Page 301 - The Chief Culprit

246 y e Chief Culprit

executors of the plans, received the appropriate directives and the final draft of the operation.
Stalin had received this draft six days earlier.
Oddly enough, in 1941 Soviet spies reported to Stalin that Hitler was planning to at-
tack, but Stalin did not believe them. Richard Sorge (agency covername—Ramzai) was a spy
whom Stalin ordered to return to the USSR “for vacation” on July 29, 1938. He refused to
return. In January 1940, he wrote to his Moscow contact: “I am grateful for your greetings
and [good] wishes [for] my vacation. However, if I go on vacation, it will immediately reduce
the information.” In May, he refused for the second time: “It goes without saying that we are
postponing the date of our return home because of the present military situation. May we
assure you once again that this is not the time to raise this question?” In October, he asked:
“May I count on coming home after the end of the war?” It is a strange question. Every secret
agent knows that after the war he will be allowed to return home. Moreover, they propose
right now that he arrive for vacation. But Sorge refuses. What is going on?
A multitude of books and articles have been written about Sorge in the Soviet Union.
Some of them overflow with praise: he was such a great intelligence officer, such a true
Communist that he even spent his own money, earned in his difficult work as a journalist, on
his illegal work. One of the Soviet weekly magazines published a report that Sorge had very
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important documents, but was unable to send them to the center, because the center had not
sent a courier.
Meanwhile, Yan Berzin, the brilliant chief of Soviet military intelligence who had re-
cruited Sorge, was executed after being horrendously tortured. Solomon Uritsky, another
GRU chief who had personally given Sorge his instructions, was also executed. Lev Borovich
(agency covername—Rozental), deputy head of the 2nd department of the intelligence head-
quarters, direct supervisor to Sorge, was shot. Gorev, the Soviet illegal resident who had
fixed Sorge’s passage from Germany, was in jail. Aino Kuusinen, Sorge’s secret collaborator
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who was the wife of the “president of the Finnish Democratic Republic” and of a future
member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, was also in jail. Ekaterina
Maksimova, Sorge’s wife, had been arrested, admitted to having links with enemies, and died
in confinement in 1943. Karl Ramm, the illegal GRU resident in Shanghai and former dep-
uty of Sorge, was summoned back to Moscow “for a vacation” and executed. Sorge received
the order to come back for a vacation and refused to travel to the Soviet Union. Undoubtedly,
Sorge guessed what was awaiting him in Moscow.
ese discrepancies are explained easily: Sorge became a defector. At that time, a more
precise term was invented—a malevolent defector. at was why he was paying agents out of
his own pocket—the center stopped funding him! Not wishing to return to a hasty trial and
certain death, Sorge continued to work for the Communists, but now no longer in the role of
a secret agent, but rather as an amateur informer, not for money but for his own satisfaction.
Sorge calculated that after the war his superiors would understand that he only told them the
truth, and they would pardon him and appreciate his work. e center did not lose contact
with him until the end. It accepted his telegrams, but apparently only to urge him: “come
home, come home, come home,” to which Ramzai replied “too busy, too busy, too busy.”
Stalin did not trust Richard Sorge, because he was a defector with a capital sentence
hanging over his head. Someone had invented the legend that Richard Sorge supposedly
submitted highly important information about the German invasion to the GRU, but