Harry Pollitt - Secret Communications With Soviet Union

Secret Communications With Soviet Union

In operation MASK (1934–1937), an MI5 counterspy infiltrated the party, and was for a time Pollit's assistant and a clandestine radio operator. This allowed John Tiltman and his colleagues to crack the code and decrypt, for a few years, messages between Moscow and some of its foreign parties, such as the CPGB. They revealed the Comintern's close supervision of the Communist Party and Pollitt. Among other things, Pollitt was instructed to refute news leaks about a Stalinist purges. Some messages were addressed to code names, while others were signed by Pollitt himself. In his transmissions to Moscow, Pollitt regularly pleaded for more funding from the Soviet Union. One 1936 coded instruction advised Pollitt to publicise the plight of Ernst Thälmann, a German communist leader who had been arrested by the Nazis and who later died at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Pollitt replied that he was 'having difficulties' getting English statesmen to make public declarations supporting Thälmann but that they promised they would speak privately with German officials in London. In one of the more amusing dispatches, Pollitt (1936) informed his Soviet contact about a recent visit to France to make campaign appearances for candidates from the French Communist Party. "At great inconvenience went to Paris to speak in the election campaign". Pollitt went on to complain that he was "kept sitting two days and comrades refused to allow me to speak. Such treatment as I received in Paris is a scandal".