The Face of Soviet Espionage in the United States during the Stalin Era: Vladimir Pravdin, “Man of Truth”

Abstract

Vladimir Pravdin was a senior Soviet intelligence officer in New York and Washington, DC, during World War II. He oversaw some of the most important Soviet agents of the era, including Harry Dexter White, a senior official at the U.S. Treasury Department; Lauchlin Currie, the chief economic adviser to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt; and Judith Coplon, a U.S. Justice Department employee who provided intelligence on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Pravdin's cover in the United States was as an editor and then director of U.S. operations for the TASS news agency. In his capacity as a TASS executive, he developed relationships with numerous U.S. journalists, including Walter Lippmann. Pravdin was born in 1905 in London, and his real name was Roland Abbiate. His unusually adventurous life included serving a two-year sentence in the Atlanta penitentiary prior to his recruitment by Soviet intelligence, surveilling Leon Trotsky in Norway and Mexico, participating in the Spanish Civil War, and leading the assassination of Ignace Poretsky. His story illuminates the triumphs of Soviet intelligence in the United States during World War II, the failures of U.S. counterintelligence, and the unraveling of Soviet espionage in North America following the defections of Igor Gouzenko and Elizabeth Bentley.