Synopses & Reviews
Dubbed an "agent of British imperialism" by Joseph Stalin, Reginald Teague-Jones (1889- 1988) was the quintessential English spy whose exceptional story is recounted in this new biography. He studied in St Petersburg, participated in the 1905 Revolution and spent the rest of his life working for various branches of British secret intelligence. Plunging into the Great Game, he participated in daring operations against the Bolsheviks and tracked down a turbulent German agent, Wilhelm Wassmuss, who was spreading anti-British propaganda in Persia. Teague-Jones was also held responsible for the execution of 'the 26 Commissars' after the fall of the Baku Commune in 1918. This became one of the Soviet Union's most powerful cults of martyrology, inspiring a poem by Yesenin, a Brodsky painting, a 1933 feature film and an immense monument. Shortly after, Teague-Jones changed his name to Ronald Sinclair and adopted a secret persona for the next five decades, for part of which he worked undercover in the United States as an expert on Indian, Soviet and Middle-Eastern affairs, possibly in collaboration with the OSS, the new American secret service. In his swan song in espionage he kept a gimlet eye on the Soviet delegation to the UN in New York. For these reasons, and many others besides, Reginald Teague-Jones is the most important British spy you have never heard of.
Review
A meticulously researched book ... Dubbed an 'agent of British imperialism,' by Joseph Stalin, English Spy Reginald Teague-Jones is the subject of this highly readable biography ... Ter Minassian tells a fascinating tale."--Cahiers du Monde Russe
About the Author
Taline Ter Minassian is a historian at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, INALCO, Paris, specialising in Soviet and Middle Eastern studies. She is the author of
Colporteurs du Komintern, L'Union Soviétique et les minorités au Moyen- Orient.Table of Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1- Childhood in Liverpool and St Petersburg
Liverpool : birthplace and departure point
Pendennis Street
Liverpool, Second City of the Empire
An Englishman in Russia
Dazzling St Petersburg
A German Education at St Petersburg : the Annenschule
Red Sunday : memories of the 1905 Revolution
Warning bells and ice-hilling
The preludes to an expected drama
Caught in the crowd : Teague-Jones, witness to the massacre
Chapter 2-From the Punjab to the North West Frontier : the making of a Gentleman of the Raj
An Ambition : joining the Indian Political Service
A foretaste of the Frontier : the Punjab
The Indian Political Service : a caste within the colonial administration
A shadow organisation : the Indian Political Service
The training-ground : the North West Frontier Province
Administrative and political frontiers : controlling the hinterland
Sherani country
The Frontier : a territory for elites ?
Chapter 3-The Persian Gulf and the hunt for Mr Wassmuss
The Great War and Persia
Iran during the First World War : the theory and practice of neutrality
Jihad and pointed helmets
A police in the South : the South Persia Rifles (SPR)
The tribulations of the German Lawrence in the Persian Gulf
Wassmuss, a model field-agent
Reginald Teague-Jones on Wassmuss's track
Persian and the Russian Revolution
On the road to Meshed
Meshed : Teague-jones at the Turkestan frontier
Chapter 4-Ashkhabad and the Transcaspian Episode
A Secret Mission at the gates of Central Asia in 1918
First impressions of Transcaspia
Transcaspia after the Russian Revolution : from the Red offensive to the emergence of a Turkmen power
The brief history of a transient government : the Transcaspian Government
Reginald Teague-Jones : Political Representative in Transcaspia
This is a railway war
A railway government
Building an intelligence network in Transcaspia
From improvisation to retreat : the Transcaspian episode
The Turkmen question : an instrumental strategy
An intelligence service in Yomut country
Malmiss : game over
Chapter 5-The Legend of the 26 Commissars : Teague-Jones, hero or villain ?
Baku : 1918
The country before the battle
Baku : the geostrategic prize
The siege of Baku
The drama of the 26 Commissars : the anatomy of an execution
A political drama with a railway ending
Passengers for Krasnovodsk
Diminished responsibilities
A malicious propaganda legend (Teague-Jones, 1979)
The origins of the Soviet case : Vadim Chaikin's inquiry
Shot or decapitated ?
The culprit on stage : Teague-Jones in Soviet iconography
Chapter 6-The Retreat of the White Armies : from Constantinople to the Caucasus (1919-1921)
A nest of spies in Constantinople
In the ruins of the Ottoman Empire : Constantinople in 1919
Beefsteaks