A Cockney in Moscow, by Harold Elvin

[p023] A Cockney in Moscow, by Harold Elvin (Cresset Press, 21s.) THESE memoirs of a night-watchman at the British Embassy in Moscow during the war are sadly disappointing. Thev largely consist of stories about Mr Elvin’s colleague, a notable wencher whose achievements seem to have given the author much vicarious pleasure, and gushing hero-worship directed towards the Ambassador and some of his staff and towards the Soviet leaders. The latter leads Mr Elvin into some em- barrassing passages. Having seen Stalin he is dissatisfied with the photographs of him. ‘Where do they show the sensi- tiveness?’ And he repeats a remark made by a former Kremlin guard: ‘You’d be amazed, the lack of seriousness, they have fun ... like a lot of children running in and out.’ The few points of interest that emerge include evidence of the poverty of sections of the Moscow population at the be- ginning of the war (this providing the background to some of the author’s friend’s amorous exploits), and glimpses of the political atmosphere in the Soviet capital in April-May 1941—-with Russians afraid to be seen entering the British Embassy, the Yugoslav Minister bundled out on the grounds that his State had ceased to exist, and Cripps under fire from Pravda for his warning of impending Nazi attack. The British Embassy stands beside the Moskva river, opposite the Kremlin, and we learn that, on the day following Hitler’s onslaught on the unprepared Soviet Union, ‘the long boats filing past the Kremlin are not saluting it as was their wont’. P. BRYAN

[p024] ‘EXPORT OF REVOLUTION’ ruins, as had happened in Russia. ‘We, from a revolu- tionary point of view, are vitally interested in the pre- servation of peace.’ If, however, Poland were to attack Germany, Russia could not but be affected, for this would constitute a blow to Europe’s economy and a strengthening of nationalist reaction—‘and both these are contrary to the interests of the revolution’.?° The leading article in /zvestia for September 29, 1923, reminded all concerned that ‘we have never renounced our idea of furthering by all means the development of the international revolution, which will lead us to final victory. We are on the threshold of great events and we must be ready for them in time .. .*° On the follow- ing day, Trotsky, in an interview given to a Western politician, again emphasized the lack of desire on the part of the Soviets for a warlike solution. War would harm the German revolution. Only that revo- lution is capable of life which succeeds by its own strength, especially when a great people is concerned. We are entirely on the side of the victims of rapacious and bloody French imperialism. We are with the German working class with all our soul in its struggle against foreign and domestic exploitation. But at the same time we are entirely for peace.30 He made the same point in his address of October 76 to the transport workers’ congress: “We are above all interested in the German working class settling its problems with its own forces, while peace prevails around Germany, so that civil war in Germany does not become transformed into imperialist war around Ger- many and within Germany itself.’ The most important form of aid that Soviet Russia could render the German revolution was economic, and Poland was being urged to allow such aid to be rendered across her territory, in return for economic concessions by Russia which would give Polish goods free access to markets in Asia. The Russian peasants should be shown how important from their standpoint it was that the German revolu- tion should conquer: this would mean an outlet for their grain and also. in return, cheaper and more plentiful manufactured goods.*! Again, on October 21, addressing army political commissars, Trotsky stressed the need to avoid any pose of militarist aggressiveness. It was not only a matter of world opinion but primarily one of the attitude of the Russian peasants, who would not go to war except for a cause they fully understood und accepted. ‘We must ensure that the link between our fundamental interests and those of the working people of Germany becomes clear and tangible to every Red Army soldier.">* (No sign of underestimation of the peasantry here!) In fact, as is all too well known, the German revolu- tion of 1923 did not come off. The Comintern leader- ship showed lack of confidence in the German workers and supported a policv of holding them back at the decisive moment, which led to a disastrous and fateful defeat. The other side of this failure of confidence was the appearance for the first time of a new note in Soviet policy, out of harmony with the traditional one, and which in subsequent vears was to become the dominant =~ Ibid. p. 376. 2“ Quoted in Kochan. op. cit. p. 87. * Quoted in Fischer. op. cit. vol, i. p. 487. ". Trotsky, Kak vooruzhalas revolyutsia (How the Revolution Armed Itself) (Moscow, 1923-28). vol. iii, part ii. pp. 143-4. 72 Ibid. pp. 160-71. note, as the bureaucracy consolidated its power and the complex of ideas and procedures known as ‘Stalinism’ took shape. When in 1920 a tendency had appeared among the German communists towards what was called ‘national Bolshevism’, 1.e., a bloc with nationalist elements of the German bourgeoisie to fight against France, this had been formally condemned by the Soviet leaders. Lenin’s remarks on the subject are well known.33 The Comintern executive wrote in a letter to Germany: War against the Entente is the alpha and omega of the policy of Laufenberg and his comrades. It may be that war with Entente capitalism will become a necessity for Soviet Germany if the workers in the Entente countries should not come quickly enough to the help of a victorious proletariat in Germany. But should this war have to be fought, the German proletariat will find it more than ever necessary to defeat the German bourgeoisie . . . Laufen- berg and Wollheim are spreading the poison of the illusion that the German bourgeoisie could, out of nationalist hatred, become allies of the proletariat. If the proletariat were to be fooled by this idea they would become cannon- fodder for German capital which, under the flag of the sham Soviet republic, would use the proletariat for war against the Entente. and then discard the cloak and openly re-establish capitalist rule.34 Again, in the theses on tactics adopted at the Third Congress of the Communist International (July 1921), the German communists were warned that ‘only if it proves by forceful and unrelenting struggle against the German Government that it is not trying to save bank- rupt German imperialism, but to clear the ground of the ruins of German imperialism, can the German Com- munist Party intensify among the French proletarian masses the will to fight French imperialism . . 2° And in a manifesto on the occasion of a joint conference of the French and German communist parties in Sep- tember 1922, the Comintern called on the French workers to fight their own Government, ‘not in order to help German imperialism to get on its feet again, but so that the removal of the military pressure of French imperialism may liberate the forces of the German proletariat for the German revolution’, and the German workers similarly to fight for a workers’ gov- ernment in their country, ‘which will relieve the French masses of the fear of a resurgence of German militarism and help them to liberate themselves from the spell of nationalism’.*6 But already in February 1923 the German communist Thalheimer was reviving the ‘national-Bolshevist’ con- ception, arguing that German nationalism was a potentially revolutionary factor; and now this found an echo in the leading circles of the Soviet Communist Party. Radek told the Comintern executive in June that. ‘the strong emphasis on the nation in Germany is a revolutionary act, like the emphasis on the nation in the colonies’, and shortly afterwards made his notor- icus ‘Schlageter’ speech, in which, referring to the recent execution of a German fascist of this name by the French forces occupying the Ruhr, he appealed for a bloc between the communists and the fascists on a basis 23 VY, I. Lenin, ‘“Left-Wing” Communism’, Selected Works, (Eng. ed.), vol. x (1938), pp. 117-18. 4 Degras. CI Documents .. . p. 98. *5 Ibid. p. 255. 36 Ibid. p. 368.

[p025] LABOUR REVIEW of struggle for the national freedom of Germany.*’ From this time onward, the rulers of Soviet Russia were to move more and more in the direction of building their foreign policy (including the policy they promoted through the international communist movement under their control) upon the cultivation of alliances with one or another national bourgeoisie, subordinating the working-class struggle to these alliances. Down to 1927 clear-cut pursuit of this policy was hindered by the open criticism of the Left Opposition inside Russia, and continual zigzagging was made necessary even thereafter by the need to avoid giving too flagrant offence to the Soviet workers or the communist rank and file abroad—and still more by the rebuffs and betrayals of the various national bourgeoisies on whom in turn the Soviet bureaucracy chose to rely rather than on the ‘inadequate’ forces of the international working- class movement. Ruth Fischer, who saw the effects of the “Schlageter line’ in Germany, asserts that Radek was not alone among the Moscow leaders at this time in his views. Associated with him were Bukharin and Varga, with Stalin in the background. In 1922-23, she writes, this group were discovering a new role for the German bourgeoisie, which they changed from the class enemy to a victim suffering almost as much as the German workers ... In shifting the emphasis of the class hatred from its historical object—the German bourgeoisie in all its personifications —to the Entente, the theorists perverted the Labour move- ment of Germany, and consequently of Europe. They aggravated the intellectual and psychological confusion that was the prime condition for the growth of totalitarian ideologies and organizations.3% From this time onward one of the themes that con- stantly recur in Trotsky’s speeches and articles is that of the danger of losing sight of the dependence of the Soviet Unien on the world revolution, and the adoption of policies that hindered rather than advanced the latter. In speeches delivered in April 1924 he warned his listeners that though some capitalist States were recognizing the Soviet Union, this did not mean they were really recon- ciled to its existence, and, commenting on French sug- gestions that the new treaty between Russia and Italy spelt danger to Turkey, he declared that although this treaty meant selling Italy Russian grain, oil and timber —‘one commodity we don’t sell, and will never sell, is the independence of the peoples of the East’.3? Even more pointedly, in June, Trotsky warned against false conclusions being drawn from the fact that the growth of communism in the capitalist countries did not always and everywhere directly and immediately improve the international diplomatic position of the Soviet Union. In Germany, for example, the rise of the ‘communist danger’ actually worsened State relations between Russia and that country. But in the last analysis only the victory of communism throughout the world would consolidate the Soviet power completely and finally, and this should never be lost sight of.4° At the same time, Trotsky 37 BE. H. Carr, The Interregnum (1954), pp. 159-60, 177f. 38 Ruth Fischer, Stalin and German Communism (1948), p. 199. 39 “Young People, Study Politics’ in Sochinenia (Works) (Moscow, 1925-27), vol. xxi: ‘May Day in the West and in the East’, in Zapad i Vostok (West and East) (Moscow, 1924), p. 47. 40 “Through What Stage Are We Passing?’, ibid. p. 109. 118 August-September 1958 opposed adventuristic measures in foreign relations, e.g., any attempt forcibly to recover Bessarabia from Rumania, independent of the rise of the revolutionary movement.*! Perhaps the most vivid example of the relation be- tween Soviet State dealings with capitalist countries and the Soviet attitude to the revolutionary movement in these countries, before ‘Stalinism’ became completely dominant, is provided by the story of the secret military collaboration between Russia and Germany which de- veloped from 1921 onwards, even before the treaty of Rapallo. The German army authorities were allowed to establish armament factories in Russia and to send officers to train with the Red Army, thereby getting round the demilitarization articles of the treaty of Versailles.#7 Very considerable benefits came to Soviet Russia from this arrangement. In the field of aviation research and testing, “every German technical accom- plishment became a starting point for production by the Russians’,** and the Soviet chemical industry, through secret German aid, underwent ‘a prodigious expansion, so that in 1930 it accounted for 7 per cent. of the European production’.** On balance, Goering concluded in 1937 that this German-Soviet co-operation had done more harm than good from his standpoint: ‘The dangerous policy of Rapallo had been followed in relation to Russia. As the result of this policy Ger- many helped Russia in military matters, armed her, sent her instructors, assisted her to build up her war industry.’ What is relevant to our subject is that this collabora- tion betwen his own department, the War Commissariat, and the Reichswehr, was not allowed by Trotsky te affect in any way his attitude and activity in relation to the revolutionary movement inside Germany. Gustav Hilger, an official of the German Embassy in Moscow who served through this period, records that in Decem- ber 1923 the German Government demanded the recull of a certain Petrov from the Soviet Embassy in Berlin. He had been discovered to be a military agent who had bought large quantities of weapons and ammunition for delivery to the German communists in the event of insurrection. Trotsky calmly admitted that he had per- sonally attached Petrov to the Embassy, regarding it as his duty to do so, in view of the situation in Germany.** Erich Wollenberg even alleges that in Trotsky’s time the Soviet authorities placed some of the 250,000 gold marks they received annually from the Reichswehr at the dis- posal of the German Communist Party.*’ It is therefore hardly surprising that Brockdorff-Rantzau, the German Ambassador in Moscow, should have urged his Govern- ment to influence the Press against publishing articles friendly to Trotsky when the conflict between him and the bureaucracy’s political spokesmen began.** When 2 41 ‘We and the East’, June 10, 1924, ibid. p. 108. 42 E. H. Carr, German-Soviet Relations (1952), pp. 57f.. and The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. iii, p. 362: also V. N. Tpatiev, The Life of a Chemist (1946), pp. 381f. 4° G. Freund, The Unholy Alliance (1957), p. 210. 44 W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany from Defeat to Con- quest (1945), p. 400. 45 Goering to Smigly-Rydz, Feb. 1937, in Polish White Book (1939), pp. 36-8. 48 G. Hilger, The Incompatible Allies (1953), p. 124. 47 E. Wollenberg, The Red Army (1940), p. 237. 48 Hilger, op. cit. p. 213.