Dimitrov & Stalin, 1934-1943: Letters from the Soviet Archives, edited by Alexander Dallin and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, translated by Vadim A. Staklo. Annals of Communism. New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 2000. xxx, 278 pp. $35.00 U.S. (cloth).

                  Dimitrov & Stalin is a collection of letters from Georgi Dimitrov, the Bulgarian
                  head of the Communist International or Comintern, to I. V. Stalin during the
                  1930s and early 1940s. There is no correspondence from Stalin; the Soviet
                  General Secretary's replies are limited to a few marginal comments and notes.
                  The documents published in this volume are found at the RTsKhIDNI (now
                  RGASPI), the Comintern and Soviet communist party archives in Moscow. The
                  correspondence covers a number of interesting topics ranging from the "united
                  front" policy (1934-39), to the Spanish civil war, the period of the Nazi-Soviet
                  non-aggression pact (1939-41), and relations with the Chinese and Yugoslav
                  Communist Parties.

                  The editors, Alexander Dallin, professor emeritus at Stanford University, and F.
                  I. Firsov, a former researcher at RTsKhIDNI, point out in their preface that the
                  Comintern portrayed in these documents, while not "a benign organization of
                  well-meaning paper-pushers," was "a far cry from the worldwide conspiracy of
                  terrorists it was sometimes believed to be" (p. xix). The editors say they
                  unexpectedly found evidence of muddle and confusion in policy-making:
                  "Moscow's strategy and tactics were characterized not so much by clarity,
                  cleverness, or consistency as by dilemmas and ambiguities in decision making.
                  Time and again we observe the tensions between conflicting aims and interests
                  ..." (p. xx).

                  Not surprisingly, the reader of this book will encounter a good deal of Dimitrov
                  going to Stalin for approval of this or that policy, sending instructions or advice
                  to foreign communist parties, and mediating policy disputes. According to the
                  editors, Stalin is "something of a sphinx," not deeply involved in Comintern
                  business, though Dimitrov may have been trying to pull him into greater
                  involvement to gain a more important role and more resources for the
                  organization. Stalin seems only casually interested in Dimitrov's
                  correspondence, giving cursory responses, or none at all. "Decide for
                  yourselves," he says, when too busy to turn his mind to Comintern business (pp.
                  xx, 122). This may have been a frightening prospect in the purge-ravaged Soviet
                  Union.

                  The role of Stalin in policy making is of great interest to scholars because he
                  was at the centre of power in the Soviet Union and because it has thus far been
                  difficult to find his written words in memoranda and directives. And this has led
                  to conspiratorial interpretations of Stalin's conduct. For example, the Soviet
                  government appeared to support a "united front" and "collective security"
                  against Nazi Germany in the 1930s, but what did Stalin really think? Was Soviet
                  government policy only a front for a clandestine personal policy pursued by
                  Stalin? A reader will not find that kind of speculation in this book. The editors
                  acknowledge that new evidence may come to light, but they think themselves on
                  relatively secure ground.

                  So Stalin supported the Comintem's "united front" against Nazi Germany which
                  ran in tandem with foreign commissar Maksim M. Litvinov's advocacy of a
                  broad based anti-Nazi alliance. The Comintern, originally an organization to
                  promote world socialist revolution, became an organ of Soviet foreign policy.
                  As one French diplomat put it in 1933, the Comintern, like the Red Army, was
                  only dangerous to those states hostile to the Soviet Union.

                  During the Spanish civil war Stalin supported the united front policy and a
                  broad-based coalition against the fascist rebellion. He approved of
                  discouraging the Spanish communists from taking too prominent a role in
                  government for fear of alienating other more conservative elements of the
                  Republican movement. In China too, he urged co-operation between the Chinese
                  Communist Party and the Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-shek against the Japanese
                  invasion. Chiang had to be dragooned into fighting the Japanese; his preference
                  was to make war on the Chinese communists, who were the greater threat. The
                  Comintern pursued a similar policy in Yugoslavia between Tito's partisans
                  fighting the German army of occupation and the anti-communist Chetniks.

                  The united front policy was abandoned after the conclusion of the Nazi-Soviet
                  non-aggression pact in August 1939. The Soviet government and thus the
                  Comintern abruptly reversed positions, depicting the European war, started by
                  the German invasion of Poland, as a conflict between rival "imperialist" powers
                  struggling for dominance. The Soviet Union had no interest in being drawn into
                  such a conflict, and European communist parties should therefore oppose the
                  war. The editors capture Stalin's cynicism after war broke out in September
                  1939. "We have no objection to their [the Anglo-French and Nazis] having a
                  good fight, weakening each other," Stalin commented (according to Dimitrov):
                  "It wouldn't be bad if by the hands of Germany the position of the richest
                  capitalist countries (especially England) were shattered ..." (p. 150). The
                  editors do not comment on the seeming contradiction between Stalin's apparent
                  equanimity at the prospect of a protracted war between Nazi Germany and
                  France and Britain and his support for an early end to the war. Grist to the mill,
                  perhaps, of those who see a conspiratorial Stalin. Whatever the position,
                  Stalin's comment mirrored the view of many French and British conservatives
                  who had hoped that if any fighting was to occur in Europe, it would be the Nazis
                  and Soviets doing it. A.J.P. Taylor long ago commented that the Soviet Union
                  succeeded in doing a deal with Hitler, where the Anglo-French had failed at
                  Munich. And as one of Dimitrov's notes to Stalin demonstrates, the Comintern
                  estimate of Anglo-French policy in the late 1930s was not so far wrong (p.
                  159). According to the editors, Comintern propaganda aimed at unmasking the
                  "legend of the antifascist character of the war" being conducted by Britain and
                  France (p. 164). This view, too, was not entirely off the mark. Contemporaries
                  attributed to the British and French leaders Neville Chamberlain and Édouard
                  Daladier a preference for an early end to the war and for not overly weakening
                  Germany. And what was the Soviet government to make of the "phoney war,"
                  and the ample evidence of Anglo-French hostility before and after the outbreak
                  of the Soviet-Finnish Winter War? The French government showed a greater
                  interest in fighting the "weak" Soviet Union than in launching an offensive
                  against "colossus" Germany.

                  The collapse of France in June 1940 frightened the Soviet government, and
                  accordingly Comintern policy shifted to allow for communist resistance to the
                  German invader in Greece, Yugoslavia, and France. The Soviet Union,
                  however, still hoped to stay clear. This was an "awkward position," as the
                  editors note (p. 169), and it was also the transition back to the "united front"
                  policy resumed after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The
                  Comintern then became a liability to good Soviet relations with Britain and the
                  United States. As the editors note, Stalin never had much respect for foreign
                  communist movements, still less so after 1935. "One tractor is worth more than
                  ten foreign Communists" went a popular epigram in the 1930s (p. 223). So
                  Stalin said it would be "good to make the Com[munist] parties entirely
                  independent instead of being sections of the CI [Communist International]" (p.
                  227). And this Stalin declared on 20 April 1941, two months before the German
                  invasion. The Comintern was dissolved in May 1943, and at the end of the war
                  Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria eventually to become prime minister until his
                  death in 1949.

                  This is an interesting book which offers a more nuanced view of Soviet foreign
                  policy as exercised through the Comintern. We still do not see much of Stalin
                  except by implication, though this is no fault of the editors. And we do not see
                  anything of the commissariat for foreign affairs, though here the editors might
                  have used the published Soviet papers in the more recent volumes of the
                  Dokumenty vneshnei politiki to give context to Dimitrov's correspondence with
                  Stalin. This more nuanced view of the Comintern is in striking contrast to the
                  earlier volume published by Yale University Press in 1995, entitled The Secret
                     World of American Communism, edited by Harvey Klehr and Earl Haynes, to
                  which Firsov injudiciously lent his name.