To the Soviet students, their first view of the modern American city of New York was a vivid demonstration of the yawning gap between the capitalist and socialist worlds. It was the city that some of the Russians would be trained in the US to emulate on their return home. Moscow planned in time to build its own skyscrapers, as befitted the capital of the Communist world. Eventually, sweeping boulevards would be created by dynamiting old buildings and whole districts, but the capital of the worker state in 1931 had nothing but dreams to compete with the reality of the Big Apple.
The students’ accommodation for their one day of acclimatisation to onshore life and an initial briefing was in the recently opened Lincoln Hotel on Eighth Avenue, a few blocks from AMTORG’s office at 261 Fifth Avenue. It would become the favourite hotel of visiting Soviet parties. Tupolev had stayed there on his first trip in December 1929, spending his time trying to figure out the technical marvel of the heating system.8 The hotel was a modern wonder. It boasted an incredible 1,300 luxury rooms spread over 27 floors, occupying an entire city block between 44th and 45th Streets. Just like the luxury ocean liner from which the students had disembarked, the hotel was a showcase of the comforts on offer in a capitalist society, shocking to those used to the overcrowded and squalid conditions of the USSR’s developing cities.
The arriving students had been briefed to act as ambassadors for their new society. By and large, they behaved as such. They were examples of what socialism had achieved so far and would achieve in the future. They believed passionately in fairness and equality for all workers and peasants and had dedicated their lives to building that dream. Many were military veterans who had experienced brutality and loss on the battlefield in the fight for their beliefs. Perplexed by the rigid class system in evidence on the boat, they had found themselves more at home in third class. They were attracted to the fun and informality as opposed to the regimented stiffness of the first -and second-class decks. America’s relaxed social attitudes suited the students. The Soviet government insisted on premium-class tickets as such passengers were treated differently by customs and immigration. Experience had shown that first-and second-class ticket holders would escape hours of questioning on arrival, or worse, internment at Ellis Island.
The party had arrived in the belly of the great capitalist beast. They had been taught that their class enemy, the American elite, feared the inevitable triumph of Communism and was scheming to destroy the Soviet Union, but that ordinary exploited American workers were their brothers, although politically asleep, bought off by consumerist dreams and neglectful of their political destiny. Lacking such a purpose, they were told, American life was empty or shallow. In a future Communist society, each member would contribute according to their ability and receive according to their need.
The students were instructed to describe the Soviet grand project as work in progress, with many problems, challenges and difficult choices. To succeed in their goal entailed making enormous sacrifices for the certainty of a better tomorrow. Having such beliefs separated the Soviets from most Americans, whose lives and aspirations they found materialistic and selfish. It is notable that none of the students decided to defect after their taste of America. Despite Russia’s many privations, Soviet society was on the road to an improvement in living standards for the masses over the squalor and hopelessness of Tsarist autocracy. The students knew that there was still a long way to go, but significantly they had fought hard to come a fair distance already. All of them had benefited from the educational opportunities offered them. Denied formal education under Tsarism, under Communism they were now on their way to study at the most elite universities in the world. Their education would be used not to obtain for themselves a bigger salary but for the greater good of all. Despite the current conditions, the ration cards, public canteens and cramped accommodation, their system was moving forward, offering a brighter future, while capitalism was in retreat and could not even provide jobs for a high proportion of its population. They also expected to meet the cowboys and gangsters they had seen in the movies.
At their first hotel, the Soviets found evidence of the very class oppression they had been warned to avoid. To real Communists, tipping porters for carrying their bags or paying for a shoe shine were open symbols of class exploitation. Communists could never adjust to paying others to perform simple everyday tasks that they were accustomed to do themselves. They would carry their own bags. They had already seen the evidence on the city streets, and would later read in newspapers lurid accounts of the awful privations of the Great Depression that affected the many, while themselves tasting the surreal world of luxury liners and hotels enjoyed by the few.
New York was in crisis. There was unprecedented mass unemployment. A plethora of apple sellers could be found on each city street, the unemployed struggling to earn money in order simply to eat. Others wandered the sidewalks wearing placards advertising their skills. All Soviet visitors at the time were consistently surprised at the diversity of immigrants that made up the population, remarking on the large number of countries represented. At this time, close to 7 million lived in the city, with a population density of over 23,000 people per square mile. Moscow was growing fast but still only had a population of 2.8 million.
Even in the midst of depression, however, New York was the definitive twentieth-century city; its wide streets and boulevards made a deep impression on foreign visitors, not least via the symbol of the modern age, the car and heavy traffic. The New York skyline had only recently taken on its impressive modern form, dominated by the three tallest buildings in the world. The arriving Russians were awed by the three buildings, visible from anywhere in Manhattan.
The Empire State Building at 102 storeys had won the friendly competition with the builders of 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building to be the world’s tallest. Construction had begun on 17 March 1930, and the skyscraper was officially opened a few months before the students arrived, on 1 May 1931. The total cost of the building, including the land, was $40,948,900. An MIT alumnus, Pierre S. du Pont, had partly financed the project. Construction required the use of up to 3,400 workers working 7 million working hours over a period of just one year and forty-five days including Sundays and holidays, a feat worthy of a Soviet Five-Year Plan. The art deco building, wrapped in Indiana limestone and granite, aluminium and chrome nickel steel, was the wonder of the modern age – even if in 1931 it was virtually empty, the victim of an unfashionable location and the Depression. The three skyscrapers had been built in a race to the sky as symbols of America’s business confidence that was now shattered.
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On the face of it, the students’ host, AMTORG, was a legitimate trading company with a valuable monopoly on Soviet trade with the United States. American conservatives suspected AMTORG was the hub of major Soviet espionage activities designed to undermine the government of the United States; in fact it was neither capable nor sufficiently resourced to be anything of the sort. Soviet intelligence in the US at the time of Shumovsky’s arrival was in its infancy, small in scale and disorganised. Only in 1933, with the establishment of official diplomatic relations, would the Soviet Consulate take over the leadership role in intelligence from AMTORG and build up resources. The AMTORG office was not the centre of a grand conspiracy to topple capitalism. Soviet espionage sought to strengthen the position of the USSR not to destroy the US system of government. Marxists believed that the collapse of capitalism was inevitable. In 1925 Stalin had adopted a policy of ‘Socialism in One Country’, abandoning the cause of world revolution, and would finally close down Comintern (The Communist International) in 1943.
Until Shumovsky’s mission, spy work had consisted almost exclusively of the gathering and collation of what would be described today as open-source information, supplemented by an occasional one-off operation. Open-source intelligence is information in the public domain in a particular country that has a value for a foreign power. Intelligence is further