Clandestine Communist Organization
Document Type:
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP78-00915R000100250007-6
Release Decision:
RIPPUB
Original Classification:
S
Document Page Count:
119
Document Creation Date:
November 11, 2016
Document Release Date:
July 9, 1998
Sequence Number:
7
Case Number:
Publication Date:
July 1, 1949
Content Type:
REPORT
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CIA-RDP78-00915R000100250007-6.pdf | 7.61 MB |
Body:
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Cory No.
25X1A8a
0 FILE
COMMUNISM
Clandestine Communist Organization
Part One
The Communist Party Underground
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TABLE 0F_CONTENTS
Page
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
PART O: a: THE COIIMJNIST PARTY UNDERGROUND 8
I ORGANIZATIONAL AND OPERATIONAL PROBLEMS ? , ? . ? ? 9
A. Police and Party ? . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1, Geographical Factors . ? , 10
2, Population Density 10
3, Politicnl Factors 10
4. 11Tass Support for Police ? 11
P3. Adaptability of Party Organization
to Illegal Conditions . . . . , , . . . a ? 12
1. Organizational Continuity . ? , ? . . ? ? 12
3.
Cadre Continuity , , , , ? , . ? ? , . . . . 13
Discipline and Security ? ? , . , . . . . . 14
4. Doctrine as Morale-Builder . . . . . . ? , 15
5. Attraction of Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6. Cell System . ., . , , . , , 16
7. Backlog of Conspiratorial Experience . . fl 17
C. Organizational Problems: Adjustment to
Illegal Conditions ? . 18
1. Reduction of Party Apparatus . ? , , , , . 18
a? Consolidation of Territorial
organizations , . . 18
b, Reduction of staffs o ? . 18
2. The Command Function: The Triad System , 19
3. Compartmentalization
a, Party and military branches . . , ? . . . 20
b.
Party and auxiliary (front)
organizations , ? ? ? ? ? . . . . 21
c. Party and auxiliary illegal
organizations ? , . , . , . . . . . 21
d. Internal Party Compartmentalization . , , 21
1) Elimination of horizontal liaison 21
2) Restriction of contacts ? ? , , , , 21
3) Functional restrictions 21
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4. Election of Party Committees . . . . . . . . 21
Election of Central Committees . . . . ? 22
b. Territorial Party committees and
electoral commissions . . . . ? 22
c. Co-optation . ? s 22
5. Party Organizations Abroad . . . . . . . . 22
a. Central Committee and Central
Departments . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
b. Foreign Bureau . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
c. Regional support centers . . . 23
d. Party organizations for emigrants ? 23
e, Special service organizations . . . . . 24
D. Operational Problems of the Party Underground. . 24
1. The Cadre Problem . 24
a. Replacement of the cadre . . . . . . 24
b. An adequate cadre reserve . . . . . . . 25
c. Ideological and practical training
of the new cadre . 26
d. The protection of the illegal cadre ? . 26
2. The "Housing" Problem and Communications . ? 27
a, Internal communications . . . . . . 27
b. External communications . . . . . . . . 27
c. Reporting points for liaison personnel
from abroad ? . ? 28
3. Technical Apparatus o ? ? a o ? . 28
The Security Problem . . . . . . . . . . . 30
a. Personal security 31
b. Administrative security . . . . . . . . 31
5. The Financial Problem . . 32
6. Mass Support: the Crucial Political
Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
a. Penetration and control of legal
non-Communist parties represent-
ing wort-ors and related class
elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
b. Penetration and control of legal
trade unions . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
c. Creation of dummy front organizations
or parties 34
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II. CASES OF CO12,UNIST PARTIES UNDERGROUND . , . . 35
A. The Bolshevik Party Underground . . , . . . ? . 36
1. Organization . . . . 38
a. The Moscow Organization . . , , . . 39
b. The Odessa Organization . . . . . . . . 40
2. Operational Problems 41
a., Security Prieasures 41
b. Technical Services 43
c. Finances 47
B. CP France Underground 48
1. Organization . . . . . . . ? . . ? . 48
a. The Party Center ? " , , 49
b, Territorial Levels . . . . . . . . . . 50
2. Technical Services . . . . . . . . . . . . ? 52
3. Security 53
.. Modification of Structure . . ? , 53
b. Compartmentalization , ? . . . . . , , . 54
C. Security Rules 54
1) Restriction of Contacts . . . . . . 54
2) Security of Meetings . . . . ? . 55
3) Safeguarding Party Records and
Witerials . . . . ? . ? . ? ? , , 55
4) Personal Conduct . . . . . . . . . 56
d. Control of Cadres 57
4. Finances ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
C. CP Germany Underground . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
1. Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : . 63
a. Initial Confusion 64
b. The Failure of Centralized Control ? . 64
C. Decentralized Control ? . . . . 67
d. Attempt to Revive Centralized
Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
2. Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
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D. CP Greece Underground 74
1. Organization . . . . . . . . ? . . . . . . 74
2, Operational Problems 78
a. Security 78
b. Communications . . . . . . ? . . ? ? . 80
1) Couriers 80
2) Press and Radio . . . . . . . . . . 81
c, Recruitment and Transport . . . . . . ? 83
d. Finances . . . . . . . . . . . . . ? 83
1) Sources of Revenue . ? ? . . 84
2) Expenditures . . . . . . . . . . . 85
E. CP Spain Underground 87
1. The Party Center Abroad . . . . . . . . . . 87
2. Organization within Spain 89
3, Other Party Organizations Abroad . . 91
F. CP Portu3al Underground . . . . . . . . . . 92
1. Organization . . . . . ? . . . . . . . . . 92
2. Security . . . . . . . . . . . . ? ? ? ? ? 95
3. Agitprop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
4. Communications Abroad 99
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GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
The international Communist movement has not merely survived,
but has actually flourished, in the face of difficulties which
have ruined political forces with less constancy of purpose and
with less practical a technique. It has maintained itself as the
"vanguard of the proletariat" through Tsarist and totalitarian
suppression, armed intervention, two world wars, and a decade of
general "bourgeois" prosperity. In large measure, Communist suc-
cesses can be explained by the organizational adaptability of the
Communist Party and its mastery over a mass of practical techni-
clues. The Party knows what it must do and how to go about doing
it, in any given circumstance. This competence was responsible
in the first place for the success of the Bolshevik Revolution,
and since then, for the endurance of the Party as a continuing
threat to all "bourgeois" states. whatever the political climate,
the, Party goes on, working openly and legally where it can,
secretly and illegally where it must. It is this latter capabil-
ity for "conspiratorial" work which largely accounts for the
survival and success of the international Communist
movement in
the face of adverse conditions.
The scope of the "conspiratorial" activities of the Commu-
nist Party encompasses defensive and offensive purposes. As an
organization of professional and practical revolutionaries bent
upon the eventual achievement of revolution, the Communist Party
is enveloped by an atmosphere of hostility. Realizing this, the
international movement has naturally developed a system of defen-
sive measures designed to protect the Party against the police,,
intelligence agencies, hostile groups and the hostile public, and
has been normally organized so as to keep knowledge of the most
significant aspects of Party activity restricted to a minimum of
individuals. For similar reasons, the Party has made it a gener-
al practise to conceal as thoroughly as possible the mechanics of
the political controls through which it extends its influence be-
yond Party confines. The Communist Party is generally designed
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and able to operate under any conditions of opposition, hostility
and outright suppression. It is capable of going totally under-
ground when outlawed, and it is sufficiently security-conscious,
even under normal conditions, to conc*al many of its "normal"
activities. The "conspiratorial" practises of Communist Parties
operating in hostile societies are largely defensive in nature.
They are designed to preserve political and organizational gains
made by the Party, rather than to advance the Party's aims fur-
ther.
The defensive side of the Party's conspiratorial behavior
can be extensively illustrated by its organizational and opera-
tional methods when proscribed. Part One of this study deals
extensively with this subject -- the general patterns of under-
ground organization are presented there, supplemented by de-
scriptive analyses of the actual underground experience of
several Communist Parties.
Defensive measures are normally adopted also by Parties
'
which function more or less openly and legally. "Legall'
Parties give their program a maximum publication and expose a
great number of functionaries as tell as parts of their organ-
ization to the public eye. However, even when admitted to the
political scene, the Party usually acknowledges the hostility
of the society it lives in, and attempts to submerge, auto-
matically and by virtue of its organizational principles, the
more significant areas of Party work.
Every Communist Party is a centralized and centrally-
directed mechanism controlled by a comparatively small group
of professional, paid and full-time functionaries -- the cadre.
Within this cadre-hierarchy the functionaries at national head-
quarters occupy the central position and have a monopoly on
policy-making and organizational direction. Accustomed to
strict semi-military discipline, the lower Party cadre and the
rank and file are more instruments of the Party center. By
virtue of its leadership function the Party center normally
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guards the professional secrets of the Party, not unlike the
management of a business enterprise. The Warty center, then,
puts the stamp of secrecy on such matters as Party finances,
particularly on the or'-gin of funds not derived from normal
sources; intra-Party communications of more than normal admin-
istrativo significance; relations with other fraternal Parties
exceeding the normal interchange of Party literature and other
routine communications and relations with the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union or representatives of the Soviet Government
and the Cominform, which are likely to compromise the Party.
Experience has further shown that Soviet intelligence agencies
frequently channel their recruitment of Party members through
individual functionaries in national Party headquarters --
operations which require secure and secret handling. Thus, even
under normal conditions, highly significant aspects of Party
work are managed by a small nucleus of trusted functionaries and
are tightly scaled off from the rest of the Party and the outside
world.
Further, Communist Parties generally maintain intra-Party
police organs, frequently identical with the Cadre Department
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and the Control Commission. Those agencies are organizational
corolla ries,of the cadre principle. As the Party is built upon
its cadre, it is essential for the center not only to train, pro-
tect and properly assign the professional personnel, but also to
preserve constant ideological and security control. Thus, most
Parties maintain a confidential corps of Party "detectives" who
must often perform counter-espionage duties such as the
identi- fication of police agents infiltrated into the ranks of the
Party, and "illegal" support functions such as the procurement
of false papers and passports for the cadre. Clearly, the
existence of such a Party police force must be concealed, not
only for security reasons, but also for ideological reasons.
The Party is supposed to be run according to the principle of
"democratic centralism", and the centralism exorcisedrthrough
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police control methods may be distasteful to the rank-and-file.
On the level of "normal" Party operations, secrecy is also
unavoidable. Considering the smallest operative Party unit, the
individual Party member, it is a well-k~:own fact that many Commu-
nists operate without ostensible connection with the Party, This
-apparent lack of connection may be aimed at personal protection
or at safeguarding a particular, often secret, mission. In any
case., the secret Party member shows up in almost every Party --
one need only recall the case of the Indonesian Socialist loader
and government official, Sjarifooddin, who, at the time of the
11foeso putsch in 1948 admitted that he had been a secret member
of the Communist Party of Indonesia since 1935.
The Party, however, needs not only secret Party members it is bent upon the manipulation of non-Communist groups and
organizations in order to establish "mass support" as a pro-
requisite for revolutionary action. The approaches to this or-
ganizational problem obviously vary from Party to Party, and the
extent of secrecy with which they are handled is determined by
the. politic^l climate prevailing in the particular country. In
general, however, the Party will attempt to surround itself with
a solar system of front organizations in order to attract acces-
sible groups, and will further direct its fractions into non-
Communist mass organizations -- for example, labor unions and
political movements in colonial countries -- in order to expand
Party control. In all those cases, it will be a problem of con--
coaling Party control over fronts and fractions. a problem which
becomes increasingly difficult to solve as the manipulative tech-
niques of the Party are exposed in public.
Clearly, however, as a revolutionary organization, the Party
cannot confine itself to defensive tactics alone. No tatter what
its status, whether legal or proscribed, the Party must at least
plan. such activities as will weaken the coercive power mechanism
of the "capitalist" state, as well as hostile groups and politi-
cal parties, in concrete operational, rather than in general
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political, terms. No matter what its tactical shifts, the Party
can never negloct its fundamentally military-revolutionary
character and it must attempt to organize support functions di-
rectly or indirectly related to future revolutionary action.
This concept, which is by no means clear-cut and free from
straight political considerations, involves what amounts to the
setting up of intelligence and counter-intelligence organizations
and/or operations, with all their operational ramifications. The
general operational program of the Communist Party provides for
the organization of secret Party nuclei in the armed forces, the
police, the navy, the government, and occasionally also within
opposition groups in order to specialize and concentrate upon
a) the procurement of information which would clarify the organ-
ization and capabilities of the hostile power mechanism; b)
clandestine subversion within "the citadel of the enemy," parti-
cularly in the armed forces. The program may also at times in-
clude the organization of clandestine nuclei operating in
strategic plants and enterprises to provide industrial and eco-
nomic information systematically -- the productive capabilities
and facilities of the hostile society are clearly related to the
problems of revolutionary action. Party security in its widest
sense may also require a more aggressive approach, particularly
when the physical liquidation of hostile individuals and
traitorous or insecure Party members is concerned. Finally, when
a revolutionary situation approaches, the Party must provide for
a para-military organization to form the executive core of
revolutionary action--action, however, which sets into coordi-
nated motion the entire Party mechanism and the social forces
allied with it.
Such and similar clandestine action auxiliaries of the Party
have been occasionally observed in operation. Part Ito of this
paper includes a factual presentation, and a tentative analysis
of their significance in detail. These offensive clandestine
Party operations probably represent the most significant area of
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Party work. They perform. functions which transgress the area of
"normmal" political action and they may constitute an acute threat
to the existing social order. However, it is not yet possible to
generalize on the subject. While the normal aspects of Party or-
ganization follow a pattern anywhere, it is by no means certain
that every Party organizes clandestine action auxiliaries in the
same fashion--if at all.
On the basis of evidence available at present, it appears
that Leninist-Stalinist action theory applies practically to the
organization of clandestine action auxiliaries as it applies to
any other aspect of Party work. Thus, the actual organization of
clandestine military auxiliaries prior to the all-out revolutionary
effort depends not only upon such factors as availability of train-
ed manpower, loaders and arms, but also upon the making of a clear-
cut policy decision that a revolutionary situation, which may be
successfully exploited by the Party, is at hand. While it may be
expected that all Parties include. individuals or even groups who
are specialists in military matters, it would be futile to search
for a facsimile,of the Military Revolutionary Organization of the
Bolshevik Party (1917) in the Communist Party of Great Britain at
present. Incipient or underdeveloped Parties are more likely to
concentrate upon political action in order to achieve mass influ-
ence. Parties which have reached a stage of relative mass propor-
tions may find it practicable to organize secret military cadres
and formations. Again, however, policy considerations and the
degree of expectable opposition will affect planning, timing and
organization.
Similar considerations apply to the organization of counter-
intelligence, intelligence, sabotage, liquidation and other clandes-
tine action agencies. Materials studied indicate that a stepping-
up of such activity and its formalization in special auxiliaries
occurs during critical periods considered by the Party favorable to
aggressive, revolutionary action in general, such as the middle
Twenties and the early Thirties when the "relative stabilization"
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of capitalism was estimated as coming to an end. It is considered,
therefore, that a definite relation exists between the particular
phase of the action-philosophy governing the Party at any given
time and the incidence of well-defined clandestine action auxiliar-
ies. Informally, however, and in a less pronounced fashion, the
Party will naturally never pass up any chance for clandestine work
in the power apparatus of the State or in hostile groups and or-
ganizations.
In focussing upon the organization of underground Parties as
well as on the organization of clandestine action auxiliaries, this
paper attempts to clarify the problem in terms of both past and cur-
rent Party experiences. Again however, this paper must be examined
against the totality of the Party's work in a given society -- over-
estimation, as well as underestimation, of clandestine Party opera-
tions may dangerously distort the terms on which each national
Party must be appreciated.
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PART 0 N E
C 0 M M U N I S T P A a.; X
USER,G U ,N
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I. ORGANIZATIONAL AND OPE iTIONAL_ PROBLEMS
A. Police and Party
on general principles, the Party prefers to assume the form of
a "legal" political party,, in order to achieve more easily a mass
basis.. Under "legal" conditions, the entire propaganda and agita-
tion apparatus can be employed overtly; front organizations can be
set up at will; the Party's drawing power can be demonstrated at
the polls; Communists can operate with greater case in labor
union.^,', and enter the government by way of "dem.ocrati c" processes.
The Party will therefore fight desperately and until the last
minute to maintain its legal status. It will marshal public
opinion with the aid of liberal sympathizers and follow-travellers.
It will employ for its defense sympathetic or crypto-Communist
lawyers, who are frequently pooled in international front organiza-
tions. It will receive the moral assistance of foreign Parties
and the Soviet party-government, making an international propaganda
issue of the Party's case,
In any case, the Party will seek to delay its transfer to il-
legality as long as possible, realizing that its organization and
operations will be severely hampered by the loss of legal status.
Once driven underground, it will make every effort to become
"legal" again.
The Part: knows that it can be paralyzed by an efficient
police. The primary concern of the Party underground, therefore,
is with the law enforcement agencies, for these can control the
fate of the Party and its leaders. It is often extremely diffi-
cult for the Party to protect itself against police penetration,
arrests, and searches, Even in areas where the police is not
particularly efficient, the Party must spend considerable effort
and time on defensive measures.
,The over-all success of the police, however, is conditioned
by several factors, some of which may work to the Party's advan-
tage.
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1. Ge o raphical Factors. In large countries and in countries
with inaccessible territories (mountains, marshland, jungles, vast
forests), the surveillance and border-control problems are difficult
for the police. The experience of the Bolshevik Party before 1917
shows how great distances favor individual escapes and illegal
border traffic. More recent events in Brazil, Greece, the Philip-
pines, Malaya, at. al., illustrate the same point.
2. Population Density, Overcrowded metropolitan areas with
vast slums, as well as port cities, also enhance chances for sur-
vival. It is comparatively easy for the underground Communist to
shake off pursuit in highly populated street-mazes and among the
wharves.
3. Political Factors, Police action against the Party may be
hindered or encouraged by public opinion. Under a totalitarian
anti-Communist government, police persecution of the Party will
obviously be far more effective than under the relatively mild,
legalistic approach of democratic governments. Mussolini, for
example, took a great personal interest in police and intelligence
operations against the Italian Party, and frequently directed them
himself -- a factor which clearly increased the efficiency of the
Italian security agencies.
On the other hand, a loosely controlled police force may grow
lax and sock only to make occasional arrests for publicity pur-
poses, without seriously affecting the Party's operations. A pre-
cariously balanced political situation, such as obtains particu-
larly in countries near the Soviet borders, may also affect police
operations. A shaky "liberal" dovornment may be forced by in-
creasing pressure from rightist parties to soften its attitude to-
ward the Party, which night become an ally in case of need. The
individual police official, too, fearful for the future of his
position, may fool it unwise to be too strict and choose rather to
straddle the fence.
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4. Mass Support for Police, If there is mss support for the
regime and its punitive policy, as in Nazi Germany, police opera-
tions against the Party may prove extremely effective. Under such
conditions, the police are able to procure a great number of infor-
mers and penetration agents, as well as disaffected Party members
who remain in the Party as police agents. Large-scale cultivation
of disaffected elements and the development of penetration opportu-
nities have been favorite police tactics since the early days of
the Bolshevik Party.
Whenever it has been feasible to put these methods into practice,
they have produced astonishing results. The Tsarist police, for
example, were able to recruit Malinovsky, who for a time was second
in importance only to Lenin in the Bolshevik wing of the underground
Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In Germany, mass support for
National Socialism provided the security authorities with a wealth of
informers and penetration agents. The Italian OVRA (originally the
CECA) is estimated to have controlled the greater part of the Italian
underground Party, exploiting the breakdown in morale which follows
vigorous punitive action. The Greek dictator 11etaxas greatly con
plicatod the operations of the underground Greek Party by setting
up a Parallel police-controlled underground Party. More recently,
CP Malaya discovered that its Secretary General had been a police
agent for many years.
The greatest danger which the Party underground must face is
often not the police itself but the psychological impact of the anti-
Communist movement upon tine population and upon the morale of the
Party members themselves. Nevertheless, various Parties which have
undergone this persecution, such as the Bolshevik Party and the
European Parties in the Fascist period, have managed, in one form or
othor, to survive. While the drawing- power of Communist ideology
may partially account for the Party's durability, the adaptability of
Party organization to illegal conditions is an important additional
factor in the struggle between Party and police.
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+claptabi, of party Organizat_~ ion to al Conditions
The model pattern of Party organization,. developed by the
Bolshevik Party during more than a decade of illegality, was grafted,
through the Comintern, upon all foreign Parties. Thus, the basic
forms of Party organization, as encountered today, have boon pro-
tested under illegal conditions. Consequently, when a Party is de-
clared illegal, there is no need to alter its basic structure. All
that is necessary is an adaptation of organization to illegal condi-
tions. The specific advantages inherent in "normal" Communist Party
organization, may be summed up as follows:
(a) The Party preserves its continuity in terms of organi-
zation and personnel.
(b) The Party emphasizes discipline and security even in
legal periods,
(c )? Communist doctrine acts as a morale-builder in illegal
periods, and may become attractive to the non-Communist leftist
in times of general supprossion-of all "progressive" movements.
(d) The basic cell organization of the Party, practiced at
all times, facilitates underground operations.
(e) More than any other "normal" political party, the Com-
munist Party has acquired a'backlog of "illegal" experience,
even under legal conditions.
1. Organizational Continuity. By its nature as a revolutionary
organization, the Communist Party wi;l operate under any conditions,
legal or illegal. On the basis of its theory; it'considers the
transition, to illegality an extremely undesirable but otherwise
"normal" consequence of the class struggle.
This advantage is not enjoyed by the evolutionary Marxist par-
ties (Social Democrats) which operate strictly by legal, parliamen-
tary-democratic methods. When ostracized and supprossed, such
parties often undergo severe morale and organizational crises.
Because of their fundamental inability (so often attacked by the
Communists) to conceive of a revolutionary approach, they interpret
their ostracism as "failure of the leadership", "failure of
doctrine", and begin to disassociate themselves, psychologically
and organizationally, from their past. "In all Fascist countries,"
states a leading Social Democrat, referring to events in the
thirties, "there grows this idea within the illegal (Socialist)
cadre : We arc something new: W7e are not a more continuation of the
old party;... The old is dead -- something entirely now must develop
now."
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Behind the security of its prefabricated doctrine, the Communist
Party does not, as a rule, need to scrutinize its basic philosophy or
raison dttitre under illegal conditions. Party continuity is taken
for granted by the Communists. When the Party is outlawed it does
not waste prs cious time and energies wrangling over basic theory
and metaphysical issues. It does not have one form of organization
for legal and another for illegal conditions. The underground Party
is the Party underground
2. Cadre Continuity. A further guarantee of continuity is the
fact that the Party is at all times a "cadre Party". As many oxecu-
tive and administrative positions as possible are occupied by trained,
experienced, full-time and salaried functionaries or "professional
revolutionaries". I'Thile the size, reliability and capabilities of
the cadre obviously vary from country to country, the Party
habitually, and as a matter of principle, creates a caste of func-
tionaries who are entirely dependent upon the Party center in finan-
cial, personal and ideological terms, and who can therefore be
depended upon to follow the center underground.
The extent to which the individual cadr(,-..man is tied to the Party
by personal interest is ably described by A. Rossi r.:rs_i to of the
French Communist Pa rj Paris, 194)
"The role played by personal interest in this faithful
adherence to the Party is greater than one might think... The
Party functionary cannot become a functionary without quitting
his factory, his office, his profession -- he takes on new
habits and lives difierontly. He sheds his roots, he becomes
a sort of outcast, . He has'ontered a new social class, a
class sul gcnoris it is true, but still'elovated as only the
salaried class of industry and commerce... To quit (this'class)
means to be thrown back into the limbo from where he eame.'1
As an added incentive for its cadre, the Party also dispenses
powor, which Rossi describes as frequently greater than that of high-
level government officials. Having tasted this sense of power, the
functionary is reluctant to give it up.
A party run both at the center and at the periphery by a well-
trained and disciplined cadre-bureaucracy has the advantage of a con-
crete and specific approach to the problem of going underground. It
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can prepare and provide for the event in terms of cadre protection
and, replacement. ';ihatevor action potential a Party may salvage in
illegality depends less on the extent to which it can protect its
rank and file from arrest, than on the success it achieves in sal-
vaging or replacing its entire cadre. The disadvantage of the
system, however, is that if the cadre fails, the Party fails. The
Party undcrpund is the cadre underground.
3. Disci line and Security.,. The stress on strict discipline
which is required under illegal conditions constitutes no problem
for the Party. The cadre will have been trained already and condi-
tioned to depend on the instructions of the center in any circum-
stance. The center will therefore encounter little resistance in
strengthening its control over the cadre, and will be able to dis-
pense with those features of "democratic centralism" ti.lhich permitted
the rank and file to participate in the selection of the cadre
during legal periods. Instructions issued by the illegal CP France
of 1940, for example, stated specifically that the election of
functionaries was out of. the question, and that cn''_y Centralism was
to be conserved. Mile this relationship has the definite opera-
tional advantage of permitting co-ordinatod actic.n even under haz-
ardous conditions, the dependence of the cadre on the center can
choke the initiative of the individual cadre-man and impede the
efficiency of the Party.
Discipline under illegal conditions means not only strict ad-
herence to the political and organizational direction of the center,
but also rigorous conformity with underground security rules govern-
ing the conspiratorial behavior of cadre and militants, A function-
ary who has "betrayed" Party secrets under severe police pressure is
punished by the competent organs of the Party for a "breach of
discipline", with no regard for the circumstances in which the be-
trayal occurred.
The maintenance of discipline and security by special Party
organs (Control Commission, Cadre Commission, and other specialized
sections) is a traditional feature of Party organization which can
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be conveniently adapted to underground conditions. The main factor,
however, which endangers the successful preservation of discipline
and security in the Party underground is that, in the course of
extremely severe police action, morale may disintegrate and result
in factionalism, mass defections and penetrations.
4. Doctrine as Morale-Builder. Efficient underground organiza-
tion and conspiratorial skill arc, of course, the decisive elements
in the Party's struggle to maintain itself when illegal. The
demands of underground life on the underground Party worker, however,
are frequently extremely taxing, and good morale becomes an opera-
tional necessity. No natter how much opportunism, adventurism, or
lust for power go into the make-up of the individual functionary or
activist, a willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of the
Party demands a stronger motive than these. This motivation is
furnished by the Party, ready-made, in the form of its doctrine, the
Mzrxist-Leninist-Stalinist ideology. As a morale-building clement,
doctrine stands in the first line of defense of, the Party underground.
Thorough indoctrination (which is, of course, a continuous and wo ll-
organized process in legal as well as illegal periods) appears to
induce the following psychological habits in Communists:
a. Superiority Complex. The doctrine is dispensed as
"absolute truth", providing the believer with a set of answers
for every political,' social and philosophical -problem. The sincere
individual Communist, in possession of "absolute truth", consi-
ders himself a crusader, a fighter for a "new world". The
longer he stays in the Party, the less he is able to think in
un-Communist terms, Ho feels eternally misunderstood' by non-
Cornmunists a nd, when ostracized, fools victimized. In brief,
his indoctrination produces the conviction that he is fighting
for a just cause -- a definite morale asset.
b. Hostilityy. Based, upon the idea of class struggle, the
doctrine systematizes and cultivates hostility'generated by
social conflict, frustration and mua.ladjustmento The doctrine
is one of hatred directed at the "class enemy", the latter be-
ing anyone .,.ho-does not share the Party's point of view. Such
indoctrination, requires, by the revolutionary-military nature
of the Party, pays off during periods of illegality. Hostility
grows with the increasing pressure exerted by the "class enemy"
and,added to the instinct for self-preservation, leads to vigor-
ous resistance.
C. Optimism. Communist doctrine has a strong morale-
building element in its "scientific" certainty of the inevitable
doom of capitalist society. Defeat can be rationalized as a
temporary setback, a deficiency in organization, or the result
of the work of traitors. But it can never be accepted as definite
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and final. Optimism is proscribed as the Communistts basic
attitude, and pessimism becomes a heresy; In this outlook
there is a modicu1 of religious strength, an asset not to be
underestimated during a period of underground activity.
5. Attraction of Doctrine. In situations where repressive
measures are applied to the non-Communist evolutionary 1,1zrxist,
liboral and progressive parties, as ,-jell as to the Communist Party,
Communist doctrine may actually extend beyond its defensive func-
tion and further the growth of the illegal Party. When repression
becomes total, as under the Fascist regimes, the peaceful evolution-
ists and liberal democrats may lose their faith in moderate tactics
and join the Communists, who always mintain that socialism cannot
be established by legal methods alone. Under Nazi control, the
Austrian working class felt that the Socialists' democratic methods
had brought about their defeat and bogan to place their hope in Com-
munist objectives. CP Austria became a significant organization for
the first tine in its history during the term of Nazi suppression;
it declined when ' suppre ssion was lifted,
6 stem, Under illegal conditions, when security consi-,
durations demand the atomization of Party organization, the Party
need only adjust its coll system, through which basic operations arc
effoctod. The grouping of the rank and file into small nuclei at
the place of v~iork; at the place of residence, and in non-Communist
parties and organizations ensures the systematic exploitation of the
dell momber's normal outside contacts for propaganda and recruitment
purposes; This is an all-important task in the underground whcii other
Party activities may be curtailed. The importance of illegal cell
activity is intensified by the fact that iriterme:1iate echelons are
usually reduced to skelotens;hence, for practical purposes the
Party underground often consists only of the center and the "numerous
"front line" cell organizations. There is inherent in this syster:i,
however adv ntagcc,us, a considerable risk of isolation. When comrouni-
cati ns break down, as they frequently do, the basic Party organiza-
Lions become ineffective or detached from the Party line, If the
is
breakdown p rol~~n^bed, as it was in Gcrmrany under Hitler
the Party
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is rcdu.coc. to a multitude of isolated nuclei, which can do little
more than maintain their clandestine existence for the day when the
Party may be revived. It is at this point that the extent to which
the Party has accumulated and transmitted lessons learned from con-
spiratorial experience becomeq effective.
7. Backlog; cf Conspiratorial Experience. Through the Comintern,
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has shaped the organizational
policy of all foreign Parties, and has passed on its own considerable
experience in underground work. Throughout the years of its exist-
ence, the Comintern exhorted and obliged its sections to prepare ade-
quately for e riods of illegality. By means of its Organization
Bureau, headed until about 1936 by Piatnitzky, a leading organizer of
the Russian underground, the Comintern furnished specific advice on
underground operations and problems. Terms used in the Russian under-
ground, such as "technical apparatus" for illegal printing and distri-
bution facilities, have consistently found their way into the nomen-
clature of foreign Parties. The Greek Party, for example, currently
uses a Russian word, "Yavka", meaning a clandestine reporting cantor.
The "groups of three" upon which illegal Party organization appears
to be based so frequently, have their equivalent in the Russian under-
ground term, "troika" (team of three).
The fundamental problems of illegal activity are now widely
understood by the various Parties. The practical experiences of
many Parties, accumulated during underground periods and pooled by
the Comintern prior to 1943, have increased the conspiratorial com-
potence of the movement. There is hardly a significant Party which
has not gone through illegal or semi-legal phases. ::bile first-hand
experience probably remains the best task-master, it is evident that
a pattern at least exists in general outlines, and that a Party faced
with illegality acts on it. To what degree this pattern has been
created by a centralized effort, or by the appearance of identical
problems treated in a similar fashion by different Parties, is a
minor point. It is more important to recognize and understand the
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basic Communist approach to the organizational and operational pro-
blems of the Party underground,
C. Organizational Problems: ustrlent to Illegal Conditions
The fundamental organizational problem faced by the Party going
underground is this: How to combine maximal security with maximal
activity-- how to expose its agencies and functionaries to the police
as little as possible* Therefore, the primary concern is with a
realistic and practicable streamlining of the bureaucratic apparatus,.
1. Reduction of Party Ap ratus. The extent of the streamlining
process is determined by the size of the legal Party, the severity of
repressive action upon it, and general policy considerations. A
small or underdeveloped P-:rty apparatus cannot be drastically reduced;
a mss Party may find it necessary to run the risk of preserving an
extensive organization. Within the limits of such considerations,
action may he taken along the following lines:
a. Consolidation of territorial organizations, The terri- -
torial, organization of the Party, particularly in a large country,
can be conveniently consolidated and reduced. This makes it pos-
sible to utilize staff personnel with greater economy, and to
concentrate communications with the Party center. All levels of
territorial organization (region, district, subdistrict and sec-
tion)-may be reduced simply by unifying the various staff'com-
mands, and combining their original areas of jurisdiction. The
twenty-eight regional organizations (Bezirke) of the German Com-
munist Party before 1933, for example, were consolidated after
the advent of Nazi suppression into eight inter-regional organi-
zations (Oberbozirke); other territorial organizations were
apparently also reduced in number while their jurisdiction was
extended.
The Party center itself may be loss affected by the pro-
cess of consolidation: a large Party may need a largo central
organization. On the cell level; however, consolid tion is not
practical. For security reasons, calls must be broken up into
small units if they arc to escape police attention. Hence, at
the same time, that territorial- organizations may decrease in
number or disappear altogether, the cell arganizations in the
Party underground may be atomized and grow in number.
b. Reduction of staffs. In addition to the consolidation of
territorial organizations, the number of staff positions through-
out the Party is normally reduced in the underground. The terri-
torial Party committees are apparently strongly affected in this
respect. According to-a Comintern instruction, the committees of
illegal Parties should, as.a rule, consist of no more than five
people, and a secretary should take the place of the executive
bureau. In practise, the composition of illegal Party committees
appears to be more elastic, depending on prevailing conditions.
The extent to which the membership of the Central Committee may be
reduced is also determined by the actual situation. Members of
the Coptral Committee are elected at the national Party Congress
or Party Conference, and their tenure of office is valid for both
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It may be as
There seems to be a general tendency to eliminate Party Com-
mittees during illegal periods, and to assign actual organiza-
tional and political work to the executive-adra nistrative appara-
tus of the Party. CP Chile, for example, simply eliminated all
Committees and transferred the direction of the Party to its
executive. agencies, as follows:
cal composition is affected by illegal conditions,
large or as small as conditions warrant.
legal and illegal periods. Over and above the losses sustained
by a Central Committee through arrests and other operational
rn_ishaps, there is, however, no general indication'of how numeri-
CONTROL
CO.211ISSION I
I POLITICAL
CO'.a.SSION
SECRETARY
GENE HAL
REGIONAL
SEC.--, RY
LOCAL
SECRETARY
REGIONAL
SECRETARY
LOCAL
SECRETARY
CELLS
Insofar as the executive-administrative apparatus of a Central
Committee is concerned, practical security reasons obviously re-
comrlend the paring down of staff personnel. I the actual work-
load is too heavy to permit reduction, the Secretariat and the
various Departments or-Commissions of the Central Committee (such
as Cadre, Organization, Youth, Agit-Prop, etc.) may continue,
while new commissions may be created for technical services, re-
lief for interned comrades, and the like. In"some Parties, the
personnel of these Departments may be reducod. In others, the
staff may continue or be replaced. One Central Committee may
dissolve its Politburo and transfer its functions to the National
Secretariat, Another may enlarge its rocribership in order to make
up for expected losses in executive positions. .There is no gen-
eral rule except adaptability to the situation at hand.
2. The Command Function: The Triad System. Consolidation of
territorial organizations and reduction of staff personnel can, in
some cases, be combined with a special organization of the command
function observable only in underground Parties. According to this
::...::
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system, at all echelons, from the national down to the cell level,
groups of three functionaries may he established with two-fold re-
sponsibilities: the over-all direction and supervision of Party
work at their level, and maintenance of vertical liaison with each
other, In the latter capacity these triads represent the live
chain of command in the illegal Party. Whenever observed, these
triads have consisted of a) a specialist for political work, b)
a specialist for organizational problems, and c) a specialist for
agitation and propaganda, or for labor union work.
The triads, however, do not necessarily replace whatever other
Party organizations may remain effective. They are sometimes mere-
ly superimposed on the illegal Party machinery in order to monopo-
lize direction. Triads at national and territgrial levels have
been known to direct the work of the various administrative and
executive departments and commissions of the Party. However,, it
cannot be clearly determined at present to what extent the nation-
al triad may combine executive command with policy-making functions.
Theoretically it remains responsible to the Politburo, but in fact
it may well become the actual lcadorrhip of the Party.. The triad
principle may even be applied to cell organization. Cells can be
constituted as three-man groups, each member recruiting and direct-
ing another group of three who are not cell members and who comprise
sub-cell basic lets,
The triad represents an effective concentration of the command
function in the hands of a comparatively few individuals,. It per-
mits greater centralization and compartmentalization,
3. Compartmentalization. Tight corapartr.:entalization is art
organization and security problem of the first order, since it is
necessary to prevent the police from learning too-much when Party
members or functionaries are arrested, Compartmentalization is ap-
plied to Party operations as follows:
a, Party and military branch. Whenever an underground Party
is in the position to create a military organization, the latter's
staff composition is kept distinct from the Party's political
mechanism. The two structures merely coordinate on policy and re-
cruitment problems at their highest echelons,
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U,. - Pam and, auxiliary front) or-ariiza:tions. As in leg=al
periods, various Party auxiliaries youth or,-o-.nizations, women's
organizations, sport clubs, etc.,) remain connected with the
Party thr~.,u h interlocking; staff porsonhol' only. They function
on their own, as independently as possilA_e.
c. Party and auxiliary i11e;.al or-,aniza_t-uns. Party organi-
zations, or teams for the performance of such specialized tasks
as espionage, sabotage, clandestine penotration of .),lice and
other ?overnment agencies, liquidation and terror groups, etc.,
are cst?b.lished as largely independent and self-contained groups
oven in legal periods. They are mTaintained on this basis in
tirrmes of illog^lity.
d. Internal Party coriaart cntal.ization. Within the polit-
ical mechanism of the Party proper, the desired effect can be
ideally achieved by the .foll :w.in ' measures:
1) Elimination of h1:)ra.zontal liaison, No cell and no
territorial organization is nor fitted to maintain contact
with any other Party or, an o orotinr-, on the same level.
Liaison may only be conductud vertically with the designated
functionary of the superior Party organization, whose task
it is to direct the lower organizations under his jurisdiction.
2) Restriction of contacts.. The fewer comrades a func--
tionarr or activist knows and meets in the course of his work,
the hotter., This principle is sound if applied realistically.
It can, however, be formalized to an extreme degree, CP
France in 1941, for example, applied the triad system not only
to the organization of the command function, but apparently
also, as a security measure, to all Party activitids. No com-
rade was to know more than two other Party workers. It is
questionable whether the French principle can be put into
practice raddly. Even CP France frequently had to threaten
disciplinary action In order to push its compartmentalization
program to the extreme.
.3) Functional restrictions.. "The comrades of a group
of three must not know anything but (what refers to) their
work proper," states an instruction of CP France (1941).
More than over, it is incumbent upon the directors of illegal
Party work to define the job of each functionary and activist
clearly, so that he may not stray beyond security limits. It
is not always possible, however, for the individual function-
ary to "stick to his guns"., Nothing is less permanent than
an underground organization, and shifts from one job to
another occur oftena., As a result, a functionary may learn
more than is good for the Party.
4. Election of Part COIThaittues, The stroamli.in, process ap-
plied to the illegal I':e:wty organization may not always be extensive,
and the direction of the Party may actually lie in the hands of the
national and territorial committees and their administrative organs.
When this is the case, the illegal election of Party committees re-
presents an organizational problem. The Comintern advised its member
Parties that in an underground situation illegal Party elections were
possible, thou,,-,h they must take place, in restricted conferences and
the elections themselves handled in such a way that even the confer-
ence members would not know who was elected. It is not certain whether
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this advice has boon generally hooded, as the problems of illegal
Parties are never identical.
a. Election of Central Committees. Electing a Central Com-
mittee at a conference abroad is one way of circumventing secur-
ity' restrictions at homo when the Party is underground. In this
way, the Bolshevik' under round elected its Central. Committee at
conferences abroad, attended by delegates who travelled illegally
from the interior of Russia. Currently, the Party conferences
of CP'Greece are held abroad for practical purposes (in the rebel
area). This is also true of CP Spain at present. On the other
hand, conditions prevailing in a particular country may perPat
the holding; of large illegal meetings at home. For example, the
illegal Central Committee (38 members) of CF Yugoslavia was elect-
ed in that country at'a national conference of more than 100 dele-
gates in October 1940.
The Party may riot be able to hold a national Party Con-
gress for the election of the Central Co_mittee, but may bo able
to convoke the smaller national conference. Again in the case of
CP Yugoslavia, special dispensation was -ranted by the Comintern
in 1940 to allow the election of?a Central Committee at a national
conference instead of a congress.
b. Territorial Party committees and electoral commissions.
Special electoral commissions have sometimes been created for the
purpose of electing menfoors of territorial Party Committees, A
Comintern document refers to two types of such commissions:
1) An electoral commission chosen by the Party confer-
ence for the counting; of secret votes cast. The commission
checks the votes but does not announce election results to
the conference.
2) A small electoral commission, elected by a Party
conference, together with a representative of the next higher
Party committee; actually "elects" (i.e. appoints) the new
Party committee. In this-caso, the Party conference does not
cast votes for candidates. It merely elects the commission.
c, Co-optation. Elections of Party committees at 'a11 levels
can be replaced by or combined with "co-optation" --`i.e., appoint-
ment to its membership by a specific Party committee. This
practice, however, appears to be regarded as an interim solution.
Under normal conditions, all members of Party committees are sup-
posed to be elected. One of the most severe of the criticisms
directed by the CP Soviet Union against CP Yugoslavia in 1948 was
that the latter had carried over a disproportionate number of co-
opted Central Committee members into the legal post-war period.
Administrative-executive positions may also be filled by co-opting
responsible functionaries.
5. Party Organizations Abroad. When repressive measures become
sovore, the central Party organs, as well as special support centers,
often have to be established abroad, working from the outside into
"illegal" territory. This method of salvaging and maintaining cen-
tralized leadorship abroad has ')con traditional with the movement
since the clays when Marx and Engels wrote in exile, and teen Lenin and
his staff abroad laid the foundation for the CP of the Soviet Union.
The types of central organizations commonly transferred to, or created
upon, foreign soil are the following:
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a. Central Committee anal Central Departments. The Central'
Committee and its administrative-executive apparatus (Politburo,-
Secretariat, Departments, Control Commission) may be transferred,
either in their entirety or in their salvageable components.
Such was the case with CP Germany under the Hitler regime. At
present, the central organs of CP Spain and CP Greece are func-
tioning in the same manner. The freedom of action enjoyed by
centers outside, the home country obviously varies with the atti-
tudes of the govornnment and police of the host country. Party
centers abroad are often forced to operate illcg~lly or semi-
illegally and are therefore not always effective. The current
solution to this problem lies, when practical, in transferring
the center to the Soviet Union or to-satellite areas. The con-
trel organs of CP Spain, for example, are apparently at present
being moved from Paris to Prague.'
The central organs abroad, as well as performing a com-
mand ~assignmonts must also provide the Party at hone with propa-
ganda and indoctrination material, printing equipment, funds,
specialists in underground work, a central repository for files
and archives, training-, facilities for the illegal cadre, comr1uni-
cation services, arms and am:iunition, safe haven, and financial
support for exiled. Party workers. In short, the central Party
or. ganiz,n.tion abroad becomes the chief operational support center
for the home Party. It must therefore frequently croatc
new types of auxiliary and administrative organizations.-
b. Forei~n Bureau. The Bolshevik Party abroad and the
Italian Party during the Mussolini era (the Ufficio Estero in
Paris) are known to have established Foreign Bureaus. This
organization represents a central administrative-executive agency
charged with the direction of support functions, such as connu=
nicctions, production and distribution of press and propaganda,
etc. Theoretically, the supervision of the Foreign Bureau'
rests with the Central Committee, but in the cases at hand, the
Bureaus have been the real directing centers.
c. R. e.r~,ional support centers. The apparatus of the Contr,.l
Committee abroad may prove 'u able to handle all its workload,
particularly when it must operate into a country with long
frontiers. Consequently, the command and support function my
have to be decentralized, and several support centers, operating
from various countries into sectors of the homeland, may be
created. The central organization of CP Germany, established
abroad in the thirties, created such regional support centers in
the form of regional command Posts (.ibschnittsleitungon), which
operated out of several countries bordering on Germany. Coordii-
nation with the Central Committee was effected through the
assignment of Central Committee members to the regional centers.
d. Part- organizations for emigrants. Special Party organi-
zations for exiled Communists, such as the "Emig;rantenleitungen"
of the German Party organization abroad, may be created. They
do relief work and carry out the indoctrination and training
functions of basic Party organizations. They also furnish persom-
nel'for special underground assignments (couriers, border guides,
etc.)*
Party organizations for emigrants should not be confused
with front organizations created by the Party abroad. The latter,
sometimes set up instead of special Party organizations for
emdgrants, serve political propaganda purposes from which the
home Party may benefit. They are convenient money-raising instru-
ments for the Party under the pretext furnished by the front's
ostensible purpose. The far-flung organization of the Free
German Movement during the war was such a front constituted
abroad. The German Central Committee in Moscow practically merged
with the Free Germany center in the USSR; other Party nuclei
abroad, particularly in Latin America, Great Britain and the
United States, followed suit.
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e. Special service organizations. The Party Center abroad
usually has to create special organs, to facilitate communications
with the homeland. Communications may be expedited through a
border-crossing mechanism, either under direct control of the
center or manipulated by a regional support station. The produc-
tion of printed materials and their distribution via special corn
munications routes may have to be entrusted to a separate organi-
zation, usually referred to as a Tpchrdcal Service or Apparatus.
The so groups, - indispensable for the effective functioning of the
illegal Party, will be discussed in greater detail below, as they
are characteristic not only of Party organizations abroad, but
appear in.the home country as well.
Party organizations abroad fulfill extremely necessary
and sensitive support functions. Their efficiency is frequently
raised by the assistance obtained from the CP of the host country
in the shape of funds, living space, safe houses, courier person-
nel, etc. Their operational problems, however, merge with those
of the Party at home. Failure to solve those problems may spell
the death of the Party.
Opera tion.:al Problems of the Party Underground_
While the Party is legal, it normally exposes most of its cadre
to the public eye. Once it is outlawed, therefore, a certain number
of functionaries and activists have to be withdrawn from active
duty. Those ranking, functionaries who are indispensable must be
safely housed or otherwise protected from the police. The compromised
cadre must be replaced, and new personnel has to be trained for the
various new functions which are characteristic of underground work.
In view of the hazardous conditions which prevail in the underground,
a special type of cadre must be developed: self-controlled, self-
saerificin;; and intrepid. Dore than ever, able cadre selection and
supervision become the problems of the Party's personnel agencies
(cadre departments and commissions). Numerically, a balance must be
struck between a cadre which is too large -- and therefore in danger
of exposure -- and a cadre which is too small -- and therefore in-
capable of mass work, shrinking into insignificant study and discus-
Sion circles,
The Cadre Problem,
a. Replacement of the cadre must be undertaken as a pre-
paratory measure before the Party is actually outlawed. Sensi-
tive functions may be secretly transferred to an "invisible
cadre" of comparatively unknown individuals.. The Comintern
strongly advised the creation of an invisible cadre, an "illegal-
ly directing core", which must be, kept distinct and separate
from the Party Committee's legal apparatus, and thus ready to
take over numerous supervisory functions where the Party goes un-
derground. This cadre, according to the Comintern, was to be
formed from those Communist leaders who were comparatively un-
knovn to the police and the rank and file of the Party, but who
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wore well trr.ined in practical- Party work.
According to the Comintern, the process of developing and
brin; into play an invisible cadre should be applied to the
entire Party structure and its auxiliaries, within-trade unions
and other legal "rovolutionary" or`;.,,nizations. If, by the time
the Party is outlawed, those invisible cadres have boon
strategically placed and properly trained, the most sensitive
functions of the Party apparatus, as well as Party documents,
can be handed over to them. Hence, when the police seize Party
promises, very little of the Partyts activities and few of its
personnel will be revealed to them.
It also becomes necessary to deceive the police further by'
divesting; ostensibly important functions of their significance.
The Secretary of-a Party committee, normally the most important
functionary, may, in the underground, be degraded from political
leader to administrative officer. The Comintern instructs on
this point as follows:
tot only is it not necessary for the secretary of the
Committee of a Communist Party to be the political leader
of the Commttee;-but as a rule he should not be its
political loader.... Why is such a rule essential.? It is
important because the secretary of the Party Committee in
illegal or semi-legal conditions is the person upon whom,
above all.* the blow of action will fall. If that person is
the political loader of the Party Cor:Lui.ttee, his arrest will
affect the work of the entire Committee,... The political
leader of the Party Committee should not be connected with
the technical functions of the Party ap-pparatus. d
Whether or not this principle has become general practise
is not known; it would certainly need revision in the case,of
small Parties with insufficient cadre material. There are,
however, pa,t and recent indications that Parties expecting to
go underground do prepare invisible cadres for underground work.
In 1927, for example, when-central records of the illegal CP
Italy were seized in Genoa, none of the regional loaders whose
names were revealed had previous records as Communists or Party
mom ors. In January 1949, Togliatti, Secretary General of CP
Italy, reportedly instructed a leading functionary to make a
tour of the regional organizations in Northern Italy and to
nominate new regional secretaries, who would operate under il-
legal conditions if the Party should be outlawed.
The extent to which an invisible cadre may be created ap-
poars in practise to depend largely upon the availability of a
reserve of`trained but unknown Party workers and crypto-
Cormunists
b. 4n adequate cadre reserve must be maintained by the
Party u.ndoi'ground in order to have the means for re-constituting
the Party. It is not always possible, however, to defer good
workers from active duty, especially as the Party becomes pro-
gressively decentralized. Larger numbers of active functionar-
ies are required in an illegal than in a legal situation. "The
cadre requirements of our Party are unli.Ated," the CP France
organ Vic du P arti stated in late 1941. The discovery of new
cadre material, so necessary for replacement purposes, is no
bureaucratic affair in the underground. This responsibility
does not rest exclusively with the personnel (cadre) officers,
A. Rossi (op, cit_)points out that the CF France in 1941 recog-
nized the fact that the recruitment of cadre personnel must
preoccupy the entire Party and could not be left, as in legal
times, to, individual (cadre) functionaries. The French Commu-
nist functionaries were instructed, at that period, to give up
bureaucratic methods applicable to legal activity; only through
an over-all Party effort could a now and capable cadre be
developed.
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t, -tLn
c, Ydelog; .ea'.L and practical training: of the now cadre must
also be 7e ur~oaucratTzed in tie underground, This is necessary
for the simple reason that it becomes extremely hazardous to run
Party schools., and not very practical to send lame numbers of
militants out of the country to attend courses arranged by'Party
organizations abroad, Only specialized technical training, such
as radio operation, is occasionally conducted abroad. Ideoloi-
cal training may be acquired in the course of cell work; simply
by reading and discussing the'illogal press, and the standard
works of Communist literature; Functionaries, who are well-
versed in theoretical matters, may merely pass on their knowledge
to small groups of other comrades (sometimes no more than two),
and create "within the FartT a multitude of small schools whose
students may, in their time, become teachers of other Communists."
(Rossi, oyp. cit.)
On the whole, however, ideological training is likely to be
pushed into the background by more pressing operational problems,
The current emphasis of the Cominform on the ideological re-
training, of the Eastern European Parties is based, at least
partially, upon'tho neglect of ideological matters durint; the il-
legal war years.
The Party' under round does afford considerable opportunity
for practical, on-the-job trainin,. In the course of its
decentralization (for exar_iplu, CP France with its multitude of
basic three-:Zan units), the Party may require more low and medium
level functionaries than usual,, It may be forced, as a result,
to assign Party workers to responsible p. _ositions without re and
to bureaucratic considerations. 11
_thou .1 admittedly low in the
J -1
hierarchy, this now cadre may in the lonr run receive better and
more valuable "practical trainin:; than it could obtain, in formal
Party schools, Similarly, the'i'artyts special underground ser-
vices (communications, housing,, production and distribution of
printed matter, etc.) must be established ac, hoc nd require now
personnel who must receive their training on rarchant. Thus, an
illegal period, if it can be successfully weathered, may prove'
beneficial for the Party. U,-on emergence from the underground,
the Party may have a cadre larger than in the normal legal
period and possessed of practical experience not previously
available.
d. The protection-of the illegal cadre must be given top
priority. Defensively, the cadre and with it the entire Party)
must be protected against infiltration'by police aonts and un-
relable elements into Party positions, Obviously, this is not
a special problem of the underground, and it may bo effectively
handled by the national and territorial cadre departments (cost-
missions) which are normally"charged with the investigation and
loyalty program of the Party. In Communist terms, however,
loyalty is an elastic word. Deviations from the Party line,
factionalism, lack of discipline, foolhardiness, breach of secur-
ity rules, and lack of initiative constitute acts of disloyalty
as reprehensible to the Party as the actual work of a police
agent. Consequently, the cadre department may also be charged
with the political supervision of the Party functionaries, Dur-
ing the war years, whoa CP France was illegal, the "Cadre
Responsible" of the Paris Inter-revion atten ded certain meetings
of the responsible regional triad, and reported to the political
"responsible" at national headquarters on the political conduct
of the ro ional functionaries, Disciplinary action, ircludin;
expulsion, based on the investigation of the Cadre Commission,
rests with the National Control Commission in loz;al as in
illegal periods. In operational terms, however, cadre protection
in the underground requires the provision of false papers, as
well as the maintenance of an adequate number of safe houses and,
apartments where the functionary may live or hide out from the
police, and make his professional contacts securely. This is an
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elementary underground requirement, especi.ply since functionar-
ies and militants must frequently change their domicile,
2. The "Housing" Problem and. Communications The provision of
safe shelter for illegal Party functionaries and fugitives constitutes
merely one aspect of a much lamer problem, The Party underground re-
quires numbers of safe houses or apartments for a variety of adminis-
tration and operational purposes. A.rchives,,files and Party corres-
pondence can no longer be kept at "legal" premises, and bank deposits
cannot be maintained in the Party's name. In fact, the entire process
of ";gin`; underground" and of sustaining an illegal Party machine can
be reduced to the prosaic but intricate search for safe space: homes
of unsuspected sympathizers, shops and offices of crypto-Communists,
houses and farms in the country, and the like. Particularly important
is the safe housing of communications.
a. Internal communications, Liaison between the illegal
national and territorial organization -- whether constituted on a
UUnormal" basis or reorganized as triads -- requires safe meeting
and contact places for representatives of the higher and lower
echelons,
Ronortinroints. The Comintern advised Parties under-
ground to establish special addresses or flats where at appointed
times representatives of the cells and fractions of the mass
organizations could meet representatives of the Party committee
for consultation and instruction, Such reporting points may be
established at all echelons of the Party underground. Even a
legal Party may find it useful to create clandestine reporting
points whenever the legal Party premises become insecure. Pro-
tective measures include the establishment of safety signals and
special passwords for verification purposes, At the central
reporting point of the Bolshevik underground Party, for example,
different passwords were used for rank and file workers, for
district functionaries, and for functionaries of the central
apparatus.
Letter drops and contact?oints for couriers, Written
communications botwoon higher and lower' echelons presuppose the
existence of safe addresses where "mail" can be delivered and
picked up, The Comintern' s instructions specify that such'safe
addresses must-'not coincide with those of reporting points. By
the same tokonq.special addresses may be established for the use
of intra-Party couriers carrying verbal messages&
h. Externai communications, Communications with the Party
organizat on abroad pose s pecial 'housing problems ,
Borde -cr.ossinf mechanismg,, There must be established
on the borders special conduct points and safe houses (such as
overnight stations) for the use of couriors, instructors, and
the various special se.rvicos of the Party, as well as for fugi-
tives. In practical terms, the Party must either use the homes
of "safe" Party members or sympathizers in the border regions,
or buy the services of non-Party individuals who may be helpful
by virtue of their experience. In the Bolshevik underground it
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was cotr4non practise to hire smug ;lers operating; in border areas.
Recruitment or bribery of individuals employed by border-control
authorities may also be attem )te Fishermen,, barge-owners, and
maritime workers may be utilized when the crossing of waterways
and maritime frontiers is required. The connections of Danish
fishermen with their German friends in the Hamburg; area were
exploited in the tqirties by the regional support station of the
German Party in Denmark for the infiltration of.liaison personnel.
Security considerations demand that border-crossing mechanisms
remain specialized and compartmentolizod. The Party must create
as many of those as possible: special border-crossing points for
couriers, for Party emissaries from abroad, for the transportation
of propaganda material, an, for escapees. They may exist side by
side. So long as they arc separate, if one mechanism: is discover-
ed, the others will not be endangered.
c. R--,o rtin oints for liaison personnel from abroad. The
success of liaison personnel sent by the foreign support station
into the homeland hinges upon a very simple requiromont: the man
must know where and to whom to report securely. In the CP Germany
underground during the Hitler re;ime, such liaison personnel
(referred to at that time as "instructors')wcre assigned the ad-
dresses of trusted Party workers (Vertrauenspersonen) inside Ger-
many. The provision of adequate shelter for such liaison officers
from abroad adds to the nu; ercus housing difficulties of the under-
ground.
3. Technical 11p-.)aratus. Maintaining and distributing illegal
Party newspapers, information sheets and propaganda material necessi-
tates the establishment of additional safe space for production,
storage and distribution. Since considerable security risks are in-
volved in the running of an production and ; distribution
machine ( or "technical apparatus"), the importance which the Party
attaches to this work merits attention,
The function of the Party press in the underground is, in
LeninIs words, that of a "collective organizer", As such, it not only
organizes the mind of the reader along Party lines, but also groups
the readers around the distribution personnel in loose, but neverthe-
less important, nuclei. In some cases, the Party may be reduced to
just this level of operations: an ille'r-;al newspaper and several cir-
cles of readers connected with the center through the workers who
brim the sheet to the house or factory. Further, the Party press
tangibly demonstrates the strength of the suppressed Party. In
highly organized Parties, the press serves the center as a vehicle
for political direction on a mass. basis, The abilities of Parties
to maintain ille,alublict tions vary. On the one hand, the il-
legal CP France was able to - rod_,uce large numbers and many
editions of national anc'.. regi: n l ac,;spapcrs, leaflets, factory
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papers and reviews within France. On the other hand, CP Germany under
Gestapo suppression had to rely almost exclusively on the production
of its foreign support centers. In general, however, an attempt will
be made by the Party to follow Comintern instructions:
'All Communist Parties must with,ut fail have an extensive-
apparatus for the publication of illegal Party literature,
printing-plants, various kinds of rotary machines, copying
machines, mimeographs and simple hoctograj).hs in order to
publish illegal literature, newspapers, leaflets, etc. In
particular it is absolutely essential that the local Party
Committee guarantee the`oublication of the factory paper
for the factory cell....'1
In addition to the production apparatus a special distribution
mechanise,., must be set up. For security reasons, the technical appara-
tus of the illegal Party must be d'ivorced from the center and compart-
mentalized on all levels; it may assume the character of a semi-
independent Party section. According to Comintorn instructions,
special personnel must be brought in for this purpose; special a(-
dresses are needed for the safekeeping of literature from the press
and for passing it along to all levels of the underground; and only
one member of the Party Committee should be made responsible for
publication and distribution.
The production process itself is dependent on the availability
of paper, equipment and trained personnel. The acquisition of paper
is often a troublesome problem. At times it must be stolen or pil-
fered by a Communist employee from his place of work. Equipment
must frequently be improvised. However, when production is on a pro-
fessional scale, as it was in France, the process may be broken up
into as many component parts as possible; decentralization of the pro-
duction of a leaflet provides better security. Depending on the
scale of production and its decentralization, the number of persons
engaged in technical work may vary. Three types of personnel, however,
can be distinguished: 1) the responsible functionaries who supervise
and direct production and distribution, 2) the skilled technicians
(typesetters, ,printers, etc.), and 3) liaison and distribution per-
sonnel. The function of the s ,pervisors appears to be restricted to
,technical problems; the writing and editing rest with the political
functionaries. Liaison. personnel may be needed in increasing numbers
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when the production process is decentralized. Six liaison agents,
for example, were reportedly involved in the production of an illegal
French leaflet, taking the text from the editor to the typesetter,
and so on, down to the central storage place and distribution point.
Final distribution of the product apparently is undertaken by
the political organization (local Party committee, etc.). The tech-
nical apparatus merely brings the product to the political section.
If the center of the technical apparatus is abroad (as in the case of
the German "Reichstochnikum"), it must provide its own courier and
border-crossing service. As a rule, the jurisdiction of the techni-
cal apparatus ends when the prn:)duct is delivered. Special function-
aries of the local Party organization may be in charge of the
ultimate storage places and distribution to the rank and file.' The
distribution process itself, according, to the capabilities of the
technical apparatus, may be put on a mass or on a selective basis.
If there ore only a few copies of a. paper available it is obviously
essential to distribute them among persons with good contacts,
capable of passing on the information to wider circles. In any case,
it can readily be seen that the housing of the technical apparatus
constitutes a major problem. Homes dust be rented for the keeping
of equipment (even if only a handpress and a typewriter). Paper
must be stored. Central and local distribution points must be es-
tablished. Couriers must be sheltered. The component operations of
the production process must be safely installed.
There has not so far been any evidence to indicate that there
is a pattern which various Parties follow in treating the housing
problem. Each Party organization, whether political or special,
national or regional, appears to handle the problem according to its
needs.
4. The Security Problem. The severe impact of security consid-
orations on.the organization and operations of the outlawed Party has
been amply demonstrated in the preceding sections. Two special
aspects arise to be treated: personal and administrative security.
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a, Personal security, Functionaries and members- alike must
adhere to certain "conspiratorial rules" if their security is to
be protected, All Parties evolve a set of practical regulations
affecting the member's entire way of life under illegal conditions.
These cover such details as alcohol consumption; behavior in case
of arrest, threatened or actual; private correspondence; selection
and change- of apartments; storage of letters, notes, newspapers
clippings and literature in general; 'attitudes towards wife, girl
friend, children, unreliable comrades, etc. Provision is also
usually made for the use of fictitious (Party) names. In the CP
Portugal, for example, members in close contact over a long period
knew each other only by such pseudonyms, Some Parties advocate
the creation of a "Party language", prohibit the use of telephone
or mail for Party communications, advise the frequent changing of
clothes and coj.ffurc, and even of posture and gait. Particular
attention is paid to security at meetings which should, as a rule,
be attendeid by small numbers and should not last long, Playing
cards may be displayed on'the table to give the meetings a social
appearance." Resolutions taken at meetings should be as succinct
as possible.
A broach of security constitutes not only a breach of disci-
pline but also a major political crime: "To be a good Communist
under the, present circumstances means above all to apply strictly
the rules of illegal work, it means to understand that each fail-
ure in this respect represents a danger for the Party and a veri-
table crime against the working class." (Vie du Parti, 1941)
b. l~dmin`strative security. Over and above the need for
safe storage space, special security measures may be introduced
to protect party records, Paper work is necessary even in the
underground, although'its reduction to minimal proportions is a
constant prescription.
Membership records. Preparatory to going underground,
functionaries will usually destroy membership lists and records
indicating the affiliation of individuals with the Party. Some
Parties may stop thoir'recruitment program altogether, or for a
certain period of time. During illegal periods, the issuance of
membership cards or books and dues stamps is often discontinued?
In some cases, the responsible personnel officer may simply rely
on his memory to keep track of the members. The consequences of
failing to carry out such an elementary security measure are il-
lustrated in the case of Cl' Ger-many. The Gestapo was able to
seize voluminous central records, which had been allowed to re-
main stored at Berlin headquarters.
Intra-Party- communications. Written reports from louver
to.higher echelons and instructions from above, when permitted
at all, will be as brief as possible, They should not contain
any specific details of police interest, such as names of func-
tionaries, cities, villages, and addresses, Confidential com-
munications may be composed in code or ciphers, and written in
invisible ink. Documents will generally be forwarded by a trusted
courier, and delivered at special reporting points. In case of
arrest, the courier must attempt to destroy the communication by
all-possible means. In the underground, Party functionaries will
not, as a rule, sign with their names: they may use their
initials or assigned numbers.
Bio ra hical documentation. The Cadre Commissions ( or
Departments may find it necessary to increase their bureaucratic
activities, Cadre control in the underground is essential, and
detailed biographical statements may be requested of each func-
tionary and militant, particularly replacements. Such biographi-
cal reports may be transmitted by special couriers of the Cadre
Commission, which may be in charge of safe-guarding these records.
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The actual volume of administrative paper work will depend
chiefly on the size of the Party. A mass Party will not be able
to function effectively without substantial administrative
records.
5. The Financial Problem. Operatint- under round is much more expen-
sive than opcratin. let-ally, )hat is'moro, the "normal" sources of
income dry up. On the one hand, illegal conditions impose a new and
often heavy financial burden on the Party. As a consequence of the
atomization of Party or anizations and the specialization of personnel,
cadres must be increased -- and payrolls with then. Functionaries
and militants must be constantly on the move, either to escape the
police or to minimize the risks of :their work. They may have to
chance their domicile, sometimes at the sli,r;htest alert, and must not
be handicapped by a lack of money. Rentals of safe kouses and
apartments, storage places, etc., may be considerable; one individual
may frequently have to rent several apartments, uadh under a separate
false identity. Printin- and distribution costs rise; equipment is
constantly 'rein{; seized by the police and must bo replaced.. Further,
the Party must aid the families of arrested functionaries and mom-
hors, an expense which may be extremely heavy in the event of mass
arreste,
On the other hand, the collection of dues is hampered. Corftri-
butions from sympathizers dwindle; front orr,anizatiuns, throu:dh which
fund-collectin.,; campai,:ns are channeled, may wither; the sale of
Party literature decreases; and commercial ventures of the Party may
fail.
.Thus, Party finances frequently become a priority operational
problem. Preoccupation with financial questions is shown in the
instructions of the ( illc;al) CF France, callin; fora discussion of
finances at the boCinninc of every cell meeting, Tight budCetin,; can
partially solve the :ilerma, out essential costs cannot be eliminated.
CP France in 1941 considered the following cate;ories as essential;
a) propaganda material -- paper, equipment; b) travel expenses; and
c) couriers. The same Party further advised all echelons to budget
as follows: 50% for propaganda costs (paper, machinery, etc.) and
50% for or;(-Inizational expenses (salaries, indemnities, travel expenses,
rents, etc.).
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In view of the scarcity of funds in the underg-ound, the Party
must frequently look for support from abroad. Party centers in
foreign countries, or Party auxiliaries with foreign connections,
such as maritime Party units, are particularly suited to collecting
funds with the help of ~raternai Parties and their front organiza-
tions. Prior to the dissolution of the Comintern, underground Parties
could also present their case to the Budget Commission of the Commu-
nist International, 7,1hile it is difficult to estimate the current
financial policy of the'CP Soviet Union towards foreign underground
Parties, it is probable that if a significant Party should be forced
underground in the near future (CP Italy or CF France, for example),
direct or indirect financial support from the Soviet and satellite
Parties would be forthcoming.
Whatever the origin of underground funds, their administration
poses a critical security problem. Party funds, in possession of
the national and territorial finance departments or finance officers,
can in some cases simply be placed with trustee. Party workers.
security considerations recommend decentralization of hiding places.
when practical, dummy accounts and dummy corporations can be created.
The administration of funds may also be taken out of the hand's of
territorial organizations and centered upon the national Party
treasury, when the latter operates in safe territory -- a procedure
recently reported to be followed by CP Greece,
6. Mass Support: the Crucial Political Problem, The PartyRs
,financial difficulties may be overcome, and the Party machine may be
salvaged to a certain extent. Even so, deprived of its legal outlets,
the Partyts basic stratc ;y of developing into the directing force of
the entire working class and other susceptible strata,'will be, severe-
ly hindered under illegal conditions. Fronts and auxiliaries fall by
the wayside in a state of political suppression, and the entire
propaganda and agitation apparatus must restrict its operations. The
strength of the Party as a political force is based upon free access
for its propagandizers and organizers to wide masses of workers,
farmers, intellectuals, minority groups, etc. The legal Party can
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obtain a maximum of mass support; the illegal Party may fall far short
of this basic objective. "The fundamental deficiency of every illegal
Party," in words of the Comintern, "(is) that an illegal Party appara-
tus makes contacts with the masses difficult - and yet the fundamental
task of the Communist Party is to have close contact i .,ith the masses."
There are several methods by which the Party may attempt to surmount
those obstacles.
a. Penetration and control of lei non-Communist _artics
re resentin,v,,orkers and relatdd class elements. This approach
has only limited possibilities, In the first place, during
severe repression all "progressive" or "liberal" parties may be
outlawed, and another ille; al'party is not worth penetrating be-
cause it is itself restricted. In the second place, Communist
efforts to take over a non-Communist "Viorkerst Party" will moot
with cgnsidorable'resistance wherever these parties arc control-
led by Socialists. The attempt made by Cr Austria to take over
the.Austrian Social Democratic Party as a whole, through a tacti-
cal alliance made by the two parties during the middle thirties,
met with failure in this way.
b. Penetration and control of legal trade unions. This is a
tactic rocomrnended by the Comintern, Even if control cannot be
achieved, Party fractions working in legal trade unions can exert
a certain degree of political influence. Illegal trade unions
are clearly lass valuable than legal outlets. The penetration'
process of the trade union movement is a permanent requirement,
no matter what the political status of the !'arty may be.
Creation of du =.v front orr;anizations or parties. As a
rule, this method has little chance of success because it is usual-
ly too transparent. Exceptions may occur when suppression is not
severe (such as currently in Brazil) or when the Party is in a
position to exploit a national emergency (such as foreign occupa-
tion or colonial unrezt) and. to marshal national or colonial
"liberation" movements.
The fact remains that no matter what political alliances the Party
underground may conclude, or what additional strength it may gain in
illegal membership, it still is not a legal Party and cannot fully
develop its potential strength. The "combination of legal and il-
legal methods" is never adequate; ultimately the illegal Party must
attempt to become legal. The passing from illegality into legality,
however,, may only be possible in acutely revolutionary situations.
The Party may have to organize militrry-revolutionary action (as in
Russia, China and Greece), or it may have to wait for such an inter-
national crisis as World I"J'ar II, during which the regime suppressing
the Party is destroyed.
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7, M
II. CASES OF CO4]IST PARTIES UNDERGROUND
This section contains analyses of six Communist
Parties during periods of illegality, showing the particular
organizational and operational problems which each of them
faced and how they tried to solve them.
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ORGANIZATION OF THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY
I CENTRAL COMMITTEE
FOREIGN
BUREAU
TECHNICAL
ORGANIZATION
EDITORIAL
BOARD
RUSSIAN
BUREAU
(after 1910)
REGIONAL
ORGANIZATIONS
PROVINCIAL
ORGANIZATIONS
CITY
ORGANIZATIONS
MOSCOW
TECHNICAL
ORGANIZATION
MILITARY
ORGANIZATION
MILITARY TECHNI-
CAL BUREAU
FINANCE
COMMISSION
LECTURING AND
LITERARY BOARD
DISTRICT ORGANIZATIONS
SUB- DISTRICTS
CELLS
Bolshevik fraction
in the Central S-D
Students Organiza- i
tion.
Moscow Trades-
Bureau.
Union
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THE ODESSA BOLSHEVIK ORGANIZATION
(1905)
ODESSA PARTY COMMITTEE
(5 members, headed by a Secretary, with
organizers for each of 3 Districts, and an
Agitprop functionary)
ORGANIZATIONAL
COMMITTEE
TECHNICAL
APPARATUS
CITY PERESYPSKY
DISTRICT DISTRICT
COMMITTEE COMMITTEE
BOLSHEVIK
STUDENT
ORGANIZATION
DALNITSKY
DISTRICT
COMMITTEE
SUB-DISTRICTS
(No sub-districts) FONTANSKY
CELLS
VOKZALNY
666 6 66 6 6 66 6 66 6
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THE BOLSHEVIK TECHNICAL MECHANISM
FOREI N
BU EAt
OF' THE `'GC:
TECHNICAL
S'ERV E
Instructions,
copy, literature;
organizers,
couriers, etc.
4
TRANSPORT
SERVICE
BORDER
CROSSING
STATIONS
Reports,
refugees,
couriers,
etc.
TRA SPOT T TECHNICAL
SERVICE SI RVICE'
PASSPORT
PROCUREMENT
AND PRO
DUCTION
ORGANI ATIO 1
PUBLISHING
AND DISTRIBUTION
MECHANISMS
(Decentralized)
ENGRAVING SHOPS
COMPOSING
PRINT SHOPS
CENTRAL STORAGE
Copy
from the local
Bolshevik
organization
LOCAL STORAGE 0 0 0
Copy
from the local
Bolshevik
organization
where supplies
could be got
Bolsheviks
in factories
0 and shops
FUNCTIONARIES
RESPONSIBLE
FOR DISTRICT
DISTRIBUTION
Dissemination
(Centralized)
Paper Mill
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A. THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY UNDERGROUND
In setting up the basis of the Bolshevik Party, it was Lenin's
view that its organization must be stable, solid and continuous, and
that the personnel engaged to take part in the enterprise must be pro-
fessionally experienced in revolutionary activity -- so well trained
in subterfuge and conspiratorial devices that the police would not be
able to undermine their organization. From 1900 to 1917, Lenin never
swerved from this concept of the Party; and in 1917, when the big
chance came, only the Bolsheviks among the several opposition factions
possessed the necessary self-confidence and organizational efficiency
,to enable them to take power and to hold it,
The development of factions within the original Russian Social-
Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), which was comprised of a large number
of local Marxist organizationsaroso over organizational differences
in 1903. Lenin insisted on restricting Party membership to a relative-
ly small group of devoted, single-minded, well-disciplined militants,
leaving sympathizers and revisionists to the Party's auxiliaries and
mass organizations. He wanted a "monolithic and militant party with a
clearly defined organization." Following the split, Bolsheviks and
Mensheviks constituted two separate parties in fact, if not in name.
They vied with each other for control over leading organs and over
local, organizations in Russia. They held separate congresses in 1905;
and finally in 1912, the schism, which had continued to widen during
the 1905 Revolution and the reaction which followed, was made permanent.
Until Stolypin's death in 1911 all opposition parties were severe-
ly repressed except for a brief period in 1905. Against the Bolsheviks,
the Government wqs, if anything, inclined to be less severe, because it
underestimated the capabilities and staying powers of the Party and
because it correctly believed that Lenin's splitting would weaken the
other revolutionary parties. These others, along with the bourgeois
reformist parties, were considered by the Government to be much more
dangerous than the Bolsheviks. The Tsarist police made mass arrests
and kept the Bolshevik Party under close surveillance, of course, and
police agents penetrated all major Party organizations. Trade unions,
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the pepper subject for Party work, were tolerated only when organized
on a local basis. Among those measures of the Government which hinder-
ed Bolshevik activity were internal passport requirements and the
registration laws. Travellers and people changing residence were re-
quired to sign the register at new lodgings. However, lower police
functionaries, when they were not ignorant, w_wre`likely to be corrupt-
ible. It was often no.great task to bribe a prison guard, frontier
patrol, or local police chief, or to "talk"oneself out of a tight
situation.
Other difficulties faced by Lenin in the building of the Party
along the highly centralized lines he had laid down, were imposed by
the long distances over which command channels were stretched, both
from abroad and within Russia itself. Transport networks sot up by the
Party's technical services, the employment of couriers, and the use of
special communications devices overcame such troubles in some measure,
Considerable aid was rendered local Russian organizations from abroad,
not only by the Party's Foreign Centers, with their propagandizing-
indoctrinating-money-raising auxiliaries, but also by foreign Social-
Democratic Parties ( particularly the German) and by the International
Socialist Bureau. Within Russia, bandit gangs ("Expropriators")
operated for Lenin's benefit, sending him funds with which he could
construct his system of organizers, couriers, and agents, who succeed-
ed in taking over the control of many previously non-Bolshevik Marxist
groups in Russia.
Stolypin's death brought some relief from repression. Pravda, a
general propaganda paper, and 7vezda,_ a weekly political journal, both
Bolshevik organs,, began to appear legally, along with several others.
These were tolerated as long as they veiled their revolutionary intent,
subject to a relatively liberal censorship. Violating these conditions,
Pravda was repeatedly suppressed, but each time reappeared with only
small changes in name, none in content. The Bolsheviks elected six
members to the Duma in 1913. They formed a coalition with Menshevik
deputies at first; but they soon broke away to form their own fraction.
Ii',,Tith its legal press and its Duma fraction, and with some influence on
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a number of labor, social, and welfare organizations, the Party pursued
legal activities. It continued its illegal work at the same time, build-
ing up its Party organizations, issuing illegal, inflammatory leaflets,
carrying on secret revolutionary work among the masses.
The Party was again forced wholly underground with the outbreak of
the War in 1914. It devoted its energies to preserving what remained
of its own strength and to sabotaging the Russian war effort, to which
end it formed cells and committees in the armed forces for agitation)
encouraged insubordination and fraternization among t he troops, etc.
When the March 1917 ("bourgeois") Revolution overthrow the Tsar,
the Bolshevik Party emerged into full legal status and resumed publi-
cation of its various periodicals. In April, Lenin hastened to Russia
from Switzerland, through the charity of the German Government. By
November, what with the incompetence of the Provisional (Kerensky)
Government, the chaos brought about by Russian military defeats, and
general economic and social debilitation within Russia, the Bolsheviks
found their small, well-disciplined machine able to achieve a new
Revolution, from which the Party emerged victorious.
1. Ora.nization. (See Chart, "Organization of the Bolshevik Party.)
The Bolshevik apparatus was marked by a high degree of centraliza-
tion of command and decentralization of structure. It consisted of
those organs of the RSDLP which the Bolsheviks controlled at any given
time. During most of the period to 1912, and from then until 1917,
those wore the Central Committee, the Foreign Bureau of the Central
Committee, and the Editorial Board of the successive central newspapers
of the Bolshevik faction. After 1911, the Bolsheviks were able to cen-
tralize their machinery inside Russia through a Russian Bureau of the
Central Committee, and, wore able to develop command channels running
down from the Russian Bureau through territorial echelons -- Provincial,
Regional, City, City District, and Cell organizations. The Latvian and
one section of, the Polish Social-Democratic Parties supported the
Russian Bolshevik Party. Some of the other independent Communist' group
in the Empire sided with the Mensheviks, whose leading organ was an
Organization Commission.
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Most iiaportant of the Bolshevik organizaticns inside Russia were
those of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, and a few other large cities.
Those received some direction, when communications permitted, from the
Russian Bureau of the Central Committee. However, the Foreign Bureau
and the Editorial Board, headed by Lenin, carried the decisive weight
with the local organizations inside Russia.
The Central Committee was elected by occasional Party Congresses,
,most of which were held abroad and to which delegates wore sent by
local organizations according to their numerical strength. The Central
Committee elected at the Prague Conference in 1912 consisted of six
members and five alternates. Stalin was coopted into membership after
the Conference. Membership of the Editorial Board varied between three
and seven, but the Board was always headed by Lenin. All Bolshevik
organizations enjoyed the right to co-opt new members into their com-
mittoes.
The following analyses of the Moscow and Odessa Bolshevik organi-
zations show the structural principles followed by the Party during
these years.
a. The Moscow 0 nization. In Moscow, three Party units worked
practically independently of each other, although their activities
sometimes overlapped. The Moscow City Committee worked exclusively
within the city; the Moscow Regional Committee administered the Pro-
vince of Moscow; and the Provincial Bureau of the Central Industrial
Region comprised several Provincial organizations.
The Moscow City Committee, c._Dnsisting of a Secretary and
several District organizers and one trade union organizer, administered
the work,of several city Districts, which, in turn, were divided into
'Sub-Districts and factory cells. Auxiliaries and Party organizations
attached to the City Committee included:
1) Moscow Central Trade Union Bureau, a Bolshevik organization
with some strength in many of the illegal labor unions;
2)
3)
4)
Central Social-Democratic Students' Organization;
Lecturing and Literary Board;
Finance Commission;
5) Central Technical Organization for production of passports
and production and distribution of literature;
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T, M
6) Military Organization, actually independent of the City
Committee, but with interlocking membership with the latter.
7) Military Technical Bureau, also independent of the City
Committee except through liaison with the Secretary: responsible
for the procurement and preparation of arms and other weapons.
b. TheOdess Organization (See Chart.) Osip Piatnitsky, the
veteran organizer, has described the organization of the Odessa
Party for the benefit of post-Revolutionary comrades and for foreign
Parties who were, at the time of writing, "in great straits because
they cannot find a suitable guise in which to clothe their local or-
ganizations under illegal conditions...."
"The organization of that t ime, in Odessa as well as in the
rest of Russia, was built from top to bottom on the principle-of
co-optation; in the plants and factories and in the workshops, the
Bolsheviks who worked there invited (co-opted) workers whom they
considered to.bo class-conscious and who were devoted to the
cause. The regional committees of the large towns had divided
among its members the work of uniting all the Party cells of a
given district (or sub-district), and of organizing new cells
whore there wore none. The organizers of the sub-districts in-
vited the best elements of the cells to the sub-district commit-
tees. F:hon a member of the sub-district committee dropped out
(if he had been arrested or had gone away), the remaining mem-
bers co-opted another with the consent of the district committee.
The district committees in turn were'composed of the best ele-
ments of the sub-district committees. The city committees were
formed by the union of the various Groups and cells of a given"
city and wore subject to the approval of the Central Committee.
City committees had the right to co- opt new members. V,hen a
city committee was arrested as a body, the Central Committee of
the Party designated one or more members to form a new committee
and those appointed co-opted suitable comrades from the workers
of that region to complete the new committee.'
Piatnitsky was himself co-opted into the Odessa Party Committee.
The Central Committee had notified the Odessa organization of his ar-
rival from Germany, and the co-optation had been effected oven before
he reached the city. He was appointed organizer of the city District.
The Odessa Committee possessed a large illegal printing plant in
the city, and was able to publish numerous leaflets on political
evonts. The Committee also distributed literature received from the
Central Committee and Technical Apparatus abroad, sent speakers to
.factories and meetings, and chose leaders for advanced circles in the
districts.
Piatnitsky gives the following description of the way in which the
Odessa organization functioned:
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IlEach member of the District Committee was connected with the
groups and cells of the trade in which he worked at the ti.rie; and
through the groups and cells he got in touch with the workers of
that same trade. Thus there was direct contact between the
Odessa Committee and the workers of the plants, factories and work-
shops at Odessa; the district organizer connected the city commit-
tee with the district committee, the members of the district com-
mittee in their turn were connected with the groups and cells, the
members of which carried out the instructions of the Odessa comit-
tee and the district committee among the workers; they in their
turn informed the Odessa committee and the district committee of
the mood of the Odessa workers.
The district committee mat at least once a week; often more
frequently. The members of the district committee m re sufficient-
ly well qualified. All questions were discussed fully and in
detail./"
2. Operational Problems,.
Security measures and communications techniques for cutting across
the difficulties imposed on the Party by the Government developed slow-
ly, through painful experience. Some of them were taken over from the
practice of older revolutionary groups, such as the Narodnaya Volya,
which had boon crushed in the 1880's.
a. Security Measures. Security precautions were directed to two
chief ends: to prevent exposure and imprisonment of cadres, and to
prevent exposure of plans and police interference with Party activi-
ties. Some of the devices used in maintaining security wore:
1) Codes, cyphers, and other communications techniques;
2) Assumption and frequent changing of false identities;
3) Secrecy of meeting places and lodgings, which were changed
frequently to avoid registration with police;
4) 'Restriction of contacts among members (letters of intro-
duction, intermediaries, restriction of plans to minimum circula-
tion);
5) Techniques of avoiding police surveillance (wearing of
inconspicuous clothing, dodging police shadows, etc);
6) Careful disposition of records (encoding, safekeeping,
committing facts to memory, provisions for quick destruction, etc);
7) Use of contacts within police as countor-intelligence
producers., (ineffectual and very limited, as it turned out).
8) Compartmentalization: especially applicable to comrades
engaged in "conspirativo'l work (as in the technical organizations),
who loft "day-to-day's work severely alone.
Molina places and safehou semis. Large meetings were held with a
minimum of publicized preparation, usually in the woods several miles
from town:
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"When it was necessary to call more or less general meetings
they were arranged under the guise of excursions to the country in
the name of some educational socioty. After leaving St. Peters-
burg a `couple of dozen worsts behind, we would go 'for a walk'
into the depth of the forest. !e would then place patrols who
would direct the way only by a previously arranged password and
then we would hold our meeting.'"
(Krupskaya, Memoirs of Lenin. II, 129)
Measures taken by functionaries in the carrying out of organiza-
tional business were more strict. Piatnitsky (Memoirs of a Bolshevik)
describes those adopted in Odessa:
r/Ccriirades arriving in the city used"to report to?the secretary
of the Odessa Committee, Comrade Gusev. He himself, except on days
when the committee itself met, had a different meeting place every
day whore we, the members of the committee, could find'him.' These
meetings were in cafes, restaurants, private dwellings, etc. Com-
mittee meetings were very frequent, at least once a week. They
took place at the private houses of sympathizing; intellectuals.
At these meetings the instructions of the Central Comrlittee,'the
political situation, and the progress of political campaigns, were
discussed.... Decisions passed by the committee were communicated
to the district mootings by district organizers. The Odessa organ-
ization maintained sevoral safe meeting places whore members of
the Central Committee, of the central organ of the RSDLF, and of
Party organizations in neighboring towns could stay and moot."
Police restrictions on travel called for the expenditure of consi-
derable energy and ingenuity. Piatnitsky emphasizes the time and
effort wasted in changing; lodgings every night to avoid being discov-
ered through the regular police inspections of residential registers.
Fake and doctored passports were prepared by technical units serving
Party organizations in most of the large cities.
Communications. Codes and cyphers, some of them quite complicated,
were employed for written communications. Piatnitsky recounts a two-
day struggle to decypher addresses sent to him in one letter by the
Secretary of the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee. Other tech-
hiques included the use of invisible ink (cobalt and sulphuric acid
solutions, milk, lemon juice) written in the margins and between t he
lines of innocent books., letters, bills, etc.; the marking of words land
letters in innocuous literature; hiding; of letters in picture frames,
in the spines of books, etc.
Written communications were carried safehand by couriers or sent
through the posts addressed to reliable sympathizers or to general
delivery. More important communications were transmitted orally.
Penetration by Police. Extensive penetration of t he Party by
police agents did much to destroy the effectiveness of the most
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careful observance of security measures:
"..., there was not a single local organization into which
some provacatear had not crept. Every man regarded his comrade
with suspicion, was on his guard against those nearest to hirm,
did not trust his neighbor."
(Zinoviev, History of the Communist Party of Russia
While recognition of the danger of police penetration undoubtedly
helped to keep Party members security-conscious, the suspiciousness
engendered must certainly have impeded efficient operation. There is
little doubt that the Tsarist'police knew practically all important
details of Party business, and it was only because of their incident-
al belief that the Bolsheviks were not nearly so dangerous as the
other revolutionary parties that even more severely repressive meas-
ures were not taken.
Roman Ma.linovsky, Lenin's trusted intimate, member of t he Con-
tral Committee, and Vice-Chairman of the Social-Democratic Duma
Fraction, was a police agent for years, and caused the arrest of in
numerable Party members. So well did he conceal his purposes that
Lenin refused to believe charges levelled against him. Even Burtsev,
who had several good police contacts and who acted as a one-man counter-
espionage service for the various revolutionary parties, failed to find
him out, and a special Party commission created to investigate rumors
against Malinovsky could not uncover any real evidence. Ma.linovsky was
only the most prominent of many police agents within the Bolshevik
Party.
b. Technical Services. As noted above, the Moscow City Comittee
maintained a Central Technical Organization for the procurement and
preparation of false passports, and for the production and distribution
of illegal literature, including the regular Party press and occasional
pieces.. Similar technical mechanisms were supported by other city com-
mittees and by the Foreign and Russian Bureaus of the Central Committee.
The Central Committee operated border-crossing, systems as part of their
technical services (See Chart, "The Bolshevik Technical Mechanism").
Passports. The procurement of passports was a continuing, pro-
blem.. The following were the types of passports used by the Party
members with police records:
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1) False passports with fc,r`cd seals, in which all details
were fictitious;
2) Copies of genuine passports'of persons without police
records;
3) Genuine passports belon;inr,, to persons without police
records.
The third type, called ."Iron," was considered the most reliable, but
was the most difficult to obtain with descriptive data appropriate to
the illegal bearer. Another important function of the technical organ-
ization was to exchange passports and copies with other centers.
Product}.on and distribution of Party literature. In 1906
Piatnitsky was put in chard;e of the central technical organization of
the Moscow Committee. The printing establishment produced about 40,000
copies each .of various leaflets, broadsides, posters, and, at the time
of a Duma election, a list of candidates for t he voters. Located in
the basement of "The Caucasian Fruitshop,'" the printing plant was
equipped with an American press. A bell was rigged to give warning of
the entrance of customers to the fruitshop, which was licensed
fictitiously. The operators of the fruitshop were registered under
false passports.
Procurement of newsprint and distribution of the literature pro-
ducod were serious problems. Piatnitsky was given a letter of intro-
duction to the manager of a papermill, from which he received credit
and large quantities of paper. A recommended book-binder cut the paper,
which was stored in an intermediate warehouse, then taken to a second
storehouse (a "depository"), from which it was taken as needed to the
printing plant. Printed matter was carried from the shop disguised as
fruit in wicker baskets, and was taken to a bakery operated by a
sympathizer; there it was, called for by a functionary responsible for
distribution, who took it to a house where distribution couriers from
all the Moscow Districts picked it up.
The Moscow Committee, through Party members in various factories,
was able to s upply the technical organization with needed production
materials. After the Cagcasian Shop had been raided by police, a make-
shift establishment was set up with type and other accessories supplied
by members working in commercial printshops.
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Piatnitsky recounts techniques of distribution of printed matter
received by the Moscow organization from St. Petersburg:
'tWNe eked.... the St. Petersburg comrades to pack the litera-
ture in boxes and send it as merchandise, and to send us only the
receipts. As soon as we received the receipts we picked out two
comrades to get the boxes. One of thorn would hire a carter, to
whom he gave the receipts for getting, the merchandise out of the
station. The carter was given a fictitious address to which he
was to deliver the boxes. Another comrade would keep an eye on
the driver, following him about wherever he went with the receipts.
If everything looked safe, the second comrade would inform the
first comrade of this, and then the latter would moot the carter
on the road and direct him to the right address. If we suspected
that the comrades were being watched, three comrades wore selected:
one hired the carter; the second followed him all the way to the
station, in the station itself, and on the way back; the third
acted as a courier for the second comrade. He informed the first
comrade whether it was safe for him to meet the carter. The fol-
lowing precautions were also taken: even-if the two comrades dis-
covered nothing suspicious at the station, they nevertheless
changed the address given at first for another fictitious address."
(In such cases we used. to give the address of some acquaintance....
The driver was dismissed, and later, if there was no hitch, the
literature was sent to the depository and from there to the various
districts.)
It sometimes happened that the carter would he called to the
gendarme office at the station after he had Produced the luggage
receipt. In such cases the comrade who was watching him warned
the other comrade not to meet the carter on the road; and he him-
self stayed to find out what would happen. Occasionally the
gendarmes let the driver pass with the merchandise but-send a de-
tachment of spies and gendarmes at his heels. However, in view
of the fictitious address given the carter, their labours wore
in vain. Several consignments of literature fell into the hands
of the authorities, but nobody was every arrostcd./d
The printing plant operated by the Tiflis organization was even
more elaborate, eventually becoming the largest underground plant in
Russia. It served both Menshevik and Bolshevik factions of the RSDLP.
It was sot up by Leonid Krassin, manager of the Government power
station in Baku, who served as a member of the Central Committee of
tho RSDLP ^nd who carried on illegal activities so successfully that
for four years neither the management of the power company, nor the
police, nor the workers suspected his real role. He arranged for the
smuggling of literature, forging of passports, raising, of funds, and
the setting up of the clandestine printing,; shop. Krassin was able
to find reliable printers who would not only work long hours, but
live in the plant as well,dispite its discomforts. Through an arrange-
ment with Krupskaya, who was Secretary of the Foreign Bureau, he re-
ceived each issue of the RSDLP organ, Iskra, from abroad, and managed
to publish 10,000 copies of it in Russia.. The secret plant also
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P V. f" 640-likMa
produced the Co unist I-anifesto, Kautsky's Erfurt Pro,r,ram, and over
a million copies in all of leaflets, pamphlets and periodicals. A
deluxe edition of one hundred copies of the Efurt Program was made up
for sale to wealthy sympathizers at a high price,
Illegal literature was also produced by more primitive means by
individuals and small organizations -- handwritten tracts circulated
a few copies at a time, and, on a slightly larger scale, those rum
off home-made hectographs. After 1912 the Parties were permitted
legal organs, subject to a partial censorship.
i2ovolutionary literature presontod transportation problems be-
cause of its bulk. .]hen the censorship was partially lifted, printed
material could sometimes be sent through the mails, disguised as in-
nocent material. During most of the pro-revolutionary period, how-
ever, it was customary to smuggle literature in falsebottomed
suitcases, in "breastplates" (false bosons), or sowed into skirts.
All travelling members and sympathizers were pressed into the service
of this "express transport."
The problem of bulk was later resolved by printing on onion skin
paper with narrow margins. As the underground organization developed,
Russian editions of papers printed abroad were run off from imported
copies or matrices.
Border-Crossing. Communications with foreign centers necessitated
elaborate border-crossing establishments. In preparation for the
establishment of a transport service operating out of Berlin,,
Piatnitsky made arran,oments for the lodging of visiting Russian
functionaries with German Social-Democratic elements, for the storing
and processing of smuggled literature, and for the creation of border-
crossing stations. The transport service in Germany had its counter-
part on the Russian side of the frontier. A second such system,
operating out of Leipzig in 1910 and also set up by Piatnitsky, illus-
trates the methods employed.
The Leipzig Social-Democratic organization supplied him with several.
addresses to which communications could be safely sent and where
visit- Russians could meet and find lodging. He was given the use of the
attic in the building of the Leipzig Social-Democratic newspaper
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a r n to r. m
for storing and packing literature. Two reliable comrades living near
the frontier were hired to do the actual smuggling. Both systems
worked with a very small staff. This organization, as well as the
persons who acted as connecting links, remained unchanged until 1913,
although the legal daily, Pravda, was already being published in .ussia.,
c. Finances. Funds for both legal and illegal Party activities
were secured by conventional means: donations by well-to-do Party mem-
bers and sympathizers, and contributions by foreign Social-Democratic
parties and the' International Socialist Bureau, Support auxiliaries,
such as Committees of Aid for Iskra,v ere set up abroad. Lenin's benc-
fits from organized banditry (?Toxpro,-)rirtions") and counterfeiting also
gave him access to large amounts of money which enabled him to build up
and strengthen Party organizations under his own authority.
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Sanitized - Approved F CIA-RDP78-00915R000100250007-6
ORGANIZATION OF THE PCF
CENTRAL
COMMITTEE
"TRIANGLE DIRECTEUR"
(A Triad, possibly consisting
of chiefs 'for Political,
Organization, Propaganda work.)
ADMINISTRATIVE SECTIONS
Youth
Propaganda
Political Cadres
Technical
CONTROL
COMMISSION
Soldarite
INTER-REGIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
r--~
R
PR P 6" 6 bis
RFrIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
F [_ ]H'
I SECTORS
FIrl FIrl
'SEC
F17N
Sub-Sections
CELLS
aoo
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000
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TECHNICAL SERVICES OF THE PCF
PARTY
CENTER
Political -
A pparatus
National
Responsible
for Propaganda
Inter-Regional
Responsible
for Propaganda
NATIONAL RESPONSIBLE
FOR TECHNICAL SERVICES
INTER-REGIONAL RESPONSIBLE
FOR TECHNICAL SERVICES
TYPOGRAPHICAL
MAKE-UP
RESPONSIBLE
PHOTOENGRAVING SHOP for photo-
(plates prepared) engraving a
composing
RESPONSIBLE
for print shops
and central
depots,
Sections
a
Cells
Intermediary
(Courier, cut-
out, etc.)
Technical Apparatus
CENTRAL
DEPOT
DISTRI - ISTRI- ISTRI-
BUTION BUTION BUTION
DEPOT DEPOT DEPOT
- DISSEMINATION
MILITANTS
in charge of
transport &
procurement
of paper, ink,
a other sup-
plies.
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Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP78-00915R000100250007-6
B. CP FRtL.NCF UNDFi1GROUND
CP France (PCF), supporting the Soviet-German non-ag;ression pact
of 24 August 1939 and pursuing an anti-war policy, was logally dis-
solved by decree of the French Government in September 1939. With the
Armistice of 22 June 1940, the Party entered a brief period of "semi-
legality, It during which it collaborated to some extent with the Gor-
mans and was tacitly permitted a limited activity, including the
regular publication of Party literature. It was again suppressed when
Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941.
The ambiguity in, its policy removed, the Party hastened to take the
load in the resistance movement. P,azrxist demands were soft-pedalled in
favor of "National Liberation" -- harassing the German occupation
forces, discrediting Vichy, and cooperating with the British and the
Free French of General Do Gaulle. Large numbers of enthusiastic
patriots were drawn into the movement through such auxiliaries as the
guerrilla Francs-Tireurs, The Comites Populaires, end the SQcours
Populaire, Party Propaganda called for a now National Front anc, for
sabotage of the sections of French economy which supported the Germans.
During the years of active resistance the Party completely rehabilitated
itself, strengthoning its cadres, perfecting its organization and tactics
finding wide mass support. It emerged from the period of illegality
stronger than over before.
1. Orfnfident that the
Nazi power was transitory, the KPD had addressed itself to the pro-
blems involved in a possible suppression, however temporary. In
response to a report made by Hans Kipponbergor in July 1932, the
Central Committee instituted preliminary security measures. A
courier system was organized; the mails were Liven up as a communica-
tions channel; the Party in Saxony ordered a house search of its mom
bers for the removal of all compromising, material. The Berlin or-
ganization set up parallel dununy and secret offices in November.
Such plans proved quite inadequate. Continuing to make light
of Nazis, the KPD was surprised by the violent suppression which
.followed the Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933. Indeed, the Central
Committee met in Berlin the same night, and retired in ignorance of
the disaster. The mass arrests which followed cut deep into Party
cadres. Communications were disrupted. Party ranks were driven into
confusion by fear and lack of leadership. The Center delayed moving
its vital records out of the Karl Liebknecht Haus lon enough for the
police to seize them.
b. The Failure of Centralized Control, The first reaction to
the suppression on the part of the KPD leadership was to attempt to
perpetuate the highly centralized control of the past. Two Polish
Communists were dispatched on Comintern orders to instruct the Party
on underground work. One was an org,'nizer, the other, a specialist
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Sanitized Approved For Release : CIA-RDP78-00915R000100250007-6
in underground press work. They accomplished nothing. In may, John
Schehr returned to Berlin from 2:Zoscow with Comintern instructions to
set up a central directorate (Peichsleitung) in the form of a Triad
(Dreierkolpf), consisting of himself as Polleitor, and two others as
Orzloitor and A itproploitcr. This system was reproduced at all
lover Party levels. (Soo Chart, "Organization of the TD under
Centralized Control.") Schehr was arrested in November, and a new
Dreiorkopf appointed. Several such triumvirates followed in rapid
succession. Finally, with the arrest of the entire d?ichsleitung in
March 1935, the idea of a centralized leadership within Germany was
given up as impractical.
The territorial organization o f the Y:PD was decentralized by..
the intercalation of eight Inter-regional units (Oberbczirke) between
Zeichsleitung and Bozirke. The other levels were retained as they
had boon, except for reduction in size, In reality, as a result of
Nazi suppression, local Party units functioned independently and often
in ignorance of each other's existence. Gradually, whatever direction
they received came largely from the foreign support centers set up in
adjacent countries,
Meanwhile, the leading organs of the KPD (Central Committee,
Politburo, and Secretariat) had been removed abroad for safety. The
Central Committee and Secretariat met in Prague; the Politburo met
occasionally in Paris. In 1936, headquarters were established in Paris.
In 1937 the Central Committee dissolved the Politburo, concentrating
authority in the Secretariat, The latter development represented a
shift of emphasis from policy-making; to organizational work, for by
this time the foreign-support centers had practically taken over control
of KPD affairs within Germany.
Liaison between the Party Center at Prague and units within
Germany was maintained through two Separate courier systems: the
11oichstechnikum and the Durchgan stelle network.
The Rol chstochnikum engaged in typically technical pursuits --
production and distribution of illegal literature -- and in the opera-
tion of a chain of couriers. Its deichskuriere carried instructions
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Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP78-00915R000100250007-6
back and forth between the Foreign Center and Berlin, as well as
literature and copy for local reproduction by the Berlin Technikum.
The German security services understood that the Leichskuriore
smu glod instructions, materiel, and funds into Germany from noigh?
boring Soviet diplomatic estal-,lishmen_ts.
The Durchn; stelle (transit stations) offered
an alternative
courier system. Lilco the eichstochnikum, Durc1gafgstelle headquarters
were originally in Saarbrucker..; later they moved' to Holland, The
Durchgangstelle operated its own couriers, one for each of the eight;
zones of Germany. Each reported weekly to the Oberbezirksloitor to
,whom he was assigned for materials and coranunicaticns. Monthly re-
ports wore mace to Durchgangstolle headquarters.
Communications abroad were effected largely through the Gorman
branch of the International of Seamen and Harbor W or-kers (ISH) under
Ernst 1WW1oliwebcr.
The degree to which centralized control disintegrated during
the early years of illegality is illustrated by the case of Heinrich
diatrek. Comm e iatrek, a KPD militant since 1922, trained at the
Lenin School in Moscow, was dispatched to Berlin as an organizer by
the lleaC''. of the Foreign Directorate (Auslandsloitung) at Prague in 1934.
At Berlin he not his contact, a Co. munist from Uupperthal who offered,
him the post of Bezirksloitor Niederrhein.
"He met the two tadviserst (Oberb#rter) for Western Germany at
Dusseldorf: One of these advisors was responsible for Party
activities, and the other for trade unions. They came to the con-
clusion that Wi?atrek was too inexperienced and placed him in the
No. 2 position (Orgleiter)-to a man from Hamburg, known only as
''Fritz'. Gliatrek, however, became Bezirksleitor a month later
when "Fritz? was summoned to Prague.
According; to 1'Tiatrok, there was no clear-cut delineation of
functions within the BezirksleitUflg?. In his position, he was re-
sponsible for Dusseldorf and Solingen. His Nos. 2 and 3 were
assigned to other areas, and a ,parently acted very much on their'
own. Within his own area, "`iatrek took charge of all activities,
producing a.papor which he wrote largely himself, and even acting
as cashier. A courier from Berlin visited him regularly up to
February 1935, a fact which indicates that the RZeichsloitung; man-
aged to keep contact with at least one Bozirk until within a few
weeks of its extinction. After that, he received his instructions
from isterdam, via a woman courier who left them with the
Bezirksloiter of Mittelnccin, from whom ,.iatrek picked them up
every Monc.ay. He also h^c a weekly meeting with his Instrukteur
from the ~Iuslandsleitun.
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The Irlstrukteur showed him an illegal publication which
originated from the region and established the existence of a
Communist group) with which Wiatrek should he in touch. When
1-,7iatrek did succeed after some weeks in making; contact with its
leader, it proved to be the Leiter of the Ylnterbezirk Dusseldorf-
Bilk -- one of his subordinates. This man, however, was extreme-
ly suspicious, and Wiatrek had r..reat difficulty in establishing
that he and the instrukteur, who was also present, were not
Gestapo agents. They succeeded in obtaining his cooperation only
after 7iatrok had agreed to ai,nwrber of conditions,, whose substance
was that he'viould leave the Dusseldorf-Bilk area completely to its
own devices."
c. Decentralized Control. The failure to maintain a centralized
direction of the KPD in Germany vas recognized at the "Brussels" Con-
ference, which was actually hold in Moscow in October 1935. A new
and enlarged Central Committee was elected, and it was decided to de-
centralize control by means of the i0oreign Directorates, the
.!,,Us lands le itunge n.
The Auslandsleit~zngen. (See Charts, "The KPD Foreig,n-
Directorate Network," and "Operaticns of a KID Foreign Directorate."
The AL's, which had been set up in various neighboring countries from
the beginning of the illegal to serve as intermediate super-
visory-communications centers between the Central Committee and Party
.elements in Germany, had assumed increasing importance as the
structure in Germany disintergrated. Central Committee supervision
over the work of the AL's was assured by ZK-TJertroter (representatives)
who sat on them until January 1937, at which time the Triad system was
introduced. By 1934, each AL was responsible for a specific area of
the 1oich, to which it dispatched Instrukteure, each assigned to a
particular district.
The following AL's have been (Jescribed:
1) AL-Zentrum, located first at Prague, then in Goteborg, and
in Stockholm from 1939. It covered Berlin, Saxony, Hanover, and
Brunswick.
2) - AL AL..~.'-'''eSt, Amsterdam. Covered Niederrhein, Aachen, Hagen,
Siegen, Ruhrgehiet, and Bielefeld.
3)' AL-Nord, Copenhagen." Covered Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein,
Bremen, and the Baltic coast. has also responsible for Communist
refugees in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland.
4) AL-Sud. Covered South Germany.
5) AL-Saa gebiot. Covered the Saar.
6) AL-Sud t established at Brussels in 1936. Covered
1:2ittelrhein.
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__n T rti ;'} r m
AL composition varied from place to place, but generally in-
cluded the following personnel:
ZK Representative, acting as chief
Chief of the Technical A pparat
Chief of the Border Station (Grcnzstelle)
Chief of the Emigrant Directorate(Emigrantenloitung)
Representative of the German zone `)eing serviced.
Representative of the Red :>id (:tote Hilfo)
In ALis Holland, Belgium, ^n~ Denmark, the International of
Seamen and Harbor Workers (ISFI) was also represented. Although under
nominal Central Committee supervision, the AL's necessarily acted with
a fair amount of independence.
As the ALts gained in importance after 1935, and especially,
from 1937, they built up extensive organizations. AL-Nord, headed
from 1937 by ;~Tiatrok, consisted of the following functionaries:
No, 1 (i olloitor) (''liatrek)
No.2 (Orgleitor)
No. 3 (i gitpro;lei tor)
Transit Agent (Gronzraann), responsible for conducting
Instruktcure into the Reich a nd for the dispatching of
illegal literature published by the AL.
Technical man '(Tochniker), responsible for false papers.
Editor, who published the AL's paper, Nord ~eutscher
Tribune .
Responsible for Youth anc'.Abwohr (the latter, concerned
with Party security)
Responsible for Trans;.:,ort and Communications.
Responsible for Finances,
Responsible for trade union work,
Three representatives of the Rote Hilfe (a welfare organi-
zation commonly used as cover for espionage activities) .
Three Responsiblcs (Zirkelleiter), each in charge of one
of, the three areas under the AL.
Instruktoure for each of the above areas.
? The Instrukteuro ,%cre gi ~
ven their oaTlers by the Zirkelleiter,
who told them what places to visit and what instructions to give there.
All of these functionaries lived illegally in Copenhagen. The AL was
supported partly by local contributions, partly by subsidies from. the
Central Committee, partly by the sale of Party literature.
The work of the `.L's was divided between organizing KPD and
mass organizations among German emigres and supervising the work of
KPD elements in the area of the Reich to which each I.L was assigned.
The organizing work was accomplished largely under cover of the
Emigrant Directorates (Emigrantenleitungen: EL's) which were set ula
under AL supervision. For communications, the ALIs operated their
own courier system, which was ap aarontly separate from those run by
the Party Center.
Q T, n
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Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP78-00915R000100250007-6
The Em i rantenleitun en! The ELts rave relief to German
emigres and organized them into KPD and mass organizations. They
maintained close contact with indigenous Communist elements and
served as convenient cover for AL activities, They were fruitful
sources of recruits for AL courier and other work. The EL Triad
consisted of Polleiter, Orgloitcr, and Agitpropleiter. The EL Pol-
loiter sat on the AL, from which he received instructions.
The AL Comimunications system. The Border-crossing Stations
(Grenzstelle) of the decentralized ,Lls consisted of a loader, a 2K-
Vcrtretor, and representatives of the Border Sections (Grenzah-
schnitte) under the particular Grenzstelle. The lay-out of the
Foreign Directoratos, with their appendage Grenzstcllo and Grenzab-
schnitte, as German security services believed them to exist in 1937-
19381 is shown on the accompanying diagram ("The KPD Foreign-
Directorate Network").
It will be noted that, while most adjoining countries sup-
.ported-only two Border Sections, Czechoslovakia boasted no less than
ten (one of those is not shown). The sections in Switzerland were
~asecl on Basel and St. Gallon: the Dutch sections, on Maastricht and
Nijmwegen. Locations of sections in B lgium and Denmark are unknown,
while Stockholm is thought to have had a border section oporatipg in
the direction of Stettin and Konigsberg.
The activities of Lothar Hoffmann, a Moscow-trained function-
ary of the Copenhagen EL from 1939 to 1941, illustrate the services
performed by such foreign support centers:
Hoffmann secured the services of a member of CP Denmark,
and of two fishermen, one Danish and the other Gorman. The
Danish Party member, serving as courier, went to Hamburg,
where he established contact with the K?Dezirksleiter.
Hoffmann furnished the Dane with literature procured-in
Copenhagen. The Dane carried it. to the Danish coast, where
he turned it over to the Danish fisherman, who, in turn, de-
livered it to his German opposite number outside Danish waters.
The Danish courier; going to Germany unencumbered, picked up
the material a8ain, this time from the German fisherman, and
delivered it to the Bozirksleitung in Hamburg. _
HoffmannIs duties also included work within the EL, instruct-
ing German emigrants. From 1940, there remained in Copenhagen besides
the .loader, of the EL and AL, only about twelve emigres. These were
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organized it four groups; each of which had street contacts and held
secret meetings. The EL maintained some contacts with CP Denmark.
The work performed by Paul Helms, who was (presumably)
Orgleitor of the Copenhagen AL, is also of interest.
In the Sumer. of 1937 he began to recruit reliable KPD
militants (Vortrauensleute: trusted persons) still in Ger-
r.,~any to carry on or,.;anizational and propaganda there in small
groups, He maintained contact with these elements through
Instrukteure.
One such Instrukteur, who had connections in Hamburg, made
the trip from Copenhagen some ten times. He met with workers
and small business men and received reports on public opinion"
and riorale and furnished his contacts with illegal literature.
Returning to'Copenhagen, he would report to the AL to got new
instructions. Once, he received a false passport. At first,
literature was smuggled into Germany by the ALrs "Grenz-
a%parat," which employed Dancs `for the purpose. Later, the
Instrukteur carried it himself. His rcoorts were written up
and evaluated by the AL, then forwarded to the Central Committee.
Another Instrukteur had contacts among Hamburg port workers.
which he was charged with exploiting. He attempted to organ-
ized them and carried into Germany illegal literature hidden
in pocket mirrors and nieces of soap.`
d. Attempt to Revive Centralized Control. As Goorgi Dimitrov,
Secretary General of the Comintern, pointed out to a KPD conference
hold at I:Ioscow in January 1910, the Party in Germany had largely dis-
integrated. The German-Soviet non-aggression pact, which had been
signed the preceding August, however, raised the illusion that the
Party might begin to function more or less normally inside Germany.
The "January platform," therefore, called for the reestablishment of
a Roichsleitung at Berlin. It should consist of a more or less overt
dummy Secretariat and a real, secret Secretariat. It was even thought
possible that the latter might built.', up and direct an extensive mili-
tary organization for espionage and sabotage work.
With this project in view, the AL's were officially (is-
solved. Actually, they continued to function as before, until forced
to close down by Nazi military advances.
Knochel, to whom the task of preparing the field for the Berlin
center fell, dispatched three Instrukteure into the Reich. Early in
1942 ho wont in himself, setting up shop in a safe-house secured by
one of the Instri.ikteure. Here he installed a duplicating machine from
which ho ran off a cumber of illegal papers. Liaison with some local
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Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP78-00915R000100250007-6
KPD units was established and maintained for a time by the
Tnstrukteure, who reported regularly to Kn"chol.
Instructions reached him through a post-box address in Dusseldorf,
through a number of couriers, and by small boats plying on the Rhine.
His own correspondence was received by his fiancee in :;msterda,m, who
gave it to a Dutch Communist known as "Der Grosse." The latter
radioed these messages abroad. An attempt to sot up a transmitter in
Berlin came to nothing, but Knochel was able to receive geno.ral
instructions from 1kadio Moscow and from other stations.
This meager establishment wns finally broken with Knochelts arrest
on 30 January 1943. Thereafter, whatever foreign direction.. was
exercised over the sr..all, disconnected KPD groups in the Acich seems
to have come from Stockholm,
Establishment of the Free German I.1ovement. Three methods of
control over units in Germany having failed, KPD emphasis now shifted
to the establishment of a mass organization abroad. The "Free German"
Movement was begun at Moscow in July, 1943. It was composed of anti-
Nazi prisoners of war and KPD emigrants. It published a weekly news-
paper, Freies Deutschland, and beamed propaganda broadcasts to Ger-
many over "Free German Radio."" On July 1943, a separate organization,
the "Union of German Officers" was affiliated with the Movement.
Free German Committees "were established on amass basis all over
the world. Chief centers were New York, Mexico City, London, and
Stockholm. In South America, a "Latin-America Committee of Free
Germans" was formed by the amalgamation of various anti-Nazi organi-
zations in 1942.
The chief value of those mass organizations to the KIT was in
converting German prisoners of war to Marxist principles. The inten-
sive propaganda carried on in prison camps in the USSR through the
^,ritifa training courses won over recruits for th ost-war Party and
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the adrainistr ation in the Soviet Zone. ;s
2. Security.
KPD unpreparedness made it vulnerable to police repression from
the first. Seizures of complete membership lists and of elaborate
central records led to decimation of lower cadres, while agonts-p.rovo-
catours invaded Party organizations and even built up numbers of decoy
organizations into which many comrades and sympathizers were enticed.
When the trap became full, it would :)e sprung, and the gulled comrades
thrown into concentration camps. The arrest, in October 1933, of the
Agitproploiter of the Bezirk Berlin-Brandenburg, for example, lad to
the exposure of the whole Unterbezirk network, and to the arrest of
the Bozirksleitung and many members of the Unterbezirke. A courier was
arrested and found to be carrying papers conceded beneath a knee-
bandage 'and under the ,;rips of the handle-bars of his bicycle. The
litter contained roughly oncyphored lists of the r oetinowhich he was
to hold during the weak. The persons whom he had arranged to meet
were nearly all rounded up while on their way to, or at, the designated
meeting places.
As a counter-measure, the IK:PD opted elaborate security regulations.
"The party organization roust be decentralized," a functionary declared
rather belatedly in 1935:
"In place of the old centralized system there must Crow up
many independent little local organizations which must be capable
Recent roor;,anizationl steps taken by the SED (Socialist Unity
Party: the amalgamated KPD -- SPD Party in the Soviet Zone) and the
KPD may have produced a degree of confusion. They may have loci some
to conclude that the KPD is about to go underround and that those
steps wore taken in preparation for this. The KPD in the Western Zones
has been officially separated from the SED and has set up a "l'Test Zone
Directorate" at Frankfurt. The Bczirk has been abolished as an inter-
mediate echelon between Land and Kreis. Ten-man Groups have boon pro-
scribed as the basic KFD unit. These measures would be perfectly
natural ones for the KPD to take in response to the crystallization of
the East-':est division within Germany. Streamlining the Party
structure, as the KPD has done, should not be taken as prima facie
evidence that it intends or expects to go underground. There is no
evidence to show that the stops were taken with such a specific expecta-
tion in view. Whether or not the KPD intends to go underground is be-
side the point. The reorganization probably would have been made in
any case.
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of carrying out the party line on their own and of leading the
masses in their respective areas. 'r
Bearing cover names and changing; residence frequently, militants
maintained very limited party contacts to prevent such lame-scale
exposures as had overtaken the Party in 1933. Functionaries were
appointed from above, rather than elected, and they habitually worked
in areas where they were not previously known. To ensure secrecy of
communications, instructions to lower units were relayed through
intermediaries. Thus, an Untcrbozirksleitun appointed a committee of
three from among the leaders of its several Ortsgruppe. This commit-
tee represented the only contact between the Unterbezirksleitung and
its subordinate groups.
All members known to the police were forbidden to take any part in
underground work or to have any contact with functioning militants.
TTeeting places were changed often end their locations closely guarded.
Signals discernible from a safe distanco wore used to indicate
security, such as flower pots in (or missing from) a window, or the
position of window shades, etc. It was forbidden to.carry incrir.n.inat-
ing documents to meetings or to keep them at mop erst lodgings. Safe
houses were established for hiding personnel and materials; letter-
drops and cut-outs for communications. Party cards and dues receipts
were no longer issued. recruits were carefully screened and their
records checked with the Central Committee, which had access to the
blacklists of police; agents and traitors compiled by the Party's
illegal Apparat. Reniaors who had over given signs of defection, or
who had been released too soon by the Gestapo, were treated with sus-
picion, and sometimes, vrith beatings or liquidatioh.
Those security measures. were all valid in themselves, and if they
had been applied at the beginning ,of Nazi suppression might have foiled
the Govorrunent t s efforts to wipe out the Party. Coming as late as
they did, it is doubtful whether they were effective in helping the
Party to pick up many of the pieces.
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Organi-
zation
CENTRAL COMMITTEE
(includes representatives of major
City Committees and Regional or-
ganizations, and Responsibles for
EAM, ELAS, EPON, EA, AKE, MLA,
KOSSA, The KKE Abroad, and
intellectuals.)
KOA
(Athens)
'APPARAT"
an advisory
council)
ORGANIZATION OF THE KKE
(/946)
FINANCE
COMMITTEE
CONTROL
COMMISSION
SECRETARIAT
WORK COMMISSIONS
Agit-
prop
Technical
Co-opera-
Syndical Women tives
POLITBURO
CITY
ORGANIZATIONS
KOP
(Piraeus)
KOTh
(Salonika)
CITY DISTRICT
ORGANIZATIONS
(ACHTIDES)
F I I Ll n y n
CELLS
(K0B's)
PROVINCIAL
ORGANIZATIONS
CELLS
(KOB's)
6666666
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Government
employees 81
KOSSA
REGIONAL,
ORGANIZATIONS
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ORGANIZATION OF EPON
Responsible
for EPON on
the CC/KKE
CENTRAL COUNCIL
(6 members)
EPON
PIRAEUS
TECHNICAL
MECHANISM
Athens EPON
Secretary,
a member of
the Central
Council. - -
Printing-
Press Dis-
tributors (the
Mourikis
Brothers)
EPON
ATHENS
Technical
Mechanism
Finance
Committee
Local
Districts
F
Labor Local Students'
Sections Sections Sectors
Z
Technical
Mechanism
Finance
Committee
Students' EPON Local Athletic
Sectors Students Sections Groups
Kallithea
Heavy
Elementary
High
Schools
School
machine
Poly-
shops
technical
Secondary
l
h
S
s
c
oo
Higher
Light
Commercial
machine
shops
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KKE CONTROL OF THE OENO
CC/KKE
KOP
ACHTIDES
I I
KOB's
EA
Secretary,
OENO
OENO Offices EA Brotherhoods
Abroad Abroad
AAAAOOOOO
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THE SALONIKA RECRUIT-FORWARDING SYSTEM
H
LN ::THE .. GRAMMO!
Funds,
lnstructio-s,
RecretRs
GA DART Q,
Funds
from KKE press
and entepr ses
in SaloniNa
NDART HO
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Di 'C GREECE UNDEi GU OUND
1 ith the* formation of the Markos rebel Junta in December 1947,
and the resumption of serious guerrilla warfare, CP Greece (KKE) went
wholly underground. Illegality was no novelty for the KKE. It had
been suppressed during the dictatorships of Parigalos (1925-1926) and
T;Metaxas (1936-1941). Many of the Party functionaries arrested then
were released when the Germans occupied the country in 1941. A new
Central Committee was formed and the Party bent its energies to the
creation of a united front resistance movementl the EA1~7. The EAL:'s
guerrilla force, ELAS, which was constituted in February 1942, co-
operated with other resistance groups and the British to forward the
fight for liberation. From the time of liberation, October 1944,
until June 1946, when the Government promulgated a Law for Public
Safety, -providing for powers of search, abolishing the right to strike,
and setting up special police tribunals, the K enjoyed practical
freedom of action, During the months from June to December 1946, it
prepared itself for illegality by strengthening discipline and re-
organizing. So far as its political mechanism is concerned, the
KKE effort has met with failure. :'While the rebel forces have had
some notable successes, the political structure in all areas but those
hold by arms appears to have collapsed. During, 1948, the Greek police
uncovered many local Party organizations, and most of the leac'i ng
cadres have either been arrested or have fled to the mountains.
1. Organization (Soo Chart, ?'Org^.nization of the KKE, 1944
Except for having established, through its resistance period, a
number of political, and clandestine action auxiliaries, the KIM was
organized along familiar CP lines prior to its suppression in 1947.
Centralized control wqs held by a seven-man Political Bureau, a four-
mars Secretariat, a Central Committee, and a Control Commission, extend-
ing successively down through Regional and City organizations,
Districts, and Cells. Most recently, the Rebel fladic (DABS) announced
that as a result of a decision of the Fifth Plenum of the Central
Committee, held in the Grammes Mountains on 31 January 1949, l.Markos
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had been relieved of political responsibilities and has since been re-
placed as military commander by Ionnis Ioannides. A new Politburo,
elected at the same time, is composed of five regular members and three
alternates, headed by the long-time Secretary General, Zachariades.
Chryssa Hadjivassiliou, once head of the KIM, organization for penetra-
tion of the Armed Forces and State Security Service (KOSSA), was also
relieved of her Politburo post.
The KKE organizations for the three major cities -- KOA, Athens;
KOP, Piraeus; KOTh, Salonika -- have traditionally stood at the region-
al level. As police interference has tightened around Party communica-
tion channels, they have come generally to represent whatever organiza-
tion coherency is loft to the KKE outside Rebel territory. If the
"normal" breakdown of KKE city administration by Districts,, and Cells
(KOB's) still obtains, it does so loosely. The average District
(Achtis) comprises a small bureau, most of whose members have been co-
opted rather than elected. It meets infrequently, and it administers
very few KGB's. An attempt was made early in 1948 to sub-divide the
KOB's into three-man groups (pyrines), but most recent reports indicate
that the KOB's, comprising anywhere from four to twelve members, are
themselves too small to admit of further purposeful division.
KKE auxiliaries such as the AKE (Agricultural Party), EAU (Nation-
al Liberation Front)', EPON (United Youth Organization), and EA (Mutual
Aid), are theoretically organized along lines similar to those of the
political mechanism, and have also suffered disruption. The underground
organization of EPON is shown on tho attached chart.
The organization of the military auxiliary, the "Democratic ArmyJ It
and the clandestine action apparatus of HOSSA and PHA, will be dis-
cussed in Part Tsno of the present study.
In October 1948 the Central Committee of the KKE announced the
dissolution and replacement of the Athens Committee (KOA) on the
grounds that the latter had failed to execute properly the recruitment
and sabotage program directed the previous March for support of the
military action. The present constitution of the KO'., is not clear. A
"Central Committee Delegation" reportedly coordinates and directs KKE
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affairs in the city. During the summer of 1946, as a counter-measure
against the numerous arrests suffered then, the Central Committee of
the KOA was enlarged from nine to fifteen members.
Power was concen-
trated in a new, four-man Secretariat, consisting of the following:
First Secretary
Second Secretary (Organization)
Responsible for Fractions
Responsible for Womon's 'York
The Central Committee of the KOA in 1946 consisted of the following
functionaries:
First Secrot ry
Second Secretary
Responsible
Responsible
Responsible
Responsible
Responsible
Responsible
Responsible
Responsible
Responsible
Treasurer
Enlightener
" 6.
or i' ~.,I:~
for Security
for Clandestine Organization
for Intellectuals
for Tr:, .de Unions
for Fractions
for IJJA's
for EPON
for .ICJ
The KOA adhninistered several independent KOB's and sixteen Achtides,
nine of which ,waoro organized on a neighborhood basis, and the remainder,
according to occupation, as follows:
Civil Servants
Studc;nt s
Street Vendors, Bus and Taxi Operators
Bank and Clerical :'Yorkers
Intellectuals
Transport ;Yorkers
Hospital and Veterans Organizations Workers
Membership of KOB's was also reduced at this time.
The KOP of Piraeus and, probably, the KOTh of Salonika, were similar-
ly organized, as wore the following Regional organizations:
Macedonia and Thrace
Epirus and Ionian Islands
Thessaly
Storea
Crete
Aegean Islands
Dodecanese
The Achtis was abolished as an o rganizational unit in the countryside
during the 1946 preparation, rural members being absorbed into local AKA
organizations. The former Provincial Conunittees of the Regions were
transformed into city committees, administering Achtides and KOB's withi
towns.
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The structural decentralization adopted by the KKE as a standard
counter-measure against police action during 1946 proved ineffectual.
As a result of many arrests during that year and the next, many local
Party units were destroyed.
A recent interrogation throws interesting light on the state of
disintegration into which the KKE political mechanism had fallen. In
July 1947 the KOA sent Maria I .Ianousaki to Chalkis as Responsible for
the city organization there. On her arrival, she discovered that it
consisted of a four-man bureau, administering three neighborhood KOB's
and three factory KOB's, with a total membership of fifty. Each KOB
was directed by a Bureau headed by the Responsible, who acted as First
Secretary. In some cases, arrests had reduced the Bureau to the Re-
sponsible alone. Each KOB comprised from four to twelve members.
According to M,,nousaki's statomont, the work of the Chalkis
political organization consisted solely of the preparation and dis-
tribution of printed material. However, as Responsible, she worked
closely with representatives of the KKE auxiliaries, EAT:, EA, and EPON,
The EPON had only fifteen members in the entire city.
The Responsible for '?vigilance" (epagrypnisis: internal control,
including aspects of Party intelligence work) in the Chalkis KKEI or-
ganization had not been able to carry this function down to the KOB's,
presumably because of a shortage of qualified cedr4. He was also,
however, Responsible for the technical mechanism, which consisted of
himself, an assistant, one flat mirnaograph machine, and a typewriter.
As Responsible for the political organization, Manousaki dictated the
policies of the technical mechanism. She also took charge of the cen-
tral distribution of the printed matter which it produced.
Liaison w?,dth the KOA and with local KCB's was maintained by
couriers. Contact with the KOA was interrupted during the winter of
1947, when the Bureau of the Regional Committee of Central Greece, in
the competence of which the Chalkis organization technically lay, suc-
ceeded in establishing an irregular liaison with J;hhnousaki through
Andarte units in Evvia. It is interesting to note that, while recogniz-
ing the nominal authority of the Regional Bureau, the guerrilla head-
quarters tried to assume some direction over the Chalkis organization.
S E C R r m
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The present composition of the KIE at the national level, and cur-
rent territorial organization are not clear. In the face of trying
communications difficulties, it seems likely that the rather elaborate
picturewhich was drawn in 1946 would be meaningless today. The
Politburo and Central Committee are stationed in the mountains. bhile
many of the functionaries who in 1946 filled posts for myriad Party
affairs may still maintain their positions, it is highly probable that
their administrative activity is nominal.
2. 0 erationa roblems.
a. Security. The KI'~E and its auxiliaries have adopted familiar
security measures for the preservation of their cadres and for what
limited action they can achieve against police interference. The
actual practise of these measures is best demonstrated in the details
given by interrogated KKE members.
Meetings.., This is how meetings were arranged for Zoi ?'Ianiati,
a fairly low-level courier working for Maria IM,anousaki:
In,May 1947 Maniati was sent by the Responsible of the
Chalkis organization to Athens to deliver a note. She was
instructed as to her Athens contact and the proper password,
and given money for expenses. Arriving at the Athens per-
fume shop to which she had been directed, she gave the sigh,
"Is Mrs. Samits perfume ready?" To this the owner of the
shop gave the countersign, It is ready and it costs 15;000."
He told the courier Lia_niati to return the following day, ,,~hen
she would be given her contact. The next afternoon she return-
ed to the shop, where the owner shortly indicated a man pass-
ing the shop as the contact. I:?aniati met the man in the street
and delivered the rmossage to him. He gave her 500,000 drachmae
to take back to the Responsible of the Chalkis organization.
Manousaki has described several meetings with other Party
functionaries, from which the following characteristics emerge:
1) Meetings were pre-arranged whenever possible. This
included the furnishing of addresses where initial contacts
could be made, such as the residence or business establishment
of a sympathizer or secret KKE member. It also involved the
use of such recognition devices as passwords.
2) ?'dhen regular contact places had not been established
or wore not known, meetings were necessarily casual. Thus,
Manousaki made contact with the KRE organization at Thebes
through the mother of an old Party acquaintance.
It is interesting to note that the KKE term for safohouse is
"yavka," an old Soviet intelligence word for a secure meeting place or
reporting center.
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C, V n _661
Meeting places wore often fitted out with secret hiding places
in case of police raids. One such was behind the false back of a w^rd-
robe closet, It was large enough to accommodate four persons,
Sympathizers and their families frequently provided 'ryavkarr
for visiting ftuzctionaries, who sometimes were forced by police sur-
veillance to "hole up'' in those safe:-houses for weeks at a timme.
Occasionally, having provided lodgings at the request of a friend or
relative, the host might even be kept ignorant of the character of
his guest.
Personal Conduct Upon Arrest. As a, guide for conduct to be
followed when arrested, the Central Committee allegedly issued the
following (paraphrased) instructions:
1) Never admit your Party affi li:tion, or reveal any
details'of Party work, organization, or personnel, even under
torture. Confine yourself to a denial of the charges made
against you. Anything further gives the police a good chock
on previous information and on the work of their agents within
the Party, and enables thom to make further arrests. Do not
associate with anyone connected in any way with the police,
2) Fear is your worst enemy, Signs of nervousness or
cowardice encourage the police to torture you in the hope of
getting detailed confessions.
3) Do net acknowledge even apparently insignificant
points, Thus encouraged, the police will resort to torture,
so that finally, you may confess tot pings you have never
heard about. Do not forgot that this is the first step to-
wards treason. From the very moment you have acknowledged
something which the Security asked you to acknowledge, how-
ever insignificant this information night appear to you, yoti
have already confessed to treason, and nothing can save you.
4) Those arrested together mast defend each other. If
another comrade is being tortured, make noise and demonstrate
so that you will be hoard outside. A passive attitude, while
a comrade of yours is being tortured, will not only not help you
when your turn corms, but will facilitate the work of the
torturers,
5) Do not avail yourself of the opportunity !which the
Security may offer you to contact anyone on the outside. You
would only give away other comrades.
6) In case Party documents or other incriminating records
are in your home, do not reveal your address, so that your
family or organization will have time to destroy them.
7) Remember that police agents may be planted in your cell
at prison as nconvicts." Never talk to follow prisoners about
Party affairs,
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c. Recruitment and Transport. A. network for the channeling of
recruits for the Rebel Army has been described by Iianousaki. It was
directed by Sawas Argyropoulos, 3ho was, until ?':-7anousaki t s arrival,
Responsible for the Chalkis political organization.
Argyropoulos cospatched couriers (the same persons employed by
llanousoki in her political liaison with the KrOA) to the same perfume
shop that was used as a reporting center for Chalkis-KOA liaison.
There the courier was put in contact with the prospective recruits and
tiould arrange to meet them at the Chalkis railroad station. If a boat
was available ".Then the recruit arrived at Chalkis, he would be des-
patched immediately, hidden in space constructed within a load of
bricks, tiles, or other cargo. Sometimes, recruits had to be lodged
in Chalkis for some time, until the next boat left. Prosum::~bly, the,
would be landed on the coast at an point from which they could easily
join a guerilla unit.
During the winter of 1947-1948 , Salonika police uncovered and
destroyed a network for the channeling of recruits, refugees, and
instructions from the Salonika area to Andarte elements in Pieria and
the Chalcidice. One George Kazakis was in charge of the "entire
illegal organization" in Salonika. Assisted by his wife, he kept
liaison with TIarkos and with local guerilla organizations, and he
operated at least two recruit-foiiardin, systems, one working by sea
to Pieria and the other, overland to the Chalcidice. The Chart, "The
Salenik- Recruit-Forwarding System," shows the major links and direc-
tions taken by those systems.
The Kazakis organization maintai nod safe-houses in a shoe-
repair shop, a provision shop, and in a sympathizer's apartment. Dur-
ing the period of its operation, it forwarded about 100 persons to the
Audartes, 19 to Pieria and 81 to the Chalcidice.
d. Finances. Financial affairs of the KIE in 1946 were directed
at the national level by a ten-man Central Finance Committee, which was
divided into five functional sections, viz:
Income
Expenditures
Enterprises
Underground Mechanism
Enlightenment and Propaganda
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The Cashier of the Committee was also Secretary of the EA
(Mutual Aid) and President of the KO,. Executive Committee. Finance
committees also operated on the Regional level.
In February 1948, it was reported that the Central Finance
Committee would confine itself to the area accessible to KIE officials
in Athens (that is, to the KOA, KOP, Aegean Islands, Crete). It wqs
to consist of six members, three of whom, headed by Chryssa Hadjivas-
siliou, woulc: direct all financial affairs. How finances in other
areas would be administered was not covered in the report. Presumably,
a finance office operates at Party Headquarters in the mountains under
direc't' supervision of the Politburo.
1) Sources of Revenue. In addition to more prosaic sources of
incomo, such as dues, membership fees, and the like, the KEE has
received large amounts from abroad through the EA and the U32M.O.
Between June 1945 and December 1946, the OENO brought in --
3,671,064 English Pounds
80 Gold Pounds
1,769,012 (Egyptia.n?) Pounds
2,060 American Dollars
These sums were transported by OENO agents. One member of
the crow of the American SS SOUTH I ;TERN VICTORY, for example,
delivered to the OE,NO finance office in Piraeus ?`.;4,200 collected
in the United States, A second courier delivered 268 Pounds in
British banknotes collected at the OENO lintwerp office.
Altogether, the Athens Finance Committee reported the fol-
loving contributions from abroad in the period September-October
1948:
Drachmae
Great Britain
19,200,000
Western Europe
12,500,000
OENO branches
United States (sent by the
18,750,000
Editor of the Now York '
G -Lmcrican Tribune 7,500,000
Cyprus (sent by 2d L) 5,000,000
Australia (sent by local
EA1I members) 1,800,000
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The above items represented about 13% of total revenues for
the period.
Other revenues included contributions from the central
treasury in the mountains, from local donors and organizations,
and proceeds from Party subscriptions and due-s and from the
.operations of various business enterprises in the Athens, Piraeus,
and Attica area. Total receipts for the period were 502,900,000
Drachma?, ,
The following business enterprises, were ol;erctad by the
Kazakis organization in Salonika:
Cooperative for the manufacture and sale of shoes,
Dairy Products Business,
A,utomobilc Cooperative: operated buses and trucks until
end of 1947, when sold, proceeds going to Kazakis;
Printing shops,
Popular Book Store: sold Party literature and stolen
stationery till end of 1948,
X-ray Laboratory,
Nail Factory,
I,Iotorboats: two boats, presumably operating on a com-
mercial basis;
Silk Business: 360 kilos of silk cloth bought in Albania
for resale, but impounded by Salonika police;
Kotoula I.I.achine shop: allegedly manufactured 11 printing
presses which were sent to various KKE organizations;
Miscellaneous soles: of the rugs, foodstuffs, etc.,
appropri.'.ted during TENS regime; proceeds from silo of three
KIM and E.111 newspapers after those were outlawed.
2) .FxPcncit ures. A detailed account for the area administer-
ed by the Athens Fin-ncc Committee during the period between 1
September and 10 November 1948 shows total expenditures of
1,038,150,000 Drackrao, principal items being the following:
Salaries, lodging, travelling expenses ,:f KKE functionar-
ies, including couriers;
Rents and other housekeeping expenses of KKF political
organs;
Equipment for technical and military mechanisms;
SaLaries, overhead and printing expenses. for publication
of Party literature;
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Financial support to auxiliary or ,nnizations;
F'innncial support to non-KKF, functiori^.rios and families
of auxiliaries;
Fin .ncial support to K IE or arizations (KOA, KOr tt, and
the KKE RcCional Committee of the t ogoan Islands), including
KOSSA.
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E. CP SPAIN UNDERGROUND
CP Spain (PCE), along with the autonomous Catalan and Basque CPis,
wqs driven deep underground with the victory of General Franco in the
Sprint; of 1939. Party cadres scattered, some to Latin America, some
to the USSR. Vith the liberation of France, a Center was established
at Toulouse,it close to the Spanish border. The official weekly publi
cation, Munde Obroro, soon began to appear clandestinely in L;adrid.
In Lurch 1947, the third PCE Congress met at Paris. It elected a Con-
tr^1 Cornittee, which sot up headquarters in Paris under Dolores
Ibarruri as Secretary General. For some time the POE controlled the
National Spanish Union (UNE), a resistance coalition v:hich w as dis-
solved in 1945. It held posts in the cabinets of Giral and Llopis
in the Republican Government in Exile that was established in Mexico
City. The Party has always worked closely with CP Franco, and has set
up branches all over the world.
The PCE center is presently at Paris; latest reports indicate, howr-
ever, that sections of it may have been already removed to Prague. A
bewildering nambor of fronts, auxiliaries, and penetrated organizations
under varying degrees of PCE control operate out of France and other
countries, some of them maintaining underground organizations within
Spain. The Spanish police have exerted so strong'a pressure on those
undergrounds as practically to nullify such small works as they may
attempt. Numerous guerilla bands carry on desultory and largely unco-
ordinated operations in the mountains. Some of thorn are undoubtedly
controlled by t he CP's; many are auxiliaries of other outlawed
parties; most arc apparently simple banditti.
.y Center :broad.
1. The Part
Late in 1945, the Madrid police arrested a number of persons
Recent reports alleging existence of a-formal PCE training school
at Toulouse seem to be without foundation. It is possible that a ccr-
tain?amount of informal cadre training is carried on in the Toulouse
area, but present anti-PCE action by French police would scorn to make
operation of any sort of a centralized school impossible.
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alleged to represent a Central Committee at Toulouse, and ocnfiscated
a printing press, 5,000 copies of undo Obroro, and two radio trans-
mitters, but moans of which contact with the Toulouse Center had boon
maintained.
The PCF Center established by the 1947 Congress at Paris consists
of a Central Committee, Politburo, Control Commission, and Secretariat,
supervising the work of several administrative departments. The
principle of co-optation has applied throughout the Party since the
Civil "Var. tlha Lever political apparatus functions within Spain is
quite decentralized, reportedly ranging through the following eight
echelons: Legion, Province, Lora], Comarcal, District, Sector, Radio,
and Coll,
The Basque and Catalan CP's maintained separate Politburos, although
both were represented on the Central Committee of the PCE until Decem-
ber 1945, when a unified politburo was set up for all three Parties.
This now Politburo reportedly consists of tor. members ( as compared to
six members previously), headed by Secretary General Dolores Ibarruri
("La Pasionaria') and Political, Secretary Vincente Uribe., It is most
recently reported that part of the Politburo is about to remove to
Prague, where Ibarruri a nc. Uribc have been for some months.
Comorora may stay on in Paris at the head of some sort of organi-
zation there. '3hethor this presages, an eventual complete removal to
the Czech capital, it is too early t o judge. French police have
lately begun to interfere with Spanish Communist activities. Never-
theless, it would seem unlikely that a complete transfer of operations
will be effected. France is too convenient a base for the manipulation
of such wires as the PCF still has into Spain..
In addition to those secretaries name! above, 1;ntonio Lfijo also
sits on the Politburo as Organization Sccretary. Both Iijo and Uribe
are aided by Politburo Assistant Secretaries. 1Idministration below
this top level is something of a mystery. Several reports of dubious
merit list such unlikely administrative departments as "Jurisprudence"
and ?ICommercial Relations." One enumerates no loss than 26 separate
working sections under the Central Committee. I1nothor cites 18 sub-
sections functioning under three major departments, viz., "Coordination
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and Information," "Political Affairs," "Ealitary Affairs." From such
descriptions, it is possible only to deduce that the PCE maintains a
standard administrative set-up, with sections for ~",.gitprop, Oreaniza-
tions, Cadres, Youth, l 7omen, Finances, Labor, etc., to which there
have possibly boon added such departments as may reasonably be expect-
ed tb function in an underground part
y --' Liaison, r;Iili.tary, Mutual
Aid, Security.
Many of the departments allegedly worldng at the Party Center pro-
bably exist as paper entities. It is indeed doubtful that such appal-
linE buroacracy as has boon set out in these reports would be coun-
tenanced by such well-schooled Communists as those who currently lead
the PCE. It is significant in this connection that most of t he mem-
bers of the now Politburo have spent some time in Moscow and have had
extensive training in practical underground work. Ibarruri was a
member of t he Ccminternts Executive Committee in 1935. Vbatevor the
composition of the central organs; it is unlikely that top cadres expend
serious energies in matters of such relative levity as "Economic
Studies."
2. Ors anization within Sp din.
Information concerning organization within Spain is even more
nebulous. There is probably some sort of central headquarters for
coordination of affairs in the peninsula. i "Contral Executive Com-
mittee,~~ "Executive Politburo,," and a "Central Committee Delegation"
have been reported at various timos as fulfilling such a function.
A central organ may have worked in or near Madrid in 1947 (see above).
Thus, Agustin Zoroa Sanchez, on trial in December 1947, admitted that,
as Secretary for the Madrid area of the PCE, he had handled all incom-
ing and outgoing communications between peninsular organizations and
France; but that he had supervised propaganda work in the Madrid area
only. (This latter included the preparation and distribution of rj do
OU rero and guerilla leaflets and the operation of a Party radio station).
The State prosecutor charged Zoroa with having boon head of a central
organization for all of Spain, an accusation which may very well have
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been true, but which the defendant persistently denied. In any case,
he a mmitted having received several monthly shipments of 60,000
pesetas from France.
It is possible that a central organ may still function in Spain.
It is also possible that it may operate from some place across the
French border, Toulouse being the most likely location.
The nearest approach to a genuine territorial organizational
breakdown at hand is a report on the Basque CP in the Province of
Vizcaya in 1946. Here a Regional Responsible directed the work in
throe subordinate Provinces, including Vizcaya, The Provincial Respon-
sible ~r.s assisted by Responsibles for :'agitprop, Political Affairs,
Organization, Syndical "fork, and Finances. Courierp and cut-outs ef-
fected liaison between various Party units.
Trials of other Communists have revealed the following details of
organization at lower levels:
Niceto Carcarmo Gonzales admitted having been Propaganda
Secretary for an (unstated) organization. As such, he supervised
the work of five "groups." A mimeograph machine was found in his
possession at time of arrest. He received a regular salary of
1,900 pesetas per month from the "organization."
Francisco Lopez Garcia, as secretary for Propaganda, directed
fifteen "Groups."
Others directed one or two "groups'1 or acted as liaison agents,
The'above were all under the direction of Antonio Villasenor
Gallego, who was Secretary General of (apparently) a Radio consist-
ing of fourteen coils of five members each.
Luis Forranes ( or Fernandez) Carrera was "Number Three" (i.e.,
Responsible for Propaganda) fat either a Radio or a Sector. He was
in contact with various Radios.
Antonio Ivias Poredas was "Number Two" (Organization? Political
Affairs?) of "Sector II."
Eusebio Cabanillas Alfaro (?) was sent to Spain from France on
instruction from the "Organization in Madrid."
Jesus'Llonzon Neparas, Governor of Alicante and Murcia during the
Civil ':ar, fled to France via Oran (the route taken by many of those
tried). Was made a member of the CC/PCE. Charged with having pro-
ceeded Zoroa as head of the apparatus in Spain and with having sent
the latter to take over in Madrid. Denied that the central organiza-
tion at Paris directed work within: Spain, claiming that it was
responsible for affairs in France only. 'Claimed that an "entirely
separate commission" functioned in Spain.
Others wore charged with having transported arms from across the
French frontier. Raquel Pelayo, for example, entered Spain clandesz.
tinely in 1944 and was sheltered by a certain Conchita in Barcelona.
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Conchita-led her and three (?) other women to a place in t he
Pyrenees, where they picked up arms, which they carried to
Conchitats house for safekeeping,
3. Other Party Organizations Abroad,
In addition to the Paris center rind the local organizations in
Spain, Communist exiles set up their own organizations in many other
countries, chief centers being the USSR, Mexico, Uru,_uay and
Argentina.
Some Spanish Communist refugees stayed on in the USSR. "Free
Spain" radio broadcasts on a variable frequency around 11,620 kilo-
cycles from some place near Moscow. Yost of the leading Party cadres,
however, have left the USSR for France.
In M Texico members of the Basque CP and of the FCE set up local
branches. These work closely with CP 11exico, but receive direction
from Paris, with which they are in regular comunication.* Principal
front for Spanish Communists in Mexico is the CP Mexico-sponsored FOARE
(Federation of Organizations for Aid to the Spanish Republic). Loaders
-of the Basque CP and the PCE serve in executive capacities in the
FOB-RE .
Manuel,Delicac',o reportedly supervises the work of Spanish Com-
munists in Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile, making frequent trips around
this circuit as newspaper correspondent for Cc Soir and Huma nite. He
receives regular contributions from CP Argentina for the financial
support of the groups in the three countries. Spanish Communists in
Uruguay work chiefly within such fronts as the Casa r 'o Espana and the
JHUPRE (Spanish Junta of Uruguay for Republican Spain) . %c=- The Argen-
tine branch of the PCr which has only about 100 members publishes a
newspaper which has a ro orted circulation of about 1,500. Spanish
Communists in Argentina utilize a number of fronts for their activities.
Intercepted letters have been addressed to-the Politburo of the PC,E
at Paris by the "Information Bureau of the PCE," Mexico City.
iH; Until this year, Spanish Communists in Uruguay could belong to CP
Uruguay. In February the CPU decided to cease issuing membership cards
to the Spaniards because the latter had occupied themselves solely with
collecting money for their own groups. They may continue to attend CPU
meetings, however.
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GENERAL ORGANIZATION OF THE PCP
CENTRAL
COMMITTEE
POLITBURO
SECRETARIAT
(a Triad)
p
Treasury
BEIRAS
?R?
(Coimbra
a Beira
Litoral)
Radio
ADMINISTRATIVE SECTIONS
Library
Technical
, PROVINCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
MILITARY
COMMITTEE
Maritime
UPPER
RIBATEJO
1. ,It
(Upper at
Lower Beira)
ALENTEJO
Agit-prop
REGIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
11 BA,
(Lower
Alentejo)
'PTO"
(Upper
Alentejo)
"BAL?
(Alentejo
East)
SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS
"TO-C?
(Upper
Alentejo,
Central)
"To-d'
(Upper
Alentejo,
West)
"TO-L?
(Upper
Alentejo,
East)
SUB-REGIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
11LH1
4
LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS
KYl?
CELLS
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b. Communications. Liaison among KIG elements and between t he
KKE and foreign Communist centers his boon maintained through couriers,
Party press, and radio.
1) Couriors, The use of couriers has already boon touched
upon in the section on security. No material is available at this
writing describing any systematic KILL; courier network, except for
that which operated out of Salonika. If a network covering the
Whole of Greece has over existed (^nd the fact that Chryssa
Hacljivassiliou was reported in 1946 to be responsible, for the -
tranamitsion of Central Committoe directives to all provincial
organizations may indicate that it did), it has most probably dis-
integrated. Those courier operations outside of guerilla-hold
territory which have been described have all been informal affairs,
with agents recruited and commissioned as the need arose.
It is otherwise with the courier system operating between
Greece and foreign countries. This service was performed by KKE
members of the Party-controlled Federation of Greek Maritime
Unions, the OENO. (Soo Chart, III-M, Control of the OEM")., It
was partially destroyed by police in September 1948..
In addition to its courier services, the O,NO performed
the following functions:
a) Infiltration of Greek Maritime services, including
the Navy, for intelligence-gathering, sabotage, and sub-
version purposes;
b) Raisin- and transporting of funds from abroad;
c) Recruitment for the Rebel Army;
d) Supply of equipment for the Rebel Army;
e) Publication and distribution of Communist literature.
The OENO operated out of Piraeus. It had offices or agents
in Marseille, Genoa, Cardiff, Sydney, Antworp, Now York, and in
Durban and Johannesburg, South Africa, In New York, the President
of the Brotherhood of the EA of Seamen worked with the CPUSA-
sponsored Committee of Aid for Democratic Greece for the collection
and forwarding of funds and equipment to Piraeus and to Markos by
way of Genoa.
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n r. n n An examination of OENO records seized by Greek police
reveals that, of the approximately u,800 seamen members of the
OENO (i.e., about one-third of the total Greek Merchant 12I,arine
ranks), 315 actively served KISS interests. These agents worked
aboard ship as firemen, sailors, stewards. They ore members of
the following KISS cells under the Piraeus City Committee (KOP) :
KOB of tubercular seamen
KOB of coastwise lines crows and lower crows of the
Merchant I:Iariro
KOB of sailing vessels
KOB of local lines
KOB of lines abroad
These KOB's constituted the "5th Seamen's Sector" of the
KOP. The KOB members were later incorporated into the "Seamen's
Partisan Cor=ittee" (KEN) . The YEN controlled the O ENO through
the latter's secretary. In March 1948, the KENL, a short-lived
successor to the KEN, was in turn superseded by the "4th Sector
for Transport and Communications" (AE 4: i.e., the 4ti-i Achtis) of
the KOP.
2) Press and Radio. Preparation and distribution of printed
KKC material is the function of the Technical Mechanism which
operates at all levels down to the Achtis. Party publications
serve communications, as much as agitation purposes, With the
breakdown of liaison channels, Party units have apparently come
to rely upon instructions, relayed orally or through print, broad-
cast by the Central Committee over the Andarto Radio (DABS), which
is now probably located in Bulgaria.
The way in which this radio channel has boon used is
illustrated in the following extract from an interrogation of an
important KIT functionary, a secretary of the "Aftoamyna" (I,TLLA:
Mass Popular Sclf_Defense) for Athens:
"Early in 1948.... the TTarkos radio station passed in
a forceful broadcast the line that the armed movement must
be intensified in the cities with sabotage and the execu-
tion of political personalities. In one broadcast a Polit-
buro letter was read, the contents of which were later dis-
seminated in-writing and verbally to all party organizations
of the cities. One letter came into my hands.... On the
basis of this letter from the Politburo we tried to put into
effect the orders but without results because of-the repeat-
ed deteriorating blows suffered by the Aftoamyna."
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Two points are significant in this statement: the extent
to which the communications system had broken down, that such im-
portant instructions had to pass by so public a channel; and the
really great potential use to which radio can be put in Party
work under illegality, without endangering the precious lives of
militants.
No material is at hand to illustrate the workings of a
technical mechanism of the KKE at a level higher than the Achtis.
Those described by T:%.nousaki are all of this caliber. The
Ivlochanism of the r_thens Fifth Achtis consisted in 1944 of a print
shop utilizing two cylindrical and ton flat mimeograph machines.
That of the,Cho.lkis organization in 1947 consisted only of a flat
machine and a typewriter, hidden in an attic over a bakery. A
second flat machine, hidden in the base of a wardrobe closot,'was
not used because the house in which it was hidden was under police
surveillance.
A recent-description of the technical racchanism of a KKE
auxiliary, EPON, (See Chart, "Organization of EPOIJ11), is more in-
teresting. Mochanisrs operated at the national and city level, set
up as follows:
Aleaandros Thomiades was technical 'responsible' of the
Central Council. Pantelis Divans (a member of the EPON Cen-
tral Council) had given him 80 gold sovereigns with which he
rented a house in Old Faliron (in the outskirts of Athens).
With the assistance of T'heofanis Paspaliaris, he had installed
in an underground crypt a new mimeograph machine and a large
quantity of paper and ink. The crypt also contained the
entire enlightermiont archives of EPON and a considerable quan-
tity of leftist books. This crypt had been constructed in
such a fashion that it was impossible to discover it by a
cursory search. Within this crypt were printed the illegal
publication of EPON. Neu u^cnia, and proclamations of subver-
sive content.
The technical mechanism of EPON in Piraeus Was,also housed
in an underground crypt. It included a hand press, two cylind-
rical mimeograph machines and a considerable quantity of paper
and ink. In addition, the Responsible for Labor in Piraeus
EPON also operated a flat mimeograph machine in his house.
The shop of the Mourikis brothers had undertaken to provide
the typographical installations for-the Communist organizations.
They not only sold printing presses, but also transported them
on the firm's motorcycles. The press installed in the house of
Thomiades was brought there by Konstatinos I Rourikis. When the
shop was seized by Piraeus police, it contained three presses
intended for the KKE.?
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CP PORTUGAL UNDERGROUND
CP Portugal (PC') has been officially illegal since 1935. It has
been suppressed since 1926. For all practical purposes destroyed dur-
ing the extreme repression practised by the Salazar regime in its first
few years, the Party was not able to reorganize until 1941. Two years
later, the "First Illegal Congress" elected a Central Committee. In
1943, also, the Nmtional Movement for Anti-Fascist Unity (MUNAF) was
,established under PCP domination, It was soon outlawed. In 1945 the
Movement of Democratic Unity a formation of liberal of position,
was set up. The PCP soon Gained control over it, The MUD was not
denounced by the Government until April 1948, although the police
closed its Lisbon headquarters in February 1947.
Meanwhile, the PCP underground spread out and strengthened its
organization. In 1945 the police again clamped down on the Party, and
during the succeeding years destroyed large segments of it, The PCP
does not constitute a significant threat to the Salazar Government, and
is a relatively insignificant Party. Nevertheless, certain aspecti of
underground organization are better illustrated from the activity of
the PCP than from any other Party currently underground.
1. Organization. (See Chart, "General organization of the PCP")
Little is known about the leading (national) organs of the PCP.
So far as they arc known they seem to fit into the standard pattern.
Location of Party headquarters is not known; it undoubtedly moves
around from, one place to another to escape the police. Loading organs
are the following:
(1) Secretariat: a Triad consisting; of Alvaro'Barreirinhas
Cunhal'(reccntly arrested), Francisco rliguol Duarte, and Manuel
Guedes.
(2) Politburo: 6 members, elected at the "Second Illegal
Congress" September 1946.
(3) Central Comrtuttee: 9 members known? In this, each of'the
Regional or Provincial Corlmittees is represented by one member, who
controls work in his area.
Other functional organs which may possibly operate under the
Socretariatis supervision are the following:
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,ni 1'+. r A 1 m
Treasurer
Radio
Library (publications?)
Techni.cP1 council (prin_tine; and distribution?)
,An 11citprop section has quite r,_3 sonably and reliably been reported
to function on the Re,_icnal level, and it is not unlikely that a
corrospondi,r_C, section operates on the National level as well. A
separate Military Committee has been describe:; as operatin,; at the top
level. It is responsible for the penetration and supervision of Party
fractions within the armed services and publishes several mimeodraphod
sheets directed at those (A Viz do Soldado, Sar;;ento' Official
T.iliciano for the Army; O Lome for the Navy). The followinz, positions
have been held in this Committee:
(1) Responsible for the Committee to the CC/PCP; also in charge
of passwords and identifications.
(2) Responsible for fractions in the Navy.
(3) Responsible for fractions in military units stationed Vest
of Lisbon,
(4) Responsible for fractions in military units stationed East
of Lisbon.
Jose Soares was reportedly made Responsible for Party maritime work
in 1946. He set up cells for stevedores, lidhtormen, warehousemen, and
unloadors. He directed a "strike commission" and re ularly distributed
copies of the PCP orans 1 vante and 0 Militante amon-- his cells.
PCP structure throu::h t ho Provinces is decentralized throu;dh the
followinC territorial echelons: Province, Region, Sub-rodion, Zone,
Local, Cell. In some areas, there is apparently no Provincial ordani-
nation, control b ein ; exercised directly by ReGional Rosponsibles sit-
tin; on the Central Committee. Likewise, the Zone and Revional Sub-
committees do not seem to be constant features in all roCions, Two
further subdivisions have been reported:. District Committees between
Ref;ional Sub-committees and local committees; and below these, an
"Advisory Commission", which seems to be merely an informal, GroupinG of
several local committee Responsibles for cooperative action. Party com-
mittees at all levels above the cell consist of from 3 to 5 "function-
aries" (i.e., pail, functionaries), one of whom is the Responsible, the
others controllinG one or more subordinato units. It appears that
S
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Responsibles for organizations on each level occupy seats on the next
higher committee.
An account of organization and activities of units under the Pro-
vincial Committee for the Beiras may clarify the picture as shown on
the chart.
The Provincial Committee was directed by J. P. Jorge (Central Com-
mittee and Politburo member). The Provincial Committee administered
two Regions, "Y" (Coimbra and the Beira Litoral) and "Ill" (Uppor,Boira
and Lower Beira). Region "Y" was directed by Arostinho da Conceicao
Saboga. It comprised at least two local committees,"Yl" (Coimbra) and
"Y2" (Figueira cda Foz). The local Committee for Coimbra was set up at
one time by V. A. do l Andrade, Dr. A. R. do Cunha, and J. R. do Frcitas,
working under Sahogats orders. As an initial stop in its organization,
Saboga met Andrade secretly in the outskirts of CoLabra, giving the
latter the following assignments:
(1) To control PCP organization in the offices of Posts and
Telegraph, in the shops of auto Industrial Lda, and among chauf-
fours.
(2) To sot up a cell in the printing, trade.
Cunha, who was Responsible for work among intellectuals, put
Andrade in touch with several persons who would take over the actual
work of organizing the cells and with "Tom", who would carry on the
work of distribution of Party publications to those cells. Later, when
Andrade, still acting on Sabog,ats orders, savored his Party relations
to devote himself to work on the MUD District Committee, he turned his
cells over to "Tom".
The same Jorge, as Central Committee Responsible for the North,
supervised PCP work at Oporto as well ,,.s Coimbra. He was PCP delegate
of the Regional Committee of T:TUNI',F at Oporto; later succeeded by F. S.
Mirtins, who acted as liaison between Jorge and Dr. J. A. D. do Oliveira,
Responsible for Party work among intellectuals in Oporto.
A safohouse in which Jorge was living in 1945 was raided, yielding
Party records and a few arms. Jorge himself escaped arrest, being in
the south at the time, Another safehouse was rented by Oliveira on
Jorgets instructions. This house was used by one PCP member after his
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esc,^po from prison and was later turned over to ' -Local Committee of
the PCP for its use.
The connections noted above between the PCP and PIUD and T!i(JNAF
roctir in many cases. There can be no doubt that these organizations
have served as Party auxiliaries. Key posts on all organizational
levels are held by individuals who are either admitted Party members
or who have technically severed connections with the Party. The
usual line of control in cases of record, passed through a "Funcionario"
sitting, on both PCP and 1TUD (or TNN..F) committees. Sometimes, a mem-
ber or members of local auxiliary committees have been nominated or
appointed to these committees by a PCP functionary, who nay thus exer-
cise an indirect control over several subordinate auxiliary groups.
MUD is organized along lines similar to those of the PC?', is divided
between IND Youth and AND ;adult or ganizations. It has had (at least
in Oporto) Feminine Committees, whose place in the over-all structure
is not quite clear.
To all intents, the above organizations operate as branches of the
PCP, agitating, recruiting for eventual Party membership, raisin? money,
printing and distributing propaganda.
Not the least important purpose served by s uch fronts has been
their usefulness in shielding Party cadres. In a strike at Barreiro
in April 1947 not a ' single member of the PCP factory cell was
implicated, although the cell had initiated the strike and had given
the orders for its termination. Responsibility could be fixed by the
police only on non-Communists.
Other fronts and auxiliaries, such as the "Gloria Football Club" of
Vila Peal (an organization which reportedly has never held a sporting
event of any kind), the "Circulo do Cinema", and various Party and
auxiliary "Aid Committees", have served money-raising, recruiting, and
propagandizing needs of the Party.
2, Security.
In September 1946, the Secretariat complainer' that the Party had
suffered heavily from failure of individual members to practise ele-
mentary rules of security. The directive circulated recited several
WMMRW
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cases in which arrested members haA given a7eray organizational details
by which the policewere chablod to break up large sections of the
Party structure. Tie Secretariat reco;nized its responsibility for
having failed to put into effect adequate security measures and
criticizes'. many middle and lower cadre-men for corresponding errors.
These may be reduced to the following:
(1) Permitting unnecessary traffic into safehouses and per=
mitting their locations to be too -onerally known among members.
(2) Storing documents in residences of members; failing to
make provision. for quick destruction of records.
(3) Using "a means of transportation the boat between the
Praco do Commercio in Lisbon, anca'Barreiro" expressly forbidden
and condemned by the Secretariat".
(4) Using a "condemned" and too "elementary code describing
the site of a meeting".
(5) Ignoring a warning; signal that all was not secure in a
house entered by a member engaged in illegal work -- such contact
itself being especially Prohibited.
(6) Failing to take'recommendec precautions in changing from
one safohouse to another.
(7) Failure on the part of a Responsible to give adequate
warning to other members of his :arganization when cane of them had
been arrested,
'(8) Giving, and inducinL, others to -give, information concern-
ing Party work to the police upon arrest. (This criticism was
levelled against no loss a person than a Candidate member of the
Central Committee).
(9) Giving, information to a police agent who had been ;planted
in the prisoner's cell.
Some additional information is available on safehouses and on
techniques employed for meetings.
Meetings. The following instructions were given in a PCP document
seized in the summer of 1947:
(1)' All loaders must he very careful about meetings with other
members.
(2) For every meeting the place and time must be previously
thought out; all who are to'attend should have advance knowledge of
it and not make others wait.
(3) The places for meetings should be secure, so that mem'oors
can discuss all problems pprtainin` to the organization without
having to worry about self-protection,
(4) The place must be known only to those attending, even after
the meeting has taken place,
(5) It must never be communicated to anyone, not oven to mem-
bers,in whom we have the greatest confidence.
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Meetings between individuals are prefaced by an exchange of
identification tok:ons (most com only, simply a card or piece of paper
torn into two ryatchinG pieces, each scrap boinL Given by the supervis-
inZ functionary, who is the only one knowing both persons) and letters
of introduction certifyint; one to be a "person of co nfidencnriel of the armcc, forces. First issue, August 1948. Alle wi-
ly put out by the Military Committee of the PCP.
0 Fax-rosso: Intended for railroad workers.
L'l.2ertac