Beyond conspiracy? The “artificial” communist party and Cold War historiography: A review of Walter Kendall’s The Revolutionary Movement in Britain
David Burke
Platypus Review 189 | September 2026
Walter Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain, 1900–21: The Origins of British Communism, eds. Paul Flewers and John McIlroy (Leiden: Brill, 2025) and (Chicago: Haymarket, 2026).[1]
“The police-tinged bourgeois mind naturally figures to itself the International Working Men’s Association as acting in the manner of a secret conspiracy, its central body ordering, from time to time, explosions in different countries.”
— Karl Marx, The Civil War in France (1871)[2]
IN THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN BRITAIN, Walter Kendall sets out to prove an a priori assumption that the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was an artificial creation that wrenched the whole course of the movement’s Left wing out of one direction and set it off on another. Kendall argues that the revolutionary movement in Britain would have possibly thrived if only the CPGB had not been created: “that the CPGB, while failing to achieve success itself, [was] yet . . . strong enough to stifle or divert into sterile channels forces which, if left to themselves, might have made a far more positive contribution” (5). Furthermore, it was not until the creation of the Communist International — the Third International (Comintern) — in March 1919, that those socialist groups seeking unity after the Russian Revolution of October 1917 fused together to form the CPGB under the watchful guidance of the Russian revolutionary state:
If the Communist International had not been backed by all the resources of a great nation state, if there had been no couriers, no instructors, no forced time scale for the fusion, no travel to Congresses in Moscow, and above all, no subsidies on a large scale, it is impossible to believe that a Communist Party of any importance could have been created. The CPGB thus became a stranger in its own country, an artificial creation which owed its existence, its form and its character, to the Communist International which had given it birth and had provided the sustenance which alone made its continued existence possible (467).
Kendall argues that Russian influence on the British labor movement, particularly financial, was critical to the formation of the CPGB. A number of key Comintern agents were apparently instrumental in the whole affair; most notably Theodore Rothstein, whom Kendall identifies as “the chief Bolshevik representative in Britain” (283):
There is no doubt that Rothstein’s role was an important one. Basil Thomson, former Special Branch Chief, writes in his memoirs that Rothstein was ‘the intermediary for subsidies to the revolutionary organisations and his secret activities were far reaching.’ Rothstein’s subventions on behalf of the Russians were certainly widespread; beneficiaries included the BSP, the SLP [Socialist Labour Party] and the Communist Unity Group, the Hands Off Russia Movement, the People’s Russian Information Bureau and the WSF [Workers Socialist Federation]. In addition he was a member of the Soviet Trade Delegation which after its arrival in May 1920 made ambitious preparations to subsidise The Daily Herald (372).
Rothstein, according to Kendall and his collaborators, was not the only Russian political émigré playing an outsized role in corrupting the revolutionary movement in Britain: “We shall illustrate the influence of the émigrés by reference to specific cases, provide evidence of the operations of the courier system and its uses, and deal in some detail with the activities of those Comintern agents about whose activities wehave been able to uncover specially valuable information” (369, emphasis added). And again: “the account will deal with the financial resources and subventions of the Comintern in some detail, since it is our contention that, without this backing to the Comintern’s political appeal, the successful foundation of the Communist Party of Great Britain would not have been assured” (363, emphasis added).
In the acknowledgements, Kendall clearly states that, “The responsibility for the views expressed, the conclusions drawn, is of course exclusively my own” (vii). Who then is the “we” mentioned? Jean Gaffin, Terence Murray, and Ronald Taylor are listed “for their assistance at various stages,” and we are informed that the second part of the book is, “in the main the text of [Kendall’s] B.Litt thesis” (vii). Part 2 was written first; Part 1 was written later in support of the conclusions already reached in Part 2.
Kendall’s thesis supervisor was Hugh Clegg, “a major player in Labour’s project to reform the unions in the 1960s.”[3] Kendall thanks him “for his insistence on terse statement and good order” (vii). He also acknowledges his debt to Zbigniew Brzeziński, who took an “interest in publication” (vii). That such influential opponents of Communism were on hand to encourage publication helped steer the book’s central Cold War message on the “artificial” nature of British Communism in a conspiratorial direction. Put simply, opinion should not have been allowed to take precedence over serious historical analysis and research. Kendall’s creation of the éminence grise,[4]Theodore Rothstein, to subvert the British revolutionary movement along Russian lines is almost a literary invention:
The evidence regarding Rothstein’s role deals the view that the CPGB was a purely British phenomenon a heavy blow. Rothstein was a Russian citizen. According to his From Chartism to Labourism: ‘Since 1920 he has been a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) as from 1900.’ Thus the leader of the BSP’s pro-Bolshevik wing, during the struggle to oust the Fairchild leadership and secure affiliation to the Comintern, [Fairchild opposed Sovietism. — DB] was a Russian citizen, a de facto member of the Russian Communist Party and, in the last months of the negotiations, [leading to the foundation of the CPGB — DB] actually an employee of the Soviet Government in London. The leader of British Communism in 1919 and the first eight months of 1920 was the man who became Soviet Minister in Persia during 1921–26 (380–81).
Given the nature and extent of Rothstein’s intervention his career needs to be described in more detail if we are to fully appreciate his contribution to British labor history. He did not merely show up after the October Revolution of 1917 as a wire-puller, as Kendall would like us to believe. By this time Rothstein had been in Britain 26 years, having arrived in 1891 following a tip-off that he was about to be arrested for membership in an underground reading circle Narodnaya Volia (People’s Will).[5] The People’s Will could not be described as Marxist, let alone Bolshevik. In fact, Rothstein was born into an unorthodox Jewish family in Kovno (now Kaunas), in Lithuania, and was introduced to Marxism in Britain under the guidance of Henry Hyndman’s Social Democratic Federation (SDF), which he joined in 1895. He spent the next 25 years working inside that organization and its successors, the Social-Democratic Party (SDP) and the British Socialist Party (BSP), becoming a leading theoretician on the British Left long before the BSP’s merger into the CPGB in 1920. This raises the question: can a foreign-born political émigré, effectively an asylum-seeker, contribute to the political life of their adopted country or are they always in thrall to the politics and demands of their country of birth?
Seen as the distributor of Moscow gold in the negotiations leading up to the formation of the CPGB, Rothstein is accused by Kendall of arresting the development of the native Left and forcing it along a course hostile to its own traditions. However, the major event that brought Rothstein to prominence in the SDF was not Russian gold but his controversy with Hyndman during the Second Boer War. On the eve of that conflict Hyndman, in an outburst of scarcely disguised antisemitism, shifted all responsibility for the conflict onto the shoulders of Jewish financiers: “Englishmen are dead against making war with the Transvaal Boers for the sake of such true-born Britons as Beit, Eckstein, Rothschild, Joel, Adler, Goldberg, Israel, Isaac, Solomon, and Co.”[6]
In an appeal for anti-war demonstrators to assemble in Trafalgar Square on July 9, the SDF’s Executive Committee did so in language which clearly betrayed an antisemitic bias: “There are plenty of common Englishmen left who are not the henchmen of Rhodes and haven’t pocketed the money of Beit, or Joel, or Rothschild. To them we Social-Democrats mean to appeal.”[7]
The editor of the SDF’s newspaper Justice, Harry Quelch, spoke in terms of a Jewish conspiracy: “that the gold international, the financial ring is dominated by Jews . . . the most virulent jingo organs in this and other countries are in their hands.”[8] Hyndman and Quelch took a jingoistic pride in the “honour” of the British Empire, which the dishonesty of the “Jew-millionaire” was threatening to destroy in South Africa. Rothstein castigated both men for scapegoating Jewish capital and absolving the capitalist class per se: “England is virtuous; the Cabinet is chaste; the capitalists are pure; it is only the Jew-millionaire who pollutes everything and deprives Britannia of her honour.”[9]
Rothstein organized an effective opposition against antisemitism in the SDF which Kendall acknowledged: “Protests followed from Rothstein and others in the party ranks” (54). What Kendall omits is that Rothstein was re-elected to the SDF’s Executive Committee at the head of the poll with 51 votes, one better than Quelch with 50 at the Annual Conference of the SDF in August 1901.[10] He also fails to mention that Hyndman, disappointed by Rothstein’s success, wrote to the American land developer and socialist Gaylord Wilshire, complaining that “a very able, enthusiastic and honest foreigner who does not fully understand the English language, or, of course, English affairs, has just been elected by the delegates at our Annual Conference at the head of the poll for the Executive Council of the SDF . . . a most absurd blunder.”[11] This is important, not only because it shows that Rothstein was a leading opponent of Hyndman from 1900 onwards, but also because it reveals a “nativism” from sections of the British Left that could not accept that an “able, enthusiastic and honest foreigner” could fully understand British conditions. This sentiment underpins Kendall’s thesis, that Russian influence (Rothstein’s in particular) distorted the British revolutionary movement over the period of 1900–21, in effect turning it inside out and switching “its line of march by 180 degrees . . . to send its members marching off in the opposite direction from before” (472).
When Kendall, to highlight Russian influence on British Communism, adumbrates that “‘Since 1920 he [Rothstein] has been a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) as from 1900,’” he neglects to tell us that Rothstein’s membership of the CPSU(B) had been backdated to 1900 to acknowledge his long fight against imperialism based upon the stand he took during the Boer War. This was before the formation of the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1903. Kendall himself noted that “The Boer War of 1899–1902 had made a profound impression on the leaders of the Social Democratic Federation. This was the first occasion on which the party found itself standing like a rock against a tide of wartime hysteria” (74).
In his chapter on “Nationalism and Chauvinism in the SDF,” Kendall shows that as international tensions mounted in the lead up to the First World War, tensions between the “nationalist” and “internationalist” wings of the BSP increased. The major challenge to Hyndman’s “nationalist” leadership came from the Central Hackney Branch of the BSP whose members held to an “internationalist” position. The leading members of the Central Hackney Branch were Rothstein, his sister-in-law Zelda Kahan and his brother-in-law Boris Kahan, E. C. Fairchild, H. W. Lee, and Albert Inkpin. Kendall mentions Fairchild in this capacity only to support his argument that Rothstein, armed with Moscow gold, engineered Fairchild’s “retiral” from the “internationalist” wing of the BSP in order to secure BSP affiliation to the Comintern (310).
Similarly, Kendall makes no mention of the leading role played by Rothstein in the campaign against militarism before the First World War. When discussing Robert Blatchford’s[12] Daily Mail articles “Germany and England”(December 13–23, 1909), Kendall chooses to ignore Rothstein’s well-received responses, “The German Menace.”[13] Furthermore, it should be pointed out that Kendall was fully aware of Rothstein’s leading role in the “internationalist” opposition. When discussing the Agadir Crisis of July 1911,[14] he comments on Rothstein’s support for W. P. Coates, the future husband of Zelda Kahan, following the latter’s attack on Hyndman during the crisis. Theodore Rothstein was more forthright: the “‘ethical considerations, with which you have been regaling us,’ he wrote, ‘are so much “bunkum” … What you cannot tolerate is the idea that anyone should presume to hunt in British preserves’” (87).
Before the October Revolution in 1917, Rothstein was an integral member of the British Left, a fact largely ignored in Part 1 of The Revolutionary Movement. When Kendall claims in Part 2 that Rothstein’s views were heard with increasing respect because he spoke “with the full authority of Moscow,” he is not only ignoring Rothstein’s role as an important figure in the early history of “internationalism” and the revolutionary movement in Britain, he is preparing the ground for Rothstein’s dramatic entry into the story as the bearer of “Moscow gold” and the “ideological leader of the pro-Comintern wing”:
The 1919 BSP conference proved a serious defeat for the Fairchild tendency. The delegates adopted a resolution which pledged the party to a Soviet-style revolution and decided to poll the membership on affiliation to the Third International. Fairchild later complained bitterly that the Soviet resolution which changed the course of events in the party had been drafted by someone who ‘was not even a member of the BSP.’ [By this time Rothstein had resigned his membership of the BSP. – DB] The executive, he alleged, were invertebrate and falling under outside influence. A study of the columns of The Call makes it plain that, in the debate with Fairchild, Rothstein was the ideological leader of the pro-Comintern wing. His article opens the debate. Another from his pen for all practical purposes closes it (380).
That Rothstein was the author of this draft resolution is highly likely, if not certain. He had resigned his membership of the BSP in December 1914 following a warning that as an “enemy alien” (despite being a Russian citizen) he was about to be interned. Hyndman had been going the rounds denouncing him as a pro-German.
To secure his position in British society Rothstein joined the News Department of the Foreign Office as a reader of the Austrian and German Press. There he met the Foreign Office official Rex Leeper before being transferred to MO7[15] at the War Office to begin working officially for British intelligence. Before the outbreak of war he had also been employed in an unofficial capacity by Ottoman intelligence since 1908; whether he broke off these contacts after Turkey’s entry into the war on October 29, 1914 is unknown.
While working for British intelligence, Rothstein continued to write for the BSP’s newspaper The Call under the pseudonym John Bryan. His first article appeared on April 20, 1916, and was written in support of the Zimmerwald Manifesto, calling upon the BSP to sever its ties with the International Socialist Bureau and “form a new ISB.”[16] Rothstein was calling for a new international long before the formation of the Comintern in March 1919.
Rothstein’s intelligence work for the Bolsheviks did not begin until 1918, and then in an unofficial capacity. He wasn’t a trained Cheka or Comintern agent as Kendall suggests. He was an intelligence freelancer with a long-standing reputation as a leading campaigner on the British Left. This is important, because Kendall’s characterization of Rothstein as the main Russian influencer on the British revolutionary movement shows him as dependent upon a professional Comintern intelligence network. In other words, he was in charge of “a powerful clandestine apparatus by which the instructions of the Russian-based centre were conveyed to the local units and made effective” (363).
In any case, given the civil war raging across Russia, just how well organized was the Comintern’s intelligence network? What difficulties did it encounter? How accurate is Kendall’s description of Russia between 1918 and 1920 as one of the most powerful European states? Kendall quotes dramatically and to great effect from a Daily Express article, dated May 21, 1920, to claim that Moscow gold presented Russia with an opportunity to take ownership of the British revolutionary movement. But Kendall’s use of this quotation demonstrates quite clearly that the “confidential agent” of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Cheka, was not, as yet, coordinating this network:
Headed ‘Sapphires for England and Pearls for France’, it told how an aircraft from Germany had made a forced landing in Latvia where, upon examination, its captors discovered a number of documents including three signed respectively, Clara Zetkin, E. Sylvia Pankhurst and James Gordon. According to the extracts published in the Daily Express: “The name of an Englishman, R … [Rothstein?] is mentioned as being in communication with the writer of the message and these words follow: ‘It was unknown to whom the money was handed over. I have been negotiating with Sylvia here. Have given her money. We want more English documents in writing from her, Litvinov gives no signs, neither couriers nor letters. It would be desirable to have Dzerzhinsky’s confidential agent here. There are great possibilities’” (376–77).
Rothstein was undoubtedly an intelligence agent of some prowess, but he wasn’t Dzerzhinsky’s “confidential agent.” It wasn’t until 1918 that he began to play a more important role in Soviet foreign affairs, owing partly to his diplomatic work with Maxim Litvinov.
In January 1918, unofficial diplomatic relations were established between Britain and Soviet Russia when it was agreed to send Bruce Lockhart to Moscow as head of a special mission. The Bolsheviks were to grant Lockhart the necessary diplomatic privileges, while the British government would not formally recognize them as the legitimate government; Litvinov was to be granted similar privileges in Britain.
Rothstein arranged the meeting between Litvinov and Lockhart, which took place at Joe Lyons coffee shop in the Strand, London. Kendall describes the scene, but curiously Rothstein is absent. This appears to be deliberate on Kendall’s part as he relies on Lockhart’s Memoirs of a British Agent (1932) for much of his information. Lockhart spoke very highly of Rothstein: “It was an amazing meal. Outside, the January sky was like lead, and the room, poorly lit at the best of times, was grey and sombre. Leeper and I were just thirty. Litvinoff was eleven years our senior. Rothstein was a year or two older than Litvinoff. Both men were Jews. Both had suffered persecution and imprisonment for their political convictions. Yet Litvinoff, whose real name was Wallach, was married to an Englishwoman. Rothstein had a son — a British subject — in the British Army.”[17]
After a nervous beginning it was Rothstein, whose diplomatic skills had been honed in the seemingly intractable internecine squabbles of British Marxists, who ensured that the “negotiations went smoothly”: “The success of that luncheon was made by Rothstein, who supplied to the conversation the necessary mixture of banter and seriousness which afterwards I was to find so useful in my negotiations with the Bolsheviks in Russia. Small, bearded with dark lively eyes, he was a kind of intellectual cricket, whose dialectical jumps were as bewildering to us as they were amusing to himself.”[18]
Here was the beginning of a quasi-official intelligence relationship between junior representatives of the British and Soviet governments, establishing a backchannel between Lenin in Moscow and Lloyd George in London. There was no room for Dzerzhinsky’s “confidential agent” here. The meal concluded on a humorous note: “As we were ordering a sweet, Litvinoff noticed on the menu the magic words: ‘pouding diplomate.’ The idea appealed to him. The new diplomatist would eat the diplomatic pudding. The Lyons ‘Nippy’ took his order and returned a minute later to say there was no more. Litvinoff shrugged his shoulders and smiled blandly. ‘Not recognised even by Lyons,’ he said.”[19]
Rothstein was undoubtedly an important presence in the negotiations that took place at Joe Lyons on January 11, 1918. Kendall, however, by excluding him from the proceedings, deliberately misleads us, relegating Rothstein to a purely Machiavellian role on behalf of the Comintern and excluding him from the backchannel now in place:
Until his departure in September 1918, the most important Russian émigré in Britain was Litvinov, resident in Britain since 1908. Married to a British wife, he was a well-informed observer of the British scene with wide contacts in the socialist movement. After the November Revolution Litvinov was made the official Soviet Representative in Britain. Following discussions, in January 1918 the British granted Litvinov semi-official status including the right to an unrestricted diplomatic courier service of the order normally only allowed to recognised Embassies. In exchange the Russians granted comparable privileges to Bruce Lockhart in Russia. Litvinov’s office was at 82 Victoria Street. On the floor below were the rooms used by Reginald Leeper and some of his colleagues in the Foreign Office Political Intelligence Department. Litvinov knew Leeper well since he had taught him Russian. Unofficial contact between British and Russian governments was maintained via the Leeper-Litvinov link (370).
Kendall’s portrayal of Rothstein as an éminence grise, acting conspiratorially in contrast to the suave diplomatic Litvinov, leads him to miss the subtle distinction between Rothstein’s unofficial role in the negotiations for communist unity as a British-educated socialist and his role as an unofficial Soviet agent pursuing Comintern tactics. These tactics were subsumed by the strategy of the Russian state’s foreign ministry, the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (Narkomindel) in pursuit of normalizing diplomatic relations.
In May 1918, Rothstein began writing in The Call under a second pseudonym, WAMM, the initials of Mozart. This was also the code name he used for cyphered telegraphic messages between Litvinov and Georgii Chicherin, the head of Narkomindel. Following an article by WAMM in The Call calling “for a break with the Second International and the creation of a new International of Revolutionary Socialists,”[20] a furious debate in the columns of The Call between WAMM and Fairchild led to the latter’s resignation as the paper’s editor. According to Andrew Rothstein, a founding member of the CPGB and son of Theodore, “Fairchild was . . . one of TR’s closest associates in the first months of the war, and up to well after the BSP Conference of Easter 1916. I don’t know whether they differed at the time of the October Revolution and the EC resolution [of the BSP] supporting it, at the end of 1917, but of course they did differ once the question of Communist unity came up. There could be no question of Fairchild not knowing the identity of John Bryan (and WAMM) by then!”[21]
That Rothstein was working as a semi-official Soviet agent at this time in the interests of the “new international” and Narkomindel is a reflection of his growing stature as an intelligence agent. After the meeting with Litvinov, Leeper, and Lockhart in the Strand, he was upgraded from an unofficial to a semi-official envoy and was no longer a freelance agent. His articles under the pseudonym of WAMM were in keeping with his pre-war internationalist outlook and the views he expressed when writing as John Bryan in 1916. Kendall misunderstood the dual nature of Soviet foreign policy and he didn’t identify WAMM as Rothstein. Lacking an appreciation of Rothstein’s role in both the British socialist movement and the fringes of the fledgling Soviet state’s diplomatic mission, Kendall falls prey to conspiracy theory: “Litvinov was arrested in the first week of September 1918, and subsequently deported. After Litvinov’s departure, Theodore Rothstein, a long standing member of the BSP, filled his place as Russian representative, only in this case clandestinely and without official status. Pankhurst tells us that Rothstein, a War Office employee, was at this time on loan to the Daily News as well as doubling as ‘confidential adviser to Lord Balfour on Russia’” (371–72).
There is no reliable evidence to support Pankhurst’s outlandish claim and Kendall does not offer any. What we do know is that by 1918, Rothstein was working in support of Lenin’s “dual policy” and would become a useful intermediary between the Comintern, Narkomindel, and junior British Foreign Office officials. Lenin’s tactic of playing the Comintern off against the Narkomindel meant that Comintern “confidential agents” did not have a free hand to create a CPGB in their own image. To state the obvious, British workers were quite capable of thinking for themselves; while Narkomindel, in seeking a normalization of diplomatic relations, restricted the Comintern’s room for maneuver. Lenin was pledging Soviet non-interference in British internal affairs in return for recognition and a formal trade agreement.
After the arrival in London of the Soviet Trade Delegation in May 1920, which “involved a form of de facto recognition,” as Kendall rightly observed, Litvinov wanted to protect Rothstein from deportation by attaching him to the Delegation: “Litvinov considered the role Rothstein was playing sufficiently important to cable Chicherin at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 22 July 1920: ‘Is Rothstein included in the Delegation for, if not, he can be arrested and deported?’” (366).
But by July 22, Rothstein was back in Moscow and was not in a position to play any further part in the negotiations to unite and found a communist party in Britain. Litvinov’s earlier decision to safeguard Rothstein had been taken against the backdrop of the Polish-Soviet War and the occupation of Kiev by Polish forces on May 8, 1920. At this stage it looked as if military defeat of the Bolsheviks was inevitable. For Lenin the formation of a communist party in Britain was necessary to put domestic pressure on the British government over its policy toward the war. On May 10, London dockers had refused to load a ship with ammunition bound for Danzig in what became known as the “Jolly George incident.” In August, Councils of Action, organized by sections of the British labor movement, were set up to enforce a general ban on the movement of munitions intended for Russia. 13 days after the Jolly George incident, Basil Thomson informed the Home Secretary, Herbert Samuel:
The agitation against the Polish offensive is undoubtedly spreading from the Labour Press to the Trade Union officials and is meeting with a positive response from the rank and file. It is not unlikely that the railwaymen will come into line with the dockers and refuse to handle material. . . . the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain has decided to exert pressure on the Government to “cease support of Polish intervention”. The officials of the National Union of Railwaymen have also resolved to instruct their members to refuse to handle any material which is intended to assist Poland. The congress of the National Union of General Workers indicated that its members would be similarly advised. . . . Members of the Russian Trading Delegation, except Krassin, who elected to be bound by an honourable undertaking, have all signed promises to abstain from interference in political questions in this country. Klishko, who is acting as Secretary, has already broken his undertaking. It is believed that Krassin himself may be trusted but there is definite evidence that Nogin and Rosovsky, to say nothing of the others, have agreed to get in touch with the Sinn Fein organisation if an opportunity occurs.[22]
The head of the Soviet delegation, Leonid Krasin, exploited the threat of labor unrest to obtain a trade agreement. The unions involved, however, were not acting as recipients of Moscow gold; nor were they preparing for revolution. The All-Russian Co-operative Society (Arcos), a private British company but under ultimate Russian control, was registered on the London Stock Exchange on June 11, 1920, establishing itself as a commercial channel for Anglo-Soviet trade. It quickly entered into negotiations with various firms and some contracts were signed for the eventual supply of goods. In June the talks faltered on the British demand that propaganda directed against the British Empire and the governments of the Entente should stop. Moscow, on the other hand, insisted on a comprehensive peace treaty before any agreement to end anti-British activities by communist sympathizers could be concluded. On June 16, Krasin confided in Lloyd George that Soviet foreign policy operated on two levels, dominated by two opposing groups — the one seeking trade and the normalization of relations, while the other, “a minority . . . preferred world revolution to world peace.”[23]
To maintain pressure on Lloyd George, the formation of a united communist party in Britain, affiliated to the Labour Party and shorn of its wilder revolutionary elements, had become an imperative. Lenin’s overall design to isolate this “minority” in his own party now began to inform Krasin’s negotiating strategy. A trade agreement with Britain would not merely undermine “Left Communism”[24] in Russia it would also help secure full diplomatic recognition and the protection of the Soviet State in the world system of states. A communist party in Britain would be in a position to exploit the parliamentary system in order to both promote communist ideals and guarantee the diplomatic status of Soviet Russia. A combative communist party concentrating solely on revolutionary propaganda and extra-parliamentary activity would have the opposite effect. At one last meeting on June 29, before his return to Russia on July 1, Krasin told Lloyd George that his government was ready to give up communist propaganda in Western countries in exchange for a trade agreement.[25]
Later in July, however, with Krasin back in Moscow, the situation changed dramatically. The Red Army went on the offensive and, after a series of decisive victories against the Polish Army operating in Ukraine, threatened to occupy Warsaw. At the Second Congress of the Comintern (July 19 – August 7, 1920), there were renewed calls for a European revolutionary war and for the Red Army to support an anticipated communist uprising in Germany. Although Lenin was less enthusiastic than many in his party, he saw in this situation an opportunity to put further pressure on Lloyd George. It was at this point that British intelligence intercepted a cypher message from Litvinov to Chicherin insisting that Rothstein be included in the new Trade Delegation on its return to London:
July 12th LITVINOFF to TCHITCHERIN (003314) “I am herewith transmitting extracts from cyphered messages received from MOTSART (i.e. ROTHSTEIN)”. Then follows the latter’s criticism of KRASIN’s negotiations which ends with:- “after having worked for 20 years in the Socialist movement and for 2 years as your (?unofficial receiver), having given up my literary work and connections, I now find myself with nothing to do. Ask Moscow to re-call me without fail”. LITVINOFF then adds “I insist that MOTSART be included in the new Delegation”.[26]
Litvinov’s persistence paid off, and a few days before Rothstein’s departure for Moscow, the latter was included in the Delegation. From July 12, 1920 onwards, Rothstein can be said to be acting in an official capacity for the Soviet Government; hitherto, his work can be regarded as freelance, unofficial, or semi-official. And yet Kendall insists that “in the last months of the negotiations,” leading to the foundation of the CPGB — Rothstein was “actually an employee of the Soviet Government in London” (381). The founding Congress of the CPGB took place eighteen days later on July 30. Rothstein, as Kendall has argued, may well have been pushing for communist unity since the foundation of the Comintern in March 1919, and he may well have been directing affairs before then. But in July 1920, when the final negotiations to form a communist party in Britain were underway, Rothstein complained to Litvinov that he had been left with nothing to do. If, as Kendall claims, he was the Comintern’s “confidential agent” setting traps for the revolutionary movement in Britain, his work at the time of his departure for Moscow was far from complete.
Rothstein returned to Soviet Russia in July 1920, apparently at his own request. He had asked to accompany Miliutin of the Soviet Trading Delegation, who was returning “to report on progress in the peace talks with Lloyd George . . .TR [Rothstein] specifically asked to be allowed to go, not having been back for 29 years. In fact there is a letter from Lenin which missed him, pressing him not to go, because the British Government might play some dirty trick on him!”[27] Lenin’s letter to Rothstein, dated July 15, 1920, reads: “I am not against your coming ‘to take a look’ at Russia, but I am afraid that to quit Britain is harmful for the work.”[28] Rothstein was not recalled to Moscow, as Kendall claims, “to give first-hand information on the British scene and the formation of the CPGB in particular” (381).
Given Kendall’s emphasis on Rothstein’s dominant role in the communist-unity negotiations, and his membership of the Trade Delegation, it does seem strange that Rothstein would want to visit Russia while those negotiations were in full swing. As soon as he was out of the country, the British government declared him persona non grata and took the necessary steps to deny him a re-entry visa. On August 16, the Trade Delegation’s diplomatic representative, Lev Kamenev, wired to Chicherin “to send ROTHSTEIN back immediately.”[29] He was obviously still needed. But in what capacity? In an official capacity to work with the Narkomindel and the Trade Delegation? Unlikely at this point: with the Polish crisis drawing to a close Rothstein’s official intelligence work was not urgent. A more conspiratorial role with the Comintern is also unlikely, since it was the diplomat Kamenev and not the Cheka agent Klishko who desired his return. He may even have been needed as a respected member of the British Left acceptable to a British working class capable of thinking for itself. Or Kamenev may have simply lacked the diplomatic skills to advance Soviet Russia’s interests and sorely missed Rothstein’s advice. Kendall does not enter into this sphere of enquiry. His thesis has all the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory. But on whose behalf?
Kendall thanks Brzeziński, the architect of the “Grand Failure of Communism” thesis in Cold War historiography, for his “interest in publication.” That he should take such an “interest” in Kendall’s book on the revolutionary movement in Britain is of great interest — the book was first published in 1969, one year after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and chimed with Brzeziński’s courting of East European opposition groups and governments. Brzeziński had met the Polish historian Adam Michnik, a future Solidarność[30] activist, in 1964; Kendall’s “major activity” from 1979, John McIlroy informs us, was in support of the Solidarność campaign for free trade unions in Poland “to exemplify his analysis of the USSR and its client states as aberrations of history.”[31] Admirable enough, maybe, but his work as a Cold War historian of the Left does more than merely stray into Brzeziński and Michnik territory. His history of the Comintern bears all the hallmarks of Marx’s “police-tinged bourgeois mind,” spreading confusion at best, “secret conspiracy” at worst. Should Brzeziński’s own strategic goals and domestic political agenda in 1969, the year Kendall’s book was published, be taken into consideration? Yes. According to the New York Times:
When he was appointed to the State Department’s Policy Planning Council in 1966, [Brzeziński] had already become an outspoken defender of United States engagement in the Vietnam conflict. In 1968, after riotous antiwar protests at Columbia and elsewhere, he wrote in The New Republic that students should not be allowed to “rally again under the same leadership,” meaning they should be tried and incarcerated. . . . “If that leadership cannot be physically liquidated, it can at least be expelled from the country.”[32]
Brzeziński’s “rigid hatred of the Soviet Union . . . stood to the right of many Republicans, including Mr. Kissinger and President Richard M. Nixon.” Under his guidance, “thwarting Soviet expansionism at any cost guided much of American foreign policy, for better or worse.”[33] Brzeziński’s “interest” in Kendall is in keeping with his overall design. By depicting the CPGB as an “artificial” creation of the Bolsheviks he not only denies to the British Left all agency, he denies them integrity. Rather than a CPGB affiliated to the Comintern resulting from the Left’s reaction to the collapse of the Second International, the barbarism of the First World War, and the impact of October 1917, we have coercion from “a Russian citizen,” Theodore Rothstein, “a de facto member of the Russian Communist Party and, in the last months of the negotiations, actually an employee of the Soviet Government in London!” (381). The fact that October 1917 was a watershed for Left-wing internationalism is entirely overlooked.
The reissue of Kendall’s book finds a Left battling a resurgent militarism once more and a technological revolution accelerating the private manufacture of munitions to bolster capitalism. A “new” internationalism is emerging in response to this; a study of the “old” that rejects conspiracy theory is long overdue. Publication of Kendall’s book is well-timed. |P
David Burke is the author of Russia and the British Left: From the 1848 Revolutions to the General Strike (2018) and books on Cold War intelligence including The Spy Who Came in from the Co-op (2008) and Agent Sonya, MI5 and the Kuczynski Network (2021). He is a member of the Stop the War Coalition.
[1] First published in 1969 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in London.
[2] Karl Marx, The Civil War in France (1871), in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker, second ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978), 651.
[3] John McIlroy, “The new left, the third camp, workers’ control and The Revolutionary Movement in Britain: the life and work of Walter Kendall,” Critique 52, nos. 2–3 (2024): 263–316, <https://doi.org/10.1080/03017605.2024.2364458>.
[4] [French] A powerful adviser or decision maker who operates secretly or unofficially; literally, gray eminence.
[5] A late-19th century Russian revolutionary organization that emerged from the broader Narodnik movement. It advocated the violent overthrow of Tsarist autocracy and is most associated with the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II.
[6] Justice (June 17, 1899).
[7] Justice (July 1, 1899).
[8] Justice (September 9, 1899).
[9] Ibid.
[10] Rothstein was a member of the SDF National Executive from 1901 to 06.
[11] The Challenge (September 11, 1901).
[12] Robert Blatchford (1851–1943) was an influential socialist journalist and the founder-editor of the popular newspaper The Clarion. While he played a central role in popularizing socialism through the civil-society-oriented Clarion movement and its various clubs, he became a controversial figure due to his support for British military policy.
[13] Justice (January 28 – April 15, 1911).
[14] Also known as the Second Moroccan Crisis; a brief crisis involving the deployment of significant French troops in Morocco in July 1911, to which the German government responded by sending the gunboat SMS Panther to the Moroccan port city Agadir. The crisis was resolved on November 4, 1911, with the French government taking Morocco as a protectorate, in exchange for ceding territories to German Cameroon from the French Congo.
[15] Later, MI7.
[16] David Burke, Russia and the British Left: From the 1848 Revolutions to the General Strike (London: I. B. Tauris, 2018), 102.
[17] R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent: Being an Account of the Author’s Early Life in Many Lands and of His Official Mission to Moscow in 1918 (London: Putnam, 1932), 202.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid., 204.
[20] Burke, Russia, 135.
[21] Andrew Rothstein, in correspondence with the author (November 10, 1980).
[22] Directorate of Intelligence, “Report on Revolutionary Organisations in the United Kingdom” (May 27, 1920), i, 1, 10, in National Archives (UK), CAB24/106/56, <https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D7735840>.
[23] “Summary of interview between the Prime Minister and M Krassin at 10 Downing St, by Fridtjof Nansen” (June 16, 1920), in National Archives, YLG/F/202/3/19, <https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/0a8c3edf-70ba-4db4-93b9-e67b3a0c59aa>.
[24] The decision to accept the German peace terms produced an open opposition to Lenin, led by Bukharin, which became known as “Left Communism.”
[25] “Summary of interview.”
[26] National Archives, KV2/1576/68, <https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11190923>, italics added.
[27] Andrew Rothstein, in correspondence with the author (August 13, 1981).
[28] V. I. Lenin to Theodore Rothstein (July 15, 1920), in Lenin Collected Works, vol. 44 (Moscow: Progress Publishers), 403, <https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/15.htm>.
[29] KV2/1576/68.
[30] Niezależny Samorządny Związek Zawodowy „Solidarność” (Independent Self-Governing Trade Union “Solidarity”), a Polish trade union founded in 1980; it became a social movement in the 80s.
[31] McIlroy, “The new left,” 284.
[32] Daniel Lewis, “Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter, Dies at 89,” New York Times (May 26, 2017).
[33] Ibid.
