Ursula Kuczynski (1907-2000) was a Soviet spy, known by a number of names, across several countries but her biggest power was never getting caught.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Today’s woman of mystery was a Soviet spy, known by a number of names, across several countries -- but her biggest power was never getting caught.
Let’s talk about Ursula Kuczynski.
Ruth Werner -- aka Sonja -- was born Ursula Ruth Kuczynski, in 1907, in Berlin. One of six children in a prosperous German Jewish family, Ursula grew up in a lakeside villa, in the Zehlendorf district. Her father was a well-known economist.
From a young age, Ursula was drawn to communism. She would later credit it to seeing disabled World War I veterans begging in the streets.
“I saw the difference between the poor and the rich,” she wrote, “And I felt this wasn’t right.”
At 17, she joined the communist youth movement, taking part in their often violent street demonstrations. Two years later, in 1926, she fully joined the party. As a result, she was swiftly fired from her job as a bookseller.
It was around this time that Ursula met and married her first husband, Rolf Hamburger. An architect with leftist politics, Rolf seemed a clear match for Ursula. She started a Marxist Workers Library, and began writing for the party’s newspaper, Rote Fahne, or ‘Red Flag.’ But Ursula wanted to commit herself even more fully to the cause.
In 1930, Ursula and Rolf moved to China. There, they were promised, Ursula would be ‘connected’ with the Soviet spy operation in Shanghai.
But initially, the move seemed fruitless. It took four months, and an American leftist journalist, for Ursula to make progress.
Finally, she was introduced to Richard Sorge.
Richard Sorge worked for the German press, and was a year into serving as the “rezident” agent, or head spy, of the or G-R-U -- the Chief Intelligence Administration of the Soviet Union’s Red Army.
Sorge allegedly asked Ursula if she was ready to face danger. She must have said yes, because over the next few years she would become one of his most active informants. Without her husband Rolf’s knowledge, Ursula hid weapons for Sorge’s spy ring and harbored a Chinese comrade who was on the run. She began publishing articles in Rote Fahne as Ruth Werner, a pen name.
In 1931, Ursula had a son, named Michael. Though her marriage to Rolf collapsed, they continued living together.
After two years in Shanghai, Ursula received a phone call from Richard Sorge. He was leaving China, he said, and this was his goodbye. Ursula soon learned that Sorge had gone to Moscow, where he’d recommended her to the GRU. They asked if she would agree to travel to Russia for training -- and if she would be willing to leave her son and husband behind. Ursula said yes, arranging for two-year-old Michael to live with in-laws in Czechoslovakia.
When she arrived at the Red Army Headquarters in Moscow, Ursula was introduced to her new code name, Sonja. As Sonja, she was put through the GRU’s training school, learning how to build radio transmitters and communicate in both Morse Code and Russian.
In 1934, she was assigned to Manchuria, an area in Northwest Asia, which Japan had just seized from China. Her superior was a former German sailor named “Ernst.” When Sonja told him she had a son, he allowed her to bring Michael, now three-years-old, along.
In Manchuria, Sonja’s mission was to aid Chinese partisans resisting Japanese occupation. She transmitted coded information back to the Soviet Union, and bought and transported huge amounts of explosives, as Chinese communists worked to bomb Japanese railroads.
In 1935, one of Sonja and Ernst’s Chinese contacts was arrested. The pair were ordered out of Manchuria. While on the road, Sonja realized she was pregnant with Ernst’s baby.
Back in Moscow, Sonja was offered a position in Poland -- this time, with her ex-husband, Rolf Hamburger, who had since joined the communist cause.
The two settled in Warsaw, where Sonja built her own transmitter, hidden in a phonograph box. She sent messages back to the GRU headquarters about the Polish economy and politics. In 1936, she gave birth to Ernst’s daughter, Janina.
Over the next few years, Sonja traveled between Warsaw and Moscow, learning to build newer transmitter models and explosives. In 1937, she was awarded the Red Banner, the highest honor from the Soviet Union’s Red Army.
But her professional successes belied personal strife. She felt torn between the fathers of her two children. After one final mission together -- setting up a new spy ring in Switzerland -- Rolf and Sonja parted ways. A few months later, she met the final love of her life: Len Beurton, an English communist.
In 1939, as the beginnings of World War II swept across Europe, Sonja was sent to Danzig, a Baltic city-state that had been taken over by Nazi Germany. Her new mission was to advise German communists who were suddenly stranded. In one close call, she later recounted how a German soldier heard her tapping out morse code from behind a wall. But she managed to escape, and was soon awarded a second Red Banner. Without ever putting on a military uniform, Sonja was now a colonel in the Red Army.
On February 23rd, 1940, the Day of the Red Army, Sonja and Len were married, and Sonja became legally British. Moscow ordered them to England.
In England, Sonja met Klaus Fuchs, a theoretical physicist. The two bonded over the shared experience of being German political exiles. At the time, Fuchs was working at the nearby secret British atomic research facility. Sonja became his handler.
After long bike rides into the country, Fuchs would hand over written material related to The Manhattan Project, which ultimately produced the first nuclear weapons. They continued this relationship for several years. Fuchs would later be arrested and imprisoned for his role as an “atomic spy.”
In 1946, Moscow abruptly cut off contact with Sonja. She later wrote, “I wasn’t bitter. I didn’t see the work as a means to earn a living, but as the activity of a communist.” Sonja became Ursula again. For the next four years, she settled into life as a British housewife, and mother of three -- she and Len’s son, Peter, had been born in 1943.
But in 1950, in a coded message, in a pre-arranged spot under a tree, Sonja was told she could come in from the cold. If she wanted, she could make a home in East Berlin, the Soviet sector of Germany.
She bought four Army duffel bags, buried her transmitter, and set out for East Berlin, with Janina and Peter in tow. Her husband, Len, and her oldest son, Michael joined her in 1951.
In her later years, Sonja -- who, by now, was known as Ursula Beurton -- turned to writing. She published an autobiography, as well as a handful of short stories and a biography of Olga Benario, a German communist who was murdered by Nazis.
On July 7, 2000, Ursula died in Berlin. She was 93 years old.
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