Solomon Adler (August 6, 1909 – August 4, 1994) worked as

U.S. Treasury The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the Treasury, national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States. It is one of 15 current United States federal executive departments, U.S. government departments. ...

representative in China during World War II. Adler was identified by

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 ...

and

Elizabeth Bentley Elizabeth Terrill Bentley (January 1, 1908 – December 3, 1963) was an American NKVD spymaster, who was recruited from within the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She served the Soviet Union as the primary handler of multiple highly placed moles ...

as a

Soviet 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 ...

spy Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ''e ...

and resigned from the Treasury Department in 1950. After several years teaching at

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

in England, he returned to China, where he resided from the 1960s to his death, working as a translator and economic advisor. From the early 1960s, Adler was also affiliated with the International Liaison Department, an important organ of 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 ...

organ whose functions include foreign intelligence.

Early life

Solomon Adler was born on August 6, 1909 in

Leeds Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...

, England. The Adler family was of Jewish ancestry and originally from Karelitz,

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

, moving to Leeds in 1900. Solomon Adler was the fifth of ten children; the oldest was

Saul Adler Saul Adler OBE FRS (; May 17, 1895 – January 25, 1966) was an Israeli expert on parasitology. Early life Adler was born in 1895 in Kerelits ( Karelichy), then in the Russian Empire, now in Belarus. In 1900, he and his family moved to England ...

, who became a well-known

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

i parasitologist. Adler studied economics at Oxford and University College, London. He moved to the United States in 1935 to do research.

Career

In 1936, he was hired at the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

's National Research Project but soon moved to the Treasury Department's Division of Monetary Research and Statistics, where he worked with

Harry Dexter White Harry Dexter White (October 29, 1892 – August 16, 1948) was an American government official in the United States Department of the Treasury. Working closely with the secretary of the treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., he helped set American financia ...

for the next several years. Adler became a naturalized

US citizen Citizenship of the United States is a citizenship, legal status that entails Americans with specific rights, duties, protections, and benefits in the United States. It serves as a foundation of fundamental rights derived from and protected by ...

in 1940. In 1941, he was posted to China, where he remained as Treasury representative until 1948. His reports from China to Treasury secretary

Henry Morgenthau Jr. Henry Morgenthau Jr. (; May 11, 1891February 6, 1967) was the United States Secretary of the Treasury during most of the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He played the major role in designing and financing the New Deal. After 1937, whil ...

, during the war years were widely circulated and played an important role in shaping American wartime economic policy toward China. In 1949, Adler became the subject of a Loyalty of Government Employees investigation. He resigned before the case was resolved and returned to Britain, where he taught for several years at Cambridge University. When his US passport expired, he was

denaturalized Denaturalization is the loss of citizenship against the will of the person concerned. Denaturalization is often applied to ethnic minorities and political dissidents. Denaturalization can be a penalty for actions considered criminal by the state ...

and lost his citizenship. In 1957, Adler wrote a well-received book, ''The Chinese Economy''. Adler moved to China in the early 1960s. His work in China was not commensurate with his policy expertise. Like most Americans working in China during the 1950s and 1960s, he worked as an English-language expert, including working in the lead group translating the '' Selected Works of Mao Zedong'' into English. A Chinese work published in 1983 stated that from 1963 on Adler worked for China's International Liaison Department, an organ of the Chinese Communist Party whose functions include foreign intelligence. According to historian R. Bruce Craig, Adler's apartment in Beijing was provided by the Liaison Department, indicating that the department was Adler's

work unit A work unit or ''danwei'' () is the name given to a place of employment in the People's Republic of China. The term ''danwei'' remains in use today, as people still use it to refer to their workplace. Prior to Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms, a ...

Later life

When the United States re-established diplomatic contacts with China in 1971, Adler renewed his US citizenship . He died in Beijing on August 4, 1994, two days before his 85th birthday.

Espionage

In 1939,

identified Adler to then-Assistant Secretary of State

Adolf Berle Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. (; January 29, 1895 – February 17, 1971) was an American lawyer, educator, writer, and diplomat. He was the author of '' The Modern Corporation and Private Property'', a groundbreaking work on corporate governance, a pro ...

as a member of an underground Communist group in Washington, DC, the

Ware group The Ware Group was a covert organization of Communist Party USA operatives within the United States government in the 1930s, run first by Harold Ware (1889–1935) and then by Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) after Ware's accidental death on Augus ...

. Chambers correctly identified Adler as serving in the General Counsel's Office at the Treasury Department, from which, Chambers said, Adler supplied weekly reports to the

Communist Party of the United States 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 ...

. In 1945,

identified Adler as a member of the Silvermaster group. A 1948 memo written by

Anatoly Gorsky Anatoly Veniaminovich Gorsky (Анатолий Вениаминович Горский) (c. 1907 – 1980), was a Soviet spy who, under cover as First Secretary "Anatoly Borisovich Gromov" of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, was secretly ''rezide ...

, a former

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

rezident A resident spy in the world of espionage is an agent operating within a foreign country for extended periods of time. A base of operations within a foreign country with which a resident spy may liaise is known as a "station" in English and a (, 'r ...

'' in Washington DC, identified Adler as a Soviet agent designated "Sax." That agent, transliterated "Sachs (Saks)" appears in the

Venona 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 ...

decrypts supplying information about the Chinese Communists by both Gorsky and the head of the US Communist Party,

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 addition to his contacts with US espionage groups, while he was serving as Treasury attache in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

in 1944, Adler shared a house with Chinese Communist secret agent Chi Ch'ao-ting and State Department officer John Stewart Service, who was arrested the next year in the ''

Amerasia ''Amerasia'' was a journal of Far Eastern affairs best known for the 1940s "Amerasia Affair" in which several of its staff and their contacts were suspected of espionage and charged with unauthorized possession of government documents. Publicat ...

'' case. Together with

, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and V. Frank Coe, Director of the Treasury's Division of Monetary Research, Adler strongly opposed a gold loan program of $200 million to help the

Chinese Nationalists The Kuomintang (KMT) is a major political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was the sole ruling party of the country during its rule from 1927 to 1949 in Mainland China until its relocation to Taiwan, and in Taiwan ruled under ...

control the

inflation In economics, inflation is an increase in the average price of goods and services in terms of money. This increase is measured using a price index, typically a consumer price index (CPI). When the general price level rises, each unit of curre ...

that took hold in unoccupied China during World War II. Between 1943 and 1945, prices rose more than 1,000% per year, weakening the Nationalist government. The inflation helped the

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 ...

s eventually come to power in China, and in later years White, Coe, and Adler were accused of having deliberately fostered inflation by obstructing the stabilization loan.Haynes and Klehr 142–143.

References

Sources

*Solomon Adler: ''The Chinese Economy'' (London, Routledge & Paul 1957) *Joan Robinson, Sol Adler: ''China: an economic perspective'', foreword by Harold Wilson (London, Fabian International Bureau 1958) *Sol Adler: ''A Talk to Comrades of the English Section for the Translation of Volume V of Chairman Mao's Selected Works'' (''Guānyú "Máo xuǎn" dì-wǔ juǎn fānyì wèntí de bàogào'' 关于《毛选》第五卷翻译问题的报告; Beijing, Foreign Languages Press 1978).

External links

Funeral of Sol Adler
(''China News Digest'', September 7, 1994) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Adler, Solomon 1909 births 1994 deaths Alumni of the University of Oxford Alumni of University College London English emigrants to the United States English Jews English people of Belarusian-Jewish descent American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent American expatriates in China 20th-century British economists American defectors to China