173. Manuilsky tried to explain to Hernandez at the Comintern villa in Kuntsevo, “Everything has been taken care of. We can’t lose! . . . If the capitalists want to slit each other’s throats, so much the better. When the time is right, when they begin to get weary, we will undoubtedly be solicited by both sides and can chose the one which suits us best. Don’t worry, our army won’t pull the chestnuts out of the fire for any capitalist country.” Hernández, La grande trahison, 206–7.
174. Lebedeva and Narinskii, Komintern i Vtoraia mirovaia voina, 71–85 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 73, d. 67, l. 44–59), 88 (op. 74, d. 517, l. 43); Dallin and Firsov, Dimitrov and Stalin, 150; “Komintern i sovetsko-germanskii dogovor o nenapedenii,” 206; Firsov, “Arkhivy Kominterna”; Firsov, “Komintern,” 21–2. Daniil Kraminov (b. 1910), assigned to draft the first editorial for Izvestiya about the Pact, had no idea what to write. The editor, Yakov Selikh, approached Voroshilov, who compared the Pact to the 1918 Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany for providing a breathing space. Already on Aug. 24, Selikh knew that Ribbentrop had proposed to insert words about German-Soviet friendship into the text, but Stalin had refused to do so. Seilkh also knew the subjects of the toasts and the jokes exchanged. None of this information had been recorded in the Soviet documents. Kraminov, V orbite voiny, 55.
175. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 115–6 (Sept. 7, 1939). For the resultant new Comintern directive, dispatched abroad, see Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 117 (Sept. 8, 1939); Lebedeva and Narinskii, Komintern i Vtoraia mirovaia voina, 88–90 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 18, d. 1292, l. 47–8); and King and Matthews, About Turn, 69–70. More broadly, see also Dallin and Firsov, Dimitrov and Stalin, 154–63.
176. Banac, Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 115–6 (Sept. 7, 1939).
177. An antifascist documentary, Ispaniya (Spain), by Esther Shub, had premiered on July 20, 1939. Short and Taylor, “Soviet Cinema.”
178. Anderson et al., Kremlevskii kinoteatr, 539. See also Luk’ianov, “‘Aleksandr Nevskii’: na s”emakh filma”; S. M. Eisenstein, “Zametkie rezhissera,” Ogonek, 1938, no. 22: 19, 20–1; and Izvestiia, Nov. 11, 1938. On Eisenstein’s self-critique of the film, whose commercial success puzzled him, see Eisenstein, Film Sense, 123–68. Five other recently made anti-German films were also pulled.
179. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 160, l. 1 (note to Dukelsky). The Comintern’s Dimitrov sent a long telegram admonishing Earl Browder, leader of the American Communists, that “now the issue is not just fascism, but the existence of the entire capitalist system,” and insisted there would be no more juxtaposing “democratic” capitalist countries to fascist ones. “This war is a continuation of the struggle between the rich great powers (England, France, the United States), which are the spine of the whole capitalist system, and the disadvantaged states (Germany, Italy, Japan), which in their struggle for a new division of the world are deepening and sharpening the crisis of the capitalist system.” Lebedeva, Komintern i Vtoraia mirovaia voina, 132–6 (RGASPI, f. 495, op. 74, d. 469, l. 108–12).
180. Quoted in Hosking, First Socialist Society, 218–9.
181. Leonhard, Betrayal, 90.
182. Uttitz, Zeugen der Revolution, 134.
183. Vishnevskii, “‘Sami peredem v napadenie,’” 104–5: Aug. 28, 31, and Sept. 1, 1939.
184. The Anti-Komintern agency inside Goebbels’s propaganda ministry, whose purpose was “a world anti-Bolshevik movement under German leadership,” was wound down with the signing of the Pact, but the Nazi regime’s identity remained founded upon German racial superiority and a crusade against “Judeo-Bolshevism.” Waddington, “Anti-Komintern,” 576, citing NA, GFM34/1265: Goebbels circular, Dec. 8, 1936. See also Waddington, Hitler’s Crusade.
