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By Root 2522 0

‘a complete file at “C’s” office’. This no longer exists, but part of the Naval Intelligence selection, comprising 101 ‘political’ reports, has been preserved in the SIS archives. Eleven concern Russia between October 1916 and December 1918, and, of these, just three are from MI1(c) sources in Russia itself between the time of the Bolshevik revolution in the late autumn of 1917 and the end of 1918. On 5 October 1917 Petrograd reported on a ‘democratic conference’ which confirmed that the Bolshevik leaders were ‘the ablest men in Party tactics’ and that Party cohesion was weak ‘except on the extreme “Left”’. On 21 November (received in London on 14 December) a six-page despatch was sent containing ‘Notes on the November (Bolshevik) Revolution in Russia’, from ‘a reliable source’. This contained a potted history of events in Russia from the summer of 1917 and described the central role which the Military-Revolutionary Committee, ably mobilised by Trotsky, had played in the coup and how the Bolsheviks were attacking the last remaining pockets of support for Kerensky. The third CX report, on ‘affairs in Russia’, dates from July 1918, and was from ‘our representative in Moscow’. It contains eighteen pages of miscellaneous material, mainly relating to the politico-military situation in the Ukraine, and including letters to and from the anti-Bolshevik, ‘White’ Russian General Anton Denikin. MI1(c) conceded that ‘while some passages are a little obscure’, it had ‘been thought better in view of the scarcity of news from Russia to leave them entire, and let them speak for themselves’.

Assuming that the Naval Intelligence Department’s 1919 definition of ‘historical value’ was not so restricted as to exclude a great number of reports (and the inclusion of the July 1918 despatch with its ragbag of material suggests otherwise), and that the reports which have survived are broadly representative of what was being provided through ‘C’, it appears that in the confused days of the October Revolution and after Cumming’s representatives (who in any case had never been organised for political intelligence gathering) were not contributing very much to whatever information London was getting about the situation in Russia. Samuel Hoare, who came home on sick leave in February 1917, was never replaced. Major John Scale, an Indian Army officer who had qualified as a Russian interpreter before the war and had fought with distinction on the Western Front before being posted to Petrograd, seems to have acted thereafter as head of the mission which, following the Bolshevik seizure of power, had to leave the Russian War Office and was given accommodation in the British embassy. The change of regime and the withdrawal of the country from the war not only meant that Russia became a target for British intelligence but also left Tsarist Russian officers stranded in the West by the revolutionary events back home. In December 1917 Cumming went to the Admiralty ‘to meet Admiral Volkov and Lt. Okerlund of Russian Service’, who wanted the British to ‘say that their S.S. is worth the £15,000 monthly that it costs. If we state this, our Treasury will advance them the money.’ There is no indication whether this offer was taken up, though in the ensuing years British intelligence agencies (among many others) employed numerous former Tsarist officers and agents. Knox (now a general and back in London) told Cumming in January 1918 that ‘Russian S.S. officers are to be trusted & would work loyally for us as they are penniless.’ The following month General Macdonogh, the Director of Military Intelligence, said he was not against employing Russians, but warned Cumming that he should ‘choose our men very carefully as Russia is divided into Bolsheviks & pro-Germans (the latter being better class folks who would welcome any power that would maintain order)’.

Cumming, meanwhile, began to work on ‘an entirely new S.S. Service [sic] in Russia’. In January 1918 he proposed to Macdonogh that this might be organised from Stockholm or Oslo. Major Scale was named to run it and,