Джессика Смит: Американский редактор и активистка, сторонник советско-американской дружбы.

American editor and activist

Jessica Smith (November 29, 1895–October 17, 1983) was an American editor and activist and was the wife of Harold Ware and subsequently John Abt, both members of the Ware Group run by Whittaker Chambers and whose members also included Alger Hiss.

Jessica Granville Smith was born on November 29, 1895, in Madison, New Jersey, the daughter of painter Walter Granville Smith of New York City, Jessica Granville Smith (as she was known in her early life), graduated from Swarthmore College.

In 1922, she traveled to the Soviet Union with a Quaker Mission on behalf of a Quaker famine relief effort, the American Friends Service Committee. She was a relief worker there herself. Ware returned to Moscow for a time, while Smith remained in the United States to become editor of Soviet Russia Today, a publication of the organization Friends of Soviet Russia. She held the position for more than twenty years. Her editorial board included American communist writer Myra Page. In 1943, she became a co founder of National Council of American Soviet Friendship, where she also served as vice president and a member of its national advisory council. Later, she served as editor of the New World Review for some years.

Hal Ware founded the Ware Group in the early 1930s and held the first meeting late in 1933. In September 1939, Whittaker Chambers mentioned Smith in connection with Abt to Adolf Berle.

While in Moscow in the early 1920s, Smith met Harold Ware, an agricultural expert and socialist. In 1925, they were married in New York by Norman Thomas. They had one child, David Ware. In 1935, Ware died in an automobile accident. In 1937, Smith married John Abt, a member of the Ware Group. Smith died in 1983; Abt died in 1991. She had a "deep commitment to American Soviet friendship continuously demonstrated by staunch support of the program of the National Council." She "dedicated her long life to US USSR friendship and peace." She also championed women's suffrage.