DOCUMENT 16
Telegram from the ECCI
Secretariat to Earl Browder, CPUSA.
25 August 1936
New York
Browder.[i]
Articles of Radek[ii],
Piatakoff[iii]
and Rakowski[iv] published
in Izvestiia and Pravda August 21 must be published in whole in Daily Worker[v]
and all communist press. Secretariat
RGASPI, f. 495, op.
184, d. 34, Outgoing telegram 1936 to New York
Original in
English. Typewritten.
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[i]Earl Browder (1891-1973). A member of the Socialist Party of America in 1906-1912 and 1918-1920; member of CPUSA and its CC from 1921. From 1929, a member of the Secretariat and the Politburo of the CPUSA. From 1930 to 1944, the General Secretary of the CC of the CPUSA. In 1944-45, chairman of the Communist Political Association. In 1946, he was expelled from the CPUSA. Between 1931 and 1943, he was a candidate and then a full member of the ECCI; in 1933-35, he was a member of the Political Secretariat of the ECCI.
[ii]Karl Radek (born Sobelson) (1885-1939). A participant in the Social Democratic movement in Galicia, Poland and Germany from the early twentieth century. He joined the Bolshevik party in 1917. In 1917-24, he was a member of the Bolshevik CC. In 1920-24, he was a member of the ECCI; from 1921-24, he was a member of the ECCI Presidium; in 1920, he was an ECCI Secretary. From 1923 to 1928, he participated in the Left Opposition, and was expelled from the VKP in 1927. He was readmitted in 1929, but expelled again in 1936 following his arrest on 16 September. At the January 1937 trial, he was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison. He died in captivity. Radek's article, "The Trotskyist-Zinovievite Fascist Band and its Hetman, Trotsky" was published in Izvestiia on 21 August 1936.
[iii]Georgi (Yuri) Leonidovich Pyatakov (1890-1937). A member of the Boshevik Party from 1910. From 1921 to 1923, a candidate member of the CC VKP; from 1923 to 1927 and again from 1930 to 1936, he was a member of the CC. He was expelled from the party in 1927 for participating in the Left Opposition; he was readmitted in 1928, only to be expelled again in 1936 following his arrest on 12 September. From 1932 until his arrest, he was the Deputy People’s Commissar of the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry. He was sentenced to death at the January 1937 trial. His article, "Ruthlessly Destroy the Despicable Murderers and Traitors," was published in Pravda on 21 August 1936.
[iv]Kristian Rakovsky (1873-1941). A longtime activist in the Social Democratic movement, he joined the Bolsheviks in 1917 and was a member of its CC from 1919 to 1927. In 1922, he was an ECCI member. From 1918 to 1923, he was the Chairman of the Ukrainian Council of People’s Commissars. From 1923 to 1925, he was the Soviet Ambassador to England; from 1925 to 1927, he was the Soviet Ambassador to France. He was one of the leaders of the Left Opposition from its inception in 1923, and was expelled from the VKP in 1927; he was readmitted in 1935. He was arrested on 27 January 1937. At the March 1938 trial of "Anti-Soviet Right-Trotskyist Bloc," he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He died there on 11 September 1941. Rakovsky's article, "There Should Be No Mercy," was published in Pravda on 21 August 1936.
[v]Founded in 1924, Daily Worker was the official newspaper of the CC CPUSA.