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Tito's Plot Against Europe: The Story of the Rajk Conspiracy in Hungary
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127 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1950
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February 8, 2026
Written as a summary of the Rajk trials in Hungary, this book shows with remarkable detail that the conspiracies of the imperialist powers against the socialist camp did not end with the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites. Far from it, having found a new renegade in the make of Trotsky, Tito, the imperialist powers leveraged Tito and his clique as the lynchpin of a new plot to sabotage the construction of socialism in the newly-established People’s Democracies and against the Soviet Union itself.
Other great works directed against Titoism certainly exist, such as James Klugmann’s From Trotsky to Tito, not to mention the wealth of articles from Pravda and the press of the Cominform. But where these works often focused more heavily on the ideological content of Titoism, from its domestic policies in Yugoslavia proper to its rehashed Trotskyite attacks on the Soviet Union, Kartun in this book concerns himself principally with the role of the Titoites as the centre of imperialist espionage activity in the socialist camp, using the case of the Rajk traitors as an example (although many other such cases, such as the gangs of Kostov in Bulgaria and Slansky in Czechoslovakia).
Beginning with a political sketch of the characters of this plot, and their early political careers, Kartun explains how it was possible for people like Rajk, Palffy, etc. to fall into the employ of enemies of socialism and, all the more interesting is the author’s analysis of the political careers of Tito and his henchmen, with details about their wartime struggle against the actual Marxist-Leninist elements in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, attempts to reconcile with the Germans, and how Tito’s “communists” came to be well-regarded by the British and American imperialists when they left the Communist-led resistance in France on their own until the eve of D-Day and even went so far as to begin killing Greek Communist partisans during WWII.
In the first place, this book is a great summary of the Rajk conspiracy against the Hungarian People’s Republic, with details about all the leading personalities taken from plenty of secondary, even anti-communist, sources, making this book a great contribution to the history of covert bourgeois plots against the Communist movement alongside such works as Sayers and Kahn’s The Great Conspiracy Against Soviet Russia among other examples. But a more timely relevance for this book is found in its portraits of the characters of this plot. No small amount of effort is spent describing how it was possible for men like Tito and Rajk to turn traitor (if they were ever, in fact, honest Communists in the first place), tracing their treachery to their class origin, an inclination toward cosmopolitan adventure, a desire to live lives not unlike that of Sidney Riley and similar persons.
By offering a detailed analysis of the class origin, mindset, and in-depth of activities of these traitors, a sketch is given that has been seen a hundred times before in history, a fact which the author points out at the end of the book. In Danton, the stool-pigeons who surrounded the Chartist movement in Britain, Malinovsky in Russia, Trotsky, and many others, one finds that the traitors who offer their services to the forces of counter-revolution often have much in common, being cut from the same cloth. As such, this book offers a great contribution in how to identify these spies and agent provocateurs, with details in how they speak, conduct themselves, how they are recruited, and their social background. Thus, this book is a great resource in operational security for Communists giving it an immense value beyond its historic content.
Other great works directed against Titoism certainly exist, such as James Klugmann’s From Trotsky to Tito, not to mention the wealth of articles from Pravda and the press of the Cominform. But where these works often focused more heavily on the ideological content of Titoism, from its domestic policies in Yugoslavia proper to its rehashed Trotskyite attacks on the Soviet Union, Kartun in this book concerns himself principally with the role of the Titoites as the centre of imperialist espionage activity in the socialist camp, using the case of the Rajk traitors as an example (although many other such cases, such as the gangs of Kostov in Bulgaria and Slansky in Czechoslovakia).
Beginning with a political sketch of the characters of this plot, and their early political careers, Kartun explains how it was possible for people like Rajk, Palffy, etc. to fall into the employ of enemies of socialism and, all the more interesting is the author’s analysis of the political careers of Tito and his henchmen, with details about their wartime struggle against the actual Marxist-Leninist elements in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, attempts to reconcile with the Germans, and how Tito’s “communists” came to be well-regarded by the British and American imperialists when they left the Communist-led resistance in France on their own until the eve of D-Day and even went so far as to begin killing Greek Communist partisans during WWII.
In the first place, this book is a great summary of the Rajk conspiracy against the Hungarian People’s Republic, with details about all the leading personalities taken from plenty of secondary, even anti-communist, sources, making this book a great contribution to the history of covert bourgeois plots against the Communist movement alongside such works as Sayers and Kahn’s The Great Conspiracy Against Soviet Russia among other examples. But a more timely relevance for this book is found in its portraits of the characters of this plot. No small amount of effort is spent describing how it was possible for men like Tito and Rajk to turn traitor (if they were ever, in fact, honest Communists in the first place), tracing their treachery to their class origin, an inclination toward cosmopolitan adventure, a desire to live lives not unlike that of Sidney Riley and similar persons.
By offering a detailed analysis of the class origin, mindset, and in-depth of activities of these traitors, a sketch is given that has been seen a hundred times before in history, a fact which the author points out at the end of the book. In Danton, the stool-pigeons who surrounded the Chartist movement in Britain, Malinovsky in Russia, Trotsky, and many others, one finds that the traitors who offer their services to the forces of counter-revolution often have much in common, being cut from the same cloth. As such, this book offers a great contribution in how to identify these spies and agent provocateurs, with details in how they speak, conduct themselves, how they are recruited, and their social background. Thus, this book is a great resource in operational security for Communists giving it an immense value beyond its historic content.
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