Sándor Radó
BornRadó Sándor
5 November 1899
Újpest, Hungary
Died20 August 1981 (1981-08-21) (aged 81)
Budapest, Hungary
Occupation

Alexander Radó FRGS (5 November 1899, Újpest, near Budapest – 20 August 1981, Budapest), also: Alex, Alexander Radolfi, Sándor Kálmán Reich or Alexander Rado, was a Hungarian cartographer who later became a Soviet military intelligence-agent in World War II.[1] Radó (codename "DORA") was also a member of the resistance (German: Widerstandskämpfer) to Nazi Germany, devoted to the service of the so-called Red Orchestra, the Soviet espionage and spy network in Western Europe between 1933 and 1945. Within the Red Orchestra he headed the Switzerland-based Red Three group, one of the most efficient components of the Soviet intelligence network.[2]

Life

Radó was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Újpest, at the time an industrial suburb of Budapest.[1] His father (née Gábor Reich) was first a clerk at a trading firm and later became a wealthy businessman[3] through the ownership of a small timber works. His mother was Malvina Rado.[3] He had two siblings, a brother Ferenc Rado (Francis Radó) and a sister Erzsébet Klein (Elizabeth Klein) .[4] As a six-year old, Radó was presented with a book about a trip to Japan on the trans-siberian railway. The book contained a page that folded out into a map of the Russian Empire. The vision of the map made an indelible impression on Radó that began an interest in maps and mapmaking[5] that would last his whole life.[4] As a child, Radó attended school at a Budapest "gymnasium" and would travel to Italy and Austria for his summer holidays.[6] While at school, he became interested in politics due to him witnessing, in 1912, the suppression of an unemployed workers demonstration by the police.[7] During his teenage years this developed into Radó becoming a devoted communist and he became part of a small socialist group that included Mátyás Rákosi and Ernő Gerő.[1] Rákosi and Gerő would later become leading functionaries in the Hungarian Communist Party.[7]

Conscription

In 1917, Radó was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army. His parents managed to use their influence to ensure Radó was posted as a junior staff officer in artillery[8] and stationed at the barracks of Fortress Artillery in Budapest.[7] During this time, he was able to continue his education by studying law as a correspondence student of the University of Budapest.[6] At university, he was exposed to the revolutionary socialists during the revolution of 1918.[6] The hostile debate expounded between the socialist and communists on how to end to war, lead to his increased radicalisation.[7] His commanding officer, the brother of Zsigmond Kunfi who was anti-war, would later introduce Radó to the works of Marx and Lenin.[7] After graduation at the officer candidate school in 1918, he was assigned to an artillery regiment and stationed in Budapest.[8]

In December 1918, after the fall of Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Radó joined the Hungarian Communist Party (MKP).[6] When the communists came to power in Hungary in March 1919 in Béla Kun's government, he was appointed as cartographer on the staff of a Hungarian Red Army 6th division, employed to draw maps.[6] Ferenc Münnich, the political commissar of the division, then made him commissar of the 51st infantry regiment.[9] Radó took an active part in fighting against Czechoslovak forces and in fighting against anti-Communist insurgents in Budapest.[1]

Geographer

After the fall of the communist regime in Hungary and the White Terror in full swing with an established anti-Semitic tendency,[10] Radó decided to flee to Austria arriving in Vienna on 1 September 1919.[9] There is some uncertainty as to the movements of Radó after he left Vienna.[9] According to a CIA report created in 1968 by Louis Thomas,[11] Radó left Vienna to travel to Jena in Germany, in the late autumn of 1919, to matriculate at the University of Jena, initially to study law[8] but later moved to study geography and cartography.[6][12] The CIA report also claims that Radó left Germany at the end of 1919 with the help of his friends Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, to travel to Moscow to volunteer for the Comintern.[12] While there, he got to know Comintern president Grigory Zinoviev.[3] According to the report, the Comintern ordered Radó to take charge of a Soviet intelligence station that was located in the port city of Haparanda, located at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, long considered a strategic location as the gateway for those needing to enter or leave Soviet Russia.[13] Both Heffernan and Győri states these claims should be treated with caution, as there is no record of Radó matriculating at the University of Jena during 1919.[14] Instead they believe that Radó spent the year of 1919 in Vienna, writing on military matters for a German-language Vienna based journal, Kommunismus: Zeitschrift der Kommunistischen Internationale für die Länder Südosteuropas (Communism: Journal of the Communist International for the Countries of Southeastern Europe) that was published by the Comintern.[15][lower-alpha 1]

In July 1920, Radó was first a journalist and later director of the information agency ROSTO (Rossifskoie Telegrafsnoie Agentur) in Vienna, that he ran until 1922. [17] It was used to spread propaganda received in broadcasts from Soviet Russia.[17] To receive these, he had bribed the head of a Vienna radio station. Information bulletins from these materials were distributed to left-wing newspapers and organizations in various countries.[18] In July 1921, through the influence of his friends that he met in Germany, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht,[3] he was brought to Moscow to attend as a delegate to the third congress of the secretariat the Communist International ("Comintern").[10] While in Moscow he began to court Helene Jansen, a secretary who was then working in the office pool of Lenin's office.[8] An ardent communist and KPD member, he had first met her in Vienna[8] where she had worked in the secretive Balkans office of the Comintern.[19] Radó got to meet Comintern president Grigory Zinoviev[3]

In 1922, Radó moved to Germany and returned to his studies, first at Jena and then at Leipzig.[12]

In October 1923, he took part in the preparation for a Comintern-planned large armed uprising in Germany and was made military chief of the communist forces in Leipzig. But the badly planned revolution had to be aborted at the last moment. Fearing arrest, Radó left Germany for the Soviet Union in September 1924. In Moscow, he worked for the All-Union Society for Cultural Contacts with Abroad (VOKS) and then for the World Economy Institute of the Communist Academy. Radó returned to Germany in 1926 and established the Berlin cartographic agency Pressgeography. He gave lectures at the Marxist Workers' School (MASCH), teaching economic geography, the history of the working class movement in Germany (Arbeitergeschichte) and imperialism.

After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Radó and his wife, Helene ("Lena"), fled through Austria to France. In Paris, Radó established the Inpress (an independent anti-Nazi press agency).[8]

Espionage career

In 1935, during a visit to Moscow, Radó was approached by Artur Artuzov, deputy chief of Soviet military intelligence and by Semyon Uritsky, chief of Soviet military intelligence. Radó agreed to be their intelligence agent with the main task of obtaining intelligence on Nazi Germany. Radó failed to obtain a residence permit in Belgium.

In 1937, Radó visited Italy to collect intelligence about the Italian military support of the Francist forces in the Spanish civil war. This intelligence was sent to Moscow through Paris Soviet military intelligence station. In 1938 Radó contacted Swiss journalist and agent Otto Pünter in Bern, who gave him military intelligence on Italy. On Italy's military support of Franco's forces he received material from "Gabel", a Yugoslav serving as Spanish Republican consul in Sushak, Yugoslavia and military intelligence on Germany from "Puasson", a German Social Democratic political emigrant living in Switzerland with sources in Germany. In 1939 was permitted residence in Switzerland. He moved to Geneva and founded yet another cartographic agency, Geopress.[5]

Report to the GRU by Dora about a meeting of leading German OKW and industry representatives, including Göring (chair), Röchling, and Vögler in Jagdhaus Hubertusstock, March 1943.

In 1940, Radó contacted Alexander Foote, an English Soviet agent in Switzerland who joined Ursula Kuczynski's network in 1938. Foote became a radio operator for Radó's intelligence network, and, in March 1941, managed to establish radio communication with Moscow Centre from Lausanne. In his radio communications, Radó used the codename "Dora". In the first half of 1941, "Luiza", a Swiss intelligence officer gave Otto Puetner (and Radó) the important information, that many divisions of the German Wehrmacht were being concentrated in the East. This warning of an imminent German attack, like that from Richard Sorge and from other Soviet agents, was dismissed by Stalin.

After the outbreak of the German-Soviet War on 22 June 1941, Radó's network continued to provide Soviet General Staff with very valuable intelligence on German forces. Some of it was supplied through Puetner by "Zalter", a press officer of the French embassy in Switzerland and by "Long", a French intelligence officer who fled to Switzerland after the capitulation of France. Both had sources in Germany, among them Ernst Lemmer ("Agnessa"), editor of a German foreign policy bulletin.

In March 1942, a most valuable piece of intelligence was sent to Moscow: summer German offensive aimed at the occupation of Caucasian oilfields (Operation Blue) would begin between 31 May and 7 June 1942. Radó's network got this from Georges Blun ("Long"), provided by General Adolf Hamann, at the German OKW. Soviet command did not make proper use of this intelligence.

The Rote Drei Group in Switzerland

Through Christian Schneider, a German lawyer who had worked in the International Labour Bureau in Switzerland until 1939, Radó made contact with Rudolf Roessler, a German political emigrant living in Lucerne. Roessler, codenamed "Lucy", apparently had extraordinary sources in Germany who provided valuable military intelligence, the Lucy spy ring. Roessler allegedly was the conduit the British used to transmit the results of their codebreaking of German cipher traffic (operation "Ultra") to the Soviets without revealing their ability to read this German code.

At the end of 1942, Abwehr and Gestapo caught up with the "Rote Kapelle", Leopold Trepper's network. There had been some contacts between both spy rings in 1940, through Anatoly Gurevich (alias "Kent"), a Soviet undercover intelligence officer and so Radó's network became known to the Germans. They even obtained the radio cipher used by Radó's network which enabled them to decrypt some of Radó's radio communications from Switzerland. Meanwhile, Radó's network continued to supply Moscow Centre with valuable intelligence. In April 1943, Stalin received news about the planned German offensive near Kursk (provided by "Werter", a Roessler source in Germany).

During the second half of 1943, the Germans persuaded Swiss authorities to act against Radó's network. Using mobile radio direction finders, Swiss police tracked down one of Radó's radio transmitters operated by Swiss agents Edmond Hamel and Olga Hamel. They were arrested on 14 October 1943. On the same day Margarita Bolli was caught, an Italian emigrant living in Switzerland and a radio operator. Radó went into hiding. On 20 November 1943 they caught Alexander Foote. Christian Schneider and two other contacts in Switzerland were arrested on 19 April 1944. Rudolf Roessler was arrested on 19 May 1944.

On 16 September 1944, Radó and his wife Helen, the sister of Hermann Scherchen, a German conductor in whose home they had hidden, illegally crossed the Swiss-French border on a French train with the help of the French Maquis from Upper Savoy. On 24 September, they reached Paris. Radó contacted a Soviet military intelligence agent and in January 1945, Radó and Leopold Trepper were evacuated via plane to the Soviet Union. Due to military operations in Germany, a direct flight to the Soviet Union from Paris was impossible, so the plane flew over Northern Africa. Using a stopover in Cairo, Radó, who suspected his arrest on arrival in the Soviet Union, escaped and managed to enter the British embassy under an alias. He applied for political asylum, but this was denied and Radó tried to commit suicide, but survived and was hospitalized. He was extradited by Egypt to the Soviet Union based on a false accusation, in August 1945 he was brought to Moscow under guard. In December 1946, he was sentenced by a Special Council of MGB without trial to 10 years on espionage charges.

Radó communications to the Soviet Union were received by his controller, Maria Josefovna Poliakova

Release

Following the death of Stalin, Radó was released on 25 November 1954. In 1955, he was officially rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, and was able to return to Hungary in July 1955 with the help of Ferenc Münnich and his old school friend Ernő Gerő.[20] Radó returned to a country radically changed from when he left. Hungary was now a communist country and the academic system had now changed to reflect the Soviet model, that was based on Marxist–Leninist worldview.[20] Geography as a science was particularly affected as it was seen by communists to have served the reactionary conservative-nationalist system of the previous government. Many leading geographers were forced to retire and the operations of the Hungarian Geographical Society (Magyar Földrajzi Társaság) was suspended.[20]

When he returned, he was amazed and overjoyed to find his sister Erzsébet was alive and somehow escaped the Holocaust.[21] In 1956, Rado was reunited with his wife, Lena,[22] when he wrote to her in Paris, with the help of the Red Cross.[23] He was unaware that his wife had divorced him, due to his incarceration in the labour camp and that she was ill with cancer, when they met in Budapest.[24]

Academia

Wishing to work in an academic capacity as a geographer, but with neither a university degree nor any business contacts within cartography, his new career could easily have foundered as his cartographic work for the Soviet Union was unknown in Hungary. However, he received strong political support from his friends that enabled his career to flourish relatively quickly.[25][23] Rado was initially employed for a short time at the Ministry of Foreign Trade, then by 15 September 1955 was appointed as the head of division with the cartographic group established at the State Office of Land Survey and Cartography (ÁFTH), a position he held, until he retired in 1978.[20] In January 1956, he was appointed the head engineer of Cartographia (Kartográfiai Vállalat), the state map and atlas publishing company. Radó held the position for three months until he was appointed chief editor from April 1956, an appointment he held until 1978.[20] As head editor, he was able to exert complete control of Hungarian civilian mapping work until his retirement.[26] The company, which was essentially moribund when he joined, lacking basic materials and instruments, began to flourish, producing two cartographic products, a "Hungarian National Atlas" and a series of atlases covering different regions.[23]

Academic career

On 20 April 1956, Radó was elected an honorary fellow of the resurrected and ideologically compliant Hungarian Geographical Society, less than one year after he arrived back in Budapest.[20] Radó never took part directly in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution,[24] although the ÁFTH were planning to remove him.[26] At one point, he believed he was capable of bringing together two opposing sides who were personal friends; Imre Nagy on one side and two Soviet generals on the other, but he was unable to facilitate a modus vivendi between the two. [24] In the same year, Radó was appointed to a position at the Karl Marx University of Economic Sciences that was formerly taken by the Marxist geographer Markos György. György had been sacked by the Ministry of Education.[26] as he was affiliated with an intellectual organisation that was associated with the 1956 revolution, making him politically unreliable.[27] By 1 September 1958, Radó had completely taken over the Department of Economic Geography (Gazdaságföldrajzi Tanszék) as a self-styled Professor of Geography, despite a lack of dissertation or research that was commensurate with the position.[28] His lack of qualifications was addressed on 22 September 1958, when the Hungarian Academy of Sciences awarded Radó the Doctor of Sciences degree (DSc), a Soviet era academic award that was considered the highest qualification on the scale.[27] The granting of this qualification without doing any of the actual work to achieve it, was as shocking then as it would have been today[27] and would not have been achievable without significant political support.[27] The award caused both anger and shame within the geographers community and brought him into conflict with established academics, from before the Soviet takeover.[27] According to the cartographer István Klinghammer "[he] blasted into local academic life in a typically ‘Stalinist’ manner. He insulted many and treated people unworthily, and hence gained many enemies".[28] As he had the political support, any conflict that occurred in relation to Cartographia or indeed even with the Academy of Sciences, he invariably won, resulting in many academic colleagues being purged, with some staff forced to retire, others having their funding removed.[28] The Hungarian cartographer György Kisari Balla who worked in the ÁFTH, stated, "We dreaded him. A good word from him meant a raise, a bad opinion a career change".[28]

Soviet model

During the late 1950s to early 1960s Radó reformed Hungarian geography to adhere to the Soviet model.[28] During this period he published heavily on articles espousing his admiration of Soviet political figures, for example Lenin, to essays on geomorphology and political geography.[28] He focused particularly on economic geography as it could be subjected to the needs of Marxist–Leninist theory to support the belief that physical and human geography were separate academic disciplines, although closely related. Specifically, this was a rejection of environmental determinism and the work of Alfred Hettner and Alfred Weber, rejected, as it failed to take into account, Soviet modes of production.[28]

He held the view, based on the official doctrine of Marxist–Leninist theory, that applied geography had primacy over theoretical geography.[29] He stated in 1957, that "...Soviet Union geography provides one of the most important scientific bases for the construction of theory and the means by Soviet people can learn actively to transform their natural environment".[29] He confirmed in 1962 that his ideas were a reflection of Nikita Khrushchev proposals to the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1961, that the application of scientific principles could strengthen communist society.[29] It implied that the role of geography was to provide the scientific basis for Soviet spatial planning, which was an entirely unoriginal idea.[29]

Espionage career in academia

It is uncertain whether Radó continued his espionage activities after he entered academia in Budapest.[30] In 1955, he told his son, that he refused both the Soviet and Hungarians offers of cooperation in establishing an intelligence service.[29] However, the CIA believed this was untrue. Their experience of Radó's successful espionage career during the interwar period led them to believe that he would use his position in cartography to collect GIS information that would be important to the Soviet Union.[30][29] Radó's career in the late 1950s and early 1960s had expanded to include attendance at several professional conferences abroad that were held several times a year and he also held positions in a number of international cartographic organisations. He also corresponded with many foreign partners in execution of his academic work, where he would request and receive GIS, cartographic and statistical data for various maps that he published.[30] The CIA produced a report in 1968,[11] where they described Radó as an important Soviet intelligence agent and his work was to collect the data for use by the Soviet Union.[30][31] At the time the Americas warned many partner cartographic agencies in the west, that they should not cooperate with Radó.[30]

Discovery

In 1960, Radó's wartime role as a spy for the Soviet Union was discovered by Swedish journalists and revealed to the attendees of the conference of the International Geographical Union in Stockholm, much to the dismay of the Hungarian attendees who were swarmed by reporters[32] and that turned Radó into a celebrity .[33] The Soviet KGB who were present as part of the Soviet delegation, were also acutely embarrassed as they had always denied the presence of Soviet agents in Europe.[32] After the exposé, the Soviets and Hungarians tried to capitalise on the situation by attempting to present a myth of Radó as an anti-fascist hero of World War II.[32] Over the next several years, speculation of the wartime career of Radó, along with the operations of the Rote Drei continued to appear and in particularly in 1963, when Kim Philby was exposed as a Soviet spy.[33] In 1966, Pierre Accoce and Pierre Quet released a novel with the title: "A man called Lucy; 1939-1945" that was a full-length history of the Rote Drei.[33] The authors argued that the intelligence provided by Rudolf Roessler was critical in ensuring the defeat of the Wehrmacht advance in 1942–1943. The publication led to further speculation that included a series of articles by Der Spiegel jourmalists on 16 January 1967 with the series title: "Verräter im Führerhauptquartier" (Traitors at the Führer's headquarters)[34] along with the subsequent CIA reports on Radó in 1967 and the Rote Drei in the 1970s.[33] The conclusions presented by the book and the article series were at odd with the official Soviet history of World War II, simply that the Wehrmacht had been defeated by ground forces of the Red Army and not German intelligence reports forwarded by Soviet agents and communist informers in Europe.[35]

Radó was instructed by the Soviet KGB to disavow the conclusions espoused in the books and newspaper series.[35] In 1967, the Soviets planned to produce a youth novel, a biography of Radó's wartime career in Switzerland, that was politically acceptable to them.[32] The novel's message was to suggest that the defeat of Germany was due to the excellent Western intelligence agencies and not to the Soviet strategic effort.[32] Instead Radó decided to write his own memoir "Dóra jelenti" (Codename Dóra) that was first published in Hungarian in 1971 .[32] The book was censored by both the Soviet KGB and Hungarian intelligence with around 10% of the textual content of the book removed.[32] The book was translated into 23 languages and became an "anti-fascist oratory".[25] In 1978, a film of the book was made with the same title.[36] In 2006, the original uncensored manuscript was published in Budapest.

Later career

Radó's career reached its peak in the second half of the 1960s and continued into the 1970s.[32] During those years, he continued to strengthen Hungarian cartography, for example by creating new positions of employment in the industry and creating political forums for discussion, and by using his academic position to build relationships in the international geographic and cartographic communities.[32] However, his career did face some setbacks. In 1966, he was forced to rescind his academic chair at the university, due to a new law that forbade state officials from holding more than one senior position. Radó choose to remain at the ÁFTH over his university chair.[37] In 1967, his nomination for vice presidency of the IGU was rejected.[38] Nor was he able to attain election to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.[38] He had approached György Aczél the doyen of communist science, with the assurance that he woud be elected to the HAS, but Aczél refused to help him.[37]

Throughout the later period of Radó's career, he continued his ideological campaign to purge all Hungarian geographers and cartographers who did not follow the Soviet line.[39] In 1975, he wrote a polemic where he criticised several long-dead Hungarian cartographers and geographers, in an attempt to expunge them from history. [39] He was particularly critical of Hungarian geographer Pál Teleki who was later prime minister of the Kingdom of Hungary (1920–1946).[39] Radó took a particular dislike to Teleki's geography, calling it a "backward, obsolete scientific construction designed by its very essentials to propagate the ideology, ambitions, and bourgeois conceptions of the outdated socioeconomic system in which it was produced".[39] In a visit to the Eötvös Loránd University, he requested that Teleki's portrait be removed from the Department of Geography.[39] This was followed in 1979, by Radó blocking the Hungarian Geographical Society attempt to hold a conference to re-evaluate Teleki's work, that was to be held on the 100th anniversary of his birth. Radó stated "that everything has already been written about Teleki".[39]

Radó was celebrated on his 80th birthday, by the Földrajzi Közlemények, the journal of the Hungarian Geographical Society when they wrote a feature on Radó that was published across two issues, to salute their president.[40] A reception was held for his birthday at the Soviet embassy in Budapest. János Kádár, who was the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party was in attendance.[40]

Death

When Radó died the Hungarian press and foreign geography and cartography journals commemorated him by publishing a necrologue.[lower-alpha 2] He was described by Márton Pécsi, the next president of the geographical society, as "I knew him as someone for whom work, revolutionism, the striving for innovation, Marxist internationalism, and socialist patriotism together formed the essence of his life”.[40]

Communist Geography

Atlases

Atlas for Politics Economy Workers' Movement

In 1930, the first of three volumes of the Atlas for Politics Economy Workers' Movement was published by Radó in Germany.[41] A year later, a Japanese version was published with the title Atlas für Wirtschaft Arbeiterbewegung.[41] In a review in the International Affairs, the journal of Chatham House, the volume was described as "Marxist propaganda, anti-capitalist in aim...the author indulges in one wild extreme of fantasy depicting the Soviet Union as encircled".[42] The subject of the creation of the atlas began with Radó in a conversation that he had with Vladimir Lenin, that places the atlas firmly within the idiom and the traditions of the Russian Revolution.[43] The atlas was presented across six chapters in black and white along with colour to represent political and economic developments between individual states. The Soviet Union was coloured in a bold red, similar to the old British cartography standard of red or pink that had been in use since the 19th century to emphasise the British Empire. Its use on the atlas was clearly for the same purpose, to show that the Soviet Union was claiming its own existence in direct competition with the old empires. To emphasise the size of the Soviet Union, Radó used the Mercator projection.[44] Although far more than a propaganda tool, numerous maps in the series were used for propaganda purposes, for example showing the Soviet Union as isolated with titles like "The Isolation of the Soviet Union in Europe" or "The Armament for the Next War" showing the countries borders surrounded by heavily armed European and Asian countries.[45] The naming of ethnic groups was an important aspect of the maps production in Soviet empire with many ethnic groups.[45] On most maps, Radó uses the term "Soviet Union" except one "The Proletarian Great Power - The Soviet Union" where he takes cognizance of the Bolsheviks. This led to difficulties for Radó when the Bolsheviks lost power and led to an analysis of Soviet ethnic peoples that resulted in other Soviet maps being produced that began the enforcement of those people into the country of the Soviet Union, in a process known as Sovietization. Radó largely ignored ethnic groupings in his maps of the Soviet Union, instead showing the area as a monochromatic and homogeneous space. In contrast, in other areas of the world he documented the groupings, for example in maps of Europe and America,[46] where he detailed the political divisions.[47]

The Atlas of To-day and To-morrow

The second main atlas, created by Rado and Marthe Rajchman, was published in London in 1937 by Victor Gollancz,[48] was of a smaller format, published across six chapters. It contained many more maps than the previous atlas and made extensive use of statistics to explain the detail.[47] In a review in the International Affairs, the atlas was described as:

"The compiler has set out to demonstrate how much information about the world today can be conveyed in maps and diagrams, eked out by a liberal amount of letterpress. Frontiers, trade relations, industrial development and distribution of races, incomes and constitutions are all shown in different sections. Some of these things lend themselves better than others to this treatment: but the only complete failure is with the forms of government, which altogether defy the rough-and-ready classifications of the cartographer. The arrogant title has already suffered its nemesis. Austria is shown as independent and Czechoslovakia as unpartitioned."[49]

Two editions were published, one in English and one in German. The only difference between the two versions was that the English language maps were in black and white, in contrast to the German Atlas, which were in colour. [47] Unlike the 1930 atlas, this new atlas presented the Soviet Union on an equal footing with other nations, politically, economically and militarily and was seen as no longer encircled.[47] Several maps were included that showed the Soviet Union as globalized with good communications, trade and infrastructure links and these maps were favourably viewed by reviewers. [50] Radó used the extensive statistics that he had available, to clearly delineate each ethnic republic and their population figures. However, in maps of the Soviet Union, the areas were shown as a homogeneous whole and drawn in a monochrome.[51]

Karta Mira

The Karta Mira or World Map was an atlas that was begun by Radó in July 1964.[52] The Soviet Union had used the 1-2,500,000 scale for their cartography since the 1930's and were familiar with its use.[53] In 1956, the Soviet Union had approached the United Nations Economic and Social Council with a plan to produce a world map on the scale of 1:2,500,000, as they objected to the scale used on the International Map of the World at 1:1,000000, due to national security considerations.[53] However, the plan was rejected by the United Nations.[53] Radó managed to convince the Soviet Union and member countries of the communist block that the 1:2,500,000 scale was ideal and the smaller project was achievable.[52] Radó had campaigned for better geographical maps in the communist bloc consisting of Hungary, German Democratic Republic, Soviet Union, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and Czechoslovakia and particularly for production of topographical maps of cities that were so often kept secret, due to national security concerns.[52]

Radó presented the first sheet of the map to the 20th Geographical Congress in London in July 1964.[17] [52] The map was constructed from 262 sheets, consisting of 224 normal sheets and 38 overlapping sheets.[54] Radó began production of the map as director, when he held a series of editorial meetings, between 1963 and 1979, in different socialist countries.[54] The other important member of the Hungarian delegation was Árpád Papp-Váry, who acted as Radó's deputy from 1973 onwards.[54]

Atlas International Larousse, Politique et Aconomique

In 1965, Radó produced an novel edition of the map in collaboration with French geographer, Ivan du Jonchay for the Larousse publishing house.[29][55] The atlas was produced in three languages, French, English and Spanish[56] with an index with 34000 entries and a table of statistics with 310 tables.[56]

Academic publishing

Radó's publishing career began after he returned from the Soviet Union in 1955. The first change to occur was in the Földméréstani Kozlemények (Periodical of Geodesy) journal, which had been printed from 1949. Its name was changed to Geodézia és Kartográfia (Geodesy and Kartography) after Radó joined the editorial board.[57] In 1956, it was expanded with a new section called Változások a Térképen (Map Changes) that consisted of several pages of cartographic map changes garnered from both western and communist countries.[57] In 1959, his title was changed to Coordinating Editor-Sandor Rado, Doctor of Geographic Science.[57] In 1962, the publishing schedule of Geodézia és Kartográfia was increased from four to six issues a year, increasing the usefulness of the data to cartographer.[58] However, as the data was published in Hungarian, it made the data of limited use.

Radó's most important contributions were in cartography, but he worked more as an organiser than a researcher.[29] In 1957, he recruited a team of geographers and caertographists at the Karl Marx University of Economics along with people from the AFTH to create the "International Almanach" that was published by Cartographia. These were three huge volumes of basic statistical data, that were published in 1959, with two further updated editions produced in 1960 and 1967.[29][23] In 1957, Radó launched the Terra Térképszolgálat ("Terra Map Service"), a new service from the AFTH that offered political maps, i.e. geographic background summaries on areas in the news, for newspapers and magazine.[59] The project in essence was an extension of Geopress and continued production into the 1980s.[29]

In September 1965, Radó began to publish the journal Cartactual, [58] a quarterly journal that had the map legends written in English, German, French, and Hungarian language to suit an international audience.[58] Each issue of Cartactual was essentially a collection of easy-to-reproduce maps that illustrated the more noteworthy map changes cited in Geodézia és Kartográfia.[58]

Awards and honours

Radó was the leading international representative of Hungarian geography who participated in all the leading international geographical conferences and bodies and was also known for his work as an intelligence agent. This made his name particularly well known both at home in Hungary and abroad[32] and led to him accumulating many awards particularly from socialist countries but also from the west.[37] Radó earned a total of 38 awards during his lifetime.[60] Only the most important are included here.

Medals

Radó was awarded two civil awards from his home country. The first was in 1963, when Rado was awarded the Kossuth Prize from the Hungarian National Assembly.[61] In 1970, he was awarded the State Award of the Hungarian People's Republic.[37] He was also awarded several military decorations in Hungary, that included the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of Merit for a Socialist Homeland and the Order of Merit for the Order of Labor.[37]

Radó received the Order of the Great Patriotic War from the Soviet Union. [37] There is doubt whether Radó received the Order of Lenin. He was expecting to receive the award when he visited the Soviet Union in 1949, but he was summoned there for a completely different reason.[37] However, two biographers claim that he received the award in 1942,[62][63] while another claimed he received it in 1943.[48] Radó in an interview himself stated that he did not receive the medal.[60]

Societies

In November 1936, Radó was elected to the fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society.[5] During the 1960s and 1970s, Radó was president of the Hungarian national commissions of the International Geographical Union (IGU) and the International Cartographic Association (ICA).[37] In 1972, he was elected to the chair of the ICA commission on thematic maps.[39] During the following year, he was elected as president of the Hungarian Geographical Society (Magyar Földrajzi Társaság).[39] In 1977, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Lomonosov University.[39]

In 1987, the Military Cartographic Services of the GDR in Halle was renamed to Militärkartogrfischer Dienst (VEB) “Sandor Rado” to honour Radó.[39]

People of the Red Orchestra

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ However, it is currently impossible to verify Heffernan and Győr position. What is known was that the Rote Drei, a component of the Rote Kapelle was comprehensively investigated by both British and American intelligence in the months after the war and the first report was produced in June 1945.[16] This included a comprehensive set of biographies on the members associated the Rote Kapelle and Rote Drei, including Radó, which is reflected in the information content found in the Thomas report. There is a scale that rates the quality and reliability of intelligence reports, described in Intelligence source and information reliability. It is worth noting that Kesaris qualifies the period slightly differently and doesn't mention the Soviet intelligence operation in Haparanda.[3]
  2. ↑ A list of formal obituaries for the record

References

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 4 Thomas 1968, p. 1.
  2. ↑ Kesaris 1979, pp. 334–337.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kesaris 1979, p. 334.
  4. 1 2 Heffernan & Győri 2014, p. 168.
  5. 1 2 3 The Geographical Journal 1982.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Schneider 2006, p. 81.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Heffernan & Győri 2014, p. 170.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 CIA 1986.
  9. 1 2 3 Heffernan & Győri 2014, p. 171.
  10. 1 2 Bourgeois 2011, p. 3.
  11. 1 2 Thomas 1968.
  12. 1 2 3 Thomas 1968, p. 2.
  13. ↑ Thomas 1968, p. 3.
  14. ↑ Heffernan & Győri 2014, p. 172.
  15. ↑ "Радо Шандор". Chronos (in Russian). Hrono RU. Retrieved 20 June 2023.
  16. ↑ Sälter 2016, p. 122.
  17. 1 2 3 Török 1987, p. 1238.
  18. ↑ Heffernan & Győri 2014.
  19. ↑ Schwarz 2014.
  20. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Győri 2016, p. 128.
  21. ↑ Heffernan & Győri 2014, p. 184.
  22. ↑ The Geographical Journal 1982, p. 128.
  23. 1 2 3 4 Bourgeois 2011, p. 23.
  24. 1 2 3 Thomas 1968, p. 10.
  25. 1 2 Győri 2016.
  26. 1 2 3 Heffernan & Győri 2014, p. 185.
  27. 1 2 3 4 5 Győri 2016, p. 129.
  28. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Heffernan & Győri 2014, p. 186.
  29. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Heffernan & Győri 2014, p. 187.
  30. 1 2 3 4 5 Győri 2016, p. 130.
  31. ↑ Heffernan & Győri 2014, pp. 187–188.
  32. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Győri 2016, p. 131.
  33. 1 2 3 4 Heffernan & Győri 2014, p. 188.
  34. ↑ "Verräter im Führerhauptquartier". Der Spiegel (in German). Hamburg: Spiegel-Verlag. 15 January 1967. Retrieved 19 September 2023.
  35. 1 2 Heffernan & Győri 2014, p. 189.
  36. ↑ Veress 1979, p. 93.
  37. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Győri 2016, p. 132.
  38. 1 2 Heffernan & Győri 2014, p. 192.
  39. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Heffernan & Győri 2014, p. 191.
  40. 1 2 3 Győri 2016, p. 133.
  41. 1 2 Schneider 2006, p. 83.
  42. ↑ F.B.B. 1931, p. 249.
  43. ↑ Radó 1980, p. Note 6.
  44. ↑ Schneider 2006, p. 84.
  45. 1 2 Schneider 2006, p. 85.
  46. ↑ Schneider 2006, p. 86.
  47. 1 2 3 4 Schneider 2006, p. 88.
  48. 1 2 Thomas 1968, p. 5.
  49. ↑ E.C.H. 1939, p. 118.
  50. ↑ Schneider 2006, p. 90.
  51. ↑ Schneider 2006, p. 91.
  52. 1 2 3 4 Bourgeois 2011, p. 25.
  53. 1 2 3 Thomas 1968, p. 16.
  54. 1 2 3 Segyevy 2018, pp. 12–18.
  55. ↑ Thomas 1968, p. 19.
  56. 1 2 Hémardinquer 1967, pp. 1161–1162.
  57. 1 2 3 Thomas 1968, p. 12.
  58. 1 2 3 4 Thomas 1968, p. 13.
  59. ↑ Thomas 1968, p. 22.
  60. 1 2 Habán, Péczi & Saura 1998, pp. 217–228.
  61. ↑ "Kossuth-díjasok" [List of recipients of the Kossuth Prize]. Chello (in Hungarian). Archived from the original on 8 February 2012. Retrieved 1 May 2023.
  62. ↑ Ormeling 1982, pp. 298–299.
  63. ↑ K.L. 1960, pp. 220–223.

Bibliography

Further reading

Publications

The following are Radó's main geographic and cartographic publications:

  • Radó, Alexander (1925). Führer durch die Sowjetunion [Guide to the Soviet Union] (in German). Moscow: Staatsverlag der RSFSR.
  • Radó, Alexander (1930). Atlas für Politik, Wirtschaft, Arbeiterbewegung [Atlas for politics, economics, labor movement] (in German). Wien: Verlag für Literatur und Politik.

The following are Radó's other geographic and cartographic publications:

  • Radó, Alexander (1924). Politische und Verkehrskarte der Sowjetrepubliken [Political and transport map of the Soviet republics] (in German). Braunschweig: G. Westermann. Completed after. As of January 1, 1924
  • Radó, Alexander (1929). Gross-Hamburg. Berlin: Neuer Deutscher Verlag.
  • Radó, Alexander (1933). Europäisches Russland und [die] Randstaaten [European Russia and [the] peripheral states] (in German). Georg Westermann Verlag. ISBN 978-9949-096-05-3.
  • Radó, Sándor, ed. (1962). Welthandbuch; Internationaler politischer und wirtschaftlicher Almanach [World Handbook; International political and economic almanac]. Budapest: Corvina Verlag.
  • Magyarország autóatlasza [Car atlas of Hungary]. Budapest: Cartographia. 1979. ISBN 9789633501573.
  • Radó, Alexander (1979). Donauknie und Umgebung : Reiseführer und Atlas [Danube Bend and surroundings: travel guide and atlas] (in German). Budapest: Kartográfiai Vállalat.

The following is the autobiography:

  • Radó, Sándor (1973). Под псевдонимом Дора: Воспоминания сов. разведчика (in Russian). Voenizdat.
Radó, Alexander (1974). "Dora meldet" – Buch gebraucht, antiquarisch & neu kaufen (in German) (1st ed.). Berlin: Militärverlag der DDR.
Radó, Sándor (1977). Codename Dora. London: Abelard. ISBN 9780200723398.

Compositions and media

  • Barth, Bernd-Rainer (November 2009). "Egy térképész illegalitásban: tények és legendák nyugati és keleti titkosszolgálati archivumokból". In Ábel, Hegedüs; János, Suba (eds.). Tanulmányok Radó Sándorró [Studies Sándorró Radó] (in Hungarian). Budapest: HM Hadtörténeti Intézet és Múzeum.
  • Ruland, Bernd (1973). Die Augen Moskaus: Fernschreibzentrale der Wehrmacht in Berlin ; zwei Mädchen gegen Hitler [The eyes of Moscow : teletype center of the Wehrmacht in Berlin ; two girls against Hitler]. Zürich: Schweizer Verlagshaus. ISBN 9783726361341.
  • Koestler, Arthur (1955). Die Geheimschrift : Bericht eines Lebens, 1932 bis 1940 [The cipher. Report of a life. 1932 to 1940.] (in German). Wien: K. Desch. pp. 318–326.
  • Schlögel, Karl (2016). Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit: über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik [In space we read time: about the history of civilization and geopolitics] (in German) (5th ed.). Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verl. p. 229. ISBN 978-3-596-16718-0.

Journal entries

  • Wise, M. J (1980). "Radó Sándor titokzatos élete. Fedőneve: Dóra". Wise, M. J.: Radó Sándor titokzatos élete. Fedőneve: Dóra Földrajzi Közlemények. 104 (28): 1–2. sz. 5–6. ISSN 0015-5411.
  • István, Kardos (2004). "Egy életrajz és ami mögötte van : Radó Sándor (1899-1981)". Egyenlítő (in Hungarian). 2 (6): 4–48. ISSN 1589-6714.
  • Pécsi, Márton (1982). "Búcsúbeszéd Radó Sándor (1899–1981) ravatalánál". Földrajzi Közlemények (in Hungarian). 106 (3): 290–292. ISSN 0015-5411.
  • Jéki, László (December 2001). "Fizika a színpadon I." MTA Részecske- és Magfizikai Kutatóintézet (in Hungarian). 5 (12).
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