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The organization called the Communist International, or Comintern, split from the Socialist International in 1919. Dominated by high-ranking members of the Russian Communist party, the Comintern initially set the goals of a worldwide proletarian revolution and the formation of an international Soviet republic, but it made subsequent decisions contradicting these aims.
The foundation of the Communist International, or Comintern (sometimes spelled Komintern), was officially proclaimed on 6 March 1919, at the Bolshoi Theater, Moscow, as the conclusion of debates at the First Congress of activists who refused the compromise position of the Socialist International controlled by reformist Social Democrats. Fifty-two delegates (thirty-four with a vote), predominantly from central and eastern Europe, and nominally from Asia and America, decided to create a Third International after what they denounced as the failure of the previous two Socialist Internationals, dominated by Social Democrats who had supported their respective countries during World War I.
The delegation of the host country included the highest-ranking members of the Russian Communist Party: Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), Joseph Stalin (1879–1953), Georgi Chicherin (1872–1936), Grigory Zinovyev (1883– 1936), and Nicolay Bukharin (1888–1938), the latter two becoming the first two chairmen of the new organization. Owing to the extreme difficulty of travel because Bolshevik Russia was under attack by Western powers, other countries with a strong tradition of working-class militancy had only token representation. Thus Russians easily dominated The Congress from the start. The agenda is probably best summed up by the concluding words of Lenin’s inaugural speech: “The victory of the proletarian revolution on a world scale is assured. The founding of an international Soviet republic is on the way,” (The Communist International 2004) but there was a fundamental ambiguity in the notion of an “international Soviet republic,” because it could easily be interpreted as a republic subservient to Soviet Russian interests—an accusation that always plagued the Comintern.
The proceedings of the Second Congress (1920) led to the subsequent split in the world left between Communists—who adhered to the Comintern and its objectives—and Socialists, or Social Democrats, who rejected them. Many well-wishers from the Socialist ranks attended, but Zinovyev presented a list of twenty-one conditions to which adherents had to subscribe—many of them unacceptable to people who otherwise supported the Russian Revolution. All were asked to adopt the standard name, “Communist Party,” and to accept Comintern decisions as binding, but the acid test was the adoption of “democratic centralism” as the governing principle of the Party in each country. In combination with the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” this mode of functioning was found incompatible with fundamental freedoms by many existing left-wing organizations, who therefore declined to join the Communist International.
In a climate of extreme domestic and international bitterness, almost every developed or colonized country of the world then saw the creation of a Communist Party, side by side with the existing Socialist party or parties, whatever their names. The ideal of world revolution obtained by civil or foreign war, which was sustained by the continued agitation and/or military operations in Germany, Poland, and the debris of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, did not really abate until the final defeat of the German Communists in October 1923. The fiery anti-bourgeois language of Comintern affiliates fueled both the revolutionary enthusiasm of its adherents and the fears of established governments, including those with moderate left-wing majorities.
But then the Comintern instigated the first of the about-faces for which it became so notorious. At the Third Congress (1921), Lenin acknowledged that world revolution had not resulted from the “Imperialists’ War” (World War I) and that the Revolution could only be consolidated in Russia if the economy was modernized, notably with imports from capitalist countries. During the Fourth Congress (1922), Trotsky delivered an enthusiastic speech in favor of Russia’s New Economic Policy, but the rift was becoming evident between the continued supporters of world revolution (Trotsky and Zinovyev) and the advocates of “Socialism in one country,” led by Stalin and Bukharin after Lenin’s death in January 1924.
This was more than a personal quarrel, as the issue at stake was the orientation of the world Communist movement. In the end, Stalin’s views prevailed and in 1926 Bukharin (who was himself eliminated in 1929) replaced Zinovyev at the head of the Comintern, which became a mere instrument in Stalin’s hands in the furtherance of Soviet—some would say Russian—interests. This is the period when Socialists were described as “Social Fascists” in Communist publications and speeches all over the world. Hitler’s ascent to power in January 1933 and fears of German aggression led to another radical about-face, with the Communist International now clamoring for a “united front against Fascism,” commonly called the Popular Front, by all progressive forces. In 1935, the Seventh (and last) Congress of the Comintern, now headed by the Bulgarian Giorgi Dimitrov, gave its official sanction to this priority, which relegated world proletarian revolution—the initial purpose of the Third International—to a distant future. The final ideological blow came with the Nazi–Soviet Pact of August 1939, which technically made Communists worldwide the allies of Hitler, but the final dissolution of the Comintern came only on 22 May 1943, as a friendly gesture toward the Western allies of the Soviet Union in the “Great Patriotic War.”
Bibliography:
- Aron, R. (1962). World communism: A history of the Communist International (introduction). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
- Borkenau, F. (1938). The Communist International. London: Faber and Faber.
- The Communist International, 1919–1943. (2004). Retrieved October 20, 2016, from https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/
- Lazic, B. M., & Drachkovitch, M. M. (1986). Biographical dictionary of the Comintern. Hoover Institution Publications, 121. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
- McDermott, K., & Agnew, J. (1996). The Comintern: The history of international Communism from Lenin to Stalin. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
- Rees, T., & Thorpe, A. (Eds.). (1998). International Communism and the Communist International, 1919–1943. New York: Manchester University Press.
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