BOOKS

of the Third International and the Communist Parties of the so-called 'Latin countries'.

Much vital historical evidence is locked away in Moscow, if not actually destroyed.

Few of the participants have been able to tell their own stories and those that do exist tend to be one-sided. Many of them were murdered by Stalin in the 1930s and those. who remained faithful to Stalinism to the end have kept their mouths shut.

Humbert-Droz's fate was exceptional and his documents have been preserved and are now published by the Amsterdam Institute of Social History.

TOGLIATTI

Entering the service of the Comintern in 1921, his break with Stalinism came 20 years later in the safe haven of Switzerland, where he was Communist Party His archives are presented French and with each item given with annotations in the original language. At least a selection could be usefully publiched in Fnalich . ..

Humbert-Droz came from a family of Swiss watchmakers.

Trained for the Protestant clergy he was, for a short time, pastor of the • French church in bayswater.

He had already joined the Swiss Socialist Party in 1911 at the age of 20 and during the First World War took up a pacifist position and was imprisoned.

In 1916 he broke with the Church and from 1919 he published a journal called 'Le Phare', which became the official organ of the Third International in Switzerland.

He took part in the Second Congress of the Comintern and in 1921 became one of the Executive Committee secretaries with responsibility for the 'Latin countries.

Between 1922 and 1925 he Jived illegally in France, Italy and Spain as Comintern agent entrusted with considerable powers to intervene in the internal life of the Communist Parties.

The duties which he undertook involved Humbert-Droz in a mass of correspondence with the Comintern, with the parties and with individuals. In most cases, for purposes of reference and to check on any dispute which might arise, he sent copies for safe keeping to his mother in a small Swiss village.

His career is less important than the documents which he preserved and has now been able to publish. In a preface dated 1966 he does, however, try to justify his position.

As he points out, in the critical period which followed the death of Lenin: 'Most of the best collaborators of Lenin who had passed years in emigration and who knew the international workers' movement from having been active in its different foreign socialist sections joined the opposition of Trotsky-Zinoviev...?

Not so Humbert-Droz, who was a Bukharin supporter and continued to serve the Comintern through the 1920s.

This volume only comes down to the middle of 1930. Later volumes will include his correspondence with Togliatti, Thorez and others who, he says, asked him for information abeut the internal disputes which was otherwise kept from them.

Vexations

Despite the vexations to which Humbert-Droz says the representatives of the foreign parties in Moscow were subject by Stalin-they were not allowed to use the special shops for foreigners and received low priority ration cards!-he soldiered on until Bukharin was disgraced.

Presumably to shield himself from criticism he claims to have remained on friendly terms with a number of Trotskyists and to have corresponded with them in exile.

These letters, he says, 'will show that I did not consider the Trotskyists as counter-revolutionaries and that I was a supporter of a dialogue and a discussion with them, and not of the repressive measures taken by Stalin'.

However, that did not prevent Humbert-Droz, despite his own disgrace in 1929, a subsequent rehabilitation, another condemnation following criticism of the Stalinist policy in Germany in 1932, and a further rehabilitation after the Seventh World Congress, from serving as secretary of a Stalinist Party until 1941.

In fact, Humbert-Droz later returned to a reformist position.

In the preface to an earlier book in which some of these documents were printed, 'L'Oeil de Moscou a Paris' (1964), he writes as though the formation of the Third International and the split from the reformists was 'useless' and 'harmful'. This was certainly not his position at the time.

On the whole Humbert-Droz carried out his duties loyally and with apparent conviction. He was thoroughly familiar with the situation in the W European parties, especially the French, from the day-to-day contact Which he had with their leaders, Journalists and militants.

The letters and personal reports he sent to Moscow reveal the true position in these parties much better than the published documents and press articles can do.

As he put it in the earlier preface: "The documents from the archives permit the respective positions of the founders and first leaders of the French Communist Party, their political intentions and their personal role to be understood better. It will be seen that it was relatively easy to unite on the text of a resolution or on the draft of a thesis, but that the division of tunctions and tasks could call everything into question again and that the struggle for power inside the party often played a more important role than action against the bourgeoisie'.

The first volume of the Archives is, in fact, largely taken up with the situation inside the French party leading up to the resignation of Frossard, who had become its secretary at the Congress of Tours when the majority of the Socialist Party voted to affiliate to the Third International.

There are, however, few documents concerning the situation in Spain, Belgium and Luxemburg and the effect of the Livorno Congress in Italy.

At the latter a split had taken place which resulted inthe majority centre wing led by Serrati leaving the International.

This greatly reduced the strength of the Italian section in which the majority was held by the ultra-left, 'abstentionist' wing influenced by Bordiga.

A major concern of the International was to prevent Livotno-type split—too far to the left-taking place in France.

As Trotsky was to put it in the introduction to his book on the Communist movement in France published in 1923:

'From 1921 and the first part of 1922, the Frossard group gave good reasons for us breaking with it. But, at that time, the split would not have been understood by the great majority of the members of the Party, the new scission would have taken place by chance and the International would have been landed with a heterogeneous left group, itself in need of an internal clean up.

It was necessary therefore, in the first place, to give to the left elements time to grasp clearly their task, to acquire ideological cohesion, to draw around themselves a large number of Party members-and it was only after this ideological, critical and educative work of the International, that big, energetic, organizational Communist Party in 1921-1923 covered in this volume.

He arrived in Paris to deal with a serious crisis. Under Frossard the Party was stagnating and declining, turned in upon itself and torn by bitter factional infighting.

There were at least five major factions from a right wing which hankered after reunification with their old colleagues of the Socialist Party (SFIO, described as the 'dissidents') to an 'extreme left' close to anarchism.

The bulk of the party followed the centre represented by Frossard and Cachin. Humbert-Droz's task was to work with the left faction, the one most loyal to the International, and to win over as many as possible of the supporters of the centre.

As Humbert-Droz was to note in a number of his reports, the left was small, politically divided, had few links with the working class and little standing in the Refute Souvarine complained to the Presidium of the International that he passed over the left and preferred to take counsel with the centre i.e. the Frossard Humbert-Droz wrote round to a number of left faction members asking them to refute this allegation. On the whole he seems to have had most confidence in the trade unionists, of whom Rosmer was the best representative.

THOREZ The real question was how Humbert-Droz himself interpreted and carried out the recommendations of the Executive Committee. His own word is hardly good enough to settle the question one way or another.

Through most of 1922 he was convinced, or at least so he wrote in his reports, that Frossard, despite his faults, could be won to accept the need for a bloc of the centre and the left. However, Frossard did not understand and refused to apply correctly the united front tactic put forward by the Comintern.

Humbert-Droz's reports in 1922 should be compared with Trotsky's speeches and writings relating to the French Communist Party which appear in "The first Five Years of the Communist International' and Le Mouvement Communiste en France' edited by Pierre Broué.

All his reports went, of course, to Trotsky who was responsible the Russian Party and made the main reports on the French Party at meetings of the Executive Committee of the Communist International to whom HumbertDroz was responsible.

While being suitably severe in his criticism of Cachin's weak direction of 'L'Humanité, Humbert-Droz appears to have conserved some illusions in Frossard throughout 1922. He had to watch while the relations between the left and the centre continued to deteriorate.

Souvarine and Treint went all out for a victory of their faction.

Frossard continued to temporize, and announced in August that he would not continue as secretary after the next Coneress. 'Humbert-Droz reported: Many cast antease communist workers are disgusted by the tone of the polemics and the struggle of tendencies; they have no confidence in the men of the centre who have abandoned the Party to itself, nor in the left, who they reproach with not knowing the working class and speaking to workers from on high.

'Even in the left, some comrades are disgusted and repelled by the haughty character of Souvarine!"

By September, 1922, HumbertDroz had become increasingly pessimistic and suggested that it was time for the Executive to intervene.

But it was difficult to see solution in practice to the crisis of leadership and decision in the French Party which still conserved all the bad old habits and traditions of the SFIO.

The legacy of Tours was not a Party of a new type: a real section of the Communist International, a Bolshevik Party, still had to be built in France. Only the comparative social calm had prevented a split of the sort which had taken place in Germany and Italy.

Problem

One problem was who should lead the Party. Frossard and Cachin, for all their weaknesses, were popular inside the Party and well known in the working class.

The left could claim no popular leaders and, for all their professions fidelity to International, they interpreted its decisions in a mechanical way and were not free of personal ambition either.

Souvarine was arrogant, given to intrigue and unwilling to IT 2.45 | Cross 5.55 6.25 schoolteacher and an army captain. Both were regarded with suspicion by worker-members and trade unionists like Rosmer.

The French Party seemed headed towards its Livorno, yet a Livorno was by no means desirable in he French situation. It would have meant that a large part, perhaps the majority, of the Party would have left the Third International. At the P split Cong indeed averted, October but only by the centre the split was re-asserting, its strength, despite moral support which Humbert-Droz, and the other Comintern representative, Manouilsky, had given to the left.

The crisis in the French Party thus continued: it became still openly opposed to the International which was finally obliged to intervene.

The French question was one the most important items before the Fourth Congress of BUKHARIN the Communist International in November, 1922, at which Trotsky delivered the principal report on the French Party.

The debates in Moscow had revealed that a number of prominent Party leaders were Freemasons or members s of the Ligue des Droits de l'Homme including Cachin, Sellier, Ker and Frossard. Amongst the decisions taken by the Fourth Congress to resolve the crisis in the French Party was the complete incompatibility between Party membership and freemasonry.

In December, 1922, HumbertDroz re-entered France illegally, to find the situation somewhat m. Film: 'Number Six'. 3.45 Robin Hood. 4.15 oads. 4.50 Showtime. 5.15 Magpie. 5.45 News. TODAY.

GHOST AND MRS MUIR.

by Tom improved by the determination which the Comintern, largely inspired by Trotsky, had shown in dealing with the French crisis. He gives many interesting details about the internal situation.

Cachin who, to stay at 'L'Humanité' had accepted the International's decisions, came into collision with Frossard. The left itself was divided. The right was all but eliminated in a series of expulsions.

Changes were made in the editorial staff pf 'L'Humanité' in accord with the International's decisions. The resistance of the centre to these changes was partly broken.

For Frossard they brought to a head a growing resistance to the demands of the International. On January 1, 1923, he sent his resignation to the leading Party committee.

Humbert-Droz suggests that Frossard, who had not gone to Moscow, had been influenced in his decision by reading Trotsky's speech at the Fourth Congress which he had taken as an ultimatum for his removal. The immediate background was provided, however, by the disputes over the control and policy of 'L'Humanité' (and by Cachin's time-serving decision to remain "loyal' to the International).

Frossard's resignation could not solve the Party's problems and intensified them in the shortrun. Together with the decisions of the Fourth Congress, it did a great deal to clear..the air. The basis was being laid for a real section of the Communist International in France.

In the first months of 1923, after Humbert-Droz's return, the old factions tended to break up, but their place was taken by personal cliques which engaged in acrimonious disputes.

The Party declined in numerical strength and in some federations the supporters of Frossard (who formed a short-lived Communist Unity Party) had the majority.

and Hubert Dato reported ak the Comintern Executive Committee that it displayed 'a complete lack of political perspective'. The time of the Political Bureau was taken up with administrative details and it seldom discussed the political situation in France or internationally.

Little was done in the way of propaganda and recruitment. The political line of 'L'Humanité' was fixed by its editors without reference to the Party and they became, in effect, a second Party leadership.

Despite these continuing negative features there were some signs that Party members, especially the Young Communists' leaders, had grasped the lessons of the crisis and were prepared to make the changes demanded by the International.

Thrust

Before they could be put in hand and a decisive alteration made in the Party's style of work the whole International movement was thrust into the crisis which followed Lenin's death and opened the way for the Stalinist degeneration.

Humbert-Droz's archives make it possible to follow the history of the French and other parties, as well as the International as a whole, from the inside.

Making allowance for the short-comings in his own position, they provide an invaluable insight into the problems of building revolutionary parties in the advanced European countries at this time and therefore have considerable relevance today.

It remains to be seen what light Humbert-Droz's documents will throw on Stalin's rise to power and on the degeneration of the Communist International which took place in the 1920s. RANADA: 4.05 News, Peyton Place. 4.40 Magic 4.50 London. 6.01 Nelsay 5 Film:

Moon'. 8.30 London. 11.30 Four just men. 12 midnight Weather.