Hisstoriography

HISS'S wartime controller was the leading NKVD illegal in the United States, Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov . . ." So records Oleg Gordievsky, one of the most important KGB officers ever to defect to the West, in his 1990 memoir. Gordievsky's detailed inside account only added to the avalanche of evidence already corroborating Whittaker Chambers's charges that Alger Hiss, key State Department aide under FDR, spied for the Soviet Union. The most authoritative analysis was (and remains) Perjury, by historian Allen Weinstein, who began his enquiry believing in Hiss's innocence but, by the time his exhaustive research was completed, had become convinced that Hiss was a consummate liar. Professor Weinstein pursued the Hiss records with KGB officials earlier this year, only to be met with (rather revealing) hints that the KGB was reluctant to release files that could embarrass agents who were still alive.

Thus, we are highly skeptical of the recent "revelation" by Russian military historian Dmitri Volkogonov that he could find no document in KGB archives to substantiate the espionage charges against Hiss. (See "On the Right," p. 62.)

Regrettably, both the KGB and Soviet military intelligence, while they have changed their names, remain under their old management, still headed and staffed by men who flourished under Communist rule. Hotbeds of reform they are not. Unlike the relatively liberated archives of, say, the Foreign Ministry or even the Communist Party Central Committee, intelligence files are still under rigid control. General Volkogonov (author of a scathing biography of Stalin) may be acting in good conscience, but the five-week "search" carried out at his request lacks all credibility. All that has been disclosed is the general's letter announcing that he could find no incriminating evidence; the files themselves remain under lock and key (if they weren't shredded a long time ago). Until outside scholars are given free access to the archives which won't happen under present management the "exoneration" of Alger Hiss must be taken with a pinch of sulphur.