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Russian Counterfeit Dollars: A Case of Early Soviet Espionage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Arnold Krammer
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The history of Soviet espionage, by the party’s own admission, did not begin in earnest until 1927, when the tiny and previously ineffectual military espionage operation came under the direction of a Moscow-trained Latvian immigrant, Alfred Tiltin. Living in New York as a Canadian under the fictitious name of “Joseph Paquette,” the debonair new director of the Soviet Military Intelligence organization in the United States recruited arid began grooming a second-in-command who would assume control of the spy group Upon Tiltin’s recall to Moscow early in 1929. The man was Nicholas Dozenberg, an early member of the American Communist Party, the first editor of the Communist publication Labor’s Voice, which later became the Daily Worker, and a man whose dedication to the Comintern was above question.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , December 1971 , pp. 762 - 773
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1971

References

1. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Un-American Activities, Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States: Hearings on H. Res. 282, 76th Cong., 1st sess., 1939, vol. 7, p. 4675.Google Scholar

2. New York Times, Jan. 27, 1930, p. 3.

3. New York Times, Jan. 28, 1930, p. 9.

4. New York Times, Feb. 7, 1930, p. 4. No information is available concerning the forged $20 bills referred to in this New York Times account.

5. New York Times, Jan. 30, 1930, p, 11.

6. Krivitsky, W. G., I Was Stalin's Agent (London, 1939), p. 136.Google Scholar

7. Stalin's General Berzin, in a conversation with Krivitsky, repeated what was evidently Stalin's argument based on the historical precedent of Napoleon's effort to print British banknotes. Krivitsky, I Was Stalin's. Agent, p. 150.

8. Gitlow, Benjamin, The Whole of Their Lives (New York, 1948), p. 1948.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., pp. 142-43. Krivitsky, however, claimed that “the notes were printed on special stock imported from the United States” ( I Was Stalin's Agent, p. 137).

10. Hearings on H. Res. 282, p. 4684. “He [Dozenberg] Appealed to the Secretariat of the Communist party to help him get the-information, promising them that it would be worth a lot of money to the Party” (Gitlow, The Whole of Their Lives, pp. 142-43).

11. Krivitsky, I Was Stalin's Agent, p. 136.

12. Valtin, Jan, Out of the Night (New York, 1941), p. 1941.Google Scholar

13. Krivitsky, I Was Stalin's Agent, pp. 142-43.

14. Ibid., p. 146.

15. Ibid., p. 149.

16. Seth, Ronald, K.G.B.: The Story of Soviet Espionage (New Delhi, n.d.), p. 75.Google Scholar

17. Gitlow, The Whole of Their Lives, p. 140.

18. Ibid., and Krivitsky, I Was Stalin's Agent, p. 152.

19. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage, 81st Cong., 1st and 2nd sess., 1949 and 1950, vol. 2, p. 3558.Google Scholar

20. Gitlow, The Whole of Their Lives, p. 140.

21. Spolansky, Jacob, The Communist Trail in America (New York, 1951), p. 1951.Google Scholar

22. Hearings Regarding Cimimunist Espionage, p. 3558. It is interesting that Burtan insisted on his innocence in this small matter while confessing freely to his participation in far more important espionage activities.

23. Gltlow, The Whole of Their Lives, p. 139.

24. New York Times, Jan. 5, 1933, p. 11.

25. Krivitsky, , I Was Stalin's Agent, pp. 154–55.Google Scholar

26. Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage, p. 3558.

27. New York Times, Jan. 5, 1933, p. 11.

28. Glaser, Lynn, Counterfeiting in America (New York, 1968), p. 244;Google Scholar also see the New York Times, Jan. 5, 1933, p. 11.

29. Krivitsky, I Was Stalin's Agent, p. 152.

30. Burtan reportedly was offered complete immunity by the FBI if he would reveal his immediate superior in the counterfeit ring's chain of command. The idealistic physician refused.

31. U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, Criminal File no. 26672: The United States v. Valentine G. Burtan. The author acknowledges, with thanks, the aid of John Stibich of the Chicago Police Department.

32. Hearings on H. Res. 282, 3rd sess., 1940, vol. 2, pp. 620-24.

33. Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage, p. 3557.

34. Hearings on H. Res. 282, 1st sess., pp. 4683-85.

35. Dozenberg was sentenced, ironically, to a year and a day in Lewisburg prison— from which Burtan had only recently been released after serving three years of his fifteen-year sentence.