Eugen Fried was a Czechoslovak communist who played a leading role in the French Communist Party in the 1930s and early 1940s as the representative of the Communist International.
26 Facts About Eugen Fried
1.
2.
Eugen Fried ensured that the party leaders were loyal to Joseph Stalin and followed the instructions of Moscow.
3.
Eugen Fried was ruthless but discreet, and stayed out of the public eye.
4.
Eugen Fried was born on 13 March 1900 in Trnava, in what is eastern Slovakia, to a family of Jewish small traders.
5.
Eugen Fried was a gifted student, and graduated from secondary school in 1917.
6.
Eugen Fried started to study chemistry at the University of Budapest but was unable to graduate due to the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918.
7.
Eugen Fried joined the Bolsheviks and from March to July 1919 participated in the revolution of Bela Kun that established the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
8.
Eugen Fried was assigned to Kosice, capital of eastern Slovakia, where he was an activist until 1924.
9.
Eugen Fried was arrested some time after returning and sentenced to thirty months in prison.
10.
Eugen Fried was a cultured and well-read man with wide interests who spoke several languages.
11.
Eugen Fried had become a professional revolutionary and an admirer of Stalin.
12.
Dmitry Manuilsky, one of Stalin's representatives in the Comintern, noticed Eugen Fried and gave him increasingly responsible tasks.
13.
Eugen Fried left his wife in 1929 when Dmitry Manuilsky called him to join the Comintern in Moscow.
14.
Eugen Fried was accused of leftism by the Comintern in December 1929 but was restored to favor after writing a self-criticism.
15.
Eugen Fried was appointed Comintern "referent", responsible for overseeing the French Communist Party, at the end of 1930.
16.
From 1931 to 1942 Eugen Fried played a leading role in the PCF.
17.
Eugen Fried's instructions were to eliminate the social-democratic and anarcho-syndicalist elements, and prevent the Trotskyists from gaining influence.
18.
Eugen Fried was to resolve rivalry, eliminate unsound elements and install men loyal to Moscow at the head of the party.
19.
Eugen Fried removed Henri Barbe and Pierre Celor and advanced Maurice Thorez, Jacques Duclos, Benoit Frachon and Andre Marty.
20.
Thorez and Eugen Fried both attended the Anti-Fascist Workers' Congress and the 7th World Congress of the Comintern, but Thorez was the public face of the party.
21.
In 1934 Eugen Fried removed Jacques Doriot, whom the Soviet Union thought had been too hasty in denouncing the growing Nazi threat in Germany.
22.
Eugen Fried arranged for Thorez to escape to the Soviet Union via Belgium.
23.
Eugen Fried established himself in Brussels and continued to direct the PCF from there.
24.
In Brussels Eugen Fried created a clandestine Comintern base for all of Western Europe, in contact with Moscow through radio-telegraph and in control of the clandestine PCF.
25.
That day Eugen Fried received a detailed directive from Comintern leader Georgi Dimitrov and Thorez on what could be done to resist the German occupying forces.
26.
Eugen Fried was assassinated in Brussels by unknown assailants on 17 August 1943.