âI canât go back,â he said. âI need to get in touch with the Russians but I donât know how. What shall I do?â
While Jack sequestered Carr in the home of a wealthy party sympathizer, Morris telephoned Tim Buck in Canada. A week or so later Soviet agents spirited Carr off to Moscow. As far as United States and Canadian authorities were concerned, he simply vanished.
In 1947 Dennis asked the Soviets for permission to send a Daily Worker correspondent to cover a Moscow conference of foreign ministers beginning in March. They replied, âWe want Morris.â After Labor Editor George Morris applied for a visa, they sent another message: âWe want Morris Childs.â
Rumors that Stalin had renewed systematic persecution of Jews circulated in New York, and Paul Novick, editor of the Yiddish newspaper Morning Freiheit , urged Morris to appeal to the Soviets to cease the persecutions. He also gave Morris penicillin and other medicine to take to Jewish artists and intellectuals in Moscow.
Morris flew to Moscow in the company of thirty-four other American correspondents, among them such noted journalists as Walter Cronkite, Howard K. Smith, and Kingsbury Smith. Molly Perlman, a South African communist working in Moscow, came to the hotel where the press corps was lodged and announced that the Soviets had designated her to act as his secretary. She gave him a ticket to the ballet and told him he absolutely must attend.
The next evening two representatives of the International Department (aka Comintern) joined him in a box at the ballet. They pressed him for details of all that had transpired in the American party since 1943, an appraisal of its current condition, and evaluations of its principal leaders. They also asked for an appraisal of President Harry Truman. Morris characterized him as a âtough birdâ and said he was not as sure as the American press seemed to be that Truman would be defeated in 1948.
During the day, Morris followed the routine of other correspondents, attending press conferences and briefings and filing stories. On most evenings he secretly conferred with the Soviets. When he raised the issue of persecution of Jews, they feigned
shock that anyone but malicious imperialists could even imagine such a thing. It just wasnât so, and they would be glad to send Soviet Jews to New York to reassure the Jewish community. As for the artists and intellectuals, for whom he had medicine, they were in dachas or sanitoria receiving good medical treatment.
As gifts for old friends from his days at the Lenin School, Morris brought Kentucky bourbon, Camel cigarettes, medicine, perfume, nylon stockings, and Spam, a canned meat made popular in Moscow by American wartime aid. The presents won him invitations to Russian apartments where heavy drinking was customary. He ordinarily did not drink alcohol but among Russians he forced himself to drink to show that he was one of them and to be one of them.
During long drinking bouts, he heard appalling confidences. The Jewish artists and intellectuals were not in dachas or sanitoria; they were in prison awaiting almost certain execution. Other mutual friends had disappeared. Morris already knew that Carl Radek, Leo Kamenev, Grigori Zinoviev, and Nikolai Bukharin, all of whom lectured at the Lenin School, had been shot. So had countless other loyal party members, generals, scientists, intellectuals, and intelligence officers. Millions of peasants and their families had been deported to slave labor camps, and in Ukraine Stalin had deliberately starved hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, to death. Moreover, Stalin, no strategic genius, had bought time to gird Soviet defenses by making a deal with Hitler. He was a fool who trusted Hitler and believed that through a union of German industry and Soviet natural resources, communists and Nazis together could dominate the world. His trust had been so complete that he had unconscionably
While Jack sequestered Carr in the home of a wealthy party sympathizer, Morris telephoned Tim Buck in Canada. A week or so later Soviet agents spirited Carr off to Moscow. As far as United States and Canadian authorities were concerned, he simply vanished.
In 1947 Dennis asked the Soviets for permission to send a Daily Worker correspondent to cover a Moscow conference of foreign ministers beginning in March. They replied, âWe want Morris.â After Labor Editor George Morris applied for a visa, they sent another message: âWe want Morris Childs.â
Rumors that Stalin had renewed systematic persecution of Jews circulated in New York, and Paul Novick, editor of the Yiddish newspaper Morning Freiheit , urged Morris to appeal to the Soviets to cease the persecutions. He also gave Morris penicillin and other medicine to take to Jewish artists and intellectuals in Moscow.
Morris flew to Moscow in the company of thirty-four other American correspondents, among them such noted journalists as Walter Cronkite, Howard K. Smith, and Kingsbury Smith. Molly Perlman, a South African communist working in Moscow, came to the hotel where the press corps was lodged and announced that the Soviets had designated her to act as his secretary. She gave him a ticket to the ballet and told him he absolutely must attend.
The next evening two representatives of the International Department (aka Comintern) joined him in a box at the ballet. They pressed him for details of all that had transpired in the American party since 1943, an appraisal of its current condition, and evaluations of its principal leaders. They also asked for an appraisal of President Harry Truman. Morris characterized him as a âtough birdâ and said he was not as sure as the American press seemed to be that Truman would be defeated in 1948.
During the day, Morris followed the routine of other correspondents, attending press conferences and briefings and filing stories. On most evenings he secretly conferred with the Soviets. When he raised the issue of persecution of Jews, they feigned
shock that anyone but malicious imperialists could even imagine such a thing. It just wasnât so, and they would be glad to send Soviet Jews to New York to reassure the Jewish community. As for the artists and intellectuals, for whom he had medicine, they were in dachas or sanitoria receiving good medical treatment.
As gifts for old friends from his days at the Lenin School, Morris brought Kentucky bourbon, Camel cigarettes, medicine, perfume, nylon stockings, and Spam, a canned meat made popular in Moscow by American wartime aid. The presents won him invitations to Russian apartments where heavy drinking was customary. He ordinarily did not drink alcohol but among Russians he forced himself to drink to show that he was one of them and to be one of them.
During long drinking bouts, he heard appalling confidences. The Jewish artists and intellectuals were not in dachas or sanitoria; they were in prison awaiting almost certain execution. Other mutual friends had disappeared. Morris already knew that Carl Radek, Leo Kamenev, Grigori Zinoviev, and Nikolai Bukharin, all of whom lectured at the Lenin School, had been shot. So had countless other loyal party members, generals, scientists, intellectuals, and intelligence officers. Millions of peasants and their families had been deported to slave labor camps, and in Ukraine Stalin had deliberately starved hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, to death. Moreover, Stalin, no strategic genius, had bought time to gird Soviet defenses by making a deal with Hitler. He was a fool who trusted Hitler and believed that through a union of German industry and Soviet natural resources, communists and Nazis together could dominate the world. His trust had been so complete that he had unconscionably
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