America, Federated Press of (1919–1956)

In October 1919, thirty-two union news editors, shocked that ‘the US press carried so little news’ of ongoing steel strikes, conceived this ‘cooperative, non-profit news service solely to cover union activities’. Established on 25 November ‘as a news agency, initially a twice-weekly mail service for affiliated journals, [informing them] of labour and left-wing news’, by January 1921 the Federated Press served ‘110 member newspapers, including 22 dailies (many foreign language newspapers), representing a broad spectrum … including socialist, communist, and trade union opinion’. Detroit journalist and ‘self-styled anti-capitalist’ Carl Haessler, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford from 1911 to 1914, ran the Federated Press from 1922. Not long after it was created in 1919, it ‘began to toe the Socialist and later the Communist Party line, [employing] many Communist editors and correspondents’.1

Baldwin, Stanley (1867–1947)

Educated at Harrow and Trinity, Cambridge, Baldwin came from a prominent industrialist family in the Midlands where he first made a name for himself before entering politics in 1908. In 1917, he joined the Coalition Government as Treasury Financial Secretary. Two years later, he gave away a fifth of his wealth after appealing anonymously in The Times to wealthy Britons for help in reducing the war debt. In 1921, Baldwin became Board of Trade President but was a leading rebel at the October 1922 Carlton Club meeting that pushed David Lloyd George out. In Andrew Bonar Law’s Cabinet, Baldwin served as Chancellor of the Exchequer until assuming the premiership in May 1923.2

Berens, Yevgeny A. (1876–1928)

In May 1923, Karl Radek mentioned having met a ‘Berens’, ‘Mikhalsky’ and the ‘head of intelligence’ (presumably the rezident) in Berlin. Admiral Yevgeny A. Berens (sometimes written Behrens) was the Imperial officer who defected to the Bolsheviks in 1917 and eventually commanded their navy. His brother, Admiral Mikhail A. Berens, commanded White naval forces (including in exile) until 1924. Yevgeny Berens was Naval Attaché in Germany before the First World War; from 1920, he served as naval expert with Bolshevik delegations at various conferences (including Genoa and Lausanne).