a passing youthful indiscretion, especially given the large number
of left-wing students at the time.
Deutsch’s first recruit was Kim Philby, who later recalled the
absolutely captivating manner and keen sense of humor of the man
known to him merely as “Otto.” Soon four other students from Cam-
bridge University—Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt,
and John Cairncross—followed the same path as Philby. By the early
years of World War II, each of these five agents held key positions
with the British Foreign Office or the intelligence community and
could supply the Soviet Union with an abundance of high-level infor-
mation. Altogether, according to KGB records, Deutsch succeeded
in recruiting 20 agents and maintaining contact with 29 during his
four-year posting in England. Some have attributed this exceptional
performance to his tactful approach, treating those in his charge less
as subordinates and more as comrades in a common idealistic cause
under his tutelage. Clearly the detailed individual profiles contained
in Deutsch’s reports reveal a penetrating understanding of his agents’
character and motivation. Four traits, he concluded, were prereq-
uisites for recruitment in this academic milieu: an inherent class
resentfulness, a predilection for secrecy, a yearning to belong, and an
infantile appetite for praise and reassurance.
Although two security alerts in 1935 caused Deutsch to take
added precautions to evade MI5 and Special Branch surveillance, an
even greater danger loomed in the Soviet Union with the advent of
Joseph Stalin’s massive purge of the party apparatus. Not only were
his three different NKVD superiors in London victims of the terror,
but Deutsch’s Jewish-Austrian origins, lack of Soviet citizenship,
and unorthodox early career put him under considerable suspicion.
Deutsch was recalled to Moscow in November 1937, and his wife
and child were instructed to return nine months later, but Deutsch
managed to evade any criminal charges, probably because he was
considered more a technician than a revolutionary. Nevertheless,
upon the advice of Lavrenti Beria to find temporary work outside
the NKVD, he became affiliated with the Institute of International
Economics. In 1941, as Soviet intelligence began to recover from
its decimated state, Deutsch was proposed as a covert operative who
would work in the United States, but the outbreak of war in the Far
East curtailed his voyage via the Indian Ocean. A second attempt in
DEUTSCH, ARNOLD • 81