Vol. XIII (2007), no 20 - The International Newsletter of Communist ...

The International Newletter of Communist Studies Online XIII (2007), no 20 107
initiative taken by Münzenberg himself, and through the network channels of his main
organisational "pet object", the Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (IAH, in English: Workers’
International Relief, WIR). At the beginning, this was a relief organization founded after a
discussion Lenin and Münzenberg had in August 1921 in Moscow, aiming to materially and
financially counteract the starving in Soviet Russia. As the effects of the New Economic Policy
(NEP) had created positive results in the Soviet society, the need for an international relief
organization gradually lost its value. Nevertheless, IAH had managed during its first years of
existence to gather a large international crowd of supporters, both financially and morally, to
defend the Soviet political system. Therefore the transition from a purely operative relief
organization to a multilayered relief and propaganda machine became real after 1923. 167
Cut and Paste – The Limited Historicisation on the LAI & Approaching the Archives
The historiography, or rather historicisation, of the Comintern controlled front organizations
like the LAI is rather scarce and limited. Research has so far been insignificant, and only
cursory investigations have been done. Historian Sean McMeekin in his biography The Red
Millionaire (2003) on Münzenberg touched the subject briefly, concluding incorrectly that the
League ceased to exist in 1929. 168 Stephen Koch stated in Double Lives (1995) that LAI was
only an “instrument for propaganda, sabotage, and espionage”. Partly correct (on the point
of propaganda), partly incorrect on other points (empirical evidence does not verify Koch’s
view on sabotage and espionage), his book is a rather sensationalist piece on Münzenberg’s
life and death career in the Comintern. 169 The only valuable interpretation of LAI put on
paper so far, has been accomplished by former East German historian Mustafa Haikal. Even
though Haikal only was able to provide us with a chronological analysis on the organization in
his article, “Willi Münzenberg und die Liga gegen Imperialismus und für nationale
Unabhängigkeit” (1995), still he had access to files of the Comintern Archives in Moscow. 170
The Comintern archive acts as the empirical basis (as in the case of my research project) for
any research trying to unveil the functions and operations of front organizations like the LAI.
But still, the material has to be complemented with files found in other archives. 171 So to
Resolutionen, „Organisationsresolution“, published by League against Imperialism, Berlin, 1927, pp. 37-
38.
167 See for example Willi Münzenberg, Fünf Jahre Arbeiterhilfe (Berlin, 1926), or Willi Münzenberg,
Solidarität (Berlin, 1931)
168 Sean McMeekin, The Red Millionaire – A Political Biography of Willi Münzenberg. Moscow’s Secret
Propaganda Tsar in the West, Yale University Press, 2003, p.208. See also Sean McMeekin’s “Willi
Münzenberg – The Comintern’s Greatest Con Man”, in Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung,
Mannheim, 2002, pp. 418-419.
169 Stephen Koch, Double Lives – Stalin, Willi Münzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals,
London, 1995, p. 38, 64
170 Mustafa Haikal, “Willi Münzenberg und die Liga gegen Imperialismus und für nationale
Unabhängigkeit“, in Tania Schlie (ed.), Willi Münzenberg: ein deutscher Kommunist im Spannungsfeld
zwischen Stalinismus und Antifaschismus, Frankfurt am Main, 1995, pp. 141-154. Haikal was also a
contributor to the “celebratory” anthology on LAI, published by the Karl Marx University in Leipzig
(1987), Die Liga gegen Imperialismus und für nationale Unabhängigkeit 1927-1937, published to
commemorate the 60 th anniversary of the League.
171 Archival holdings that have been utilized during the research process, apart from the RGASPI in
Moscow, are the Bundesarchiv / SAPMO (BArch) in Berlin; the National Archives in London (Kew); the
National Archive in Stockholm; the Stockholm City Archive (SCA); the SÄPO archive in Sweden (Security