Brian Goold-Verschoyle facts for kids
Brian Goold-Verschoyle (born June 5, 1912 – died January 5, 1942) was an Irish man who joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. He was secretly hired by the Soviet spy agency, the NKVD, to carry messages between their secret agents (called moles) and the people who managed them (called handlers) in London.
He was sent to Spain in 1937 as a radio technician during the Spanish Civil War. There, he became unhappy with the way the Soviet Union was controlling the Communist Party. He was tricked into boarding a Soviet ship, taken secretly to the USSR, and died as a prisoner in a forced labor camp called the Gulag in 1942. He is one of only three Irish people known to have been victims of Joseph Stalin's "Great Purge" – a time when many people in the Soviet Union were arrested and killed.
Early Life in Ireland and England
Brian Goold-Verschoyle was born in Dunkineely, a town in County Donegal, Ireland. His family was part of the Anglo-Irish gentry, which means they were English families who had lived in Ireland for a long time and owned land. His father, Hamilton Frederick Stuart Goold Verschoyle, was a lawyer. He believed in peace and supported Home Rule, which meant Ireland should govern itself.
Brian grew up during a time of big changes in Ireland, including the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. He went to schools like Portora Royal and Marlborough. In 1929, when he was 19, he moved to England. He started an apprenticeship (a type of training for a job) at English Electric Works in Stafford.
In 1931, he decided to join the Communist Party of Great Britain. This decision led the British spy agency, MI5, to start a file on him. Eventually, he became the leader of the Communist Party in Stafford.
Working as a Soviet Courier
Brian Goold-Verschoyle became a Soviet spy after visiting his older brother, Hamilton Neil Goold-Verschoyle, and his Russian wife in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). The British spy agency, MI5, thought he was just a "naïve supporter" of the Soviet Union. They didn't know the full truth until years later. They learned from Soviet spies who had left their country that Brian regularly carried messages for the Soviet spy agencies, the OGPU and later the NKVD. He traveled to the USSR in 1933, 1934, and 1935 for this work.
Brian also carried secret papers from moles (spies working secretly) inside the British Government. One of these moles was John Herbert King, a clerk in the British Foreign Office. Brian delivered these documents to Theodore Maly, a former priest who became an NKVD spymaster (a person who manages spies). Brian was Maly's main courier. He also worked as a courier for another spy, Dmitri Bystrolyotov.
In 1936, Brian, who used to be a technician, went back to Moscow using a different name. He went there to get special training in wireless (radio) communication. At that time, he was in love with a German Jewish refugee named Lotte Moos. To the surprise of his NKVD bosses, she went with him. Lotte was seen as politically suspicious because she was linked to a group in the Communist Party of Germany that was against the main party line. After Brian finished his radio training, he was sent to be a military advisor to the Second Spanish Republic. He was told specifically to stop contact with Lotte Moos.
Becoming Disillusioned and His Arrest
In Spain, Brian Goold-Verschoyle became worried. He saw how Soviet agents and the local Communists they controlled were secretly trying to take over the Spanish republic. He didn't like how the Soviet NKVD and the republic's Communist-controlled police (the Servicio de Investigación Militar) watched and punished people who had different political ideas. He realized that Moscow only cared about a socialist revolution if they could control it completely.
Brian's letters to Lotte Moos and his family in Ireland showed he was becoming more sympathetic to the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). This was a group that was against Joseph Stalin's ideas. Famous writer George Orwell served with this group and wrote about it in his book Homage to Catalonia.
By April 1937, Brian was working as a technician for the radio service of the Republican Army in Barcelona. He was so unhappy that he asked to leave his job. His commander told him he had to wait until a replacement could be found. A few days later, Brian was told to repair radio equipment on a Soviet freighter (a cargo ship). Once he was on board, he was arrested. Along with two members of the Komsomol (the Communist Youth League), he was shipped as a prisoner to the Soviet port of Sevastopol. There, Brian and the two Komsomol members were handed over to the NKVD and taken to the Lubianka Prison in Moscow.
Goold-Verschoyle was sentenced to eight years of solitary confinement (being held alone) in the Gulag. He was accused of "counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities," which meant he was seen as working against the Soviet government and supporting ideas similar to those of Leon Trotsky, a rival of Stalin. He died as a political prisoner in a Soviet gulag in Orenburg Oblast on January 5, 1942.
Brian Goold-Verschoyle was survived by his brother, Hamilton Neil Goold-Verschoyle, who later moved from Ireland to the Soviet Union and died there in 1987. He was also survived by his sister, Mrs. Shiela Fitzgerald, and three younger siblings.
