Robert Service - Spies and Commissars

But although Chicherin could now mask Soviet pretensions abroad, he could not make them disappear. The People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs conducted business for a state that needed to spread the message of revolution to foreign working classes if Sovnarkom was to survive the hostility of world capitalism. At the same time — until fraternal revolutions took place in powerful countries — Chicherin had to conciliate those governments willing to grant diplomatic recognition and open their economies to trade with Russia. Comintern’s open espousal of proletarian insurrection and dictatorship inevitably complicated his overtures. The work was made no easier by Zinoviev’s poaching of personnel from the People’s Commissariat. Even Litvinov and Vorovski were seconded to fulfil tasks for Comintern. 9This was bound to render them still more suspect in the eyes of states abroad and put obstacles in the path of Soviet diplomacy. Gradually Chicherin achieved agreement that Comintern should publicly be kept separate from the People’s Commissariat. Zinoviev saw the sense in this and asked to keep his own couriers rather than share them with Chicherin. 10In May 1919 the Politburo also ruled that Comintern alone should conduct illegal work abroad, and a ban was introduced on Soviet embassy personnel engaging in efforts that broke local law. 11

The separation of functions was never as neat in reality, and the Politburo muddled everything again by appointing Litvinov to oversee the Comintern budget. 12From Litvinov downwards, Soviet diplomats abroad remained in active contact with revolutionaries committed to insurrectionary violence. Chicherin, in fact, had no basic objection. His only stipulation was that embassy officials should carry out their clandestine functions without getting caught. He wanted world revolution no less fervently than Zinoviev.

By July 1920, when the Second Comintern Congress took place, there had been much organizational progress. The Germans already had a communist party and the French and Italians were well on their way to establishing theirs. Advances in America and Britain were slower as the Executive Committee put militants under pressure to form a single party in each country. The path towards this end was being smoothed by Comintern’s money, which always went to communists who toed the Russian line. Comintern leaders picked the British Socialist Party as the likeliest instrument for the Soviet cause in the United Kingdom. Being to the left of the Labour Party, it was a stalwart of the Hands Off Russia movement; and like all groups on the political extreme left, it was experiencing the torments of internal struggle — in this case between factions led by E. C. Fairchild and John Maclean. Their conflict was gradually surmounted through the intervention of Theodore Rothstein acting on Moscow’s orders. Rothstein’s own influence had risen through his close ties with the Kremlin, and he received a hearing before British militants which began the process that ended in splitting the British Socialist Party and creating the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920. 13

The Second Comintern Congress imposed a universal scheme for communist parties to be organized on the Bolshevik model. The parties were to be centralized, hierarchical and disciplined. They had to recognize Comintern as the supreme authority on every matter of importance. ‘Internationalism’ was to take precedence over national concerns.

Yet Comintern had a long way to go in the cause of creating communist parties everywhere, and delegates came to Moscow devoted to the cause but not yet leading large organizations. Their ways were rough and ready. The communist organization in Mexico chose three comrades, including the American political refugee Linn A. E. Gale, to represent it at the Second Congress. None of them, however, could go. As chance had it, the Japanese communist Keikichi Ishimoto was passing through Mexico City on his way to Moscow via the United States and Norway. Gale, who was himself not Mexican but an American in exile, warmed to Ishimoto as being ‘quite young but a fine, sincere fellow’. Gale and his comrades decided to transfer their credentials to him for use in the Congress proceedings. 14The fact that Mexico’s national representation passed so casually into the hands of an obscure Japanese says a lot about the haphazardness of the arrangements. In Brazil it was Comintern which took the initiative. Its agent, a certain Ramison, searched Rio de Janeiro for militants who might found a communist party. He made his first approach to Edgard Leuenroth, who bluntly refused. Pressed to give his reasons, Leuenroth exclaimed: ‘Because I’m not a Bolshevist!’ 15Ramison, though, knew that Comintern did not mind who created parties as long as they were created, and he eventually found people who would start the process for him. In Moscow, Zinoviev had confidence that the Executive Committee could cope with any difficulties that might arise. There would be many zigzags on the road to world revolution and the Bolshevik leaders were masters of the art of political manoeuvring.

In July 1921 the Politburo set up a world trade union agency — Profintern — in parallel to Comintern. It was to be an international centre for unions that rejected working inside the capitalist system. Communists would lead and inspire Profintern, challenging the broader labour movement to fortify the resistance to governments and employers. In its first pronouncement Profintern made an open declaration of its hostility to the entire order of capitalism around the world.

The Soviet authorities were not just looking to Europe and America. In September 1920 Zinoviev organized a Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku. As the capital of Azerbaijan, the new Soviet republic, it appeared the best place for the communist leadership to signal to Muslim peoples that Moscow wanted to befriend national liberation movements. Joint action against the imperial powers was proposed. The treaty of Sèvres in August 1920 subjected the Middle East to British and French control, and the communist leaders in Moscow intended to exploit existing regional resentments as well as those which might arise as the result of the treaty. They also aimed to cause trouble for the United Kingdom in India. If Indians overturned British rule, the entire empire might fall apart — and the French imperial edifice might well collapse soon afterwards. Communism’s militant atheism was a barrier to the recruitment of followers since religious belief and affiliation was well-nigh universal in Asia. In Baku, therefore, care had to be taken to avoid giving offence to Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and other believers; and communist speakers were under orders to avoid showing disrespect for popular traditions. The ‘peoples of the East’ were instead to be won over by the promise that Comintern could help them to break off the shackles of imperialism and modernize their economies and cultures. Communism would benefit from European and US capitalists losing their grip on the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Zinoviev, Radek and Kun gave rousing speeches at the ceremonial meeting of welcome. The Azerbaijani communist leader Nariman Narimanov, himself an Azeri, opened the first full session. 16Although Narimanov was a communist through and through, he argued that the Congress should unite behind a common struggle: ‘I say that we are now faced with the task of kindling a real holy war against the British and French capitalists.’ 17Radek was also fiery, asking: ‘How is it that a little handful of British are able to keep under their heels hundreds of millions of Indians?’ 18The speeches were translated instantaneously into Turkish and Persian. Enver Pasha, a prominent figure in the military campaign under Mustafa Kemal to salvage Turkey’s independence after the Ottoman defeat in the Great War, sent passionate greetings to the Congress and wished the Red Army well. 19John Reed, recently returned from the US, denounced American imperialism. 20A Council for Propaganda and Action was elected with its base in Baku and the audience rose to sing the Internationale. 21Zinoviev closed the proceedings with a modification of one of Karl Marx’s most famous slogans. From Baku onwards, he announced, the words of The Communist Manifesto needed to be changed to: ‘Workers of all lands and oppressed peoples of the whole world, unite!’ 22