The years 1928 to 1933, the subject of this study, were without question fateful for Germany and the German Communist Party, the KPD. Similarly beyond dispute is the central role of Stalin in determining the policies and the actions of the KPD. As his very choice of title indicates, the author Bert Hoppe is not about to overturn these broader orthodoxies, and yet he is able to deliver a much more nuanced understanding of the course of relations between the KPD and Stalin, an understanding that finds a place for other players and for a complex, dynamic web of interconnections. In short, the goal, indeed the achievement, in this investigation of the KPD and its Moscow links is to assert a level of complexity where earlier studies, both in western and East German historiography, had tended to assume a simple relationship of authority and fawning obedience.
The complexities of everyday, political relationships are traced meticulously with the aid of extensive research, drawing not only on extensive published material but also, crucially, on the holdings of the Russian State Archive for Social and Political History (RGASPI) in Moscow. Particularly useful is the voluminous correspondence, which extends far beyond Stalin and the KPD leader Ernst Thälmann to include other leading figures in the communist parties and the Comintern. The focus on this correspondence by no means diminishes the influence of Stalin on the KPD; if anything it confirms and strengthens it. Yet at the same time it points to some fundamental differences between Soviet and German communists, who had been socialized and who gathered their political experiences in starkly contrasting circumstances, and in doing so, it contributes substantially to a contextualization of the relationship so as to identify significant changes over time and to offer compelling revisions of existing interpretations of events.
A crucial dimension of this contextualization concerns the role of individuals and indeed of personalities within networks, especially as controlled by Stalin. In Hoppe's interpretation, differences that might appear to result from fundamental ideological or political cleavages, and indeed that may have been presented in those terms, in fact resulted in large part from differences of a personal-political nature. One example, concerning the leading KPD functionary Heinz Neumann, will suffice to illustrate the point. Publicly his fall from grace was connected to his pursuit of a discredited policy, one that contrasted to the favored, more radical course set by the Party leader Thälmann. Historians have tended to attribute Neumann's marginalization to the kind of conciliatory political strategy rejected by Stalin. In reality, as Hoppe shows, the elimination of Neumann as a leading figure within the KPD had more to do with the record of intrigues with which he had sought to unseat Thälmann, who enjoyed Stalin's full backing. Presented with this German rivalry, Stalin's instinct was to favor the man already firmly integrated into his network, whose loyalty was assured, indeed who was deeply indebted to Stalin himself.
Were this study to be merely a meticulous study of Stalinist intrigues, networks, and personality politics, it might be a disappointment. In recording the minutiae of party and interparty politics, both in Germany and the Soviet Union, however, Hoppe serves a larger purpose, namely one of seeking to understand how the Stalinist system as a whole functioned. For Hoppe Stalinism was characterized by these political networks of loyalty and indebtedness in their myriad variations. This explains why Thälmann maintained his preeminence in the KPD even after the corruption scandal of the so-called “Wittorf-Affair” in 1928—the starting point of the study—and it helps to make sense of Thälmann's uncritical obedience to the line set by Stalin from Moscow, even when from the perspective of Depression-ravaged Germany more effective policies might have been pursued to counter the growing Nazi threat.
In seeking to draw larger conclusions about the nature of Stalinism, Hoppe identifies interesting parallels with the other great, emerging dictator of the time. Adapting the characterization of the Nazi state adopted by Ian Kershaw, Hoppe identifies a system whose essential dynamic was a “working toward” the leader. From the provinces of the Soviet Union to Moscow, Berlin, and beyond, it was this fundamental motivation, stemming from the obligations inherent in Stalinist networks, that drove policy and practice. The miserable failure of the KPD in Germany in 1933 provides some evidence of the inherent weakness of the system. Ultimately it was ineffectual and destructive; moreover the personal networks could be readily sacrificed on the altar of Stalin's power and prestige. Presented with the opportunity to have the faithful and compliant Thälmann released from a Nazi jail after the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact in August 1939, Stalin decided the German was more use to him behind bars, where eventually, of course, he was to perish. Thälmann's rivals in the KPD, Neumann and Hermann Remmele, had already been “purged” in Moscow years earlier and under different circumstances. Yet in a sense, the murders of all three Germans were the products of this Stalinist system.
Devoting just under 400 pages to a brief period, this study is certainly thorough. Indeed, there is a case that the argument and its evidence might have been put more economically. Beyond the mass of detail, however, Hoppe's study does make a valuable contribution to an understanding of both a pivotal period of German history and of a system that, because of its deeply ingrained political culture, survived for as long as Stalin himself did.
