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  Joe Hansen was at Trotskyist headquarters in New York City, having been replaced as Trotsky’s American secretary guard—driver by Irish O’Brien, Hansen’s close friend from Salt Lake City. O’Brien assumed that the news of the pact was the signal to break camp in Taxco and return to Coyoacán to monitor the crisis. To his surprise, Trotsky insisted that the pact was of secondary importance. He would not budge.

  Back at the house on Avenida Viena, O’Brien’s wife, Fanny, was deluged with requests from news organizations all over the world for Trotsky’s analysis of Stalin’s treaty with Hitler. Unable to get through by telephone, she took a bus to Taxco in order to alert Trotsky to the urgency of his return. Nonetheless, and to O’Brien’s bafflement, “the OM refused to be disturbed.” Only when O’Brien showed him an anxious letter from Hansen saying that the American comrades were waiting for his assessment and his guidance did Trotsky snap to and give the order to start packing.

  O’Brien, who was less inclined than Hansen to hero-worship the Old Man, was chagrined at his nonchalance. By delaying his return from Taxco he had squandered an opportunity to make a sizable sum of money from interviews and articles for the major newspapers, news services, and magazines. By the time the vacationers arrived back in Coyoacán on August 30, the offers were drying up. Two days later, Germany invaded Poland. On September 3, Britain and France declared war on Germany.

  There was a hint of smugness in Trotsky’s show of imperturbability at this historic moment. For years he had been predicting a rapprochement between Stalin and Hitler, a prospect that began to appear more likely after Germany’s absorption of Austria in the Anschluss of March 1938, and especially after the Munich Agreement had sanctioned Germany’s annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. Munich failed to appease Hitler, of course, and when German troops marched into Prague in March 1939, Trotsky felt certain that a Nazi-Soviet accord was in the works.

  Trotsky tragically underestimated Stalin, but from early on he was keenly sensitive to the danger posed by Hitler. His writings of the early 1930s that sounded the alarm about the Nazi menace were among the most perceptive and prescient he ever produced. He denounced the Comintern’s policy of labeling the German Social Democrats “social fascists,” which he predicted would facilitate the rise of the National Socialists. He took Mein Kampf seriously, warning that if Hitler came to power, the Red Army should immediately be mobilized.

  As the Nazis consolidated dictatorial control in 1933, Trotsky changed his mind about remaining inside the Comintern as the Left Opposition. The only way forward, he decided, was to build a Fourth International, to replace the Communist Third International, which had superseded the Socialist Second International, the successor to Karl Marx’s original. The goal was to unite the Trotskyists—the self-styled “Bolshevik-Leninists”—into an organization that would become the true standard-bearer of proletarian internationalism.

  Although for the next several years Trotsky and his comrades referred to themselves as members of the Fourth International, formally the organization came into existence only in the summer of 1938. The moment was hardly propitious. Worldwide there were only a few thousand Trotskyists, spread out among numerous marginal organizations in many countries and often riven by factionalism. The French Trotskyists, the most important “section” of the embryonic Fourth International in the early thirties, had been crippled by a factional split. By the time Trotsky arrived in Mexico in 1937, the United States was home to what was easily the largest of the Trotskyist groups, although its total membership probably never exceeded two thousand.

  Nor did the movement’s growth prospects appear at all promising in that summer of 1938. In the Soviet Union, the Trotskyists had been either liquidated or banished to the camps. In Germany, Austria, and Italy, fascism reigned. In Spain, where Franco’s Falangist armies were pressing their offensive against the Republican Loyalists, the Trotskyists had been purged or forced to flee the country. In Asia, the Trotskyists were without a significant foothold, least of all in China, which had been fighting for its independence since the full-scale Japanese invasion the year before. It is no wonder, given this depressing state of affairs, that many Trotskyists were skeptical that this was an appropriate moment to launch a new International.

  Trotsky himself, however, was the voice of supreme optimism. Western capitalism was in the throes of an economic depression from which it could not recover. Just as Marx had predicted, capitalism’s internal contradictions were ripening, most portentously in the United States, where President Roosevelt’s New Deal could only postpone the inevitable. Just as the First World War had carried the Bolshevik Party to power in 1917 on a wave of revolution, the next world war would precipitate a revolutionary tidal wave that would sweep the Bolshevik-Leninists to victory. Trotsky’s view of the matter was summed up by the title he gave to his new organization’s programmatic statement: “The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International.”

  The scene of the founding congress belied such optimism. It took place at the home of Alfred Rosmer in Périgny, a village outside Paris, on September 3, 1938. Twenty-one delegates were in attendance, representing Trotskyist sections in eleven countries. Max Shachtman, of the American group, presided. The delegates elected Lyova and two of Trotsky’s one-time secretaries, Rudolf Klement and Erwin Wolf—all three presumed murdered by the GPU within the past year—as honorary presidents. As a security precaution, it was arranged for the conference to complete its business in a single day. Votes were taken on various reports and resolutions, most of them written by Trotsky, with little time for genuine discussion. Only the Polish delegates openly questioned the wisdom of establishing a new International at a time when the political outlook was so grim.

  At the end of the day, a press release announced the historic initiative, although in order to keep the GPU off the trail of the dispersing delegates, the congress was said to have taken place in Lausanne. This deception accomplished nothing, though, because the Russian section was represented at the congress by the Soviet spy Mark Zborowski, who provided Moscow with a complete report, which included his own canny contribution to the proceedings. Upon the election of the International’s executive committee, Zborowski protested that the Russian section had not been given a seat. In response, the congress designated Trotsky as a secret and honorary member of the executive. Since Trotsky could not directly participate in the executive’s work, his place was filled by the GPU provocateur.

  THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL was not the only historic congress involving the Trotskyists who gathered in Paris that summer. Among them was Sylvia Ageloff, a Brooklyn native in her late twenties. A short, frumpy dishwater blonde, with a pointed nose and a broad, lipless smile that suggested a smirk, Sylvia was the oldest of three Ageloff sisters, daughters of a Russian émigré father, all of them active in the Trotskyist movement. She was accompanied to Europe by a friend named Ruby Weil, who invited herself along as Sylvia’s traveling companion. The Ageloffs were aware of the rumor that Ruby had joined the Communist Party. What they did not know was that she was working for the GPU.

  In Paris, Ruby looked up a friend of her sister, a Belgian in his mid-thirties by the name of Jacques Mornard, and introduced him to Sylvia. This encounter led to others, as Jacques took the ladies sightseeing in his Citroën and entertained them lavishly. In his excellent English, Jacques told them that he was studying journalism at the Sorbonne, that his generous supply of spending money came from his aristocratic parents, and that his father was a high-ranking Belgian diplomat. He proved to be the perfect dilettante, with a smattering of knowledge about art, music, and literature—only politics did not interest him.

  Before long, Ruby decided to return to New York, leaving the field to Sylvia. Jacques was tall, lean, and muscular, with swarthy good looks. He took Sylvia to his favorite restaurants, always insisting on ordering the finest wines. The Belgian playboy intoxicated the homely Brooklyn social worker, and he seduced her. In other words, he did
exactly what was expected of a penetration agent.

  Jacques Mornard’s real name was Ramón Mercader. He was born in Barcelona in 1914, the son of a Catalonian father and a Cuban-born mother, Caridad. She acquired a taste for radical politics not long after she left her husband and moved to Paris with her four children in 1925. The children were shifted back and forth between mother and father, France and Spain. At age fourteen, Ramón entered a hotel management school in Lyon; he later returned to Barcelona and became assistant chef at the Ritz, the city’s premier hotel.

  After the Spanish revolution in 1931, when the monarch fled the country and the Republic began its precarious existence, Ramón enlisted in the Spanish army, where he remained for two years and attained the rank of corporal. In 1934, he took part in the Catalonian uprising against rule by Madrid, serving with the Communist forces. After this rebellion was suppressed, Ramón was active in an underground cell of Communist youth in Barcelona. Arrested in June 1935, he was released when the Popular Front government was elected in Madrid at the beginning of 1936.

  That summer, Franco and his generals launched their military assault on the Republic from Spanish Morocco. Ramón’s flamboyant mother, now a fervent Communist, distinguished herself by leading an impromptu attack on Francoist machine gun positions in a central plaza in Barcelona, a ferocious onslaught with homemade grenades and rifle fire that wiped out the Francoist units at the cost of many lives. Caridad and her sons Ramón and Pablo were among the first to enlist in the Republican people’s militia. Ramón served as a political commissar with the 27th Division on the Aragon front, with the rank of lieutenant.

  The Spanish civil war became the NKVD’s training ground for political terrorism. It organized six schools for saboteurs, the largest with upwards of 600 students. Leonid Eitingon, the NKVD’s deputy resident in Spain, was responsible for training new recruits for commando and sabotage operations and for organizing detachments to carry out sabotage and terrorist acts deep inside enemy territory. Eitingon and Caridad Mercader became lovers, which made Ramón, who was recruited by the NKVD in February 1937, one of his special students. After serving for several months with a commando unit, Ramón was brought back from the front with a wounded arm.

  Late in 1937 Eitingon sent Ramón to Paris. His forged Belgian papers identified him as Jacques Mornard. His NKVD code name was “Raymond.” Sylvia’s visit to Paris was a windfall for Ramón’s handlers. Although she had come as a tourist, after making contact with American Trotskyist friends there, she was asked to serve as a translator at the founding congress of the Fourth International. Jacques was absent from Paris at the time, which was a relief to Sylvia, because she was worried that her Trotskyism might alienate her lover and had, for the time being, chosen to conceal it from him.

  The fact that Sylvia was keeping such a secret—or thought she was—made her less inclined to question some things about Jacques that did not add up: stories about his family in Belgium, his life in Paris, and his sudden absences. Sylvia had a master’s degree in psychology from Columbia, and when she expressed an interest in finding a job in Paris, Jacques arranged for her to ghost-write weekly synopses of books on psychology for a French newspaper syndicate. She was handsomely paid for her work, although she never saw the published results and Jacques refused to put her in direct contact with the syndicate. Sylvia sensed that her “job” was merely a tactful way for her lover to support her in Paris.

  For the NKVD, it was money well spent. Sylvia herself was an insignificant figure in the Trotskyist movement, but Trotsky was especially fond of Sylvia’s sister Ruth. Ruth had been in Mexico at the time of the Dewey hearings and proved to be of enormous help as a translator, typist, and researcher. She did not live at the Blue House, but she visited almost daily and was considered a reliable and devoted comrade. Ramón’s NKVD controllers understood that Ruth’s sister would be welcomed into Trotsky’s home. Now they had to maneuver Sylvia—and Ramón—to Coyoacán. And the road to Coyoacán led through New York City.

  A few weeks after the conclave in Paris, on Friday, October 28, 1938, at 8:00 p.m., the American Trotskyists gathered in the main auditorium of the Center Hotel, the future Hotel Diplomat, just off Times Square, on West 43rd Street. They came together to celebrate the founding of the Fourth International and the tenth anniversary of the American Trotskyist movement. New York had supplanted Paris as the center of Trotskyism, and on this night Times Square was its epicenter. An overflow crowd of up to 1,400 Trotskyists, sympathizers, and the curious packed the hall, including both galleries, paying twenty-five cents in order to witness the celebration and, more importantly, to hear Trotsky speak.

  The hall was festively decorated with banners and streamers honoring the Fourth International and its American section, the Socialist Workers Party. Above the speakers’ platform hung a six-by-four-foot charcoal drawing, draped in red, of Lenin and Trotsky. The Trotsky youth, some fifty strong, most in their early twenties, performed ceremonial duties, outfitted in uniforms of blue denim and red ties, with red armbands that read “Young People’s Socialist League, 4th International.”

  The mass meeting began with the singing of the “Internationale.” The program included speeches from the party’s leaders, each accompanied by mounting anticipation of the performance of the evening’s headliner, Comrade Trotsky, who naturally was saved for last. When the moment finally arrived, it was after ten o’clock. The audience fell silent as thirty male comrades came forward and positioned themselves below the front of the stage. They stood with arms folded and faces hardened in an attitude of defiance. The organizers were taking no chances, remembering that Trotsky’s attempt to address an audience at the New York Hippodrome the year before had been sabotaged.

  The lights were extinguished and a spotlight beam illuminated a photographic portrait of Trotsky placed at the center of the stage. “I hope that this time my voice will reach you and that I will be permitted in this way to participate in your double celebration,” Trotsky began in his heavily accented English. The Bolshevik-Leninists, he continued, were genuine Marxists, governed not by wishful thinking but by an objective evaluation of the march of events. Trotsky’s analysis of those events, which lasted close to fifteen minutes, came across clearly, despite some hiss and the occasional crackle from the gramophone record.

  There was certainly no mistaking Trotsky’s revolutionary optimism. The Communist International, he reminded his audience, had become a “stinking cadaver.” The Fourth International had replaced it as the world party of socialist revolution. Its victory in the coming revolution was assured. “During the next ten years the program of the Fourth International will become the guide of millions and these revolutionary millions will know how to storm earth and heaven. Long live the Socialist Workers Party of the United States! Long live the Fourth International!” The hall erupted in tumultuous applause.

  Trotsky’s uplifting message notwithstanding, the Socialist Workers Party, the nucleus of the newborn Fourth International, was divided against itself. The party, all of ten months old, had been founded after a near-decade of Trotskyist splits and mergers. It was led by three able men of widely different backgrounds and talents: James Cannon, Max Shachtman, and James Burnham.

  Cannon, the party’s leader, was born in 1890 in rural Kansas, the son of Irish immigrants with strong socialist convictions. In his youth he was an itinerant organizer for the trade unionist Industrial Workers of the World and a member of the Socialist Party of America. He belonged to the Socialist left wing, which in 1919 broke away to form the first Communist party in the United States. Cannon sat on the presidium of the Comintern in Moscow in 1922 and 1923, and he attended its sixth congress in 1928. Shortly afterward, he along with Shachtman and a third comrade were expelled from the party for their Trotskyist sympathies, and together they formed the Communist League of America, the original American Trotskyist group.

  By the late 1930s, Cannon, with his stocky build, thick gray hair, and florid complexion, fit
the stereotype of the jovial, hard-drinking Irishman. He operated out of the party’s headquarters near Union Square, but his political base was the Teamsters organization in Minneapolis. A forceful public speaker, he spent eight months in 1936 and 1937 agitating among the seamen and cannery workers on the California coast, and he maintained ties to the unionized automobile workers in Ohio and Michigan.

  Max Shachtman was born in 1904 in Warsaw, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire, and was brought to New York as a small child. He was the party’s leading journalist and its most brilliant orator. Shachtman, like Cannon, had a keen wit, and he was able to exploit his Yiddish accent in the service of a laugh line, especially when addressing his constituents in the Bronx.

  Unlike Cannon and Shachtman, James Burnham was not a professional revolutionary. The son of an executive of the Burlington Railroad, Burnham, a relative newcomer to the movement, was born in Chicago in 1905. He was educated at Princeton and Oxford, and taught philosophy at New York University, where he came to national attention as co-editor of the journal Symposium and as coauthor of a well regarded textbook, Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. Burnham was the party’s leading theorist, and he and Shachtman edited its monthly journal, New International. His Manhattan address, 34 Sutton Place, testified to his privileged circumstances, as did his occasional appearance at political meetings in a tuxedo, donned earlier in the evening for some high society social gathering.