Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer and intelligence agent. After early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), he defected from the Soviet underground (1938), worked for Time magazine (1939–1948), and then testified about the Ware Group in what became the Hiss case for perjury (1949–1950), often referred to as the trial of the century, all described in his 1952 memoir Witness.[1] Afterwards, he worked as a senior editor at National Review (1957–1959). US President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1984.[2]
Whittaker Chambers
July 9, 1961 (aged 60)
Journalist, writer, spy, poet, translator
Ellen Chambers, John Chambers
"Communist underground" controlled by the GRU
1932–1938 (spy), 1922–1959 (writer, poet), 1926–1939 (translator)
Carl (Karl)
Bob
David Breen
Lloyd Cantwell
Carl Schroeder
Career[edit]
Communist[edit]
Chambers wrote and edited for the magazine New Masses and was an editor for the Daily Worker newspaper from 1927 to 1929.[2]
Combining his literary talents with his devotion to communism, Chambers wrote four short stories for New Masses in 1931 about proletarian hardship and revolt, including Can You Make Out Their Voices?, which was considered by critics as one of the best pieces of fiction of American communism.[10] Hallie Flanagan co-adapted and produced it as a play entitled Can You Hear Their Voices? (see Bibliography of Whittaker Chambers), staged across America and in many other countries. Chambers also worked as a translator, his works including the English version of Felix Salten's 1923 novel Bambi, a Life in the Woods.[11][12]
Personal life and death[edit]
In 1930 or 1931,[69] Chambers married the artist Esther Shemitz (1900–1986).[1][70] Shemitz, who had studied at the Art Students League and integrated herself into New York City's intellectual circles, met Chambers at the 1926 textile strike at Passaic, New Jersey. They then underwent a courtship that faced resistance from her mentor comrade Grace Hutchins.[1] Shemitz identified as "a pacifist rather than a revolutionary".[71] In the 1920s, she worked for The World Tomorrow, a pacifist magazine.[1]
The couple had two children, Ellen and John, during the 1930s. While some Communist leadership expected professional revolutionists to go childless, the couple refused, a choice Chambers cited as part of his gradual disillusionment with communism.[1] His daughter Ellen died in 2017.[72][73][74][75]
In 1978, Allen Weinstein's Perjury revealed that the FBI has a copy of a letter in which Chambers described homosexual liaisons during the 1930s.[76] The letter copy states that Chambers gave up the practices in 1938 when he left the underground, which he attributed to his newfound Christianity.[77] The letter has remained controversial from many perspectives.[78]
Chambers's conversion to Christianity was expressed by his baptism and confirmation in the Episcopal Church, but more permanently in he and his family's request for membership in Pipe Creek Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) near their home in Maryland on August 17, 1943; they remained a part of this meeting until long after his death. In 1952 Chambers wrote a memoir, Witness, that was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post. Historian H. Larry Ingle argues that Witness is a "twentieth-century addition to the classic Quaker journals", and that "it is impossible to understand him without taking his religious convictions into consideration".[79]
Chambers died of a heart attack on July 9, 1961, at his 300-acre (1.2 km2) farm in Westminster, Maryland.[80][81] He had had angina since the age of 38 and had several heart attacks.[1]