Jules Humbert-Droz

Jules-Frédéric Humbert-Droz (23 September 1891, La Chaux-de-Fonds – 16 October 1971) was a Swiss pastor, journalist, Socialist and Communist. A founding member of the Communist Party of Switzerland, he held high Comintern office through the 1920s and also acted as Comintern emissary to several west European countries. He was involved in the Right Opposition in 1928."Nachts kamen Stalins Häscher"
''Der Spiegel'' (October 16, 1978), p. 100. Note: The HTML file is an OCR scan of a bad photocopy and is full of typos. There is a link at the URL to a PDF version, but it's not much easier to read. Retrieved November 15, 2011 He rejoined the Swiss Socialist Party in the 1940s, serving as secretary from 1946 to 1965.

Early life

He was born in a working-class family of watchmakers with socialist beliefs. His grandfather was a member of the International Workingsmen's Association. Humbert joined the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland (Swiss Socialist Party) in 1911, at the age of twenty years. After studying Protestant theology in Neuchâtel, Paris and Berlin, he wrote a thesis about ''Socialism and christianism''. He became a pastor in 1914, and started writing in the socialist daily newspaper ''La Sentinelle'' soon after.

He married Eugénie (Jenny) Perret in 1916, who would accompany him throughout his political life, becoming known as Jenny Humbert-Droz.

Political life

Humbert-Droz opposed the First World War and refused to serve in the Swiss Army, for which he was imprisoned. He received another jail sentence for his participation the 1918 Swiss general strike. He supported the Bolshevik revolution, and travelled with Walther Bringolf to Russia to represent the left wing of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland. There, the two of them joined the Provisional International Bureau of the Kultintern. In 1921 at the third International Congress of the Comintern, Jules Humbert-Droz was elected secretary of the Communist International, on the proposal of Lenin himself. He became after 1920 an outstanding leader in the international communist movement, travelling all around the world to organize the national sections of the Comitern. He exerted some control over the French Communist party and called himself ''the eye of Moscow in Paris''. He eventually became the first director of the Latin Secretariat of the Comintern. He was an ally and friend of Nikolai Bukharin. After the Sixth Comintern Congress, Bukharin was politically isolated and only few people in the Moscow Apparatus stayed loyal to him, including Humbert-Droz, who was disgraced along with his ally. Their friendship later ended. He stated in his 1971 ''Mémoires'' that it was because, in his last encounter with Bukharin in 1929, the latter said he had sought to establish contact with Zinoviev and Kamenev in order to enlist their support in removing Stalin from the leadership, and that Bukharin also told him he was planning to use individual terror (assassination) against Stalin. Humbert-Droz writes that he replied to Bukharin by criticizing any rapprochement with Zinoviev and Kamenev, and argued that resorting to individual terror would destroy the Bolshevik leadership. He managed to re-enter the Executive Committee of the Communist International after self-criticizing and capitulating. In 1943, he was definitely expelled from the Swiss Communist Party. Aware of his worth and experience, the Swiss Socialist Party invited him to return to his original party, where he was party secretary until 1959, and then secretary of the Neuchâtel cantonal section of the party until 1965. He retired to La Chaux-de-Fonds, yet remained politically active. He militated against the atomic armament of Switzerland, and contributed to various journals. Toward the end of his life, he undertook the writing of his memoirs, published between 1969 and 1973.

Works

*''L’œil de Moscou à Paris, 1922-1924'' (1964)
*''L'origine de l'Internationale communiste : de Zimmerwald à Moscou'' (1968)
*Mémoires
::1, ''Mon évolution du tolstoïsme au communisme, 1891-1921'' (1969)
::2, ''De Lénine à Staline, dix ans au service de l'Internationale communiste, 1921-1931'' (1971)
::3, ''Dix ans de lutte antifasciste : 1931-1941'' (1972)
::4, ''Le couronnement d'une vie de combat : 1941-1971'' (1973)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Humbert-Droz, Jules
1891 births
1971 deaths
People from La Chaux-de-Fonds
Swiss Calvinist and Reformed ministers
Social Democratic Party of Switzerland politicians
Swiss communists
Swiss socialists
Swiss revolutionaries
Members of the National Council (Switzerland)
Red Orchestra (espionage)
Executive Committee of the Communist International
Swiss expatriates in the Soviet Union