The 'Comintern' ('Com'munist 'Intern'ational, also known as the 'Third International') was an international
Communist organization founded in
Moscow in March
1919. The International 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."
[1] The Comintern was founded after the dissolution of the
Second International in
1916, following the
1915 Zimmerwald Conference in which
Lenin had led the "
Zimmerwald Left" against those who supported the "
national union" governments in war with each other.
The Comintern held seven World Congresses, the first in March
1919 and the last in
1935. As of
1928 it was estimated that the organization had 583 105 members, excluding its Soviet membership.
[2]
At the start of
World War II, the Comintern supported a policy of non-intervention, arguing that this was an imperialist war between various national
ruling classes, much as
World War I had been. However, when the Soviet Union itself was invaded on
June 22,
1941, during
Operation Barbarossa, the Comintern switched its position to one of active support for the
Allies. The Comintern was subsequently officially dissolved in
1943.
Origins
From the First to the Second International
Although divisions between revolutionary and reformist-minded elements had been developing for a considerable time, the origins of the Communist International derive from the split in the
workers' movement that surfaced in
1914 with the beginning of the First World War. The
First International, founded in 1864, had split between the socialists and the
anarchists who preferred not to enter the political arena, setting their sights instead on the creation of a strong
anarcho-syndicalist movement (a.k.a. the "International Workingmen's Association"). The Second International, founded in 1889, followed, but tensions surfaced again in the new International.
"Socialist participation in a bourgeois government"?
For example, as far back as 1899, reformist or right-wing elements in the socialist movement had supported the entry of
French independent socialist Millerand into
Waldeck-Rousseau's
republican cabinet (1899-1902), which included as
Minister of War none other than the
marquis de Galliffet, best known for his role during the repression of the 1871
Paris Commune. On the other hand, revolutionary or left-wing elements were fiercely opposed to this development. In
France, this was represented by the debate between
Jules Guesde, whom opposed himself to socialist participation in a "
bourgeois government", and
Jean Jaurès, considered as one of the founder of
social-democracy. Thus, Jules Guesde declared in 1899:
"Wherever the proletariat, organized in a class party -- which is to say a party of revolution —- can penetrate an elective assembly; wherever it can penetrate an enemy citadel, it has not only the right, but the obligation to make a breach and set up a socialist garrison in the capitalist fortress! But in those places where it penetrates not by the will of the workers, not by socialist force; there where it penetrates only with the consent, on the invitation, and consequently in the interests of the capitalist class, socialism should not enter." Jules Guesde's speech to the 1899 General Congress of French socialist organizations
Criticizing the belief "that by a portfolio granted to one of his own socialism has truly conquered power — when it’s really power that conquered him", Jules Guesde thought that "such a state of affairs, if we don’t quickly put an end to it, would bring on the irremediable bankruptcy of socialism. The organized workers considering themselves duped, some will lend an ear to
propaganda by the deed.", thus fostering "
anarchy". The same controversy arose the next year, when Guesde opposed himself to
Jean Jaurès who advocated socialist participation to the bourgeois government, during a famous
November 29, 1900 speech in
Lille on the "Two Methods", held during several hours before 8,000 persons.
Revisionism
Also important was the controversy over the publication of
Eduard Bernstein's ''
Evolutionary Socialism''
[3], which espoused a
reformist path to socialism and received powerful criticism from, among others,
Karl Kautsky and the young
Rosa Luxemburg, who criticized him as a
revisionist. The revisionist current would come to dominate the Second International, one of the factors in the subsequent break with it by revolutionary socialists.
Aftermath of the 1905 Russian Revolution
The
Russian Revolution of 1905 had the effect of radicalizing many socialist parties, as did a number of
general strikes in pursuit of
universal suffrage in Western European countries. At this point the Second International appeared to be a united body that was growing at every election and in every advanced country. Karl Kautsky, aptly dubbed the Pope of Marxism, was at his most radical as the editor of the highly influential ''
Die Neue Zeit'' (The New Time), the theoretical journal of the massive
Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) which was the flagship of the International.
However, by
1910, divisions were appearing in the left of Social Democracy (as the Marxists who dominated the International described themselves), and left-wing thinkers such as Rosa Luxemburg and the Dutch theoretician
Anton Pannekoek were becoming ever more critical of Kautsky. From this point onwards then it is possible to speak of there being a reformist right, a centre and a revolutionary left within the International. Interestingly, from the point of view of later events, both the
Menshevik and Bolshevik wings of the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party were counted amongst the revolutionary left wing. The quarreling groups of Russian
emigres were not held in high regard by the leaders of the International and were unknown to the general public.
Failure of the Second International confronted with World War I
World War I was to prove to be the issue which finally and irrevocably separated the revolutionary and reformist wings of the workers movement. The socialist movement had been historically
antimilitarist and
internationalist, and was therefore opposed to being used as "cannon fodder" for the "bourgeois" governments at war. This especially since the
Triple Alliance (1882) gathered two empires, while the
Triple Entente itself gathered the
French Third Republic and the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with the
Russian Empire. ''
The Communist Manifesto'' had stated that "workers' do not have any
fatherland", and exclaimed "
Proletarians of all countries, unite!" Massive majorities voted in favor of resolutions for the Second International to call upon the international working class to resist war should it be declared.
Despite this, within hours of the declaration of war, almost all the socialist parties of the combatant states had announced their support for their own countries. The only exceptions were the socialist parties of the Balkans, Russia and tiny minorities in other countries. To Lenin's surprise, even the
German SPD voted the war credits. Finally, the assassination of
French socialist Jean Jaurès on
July 31,
1914, killed the last hope of peace, by taking out one of the few leaders who possessed enough influence on the international socialist movement to block it from aligning itself on national policies and supporting
National Union governments.
Socialist parties of
neutral countries for the most part continued to argue for neutrality, and against total opposition to the war. On the other hand, Lenin organized the "Zimmerwald Left" opposed to the "
imperialist war" during the 1915
Zimmerwald Conference, and published the
pamphlet ''Socialism and War'', in which he called all socialists who collaborated with their national governments "
Social-Chauvinists" (socialist in their words but chauvinist in their deeds).
The International was being divided between a revolutionary left, a reformist right and a centre wavering between each pole. Lenin also condemned much of the centre, which often opposed the war but refused to break
party discipline and therefore voted war credits, as social-pacifists. This latter term was aimed in particular at
Ramsay MacDonald (leader of the
Independent Labour Party in
Britain) who did in fact oppose the war on grounds of
pacifism but had not actively resisted it.
Discredited by its passivity towards world events, the Second International was henceforth dissolved in the middle of the war, in 1916. In 1917, Lenin published the ''
April Theses'', which openly supported a "
revolutionary defeatism": the Bolsheviks pronounced themselves in favour of the defeat of Russia in the war which would permit them to pass to the stage of a revolutionary
insurrection.
Founding
The Comintern was thus founded in these conditions in at a congress
March 2-
6 1919[4], against the backdrop of the
Russian Civil War. 19 parties and organisations assisted the congress. There were 52 delegates present from 34 parties.
[5] They decided that an Executive Committee would be formed with representatives of the most important sections, and that other parties joining the International would get their own representatives. The Congress decided that the Executive Committee would elect a five-member bureau to run the daily affairs of the International. However, such a bureau was not constituted and Lenin, Trotsky and
Christian Rakovsky later delegated the task of managing the International to
Grigory Zinoviev as the Chairman of the Executive. Zinoviev was assisted by
Angelica Balbanoff, acting as the secretary of the International,
Victor L. Kibaltchitch[6] and
Vladmir Ossipovich Mazin.
[7] Material was presented by Lenin, Trotsky and
Alexandra Kollontai. The main topic of discussion was the difference between "
bourgeois democracy" and the "
dictatorship of the proletariat".
[8]
The following parties and movements were invited to the first congress:
★
Spartacus League (
Germany)
★ The Communist Party (Bolshevik)
Russia
★ The
Communist Party of German Austria
★ The
Hungarian Communist Workers' Party, in power during
Béla Kun's
Hungarian Soviet Republic
★ The
Finnish CP
★ The
Communist Party of Poland
★ The
Communist Party of Estonia
★ The
Communist Party of Latvia
★ The
Lithuanian CP
★ The
Belarusian CP
★ The
Ukrainian CP
★ The revolutionary elements of the
Czech social democracy
★ The
Bulgarian Social-Democratic Party (Tesnjaki)
★ The
Romanian
SDP
★ The Left-wing of the Serbian SDP
★
The Social Democratic Left Party of Sweden
★
The Norwegian Labour Party
★ For
Denmark, the
Klassenkampen group
★ The
Communist Party of Holland
★ The revolutionary elements of the
Workers Party of Belgium (who would create the
Communist Party of Belgium in 1921)
★ The groups and organisations within the
French socialist and
syndicalist movements
★ The leftwing within the
Social Democratic Party of Switzerland
★ the
Italian Socialist Party
★ The revolutionary elements of the
Spanish SP
★ The revolutionary elements of the
Portuguese SP
★ The
British socialist parties (particularly the current represented by
John MacLean)
★ The
Socialist Labour Party (Britain)
★
Industrial Workers of the World (Britain)
★ The revolutionary elements of the workers' organisations of
Ireland
★ The revolutionary elements among the
shop stewards (Britain)
★ The
Socialist Labor Party of the
United States
★ The Left elements of the
Socialist Party of America (the tendency represented by
Eugene Debs and the
Socialist Propaganda League of America)
★
IWW (United States)
★
IWW (
Australia)
★
Workers' International Industrial Union (United States)
★ The Socialist groups of
Tokyo and
Yokohama (
Japan, represented by Comrade Katayama)
★ The
Socialist Youth International (represented by
Willi Münzenberg)
[9]
Of these, the following attended: the Communist Parties of Russia, Germany, German Austria, Hungary, Poland, Finland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Byelorussia, Estonia, Armenia, the Volga German region; the Swedish Social Democratic Left Party (the Opposition), Balkan Revolutionary People's of Russia; Zimmerwald Left Wing of France; the Czech, Bulgarian, Yugoslav, British, French and Swiss Communist Groups; the Dutch Social-Democratic Group; Socialist Propaganda League and the Socialist Labor Party of America; Socialist Workers' Party of China; Korean Workers' Union, Turkestan, Turkish, Georgian, Azerbaijanian and Persian Sections of the Central Bureau of the Eastern People's, and the Zimmerwald Commission.
[5][11]
The First Four World Congresses
The first Chairman of the Comintern's Executive Committee was
Grigory Zinoviev, from 1919 to 1926, but its dominant figure until his death in January 1924 was Lenin, whose strategy for revolution had been laid out in ''
What Is to Be Done?'' (1902). The central policy of the Comintern under Lenin's leadership was that Communist parties should be established across the world to aid the international
proletarian revolution. The parties also shared his principle of
democratic centralism, "freedom of discussion, unity of action", i.e. that parties would make decisions democratically, but uphold in a disciplined fashion whatever decision was made.
[Lenin, V. (1906), ''Report on the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.''] In this period, the Comintern became known as the "
General Staff of the
World Revolution".
[12]
Ahead of the Second Congress of the Communist International, held in 1920, Lenin sent out a number of documents, including his
Twenty-one Conditions to all socialist parties. The Congress adopted the 21 conditions as prerequisites for any group wanting to become affiliated to the International. The 21 Conditions called for the demarcation between Communist parties and other socialist groups
[13], and instructed the Comintern sections not to trust the legality of the bourgeois states. They also called for the build-up of party organisations along
democratic centralist lines, in which the party press and parliamentary factions would be under the direct control of the party leadership.
Many European socialist parties went through splits on the basis of the adhesion or not to the new International. The French
SFIO ("French Section of the Workers International") thus broke away with the 1920
Tours Congress, leading to the creation of the new
French Communist Party (initially called "French Section of the Communist International" - SFIC); the
Communist Party of Spain was created in 1920, the
Italian Communist Party was created in 1921, the
Belgian Communist Party in September 1921, etc.
Writings from the Third Congress, held in June-July 1921, talked about how the struggle could be transformed into "civil war" when the circumstances were favorable and "openly revolutionary uprisings".
[14] The Fourth Congress, November 1922, at which
Leon Trotsky played a prominent role, continued in this vein.
[15]
During this early period, known as the "First Period" in Comintern history, with the Bolshevik revolution under attack in the
Russian Civil War and a
wave of revolutions across Europe, the Comintern's priority was exporting the October Revolution. Some Communist Parties had secret military wings. On example is the
M-Apparat of the
Communist Party of Germany. Its purpose was to prepare for the civil war the Communists believed was impending in Germany, and to liquidate opponents and informers who might have infiltrated the party. There was also a
paramilitary organization, the
Rotfrontkämpferbund.
[16]
The Comintern was involved in the revolutions across Europe in this period, starting with the
Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. Several hundred agitators and financial aid were sent from the Soviet Union and Lenin was in regular contact with its leader,
Bela Kun. Soon an official "Terror Group of the Revolutionary Council of the Government" was formed, unofficially known as "
Lenin Boys".
[17] The next attempt was the "
March Action" in Germany in 1921, including an attempt to dynamite the express train from Halle to Leipzig. When this failed Lenin ordered the removal of the leader of the
Communist Party of Germany,
Paul Levi, from power.
[18] A new attempt was made at the time of the
Ruhr Crisis. The
Red Army was mobilized, ready to come to the aid of the planned insurrection. Resolute action by the German government cancelled the plans, except due to miscommunication in Hamburg, where 200-300 Communists attacked police stations but where quickly defeated.
[19] In 1924 there was
failed coup in Estonia by the
Estonian Communist Party.
[20]
Several international organizations were sponsored by the Comintern in this period:
★
Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern - formed 1920)
★
Red Peasant International (Krestintern - formed 1923)
★
International Red Aid (MOPR - formed 1922)
★
Communist Youth International (refounded 1919)
★
Red Sports International (Sportintern)
In 1924, the
Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party joined Comintern.
[21] In China at first both the Chinese Communist Party and the
Kuomintang were supported. After the definite break with
Chiang Kai-shek in 1927, Stalin sent personal emissaries to help organize revolts which at this time failed.
[22]
From the Fifth to the Seventh World Congress
The Second Period
Lenin died in 1924. 1925 signalled a shift from the immediate activity of world revolution towards a defence of the Soviet state. In that year,
Stalin upheld the thesis of "
socialism in one country", detailed by
Nikolai Bukharin in his brochure ''Can We Build Socialism in One Country in the Absence of the Victory of the West-European Proletariat?'' (April
1925). The position was finalized as the state policy after Stalin's January
1926 article ''On the Issues of Leninism''. The perspective of a
world revolution was dismissed after the failures of the
Spartacist uprising in Germany and of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, and the reflux of all revolutionary movements in Europe, such as in
Italy, where the
fascist ''
squadristi'' broke the strikes and quickly assumed power following the 1922
March on Rome). This period, up to 1928, was known as the "Second Period", mirroring the shift in the USSR from
war communism to the
New Economic Policy.
[23]
At the Vth Comintern Congress in July
1924, Zinoviev condemned
Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács's ''History and Class Consciousness'', published in 1923 after his involvement in
Béla Kun's
Hungarian Soviet Republic, and
Karl Korsch's ''
Marxism and Philosophy''. Zinoviev himself was dismissed in 1926 after falling out of favor with
Stalin, who already held considerable power by this time. Bukharin then led the Comintern for two years, until 1928 when he too fell out with Stalin.
Bulgarian Communist leader
Georgi Dimitrov headed the Comintern in
1934 and presided until its dissolution.
The Third Period
In 1928, the 9th Plenum of the Executive Committee began the so-called "
Third Period", which was to last until 1935.
[24] The Comintern proclaimed that the capitalist system was entering the period of final collapse, and that as such, the correct stance for all Communist parties was that of an highly aggressive, militant,
ultra-left line. In particular, the Comintern described all moderate left-wing parties as "
social fascists", and urged the Communists devote their energies to the destruction of the moderate left. With the rise of the
Nazi movement in Germany after 1930, this stance became somewhat controversial with many such as the Polish Communist historian
Isaac Deutscher criticizing the tactics of the
Communist Party of Germany of treating the
S.P.D. as the principal enemy.
In 1932 special sections were established in many Communist parties with the purpose to keep complete records of all party activists to gather questionnaires from all the leaders. More than 5,000 such dossiers were sent from the French Communist Party alone to Moscow before the war.
[25]
7th Congress and the Popular Front
The seventh and last congress of the Comintern was held in 1935 and officially endorsed the
Popular Front against fascism. This policy argued that Communist Parties should seek to form a Popular Front with all parties that opposed fascism and not limit themselves to forming a
United Front with those parties based in the working class. There was no significant opposition to this policy within any of the national sections of the Comintern; in France and Spain in particular, it would have momentous consequences with
Léon Blum's 1936 election, which led to the
Popular Front government.
As the Seventh World Congress officially repudiated the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism as the purpose of the Comintern,
Leon Trotsky was led to state that it was the death of the Comintern as a revolutionary International and therefore a new International was needed. Trotsky also argued that the Stalinist parties were now to be considered reformist parties, similar to the social democratic parties (but also playing a role as border guards for the Russian state).
As a result, in
1938 the
Fourth International was founded in opposition to the Comintern. Its founders believed that the Third International had become thoroughly bureaucratized and Stalinized, and was no longer capable of regenerating itself into a proper revolutionary organization. In particular, they saw the calamitous defeat of the communist movement in Germany (at the hands of the
National Socialists) as evidence that the Comintern was effectively irrelevant and fully under Stalin's control.
The
Stalin purges of the 1930s affected Comintern activists living in the USSR. 133 out of the staff of 492 being victims. Several hundred German Communists and antifascists who had fled from Nazi Germany were killed and more than thousand were handed over to Germany.
[26] Fritz Platten died in a labor camp; the leaders of the Indian, Korean, Mexican, Iranian and Turkish Communist parties were executed. The only German Communist leaders to survive were
Wilhelm Pieck and
Walter Ulbricht. Out of 11 Mongolian Communist Party leaders, only
Khorloogiin Choibalsan survived. A great number of German Communists were handed over to
Hitler.
Leopold Trepper recalled these days: "In house, where the party activists of all the countries were living, no-one slept until 3 o'clock in the morning.[..] Exactly 3 o'clock the car lights began to be seen [...]. we stayed near the window and waited [to find out], where the car stopped."
[27]
Dissolution
At the start of
World War II, the Comintern supported a policy of
non-intervention, arguing that the war was an imperialist war between various national ruling classes, much like
World War I had been (see
Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact). But when the Soviet Union itself was invaded on 22 June
1941, the Comintern changed its position to one of active support for the
Allies.
On
May 15 1943, a declaration of the Executive Committee was sent out to all sections of the International, calling for the dissolution of Comintern. The declaration read:
"The historical role of the Communist International, organised in 1919 as a result of the political collapse of the overwhelming majority of the old pre-war workers’ parties, consisted in that it preserved the teachings of Marxism from vulgarisation and distortion by opportunist elements of the labor movement. ...
But long before the war it became increasingly clear that, to the extent that the internal as well as the international situation of individual countries became more complicated, the solution of the problems of the labor movement of each individual country through the medium of some international centre would meet with insuperable obstacles."
Concretely, the declaration asked the member sections to approve:
"To dissolve the Communist International as a guiding centre of the international labor movement, releasing sections of the Communist International from the obligations ensuing from the constitution and decisions of the Congresses of the Communist International."
After endorsements of the declaration was received from the member sections, the International was dissolved.
[28]
Usually, it is asserted that the dissolution came about as Stalin wished to calm his World War II
Allies (particularly
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
Winston Churchill) not to suspect that the Soviet Union was pursuing a policy of trying to foment revolution in other countries.
[29]
Successor organisations
In September 1947, following the June 1947 Paris Conference on
Marshall Aid, Stalin gathered a grouping of key European communist parties and set up the Cominform, or ''Communist Information Bureau'', often seen as a substitute to the Comintern. It was a network made up of the
Communist parties of
Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia,
France,
Hungary,
Italy,
Poland,
Romania, the Soviet Union, and
Yugoslavia (led by
Tito, it was expelled in June 1948). The Cominform was dissolved in 1956, following Stalin's 1953 death and the
XXth Congress of the CPSU.
While the Communist parties of the world no longer had a formal international organisation, they continued to maintain close relations with each other, through a series of international forums. In the period directly after dissolution of Comintern, periodical meetings of Communist parties where held in
Moscow. Moreover ''
World Marxist Review'', a joint periodical of the Communist parties, played an important role in coordinating the communist movement up to the break-up of the
Socialist Bloc in
1989-
1991.
See also
★ Lenin's speech: The Third, Communist International (, )
★
Tatlin's Tower
★
List of delegates of the 2nd Comintern congress
★
Anti-Comintern Pact
★
League against Imperialism
★
List of left-wing internationals
★
List of Communist Parties
★
List of members of the Comintern
★
Spanish Civil War
★
International Working Union of Socialist Parties ("2 and a half International" founded by
Austro-Marxists)
★
International Revolutionary Marxist Centre
★
Communist Workers International
★
International Communist Opposition
References
1. MI5 History, The Inter-War Period
2. [1]
3. ''Evolutionary Socialism'' 1899
4. Berg, Nils J. ''I kamp för Socialismen'' - Kortfattad framställning av det svenska kommunistiska partiets historia 1917-1981''. Stockholm: Arbetarkultur, 1982. p. 19.
5. Marxist Internet Archive
6. Kibaltchitch would later take the name 'Victor Serge'. A former anarchist, he was not even a member of the RCP(b) at the time. In his own words, he considered that it was his knowledge of various European languages that motived his inclusion into the Comintern apparatus. See: Serge, Victor. ''Memoirs of a Revolutionary''.
7. [2]
8. Marxist Internet Archive
9. [3]
10. Marxist Internet Archive
11. Delegates with decisive vote were: Hugo Eberlein (Communist Party of Germany), Lenin (Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks)), Trotsky (RCP(b)), Zinoviev (RCP(b)), Stalin (RCP(b)), Bukharin (RCP(b)), Georgy Chicherin (RCP(b)), Karl Steinhardt (Communist Party of German Austria) K. Petin (CPGA), Endre Rudnyanszky (Communist Party of Hungary), Otto Grimlund (Social Democratic Left Party of Sweden), Emil Stang (Norwegian Labour Party), Fritz Platten (the opposition within the Swiss Social Democratic Party), Boris Reinstein (Socialist Labor Party of America), Christian Rakovsky (Balkan Revolutionary Social Democratic Federation), Jozef Unszlicht (Communist Party of Poland), Yrjö Sirola (Communist Party of Finland), Kullervo Manner (CPF), O. V. Kuusinen (CPF), Jukka Rahja (CPF), Eino Rahja (CPF), Mykola Skrypnyk (Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine), Serafima Gopner (CPU), Karl Gailis (Communist Party of Latvia), Kazimir Gedris (Communist Party of Lithuania and Belorussia), Hans Pöögelman (Communist Party of Estonia), Gurgen Haikuni (Communist Party of Armenia), Gustav Klinger (Communist Party of the German Colonists in Russia), Gaziz Yalymov (United Group of the Eastern Peoples of Russia), Hussein Bekentayev (UGEPR), Mahomet Altimirov (UGEPR), Burhan Mansurov (UGEPR), Kasim Kasimov (UGEPR) and Henri Guilbeaux (Zimmerwald Left of France). Delegates with consultative vote: N. Osinsky (RCP(b)), V. V. Vorovsky (RCP(b)), Jaroslav Handlir (Czech Communist Group), Stojan Dyorov (Bulgarian Communist Group), Ilija Milkić (Yugoslav Communist Group), Joseph Fineberg (British Communist Group), Jacques Sadoul (French Communist Group), S. J. Rutgers (Dutch Social Democratic Party/Socialist Propaganda League of America), Leonie Kascher (Swiss Communist Group), Liu Shaozhou (Chinese Socialist Workers Party), Zhang Yongkui (CSWP), Kain (Korean Workers League), Angelica Balabanoff (Zimmerwald Committee) and the following delegates representing the sections the Central Bureau of Eastern Peoples: Gaziz Yalymov (Turkestan), Mustafa Suphi (Turkey), Tengiz Zhgenti (Georgian), Mir Jafar Baghirov (Azerbaijan) and Mirza Davud Huseynov (Persia). Source:[4]
12. William Henry Chamberlin ''Soviet Russia: A Living Record and a History'' 1929, chapter 11; Max Shachtman "For the Fourth International!" ''New International'', Vol.1 No.1, July 1934; Walter Kendall "Lenin and the Myth of World Revolution", ''Revolutionary History'').
13. For examle, the thirteenth condition stated that "The communist parties of those countries in which the communists can carry out their work legally must from time to time undertake purges (re-registration) of the membership of their party organisations in order to cleanse the party systematically of the petty-bourgeois elements within it. The term "purge" has taken on very negative connotations, because of the Great Purge of the 1930s. In the early 1920s, however, the term was more ambiguous. See J. Arch Getty ''Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938'' p.41 for discussion of the ambiguities in the term, including its use in the 1920 Comintern resolution.
14. The Black Book of Communism pp. 275-6; Minutes of the Seventh Session
15. http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/4th-congress/index.htm Marxist Internet Archive]
16. The Black Book of Communism pp. 282; Marxist Internet Archive
17. The Black Book of Communism pp. 272-5
18. The Black Book of Communism pp. 276-7
19. The Black Book of Communism pp. 277-8
20. The Black Book of Communism pp. 278-9
21. [5]
22. The Black Book of Communism pp. 280-82
23. Duncan Hallas ''The Comintern'', chapter 5
24. Duncan Hallas ''The Comintern'', chapter 6; Nicholas N. Kozlov, Eric D. Weitz "Reflections on the Origins of the 'Third Period': Bukharin, the Comintern, and the Political Economy of Weimar Germany" ''Journal of Contemporary History'', Vol. 24, No. 3 (Jul., 1989), pp. 387-410 JSTOR
25. The Black Book of Communism p. 292
26. The Black Book of Communism p. 298-301.
27. Radzinski, ''Stalin'', 1997
28. [6]
29. Robert Service, ''Stalin. A biography''. (Macmillan - London, 2004), pp 444-445
Further reading
★
C. L. R. James, ''World Revolution 1917-1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International'' Humanities Press, New Jersey, (Revolutionary Series), 1993, ISBN 1573925837
★ Marcel Liebman, ''Leninism Under Lenin'' Humanities Press, New Jersey ISBN 085036261X
★ Piero Melograni, ''Lenin and the Myth of World Revolution: Ideology and Reasons of State 1917-1920'', Humanities Press, New Jersey, 1990
★ ''The Comintern and its Critics'' (Special issue of ''Revolutionary History'' Volume 8, no 1, Summer 2001)
External links
★
Comintern Archives
★
Comintern Archives
★
Article on the Third International from the Encyclopedia Britannica
★
Workers' Internationals, at Marxist Internet Archive
★
Report from Moscow, 3rd International congress, 1920 by
Otto Rühle