안소니 블런트, 소련 스파이로 활동의 고백… 영국 텔레그래프

 

                               Documents from Soviet spy Anthony Blunt released by The British Library[좌파 이념에 물든 요원이 조국을 배신]

명문 캠브리지대학교를 졸업한 뒤 영국 첩보국 MI 5에 발탁된 안소니 블런트에게는 창창한 미래가 보장되는 듯 했다.  그는 미술사가로도 활동하며 왕가의 사진작업에 관여했다. 1956년에는 기사 작위까지 받았다.

 그러나 그는 제2차 세계대전 때 소련의 첩자로 활동하며 조국을 배신했다고 영국 유력일간지 텔레그래프가 23일 보도했다. 신문에 따르면 그는 MI 5 근무 당시 소련에 수백 건의 기밀문서를 넘겼다. 그는 1983년 심장마비로 타계하기 직전 회고록을 출간했다. 그는 3만 단어에 달하는 회고록에서 당시 정황을 상세하게 기술했지만 자신의 간첩 활동에 대해서는 자세히 언급하지 않았다. 다만 그는 동급생 가이 버제스와의 기묘한 우정을 묘사하는데 지면을 할애했다. 블런트와 버제스는 1931년 캠브리지대학교 트리니티칼리지에서 만났다. 이후 50년 동안 블런트는 버제스의 영향력 아래 있었다.

블런트는 회고록에서 "버제스는 내가 잘 알지 못하는 사람들의 개인적 삶에 대해 말하기 시작했다"며 "처음에는 별다른 인상을 받지 못했지만 당시 캠브리지대학교는 마르크스주의에 강타당한 상태였다"고 회고했다. 그는 "버제스를 포함해 동급생들은 공산당에 가입하거나 최소한 유사한 정치적 성향을 띠기 시작했다"며 "나도 계속 방관만 하고 있을 수 없는 상황이었다"고 되돌아봤다.
그는 "당시 나는 내 생애 가장 중요한 결정에 직면했다. 공산당에는 가입할 수 있었다. 그러나 비상한 설득력을 지닌 버제스는 내가 그가 하고자 하는 일에 합류한다면 더 좋은 일을 할 수 있을 것이라 확신했다"고 회고했다.
그는 "그러나 나는 그런 종류의 정치적 행동에 나 자신을 맡기는 게 납득되지 않았으며, 나 자신이 정치적으로 너무 순진하다는 점을 깨닫지 못했다"며 "당시 캠브리지의 공기는 뜨거웠고, 파시즘에 대한 열정은 위대했지만 그 일은 내 생애 가장 큰 실수였다"고 토로했다.

당시 블런트는 버제스가 이끈 '캠브리지 간첩단'의 네번째 멤버가 됐다. 영국 외무성, 육군성 등 요직에 기용된 이들은 민감한 기밀 사항을 소련으로 빼돌렸다.

동성애자인 블런트와 버제스는 한 집에 살았지만 육체적인 관계는 맺지 않았다. 블런트는 둘 사이에 '성적인 관계'는 없었으며, 그는 단지 공산주의에 대한 버제스의 열정에 매혹됐을 뿐이라고 강조했다.

전후 간첩 활동이 발각된 블런트는 사회적으로 매장됐다. 기사 작위를 박탈당한 그는 심각하게 자살을 고려했다.

블런트는 노팅힐 극장 앞 계단에서 굴러떨어졌을 때 시민들이 보인 냉담한 반응을 기억한다. 상처로 인해 피를 흘리는 그에게 야유가 쏟아졌다.

오랫동안 그의 연인이었던 존 가스킨은 블런트의 자살 시도로 미치기 일보직전이었다. 블런트가 6층 발코니에서 투신했기 때문이다. 블런트는 당시 난간만 부서뜨린 채 살아났다.

이에 대해 블런트는 "어떤 사람들은 이런 상황에서 내가 자살하는 게 차라리 명예로운 일이라고 말할지도 모른다"며 "그러나 나는 자살은 좋은 해결책이 아니라고 생각했다. 내가 자살하면 내 가족과 친구들은 두 번 충격을 받을 것"이라고 말했다. 블런트는 1983년 심장마비로 사망했다.

 

Memoir Reveals the Regret of a Former Soviet Spy

LONDON — one of Britain’s most notorious spies, Anthony Blunt, has called his decision to betray his country to the Soviet Union “one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”

Blunt finally revealed snippets of his clandestine life and complex motivations in a memoir brought to light 25 years after his death.

Blunt, a former Cambridge professor and renowned art historian, was unmasked publicly as a spy by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979, 15 years after privately confessing to being part of a four-man Soviet ring that included Britain’s most infamous Cold War traitor, Kim Philby.

After his confession, Blunt was given immunity in exchange for information and allowed to continue in his role as surveyor of the queen’s pictures and a professor of art history.

But after his public exposure, which prompted him to contemplate suicide, Blunt sat down and wrote a 30,000-word manuscript that amounts to a short account of his life, from birth through the moment of his unmasking.

Following his death in 1983, the memoir was anonymously donated to The British Library on condition that it not be made available for 25 years, a restriction that has now expired.

While the account largely avoids his activities in the 1940s and 1950s, when he was a key agent for the KGB, it does provide his account of how he came to be recruited and, 30 years later, exposed as one of Russia’s highest-level agents in Britain.

“Although it contains no revelations, the memoir is important as an account of Blunt’s life and motives in his own words and with his own emphasis,” said Frances Harris, head of modern historical manuscripts at The British Library. “It is the one central document bearing on this long, complex and controversial episode in recent history, which has been known to exist but has not hitherto been accessible.”

By Blunt’s account, his introduction to the Soviets came via his friend and fellow agent Guy Burgess, a bright, persuasive homosexual who Blunt, who was also gay, met while he was teaching at Cambridge in the early 1930s.

Blunt, who writes that he initially did not take to Burgess, describing him as “perverse both in argument and behavior,” later warmed to his intelligence and was seduced by his left-wing politics, which went beyond the Communist Party.

 

                                                                                                            Blunt  

“I was thus faced with the most important decision of my life,” he wrote. “I might have joined the Communist Party, but Guy, who was an extraordinarily persuasive person, convinced me that I could do more good by joining him in his work.

“What I did not realize at the time is that I was so naive politically that I was not justified in committing myself to any political action of this kind,” he wrote, describing his move into espionage as “the biggest mistake of my life.”

Blunt was initially a “talent spotter,” recruiting agents to the network while teaching at Cambridge. He then describes being made “dormant” by Moscow for many years, before being reactivated during World War II, but he does not describe how.

During the war, Blunt worked for MI5 as a military intelligence agent, a position that gave him access to classified documents, military planning and movements.

After the war, he left MI5, continued in his role as a royal surveyor of art and was given a knighthood in 1956. His espionage was uncovered beginning in 1963, when Blunt was identified by one of the agents he helped recruit.

While a fascinating document in its own right, reaction to the manuscript has been mixed, with those who have both read it and knew Blunt during his time as an art professor, describing it as a “damp squib” that fails to get to the heart of the matter.

“He never got to the really important part,” said Brian Sewell, an art writer who was tutored by Blunt at the Courtauld Institute of Art and later became a close friend.

“Everyone who has ever read it has been very disappointed by how little solid material there is in it. I always thought it would turn out to be the damp squib of all damp squibs.”

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/1010/42/379819.htm