The terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001, and the war on global terrorism and its network reminded the world of the danger to civilization of worldwide criminal enterprises. Since 2022 Ukraine has been fighting for its freedom and independence after having been attacked by imperial Russia. The term European Civil War has been used to describe the entire period from 1917 to 1945. A similar term, Planetary Civil War, can be used for the First Cold War and the Second Cold War that started in 2001 and has intensified since 2014 when Russia occupied Ukrainian Crimea. The purpose of these notes is to present some introductory material on the ongoing international warfare since 1917. The training for worldwide revolutionary war started at Soviet Russian political warfare academies shortly after the Bolshevik revolution. During the 1990s in a similar way, terrorists have been undergoing training for terrorism in Russia and Iran. Thousands of terrorists graduated from terrorist schools and have been active in around 60 countries worldwide.
Soviet Russia has organized and supported revolutionary war worldwide since after the revolution in 1917 and since the early 1920s especially targeting Asia
V.I. Lenin, one of the keenest criminal political minds in world history, early claimed that the imperative was to train professional revolutionists and they had, according to him, to be trained for years. Lenin meant what he said and during the existence of the Soviet regime over 100,000 dedicated communists were trained in Soviet Russian or satellite political warfare academies. The trainees later made careers in local communist parties and home countries often to become powerful politicians to influence world political events. This article will deal with only one leading Soviet Russian political warfare academy.
Before 1917 Lenin established three political warfare training centres in Western Europe – one on the Island of Capri outside Naples in Italy, one at Bologna in Italy and the third in a suburb of Paris. 1) The trainees of these schools later played an important role in undermining and weakening the non-Bolshevik Russian government.
When in power the communists in Soviet Russia started to establish several top training academies in Moscow. They were often called ”universities” but these had nothing to do with the Western concept of university (the academic training of young people).
Below is a short overview of the main Soviet Russian so-called academy for communist political warfare. It is based on open sources including declassified material from archives of the FBI. The Soviet Russian schools must in retrospect, be seen as having been successful with many trainees rising to very important positions inside and outside the empire.
It is unclear when the International Lenin School was closed but political and civil warfare training continued up until the collapse of Soviet Russia.
Lenin Academy, Moscow
The most common name for the school in the West is the ILS but it has also been described as university, academy, institute and college. Underneath is an excerpt from the testimony of Professor S. Possony at a Congressional hearing during the First Cold War:
“When Michael V. Frunze became Commissar of War in 1924 he started preparing to establish a system of advanced training academies for foreign communists to make them professional revolutionaries. In 1925 the Hungarian Bela Kun, chief of the Comintern’s agit-prop Department announced plans for a new Comintern school and the Lenin School was established in May 1926. By 1959 the school had processed 120,000 pupils. The first graduating class was in 1928. ….students came from many countries and were given an unusually intensive three-year course designed to train them in all the arts of a total power struggle. Guerrilla warfare, armed uprising, agitation and propaganda, legal and illegal methods, as well as advanced indoctrination in Marxism-Leninim, were all in the curriculum.” 2)
Teachers included Soviet leaders Stalin, Manuilsky, Bukharin, Molotov, Kuusinen, and Trotsky before he had to escape from Soviet Russia (see below). The school had two courses: the full course ran for three years and there was a short course of one year.
One of the most extensive FBI reports on ILS is a synopsis of facts stated:
“Informants report Lenin School (LS) was founded in 1926 in Moscow, Russia to train Communist leaders from other countries both politically and practically. Other schools, such as Far Eastern University, were also in progress in Russia simultaneously with LS. The branch of LS is believed to have operated in Sweden. Students for LS were selected by CPUSA. The quota for each country was assigned by Communist International. Those who were considered to be leadership material were selected. Travel to the school was paid by the CP and students received a subsistence for themselves and their families while at school. Some informants state they were instructed to protect their identity while travelling. Students at LS transferred CP membership from their country of origin to CP of Russia. At school, students were interviewed and indoctrinated concerning security. Most students assumed aliases at school. LS term was from 1 to 3 years. Classes were held in various languages simultaneously. Instructors at LS were chiefly from Russia. Courses covered Marxist philosophy and economics, the history of the CP movement, and trade union work. Students received instructions in military training, firearms and illegal work. Some informants reported receiving instructions in espionage and sabotage. After completing a course at school, students toured Russia. Some were assigned to departments of CP of Russia. Others returned to their country of origin to assume leadership roles. Some students were utilized as couriers during and after the school year.” 3)
After the Soviet collapse, it has been confirmed that the Soviets regarded ILS as very secret:
“Much of what went on at the ILS was secret. In 1930, William Weinstone, the CPUSA’s representative to the Comintern, rebuked the CPUSA’s Secretariat for publishing an article about the school. Weinstone told his comrades that the article ‘has aroused the School Administration and the students because there must be absolutely no publicity given about the school or any of its activities…nothing like this must be repeated.” He also reminded the party not to send material to the students using an ILS address.” 4)
Some of the more prominent pupils of the Lenin School were:
Chou En-lai, China
Harry Pollit, Great Britain
Sanzo Nosaka, Japan
Ernst Thaelmann, Germany
Maurice Thorez, France
L.L. Sharkey, Australia
Joseph Z. Kornfeder, Czechoslovak-American communist defector
Bertil Haggman
Notes:
- 1959 Hearings on the Freedom Academy Bill, p. 81.
- Hearings on the Freedom Academy Bill 1964, p. 1194.
- FBI Report, August 2 1954 made at New York City. Title: The Lenin School. 71 pages.
- H.Klehr, J.E. Haynes, F.I. Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996, p. 202.
