GEORGI DIMITROV

Georgi Dimitrov, the Bulgarian communist leader, became famous as a result of his stand in the Reichstag fire trial held at Leipzig in 1933.

As a result of his enormous popularity he was selected by Stalin to replace the littleknown Manuilsky as Secretary the Communist International. At the Seventh and last Congress of that body held in • Moscow in the summer of 1935 he made the main report which inaugurated the policy of the Popular Front. This became binding policy on all the communist parties until Stalin decided otherwise.

In 1943 Dimitrov wound up the Comintern on Stalin's instructions when it got in the way of Kremlin policy of alliance with Britain and the United States.

After the war he returned to Bulgaria as a national hero as well as leader of the Communist Party. Supporter of the idea of a Balkan Federation with Tito, he came into conflict with Stalin and died in July 1949 while in Moscow in circumstances which have never been fully explained.

The Communist Party of Great Britain has seen fit to devote the whole of the July issue of its theoretical journal. 'Marxism Today', to Dimitrov to mark the 90th anniversary of his birth. The contributions to this issue raise some fundamental questions international communist movement which require examination.

While Dimitrov was able to pass himself off at the Leipzig humble Bulgarian exile studying events in country he was already an important Comintern official.

He was, in fact, head of the West European Bureau which, behind the front of a harmless publishing house, controlled the activities of the communist parties of Europe. was eit transmission through which Stalin exercized his control over those parties.

That Dimitrov was able to conceal his real role from the German police and the Gestapo was a tribute, of course, to the highly organized illegal methods of work which Comintern had inherited from Bolshevism. was reflected also in espionage rings like the 'Red Orchestra' during World War II.

To that extent, too, it can be agreed that Dimitrov was an old revolutionary. There also no doubt that in the 1920s he sided with Stalin against the Left Opposition Trotsky. was as faithful Stalinist that Dimitrov became a trusted Comintern functionary.

As head of the Comintern branch concerned with relations with European communist parties before Hitler came to power, Dimitrov was necessarily an adherent of the policies of the so-called 'third period' which had been imposed on the movement by Stalin. This much is admitted by James Klugmann in 'Marxism Today' —though without mentioning Stalin, of course. It was this policy which led the German Communist Party, the largest outside the Soviet Union, to disaster and defeat in 1933.

This period can no longer be passed over in silence by the Communist Party as it was for many years. One of the interesting features of this number of 'Marxism Today' is that it actually discusses the 'third period'. In the editorial comments on page 196 read: 'At the end of the 1920s and in the first years of the 1930s there were within International, despite all many achievements, some deep sectarian mistakes, particularly in regard to the estimation of social-democracy and social - democratic parties, approaches to reformistled trade unions and on the question of the united front."

is admitted that Dimitrov supported the policy which described social democracy as the main enemy, as a of fascism. Usually the meaningless 'socialfascist' was used. Anybody who remembers may know that Herbert Morrison, head of the London County Council, habitually described as a 'social fascist'.

This term had been used, and perhaps coined, by Gregory alliance with Stalin in the early 1920s. There can be no doubt, however, that the policy of the 'third period' was sired by Stalin who, in a famous phrase described fascists social-democrats as 'not antipodes but twins'.

The whole question is discussed in unusual detail by Klugmann (of 'From Trotsky to fame) on page 214. Unfortunately mention Stalin-perhaps he has not heard the name! The individuals who formulated the policy and imposed it on the communist parties are somewhat shadowy figures described as 'they' or the Plenum'.

UNDERESTIMATED THREAT OF FASCISM Klugmann blasts the 'sectarian approaches' of the 'third period' with an eloquent pen. They were, he says, 'particularly dangerous in view of the fascist offensive. 'Such approaches, he claims 'tended towards underestimain of the threat of There is much more in the same vein. But he does not explain why these policies were accepted without question on instructions from Moscow when their suicidal absurdity must have been obvious to the most dim-witted bureaucrat.

He calls for of the period'.

It is to be hoped that if he ever makes such a study he will emphasize the fact that Trotsky played a leading part in denouncing the dangers of these policies, before they led to the German debacle, in a series of writings which have often been reprinted. How was it that Trotsky was able to expose these policies while the Klugmanns of the time blindly followed the dictates of Stalin?

The reason why Klugmann is so positive in his condemnation of the 'third period' will be clearer later. In fact his critique of it has nothing in common with Trotsky's, but is intended to prepare the way for the justification of the turn to the Popular Front in 1935, when people like Klugman began to be attracted into the Communist Party.

The burning down of the parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, in February 1933 was made the pretext for a wave of arrests of Communists and other opponents of the regime. The Nazis then staged a trial in which they tried to pin responsibility for the fire onto the Communist Party in the person of Ernst Torgler, a leading Ut deputy, and three Bulgarian communists, including Dimitrov.

As already pointed out, the investigation was unable to discover the real reason for Dimitrov's presence in Berlin, though the Nazis were glad to produce some 'foreign communists' for the purposes of the trial. Reichstag fire, 1933: to pin blame on the communists, the Nazis staged a public trial. Dimitrov was one of the defendants In the dock Dimitrov was able to turn the situation to good account. Somewhat naively the Nazis had organized a great public spectacle, so that Dimitrov's exchanges with the prosecution and particularly his duel with Goering achieved worldwide publicity.

Although, as Trotsky said, Dimitrov did no more and no less than any revolutionary would have done in his place, the Stalinist propaganda machine built him up into a great hero of superhuman proportions.

The Stalinists needed a hero to cover up their abysmal failure in Germany which had opened the way for Hitler. Dimitrov was an almost providential figure and they made the most of him.

On his acquittal he was received in Moscow with all the honours and promoted to the Executive Committee of the Communist International. Almost all the rest of his life was spent in the Soviet Union as a loyal Stalinist functionary.

A turn was now being prepared by Stalin towards what was to be known as the Popular Front. Dimitrov and others went to work to provide this rightward turn with some semblance of theoretical justification. 'Marxism Today' publishes some letters, notes and speeches made by Dimitrov in July, 1934 which are claimed to be the starting point for the turn to the Popular Front which was made Comintern policy at the Seventh Congress in the following year. Whether or not Dimitrov contributed to the change of line is of little importance. Even the newest recruit could see that the 'third period extravaganza had produced the German disaster and that it would have to be abandoned.

Empirically, in a number of countries, the local leadership, often under pressure from the rank-and-tile,. was forced to look to joint action with social democrats and other tendencies against the growing fascist menace. Meanwhile, Stalin was making a right-turn in foreign policy which was. to lead him, in May 1935, to make a defensive military pact with France which was signed in Moscow by Pierre Laval.

7TH CONGRESS AND SHIFT TO THE RIGHT Just as the 'third period' had seen an ultra-left turn, so the Seventh Congress marked a shift to the right, the abandonment of any revolutionary perspective and the pursuit of alliances with reformist and bourgeois parties. 'Antifascism' meant defence of bourgeois democracy.

It was also, as Dimitrov and Stalin saw, necessary to give the local Communist Party leadership in each country greater independence to make their own alliances and to develop their own tactics in line with the particular national conditions which they faced. The seeds not only of the Popular Front but also of what was later to be called 'polycentrism' were being sown.

However, there can be no doubt that complete and unswerving loyalty to the Soviet bureaucracy was demanded from every Communist Party leadership. This meant loyalty to Stalin, who was now the acknowledged theorist of the entire international movement. The new turn was thus completely consistent with the essence of Stalinism: the theory of 'socialism in one country'.

The Popular Front policy, the policy of broad alliances of all anti-fascists, of 'antimonopoly coalitions' and the like, for which Dimitrov became responsible, were not his invention. They sprang from the foreign policy needs of the Soviet bureaucracy which, after the German defeat in 1933, had passed definitively to the side of counter-revoluThe perspective which Dimitrov put forward at the Seventh World Congress was a Stalinist policy through and through. Although Stalin did not bother to speak at the Congress, there is no doubt that at this time he ruled the Comintern with an iron fist. Contemptuous of foreign communists-he was to have thousands murdered in the name of the Popular Front-he still needed the Comintern as an instrument of foreign policy and of control over the other communist parties.

THE INFALLIBLE POPE The policies which were put forward at the Seventh Congress were endorsed by him and bore his trademark. Obeisance had to be paid to his outstanding merits as a theoretician and as a leader. Reference to his name evoked thunderous applause. This was Stalin's consecration as the foremost Marxist of the age, the infallible pope in the Kremlin who crushed his enemies and critics without mercy.

For make no mistake about it, while the Seventh Congress was in session the secret police was going about its work with ruthless determination on Stalin's instruction. Many a delegate must have thought, when Dimitrov was speaking, of another Comintern leader to whom he bore a certain once-favoured Gregory viev.

Where then was the wretched Zinoviev, up on whose shoulders James Klugmann heaps responsibility for the theory of 'social fascism'? He was being 'processed' by the GPU for the first of his trials, which was to take place in the following year.

In the next three or four years, many of Dimitrov's colleagues and friends were to disappear into the jails of the GPU, never to re-emerge. They included Bela Kun, Hugo Eberlein, Spartacist delegate to the First Congress of the Comintern, many of the German party leaders and almost all the Poles and Yugoslavs. It is said that Dimitrov fought hard for 'his' Bulgarians and that few of them were in fact victims of Stalin's purges. For most of the others he could do very little. He, at least, had had the benefit of a trial, if only in a Nazi court. Stalin's trials were show pieces in which the accused were rehearsed in advance and only those willing to go through with the charade were given the benefit of a court appearance at all.

The reality of the purges, the true story of the Comintern in the 1930s and especially after the Seventh Congress, makes a mockery of what James. Klugmann and that pathetic old veteran,. Isabel Brown, write about Dimitrov in 'Marxism Today'.

In order to move closer to the bourgeoisie, whether of the fascist or the democratic variety, Stalin cut down thousands of honest revolutionaries from the international communist movement. Dimitrov knew about it and accepted it because he was a faithful flunkey of Stalin. So did Harry Pollit, R. Palme Dutt ('spots on the sun'), John Gollan (zealous 'antiTrotskyite' in the YCL of the time and present general secretary) and the other leaders of the CPGB.

Klugmann and company of course, are uncomfortable today with the 'third period'; 'class against class' for them is a meaningless phrase. They want to get nearer to bourgeois democracy, to reformism.

That is why they see Dimitrov as a great precursor. That is why they salute today the Seventh Congress while leaving Above left: Georgi Dimitrov. During the 'Reichstag fire' trial his exchanges with the prosecution, particularly Goering (top right), achieved worldwide publicity. Above right: Zinoviev, Who le thought to have first coined the phrase 'social fascist' out completely Stalin, the OGPU, the purges, the Moscow Trials and all the horrors which followed it as an historical necessity.

They cannot be allowed to get away with so much lying hypocrisy and distortion. This is not history. It is using the memory of one dead man, who conserves a reputation for revolutionary honour on the basis of one action-his defence in the Leipzig trial—to cover up for the most abject retreats and counter-revolutionary policies.

The Communist Party moves still further to the right. In Britain and in other countries it prepares further betrayals of the working class.

Klugmann, Isabel Brown and others who evoke the Popular Fronts in France and Spain in the 1930s conveniently forget that under its banner the working class of those countries were led to defeats and destruction. Dimitrov deserves no honour for his part in that.

8 Workers Press, Friday Trotsky. (oht) commiser lor