Brian Goold-Verschoyle (5 June 1912 – 5 January 1942) was an Irish member of the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...

who was recruited by the Soviet

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

as a courier between its

mole Mole (or Molé) may refer to: Animals * Mole (animal) or "true mole", mammals in the family Talpidae, found in Eurasia and North America * Golden moles, southern African mammals in the family Chrysochloridae, similar to but unrelated to Talpida ...

s and their handlers in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. After being sent as a radio technician to Republican Spain, in 1937 he revealed his disaffection with the Moscow party line. Abducted by being lured aboard a Soviet freighter, he was smuggled to the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

and died as a prisoner in the

Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the State Political Directorate, GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= ...

in 1942. He is one of only three

Irish people The Irish ( ga, Muintir na hÉireann or ''Na hÉireannaigh'') are an ethnic group and nation native to the island of Ireland, who share a common history and culture. There have been humans in Ireland for about 33,000 years, and it has been ...

who can be formally identified as victims of Stalin's

Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secreta ...

Early life

Brian Goold-Verschoyle was born in

Dunkineely Dunkineely () is a small village and townland in County Donegal, Ireland. It is situated from the town of Donegal and from Killybegs on the N56 National secondary road. It is a small single street village with a population of around 300 in i ...

County Donegal County Donegal ( ; ga, Contae Dhún na nGall) is a county of Ireland in the province of Ulster and in the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the town of Donegal in the south of the county. It has also been known as County Tyrconn ...

into a family from the Anglo-Irish

gentry Gentry (from Old French ''genterie'', from ''gentil'', "high-born, noble") are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. Word similar to gentle imple and decentfamilies ''Gentry'', in its widest c ...

. His father, Hamilton Frederick Stuart Goold Verschoyle, a barrister, was a pacifist who supported

Home Rule Home rule is government of a colony, dependent country, or region by its own citizens. It is thus the power of a part (administrative division) of a state or an external dependent country to exercise such of the state's powers of governance wit ...

. After a childhood spent during the

Irish War of Independence The Irish War of Independence () or Anglo-Irish War was a guerrilla war fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army (1919–1922), Irish Republican Army (IRA, the army of the Irish Republic) and United Kingdom of Gre ...

and

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polic ...

and schooling at Portora Royal and Marlborough public schools he moved in 1929 to England at the age of 19. He took part in an

apprenticeship Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners to gain a ...

in English Electric Works in

Stafford Stafford () is a market town and the county town of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It lies about north of Wolverhampton, south of Stoke-on-Trent and northwest of Birmingham. The town had a population of 70,145 in ...

. In 1931 he applied to join the

which prompted the

MI5 The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Go ...

to open a file on him. Eventually he became the party's leader in Stafford.

Soviet courier

Goold-Verschoyle became a Soviet spy after visiting his older brother Hamilton Neil Goold-Verschoyle and his Russian wife in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

. The British domestic

counterintelligence Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or o ...

service,

, thought he was simply a "naïve supporter" of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

. They remained unaware of the full truth until they learned years later from defecting Soviet spymasters Gen.

Walter Krivitsky Walter Germanovich Krivitsky (Ва́льтер Ге́рманович Криви́цкий; June 28, 1899 – February 10, 1941) was a Soviet intelligence officer who revealed plans of signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact after he defected to ...

and

Henri Pieck Henri Christiaan Pieck (19 April 1895, in Den Helder – 12 January 1972, in The Hague) was a Dutch architect, painter and graphic artist. Pieck married twice. On 12 July 1922, he married Geziena van Gelder, with whom he had one son. This ...

, that Brian Good-Verschoyle routinely couriered messages to the

OGPU The Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление) was the intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union ...

and that he travelled in 1933, 1934 and 1935 to the USSR. Brian Goold-Verschoyle also couriered classified papers from

s working within the British Government, particularly from

John Herbert King John Herbert King, alias 'MAG', was a British Foreign Office Foreign may refer to: Government * Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries * Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries ** Foreign Office, a department of t ...

, a

British Foreign Office The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is a department of the Government of the United Kingdom. Equivalent to other countries' ministries of foreign affairs, it was created on 2 September 2020 through the merger of the Foreig ...

clerk. Goold-Verschoyle delivered the documents to former

Roman Catholic priest The priesthood is the office of the ministers of religion, who have been commissioned ("ordained") with the Holy orders of the Catholic Church. Technically, bishops are a priestly order as well; however, in layman's terms ''priest'' refers only ...

and

spymaster A spymaster is the person that leads a spy ring, or a secret service (such as an intelligence agency). Historical spymasters See also * List of American spies *List of British spies *List of German spies The following is a list of people e ...

Theodore Maly Theodore Maly (1894 – 20 September 1938) was a former Roman Catholic priest and Soviet intelligence officer during the 1920s and 1930s. He lived illegally in the countries where he worked for the NKVD and was one of the Soviet Union’s most effec ...

, for whom he was the principle courier. He also worked as a courier for

Dmitri Bystrolyotov Dmitri Aleksandrovich Bystrolyotov (January 4, 1901 – May 3, 1975) (russian: Дмитрий Александрович Быстролётов) was a Soviet Russian intelligence officer, a polyglot, a writer and a Gulag prisoner. One of the most o ...

. In 1936 Goold-Verschoyle, who had formerly worked as a technician, returned under an assumed name to Moscow to undergo

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The mos ...

training. He was in love at the time with a

German Jew The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...

ish refugee named

Lotte Moos Margarete Charlotte Moos (née Jacoby; 9 December 1909 – 3 January 2008) was a German-born politically active poet and playwright. Early life Daughter of Samuel and Luise Jacoby, she was born in Berlin on 9 December 1909. She soon showed her tal ...

and, to the dismay of his NKVD superiors, she accompanied him. Associated in the

German Communist Party The German Communist Party (german: Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, ) is a communist party in Germany. The DKP supports left positions and was an observer member of the European Left. At the end of February 2016 it left the European party. Hi ...

with the so-called

Right Opposition The Right Opposition (, ''Pravaya oppozitsiya'') or Right Tendency (, ''Praviy uklon'') in the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was a conditional label formulated by Joseph Stalin in fall of 1928 in regards the opposition against certain me ...

, she was regarded as politically suspect. When Goold-Verschoyle completed his wireless training, he was assigned as a

military advisor Military advisors, or combat advisors, advise on military matters. Some are soldiers sent to foreign countries to aid such countries with their military training, organization, and other various military tasks. The Foreign powers or organizations m ...

to the

Second Spanish Republic The Spanish Republic (), commonly known as the Second Spanish Republic (), was the form of government in Spain from 1931 to 1939. The Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931, after the deposition of King Alfonso XIII, and was dissolved on 1 ...

, with express orders to break contact with Moos.

Disaffection and arrest

In Spain, Goold-Verschoyle was alarmed by what he perceived as the subversion of the republic by Soviet agents and by the local Communists they directed. He objected to the surveillance and prosecution of ideological dissent by the Soviet

and the Servicio de Investigación Militar, the republic's Communist-controlled

political police Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of a ...

. Concluding that Moscow had no interest in a socialist revolution it did not control completely, Goold-Verschoyle's letters to Lotte Moos and to his family in Ireland revealed a growing sympathy for the anti-Stalinist Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (

POUM The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification ( es, Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, POUM; ca, Partit Obrer d'Unificació Marxista) was a Spanish communist party formed during the Second Republic and mainly active around the Spanish Civil ...

, the militia with which

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalita ...

served and which inspired his memoir ''

Homage to Catalonia ''Homage to Catalonia'' is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations fighting in the Spanish Civil War for the POUM militia of the Republican army. Published in 1938 (about a year before the war ended) with little com ...

''). By April 1937, while working as a technician for the radio service of the Republican Army in

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ...

, Goold-Verschoyle had become sufficiently disillusioned that he asked to be released from

active service Active may refer to: Music * ''Active'' (album), a 1992 album by Casiopea * Active Records, a record label Ships * ''Active'' (ship), several commercial ships by that name * HMS ''Active'', the name of various ships of the British Royal ...

. His commander told him that he would have to wait until a replacement could be found. Several days later, Goold-Verschoyle was assigned to repair radio equipment aboard a Soviet freighter. Once aboard he was arrested and, with two members of the

Communist Youth League The Communist Youth League of China (CYLC), also known as the Young Communist League of China or simply the Communist Youth League (CYL), is a youth movement of the People's Republic of China for youth between the ages of 14 and 28, run by th ...

, he was shipped as a prisoner to the Soviet port of

Sevastopol Sevastopol (; uk, Севасто́поль, Sevastópolʹ, ; gkm, Σεβαστούπολις, Sevastoúpolis, ; crh, Акъя́р, Aqyár, ), sometimes written Sebastopol, is the largest city in Crimea, and a major port on the Black Sea ...

. There the Irishman and the two Komsomol members were handed over to the NKVD and transferred to the

Lubianka Prison The Lubyanka ( rus, Лубянка, p=lʊˈbʲankə) is the popular name for the building which contains the headquarters of the FSB, and its affiliated prison, on Lubyanka Square in the Meshchansky District of Moscow, Russia. It is a large Ne ...

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

. Goold Vershoyle was sentenced to eight years of

solitary confinement Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which the inmate lives in a single cell with little or no meaningful contact with other people. A prison may enforce stricter measures to control contraband on a solitary prisoner and use addit ...

in the

for

counter-revolutionary A counter-revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary is anyone who opposes or resists a revolution, particularly one who acts after a revolution in order to try to overturn it or reverse its course, in full or in part. The adjective "counter-revolut ...

Trotskyist Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...

activities. He died as a

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their politics, political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, al ...

in a Soviet gulag in

Orenburg Oblast Orenburg Oblast (russian: Оренбургская область, ''Orenburgskaya oblast'') is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is the city of Orenburg. From 1938 to 1957, it bore the name ''Chkalov Oblast'' ...

on 5 January 1942. Goold Vershoyle was survived by his brother, Hamilton Neil Goold-Verschoyle, who subsequently emigrated from Ireland to the Soviet Union, where he died in 1987, by his sister Mrs. Shiela Fitzgerald, and by three younger siblings.

In popular culture

*Brian Goold-Verschoyle is mentioned in

GRU The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, rus, Гла́вное управле́ние Генера́льного шта́ба Вооружённых сил Росси́йской Федера́ци ...

defector

's memoir ''I Was Stalin's Spy'' and in Gulag survivor Karlo Stajner's memoir ''7000 Days in Siberia''. * His childhood and later life are fictionalized – along with that of his oldest brother, fellow communist

Hamilton Neil Goold-Verschoyle Hamilton may refer to: People * Hamilton (name), a common British surname and occasional given name, usually of Scottish origin, including a list of persons with the surname ** The Duke of Hamilton, the premier peer of Scotland ** Lord Hamilto ...

, and their sister,

Sheila Fitzgerald Sheila (alternatively spelled Shelagh and Sheelagh) is a common feminine given name, derived from the Irish name ''Síle'', which is believed to be a Gaelic form of the Latin name Caelia, the feminine form of the Roman clan name Caelius, meani ...

– in the 2005

historical novel Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other t ...

, ''The Family on Paradise Pier'' by

Dermot Bolger Dermot Bolger (born 1959) is an Irish novelist, playwright, poet and editor from Dublin, Ireland. Born in the Finglas suburb of Dublin in 1959, his older sister is the writer June Considine. Bolger's novels include ''Night Shift'' (1982), '' ...

. *

Danilo Kiš Danilo Kiš (; born Dániel Kiss; 22 February 1935 – 15 October 1989) was a Yugoslav novelist, short story writer, essayist and translator. His best known works include ''Hourglass'', ''A Tomb for Boris Davidovich'' and ''The Encyclopedia of ...

's collection of short stories ''

A Tomb for Boris Davidovich ''A Tomb for Boris Davidovich'' ( Serbo-Croatian: ''Grobnica za Borisa Davidoviča / Гробница за Бориса Давидовича'') is a collection of seven short stories by Danilo Kiš written in 1976 (translated into English by Dus ...

'' contains a short story entitled ''The Sow That Eats Her Farrow'' that is inspired by the life of Brian Goold-Verschoyle.

References

, ''I was Stalin's Spy'', pp. 115–16. Ian Faulkner Publishing Ltd, Cambridge, 1992 * Barry McLoughlin, ''Left to the Wolves: Irish Victims of Stalinist Terror'' * ''

International Socialism Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is the perception of all communist revolutions as being part of a single global class struggle rather than separate localized events. It is based on the theory that ...

'' – "Stalin's Irish Victims" *

, ''The Family on Paradise Pier''

External links

Verschoyle Official Site
*
BBC News – Irish Victims of Stalin uncovered
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goold-Verschoyle, Brian 1912 births 1942 deaths 20th-century Anglo-Irish people Communist Party of Great Britain members Expatriates in the Soviet Union Foreign Gulag detainees Interwar-period spies Irish Comintern people Irish communists Irish expatriates Irish people of Dutch descent Irish people of the Spanish Civil War Irish spies for the Soviet Union Irish Trotskyists Politicians from County Donegal Prisoners and detainees of the Soviet Union Prisoners who died in Soviet detention Soviet spies against Western Europe