3/30/2023 0 Comments Algier hissThe Soviet Delegation argued that, as the Soviet Republics were sovereign states in full control of their own foreign policy, they should each have their own delegation at the United Nations. The question of UN voting rights for the Soviet Republics first appeared at the Dumbarton Oakes conference in the late summer, early fall of 1944. Sam Tanenhaus, the biographer of Whittaker Chambers, dodges the issue by claiming that Hiss, as an “ideological freelancer,” was by nature inconsistent. Some try to dismiss it as irrelevant, saying that Hiss’s Soviet contacts were interested in ‘military rather than political matters,’ others consider it part of trade craft, a way for Hiss to deflect attention from himself. Even those convinced that Hiss was guilty as charged admit that there is something ‘puzzling’ about the Memorandum. Fetter cites a number of them in his article, all of whom, in one way or another, echo the comment of Lewis Hartshorn that opposing UN voting rights for each of the Soviet Republics was ‘a curious position’ for an alleged Soviet Spy. The Hiss Memorandum is a key piece of evidence in the scholarly debate surrounding Hiss and has been used as proof of his innocence by his defenders. Instead he intends to look intensely at the so-called Hiss Memorandum, a briefing paper that Hiss wrote while at Yalta arguing strongly against allowing each Soviet Republic a vote in the General Assembly of the proposed United Nations (UN). Fetter makes it clear that his topic is not the Hiss case in general (he accepts that Hiss was a Soviet agent) or even Hiss’s broader role at Yalta, including claims by former Soviet Intelligence officers that Hiss betrayed American interests by disclosing confidential information on American policy positions and objectives. It is a strength of Fetter’s article that it never fails to appreciate the nuances and dynamism of its subject. In the effort to prove Hiss guilty or innocent, students of his case divided into hostile camps taking increasing black and white approaches to a very complex topic. It was the sheer intensity of the Hiss controversy and the distorting effect it had on a generation of scholarship that makes his paper significant. Although Fetter is clear that his article is about a close analysis of the Hiss memorandum and not the Hiss case in general a little more background would have been helpful. The ALES message effectively ended the controversy over whether or not Hiss had been a spy. Released when the VENONA project was declassified the decrypt is a telegram sent from the Soviet Consulate in New York City to Moscow describing the recent travels of one of its agents, travels that perfectly fit the itinerary of Alger Hiss in the weeks after the Yalta Conference. In particular Fetter cites the Pumpkin Papers, a collection of State Department memos Hiss gave to Soviet Agent Whittaker Chambers in the 1930s that Chambers later dramatically pulled out of a hollowed-out pumpkin for the benefit of Congressional investigators, and the ALES decrypt. And if he was still a spy in 1945 what was his motive in writing a memorandum at the Yalta Conference that ran counter to Soviet interests? The answer is presented in a well-reasoned article that illuminates a fascinating corner of Cold War history and resolves one of the nagging inconsistencies in the long-running debate over the guilt or innocence of Alger Hiss.įetter devotes relatively little space to the background of the Hiss case, referring briefly to the decades-long debate over whether or not Hiss had spied for the Soviets and its resolution through the weight of documentation released during and after the Cold War. Henry Fetter has chosen to take on one of the remaining controversies of Cold War academia: was Alger Hiss still a spy in 1945.
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