Politburo decision. Set up an “International Fund to aid Left-wing, Workers’ Organizations”. Fund total, $16.5 million; Soviet contribution, $14 million, and sums to be contributed by fraternal socialist parties in Eastern Europe, pp 1-2.

Also contains the 8 January 1969 (Pb 111/163) decision, specifying how much political parties, organisations and movements are to receive from the new Fund, pp 3-4. [Russian: 8 January 1969, Pb 111-162] total 4 pp.

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[page one of four]

Workers of all Lands, Unite!

[Text in top left hand corner of page]

Must be returned within 24 hours
to CPSU Central Committee (General Department, sector 1)

COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION. CENTRAL COMMITTEE

No. Pb 111 / 162

To Comrade Ponomarev (all paragraphs)
Comrade Poskonov (paragraph 2)

STRICTLY SECRET
SPECIAL FILE

Excerpt from Minute No. 111
of the Central Committee Politburo meeting on 8 January 1969

A request from the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee

1. Adopt the proposal of the CPSU Central Committee International Department to set up an International Fund to Aid Left-wing Workers’ Organisations for 1969 to the value of 16,550,000 dollars and establish the contribution of the CPSU to the Fund as 14,000,000 dollars.
2. Instruct the board of the USSR State Bank (Comrade Poskonov) to provide Ponomarev, B.N., with 14,000,000 dollars for special purposes.
3. Instruct the CPSU Central Committee International Department to inform the leaders of the Communist Parties participating in the International Fund as to the expenditure of the Fund in 1968, and reach agreement with them that the Fund should amount to 16,550,000 dollars for 1969 with a contribution from each party of the following levels:

• from the Czechoslovak Communist Party – 500,000 dollars
• from the Rumanian Communist Party  – 500,000 dollars

——————————————————————-

[page two]

• from the Polish United Workers Party – 500,000 dollars
• from the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party – 500,000 dollars
• from the Bulgarian Communist Party – 350,000 dollars
• from the Socialist Unity Party of [East] Germany – 200,000 dollars

SECRETARY OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE

——————————————————————–

[page three]

Workers of all Lands, Unite!

[Text in top left hand corner of page]
Must be returned within 24 hours
to CPSU Central Committee (General Department, sector 1)

COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION. CENTRAL COMMITTEE

No. Pb 111 / 163

To Comrade Ponomarev (all paragraphs)
Comrade Poskonov (paragraph 2)

STRICTLY SECRET
SPECIAL FILE

Excerpt from Minute No. 111
of the Central Committee Politburo meeting, on 8 January 1969

A request from the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee

1. Provide financial aid in 1969 to:

• The Italian Communist Party (for first six months of 1969) – 3,700,000 dollars
• The French Communist Party – 2,000,000 dollars
• The US Communist Party – 1,000,000 dollars
• The Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity – 700,000 dollars
• The Chilean Communist Party – 350,000 dollars
• The Venezuelan Communist Party – 300,000 dollars
• The Indian Communist Party – 300,000 dollars
• The Brazilian Communist Party – 200,000 dollars
• The Greek Communist Party – 100,000 dollars
• The People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola – 100,000 dollars
• The Canadian Communist Party – 100,000 dollars
• The Syrian Communist Party – 100,000 dollars
• The Danish Communist Party – 100,000 dollars
• The Guatemalan Labour Party – 100,000 dollars
• The Dominican Communist Party – 100,000 dollars

———————————————————————

[page four]

• The Ecuador Communist Party – 100,000 dollars
• The Swiss Labour Party – 80,000 dollars
• The People’s Avantgarde of Costa Rica – 70,000 dollars
• The Somalian Democratic Union – 70,000 dollars
• The Salvador Communist Party – 70,000 dollars
• The Zimbabwe African People’s Union (S. Rhodesia) – 60,000 dollars
• The Portuguese Communist Party – 50,000 dollars
• The Venezuelan Party of National Union – 50,000 dollars
• The Uruguayan Communist Party – 50,000 dollars
• The Haiti Party of Nation Union – 40,000 dollars
• The Nicaraguan Socialist Party – 40,000 dollars
• The Bolivian Communist Party – 30,000 dollars
• The Finnish Communist Party – 30,000 dollars
• The Honduras Communist Party – 30,000 dollars
• The Lesotho Communist Party – 20,000 dollars
• The Iranian Communist Party – 20,000 dollars
• The Martinique Communist Party – 20,000 dollars
• The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique – 10,000 dollars
• The chairman of the Sri Lanka Communist Party, Comrade Vikremasithke – 6,000 dollars

Transfer of these funds is entrusted to the KGB (Comrade Andropov)

SECRETARY OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE

========================================

NOTES

[1] The British Communist Party (CPGB) is absent from this and a later list of the Fund’s disbursements (29 December 1980*, Pb 230/34). It reportedly received £100,000 a year from Moscow between 1957 and the mid-1970s (see Anderson & Davey, Moscow Gold? The Soviet Union and the British Left, Woodbridge, UK, 2013, p. 102 fn).

[2] At a later date, funds were transferred from the USSR to foreign CPs via other channels (see 18 January 1983, Pb 94/52). The parties also drew on other sources within the country: elected deputies, wealthy donors and membership subscription.

Oleg Gordievsky, KGB station chief in Copenhagen in the mid-1970s, comments that the one million kroner (US $100,000) he transferred to the Danish Communist Party represented 12% of its annual income (Instructions from the Centre, 1993 pbk, p. 241).

General

1. Notes by translator and editor are bracketed, thus [ ];
2. text written by hand is indicated in italic script;
3. when a handwritten phrase, figure or word has been inserted
in a previously typed document this is indicated by underlined italic script.

Translation, John Crowfoot