Review of “Out of Bondage” by Elizabeth Bentley

Ms Bentley was an Communist Party USA (CPUSA) member who was an active Soviet spy for most of a decade. Her story is perhaps a micro-version of the entire relationship between American Communism (aka progressivism) and the Soviet variety.

Many Americans joined the CPUSA and many spied for the Soviets. Many (if not all) also eventually broke with the Soviets. Obviously, these people were not all identical. They did not all come from the same background. However, when one reads their memoirs, one notices a lot of similarities. Ms Bentley is, in my opinion, the quintessential American Communist. In a way, her story is the story of them all and it’s laid out – in detail and in a matter of fact way – in this nearly forgotten book. Conservatives want you to remember Whittaker Chambers and progressives want you to remember Joseph McCarthy (if they want to remember anything at all). I would like you to remember Elizabeth Bentley.

Ms Bentley came from good Puritan stock. Wikipedia describes her family as "strait-laced old family Episcopalian New Englanders." I could not possibly improve upon that description. When she first joined the Party, Bentley took the name "Elizabeth Sherman" because she was a descendant of Roger Sherman (the dude who signed the Declaration of Independence). In sum, people do not get more American than Bentley.

Communism (the ideas of which she never repudiates in her book, at least) was her way of "reconciling" "Christian ethics" with "industrial civilization." As one of her fellow CPUSA members who was in the process of becoming a minister says, "Communism is the Christianity of the future . . . I, as a potential Christian minister, must per se be a Communist." Like so many Communists of her era, Ms Bentley became a Communist to fight Fascism. Critically, for Bentley (and so many others see my reviews of Budenz’s books, for example), Communism was both patriotic and Christian.

Ms Bentley works for a while in various New-Deal-related jobs, as do so many Communists of that era. If you read enough of these sorts of memoirs, you can’t help but wonder if the New Deal was just a large plan to employ lots of Communists and Communists-sympathizers.

For a while, her story is relatively uninteresting and remains typical of the average US Communist (she uses the term Communist or "progressive" (including the scare quotes) interchangably). She works for an Italian library, which handles some fascist propaganda. She reports on the propaganda to the Party. Occasionally, she see some indications that she may be spying for the Soviets (not the CPUSA, which she believed – at the time – was distinct from the Soviets). She never quite put the pieces together until she met Jacob Golos.

At this point Ms Bentley’s story deviates from the normal and gets really interesting. She and Jacob Golos fall in love. Golos ran several operations for the Soviets – including founding the CPUSA. Golos’ operations included setting up (apparently) legitimate businesses that funneled money to the Soviets. Golos also ran several spy rings, some of which were specifically tasked with infiltrating the USG. Bentley became more and more involved with Golos and they began to co-manage these spy rings. When Golos died, Bentley took over his spy rings and ran them herself.

The spy rings included Julius Rosenberg’s, Nathan Silvermaster’s (a group which included Harry Dexter White), and Victor Perlo’s.

It may be worth linking to the stories of some of the people that Bentley worked with. At the time, everyone accused Bentley of lying. Thanks to Venona, we now know better (or at least we should). Spies that Bentley had contact with or knew of (besides the three mentioned above) include: Mary Price (who was particularly valuable as Walter Lippmann’s secretary), Julius J. Joseph (who had access to the US intelligence agencies’ information on Russia), Leonard Mins, George Silverman, Lauchlin Currie, Duncan C. Lee (a direct descendant of Robert E. and assistant to the founder of the OSS), William W. Remington (Wikipedia notes that his death is "one of the few murders attributable to McCarthyism"), Frederick Vanderbilt Field, Helen Tenney, John Abt (his jobs included chief counsel of CPUSA, Chief of Litigation for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, assistant general counsel of the Works Progress Administration, counsel to Senator La Follette’s Committee and special assistant to the United States Attorney General – a resume doesn’t get more American than that!), Charles Kramer, Maurice Halperin, Robert Miller, Fred Rose, and Anatoli Grosky.

Take a few minutes to skim those entries. I have not edited any of them. Pay attention to the Americans and notice where they came from and, more importantly, where they ended up.

Back to Bentley. Essentially, if there was a government agency, she and Golos had a source inside it and were getting accurate, up-to-date information on its activities. As Bentley says, "I doubt if there were very many people who were quite as well informed as we on what was happening in Washington." She also notes in passing that, "sometimes [Golos] and I were actually horrified at the ease with which notorious, open Communists wandered into sensitive departments [of USG] and obtained positions."

The big sources were Harry Dexter White (who was able to get incredible things and place people in all sorts of agencies), Nathan Silvermaster, and William Ludwig Ullmann. Ullmann was eventually in a position to obtain all sorts of information on US military capabilities via his position in the Pentagon. He knew about D-Day four days ahead of time, and he supplied the Soviets with the US plan for the occupation of Germany. At one point Silvermaster gets busted by the FBI, but the insiders pull together and get him reassigned to the Department of Agriculture (apparently that was sufficient punishment).

When Golos died, Bentley began to slowly break with the Soviets as she began to realize that the Soviets were not sufficiently concerned with bringing Communism to the US. Instead, the damn Soviets wanted to strengthen the position of the Soviet Union – she considered this a betrayal of the Communist cause. At this point, Bentley breaks with the Soviets. In order to protect her agents from the Russians (whom she fears), she decides to talk to the FBI. When Bentley did defect, reports of her defection immediately reached Moscow via Kim Philby. That may or may not surprise you. As always, do remember that Joseph McCarthy was crazy. (Hysterically, Bentley talks about the beginning of a Communist "witch hunt" of Soviet spies in government).

Bentley’s break with the Soviets is thus a perfect encapsulation of the Cold War. Note that she doesn’t ever repudiate her original ideas (hence unlike Whitaker Chambers, she is not a conservative icon) – in fact, she breaks with the Soviets because she believes that they do not actually agree with Communist ideas. Bentley’s break (and the Cold War) are best understood as a war between rival branches of the same original ideology.