Agnes Smedley

A young Agnes Smedley, 1914.

Agnes Smedley (February 23, 1892 – May 6, 1950) was an American journalist and writer. Well known for her semi-autobiographical novel Daughter of Earth as well as for her sympathetic chronicling of the Communist forces in the Chinese Civil War. During World War I, she worked in the United States for the independence of India from the United Kingdom, receiving financial support from the government of Germany, and for many years worked for or with the Comintern, frequently in an espionage capacity. As the lover of Soviet super spy Richard Sorge in Shanghai in the early 1930s, she helped get him established for his final and greatest work as spymaster in Tokyo. She also worked on behalf of various causes including women's rights, birth control, and children's welfare. Smedley wrote six books, including a novel, reportage, and a biography of the Chinese general Zhu De, reported for newspapers such as New York Call, Frankfurter Zeitung and Manchester Guardian, and wrote for periodicals such as the Modern Review, New Masses, Asia, New Republic, and Nation.

Life

Early years

Agnes Smedley was born in Osgood, Missouri on Feb 23, 1892, the second of five children. In 1901, at the age of nine, she and her family moved to Trinidad, Colorado, where she witnessed many of the events in the 1903–04 coal miners' strike.[1] Her father worked for several of the coal companies in Colorado and the family moved back and forth across southwestern Colorado. At the age of 17, Smedley took the county teacher's examination and taught in rural schools near her home for a semester. She returned home when her mother, Sarah, became ill. Sarah died in early 1910.[2]

Later that year, with the help of an aunt, Smedley enrolled in a business school in Greeley, Colorado, after which she worked as a traveling salesperson. Suffering from physical and emotional stress in 1911, Smedley checked into a sanatorium. A family friend in Arizona offered her a place to stay after she was discharged, and from 1911 to 1912 Smedley enrolled in Tempe Normal School.[3] She published her first writings as editor and contributor to the school paper, Tempe Normal Student. At Tempe, she became friends with a woman named Thorberg Brundin and her brother Ernest Brundin. Both Brundins were members of the Socialist Party of America and gave Smedley her first exposure to socialist ideas. When the Brundins left Tempe for San Francisco, they invited Smedley to come stay with them, and in August 1912 Smedley married Ernest. After six years of marriage Smedley divorced and moved to New York City, where, among other new activities, she worked with Margaret Sanger at the Birth Control Review.

Involvement with Indian Independence

During World War I, Smedley grew close to Lala Lajpat Rai and a number of Bengali Indian revolutionaries then in the United States. She was at this time close to M. N. Roy and Sailendranath Ghose and agreed to serve as a communication centre for Indian revolutionaries then in United States. She oversaw publication of anti-allied propaganda at the request of Ghose, and later met Bhai Bhagwan Singh and Taraknath Das.[4] Her involvement in the Hindu-German Conspiracy would lead to British detectives being put on her trail. Correctly judging her mail being intercepted and opened, and fearing for her personal safety as well as those she knew, Smedley would move from house to house more than seven times in a year.[5]

Later, she became involved in a relationship with an Indian communist, Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, and moved to Germany with him. She spent several years in Germany, involved with various left-wing causes.

In 1929, she finished her autobiographical novel Daughter of Earth. She left Chattopadhyaya and moved to Shanghai, initially as a correspondent for a liberal German newspaper.

Years in China

Smedley (second from the right) with Soong Ching-ling (third from right), 1930s

Smedley had a sexual relationship with Richard Sorge, a Soviet spymaster, while in Shanghai, and probably with Ozaki Hotsumi, a correspondent for the Asahi Shinbun. Later he translated Smedley's Daughter of Earth into Japanese. She introduced Sorge to Ozaki, who became Sorge's most important informant in Japan. Maj. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, who served with Gen. Douglas MacArthur's chief of intelligence, claimed that Smedley was a member of the anti-Japanese Sorge spy ring. After the war, Smedley threatened to sue Willoughby for making the accusation. Ruth Price, author of the most recent and extensive biography of Smedley, writes that there is very strong evidence in former Soviet archives that Smedley was indeed a spy who engaged in espionage for the Comintern and on behalf of the Soviet Union.[6]

In China, Smedley served as a correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung and the Manchester Guardian. She covered many topics, including the Chinese Civil War. She was also in Xi'an during the Xi'an Incident, which took her by surprise but led to her making broadcasts in English for the rebels. She then reported on the Anti-Japanese war during the Second United Front. She first travelled with the 8th Route Army and then with the New Fourth Army, as well as visiting some units ofin the non-Communist Chinese army. During the 1930s she applied for membership in the Chinese Communist Party but was rejected due to Party reservations about her lack of discipline and what it viewed as her excessive independence of mind. Smedley was devastated by this rejection but remained passionately devoted to the Chinese communist cause.

Smedley left the field in 1937; she organized medical supplies and continued writing. From 1938 to 1941, she visited both Communist and Guomindang forces in the war zone; it is recorded that this is the longest tour of the Chinese war front conducted by any foreign correspondent, male or female.

Final years

Headstone for Agnes Smedley at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in Beijing.

She relocated to Washington, DC to advocate for China and authored several works on China's revolution. During the 1940s she lived at Yaddo, a writer's colony in upstate New York. In 1947 she was accused of espionage. Feeling pressure, she left the U.S. in the fall of 1949. She died in the UK after surgery for an ulcer. Her final book, a biography of Zhu De, was complete but unpublished at the time of her death. It was published in 1956.

Her ashes were buried at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in Beijing in 1951.

Legacy

Smedley is a featured figure on Judy Chicago's installation piece The Dinner Party, being represented as one of the 999 names on the Heritage Floor.[7]

In 1992, a musical theatre production entitled "A Smedley of Revolution" was commissioned by the Theatre Faculty of the University of Melbourne from the Australian writer Tania Peitzker. Peitzker based her manuscript on the novels, travelogues and biographies of Agnes Smedley.[8]

According to PBS, in her work as triple agent for Communists in China, India, and the Soviet Union, Smedley "was one of the most prolific female spies of the 20th century."[9]

Works

A selection of her writings on China was published in 1976 as Portraits of Chinese Women in Revolution.

See also

Further reading

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Price 20–23
  2. ↑ Price 31–32
  3. ↑ Price 34–36
  4. ↑ Price 2005, pp. 63–66
  5. ↑ Price 2005, p. 65
  6. ↑ Price 5–9
  7. ↑ "Agnes Sampson". Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: The Dinner Party: Heritage Floor: Agnes Smedley. Brooklyn Museum. 2007. Retrieved December 25, 2011.
  8. ↑ MS held in the Tania Peitzker Collection of the Fryer Library, University of Queensland
  9. ↑ Agnes Smedley PBS Nova

References

External links

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