| http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,516859,00.html
MI5 detained Trotsky on way to revolution Public records: Russian was arrested on British orders in 1917 on a boat in Canada but released after intervention by MI6 Richard Norton-Taylor Thursday July 5, 2001 The Guardian Leon Trotsky, the creator of the Red Army, was detained on the orders of MI5 in a move which could have prevented him from playing any part in the Russian revolution and its aftermath, reveal hitherto secret documents released today. The papers show that had it not been for the intervention of an officer of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, - who believed the evidence against him was provided by an agent provocateur - the leading revolutionary might have had no place in history. Papers made available at the Public Record Office show how MI5, and the French and Spanish security services, monitored Trotsky's movement in the months leading to the revolution in February 1917 which overthrew the Tsarist regime. The previous autumn Trotsky was expelled from France after his Paris paper, Nashe Slovo (Our Word) was suppressed on the grounds it was subversive and anti-war. He set off for Madrid, "surrounded by spies" who, he noted, regarded him as as a "dangerous terrorist agitator". In Madrid he was immediately arrested, jailed, and taken to Cadiz where he was told he was going to be put on a boat to Havana. But after angry protests, Trotsky was allowed to remain a few more days and sail, instead, to New York. Trotsky explained his predic-ament in a postcard to a Russian contact in London, Georgy Tchitchrine. "Dear Comrade," he wrote, "I press your hand warmly... I hope that we may meet once again in the ranks of fighters for the common cause. Yours, Trotsky". The card never reached its destination.. It was intercepted by MI5. MI5 continued to monitor Trotsky's activities. In a telegram from New York to London, dated March 22, 1917, an MI5 agent warned: "An important movement has been started here among Socialists, with a view to getting back Revolutionary Socialists into Russia ... with [the] object of establishing a Republic and initiating Peace movement; also of promoting Socialistic Revolutions in other countries, including the United States". The "main leader", the tele-gram noted, "is Trotsky", who was planning to leave the US for Russia. A few days later, the MI5 agent dispatched a mess-age to London saying Trotsky had set sail "with $10,000 subscribed by Socialists and Germans" on the way to Petrograd, now St Petersburg. The agent ordered the ship to be detained when it stopped at Halifax in Canada. Trotsky was arrested with five Russian comrades. There he could have remained, had it not been for the intervention of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. Claude Dansey, an MI6 officer, had also just landed at Halifax. "I told Captain Malkins, the Naval Control Officer, that I believed the new Russian government would at once ask for Trotsky's release, and that we should be unable to hold him, and that, unless they were very certain of the source of information against him it would be much better to let him go before he got angry," he noted. Dansey was told by the MI6 station chief in New York, William Wiseman, that the information against Trotsky had come from a Russian agent "in whom he had great confidence." However, Dansey reported: "I then asked him a few questions about the man, and from what I gathered, there is a strong possibility that he was an agent provocateur, used by the old Russian Secret Police. I told Wiseman he had better be discharged at once, and he said that he was going to do so." Within four weeks of his arrest, to MI5's chagrin, Trotsky and his fellow revolutionaries boarded another ship heading for Russia. Documents released today show MI5 continued its campaign right up the Bolsheviks' October Revolution of 1917. "Until such men as Trotsky are finally convicted, anti-war agitation will be carried on in the factories of Petrograd, Moscow...and Leninite doctrines will continue to be promulgated among the simple-minded peasantry," it warned. An MI5 file on Eamonn de Valera, the Irish nationalist leader, is also released today though many pages have been withheld. Marked "Personal File 1" - the first of the 300,000 or so files MI5 has since accumulated on individuals - it includes informants' reports in 1917 on his plans to build up a force of 500,000 volunteers. His victory for Sinn Fein in a byelection that year gave "enormous impetus to the disloyal movement", says an MI5 report. |
