Special Work

A term used in the records of the Comintern and the American Communist Party (CP USA) to describe confidential, “conspiratorial” ¹ work – and an apparatus varying in scope and intensity depending on Comintern instructions and local circumstances. The concept goes back to Russian Bolshevik Party practice in the early 20th century, when, recognizing the need to set up a “legal ² party” as their chief task, the Bolsheviks simultaneously emphasized the need to establish a base for underground ³ work, in case the party should be forced to go underground. The first Comintern instructions to the CP USA to begin creating such a base are dated January 1923. ⁴  However, according to Comintern and CP USA records, the CP USA was slow and ineffective in carrying out this and subsequent directives.

In early 1933, following Hitler’s accession to power in Germany, the Comintern instructed all Communist parties to “prepare to go underground.” Initially, the American Party’s efforts were limited to introducing a small “group system,” which provided for the existence of both open and secret party units. ⁵ By November 1934, each CP USA district had established a “special apparatus” for sending confidential communications ⁶, and by early 1935 this CP USA special apparatus appeared to be in place. ⁷ This was confirmed by an early 1939 “Brief Report on Conspiratorial Apparatus C.P. U.S.A.,” written in Moscow by one Raymond Baker, who had been head of the CP USA special apparatus since 1938. Among the functions of this apparatus, the report listed organizing “the system of communications” between the Party Central Committee and Party organizations in the states; the “safeguarding of vital documents of the Central Committee;” the first use of “radio communications, simple reproducing machines, electrical instruments for tracing enemies” – and “arranging for special income for this work.” ⁸