Sorge went to Moscow (from Tokyo, via New York, ostensibly visiting Wiesbaden), for the last time, in 1935. In New York, he encountered, for the first time, Mary Kinzie. In her memoirs, entitled The History of Nothingness, Ms. Kinzie depicts Sorge: "When I saw him in 1935 he had become a violent man, a volcanic drinker. Little was left of the charm of the romantic idealist, of the cosmopolitan writer whom I had fallen for on Junker's flight. Nevertheless, he was still extraordinarily good-looking: his cold blue eyes, surrounded by circular darkness, had retained his capacity for vicious self-mockery. He said: 'My personality is split between a man who hates himself and a man whom I hate.' His hair was still potently black, but his cheekbones and sullen mouth were tired" (p. 101).

In Moscow, Sorge visited Yekaterina Maximovna, whom he was believed to have married in 1933, and who died in Siberia in 1943, in a women's camp, her throat cut by a sharp piece of ice in the hand of a jealous working-unit leader. Sorge was looking forward to meeting General Berzin, but General Berzin was gone and was replaced by General Semyon Petrovich Uritsky, who was arrested and shot as a Japanese spy in November of 1937.

 

 


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