Sir Paul Dukes, KBE, renowned MI6 Officer and one time Chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service in Soviet Russia, is the author of the historical book "Red Dusk and the Morrow: Adventures and Investigations in Red Russia." The book chronicles the rise and fall of Bolshevism and Dukes toured the world extensively giving lectures pertaining to this subject. He writes on his experiences in Russia, beginning with the coming to power of the Bolshevik revolutionaries in 1917 and his subsequent observations and experiences as a British Intelligence Officer at the time.
Paul Dukes was sent into Russia in 1918, shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, by 'C' (the mysterious head of the British secret service). His mission: to pull together the British spy networks operating against the new regime. With its spies and diplomats thrown out at the start of the Red Terror, Britain's espionage efforts were left to a British businessman with no previous experience as a spy. Dukes operated under a variety of covers, the most daring of which was as a member of the Cheka secret police. On his return, the government publicised his account of Bolshevik terror to justify a joint US-UK military attack on northern Russia. Dukes became the only British secret agent to be knighted for spying and was awarded the Victoria Cross. This thrilling account of his mission, first published in 1922, remains a true classic of espionage.
Excerpt from Red Dusk and the Morrow: Adventures and Investigations in Red Russia The extreme opponents of Bolshevism, especially amongst Russians, have sinned in this respect as greatly as the extreme proponents, and with no advantage to themselves even in their own class. For to their unreasoning immoderation, as much as to the distortion of ideas by ultra-radicals, is due the appearance, among a certain class of people of inquiring minds but incomplete information, of that oddest of anomalies, the parlour Bolshevik. Clear ness of vision and understanding will never be restored until precision in terminology is again re-established, and that will take years and years. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Service offers a history of communism, drawing the uncomfortable conclusion that the poverty and injustice that enabled its rise are still dangerously alive. Unsettling and compelling, this is a comprehensive study of one of the most important movements of the modern world.
The Armistice of November 1918 ended four years of slaughter that left armies exhausted and populations weary of war – but the fighting was not over. In Russia, civil war and revolution had divided the nation and the Allies sought to intervene on behalf of the ‘White’ Russians against the Bolsheviks and this conflict continued long after the war had finished elsewhere in Europe. A vital source of information from inside the Bolshevik-held territory came from British secret agents in Petrograd, the main one being Paul Dukes. Known as the ‘Man of a Hundred Faces’, Dukes had managed to infiltrate both the Communist Party and the political police. The problem which faced the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, Maurice Smith-Cummings, was getting Dukes’ information back to London. Carrying information overland was proving far too problematical, so Smith-Cummings hit upon the idea of using one of the Royal Navy’s new fast Coastal Motor Boat which was revealed just before the end of the war. He recruited Lieutenant Augustus Agar and through him he found five men, all unmarried, who could handle the two CMBs. Using an inlet on the Finnish coast as a base, Agar slipped past a series of forts, submerged breakwaters and the Russian Baltic Fleet to reach Petrograd and made contact with Dukes. A frequent courier service was soon established, with Agar carrying couriers in and out of Petrograd under the very noses of the Russians. So confident did Agar become, he even torpedoed the Russian cruiser Oleg. He followed this with support from Admiral Sir Walter Cowan in an all-out raid upon the Russian ships with eight larger CMBs and a bombing raid by the RAF. The raid resulted in the sinking of two battleships and the submarine depot ship Pamiet Azova. Agar was quietly given the Victoria Cross but told not to publish his memoirs until 1963. As for Paul Dukes, his cover was eventually blown, and he had to escape via Latvia in a number of hair-raising escapades. In 1920 he was knighted by King George V, who called Dukes the ‘greatest of all soldiers’. To this day, Dukes is the only person knighted based entirely on his exploits in espionage. This is their remarkable story.
The early years of Bolshevik rule were marked by dynamic interaction between Russia and the West. These years of civil war in Russia were years when the West strove to understand the new communist regime while also seeking to undermine it. Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks tried to spread their revolution across Europe at the same time they were seeking trade agreements that might revive their collapsing economy. This book tells the story of these complex interactions in detail, revealing that revolutionary Russia was shaped not only by Lenin and Trotsky, but by an extraordinary miscellany of people: spies and commissars, certainly, but also diplomats, reporters, and dissidents, as well as intellectuals, opportunistic businessmen, and casual travelers. This is the story of these characters: everyone from the ineffectual but perfectly positioned Somerset Maugham to vain writers and revolutionary sympathizers whose love affairs were as dangerous as their politics. Through this sharply observed exposéf conflicting loyalties, we get a very vivid sense of how diverse the shades of Western and Eastern political opinion were during these years.
