Book Review - 'Operation Kronstadt' by Harry Ferguson

Operation Kronstadt by Harry Ferguson

As the recent unpleasantness in South Ossetia and the Ukraine shows, the Russian bear is never happier than when waving its claws and causing trouble. This excellent book recounts a little-known but similar period in Anglo-Russian relations.
 
By May 1919 the First World War was over and the “Red Terror” of the Bolsheviks had taken over as Britain’s biggest fear. The head of MI6, the wooden-legged Sir Mansfield Cumming, had a predicament: all his secret agents in Russia, save one, had been captured. The sole remaining agent, Paul Dukes, was cut off in Petrograd and needed to escape. Dukes was a 30-year-old concert pianist who had studied in St Petersburg, spoke fluent Russian, and was a master of disguise. Seldom more than a few steps (literally) from being captured by the Bolshevik secret service, the Cheka, Dukes managed not only to join the Red Army, the Communist Party, and the Petrograd Soviet, but even to penetrate the Cheka itself. The bloodthirsty Cheka, forerunner of the KGB and FSB, would often “interrogate” prisoners by scalping them alive, or feeding them feet-first into furnaces.
 
MI6 decided that the Royal Navy would help Dukes escape from Petrograd via the Gulf of Finland by using high-speed Coastal Motor Boats (CMBs or “skimmers”), as they were the only vessels fast enough to evade the Bolshevik gunners and “skim” over the minefields. Accordingly, Lieutenant Augustus “Gus” Agar and some like-minded chaps were smuggled into Finland with two CMBs, where they set up a secret base in a disused yacht club just across the Gulf from Kronstadt harbour. Kronstadt was, at the time, the most heavily defended harbour in the world, with fifteen coastal forts, and guns and minefields galore.
 
Although Dukes tried several times to rendezvous with Lieutenant Agar in the freezing waters of the Gulf, he was unsuccessful. He eventually escaped using a variety of disguises, via train and leaking rowing-boat through Latvia. On his return to Britain he was knighted for his spying, the only man in the annals of MI6 to achieve this distinction.
 
In the meantime the anti-Bolshevik White Russian garrison was trapped in one of the Gulf fortresses, Krasnaya Gorka, which was being shelled mercilessly by the Russian cruiser Oleg. The CMBs carried torpedoes and Lieutenant Agar asked for permission from London to attack the Oleg. Permission was refused but Lieutenant Agar decided to biff ahead anyway. On the night of 17^th June 1919, despite mechanical problems, his crew managed to fire one torpedo at the Oleg and sunk her. Lieutenant Agar was awarded an immediate Victoria Cross for his actions, though because the Russians put a price of £5,000 on his head he could not be publicly named and was always known as “the mystery VC”.
 
London then did a volte-face and decided a raid by seven CMBs into Kronstadt harbour itself would be a good idea. Against enormous odds, on 18^th August the attack was launched. Despite eight British sailors killed and nine captured, the CMBs managed to sink and damage three Russian cruisers. Two more VCs were awarded, and Lieutenant Agar received a DSO.
 
Harry Ferguson (apparently an ex-MI6 man himself) has researched the subject assiduously and has written a ripping yarn about these little-known exploits. Let us hope this book brings them to a wider audience.

(A version of this article first appeared in The Chap magazine.)