GUEST REVIEWER THE ENIGMA OF PENKOVSKY

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30919, 27 November 1965, Page 4

GUEST REVIEWER THE ENIGMA OF PENKOVSKY

This review of “The Penkovsky Papers,” a new book which is arousing great interest in Britain and the United States, was written for the “Daily Telegraph,” London, by David Floyd. “The Times” devoted a first leading article to the book; the expulsion from Russia of the correspondent of the “Washington Post” has been connected with the fact that the “Washington Post” is serialising “The Penkovsky Papers.” The book is published by Collins.

On May 11, 1963, a military court in Moscow sentenced a senior Soviet Officer, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, to death for spying for Britain and America. There seems to be no doubt that he was in fact a spy, not just a browbeaten and brainwashed critic of th§ regime who had been forced to “confess” to unlikely offences. For the first time Soviet officialdom had unearthed a genuine traitor from among its own ranks.

Penkovsky was unquestionably a member of the new Soviet “upper class.” Trained at some of the best Russian military colleges, he was an experienced intelligence officer and had served as assistant military attache in Turkey. He had been a full member of the Soviet Communist party since 1940. At the time of his arrest in 1962 he was deputy head of the foreign department of the State Committee (equivalent to 1 a Ministry) for co-ordinating scientific research. On the surface he was one of the better-offs of the Soviet regime, a man who had accepted its ideas and its morals and who had been rewarded for his devotion. Yet from April, 1961, until August, 1962, he kept the British and American intelligence services supplied with an unbroken flow of extremely valuable top-secret information about Russia’s political and military affairs. What exactly this information was has not been revealed. But the period during which he was keeping the Western Governments informed about Soviet intentions included the crisis over the Berlin Wall and led up to the confrontation over Cuba in the autumn of 1962. The information he provided about military intentions and abilities may have proved decisive.

At his trial he was given no public opportunity of explaining why he had done what he confessed to having done. He was allowed only to make an abject confession, admitting that he had been led astray, in the words of the prosecuting counsel, by “envy, vanity, love of an easy life, affairs with women, moral decay and the use of liquor.” There could be no suggestion that he had acted out of serious conviction or genuine disillusionment with the Soviet system. Yet even his Soviet accusers were unable to make their picture of Penkovsky veryconvincing. They did not even attempt to prove that he had received vast sums for his services from the WestNor could they show that at

the first signs of danger he had fled to the flesh-pots of capitalism. In fact, he turned down an opportunity to flee.

Why, then, did he do it? According to Mr Greville Wynne, the British businessman who acted as courier between Penkovsky and the West and who was tried and condemned along with him, Penkovsky was “an extraordinarily high-minded man”: “He was willing to put up with the basic deceptions of spying and the tremendous strains of his lonely life because he believed in a cause. He believed simply that a free society should emerge in the Soviet Union and that it could only come by toppling the only Government he knew. He was an heroic figure.” Mr Wynne is the only person in the West who both knew Penkovsky and is ‘able to speak about him. But now we have, in a book Penkovsky’s own answer to the question.

“The Penkovsky Papers” purport to be his own random jottings, made late at night in the seclusion of his tworoomed Moscow flat, about himself, his friends, the society he lived in. espionage and Soviet policy in general. They are said to have been spirited out of Moscow at about the time of his arrest. Selected and edited in America, “their authenticity is beyond question,” according to Frank Gibney, author of the introduction and commentary.

Granted the existence of such a man as Penkovsky, there is indeed no reason why he should not have set down what now appears in his “Papers.” But it puts some strain on credulity to accept the idea that he wrote these notes in the very midst of his life of espionage. He was, after all, not an amateur spy, but a professional, taught never to write anything down, especially the sort of com-i ments on the Soviet system that would have exposed the least important of citizens to reprisals. I prefer to believe that the “Papers” are, rather, a by-|

product of his espionage activities, odd notes of a general character, written down or recorded in some way along with other information of a more secret nature. They are, it seems to me, simply the publishable part of the material that Penkovsky sent to the West.

They are none the less important for that. The picture of life in the Soviet Union which emerges from them is depressing and, in parts, alarming. It is, above all, a society dominated by the police and intelligence services in their various guises. “Anyone who has anything at all to do with foreign countries or who is connected with foreigners in the course of his work is perforce engaged in intelligent work. We are all spies,” Penkovsky says. Apparently, too, they are all spied upon. However effective this atmosphere of mutual suspicion may be for protecting secrets of State, it makes the life of any senior official almost unbearable.

To Penkovsky Soviet society seems to be pervaded by petty ambitions, rivalries and jealousies. Of military elite among whom he moved he says: “I realised that their praise of the party and communism was only in words. In their private lives they lie. deceive, scheme against each other, intrigue, inform, cut each other’s throats . . . Their children despise everything Soviet, watch only foreign films and look down on ordinary people.” Of his frifends, none believed in communism. High officials were interested only in their own advancement, in food and drink and the good things they could get from the West. Political leaders were held in the greatest contempt, both for their high-handed treatment of the armed forces and for their recklessness. Penkovsky’s notes are infused with a hatred of Khrushchev which may well reflect the general mood in the Soviet administration which eventually brought him down. But he thinks very little of Khrushchev’s colleagues and successors.

“Kozlov and Brezhnev are

both fools and they both dislike Mikoyan.” Mikoyan is “the cleverest of them all.” Churayev, a senior party official, is described as: “Twenty-thousand roses, a Chaika limousine, two maids, a personal chaffeur, a flat in Moscow, his own country house on the outskirts, a gambler, a drunkard and a babbler.”

Marshal Malinovsky, the Defence Minister, is “the most colourless of all the marshals, of limited mental capacity.” Marshal Chulkov, the victor of Stalingrad, is “a boor and scum.” “All our generals have mistresses and some have two or more,” says Penkovsky. If anyone thought that Soviet Russia was ruled by a bunch of high-minded, idealistic and personally blameless politicians and military leaders, Penkovsky’s notes may provide a useful antidote. Many of his revelations about the nature of Soviet society, especially of Soviet high society, are new and maybe true. But it is difficult to believe that he has provided anything more than one obviously disillusioned and embittered man’s view of that society. It is in this disillusion and bitterness that we must look for the answer to the question: “Why did he do it?” For there is little of reason or logic in his behaviour or writing. But there is plenty of resentment of the secret police, of the marshals, of the politicians, of almost everybody.

For reasons which are not entirely clear Penkovsky came to hate the society he lived in and the people who ran it. and the more he saw of the West the more he hated the Soviet system. His reaction was not to escape but to hurt that system in its most sensitive and vulnerable spot to give away secrets about its military strength. This certainly required courage. But it did not bring a ‘free society” noticeably nearer in Russia. This is the sad conclusion of the Penkovsky affair—that protest in Russia today cannot go beyond occasional material criticisms or individual acts of resistance. There is little outlet for the reformer in Soviet society and no scope at all for the opponent of the regime.

Penkovsky’s “Papers” are a depressing document: depressing for the picture of Soviet society they give: depressing because they give no promise of change: depressing because they suggest that Penkovsky himself was a lone wolf.

Nevertheless he caused the authorities considerable pain. It seems that no system not even the police-ridden Soviet system, has an effective defence against the individual who quietly declares his own personal war on it.