Posted by Phil Tomaselli on April 23, 2002 at 05:19:28 from 212.211.109.25:
Sorry to have taken a little while to get back, I'd not thought to start such an interesting chain of thoughts or to ellicit(?) such interest.
Firstly, and please excuse the blatant self-interest here, I've spent five years researching SIS in Russia c1917-1930 at my own expense so I'm rather loath to let my hard earned research out willy-nilly.
I will say that I have no priveleged access to anything and everything is in the public domain, either at the PRO, IWM, Leeds Ransome collection or in R's own books ("Russia in 1919" & "Racundras First Voyage"). Genuine researchers please contact me direct at Ptomaselli@compuserve.com and I'll see what pointers I can offer.
I am trying to put together an article on the subject (4000 words & rising)which "The Guardian" expressed an interest in but seem to have lost interest......
With regard to R's fundamental attitudes there has to be a certain ambivalence. Individual (and identifiable) secret agents reports are rare and the only one that is clearly from Ransome could almost be the record of a journalistic interview (with Litvinov), which it almost certainly was. I have tried without success to find any reports from his two 1919 visits to Russia.
One thing I do have is a letter from R to the Head of SIS Russia section in mid-1919 in which he says that he has "worked hard" to get close to the Bolshevik leadership and suggests that if he is allowed back they ought to be able to work out a way of getting his reports out. This suggests to me that he was an "out and out" British agent but I suppose I'd say and do just about anything if the love of my life was stranded in Russia and I needed to get there.
Certainly MI5 remained ambivalent to him: in 1918 he was described as an "out & out bolshevik" but also "quite loyal and willing to help the British". In 1919 "Ransome could be regarded as absolutely honest. If asked about any of his numerous activities in Russia he would answer truthfully". In 1927 "one who reports what he sees, but one who does not always see straight."
Phil T