The International Lenin School
Professor Helena Sheehan
Dublin City University
[email protected]
Questions
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What role did the ILS play in the world communist movement?
Why was it formed?
Who were its teachers and students?
What was its curriculum?
Why was it so clandestine?
What were its boundaries?
What were the consequences of transgression?
How did the post-Comintern school differ from the Comintern school?
What was the experience of Irish communists during each period?
What sources are available to shed light on these questions?
Which archives are accessible and which are still inaccessible?
How much personal testimony is available?
What secrets have been revealed?
What is still hidden? Why?
What conclusions can be drawn at this stage?
What? Why?
• clandestine school run up by EC CI
& later by ID / CPSU
• to train leaders of communist movement
• to facilitate bolshevisation process
• to raise level of work in philosophy, political economy,
history, strategy & tactics
When?
• Resolution of 5th World Congress of Comintern in 1924
• Opening in May 1926
• 1926 to 1938 to 1943 (dissolution of Comintern) (under ECCI)
From 1938 only illegals
• Post-war to 1991 (end of USSR) (under ID / CPSU)
From 1962 separate schools for communists in socialist & capitalist countries
Who? Its teachers
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1st director: NI Bukharin (1888-1938)
2nd director: Bela Kun (1886-1938)
Comintern intellectuals
Soviet intelligentsia
innovative teaching methods
effects of ideological struggles & purges
Who? Its students
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members of communist parties with leadership qualities
2500-3000 from 1926 to 1938
criteria: age, background, party experience, etc
primarily single males under 35
organised into groups who spoke Russian, English,
French, German, later other languages
known through pseudonyms
also members of CPSU & active in Comintern
called ‘little Lenins’ by Larkin
called ‘strangers in their own land’ on return to NZ
Who?
Graduates became
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heads of state
members of parliament
communist party leaders
trade union leaders
brigadistas
spies & spymasters
professors
prisoners
‘renegades’
Alexander Dubchek * Markus Wolf * Josip Broz Tito * David Siqueiros * Nikolaos Zachariadis * Thabo Mbeki
Also Wladyslaw Gomulka, Erich Honecker, Waldek Rochet, Moses Kotane, Harry Wicks, Ted Tripp, Morris Childs
Where?
• Miusskaya Plashad 6 in Moscow
• Kushnarenkovo in Bashkiria
• Leningradsky Prospekt 49 in Moscow
• Ulista Vorovskogo 25 in Moscow
• freedom of movement varied in different periods as did rules on many matters
The Larkins, IWL & Comintern
• ups & downs of Larkin & Comintern
• members of IWL to ILS
• purge of Larkinism at ILS
Irish at ILS
1926-1938
21 (20 male)
their fates
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SM: GS of CPI
JL: TD, Pres of ICTU, GS of WUI
LMcG: died in Spain
PB: perished in purges
BS: Sec of BTC, etc
Twists & turns of Comintern
& chistkas at ILS
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1929 new turn in USSR
3rd period of Comintern
classes suspended
purge of Bukharinism
move v II tendencies in other parties
purge of Larkinsm
– Jim Larkin Jr replaced as partorg
– Pat Breslin expelled
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post-Kirov purges & Prendergast recantation
‘Stalin’s sausage machine’?
terror tightened & took toll on teachers
1938 legals departed
1938-1943 illegals remained under heavy security
Patrick Breslin 1907-1942
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joined CPI in 1922
studied at ILS 1928-1930
arrested in 1940
died in 1942
Betty Sinclair 1910-1981
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CPI
ILS
NICRA
BTC
WMR
diaries in CPI archives
Sources for ILS in Comintern period
books
• primary
• secondary
Also articles in journals & chapters in books
Studies of British, Finnish, Swiss, Chinese, etc at ILS
Most research since mid-1990s
Sources for post-Comintern ILS
• very little published
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memoirs of participants
books of surrounding history
articles
personal notes & memories
personal communications with other participants
unpublished ms (myself as primary source)
Post-war ILS (aka) Institute of Social Sciences
• International Dept of CPSU
• higher party school
• separation of communists from
socialist & capitalist countries
• Leningradsky Prospekt 49
• Until end of USSR 1991
CIA doc
My notes
(partially declassified)
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Since 1960s, estimate of 167,000
from non-communist countries
travelled to USSR for education /
training
Of these, a select group of 10,500
sent to Institute of Social Sciences of
CPSU > 450 graduates a year
Obviously, some of these were CIA
spies
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600 employees
Of whom, 270 members of CPSU or
Komsomol
All professors & interpreters in CPSU
or K
An unspecified number were KGB
CPI at ILS 1972-1991
• one person for one year in 1972
• groups for 3 weeks in July from 1974
• lectures in philosophy, political economy, history, strategy
• focus on soviet studies
CPI at ILS 1977
• lectures
• excursions
• parties
CPI at ILS 1977
To Lithuania
• factories
• museum
• party meetings
Researching, lecturing & broadcasting in
Moscow 1978
• Institute of Social Sciences / ILS
• lectures, conferences, rituals, socials
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Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences
Moscow University
Lenin Library
Moscow Radio
Moscow News
Moscow at large
Workers Party at ILS
• 1983 to 1991
• CPI v WP in international arena
Professors & perestroika
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International Dept of CPSU
elite of party intelligenstia
moved between Prague & Moscow
range of positions, but base for precursors of perestroika
some semi-dissidents
from implicit to explicit in post-1985 period
Professors & apparatchiks at ILS
Where are they now?
• dead or alive?
• left or right?
• evasive or forthcoming?
Vladimir Shubin, Vadim Zagladin, Fydor Burlatsky, Evgeny
Novikov, Yuri Zamoshkin, Yuri Sherkovin, Valery Terin
Graduates still in leading positions
Presidents in 2013
eg, Cyprus & Ghana
Still many government ministers, trade union
officials, professors, political activists, etc
End of ILS / End of USSR
• Gorbachev Foundation
• archives of International
Dept of CPSU
Now > Finance Academy
Where there was once the USSR,
there came the new world order.
Whereas the communist movement once dominated the left,
new forms of left political organisation and political education still emerging.
Conclusions
The story of the ILS is the story of the
communist movement. It’s a thread
woven through all the twists and
turns from 1926 to 199.
• progressive push to change the
world, to expropriate the
expropriators, to liberate labour
• only revolution for decades in
conditions of underdevelopment
• struggle for power gave edge to most
ruthless
• alternative paths undermined
• interests of international movement
subordinated to national interests of
USSR
• CPs survive, but best of movement
carried on in new formations