Kasenkina Case


The Kasenkina Case
– the 1948 Cold War political scandal was associated with the name of Oksana Kasenkina, a teacher of chemistry at the Soviet school in New York.
The personal tragedy of a lonely aging woman coincided in time with McCarthyism and the Berlin Blockade and was immensely overheated by the Mass media into a noisy and ambiguous affair. After 50 years it still remains of interest to historians and journalists. Ellis M. Zacharias, a retired Rear Admiral and senior Intelligence Officer of the US Navy, wrote: "Bigoted individuals should not be allowed dominant influence on the delicate conduct of our foreign relations – but soon it became evident that such persons had gained complete control of the case. By inspiring headlines and stimulating the news stories below them, they drove the State Department to a diplomatic action whose severity was out of proportion to the incident". The mystery of the case was unravelled only 50 years later when the classified top secret documents of the State Department and FBI became open to the public.

Kasenkina Goes Missing

After WWII the profound economic and political differences led to a confrontation between the wartime allies against Nazi Germany. In 1946 the United States, United Kingdom, and France unified their occupation zones in Germany. The Marshall Plan was introduced to support economic recovery of Western Europe and stop the expansion of Communism. In retaliation the Soviet Government began the Berlin Blockade by halting all surface traffic communications to West Berlin, which was located 100 miles inside Soviet-controlled Eastern Germany. Diplomatic negotiations on the terms of lifting the blockade were going at a very slow pace. As war-like tensions kept dangerously mounting Soviets began to reduce the number of their experts seconded to the United States.
In June 1948, on orders from Moscow, the Soviet school in New York was closed. All teachers and students were to return to the USSR by September. On July 31, when the steamer "Pobeda" was scheduled to sail, the former headmaster and math teacher Michael Samarin with his wife and their 3 children were reported missing. Also missing was the 52-year-old chemistry teacher Oksana Kasenkina. Samarin immediately went to the FBI and asked for political asylum for his family, which was granted. Kasenkina's behavior was erratic, which caused a major international scandal. For 50 years and political reasons the US State Department held the documents of the Kasenkina case as classified and top secret. The documents declassified in 1998 and available to the public at the State Archives of the United States show that three days before her departure, at different times two Russian-speaking men, – chemist Dr. Alexander Korzhinsky and Leo Castello, independently, started a conversation with Kasenkina on a park bench close to her place of residency. Korzhinsky invited her to his apartment for dinner;- she refused to eat but complained that she did not want to return to the USSR. He advised her to seek help at the office of the anti-soviet newspaper "The New Russian Word". On July 31 Vladimir Zenzinov a journalist and former member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, took her to Reed farm in Valley Cottage belonging to the Tolstoy Foundation. The President of the Foundation, countess Alexandra Tolstaya, provided Kasenkina shelter and a job. The teacher worked in the kitchen and dining room serving farm workers, many of whom previously served in the White Movement and the Russian Liberation Army and therefore distrusted the Soviet teacher.

The Mystery Letter

After five days at the farm Kasenkina stopped a passing-by driver with a vegetable cart and secretly smuggled out a handwritten letter to the Consul-General of the USSR.
On August 6, 1948, Consul Jacob M. Lomakin received the five-page muddled handwritten letter in which she complained of loneliness and a suicidal mood. The excerpts from the letter read: -"the reaction of the already undermined organism has set in. You never considered it necessary to speak frankly with me... I was in despair ready to commit suicide... Finally they began to persecute me, apparently being aware of my state of mind... And then just before my departure it seemed that they begun to pay some attention to me, but I was already warned of my condition..." Kasenkina used propaganda clichés about loyalty to the dictatorship of the working class, "devotion and love for the Fatherland and her "hatred for traitors", not a word about the US and no information on how she came to the farm. Her disorganized thoughts jumped from past to present. The letter certainly imparted no suggestion that its author was driven by an overwhelming desire to begin life over in United States, borne aloft by her ardor for freedom and hatred of Soviet tyranny... The letter's most unambiguous statement is in its concluding plea to the Consul: "I implore you, I implore you, don’t let me perish here. I have lost my will power." The unsigned letter ends with the handwritten address of the farm. The Consulate’s primary activities include the protection of the interest of their citizens temporarily or permanently residing in the host country. Kasenkina's letter addressed to Lomakin left him no alternative but to take the dangerous mission to Reed Farm.

The Kidnapping Mystery

On August 7, before starting to the farm, Lomakin called the Missing Persons Bureau, Police Dept of New York and asked for support. According to The New York Times, Capt. John J. Cronin confirmed the call from the Consulate at 12:15 pm. "He said that the Russian Consul General was going to Reed Farm to get a woman who was in a highly nervous state and asked for help." Capt. Cronin informed the New City Barracks nearest to Reed farm. The trooper got to the farm too late, the Consulate car with Kasenkina has already departed. Questioning under oath of the President of the Tolstoy Foundation, Countess Alexandra Tolstaya at the New York Supreme Court on August 12, 1948 revealed the following events. As the black Buick executive car with a driver carrying the Consul, the vice-consul Zot Chepurnykh and stenographer Maria Kharlamova arrived, Kasenkina took her suitcase and walked out to meet them. Countess Tolstaya ordered 12 men to surround the diplomat's car. She called Kasenkina into the house, locked the door and tried to convince the teacher not to leave with the Soviets. Kasenkina did not listen to the arguments and repeated – "I must go, I must go". Seeing that the teacher was desperate to leave Tolstaya told the men not to hold the car, because Kasenkina decided to leave with the Consul "of her own free will."

Press Conference at the Consulate

Upon returning to the Consulate Lomakin immediately invited a large group of journalists and mass media workers. In this emergency press conference Kasenkina told how she was drugged and kidnapped by "White Russian bandits". Lomakin showed the envelope and Kasenkina's handwritten letter. He read aloud extracts from the letter in English translation. The photostatic copy was given to the United States Department of State and Federal Bureau of Investigation. On August 8, all major US newspapers came out with photos from the press conference, and The New York Times and New Herald Tribune published detailed reports. Countess A. Tolstaya stated that she was against providing shelter to Kasenkina believing she was sent for spying, in particular, to determine the location of Samarins. A separate article printed a statement by Congressman Karl Mundt, – a member of the HUAC requiring that Kasenkina should be questioned as a witness of USSR espionage activities.
Headlines of other newspapers cried out that the teacher was kidnapped "by force" from her hiding place at the farm of anti-communists and the letter to the Consul was called a fake. The Consul gave the photocopy of the letter into the hands of the representatives of the U.S. State Department, hoping for a fair resolution of the conflict. Publication of the letter would demonstrate that Kasenkina came to the Consulate of "her own free will". Despite the validity of his actions, the press and radio accused Lomakin of kidnapping, the authenticity of the letter was denied or called forged. Reporters hounded Lomakin. Day and night the building was surrounded by journalists and anti-soviet crowds. According to the memoirs of Kasenkina, ghosted by anticommunist writer Isaac Don Levine, she had a private room and freely moved within the Consulate. On August 12, former New York Democratic Congressman and New York State Supreme Justice Samuel Dickstein issued the habeas corpus writ ordering the Consul General to produce Kasenkina to the Supreme Court for questioning the next day. Lomakin refused, stating that the teacher was sick. Dickstein responded: "he would order the sheriff to seize Mrs. Kasenkina if necessary. Immunity given to Lomakin and his staff does not extend to the teacher". In 1999, declassified Soviet files revealed that Dickstein, known as the "father of McCarthyism", for many years was a paid agent of the Soviet secret service agency NKVD. The file documents indicate that for his greed, his handlers gave him a code name "crook".

"Leap to Freedom"

On August 12, after five days at the Consulate, Kasenkina fell from a high third floor window to the building's concrete fenced yard. Miraculously she survived and was taken to the hospital. In Lomakin's version, she had jumped in suicidal despair. Four inspectors of the New York Police headed by Deputy Chief Inspector Conrad Rotingast were allowed by Lomakin to enter the Consulate building and inspect the teacher's room for a possible suicide note. They found a sealed letter addressed to Moscow, after translation by an FBI translator, a photostat was made and "the letter was returned to the Consulate unopened". In the letter written to her friends on June 10, 1948 Kasenkina wrote:"We shall see one another very, very soon. I dream every day, every hour, and every minute of the moment of our meeting... It seems that even now I see the shores of our distant, vast and beloved Fatherland!.." Graphology expertise proved that both letters were written by Kasenkina. History professor at Rutgers University Susan Carruthers in the book "Prisoners of the Cold War: imprisonment, escape and brainwashing" writes: "in the first 6 hours at the hospital Kasenkina explained her action by the fact that she wanted to end it all". No statements about the desire to obtain political asylum. In the hospital communication of Kasenkina with Soviet representatives was banned, while visits by Zenzinov and Tolstaya and reporters were permitted. The mass media called her action as a "leap to freedom" and harshly predicted: "Soviet Consul May Face Firing Squad" and "Failure to Hold Kasenkina May Mean Death". On August 28, 1948, two weeks after the incident, the BBC newsreel clip "Mrs Kasenkina tells her story", shows bedridden Kasenkina. When asked why she jumped, she mumbles in Russian almost the exact words from her letter to the Consul-General:- "I have repeatedly asked you to tell me frankly everything that you know...", her words were maliciously mistranslated by interpreter Luba Trepak, who speaks of her leap to freedom. Ellias M. Zacharias writes "the judgement of some of the men who rushed headlong to Mme Kasenkina’s bedside to take charge of her relations with the press and radio were not to be trusted. Their anti-Soviet record had been remarkable for its senseless and vindictive venom rather than for its effectiveness." For many weeks "Voice of America" radio beamed overseas in 22 languages, including Russian, the story of Mrs. Oksana Kasenkina. In retaliation the Soviets jammed Russian programs of VOA, including music. For decades mass media revived the Kasenkina Case without explanation of her emotional instability that caused her to radically change her life three times in 11 days. For 50 years the US State Department kept all the documents and the text of her letters classified as well as the fact that the FBI graphologist confirmed that it was entirely in Kasenkina's handwriting. Acting Police Commissioner Thomas F. Mulligan, in charge of investigating the Kasenkina Case, asked State Department Spokesman Michael J. McDermott for an English translations of both mysterious letters, but they were never turned over to the Police or Press. On September 21, 1948, in a letter to Kasenkina's lawyer Mr. Archie Dawson, State Department Acting Legal Adviser Jack B.Tate suggested that "inasmuch as the letters are presumably the personal property of Mrs. Kasenkina, the question of releasing them to the Press is a matter for her decision so far as the Department of State is concerned".
Despite demands of her return by Soviet Ambassador Panyushkin, Kasenkina stayed in the US; in 1951 she received a US residence permit, and in 1956 became a US citizen; she died in Miami of heart failure on July 24, 1960.

Severance of Consulate Ties and End of Berlin Negotiations

On August 19, 1948 the Department of State requested the President to revoke the exequatur issued to Consul General Lomakin. The same day President Truman approved the decision of the State Department. Consul General Lomakin was declared persona non grata on the grounds that he kidnapped a woman and held her in custody. The Kasenkina Case coincided in time with the neck-to-neck presidential campaign of President Harry Truman and New York Governor Thomas Dewey. The revoke of the exequatur came before the State Department received a translation of Kasenkina's letters and ahead of graphology expertise. Cancellation of a high-ranking diplomat exequatur is rare and is always seen as a blow to the prestige of the country. In retaliation the Government of the USSR ended negotiations on lifting the Berlin Blockade, and closed its consulates in New York and San Francisco, that by protocol meant the closing of US consulates in Leningrad and Vladivostok. Secretary of State George C. Marshall said Russia's reprisal for ouster of Lomakin is regrettable, not serious.
On August 26, it was admitted: "Lomakin still a member of U.N. Sub-Group. Ousted Consul might claim immunity accorded U.N. personnel to return here. Mr. Lomakin was elected as an individual-rather than a member of the Soviet government-by the Economic and Social Council".
Consular relations between the USSR and the US were restored only after 24 years in 1972.
In his 1952 book, Ellis M. Zacharias writes: " In the moment of Lomakin’s expulsion we lost the initiative to the Russians....we became deprived of a major diplomatic listening post in the far East". In addition to the closing of Consulates, termination of Berlin blockade negotiations cost the United States millions of dollars spent on the creation of the airlift needed for food supply to the 2.5-million population of West Berlin.