International Liaison Department of the Communist International

In 1939, Soviet intelligence defector Walter Krivitsky described the OMS as "a worldwide network of permanently stationed agents." Moreover, "These OMS representatives hold the whip over the leaders of the Communist Party in the country where they are stationed... The most delicate job entrusted to OMS resident agents is the distribution of money to finance the Communist Parties." In 2011, historian Thomas L. Sakmyster stated: The OMS was the Comintern's department for the coordination of subversive and conspiratorial activities. Some of its functions overlapped with those of the main Soviet intelligence agencies, the OGPU and the GRU, whose agents sometimes were assigned to the Comintern. But the OMS maintained its own set of operations and had its own representative on the central committees of each Communist party abroad. Most sources agree that the OMS "acted as an adjunct between the two main Soviet intelligence services." Radio communications formed part of OMS services, headed by David Glazer. The falsification (not manufacture) of passports was a major function of the OMS. American passports were a particular favorite. ==Major locations==

The OMS's international headquarters resided in Berlin. The OMS's training school lay in Kuntsevo near Moscow, with additional training available in Berlin. ==History==

It was founded at the Third Congress of the Comintern in July 1921. It mission was to provide support, guidance, and funding to communist parties outside Russia. In 1923, the OMS received direction from the "Illegal Commission," headed by Mikhail Trilisser and two others. In 1924, direction of the OMS transferred to the GRU and the OGPU. The historian Raymond W. Leonard noted, "Between 1919 and 1922, people frequently moved back and forth between the Razvedupr and Comintern... For the rest of the interwar period, the Red Army used the Comintern, especially the OMS, primarily for agent support and as a source of recruits for its own purposes... After 1927, agents of the OMS usually acted as liaisons between the Comintern and Red Army Intelligence." It began to fold into the OGPU in 1935 or 1937 with Trilisser's appointment. ==Personnel==

The first head of the OMS was the Latvian functionary Dāvids Beika. Beika was replaced by Osip Piatnitsky. also called "chief of OMS for Europe." In 1935, Berthe Zimmermann (1902–1937), wife of Fritz Platten of Switzerland, worked for the OMS in Moscow in 1935 as head of the courier section at OMS headquarters. In Germany, the head was Mirov-Abramov. in the mid-1920s, a protegee of Walter Krivitsky and of Fyodor Raskolnikov's wife Larisa Reisner. Succeeding him was Fritz Burde, under whom served future author Arthur Koestler. In 1925, Richard Sorge became an OMS officer in Germany, "charged with establishing Comintern intelligence networks." Leo Flieg was the last OMS head in Germany before the Nazi electoral victory in 1933. In Austria, an early head was Jakob Rudnik; by 1929, Arnold Deutsch was a member there. While in Austria, Kim Philby may have served as an OMS courier. In the Netherlands, the head was Henk Sneevliet. In 1931, when Sorge arrived in Shanghai, OMS agents Agnes Smedley and Ruth Werner supported him. (In his memoir, Whittaker Chambers refers to the "Noulens Affair" as the "Robinson-Rubens Case". Over the same period, CPUSA general secretary Earl Browder made J. Peters its OMS counterpart. Peters sought to develop a homegrown "illegal apparatus," which grew to include the Ware Group, whose best known members were Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss. == Directors ==

• David Samuilovich Beika (1920–1921) • Osip Aronovich Pyatnitsky (1921–1922) • Petr Aleksandrovich Wompe (1922–1925) • Alexander Emelyanovich Abramovich (1925–1926) • Alexander Lazarevich Abramov-Mirov (1926–1935) • Boris Nikolaevich Melnikov (1935–1937) • Konstantin Petrovich Sukharev (1937–1943) ==Mentions==

In her book, KPD co-founder Ruth Fischer says that the OMS group sent to Germany in 1923 "can well be compared with the International Brigade in Spain thirteen years later." In his memoir (published posthumously in 1951 in French), Victor Serge (1890–1947) mentions that the OMS had failed to mention his child when entering details onto (false) Belgian passports. In her book Before and After Stalin, Aino Kuusinen, wife of Otto Wille Kuusinen, calls the OMS "the brain and the inner sanctum of the Comintern." ==Research==

Historian McKnight has noted, "Unlike other Comintern files, those about the OMS are still generally withheld from scholarly research." ==See also==