Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Communists in the Transnational World of the Comintern before the Great Purge

Abstract

The Comintern represented in the international relations of the inter-war period a transnational global force. It has been rightly described as an organisation with political program ambitions extending beyond national boundaries. Its sections were active in most countries of the globe. The involvement of the Comintern with the Baltic states and the activities of Baltic communists in the transnational framework of the organisation has remained almost unexplored. This article deals with the period from 1918 to 1935 and looks at the Baltic communists’ activities in the Comintern before the Great Purges in the USSR.Estonian and Latvian Communism grew out of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, Lithuanian Communism out of Polish Social Democracy and the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. At the time of the Comintern’s I Congress, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Bolsheviks had congregated into the national sections subject to RKP(b). The Soviet Balticum Project and the founding of the Comintern were reasons for a part of the Baltic bolsheviks belonging to the national sections of RKP(b) to declare that they had formed independent communist parties. The annulment of the Brest peace treaty in November of 1918 and the subsequent emergence of the Estonian Workers’ Commune, Soviet Latvia and Soviet Lithuania-Belarus Republic, or in other words, the soviet project’s duration in the Baltic provinces of the former Russian empire proved to be short-lived. The peace treaties between Soviet Russia and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania signed in 1920 which became the foundation for the emergence of three independent states evoked sharp disagreements and demoralization in the ranks of the Baltic Bolsheviks. One part of them saw the Soviet Russia’s agreement to the peace treaty as treason, while the other justified the act with a comparison to the Brest peace treaty: Considering the existing power relationships and the Comintern-led international revolutionary movement, the peace agreements reached by the Soviet government are temporary and they will certainly encounter the same fate as the Brest peace treaty. The Stalin-led Peoples’ Commissariat of Nationalities played a decisive role in making it possible that bolsheviks of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian extraction were among the founders and afterwards in the leadership of the Comintern as a transnational organization. A similar role played the Zinoviev-led Peoples’ Commissariat of Nationalities of the Union of the Commune of the Nordic Region. In the first of these Commissariats worked Mickevičius-Kapsukas, Alexa-Angaretis, Gailis and Pöögelmamm, in the latter Anvelt and Giedrys. The Latvian bolshevik/communist Stučka was a part of Lenin’s retinue, while his countryman, one of the most transnational Balts in the Comintern and the top level of AUCP(b), Knoriņš, was allied with Stalin. Becoming members of the Comintern, the Baltic communists declared that the leadership of the revolutionary movement in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would belong wholly to the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian communist parties. Ties to the Comintern were justified as follows: the communist party as an independent organization forms a direct tie with the Comintern; having gained the recognition of the Comintern, the communist party joins as an independent member the transnational union of communist parties and starts with the internationalism of the working class, which allows the globalization, together with Soviet Russia/Soviet Union, of the results of the October Revolution. The question of what were the Baltic communists’ relations with the RKP(b) received this declaration as answer: the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian proletariat can proudly point to traditions and cooperation that has connected them to the Russian proletariat. Having joined the Comintern and directing from Soviet Russia / Soviet Union illegal communist activity in their homelands, the Baltic communist leaders remained members of RCP(b)/AUCP(b) and were in their actions subject to the direction of both that organization and of Comintern. They declared that they did not recognize the bourgeois Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and would greet the day when the bourgeois order was ended in these countries and union with Soviet Union took place. A role played here also the rhetoric about the internationalism of the working class and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The latter was to be achieved by taking part in the Comintern’s transnational campaigns. Among such campaigns were the peace movement, the fight against social democracy, the creation of joint and peoples’ fronts etc. The varied ideas and wishful thinking of the Baltic Bolsheviks came to an end with the start of repressions in 1936—1937 or the Great Purge.