodation. The presidential bench, the rostrum, and the reporters remained, but instead of an atmosphere of weary parliamentarianism, we found ourselves in the crowding, the noise, and the peculiar thrill of a mass meeting. There were, I should think, some two hundred people or more packed upon the semi-circular benches round about us on the platform behind the president, comrades in naval uniforms and in middle-class and working-class costume, numerous intelligent-looking women, one or two Asiatics and a few unclassifiable visitors, and the body of the hall beyond the presidential bench was densely packed with people who filled not only the seats but the gangways and the spaces under the galleries. There may have been two or three thousand people down there, men and women. They were all members of the Petersburg Soviet, which is really a sort of conjoint meeting of its constituent Soviets. The visitors' galleries above were equally full. Above the rostrum, with his back to us, sat Zenovieff, his right-hand man Zorin, and the president. The subject under discussion was the proposed peace with Poland. The meeting was smarting with the sense of defeat and disposed to resent the Polish terms. Soon after we came in Zenovieff made a long and, so far as I could judge, a very able speech, preparing the minds of this great gathering for a Russian surrender. The Polish demands were outrageous, but for the present Russia must submit. He was followed by an oldish man who made a bitter attack upon the irreligion of the people and government of Russia; Russia was suffering for her sins, and until she repented and returned to religion she would continue to suffer one disaster after another. His opinions were not those of the meeting, but he was allowed to have his say without interruption. The decision to make peace with Poland was then taken by a show of hands. Then came my little turn. The meeting was told that I had come from England to see the Bolshevik régime; I was praised profusely; I was also exhorted to treat that régime fairly and not to emulate those other recent visitors (these were Mrs. Snowden and Guest and Bertrand Russell) who had enjoyed the hospitality of the republic and then gone away to say unfavourable things of it. This exhortation left me cold; I had come to Russia to judge the Bolshevik Government and not to praise it. I had then to take possession of the rostrum and address this big crowd of people. This rostrum I knew had proved an unfortunate place for one or two previous visitors, who had found it hard to explain away afterwards the speeches their translators had given the world through the medium of the wireless reports. Happily, I had had some inkling of what was coming. To avoid any misunderstanding I had written out a short speech in English, and I had had this translated carefully into Russian. I began by saying clearly that I was neither Marxist nor Communist, but a Collectivist, and that it was not to a social revolution in the West that Russians should look for peace and help in their troubles, but to the liberal opinion of the moderate mass of Western people. I declared that the people of the Western States were determined to give Russia peace, so that she might develop upon her own lines. Their own line of development might be very different from that of Russia. When I had done I handed a translation of my speech to my interpreter, Zorin, which not only eased his task but did away with any possibility of a subsequent misunderstanding. My speech was reported in the Pravda quite fully and fairly.
Then followed a motion by Zorin that Zenovieff should have leave to visit Berlin and attend the conference of the Independent Socialists there. Zorin is a witty and humorous speaker, and he got his audience into an excellent frame of mind. His motion was carried by a show of hands….
(Source: H.G. Wells; Russia in the Shadows.)
Nov 15, 1920: Zorin—Leading Man in Petrograd; Most Loveable Personality
This article in the Washington Times claims that, based on a letter received in Washington, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman had fled Russia and were in Ukraine. The letter said that the two deported anarchists had no intention of returning to Russia as long as the Lenin-Trotsky regime remains in power.
This article also includes a long letter, in three parts, dated June 28, 1920, ostensibly from Goldman to John Reed. Reed had been Goldman’s lover in New York. The bulk of the letter begs for gold and consumer goods, like diapers, and food. Goldman mentions Zorin:
Of the leading men in Petrograd we have only met two so far. Zinoviev and J. Zorin. We saw the former only for an hour. But the latter devotes much of his time to us. He is a most loveable personality…so earnest and dedicated.
Goldman whines about the high cost of food and consumer goods in the communist promised land, and pleads for American gold (exchanging American paper money for rubles loses value, so says the militant anti-American socialist!) She advises that her her mailing address is: …care of J. Zorin, Hotel Astoria, Petrograd.
(Source: Newspapers.com)
Zorin in the News: 1921
March 3, 1921: Workmen refuse to hear Commissar Zorin
As the Bolsheviks prosecuted the Red Terror against any who stood up to communist power, it appears that Bolshevik leaders went into factories to harangue the workers. The workers seemed to want none of it. Zorin, as usual, was on the front lines of the efforts. He appeared in this newspaper account, being shouted down by hungry workers demanding bread.
On February 23 Commissary (sic) Zorin was refused a hearing by workmen of the La Ferme tobacco factory, who shouted for bread.
(Source: Newspapers.com)
April 13, 1921: Zorin, Zinoviev’s Secretary and Editor of Official Newspaper
Patrick Quinlan, who served prison time in New Jersey for his role in a violent strike, was a socialist agitator. He made a pilgrimage to Soviet Russia, and sent back a white-washed version of the utopia, as described in this article.
His description of a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet matches that of others. After Maxim Gorky was greeted with deafening applause, Zorin, secretary of Zinoviev, and editor of the official newspaper, also spoke.
(Source: Newspapers.com)
May 13, 1921: Zorin Resigns from Petrograd Government
Widely reprinted by American newspapers, from the Associated Press wire on this date, Zinoviev and Zorin both resigned from their positions in the Petrograd government because of differences with Premier Lenine (sic) over the question of freedom on trade in Petrograd.
(Source: Newspapers.com)
Zorin in the News: 1925
1925: Berkman’s Book: The Myth of the Bolsheviks, Zorin in the Top Ranks of Bolsheviks
Between 1920 and 1922, Alexander Berkman, the would-be assassin of the industrialist Henry Frick, was immersed in Bolshevik Russia. He saw the future—the Bolshevik dystopia—and realized the error of his ways. After leaving Russia, he published his diary notes from his two years under the Bolsheviks in a book. The Bolshevik Myth: Diary 1920-1922 laid out, in detail, the failure of communism to live up to the fantasies of the believers.
Published in 1925, this book was available to any competent researcher in the 1970s. Berkman paints a detailed profile of Zorin, his power, his family, his life as a Commissar.
As described in articles above, Berkman and Goldman were hosted (a better term would be handled, as Zorin was responsible for the American deportees’ political and social integration) by Zorin and his wife upon their arrival in Russia. Zorin seems to have been the constant in their lives while in the communist state. It did not take long for Berkman and Goldman to see reality: their dreamed-of utopia was actually a totalitarian, terroristic, bloody nightmare of repression and horror. Below are excerpts featuring Zorin, in chronological order.
January 19, 1920:
Zorin leads Soviet delegation to Finnish border to greet 249 deportees from America. Zorin announces Bolshevik success in the civil war, deportees cheer.
Source: The Myth of Bolshevism, page 27
January 20, 1920:
Bolsheviks hold a mass meeting in honor of the deportees at the train station town on the Russian side of the border. Zorin headlines the event, giving a speech of welcome to Soviet Russia, and noting their cooperation in the work of the Revolution. Berkman overcome with gratitude and emotion, full of love for the Bolsheviks and Zorin.
Source: The Myth of Bolshevism, page 30
January 21, 1920:
Zorin invites Berkman to stay at the First House of the Soviet--the former luxury Hotel Astoria, built in 1912 for the 300th anniversary celebration of the Romanov dynasty.
Zorin is Secretary of the Petrograd Section of the Communist Party, and the editor of the Krasnaya Gazetta, the official daily of the Soviet. Zorin worked in America as a millman. Zorin is a devoted Communist and indefatigable worker. Zorin's wife, Liza, also an American emigrant, is the typical I.W.W. [International Workers of the World] Though very feminine in figure, she is rough and ready of speech, and an enthusiastic Bolshevik.
Source: The Myth of Bolshevism, page 36
January 21, 1920:
Berkman notes the sharp division of communist rhetoric and reality: As they eat in the Smolny dining room, where he finds the food much superior to the meals served in the public cafeterias, and their fellow diners were only prominent Communists and Soviet officials. Zorin tells him, Only the 'responsible workers,' Communists holding important positions, dine here.
Zorin explained the different food rations for different classes of people (Berkman seemed to catch on to communist hypocrisy after just 2 days in utopia.): There are several gradations of pyock (rations), he explained. Soldiers and sailors receive one and a half pounds of bread per day; also sugar, salt, tobacco, and meat when possible. The factory workers get one pound, while the non-producers — most of them intelligentsia — receive half a pound and even less. There is no discrimination about this system, Zorin believes; it is just division, according to the value of one's work.
Source: The Myth of Bolshevism, page 36-47
January 21, 1920:
Berkman suggests to Zorin that the deportees' skills could be used by the Soviets, instead of just sitting in their rooms. Berkman tells Zorin that the food rations are not enough, even though the deportees are buying some things in the streets.
Zorin warns Berkman, with a smile and a dry comment, You are very American, you want it done on the spot. But that isn't the way, I'll submit your plan to the proper authorities, and then we'll see.
Zorin severely warns Berkman about buying food, Trading is forbidden. Buying and selling is speculation. Your people should not do such things.
Berkman tries logically arguing with Zorin, that buying bread can't be called speculation, and the Bolsheviks issue money, so it must be okay to use it, and calls Zorin unjust.
Zorin is displeased and warns again, Y-e-s, but better tell your friends not to speculate any more. Only shkur- niki, self-seeking skinners, do that.
Berkman argues again that it is unjust. Zorin simply repeats, Better warn the men.
Source: The Myth of Bolshevism, page 40
April 2, 1920:
After just three months under the oppression of the Bolsheviks, Berkman calls out Zorin as a liar. Upon arrival, Berkman had told Zorin he wanted to meet Bill Shatov. Zorin told him that Shatov had gone East. Berkman now has learned that as a matter of fact he was still in Petrograd.
Source: The Myth of Bolshevism, page 114
April 2, 1920:
Berkman hears that Soviet reform schools are deplorable…permeated with bureaucracy and corruption…nepotism prevails.
Berkman helpfully used the opportunity to discuss the matter with Zorin.
Zorin, the Commissar, appears to be losing his patience with Berkman's American ideas.
[Zorin] was greatly displeased at the revelations and inclined to consider the school situation exaggerated by the youthful investigators. He insisted that existing evils are due chiefly to the lack of Bolshevik teachers. Only Communists can be trusted in responsible positions, he asserted. Where non-partisans hold high office, it has become necessary to put a politkom (political commissar) at the head of the institution to guard against sabotage. This system, though uneconomical, is imperative in view of the scarcity of Communist organizers and workers. Evils and abuses in Soviet institutions are almost wholly due to this situation…. The average man is a Philistine, whose sole thought is to exploit every opportunity to secure greater advantages for himself, his family, and friends. It is bourgeois human nature…. It is true, of course, that most Soviet employees steal and speculate. But the Government is fighting these evils with merciless hand. Such men are often shot as guilty of crime against the Revolution…the Government is ruthless and justly so: Communists are the advance guard of the Revolution — they should show an example of devotion, honesty, and self- sacrifice.
Source: The Myth of Bolshevism, page 122-123
April 1920:
Zorin has a plan to convert a resort island, formerly used by Russian intelligentsia, into a rest and recuperation center for workers. Zorin tells Berkman to complete the job in hurry-up American style.
Zorin appoints Berkman to manage the project.
Berkman is stymied by communist bureaucracy, inefficiency, and disinterest.
Some of the holiday dachas are still occupied by their owners. Zorin orders Berkman to execute the order for eviction. Berkman refuses. Zorin is displeased at my 'sentimentality'…. Zorin fires Berkman from the project.
Source: The Myth of Bolshevism, page 125-128
May 1, 1920:
The procession formed. Zinoviev put his arm through mine, and someone pushed us into the front rank. Holding hands, the lines marched toward the Field of Mars, Zorin carrying the huge red banner. His slender figure staggered beneath its weight, and willing hands stretched out to relieve him. But Zorin would not be deprived of the precious burden.
Source: The Myth of Bolshevism, page 130-131
May 16, 1920:
Berkman was assigned to escort and interpret for a Mission of prominent socialists and well-wishers from Great Britain. He makes a point of including Zorin in the prominent Communists who traveled with the Mission.
At the stroke of 11 P. M. on Sunday, May 16, the Mission started for Moscow. The delegates were accompanied by a large coterie of prominent Communists, including Radek, Kollontay, Losovsky, his daughter, who acts as his secretary, Balabanova, Zorin, and some lesser lights. By request I went with the Mission as unofficial interpreter, sharing my coupe with Ichov, head of the Government publications in Petrograd.
Source: The Myth of Bolshevism, page 137
August, 1920:
Berkman visited a prison in Kharkov, and interacted with the prisoners and guards. He peeked into the cell of an inmate awaiting execution, who pleaded with him for mercy. Berkman reflected on the lies Zorin told him during their first conversations:
As I note down these experiences in my Diary, there come to me the words of Zorin. "The death penalty is abolished, our prisons empty," he had said to me soon after my arrival in Russia. It seemed natural, self-evident. Have not revolutionists always opposed such barbarous methods? Was not much of Bolshevik popularity due to their condemnation of Kerensky for restoring capital punishment at the front, in 1917?
Source: The Myth of Bolshevism, page 137
Zorin in the News: 1934
November, 1934: Zorin Denounces Bukharin’s Stalinist Witch-hunt; Confirms Zorin was on Editorial Board of Novy Mir
A widely available source, a public letter to Bukharin from Zorin, published in an American socialist journal in 1934, provides clear evidence refuting nearly all of Libbey's false assertions about Zorin.
As Stalin pursued his purges against internal competitors in the Soviet communist system, in the early to mid-1930s, Trotsky and Zinoviev (members of the Gumberg-Elizavetgrad network) were the main targets of Stalin's wrath.
Zorin was not only a member of the Trotsky/Zinoviev/Elizavetgrad network, but was also tightly bound to Zinoviev as an acolyte/follower. Both of these facts made Zorin a target in Stalin's brutal internal warfare.
In a masterful agent provocateur covert operation, Stalin's KGB minions funded and provided printing equipment to Trotsky's opposition group in late 1927. This was a master stroke in Stalin's battle against the old Bolsheviks who opposed his stranglehold on Soviet internal power (the Left Opposition).
The battle resulted in Trotsky and Zinoviev, and many of their followers (including Zorin) being expelled from the Party, and/or exiled. This action began a long slide downward that culminated with Stalin's purges—imprisonment, banishment, show trials, executions, murders, and more—against Stalin’s internal enemies.
These details are not our focus here, however. This short summary of the context of the Bolshevik/Communist/Soviet internal struggle, which was clear and available to researchers in the 1970s, is to provide insight into Zorin's importance and abilities.
The letter from Zorin to Bukharin (another Novy Mir alumni in the highest levels of Soviet power) appeared in the November, 1934 edition of the American Trotskyite journal, New International, published in New York, on pages 124-125. Zorin's letter was a skirmish in the Stalin-Trotsky battle. Details of the specifics of the incident Zorin describes can be found in other sources. Our interest is in the details Zorin provides of his life, his role, and the clear indication that Zorin was operating at the highest levels of Bolshevik/Soviet power.
This letter provides evidence of to refute nearly all of Libbey's assertions about Zorin. Instead of being a simple laborer (in the U.S. or elsewhere), Zorin confirms his role on the editorial board of the Novy Mir. Zorin's letter also gives the lie to Libbey's assertion that Zorin was not a public figure. Numerous reports of Zorin's Bolshevik role in American media, contemporary accounts of travelers to the USSR, and Bolshevik/Soviet accounts of Zorin's activities and high-level roles in the Bolshevik/Soviet government also contradict Libbey's mendacious assertions.
Zorin’s Letter to Bukharin
COMRADE Bukharin:
The case of comrade Fishelev impels me to write you a few lines. You have known Fishelev for twelve years. I have known him for eighteen. I know that all during his youth he was in the Russian social democratic party and that he was arrested as far back as 1906; that he remained in prison, in solitary, for two years, and that he was banished for life to Siberia, whence he escaped. As soon as he arrived in the United States, he and comrade Voskov, now deceased, founded the journal Novy Mir. When you, comrade Bukharin, arrived in New York and joined the editorial board of Novy Mir, the paper had already been put on its feet and became a daily. You yourself know how difficult it was to establish a paper under the conditions set down by American capitalism. You know at the beginning the small number of proletarians who published Novy Mir had to lend money out of their meager wages, to write the articles and print them themselves after their day’s work, at night, that they themselves had to mail the paper and get the subscribers. In a word, you know that in America we expended the true Russian muscular power and did not carry on a mechanical labor. And you know that Fishelev stood in the front ranks of those who fought for a new world, literally [Note: Novy Mir means: New World].
Comrade Bukharin, who among us has not made mistakes? The proletarian Fishelev has also made mistakes. In 1917, returning from emigration, he worked in a Kharkov printshop and joined the Menshevik-Internationalists. He was soon elected secretary of the Typographical Union of Kharkov, and in that capacity, organized the general strike of the printing trades workers during the German occupation. He was arrested for this by Petliura’s soldiers and would have been killed but for the solidarity of the workers who refused to return to work unless he was set free. In 1919, he returned again to our ranks. He worked as secretary of the Moscow district of the Typographical Union, then as a Red director. Everywhere he worked as a true proletarian, vigorously and honestly. Now he is arrested and expelled from the party. Why?
Comrade Bukharin, I ask you, you who are a member of the Political Bureau, why do you arrest workers like Fishelev? I ask you, as editor of Pravda, why do you calumniate workers like Fishelev?
You, Bukharin, were imprudent enough to print an article by V. Nikolayev in your paper, in which, among other calumnies, Fishelev is accused of “having published in New York the journal of Trotsky, Novy Mir”. But you and I, as members of the editorial board of Novy Mir, also published the articles of Trotsky. [Note: emphasis mine.]
Why do you forget that? Why do you neglect, as editor-in-chief, to call yourself a Trotskyist? Because you go insane when faced with comrades like Fishelev. Had Fishelev stolen money, like Broiclo, or printed your anti-Leninist articles, you would have given him your approbation. But Fishelev did not steal money, he only printed the platform of the Opposition, a platform which rightly reflects the interests, the needs and the aspirations of the proletariat and the poor peasants – and that is why Fishelev now lies in a GPU prison while his family is dying of hunger.
Comrade Bukharin, such a state of affairs is very dangerous to the building up of socialism. Socialism itself is inconceivable with the imprisonment of the best communist workers. How can you reconcile the chairmanship of the Communist International with the job of jailor of the best communists?
I know that behind the political motives and petty revenge lies the intention of frightening off others, of preventing them from following the example. It is part of your struggle of self-defense. But you cannot frighten us off. Fishelev’s place will be taken by a hundred others. A quarter of a million Leningrad workers showed, at the October 17, 1927 demonstration, that they have had their fill of your calumnies and falsehoods, by displaying; their sympathy for us, the Opposition, you will try to deny this, too; What self-defense can be practised by such means? You have fallen to such a low level of political degradation, that the political struggle in the ranks of our party before the congress, at a time when the two groups ought to preserve the maximum of dignity and carry on that calm and serious discussion so needed by the party, has been conducted against the Opposition exclusively by violent practises. You are making the dry guillotine operate at all hours. By expelling hundreds of the most devoted communists from the party you are trying to kill them politically. But the guillotine is only beginning to operate. Every day you will be compelled to arrest more Bolshevik-Leninists, to immure them in prison. And why? So that you and your group may select the delegates to the fifteenth congress, and separate yourselves completely from Leninism. But can a congress convoked under such conditions have any authority in the disputed questions? And afterward? Have you asked yourself this question?
Do you remember the time you were fighting Lenin, before the Cronstadt rebellion had reached Leningrad? We who fought against you nevertheless organized meetings for you, we printed your platform, and elected delegates to the congress in proportion to the importance of the platforms. That’s how we acted in Lenin’s time, when you and Stalin didn’t have the slightest power. Whereas today, armed men come to arrest Fishelev in his home. They ransack his books, putting aside the books that you and your friends have written against the Opposition. They hunt inside for what might have been inscribed there about the Opposition. They finally seize a pamphlet containing the resolutions of the fourteenth congress, in which a number of letters are found. They triumphantly carry off the pamphlet and drag Fishelev along. They conduct him to the Central Control Commission, the purgatory before the prison. He is probed at the GPU while his affairs and his thoughts are probed at the Control Commission.
“Where did you get the platform of the Opposition?”
“Who suggested the idea that you print it?”
And you, comrade Bukharin, who gave you the idea of doing against Lenin all that Fishelev is doing now? Had we employed such methods then, do you think we would have come out of the discussion stronger and more united? Have you asked yourself: How will the party come out of this battle?
The problems that have arisen in the present party crisis must be discussed intelligently and scrupulously by every party member. Only then will the discussion help the party and the revolution. You want to cook up a reply to the questions put by the GPU policemen. Comrade Agranov is in his place when he fights anti-Soviet elements, but he is incompetent to sit in judgment in the case of Fishelev and the other imprisoned Bolshevik-Leninist oppositionists. Take care, comrade Bukharin! You yourself have often fought against our party, and probably you will some day have to carry on another fight against it. The comrades will then give you Agranov of the GPU as your judge. Examples are contagious.
Fishelev and other comrades are imprisoned. They have no right to receive food or anything else from the outside. They are deprived of all visitors. Their families are starved. Evidently all this makes you happy. You think that this will cut down the Opposition’s vote. This fact forces me, as a party member and an Oppositionist, to make a gesture. Either you set free the workers who are with us in the fight for Leninism, with whom we have hungered, with whom we have suffered and fought, or I shall print this letter by every means at my disposal and distribute it to the party membership. Arrest me for it! Only, remember that from prison our voice will reach deeper into the party and carry further. This time, without greetings,
[signed] Sergei Zorin
(Source: Marxists.org)
Besides the overall tone and eloquence of Zorin's letter, which show that Zorin was an orator and writer of superb power, the content also provides evidence of Zorin's life and roles.
In excoriating Bukharin's craven hypocrisy, Zorin confirms his own role at Novy Mir: …you and I, as members of the editorial board of Novy Mir, also published the articles of Trotsky. Why do you forget that? Why do you neglect, as editor-in-chief, to call yourself a Trotskyist?
So, from Zorin's own pen, available in an American journal published in 1934, we see that Zorin was, indeed, an editor, on the editorial board, of Novy Mir during the eight years he lived and agitated in New York City. Zorin also confirms that Bukharin was editor-in-chief of Novy Mir, and that Trotsky also wrote for the paper while in New York. We also know that other high-level, old Bolsheviks were affiliated with Novy Mir at the same time: Kollontai, and Kamenev among them.
Libbey's false assertions about Zorin and his background are utterly destroyed in the face of this evidence, which was available in the 1970s.
Published Source Details Zorin’s Life after his Death
1940: William Henry Chamberlin— American Marxist Member of Gumberg’s Greenwich Village Bolshevik Salon; The Confessions of an Individualist
William Henry Chamberlin was an American journalist and author. He was a late-comer to the socialist/communist cause, arriving in New York City, around 1922. It appears that he was a regular at Alex Gumberg’s Bolshevik salon in Greenwich Village. Chamberlin married a girl in New York who was a member of the Elizavetgrad network. Under Gumberg’s spell, and likely using Gumberg’s connections, Chamberlin moved to Bolshevik Russia and began a long career as a correspondent there. A Marxist who supported the revolution, it took him a full 12 years of immersion in the realities of the terror State before his eyes were opened. He turned against the communists and finished his life as a supporter of individual liberty, and truth-teller about the horrors of the Soviet regime and communism.
Chamberlin knew Alex Gumberg well, attended his Greenwich Village socialist/Russian/radical salon, but only after the revolution. So, he did not know Zorin in New York, and would appear to be repeating the Gumberg party line—which was used to obscure the fact that Alex and Zorin were both high-level Novy Mir/Russian socialists—not a Russian-American businessman and an unemployed laborer.
It was through [Albert Rhys-] Williams, I think, that I met the late Alex Gumberg, whose Union Square apartment was a frequent informal meeting place for persons interested in Soviet Russian. Gumberg, who was of Russian Jewish origin, was the second of three brothers whose varied experiences against the background of the Russian Revolution would have made an excellent plot for a novel.
(Source: The Confessions of an Individualist, page 56)
Chamberlin’s autobiography, The Confessions of an Individualist, provides some insights into the Gumberg family, but must be taken with a grain of salt. He did not know Zorin in New York, arriving five years after Zorin left. Chamberlin only met Zorin when he went to Moscow in 1922 as a foreign correspondent. But he did know Gumberg, and his circle well, and appears to have drunk deep from the Gumberg well of cover stories, prior to his in-person meeting(s) with Zorin in Russia. With that caveat, it appears that Libbey used Chamberlin’s book as a source for several of his assertions, including that Zorin was an unemployed laborer while in New York.
The oldest brother, who had shown marked promise as a university student, was on the moderate wing of the revolutionary movement and was imprisoned for a time under the Soviets. He survived this first storm of revolution and emerged as an official in one of the state trusts. But here he encountered new troubles, persecution, and harassment by the suspicious Communists in his organization. With the shadow of his former non- Bolshevik political affiliations, his good education, and his "bourgeois" tastes, he was just the kind of person who might be picked off ultimately as a "wrecker," although I do not know whether this fate actually befell him.
The youngest brother, who went by the revolutionary pseudonym of Sergei Zorin, was the Bolshevik of the family. Like Alex, he had emigrated to America. But, unlike his brother, who displayed a good deal of capacity for adapting himself to American ways, Zorin could not get on in the new "capitalist" world. He remained an unskilled laborer, his revolutionary beliefs untouched by the softening effect of the fleshpots which America offers to many successful immigrants.
As soon as the news of the fall of Tsarism arrived, he went back to Russia with Trotzky and a number of other Russian revolutionaries who were living in America at that time. He became an active agitator for the Bolshevik party in Petrograd, was out with his rifle at the Winter Palace when the day of victory arrived in November, 1917, and became one of the chief lieutenants of Zinoviev, first President of the Communist International and party "boss" of Petrograd during the first years of the Soviet regime.
(Source: The Confessions of an Individualist, page 56)
In the same discussion of the Gumberg brothers, Chamberlin provides a first-hand eye-witness account that Libbey seems to have ignored. Chamberlin sought out Zorin in the Kremlin. Although it would appear that Chamberlin reduced Zorin’s importance by a factor of about ten (Zorin was likely among the first 20 or 30 men of Soviet Russia), he places Zorin among the first two or three hundred men of Soviet Russia.
When I arrived in Russia {Note: Probably in 1922] I found Zorin living in the Kremlin, having just returned from an important political mission to Turkey. The former east-side unemployed laborer had become one of the first two or three hundred men of Soviet Russia. And it was a tribute to his sincerity that he lived in the Kremlin with little more comfort than he had formerly enjoyed in some New York tenement.
But Soviet eminence, quickly gained, can be quickly lost. Zorin was involved in the decline of his patron, Zinoviev, who fell from power in 1926 and was shot ten years later. His wife, a scantily educated working girl, left him when his prospects of advancement were thus clouded over. What finally became of Zorin I do not know; one seldom hears of friends or acquaintances in Russia unless their names appear in lists of persons who have been arrested or shot.
(Source: The Confessions of an Individualist, page 57
Zorin in Bolshevik Documents, Photos, Other Sources
This section includes various sources that show, demonstrate, or detail Zorin’s role as a Bolshevik/Soviet Commissar, high-level leader, and ultimately a victim of Stalin’s purge of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Left Opposition. A diligent researcher, interested in discerning the truth of Alex Gumberg, and his brothers’, true roles could have found many of these sources, even in the 1970s.
January 31, 1918: Zorin: President of the Revolutionary Tribunal
The online archive of Bolshevik/Soviet documents complied by Alexander Yakovlev, in Russian, includes a document from the files of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Cheka, the Bolsheviks’ forerunner of the KGB. This document details a meeting, chaired by Lenin, of the Council of People’s Commissars. The subject of this meeting was the functions (search and suppression, investigation and courts) and personnel of investigative bodies.
One of the first speakers at this meeting was Comrade Zorin, the President of the Revolutionary Tribunal. No other sources reflect Zorin having served in this role. However, this confirms other evidence that Zorin was operating at the highest levels of the Bolshevik leadership. In the hectic confusion of the first months of the new regime, Zorin, like other high-level Bolsheviks, was called upon to play various roles.
In this document, from the files of Felix Dzerzhinsky, we see Lenin chairing a meeting of the Council of People’s Commissars
The text below was machine translated from the online Russian language version, and lightly edited for clarity.
F.E. DZERZHINSKY — CHAIRMAN OF THE CHEKA—OGPU. 1917–1926; 1918 [Doc. No. 21–148]
Document No. 31
From minutes No. 61 of the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars on the delimitation of the functions of the investigative bodies
31.01.1918
Chaired by V.I. Lenin.
Listened:
On the exact delineation of the functions of the existing institutions of search and suppression, investigation and court (Steinberg).
Statement by the President of the Revolutionary Tribunal, Comrade Zorin.
Statement from the Investigative Commission at the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.
Comrade’s Report. Dzerzhinsky.
Speech of Comrade Alexandrovich. Debate on the issues raised.
Comrade Bonch-Bruevich's Report on the Activities of His Commission1.
Decided:
4. Adopt the following resolution:
Having familiarized itself with the situation of the del in the various investigative commissions, the Council of People's Commissars, in order to streamline the fight against counter-revolution, sabotage and speculation, decides:
The Extraordinary Commission concentrates all the work of searching, suppressing and preventing crimes, yet the further conduct of data, the conduct of investigations and the setting of the case for trial is submitted to the Commission of Inquiry at the tribunal. Both commissions should be immediately replenished with an additional composition of energetic comrades.
Commissions are advised to delineate their activities into sub-departments – provocative2,criminal, speculation and counter-revolution.
To instruct the Commissariat of Justice to submit to the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies the lists of candidates for the post of members of the Commission of Inquiry. The same commissariat is instructed to take measures to increase places of detention, improve conditions of detention and increase criminal repression.
Source: Alexander Yakovlev’s Archive
Aug. 1, 1918: Zorin, Member of Presidium [Executive Committee] of Soviets of the Northern Region
Zorin poses in dead center of members of the Executive Committee of Northern Region Soviets. Between Trotsky (sitting, second from left) and Zinoviev (sitting, second from right). Zorin, a protégé of Zinoviev, had a high position in the Petrograd Soviet.
(Source: https://ru-m-wikipedia-org)
Nov 7, 1918: Zorin with Lunacharsky at Marx Monument
Anatoli Lunacharsky was an Old Bolshevik, with decades of active participation in revolutionary socialist circles close to Lenin before the revolution. He was the Bolsheviks’ first Commissar of Education. He was a key figure for the Bolsheviks in cultural affairs.
Although the online source for this photo claims that it was in the Saratov region, other sources reveal that this photo captures the unveiling ceremony for A.T. Matveev’s sculpture of Marx in front of the Smolny Institute (the headquarters of the Bolsheviks during the 1917 October revolution) in Petrograd on the first anniversary of the Bolshevik coup.
Zorin held high-level Bolshevik positions in Petrograd during the years immediately after the Bolsheviks seized power. At this Marx statue ceremony, he was likely the Commissar responsible for ruling Petrograd, much like being the mayor of the city.
Zorin’s appearance with Lunacharsky at this important ceremony underscores Zorin’s stature in the Party, the government, the ruling elite of Bolshevik Russia.
(Source: russiainphoto.ru)
March 1919: Zorin sits front and center at Lenin’s knee; Portrait of the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party
Beginning in 1903, the Russian Communist Party (RCP) (although it went through a series of name changes, beginning as the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party) leaders met in a regular Congress. These Congresses were held in exile until 1918. In 1919, the Russian Communist Party held its eighth Congress in Moscow, beginning on March 18, 1919.
There were around 400 delegates to the Congress. The group selected the RCP Central Committee, its ruling body, and heard speeches by Lenin and others.
Zorin appears to have been a delegate, but there are no records that reflect his status at the Congress. However, a widely available photo taken during the Congress (see below) shows a group posing sometime during the Congress. The group is made up of most members of the RCP Central Committee, and a few other Party leaders. The others include Zorin. It’s clear that this was a powerful group, not just a bunch of troubleshooters plucked off the floor for a quick snapshot.
The group of twenty RCP power-brokers includes Lenin, Stalin, Kalinin, Smilga, Lashevich, Serebryakov, Tomsky, Schmidt, and Zorin.
Zorin was a powerful Bolshevik Communist Party leader, and was well-known. Sources clearly revealing his status were available to Libbey in the 1970s.
(Source: commons.wikimedia.org)
March 1919: Zorin at 8th Congress of Russian Communist Party
This is a zoomed in portrait of Zorin from the group photo of RCP leaders at the 8th RCP Congress in 1919.
(Source: commons.wikimedia.org)
May 1 1920: May Day Celebrations, Petrograd. Zorin (as City’s Mayor front and center with Zinoviev
The Bolsheviks instituted official May Day celebrations of the laboring proletariat as soon as they were able, after seizing power. As the Executive Secretary of the Petrograd Communist Party, a position analogous to mayor of the city, Zorin was at the center of such communist festivities.
This photo, discovered online, did not come with any subjects identified. I was able to pick out Zorin and Zinoviev. Zorin has removed his hat, holding it next to his chest. He is in the middle of the photo, with fair hair, a white shirt front shining, with no tie. To the left of Zorin, just behind his right shoulder, is Zinoviev in a dark jacket, white collar with tie, also without his trademark hat, but his dark hair and slightly hunched posture help to identify him.
Source: Online collection
May 1 1920: May Day Celebrations, Petrograd. Zorin (as City’s Mayor front and center with Zinoviev
The Bolsheviks instituted official May Day celebrations of the laboring proletariat as soon as they were able, after seizing power. As the Executive Secretary of the Petrograd Communist Party, a position analogous to mayor of the city, Zorin was at the center of such communist festivities.
The source of this photo, posted online, did not identify any subjects. Being familiar with Zorin’s appearance, I was able to pick out Zorin and Zinoviev. Zorin is in the middle of the photo, with fair hair, a white shirt front shining, with no tie. He has removed his hat, holding it next to his chest, and is turned slightly to his left. To the left of Zorin, just behind his right shoulder, is Zinoviev in a dark jacket, white collar with tie, also without his trademark hat, but his dark hair and slightly hunched posture help to identify him.
Source: Online collection
May 1 1920: Petrograd. Zorin and Zinoviev Leading the Procession
Zinoviev in center in dark overcoat wearing his trademark fur hat.
The man facing sideways in front of, and to the left of Zinoviev obscures the man behind him. The obscured man is Zorin. Just 3/4 of his face isvisible behind the man's hat and collar. See the zoomed in version below.
Source: OpenEdition Books
Zoomed in high-resolution view of May Day, 1920 photo above. Zinoviev on far right, Zorin just to the left of man in foreground.
Source: OpenEdition Books
Probably 1920: Petrograd Soviet Leaders; Zorin sitting on Podium
The handwritten caption in the album says, Meeting of the Petrograd Soviet in honour of the Italian delegation. Zinov’yev under the lamp.
The date is sometime around the Comintern meeting in 1921.
Zorin is seated behind and to the right of Zinoviev. Zorin's face is on the same level as the lamp above Zinoviev's head, then to the right 4 or 5 head widths. Zorin's face is bright white, and his hands are steepled in front of him, forming a white blob just under his face.
Source: NY Public Library
July 1920: Second Congress of the Comintern; Zorin prominent in center
The 2nd World Congress of the Comintern was a gathering of approximately 220 voting and non-voting representatives of Communist and revolutionary socialist political parties from around the world, held in Petrograd and Moscow from July 19 to August 7, 1920. The 2nd Congress is best remembered for formulating and implementing the 21 Conditions for membership in the 3rd Communist International (Comintern).
This event was recorded for posterity in multiple photographs, and even movie footage of Zorin chatting with Lenin. Zorin’s prominence in the photos of this event makes clear that he was at the highest levels of the Bolshevik party and leadership.
Zorin appears in some photos, found on webpages with sketchy identifications and dating, or lacking identification of the subjects. I’ve identified Zorin in photos by his characteristic appearance. I’ve identified the dates, or the event, by the unique clothing he wore at the Second Comintern conference.
Note Zorin’s distinct hairstyle, long bangs brushed back from his high forehead, covering his ears. At the Second Comintern, he favored a floppy brimmed fedora, looking almost like he wore it backwards. The shirt he’s wearing is also unique. Light-colored, probably white, it has an off-center placket, on the left side of the shirt, with a unique criss-cross pattern, apparently embroidered. The placket meets what appears to be a nehru collar with the same embroidered pattern. He wears a dark-colored light-weight jacket over the shirt. This shirt and jacket, along with the floppy-brimmed fedora, help to confirm Zorin’s identity.
(Source: Wikipedia)
July 1920: Second Congress of the Comintern; Zorin and Lenin
At the 2nd Comintern World Congress, the delegates from socialist parties around the world visited Smolny, viewed as a revolutionary shrine. After the Smolny visit, delegates moved to the Uritsky Theater for the opening session of the conference, a speech by Lenin.
In this photo, delegates escort Lenin out of Smolny. Lenin is in center of the photo wearing his trademark cloth cap, white shirt and tie.
Zorin is just to the left of Lenin, in front of and to Lenin's right, hatless, in the high-collared white shirt with open jacket. It appears that he has linked arms with others to escort Lenin through the crowd.
Just behind Zorin, over his right shoulder (to our left) is Lashevich, in uniform.
Zorin was at the right hand of the world’s most powerful Marxist leader during the most important global meeting of communists. Atop the Bolshevik world, Zorin was an important leader.
Source: OpenEdition.org website.
July 1920: Second Congress of the Comintern; Zorin and Lenin
This screenshot from the movie Tsar to Lenin, by Herman Axelbank, captures an intimate moment between Zorin and Lenin. The footage appears to be later in the procession depicted above, with the Comintern delegates in a procession out of the Smolny, headed to the Uritsky Theater for Lenin’s speech. This could be after the speech also, it’s not clear from the brief segment in the film.
Regardless, for our purposes of analyzing Libbey’s claims that Zorin was a low-level, not public, trouble-shooter for the Bolsheviks, this frame again destroys those assertions. Here is Zorin accompanying, as an equal, the revered Bolshevik leader. Zorin and Lenin pause for a moment of light banter, even as they are engulfed in the adoring crowd.
Source: Still from movie, Tsar to Lenin, by Herman Axelbank.
Probably July 1920: Zorin and fellow members of Petrograd Soviet
This photo, sourced from a Russian language website, is captioned there, Members of the Petrograd Soviet Alexei Badayev, Maxim Gorky and Sergey Zorin. 1919-20.
However, I believe that this photo is from the activities of the 2nd Comintern Congress in 1920. Note Zorin and Gorky’s clothing, appears identical to their outfits—clothing and hats, in other pictures from the July 1920 Congress in Petrograd (see photos above). This photo probably dates from that meeting.
Regardless, Gorky was one of the most famous members of the Bolsheviks, due to his pre-revolution stature as an internationally known writer. In other sources, Zorin bragged that the Bolsheviks had Gorky on their side. Yet again, we see that Zorin was at the highest levels of Russian/Bolshevik/Soviet society and power.
(Source: russiainphoto.ru)
Probably 1920: Zorin and fellow members of the Comintern 2nd Conference
The handwritten captions in the source album (by an unknown photographer or collector) now in the New York Public Library, and the online photo of the album page identify this photo as from the 3rd Comintern International. It appears to date from the Comintern’s 2nd Conference, in July, 1920, based on Zorin’s clothing, like others above and below here.
It’s not clear why these eight men are grouped together for the portrait, but we do know that the identifiable individuals are high-level Bolshevik leaders. These include: Bukharin, Zinoviev, Lashevich, and Zorin.
Source: New York Public Library
Probable 1920s: Bolshevik Revolutionaries of 1917
Zorin is depicted in this montage of the leaders of the Bolshevik revolution. He is included near the center of the montage, two heads above the image of Lenin. Zorin’s Elizavetgrad network peers and mentors, Zinoviev and Trotsky, appear directly adjacent to Lenin, on either side of the leader.
A very public figure, at the highest levels of Bolsheviks, revered and included among the most important Communists of Russia.
(Source: David King Kickstarter)
January 21, 1935: Transcript of NKVD Interrogation of Zorin
The Russian language website Knowbysight.info recorded information on Zorin, with sourcing notations for most documents and photos as: Courtesy of S. S. Zorin's family. As of publication of this chapter, I have been unable to locate Zorin’s family to corroborate the information, or other research findings.
This photo of Zorin came from that site.
(Source: Knowbysight.info entry on Zorin)
A transcript of Zorin’s interrogation, on January 21, 1935, by the Soviet secret police is reproduced at that site. Zorin confessed to crimes against the state.
Zorin’s interrogator was the notorious Leonid Isaakovich Chertok, whose family name is indicated after Zorin’s signature at the bottom of the interrogation form. According to biographies on Russian websites, Chertok was the interrogation go-to guy, called in to break the Old Bolshevik opponents of Stalin. After dealing with Chertok, the prisoners would confess to whatever they were instructed to confess: espionage, sabotage, assassinations, conspiracies. Whatever was required for Stalin’s needs at the moment, Chertok would produce signed confessions from the Old Bolsheviks.
According to Boris Efimov, a famous Soviet cartoonist, and Chertok’s brother-in-law, in a profile of Chertok for a Russian literary magazine in April 2000, Chertok [was] the most terrible investigator in the NKVD apparatus, a sadist and executioner, [he] kept the arrested person on the “conveyor line” - forty-eight hours without sleep and food, beaten mercilessly, signed in his presence a warrant for the arrest of his wife and children ....
Chertok surely tortured Zorin to obtain the confession that doomed Zorin in January, 1937. Ironically, only 3 months after Zorin’s torture sessions, Chertok, facing KGB officers sent to his apartment to arrest him, leaped from his eighth floor balcony to his death. Cheating the executioner, Chertok’s death came five months before Zorin was executed, while Zorin sat in prison awaiting his fate.
A lightly edited machine translation version of that transcript is below:
Protocol of the interrogation of Zorin (Gombarg) Sergei Semenovich of January 21, 1935
[Name]: Zorin (Gombarg) Sergey Semenovich
[Born]: 1890 Kirovsk (Yelisavetgrad)
[Parents]: Father a teacher, a Jew, Soviet citizenship.
[Address]: Moscow - Leontief lane [eulok] 8 sq [artira] 20.
[Current work]: Director of the Research Institute of Housing Industrialization.
[Family]: His wife Antonina Malinowski, 35 L [a] bespo [artiynaya] head [eduyuschaya] paperwork in store "Deli", Daughter - Natalia 15 years old student, Olga 9 years old, living with his ex-wife in Moscow, Nikita str [ICA] d [th], Elizabeth Y. Volgin, member [en] CPSU (b), a writer working in "Izvestia". Poor.
Education: nisshee (sic).
[History of Communist Party roles]:
Member of the CPSU (b) since 1917 to 1919 to 1921 (sic)
Secretary of the Leningrad Party Committee, secretary of the Bryansk Provincial Committee in 1921/
Secretary of Ivano-Voznesensky Provincial Committee from 1923 to 1925.
XIII [13th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]: elected as a candidate for the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).
Do not judge. White has not served. (sic)
Question: The investigation has information about your participation in the Zinoviev organization. Do you acknowledge that?
Answer: After the 15th[Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), 1927] I stayed at their old views and opposition to the Party is therefore not returned. I returned back into the game in the first half of 1930 not entirely his past counterrevolutionary views. And after returning to the game I continued to liaise with Zinoviev and KAMENEV. I met with them to continue in 1930, 1931 and 1932. In the course of these meetings I had with Zinoviev and KAMENEV there was a series of political conversations anti-Party character.
The main conclusion that you should do as a result of these meetings - this is what Zinoviev and Kamenev on the most essential issues of economic and political life remained on his past counterrevolutionary positions. While not opposed to the policy of industrialization and Zinoviev and Kamenev believed that industrialization carried enormous costs, as a result of insolvency leadership of the CPSU (b). The fact that industrialization carried enormous costs of production Kamenev argued alongside its existing figures and specially selected materials. The meaning of statements ZINOVIEVA and KAMENEV on the industrialization of the country was reduced to what is here, if they were carried out industrialization - Zinoviev and Kamenev, the results would be quite different.
On the question of collectivization Zinoviev and Kamenev believed that collectivisation should not be carried out in such a large scale that it was necessary to first build a collective only the poor that gradually, as the strengthening of the collective farms, it was necessary to involve them on the selection of the least well-off middle peasants. At the same time, Zinoviev and Kamenev completely avoided the question of the liquidation of the kulaks as a class.
From statements ZINOVIEVA and KAMENEV collectivization appeared that because of this issue within the party going fight between the CC and Regulation, ZINOVIEV and KAMENEV necessary in this struggle to be in the side, in case of need to be able to contact with the right.
With regard to the financial situation of the working class's favorite sayings ZINOVIEVA was that the workers deteriorated, where the workers had been on strike, etc.
And Zinoviev and Kamenev in the darkest colors imagined future situation of the Union Republics, considering that as a result of mismanagement and improper management of the CPSU (b) the country faces enormous difficulties with which the leadership of the CPSU (b) not be able to cope.
I recognize that supporting during 1930, 1931 and 1932 political relations with Zinoviev and KAMENEV that being in separate views of their political soul mate - I have been a double-dealer.
Recorded with my words correctly, I read – [signed] Zorin.
Interrogator: Initial [Alnico] Dep [Jelenia] IVF GUGB NKVD - Chertok.