DOCUMENT 20

Cadres Department memorandum on "Trotskyists and other hostile elements in the emigre community of the German CP."

 

4 cop[ies]. mkh.

4. IX. 36.

Top secret.

1936

To c. Sergeyev[i]

Carry out and report

on the results of the verification of

the German émigrés.

9. 36. GD[ii]

To:       Com. Dimitrov.

            Com. Manuilsky

            Com. Moskvin.

The Cadres Department is sending to you a memorandum “On Trotskyists and other hostile elements in the émigré community of the German CP.”

We here mention only the most typical cases. Actually, the work on exposure is in progress, and a much larger number of these kinds of elements has already been revealed.

Chernomordik  /Chernomordik/.[iii]

 

5 cop[ies]. mkh.

2. IX. 36.

Top secret.

MEMORANDUM

ON TROTSKYISTS AND OTHER HOSTILE ELEMENTS IN THE ÉMIGRÉ COMMUNITY OF THE GERMAN C.P.

 

Among the German émigrés in the USSR there are people who were known in the CPG as active Trotskyists and factionalists before their arrival in the USSR:

1) SOLOMON MUSCHINSKI (STSALMOSH)[iv] – a member of the CPG from 1921, an active collaborator of Ruth Fischer[v] – Maslow,[vi] a member of the Korsch opposition;[vii] throughout his party membership, maintained close ties with [those] expelled from the party as ultra-Leftists and Trotskyists. As early as in 1931, there was a rumor in the party about him that his brother was a Polish Okhranka agent, and that he, together with his brother, was trading cocaine in Khemnits, etc. According to the German section, he was already trying to get some party work assigned to him, but was denied it, under different pretexts, due to his lack of credibility.

After the arrest of Berman-Yurin, his wife, Sonja Fichmann,[viii] told Koska[ix] (the CPG member) that, at the time of Koska’s visit to Berman-Yurin’s apartment, the latter was talking in Russian over the telephone with Muschinski (Stsalmosh). This fact is evidence of Muschinski’s connection with Berman-Yurin.

Muschinski came to the USSR in 1931, via the trade delegation with which he had worked in Berlin. Expelled from the VKP(b). He asked Koska for a recommendation, but he refused.

On 26 April 1936, the German representative sent to the Party Control Commission a positive recommendation [of Muschinski] as a CPG member, alluding to the positive recommendation of [his] party cell. His place of work is unknown; recently he lived in the “Mirovoy Oktiabr” ap[artment] coop[erative].

2) RUNDOLF GERTSEL[x] – a member of the CPG from 1919, before that a member of the PPS and the German S[ocial] D[emocratic party]. Before 1933, [he] was an active Brandlerian,[xi] [a fact] which he had concealed in his autobiography. [He] came to the USSR in 1934 from Paris, without the party’s consent. His [home] address and place of work are not known.

3)         HERBERT ENGELHART (WILHELM REISS)[xii] – a member of the CPG  from 1924. [He is] known as an active fractionalist and a member of the ultra-Leftist group in Saxony. In 1927-28, [he was] a member of the Wedding opposition.[xiii] Recommended to the party by Renner, who was expelled for Trotskyism. In 1931, [he] came to he USSR, [after] being supposedly persecuted for stealing arms, but he was not given a political émigré status. [He] works in a plant in Kolpino, Leningrad region.

4)         NOAH BOROWSKI[xiv] – a member of the CPG from 1919. Worked in Khemnits-Leipzig. Expelled from the party in 1929 as an active member of the Brandler group; worked on the Brandlerian newspaper “The Workers’ Politics.” Before his arrival in the USSR (i. e., before 1931), he remained closely connected with the Brandler group. Readmitted into the CPG in 1933. While working in and translating for the Foreign Workers Publishing House in December 1934, he tried to integrate anti-party ideas into Popov’s book “History of the VKP(b),” omitting those parts [of the book] that described Kamenev’s behavior during the trial of the Duma faction, his strike-breaking in October, etc. His last place of work is unknown; his wife is still working in Moscow for the “German Central Newspaper.”[xv]

5)         LEW SUSSKIND[xvi] – a writer, he came to the USSR from the Copenhagen in 1934. It is known that after his arrest in the winter of 1933, he passed on to Gestapo the addresses of communists and after his release, he publicly declared that communists were not tortured. After his release, he visited one of the leaders of the Storm troops and gave him presents. In an article in an American newspaper, [he] described the revolutionary activities of a certain Deivits. [He] had connections with a certain Moishe Livshits, who had a reputation as a provocateur and who played suspicious role toward the USSR. It is known that Süsskind gave Trotskyist speeches in the Berlin Jewish Club, [and] received and distributed Trotskyist literature in Dannemark.[xvii] After Süsskind’s departure from Germany, a group of German political émigrés to which he belonged was expelled from the party for Trotskyist activity.

After his departure from Germany, he went legally [i. e. with his own passport] from Copenhagen to Paris and back via Germany. Currently [he lives] in Minsk.

6) PETTER, ERWIN[xviii] – a member of the CPG from 1927 to 1928, expelled from the CPG as a Trotskyist. He took part in the attack on Wilhelm Pieck[xix] during his speech in Ratenau(??). Despite his continual Trotskyist activity in the CPG and despite the fact that the CC CPG in its letter of 10. 1. 1930 refused to give Petter a recommendation to the VKP(b), he joined the party, evidently while he was working at the “Mostremass”[xx] plant in Moscow. [He was also] sent to the University of the Peoples of the West, from which he graduated in 1934.

The question of his attack on c[omrade] Pieck was raised during the purge in the University.  However, in view of c. Pieck’s statement that no importance should be attached to it, the Ger[man] section did not discuss this question. Recently [Erwin] worked in Prokopievsk in the Kuzbass as an instructor among foreign workers. In October 1934, a characteristic [evaluation] of Petter corresponding [to the above] was given in response to the inquiry from the appropriate organizations.

7)         PETTER, MARGARITA – a member of the CPG, like her husband, a Trotskyist.  [She] came to the USSR in 1930, via the Berlin trade delegation, on 6 August 1930. The CC CPG recommended her transfer to the VKP(b) as a candidate.[She] was sent by the CPG representative [in the Comintern] to the University of the Peoples of the West. After the assassination of c. Kirov, she told a friend at the University: “If there is only a personal issue behind this act of revenge, it could be jealousy.” After that she was immediately removed from the school. Her [current] place of work is unknown, [her] address is: Moscow, Tiufelev proezd, 3, apt. 42.

8)         ERNST HESS (LEO ROTH)[xxi] – a member of the YCL of Germany, expelled from the YCL in 1926 for Trotskyism. Between 1926 and 1928, [he] was one of the leaders of the Korsch opposition, after the split of the German YCL’s Pappelplatz group.(??) Admitted to the CPG in 1929; in 1930 he began to work in its underground apparatus and, after that, in the CC CPG.

[He] came to the USSR in November 1935 on the order of the CPG (representative) to work in the apparatus. HESS is married to the daughter of Von Hammerstein (??), a Colonel-General of the German Reichswehr.  He receives mail from abroad to the address of Steinberg Nati,[xxii] with whom he maintains close relations.

9)         STEINBERGER, NATI – a member of the CPG from 1928; German Komsomol activist. Before that, in 1926, [he] was expelled from the YCL of Germany for energetic Trotskyist activities. It is known that, in 1932, Steinberger received materials from Trotskyists abroad. According to him, he reported this to the former analyst C. Schwab and passed this material to him then. [He] came to the USSR in 1932, with the approval of the CC CPG, to work in the Agrarian Institute.[xxiii] Steinberg currently works in the History Institute of the Red Professors.[xxiv]

10)       OTTO KNOBEL (OTTO BRANT)[xxv] – a former worker of the YCL of Germany who worked in the International Publishing House for Youth in Germany and who, in 1933, emigrated to Paris without the party’s consent. [He] was not granted political émigré status. [Knobel] returned to Germany and then emigrated again. In Paris, [he] was involved with the Trotskyists. [He] moved to Copenhagen to work, where he was not connected to the party and did not establish connections with the émigré community. In Copenhagen, [he] worked in the publishing house of Wilhelm Reich[xxvi] who had been expelled from the CPG for Trotskyism. According to him, he broke with Reich over personal differences. However, according to some party comrades, he went to Berlin with Reich’s consent and, a month later, in late 1935, came to the USSR via Inturist without connections and without the party’s permission. He was so close to Reich that he read [Reich’s] letters to Trotsky and even mailed them himself.

In April 1936, the Cadres Department reported Knobel’s past to the responsible organs. His last address [was]: Hotel “Novomoskovskaia.”

11) LADISLAUS STERN (PAUL STEIN)[xxvii] – a member of the CP Hungary from 1918-21, CP Austria from 1922-29, CP Germany from November 1929. From 1924, he revealed himself as an active Trotskyist. At the party meeting in 1927, he protested the expulsion of Trotsky. In 1928-29, he worked with the Trotskyist group of Iakov Frank, Iza Strasser,[xxviii] Raisa Adler.[xxix] At party meetings, he spoke openly as a Trotskyist, defended the theory of permanent revolution and stood by the platform of the Russian opposition. In that period, he personally sent a package of books to Trotsky. In June 1929, [he] was expelled from the CP Austria for Trotskyism. [He was] deported from Vienna in June 1929.  In August 1929, after making an oral declaration recognizing his mistakes to the Berlin district committee and appealing to the CC CPG for reinstatement to the party, he was admitted to the CPG in November 1929 with the agreement of the CC CP Austria. According to the Ger[man] section, nothing “reprehensible could be attributed to him during the period of 1929-1931 (in Berlin).”

From May to August 1931, while doing underground work in Hungary, [he] was reprimanded for violating the rules of security.

[He] has been living in the USSR since January 1932, because he was prohibited from staying in Germany. [He] arrived with the permission of the CPG and CP Hungary. [He] works in the “German Central Newspaper” in Moscow.

12) SOBOLEVIC A. (Abrascha, SENIN)[xxx] – according to his own words, a member of the YCL of Lithuania from early 1921; however, according to [his written] statement of 18 June 1931, from 1920-21. According to some sources, he conducted disorganizing work in the YCL of Lithuania and had a reputation [as being] “a disorganizer with adventurist propensities.”  A CPG member from 1924. He claims that his Trotskyist activities started in 1929, but, according to our sources, he joined the Trotskyists much earlier and in 1929 was expelled from the CPG as a Trotskyist. In 1927, Sobolevic traveled from Germany to the USSR, probably to establish contacts with the Russian Trotskyists. In 1928, he and the Trotskyist Frank from Vienna (originally also from Lithuania) offered their services to the CP Lithuania, but at that time Sobolevic’s friend, Glavatsky, was expelled from the CP Lithuania.

Frank and Sobolevic protested against this expulsion and it turned out that in 1928 Sobolevic had already traveled to Lithuania to contact Lithuanian Trotskyists. Sobolevic contributed to Trotskyist newspapers in Germany and France, traveled to Turkey to see Trotsky, and returned to Germany where he organized Trotskyist groups in several cities, including Leipzig. Once again he went to the USSR, via Inturist, after which he published a series of articles hostile to the USSR in a Trotskyist newspaper. His wife, who worked for Inturist, helped him to leave the USSR for abroad.

In 1932, Sobolevic and his brother (Ruvim Sobolevic, Roman Vell)[xxxi] published an article against Trotsky in the Trotskyist press and after that tried again to join the party. In 1932, Sobolevic came to the USSR, joined the VKP(b) (dating his party membership back from 1931) and worked as an editor of “Das Neue Dorf” in Kharkov.

In April 1934, the Cadres Department sent c. Shkiriatov[xxxii] a report about the Sobolevic’s Trotskyist activities and comments by c. Angaretis about the incorrect information in Sobolevic’s autobiography. At the same time, the Cadres Department sent all of the necessary information on Sobolevic to the responsible organs. After December 1935, these organs [made] new inquiries. The Cadres Department sent to the responsible organs a statement by Ludwig Brukker, unmasking Sobolevic as an agent of Trotsky. It mentions, among other things, that according to Sobolevic, “the old man (Trotsky) continues to trust him in the same old way.”

The fate of Sobolevic, who was expelled from  the party in February 1936 in Kharkov, is unknown to us.

13) GRUSS, BORIS[xxxiii] – member of Poalei Zion[xxxiv] from 1912. A member of the CPG from 1925, expelled in 1929 for being a Trotskyist. Worked in Leipzig. The Ger[man] section considers the information about his reinstatement to the CPG in 1932 [to have been] falsified. Although readmission [to the party] of Grüss and others was entrusted to the Saxon district, Grüss was not readmitted because he was a Pole and had never been a CPG member. The [German] section considers Grüss B. an untrustworthy element and the information provided by him to be unreliable (from a document from the Ger[man] section).

Such is the conclusion of the Ger[man] section which was recently received. In July 1935, in response to an inquiry from the party control commission, the ECCI’s Ger[man] section, referring to Heckert who knows the case in more detail, reported that Grüss had been a CPG member from 1925 and was expelled in 1929 as a Trotskyist.

Grüss came to the USSR in November 1933 on a visa issued by the consul in Prague, without the party’s knowledge. According to the Ger[man] section, he works in Mostorg and lives in Moscow, 5 Vorovsky St., apt. 9.

14) PAUL WEISS – a member of the CPG from 1924 to 1930. The party was aware of his rightist position in the past, after the VI [Comintern] Congress. On 15 May 1930, WEISS arrived with the approval of the CC CPG and was immediately sent to the Philosophy Department in the [Institute of Red] Professors with the approval of D. Riazanov,[xxxv] even though he is a musician and artist by training. In 1930, he was admitted to the VKP(b). Weiss was expelled from the party for Trotskyism in 1935. He and his wife, Vera Emerikovna Weiss, a VKP(b) candidate member from 1931, remained Czech citizens without the party’s permission. His wife worked as a [party] cell technical secretary. All the time they were both connected to the Czech consul in Moscow. It also turned out that Weiss later worked in the music sector of Gosizdat. In 1934, the Kun commission discussed the question of Weiss’ trip abroad (on behalf of Gosizdat), but that trip was canceled.

What happened to him later, we do not know. His address is: 54 Bolsh[aia] Pirogovskaia, apt. 230.

15)       ELZHERS, ALBERT (LEO BERMAN) – Berman-Yurin’s brother, a member of “Poalei Zion” from 1917-1928, a member of the CPG from 1927. [He] came to the USSR in April 1933 with a trade delegation. Connected to Fritz David and Berman-Yurin. In the past, [he] had worked as an instructor of mass cultural work in the VTsSPS; [he] was fired from there in August 1933. His old address (1933) is: 9 Chernigovsky per[eulok], apt. 13.

16)        NATHAN NEIMAN[xxxvi] – a member of the CPG from 1923. [He] came to the USSR in December 1934 and was denied émigré status. In his recommendation, he refers to Fritz David, with whom he could not have any party connection. He entered the USSR via the German section thanks to Fritz David. [He] worked in the OGIZ scientific research institute, 28 Varlovaia [Street].

17)        HOFFMAN, INGA[xxxvii] – the wife of N. Lurye,[xxxviii] a member of the CPG from 1926. [She] came to the USSR in 1932 with her husband N. Lurye – Hans Wolf. Regarding her work in the CPG, the Ger[man] section knows only that she held a series of party obligations of a technical character. She has a recommendation to the VKP(b) from Leo Berman (Elzhers, Albert).

18)        SONJA FICHMANN – Berman-Yurin’s wife, a member of the CP Romania from 1919-23, a member of the CPG from 1923. [She] came to the USSR in 1923 on a trade delegation trip. The Ger[man] section characterizes her as an active party worker.

The Cadres Department knows the following facts: when in Berlin, Fichmann vigorously opposed the expulsion of a Trotskyist named Rosov from the party.

One Arnold Gubb, a former CPG member who was suspected of provocation and later found his way to the Storm troops, also enjoyed Fichmann’s protection.

Fichmann, together with Berman-Yurin, tried persistently to talk c. Goldzweig,[xxxix] who now works in the IMEL,[xl] out of going to the USSR, by making arguments such as: “Where are you going? It is so bad there.” When she worked in the [newspaper] “Za Industrializatsiiu,”[xli] Fichmann had access to materials from military factories and reportedly visited those factories more than once.

According to Golda Freilich,[xlii] a VKP(b) member, Fichmann offered a room to Freilich’s sister, in which, it turned out, had lived [a person] exiled for Trotskyism for 3 years. Currently, CPG member Vinter and her husband, the recently arrested HARTMAN, live in this room. Address: 29 Usachiovka, kor[pus] 7, apt. 366.

19) HAUSCHILD, ROBERT (HAUS RUDOLF)[xliii] – a member of the CPG from 1918. Between 1924 and 1934, he was loosely connected to the party organization and party work. Maintained close connections with Trotskyists and Brandlerians. In 1928, published a military-political magazine “Die Gruhne Front.” Despite a CC CPG decision, he tried to maintain the newspaper by financing it with the help of German and foreign Brandlerians. From 1928-29, he was known in the CPG as a conciliator.

According to c. Ercoli’s secretary,  c. Petterman,[xliv] in 1930, Hauschild expressed in conversations “doubts about the possibility of building socialism in one country,” talked “about the possibility of a Thermidor as a result of degeneration of the proletarian dictatorship,” “about the likely necessity to ‘overcome’ the CPG and the Comintern which had proved to be incapable of moving the revolution forward.” “Seriously doubted the importance and the role of Stalin, unscrupulously discredited Ernst Thälmann, as well as the other comrades from the party leadership.” Com. Petterman claims that Hauschild maintained permanent contact with various oppositional elements in and around the party, in particular with Walter Frölich, Kurt Heinrich (Süsskind), Robert (Volk, Karl),[xlv] Frenzel,[xlvi] Greve,[xlvii] Herbert,[xlviii] Bringdolg (Switzerland). During his trip to France, he tried to talk with Souvarine.[xlix] [He] came to the USSR in 1932, with the permission of the CC CPG. [Currently he] works for “Izvestiia.”

In August 1934, in response to an inquiry from the responsible organs, the Ger[man] section reported that “Hauschild is a CPG member from 1919, a writer, and currently works in the 4th Department.” In October 1935, the same [information], as well as [information] that, from 1929-31, he joined the conciliators, was given in response to a second inquiry. In February 1936, the following reference was given: “already during the world war, he belonged to the Socialist youth and worked in close contact with comrades from the Spartacist Union. During the world war, [he] was imprisoned several times for his political beliefs and work. After 1919, [he] belonged to the CPG. After the VI [Comintern] congress, between 1928 and 1930, he belonged to the conciliators. For about 8 years [he] has specialized in military issues.”

20) HAUSCHILD, HILDE (LOEWEN)[l] – a member of the CPG from 1922. In 1931, an instructor of Berlin’s eastern sub-district committee; she worked for the “Die Gruhne Front” magazine published  by her husband. At one time, the CC CPG received a statement by  Eigin, c. Schoenhaar’s[li] technical secretary, that she “works for the class enemy.” In 1930, she tried to spy on some [party] workers in the interests of her husband’s magazine (connections to the police, etc.). Between 1928 and 1932, [she] disagreed with party policy and belonged to the conciliators. In 1933, (already in the USSR) [she] was reprimanded by the ICC for blabbing about secret addresses.

In 1934, the Ger[man] section responded  to an inquiry  from the responsible organs that Hilde Hauschild was a CPG member from 1922, had come to the USSR with the CC CPG permission and was working as an editor at the In[ternational] Radio. In February 1936, it repeated the same information and added that she was an active CPG worker and had belonged to the conciliators from 1928 to 1930.

21)       PAUL HEINZ[lii]  (Rakow’s[liii] brother), a member of the CPG, he maintains continual ties with his brother. Came [to the USSR] via the OMS, recently worked as an instructor among foreign workers in the Postyshev (formerly Grishino, mine no. 1). The CPG delegation states that, according to c. Stucke (Tselner)[liv] who went there to conduct propaganda work, Paul Heinz has two passports – German and British -- boasts of his former underground work and his current ties to the NKVD. “At a study group [he] asked a question through his wife, what mistakes did Thälmann commit in 1932?”

22)        HEINZ MOLLER (ASIATICUS),[lv] came [to the USSR] with a Polish passport under the name of Schiff. [He] came in order to file an appeal. [He] had been [in the USSR] with the same objective in 1927. [He] is a CPG member and was a VKP(b) member, but was expelled in 1927 for his Trotskyist position on the Chinese question. An active Brandlerian. After expulsion from the party, [he] went to China and worked in Shanghai as a journalist. According to the Cadres Department (of the Chinese section), [he] went to China to work in the newspaper of a certain Isaacs,[lvi] who is a direct agent of Trotsky in China (and went to see Trotsky in Norway in 1935). Isaacs’ newspaper, “China Forum,” was published in Shanghai for some time as an American-Chinese newspaper, and Asiaticus worked there. But this newspaper was closed because the  CC CP China publicly disassociated itself from this newspaper.

Asiaticus escaped to Norway with party money. In his statement asking to be readmitted to the party, [he] lists all the newspapers for which he had worked, but fails to mention the abovementioned facts. The Chinese comrades claim that Asiaticus has a reputation as a police agent. The fact that, in his statement, he refers to the connection to and the support of the communist organization in China speaks, according to the Chinese comrades, against him since it is known that in Shanghai there is only a police agency disguised as a communist organization. [He] works as a full-time correspondent of “Izvestiia” and TASS.

The Cadres Department has taken appropriate measures.

23)       MAX WEISS[lvii] – a worker; a member of the Communist Workers Party (syndicalist-Trotskyist organization) in 1920-24. From 1924-27, a member of the CPG. [He] left the CPG because of [his] ultra-Left differences. Joined the party again in 1930, [and] came to the USSR in 1931 as a foreign worker. His address and place of work are unknown, however, in August 1933, the German delegation was helping him to get a job.

24)        WALTER BOERNER[lviii] – a member of the CPG from 1920 to 1927. Left the party due to his ultra-Left position; joined again in 1929. In March 1933, [he] was arrested and, in a short time, released. Arrested again in May and released in 14 days. [He is] suspected of provocation. Has arrived in the USSR.

25)        SCHWEIGER[lix] – a member of the Independent Socialist Democratic party from 1920-23; a member of the CPG from 1923 to 1927, from 1927 to 1928, [member of] the Leninbund (Trotskyists).[lx] Known as an active Trotskyist. In January 1930, he again [became] member of the CPG. [He has been] in the USSR since 1931 as a for[eign] worker. Address: Kharkov, KhTZ.[lxi]

26)        ILIAS SARCHIN (WALTER BERGER)[lxii] – Berman-Yurin’s closest friend. According to Karl Hoeflich,[lxiii] [he] belonged to Berman’s group in Germany, after which, in 1931, [he] was sent to [work in] Lesoexport[lxiv] in Leningrad. In 1932, he traveled to Berlin.

27)        WILLI RABE ([REAL] NAME PAWERA)[lxv] – a worker; a member of the CPG from 1926. From 1930, he worked in the CPG apparatus. From 1930 until the end of 1933, [he was] an active member of the conciliators’ faction, received financial support from them, [and] attended all the faction’s meetings. Being a CC courier, [he] surveyed and passed over to the conciliators all of the CC’s mail regarding the conciliators. [He] came to the USSR in 1933, studied in the MLSh. [He] concealed from the party his work on behalf of the conciliators and was unmasked in 1934.

[He] had connections with Fritz David from [the time of his] trade union work in Germany, and continued to maintain these connections in Moscow. Referred to Fritz David’s recommendation and regularly read the fascist press in his home. Since then, [he] has not provided the German delegation with any explanations of his relations with Fritz David. [He] works at the Sacco and Vanzetti factory in Moscow.

28)       NEWIJASCHEVSKI FAIBISH (PAUL WEIZENFELD)[lxvi] – originally from Gorodnia, Ukraine. From 1917 to 1920, a member of the “Poalei Zion.” In 1920-21, was in emigration in Lithuania [and stayed] in Memel until 1923. A member of the CPG after 1926. According to his statement, he was exiled to the USSR in April 1933 as a Soviet citizen. Com. Angaretis claims that Weizenfeld stayed in Lithuania as a white émigré. Recommended by Fritz David, Leo Berman (a brother of Berman-Yurin), Alexander Emel [Lurye], Brucker[lxvii] (who provided this information), Osher Tikushinski.

29)        EMIL POTRATZ (HERBERT KRAMER)[lxviii] -- a member of the CPG from 1920. Came to the USSR as an émigré in June 1933. He recommended Alfred Kuhnt,[lxix] known from the trial of the Trotskyist-Zinovievite gang.

Here in the USSR, Potratz, who used to be an active CPG worker, has an awful reputation (organization of drinking-bouts, connections with the worst elements among the foreigners). His wife writes to Germany that there is hunger here, and each time repeats that she wants to go back. All this time Potratz has been seeking Soviet citizenship. He works in a foreign bureau of  the Novokramatorsky machine-building plant in Donbass.

30)       FRITZ PALENSCHAT[lxx] – a member of the German YCL from 1922, a member of the CPG from 1928. In 1928 and 1930, worked in the underground organizations (in the Storm troops and in the Reichswehr). [He] came to the USSR in February 1934, recommended by Ernst Mansfeld,[lxxi] who was arrested in the USSR. In conversations, [he] advocates the idea of individual terror. His wife frequently travels to Germany. [He] works at the Stalin plant in Leningrad, [and] lives at: Kamenostroevsky, Glavnaia alleia 49, apt. 16.

31)        HARTMAN (“Pravda’s” correspondent in Berlin) – according to Richard Paschke,[lxxii] a CPG member working for “Pravda” in Berlin, [Hartman] had much closer connections with David than were necessary for his work. Allegedly, “Pravda” occupied his Berlin apartment, where David used to live. Hartman also met with Wollenberg,[lxxiii] a Trotskyist expelled from the party, who is now in Prague conducting active c[ounter] r[evolutionary] work. Moreover, he had connections with Magyar during the Magyar’s stay in Berlin. He was visited twice by Berman-Yurin. Hartman is currently in Moscow, [living] in the Hotel “Savoy” and works for the TASS.

32)        GINZBURG, MEER (KARSKI, PAUL) - a member of the CPG from 1928. [He] came to the USSR in 1931 with the trade delegation and was sent to work in the Scientific Research Institute of the Monopoly of Foreign Trade. On the recommendation of the CC CPG, [he] was transferred to the VKP(b) in 1931. According to recently received information [and] according to the statement  of CPG member Iohanna Zorn,[lxxiv] [he] was the closest friend of Natan Lurye and visited N. Lurye in Cheliabinsk.

According to the statement of the party committee of the Institute of Foreign Trade, [he] was expelled from the party as an alien element during the verification of party documents in 1936. Based on the information provided by the Ger[man] section, the Cadres Department responded to an 8 May 1934 inquiry from the responsible organs that he was an active party member and conducted struggle against the Trotskyists and Brandlerians. The German section gave [him] a reference not only on 22 December 1931, but also on 28 January 1936, based on the reference of the trade delegation’s [party] cell, [but] without even taking pains to verify that information.

 

The composition of the political émigrés who are CPG members [and] who have been arrested by the NKVD makes evident the level of [enemy] saturation of German emigration in the [Soviet] Union. We already know about 50 people [who have been] arrested.

Among those arrested are: Willi Leow,[lxxv] a former CC CPG member and party member from 1920; and a number of CPG members who had been in the party for 17-15[lxxvi] years -- Schuster,[lxxvii] Demolski,[lxxviii] Traubenberger,[lxxix] Mansfeld, Otto Unger,[lxxx] Erich Wendt,[lxxxi] Nixdorf,[lxxxii] Lülsdorf,[lxxxiii] etc.; 10 people who have been in the party from 1919-1922; 12 people – from 1923 to 1929, etc.

But most important is [the fact] that many of them had been recommended for jobs by the Ger[man] section as political émigrés, as party members, and most of them were in good repute within the section until the very last moment, until their arrest.

Moreover, the Cadres Department continues to receive information about a whole series of individuals among the German political émigrés [who are] suspicious, maintain connections with those arrested [or] with those put on trial, suspected of serving in the Gestapo, suspected of provocation, etc. Most of these people are currently in the USSR.

Here are some more examples:

1. KURT RICHARD BRUCH[lxxxiv] – a member of the German YCL from 1924, a CPG member from 1930. [He] came to the USSR in 1934; his wife returned to Germany. Among the materials of the Ger[man] section, there is information that he, together with a certain BUCHZEMAN, who is a Gestapo agent in Khemnitz and has been twice expelled from the party, is strongly suspected by the Khemnitz organization because Bruch was once arrested during a clash between the Nazis and the Roter Front[lxxxv] members, and then was immediately released.

Bruch has a recommendation from that same Buchzeman.

2.         JOSEF FORTUSADESKI[lxxxvi] – a member of the CPG from 1923, also from Khemnitz, but originally from Kherson. [He] came to the USSR without the party’s consent. He is in permanent communication with BRUCH and also has a recommendation from the same Buchzeman.

3.         SKROBITSZ SAMUEL[lxxxvii] – originally from Poland, a member of the Bund[lxxxviii] from 1912, a member of the CPG from 1932. [He] has been in the USSR since August 1934, against the party’s will. Communists avoid him because the reason for his arrival is unknown and he inspires suspicion.

4.          OTTO GROSS[lxxxix] – a kulak; he has been in the USSR since 1934 without the party’s knowledge. [He] claims to be a CPG member from 1922. Was imprisoned [in Germany] three times, [and] each time promptly released. He claims that, during the last search, they supposedly found party materials on him, however, at that time he had no connections with the party and, in general, his party membership is doubtful. Upon arrival here, he spread false rumors that he was imprisoned together with Thälmann, was condemned to execution and escaped that same day, etc.

5.          HAMAN, ERNST – a member of the CPG from 1921. [He has been] in the USSR since 1931. Maintains close relations with OTTO BRESSEL, who had been expelled from the party for Brandlerianism and for embezzling party’s funds, who organized a Storm troop[xc] unit in Kiel and who has caused plenty of harm to the party in the recent years.

6.          KLAUS ELSA[xci] – came to the USSR in 1932. Maintains constant connections with  the German embassy, from which she gets fascist newspapers. She has a bad reputation in Hamburg.

7.          BAYER, SIMON – a member of the CPG from 1925, originally from Vilno. Came to the USSR in 1934 without the party’s consent. Before his arrival, he stayed in France and England. Suspected of provocation.

8.          VICTOR ADAMCZAK[xcii] – joined the CPG in 1929 for several months in order to get to the USSR. [He] came as a foreign worker in 1930. Expelled from the party. One of the instigators of counterrevolutionary and anti-Soviet moods among the foreign workers ([he] works in Donbass at the Grishino mine).

 

Given that it is unacceptable to delay reporting on these people until the final investigation of their fates and even accertaining their current location (unknown, in some cases, even to the Ger[man] section), we consider it necessary, besides urgent police investigation, to draw certain conclusions on the basis of these materials.

As the above facts demonstrate, the absolute majority of the aforementioned CP members were Trotskyists and Brandlerians in the past, who were expelled from the party  and retained close contacts with the anti-party elements and with the people who conducted anti-party work in the USSR. They came to the Soviet Union in 1931-1934, years of fascist growth, the activization of Trotskyism and its conversion into a direct agency of fascism. Indeed, in 1930, 3 people came, in 1932 – 11 people, in 1933 – 11 people, in 1934 – 13 people, in 1935 – 5 people.

Already now, on the basis of the existing materials, it is possible to trace certain connections between these people and their known groups in our country.

Indeed, there is a connection between Fritz David and Berman-Yurin, and  Leo Berman (Berman-Yurin’s brother), Inga Hoffman (Nathan Lurye’s wife), Solomon Muschinski, who was connected to Berman-Yurin in Moscow, Nata[n] Neiman, whose arrival in the USSR was made possible with the assistance of Fritz David via the German section, Sonja Fichmann – Berman-Yurin’s wife, Sara David,[xciii] Ilja Sarchin – Berman-Yurin’s closest friend, Willi Rabe, who came [to the USSR] in 1933 and maintained permanent relations with Fritz David, Newijaschevski (Paul Weizenfeld), [and] who has a recommendation from Fritz David, Leo Berman  and Emel.

On the other hand, Emel Potratz, who came in June 1933, recommended Alfred Kuhnt, who used to bring Trotsky’s letters to Moscow. Alfred Kuhnt himself, a CPG member from 1923-27, expelled in 1927 for participating in the activities of the Trotskyist center and again admitted to the CPG in 1929, came to the USSR in 1932 as an émigré. He claimed that he had been charged with killing of one Nazi, presumably in an armed clash. However, it was not a clash, but a drinking bout.

A group of émigrés from Poland and Lithuania, who came from different places and under different pretexts to join the German party and, through it, came to the USSR as political émigrés, merits attention. Indeed, Leo Berman, the “Poalei Zion” member between 1917 and 1926, is from Minsk; Hoffman Inga is from Kovno; Nathan Neiman is from Warsaw; Noah Borowski is from Peski; Rundolf Hertzel the PPS member between 1912-1925, is from Tsarnov; Sobolevic A. is from Lithuania; Leo Zusskind is from Poland; Solomon Muschinski is from Poland; Newijaschski (Paul Weisenfeld), a member of the Poalei Zion from 1917 to 1920, is a Lithuanian émigré. Baer Sima is from Vilno. Skrobic Samuel, a member of the Bund from 1912 to 1932, is from Poland. Some of these people are connected to each other, as shown above.

A significant number of these people have settled in Moscow and work in the press and publishing: Hauschild Robert, for the newspaper “Izvestiia;” Weiss Paul, in the Gosizdat’s Music Sector; Sobolevic, editor of the “Das Neue Dorf” newspaper. Lev [Leo] Zusskind is a writer, Noah Borowski [works] in the Foreign Workers Publishing House, his wife [works] for the German Central Newspaper; Paul Stein [works] for the German Central Newspaper; Sonja Fichmann [works] for the newspaper “Za industrializatsiiu;” Hauschild Hilde is an editor on the International Radio; Nathan Neimen is in the OGIZ Scientific Research Institute; Heinz Möller (Asiaticus) works, according to his statement, as a full-time TASS and “Izvestiia” correspondent; Hartman works for the TASS.

Another part [of them] works in factories: Gerber Engelgard – in a plant in Kolpino, Leningrad district; Petter Erwin, in Prokopievsk, Kuzbass; Paul Geintz, in the Donbass, in the Grishino mine; Schweiger, in the Kharkov tractor plant; Frotz Palentscha, in the Stalin plant in Leningrad; Georg Blumfeldt,[xciv] in Metrostroy, etc.

The German delegation has not applied itself to verifying those coming to the USSR, to selecting them [carefully] and has failed to organize the investigation into cases of clearly suspicious elements. In a number of cases, it permitted direct agents of Trotsky and the Gestapo, agent provocateurs and spies to enter the USSR, often times even failing to warn the Comintern and other organizations, and showing no further interest in them

It was with the explicit consent of the German section that Hoffman Inga, Nathan Neiman, Noah Borowski, Steinberger Nati, Ernst Gesse (who even came at the CPG’s invitation), Paul Weiss, Ladislaus Stern, Hauschild Robert and Hauschild Hilde came to the USSR, despite the fact that the CPG was aware of the Trotskyist past of these people, most of whom had been expelled from the party.

The German delegation failed to warn about the arrival direct from Copenhagen of such people as Otto Knobel and Leo Zisskind [Zusskind]. The [German] section learned about open anti-Soviet activities of a number of arrested and suspicious people, those who had connections with the German embassy, agents provocateurs and criminal elements only after they had been exposed without the participation of the section.

Taking into consideration the large number of German political émigrés in the USSR, their saturation [with enemies], as well as the substantial ignorance of the German section and its poor organization of the verification of political émigrés, it is essential:

1)         To oblige members of the CC CPG (cc. Pieck, Florin, Weber[xcv]) to personally conduct, within a month, the verification of all German political émigrés and to provide, under c. Pieck’s personal supervision, a report on each of them.

2)         To investigate without delay all existing materials on German political émigrés.

To present to the Commission on the political émigrés the question of each of the people mentioned here in order to decide on their future fate.

CADRES DEPARTMENT.

 

RGASPI, f. 495, op. 74, d. 124, ll. 11-31.

Original in Russian. Typewritten.

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[i] Aleksandr Petrovich Sergeyev.  Born in 1889 in Tyrnovo, Bulgaria. He emigrated to the USSR in 1927, and transferred to the VKP. After 1933, he worked in the Bureau of the ECCI Secretariat and as a political assistant to Dimitrov.

[ii] Handwritten by Dimitrov.

[iii] Moisei Borisovich Chernomordik (1889-1937). Born in Dnepropetrovsk, member of the Bolshevik party from May 1917. After 1921, he was a professional party worker. Between 1931 and 1937, he was the deputy head of the ECCI’s Cadres Department. He was arrested on 14 June 1937 and shot on 14 September.

[iv] Solomon Muschinski (Franz Samusch) (1897-1936).  He was arrested in May 1936 and condemned to face the firing squad.

[v] Ruth Fischer (real name – Elfride Eisler) (1895-1961). A member of the CP Austria from 1918. In 1919, she moved to Berlin and became an active CPG worker. Together with Arkady Maslow, she headed the Left Opposition in the CPG. In 1924, she took a leading position in the party and was elected a Reichstag deputy. At the Fifth Comintern Congress, she was elected a candidate member of the ECCI. In fall 1925, the ECCI removed her for helping to found the oppositional group Leninbund, but soon after she broke from it. In 1933, she moved to Paris and helped organize the Gruppe Internationale.  She worked until 1936 in the Secretariat of the International Communist League. After 1940, she lived in the USA and engaged in scholarly work.  For a complete discussion, see Fischer, German Communism.

[vi] Arkady Maslow (real name – Isaak Chemerinsky) (1891-1941). Originally from Russia. A member of the CPG from 1918, one of the theoreticians of the party’s left wing. Together with Ruth Fischer, he headed the CPG leadership in April 1924. In fall 1925, the ECCI removed him from the CPG leadership; in August 1926, he was expelled from the CPG. He was one of the founders of the Leninbund. In 1939, he moved to Paris where, together with Ruth Fischer, he founded the Gruppe Internationale, which later joined the International Communist League. In 1940, he went to Cuba, where he died.

[vii] The Korsch opposition – an ultra-Left oppositional group in the CPG which was led by Karl Korsch in 1925-1926. K. Korsch (1889-1961), a theoretician of the German ultra-Leftists, was one of the founders of the oppositional magazine Kommunistische Politik. In 1926, the ECCI expelled him from the party.

[viii] Sonja (Gertrude) Fichmann (1898-1939). Born in Kishinev, Bessarabia; a member of the CP Romania from 1919. After 1923, a member of the CPG. In August 1933, she went to the USSR together with her husband, Berman-Yurin, and worked for the newspaper Za Industrializatsiiu. In November 1936, she was arrested by the NKVD and exiled. On 21 March 1937, she was condemned to eight years in a corrective labor camp. She was sentenced to be shot on 7 March 1939.

[ix] Willi Koska (1902-1943). A member of the CPG from 1921. At the 12th CPG congress, he was elected a CC member. After 1931, General Secretary of Germany’s Red Aid. After 1932, member of  MOPR’s Executive Committee. He was a Reichstag deputy from July 1932 until the fall of 1933, when he emigrated to Czechoslovakia.  In 1935, he emigrated to the USSR, where he worked in one of Moscow’s enterprises. He was arrested on 5 July 1941.

[x] Probably,  Gerszel Ryndhorn (Mindsigorski). He was born in 1877 in Zharnov (Radomskaia province, Russia). Member of the CPG from 1919, secretary of the party organization in Khemnits. Arrived in the USSR in 1934.

[xi] Brandlerian – supporter of Henrich Brandler (1881-1967), the CPG leader in 1922-1924, who was one of the leaders of the CPG’s right wing and was expelled from the party in December 1928.

[xii] Herbert Engelhart (real name – Wilhelm Reiss). Born in Frankfurt-am-Main, a member of the CPG from 1924; he worked in the party’s military apparatus. In 1930, he emigrated to the USSR, and worked in the Izhorsky plant in Kolpino, near Leningrad and for Inturist in Baku. He studied at the KUNMZ in 1934-1936, after which he worked in a mechanical repairs plant in Engels. He was arrested in 5 February 1938 and, on 26 May, sentenced to be executed.

[xiii] The Wedding opposition – an ultra-Leftist group in the CPG led by Max Reise which had its base in the Wedding worker’s district of Berlin. Reise was expelled from the CPG in 1928.

[xiv] Noah Isaakovich Borowski (1885-1944).  A translator and editor who worked in a number of party editorial boards. He translated Lenin’s works into German. While working in the Foreign Workers Publishing House in Moscow, he translated the N. Popov’s book The Outline History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) (Moscow, 1932) into German.   In the commentaries for the German edition, he allegedly smoothed over the political criticisms of the opposition. As a result, he was fired. On 10 February, the ICC resolved to consider Borowski a non-party member from 1929, that is it disallowed his restoration in the party in 1933.  On this, see the discussion of Borowski in chapter 2 above.  Between 1935 and 1937, he worked in the Turkstroi trust. In 1938, he was arrested. Later he worked in Alma Ata, where he died.

[xv] The German Central Newspaper (Deutsche Zentral-Zeitung) was published in German in Moscow between 1927 and 1938.

[xvi] Lew Süsskind. Born in 1898 in Poland, a member of the CPG from 1930. Arrested by the NKVD in 1937.

[xvii] Misspelled in the document. Should read “Denmark” (Trans.).

[xviii] Erwin Petter. Born in 1904 in Ratenau, Germany. A CPG member from 1925, In 1930, he moved to the USSR as a foreign worker together with his wife, Margarita Petter. They were both arrested in January 1937.

[xix] Wilhelm Pieck (1876-1960). A member of the German Social Democratic Party from 1895. During WW I, he was one of the leaders of the Die Internationale group (later known as the Spartacus League). A member of the CPG and its CC from 1918. Between 1926 and 1929, he was a political leader of the Berlin party organization and in 1928-1933, a Reichstag deputy. A member of the ECCI Presidium after 1928, and of the ECCI Secretariat after 1935. In 1949-1960, he was Chairman of the German Democratic Republic.

[xx] Mostremass – The Moscow State Trust for Mass Production, which supervised the luxury goods plants and factories.

[xxi] Ernst Hess (real name – Leo Roth, alias Victor Albert) (1911-1937). A member of the German YCL from 1925. In 1926, he was expelled from the YCLG as a Trotskyist. In 1929, joined the CPG and was one of the leaders of the party’s military-political apparatus. In early 1936, he moved to the USSR and worked as a metal worker in one of the Moscow plants. On 4 November 1936, he was arrested; on 10 November 1937, he was sentenced to death and executed.

[xxii] Nathan Steinberger. Born in 1910 in Berlin, he took part in the Jewish Socialist youth movement and later, in the Communist youth movement. A member of the CPG from 1928. In April 1932, he moved to the USSR with his wife, Edith Steinberger. In April 1937, he was arrested and condemned to “permanent exile.” Until 1955, he was imprisoned in Magadan. He was rehabilitated in 1955 and moved to the GDR, where he taught thereafter.

[xxiii] The International Agrarian Institute was created in 1925 under the aegis of the Krestintern (The Peasant International). The Institute studied agricultural and peasant issues of different countries and analyzed the communist parties’ agrarian policy. The Institute was closed in 1940.

[xxiv] The Institute of Red Professors. A specialized school which prepared professors to teach humanities in the universities as well as cadres for the scientific research institutes, and central party and state organs in the USSR. The Institute was created in 1921 in Moscow and had several departments which, in 1930-1931, were reorganized as independent institutes: History, Economics, Philosophy, Agriculture, World Economy and Politics, Soviet Organization and Law, Literature, Technical and Natural Science, etc. The Institute was closed in the 1930s.

[xxv] Otto Knobel (Brandt). Born in 1908 in Schwerin, Germany, he was a member of the CPG from 1929. In June 1935, he moved to the USSR and taught at the Karl Liebknecht German school in Moscow. He was arrested on 1 October 1936 and, on 22 June 1937, sentenced to five years in a corrective labor camp.

[xxvi] Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957).  A psychoanalyst who specialized in the problems of sex and sexual education, he joined the CPG in 1930 and was expelled in 1934.

[xxvii] Ladislaus Stern (Paul Stein). Born in 1899 in Budapest, he worked in different party publishing houses and bookstores of the Hungarian party in Vienna. He joined the CPG in 1929 and worked in the MOPR publishing house in Berlin. In January 1932, he emigrated to the USSR, where he was arrested in September 1937.

[xxviii] Isa Strasser. Born in 1891. A member of the Austrian CP from 1919 and the VKP from 1923. In 1924-27, he worked for the Profintern.

[xxix] Raisa Adler. A member of the Austrian CP. She worked for the International Workers’ Aid organization. In 1930, she was expelled from the CPA as a Trotskyist; she was readmitted in 1934. In 1935, she emigrated to the USA.

[xxx] Adolf (Abrasha) Sobolevic (Senin). Born in 1903 in Lithuania, a member of the CPLith from 1921, and a member of the CPG from 1922. He was expelled from the party in 1929 as a Trotskyist, but readmitted in 1931. In 1932, he emigrated to the USSR and worked in the Profintern, later was an editor of the newspaper Das neue Dorf (“The New Village) of the CC CP(b) of Ukraine, which was published in Kharkov. In 1934, the CC VKP Party Control Commission transferred him to the VKP. In 1936, he was expelled from the party as a “militant Trotskyist.”

[xxxi] Ruvim Sobolewski (Roman Vell) (1900-1962). A member of the CPLith from 1921, member of the CPG from 1922. In 1929, he was expelled from the party as a Trotskyist. After the Nazis came to power, he was arrested and deported to Czechoslovakia; from there, he moved to Sweden and, in 1935, returned to Lithuania.

[xxxii] Matvei Fyodorovich Shkiriatov (1883-1954). A member of the RSDRP from 1906. After 1918, he was the Secretary of the CC of the sewers’ union. Between 1923 and 1934, member of the Presidium of the VKP CCC, and from 1930, Secretary of its Party Board. After 1939, he was a member of the CC VKP and Deputy Chairman and, after 1952, Chairman of the Party Control Committee of the CC CPSU.

[xxxiii] Boris Grüss. Born in Brody, Poland. In 1922, he emigrated to Germany. In 1925, he joined the CPG and conducted party work in Leipzig.  In 1929, he was expelled from the CPG; he was readmitted in 1932. In 1932, he moved to Czechoslovakia and from there to the USSR, where he worked at the 2nd Moscow Fur Factory.

[xxxiv] Poalei Zion – Jewish Social Democratic Workers’ Party. It was created in Russia in 1906; its programmatic goal was to create a national state in Palestine and to build a socialist society there. Until 1917, the party was illegal. Similar parties were created in some other countries. At the head of this movement was the World Socialist Workers’ Union Poalei Zion (Weltverband Poalei Zion). In August 1919, part of the Poalei Zion formed itself as independent Jewish Communist Party Poalei Zion. In 1922, it dissolved itself after its members joined the VKP. After that, the Jewish Socialist Democratic Workers’ Party took the name “Communist.” Multiple attempts by the Poalei Zion to join the Comintern proved fruitless; other leftist organizations of the Poalei Zion world organization were also denied membership.  The Jewish Communist Workers’ Party was dissolved in 1928.

[xxxv] David Borisovich Riazanov (real name – Goldenbakh) (1870-1938). A participant in the Socialist Democratic movement from the 1890s and a member of the Bolshevik party from 1917. After the October Revolution, he studied and wrote on the history of Marxism and the international workers’ movement, and was a Director of the Marx-Engels Institute. In February 1931, Riazanov was expelled from the VKP and arrested. He was exiled in Saratov for three years. On 23 July 1937, he was arrested again. Executed on 21 January 1938.  On Riazanov, see Colum Leckey, “David Riazanov and Russian Marxism,” Russian History/Histoire Russe, 2 (1995), 127-153.

[xxxvi] Nathan Neumann (1897-1937). Born in Warsaw. A member of the Bund from 1916; after 1923,  a CPG member. In August 1933, he emigrated to Paris and, in December 1934, to the USSR. There he worked at the Polygraphic Institute and later, at the Children’s Literature Publishing House in Moscow. In August 1937, he was arrested and on 1 November 1937 executed.

[xxxvii] Inge Hoffman (real name – Necha Lurye). Born in 1910 in Grodno, Poland. Member of the CPG from 1926. In 1932, she emigrated to the USSR; arrested in September 1936.

[xxxviii] Nathan Lurye (Hans Wolf) (1901-1936). Born in Latvia, he was a physician who became a member of the CPG in 1925. In 1932, he emigrated to the USSR, where he worked in Cheliabinsk. He was one of the defendants at the trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev; he was convicted and executed on 25 August 1936.

[xxxix] Elfrida Goldzweig (Klege). Born in 1904, a CPG member from 1931. In 1932, she emigrated to the USSR and worked as a typist in Soiuzpromexport, Tekstilimport, and at the Institute of Marx-Engels-Lenin, as well as a teacher of German in a Moscow school. Between 1938 and 1948, she was imprisoned in a corrective labor camp. In 1955, she left for the GDR.

[xl] IMEL – Institute of Marx-Engels-Lenin of the CC VKP(b), a party research institution, was created in 1934 by merging the Institute of K. Marx and F. Engels of the CC VKP(b) with the Institute of Lenin, which was created in the early 1920s. It worked on publishing the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, researching the problems of the Marxist-Leninist theory, studying the history of the workers and communist movement. The Institute was closed in 1991.

[xli] Za Industrializatsiiu – the newspaper of the People’s Commissariat for Ferrous Metallurgy, was published in Moscow between 5 September 1937 and 29 September 1940.

[xlii] Golda Frölich. Born in 1898 in Germany; a member of the CPG from 1919. In 1931, she joined her husband, Horst Frölich, who was working in the IMEL. Her two sisters, Johanna Wilke and Selma Gabelin, who lived in Moscow, were arrested by the NKVD. Golda Frölich was expelled from the party and arrested in 1937.

[xliii] Robert Hauschild (Rudolf Haus) was arrested on 31 August 1936; on 28 May 1937, he was sentenced to five years in prison.

[xliv] Werner Petterman (1906-1942). A member of the CPG from 1926. In 1931, he was sent to work in the ECCI, where his wife, Erna Petterman, was working. After 1932, he was a Secretary of the ECCI’s Central European Landersecretariat. After the 6th Comintern Congress, he was Ercoli’s technical assistant. On 11 November 1937, he was expelled from the party for “insufficient vigilance toward the enemies of the people.” He was readmitted to the party on 20 January 1938. On 27 March 1938, he was arrested, and on 5 December 1940, sentenced to five years in prison. On 24 July 1942, he was condemned to be shot; he was executed on 12 September 1942.

[xlv] Robert (real name – Karl Volk). Born in 1897. A member of the CP Czechoslovakia from 1921. In 1923, he transferred to the CPG and worked in the party press. From 1923, he worked in the ECCI’s department of agitation and propaganda, later – in ROSTA. After 1926, he was the head of the CPG’s press service. In 1928, he was relieved of the party work because of his conciliatory position. In 1933, he was expelled from the CPG. He later lived in Zurich, contributed to an English newspaper, and worked as a translator.

[xlvi] Karl Frenzel. Born in 1874 in Berg, Germany. A member of the CPG from 1931. In March 1932, he emigrated to the USSR as a foreign worker and worked as a turner at the Moscow Frezer plant. Arrested on 29 July 1937.

[xlvii] Willi Greve (Hans Ende). Born in 1907. A CPG member from 1927, he supported the “conciliators.” In February 1935, he was expelled from the CPG for “violating the rules of conspiracy in the interests of a faction.”

[xlviii] Probably, Herbert (real name – Fichtenbog). A German YCL worker who was suspected of provocation because of his prompt release after he was arrested by Gestapo in March 1933.

[xlix] Boris Souvarine (real name – Lipshitz) (1895-1984). A member of the CPFr from 1920. Between 1921 and 1924, the CPFr representative in the ECCI and a member of the ECCI and its Secretariat. In 1924, he was expelled from the party for supporting Trotsky and creating a faction in the CPFr.

[l] Hilde Hauschild (Hilde Loewenstein). Born in 1904 in Leipzig. She was arrested in the USSR in 20 November 1937. In 1940, together with the other repressed communists, she was extradited to Germany.

[li] Eugen Schoenhaar (1899-1934). He worked in the German YCL, and was a member of the KIM Executive Committee. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1933 and killed on 1 February 1934 “while attempting to escape.”

[lii] Paul Heinz (Paul Rakow) (1901-1937). Born in Neibekum, Westphalia. A CPG member from 1919. Until 1928, he conducted party work in Berlin and Hanover; in 1928, he worked in the ECCI apparatus. After that, he was sent to China. He studied in KUNMZ in 1931-1934. Between 1934 and 1937, he worked as an instructor of the foreign workers in Donbas. Arrested on 15 April 1937. On 19 September 1937, the Military Board of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced Heinz to death. He was shot on 20 December 1937.

[liii] Werner Rakow (alias Felix Wolf). Born in 1893 in Liflandia province, Russian Latvia, he grew up in Russia in the family of a German factory foreman. In 1918, he was the secretary of the German workers’ and soldiers’ deputies Soviet in Moscow. In late 1918, he went to Germany and took part in the CPG’s founding congress. Expelled from the party in 1933, but readmitted in 1934. In August 1937, he was arrested by NKVD.

[liv] Friedrich (Fritz) Stucke (1895-1937). Born in Bremen, Germany. Between 1913 and 1918, a member of the SPD; after 1919, a member of the CPG. He was a lecturer of the Berlin district party committee and an editor of the central party’s newspaper, Die Rote Fahne. In 1931, he emigrated to the USSR, where he taught German in the Institute of Red Professors. He was arrested on 27 April 1937. On 26 October, he was sentenced to be shot and was executed that day.

[lv] Heinz Möller (Asiaticus). Born in 1897. A CPG member from 1919. In 1923, he worked in the ECCI apparatus and, while in the USSR, joined the RKP(b). In 1924, he went to Germany; he was sent to China in 1925-1927. Upon his return, he was named Die Rote Fahne editor. He supported Trotsky during the discussion of the Chinese question in 1927. He was expelled from the CPG in 1929 for his affiliation with the Brandlerian group. After 1932, he lived in China. Several times he raised the question of being readmitted to the party, but the ICC denied his appeals.

[lvi] Harold R. Isaacs (1910-1986). An American journalist who after 1931, worked as a correspondent in several American newspapers in China, and published the magazine, The China Forum, which supported the CPCh position. In early 1934, he joined the Chinese Trotskyists. In 1937, he returned to the USA and joined the American Trotskyists, contributed to their newspaper Socialist Appeal, and published the book The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution. After the murder of Trotsky, he left the Socialist Workers Party of America and worked as a journalist and later as a university professor.

[lvii] Max Weiss. Born in 1900 in Goldlauter. After emigrating to the USSR, he worked in Tula.

[lviii] Walter Boerner.  Born in 1896 in Zeifen, Germany. In October 1935, he arrived in the USSR as a political émigré. In January 1936, he received work, with MOPR’s assistance, at the Aktiubinsk chemical plant. In September 1937, he was expelled from the CPG as an “alien element” and denied permission to leave the USSR. He worked in Kirovabad until 1940 and was then transferred to the North. He vanished in the labor camps, together with his son. His wife and another son, Rudolf Boerner, survived and went to the GDR in 1956.

[lix] Josef Schweiger. Born in 1897 in Algdorf, Germany. Expelled from the CPG as a Trotskyist.

[lx] Leninbund – the oppositional Communist organization created in March 1928 in Germany by the Maslow-Fischer group after their expulsion from the CPG. It was influenced by the Zinoviev platform and later, by the united opposition in the VKP. Arkady Maslow and Ruth Fischer left theLeninbund in May 1928. After that, the organization entered a period of crisis and decomposition. Only a small group led by Hugo Urbans survived until the end of 1929.

[lxi] Russian abbreviation of Kharkovsky Traktornyi Zavod (the Kharkov Tractor Plant) (Trans.).

[lxii] Ilya Iakovlevich Sarchin (Walter Berger, Erich Leutner). Born in 1908 in Riga. He lived in Russia in 1915-1924, after which he returned to Latvia. Between 1927 and 1932, he worked in the Soviet trade delegation in Berlin. After December 1936, he is a political émigré in the USSR. On 3 September 1936, he was expelled from the CPG for connections with Hans Schtauer (K. Berman-Yurin). In June 1937, he was arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison. He was released on 20 February 1940 after his case was dismissed.

[lxiii] Karl Hoeflich. Born in 1896 in Budapest, a mechanic. A CPH member from 1918. After 1919, a member of the CPG, he served in the CPG fraction in Reichstag. He emigrated to the USSR in March 1933, where he was arrested in May 1937. Repressed.

[lxiv] Lesoexport – The State Timber Export company (Trans.).

[lxv] Willi Rabe (real name – Willi Pawera). Born in 1905 in Utenberg, Germany. In August 1933, he emigrated to the USSR. After graduating from KUNMZ in December 1935, he was sent to work in the Sacco and Vanzetti pencil factory in Moscow. He was arrested on 5 March 1938 and exiled to Norilsk.

[lxvi] Probably, Feibisch Newijaschski (Paul Wiesenfeld). Born in 1898 in Ukraine. One of the founders and later Chairman of the Jewish Cultural Union of Workers in Berlin (1924-1933). After his arrival in the USSR, he worked in the Moscow Restaurant Trust and, after May 1941, in Mosminvodtorg.

[lxvii] Ludwig E. Brucker. A member of the CPG from 1920. He emigrated to the USSR in 1932 and worked as an instructor of international techniques at the Trekhgornaia Manufactura factory in Moscow. He was expelled from the CPG in 1936.

[lxviii] Emil Potratz (Herbert Kramer). Born in 1888. A member of the SPD from 1912 and of the USPD from 1917. He joined the CPG in 1920 and was a party activist in the Berlin-Zuidwest region. He was arrested in the USSR on 5 November 1936 and sentenced to five years in prison. On 12 April 1941, he was extradited to Germany, where he was kept under police surveillance.

[lxix] Alfred Kuhnt (1904-1937). Born in Berlin; a member of the CPG from 1923. He was expelled from the party in 1927 and readmitted in 1929. In 1932, he took part in a clash with the Nazis which resulted in one fascist being killed. Kuhnt escaped to the USSR, where he worked at the Stalingrad tractor plant. He was arrested in 1936 and sentenced to be shot on 16 August 1937.

[lxx] Fritz Palenschat. Born in 1905 in Berlin. A member of the German YCL from 1922 and of the CPG, from 1928. In 1924, he was sentenced by the German authorities to six years in prison for stealing explosives. In 1927, he was released following an amnesty and worked in the CPG apparatus. He moved to the USSR in February 1934, with the permission of the CC CPG, and was arrested in May 1937 in Leningrad. Repressed.

[lxxi] Ernst Mansfeld (1908-1942). Born in Berlin; a member of the CPG from 1928. In 1933, he emigrated to the USSR, where he worked as a film director’s assistant at the Mezhrabpomfilm studio. He was arrested on 9 February 1937, and sentenced to ten years in prison.

[lxxii] Richard Paschke (1901-1938). Born in Berlin. A member of the CPG from 1920. A journalist, he worked in the Pravda bureau in Berlin as a correspondent. After the Nazis came to power, he was sent by the CC CPG to the USSR, where he studied at the KUNMZ between 1933 and 1935. Later he worked at the editorial board of the Deutsche Zentral-Zeitung in Moscow. He was arrested on 17 February 1938, and executed on 29 March 1938.

[lxxiii] Erich Wollenberg (Wilhelm Rüdiger). Born in 1892 in Königsberg; a member of the CPG from 1919. He was a Red Army commander during the shortlived Bavarian Soviet republic. Between May 1919 and March 1934, he lived in the USSR.  He served in the Red Army, and worked in the ECCI apparatus and later in the IMEL, MLSh and the Foreign Workers Publishing House in Moscow. Expelled from the party on 4 April 1933. In 1934, he moved to Warsaw and later to Prague.

[lxxiv] Iohanna Zorn (Schmaewa). A member of the CPG from 1926. She emigrated to the USSR in 1933, where she worked in Gosplan USSR and taught German at the Pedagogical Institute. During the war, she lived in Bashkiria and in the Kalinin region. In 1955, she moved to the GDR.

[lxxv] Willi Leow (1887-1937). A member of the CPG from 1918, one of the leaders of the Red Veterans Union. After 1929, a member of the CC CPG. Between 1928 and 1933, he was a Reichstag deputy. After Hitler came to power, he escaped to France without the party’s permission. For this he was relieved of work at the Red Veterans Union. In 1935, he went to the USSR. He was arrested by the NKVD in 1936. On 3 October 1937, he was sentenced to be shot.

[lxxvi] As in the text (Trans.).

[lxxvii] Karl Schuster. Born in 1901 in Warsaw. A clerk; a member of the CPG from 1928. In 1934, he emigrated to the USSR and was arrested in March 1936.

[lxxviii] Artur Demolski. Born in 1898 in the town of Ora near Danzig. Member of the CPG from 1920, editor in chief of the Hamburger Volkszeitung. In 1931, he went to the USSR as a political émigré and worked on the board of the Deutsche Zentral-Zeitung and in the State Publishing House of the Germans of the Volga region. He was arrested in May 1936 in the city of Engels. Repressed.

[lxxix] Hermann Traubenberger (1892-1937). A member of the CPG from 1919. During the shortlived Bavarian Soviet republic, he was a member of the Red Headquarters and head of the railway station in Dachau. He was condemned by the German court and imprisoned. After his release in 1922, he conducted party work and was sentenced for the second time. In 1925, he escaped from prison and went to the USSR with his wife, Elsa. There he worked in Moscow and in Stalingrad in the military plants and in the VSNKh. In the fall of 1936, he was arrested and sentenced to death. Elsa Traubenberger was sentenced in 1936 to 10 years in prison. In 1972, she left for the FRG.

[lxxx] Otto Unger (Bork) (1893-1938). A member of the CPG from 1919, one of the leaders of the German YCL. In 1921, he was elected a member of the KIM Executive Committee. In 1934, he emigrated to the USSR, and was appointed a director of the Foreign Workers Publishing House in Moscow. In November 1937, he was arrested by the NKVD and, on 19 March 1938, sentenced to be shot.  Chernomordik appears to have been wrong about Unger's having been arrested in 1936.

[lxxxi] Erich Wendt (1902-1965). A member of the CPG from 1922. A type-setter by profession, he worked in the KIM publishing house and other youth publishers. In 1931, he emigrated to the USSR and worked, until 1936, in the Foreign Workers Publishing House in Moscow. On 14 August 1936, he was arrested; he was released on 14 July 1938. Between 1938 and 1941, a translator of the German department of the All-Union Radio. In 1947, he went to Germany. After 1957, Deputy Minister of Culture of the GDR.

[lxxxii] Kurt Nixdorf (1903-1937). Born in Breslau. A member of the CPG from 1920, he was one of the leaders of the German YCL. In the late 1927, he was summoned to Moscow to work in the Institute of Marx-Engels. On 3 February 1935, he was arrested by the NKVD and sentenced to five years in prison. On 2 February 1937, he was sentenced to be shot.

[lxxxiii] Barthel Lülsdorf. Born in 1892 in Cologne. An engineer and member of the CPG from 1923, who worked in the Soviet trade delegation in Berlin. In 1931, he went to the Soviet Union and worked at the People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry and in Mosgipromash. Arrested on 22 February 1936. Repressed.

[lxxxiv] Kurt Bruch. Born in 1909 in Khemnits. A member of the CPG from 1930. In January 1934, he went to the USSR without the CPG’s permission, worked in the “Spartak” commune (in the town of Khosta), and at the Kharkov Tractor plant. Arrested on 23 October 1937. Repressed.

[lxxxv] The Roter Front – Roter Frontkämpferbund, Union of Red Veterans, a self-defense organization created on the initiative of the CPG in 1924. After 1925, its leader was Ernst Thälmann. In 1929, the Union was banned in Prussia and later in other provinces in Germany, but continued to function underground until 1933.

[lxxxvi] Josef Fortuzadeski. Born in 1894 in Kherson. During WW I, he was captured by the Germans and stayed in Germany. In 1923, he joined the CPG and worked in Khemnits. In January 1934, he emigrated to the USSR and worked at the Kharkov Tractor plant. In his personal file, the last documents are dated as late as 1936. Among them, there is a note: “died.”

[lxxxvii] Probably, Samuel Skrobisz. Born in 1894 in the town of Tomashuv, Poland. A member of the CPG from 1932; he worked in Saarbrucken. In 1933, he emigrated to Paris and in March 1934, to the USSR, where he lived in the town of Murom, Gorkovsky region.

[lxxxviii] Bund – General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland and Russia. It was created in 1897. At the First RSDRP Congress in 1898, the Bund joined the Russian Socialist Democratic Party. However, at the Second Congress (1903), it left the party, only to again join it at the Fourth, unifying Congress (1906).  Based on its demand for cultural national autonomy, the political program of the Bund contradicted the Bolshevik program. In 1921, the Bund dissolved itself and some of its members joined the RKP(b) individually.

[lxxxix] Otto Gross. Born in 1899 in Trojen, Germany. A member of the SDP from 1913; after 1918, a member of the Spartacus League. In 1922, he joined the CPG. In 1933, he was arrested by the Gestapo. After his release in 1934, he emigrated to Czechoslovakia and, in October 1935, to the USSR. In December 1937, he was arrested; on 2 February 1938, the NKVD Special Council sentenced him to ten years in prison. He was released in 1947 and went to the GDR in January 1957.

[xc] Storm troops – Sturmabteilungen, fascist paramilitary units of the German National Socialist Party in 1921-1945. The Storm troops were an effective instrument of terror used against the political enemies of fascism.

[xci] Elsa Klaus (Schumann). Born in 1907 in Khemnits. A member of the CPG from 1926. In 1932, she and her husband, Kurt Schumann, emigrated to the USSR, where she worked as a driver at the Moscow Fourth Motor Transport Depot.

[xcii] Viktor Adamczak. Born in 1894 in Neidorf, Germany. A miner by profession, he joined the CPG in 1929 and was a treasurer of the local branch of the International Red Aid in Essen. In 1930, he went to the USSR and worked in Donbas. In 1933, he was expelled from the party for “anti-Soviet, counterrevolutionary views.”

[xciii] Sara David (Toni Stern). Born in 1900 in Russia. A member of the CPG from 1930. In 1933, she emigrated to the USSR. On 3 September 1936, she was arrested as the wife of Fritz David. She was expelled from the party and sentenced to twelve years in the corrective labor camp.

[xciv] Georg Blumfeldt. Born in Revali, Prussia. An engineer by profession, he joined the CPG in 1931. In the fall of 1931, he went to Switzerland and joined the CP Switzerland. In March 1934, he went to Moscow, where he worked on the construction of the city’s the Metro. On 21 June 1937, he was expelled from the party.

[xcv]  Fritz Weber (real name – Heinrich Wiatrek). Born in 1886. A member of the CPG from 1922. Between 1928 and 1932, he was a member of the Upper Silesia CPG district committee. After 1935, member of the CC CPG. He was a delegate of the 7th Comintern Congress. Between 1935 and 1937, the CPG representative in the ECCI, and between 1937 and 1941, the CPG representative in Denmark. In 1941, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Denmark. In 1946, he lived in the British occupied zone in Germany.