9. II. 1933

Dear comrade Stalin!

I’m sorry if I bother you in your glorious, great work with my little matters. I just want to say a few words to ask you for your help.

I have been working for a few months in Spain, defending the line of the Comintern and the VKP(b) and am aiming to correct my mistakes with all of my strength, mistakes that I fully admitted to before the Comintern. I have acknowledged the leadership of the IKKI and comrade Manuilskiy as satisfactory. In response to my statement I was promised that after some time of successful work here he will be posing before you the question of my return to party work in Germany.

Despite this and despite the fact that I am absolutely fulfilling my duties before the party, there starts — as a complete surprise for me — in all magazines instructed by comrade Knorin, an incredibly harsh campaign against me, qualifying me as a “disorganizer”, an “enemy of the party”, a “rotten opportunist” and demands that I be expelled from the Central Committee of the party. Comrade Knorin, who never seriously took up our actual political question, appears to want “my head” for some personal constellations and is trying to get me expelled by any means necessary. I am deeply convinced that these attempts by Knorin are not congruent with the opinion of the VKP leadership, which always found it possible for me to return to Germany to work, even if in the future.

Knorin even stands in the way of publications of my official statement with an acknowledgement of my mistakes and my full submission to Telman’s leadership. Never in the history of the VKP has any party member been denied that right — to publicly admit to his mistakes. Knorin further forbids the publishing of my articles to defend the lines of the K. I. and the German party, in particular one substantial article at the end of the capitalist stabilization, in which I try to popularize the establishment of the VKP leadership and which comrade Kuusinen found useful and correct.

They cannot send me as a Comintern representative to this country and simultaneously, without considering my work, brand me as an “enemy of the party”.

The latest events in Germany, the details of which I do not know yet, will affect me to once again pose a request to you to send me to work in Germany, especially in the current difficult situation. I feel that it is highly painful I it is difficult in such an environment to be absent from the struggle of our party and our workers. My only wish, dear comrade Stalin, is to receive the opportunity to complete even the smallest, most modest work, literary or other, in the German party. I have acknowledged and seriously corrected my mistakes and I am absolutely ready to work under the current leadership of Telman, if the Comintern finds it logical and possible.

In any case I believe that Knorin and his coworkers from the Central European secretariat have no right to bully communists who always defended and always will defend with the greatest enthusiasm the line and leadership of the VKP, not like any Stehns or Eismonts, or Smirnovs. Even Rykov and Tomskiy were not expelled from the Central Committee and even they were given the opportunity to publicly acknowledge — I don’t know how honestly — their mistakes, which were, after all, of a slightly “different” character than our nonsense.

I would at the very least ask to return me to Moscow for a conversation about these possibilities and a review of my future work.

I have taken on the courage to write to you, dear comrade Stalin, though I had no right to do so, because I know that you have often helped communist who have found themselves at dead ends in internal party matters and you have always given aid to comrades who, having made mistakes, have honestly wanted to get out of their situation. I could not write this to comrade Pyatnitskiy, whom I respect tremendously, because he is still too angered because of our old issues, and such proposals usually bring after them only new measures of a negative character from him.

With the best communist greeting

Yours — G. Neumann

P.S. So as not to lie, I have to admit to you that I have not changed my negative opinion on Telman, but I fully understand the harm and irresponsibility of my factional struggle against him and am prepared to submit to Telman’s leadership with the firmest discipline, seeing as he enjoys your trust.

2 di.