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By Root 2629 0

Bolsheviks, supported by the Central Powers, from seizing power’, the surviving evidence suggests something slightly less ambitious. A review of Maugham’s mission after it had finished said that it had been part of a broad plan ‘to start an Intelligence and Propaganda service in Russia’. The intelligence side was to expose ‘German political intrigues’, and Maugham was to help supply material for propaganda purposes. Wiseman’s agents were also to ‘ascertain whether it was possible to support the more responsible elements in Russia. No attempt was to be made to support any reactionary movement, but it was thought it might be possible, to some extent, to “guide the storm”.’ Given the parlous internal condition of Russia, even this was over-sanguine. Supplied with $21,000 (approximately $350,000 today) for expenses and travelling from the west coast of the United States, through Japan and Vladivostok, Maugham reached Petrograd in early September 1917.27

While the ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, was informed of his presence (though not his precise mission), Maugham made no formal contact with Cumming’s remaining personnel in Russia. Accompanied by Emanuel Voska, a Czech émigré leader long resident in the USA, he contacted Tomáš Masaryk in the hope of mobilising Czech and Slovak elements in Russia to work for the Allied cause. Using the cover-name ‘Somerville’ for Maugham, Wiseman supplied the State Department with his reports, which have been credited with providing the best political intelligence the Americans had about Russia at the time. They were, for example, among the very few accurately to assess the weakness of Alexander Kerensky’s administration and the strength of the Bolshevik movement, as well as indicating the possibilities of mobilising Polish and other nationalists against Germany. Having reported in late September that Kerensky’s government was losing support and would probably not last very much longer, Maugham secured an interview with Kerensky himself on 30 October in which the Russian asked him to tell Lloyd George that with Germany offering peace and the winter coming on he did not think his government could continue. By the time Maugham’s report of this interview reached the Foreign Office on 18 November, Kerensky had indeed been toppled and Maugham summoned back to London.28 The Bolsheviks seized power on 7 November. Because Russia was still using the old Julian calendar, which was thirteen days behind the West, it was frequently called the ‘October Revolution’. They immediately sued for peace. After a ceasefire was agreed on 16 December, peace talks led to the harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918, by which the Russian government had to give up control over former imperial territories in Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

These developments vitiated Wiseman’s scheme and Maugham (who suffered ill-health) never returned to Russia, though his suggestion that secret subsidies should be paid to national self-determination groups within Russia, including Cossacks, was one which intermittently attracted successive decision-makers in both London and Washington. Wiseman remained close to Colonel House and President Wilson, though the growing formalisation of Anglo-American relations affected his situation. General Macdonogh’s insistence that intelligence liaison with Allied states should be through orthodox military channels undermined Wiseman’s position as part of Cumming’s organisation and reinforced Vernon Kell’s desire to establish a Military Control Office in the USA under direct MI5 control. Wiseman told Cumming in December 1917 that he wanted to continue as his representative ‘for S.S. & Political work’. Presumably alluding to the Somerset Maugham operation in Russia, he said that part of the ‘S.I.’ (secret intelligence) work could be handed over to the Americans, with the rest under Major Thwaites, who should also be appointed Military Control Officer and made responsible to the military attaché. In March 1918 Thwaites became head of the MI5 office in New York while remaining part