Arvid Werner Jacobson (November 12, 1904 – April 1, 1976) was a Finnish-American

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

who spied for the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

in the 1930s.

Biography

Jacobson's parents were Finnish immigrants from

Lapua Lapua (; ) is a List of cities and towns in Finland, town and municipalities of Finland, municipality in Finland's South Ostrobothnia regions of Finland, region. It is located next to the Lapua River. The town has a population of () and cov ...

, Ostrobotnia. Jacobson was born in Covington, Michigan and was working as a high school teacher in Northville when, in the fall of 1932, he was recruited to work for the Soviet Military Intelligence by the

Comintern The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internatio ...

agent "''Mrs. Morton''", a pseudonym of Aino Kuusinen, the wife of the Finnish communist leader

Otto Wille Kuusinen Otto Wilhelm "Wille" Kuusinen (; ; 4 October 1881 – 17 May 1964) was a Finnish-born Soviet politician, literary historian, and poet. After the defeat of the Reds in the Finnish Civil War, he fled to the Soviet Union, where he worked unti ...

. With his wife Sally, he traveled to

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

, where the fledgling GRU agent

Whittaker Chambers Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer and intelligence agent. After early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), he defected from the Soviet u ...

was assigned the task of meeting Jacobson and making a fitness report. Chambers advised against using Jacobson as an underground agent because of his truculent temperament and the fact that he was missing

finger A finger is a prominent digit (anatomy), digit on the forelimbs of most tetrapod vertebrate animals, especially those with prehensile extremities (i.e. hands) such as humans and other primates. Most tetrapods have five digits (dactyly, pentadact ...

s on one hand. Nevertheless, the GRU sent him to Europe as part of an apparatus of Soviet agents, led by the wife of Alfred Tilton, that operated in

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

. The Finnish police uncovered the group after the suspected army officer Vilho Pentikäinen fled to the Soviet Union with military secrets. Jacobson was arrested in October 1933, along with his wife Sally, and he promptly confessed to his role as an agent and revealed the existence of another Soviet apparatus working in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, which included Lydia Stahl and Robert Gordon Switz. After a

secret trial A secret trial is a trial that is not open to the public or generally reported in the news, especially any in-trial proceedings. Generally, no official record of the case or the judge's verdict is made available. Often there is no indictment. S ...

, the Finnish court sentenced Jacobson to six years imprisonment in April 1934. He was subsequently pardoned in July 1935 and extradited to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Career

Jacobson was hired to teach mathematics at

Wayne State University Wayne State University (WSU) is a public university, public research university in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1868, Wayne State consists of 13 schools and colleges offering approximately 375 programs. It is Michigan's third-l ...

in 1944. He became active in the field of computing, and in the late 1950s directed a program at Wayne State to develop a computer capable of translating between human languages. Jacobson was a member of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

(ACM), and in 1958 he served with

Saul Gorn Saul Gorn (10 November 1912 – 22 February 1992) was an American pioneer in computer and information science who was a member of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania for more than 30 years. Gorn was hi ...

, Melvin A. Shader, and

Edmund Berkeley Edmund Callis Berkeley (March 21, 1909 – March 7, 1988) was an American computer scientist who co-founded the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1947. His 1949 book ''Giant Brains, or Machines That Think'' popularized cognitive i ...

on an ACM committee investigating the social responsibilities of computer scientists. He retired in 1966 and died in

Novi, Michigan Novi ( ) is a city in Oakland County, Michigan, Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. A northwestern Metro Detroit, suburb of Detroit, Novi is located roughly northwest of downtown Detroit. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census ...

in 1976.

References

Sources

* *John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America'', Yale University Press (1999), pgs. 375, 469. *Aino Kuusinen, ''The Rings of Destiny: Inside Soviet Russia from Lenin to Brezhnev'', Morrow, 1974. *Allen Weinstein, '' Perjury: The Hiss–Chambers Case'', New York: Random House, (1997), pg. 106 {{DEFAULTSORT:Jacobson, Arvid 1904 births 1976 deaths American communists American people convicted of spying for the Soviet Union American people of Finnish descent Prisoners and detainees of Finland