THE SOVIET GAME PLAN..

 

There was always a Game Plan for Soviet Expansion and it included Australia, right down to building a duplicate of South Australia's Woomera rocket range at Kapustin Yar inland from Odesa.

It's a matter of record.

The Soviets were masters of the long game, sometimes that worked really well for them and sometimes abysmally well, but you better believe that they were avid planners and took everything into account. 

Stalin always regretted his decisions surrounding Barbarosa, that was down to not listening to 2 of his best agents at the time. Sorge actually gave the date of the attack and the number of Divisions involved. Joe listened after that but it didn't stop him refusing to help Sorge out when he was tried for espionage in Japan, the trial ended badly and Sorge was supposedly hanged in a Japanese prison. in 1944. A lesson learned.

This post will show the long history of the Soviet Intelligence Services and the Communist movement in Australia and how it was planned and set out almost from the very beginning with the goal of infiltrating and eventually dominating Australia and other countries in the region by any means, fair or foul.

This post will illustrate that there was a much bigger picture than portrayed by what you might call the 'Popular Version' of the Somerton Man mystery.

But exactly how does this fit into the Somerton Man case? Bear with me and all will be explained. First things first and this story is far from boring.

SOVIETS AND COMMUNISTS IN AUSTRALIA

THE HISTORY

Look back at the history of the Soviet Union, look right back to the days of the Revolution, often referred to as the 'October Revolution' of 1917. The reality though, is that the Revolution was born of years of repression and had its roots in the Bloody Sunday massacre of January 1905. (Note: There appears to be a 'shift' in the relevant dates in some publications, that is due to the change from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian or New Version. The effect of this was to add 13 days to the originally quoted date thus October 26th, 1917 became November 8th 1917.)

It didn't take long for news of this uprising to travel to every part of the world including Australia where, starting in Brisbane, the notion of an uprising quickly took hold such that in late 1918, following the ending of WW1, large gatherings of workers and ex-servicemen started to voice their dissatisfaction with the then ruling parties. This movement culminated on 23rd March 1919, with one such gathering, 1000 people to some accounts, of sympathisers with the Russian cause unfurled 3 large Red Flags. A counter-demonstration by ex-servicemen and members of the Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League, (8000) which resulted in numerous injuries on both sides and 3 horses shot to death. 

For the record, Queensland at the time had a relatively high population of Russian Emigres, some of whom were Bolsheviks and some who were White Russians.

Being banned in Queensland, leaders of the Russian sympathisers moved to Victoria where a speech was given by a Peter Simonoff, a known leader of the cause, resulting in his arrest and subsequent conviction.

THE MELBOURNE CELL & ILLEGALS

It is is likely that the incident in Victoria led to the after formation of the Melbourne Cell described in our previous post, led by Dr. Hirscht Munz but under the instructions of the 'Inostrannyl Otdel' The 5th Directorate of the First Directorate responsible for 'illegals' with illegals being Russian agents who had entered Australia illegally with false identification documents. The Melbourne Cell was in existence from 1927 to 1950, the main coordinators of the entry of Illegals into Australia.

STALIN'S GREAT PURGES & THE NKVD

In 1930, the NKVD originally formed at the time of the Revolution was disbanded only to be reformed in July of 1934 and merged with the OGPU (Secret Police) keeping it's original role of policing and guarding labour camps and extending its operations to include that of internal security and the work of the Secret Police. Stalin was to use this organisation to carry out his Great Purges and, impressed by its performance, he was to use them in his quest for domination. As you will read, they also played a lead role in the infiltration of the Spanish Socialist Government of the day.

It was 1934 Stalin's Great Purges really got underway, terrorizing Russians and exercising bitter retribution amongst the leadership, leading to the assassination of Stalin's main opponent, Leon Trotsky (Lev Bronstein) in Mexico. One failed attempt to kill Trotsky by a group of gunmen led by Russian agents was followed by his eventual murder with an ice pick by one of those agents, Trotsky was to die of his wounds. The assassin, Ramon Mercader was a Spanish Communist and an NKVD agent, he served 20 years in a Mexican prison for the crime.

THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR & ILLEGALS

How it relates to Australia..

Within this same time frame of the 1930s, around 1936 in fact, at a time when the Soviets had successfully infiltrated the Left wing Socialist forces and leadership in Spain, hundreds if not thousands of volunteers for the International Brigades from France, Britain, Germany, and the US that fought in the Spanish Civil War handed in their Passports for 'safekeeping' at the Russian Communist-run recruiting offices in France. The most 'suitable' passports were to find their way to Moscow where the details were kept but the photographs were swapped as more Soviet agents took on the original owner's identities. As for those unfortunate original owners, they apparently perished in the battles of the war.

It was one of those passports supposedly held for safekeeping by the Russians that was used in 1939 by the man who assassinated Leon Trotsky, Ramon Mercader only the name he used was that of Franc Jackson a Canadian who had been 'killed' in the Spanish Civil War.

Behind the Trotsky, assassination were two senior Russian NKVD men. Pavel Sudoplatov and Nahum Eitingon. Eithingon like Sudaplatove had experience in the sourcing and planting of Soviet 'illegals'.  Eitingon himself was an 'illegal' landing in the US in 1930. Importantly, Eitingon initially organised the assassination from an office in New York, the office was that of AMTORG, the same organisation, and location of Pavel Fedosimov. AMTORG was used as a front for Soviet communications centres.

This war was fought by the Left using guns, tanks, ammunition and training supplied by the Soviets, a monetary price was ultimately 'paid' to Russia amounting to $500,000,000 worth of gold bullion sent by the Spanish Government to Russia for 'Safekeeping'. The 'transaction' was organised and executed by Aleksandr Orlov, an NKVD agent who was to become a rather high profile defector to the US. For the record the shipment of gold was placed on 4 different ships, each bound for the port of Odesa, that's a name that rings more than a few bells.

Importantly, you should note that the NKVD having infiltrated the Spanish Socialist Government eventually took full control of the Spanish Secret Service. In short, they had a defined method of operation, one which was being copied across to their efforts in Australia..

Just how many of the 'illegals', whose passports were taken, found their way to Australia we may never know but it can be safely said that some most certainly did. It is also known that a prominent French Communist and NKVD agent, Andre Marty, personally signed the death warrants of more than 500 International Brigade members who were suspected of being Trotskyists. Ernest Hemmingway once wrote of Marty as being 'Crazy as a bed bug, he has a mania for shooting people..'

MOBILE ASSASSINATION GROUPS

In the late 1930s a number of these Russian 'mobile groups' scoured Europe looking for those people who had been named as suspected enemies of Stalin and when found, they were killed irrespective of which country they were found in. The NKVD had a long track record of dealing with enemies of the state. Most commonly when assassinations were carried out on foreign countries, especially post WW2, poison was the preferred method. Within the Soviet home territory, shooting was the most expedient and preferred method.

IN SUMMARY

This then paints part of the bigger picture, we have provided detail that shows the nature of the NKVD and Soviet intelligence methods in the times leading up to and including the early 1940s. They were experts at many things but most especially in two fields, assassinations and setting up documents and stories for 'illegals' so that their agents could secretly enter foreign countries and carry out espionage and spying more effectively. We know for a fact that for an illegal to break the rules meant certain death.

But what of the NKVD organisation in Australia? In Part 2 of this post we will examine in detail the networks and the people who spied on Australia and the methods they used.

For now, here's a hint of what you might expect:

There was one man who sat in the position indicated, his name might surprise you...