Rab Stewart – Breaking the Fetters

Comrades: Rab Stewart.

This was a first draft of a chapter from the biography of Bob Stewart I’m currently writing, tentatively titled Everything You Get Must Be Fought For. Much of the material here will make it in the rewrite but the chapter as a whole is, unlikely to survive. I thought I’d post it here as I loved learning more about my dad’s uncle. Many thanks to Rab’s daughter, Linda – I hope we can meet up again soon. Thanks also to Ros Sitwell who found material on Rab in The Daily Worker – it was enormously helpful.

Bob had named his first child after his father. When his second came along in 1906, he gave him his own name. To avoid the muddle of having two Roberts, two Bobs in the household, the younger son was forever known as Rab. However, as if to add to the confusion, Rab also went on to marry a woman named Margaret.

Rab became active in the trade union movement at the age of 16 when he began working as a printer which, in Dundee, meant working for the press baron DC Thompson. Today, of course, the company he founded is famous for being the publisher of The Beano and The Dandy – something commemorated by statues of cowpie connoisseur Desperate Dan and Minnie the Minx situated in the city’s High Street. However, in the 1920s Bob and other communists viewed it as a bastion of the reactionary right wing press- its conservative leaning title The Dundee Courier being particularly critical of their activities. Although, to be fair, as Bob mentioned in his memoirs, the Courier was also pretty vituperative about Winston Churchill during his time as an MP there.

The 1926 General Strike was a turning point. Rab evidently played his part and was victimised for it. Thompson was furious with the strike and the damage it did to newspaper revenues. As a punishment he would only allow those who took industrial action to return if they made a formal apology and presented a document proving that they had left their union. Rab was one of those who lost their jobs. The sacked printers set up their own paper The Dundee Free Press which ran for around a decade. It’s likely that Rab had some involvement with this although in 1927 he came to London and found a job with the The Daily Chronicle and joined the National Society of Operative Printers. He became a shop steward or, as they were termed in the printing trade, a Father of Chapel and throughout the Second World War was an organiser for the Daily Worker League, drumming up funds and support for the CPGB’s paper.

Though our conversations about his family were rare, my dad always spoke of his uncle with great affection. My brother recalls an incident during the 1980s which shows the influence he had. When we were younger our family took both The Observer and The Sunday Times – the latter for balance. This lasted until the Wapping dispute when Dad refused to buy the Murdoch paper ever again in solidarity with striking printworkers. A small act from a man who was vaguely left but not party political. One afternoon during the summer holidays my brother was working as a pot boy and heard raised voices in the main bar. Dad was in a heated discussion with a holidaymaker from London.

It turned out that he was an electrician working at Wapping, and very pleased with himself he was too. Dad was politely refusing him further service, and the exchange went like this:

Electrician: I can spend my money how I bloody well please!

Dad: Yes squire, but I don’t have to take it. Goodbye.

As the man left with his family, muttering under his breath and the regulars sat in stunned silence, Dad said out loud, “I don’t mind a man scabbing, we’ve all got to eat, but he was proud of it. My uncle was Father of Chapel.” The bar then returned to its normal sleepy midweek hum, as Dad, now aware that my brother had seen this, told him, “Don’t tell Mum I lost my cool, I shouldn’t have done that.”

However, as well as his lifelong career in the printing trade, Rab, along with the rest of the family, also dipped his toe into secret work. Letters in various files in the National Archives reveal that in the mid 1930s he was living in Moscow and attending the International Lenin School. The ILS was a Comintern initiative founded in order to shape the outlook of generations of communist leaders from all over the world – in JT Murphy’s words it was to be “a real revolutionary university capable of training revolutionary workers for real Communist leadership.” Its most famous graduate was probably Yugoslavia’s Marshal Tito followed by the GDR’s Erich Honecker. The idea was to fashion a revolutionary elite free from the ‘taint’ of social democracy. There was an academic curriculum focussing on subjects such as Philosophy, Politics and Economics although I imagine this was very unlike Oxford University’s PPE as taken by UK Prime Ministers David Cameron and Liz Truss and right wing Labour figures such as Rachel Reeves. There were further courses such as Trade Union Organization and the History of the Russian Communist Party but, most significantly, the school also provided training in practical underground political work.

Over the years the CPGB sent around 160 comrades to the ILS and, in keeping with the Comintern’s impatience with the British party’s less than stellar record in achieving revolution, the British recruits tended not to impress. Nevertheless, MI5 and MI6 maintained a keen interest in anyone found to have attended the school and letters from Rab during his time at the ILS appear in Bob’s files. First of all, the security operatives were focussed on establishing that the pseudonym Robert Ness written on the envelopes was indeed Rab. All the ILS students had to adopt aliases but the family gossip content of the letters was a fairly good clue as to the true identity. Of course there was little mention of Rab’s activities at the school and scanning them for secret messages turned up nothing. Vague references to old friends and various visitors coming and going were of interest but there was nothing conclusive. However, while Military Intelligence found little to interest them within these pages, to me they provide a glimpse about Rab’s life and the lives of other British communists in the USSR including his sister who had moved there at around the same time.

In the grand tradition of the British traveller, one of the first things that Rab encountered in a far-off land was a debilitating bout of dysentery. In June 1934 he wrote to his parents warning that there would be a period when there would be no letters from him as he was about to get very busy. His work had suffered as a result of his poor health and he mentioned that he’d lost weight but felt he was on the mend. He noted that he had to be careful of his diet but that it wouldn’t be difficult as most things were “barren” and he stuck to basic foods like rice and fish. Partly due to his illness he hadn’t yet seen “any of our old friends” at that point and was keeping abreast of current affairs as he could get all the newspapers there. He described events in Britain as ‘lively’ but Moscow was, in his view, the opposite apart from the rescue of the Soviet Arctic explorer Otto Schmidt and his team whose vessel, the SS Chelyuskin, had become trapped in polar ice and sunk. A daring air rescue was planned and, after weeks of surviving on the ice floes, the scientists were given a heroes’ welcome along with the rescuers. Unable to join in due to his illness, Rab relayed what he heard about the event from friends and wrote of the “tremendous reception” the explorers were given and the huge parade thrown in their honour.

Rab had rallied enough to attend celebrations for the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution in the autumn that year. He mentioned the excitement of watching thousands of people passing through the square and being involved in the various celebrations. He was kept very busy but he did feel a sense of isolation about being so far from his family. In response to a letter from Bob which included a lovely account of my father at one years old – “ A mouthful of teeth and we toddling legs off which he falls every few steps but he is rather a good-natured kid and seems used to the bumps.” – Rab replied that he loved hearing about “Bill’s kid” but it brought home how much he missed his own daughter, Moira and had written to her in the hope of a reply. In a subsequent letter he writes of his relief to hear from her and her mother.

However, what comes across in Rab’s letters is how much the cultural life of Moscow, such as it was, meant to him. In one letter he laments that, after attending a film festival, there were no new films for him to see. He urged Bob to catch Chapaev as soon as he was able. A war movie by the Vasilyev brothers about a Red Army commander from the Civil War, it became one of the most popular Soviet films of all time. It was well regarded and won prizes abroad in the USA and France. It is also apparently, Vladimir Putin’s favourite film. Rab also recommended a comedy Jolly Fellows and mentioned that he’d seen Rene Claire’s On the Roof of Paris once again after reminding his father they’d seen it at the Rialto some years previously. He went on to remark that the festival had created tremendous interest abroad and there were great musical and theatrical programmes planned. He mentioned that Paul Robeson had written very favourably about the Moscow theatre and anticipated many more performers coming to the USSR. Rab was very much looking forward to this. Music was his first love – both as a listener and as a performer. Bob had written in a previous letter of Rab and his wife keeping them all entertained singing into the “wee sma’ oors” and his surviving daughter, Linda, recalls a man whose favourite thing was to browse the record stores after work and arrive home with a new LP under his arm. He also had quite a fine voice. In a letter from March 1935 Rab’s sister described him singing the Robeson standards ‘Old Man River’ and ‘Pretty Little Fellah’ – presumably ‘Mighty Like a Rose’ – at a party thrown for a visiting Harry Pollitt. It sounds like quite a raucous evening. Before the party Nan, her husband and Rab had gone to the theatre and saw the first three acts of ‘Eugin Onegin’ before making their way to Pollitt’s bash. According to Nan, Pollitt, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, remarked that Rab’s voice would “make all the women there want to have babies.”

The letters from this time reveal quite a bond between Rab and Nan. It must have been a comfort to have family so close by in a strange place when he could barely speak the language. He called round often, joking that it was mainly to pinch her notepaper. The pair of them tease and gossip about each other in their letters home but ultimately Rab’s time in Moscow was relatively brief. It was Nan who had decided to make her life out there. A decision she would soon come to regret.

Comrades: Anatole Naumovich Kaminsky (Part Two).

The second of two pictures of Anatole Kaminsky in his MI5 file.

Anatole Naumovich Kaminsky married Bob Stewart’s daughter Annie at some point during 1933. This is an overview of what I found in his security file when I visited the National Archives last year and any inaccuracies are my own. This post concerns information the British secret services gathered on him during his brief visits to Britain while the details of his arrest and execution can be found in ‘Comrades: Anatole Naumovich Kaminsky (Part One)’. Ultimately, this is all the information I have found out about Kaminsky but I would love to know more.

Anatole Naumovich Kaminsky first arrived in the United Kingdom on the 10^th September 1930. Sailing from the Hook of Holland and docking at Harwich, it’s likely that it was his first visit or, at least, he had never caught the attention of the security services before. His arrival records state that he was 23 years old, a Russian national and that he carried a Soviet passport. His proposed address in the UK was given as “Arcos, London”. Arcos was the All-Russian Co-operative Society – the organisation which oversaw Anglo-Soviet trade. Three years before, its Hampstead headquarters had been raided by the British authorities and evidence of espionage uncovered. The whole affair had been a cause celebre and the relationship between Britain and the Soviet Union, always palpably frosty, had cooled somewhat as a consequence. Kaminsky came in on a six month visa and was employed as a commercial secretary. It’s clear from the outset that the security services were intending to keep an eye on him.

Initial investigations found that Kaminsky was much more than a secretary. In a letter dated 27^th March 1930 Captain Guy Liddell, then of Special Branch, wrote to Oswald Allen Harker in MI5 with the following information:

Dear Harker,

Application was made a short time ago in Moscow for a visa for Anatole Naumovitch KAMINSKI, born 1907. This man who was then secretary of the Scientific Technical Section of the Society for the Promotion of Cultural Relations with Countries Abroad in Moscow, was coming here as a secretary to Arcos. Preliminary enquiries through SIS show that he is a scientist and is in touch with military scientific men in the “Revoyensoviet”. He has also been working in the Osoaviachim. He is a full member of the VKP (b).

KAMINSKI arrived her on the 10th September and proceeded to 81, Kensington Gardens Square, W.

The involvement with the Osoaviachim was of particular concern as that was the society concerned with the construction of military aircraft and chemical warfare research. There is little else in the file at this point other than establishing links with the director of Arcos Vladimir Belgoff and his wife Sophie. There was a request to intercept all mail at the Belgoff’s address 14 Tenterden Drive in Hendon and it looks like Kaminsky might have been staying with them for a time.

I assume Kaminsky left the UK sometime in March 1931 due to the length of his visa. However, he made a return visit in December of that year as part of The Trade Delegation of the USSR in Great Britain and, this time, he was listed as a “consulting economist”. Shortly after this on the 7^th January 1932, he appeared in a news story in the Daily Mail. Despite the snideness of the journalist remarking on Kaminsky’s “broken English” the economist’s assurances that his activities are strictly business and nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence gathering are spectacularly unconvincing.

Transcript of The Daily Mail article from 1932 Anatole Kaminsky’s MI5 file.

ARCOS IMPUDENCE.

Demands to British Firms.

An impudent letter which British firms have received recently from Arcos is making them wonder what secret object the Soviet trade organisation in this country is pursuing under the disguise of innocent business relationships.

The letter explains that Arcos is anxious to “tabulate information on industrial and technical lines concerning their production and general characteristics of distinguished British firms, with whom we have commercial relations, to be placed upon record for reference when deciding orders for the forthcoming year.”

It proceeds: “We ask you especially to give technical information in detail such as measurements, size and capacity of machines.” It demands information “in detail” and not “under general headings” and instructs that replies should be sent “in triplicate.”

Then follows a questionnaire, half of which could be filled in from ordinary business books. It includes such questions as dividends paid, if any, from 1926 to 1931 and number of work people employed.

‘Comrade’ A. KAMINSKY, of the economic department of Arcos, is responsible for this piece of effrontery. He had little explanation to offer yesterday when asked by a Daily Mail reporter what was the object of this so-called business inquiry. “Just to assist us in making purchases,” he answered in broken English.

When it was suggested to him that the replies would be useful for the secret archives of Moscow, ‘Comrade’ KAMINSKY gave his favourite answer: “Oh, no, you make big mistake, just business purposes only.”

Kaminsky came to the attention of the security services again in January 1933 when he arrived in the UK on a short term visa only valid for a few months. It stated that he was returning to the same post, however, during this time, it was his personal life rather than the professional which interested MI5. It is likely that this was when he married Bob Stewart’s daughter Annie, my father’s Aunt Nan. There are several enquiries about this and it is confirmed by Superintendent Canning of Special Branch in May of that year.

“In reference to the enquiries which you were recently good enough to have made regarding Annie Walker STEWART (301/MP/2860), it has just been reported from a source which is I think reliable, that this woman is married to a Russian called KAMINSKY.”

Of course the security services were already interested in Bob Stewart for his roles in the covert finance of the CPGB, his time as the British representative to the Comintern and his associations in Ireland. They also clearly considered Annie and her older brothers William and Rab to be persons of interest due to their links to Arcos and it is likely that all three had some involvement, however slight, in Bob’s underground activities.

Although Annie’s marriage to a Soviet official who seemed to be rising through the ranks would have ensured the security services attention it seems the pair did little to attract it. The next mention of Kaminsky is from March 1934 when the passport office is extending his visa and its confirmed that, “This alien has not come under notice.”

Nevertheless, MI5 still tracked Kaminsky’s movements and gathered information on him. There’s a record that on March 4^th 1934 there was a lecture at the “London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The lecturer was to be A. KAMINSKY, Soviet Economist, of the First Moscow State University, and the subject to be ‘The Second Five Year Plan.’” Also that year MI5 received intelligence that Kaminsky was “the real power behind Arcos” and that he was “either married to or living with Nan STUART, the daughter of the Clydeside Communist.” One hopes the agent who drafted that memo was slightly more knowledgeable about potential threats to the nation than they were about Scottish geography. Bob was a Dundonian – not a Glaswegian. It’s likely they were confusing Bob with Willie Gallacher.

By October 1935, Anatole and Annie had moved to Moscow although they were in regular contact with the family back in London. Being so far away Annie would have been eager for news from home and, in the files, there is an intercepted letter from Bob dated the 8^th October. The security services were mostly interested in the references to Harry Pollitt, the head of the CPGB and his wife Marjorie. However, the letter is largely domestic. Bob’s wife Margaret is ‘in the tub’ and Bob is taking the opportunity to write to their daughter. There is some news of ‘Bill and family’ – my grandfather, grandmother and my dad – baby Robin- who would have been two years old at the time. There’s some gossip about Rab, Bob’s middle child and his new girlfriend. The anecdote about them singing makes me smile as when I met his daughter Linda for the first time last year she remarked that what her father loved above all else was music. Towards the end there’s some talk of knitting and this is because Annie would have been pregnant at the time with my father’s cousin Greg. Bob and Margaret were eagerly awaiting their second grandchild.

Part of the letter from Bob Stewart to Annie and Anatole. (1935).

Dear N & N again,

Your letter arrived a couple of hours ago and we three enjoyed its contents. So very glad to know that you are both so well. This seems to be washing night. Rab balked and hopped off to bed, mother is now in the tub. While the old man, like the dutiful father he is, sits down to write this letter straight away lest tomorrow he should be too busy in other directions. The new situation is imposing duties that cannot wait as you will readily appreciate. We are well in health. Rab walks fairly comfortably now and is on the hunt for a job. Mother is all right again and of course the old man is the XXXX-XXXX-XXXX or thereby.

We were glad that you remembered our Welsh friends who are really the most excellent comrades. I hope you will be successful in helping them out. Very glad that P____ is going to help you get numbers? Tolia has many things to do and maybe he is modest about his own comfort. We were so glad to get his picture cards from way down South to find that his writing arm was still in good order. I gave Harry your message- he says it’s between you and Marjorie whom I saw a day or two ago. She is looking and feeling very well as is Jean who played merry hell when I couldn’t play with her any longer. We have not seen Bill and family for a fortnight but they are all well and Robin has had more photographs taken. Everyone likes to take his picture and he quite likes it. We have now got a big one of him and all the lady visitors are taking him for a walk -he is so lovely to look at they say.

We have had numbers of visitors recently among them XXXX’s auntie who is much interested in you but more in Rab who needs to help with the printers of whom we have now quite a few. We had Tom Wilson and C____ up for tea and we had a young girlfriend from a distance staying the weekend. She and Rab sang all our favourites till the wee sma’ oors. It was delightful. She reminded mother very much of you although her singing was a vast improvement on yours. She went away home overwhelmed by the kindness of your mother which is not unusual. We also had a visit from one of the numerous Clark family who want me to share with you the joys of the children’s movement at home. I don’t remember his first name he’s got a job in some club or hotel down Leatherhead way – not much of a job but better than idleness. Yes! We read in your XXXX all about the XXXX expansion of trade and the XXXX values brings to you all. It’s a remarkable achievement and opens the door to new XXXX. It’s a consolidation of brilliance compared to the darkening skies elsewhere. The centre the world’s attention is now on Africa and as you’ll see by the British XXXX there is a lack of confusion and in some cases XXXX XXXX in our movement. It’s an acid test that will reveal much base metal. Probably you will have seen Jane ‘ere you get this. I hope she will benefit from her sojourn in your country. Hope to get some of your orders shipped in the course of the next fortnight if I’m not called away! I notice the knitting needles being used here and no doubt you’ll be pleased with the result – the other fittings may not be so easy to get but will have a good try on the first fine day. I think that’s all I’ve got to say at this time except that the weather is as wet as you have had it. Even as we are all bearing up – always cheered up when your letters come along. All the same I could have sat in on mothers celebration and I think Rab’s teeth were watering when I thought of what he could have done had he been around. I don’t know if I told you that Jimmy B had a XXXX XXXX badly and has been under medical care for three weeks. He seems to have got over the worst but it is a XXXX XXXX blow as he had to cancel all engagements and new ones will not be easy to get. Cheerio- it’s bedtime.

Love from all to you all,

Dad.

(I’ve used XXXX when I can’t make out the Bob’s handwriting.)

Greg was born in Moscow in early 1936 and, in the summer, Annie took him to London so that everyone could be introduced to the latest addition to the family. Anatole stayed behind in the Soviet Union but wrote regularly. MI5 intercepted the following letter from him addressed to Annie and their son. The letter has all the hallmarks of the new parent – concern, pride and love. However, just over a year later Anatole’s brother, Grigory, was arrested and executed in Stalin’s purges, setting in motion his own imprisonment and eventual murder.

Letter from Anatole Kaminsky to Annie Stewart. (1936).

17^th June 1936

Dearest Nan and XXXX

Last night I received your long letter and felt very happy that you are managing well. It was nice to hear that calm and sunny weather made your journey bright and not a difficult one.

A few days ago I got your note from the sea and Dad’s ‘epistle’. It makes a pleasant reading to find out that old people and the whole family are taking such a keen interest in our wee sonny. I think he already succeeded to prove that he is a thoroughly good boy and deserves all the love and care bestowed upon him. As to his ??? on the face I think it will go away after some fresh fruit and vegetable diet of his milking cow – (Sorry to use zoo terms!)

Have a complete rest, change over to fruit eats and drinks and don’t take troubles of any kind. I don’t give anymore advice is as you have very good advisers around you with lots of experience gained during a long life. The only remark will be the main thing is to develop regular habits a good regime.

Anatole

According to his file, Anatole made one more visit to the United Kingdom. Beforehand, the Soviet Ambassador Ivan Maisky wrote to the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to request a visa so Kaminsky could attend trade negotiations.

M. Maisky, Ambassador of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in Great Britain, presents his compliments to His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and has the honour to request a visa for M. Anatole Kaminsky who is a financial expert, and is coming to this country to take part in the financial negotiations which are going on between the Trade Representative of the USSR in London and the Board of Trade.

As his presence here is urgently required, M. Maisky would be obliged if the instructions granting him a visa could be telegraphed to Moscow at the Embassy’s expense.

11th of July, 1936.

The Rt. Hon. Anthony Eden, MC, MP,

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

Anatole Naumovich Kaminsky arrived in Britain from Amsterdam by aeroplane on or around the 1^st August 1936 and was recorded as an “Economic Advisor to the USSR Trade Delegation.” An unconditional landing was granted. This is the last record I can find of Kaminsky in the MI5 files until 1956 when, after Khruschev’s speech denouncing Stalin, Annie and her teenage son, Greg found out exactly what had happened to him after his arrest by the NKVD in June 1938.

Alan Stewart.

Comrades: Anatole Naumovich Kaminsky (Part One).

Where to begin? It’s a troubling, ultimately tragic part of the story and some of it is truly inexplicable. Perhaps the best way to deal with it is to set out the information as simply as I can.

What we knew was this. At some point in the early 1930s Bob Stewart’s daughter, Annie (my dad’s Aunt Nan) married a ‘Russian’ and they went to live in Moscow. We didn’t know his name nor had we ever seen a photograph of him. At some point Nan gave birth to a baby boy – my dad’s cousin Greg. Soon after this Nan’s husband was killed in Stalin’s purges. Nan fled with their infant child back to London. Information about her husband was almost impossible to come by. I have no idea how they managed to escape. In the years that followed, Nan remarried, had two more children and remained a member of the Communist Party until 1956.

For me, all of this was rather abstract. Dad had a lot of family somewhere out there but was rarely in contact with them. Until recently, apart from visits to my grandfather when I was a toddler, the only other person I’d ever met from my father’s side was Greg. That was at my brother’s wedding just over a decade ago. I only spoke to him briefly as I was on best man duties. All I can really remember is how strange it was to be speaking to somebody who bore such a strong resemblance to my dad and yet was someone who was to all intents and purposes a complete stranger. I never made the effort to remain in touch. I wish I had.

After my father died, I started reading through the security files on Bob Stewart that the National Archives had digitised and put online. Trying to find glimpses of who he was before he was our dad. To begin with, I knew very little about the Communist Party or our family. I tended to focus on the later files as during that period MI5 weren’t simply intercepting Bob’s post and tailing his movements but bugging his offices and tapping his phone. Rather than squinting at spidery 1920s handwriting and trying to work out what it all meant I could easily read the transcripts of conversations and, through their voices, almost begin to get to know these people who were long gone.

I started looking at the files collected during 1956. The year that Nikita Khrushchev gave a speech condemning the crimes of Stalin and the first official recognition about what had gone on in the decades before. At this time Nan was living in a large house in North London with her family and also her father who was nearing eighty but still involved in the secret side of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Most of the documents in that file focus on the general disquiet about the revelation in ‘secret speech’ felt by those at the CPGB’s HQ at Covent Garden. However, a more personal impact is outlined in the transcript of a phone call Nan made to her sister in law Margaret on 10th August 1956.

O/G call from NAN CAPLAN to MARGARET STEWART, BOB’S daughter in law. HARRY is back, and DRONA, (the father of NAN’s son GREGORY CAPLAN) was definitely shot in 1941. They are both shattered by it. HARRY came to see BOB and NAN insisted on seeing him. She says there is not one of the five brothers in KRONA’s (sic) family left. She threatened that if HARRY does not give her justice she’ll follow him to every meeting at which he speaks. BOB’s threatening to leave (The house? The party?) She would like her brother RAB STEWART to come and see her. BOB is going away next week so they will arrange it.
(KV2/2790 – Security File on Robert Stewart held at the National Archives.)

‘HARRY’ was Harry Pollitt, the leader of the CPGB, who had gone to Russia in part to find out what had happened to the family members of several of his own colleagues and friends. Of course, this transcript raises so many questions. How had they lived with this trauma for so long? How had they maintained their commitment to the CPGB in all that time in the face of it? What had they already known?

At this stage I still did not know the identity of Nan’s husband. From the battered suitcase that had been up in the loft, every old photograph or letter in Russian that I sifted through proved a dead end. So too did the references to KRONA or DRONA in the transcript- a nickname that didn’t seem to crop up elsewhere. However, later on in the files I did find a reference that linked Greg’s father to Grigory Kaminsky and this was the first real breakthrough in my search.

Grigory Kaminsky was the People’s Commissar for Health of the Soviet Union between 1934 and 1937. He set up the Soviet health system, improved the production of medicine and medical training and battled malaria in the USSR. Evidently, he was also Nan’s brother-in-law. However, in 1937 he made speech in which he condemned the wrongful arrests of people and accused Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the NKVD, of counter revolutionary activities. As a result, he was arrested and then executed by firing squad in February 1938. Then, it seems, the NKVD went for the rest of his family.

Now I had a surname I went back to the earlier files from the 1920s and 1930s and managed to find documents that linked Anatole Naumovich Kaminsky and Annie Stewart together which speculated about whether they were married. So, now I knew who he was but still no idea of what he looked like or any real details of what had happened to him. My first port of call would have been to search for him through the Memorial website. Memorial is the Russian human rights organisation set up to investigate the crimes of the Stalin era and beyond. They’d amassed records of all known victims in a ceaseless effort to record every human rights violation. However, last year it was closed down after years of intimidation by the Putin regime. During one court hearing the state prosecutor announced that Memorial was “creating a false image of the Soviet Union as a terrorist state.”

Screenshot of the information I found on Anatole Kaminsky. Apparently the information is from a database of “Victims of political terror in the USSR”; Moscow, execution lists -Kommunarka.

Despite Memorial being closed down I think I’ve still managed to find a record of what exactly had happened to Anatole. It appears that there are several websites that have ‘backed up’ the information held by Memorial and similar agencies and these have not all been shut down yet. Not being a Russian speaker, I can’t fully judge the reliabilty of the website I found but, as key parts of the information held on Anatole Kaminsky match what’s held in the MI5 files, I am reasonably sure that this is what happened.

On June 20th 1938 NKVD officers arrived at Anatole Kaminsky’s Moscow flat on the St. Malaya Dmitrovka. They arrested him on charges of espionage and participation in counter revolutionary organisations. He remained in custody for the next three years and was eventually convicted on 8th July 1941 shortly after the Nazis invaded the USSR. His sentence was noted down as ‘VMN’. This stood for ‘Vysshaya Mera Nakazaniya’ which translates as ‘the supreme measure of punishment’. In other words, the death penalty. On July 28th the sentence was carried out. They took him to the Kommunarka shooting ground on the outskirsts of Moscow where his body lies alongside thousands of other victims to this day. He was 34 years old.

Anatole was rehabilitated by the Khrushchev regime in 1956. Rehabilitation would have had to have been requested and I assume it was Harry Pollitt who put that in motion or it might have been Bob on his visit to Moscow in August that year. That’s as far as justice stretched.

In November this year I finally saw some photographs of Anatole, one of which is reproduced at the top of this article. They were attached to his MI5 security file held at the National Archives. I spent the morning reading all about the six years he spent in Britain before he returned to the Soviet Union and the dreadful fate that awaited him. That afternoon I met, for the very first time, another of my dad’s cousins. It was Rab and Margaret’s daughter Linda. It had been Margaret who Nan had rang up after discovering what had happened to her husband in that summer in 1956. It was an emotional meeting and we covered a lot of ground in the few hours we were together. She could not believe I had found photographs of ‘Natte’ as he’d been known. He’d died long before she was born and she’d never seen a picture of him either. Of course she was familiar the story and knew that her aunt and cousin had got away by “the skin of their teeth.” When I showed her the photographs on my phone she was instantly struck by the resemblance to Greg who she’d known well and who died in 2019. I was glad I was able to show her these images. I wish that I could have shown them to my father. Above all, I wish I could have shown them to Greg.

Alan Stewart.

Thanks to Linda Stewart, Ian Stewart, Ruth Holliday and Maurice Casey for all their help.

The Family Firm.

*The Stewart Family pictured in the mid 1920s: -R: Bob, Rab, Annie (Nan), William and Margaret.*

To the best of my knowledge the last person in my family to still be fully committed to a Marxist-Leninist revolution died in 1978. He was my grandfather William Stewart and he was lovely. However, even though those that remain have spent the intervening forty-four years failing to overthrow the capitalist system, communism has loomed ever present in the background in our lives for all sorts of reasons. It is a bittersweet inheritance. I suppose there is nothing surprising in its presence as, from the inception of the CPGB in 1920, communism essentially became the family business for the next fifty years. Practically everyone was involved.

At the end of 1955 – a few months before Khrushchev would acknowledge the crimes of Stalin for the first time in his ‘secret speech’ MI5 picked up some office gossip about the Stewart family through one of the bugs it had placed in the offices at the Communist Party’s HQ in King Street, Covent Garden. Reuben Falber, who, when Bob Stewart finally retired in 1957, would go on to be responsible for distributing funds from Moscow, was overheard talking to fellow party worker Betty Reid about a recent scandal involving Bob’s nephew Greg – a Cambridge student who had just been unforgivably rude to one of the comrades at Central Books. Here’s part of the transcript in the security files:

‘They’re a family that-well, they’re a law unto themselves because you’ve got a combination of the old fellow’s prestige and money. BETTY asked where the money came from. Regret FALBER’s reply was whispered and could not be followed.

(From the MI5 Security File on Bob Stewart KV2/2790 – The National Archives)

The ‘old fellow’ is, of course, Bob Stewart and quite clearly the whole family had something of a reputation within communist circles. In fact, Betty Reid, in a conversation recorded about eight months later, was of the opinion that the Stewart children – William, Rab and Nan, had been “thoroughly spoiled all their lives.” This kind of attitude is elaborated further in an earlier document I came across in my grandfather’s security file on a recent visit to the National Archives. It’s dated 17th October 1932 and appears to be a memorandum from Special Branch to MI5 concerning the activities of Bob and his three children. I reproduce it here in full partly because I think it’s an interesting account of how the Stewarts and other similar families were viewed within the movement but mainly because I love the description of my grandfather.

The following information has been received.

WILLIAM STEWART, who used to drive the Soviet Ambassador’s car has given up driving altogether and is now employed in the Embassy as a ‘trusted’ man. He recently stated that he was engaged there on work of a secret nature, which included a little clerical labour.

His hours are from 5pm until 1am and his wife also has a job at the Embassy.

He is forbidden to undertake Communist Party of Great Britain work.

He now wears a small moustache, Charlie Chaplin style, which gives him an altered appearance, and carries an ash walking-stick. He often wears a light green shirt, brown jacket and shorts (at other times grey flannel trousers), light brown rabbit-skin hat, and brown shoes. He apes the appearance and mannerisms of a university student.

His father, ‘Bob’, is at present in Belfast where he is assisting the Irish Revolutionary Workers’ Party.

His brother, who lived with Ralph Edwin BOND, and was attached to St. Pancras Local Communist Party of Great Britain, has now secured a situation at Arcos Ltd. as also has his wife. Both have been transferred to Islington Local.

His sister, who was active in the Young Communist League of Great Britain, and who went to Russia on several occasions, has gone to live there permanently. She also was employed at Arcos and married a principal of that concern. As he has been recalled to Russia, she has accompanied him.

The state of affairs here outlined indicates how the movement is ‘exploited as a meal ticket’ (to use the phrase of certain disgusted genuine Communists) by certain fortunate families.

The CAMPBELL family is another case in point. The sum of over £20 weekly is received in John Ross Campbell’s home from Soviet sources.

The WATKINS’ are in the same position, whilst there is a host of others.

There is keen resentment in the ‘movement’ over this condition of things. It is freely expressed that no man and wife should be allowed to hold a situation while other ‘Comrades’ are unemployed. This objection has taken root and considerable trouble on the point seems likely to develop.

SUPERINTENDENT.

(From the MI5 Security File on William Stewart KV2/4494 – The National Archives)

Alan Stewart.