Introduction
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Editor CHNN
Department of Government
University of Manchester
Manchester
United Kingdom
M13 9PL
Contents
Editor's introduction
Announcements
- ‘International Reactions to the Scottsboro Case’
- ‘Communism: National and International’
- ‘Playing with Paradox’
- Rose Smith, 1891-1985, Gisela Chan Man Fong
- 'Against All the Odds' — Women in the Communist Party in Scotland, 1920-91: An Oral History, Neil Rafeek
- 'I'd Sooner be Shot than Expelled from the Party': Dave Springhall, David Turner
- Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?, by N Lenin; and Ten Days that Shook the World, by John Reed, reviewed by Monty Johnstone
- The Red Menance: British Communism and the State 1920-51, Richard Thurlow
- The Communists' Capital, Morten Thing
Announcements
INTERNATIONAL REACTIONS TO THE SCOTTSBORO CASE: Under this title James A. Miller (University of South Carolina), Susan Pennybacker (Trinity College, Harford) and Eve Rosenhaft (University of Liverpool) will present a discussion of case studies based on research in US, British, German and Russian archives. The seminar takes place on Friday 15 May, 4.00 pm at Manchester Metropolitan University, Mabel Tylecote Building, room 3.21. Further information from Anne Morrow on 0161-275-2505.
COMMUNISM: NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL: Under the title 'Communism: National and International' the papers from a conference held last year at the University of Helsinki are to be published on 1 May by the Finnish Historical Society. The editors are Kimmo Rentola and Tauno Saarela and the other contributors are Marc Lazar, Mikko Majander, Kevin McDermott, Markku Kangaspuro, Aldo Agosti, Kevin Morgan, Lars Björlin, Terje Halvorsen, Morten Thing, Heikki Marjomäki, Ulla-Maija Peltonen, Elina Katainen and Joni Krekola. The book, c.340 pp., in English, is distributed by Tiedekirja, Kirkkokatu 14, 00 170, Helsinki, Finland, price 140 Finnish marks. Copies can be obtained for £15, roughly the sterling equivalent, by sending a cheque for this amount to Jane Harden, Dept. of Govt., University of Manchester, M13 9PL. Jane also has copies of the full contents list. All cheques, payable to the University of Manchester, to be received by 1 June please.
PLAYING WITH PARADOX: 'Playing with Paradox', an exhibition of works by the sculptor George Fullard (see the item by Gillian Whiteley in the October 1996 Newsletter), is being held at Sheffield City Museum and Mappin Art Gallery from 9 May-26 July 1998. For further details ring 0114-2768-588.
Work in Progress
Rose (Rosina) Smith, 1891-1985
This PhD thesis, shortly to be completed, reconstructs and analyses the development and experiences of Rose Smith from her birth in 1891 in Putney, England to her death in 1985 in Beijing, China. Over the span of her lifetime, she was among other things, a communist local strike leader of women, a functionary in the Executive Committee of the CPGB, and a journalist working for the Daily Worker in London and Xinhua in Beijing. The factors that might have influenced her in her choice of activities are discussed. The socio-political environments in which she operated are described.
The approach adopted in the thesis has been proposed by Peter Leonard. Instead of presenting Rose Smith as a separate and atomised entity, she is comprehended as an individual whose social identity was constructed by her gender, her working-class background, and her membership of the CPGB and the communist community with its distinct social and cultural norms.
In chapter one her childhood and adolescence as eldest daughter in a large artisan household in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, and her becoming a Marxist by joining the SDF and WEA tutorial classes and summer-schools at Balliol College, Oxford are discussed.
Chapter two examines her activities as a strike leader of miners' wives in Mansfield during the General Strike and lockout in 1926, and during the textile strikes in Lancashire from 1930-34. The forms of 'direct action' as espoused by Rose Smith and the National Minority Movement are assessed.
Chapter three and four deal with Rose Smith's activities as a 'formal' and 'informal' politician. Chapter three analyses her training as a cadre, her work as the CPGB's National Women's Organiser from 1930-33, her involvement with the Hunger Marches of the NWUM, her CP candidatures in the General Election of 1929 and the municipal election of 1933. Her involvement in 'informal' politics via the more women-community based path focuses on her campaigning for birth control for working-class women, housing, cost of living, and against the spread of Fascism at local and national level of British politics.
Chapter five is devoted to Rose Smith's work as a working-class journalist from 1926 to 1955. It analyses her writing on industrial and women's issues as worker correspondent for various socialist papers in the 1920s, as reporter at the Daily Worker in Britain and Spain from 1930s to mid-1950s.
Chapter six focuses on Rose Smith's work and life in the People's Republic of China form 1962 to 1985. Special emphasis is laid on her experiences of the Sino-Soviet split in the British communist community, of 'class' and 'class struggle' in liberated China, and as 'polisher' in the Chinese media.
Sources consulted for this study are Rose Smith's writings, her interviews given to Roland Berger in Beijing in 1978, archival materials of the CPGB, various British and Chinese newspapers, and several interviews with family members, friends and former colleagues of Rose Smith, which I conducted in England and Beijing.
If anyone has any advice or suggestions as to the possible publication of this study, please contact me at: 3420 Papineau Couture, Rock Forest, Québec, Canada, J1N 2X1, Fax: +1 819 566 6343.
Gisela Chan Man Fong, Concordia University, Montreal
‘Against All the Odds’
‘Against All The Odds’: Women in the Communist Party in Scotland 1920-91: An Oral History
This PhD thesis was recently completed at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. My supervisors were Dr A McIvor and Professor J F McMillan. The following is a synopsis of the extent of oral testimony and the topics covered in the relevant chapters.
The thesis consists of oral testimony integrated into a chronological historical text covering the CP from its birth to its death. Overall, forty people were interviewed. Thirty-two of the respondents were women who were involved in the party. Of the remaining eight, seven were men who held central positions in the Party in Scotland and/or were very knowledgeable about the Party's history because of their involvement. One of the eight was a women whose mother had been involved in the Socialist Sunday School which taught many young women who then went into the CP.
Originally I had planned to specifically cover the post-World War 2 period, however it soon became apparent that some of the women were active from the late 1920's and their political experiences had not fully been accounted. An important aspect to involvement in communist politics for some seemed to be the Socialist Sunday School and , to a lesser extent, organisations like the Woodcraft Folk and the Young Pioneers. The Socialist Sunday School was particularly strong in the West of Scotland and the second chapter covers childhood antecedents to political involvement.
Subsequent chapters cover the following: Party activity in the 1930s and life in the Party's structures. The role of the Scottish Women's Advisory Committee and its importance in politicising women. Internationally there is the influence of the Soviet Union and its leaders such as Stalin , Khruhschev and the events of 1956. After this there is a concentration on the new generation of women who came into the party from the 1960s. Here the route to political commitment is traced as are the impressions of joining a now firmly established political culture. The role of the YCL is particularly revealing at this time in Scotland as it was a small but vibrant body.
The role of new theories , development of criticisms of the party's structures and its loyalty to the Soviet Union are the central concern of the penultimate chapter (Seven). Here the divisions that arose over The British Road to Socialism, feminist and sexual politics, and the split over the Morning Star are crucial to the late 1970s and the 1980s. Overall there is an attempt to show the importance of the party's organisation - branches, committees and congresses, and how members addressed issues among communities, groups and at work.
Since the first interviews were started in 1994, three of the respondents have died. Inevitably the interviews were often flawed and I needed to amend questions and re-record some respondents. However as methodology improved (and I spoke less!) there were many valuable contributions, not least illuminating the great commitment and central role that women played in the CP in Scotland. All this was done with their full consent and co-operation although I am sure that had I attempted to do this thesis ten or twenty years ago, then I would more would have declined the opportunity to express themselves. That the CPGB had folded had a lot to do with peoples openness as so many respected and were loyal to the Party. It became clear that women undoubtedly made a greater impact from the 1960s.
There were many women who had passed away over the years and had never been recorded. This is a real tragedy for feminist and political historians as well as many other social scientists. Therefore the importance of recording senior CP members cannot be understated. Although this study is now over I plan to record ex-CPGB members when the opportunity arises.
Neil Rafeek, University of Strathclyde
'I'd sooner be shot than expelled from the Party': Dave Springhall
Douglas Frank ("Dave" or "Springie") Springhall was born in Kensal Green, West London on 28th March 1901, the son of an insurance agent. He was educated at elementary school and in 1916 enrolled in the Royal Navy for a twelve-year stint. In 1920, while still a naval rating, he became involved in the revolutionary movement, writing an article for Sylvia Pankhurst's Workers' Dreadnought entitled "Discontent on the Lower Deck". In November 1920 Springhall was discharged from the Navy for "associating with extremists", although he managed to avoid a court-martial (he was dismissed "services no longer required").
He was soon an active member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and became the Thames Valley Organiser of the National Unemployed Workers' Committee Movement. He led delegations of the unemployed to the Richmond and neighbouring Boards of Guardians and was involved in the local trade union movement, sitting as a delegate on the Richmond Trades and Labour Council. On several occasions he was elected to the Richmond Board of Guardians as the candidate of the unemployed. He also stood for Richmond Town Council, first as a Labour candidate and then as a Communist. For a time he worked in the building industry but in 1924 he was victimised for his trade union activities.
In 1922 the CP directed Springhall into work in the Young Communist League. At the YCL's second National Congress in 1923 he was elected to its Executive Committee, which put him in charge of the Communist Children's Sections. In 1924 he visited Russia as a delegate to the Fifth Congress of the Communist International and the Fourth Congress of the Young Communist International. He returned to Russia in 1926 when he was among the British delegates to Plenum meetings of the Comintern and YCI. Later the same year he became Acting Secretary of the YCL and was twice gaoled for his activities in the General Strike and its aftermath.
During 1926-8 Springhall worked as an assistant in the central Organisation Department of the CPGB. Then in 1928 he was sent to Russia to study at the International Lenin School, the Comintern's "university" in Moscow. According to some sources, in 1929 Springhall was one of the "Young Turks" who overturned the CPGB leadership for their reluctance to follow the Comintern's ultra-left "New Line".
Springhall returned to Britain in 1931 and became the Secretary of the CP's North East District until 1932. He was then elected to the Party's Central Committee and became the full-time Secretary of the London District; he was also elected to the Political Bureau and put in charge of the CP's central Organisation Department. In 1935 he was on the British delegation to the Seventh Comintern Congress.
Springhall is said to have played a prominent role in removing Trotskyists from the Party during the 1930s. One Trotskyist, Steve Dowdall, recalled that Springhall told him "I'm surprised at you, Steve … I'd sooner be shot than expelled from the Party".
In December 1936 Springhall was one of the first British Communists sent out to organise the British Battalion of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. He served as Political Commissar of the British Battalion and then Assistant Commissar of the 15th Brigade. In February 1937 he was shot during the battle of Jarama but, miraculously, the bullet passed through his cheeks and caused only a flesh wound. It has been alleged that while in Spain he was working for Soviet Military Intelligence (the GRU).
Between April 1938 and August 1939 Springhall was the editor of the Daily Worker. He then became the CP's representative in Moscow. However, after the British Communists came out in support of the war against Germany in September 1939 Springhall was sent back, bringing instructions from Moscow to change the line to one of opposition to the war. When Harry Pollitt was removed from his post as General Secretary for resisting the change of line Springhall, along with R P Dutt and Bill Rust, took over the leadership of the Party. He assumed responsibility for secret coded radio communications with Moscow, became the Party's National Organiser and again took charge of the central Organisation Department.
In July 1943 Springhall was convicted of obtaining secret information from an Air Ministry employee named Olive Sheehan and sentenced to seven years' penal servitude. The CP disowned Springhall and expelled him; at the same time his wife was fired from her job at the Daily Worker. It later transpired that Springhall had also been receiving secret information from Captain Ormond Uren of the Special Operations Executive.
Springhall served four and a half years of his sentence and was released in 1948. After a spell working in advertising he apparently travelled to Moscow, Prague and then the Far East. In April 1950 Springhall and his wife appeared in China as press advisers to the Chinese Information Bureau of the Press Administration. On 2nd September 1953 Springhall died of throat cancer in Moscow, where he had gone to seek medical treatment. According to the press, his wife had only recently renewed his British passport.
I would like to thank Monty Johnstone, for supplying some of the documentation on which this note is based, and Simon Fowler, for turning up information about Springhall's time in Richmond. Any further information anyone can provide about Springhall, particularly his espionage activities, would be very welcome.
David Turner, Canterbury Christ Church College
Book Review
Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power? and Ten Days that Shook the World
N. Lenin, Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?, 122 pp, Sutton Publishing, 1997, £2.99 (pb); John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World; The Illustrated edition, xiv + 273pp, Sutton Publishing, 1997, £19.99 (hb)
These two works have acquired historical status and are essential reading for all students of Russia's October 1917 Revolution. Lenin's Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power? was written first as an article on the eve of the revolution for which he confidently argues. John Reed's Ten Days provides a vivid and pulsating day-to-day account of that major event
Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power? was written shortly after Lenin had completed his better known State and Revolution. Unlike the latter, however, in which the Party barely features, the Bolshevik Party's claim to revolutionary leadership here constitutes the core of its argument. It is directed primarily at Bazarov and the group of left-wing socialists around Maxim Gorky's paper Novaya Zhizn', described by Lenin as 'quarter-Bolsheviks'. They shared Lenin's opposition to Russia's imperialist war, but criticised the Bolsheviks' preparations in the autumn of 1917 for organising an armed insurrection and seizing state power.
Discussing the widespread view that the Bolsheviks would never dare 'to take the whole governmental power into their hands alone', Lenin writes that the Bolsheviks would be unworthy of calling themselves a party if they refused to do so when the opportunity presented itself. He argues that they now have sufficient support to lead the workers to 'destroy all that is oppressive in the old state machine' and substitute their own new apparatus in the form of the Soviets of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants.
Lenin compares the 240,000 Bolshevik Party members of that time acting in the interests of the poor with the 130,000 landowners oppressing 150 million Russians. Expecting that the quarter of a million Party members would be backed by a million adults votes (they were actually to receive nine million, or 24%, in the elections to the Constituent Assembly), he concludes that they already had a 'state apparatus' of a million people 'faithful to the idea of the socialist state'. This, he avers, could be enlarged further by 10-20 million people drawn into administering the country.
A few weeks later Lenin started disproving in practice the prediction that the Bolsheviks would be unable to take and hold on to state power. However, the years ahead were to show that he had greatly minimised the problems involved in so doing. Thus more than four years after taking power, he was to indicate that no more than a few thousand workers throughout Russia had been engaged in governing the country. And, looking back in 1923 he was to note that 'our state apparatus is to a considerable extent a revival of the past and has undergone hardly any change'.
This new edition is a facsimile of the booklet published in this country in 1922 by the Labour Publishing Company.
John Reed was an American left-wing socialist, and later communist, and a journalist of great talent, who was in Petrograd at the time of the October Revolution. His Ten Days captures the excitement and high hopes of working people in that city, which he shared, during those world-shaking days.
Reed moved around the city, spoke to people of opposing views, attended often heated and chaotic popular assemblies and congresses, and made notes and wrote up what he heard and saw. In addition he worked hard to provide, both in the text and in the 56-page Appendix of his book, some of the essential documents of the revolution, including a number from its opponents. However, not having been privy to the closed debates in the Bolshevik Party leadership prior to the rising, he is not immune on occasion from using hearsay leading him into factual error. In particular, his account of Lenin and Trotsky being initially on their own in the Central Committee meeting of 23 October 1917 in voting to organise the insurrection is incorrect. The Central Committee minutes, published later, show that the vote was 10-2 for the rising with only Zinoviev and Kamenev voting against.
Reed's book is no substitute for a study of the archives essential for a critical evaluation of the debates and decisions of the Bolshevik leadership and for examining possible alternatives open to them. It is however a crucial complement to these, indicating popular moods with vital influence on the actions of Lenin and his comrades.
Ten Days conveys the spirit and activity of the workers and soldiers in Petrograd and Moscow, which made October into a popular revolution albeit with elements of a coup d'état — a term which Reed applies twice to the Bolshevik planned, organised and led armed uprising. However, he also insists that 'if the masses all over Russia had not been ready for insurrection it must have failed. The only reason for Bolshevik success lay in their accomplishing the vast and simple desires of the most profound strata of the people'. These desires were dominated by the people's yearning for an end to the war, movingly captured in Reed's account of how the Congress of Soviets greeted the unanimous adoption of the Decree on Peace introduced by Lenin.
Reed's classic first appeared in 1919 and had a great impact in Russia and on Socialists and Communists throughout the world. In a foreword Lenin wrote: 'Unreservedly do I recommend it to the workers of the world ... It gives a truthful and most vivid exposition of the events so significant to the comprehension of what really is the Proletarian Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat'. However already in the 1920s the book was subjected to some criticism by Stalin (whose name occurs in it only once) and in the mid-1930s it became an acute embarrassment to the Communist establishment. Trotsky and most of the other revolutionary leaders, apart from Lenin, prominently featured in the book were now being condemned in Moscow as agents of fascism.
Reed, who died in 1920, had left the copyright of his book to the Communist Party, which in 1937 refused permission for the News Chronicle to serialise it. J.R Campbell, in this period of High Stalinism, claimed in the Daily Worker of 11 April 1938 that, after the Moscow Trials, 'we would be failing in our duty if we allowed to be reprinted a book containing inaccuracies and legends'. It was not until 1962, following the 20th and 22nd CPSU congresses and its reappearance in the Soviet Union, that Lawrence and Wishart re-issued Ten Days in Britain.
The new edition is attractively produced and well-illustrated. It has a 6-page introduction by Harold Shukman outlining Reed's adventurous life. At nearly three times the price of the Penguin edition still available at £6.99, it is however regrettable that the publishers have not provided it with a name and subject index.
Monty Johnstone, London
Articles
The Red Menace: British Communism and the State 1920-51
From its origins to the height of the Cold War the Communist Party of Great Britain (hereinafter CPGB) played a starring role in the demonology of the authorities as the perceived main threat to the British Constitution. While the paranoia of some sections of the state needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, it is a mistake to categorise the response of Diehard politicians and secret policemen as the stereotyped reaction to the 'Red Menace'. Indeed state management of the CPGB was to prove a lot more devious and sophisticated than some of the more 'ferocious anti-bolsheviks' in the security community would have wished [1]. Exactly as the Cold War warrior view of the CPGB as a monolith manipulated by Moscow, with ratchet like obedience to the whims of the Comintern and or Stalin is a myth, so is the interpretation that there is a uniform paranoid reaction by the state to the 'threat' posed by the CPGB [2].
The cautious accelerated opening of the Public Records, under the Open Government Initiative (OGI) is slowly transforming our knowledge of the secret state. The pioneering academic research of Christopher Andrew, Nicholas Hiley and Bernard Porter, which have produced scholarly and often amusing histories of both the achievements and shortcomings of the British intelligence and security communities in the twentieth century, is now being documented in recent releases [3]. While the most fascinating material, as far as the CPGB is concerned, relates mainly to the second world war, there has also been interesting radio intercepts from the Government Code and Cypher School relating to Comintern messages to the CPGB between 1934 and 1937, as well as the Venona material on KGB and GRU espionage during the war [4]. These provide useful additional information to that available for some time, from long released Cabinet Office documents relating to the political surveillance of 'Revolutionary Movements' in the United Kingdom between 1920 and 1924, (mainly the CPGB) and some Home Office files from the later 1920s [5]. The interwar period between 1924 and 1939 remains a problem as little, so far, has been declassified. Some indication of the extent of the material can be gauged from the recent publication of the HO 144 lists, one of the two main Home Office categories of record pertaining to public order and the CPGB, which are closed for 75 or 100 years and contains over thirty files relating to aspects of the political surveillance of the CPGB and its 'solar system' of front groups. Much of the remainder is to be found in the HO 45 series, which has not so far listed its holdings, and has a closure period of 50-100 years. Although certain material has, under the OGI, been subject to consumer led accelerated opening, the vetting procedures and permission from Special Branch makes the process subject to lengthy delays.
The second world war, however, is not only an interesting period for state-CPGB relations, but files relating to this theme have recently been released into the public domain. There are several fascinating Home Office general files relating to Communist propaganda, the political surveillance of the CPGB, communist activity in youth organisations and the About Turns of the period. Also of considerable interest are the minutes and papers, from the Cabinet Office, of the Home Defence (Security) Executive (HD(S)E) between 1940 and 1945, one of whose chief concerns was the state management of the CPGB, both during the anti-war period of the party before 22 June, 1941 and the more anti-Nazi than Churchill position after the invasion of the Soviet Union [6]. This includes the minutes of the 117 meetings of the subcommittee on Communism between February 1941 and 1945. This met more times than the HD(S)E, the main talking shop which supervised Britain's internal security during the war [7]. It will be interesting to see whether material pertaining to security service surveillance and the state management of British communism will be released in the papers due to be declassified from MI5 files on the second world war, at the end of this year.
State attitudes towards the CPGB derived from the social dislocation at the end of the first world war. The impact of the Russian Revolution, growing social and political discontent in the aftermath of war, the frustrated rising expectations of the failure to create the 'homes fit for heroes' to live in, structural unemployment and the collapse of law and order in Ireland created considerable anxiety for the Colonel Blimps and those vainly trying to return to the ordered certainties of the Edwardian age, which had forever passed away. The long gestation period before the eventual emergence of the CPGB, more than a little helped by cajoling and a head banging exercise on the fractious participants conducted by the Comintern in Moscow, ensured that the CPGB would become a scapegoat to explain state anxiety to pervasive discontent between 1919 and 1922.
There were also several other worrying factors for those concerned at social unrest. While all sections of the economy were hit by deflation, defence and security felt the main force of financial cuts. The military point blank refused to continue aiding the civil power except as a force of last resort, despite the Chief of the General Staff being the redoubtable, reactionary and bellicose Sir Henry Wilson. Although all four Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police in the interwar period were 'brass hats', the militarisation of the police was to be in organisation only. Greater civil security was to be achieved by higher productivity and greater efficiency by the police, on far fewer resources. MI5 was cut back from over 800 to less than 30 members in the interwar period and Special Branch, too, underwent drastic pruning. It was not surprising, then, as social unrest mounted, as the Labour Party with its socialist constitution became the second party of the state, and both the IRA and the suffragettes could be perceived by Diehards as being rewarded for their violence and unconstitutional behaviour, that the secret state should become a last ditch redoubt for those that wished to preserve the world that never was. The CPGB, emerged at precisely the right moment as a revolutionary metaphor, whose strength was vastly inflated and exaggerated by Britain's security agencies, as a result of the resources, direction and control they received from Moscow. The first world war had created the British security industry, saving us from the dastardly, and mainly mythical designs, of the 'Hun'. Now the undermining of the British state had passed under new management; the Communist octupus whose tentacles were operated by the Comintern, and who were quickly seen as the perceived threat who controlled and manipulated the CPGB from Moscow in a concerted conspiracy to undermine the British state.
While some of the actions of the authorities had some of the elements of farce to meet a non-existent threat, there were enough moments of uncertainty in the interwar period, and social discontent, to ensure the survival of Britain's new security apparatus in peacetime. Most interestingly, the most serious challenges to the authority of the state, the General Strike in 1926 and the Hunger March organised by the National Unemployed Workers Movement in 1932 were both portrayed as communist conspiracies by MI5, MI6 and Special Branch even if, sensibly, most politicians rightly concluded that they reflected industrial rather than political discontent [8]. But the strength of the liberal tradition in both administration and government made many in Whitehall sceptical of the scaremongering of the security buffs, diehards and secret policemen. Even within the security community there were divisions reflecting the bitter struggle between overlapping agencies for diminishing resources, and between a more liberal and objective military professional intelligence tradition and the Diehards. While all were militantly anti-communist, some wished to deliver a knock out blow by banning the CPGB, whilst others, more sensibly, recognised that driving 'the enemy within' underground, was less efficient than maintaining political surveillance, which enabled subtler forms of political management and manipulation.
These divisions in the interwar period reflected both tactical and ideological differences. While it is a mistake to categorise the security and intelligence communities and secret policemen as reactionaries, and most politicians and administrators as being more relatively liberal, these 'ideal type' caricatures do reflect some aspects of reality. The problem was that although all were fiercely anti-communist, most of the different security authorities were suspicious of each other and politicians and civil servants had different agendas, the former obsessed by high politics and public opinion, the latter by the law, and all concerned by the most efficient means of spending less to obtain a greater degree of social cohesion. Hence the interwar period saw much rationalisation and cutting corners to maintain internal security.
Victory in the security wars of the interwar period was to go to MI5. Sir Vernon Kell, the head of MI5 between 1909 and 1940, was to see his fortunes alter dramatically over the period. Outmanouevred by the alliance between the wartime Director of Naval Intelligence, Sir Reginald 'Blinker' Hall, and the head of Special Branch, Sir Basil Thomson, in 1919, Kell's role was reduced to keeping the communist virus out of the armed forces. Thomson was made responsible for civilian security, but his Directorate of Intelligence quickly fell foul of Lloyd George's suspicions that its high profile alienated the Labour movement, which became increasingly concerned about agents provacateurs tactics by professional intelligence agents. The Directorate of Intelligence was closed down in 1921 and its functions taken over by the more discrete Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police. Surviving an attempted takeover by MI6 in 1923 and 1925, Kell was to be rewarded for his parsimony and efficiency, when he became the beneficiary of another security review in 1931, when his empire was expanded with the creation of the Security Service, responsible for both civilian and military security. MI5 was made responsible for the direction and analysis, while Special Branch became the police arm although it retained the political surveillance of anarchism and the IRA. This meant that MI5 became responsible for the state management of the CPGB.
Interwar security agencies were also influenced by two very different traditions of political surveillance and policing. One of the solutions to the postwar realities of economic cuts and social crisis, was the establishment of private intelligence organisations associated with patriotic middle class societies like the British Commonwealth Union, the Middle Classes Union and the British Empire Union [9]. By their very nature these were often dominated by right wing views, funded by Diehards like the Duke of Northumberland, and influenced by the antisemitic, anti labour and obsessional anti-communist views of the grand dame of British conspiracy theory, Nesta Webster. Orchestrated by 'Blinker' Hall, National Propaganda emerged as a right wing think tank which pooled 'intelligence' about the Soviet conspiracy to undermine the British Empire in the 1920s, gathered by such organisations. The resources of this organisation were later taken over by the Economic League; its director, John Baker White was not only fiercely anti-communist, but he was also to be responsible for a McCarthy style blacklist, designed to weed out alleged communist sympathisers and radicals in British industry, until it was exposed in 1991. Baker White's mother was also a personal friend of Nesta Webster. There were also direct lines of contact between the 'patriotic' organisations and MI5. Important figures like the agent runner Maxwell Knight, and the agent James McGuirk Hughes, were recruited into MI5 from the patriotic organisations.
However there were also more liberal and professional intelligence and policing influences in the security community. While no less hostile to threatened public disorder and as suspicious of the revolutionary activities of British communists as the Diehards, nevertheless the influence of General Sir Nevil McCready was to be crucial to state management of revolutionary and extremist organisations in the interwar period. McCready had been responsible for the successful military-police strategy in defusing civil unrest in South Wales between 1910 and 1911; this had been achieved by a rigidly neutral stance which did not use the military directly in the employer's interest, and by the acquisition of objective intelligence on the actions of capital and labour, which was often used to defuse potential flashpoints. Macready, as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in 1918-19, although he sacked the strikers in the Police strike, he was also responsible for the crucial evidence to the Desborough Commission in 1919, which emphasized that management of civilian security depended on the militarisation of the administration of the police using the lessons learned in South Wales. The fact that his hand picked successor, Brigadier-General Horwood, and the new head of Special Branch, Major-General Sir Wyndham Childs, both worked with Macready in South Wales, was not without significance. Childs was nicknamed 'Fido' by the Home Office, because of his devotion to Macready. Horwood's takeover of Thomson's Directorate of Intelligence in 1921 symbolised the victory of the more professional over the ideological approach to political surveillance. Horwood still wished to outlaw the CPGB, but was prevented from doing so by the Home Office who considered this would both make political surveillance more difficult, and infringe civil rights to freedom of expression providing no illegal acts were being contemplated.
What is noticeable in the released records is both the monotonous refrain from MI5, MI6 and Special Branch about the revolutionary objectives of the Comintern and the CPGB, and, apart from moments of crisis like the industrial discontent between 1919 and 1922, and the General Strike in 1926, the far more sceptical view of most politicians and civil servants. While Whitehall valued what it considered objective intelligence about CPGB activities, it was more discerning about the propaganda fed it by the security authorities. Thus, for example, the inaccuracy of reports of Hunger Strikers armed with offensive weapons in 1932, and of the persistence of false information about the CPGB forming paramilitary working class defence organisations, led to increasing scepticism. The state became selective in the use of the persistent drip of exaggerated reports of CPGB behaviour from the Security Service.
Even after the CPGB early move to the United Front in 1932, and the transition to the Popular Front in 1935, the reaction of the Security authorities remained the same. Such manouevres were seen as merely changes in tactics, a machiavellian ruse to infiltrate and then takeover other radical organisations. Anti-fascism was interpreted by MI5 as not primarily designed to defeat Mosley on the streets, or to organise a working class defence of the Spanish second Republic, but a means of undermining reformist trade unions and the Labour Party, and of subverting potential revolutionary competition from the Independent Labour Party. For MI5 only CPGB tactics varied; when it was more advantageous communists denounced other radicals as 'social fascists' (particularly after the General Strike), while when greater advantage could be gained from working with other working class organisations or progressive groups, the creation of front organisations, or infiltration was the tactic employed. The steady growth of the CPGB in the 1930s, from 10,000 to over 17,500 in 1939 led to increased concern about the need to isolate the CPGB and prevent its permeation of the Labour Party and trade unions in particular.
The second world war saw the paranoid views of the security service with regard to the CPGB infect all levels of the state apparatus. The Nazi-Soviet pact of 23 August 1939 turned the demonology of security buffs into a widespread concern about a communist 'fifth column'. The first 'About Turn' of the CPGB in the war, from militant anti-fascism to anti-war evoked much cynicism in the state [10]. MI5 particularly emphasised the change of line, and argued that even the most principled grovelled to Moscow when the chips were down. In fact the CPGB line in 1939, which portrayed Hitler and Chamberlain as two sides of the same coin, could be relatively easily adapted to the new line; 'against Fascism and War' now became 'against Imperialist War' and advocated Leninist tactics of revolutionary defeatism after October 1939. Both the state and the CPGB were cautious in their behaviour; the authorities did not wish to evoke sympathy for communists by overreacting and making them martyrs through persecution. The CPGB did not wish to create public hostility by behaviour which could be construed as unpatriotic. In practice CPGB behaviour, as opposed to sloganising and the dissemination of propaganda, was little different from the 'war on two fronts' policy of the first few days of the war, although criticism of the 'men of Munich' was stepped up, a neutral attitude to the war was adopted and criticism of Hitler largely disappeared from the Daily Worker.
Although the CPGB was more active in its opposition to the war than the British Union of Fascists, the state was very careful not to evoke sympathy for them through overt persecution. The initial discussion of how to neutralise the CPGB in the HD(S)E 'disclosed the delicacy of the whole question' [11]. Whereas interning Fascists was perceived as uniting the country during the fifth column scare, the CPGB was treated with kid gloves. One of the principle reasons for the collapse of France in 1940 was seen to be the divisions created, and the subsequent fall in morale occasioned by the internment of Communist MP's and Mayor's at the outbreak of war. An unofficial 'Sixth Column' network informed the Ministry of Labour of 'suspicious characters' in industry and shop steward attempts to impede production [12]. However the authorities were well aware that communist criticisms often genuinely reflected economic grievances, and given the important role CPGB shop stewards played in engineering and strategic industries like aircraft production, the situation was carefully monitored.
Special Branch sources, which accurately portrayed the process of the changing of the line at the outbreak of war, also followed the alleged debate on CPGB response to the threatened Nazi invasion during the Summer of 1940 in the Political Committee. This suggested that the CPGB should do nothing to hinder the invader, as a Nazi Britain would be inherently unstable, rapidly disintegrate and create a revolutionary situation from which the CPGB, possibly with Soviet assistance, could seize power [13]. CPGB members should also be trained to take advantage of the chaos following a Nazi invasion, and be instructed in the rudiments of control of local government. While MI5 and the HD(S)E did not wish to compromise their sources of information, measures were taken to lessen the 'threat' posed by the CPGB. Raids on CPGB printing presses were stepped up, communist criticisms of Air Raid Precautions were countered, the Ministry of Information increased censorship of Communist pamphlets, the Convention campaign was carefully monitored and finally, in January 1941, the Daily Worker was closed down. This effectively hindered the dissemination of CPGB propaganda, and through the gradual throttling of communist influence in the crisis the CPGB were not perceived as being persecuted, thus avoiding a significant division in public opinion.
The 'highly charged electric current' following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, produced the second 'About Turn' of the war [14]. Overnight the CPGB turned an intellectual somersault and reverted to virulent anti-Nazism. Strange behaviour on both sides was to develop in state-CPGB relations. On the surface 'God save the King' was in full harmony with the 'Red Flag', as his worship the Mayor sang the praises of our new noble ally, the Soviet Union, from the same platform as the CPGB. The CPGB now adopted the unlikely stance as the 'apostles of national unity', published such epics of industrial collaboration as 'Our Production Campaign' and denounced as 'Trotskyists' those who opposed the Essential Works Order and opposed industrial conscription. In practice, from the state's perspective, the communist ugly duckling had turned into an unwanted swan. Steps were taken to minimise the impact of CPGB propaganda and to 'steal the thunder of the left' as the Ministry of Information ensured the takeover of all CPGB propaganda activities, new regulations were put in place to ban political meetings on industrial premises and the influence of communist shop stewards on Joint Production Committees were carefully monitored [15]. MI5 reminded the HD(S)E that the aims of the CPGB had not changed; it was still the violent overthrow of state power. The current desire to boost the war effort was merely a 'camouflaged plan' to disguise their real intentions. Lord Swinton, the Chairman of the HD(S)E in 1941, concluded that 'the communist game is still the same; but it is being played on a much better wicket' [16]. Political surveillance of the CPGB was stepped up and the CPGB's campaigns for lifting the ban on the Daily Worker in 1941-2, the creation of the Second Front (1942-4), the opposition to the release from internment of Sir Oswald Mosley (1943-4) and opposition to British intervention in Greece (1945) were ignored. As tensions between Britain and the USSR developed, particularly over Poland, so the views of MI5 and the Security Executive became more widespread. By the end of the war the Chiefs of Staff were arguing that the CPGB was a Soviet 'fifth column' Trojan Horse in British Societ The coming of the Cold War was to extend such an analysis to the whole state.
Richard C Thurlow, University of Sheffield
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|
1. |
R Thurlow, The Secret State, (Oxford, 1994) pp.107-172
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2. |
Ibid, p.110
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3. |
C Andrew, Secret Service (London, 1985), N Hiley, 'The Failure of British Counter-Intelligence against Germany 1907-1914', Historical Journal 28, 4 ,1985 pp.835-862, N Hiley, 'Counter-Espionage and Security in Great Britain during the First World War', English Historical Review 101,1986 pp. 100-126, B Porter, The Origins of the Vigilant State (London, 1987), B Porter, Plots and Paranoia (London, 1989)
.
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4. |
PRO HW/15, PRO HW/17
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5. |
PRO CAB 24, PRO HO/45 'Disturbances'
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6. |
PRO CAB 93/2-CAB 93/7
|
7. |
PRO CAB 93/5 Minutes of the Committee on Communism
|
8. |
R Thurlow, op. cit., pp.110-125
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9. |
J Hope, 'Surveillance or Collusion? Maxwell Knight, MI5 and the British Fascisti', Intelligence and National Security 9, 4, October 1994, pp.651-675.
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10. |
R Thurlow, '"A Very Clever Capitalist Class": British Communism and State Surveillance 1939-45', Intelligence and National Security, 12, 2 April 1997, pp.1-27.
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11. |
PRO CAB 93/2 HD(S)E 4. 29 May 1940
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12. |
PRO HO 45/25552/832463/172
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13. |
PRO HO 45/25552/832463/106, Special Branch 25 June and 2 July 1940, CAB 93/2 HD(S)E 46, Swinton to Anderson, 24 January 1941
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14. |
PRO 45/25573/865000/5 Special Branch 23 and 28 June 1941
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15. |
PRO CAB 93/3 SE/130 'The Communist Party Policy of the Ministry of Information'
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16. |
PRO CAB 93/3 SE/122 'The Communist Party of Great Britain'
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The Communists' Capital
This is a slightly edited version from Arbejderhistorie, no 3, 1995, pp.1-13 [1]
"Confidence, spirit of self-sacrifice and belief are the capital of the communists". The words are Martin Nielsen's with clear reference to the indestructible debate about Moscow Gold. Throughout the years the denials of the Danish Communist Party [DKP] have been Pavlovian. The party was produced by its members' sacrifices and not a penny received from the Soviet Union. Now that Russian archives, including those of the CPSU and Comintern, are accessible to researchers, we can investigate the matter with less passion. And the history of the communists' capital is wholly different to that claimed by the communists, as I will document below.
For the Danish party we do not — yet — have a whole series of documents concerning its financial support, and access to key parts of the archives has been subject to politically determined fluctuations. This, for example, is the case for the Comintern period (1919-1943), where the two central archive units, namely the budget commission and the OMS (section for illegal transactions), were opened only to particular researchers and are now totally closed again. And for the post-war period only some of the documents concerning financial transfers are declassified and accessible. But in both cases we can lean on the researchers who did get access to the relevant archives for information about Danish circumstances, and draw parallels from similar circumstances elsewhere.
German Revolution costs millions
From his many years as a professional revolutionary Lenin knew that theory and self-sacrifice are not enough. Money is required to get an organisation functioning. During the First World War he recognised the need for a new international. Then, after seizing power in November 1917, it soon became obvious to him that in order to succeed the Russian Revolution needed support from revolutions in the heartlands of capitalism, first and foremost in Germany, Britain and France. These different perspectives were linked in Lenin's plan to establish a Third Communist International. A conference called to discuss the idea in March 1919 was declared the international's first congress. Lenin was convinced that if the European revolution was to save the Russian one, then it would require money. But it was precisely money that was in short supply in the war-torn country. The first large sums which the Comintern had at its disposal came therefore from confiscated jewels and diamonds, even from the sale of morphine [2]. Thus, on 30 May 1919, jewellery worth 300,500 rubles [3], morphine worth 7,500 rubles, plus cash: 100,000 German marks, 100,00 Swedish crowns and 6,500 rubles, was transferred to Germany. On 9 September 1919, jewellery worth 250,000 rubles was transferred, and on 28 September 1919, jewellery worth 639,000 rubles. Most of the money was administered by Jakob Reich with the alias Thomas [4] who also built up the Comintern's propaganda apparatus in Germany. For 1921 alone, the Comintern paid out more than 10 million marks to the publishing enterprise, which only took c. half a million marks in receipts.
SAP and the Comintern Money
When Marie Nielsen established the Socialistisk Arbejderparti in March 1918, she used 750 crowns of her own savings in the enterprise in order to establish the weekly paper Klassekampen. She also received a contribution of 800 crowns from the Zimmerwald Commission in Stockholm. It was a further development of the wartime left-wing opposition and was led by the Russian Angelica Balabanova and the Swedish left-socialist Zeth Höglund. On 2 December 1919, the Comintern transferred 4,000 pounds, 4,000 dollars, 52,000 Swedish crowns and 25,000 German marks to the Swedish bureau [5]. The money was surely destined for the Scandanavian parties. Already during 1919, when Socialistisk Arbejderparti was in difficulties, the Swede Otto Grimlund, at that time the Comintern's treasurer, had to pay out to save Klassekampen from going under. On 1 October 1919, Brimlund granted 10,000 Swedish crowns to pay off the paper's debts, and wrote to Nielsen: "It seems to me hopeless to continue throwing such unprecedented sums at KK as we have done up to now" [6]. The size of these large sums is not known, but an informer, presumably a police-agent, indicated a sum of 100,000 crowns [7]. At the Comintern Executive (ECCI) session of 21 January 1919, it was decided to send a courier to Denmark in order to unite the forces in support of the Comintern. The minutes also indicate that the courier would be taking 12,000 rubles with him [8]. The Danish police were very concerned about rumours of Russian money passing through Copenhagen during 1919, particularly the trading in rubles. The Bolsheviks were printing false Romanov rubles which, according to information given to the police, they sold in Copenhagen. And when the British gave the Whites in Archangel permission to issue their own rubles, the Bolsheviks also began to forge them and sold them in Copenhagen [9]. However, the police never succeeded in getting closer to the events than the rumours.
The Comintern was desperate to establish communist parties in Europe. And to that end money was required. Jewellery, diamonds and money were smuggled in and then used in a very generous financing of the often very tiny communist parties. According to the already mentioned survey of the 1919-20 period, the following was sent to Italy: 15,200 German marks, 331,800 Finnish marks, 13,000 Swedish crowns, 300,000 rubles and jewellery to the value of 487,000 rubles. The following was sent to the USA: jewellery worth c.2.7 million rubles. To France went jewellery worth 2.5 million rubles in 1919, and jewellery worth 1 million rubles plus 1.6 million German marks in 1920. The Poles received 10 million (presumably rubles). Jewellery worth 8.5 million rubles went to Britain, and £55,000, equivalent today to about £1 million, is said to have gone to establish the CPGB and at the same time support the Independent Labour Party [10]. When comrade Thomas/Reich returned to Germany in 1921, he brought with him 25 million marks in gold, comparable to 37 million paper marks [11]. When one considers that Russia, at that time, was suffering one of its worst famines, costing the lives of millions, one understands how desperately Lenin relied on the revolution spreading, but also the human costs of this policy.
VSP, DKP and the money 1919-45
Venstresocialistisk Parti (VSP) was set up in November 1919, when a number of small left-wing groups united. The party affiliated to the Comintern and participated in its Second Congress in 1920, changing its name to Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti (DKP) in accordance with the CI's 21 conditions. We know little about its subventions in the earlier years but we can be sure that the party received support. The Swedish party (Sveriges Vänstersocialistiska Parti), even before it became the Swedish Communist Party (SKP) in 1920, received 100,000 Swedish crowns from the Comintern. Later that year it received another 50-55,000 Swedish crowns from the ECCI's budget commission, something like 1 million crowns at today's value [12].
In August 1920, Martin Andersen Nexø sounded out the possibilities in Moscow of fusion between DKP and Fagoppositionens Sammenslutning (FS — a syndicalist organisation). Already financial questions were raised: a fusion could only occur if the FS daily Solidaritet could be maintained in one form or another. And one found that form in the idea of a federation. Subsequently, Christen Christensen from FS clearly stated that it was the Comintern money that sugared the bitter federation pill. When Solidaritet and the DKP daily Arbejdet were fused into Arbejderbladet in May 1921, the Comintern granted 65,000 crowns — today about 700,000 crowns — to cover its operational costs for the first quarter. That was more than any of those involved had dreamt of, so they splashed out on employees [13].
This was not the only money DKP received in 1921. In the archive of party chairman Ernst Christiansen, a unique set of letters from the Swedish communist Oskar Samuelson, the Comintern's Scandinavian treasurer at the time, is preserved; he distributed large sums to both the USA and to the European parties [14]. Samuelson appears in the letters under different and the letters, addressed to "Carl Madsen, Köpenhamn", and are commonly rendered in an 'easy code', as if they were business correspondence [15] But the subject dealt with is not always so effectively hidden, and financial and organisational questions mentioned almost in the same breath. One of the preserved letters is partially written in a number code, in which each letter consists of two figures, such as 23 January. The code, which also survives, consists of two strips, whereby the first has a vertical series of letters (the Swedish alphabet) framed in squares. The second has three rows: a vertical row of numbers, a vertical row of square holes and a vertical row of letters in square frames and in another order than on the first strip. By laying the two over each other one can translate numbers to letters according to a varying value. The decoded letter is an enquiry whether Richard Jensen can send a "Finnish comrade illegally to America".
Most of the letters concern money, and the recipients are numerous. Thus Arbejderbladet is described as "Jos & C:s business" (Johs Erwig and Chr Christensen were the editors), the publishing house is called "TT's business" (Thørger Thørgersen ran the publishing house), while DKP is called "Your own movement". The letters contain traces of many requests for money, many warnings not to use too much and constant demands for receipts and budgets. One sees here the beginning of the development of the special relationship between Moscow and the individual parties. Since the party can always use more money, then one asks for it. The money should really go towards recruiting more members and more readers. Instead it looks as if the money acts towards cementing the party together as something one can live off. In this way, the money becomes something very central in the development of the relationship between Moscow and DKP — or any other party.
If one adds up all the payments named in the letters and calculates the Swedish crowns into Danish crowns, then from 1 July to 31 December 1921 there are payments of 64,060 crowns. In this sum is probably included a part of the 65,000 which was granted for May, June and July, but still the major part relates to the rest of the year.
However, the subvention granted was quickly reduced [16] and "the generosity of the earlier years was replaced by precisely calculated grants according to recommendations from ECCI's budget commission" [17] For example, for 1922 we know that DKP requested a support of 210,000 crowns, but the party only got 18,750 crowns. The Danes received 5,000 gold rubles for 1924, the same is the case for 1925 [18].
Moscow was not impressed with the Danish party's results. Its violent factional struggles took up most space in the reports. For the 1926 election the party succeeded in getting an extraordinary subsidy of 3,700 crowns [19], but that was an unusually large amount. Comparing the few details we have on DKP's subsidisation in the 1920s with those available for other parties, there seems to be a clear relationship between the significance Comintern ascribed to the party and the subsidy granted. We know that the Dutch party got a fixed sum every quarter, but there were also individual large amounts granted after requests to the budget commission. In the French party's case, it seems that up to one third of its expenditure was covered by the subsidy during the 1920s. The Swiss party had c.60% of its expenses paid by the subsidy during the 1930s [20]. However, the Danish party was a problem-child put on a starvation diet, but the system of a fixed allocation plus possible extraordinary subsidies seems to have been the same. When the CI emissary Heinrich Wiennecke came to Copenhagen in January 1930, in order to cut the Gordian factional knot, he requested thus Comintern to quickly send "the regular subsidy", and the calculating of a quarterly budget [21]. Regular requests are made for extraordinary subsidies, as the party is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy — not just the one [22]. It is not easy to determine the amounts from this material but only the subsidies' significance: as much for the big as for the little party they very quickly became a modus vivendi, and gradually a necessity, too. It is thus obvious that the party's ready response in relation to Russian wishes and orders becomes more sensitive when the party is economically in the pocket of the Comintern. A possible straw in the wind can be found in the balance sheet for Arbejderbladet in the period August 1929 to June 1930. The paper's total income is 18,000 crowns. To this is added a 'subsidy' of 4,700 crowns, which presumably came from the Comintern [23].
The same system appears to have operated throughout the 1930s. In his biography of Aksel Larsen, Kurt Jakobsen writes about a collection at Christmas 1939: "The 10,000 crowns was attained in the course of just four days, and in total the collection officially reached 56,000 at the same time, renewed extraordinary economic support from Moscow arrived again" [24]. In November 1939, Alfred Jensen was in Moscow to raise "the question of an economic subsidy to party and paper". After a recommendation by Florin, secretary with responsibility for Danish affairs at ECCI, the subsidy was adopted [25].
On 9 April 1940, Aksel Larsen and Martin Nielsen were in Moscow for discussions, and henceforth the link to Moscow was maintained by Larsen writing letters in a simple code (i.e. with changed names) about the party's and country's situation. There was another informer for the Comintern in Copenhagen, as one can see from the reports in the Comintern archive. Whether during this time, and also later during the party's wartime illegality, money was still transferred is not known. But in the telegrams received by Comintern from the Swedish party, it appears that Nexø had operated as a money-courier, that the Swedish party received relatively large sums of money every quarter (from 10,000 to 60,000 Swedish crowns), and that it had the task of mediating information from Denmark and Norway. It is quite conceivable that SKP received money for DKP's operating costs in Sweden during the latter's illegality, perhaps also for further transference to Denmark [26].
The new system
The Comintern was officially dissolved in the summer of 1943. However, its General-Secretary, the Bulgarian Dimitrov, continued at least until some time in 1944 as leader of a secretariat, which collaborated with the foreign ministry and the intelligence services regarding information on parties and persons. From 1944, the fighting communist parties began to reappear out of illegality, and Dimitrov himself later went home to Bulgaria. The World Party, the Communist International, was dissolved, and the individual parties were now autonomous and independent from any leadership beyond their own congresses, as also from the Soviet party (VKP(b)). That at least was the case on the formal and juridical plane.
In reality, the VKP(b) had come out of the war with an enormous authority, more than enough to replace the formal subordination. Moreover, the apparatus for continued links in these new times was already created just after Comintern's dissolution. A large foreign department with its basis in Stalin's secretariat [27] was set up in VKB(b)'s Central Committee and kept up links to the communist parties. This department could draw on the foreign service of the Soviet state, for no precise line was drawn between party and state authorities. As yet we do not exactly know how and under which forms the 'new system' was established. We do know that Martin Nielsen, while on the death-march from Stutthof, was gathered up by the Red Army and flown to Moscow. Here he had conversations with Dimitrov and when he arrived home 31 May 1945, he brought drawings with him for DKP [28]. We do not know the contents of the drawings but one can see from the first correspondence conducted, that DKP's relationship to the CPSU was akin to that towards the Comintern earlier. For example, in September 1946, deputy foreign minister Dekanozov writes to Zhdanov, the VKP(b) secretary, about a conversation with the ambadassor in Denmark, Plakhin, who informs him that DKP intended to send Alfred Jensen to Moscow: "According to comrade Plakhin the leadership of the Danish communist party needs advice. The comrades in the leadership feel unsure about everything they do." [29] In the following years, the new system was extended with the formation of Cominform in 1947, including the communist parties of Italy and France as well as the "people's democracies". We cannot say for sure whether renewed financial support began immediately the war ended, but from 1950 at least it took on solid forms.
A number of the new people's democracies had individually supported various west European parties; particularly the PCF, which was supported by the Hungarian (150,000 dollars), the Polish (100,000 dollars) and the Czechoslovak communist party (100,000 dollars). On 19 July 1950, the VKP(b) Politibureau decided to set up the 'International Trade Union Fund for the support of left-wing working class organisations', with its seat in Bucharest under the Rumanian trade union council. The aim was to give financial support to foreign left-wing parties, progressive trade unions and social organisations. In the first year 2 million dollars was to be put into the fund, of which VKP(b) contributed 1 million dollars, the Chinese communist party 200,000 dollars, East Germanys' SED, the Polish United Workers Party, the Czecoslovak communist party, the Rumanian and Hungarian parties each 160,000 dollars. The fund was to be managed by a representative from VKP(b) together with one each from the Polish and the Rumanian parties. On 16 August 1950, V Grigorian, leader of the foreign department, informed Stalin, that Boris Ponomarev had negotiated with Gheorghiu-Dej, Rakosi, Gottwald, Pieck and Bierut from the respective parties, who had all replied positively, although Gottwald had been less enthusiastic. No reply had come from Mao Zedong [30], but it arrived, as did the 200,000 dollars. In January 1951, Grigorian informed Stalin on how the money had been used. In the last 6 months of 1950, eleven parties had received money. The top-scorer was the Finnish communist party with 874,000 dollars, followed by the PCF, which received 300,000 dollars on top of the 300,000 it had received earlier in the year. Interestingly enough, the PCI had received 400,000 dollars while the Italian socialist party (Pietro Nenni's party) had received 100,000 and Trieste's communist party 40,000. In Scandinavia, only the Norwegian party (NKP) had been endowed, with 20,000 dollars [31].
Support in the 1950s-1960s
On 8 February 1951, the Politbureau decided that support for 1951 should be 1.5 million dollars according to the same pattern as 1950. While DKP was not recorded as receiving money in 1950, it may be that it received support for which we have so far found no documentation. As I show later, VKP(b)/CPSU did give extraordinary sums of money direct from party/state funds. And in 1950 DKP received a sum which should perhaps be put onto the SED account: a First of May gift "from 9,200 German workers" of an automatic Mercedes printing press for Land og Folk [32].
The 1951 allocation was distributed with the Finnish party in first place with 874,000 dollars, the PCF with 600,000 the PCI 500,000 and the Nenni socialists 200,000. In Scandinavia, the Swedish party (SKP) got 20,000 and the DKP 7,500. In addition, VKP(b) distributed a further 600,000 dollars from its own coffers to the PCF which, altogether, therefore, received 1.2 million dollars. The Japanese and Indian parties also received separate sums [33].
For 1952, the sum in the fund was 2.5 million dollars, 1.15 million of which came directly from CPSU (as it was now called). There is no comprehensive statement of accounts for all the various sums paid out but the French, Italian and Finnish parties were again the top-scorers. SKP got 25,000 dollars and NKP got 20,000 dollars.
For 1953, the fund was up to 3.425 million dollars, but already on 7 May, PCI, the Nenni socialists and Trieste's communists had been given 2.05 million, while PCF got 1.2 million. The fund was thereby emptied, but the CPSU supplemented it with 750,000 dollars. DKP apparently got nothing from the 1953 amount, while SKP and NKP got 25,000 dollars each. The Finns received 400,000 dollars [34].
For 1954, the fund was increased to 5 million dollars. Of this the Finns received 480,000 dollars, SKP 55,000 dollars, NKP 30,000 dollars and DKP 25,000 dollars [35]. A sum of 1.374 million dollars was not distributed. This was put into the 1955 total, which thereby became 6,424 million dollars. In addition to that, CPSU contributed 1.7 million dollars from its own coffers. PCI got 2.64 million and PCF got 1.2 million, while the Finns got 450,000, NKP and SKP got 30,000 each, and DKP got 25,000 dollars. There were payments to 28 recipients in all, mostly to communist parties [36].
At the CPSU's Twentieth Congress in February 1956, leaders of the parties participating in the fund were to be informed that for that year it would total 5.5 million dollars, the CPSU contributing 3 million, with a further 179,000 dollars remaining from the previous years. The top-scorers were the usual ones, though one notes that the Austrian party received 200,000 dollars from the fund plus 200,000 direct from CPSU. The Finns got half a million, SKP 70,000 dollars, DKP 25,000 and Iceland's socialist unity party 20,000 dollars. That was not the only help DKP received in 1956. In May, the CPSU decided to give Land og Folk two new composing machines worth 60,000 rubles and the foreign trade ministry was instructed to formulate a document to make it seem that DKP was buying the machines [37]. Such material assistance was not a burden on the Soviet Union's foreign currency earnings in the same way as contributions in dollars.
In 1957, the fund reached 5.5 million dollars. The PCI received all of 2.635 million dollars, topped up by an extra grant of 500,000 dollars directly from CPSU. The Finns again got half a million, NKP 45,000, SKP 40,000 and DKP 65,000 dollars [38].
While the details we have for later years are limited for individual parties like the DKP, through Loupan and Lorrain we can trace the development of the total sum as follows: 1958, 6.8 million dollars; 1959, 9 million; 1960, 9.05 million; 1961, 10.5 million; 1962, 11.05 million; 1963, 14.65 million; 1964, 15.75 million dollars [39].
The Chinese stopped paying in to the fund in 1962. In 1966, following Brezhnev's take-over, the fund was renamed The International Fund for Help to Left and Working Class Organisations. Apart from the Chinese, the same contributors were involved.
Loupain and Lorrain publish the document showing the support for 1969. That year's total was 16.5 million dollars, the CPSU paying 14 million, the Czechs, Rumanians, Poles and Hungarians 500,000 each, the Bulgarians 350,000 and the East Germans 200,000. The SED's modest contribution was probably the result of its contributions that year to setting up the new West German CP. Top of the list that year was PCI with 3.7 million dollars, while the PCF received 2 million and the American party 1 million. There are 34 recipients on the list, among whom one notes Lelio Basso and his PSIUP, which received 700,000 dollars. Basso's party became worthy of support following Pietro Nenni's party entering a Christian Democrat led government in 1963.
In 1969, the Danish party got 100,000 dollars, roughly equivalent to the 65,000 it had received in 1957 [40]. The allocation over the 12 years may have fluctuated but presumably there was a constant increase in dollars corresponding to a quite constant sum in real terms. Those 12 years were difficult ones for DKP, struggling to keep its paper going. In this period, C.H. Hermansson, upon taking over leadership of the Swedish party in 1964, demonstrated his independence by not taking subsidies. The Norwegian party meanwhile continued its slow but sure decline towards oblivion. All this made DKP a much more interesting prospect, known as it was for its loyalty.
Other subsidies to the DKP are documented in the CPSU CC archive in the special file of decisions: on 15 May 1958, 20,000 rubles changed at the then rate of 4 rubles to the dollar; and one 24 February 1959, 10,000 rubles changed into crowns. On 13 July 1959, CPSU telegraphed support to the extent of 50,000 crowns for the publication of the CPSU's history in Danish, with a similar sum granted on 6 February 1960. At the same time, it was decided to organise 5-6 week courses for leading Danish comrades in the theory of Marxism-Leninism. This would become a further source of income for DKP. The courses were free to DKP but the party charged the members participating fees in crowns. These fees went directly into party coffers. Incidentally, the proposal for the courses came from DKP. On 28 September 1960, DKP received 12 documentary films from CPSU worth 100,000 rubles. And on 17 December 1960, following a request from DKP's CC, 16,750 rubles were granted for exchanging [41]. When I visited the CPSU's CC archive in 1993, the file of decisions was still accessible. But if one looks at the survey in Danica i Rusland, based on unhindered access to the whole files, one can see requests from DKP's CC by the score, and before copies of that material comes to Denmark, we are unable to say anything certain about the extent of the supplementary granting of subsidies [42].
Support 1970-1990
The Rumanians withdrew from the fund following a number of squabbles in 1974. That year 18.4 million dollars were shared out. In 1977, the fund was up to 18.7 million dollars. In 1981, 15.295 million dollars was shared out. That year the US party topped the list with 2 million dollars subsidy, PCF got the same, while the Finns got 1.4 million. The Italians were not on the list, and reflecting internal developments between Moscow and the communist parties. Thus, the Swedish Workers Communist Party appears on the list with a subsidy of 100,000 dollars. That is not the 'old' communist party VPK, but the new old-style party. The Norwegian party got 50,000 dollars, while DKP had become No 11 on the list with a subsidy of 350,000 dollars [43].
The international fund reached 20.35 million dollars in 1985, but in real terms it declined in value during the 1980s. Under Gorbachev the subsidies further declined and totally vanished with the dissolution of the Soviet Union following the coup in 1991. By this time, according to Loupan and Lorrain, the total direct subsidy to the PCF alone from 1950-1990 was c. 50 million dollars, along with other forms of subsidy such as free newsprint for L'Humanité and Drapeau rouge. Between 1982 and 1989 this amounted to 4,058 tons of free paper [44].
Other forms of support
The DKP too benefited from many indirect sources of support such as the printing press, composing machines and courses mentioned above. In 1969, Land og Folk again received a printing press form the GDR. Large subsidies were also attained through the party's publishing house. That started already in the 1930s with Mondes Forlag, which published the stenographical reports from two of the Moscow Trials, paid for completely by the Russians. The Mega, Sputnik and Tiden publishing houses, all received large subsidies towards publishing Russian books in Denmark. The subsidies could be in the form of direct payment for production in Denmark, in free translations from Russian, or by the publisher receiving books wholly produced in the Soviet Union and given cheaply for sale in Denmark. In such a business practice subsidies could be built in by a variety of means. If one could convince the Russians that it was wholly unrealistic to think of being able to publish Lenin's Selected Works in Danish, the printing subsidy could be raised to a level at which it produced a masked subsidy to the party. But the translation could also be inflated.
In 1961, the party began publication of the journal Verden Rundt, which from 1963 appeared as a supplement to the journal Tiden. It contained articles from the world communist movement. The subsidy for the printing of Verden Rundt surely helped cover the costs of Tiden. There are several statements to the effect that Ib Nølund just took the money to finance Tiden with him home from Prague. Similarly, one should note that the Russians subscribed to a large quantity of Land og Folk, which were flown to Moscow every day. One should also add to these indirect subsidies the many holidays that leading Danish communists took in the Soviet Union or other Eastern-Bloc countries; also the lecture-tours they undertook while there, for which they were very well paid. One should also remember the friendship societies, for there is no doubt that they were wholly paid by the Russians [45].
DKP — a party on benefit
A related question is: how such large means were channelled into an organisation like DKP, why so few knew about it and how it affected the organisation. Among those I have spoken to there seems to be agreement that DKP's print works Terpo Tryk was a key channel for the supplying of the Russian money. The print shop simply received large print orders from the Russians which they carried out at inflated prices. The work was done much better that in the Soviet Union, but the price was many times greater than one could have expected to pay in Milan or Lisbon. Inflating the invoices was in that sense a conscious subsidy to DKP. Sometimes the payment never turned up and the party's president, Jespersen, Jensen or Sohn, had to travel to Moscow to rescue the party from bankruptcy. Whether Terpo was the conduit for the sums we can find on the list of payments is not known at present. Possibly, one can speak of subsidies both via inflating invoices and direct cash subsidies. The KGB chief in Copenhagen in the1960s-70s, M.P. Lubimov has said in newspaper interviews that he paid cash sums to Knud Jespersen. And the previously mentioned anonymous source, who worked in the CPSU's foreign department with regard to Scandinavia during the 1960s, has confirmed that the KGB was used for transporting the money.
Stories of Moscow Gold have represented a permanent component of DKP's press history. That they could be rejected as mere stories is closely linked to the fact that only a very few knew anything of what really happened and how it happened. The few who knew have had no interest in telling because they were themselves implicated. Just as Aksel Larsen never told about Arne Munch-Petersen, neither did he tell about the money, because it would taint him too. Detailed accounts were never presented to the CC. The details of the accounts were known only to a tiny circle consisting of the treasurer, business-manager, president and accountant. Once the accounts had been audited the main figures were presented to the party leadership.
What effects did the money have on DKP? It is naturally difficult to establish, but certainly one can say that apart from easing the party's economic situation, the money also created problems. The money gave the party a false sense of its possible range and a swollen bureaucracy. In the 1970s there were almost 100 employees in the DKP enterprise, and although the two print shops required a number of typographers and lithographers, there were proortionately many employees for 10,000 members. A previous party employee believed that this made the employees thoughtless in regard to expenditure. And that resulted, for example, in Terpo Tryk not being a competitive printing firm.
One can ask oneself the question, whether there would have been a communist party in Denmark without the Russian subsidies. Of course, one cannot give a serious reply. But it is certain that if there had existed a self-sustained communist party in Denmark it would have had a much more moderate dimension and would have had to live with a much more limited staff. Land og Folk would hardly have survived 1958.
One can also ask oneself the question: why did the Russians pay such astronomical sums to keep a communist movement going? There is hardly any doubt about the answer in the early period. Lenin relied on the Comintern to break the isolation the Russian Revolution was undergoing once the German revolution was stillborn. When this situation changed is hard to say. Did Stalin himself believe that he was on route to communism and that the Comintern was a tool for undertaking the world revolution? It is difficult to give an unambiguous answer. At any rate, he put his own survival and that of the system above everything else. It is obvious that the Soviet leadership at some stage must have asked itself whether it had any purpose to sustain life in a communist movement unable to function on the same scale without subsidies. And seen in that perspective, that the communist movement was a type of supplement to the foreign service, a type of voluntary corps for public relations services for the Soviet Union, the expenditure is in a proportion that is understandable. But the question is rather whether it makes complete sense only in understanding the relationship in terms of aims. After all, ideological struggle is connected with both illusions and also lies in the case of all large nations. It is particularly valid for the US ideological offensive over democracy. I think that one must count on at least a part of the answer being found in the Byzantine character of Soviet public life. The communist ideology ('Marxism-Leninism') was the only form of thought allowed. It did not necessarily mean that a consensus existed around it, but the terror made sure that other forms of thought were always subject to suppression. It probably also created in a part of the old, now in reality outdated thinking, a certain inertia perhaps also linked to a certain nostalgia. Such as the Americans have regarding their revolution and the civil war.
Morten Thing, Centre for the Study of Working-Class Culture, Copenhagen
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1. |
Thanks to Torgrim Titlestad, Lars Björlin, Kurt Jakobsen, Jukka Paastela, anatolij chekanskij and Niels Bredsdorff for their help during the project, and to Ole Sohn, Frank Aaen and Bjørn Grøn and others, who want to remain anonymous, for allowing me to question them about their earlier role as functionaries in DKP and CPSU.
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2. |
Documentin rossinjskij tsentr khanenija I izucenija dokumentov novejsej istorii (RTsKIDNI), Moscow, 495-83-1, published in Victor Loupan and Pierre Lorrain: L'Argent de Moscou. L'histoire la plus secrete du PCF, Paris, 1994, p 46.
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3. |
After the February 1917 revolution in Russia new rubles 'Kerensky rubles' were introduced to replace the old 'Romaniv rubles'. On 20 December 1918, trade in Kerensky rubles were stopped in Copenhagen because the rate for 1,000 R had fallen from 58 to 38. Then the White's rubles, issued in Archangel, and the Bolshevik's rubles. Loupan and Lorrain reproduce documents showing diamonds transferred to Comintern. But although the carat is given together with the value in rubles, it does not permit us to conclude the value of the ruble, as there is not clear relation between carat and the ruble value (Louan, o cit p 53 and p 57). The ruble was not noted on Copenhagen's Stock Exchange in 1919. As the inflation after the revolution in Russia was enormous, it is most probable that it concerned here the pre-revolutionary gold ruble, which corresponded to 0.774 g. gold, which would make a ruble 0.87 dollars or 4.05 Danish crowns in 1919. In 1922, the new Chervonets was introduced, which was valued at 10 pre-revolutionary gold rubles (Maurice Dobb: Russian Economic Development Since the Revolution, London, 1929, p 225).
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4. |
See Alexander Watlin: 'Genosse Thomas' und die Geheimtätigkeit der Komontern in Deutschland 1919-1925, in Watlin: Die Komintern 1919-1929, Mainz, 1993, p 23.
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5. |
Loupan, op cit p 48.
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6. |
Otto Grimlund to Marie Nielsen 25 August 1919, in Marie Nielsen Archive in Arbejderbevægelsens Bibliotek og Arkiv (ABA).
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7. |
Anonymous report in AIC archive, ABA.
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8. |
Minutes of ECCI session 21 January 1919, RTsKhIDNI.
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9. |
Information in various cases in possession of the Danish State Police concerning collaboration with military authorities, 1919.
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10. |
Paul Anderson and Kevin Davey, New Statesman, 7 April 1995.
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11. |
Watlin, op cit p 30.
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Lars Björlin: Ur Moskvas Perspektiv. Kommunismen I Sveriged 1919-1970 betraktad och bedomd I Moskva. En oversikt. The author very kindly put his manuscript from 1995 at my disposal. The information is from the archive of the budget commission, 495-82-4.
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13. |
Kurt Jakobsen: Mellem København og Moskva, Copenhagen 1989, pp 33 & 45.
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14. |
Lars Björlin, op cit.
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15. |
See e.g. G Carlson to Carl Madsen, sending 10,000 Swedish crowns, 1 July 1921, Ernst Christiansen's archive, ABA. The letters subsequently quoted are also found here.
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16. |
Jakobsen, op cit, p 45.
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17. |
Jakobsen, op cit, p 111.
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18. |
Lars Björlin, op cit. References are to the budget commission's archive 495-82-6, 9a, 12.
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19. |
Jakobsen, op cit, p 135.
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20. |
Information from Gerrit Voerman, Stéphane Courtois & Peter Huber in conference papers of Groupe de recherche sur le communisme ouest-européen in Nanterre, April 1995.
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21. |
Kurt Jakobsen: Moskva som medspiller. DKP's gennembrud og Aksel Larsens vej til Folketinget, Copenhagen 1987, p 56.
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22. |
Jakobsen, op cit, pp 38, 84, 91, 122. But there are also examples of pleas not helping, pp 40, 181, 183.
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23. |
DKP archive, ABA. Jakobsen op cit, note 2, p 211.
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24. |
Kurt Jakobsen: Aksel Larsen — en politiisk biografi, Copenhagen 1993, p 236.
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25. |
RTsKIDNI 495-74-181 and 495-18-1320.
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26. |
RTsKIDNI opis vkhodjascikh telegramm ot nomera 15. nacato 1 janvarja 1942 g. I have not had access to this file but lean on notes by Torgrim Titlestad.
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27. |
Niels Erik Rosenfeldt: Stalin's secret Chancellery and the Comintern. Copenhagen 1991, p 52.
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28. |
Kurt Jakobsen: Aksel Larsen, op cit, p 301.
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29. |
RTSKIDNI 17-128-167.
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30. |
Tsentr Khranenija Sovremennoj Dokumentatsii (TKSD), Moscow, 89-38-22 and 23. See also Jan Foitzik: Aus der buchhaltung der Weltrevolution. Finanzhilfen der 'regierenden kommunistischen Parteien' für den internationalen Kommunismus 1950-1958, Jahrbuch für historische Kommunismusforschung 2, 1994, pp 140-47.
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31. |
TKSD 89-38-24.
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32. |
Land og Folk, 28/4/50.
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33. |
TKSD 89-38-26.
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34. |
TKSD 89-38-15, 16, 18.
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35. |
TKSD 89-38-28.
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36. |
TKSD 80-38-33-5/
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37. |
Decisions file TKSD.
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38. |
TKSD 89-38-29.
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39. |
Victor Loupan and Pierre Lorrain: L'argent de Moscou, op cit, p 211. The figure for 1960 from TKSD 89-38-36.
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40. |
Loupan, op cit, p 215 and document 61.
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41. |
Decisions file TKSD.
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42. |
Danica i Rusland. Kilder til Danmarks historie efter 1917 i russiske arkiver. Resultater af et forskningsprojekt, National Archive 1994, pp 267-277.
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43. |
Loupan, op cit, document 61.
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44. |
Loupan, op cit, p 234.
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45. |
Lars Björlin can document that it was so in Sweden in 1962 with 100,000 S Kr.
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