Agnes Smedley
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Agnes Smedley (February 23, 1892 – May 6, 1950) was an American journalist, writer and activist who supported the
Indian Independence Movement The Indian independence movement was a series of historic events in South Asia with the ultimate aim of ending British Raj, British colonial rule. It lasted until 1947, when the Indian Independence Act 1947 was passed. The first nationalistic ...
and the
Chinese Communist Revolution The Chinese Communist Revolution was a social revolution, social and political revolution in China that began in 1927 and culminated with the proclamation of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. The revolution was led by the Chinese C ...
. Raised in a poverty-stricken miner's family in Missouri and Colorado, she dramatized the formation of her feminist and socialist consciousness in the autobiographical novel '' Daughter of Earth'' (1929). As a college student during
World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
, she organized support for the independence of India from the United Kingdom, receiving financial support from the government of Germany. After the war she went to Germany, where she met and worked with Indian nationalists. Between 1928 and 1941, she lived and worked in China, mainly as a journalist. During the first phase of the
Chinese Civil War The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led Nationalist government, government of the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Armed conflict continued intermitt ...
, she was based in Shanghai and published widely in support of the communist cause; later, during the
Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part ...
, she traveled with the
Eighth Route Army The Eighth Route Army (), officially titled as the List of Army Groups of the National Revolutionary Army, 18th Group Army, was a Field army, group army nominally under the banner of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Republic of Ch ...
and lived for a time in the communist base in
Yan'an Yan'an; ; Chinese postal romanization, alternatively spelled as Yenan is a prefecture-level city in the Shaanbei region of Shaanxi Province of China, province, China, bordering Shanxi to the east and Gansu to the west. It administers several c ...
. In addition to ''Daughter of Earth'', Smedley's publications include four non-fiction books on China; reportage for newspapers in the United States, England and Germany and a biography of the Chinese communist general
Zhu De Zhu De; (1 December 1886 – 6 July 1976) was a Chinese general, military strategist, politician and revolutionary in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Zhu was born into poverty in 1886 in Sichuan. He was adopted by a wealthy uncle at ...
. She is accused of being a spy for 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 ...
and working with such agents as
Richard Sorge Richard Gustavovich Sorge (; 4 October 1895 – 7 November 1944) was a German-Russian journalist and GRU (Soviet Union), Soviet military intelligence officer who was active before and during World War II and worked undercover as a German journa ...
, who was among her lovers.


Background

Agnes Smedley was born in Osgood, Missouri, on Feb 23, 1892, the second of five children. In 1901, at the age of nine, she and her family moved to
Trinidad, Colorado Trinidad is the List of cities and towns in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule municipality that is the county seat of and the List of cities and towns in Colorado, most populous municipality in Las Animas County, Colorado, United Stat ...
, where she witnessed many of the events in the 1903–04 coal miners' strike. Her father worked for several of the coal companies in Colorado and the family moved back and forth across southwestern Colorado. She finished eighth grade in
Tercio A ''tercio'' (), Spanish for " third") was a military unit of the Spanish Army during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain and Habsburg Spain in the early modern period. They were the elite military units of the Spanish monarchy and ...
at age 16. At the age of 17, Smedley took the county teacher's examination and taught in rural schools near her home for a semester. She returned home when her mother, Sarah, became ill. Sarah died in early 1910. Later that year, with the help of an aunt, Smedley enrolled in a business school in Greeley, Colorado, after which she worked as a traveling salesperson. Suffering from physical and emotional stress in 1911, Smedley checked into a sanatorium. A family friend in Arizona offered her a place to stay after she was discharged, and from 1911 to 1912 Smedley enrolled in Tempe Normal School. She published her first writings as editor and contributor to the school paper, ''Tempe Normal Student''. At Tempe, she became friends with a woman named Thorberg Brundin and her brother Ernest Brundin. Both Brundins were members of the
Socialist Party of America The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political party in the United States formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party of America ...
and gave Smedley her first exposure to
socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...
ideas. When the Brundins left Tempe for San Francisco, they invited Smedley to come stay with them, and in August 1912 Smedley married Ernest. The marriage did not last, however; by 1916, Smedley and her husband divorced and at the beginning of 1917, Smedley moved to New York City. Smedley's sister-in-law, Thorberg Brundin, had herself recently returned to New York, and Smedley was able to stay with Brundin and her husband Robert Haberman in their Greenwich Village home for her first few months in New York. During her stay with them, Smedley came to know a number of Brundin's acquaintances, including feminist Henrietta Rodman and birth control activist
Margaret Sanger Margaret Sanger ( Higgins; September 14, 1879September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. She opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, founded Planned Parenthood, and was instr ...
.


Career


Indian activism

During this same time, Smedley also became involved with a number of Bengali Indian revolutionaries working in the United States, including M. N. Roy and Shailendranath Ghosh. Working to overthrow British rule in India, these revolutionaries saw World War I as an opportunity for their cause, and began to cooperate with Germany, which saw in the revolutionaries' activities an opportunity to distract Britain from the European battlefront. The cooperation between the revolutionaries and Germany became known as the
Hindu–German Conspiracy The Hindu–German Conspiracy (Note on the name) were a series of attempts between 1914 and 1917 by Indian nationalist groups to create a pan-Indian rebellion against the British Empire during World War I. This rebellion was formulated betw ...
, and the United States government soon took action against the Indians. Roy and Ghosh both moved to Mexico, and recruited Smedley to help coordinate the group's activities in the United States during their absence, including operating a front office for the group and publishing anti-allied propaganda. Most of these activities continued to be funded by Germany. Both American and British military intelligence soon became interested in Smedley's activities. To avoid surveillance, Smedley changed addresses frequently, moving ten times in the period from May 1917 to March 1918, according to biographer Ruth Price. In March 1918, Smedley was finally arrested by the U.S. Naval Intelligence Bureau. She was indicted for violations of the Espionage Act, first in New York and later in San Francisco. She was imprisoned for two months, and then released on bail through the efforts of friends such as Rodman. Smedley spent the next year and a half fighting the indictments; the New York indictment was dismissed in late 1918, and the government dropped the San Francisco charges in November 1919. Smedley continued working for the next year on behalf of the Indians who had been indicted in the Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial. She then moved to Germany, where she met an Indian communist,
Virendranath Chattopadhyaya Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (31 October 1880 – 2 September 1937), also known by his pseudonym Chatto, was a prominent Indian revolutionary who worked to overthrow the British Raj in India using armed force. He created alliances with the German ...
, whom she then lived with for several years in Germany, involved with various left-wing causes. Apart from Chatto, she had also an affair with an Indian student from Oxford, Barkat Ali Mirza, who had been to Berlin in 1926. He wanted an Islamic marriage, which she refused. In 1928, she finished her
autobiographical novel An autobiographical novel, also known as an autobiographical fiction, fictional autobiography, or autobiographical fiction novel, is a type of novel which uses autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fictive elements. The ...
'' Daughter of Earth''. She then left Chattopadhyaya and moved to Shanghai, initially as a correspondent for a liberal German newspaper. ''Daughter of Earth'' was published in 1929 to general acclaim.


Years in China

In 1933, Smedley wrote '' China's Red Army Marches'', for which
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
commanders were her sources. In China, Smedley served as a correspondent for the '' Frankfurter Zeitung'' and the ''
Manchester Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
''. She covered many topics, including the Anti-Japanese War as a major war correspondent. She was also in
Xi'an Xi'an is the list of capitals in China, capital of the Chinese province of Shaanxi. A sub-provincial city on the Guanzhong plain, the city is the third-most populous city in Western China after Chongqing and Chengdu, as well as the most populou ...
during the
Xi'an Incident The Xi'an Incident was a Chinese political crisis that lasted from 12 to 26 December 1936. Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Nationalist government of China, was arrested in Xi'an by soldiers of the Northeastern Army under the command of Ge ...
of December 1936, and made broadcasts in English for the rebels. She then reported on the
Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part ...
during the
Second United Front The Second United Front ( zh, t=第二次國共合作 , s=第二次国共合作 , first=t , l=Second Nationalist-Communist Cooperation, p=dì èr cì guógòng hézuò ) was the alliance between the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Co ...
. She traveled to
Yan'an Yan'an; ; Chinese postal romanization, alternatively spelled as Yenan is a prefecture-level city in the Shaanbei region of Shaanxi Province of China, province, China, bordering Shanxi to the east and Gansu to the west. It administers several c ...
in January 1937 and with the
8th Route Army The Eighth Route Army (), officially titled as the 18th Group Army, was a group army nominally under the banner of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Republic of China, established in 1937 as part of the Second United Front agains ...
that year. She traveled with the
New Fourth Army The New Fourth Army (N4A) () was a military unit nominally under the banner of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Republic of China, established in 1937 as part of the Second United Front against Japan. However, in practice, the New ...
in 1938–39, as well as visiting some units of the non-Communist Chinese army. Smedley had a sexual relationship with
Richard Sorge Richard Gustavovich Sorge (; 4 October 1895 – 7 November 1944) was a German-Russian journalist and GRU (Soviet Union), Soviet military intelligence officer who was active before and during World War II and worked undercover as a German journa ...
, a Soviet spymaster, while in Shanghai, and probably with Ozaki Hotsumi, a correspondent for the
Asahi Shimbun is a Japanese daily newspaper founded in 1879. It is one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. The ''Asahi Shimbun'' is one of the five largest newspapers in Japan along with the ''Yom ...
. Later he translated Smedley's ''Daughter of Earth'' into Japanese. She introduced Sorge to Ozaki, who became Sorge's most important informant in Japan. Maj. Gen.
Charles A. Willoughby Charles Andrew Willoughby (8 March 1892 – 25 October 1972) was a major general in the U.S. Army who was General of the Army Douglas MacArthur's chief of military intelligence during World War II and the Korean War. An immigrant from Germany ...
, who served with Gen.
Douglas MacArthur Douglas MacArthur (26 January 18805 April 1964) was an American general who served as a top commander during World War II and the Korean War, achieving the rank of General of the Army (United States), General of the Army. He served with dis ...
's chief of intelligence, claimed that Smedley was a member of the anti-Japanese Sorge spy ring. After the war, Smedley threatened to sue Willoughby for making the accusation. Ruth Price, author of the most recent and extensive biography of Smedley, writes that there is very strong evidence in former Soviet archives that Smedley was indeed a spy who engaged in espionage for 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 ...
and on behalf of the Soviet Union. Soviet archives also make it clear that Smedley's connection to the Comintern ended in 1936.MacKinnon In 1937 she applied for membership in the
Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...
but was rejected due to Party reservations about her lack of discipline and what it viewed as her excessive independence of mind. Smedley was devastated by this rejection but remained passionately devoted to the Chinese communist cause. Smedley left Yan'an in 1937; thereafter she organized medical supplies and continued writing. From 1938 to 1941, she visited both Communist and
Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT) is a major political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was the one party state, sole ruling party of the country Republic of China (1912-1949), during its rule from 1927 to 1949 in Mainland China until Retreat ...
forces in the war zone. It was during her stay with Communist forces in
Yan'an Yan'an; ; Chinese postal romanization, alternatively spelled as Yenan is a prefecture-level city in the Shaanbei region of Shaanxi Province of China, province, China, bordering Shanxi to the east and Gansu to the west. It administers several c ...
, after the
Long March The Long March ( zh, s=长征, p=Chángzhēng, l=Long Expedition) was a military retreat by the Chinese Red Army and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from advancing Kuomintang forces during the Chinese Civil War, occurring between October 1934 and ...
, that she conducted extensive interviews with General
Zhu De Zhu De; (1 December 1886 – 6 July 1976) was a Chinese general, military strategist, politician and revolutionary in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Zhu was born into poverty in 1886 in Sichuan. He was adopted by a wealthy uncle at ...
, the basis of her book on him. She was helped later with her book by the actress and writer Wang Ying who was living in the USA during the 1940s. It is recorded that this is the longest tour of the Chinese war front conducted by any foreign correspondent, male or female.


Final years

She relocated to Washington, DC in 1941 to advocate for China and authored several works on China's revolution. In the mid 1940s she was an influential voice in support of the Chinese Communists on public forums and NBC radio. Her 1944 book ''Battle Hymn of China'' was widely read and reviewed. During the 1940s she lived at
Yaddo Yaddo is an artists' community located on a estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment.". On March  ...
, a writer's colony in upstate New York and lived at times with Edgar Snow. In 1947 she was accused of espionage by General MacArthur and followed by the FBI. Feeling pressure, she left the U.S. in the autumn of 1949. She died in the UK in 1950 after surgery for an ulcer. Her ashes were buried at the
Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery The Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery () is Beijing's main resting place for the highest-ranking revolutionary heroes, high-ranking government officials and, in recent years, individuals deemed of major importance due to their contributions to soc ...
in Beijing in 1951.


Legacy

Smedley's final book, a biography of
Zhu De Zhu De; (1 December 1886 – 6 July 1976) was a Chinese general, military strategist, politician and revolutionary in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Zhu was born into poverty in 1886 in Sichuan. He was adopted by a wealthy uncle at ...
, was incomplete at the time of her death. It was published in 1956. Smedley is a featured figure on
Judy Chicago Judy Chicago (born Judith Sylvia Cohen; July 20, 1939) is an American feminist artist, art educator, and writer known for her large collaborative art installation pieces about birth and creation images, which examine the role of women in history ...
's installation piece '' The Dinner Party'', being represented as one of the 999 names on the '' Heritage Floor.'' According to
PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
, in her work as triple agent for Communists in China, India, and the Soviet Union, Smedley "was one of the most prolific female spies of the 20th century."Agnes Smedley
'' PBS Nova''


Bibliography


Main works

*'' Daughter of Earth'' (1929) *'' Chinese Destinies: Sketches of Present-Day China'' (1933) *'' China's Red Army Marches'' (1934) *'' China Fights Back: An American Woman with the Eighth Route Army'' (1938) *'' Battle Hymn of China'' (1943, republished in 1984 as ''China Correspondent'') *'' The Great Road: The Life and Times of Chu Teh'' (1956, published posthumously)


Miscellaneous

*''Stories of the Wounded: An Appeal for Orthopaedic Centres of the Chinese Red Cross'' (1941, pamphlet) *"After the Final Victory," published in ''Asia Magazine'' and included in
Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized fo ...
's edited collection ''Men at War'' *''Portraits of Chinese Women in Revolution'' (1976, anthology, edited by Jan and Steve MacKinnon)


See also

* Jack Belden – fellow correspondent in China * Xu Zhimo – Chinese poet with whom Smedley was romantically involved *
Anna Louise Strong Anna Louise Strong (November 24, 1885 – March 29, 1970) was an American journalist and activist, best known for her reporting on and support for Communism, communist movements in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.Archives Wes ...
– fellow supporter of Chinese communism


References and further reading

* Agnes Smedley, "Cell Mates," from ''Call Magazine'' (Sunday supplement to the ''New York Call'') 15, 22, 29 February, 14 March 1920, reprinted in * * * * * * Willoughby, Charles Andrew (1952) ''Shanghai Conspiracy: The Sorge Spy Ring: Moscow, Shanghai, Tokyo, San Francisco, New York''. E.P. Dutton and Co., New York (reprinted, Boston: Western Islands, 1965).


Notes


External links

*
Agnes Smedley from the
Arizona State University Hayden Library archives

from
Nova A nova ( novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. All observed novae involve white ...

"A Passionate Warrior with No Compromise"
from ''China Through A Lens''
"From the Midwest to the Far East"
by Jeffrey Wasserstorm from ''Global Journalist''.
Agnes Smedley materials in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)Agnes Smedley and China's Red ArmyAgnes Smedley in the Sino-Japanese War, and how she was persecuted in the McCarthy Era
{{DEFAULTSORT:Smedley, Agnes 1892 births 1950 deaths 20th-century American people 20th-century American women American communists American expatriates in China American spies for the Soviet Union American women journalists Burials at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery Hindu–German Conspiracy People from Sullivan County, Missouri Writers from Missouri