 | This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(July 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) |
Rudy Baker (born 1898, date of death unknown), a Communist Party USA (CPUSA) official, is today best known for his role as head of the CPUSA's underground secret apparatus . He succeeded to the position in 1938, after the removal of J. Peters.
Baker was born in 1898 in Vukovar, Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, Austria-Hungary (modern-day Croatia), probably under the name Rudolph Blum. Baker had little formal education, and emigrated to the United States with his family in 1909. He joined the Communist Party of the United States at its founding, in 1919. He went to Moscow and trained at the International Lenin School from 1927 to 1930. He became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during that period.
Baker shows up in the Venona project decryptions of Soviet codes under the cover name SON; he may also be RUDI. The identification comes from coded correspondence between the Comintern and the party in Russia's RTsKhIDNI archive (495-184), which contains dozens of messages from BROTHER in Moscow to FATHER and SON in the United States. Annotations on these messages identify BROTHER as Dimitrov and FATHER as the party General Secretary Earl Browder. In these messages, SON is the head of the party's covert arm or secret apparatus, which Baker took over in mid-1938 after the defection of Whittaker Chambers. Notably, all of the Comintern messages to SON were sent after Baker visited Moscow in January 1939 to brief Comintern officials on the status of the party's secret apparatus (after Baker took over its operations).
In May 1942, General Pavel Fitin, the head of KGB foreign intelligence directorate states in a message to Dimitrov found in the Comintern Archives, "We are forwarding a telegram we received from New York addressed to you from Rudy"; this telegram is signed SON.
Earl Russell Browder was an American political activist and leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Browder was the General Secretary of the CPUSA during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s.
Kitty Harris was a Soviet secret agent and "long-time special courier of the OGPU-NKVD foreign intelligence during the 1930s and 1940s."
In political ideology, a deviationist is a person who expresses a deviation: an abnormality or departure. In Stalinist ideology and practice, deviationism is an expressed belief which does not accord with official party doctrine for the time and area. Accusations of deviationism often led to purges. Forms of deviationism included revisionism, dogmatism, bourgeois nationalism, and rootless cosmopolitanism.
Isaac "Pop" Folkoff also known as "Volkov," "Folconoff," and "Uncle", was a senior founding member of the California Communist Party and West Coast liaison between Soviet intelligence and the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
J. Peters was the most commonly known pseudonym of a man who last went by the name "Alexander Stevens" in 1949. Peters was an ethnic Jewish journalist and political activist who was a leading figure of the Hungarian language section of the Communist Party USA in the 1920s and 1930s. From the early 1930s, Peters was actively involved in the espionage activities of the Soviet Union in the United States, fabricating passports, recruiting agents, and accumulating and passing along confidential and secret information.
Marion Bachrach (1898–1957) was the sister of John Abt and also a member of the Ware group, a group of government employees in the New Deal administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt who were also members of the secret apparatus of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) in the 1930s.
Marion Davis Berdecio, born Marion Davis, was a recruit of the Soviet intelligence in USA.
Several allege that Harry Magdoff was among a number of persons inside the U.S. government used as information sources by Soviet intelligence. However, the allegation is disputed by several academics and historians asserting that Magdoff probably had no malicious intentions and committed no crimes.
Harvey Elliott Klehr is a professor of politics and history at Emory University. Klehr is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America.
John Earl Haynes is an American historian who worked as a specialist in 20th-century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. He is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist and anti-Communist movements, and on Soviet espionage in America.
Irving Charles Velson was an American who had a long career in the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) secret apparatus and who allegedly worked for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU). He was the son of Clara Lemlich Shavelson and changed his name to Velson by 1938. Velson worked as a machinist at the Brooklyn Navy Yard from 1931 to 1938.
Leonard Emil Mins was an American who worked in the Russian Section of the Research and Analysis Division of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. Mins also worked for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU).
Samuel Jacob Rodman, was an American double-agent during World War II. Rodman was employed by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and spied for the Soviet Union at the same time. Rodman was a member of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), and his previous occupations were teaching and journalism.
Elza Akhmerova, also Elsa Akhmerova was an American citizen, born Helen Lowry. She was a niece of Earl Browder, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). She died of leukemia.
James Walter Miller (1890–1950) was an American citizen and an alleged asset of the San Francisco Office of the KGB from 1943 to 1945. Miller worked in the United States Government wartime mail censorship office. Miller was allegedly recruited into espionage for the Soviet Union by Isaac Folkoff of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). His cover name was "Vague".
Theodore Bayer was president of the Russky Golos, or Russian Voice Publishing Company, which published an anti-capitalist Russian-language newspaper during the Great Depression and World War II. Russky Golos was funded by the Comintern and by advertising, commercial newsstand and subscription sales. Its editorial position was closely aligned with the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). Bayer was allegedly part of a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) network.
Rudolph Carl Lambert was an American citizen and head of the California Communist Party Labor Commission and also headed of its security section in the 1940s. Lambert first fell under FBI scrutiny in connection with its Comintern Apparatus investigation. Lambert is named in a 1945 San Francisco KGB cable intercepted and deciphered by the Venona project discussing information about uranium deposits in Western states.
Harrison George was a senior Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) leader. He is best remembered as the editor of the official organ of the Profintern's Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat (PPTUS) as well as the party's West Coast newspaper, People's World.
Charles Dirba was a Latvian-American co-founder of the Communist Party of America (CPA) and Communist Party USA (CPUSA).