Page 35 - The Chief Culprit

12 y e Chief Culprit

of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Sergei Kirov, proposed to build a “Palace
of the Soviets.” Kirov explained: “ is building must serve as the symbol of future might,
the victory of communism not only here, but also there, in the West.” He emphasized that
the palace must be built for the purpose of holding the ceremony of acceptance for the final
republic into the Soviet Union. At that time, nobody could forecast which republic in par-
ticular would be the last to come into the Union of Soviets—the Argentine Soviet Republic
or the Uruguay Soviet Republic—but the Soviet Communists were certain that this moment
would inevitably come.
Attempts to unleash a war and revolution were repeated by the Soviet Communists
many times over. ere was an attempt to start a “Balkan revolution,” and obtain, in Trotsky’s
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words, a direct route from the Balkan region to the ports of France and Britain. An assas-
sination attempt was made against the Bulgarian Tsar Boris, but miraculously he survived. In
September 1923 armed uprisings began in Bulgaria, started on the Comintern’s orders. On
September 27, 1923, the Soviet Politburo ordered ten Bulgarian Communists (officers and
pilots) to the navy base in Sevastopol. If a nearby Bulgarian city close to the shore was in rebel
hands, the pilots would establish a connection by airplane between the south of Russia and
Bulgaria. en, “upon the establishment of the connection, to send out arms that have been
in Sevastopol since last year, prepared for the Bulgarian revolution . . . and . . . send Bulgarian
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Communists currently in Moscow and other Russian cities to Bulgaria with arms.” e
leader of the uprisings was Georgy Dimitrov—future head of the Comintern. Attempts were
also made to spark revolutions in South America, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, China, India,
and many other countries.
However, Germany remained the ultimate objective. One of the several attempts to
take power in Germany is especially interesting. is attempt was undertaken in the fall of
1923 when Lenin no longer participated in the leadership. e reins of power were almost
completely in Stalin’s hands, although neither the country, nor the world, not even his rivals
within the party, had come to understand this. Stalin’s personal secretary, Boris Bazhanov, de-
scribed the preparations for seizure of power in Germany: “At the end of September an emer-
gency meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist
Party of Bolsheviks (the former name of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—the
CPSU, as it was renamed in October 1952) was held, so secret that it was attended only by
the members of the Politburo and myself. No regular member of the Central Committee was
permitted to be present. is meeting was called in order to fix a date for a coup in Germany.
It was decided on November 9, 1923.” 8
Bazhanov wrote that the funds earmarked to support the German revolution were tre-
mendous, and a decision was made to support the effort without limits. Inside the Soviet
Union, all Communists of German origin and all Communists who knew the German lan-
guage were mobilized. ey were trained and sent to Germany for underground work. Not
only regular Soviet Communists were sent to Germany, but leaders of higher rank as well,
among them the People’s Commissar (member of the cabinet of ministers of the Soviet gov-
ernment) Vasily Schmidt, the members of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist
Party Karl Radek and Grigory Piatakov, the candidate for membership to the Politburo of the
Communist party of the USSR Nikolai Bukharin, and many others. In 1923 many others,
also under aliases, arrived in Germany: Tukhachevski, Unshlikht, Vatsetis, Menzhinskii, 10
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