Comintern - Origins of the Communist International, The foundation of the Comintern

An abbreviation for the Communist International, founded in Moscow (Mar 1919) at the behest of the Russian Communist Party, its purpose being the rallying of left-wing socialists and communists. It adopted Leninist principles in its policies, rejecting reformism in favour of revolutionary action, which it encouraged against capitalist governments. It was disbanded in May 1943.

"Third International" redirects here. For Webster's Third New International Dictionary, see Webster's Dictionary.

The Comintern (Russian: Коммунистический Интернационал, Kommunisticheskiy Internatsional – Communist International, also known as the Third International) was an international Communist organization founded in March 1919, in the midst of the "war communism" period (1918-1921), by Vladimir 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 was founded after the dissolving of the Second International in 1916, following the 1915 Zimmerwald Conference in which Lenin led the "Zimmerwald Left" against those who supported the "national union" governments in war with each other. The new International thus represented a response to the latter's failure to form a unified coalition against the First World War, which the founders of the Third Internationalists regarded as a bourgeois imperialist war and which the whole of the anti-militarist socialist movement had been completely opposed to until the beginning of the war itself.

The Comintern held seven World Congresses, the first in March 1919 and the last in 1935, until it was officially dissolved in May 1943. Communist parties of the Stalinist or Maoist persuasion recognize all seven congresses. At the start of World War II, the Comintern supported a policy of pacifism and non-intervention, arguing that this was an imperialist war between various national ruling classes, much like World War I had been.

Origins of the Communist International

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 Second International, founded in 1889, followed, but tensions surfaced again in the new International.

The question of the "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. 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;

The aftermaths 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. Karl Kautsky, aptly dubbed the Pope of Marxism, was at his most radical as the editor of the highly influential Die Neue Zeit (New Times), 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. 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 failure of the Second International confronted to World War I

World War I was to prove 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 (in particular when the Triple Alliance gathered two empires, while the Triple Entente itself gathered the French Third Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with the Czar's Russia).

However, despite massive majorities voting in favor of resolutions that stated the Second International would call upon the international working class to resist war should it be declared, 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 being the socialist parties of the Balkans, Russia and tiny minorities in other countries. 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. The socialist parties of the neutral countries for the most part continued to argue for neutrality and against total opposition to the war. 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 did nothing to resist it. Discredited by its passivity towards world events, the Second International was henceforth dissolved in the middle of the war, in 1916, its internationalist ideals having obviously been defeated by the nationalist ideology in force in each country.

The foundation of the Comintern

The Comintern was thus founded in these conditions in March 1919 by the Russian Bolsheviks, whom adopted the name "Communists". Lenin then sent his Twenty-one Conditions (which included democratic centralism) to all socialist parties, which were then split 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 (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;

A central policy of the Comintern was that Communist parties should be established across the world to aid the international proletarian revolution. It was organized by Lenin, whom had already displayed his strategic aims in What Is to Be Done? (1902), in an attempt to make of the new International the "General Staff of the World Revolution" (in the Comintern Electronic Archives' words ).

The following parties and movements were invited to the First Congress of the Communist International in March 1919 :

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 Polish Communist Workers' Party The Communist Party of Estonia The Latvian CP 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 (whom would create the Communist Party of Belgium in 1921) The groups and organisations within the French socialist and syndicalist movements The social-democratic Left 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 League for Socialist Propaganda) 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)

The First Four World Congresses of the Communist International

The first Chairman of the Comintern's Executive Committee was Grigory Zinoviev, from 1919 to 1926.

From the Fifth to the Seventh World Congress

Several international organizations sponsored by the Comintern:

Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern) Red Peasant International (Krestintern) International Red Aid (MOPR) Communist Youth International Red Sports International (Sportintern)

From the Last Congress to Dissolution

The 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.

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 needed to be built. 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). the leaders of the Indian, Korean, Mexican, Iranian and Turkish Communist parties were executed. Out of 11 Mongolian Communist Party leaders, only Horloogiyn Choybalsan survived. Leopold Trepper has 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. (Radzinski, Stalin, 1997)

As a result, in 1938 the Fourth International was founded in opposition to the Comintern. The communists of the Fourth International 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.

At the start of World War II, the Comintern supported a policy of pacifism and non-intervention, arguing that this was an imperialist war between various national ruling classes, much like World War I had been. Membership of the Comintern gave national parties the reputation of being Soviet stooges. By abolishing the Comintern, Stalin hoped to alleviate this problem and facilitate the route to power of European communist parties after the end of the war. Lenin described the Comintern’s directives in a speech at the Third Communist International

(Stalin : The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives, 1997, p.

After the Comintern

In September 1947, following the June 1947 Paris Conference on Marshall Aid, Stalin gathered the socialist parties and set up the Cominform, or Communist Information Bureau, as a substitute of 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).

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, or CPSU, for leadership, and had periodic meetings in Moscow. There was especially close coordination between the CPSU and the Communist Parties of the Warsaw Pact.