Dimitrov to Stalin on the Dissolution of the Polish Communist Party

Posted on February 1, 2017 | 

Dimitrov to Stalin, 28 November 1937, with enclosed draft resolution of the ECCI. Original in Russian. Typewritten with handwritten comments by Stalin.
Top secret, [1]
Dear Comrade Stalin!
We are thinking of passing the attached resolution on the dissolution of the Polish Communist Party in the ECCI Presidium, and then publishing it.
After publishing this resolution, we would send an open letter to the Polish Communists that would reveal in greater detail the enemy’s decomposing activities within the ranks of the Communist Party and the Polish workers’ movement.
In reestablishing the CP of Poland, it has been suggested that a special organizational commission be formed. We plan to select some of the members of this commission for the most distinguished and tested fighters from the International Brigades in Spain.
We beg you, Comrade Stalin, to give your advice and directives:

1. Regarding this issue, whether this announcement will be expedient before the investigation of the former Polish party leaders under arrest is completed, or should we wait longer?
2. Regarding the contents and the character of the resolution on the dissolution of the CP of Poland itself.

With fraternal greetings.

Dimitrov

No. 132/Id
28 November 1937
T[op] Secret,

RESOLUTION OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL

Polish fascism, unable to cope with the growing mass revolutionary movement by means of overt terror alone, has made espionage, sabotage, and provocation the major tool of its struggle against the workers’ movement, against all anti-fascist, democratic forces, [having] poisoned the entire political and social life in Poland with this foul system. For many years, it has been planting its spies and agents among all the workers’ and peasants’ democratic organizations. However, the Pilsudchiks [2] made a special effort to infiltrate the Communist movement, which represents the greatest threat for Polish fascism.
The Executive Committee of the Communist International has established, on the basis of irrefutable documentary evidence, That for a number of years enemies, agents of Polish fascism, have been operating within the leadership structures of the Polish Communist Party. By organizing splits, often fictitious, within the workers’, national-democratic, and petty-bourgeois organizations, the Pilsudchiks poured their spies and provocateurs into the Communist Party, disguised as oppositional elements coming over to the ranks of the Communist movement (the PPS group headed by Sochacki-Bratowski, the Poalei-Zion group headed by Henrykowski and Lampe, the Ukrainian s[ocial] d[emocratic] group, the UVO group of Wasylkiw-Turianski, Korczyk’s group of Belorussian SRs, the “Wyzwolenie” group of Wojewodzki). [3] By arranging the arrests so as to remove the most loyal elements from the Communist ranks. the Polish defenziwa [counterintelligence] gradually advanced its agents into leading positions in the Communist Party. At the same time, in order to give its agents provocateurs and spies authority among the workers [and] members of the Communist Party after staging mock trials, the fascists would often subject their own agents to imprisonment so that later they could be liberated, at the earliest convenience, by organizing “escapes” or by “exchanges” for spies and saboteurs caught red-handed in the USSR. With the help of their agents in the leading organs of the party, the Pilsudchiks promoted their people [for example Zarski, Sochacki, Dombal] to the Communist faction of the Sejm [parliament] during the elections to the Sejm, instructed them to deliver provocative speeches, which the fascists used to attack the Soviet Union and for the bloody repression of the workers’ and peasants’ movement.
The gang of spies and provocateurs entrenched in the leadership of the Polish Communist Party, having planted, in turn, agents in the periphery of the party organization, systematically betrayed the best sons of the working class to the class enemy. By organizing failures, [they were] destroying, year after year, party organizations in the Polish heartland, as well as in Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine. [This gang] systematically perverted the party’s political line so as to weaken the influence of communism among the masses, to make the party increasingly alien and hostile to the Communist International. For its work of disintegration, Polish fascism widely used a Trotskyist-Bukharinist reprobates, [who] either were already, or were willingly becoming, agents of Polish defenwiza, by virtue of having a common outlook with fascism. The Polish defenwiza kindled the factional struggle in the party, through its agents both in the Kostrzewa-Warski group and in the Lenski-Henrykowski group, and used both factions to disorganize the party and its work among the masses, and to separate the workers from the Communist Party.
However, the most ignoble role that this espionage agency played was following the directives of the fascist intelligence in relation to the USSR. Playing on the nationalist prejudices of the most backward masses among the Polish people, it sought to create obstacles to the rapprochement of the peoples of Poland and the peoples of the USSR, and in the interests of the fascist warmongers, to wreck the cause of peace that is selflessly defended by the great country of the Soviets. At the same time, this network of class enemies, disguised as political emigres, was transferred by Polish fascism to the USSR so as to conduct espionage, sabotage, and wrecking activities.
All attempts to purge the agents of Polish fascism from the ranks of the Communist movement, while retaining the current organization of the Polish Communist Party, prove futile, since the central party organs were in the hands of spies and provocateurs who used the difficult situation of the underground party to remain in its leadership.
Based on all this and in order to give honest Polish Communists a chance to rebuild a party, once it is purged of all agents of Polish fascism, the Executive Committee of the Communist International, in accordance with the statutes and the decisions of the Congresses of the Communist International, resolves:
1. To dissolve the Polish Communist Party because of its saturation with spies and provocateurs.
2. To recommend that all honest Communists, until the re-creation of the Polish Communist Party, shift the emphasis of their work to those mass organizations where there are workers and toilers, while fighting to establish the unity of the workers’ movement and to create in Poland a popular antifascist front.
At the same time, the ECCI warns the Communists and the Polish workers against any attempt by Polish fascism and its Trotskyist-Bukharinist espionage network to create a new organization of espionage and provocation, under the guise of a pseudo-Communist Party of Poland, to corrupt the Communist movement.
The Communist International knows that thousands of Polish workers sacrifice themselves and their lives to serving and protecting the vital interests of the toiling masses; it knows that the heroic Polish proletariat had, in its glorious revolutionary past, many remarkable moments of struggle against the tsarist and Austro-Hungarian monarchies, against Polish fascism. It knows about the heroic deeds of the Dombrowski battalions sent by the Polish proletariat to defend the Spanish people. It is convinced that the Polish proletariat will have [again] a Communist party, purged of the foul agents of the class enemy, which will indeed lead the struggle of the Polish toiling masses for their liberation.

Footnotes

[1] Handwritten in the margin: “N1433/2 XII 37.” Across the letter, Stalin wrote: “The dissolution is about two years two late. It is necessary to dissolve [the party], but in my opinion, [this] should not be published in the press.” This resolution was first published in Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1988, no. 12, p. 52,
[2] Pilsudchiks: a derisive name used to describe the Polish government under Marshal Pilsudski, and a generic term for his followers. Jozef Pilsudski was a leader of the right-wing of the Polish Socialist Party. In 1918 he was war minister, and between 1918 and 1922 head of state. After May 1926 he was again war minister, then prime minister, and later inspector general of Poland’s armed forces – Trans.
[3] Various Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian, and Belorussian groups.
From “Dimitrov and Stalin, 1934-1943: Letters from the Soviet Archives” by Alexander Dallin and F.I. Firsov, pp. 28-31.