Mikhail Efimovich Koltsov

The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was the most dramatic chapter of Koltsov's career. Sent as a Pravda correspondent, his role was in fact dual. Publicly, he reported from the Republican front lines, writing dispatches and broadcasting radio reports that became The Spanish Diary (1938), a sensation in the USSR. Behind the scenes, however, Koltsov operated under the alias 'Miguel Martínez' as an unofficial Soviet political agent and military advisor. He dealt directly with the Republican government, enforced Stalin's line, helped shape the International Brigades, and provided practical military counsel during the defense of Madrid. His hotel room reportedly had a direct telephone line to the Kremlin.

Koltsov attacked the POUM and anarchists with ferocity, faithfully representing the Stalinist position. At the same time, he cultivated close ties with Western intellectuals and journalists including Ernest Hemingway, who later immortalized him as the Soviet intelligence officer Karkov in For Whom the Bell Tolls. The British communist journalist Claud Cockburn described Koltsov as 'a stocky little Jew with a huge head and one of the most expressive faces of any man I ever met' who 'unquestionably and positively enjoyed the sense of danger.' Koltsov's Spanish mission remains a miniature of an era in which Soviet journalism operated as one body with diplomacy, intelligence, and military operations.

In November 1937 Koltsov was called back to Moscow from Spain and awarded the Order of the Red Banner. What awaited him was not triumph but the middle of the Great Purge. He became close to Yevgenia Yezhova, wife of NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov, and on 19 December 1937 he published an article criticizing aspects of the purges. In it Koltsov asserted that some people had smeared the innocent to protect themselves, and called on the party, the government, the courts and public opinion to stop 'heartless liars who violated the rights of Soviet citizens.'

His public stance was far more complicated. In a speech on 8 July 1937 he argued that Soviet writers should be at the forefront of the battle against treachery and that they supported the government's 'vigorous and pitiless measures' against 'traitors, spies and enemies of the people,' because its hand 'does not shake when punishing the enemy.' Yet he also asked his brother Boris Efimov how so many people known for years could suddenly all confess to being enemies of the people, saying 'I think I'm going out of my mind.' On his return to Moscow in May 1937 he had a three-hour private meeting with Stalin about Spain, at the end of which Stalin called him back and asked whether he had a revolver and intended to commit suicide; Koltsov took this as a warning.

In September 1938 he was sent to Prague to report on the Hitler-Chamberlain negotiations. Koltsov told Claud Cockburn he was authorized to inform President Eduard Benes that the USSR was ready to send troops, artillery and aircraft if hostilities began. He hoped Britain, France and the USSR would unite for Czechoslovakia against Nazi Germany, and was plunged into despair when this failed. Cockburn recorded Koltsov's burlesque of his own imaginary future trial for counter-revolutionary activity, and Koltsov told him he was in danger of arrest. A planned trip to Paris to see Maria Osten was cut short by the Soviet ambassador's order to come home.

The sources disagree on when he was arrested. The Russian account records an arrest on 13 December 1938 in the Pravda editorial office without a warrant, formalized retroactively on 14 December. The English account gives 14 December, four weeks after Yezhova's suicide and nine days after Yezhov's removal from the NKVD. A third source states 12 December. No date is settled here; the conflict is recorded as it stands.

Koltsov was charged with 'anti-Soviet Trotskyist activity and participation in a counter-revolutionary terrorist organization.' Tortured during the investigation, he implicated more than 70 acquaintances, many of whom were also arrested and later shot along with him. On the Stalin execution list dated 16 January 1940 his name stood at no. 137 among 346 alleged 'participants in a conspiracy against the VKP(b) and Soviet power,' a list that included Yezhov and the whole top NKVD leadership of the 'Yezhov' intake. The Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court formalized the sentence on 1 February 1940 and it was carried out the next day, 2 February. An attributed account of the trial before Vasiliy Ulrikh states that Koltsov retracted all his confessions, was found guilty and shot that night.

Explanations of the arrest compete and none can be asserted as settled. One version centres on his close relationship with Yevgenia, Yezhov's wife, who died on 23 November 1938 under highly suspicious circumstances suggesting a sleeping-pill overdose; Yezhov's interrogation testimony shows he was well aware of his late wife's close relations with Koltsov and other writers. Another view, put in his memoirs by Koltsov's brother Boris Efimov, holds that he was removed as a witness to secret NKVD operations in Spain, the direct trigger being a letter to Stalin from Andre Marty, general secretary of the International Brigades, accusing Koltsov of links with the POUM and indirectly of espionage; his early-1920s essay on Trotsky may also have counted against him. Simon Sebag Montefiore points to Stalin's determination to arrest all his representatives who had served in Spain, and Donald Rayfield to the diary of the arrested journalist Mikhail Prezent implying Koltsov was a Trotsky supporter.

After his posthumous rehabilitation the family was issued a death certificate with a deliberately falsified date, 4 April 1942, and no place of death; the false date was reproduced as authentic in many Soviet encyclopedias and reference works until the late 1980s. He was rehabilitated posthumously on 18 December 1954, the case review handled by D. P. Terekhov. His third wife, Maria Osten, was also sentenced and shot.