Thus a vigorous control was exercised over the local branches of the Third International from the centre, but there was no corresponding control over the centre by the branches, for the annual summer congresses in Moscow were under Russian domination. In 1924, for instance, the proceedings began with the Thirteenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party, which lasted from the 13th May to the 3rd June; this was followed, from the 17th June to the 8th July, by the Fifth Congress of the Third International; and from the 8th July until the last days of that month this was followed in turn by the Third Congress of the International of Red Trade Unions.1 The effective part of these proceedings was the first, and the decisions then taken by the Russian Communist Party appear to have been endorsed, much as they stood, by the few foreign delegates who were present at the meetings of the two other bodies, which were thus directed in effect by the same persons, although they were organically distinct from one another and from the Russian Communist Party. The Russian Communist Party, to judge by the vivid description of it in The Official Report of the British Trade Union Delegation to Russia in November and December 1924,2 was a model Communist cell', laid up in Russia as an ensample for the Communists of other countries.

The Russian Communist conception of Communism as a nucleus ' or cell' (yatcheika) not only expresses the present position of the Party within the body politic, but also the policy of the Party within the proletariat. The Party no longer relies on mere accretion. It works by leavening the lump. . . . Admission to membership and retention of it are now a matter of prayer and fasting. Proletarians and peasants must pass a probation of six months as candidates and be vouched for by two members. Others must remain candidates for two years and get six guarantors. Members are tested every year or so by oral examinations, about 10 per cent. being eliminated. Any anti-Communist action entails expulsion, such as a religious marriage, circumcision as a religious ceremony, and so forth. The Communist Party now prides itself on the annual reduction of its membership as much as it previously did on its increase under War Communism.3

This Spartan corps d'élite was governed by a Central Committee, which in turn performed its missionary functions through a Political Bureau, and this Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the

1 See The Times, 14th July, 1924.

2

3

pp. 13-14.

Compare with this passage M. Zinoviev's remarks (as reported in The Times of the 11th February, 1924) on the measures necessary to guard against an enveloping movement' against the Russian Communist Party by the non-Communists in Russia.

Russian Communist Party appears to have dominated the Executive Committee of the Third International, which was likewise located in Moscow and the leading Russian members of which were also members of the Political Bureau of the Russian Party, though on the Executive Committee of the International these Russians were assisted by non-Russian colleagues in the proportion of ten to five.1 The extent to which the Russian Political Bureau directed Communist strategy in other countries is well illustrated by the following passage (relating to the crucial case of the German situation in the autumn of 1923) from a report made by Zinoviev to the Russian Communist Party in February 1924.2

I must admit that the whole Central Committee, and especially the Political Bureau, are largely responsible for our views in general, and on the German question in particular. This question concerned Russia too closely. That is why our comrades in the Communist International were obliged to discuss all questions first in the Political Bureau and then within the Party. While Lenin was in a state to direct our work we, the members of the Communist International, came to him for advice, and the whole Central Committee agreed that his views were to be put into practice without further debate. When this became impossible, Lenin's guidance had to be replaced by that of a collective body. That is why those members of the Central Committee who are members of the Communist International were obliged to discuss the question of the German revolution in all its details within the Political Bureau. Most of the decisions were passed unanimously, and therefore they were collective resolutions, for which we are all responsible. . . . We, the Executive, are accused by some of having fixed the date of the German revolution, but I assert that this decision was left by us to the German Communist Party.

While the Russian Communist Party was thus sustaining and inspiring the Third International, the International itself was extending its range by operating simultaneously through a number of auxiliary organizations, which were enumerated officially as follows:

First. The Red International Trade Union, working hand in hand with the Third International.

Second. The International League of Communist Youth, politically controlled by the Committee of the Third International.

Third. The auxiliary instrument for the international struggle called Mopr (the society for the relief of destitute revolutionaries abroad).

Fourth. The Co-operative section, which aims to convert all workmen's co-operatives throughout the world into an instrument for revolution.

1 See The Times, 6th November, 1924.
2 Ibid., 6th February, 1924.

Fifth. The Sport International, which is to combine all forms of proletarian sport organizations for revolutionary strife.

Sixth. The Women's section, working specially for the emancipation of Oriental women.

Seventh. The Peasants' International.1

In the following autumn it was announced that preparations were being made for a Congress of the Red Sport International in Moscow, in order to discuss the utilization of physical culture as a training for class warfare'. It was added that a severe struggle' was 'proceeding in Western European countries between the Red Sport International and the Evolutionary Socialist Sport International for the control of Labour gymnasiums and sport organizations '.2 Few Englishmen at this time would have allowed their sport to be subordinated to politics of any colour; but the part played by the gymnastic associations called Sokols in the national movements of the East European Slavs during the years preceding the War showed that, in large parts of Continental Europe, sport might be exploited effectively for political ends, and thus the Red Sport International was not so ludicrous a conception as it might appear at first sight to an English reader.

3

Auxiliary organizations of a similar kind were created by the Communist Groups abroad to suit the circumstances of the countries in which they were operating respectively. In the United States, for example, the Communist Party, which there was an underground organization, apparently maintained and controlled another organization called 'The Workers' Party of America', which was ostensibly non-revolutionary and was therefore able to work in the light of day; and, in addition to this, it cultivated special fields by means of the Women's Auxiliary of the Communist Party of America, the Trade Union Educational League, the African Blood Brotherhood, the Friends of Soviet Russia, and the Russian Famine Reliefall of which had been identified, in the judgement of the State Department, as Communist agencies.

On the Fifth Anniversary of the Third International, Zinoviev was reported to have drawn up a list of fifteen tasks, to the

1 Quoted in The Times of the 8th March, 1924, from an article by Kolarov, General Secretary of the International, which had been published in the Moscow Izvestia of the 4th in celebration of the Fifth Anniversary of the Third International.

2 See The Times, 22nd September, 1924.

See the evidence presented by the State Department, cited on p. 192 above.

4 The Times, 4th March, 1924.

accomplishment of which the International must apply itself forthwith.

First, the International must aim steadily at an early proletarian revolution in Germany. Not only the German Communist Party, but the Communist Parties of Russia, France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia must collaborate in the preparation for this event. The second urgent task, which affected British Communists in particular, but in which the whole Communist International must take its part, was to create a powerful Communist Party in Great Britain. The third task was to render assistance to the Communists of America and Japan. The remaining tasks included careful work in Poland, where a crisis was rapidly developing, and in Bulgaria, whence, according to Zinoviev, revolution would spread and envelop the whole of the Balkans. But a good half of the Third International's attention must be directed Eastward. The International, Zinoviev concluded, must at present follow the tactics of the Russian Communist Party, but as soon as the proletariat overthrew the Bourgeoisie in another country, the headquarters of the International must be removed to that country.

This programme may conclude the present survey of the methods of Communist propaganda. At the time of writing, the information accessible, outside Russia, regarding either the Third International or the U.S.S.R. was so notoriously untrustworthy that the foregoing account is offered with some diffidence. At the same time it is submitted that it contains nothing intrinsically impossible or even improbable; and any Western readers who may be inclined to reject the whole picture as fantastic should remind themselves that the citadel in Holy Russia, from which this strange religion was conducting its missionary activities, lay outside the borders of the Western world. If the truth or falsehood of the picture is to be judged at all on a priori grounds, the precedents must be sought, not in the West, but in the history of other non-Western societies, and in Islamic history, at least, several remarkable precedents will be found. While the term 'cell' was a metaphor taken from an hypothesis of modern Western science, the method indicated was as old as the propaganda (da'wa) by which the 'Abbasids had undermined the power of the Umayyads during the first half of the eighth Christian century, and these Muslim missionaries (duʻāt) were true confrères of the Communist propagandists in the insidiousness, the versatility, the discipline, and--it must be added-the fearlessness with which they set about their subversive work. A still closer parallel is afforded by the history of the 'Ismaili sect of the Shi‘a, who in the ninth Christian century were organized into a secret society by 'Abdu'llāh b. Maymun, and who, under the redoubtable

name of Assassins, made themselves the terror of Muslim and Frank alike from their seizure of the Castle of Alamut in A. D. 1090-1 until A. D. 1256, when they were trampled under foot by the Mongols.

'To bind together in one association the conquered and the conquerors; to combine in one secret society, wherein there should be several grades of initiation, the free-thinkers, who saw in religion only a curb for the common people, and the bigots of all sects; to make use of the believers to bring about a reign of the unbelievers, and of the conquerors to overthrow the empire which they themselves had founded; to form for himself, in short, a party-numerous, compact, and schooled to obedience—which, when the moment was come, would give the throne, if not to himself, at least to his descendants: such was the dominant idea of 'Abdu'llah b. Maymun-an idea which, grotesque and audacious though it was, he realized with astonishing tact, incomparable skill, and a profound knowledge of the human heart.'

To attain this end, a conjunction of means was devised which may fairly be described as Satanic. Human weakness was attacked on every side; devoutness was offered to the believing; liberty, not to say licence, to the reckless; philosophy to the strongminded; mystic hopes to the fanatical; and marvels to the common folk. . . . And this system was put in movement with a calm resolve which excites our astonishment and which, if we could forget the object, would merit our liveliest admiration.1

These words, written by two European scholars before Lenin's name was known, and in reference to events which took place nearly a thousand years before he was born, might serve, with scarcely a change, as an epitaph for this latter-day reincarnation of the Propagandist of Propagandists, the Old Man of the Mountain.2

(c) THE COMMUNIST RISING IN ESTHONIA (DECEMBER 1924) The Communist activities in Esthonia, which had not ceased since the establishment of normal diplomatic relations between the Esthonian Republic and the U.S.S.R.,3 had become so menacing by the beginning of 1924 that in January the Esthonian Government made wholesale arrests of suspects, including several members of Parliament. This measure was a new departure, since up to that

1 This passage is quoted from de Goeje, quoting Dozy, by Professor Edward Browne in his Literary History of Persia, Vol. 1, pp. 394-5 (London, 1902, Fisher Unwin). For an expert account of the history of the 'Isma'īlīs, in which the historical facts are disengaged from romance, see not only this volume, Ch. XII, passim, but also Vol. ii (London, 1906, Fisher Unwin) Chs. III and VII. For the romantic version, see Marco Polo, Colonel Sir Henry Yule's translation of his Book, Chs. XXIII-XXV (third edition, London, 1903, John Murray).

2 Da'i-d-Du'at, Shaykhu'l-Jabal. 3 See Survey, 1920–3, p. 240.