Chapter Five
“Oh, That? It’s Khrushchev’s Speech . . .”

It all started with a love affair.

In the spring of 1956, Lucia Baranovski was head over heels in love with a handsome journalist, Victor Grayevski. Her marriage to the deputy prime minister of Communist Poland was on the rocks, and they hardly saw each other anymore. Lucia worked as a secretary to Edward Ochab, secretary general of the Polish Communist Party. The members of his staff had grown accustomed to charming Victor’s frequent visits to his lovely girlfriend. There were no secrets about Lucia’s feelings for this dashing young man.

Victor was a senior editor at the Polish News Agency (PAP), in charge of Soviet and Eastern European affairs. He was actually Jewish, and his real name was Victor Shpilman. But years ago, when he had joined the Communist Party, his friends had let him know that with a name like Shpilman he wouldn’t get far. So he changed it to Grayevski, which sounded Polish.

When the German Army invaded Poland in World War II, he was a child. His family had managed to cross into Russia and narrowly escaped the Holocaust. After the war, they came back to Poland. In 1949, Victor’s parents and younger sister emigrated to Israel. But he, a staunch and ardent Communist, stayed behind; Stalin’s admirer, he longed to help create a workers’ paradise.

But neither his friends and colleagues, nor even his beloved, knew that disenchantment had started gnawing at the young Communist’s heart. In 1955 he visited his family in Israel, and saw another world—free, progressive, a Jewish democratic nation, a dream of sorts, utterly different from the Communist propaganda he had been exposed to. Back in Poland, thirty-year-old Victor began to consider emigrating to Israel.

That morning in early April 1956, Victor came, as usual, to visit his sweetheart at the party secretary’s office. On a corner of her desk, he saw a brochure bound in a red cover, numbered, and stamped with the inscription TOP SECRET.

“What is this?” he asked her.

“Oh, that’s just Khrushchev’s speech,” she answered casually.

Victor froze. He had heard about Khrushchev’s speech, but had never met anybody who had heard or read a single sentence from it. It was one of the best-kept secrets of the Communist bloc.

Victor did know that Nikita Khrushchev, the almighty secretary general of the Soviet Communist Party, had delivered the speech at the party’s Twentieth Congress that had taken place the previous February at the Kremlin. On February 25, shortly before midnight, all foreign guests and heads of foreign Communist parties were asked to leave the hall. At midnight, Khrushchev took the podium and spoke to the fourteen hundred Soviet delegates. His speech was said to be a surprise and a terrible shock for everyone present.

But what had he said? According to an American journalist who dispatched a first report to the West, the speech had lasted for four hours, and Khrushchev had described in detail the terrible crimes of the man worshipped by millions of Communists all over the world—Stalin. Khrushchev, rumor had it, had accused Stalin of the massacre of millions. Some whispered that while listening to the speech many delegates cried and pulled out their hair in despair; some fainted or suffered heart attacks; at least two committed suicide after that night.

But not a word about Khrushchev’s revelations was published by the Soviet media. Rumors wafted about Moscow, and some passages of the speech were read in closed sessions of the party’s supreme bodies. But the full text of the speech was guarded, as if it were a state secret. Foreign reporters had told Victor that the Western secret services were mounting an all-out effort to obtain the text. The CIA had even offered a $1 million award. It was estimated that the publication of the text, at the height of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet bloc, could generate a political earthquake in the Communist countries and trigger an unprecedented crisis. Hundreds of millions of Communists, inside and outside Russia, blindly worshipped Stalin. The exposure of his crimes could destroy their faith and perhaps even cause the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But all the efforts to get the speech failed. It remained an enigma.

Lately Victor had learned that Khrushchev had decided to send a few numbered copies to Communist Party leaders in Eastern Europe, which was how that brochure, bound in red, had reached Lucia’s desk.

 

When Victor Grayevski spotted it, he had a crazy idea. He asked Lucia to lend it to him for a couple of hours, so he could read it at home, without all the hustle-bustle in this office. To his surprise, she agreed. She was happy to please him . . . “You can take it,” she said, “but you must bring it back before four P.M., I have to lock it in the safe.”

At home, Victor read the speech. It was indeed stunning. Khrushchev had shattered, boldly and mercilessly, the myth of Yosif Vissarionovich Stalin. Khrushchev had revealed that Stalin, during his years in power, had committed monstrous crimes and ordered the murder of millions. He’d reminded his audience that Lenin, the father of the Bolshevik Revolution, had warned the party against Stalin. Khrushchev condemned the cult of personality of the man who’d been hailed as the “Sun of the Nations.” He told of the forced relocation of entire ethnic groups in the Soviet Union, which led to countless deaths; of the “great purges” (1936–1937), when 1.5 million Communists were arrested and 680,000 of them executed. Out of 1,966 delegates to the Seventeenth Congress of the party, on Stalin’s orders 848 were executed, as well as 98 out of 138 candidates to the Central Committee. Khrushchev also spoke of the Doctors’ Plot, the fabricated accusations against some Jewish doctors who allegedly had conspired to murder Stalin and other Soviet leaders. Khrushchev’s words revealed Stalin as a mass murderer, who had massacred millions of Russians and other nationals, many of them loyal Communists. In four hours, the messiah had metamorphosed into a monster.

Khrushchev’s speech shredded Victor’s last illusions about Communism. And he realized that he held in his hands an explosive device that could shake the Soviet camp to its foundations. He decided to return the red brochure to Lucia. But on his way to her, he had second thoughts, and his feet carried him elsewhere—to the Israeli embassy. He walked in confidently, and the wall of Polish policemen and secret service agents parted and let him pass. A few minutes later, he was in the office of Yaacov Barmor, officially a first secretary of the embassy, but in reality, the Shabak representative in Poland.

Grayevski handed him the red brochure. The Israeli perused it and his jaw dropped. Will you wait a few minutes, he asked, grabbed the brochure, and left the room. He came back an hour later. Grayevski realized that Barmor had photocopied it, but asked no questions. He picked it up, concealed it under his coat, and left. He reached Lucia’s office on time, and she put it in the safe. Nobody bothered him or asked him about his impromptu visit to the Israeli embassy.

 

On Friday, April 13, 1956, in the early afternoon, Zelig Katz entered the office of the director of Shabak, Amos Manor. Katz was Manor’s personal assistant. Shabak headquarters were located in an old Arab building in Jaffa, not far from the picturesque flea market. Manor asked Katz the routine Friday question: “Any material from Eastern Europe?” Friday was the day when the diplomatic pouch brought reports from Shabak agents behind the Iron Curtain.

Zelig nonchalantly quipped that a few minutes ago he had received from Warsaw “some speech of Khrushchev at the Congress . . .” Manor jumped from his seat. “What?” he roared. “Bring it at once!”

Manor, a tall, handsome young man, had immigrated to Israel only a few years earlier. Born Arthur Mendelovitch in Romania, to a well-to-do family, he was sent to Auschwitz, where his entire family—parents, sister, and two brothers—were murdered. He survived, weighing barely eighty pounds when the camp was liberated. Back in Bucharest, he worked for Aliya Beth, helping smuggle Jewish refugees into British-controlled Palestine. He used the war name of Amos, and several other names, to cover his tracks. When his turn came to leave for Israel, in 1949, the Romanian authorities wouldn’t let him go. He managed to escape with a forged Czech passport in the name of Otto Stanek. His friends started calling him “the man with the thousand names”; in Israel, he became Amos Manor.

He rose quickly in the secret services. Isser was fascinated by him. Manor was his opposite. Isser small, Manor big. Isser tough and gruff, Amos suave and urbane. Isser played no sport, while Manor was a swimmer, and played soccer, tennis, volleyball. Isser spoke Russian and Yiddish, Manor spoke seven languages. Isser was a devoted Labor Party member, Amos didn’t care about politics. Isser dressed modestly, Amos was fashionable, European-looking. But besides all that, he was intelligent and resourceful. Isser recruited him to the Shabak in 1949; barely four years later, he was appointed director by Ben-Gurion on Isser’s recommendation. He also was put in charge of the Israeli intelligence community’s secret relations with the CIA.

 

On that rainy Friday, Manor threw himself into the sheaf of photocopied papers. He had no problems reading it—one of his seven languages was Russian. Reading the pages, he realized the huge importance of Khrushchev’s speech. He jumped into his car and rushed to Ben-Gurion’s house.

“You must read this,” he told the prime minister. Ben-Gurion, who also knew Russian, read the speech. The following morning, a Sabbath, he summoned Manor urgently. “This is a historic document,” he said, “and it all but proves that in the future Russia will become a democratic nation.”

Isser got the speech on April 15, and right away saw that it could be a bonanza for Israel. In it was the means to upgrade the Mossad’s ties with the CIA, first established in 1947. In 1951, when visiting the United States, Ben-Gurion had called on General Walter Bedell Smith, whom he had met in Europe at the end of World War II. Bedell Smith was the director of the CIA (and about to be replaced by Allen Dulles, an OSS veteran and brother of a future secretary of state). Bedell Smith agreed, hesitantly, to establish limited cooperation between the CIA and the Mossad. The main element of such cooperation was the debriefing by the Israelis of Soviet and Eastern bloc emigrants. Many were engineers, technicians, and even army officers who had worked in Soviet or Warsaw Pact installations and were able to supply detailed information about the capacities of the Communist bloc’s armies. This information was regularly conveyed and it impressed the Americans; the CIA appointed as liaison with Israel a legendary figure—James Jesus Angleton, the head of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton visited Israel and came to know the heads of its services. He established a friendly rapport with Amos Manor and even spent a few nights in his tiny two-room apartment over bottles of scotch.

But this time Isser and Amos offered far more than emigrants’ debriefings. They decided to hand over Khruschev’s speech to the Americans—not via the CIA man in Tel Aviv, but directly, in Washington. Manor dispatched a copy of the speech with a special courier to Izzi Dorot, the Mossad representative in the United States, who rushed to Langley and handed it to Angleton. On April 17, Angleton brought the speech to Allen Dulles, and later that day it was on President Eisenhower’s desk.

The American intelligence experts were stunned. Israel’s tiny spy services had obtained what the giant, sophisticated services of the United States, Britain, and France couldn’t get. Skeptical, CIA senior staff had the document examined by experts, who unanimously concluded it was genuine. Based on that, the CIA leaked it to the New York Times, which published it on its front page on June 5, 1956. Its publication caused an earthquake of sorts in the Communist world, and prompted millions to turn their backs on the Soviet Union. Some historians hold that the spontaneous uprisings against the Soviets in Poland and Hungary, in the fall of 1956, were motivated by Khrushchev’s revelations.

The intelligence coup led to a major breakthrough in the Mossad’s relations with its American counterpart, and the modest brochure that sweet Lucia had shown to her handsome Victor had surrounded the Israeli Mossad with a legendary aura.

 

Back in Warsaw, no one suspected Victor Grayevski of having smuggled Khrushchev’s speech to the United States. In January 1957, Victor emigrated to Israel. Grateful Amos Manor helped him get a job in the East European Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Shortly afterward, he was also hired as an editor and reporter in the Polish section of Kol Israel, the state-owned radio network.

But soon he also got a third job. Shortly after coming to Israel, he’d met a few Soviet diplomats at an ulpan, a special school where immigrants and foreigners were taught the Hebrew language. One of the Russian diplomats happened to meet him in a foreign ministry’s hallway, and was impressed by the important position held by this new immigrant. Soon afterward, a KGB agent popped up “by chance” at Grayevski’s side on a Tel Aviv street. He conversed with Grayevski and reminded him of his past in Poland, as an anti-Nazi and a Communist. Then he made him an offer: become a KGB agent in Israel. Grayevski promised to think about it, then made a beeline for Mossad headquarters. “What should I do?” he asked.

The Mossad people were delighted. “Wonderful,” they said, “go ahead and accept!” They would turn Grayevski into a double agent who would feed the Russians false information.

So began a new and long career for Victor. For many years he supplied the Russians with information concocted and doctored by the Mossad. His KGB handlers would meet him in the forests around Jerusalem and Ramleh, in Russian churches and monasteries in Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Tiberias, during “chance” encounters in crowded restaurants and at diplomatic receptions. Not once, in the fourteen years that Grayevski spent as a double agent, did the Soviets suspect that he was the one using them. They complimented him over and over for the excellent materials that he provided; in KGB headquarters in Moscow, rumor had it that the Soviet Union had an agent embedded deep in Israeli governing circles.

Through all those years, the Soviets trusted Grayevski and never questioned his credibility. The exception was in 1967, when they ignored him and his conclusions; ironically, this was the only time when he delivered fully accurate information. During the “waiting period” in 1967 before the Six-Day War, Egypt’s president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, erroneously believed that Israel intended to attack Syria in May. So he massed his troops in Sinai, expelled the UN peacekeepers, closed the Red Sea straits to Israeli ships, and threatened Israel with annihilation. Israel had had no intention to attack and was eager to prevent a war with Egypt. Prime Minister Eshkol then asked the Mossad to inform the Soviets that if Egypt didn’t cancel its aggressive measures, Israel would have to go to war; he hoped that the Soviet Union, which had a huge influence on Egypt, would stop Nasser. Grayevski conveyed to the KGB a document detailing Israel’s true intentions. But the USSR made a wrong assessment of the situation; Moscow ignored Grayevski’s report and encouraged Nasser in his belligerence.

The result was that Israel, in a preemptive attack, destroyed the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan and conquered much of their territory. And the Soviet Union, too, was a great loser; its weapons were proved inferior, it reneged on its promises and failed to support its badly beaten allies.

Nevertheless, the long-lasting affair between Grayevski and the KGB reached its peak that year. He was summoned to a meeting with his Soviet handler in a forest in central Israel. The KGB agent solemnly informed him that the Soviet government wanted to thank him for his devoted services and had decided to award him its highest distinction, the Lenin Medal!

The Russian apologized for not being able to pin the medal on Grayevski’s lapel in Israel, but assured him that the medal was being kept for him in Moscow, and he would receive it whenever he got there. Grayevski preferred to stay in Israel.

And in 1971 he retired from the spy game.

But he was not forgotten. In 2007, he was invited to Shabak headquarters, where he was welcomed by a select group that included present and past directors of Shabak and Mossad, as well as many of his friends, colleagues, and relatives. The Shabak director at the time, Yuval Diskin, presented him with a prestigious award for his distinguished service—and Grayevski became the only secret agent to be decorated twice: by his own country, which he had served with devotion all his life, and by his country’s foe, whom he had misled and deceived, regardless of the risks.

A reporter called him “the man who began the end of the Soviet Empire,” but Grayevski didn’t feel that way. “I am not a hero, and I didn’t make history,” he said. “The one who made history was Khrushchev. I just met history for a couple of hours, and then our ways parted.”

He died at the age of eighty-one. And somewhere in the Kremlin, in a little box padded with red velvet, his medal, engraved with the profile of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, perhaps still awaits him.