ABSTRACT
The fate of India was a constant preoccupation both for the Comintern plotters in Moscow, Berlin and London, and for their adversaries in Whitehall and Delhi. Boris Bajanov's account of the OGPU's development followed the unexpected but natural death of its founder, Feliks Dzerzhinsky, in July 1926, which had allowed Genrikh Yagoda, then the administrative chief of the Cheka's Special Department, to succeed him. In October 1929 Georgi Agabekov arrived in Constantinople operating under commercial cover as a business importing bicycles and typewriters. However, upon his arrival he advertised for an English teacher, and engaged Isabel Streater, the twenty-year-old daughter of an expatriate Briton who worked for a local shipping company. British knowledge of the relationship between the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party and its parent, the Indian Communist Party, stemmed from a document, later known as the Assembly letter, so-called because it had been read out during a debate in the Legislative Assembly in September 1928.
