new telegram from ‘Grisha,’ ” said the Communist leaders. “The insurrection is postponed!”
Again the Comintern couriers sped through Germany with new orders and a new date for the revolution. This state of alarm continued for several weeks. Almost every day a new telegram would arrive from ‘Grisha’ (Zinoviev)—new orders, new plans, new agents from Moscow with new instructions and new revolutionary blueprints. At the beginning of October, orders came through for the Communists to join the governments of Saxony and Thuringia in coalition with the Left Socialists. Moscow thought that these governments would become effective rallying centers for the Communists, and that the police could be disarmed in advance of the uprising.
At last the stage was set. A categorical telegram came through from Zinoviev. Again the couriers of the Comintern sped to every party district in Germany passing along the word. Again the Communist battalions mobilized for the attack. The hour drew near. There could be no turning back now, we thought, and awaited with relief the end of those nerve-wracking weeks of delay. At the last moment the Central Committee of the German Party was again hurriedly convened.
“A new telegram from ‘Grisha’! The insurrection is postponed again!”
Again messengers were dispatched with urgent last minute cancellation orders to the party centers. But the courier to Hamburg arrived too late. The Hamburg Communists, with true German discipline, went into battle at the appointed hour. Hundreds of workers armed with rifles attacked the police station. Others occupied strategic points in the city.
Communist workers in other parts of Germany were thrown into a state of panic.
“Why are we doing nothing while the workers of Hamburg are fighting?” they asked the district leaders of their party. “Why don’t we come to their aid?”
The party lieutenants had no answer to give them. Only those on top knew that the workers of Hamburg were perishing because of ‘Grisha’s’ latest telegram. The Hamburg Communists held out for about three days. The great working-class masses of the city remained indifferent, and Saxony and Thuringia did not come to the aid of the Communists. The Reichswehr under General Von Seckt entered Dresden and threw the Communist-Left Socialist cabinet of Saxony out of office. The Thuringia cabinet suffered the same fate. The Communist revolution had fizzled out.
Those of us in Germany all knew that headquarters in Moscow were responsible for the fiasco. The entire strategy of the proposed revolution had been worked out by the Bolshevik leaders of the Comintern. This made it necessary to find a scapegoat. The factional rivals of Brandler in the German Party were familiar with the Comintern technique of covering up the mistakes of the high command, and they at once swung into action.
“Brandler and the Central Committee are responsible for our failure to capture power,” shouted the new “opposition” headed by Ruth Fischer, Thaelmann and Maslow.
“Entirely correct,” echoed Moscow. “Brandler is an opportunist, a social democrat. He must go! All hail to the new revolutionary leadership of Ruth Fischer, Thaelmann and Maslow!”
At the next World Congress of the Comintern this was all dressed up in ritualistic resolutions and decrees, and with Moscow’s blessings the German Communist Party was turned over to its new general staff.
Brandler received an order to come to Moscow, where he was deprived of his German passport and given a Soviet office job. German matters, he was informed by Zinoviev, were no longer to concern him. All of his efforts to return to Germany were unsuccessful until his friends threatened to create an international scandal by bringing the matter to the attention of the Berlin government. Only then was he released from Soviet Russia and expelled from the Communist Party.
Souvarine, the eminent French writer and author of the most comprehensive biography of Stalin, had the same experience. Ousted in 1924 from the leadership of the French Communist Party by order of the Comintern, he was detained by the Soviet government until his friends in Paris threatened to appeal to the French authorities.
Upon one branch of the Soviet government the costly experiment of 1923 was not entirely wasted. That was the Military Intelligence Service. When we saw the collapse of the Comintern’s efforts, we said: “Let’s save what we can of the German revolution.” We took the best men developed by our Party Intelligence and the Zersetzungsdienst, and incorporated them into the Soviet Military Intelligence. Out of the ruins of the Communist revolution we built in Germany for Soviet Russia a brilliant intelligence service, the envy of every other nation.
Shaken by the defeat in Germany, Moscow began looking for other fields of conquest. By the late fall of 1924, Germany had become stabilized. The Communist International after nearly six years had not a single victory with which to justify its enormous squandering of money and lives. Thousands of Comintern parasites were on the Soviet payrolls. Zinoviev’s position within the Bolshevik Party was beginning to wobble. A victory, somehow, somewhere, was necessary at any cost.
On Soviet Russia’s western border was Estonia, a tiny nation, then apparently in the throes of a crisis. Zinoviev and the executive committee of the Comintern decided to throw all Marxian theory to the wind. Summoning the chief of the Intelligence Department of the Red Army, General Berzin, Zinoviev spoke to him along these lines: Estonia is in a revolutionary crisis. We will not act there as we did in Germany. We will use new methods—no strikes, no agitation. All we need is a few courageous groups under the command of a handful of Red Army officers, and in two or three days we will be masters of Estonia.
General Berzin was a man who obeyed orders. In a few days a group of about sixty reliable Red Army officers, mainly Baltic Russians, was organized under Zhibur, one of the heroes of the civil war. They were directed to enter Estonia through different routes, some through Finland and Latvia, others by slipping across the Soviet border. Awaiting them in Estonia were scattered special Communist units totaling about two hundred men. By late November all preparations were ready.
On the morning of December 1, 1924, a “revolution” struck at specified focal points in Reval, the capital. The country remained completely calm. The workers proceeded to their factories as usual. Business moved at a normal pace, and in about four hours the “revolution” was completely crushed. About one hundred and fifty Communists were shot on the spot. Hundreds of others not connected with the affair in any way, were jailed. The Red Army officers returned quickly to Russia along pre-arranged routes. Zhibur reappeared at his desk in the offices of the General Staff, and the Estonian “revolution” was hushed up as quickly as possible.
In Bulgaria, the Comintern enjoyed a period of prosperity while Stambouliski, the leader of the Peasant Party, was in power. Stambouliski was friendly to Moscow. The remnants of General Wrangel’s White Army, which the Bolsheviks had driven out of the Crimea, were on Bulgarian territory, and the Soviet government was anxious to break up this force. With Stambouliski’s consent Russia sent a group of secret agents into Bulgaria for this purpose. These agents used every method of propaganda, including the publication of a newspaper, and every means of terror, including assassination. To a considerable extent they were successful in demoralizing this potential anti-Soviet army.
Despite these friendly relations between Stambouliski and Moscow, when in 1923 Tsankoff executed a military revolt against Stambouliski’s government Moscow directed the Bulgarian Communist Party to remain neutral. The Communist leaders hoped that as a result of the death struggle between the army reactionaries and Stambouliski, they would gain full power for themselves.
Stambouliski was overthrown and slain. Tsankoff established a military dictatorship. Thousands of innocent people went to the gallows, and the Communist Party was driven underground.
Two years passed and the Comintern
