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• Sidney Reilly

Georgi Rosenblum, the only son of Hersh Yakov Rozenblium and his wife, Paulina Bramson, was born in Piotrków on 24th March 1874. He had two sisters, Elena and Mariam. His father was a contractor and a landowner. He was also active in the Jewish emancipation movement.

According to his biographer, Richard B. Spence, details of his education are uncertain. "Despite later claims, he did not attend Heidelberg or Cambridge universities or the Royal School of Mines. Nevertheless he demonstrated sufficient knowledge of chemistry to gain membership in the Chemical Society in 1896 and the Institute of Chemistry in 1897. He had an exceptional command of languages, including English, Russian, Polish, German, and French."

Rosenblum arrived in London in 1895. Three years later he married Margaret Callahan Thomas (1874–1933), a governess and the widow of the Revd Hugh Thomas. The author of Trust No One: The Secret World of Sidney Reilly (2003) points out: "In 1899 he became Sidney George Reilly by receiving a passport in that name, though he never legally adopted it or became a British subject. A patron, possibly his entrée into British intelligence, was Sir Henry Hozier (1838–1907), powerful secretary of Lloyds connected to the War Office intelligence branch. With his strong Jewish features and accented English, Reilly was an unconvincing Englishman, but this became his favourite of many alternative identities." According to Brian Marriner Reilly "possessed passports in eleven different names."

Although based in London, Reilly spent most of his time in the Far East. In 1904 he began working for the trading firm M. A. Ginsburg & Company in Port Arthur, China. The author, Richard Deacon, has argued that he was working as a "double-agent serving both the British and the Japanese." In 1906 he moved to St Petersburg, where he became friendly with members of the revolutionary underground. It is believed that as well as working for the British he was also spying for the Tsarist regime. Deacon adds that: "He was certainly being well-paid as in 1906 he had a lavish apartment in St Petersburg, a splendid art collection and was a member of the most exclusive club in the city."

In his book, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (1985), Christopher Andrew argues that Reilly was recruited by Mansfield Cumming, who was the head of the Secret Service Bureau that had responsibility for secret operations outside Britain (later known as MI6): "Reilly had a remarkable personal charisma and flair for intelligence work which was to win the admiration of both Cumming and Winston Churchill." The diplomat, Robert Bruce Lockhart, who had a generally low opinion of Cumming's agents, was impressed by Reilly, who he described as having the "artistic temperament of the Jew with the devil-may-care daring of the Irishman".

Reilly then got a job working for German naval ship-builders. This enabled him to see and copy all blueprints and specifications of the latest German naval construction. These he passed to MI6. On the outbreak of the First World War Reilly went to New York City as a war contractor buying arms supplies for the Russians. Richard B. Spence has argued: "His ruthless business tactics earned him a fortune and many enemies." During this period he remained in contact with Mansfield Cumming via William Eden Wiseman, his station chief in New York.

After spending a short time in London in 1917, Reilly was smuggled into Germany and was given the task of discovering how close the country was to defeat. The Foreign Office's George Nevile Bland, has argued that Reilly was "a man of great courage... coupled with a somewhat unscrupulous temperament, making him a rather double edged tool". Another MI6 official, Norman Thwaites, described him as having a "swarthy complexion, a long straight nose, piercing eyes, clack hair brushed back from a forehead suggesting keen intelligence, a large mouth, figure slight, of medium height, always clothed immaculately, he was a man that impressed one with a sense of power."

With the help of Norman Thwaites, on his return to England in October he joined the Royal Flying Corps as second lieutenant. In April 1918 MI6 sent Reilly to Russia. He later claimed that he was asked by Lieutenant Ernest Boyce, the local station chief, to assassinate Lenin and Leon Trotsky. He refused saying that his aim was "not to make martyrs of the leaders but to hold them up to ridicule before the world". However, Dora Kaplan did try to kill Lenin but he survived the attempt. Reilly worked closely with Boris Savinkov in various plots against the Bolshevik government.

Moisei Uritsky, the head of Cheka in Petrograd was assassinated on 30th August 1918. Russian newspapers claimed that Uritsky had been killed because he was unravelling "the threads of an English conspiracy in Petrograd". Reilly paid 60,000 rubles to be smuggled out of Russia on board a Dutch freighter, but MI6 agents, Robert Bruce Lockhart, Ernest Boyce and George Hill were arrested, and eighteen couriers and agents were executed. These men were released in October 1918 when they were exchanged for Maxim Litvinov and other arrested Soviet officials in London. Later, Reilly was found guilty of espionage and sabotage and was sentenced to be shot if apprehended. Reilly told Mansfield Cumming that he regarded the "salvation of Russia" as "a most sacred duty" and that he intended to "devote the rest of my wicked life to this kind of work".

Desmond Morton of MI6 claimed that: "Reilly is not a member of our office and does not serve C (Mansfield Cumming) in that he is not receiving any pay from us. He worked at one time during the war in Russia for C's organisation and is now undoubtedly of a certain use to us. We do not altogether know what to make of him. There is no doubt that Reilly is a political intriguer of no mean class, and therefore it is infinitely better for us to keep in with him, whereby he tells us a great deal of what he is doing, than to quarrel with him when we should hear nothing of his activities... he is at the moment Boris Savinkoff's right hand man. In fact, some people might almost say he is Boris Savinkoff. As such he has undoubted importance. In addition to the above, Reilly is of course a very clever man, indeed with means of finding out information all over the world. Whatever may be Reilly's faults, I personally would stake my reputation that he is not anti-British, at the moment at any rate, and never has been. He is an astute commercial man out for himself, and really genuinely hates the Bolsheviks."

In 1921 Reilly became a business adviser to Brigadier Edward Louis Spears, who told Winston Churchill that he had received an attractive offer from "a big financial group interested in opening up Poland, the Ukraine and Rumania and in securing trade privileges in those countries for Great Britain". Spears recruited Reilly because of his wide experience of Eastern Europe. Spears later recalled that "Reilly accompanied me in the capacity of an able businessman which I certainly was not myself at the time." Spears warned Reilly about "the danger of dealing with shady people & mixing politics with business". A number of business ventures instigated by Reilly were not successful and on 2nd August, 1922, Spears sacked him.

In the 1923 General Election, the Labour Party won 191 seats. Although the Conservatives had 258, Ramsay MacDonald agreed to head a minority government, and therefore became the first member of the party to become Prime Minister. As MacDonald had to rely on the support of the Liberal Party, he was unable to get any socialist legislation passed by the House of Commons.

MI6 was appalled by the idea of a Prime Minister who was a socialist. As Gill Bennett pointed out in her book, Churchill's Man of Mystery (2009): "It was not just the intelligence community, but more precisely the community of an elite - senior officials in government departments, men in "the City", men in politics, men who controlled the Press - which was narrow, interconnected (sometimes intermarried) and mutually supportive. Many of these men... had been to the same schools and universities, and belonged to the same clubs. Feeling themselves part of a special and closed community, they exchanged confidences secure in the knowledge, as they thought, that they were protected by that community from indiscretion."

Reilly now joined a conspiracy that was determined to overthrow the MacDonald government. In September 1924 MI5 intercepted a letter signed by Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern in the Soviet Union, and Arthur McManus, the British representative on the committee. In the letter British communists were urged to promote revolution through acts of sedition. Hugh Sinclair, head of MI6, provided "five very good reasons" why he believed the letter was genuine. However, one of these reasons, that the letter came "direct from an agent in Moscow for a long time in our service, and of proved reliability" was incorrect.

Vernon Kell, the head of MI5 and Sir Basil Thomson the head of Special Branch, were also convinced that the letter was genuine. Kell showed the letter to Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour Prime Minister. It was agreed that the letter should be kept secret but someone leaked news of the letter to the Times and the Daily Mail.

The letter was published in these newspapers four days before the 1924 General Election and contributed to the defeat of MacDonald and the Labour Party. In a speech he made on 24th October, Ramsay MacDonald suggested he had been a victim of a political conspiracy: "I am also informed that the Conservative Headquarters had been spreading abroad for some days that... a mine was going to be sprung under our feet, and that the name of Zinoviev was to be associated with mine. Another Guy Fawkes - a new Gunpowder Plot... The letter might have originated anywhere. The staff of the Foreign Office up to the end of the week thought it was authentic... I have not seen the evidence yet. All I say is this, that it is a most suspicious circumstance that a certain newspaper and the headquarters of the Conservative Association seem to have had copies of it at the same time as the Foreign Office, and if that is true how can I avoid the suspicion - I will not say the conclusion - that the whole thing is a political plot?"

After the election it was claimed that two of MI5's agents, Sidney Reilly and Arthur Maundy Gregory, had forged the letter. According to Christopher Andrew, the author of Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (1985): "Reilly played an active part in ensuring that the letter was publicised. A copy of the Russian version of the letter has been discovered in what appears to be Reilly's handwriting, and there can scarcely have been another past or present SIS agent with so few scruples about exploiting it in the anti-Bolshevik cause."

It later became clear that Major George Joseph Ball (1885-1961), a MI5 officer, played an important role in leaking it to the press. In 1927 Ball went to work for the Conservative Central Office where he pioneered the idea of spin-doctoring. Later, Desmond Morton, who worked under Hugh Sinclair, at MI6 claimed that it was Stewart Menzies who sent the Zinoviev letter to the Daily Mail.

The author of Trust No One: The Secret World of Sidney Reilly (2003) argues: "Thereafter he ostensibly devoted himself to the anti-Bolshevik cause and became the key adviser to one of the Soviets' militant opponents, Boris Savinkov (1879–1924). In 1924 Reilly was a charter member of the International League to Combat the III International and in the same year helped found the American affiliate, the Anti-Bolshevik League. However, Reilly's memoranda to the SIS and various British officials reveal a measured approach to the Soviet regime. He judged the abrupt and total overthrow of the Bolsheviks as unwise and unnecessary and advocated policies aimed at shifting leadership from ideologues to more pragmatic hands. Economic incentives played a vital role in these plans."

The Bolshevik government decided to trick Reilly and Boris Savinkov into going back to the Soviet Union. As the author of Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (1985) has pointed out: "Since 1922 the GPU had been plotting the downfall of both Reilly and Savinkov by operating a bogus anti-Bolshevik Front, the Monarchist Union of Central Russia (MUCR), better known as the Trust, designed to ensnare the remaining plotters against Bolshevik rule."

Ernest Boyce, the MI6 station chief in Helsinki, wrote to Reilly asking him to meet the leaders of Monarchist Union of Central Russia in Moscow. In March 1925, Reilly replied: "Much as I am concerned about my own personal affairs which, as you know, are in a hellish state. I am, at any moment, if I see the right people and prospects of real action, prepared to chuck everything else and devote myself entirely to the Syndicate's interests. I was fifty-one yesterday and I want to do something worthwhile, while I can."

After a number of delays caused mainly by Reilly's debt-ridden business dealings, he met Ernest Boyce in Paris before crossing the Finnish border on 25th September 1925. At a house outside Moscow two days later he had a meeting with the leaders of MUCR, where he was arrested by the secret police. Reilly was told he would be executed because of his attempts to overthrow the Bolshevik government in 1918.

According to the Soviet account of his interrogation, on 13th October 1925, Reilly wrote to Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of Cheka, saying he was ready to cooperate and give full information on the British and American Intelligence Services. Sidney Reilly's appeal failed and he was executed on 5th November 1925.