DOCUMENT
23
Letter
from the ECCI Secretariat to the leaders of selected Communist parties
regarding propaganda work during the trial of Radek, Pyatakov and others.
Urgent*
17
January 1937
The
trial of Radek, Pyatakov and others opens in a few days. It is necessary [to
give] in the communist press the widest
possible convincing explanation of the defendants' confessions. It is necessary
to organize a refutation of the
arguments of the bourgeois Social Democratic press, which will try to discredit
the trial. Immediately initiate a campaign in the press and among the masses
against Trotsky and Trotskyism as a terrorist agency, a gang of wreckers, subversives, spies, [and] accomplices of the German Gestapo. Even before and during
the trial, develop a campaign in the press, not only by
reporting on the trial, but also by publishing articles written by the party
leaders. Accounts of the trial are to be published in the form of your newspaper correspondent's special
report.
Secretariat
GD
Ercoli
17.1.37
Sent
to:
Thorez
-- Paris
Pollitt
-- London
Browder
-- New York
Gottwald
-- Prague
Diaz[i]
-- Valencia
Linderot[ii]
-- Stockholm
P.B.
[Political Bureau] -- Brussels
P.B.
-- Amsterdam
P.B.
-- Copenhagen
Julius
-- Paris
RGASPI,
f. 495, op. 184, d. 19, ll. 4-5. Outgoing telegrams for 1937. General
directives.
Original
in German. Handwritten.
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* Handwritten in Russian by Togliatti (Trans.).
[i] José Ramos Díaz (1895-1942). A member of the CP Spain from 1927; a member of the CC and General Secretary of the party from 1932. An ECCI member after 1935. In February 1939, he emigrated to the USSR. That same year he was elected an ECCI Secretary.
[ii] Sven Linderot (1889-1956). In 1908-1916, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Sweden. In 1921, he joined the CPSwed and, after 1927, was a member of its CC and Political Bureau. In 1928-1949, he was the General Secretary of the party, later Chairman of the party. In 1949, he was relieved of this post because of poor health. After 1951, he was the Political Secretary of the CC CPSwed. Between 1935 and 1943, he was a candidate member of the ECCI Presidium.