Web Letters: Hiss in History

Victor Navasky Responds to Mark Kramer's Bletter, "The Hiss Case and General Volkogonov: A Comment on Victor Navasky's Article"

Thanks to Mark Kramer for reminding us what Volkogonov told Serge Schemann and for adding what he told Kramer himself.

Now let me remind you of what Volkogonov told John Lowenthal before he talked with Schemann/Kramer and add what he told Loewenthal after he talked with Schemann/Kramer:

On 14 October 1992, he wrote Lowenthal in response to his and Alger Hiss's request:"...On the basis of a very careful analysis of all the informatfion available, I can inform you that Alger Hiss was never an agent of the intelligence services of the Soviet Union...Not a single document, and a great amount of materials has been studied, substantiates the allegation that Mr. A. Hiss collaborated with the intelligence services of the Soviet Union. Probably, such old allegations are based on a misunderstanding or incorrect misinformation. I believe that public opinion should have long since cleared Mister Hiss of the old suspicions, which are completely groundless."

After various people including Romerstein, Schemann, and Kramer met with Volkogonov Lowenthal reinterviewed him in Washington and a transcript of that reinterivew may be found on the Hiss website (at http://homepages.nyu.edu/th15/ volk2.html)

John Lowenthal: General, which archives did you examine in the Alger Hiss case?

Dmitry A. Volkogonov: When I was approached about the Alger Hiss case, I tried to examine all the archives of the Foreign Intelligence Department. This department used to be part of the KGB. I was interested in the '30s and '40s, and with the kind permission of the Chief of Russian Intelligence, Mr. Primakov [Yevgeny Primakov was subsequently Prime Minister of Russia], I had been able to examine a large number of materials on intelligence services in the '30s and '40s. I've had the assistance of some of the staff of the Foreign Intelligence archive. And as a result of this work, I have been able to determine that Alger Hiss, according to those documents, had never been listed as a paid or recruited agent of the Soviet ¨Union....

JL: Did you examine also the military intelligence GRU files?

V: Yes, we also asked to examine the military intelligence files and there, too, no traces of Alger Hiss have been found. Sometimes I'm told that I could look through not all of them, and naturally I can't say that I've seen all existing documents, but the intelligence documents pertaining to agents, personnel matters I did see...

JL: In your opinion, if Alger Hiss had been a spy, would you have found some documents saying that?

V: Positively, if he was a spy then I believe positively I would have found a reflection in various files. I know this from numerous documents and on many spies, many agents, I have been able to see documents.

JL...How do we know nothing was destroyed or removed on Alger Hiss?

V: ...naturally I can not give a one hundred percent guarantee that something wasn't destroyed, but as far as I know...these documents were not touched.

Now of course I do not and did not cite Volkogonov to prove anything one way or the other about Alger Hiss's guilt or innocence, merely to set the record straight on what he did and didn't say. And for what it's worth, Major General Julius N. Kobyakov, who did some of the research on behalf of Volkonov, subsequently said publicly that if and when the GRU files are opened, it turns out that Alger Hiss was a spy he would "take a bite of my hat."

Victor Navasky

Victor Navasky
The Nation

NYC, NY

The Hiss Case and General Volkogonov: A Comment on Victor Navasky's Article

In his latest article about the Alger Hiss case, "Hiss in History" (Apr. 30), Victor Navasky refers to General Dmitrii Volkogonov, a long- time Soviet military-political officer and military historian, who became a senior military adviser to Russian president Boris Yeltsin in the early 1990s. Specifically, Navasky writes that:

"in 1992, the Russian historian general Dmitry A. Volkogonov, after ordering a search of a full range of official Russian government repositories with information about Soviet intelligence operations, including KGB files and military intelligence - or GRU files - told Hiss attorney John Lowenthal and the world, in a videotaped interview that Hiss had not been a spy. . . . Volkogonov subsequently conceded under questioning by Herb Romerstein, formerly a staff consultant to the House Committee on Unamerican Activites, that he could not say with absolute certainty that some files had not been destroyed or that his search had been 100% exhaustive."

The phrasing Navasky uses here implies that Volkogonov's retraction was merely a technicality (i.e., that Volkogonov was unable to "say with absolute certainty that some files had not been destroyed or that his search had been 100% exhaustive") and that the only time the general made such a retraction was during questioning by Herbert Romerstein, whose credibility Navasky obviously doubts.

Fortunately, we have good records of precisely what General Volkogonov said when making his retraction. I have no idea what Volkogonov said to Herbert Romerstein, but I do know what the general said to Serge Schmemann, who was then bureau chief in Moscow for The New York Times, and what Volkogonov said to me. Presumably, Navasky, too, knows what Volkogonov said to Schmemann because it appeared in a news article in The New York Times on 17 December 1992. In that article, titled "Russian General Retreats on Hiss," Schmemann cites Volkogonov at length. If we look at what the general actually, it does not bear out what Navasky implies.

In the interview with Schmemann, Volkogonov said that his initial statement about Hiss in October 1992 had been badly misconstrued: "I was not properly understood. The Ministry of Defense also has an intelligence service, which is totally different, and many documents have been destroyed. I looked only through what the K.G.B. had. All I said was that I saw no evidence."

Volkogonov went on to explain that his motive in making the statement on behalf of Hiss was "primarily humanitarian," to help out an elderly man under pressure from the man's lawyer, John Lowenthal, who came to Moscow to receive the general's written statement. Volkogonov emphasized that he was disconcerted by Lowenthal's insistence on receiving a blanket exoneration of Hiss: "Hiss wrote that he was 88 and would like to die peacefully, that he wanted to prove that he was never a paid, contracted spy. What I saw gives no basis to claim a full clarification. There's no guarantee that it was not destroyed, that it was not in other channels. This was only my personal opinion as a historian. I never met [Hiss], and honestly I was a bit taken aback. His attorney, Lowenthal, pushed me hard to say things of which I was not fully convinced."

In January 1993, a few weeks after The New York Times article appeared, I had dinner with Schmemann in Moscow. A week after that, I met with General Volkogonov for around two hours, a conversation that I recorded. Although I spoke with Volkogonov mostly about things unrelated to the Hiss case (especially about some photocopied documents he had given me), I asked him about Hiss toward the end of our discussion. Volkogonov not only reaffirmed everything he had told Schmemann, but was even firmer in saying that he felt he had been "deceived" by Lowenthal. Volkogonov added: "I am not a specialist on the Hiss case," and "I thought I was just doing a favor for a dying man." Volkogonov confirmed that he had "not seen anything from the GRU archive" and that without going through the files there, there was "no basis for saying anything that would shed greater light on the question of Hiss."

All of this raises serious questions about Navasky's claim that Volkogonov had gone through "a full range of official Russian government repositories with information about Soviet intelligence operations, including KGB files and military intelligence - or GRU files." The reality is that at no point did Volkogonov say that he had gone through any GRU files. On the contrary, he explicitly said several times that he had *not* gone through GRU files. Even his search of KGB/NKVD files was cursory, as he himself later acknowledged. Numerous KGB/NKVD documents that have emerged in subsequent years, including the March 1945 memorandum from Anatoly Gorsky that plays a central role in the paper by Kai Bird and Svetlana Chervonnaya (which Navasky praises), contain extensive references to Hiss either by name or through the codename Ales, which seems to fit only Hiss.

Debate about Hiss is bound to continue, but it is time to drop any further reference to Volkogonov's initial statement in October 1992 as somehow a vindication of Hiss. Volkogonov himself firmly disavowed the statement, and evidence that has emerged in subsequent years amply supports his disavowal. I agree with Navasky that "ultimately truth is what history is and ought to be about," and that is why we should stick to what Volkogonov actually said.

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Mark Kramer is Director of Cold War Studies at Harvard University and a Senior Fellow at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Mark Kramer

Cambridge, MA