The word “international” brings unambiguously left-wing associations. Marked by subsequent numbers, transnational movements of this name since Marx's time have spread communist ideas. A 100 years ago, copying the structure and methods of action of the 3rd Internationals, a right-wing organization was created, specialized in the fight against communism, which for a 4th century corrupted the chic of russian diplomacy and agenthood.
This communicative began in 1923 inLausanne during the global conference on the Black Sea Straits. The russian delegation was chaired by Wacław Worowski – a diplomat, polyglot, old Bolshevik of Polish origin, grandson of the January insurgent. He was accompanied by Jan Arens (Izaak Alter) from Mława and the only Russian Maksim Divilkowski. russian delegates were accommodated at the Cecil Hotel. That's where, on Thursday, May 10, around 20.45, all 3 of them appeared in the restaurant area to have a late dinner.
Murder at Hotel Cecil
They were expected by Maurice Conradi, Swiss, born and raised in Russia, boy of a well-known chocolate maker from St. Petersburg. Maurice was a Russian patriot, fought the Bolsheviks in the civilian war in Russia. He served as an adjutant to the celebrated colonel commanders. Mikhail Drozdov and his successor Colonel Anton Turkul. After the white man's defeat, he got to Switzerland. In Russia, he lost his father and uncle and all his wealth. He hated communism and had planned to kill any prominent Bolshevik for months.
Conradi was married to Polish Władysława Swarckiewicz, a paramedic he met in Russia. A fewer weeks before the bombing, the couple stayed in Poland, where they visited Wladyslawa's sick mother. The stay in the wife's homeland coincided with the execution by the Bolsheviks on the large Saturday on 31 March 1923 of the death conviction on Fr Konstanty Budkiewicz. The news of this crime and the persecution of the Church by the communist Russian authorities shook Conradi and confirmed him in his determination.
Around 21.10 Conradi approached the table of the russian delegation and fired shots, killing at the site of Worowski and injuring the others. Then he ordered the orchestra to play The Death of Asa Griega and calmly awaited the arrival of the police.
Maurice Conradi. Source: Wikipedia
A vigorous investigation rapidly led to the detection of Conradi's accomplice, a Russian immigrant and officer Arkadius Polunin. He was an worker of the Russian Red Cross representativeship (carry, alongside which there was besides a russian typical with Sergei Bagocki at the head). The superior of Polunin and the head of the Russian Red Cross representation in Switzerland was Grigory Łodyżenski – besides a Tsarian officer, doctor and veteran of the large War. He was active in defending his subordinate and sought his lawyer. It became the 45-year-old then Théodore Aubert.
"White" final triumph – Conradi's trial
The concept of defence was invented by Russian immigrants. Her thought was to be Alexander Guczkov himself – the erstwhile president of the Duma and Minister of War in the Provisional Government of Russia who was on emigration. It assumed a kind of shift in roles and a turn of court over the killer into a court over Bolshevikism.
According to this presumption Aubert sought to show that both perpetrators were in fact victims of the criminal Bolshevik system. The trial of the Worowski assassins (Arens and Divinkowski survived) became a loud accusation of the russian system. Although both perpetrators were found guilty by the jury in November 1923, the 5:4 vote ratio did not let their conviction (to which the law required a 6:3) vote ratio, they were released.
Alexander Guczkov, mentioned earlier, was besides behind the thought that the publicity gained (Auberta's defence speech was published in respective languages) should be utilized for further activity to combat Bolshevikism. Conradi and Polunin no longer played any crucial function in this story. The task of disclosing the success achieved in the courtroom was the engagement of Aubert and Łodyżenski, who cooperated closely during the trial. The Russian provided an lawyer with arguments in the form of information on the atrocities of the Bolshevik system.
Théodore Aubert was perfect for this role. He was not only an attorney, but besides an associate of the global Red Cross and an experienced social activist. He co-founded and led the Union Civique (Civil Union) organization aimed at ensuring public order, food supply and the functioning of public institutions and services in the event of a general strike and social unrest. It was besides global due to the fact that specified anti-subversive groups were then formed in many Western European countries, formed contacts, collaborated, and were besides planned to establish their European federation.
The emergence of the anti-communist international
In specified circumstances, after the trial of the Worowski assassins, on the wave of publicity given to Bolshevik crimes, the thought of establishing an global structure to fight this ideology was born. On 13 March 1924, the Founding Committee of the global Agreement against the 3rd global Agreement was established. Bolshevism was believed to be an global movement of global reach, led by the headquarters, which is Komintern. In order to combat it effectively, an analogous form of action must be applied, combining the forces of anti-communist organisations existing in different countries.
The thought gained support from parts of Swiss financial circles, Union Civique activists and the global Red Cross. utilizing abroad contacts, both its own and its supporting environments, Aubert established cooperation with anti-communist movements from respective European countries and already in June 1924 organized a founding convention of anti-communist internationalism in Paris. It was attended by representatives of 9 countries and representatives of Russian emigration. The number of participants in the next reunion in 1925 increased to 21 and in the 1930s the agreement brought together groups from 27 countries.
The organization adopted the name Entente Internationale contre la III-e Internationale (International Agreement against the 3rd International), in the 1930s the name Entente Internationale Anticommuniste (International Anti-communist Agreement) began to be used. This federation of anti-communist environments was headed by the global Council (Conseil International), composed of representatives of associate formations. It met erstwhile a year to draw up general guidelines for the following year and adopt the study of the Permanent Bureau (Bureau Permanent), headed by Théodore Aubert, which was the office of the global service. The Bureau collected and analyzed information on communist activity, publishing it in the form of a monthly newsletter and books and brochures.
Théodore Aubert, photograph of 1939. Source: Wikipedia
The existing anti-communist organizations, i.e. the alleged national centres, on the 1 hand received substantive support from the office in the form of information material, on the another hand they should have implemented the adopted action programme.
The Entente Internationale Anticommuniste (EIA) program was comparatively simple. The current activity aimed at revealing the Communist movement's actions, and in peculiar the links between Kominterne and the russian government, which for many people, including politicians, were not apparent at the time. They besides tried to counter the designation and diplomatic relations of individual states of the russian government. The forward-looking nonsubjective was, of course, to destruct the Bolshevik government in Russia.
Methods of action
One form of EIA activity was visits and direct meetings with politicians of different countries. In this aspect, the anti-communist entent acted as a well organized diplomatic service. By 1940, representatives of the EIA had made about 150 abroad visits. Aubert met with politicians of this rank, specified as King George II of Greece, Benito Mussolini or Austrian Chancellor Johann Schober. The organization besides maintained relations with the Portuguese authorities, Spain, Marshal Petain in France, and was active in the League of Nations.
In addition to direct contacts with crucial political and economical people, publishing activities were an crucial aspect of EIA's work. The organisation has published a number of periodical publications and materials intended for circumstantial recipients, specified as police, military authorities (for example, Dutch and Belgian intelligence services) and diplomacy, etc. Their undeniable value was unique, inaccessible information about russian politics, Komintern activities and associated organizations. In addition, material was developed for the wider audience, which was forwarded to the press. In her reports, the EIA reported that publications were produced in 19 languages based on the material it provided.
EIA Newsletter. photograph by auction service www.conradoleiloeiro.com.br
This extended global activity required crucial financial resources. Providing them was the constant concern of the organization's management. The financing of the agreement consisted of 5 000 Swiss francs per year, contributions from associate groups from individual countries and various subsidies from Swiss banks, insurance companies, companies, as well as ad hoc amounts from different environments and abroad entities. The organisation besides received grants from the Italian and German governments.
Although the EIA's resources were crucial (in 1924–1929 it had funds of a full of 429,000 Swiss francs), it was especially during the economical crisis that the management of the EIA's financial needs required continuous treatments. Eventually, the financial situation of the agreement stabilised the fall of about 1 million Swiss francs taken over after Arthur Engel, a comparative of Aubert, who died in 1935.
"Gen. Franco brainwashing". Successes Entente Internationale Anticommuniste
A solid financial background and momentum with which the EIA worked raises a question of effects. At first glance, they were not impressive. In the global politics of the inter-war period, the "Buyer Shortsightedness" (the correct word of S. Cata-Mackiewicz) of Western democracy prevailed, which led to the full legitimacy of russian power on the global stage, the russian admission to the League of Nations, and even attempts to build a collective safety strategy with its participation. However, EIA’s efforts yielded any tangible results. Spain can be a good example of this.
Relations with the Prime Minister of this country, General Miguel Primo de Rivera, the ententa established in 1928. The consequence of the cooperation was the subscription of EIA releases, which went to, among others, a group of young officers of the Spanish Army. A systematic and attentive reader of these studies was Francisco Franco. He appreciated this reading sufficiently that erstwhile the government's subscription expired in 1934, he resumed it at his own expense. Caudillo confessed to his biographer Brian Crozier that the 2 most crucial events he had encountered in 1928 were the birth of his daughter Carmen and the encounter with Entente Internationale Anticommuniste releases. The large influence of these publications on the views of the future dictator is besides stated by another biographers, and the reluctant American leftist publicist Herbert R. Southworth devoted much of his last book under the prominent title to this problem. Conspiracy and the Spanish civilian War. The Brainwashing of Francisco Franco. As you can easy guess, the second part of the title refers to the impact of EIA publications on the Spanish leader. General Franco himself claimed that reading anti-communist publications had provided him with cognition of the Communist intentions and gave him the will to fight them.
Entente Internationale Anticommuniste was well aware of the nuances of the tactics of the Communist global and its buildings, for an average man hard to discern. She pointed out, for example, relations with Komintern established in 1925, the All-Union Cultural Society for Communication with abroad Affairs (WOKS). In 1933, the Commission Intentionale “Pro Deo” – a structure that was tasked with combating communism on spiritual and spiritual grounds.
National centres
Aubert's organization besides carried out its work through national centres, or affiliated anti-communist groups in individual countries. The most celebrated was the Belgian Societe’ d’ Etudes Politiques, Economiques et Sociales, founded at the end of 1924. In large Britain, the EIA was represented by the economical League, which had its own cell of information and studies since 1926, tracking the activities of extremist social-political movements. The League besides issued a letter “Russia Today”, which responds to a periodical of the same title issued by the Friends of the russian Union.
Paradoxically, difficulties in establishing the national EIA centre have occurred in Poland. Anti-communist environments over the Vistula River supported the EIA uprising as early as 1924, and Théodore Aubert corresponded with Roman Dmowski in this case. In 1925 Poland was represented by the national activist Włodzimierz Marszewski. Correspondence on the creation of a national centre in Poland was besides conducted by Aubert with Fr Antoni Oko-Kułak, president of the Antibolshevik League and expert on Russian issues. Later on, he became active and met with Aubert (in March 1926 in London) besides hr. Adam Zamoyski. However, all these discussions have not led to the establishment of a national centre.
Only the gathering of Théodore Aubert with Scouting activist Henry Glass in August 1926 at the 4th global Scout Conference in Kandersteg, Switzerland led to lasting cooperation. A year later, Glass, with the aid of Stanisław Grabski (privately his son-in-law), established the letter "Walka with Bolshevism", and in 1928 – a structure called the Agreement of Organizations Co-operative in Combating Communism, which was affiliated as the national centre of the EIA in Poland. Glass's group was the most active and competent of Polish anti-communist organizations and successfully operated under Nazi business under the code name “Blok”.
Monthly "Fighting with Bolshevism". Source: Jagiellonian Digital Library
Relationship to Axis countries
Aubert paid peculiar attention to his relation with Germany. The Soviet-German rapprochement, which occurred in the 1920s, alarmed EIA activists and consequently led to a relation with NSDAP. Grigorij Łodyżenski, who met with her representatives in 1931, despite a number of doubts, decided that it contained elements of value for anti-communist action. 2 years later, Aubert estimated that Hitler's coming to power had thwarted russian plans for the Bolshevikization of Germany and spoke positively against Nazi communism. From the beginning, the EIA management saw negative aspects of national-socialist ideology, especially its attitude towards Jews and Slavs. However, the general evaluation of the 3rd Reich – a country where the fight against communism was 1 of the priorities of the government – was positive. Especially in the second half of the 1930s, erstwhile the USSR yet came out of isolation and was admitted to the League of Nations, and the fresh Comintern tactics of creating folk fronts were successful in subsequent countries, for anti-communist activists Hitler's state appeared as the only force capable of resisting the expansion of Bolshevikism.
Théodore Aubert and his associates saw in fascist dictatorships a barrier for the expanding influences of Bolshevikism. So they supported the thought of the Anti-Comintern Pact, collaborated with Japan and fought against the thought of collective security, seeing in it the tactics of Komintern leading to the abolition of global isolation of the USSR. The EIA accepted the global moves of the 3rd Reich, and the demolition of Czechoslovakia in Munich in September 1938 was assessed as the end of the "red base" in Prague.
The anti-communist global cooperation with Germany ceased after the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was signed, and the outbreak of war fundamentally put an end to the global activities of the EIA. Aubert and his Swiss colleagues focused on the interior situation of their homeland. Fearing the repetition of the late 1918 accidents (inspired by the Bolshevik agently social unrest), they engaged in actions to prevent a possible communist coup. Aubert made available to the national authorities the EIA structure in Switzerland with its information resources.
End of activity
The last abroad mission of the entent typical was to travel to Finland during the winter war with the USSR. Its goal was to carry out a propaganda action among russian prisoners of war and to make a unit of them fighting on the Finnish side. However, these ideas were coolly adopted by the Social Democratic Government in Helsinki, who stood in the position that Finland was conducting a purely defensive war and did not want to be seen as an avant-garde anti-bolshevik crusade. So the mission of Łodyżenski ended in failure.
The accession of the USSR to the anti-Hitler coalition and its military successes has made the extremist anti-communist and friendly towards Entente Internationale Anticommuniste axis states a burden for the Swiss authorities, curious in normalizing relations with the Soviets. So she was pushed to the margin of social-political life and the national authorities distanced themselves from her. Thus the expression in which the organization operated, in new, post-war conditions was exhausted. After the war, the burden of combating communism took over.
Under these circumstances, in November 1950, the anti-communist internationalist which had existed since 1924 suspended its activities. Its archives were donated to the Public and University Library in Geneva (Biblioteque Publisher et Universitaire, now Bibliotheque de Geneve), initially as a deposit, and later as the gift of Théodore Aubert, who made a disposition not to uncover their existence before 1975. The boy of Théodore Aubert Edouard extended this period until 1991. Only Aubert's grandson Jean-Pierre decided to open the EIA archive for historical research. These circumstances have made the Entente Internationale Animmuniste activity not more widely known for many years, and in Polish literature almost completely absent.
For respective years, investigation has been underway in the past of this organization, bearing both extended monographs and causative articles. Poland's historiography has not yet addressed this.
Bibliography
- M. Caillat, L’Entente internationale anticommuniste de Théodore Aubert, Lausanne 2016.
- R.M. Franco, The last White victory. Aleksandr Guchkow and the Conradi-Polunin process of 1923, Revolutionary Russia, 2023, t. 36, nr 1, pp. 76-99.
- A. Senna, Assasination in Switzerland: execution of Vatslav Worovsky, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1981
- H.R. Southworth Conspiracy and the Spanish civilian War. The Brainwashing of Francisco Franco, London, 2002
