Otdel meschdunarodnych svyazei

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The Otdel meschdunarodnych swjasei (OMS, Russian Отдел международных связей Коминтерна , German  Department for International Relations ) was a department of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (EKKI).

The department's task was to maintain secret service contacts between the EKKI and communist parties outside the Soviet Union . When it was founded in 1921, the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs , which in the first few years had partially promoted the secret correspondence of the Comintern , was to be relieved. The OMS was responsible for the transport of instructions, literature, funds, goods and people between the Moscow Comintern headquarters and the individual communist parties. She was also responsible for radio communications and encrypted telegram correspondence, as well as for the arrival and departure of students at the International Lenin School , the Comintern's cadre training facility. The OMS also organized its own special courses.

In addition to the headquarters in Moscow, the OMS had residences at different times in Vienna , Amsterdam , Stockholm , Vardø , Varna , Oslo , Stettin , Riga , Berlin , Paris , Prague , Brussels , Shanghai , Istanbul , as well as in several locations in southern France , Yugoslavia , Mexico and Chile ; in addition, bases in several Soviet border and port cities. The Berlin base was particularly important for international contacts and resided at Wilhelmstrasse 131-132 in the premises of the KPD- near Führer Verlag.

The first head of the OMS was the old Bolshevik Ossip Pyatnitzki . He was followed in 1926 by Alexander Lasarewitsch Abramow-Mirow , who had previously headed the OMS base in Berlin. However, Pyatnitzki continued to play a leading role in the work of the OMS. Another important functionary of the OMS was the former deputy GPU chairman Michail Trilisser , who was transferred to the Comintern in 1924. The Swiss Berta Zimmermann was the head of the OMS courier department .

In the course of the reorganization of the EKKI after the 7th World Congress of the Comintern in 1935, the OMS was transformed into the "Liaison Service of the EKKI" (Russian: Служба связей , Sluschba swjazej, abbr. SS). In 1937, a significant part of their staff fell victim to the Stalin terror , including Pyatnitzki, Trilisser and Abramow-Mirow. After the evacuation of the EKKI from Moscow as a result of the German advance in 1941, the OMS / SS was reorganized as the "First Department of the EKKI". After the dissolution of the Comintern , the personnel and infrastructure of this department were finally transferred to the NKVD and the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU .

literature

  • Bernhard H. Bayerlein: The new Babylon. Structures and networks of the Communist International and their classification. In: Yearbook for Historical Research into Communism , 2004, pp. 181–270.
  • Julia Köstenberger: The cadre school of Stalinism. The International Lenin School in Moscow (1926-1938) and the Austrian Lenin students , LIT Verlag, Vienna, 2016. ISBN 978-3-643-50666-5 .
  • Branko Lazitch: La formation de la Section des liaisons internationales du Comintern (OMS) 1921–1923. In: Communisme, 1983, 4, pp. 65-80.
  • Hermann Weber , Jakov Drabkin, Bernhard H. Bayerlein (eds.): Germany, Russia, Comintern. Vol. 2: Documents (1918-1943) . De Gruyter, Berlin 2015. ISBN 978-3-11-033978-9 . ( Online edition )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Weber et al. a., Germany, Russia, Comintern, vol. 2, p. 152.
  2. ↑ Ibid., P. 287
  3. ↑ Köstenberger, Kaderschmiede des Stalinismus , pp. 41–42.
  4. ↑ Bayerlein, Das neue Babylon , p. 210.
  5. ↑ Thomas L. Sakmyster: Red Conspirator: J. Peters and the American Communist Underground
  6. ↑ Bayerlein, Das neue Babylon , p. 208