851.00B/10–747: Telegram
The Ambassador in France (Caffery) to the Secretary of State
4323. Highly qualified observers here, including one who is close to Duclos,1 state that the Kremlin’s choice of Communist Parties participating directly in new Comintern indicates that latter’s battle formation counts on “decisive parties” of Europe. They consider that while designation of French and Italian parties reveals that Moscow regards France and Italy as falling within its “zone of immediate influence”, this decision, rather than augmenting Communist prestige in these two countries, is more likely to injure it especially if both France and Italy survive the winter without collapsing economically. Informants explain, and in this I heartily agree, that one of the main sources of Communist strength in France resided in widespread belief on part of general population and even some political circles that the Communists since 1941 were no longer subservient to Kremlin. Consequently, it is believed in anti-Communist circles on the right and left that the “open” operation of Comintern will aid them in providing sufficient evidence during electoral campaign that Communist militants were never anything but Soviet patriots.
The selection of Belgrade rather than Praha as the “transmission belt” leading from Kremlin to Paris strikes these observers as convincing proof that the Soviets feel somewhat isolated and prefer to operate from a “sure GPU and military base”. Absence in France of “United Front with Socialists and Radical Socialists” as during prewar [Page 765] Popular Front period will greatly handicap, according to same informants, Communists task of convincing people that Moscow stands for peace and anti-imperialism while United States is the bulwark of the “camp of warmongers and imperialists”.
Source close to Duclos remarks that “mass Communist Front organizations” will now be directed to reorient their policies by shifting “line” from “anti-Fascism” to anti-Americanism and to stress more than ever view that Moscow is the “bearer of peace”.
Source also believes that absence of German party from “open” participation in new Comintern indicates that German question, especially in France, is still too delicate in view of French chauvinism but they firmly believe that even here a new orientation is beginning to take place (reference my 4296, October 32) and they point to participation of Georges Roucaute at recent Berlin Conference of United Socialist Party.
Socialists militants here also believe that Comintern’s attacks against Blum and Bevin are designed “to oblige all Socialists, especially those behind Iron Curtain, to side with Moscow or with ‘Social Fascists’ like Blum with all the consequences that this decision now entails in Soviet satellite states”.
Finally, trustworthy source states that French Communist Party was given task at Warsaw Conference to “direct the Belgian, Dutch, English, Spanish and Swiss Communist Parties”. Italian Communist Party will be directed by Moscow via Belgrade. As for North American Continent party work will be entrusted to a “special representative under Manuilski’s3 immediate guidance”.
Sent Department 4323, repeated Moscow 495, Berlin 383, Belgrade 49, Rome 254, London 791.
- Jacques Duclos, a leader of the French Communist Party.↩
- Not printed; it reported that the French Communist press was beginning to extol the administration of the Soviet Zone of Germany and to view sympathetically the efforts of Germans there to create a “new democracy” (740.00119 Control (Germany)/10–347).↩
- Dimitri Zakharovich Manuilsky, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.↩