Stalin полностью

Some Communists, including Germans who had managed to escape into exile from Nazi terror, were lobbying for a shift toward cooperation with other parties on the left.²⁸⁸ But Stalin stressed the need to win over European workers from parliamentarism, whose absence had allowed Russian workers to be revolutionary in 1917. “In all countries, the bourgeoisie will proceed to fascism,” he told Dimitrov, which he presented as an opportunity for Communists to win workers’ allegiance, provided the latter were made to understand that the era of parliamentarism was ending, meaning Social Democrats could be outmaneuvered. Still, he concluded that “we cannot immediately and easily win millions of workers in Europe.” In the meantime, he encouraged Dimitrov to seize leadership inside the Comintern: “Kuusinen is good, but an academic; Manuilsky—agitator; [Wilhelm] Knorin—propagandist! [Osip] Pyatnitsky—narrow . . . Who says that this ‘foursome’ must remain [in charge]?” Molotov chimed in: “You have looked the enemy in the face. And after prison, you now take the work into your hands.”²⁸⁹

At the 1934 May Day parade, Stalin motioned Dimitrov to come up to the dictator’s side on the Mausoleum, a Kremlinological sign for all. Dimitrov seized the moment, asking to be received again privately when convenient; Stalin agreed to an audience the next day. “Select yourself where and how to appear and what to write,” he instructed him in the Little Corner. “Don’t let yourself be talked into anything.”²⁹⁰ Dimitrov drew inspiration from recent events in France, where workers, in response to antiparliamentary riots by far right, monarchist, and fascist leagues, had ignored party divisions on the left and united in a general strike to prevent France from following Germany’s path.²⁹¹ “The wall between Communist workers and Social Democrats should be demolished,” Dimitrov told the visiting Maurice Thorez, the French Communist party leader, on May 11. But this was a call not to cooperate with Social Democrat party leaders but to redouble efforts to reclaim their rank and file.²⁹² Additional urgency arrived on May 19, when a fascist-inflected coup succeeded in Dimitrov’s native Bulgaria. And yet, not only Stalin but also Pyatnitsky (real surname Tarshis), Béla Kun, Wilhelm Knorin, Solomon Lozovsky (Dridzo), and Jenő Varga detested Social Democrats and opposed a broad leftist front to combat fascism.

BUNGLING

Stalin summoned Artuzov, who had predicted Poland’s behavior, to a series of discussions in the Little Corner. (Litvinov exited when the intelligence officials entered.)²⁹³ Soviet military intelligence in Europe had suffered a string of catastrophic exposures several years running, as a result of violating elementary tradecraft: recruiting agents among local Communist party members (who were under police surveillance).²⁹⁴ A list compiled by Yagoda for Stalin and Voroshilov of every agent exposure with names, dates, and causes, covered ten pages and highlighted “infestation by traitors,” “recruitment of foreign cadres among dubious elements,” and “non-observance of the rules of conspiracy,” all of which had resulted in the USSR being fed “a mass of disinformation.”²⁹⁵ On May 26, 1934, Stalin appointed Artuzov deputy chief of military intelligence, concurrent with his post as head of OGPU foreign intelligence, an unprecedented combination.²⁹⁶

Within a month, Artuzov had written a detailed analysis—one copy to Stalin, one to Voroshilov, and none to Jan Berzin, the nominal military intelligence chief—detailing that the Soviets now had essentially no military intelligence operations in Romania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, France, or Italy. His solution was to prohibit, once again, recruitment of foreign Communists as spies and to improve the pay and housing of operatives abroad. Fatefully, Stalin also accepted Artuzov’s recommendation to liquidate military intelligence’s department for analysis, the one central clearinghouse for assessing the mass of all incoming information. Artuzov pointed out that there was no such all-knowing and therefore risky department of analysis in the OGPU foreign directorate (which was one of its weaknesses).²⁹⁷ Military intelligence was subordinated directly to the defense commissar, who emerged with enhanced powers.²⁹⁸