On May 22—largely as a gesture to impress Britain and America— the dissolution of the Comintern was announced. This took the form of a Resolution by the Presidium of the
Executive Committee of the Communist International. It declared the whole organisation to be "out of date", and that it was even "becoming an obstacle in the way of the further strengthening of the national working parties." It then explained that the war had demonstrated a very important fact:
Whereas in the Axis countries it is important for the working class to strive to
overthrow the government, in the United Nations countries it is, on the contrary, the duty of the working class to support the governments' war effort.
This strange document concluded: "The Executive Committee calls upon its supporters to concentrate on the smashing of German fascism and its vassals."
It was signed by the following members of the Presidium: Gott-wald, Dimitrov, Zhdanov, Kolarov, Koplenig, Kuusinen, Manuilsky, Marty, Pieck, Thorez, Florin, Ercoli (i.e.
Togliatti), and also the following representatives of the Sections: Biano (Italy), D.
Ibarruri (Spain), Lechtinen (Finland), Anna Pauker (Rumania), M. Rakosi (Hungary).
A few days later, in a statement to Harold King of Reuters, Stalin declared the dissolution to be "right and timely".
It showed up the Nazi lie that "Moscow" intended to interfere with the lives of other states, or to "bolshevise" them... It also facilitated the work of all patriots for uniting all the progressive forces, regardless of party allegiance and political
beliefs... It was particularly timely just when the Fascist beast was exerting his last reserves of strength that the freedom-loving nations should organise a common
onslaught on him, and so save all nations from the Fascist yoke...
It was well-known that both Churchill and Roosevelt had pressed for this step. Stalin had always replied that the Comintern was moribund, and did not matter. What he did not
say, however, was that this "moribund"—and now dead—body comprised many future leaders of the "new democracy" in Europe—Thorez, Togliatti, Gottwald, Kopecky, Dimitrov, Pauker, Rakosi, et cetera. They led at the time a very retiring existence either at Ufa or in Moscow, where most of them lived in the grubby Hotel Lux in Gorki Street,
only very occasionally wrote in the Soviet press, and were seldom seen in public, except at the very end of the war. But they were kept in reserve. Even so, many wondered
whether Stalin had not a genuine grudge against the Comintern leaders. Had not Dimitrov overdone his "imperialist war" stuff in 1939-40. And who had thought up the "Kuusinen government"?
In my Diary notes during the few weeks before the Battle of Kursk I find a record of a number of conversations with Russians on the dissolution of the Comintern. One said that
"it must have been a very hard decision for Stalin to take; after all, he had sworn on Lenin's tomb never to abandon the cause of the world revolution. But just like his
'socialism in one country' this decision was another sign of Stalin's greatness that he could adapt himself to changed conditions". Another Russian described it jokingly as
"our NEP in foreign policy"; and still another said that "Stalin had been a bit fed-up with the Comintern for some time, especially for their screaming about the 'imperialist war' in 1939-40". This had caused no end of damage in a country like France, and had also grossly misled the Soviet Government on a number of occasions.
Then there was the rather spectacular visit on May 30 of ex-Ambassador Joseph Davies, of Mission to Moscow fame, who had done his utmost to explain the Purge Trials in a manner most favourable to the Soviet Government. On arriving in Moscow, he got the
Russians to paint "Mission to Moscow" in white paint on the fuselage of his plane. He went to see, as he called them, "his old friends" Mikoyan, Vyshinsky and Judge Ulrich.
The film of his Mission to Moscow was full of absurdities—Vyshinsky with a great black beard, Mrs Molotov speaking pidgin Russian, and so on. They showed it at the Kremlin the night he was there, and the big Russian bosses laughed themselves nearly sick, but agreed that the film was friendly, and useful in debunking the Red bogey idea, still, according to Davies, very strong in the USA. The British Embassy were pretty mad with Davies about the monocled silly-ass who was supposed to represent Lord Chilston, the British Ambassador, scared to death of OGPU microphones, and so on. The US Embassy
and the American press were uniformly hostile to Davies, partly because of his peculiar showmanship, and partly because of his excessive display of pro-Soviet sentiment, not to say sentimentality. Davies, for his part, was very pleased with the dissolution of the Comintern and remarked that when he was Ambassador in Moscow, he used to say to
Litvinov that the Comintern—the stick with which everybody beat the Soviet Union—
was the real source of all the trouble.
*
Sandwiched between the Dissolution of the Comintern and Stalin's statement on it were the celebrations of the first anniversary of the Anglo-Soviet Alliance which took the form of enthusiastic articles in the press, messages from Kalinin to George VI, and so on. On June 9, the anniversary of the Soviet-American Agreement, the papers were full of
compliments to the USA, complete with expressions of gratitude for lend-lease
shipments. Said Pravda: "The Soviet people not only know about them, but they highly value the support coming from the great Republic beyond the ocean." The most important thing now, Pravda said, was not to give Hitler any respite.
This constant boost of the Allies in May and June, and the great ideological concessions the Russians were making to the West were not, of course, without reference to the
military situation. A period of extremely hard fighting was imminent, and the Russians were hoping that a tremendous new effort (now that North Africa was a closed chapter) would be made by the Allies in the near future.
In its "Second Anniversary of the War" statement on June 22, 1943, Sovinformbureau went so far as to say that "without a second front victory over Germany is impossible."
The main theme of the statement was that thanks to the Red Army, which was tying up
200 German and thirty satellite divisions, the Western Allies had been given enough time to prepare themselves for an all-out attack on the Axis on the continent of Europe.
[This statement said that, in two years, Germany and her allies had lost 6.4 m. men in killed and prisoners, 56,000 guns, 42,000 tanks, 43,000 planes. The Soviet Union had lost 4.2 million men in killed and missing (i.e. including prisoners), 30,000 guns, 30,000
tanks, 23,000 planes. It then dealt with the Partisan movement which it credited with having killed 300,000 Germans, wrecked 3,000 trains and over 3,000 bridges, destroyed
"hundreds of tanks", et cetera, all of which is highly improbable, since the Partisan movement did not assume major proportions until the second half of 1943.]
Was the Sovinformbureau statement merely another tactical move to butter up the allies, or was it a sign of genuine nervousness on the eve of the great summer battles?
For June 1943 was certainly an anxious month. Everybody felt that the storm might break at any moment. Many were surprised that the Germans had not attacked yet. There was
intense air activity on both sides. On several nights the Germans raided Gorki, causing much damage to its industrial areas, especially to a large tank-assembly plant. There were also raids on Kursk, Saratov, Yaroslavl, Astrakhan, et cetera, and the Germans also
dropped mines on the Lower Volga. The Russians raided Orel and other places.