The Spy Who Would Be Tsar

The Mystery of Michal Goleniewski and the Far-Right Underground

Kevin Coogan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367506636
• eBook ISBN: 9781000399875
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Michal Goleniewski was one of the Cold War's most important spies but has been overlooked in the vast literature on the intelligence battles between the Western Powers and the Soviet Bloc. Renowned investigative journalist Kevin Coogan reveals Goleniewski's extraordinary story for the first time in this biography.

Goleniewski rose to be a senior officer in the Polish intelligence service, a position which gave him access to both Polish and Russian secrets. Disillusioned with the Soviet Bloc, he made contact with the CIA, sending them letters containing significant intelligence. He then decided to defect and fled to America in 1961 via an elaborate escape plan in Berlin. His revelations led to the exposure of several important Soviet spies in the West including the Portland spy ring in the UK, the MI6 traitor George Blake, and a spy high up in the West German intelligence service. Despite these hugely important contributions to the Cold War, Goleniewski would later be abandoned by the CIA after he made the outrageous claim that he was actually Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia – the last remaining member of the Romanov Russian royal family and therefore entitled to the lost treasures of the Tsar. Goleniewski's increasingly fantastical claims led to him becoming embroiled in a bizarre demi-monde of Russian exiles, anti-communist fanatics, right-wing extremists and chivalric orders with deep historical roots in America's racist and antisemitic underground.

This fascinating and revelatory biography will be of interest to students and researchers of the Cold War, intelligence history and right-wing extremism as well as general readers with an interest in these intriguing subjects.

PART I

Sniper

DOI: 10.4324/9781003051114-2

1

Grave secrets

DOI: 10.4324/9781003051114-3

Paper trail

Michal Goleniewski is universally portrayed as a Polish intelligence officer. But just how Polish was he? He was born on 16 August 1922 in Nieswiez, a city that was Polish only as a result of the 1919–1922 Polish–Soviet War. The family then migrated to Poland’s Western border with Germany where he was raised. In 1995, British author William Clarke published The Lost Fortune of the Tsars. For background on Goleniewski, Clarke turned to Malgorzata Stapinska, a professor of English at Krakow’s Jagellonian University. She confirmed Goleniewski’s story that his father (also named Michal) was buried in a cemetery in the small town of Wolsztyn, near Poznan, the largest city in western Poland. His father and mother lived in the small village of Ciosaniec in the Lubusz Voivodeship (Province), some 14 miles from Wolsztyn. After his death, the body was brought to the cemetery in Wolsztyn. Stapinska also confirmed that Goleniewski’s father died on 17 May 1952 at age 69.¹

Using birth records and other documents, Stapinska learned that Michal, Sr., had been born in Russia on 29 September 1883. Parish records list his parents as Antoni and Marcela (née Buczynska or Bieczynska). Stapinska also found a discrepancy: his tombstone in the Wolsztyn cemetery lists his birth as 29 September 1893 (not 1883), which would have made him 59 at the time of his death.

From Lost Fortune of the Tsars:

The grave was certainly there. It was found in the main aisle of the graveyard, to the left of the main entrance. Made of stone, with a headstone and a stone surround with soil filling in between, the grave had been covered by evergreen branches as though someone had recently been caring for it. Two glass jars stood beside each other, one empty, the other containing plastic flowers and some dead leaves. Behind one of the jars, the inscription on the marble headstone read: s.p. Michal Goleniewski, ur. 29.9.1893 zm. 17.5.1952 that is ‘The late Michal Goleniewski, Born September 29, 1893, Died May 17, 1952.’ It looked as though someone had tried to scratch out the ‘52’ with a sharp instrument, or at least to leave that impression.²

Stapinska, however, found Michal, Sr.’s, death certificate in the small town of Slawa, a village a few miles south of Ciosaniec. It confirmed that he was born on 29 September 1883.

As for Goleniewski’s mother Janina, the Central Registry of Inhabitants listed her maiden name as Turynska.³ She may have been born in Russia, but it is unclear from the records. Goleniewski claimed that after ‘the Imperial family’ fled Russia, they first traveled under the name ‘Turynski’ before changing it to ‘Goleniewski.’ After ‘his mother’s death’ in 1924, the family relocated from Warsaw to a rural area outside of Poznan in the area of Wolsztyn.⁴

Located on the Warta River, until 1918 Poznan (then Posen) had been part of the German empire since the Second Partition of Poland in 1793. It passed into Polish hands following a 1918–1919 uprising against the Germans. The city was incorporated into what became the Polish Second Republic in the Treaty of Versailles. On 1 January 1920, the German town of Wollstein formally became Wolsztyn.⁵

The only glimpse of Goleniewski’s father comes from Lost Fortune:

One of the elderly people interviewed, who had a horse carriage, remembered going hunting with him for hares. ‘He usually joked and argued over the hares and when my dog brought one back, Michal would try to convince me that he had shot it.’ He was on extremely good terms with the local farmers and, it was said, they would visit him in his flat in the distillery to play cards. One of the couples interviewed recognized him from the picture shown to them from Guy Richards’ book The Hunt for the Czar. They did not recognize the son (Colonel Goleniewski) and had not seen him in Ciosaniec, though the other couple remembered him attending the funeral.⁶

At the time of his death, Michal had been the manager of an alcohol distillery factory, and one older couple said they believed he died after falling down steps in the factory. His widow Janina was reportedly five or six years younger than her husband. In a report to Polish intelligence shortly before his defection, however, Goleniewski said his mother was 61 at the time of his father’s death, which would make her born in 1891. Janina then would have been eight years younger than her husband who, as the records indicate, was most likely born in 1883.

As for Goleniewski, Stapinska uncovered his birth record which was given as 6 September 1922 in Poland’s Central Register of Inhabitants. Goleniewski, however, stated he had been born on 16 August 1922 when he applied for US citizenship. His Polish intelligence files list his birthday as 16 August 1922 as well. Polish reports say he was born in the city of Nieswiez (in Poland), south of Minsk and today a city in Belarus known as Nesvizh. In World War I the city had been captured from Russia by the Germans, briefly incorporated into the Soviet Union, and then claimed by Poland from 1919 to 1939.⁷

Goleniewski later asserted that after being smuggled out of Russia and traveling through Turkey, Greece, and Austria, the Romanovs relocated to Poland because of the number of Russians living there. He claimed that when the family first arrived in Poland, Marshall Pilsudski assigned two Polish colonels named Alexander Prystow (Aleksander Prystor) and Waclaw Szalewicz to provide them with false papers as the Turynski family.⁸ He said they lived in an apartment on Rynek Nowomiejski Street until 17 February 1924 when they relocated to Karpicko, also near Wolsztyn.⁹ His father entered Poland as ‘Raymond Turynski’ and then changed the name first to ‘Michal Goleniowski’ and then Goleniewski.¹⁰

In a 17 August 1964 interview with Phillipa Schuyler for the Manchester Union Leader (‘Russia’s Czar Lives’), Goleniewski said that his father ‘Czar Nicholas II’ went with Polish and Russian troops fighting the Bolsheviks during the 1919–1921 Russo-Polish War, which at one point saw Polish forces occupy Kiev. Goleniewski’s father also had links to ‘a special advisory group that was close to General Weigand.’ General Maxime Weygand was a member of the Second Interallied Mission to Poland during the 1920 war with the Soviet Union.

On 17 February 1924, the family moved to a village near Poznan (Poland’s fourth largest city), and close to the German border. He claimed that England’s de jure recognition of the Soviet Union in February 1924 – and the planned arrival of the new Soviet Ambassador ‘Piotr Voikov’ (Pyotr Voykov) that same year – made the family decide to abandon Warsaw. Goleniewski stated that his mother, ‘the Empress Aleksandra Feodorovna’ died in Warsaw in the autumn of 1924. He adds that her ‘cover name’ was ‘Marie A. Kaminski.’¹¹

About the new Soviet Ambassador, Goleniewski writes that he had been ‘also involved in RUSSIAN IMP. FAMILY’s imprisonment in EKATERINBURG, PIOTR VOIKOV (who was executed by RUSSIAN IMP. UNDERGROUND in POLAND on JUNE 7, 1927 publicly with regard to his attempts to investigate the fate of RUSSIAN IMP. FAMILY).’¹² Voykov, who became the Soviet Ambassador to Poland on 8 November 1924, was shot to death in the Warsaw Central Train Station three years later by Boris Kowerda, a teenage White Russian living in stateless exile in Poland. A monarchist, he was given the gun used to kill Voykov from another White Russian exile. In retaliation, the Soviets arrested hundreds of monarchists and carried out summary executions of some of them while claiming the murder of Voykov was a British conspiracy.

Pierre de Villemarest writes that the family lived first in a modest home in Wolsztyn. They next relocated to the small town of Karpicko, near Wolsztyn until they decided to move even closer to Poznan.¹³ Whatever the exact sequence, it seems clear they lived in the Wolsztyn area. Polish intelligence files also state that Goleniewski was enrolled in a gymnasium in Wolsztyn in 1939 when World War II began. Polish records also report that the family lived in Ciosaniec, and Goleniewski’s parents did live there after the war.

Finding out anything about the family was not easy. Stapinska examined the records of the Central Register of Inhabitants, the key archive for genealogical research and the source for Goleniewski’s birthday as well as the name of his parents. The Central Register, however, only listed him from 1953 on when he was living in Gdansk. It also gave his local address. Yet when Stapinska checked the Register of Inhabitants of Gdansk and its surrounding regions, there was no mention of his name, although from other records we know he did live in Gdansk at this time.

Goleniewski’s absence from the Central Registry records raises the possibility that the family was registered, but that they either employed a variant spelling of their name or used a different name when first registering. Given that the family employed the names ‘Turynski’ and ‘Goleniowski,’ her failure may be less surprising.

As for Ciosaniec, it had been the German village of Schussenze; after 1937 it was renamed Ostlinde.¹⁴ After the German defeat (and finalized in the Potsdam Agreement), the town became Ciosaniec. The few elderly Polish residents in Ciosaniec who spoke to Stapinska said they did not remember the family before the late 1940s. From Lost Fortune of the Tsars:

The locals were quite sure that the Goleniewskis were not in the area before the war. One of them who arrived in 1948 was certain that the Goleniewskis must have arrived ‘before, in or just after 1950.’ They assumed that they had come from further east, perhaps from Lvov, but were not certain. ‘He liked singing songs about Lvov,’ they recalled. Certainly Michal Goleniewski [Sr.] seemed to them to have a strong ‘eastern’ accent, indicating someone from around Lvov. But my researcher [Stapinska] thinks that this could easily have been confused with a Russian accent by the locals. They are quite similar.¹⁵

Goleniewski’s parents, then, most likely relocated to Ciosaniec after the war when his father became the head of the distillery. The available evidence suggests that starting sometime in the early 1920s they lived in the Karpicko–Wolsztyn–Ciosaniec area. For now, the best we can say is that Goleniewski...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Publisher’s Foreword
• Preface
• Abbreviations, acronyms and agency names
• Introduction: Labyrinth
• PART I: Sniper
• PART II: Hacke
• PART III: King of Queens
• PART IV: Knights of Malta
• Appendix I: Noddy and the Pig
• Appendix II: A weird Yank in Warsaw
• Appendix III: Skorzeny
• Cast of characters
• Chronology: Poland (1922–1961)
• Bibliography
• Kevin Coogan Bibliography
• Index