OUR UNSWERVING LOYALTY A documentary survey of relations between the Communist Party of Australia and Moscow, 1920–1940 OUR UNSWERVING LOYALTY A documentary survey of relations between the Communist Party of Australia and Moscow, 1920–1940 David W. Lovell and Kevin Windle (editors) Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/oul_citation.html National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Our unswerving loyalty : a documentary survey of relations between the Communist Party of Australia and Moscow, 1920-1940 / editor David Lovell, Kevin Windle. ISBN: 9781921313950 (pbk.) 9781921313967 (web) Notes: Includes index. Bibliography. Subjects: Communist International. Communist Party of Australia. Communism--Australia. Australia--Politics and government--1901-1945. Soviet Union--Relations--Australia. Australia--Relations--Soviet Union. Other Authors/Contributors: Lovell, David W., 1956- Windle, Kevin, 1947- Dewey Number: 335.4230994 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design by Teresa Prowse Printed by University Printing Services, ANU This edition © 2008 ANU E Press Contents Preface and Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations ix Glossary of individuals, organizations and tactics xi Some key dates in the history of Australian communism to 1943 xxiii Dates of key Comintern meetings xxv The organization of the Comintern xxvii Reproducing the documents: some conventions xxix Notes on the texts and translations xxxi A note on currency xxxiii Piecing together the past: the Comintern, the CPA, and the archives 1 David W. Lovell The CPA and the Comintern: from loyalty to subservience 25 David W. Lovell The scope and limits of this book 53 1. Forging a Communist Party for Australia: 1920–1923 Introduction 57 Documents 1–33 63 2. Wilderness years: 1924–1928 Introduction 193 Documents 34–53 197 3. Moscow takes command: 1929–1937 Introduction 271 Documents 54–79 279 4. The price of subservience: 1938–1940 Introduction 339 Documents 80–85 343 References 367 Index 375 v Preface and Acknowledgements This book brings together 85 documents from the Russian State Archives of Social and Political History (RGASPI), selected and introduced by us from a collection of thousands of documents concerning the relations between the Communist International and the Communist Party of Australia. The entirety of the collection we surveyed is deposited at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) Library in Canberra, and is available for public consultation. In the first place, we must thank RGASPI's Director, Dr Kirill Anderson, for permitting the Archive to be reproduced, sent to Australia, edited for publication, and made publicly available: the documents add another important dimension to the story of the early Communist Party of Australia. In this process, the preliminary work of Dr Konstantin Samarin and the late Professor Patrick O'Brien was invaluable. The connection between Drs Anderson and Lovell was facilitated by Chris Mitchell, now Editor-in-Chief of The Australian newspaper. Chris Mitchell has been supportive of this project throughout its long journey, and has never made any directions or demands on the material we chose to select, translate and publish. We must also thank the helpful staff of the Mitchell Library in Sydney, for access to the Comintern Archives held there, allowing us to make a careful comparison with the documents in the Comintern Archive at the ADFA Library (CAAL). We thank the staff of the Public Record Office in London for assistance in trying to track the movements of some of the early communists through the United Kingdom on their way to and from Australia, and for access to files on the CPGB. David Lovell thanks the staff of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, for assistance in his comparisons of the Comintern files of the CPUSA with the CAAL. Kevin Windle is grateful to the staff of the National Archives of Australia and the Noel Butlin Archive Centre (The Australian National University) for valuable assistance in locating Australian documents pertaining to Russian activists in Australia in 1917±23, and to the staff of RGASPI in Moscow for allowing further access to their documents. Both of us have received financial support and encouragement from our universities which we would like to acknowledge here. In addition, the comments of the anonymous referees proved encouraging and helpful; we thank them for their overall evaluations and their attention to detail. Some of the material in the introductory essays, and parts of some documents relating to Aleksandr Zuzenko, have been adapted for use in work published on related topics by Lovell and Windle respectively since 2003. We are grateful to the publishers for permission to re-use this material: Australian Slavonic and East European Studies, publishers of Windle's 2004 `ªThe Achilles Heel of British Imperialismº: A Comintern agent reports on his mission to Australia 1920±22. vii Our Unswerving Loyalty An annotated translation', ASEES, 18:1±2, pp. 143±76; Crawford House Publishing, publishers of Lovell's 2007 essay `Strained Relations: Russia, Australia and the Comintern, 1920±40', in A. Massov, J. McNair and T. Poole (eds), Encounters Under the Southern Cross: Two Centuries of Russian-Australian Relations, 1807-2007, pp. 163±184; and Quadrant Magazine Co. Inc., publishers of Lovell's 2008 essay `ªUnswerving Loyaltyº: documenting Australian communist relations with Moscow, 1920±40', Quadrant, LII:5, pp. 80±86. Cataloguing the CAAL documents, making the selection presented in this book, and researching the supporting materials, has taken us much longer than we had expected, largely because of the intrusion of other duties (both of us spending much of the period as Heads of our respective Schools). We are particularly grateful to our wives for enduring the book's lengthy gestation with good humour. David W. Lovell, University of New South Wales Kevin Windle, The Australian National University viii Abbreviations ACTU Australian Council of Trades Unions ALP Australian Labor Party ASP Australian Socialist Party CAAL Comintern Archive at ADFA Library, Canberra CALC Comintern Archive at the Library of Congress, Washington DC CAML Comintern Archive at the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW CC Central Committee CCC Central Control Commission CEC Central Executive Committee CI Communist International, or `Comintern' CP Communist Party CPA Communist Party of Australia CPGB Communist Party of Great Britain CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union CPUSA Communist Party of the USA EC Executive Committee ECCI Executive Committee of the Communist International GPU Soviet State Security service, variously re-named in later periods, and known by other acronyms: OGPU, NKVD, MVD, and KGB ICC International Control Commission IWW Industrial Workers of the World: the `Wobblies' KGB see GPU MM Minority Movement (sometimes MMM: Militant Minority Movement) NKVD People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (see GPU) NSW New South Wales NZ New Zealand OBU One Big Union PRO Public Record Office, London PPW Pan-Pacific Worker RILU Red International of Labour Unions RCP Russian Communist Party RGASPI Russian State Archive of Social and Political History RSFSR Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic RTUI Red Trade Union International (see RILU) SLP Socialist Labour Party UF United Front ix Our Unswerving Loyalty URCW Union of Russian Communist Workers VSP Socialist Party of Victoria WIIU Workers' International Industrial Union WW Workers' Weekly x Glossary of individuals, organizations and tactics Individuals, organizations and tactics that appear more than once in the documents, or are the subject of a substantial part of a document, are listed below. Individuals who appear only once are identified wherever possible by a footnote on the relevant page. Agitprop: Bolshevik jargon for agitation and propaganda; an Agitprop Department was established by the Comintern at its Fourth Congress to advise and supervise the work of its parties in this area. Anderson, John (1893±1962): philosopher, arrived in Australia from Scotland in 1927 to teach at the University of Sydney. Though a libertarian, he at first sympathized with the CPA and wrote for their publications, but in 1932 he broke with the Party, accusing it of being bureaucratic and afraid of spontaneity; from 1933 to 1936 he supported Trotsky's views but finally could not agree that the USSR remained a `workers' state', as Trotsky insisted until his death. Anglo-American Secretariat: organizational unit of the Comintern that supervised Communist parties in the USA, Britain, and the British Dominions (Australia, Canada and New Zealand). Communists in British colonies came under a different Comintern Secretariat. This Secretariat (sometimes `Bureau') was formed in mid-1922. Artem: see Sergeev. Australian Socialist Party: host of the founding conference of the CPA in October 1920. In 1919, the ASP had declared allegiance to the Comintern, but its affiliation was derailed by Petr Simonov. The ASP had focused on Marxist propaganda and opposed participating in the ALP; it had close links with Russian émigrés in Brisbane and with Moscow. The ASP remained an important current within the