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PERSON FILE · 15 May 1907 – 7 July 2000

Ruth Werner (SONYA)

German communist and Soviet military-intelligence officer who worked in Shanghai, Poland and Switzerland and, as SONYA, was Klaus Fuchs's courier in wartime Oxfordshire.

1907–2000

3 min read · 5 sources, 2 primary

Ursula Kuczynski grew up in a prosperous, secular Jewish family in Berlin; her father, Robert René Kuczynski, was a well-known economist and demographer, and her brother Jürgen became a prominent communist economist4. She joined the German Communist Party in 1926 and worked in bookshops and publishing before marrying the architect Rudolf Hamburger4. The name by which she is best remembered, Ruth Werner, came later, from the books she wrote in East Germany.

Shanghai to Switzerland

In 1930 the couple moved to Shanghai, where she met Richard Sorge, the Soviet military-intelligence officer then working there under journalistic cover. Sorge drew her into his network and gave her the codename SONYA3,4. After training in Moscow in radio and espionage for the Red Army's intelligence directorate, the GRU, she worked in Manchuria and China and then in Poland3,4. The National Archives' catalog of her MI5 file summarizes her career: recruited as a Soviet intelligence officer in the early 1930s, in China from 1931 to 1935, a "successful intelligence mission in Poland" in 1936, and by 1938 in Switzerland, "responsible for the intelligence network later known as the Rote Drei, for which she recruited Alexander Foote"2. See The Sorge spy ring and The Lucy spy ring.

In Switzerland she married Len Beurton, a British veteran of the International Brigades, which entitled her to a British passport. She reached Britain early in 1941 and settled in Oxfordshire, eventually in the village of Great Rollright2,3.

SONYA and Fuchs

Klaus Fuchs, working on Britain's atomic bomb project in Birmingham, had offered his services to the Soviets through her brother Jürgen. MI5's account says that in 1942 he "was transferred to another GRU agent, Ursula Beurton (codenamed SONYA). The two met regularly in Banbury, Oxfordshire where Fuchs passed secret documents to Beurton"1. She passed the material to her controllers in London or sent it by radio from home3. The courier role continued until Fuchs left for the United States at the end of 19431. The Department of Energy's history describes Britain's Soviet sources as, if anything, better than those in the United States5.

Close calls

Moscow broke off contact with her in 19463. In 1947, apparently because Alexander Foote had told British intelligence about his former chief, officers visited the Beurtons; she refused to discuss Soviet intelligence and they left with nothing2,3. The MI5 file for that year survives at Kew2. In early 1950, with Fuchs under arrest, she left Britain, reportedly the day before his trial, and settled in East Berlin3,4. Fuchs identified her as his contact only later, by which time she was beyond reach4.

Ruth Werner

In East Germany she left the GRU and, after some years in government posts, became a writer under the name Ruth Werner4. Her memoir Sonjas Rapport (1977) was a bestseller; censored for publication, it left out Fuchs and others still living3,4. She insisted to the end that she had been a soldier of the Red Army's reconnaissance service rather than a spy, and that she had worked against fascism3. She died in Berlin on 7 July 20003,4.

Key dates

  1. July 1930 Moves to Shanghai; soon works with Richard Sorge for Soviet military intelligence.
  2. 1938 Posted to Switzerland; recruits Alexander Foote into what became the 'Red Three' network.
  3. 1941 Arrives in Britain on a British passport after marrying Len Beurton.
  4. 1942 Becomes the courier for Klaus Fuchs, meeting him near Banbury.
  5. 1947 Questioned by British security officers; declines to talk.
  6. 1950 Leaves Britain for East Germany shortly before Fuchs's trial.
  7. 1977 Publishes her memoir, Sonjas Rapport, in East Germany.

Sources

  1. Official history Klaus Fuchs, MI5 (archived copy).
  2. Other KV 6/42: Ursula Maria BEURTON / Leon Charles BEURTON, The National Archives, Kew (1947).
  3. Other Ruth Werner (obituary), The Guardian (2000-07-11).
  4. Wikipedia Ursula Kuczynski, Wikipedia.
  5. Official history Espionage and the Manhattan Project, 1940–1945, US Department of Energy, Office of History and Heritage Resources.
  6. Wikipedia English Wikipedia article (used for cross-checking).

Elsewhere in the files

Read next

September 1941 – June 1950 Soviet atomic espionage (Enormoz) How Soviet intelligence penetrated the Manhattan Project under the codename ENORMOZ, who its sources were, how Venona and confessions exposed them, and what the stolen secrets were worth. September 1933 – 18 October 1941 The Sorge spy ring From 1933 to 1941 a Soviet military intelligence network in Tokyo, run by the German journalist Richard Sorge, reported from inside the German embassy and Prince Konoe's circle until Japanese police broke it. August 1942 – 19 May 1944 The Lucy spy ring From Lucerne, the German émigré publisher Rudolf Roessler fed German high command secrets to Soviet intelligence in 1942–1943. Who his sources were, and how the material reached him, is still argued over. 1938 – 3 May 1945 The Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle) Rote Kapelle was the German counterintelligence name for Soviet radio networks in Belgium, France and the Netherlands and for a Berlin resistance circle that passed secrets to Moscow. Most were rounded up in 1942. United Kingdom · 1909 Security Service (MI5) Britain's domestic security service, founded in 1909 as the home section of the Secret Service Bureau: hunter of German spies in two world wars, runner of the Double-Cross System, and a target of Soviet penetration.