Juliet Poynz, changer?
About a week ago marked the 75th anniversary of the disappearance of Juliet Poyntz. She’s hardly a household word, but her story is not atypical of those highly-placed Communists who turned on their former colleagues.
Poyntz was a Barnard history professor and one of the founders of the American Communist Party, who worked for a while for the prototype of the KGB. Like many others (but not enough others), she became disillusioned with Communism during the 30s when Stalin’s excesses became more obvious. She disappeared not long after that, and the case has never been solved.
Fast forward to now. Kevin Higgins is a contemporary Irish poet who, like so many other poets, started out on the far left—but unlike most of them, he’s moved somewhat rightwards. Although it’s only “somewhat” rightwards, “somewhat” is way too much for many on the left, and as a result he has dealt with some ire from former fellow travelers.
Although I “know” Higgins, I’ve never met him; we’ve corresponded from time to time (one of the best perks of the blogosphere is hearing from people such as Higgins). He’s written the following poem in remembrance of Juliet Poyntz’s disappearance:
WHEREABOUTS
for Juliet Poyntz (1886-1937)You deliver envelopes
you must under no circumstances open
to men whose names you never ask
in hotel lobbies in Baltimore, Copenhagen,
Shanghai”¦ No one you know has seen
you in three years. On a New York streetyou happen upon an old friend, you used to
like to disagree with ”“ those
big opinioned, diner nights
you can’t quite forget ”“ talk over
your new found
disgust: the white-walled cells
into which you’ve seen people
you call ”˜comrade’ one by one vanish
to be kept awake all night
and confess
under extreme electric light. Over coffee
you are full of
the book you’re planning to write.Already evening. Earlier today,
at a chateau in central France,
Edward married Mrs Simpson.
You leave your room at
353 West 57th Street
to buy The New York Times
or some Lucky Strike
cigarettes. No luggage
nor extra clothes. Behind you,
everything you own.
A solitary candle
still burning.Buried in the upstate woods
or smuggled aboard a tanker bound for
Archangel, Leningrad, Vladivostok”¦
You are never heard of again.
The poet failed to mention she was a member of the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution). I wonder if it was concurrent with her founding of the CPUSA? At any rate that’s an odd parlay.
We know more today
Juliet Poyntz: File 100-206603
That’s the number of her file..
she is mentioned in Venona
Glazer, Juliet: Married name of Juliet Stuart Poyntz
Vassiliev Notebooks Concordance
Cover Names, Real Names, Abbreviations, Acronyms, Organizational Titles, Tradecraft Terminology
Compiled by John Earl Haynes, 20081
Wilson Center
Gitlow
GRU defectors
Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun)
Stanislav Lunev
Oleg Penkovsky, a GRU officer who played an important role during the Cuban Missile Crisis
Igor Gouzenko, a GRU cipher clerk who defected in Canada
Walter Krivitsky, a GRU defector who predicted that Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler would conclude a Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, found dead in 1941
Ignace Reiss, a GRU defector who sent a letter of defection to Stalin in July 1937, found dead in September 1937
Juliet Poyntz, a founding member of the Communist Party of the United States, allegedly killed for an attempt to defect
Iavor Entchev, a communist member of GRU; defected to United States during the Cold War.
and in camera, they are referring to Kamera..
i have brought it up before…
The KGB’s Poison Factory
the “Kamera,” or as KGB veterans might remember it, “Laboratory No. 12.”
Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_laboratory_of_the_Soviet_secret_services
Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services, alternatively known as Laboratory 1, Laboratory 12, and Kamera which means “The Chamber” in Russian, was a covert research and development facility of the Soviet secret police agencies
Currently: Several laboratories of the SVR, (headquartered in Yasenevo near Moscow), are responsible for the “creation of biological and toxin weapons for clandestine operations in the West”
GRU alone spent more than $1 billion for propaganda and peace movements against Vietnam War,
In his memoir Radical Son, David Horowitz wrote about the courier work of a family friend in 1940. Not for nothing was he called a Red Diaper baby!
There are couriers, and then there are couriers. Ann Colloms remained a loyal Party member at least through 1950, when she shut her mouth when she was called to testify in front of a Congressional committee.
Thanks for the additional information, Artflgr.
[My hardcopy version says “In 1940 one..” but the Google Books version says “In 1944 one..”]
Sorry, I can’t muster much – make that “any” – sympathy for someone who was killed by the evil she’d spent her life trying to inflict on others. In my book, she’s on the Ernst Roehm plan.
I think that last comment is just a little unfair. ‘Darkness at Noon’, the novel which in many ways inspired ‘1984’ was written Arthur Koestler who was also a former communist. And of course then there is Whittaker Chambers, who was actually a personal friend of Juliet Poyntz’. I don’t think she spent her life trying to inflict evil on others. There was an extremely serious crisis of capitalism between the two world wars. Many thinking people saw communism as a way out of that crisis for humanity. And many of these people became horrified by what it grew into i.e. Stalinism and took very brave stands against it.