all of the tutors. Their opportunity to disclose this was at the conclusion of the course, when the reports that were to be sent to the respective countries of the students were read to the class. A few of them contained the words: "Have wasted their time in the Soviet Union."
My report was to say: "has studied well in the Soviet Union ". p> At that time I just went to the school and took in all the knowledge I could. I only knew the bare outlines of the theory of surplus value, but when you begin to study it, in the ay that it should be studied, you soon realise the enormity and tremendous value of it as a study.
So I got stuck into it. They would give you a week or two when you could go away and do whatever you liked in studying for a class. But that was your task, to do that research. And then you were told that, for example, the political economy group was to meet in a conference.
Our tutor was a Red Army officer who was a very fine Marxian economist. The tutor would read the questions and ask who wanted the floor. Well, the British students were very eager to get up and take the floor, but what they said was a different matter. You could very well tell that they had done very little study. The Americans tried to do the same. p> It was in this way that I began to see the limitations of these educational conferences at the school, but I still managed to gain enormously from it all and quietly assimilated the science of Marxism.
However, I wasn't the only one who could see the misuse of the Lenin School, because old Comrade Trotsky was well aware of it too. At one of the earlier Comintern plenums, Trotsky quoted Stalin as saying that "our weakest link is the trade unions ". Trotsky replied: "And where's your stongest link - the Hotel Deluxe, and the other places in Moscow where your students are. "
How right Trotsky was with that observation. That summed up, to my mind at least, what most other students made of their stay at the Lenin School.
In my room at the school were an American and two Canadians. The American was to go on to become a central leader of the CPUSA. And there they were lying in bed with volumes of Capital stuck on their chests while they were sound asleep. If they weren't in the Hotel Deluxe, they were to be found in bed.
These were the new leaders of the Communist parties. Their performance at the Lenin School not only reflected their lack of interest in Marxist theory, but also the calibre of leadership being cultivated by the Stalinist leadership of the Third International. p> While in Moscow I was able to attend many important meetings of the Comintern, including meetings of the executive committee of the Communist International. One that I recall in detail was the debate about the production of a daily paper by the British CP. Harry Pollitt was in Moscow for the meeting and presented a critical report on the proposal. He pointed out that they only had a few thousand members and would be unable to financially support a daily paper.
The Russian Comintern leader who had been pushing the project simply moved that such a paper be printed. "I cannot believe," he said, "that in the heart of the British empire we do not have a Bolshevik daily. "Pollitt said, all right, so be it. The British CP couldn't afford it, didn't feel they could properly use it, and simply didn't want it at that time. But the Comintern won out. p> A few months before I finished the course, the school called all the students together in our large auditorium. We were addressed by the woman comrade who ran the Lenin School. She announced in a loud and accusing manner:
We have just discovered that a faction has been formed of Zinoviev and Bukharin. We don't know how far it has gone, but it is permeating the ranks of the party. We are determined that it is going to be wiped out. p> I have received instructions that all students at the school have to be examined to see if they have any germs of this faction in them. It is what we call a party chistca, a party cleansing, which has been ordered throughout the Soviet Union.
This consisted of a presidium being placed in charge while students were put into a witness box then asked factual questions about their activity in the Communist Party. It was then left to members of the respective party to challenge or refute the statements of the "accused".
For the New Zealander and myself, there was no one else from our respective countries. The opportunism of the British and American students astounded me. You wouldn't credit how they could go at each other as they did. The Russians just laughed at all of this as they saw who were the most subservient. They were, however, more interested in the students from Poland, Lithuania, Finland and other countries bordering the Soviet Union. They were often in the stand for hours on en...
