In transliterating from Russian and Bulgarian to English, we have used the modified Library of Congress system—hence, “Trotsky” and not “Trot-skii,” “Yugov” and not “Iugov.” For individual Russian and Bulgarian words and titles of books and journals, however, we used the Library of Congress system. Chinese names, with notable exceptions (Chiang Kai-shek) are rendered in the pinyin version. All native names in the languages that use the Roman script were spelled in the respective standard version. Hence, “Ernc) Gerc)” and not “Erno Gero.”
We have not attempted to duplicate every peculiarity of the original. Dimitrov’s punctuation, including ellipses, underlines (represented here as italics), and breaks between sections of text, is largely reproduced, but not every indent and line space. Nor, for the sake of convenience, have we tried to warn the reader where Dimitrov is using German, Russian, or Bulgarian. Dimitrov’s frequent and irregular abbreviations for the surnames of his colleagues are filled in. Common and recurring pseudonyms (“Er-coli” for Palmiro Togliatti, or “Walter” for Josip Broz Tito) are explained in brackets. The exceptions are pseudonyms that have acquired currency. Hence, “Moskvin” and not “Moskvin [Trilisser],” “Kang Sheng” and not “Kang Sheng [Zhang Shaoqing].” In a similar fashion, Dimitrov’s shorthand renderings of words and phrases, which can nearly always be reliably determined from the context, are simply filled in the brackets: “adv[iser]” or “part[isan].”
Common abbreviations for official bodies or bureaucracies (“CP” for “Communist Party,” “CC” for “Central Committee,” “PB” for Politburo, and so on) are standardized throughout the text and explained ini-
Tially in brackets. Such acronyms also appear in the list of abbreviations in the front matter to the book. For references to foreign Communist parties, Dimitrov’s standard usage is usually preserved: “American CP,” “CP of Germany,” “Yugoslav CP,” “CP of Finland,” and so forth, without regard to the original English, German, Croatian, Serbian, or Finnish renderings.
Unfamiliar and cumbersome Russian acronyms (such as “Narkomin-del” or “Narkomvneshtorg,” for the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs and the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade, respectively) are given in full English translation whenever they occur. The same pattern is followed for the title “narkom,” which is given simply as “people’s commissar”; however, better-known acronyms or abbreviations (such as that for the dreaded NKVD) are given in their familiar form. Try as we might, it proved impossible to find dates of birth or death for some of the vast cast of characters in this book. Like human lives, diaries, even when edited, can seldom be brought to perfection.
World History
