Isaac Folkoff
Isaac "Pop" Folkoff, was a senior founding member of the Communist Party of California and West Coast liaison between Chronology of [Soviet secret police agencies|Soviet intelligence] and the Communist Party USA.
Biography
Folkoff was born in 1881, in Ludza. In 1904, he arrived San Francisco, where he ran an embroidery business.He helped found the California Communist Party and had gone as a delegate for the founding of the Communist International in Moscow in 1919.
He was in charge of West Coast of [the United States|West Coast] operations. He worked as a courier passing information to and from Soviet sources, and as a talent spotter and vetter of potential espionage recruits. He also worked as a Case Officer. His code name in Soviet intelligence and in the Venona files was "Uncle".
Notes taken in 1939 by Adolph Berle show that Whittaker Chambers told him:
West Coast-Head : "The Old Man"-Volkov is his real name - daughter a Comintern courier. He knows the West Coast underground-Residence: San Francisco or Oakland
When Grigory Markovich Kheifitz, formerly personal secretary to Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, came to San Francisco in 1941, he began meeting with Folkoff to develop information and recruit intelligence workers among American Communists.