The Red Flag: A History of Communism

by Priestland, David

  Street battles between the Communists and the authorities intensified in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It was in this atmosphere of violence that the young Erich Honecker – later the leader of Communist East Germany – grew up. Born in 1912, in a small town on the Saar, Honecker came from a radical Social Democratic family that became Communist. He himself was a Communist virtually from the cradle. As a child he collected money for strikers, and was told to march at the front of demonstrations – it was thought that the police would not fire on children. In his youth he was a member of a workers’ gymnastics club and played in a Communist party brass band. Although he was a roofer by trade, like most German Communists he never found a job; his life was politics. He was sent to the Lenin School in Moscow at the unusually young age of eighteen, where his end-of-year reports were lavish in their praise: ‘A very talented and diligent comrade’; ‘Understands very well how to relate theory to the class struggle in Germany’. Honecker returned, a fully fledged Marxist-Leninist, to become leader of the Saarland Communist youth league in 1931.9

  Honecker’s – and Stalin’s – belief in class struggle and the imminence of revolution was reinforced by the Depression that followed the crisis of 1928–9. In Germany industrial output fell by a catastrophic 46 per cent; in France by 28 per cent. Most governments made the problem worse by following the laissez-faire market orthodoxy of the time and slashing state spending. Welfare was cut, increasing the numbers of the poverty-stricken and reducing economic activity still further. The Keynesian solution (adopted after World War II) of state spending to compensate for private caution was not yet widely accepted, and few defended it with conviction. Meanwhile, international attempts to coordinate a response also failed, as states panicked and pursued narrowly nationalistic agendas. Although the collapse of the gold standard in the early 1930s helped the recovery of European economies, the effects of the Depression reverberated throughout the decade.

  It is then not surprising that many came to believe that liberal capitalism had no answers to the problems of the era. The system seemed incapable of providing employment for the mass of America’s and Europe’s people. The intellectual tide turned and the liberal optimism of the 1920s evaporated. To many on the centre-left it seemed that the Soviet Union, with its (official) growth figures of 22 per cent per annum, had something to teach the West. (The extraordinary levels of waste and low workers’ living standards in the USSR were not yet widely known.) Even liberal elites were impressed by Soviet success. In 1931, the British ambassador to Berlin wrote that everybody was talking about ‘the menace represented by the progress made by the Soviet Union in carrying out the First Five-Year Plan, and the necessity of some serious effort being made by the European countries to put their house in order before Soviet economic pressure becomes too strong’.10

  The response of those on the radical right to the crisis of liberal capitalism was inevitably very different. For them, both liberalism and Communism were responsible for fragmenting the nation and thwarting legitimate imperial ambitions: liberalism was responsible for political conflict and economic crisis, whilst Communists preached divisive class struggle. The solution, for the Nazis, the Italian Fascists and their imitators in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, was a militarized, masculinized, mobilized nation. This model, of course, had much in common with the Stalinist one. The difference was that for the right, property rights had to remain largely intact, as did social and professional hierarchies. ‘Left’ Fascists and Nazis also hoped for a serious attack on liberal capitalism and its market-based ethos, but they were generally ignored and, in the case of the Nazis, purged. The far right did garner some working-class support. But radical-right regimes, broadly speaking, favoured bosses over workers; independent trade unions were banned and wages remained low.

  As the economic crisis intensified, support for both Communists and the radical right increased, especially in Germany. Politics was becoming a zero-sum game: the left was insistent that welfare benefits be maintained; the right believed that labour was destroying the nation by resisting the necessary retrenchment. Compromise became difficult. The Social Democratic Party did tacitly support the Catholic Centre Party Chancellor Brüning after September 1930, for fear of triggering elections that might increase Nazi representation. But this alliance antagonized the supporters of both sides. Communist support increased amongst workers – almost overtaking the Social Democrats in the November 1932 elections – whilst Germany’s elites began to look for authoritarian solutions to the increased unrest. In July 1932, Von Papen, Brüning’s successor, staged a coup against the elected Social Democratic government of Prussia claiming that it could not maintain order, and it looked as if parliamentary democracy was doomed. It was perhaps at this point that a united left could have fought back – as Von Papen indeed thought might happen. But the Social Democrats were too demoralized and committed to legality, the better-armed Communists would not have supported them had they resisted, and even a joint force of the left would have stood little chance against the army.11 The way was open for the appointment of Adolf Hitler by President Hindenburg in January 1933. Stalin and the Comintern’s ‘class against class’ policy certainly played a role in that disastrous outcome, but it was just one factor amongst many.

  The Nazis swiftly moved to destroy parliament and liberal rights, banning both Communists and Social Democrats and imprisoning thousands. The Nazi takeover was only one of several right-wing authoritarian takeovers in the inter-war period. The Italian Fascists had banned the socialist left as early as 1924; Hungary, Albania, Poland, Lithuania, Yugoslavia, Portugal and Spain had all been run by authoritarian governments before the Depression, whilst following the Nazi takeover liberal democracy was abandoned in Austria, Estonia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Greece and (again) Spain. But the attack on the German left was particularly devastating. At one stroke, the largest Communist party outside the USSR and the most influential Social Democratic party in Europe were destroyed.

  Events in Berlin inevitably led many Communists to question the Comintern’s ‘class against class’ line. Surely it was now evident that the main enemies were the fascist and Nazi right, not the Social Democrats? At the same time, the Social Democrats became disillusioned with their centrist liberal allies. The decision of the German establishment to embrace the Nazis was merely one example of liberals’ ‘appeasement’ of the radical right. Just as the Communists were rethinking their strategy, the socialists were moving to the left. The time was ripe for a rapprochement between the comrades and the brothers.

  III

  In 1936 the Soviet film industry produced one of its most successful blockbusters – Circus.12 Scripted by a team of eminent writers, including Isaak Babel, and directed by Grigorii Aleksandrov, one of Eisenstein’s collaborators on October, it was a fine example of the ‘socialist realist’ Hollywood-style musical comedy. It told the story of an American singer and dancer, ‘Marion Dixon’ (a cross between Marlene Dietrich and Ginger Rogers, played by the most popular actress of the era,Liubov Orlova), who is hounded out of the United States by the racist inhabitants of ‘Sunnyville’ because she has had a child by an African-American. Dixon is rescued by a German impresario, Von Kneischitz, but his intentions are exploitative, not charitable: he sees her as a money-spinner in his circus tour of the Soviet Union. Dixon propels the circus to the heights of popularity. But she then falls for her co-star, the acrobat Martynov, and decides that she wants to stay in the USSR. The callous Hitler-lookalike Von Kneischitz, worried about losing his main attraction, is desperate to keep her. In the film’s climax, during a dance extravaganza featuring rockets, spacemen and dancing girls, he brings her black child into the circus tent, expecting that the Soviet audience, shocked, will drive her out of the USSR. But to his consternation they welcome the infant. Skin colour, the circus-master tells us, whether black, white or green, is of no consequence in the land of the Soviets. Representatives of the various nationalities of the USSR in traditional dress pass the smil
ing toddler from group to group, each singing a lullaby verse in their own language; most pointedly, given Nazi policies at the time, the Jewish actor Solomon Mikhoels was shown singing a verse in Yiddish. The film ends with Marion Dixon and her fellow circus artists miraculously appearing in the midst of a Red Square rally, holding aloft red flags, Politburo portraits and the black child, as they pass Stalin standing on the Lenin Mausoleum. Whilst they march, they sing ‘The Song of the Motherland’, a hymn to ethnic equality that was so popular it almost became the unofficial national anthem of the USSR.

  A great deal of the film is taken up with Hollywood routines, whether Charlie Chaplinesque slapstick or Busby Berkeley-style dance numbers. But the film skilfully interweaves a political message into the popular entertainment: the Nazis – racist and capitalist – and the Soviets – humanist and socialist – are competing for the soul of the naïve Westerner; after a period of slavery beneath the heel of Von Kneischitz’s ‘fascism’, Marion becomes convinced that life is better under Soviet socialism. Timed to celebrate the Soviet Constitution of 1936, the film showed the USSR to be a unified nation, free of ethnic and class conflict, and bearer of the values of the Enlightenment. This was a happy, free society in which any open-minded Westerner would love to live, from whatever social milieu – even petty-bourgeois circus artistes were welcome. The USSR was ready to ally itself with all ‘progressive’ forces, of all classes. The only enemies were a small group of racist fascists and reactionary elites, represented by the aristocratically named Von Kneischitz (kniaz is Russian for ‘prince’).

  Circus was mainly designed for a Soviet audience, and it became the hit of the year. But it was also seen in Eastern and Western Europe – especially after the War – and articulated the new Popular Front policy that had become orthodoxy by 1936. Yet it took some time after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 to bury the differences between the Second International and the Comintern; the poisonous conflicts of the past were not easily overcome.

  At a local level, however, the advantages of an anti-fascist alliance seemed clear. The left in France was most enthusiastic. As the Depression hit, politics became more polarized, and a violent demonstration by the radical right on 6 February 1934 forced the resignation of the centrist Radical Party premier Édouard Daladier. Six days later, the trade unions, socialists and Communists launched a general strike against the right and in defence of democracy, fearing a repetition of events in Germany. The united action impressed the Bulgarian Comintern official Georgi Dimitrov, and he had several meetings with Stalin to persuade him of the need for a new line.13

  Stalin remained hostile to Social Democracy, and he seems to have accepted Dimitrov’s line only very reluctantly.14 His approach to foreign policy was similar to his domestic policy: the USSR, had to remain a unified ‘citadel of the revolution’;15 it had to preserve its ideological purity and be ready to spread socialism when the time was ripe at some time in the future.16 Indeed, in 1927 Stalin explicitly compared the USSR with Jacobin France: just as ‘people danced to the tune of the French revolution of the XVIII century, using its traditions and spreading its system’ now people ‘dance to the tune of the October revolution’.17 Class peace and inclusiveness could therefore not go too far. However, given the weakness of the USSR, only ‘socialism in one country’ was feasible, and the Soviets might have to forge alliances with bourgeois forces in order to preserve it. Ultimately Stalin believed in the inevitability of war between the socialist and capitalist camps, but that war had to be postponed until the Soviet Union was ready for the battle.18 World revolution would eventually happen, he was convinced, but it was most likely to occur at a time of war, preferably between the ‘imperialist’ powers.19 In the meantime, it was unlikely that new revolutions would occur, especially in Western Europe, where the masses had been fooled by ‘bourgeois democracy’.20

  Eventually Dimitrov and others, including the Italian party leader Palmiro Togliatti, won Stalin over, and they were helped by a change in Soviet foreign policy, which now favoured an alliance with France and Britain against Germany. At the end of the year, Stalin acceded to the new policy, which was finally endorsed by the Comintern in the summer of 1935.21

  According to the Comintern decisions of 1935, Western Communist parties were only allowed to ally themselves with parties committed to a radical, anti-capitalist programme, as a prelude to revolution.22 But in practice the Popular Front policy allowed Communist parties to join moderate socialist governments and defend liberal democracy against fascism. They desisted from agitation for a proletarian, Communist revolution, at least in the foreseeable future, and they were also allowed to appeal to local nationalisms in their efforts to win support.

  Communist parties throughout the West adopted the mantle of national unity and reconciliation, in line with the new emphasis on patriotism within the Soviet party. Even in the United States, Communism became remarkably respectable. Although the party was closely controlled by the Comintern, it claimed to have inherited ‘the traditions of Jefferson, Paine, Jackson and Lincoln’, and worked with a broad range of organizations from trade unions to churches and civil rights groups.23 The Popular Fronts’ inclusive attitude to ethnicity appealed to many second-generation immigrant workers who had suffered from the Depression and identified themselves as a ‘working class’.

  The party that followed the Popular Front line most enthusiastically and successfully was the French one, under the leadership of Maurice Thorez. Thorez was born in 1900 and brought up by a family of Jacobin Socialist miners in the department of Nord. A studious child, he did not work in the mines for long, and had a number of short-term jobs.24 But his real life was the Communist Party, and he worked his way up the hierarchy, carefully observing and obeying the demands of Moscow. His Communist critics saw him as bland, submissive and docile, and he certainly lacked charisma. But his calm manner and beatific smile proved ideal for winning over sceptical socialists and liberals. This was not the rabid class warrior of conservative nightmares. His image did not provoke the bourgeois anxiety aroused by the Jewish and seemingly more threatening Socialist leader, Léon Blum.

  Thorez also always made sure he attended public gatherings wearing a tricolore sash underneath his suit jacket: the Communists now stressed their French roots. They presented themselves as the successors to the patriotic Jacobins, whilst the fascists were the equivalents of the old aristocratic émigrés, linked to foreign reactionaries. In June 1939 they even celebrated the 150th anniversary of the French Revolution with a grand Robespierrian festival, in which 600 liberty trees were planted by Phrygian-capped children.25 The Communists also used populist Jacobin language. They spoke of the ‘struggle of the little people against the big’, and their enemies were the ‘two hundred families’ – a small quasi-aristocracy rather than the whole bourgeoisie.26

  The Communists’ new image allowed them to play an important role in French politics for some time, as a non-revolutionary leftist party.27 However, the nature of the party itself did not change. Like other Communist parties, it aspired to be a ‘total’ institution for its members, in some ways like a religious sect.28 Like the Soviets, the French learnt party doctrine, wrote autobiographies describing their political and personal histories, and subjected themselves to ideological self-criticism.29 They were expected to keep the party’s secrets and treat the outside world with ‘vigilance’ and suspicion, a potential source of contamination. Their social and family lives were often entirely bound up with the party. They were to remain a vanguard, ready to bring the revolution when the time came – though levels of participation varied, depending on one’s position within the party.

  Whilst maintaining their purity, the French Communists were now expected to cooperate with the outside world, and they did so just as workers were being radicalized by the Depression. The result was thousands of new members. A party of 40,000 in 1934 swelled to one of 328,647 in 1937. The French Communist Party had taken over from the German as the leading party outs
ide the USSR. In May 1936, the Popular Front of Socialists, Communists and liberal Radicals gained a majority in the elections, and Léon Blum became Prime Minister, supported by the Communists from outside the cabinet.

  However, it was the Popular Front in Spain that, at least temporarily, contributed most to the increasing prestige of international Communism. Here, politics was even more polarized than in France; indeed, some areas of Spain had much in common with the old agrarian states where Communism had been so successful in the years after World War I. In particular, the question of land redistribution was still unresolved. Landless peasants, especially in the South, were attracted to a decentralizing radical socialism, whilst other radicals, in the Socialist Party, the anarcho-syndicalist parties and the quasi-Trotskyist Workers’ Party of Marxist Unity (POUM) also had a good deal of support. But so too did the Right, with its heartland amongst the small-holding peasants of the North and the centre. When the left, a shaky alliance of left-liberals, socialists, anarcho-syndicalists and the small Communist party, won elections in February 1936, a social revolution was sparked in many rural and urban areas. The left’s victory, in turn, provoked a military coup, led by the authoritarian conservative General Francisco Franco. The sharp social divisions within Spain had precipitated a civil war; and within a week a domestic conflict had become an international one, when Mussolini and Hitler sent military aid to Franco’s rebels.

  Stalin was faced with a dilemma. The Spanish Republicans were without foreign friends: Blum in France was too afraid of antagonizing the Germans, and a Conservative British government would not expend any effort defending such a leftist government. Only the USSR could halt Franco in Spain, and therefore prevent the balance of power shifting in favour of the fascists. However, Soviet support for revolutionary Spaniards might worry the French and British establishments, and scupper any chance for a collective security treaty against Hitler.30 Stalin dithered for some time, but eventually decided to send arms and commissars, whilst insisting that the Popular Front should not aim for socialism. Stalin wrote to the Socialist Prime Minister, Largo Caballero, advising him that the ‘parliamentary road’ was more suited to Spanish conditions than the Bolshevik model; he urged him to take account of the interests of rural and urban middle classes, and to forge links with liberals. For the Soviets, winning the war and keeping bourgeois allies had to take priority over socialist revolution.