Rudy Baker (born 1898, date of death unknown), a

Communist Party USA The Communist Party USA (CPUSA), officially the Communist Party of the United States of America, also referred to as the American Communist Party mainly during the 20th century, is a communist party in the United States. It was established ...

(CPUSA) official, is today best known for his role as head of the CPUSA's underground '' secret apparatus''. He succeeded to the position in 1938, after the removal of J. Peters.

Background

Baker was born in 1898 in

Vukovar Vukovar (; sr-Cyrl, Вуковар, , ) is a city in Croatia, in the eastern Regions of Croatia, regions of Syrmia and Slavonia. It contains Croatia's largest river port, located at the confluence of the Vuka (river), Vuka and the Danube. Vukova ...

Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia The Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia (; or ; ) was a nominally autonomous kingdom and constitutionally defined separate political nation within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was created in 1868 by merging the kingdoms of Kingdom of Croatia (Habs ...

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe#Before World War I, Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military ...

(modern-day

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

), probably under the name Rudolph Blum. Baker had little formal education, and emigrated 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 ...

with his family in 1909. He joined the Communist Party of the United States at its founding, in 1919. He went to

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

and trained at the International Lenin School from 1927 to 1930. He became a member of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...

during that period.

Identification in VENONA Soviet Cables

Baker shows up in the

Venona project The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by the National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, u ...

decryptions of Soviet codes under the cover name ''SON''; he may also be ''RUDI''. The identification comes from coded correspondence between 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 the party in Russia's RTsKhIDNI archive (495-184), which contains dozens of messages from ''BROTHER'' in Moscow to ''FATHER'' and ''SON'' in the United States. Annotations on these messages identify BROTHER as Dimitrov and FATHER as the party General Secretary

Earl Browder Earl Russell Browder (May 20, 1891 – June 27, 1973) was an American politician, spy for the Soviet Union, communist activist and leader of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). Browder was the General Secretary of the CP ...

. In these messages, SON is the head of the party's covert arm or ''secret apparatus'', which Baker took over in mid-1938 after the defection of

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 ...

. Notably, all of the Comintern messages to SON were sent after Baker visited Moscow in January 1939 to brief Comintern officials on the status of the party's ''secret apparatus'' (after Baker took over its operations). In May 1942, General Pavel Fitin, the head of

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

foreign intelligence directorate states in a message to Dimitrov found in the Comintern Archives, "We are forwarding a telegram we received from

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 * ...

addressed to you from Rudy"; this telegram is signed ''SON''.

Sources

* John Earl Haynes, Russian Archival Identification of Real Names Behind Cover Names in VENONA, Cryptology and the Cold War, Center for Cryptologic History Symposium, (October 27, 2005) * John Earl Haynes and

Harvey Klehr Harvey Elliott Klehr (born December 25, 1945) is a professor of politics and history at Emory University. Klehr is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America (many written jointly with ...

, ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). * Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov and Harvey Klehr, ''The Secret World of American Communism'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). .

External links

Marxist Internet Archive, Early American Marxism, A Repository of Source Material 1864- 1930
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baker, Rudy 1898 births People from Vukovar Members of the Communist Party USA American people of Croatian descent American spies for the Soviet Union American people in the Venona papers Espionage in the United States Foreign Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Year of death missing American emigrants to the Soviet Union Emigrants from Austria-Hungary to the United States