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Comintern)
The first edition of
Communist International, journal of the COMINTERN published in
Moscow and Petrograd (now
Saint Petersburg) in May 1919. The slogan at the top says "proletarians of all countries, unite!"
The COMINTERN (from Communist International), also known as the Third International, was an international Communist organization founded in March 1919 by Lenin and the Russian Communist Party (bolshevik), which intended to fight "by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State." The COMINTERN represented a split from the Second International in response to its support of the First World War.
The COMINTERN held seven World Congresses, the first in March 1919 and the last in 1935, until it was dissolved in 1943. Left Communists today recognise only the first two congresses, and groups coming out of the Bolshevik Leninist or Trotskyist movement recognise the decisions of the first four only. Communist Parties of the Stalinist or Maoist persuasion, however, recognize all seven congresses.
Before the COMINTERN was formally established, Lenin had already written of his extreme disgust with the way in which many European Social-Democrats had failed to oppose World War I, and was particularly critical of individuals such as Karl Kautsky and Ramsay MacDonald, disparagingly describing them as Social-Chauvinists (socialists in words, chauvinists in deeds), as in the case of the latter, and social pacifists, as in the case of the former.
The socialist movement soon split in two, with the Social Democrats on one side and the Communists on the other. As noted above, the original reason for this split was a difference of vision regarding the First World War and associated events, but the rift grew wider over the years, with the two groups opposing each other on many other issues.
The split was initiated by the Russian Bolsheviks, who adopted the name "Communists". It was made official by the First Congress of the COMINTERN.
A central policy of the COMINTERN was that Communist parties should be established across the world to aid the international proletarian revolution. They also shared the idea of democratic centralism, which essentially boils down to the principle that all decisions must be made democratically and all voices must be heard in the process, but party members should not continue to dispute a decision after it has been adopted.
The following parties and movements were invited to the First Congress of the Communist International:
For a party to join the COMINTERN , it had to accept 21 conditions. Some of these were:
- To actively campaign in favor of communist ideas, both in the cities and the countryside
- To remove reformists and centrists from positions in the working class movement
- To combine legal and illegal methods of struggle, in countries with prohibitive anti-socialist laws
- To supervise the activities of any members in parliament
- To denounce excessive pacifism and accept that violent struggle is sometimes necessary
- To support liberation movements in the colonies
- To ensure their affiliated trade unions join the 'red' trade union international rather than the 'yellow' Amsterdam one.
- To organise on the basis of democratic centralism
- To support all existing Soviet republics
- To revise its party program by including the general policies of the International
- To accept all decisions of the Comintern as binding
- To expel all members who voted against any of the 21 conditions (or, if the majority of their party voted against them, to resign and form a new party)
- To take the name 'Communist Party'
The first Chairman of the COMINTERN's Executive Committee was Grigory Zinoviev, from 1919 to 1926 (when he was dismissed after falling out of favor with Stalin, who already held considerable power by this time). Nikolai Bukharin led the COMINTERN for two years, until 1928, until he too fell out with Stalin. Bulgarian communist leader Georgi Dimitrov headed the Comintern in 1934 and presided it until its dissolution.
In 1938 Leon Trotsky formed the Fourth International in opposition to the COMINTERN, believing that the Third International had become thoroughly bureaucratised and Stalinized and was no longer capable of regenerating itself into a proper revolutionary organization. In particular, he saw the calamitous defeat of the communist movement in Germany (at the hands of the nazis) as evidence that the COMINTERN was effectively irrelevant and fully under Stalin's control.
The COMINTERN was officially dissolved on May 15 1943, by Stalin, who wished to reassure his World War II Allies (particularly Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill) that the USSR was no longer pursuing a policy of trying to foment revolution.
In 1947 the COMINFORM or Communist Information Bureau was created as a substitute. It was a network made up of the Communist parties of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. It too was dissolved in 1956.
While the pro-Moscow Communist parties of the world no longer had a formal international organisation, they still looked to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for leadership, and would have periodic meetings in Moscow, the most notable one being in 1962 when the Sino-Soviet split became public for the first time. There was especially close coordination between the CPSU and the Communist Parties of the Warsaw Pact.
See also: List of Communist Parties, List of members of the Comintern, World Communist Movement
External links
de:Komintern
eo:3-a Internacio
fr:Troisième Internationale
it:Comintern
nl:Comintern
ja:コミンテルン
no:Komintern
zh:第三国际
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