The Fourth Congress of the Communist International, held in November–December 1922, shows evidence of member parties outside Soviet Russia taking initiatives and exerting significant influence on central political questions before world communism. On at least three issues, all related to united-front policy, non-Russian delegates’ pressure substantially altered Comintern Executive Committee proposals to the Congress. A central role in this process was played by leaders of the German Communist Party. The record of the Congress, newly available in English, also contains (...) many calls for increasing the authority of the Comintern Executive. Still, the influence of non-Russian delegations, in a context of frequent division among leading Bolsheviks, suggests that influence of front-line parties was significant and possibly growing in 1922, little more than a year before the Comintern took a sharp turn toward Russian-dominated bureaucratisation. (shrink)

Romanian Prime Minister Al. Vaida-Voevod aired the “communist danger” that “threatens the constitutional order and aims to dismantle the Greater Romania” when he asked for parliamentary support for the Law on state of siege (martial law) in February 1933. This article will investigate the role of the transnational communist networks in Romania in the Grivița strikes to verify the truthfulness of the Prime Minister’s discourse. The communists’ role in the Grivița strikes is part of the general performance of these transnational (...) networks during the Great Depression. The political strength of the Romanian extreme-left will be assessed by taking into consideration the main goals of the Comintern towards the transport sector during the Great Depression, the institutions that were supposed to achieve the goals, and their effectiveness from mid-January until mid-February 1933. (shrink)

These two key texts of German Communism appear in English for the first time. Paul Levi's Our Path and What Is the Crime? were the response of the KPD leader to the disastrous 'March Action' of 1921. Over two years, Levi had succeeded in building a mass revolutionary party that drew on the traditions of both Luxemburg and Lenin; this was now over-ridden by a stereotyped Bolshevism enforced by the Comintern's emissaries. In the first text, subtitled 'Against Putschism' and (...) written within days of the attempted coup, Levi criticised the attempt to seize power without the majority-backing of the working class, which had decimated the Party's membership. Its publication led to Levi's exclusion from the Party for breach of discipline, even though his critique of the March Action was shared by Lenin. The second text was delivered verbally to the Central Committee, as an unsuccessful appeal against his expulsion, and the transcript gives a unique flavour of the atmosphere in the KPD leadership at this crucial moment. (shrink)

The study examines the original work An Attempt to Get Lenin Back on His Feet (Berlin, 1974) by Rudi Dutschke, the well-known German political philosopher and leader of the youth movement in 1968, as well as the influence of the famous Hungarian philosopher György Lukács on the ideas of Dutschke. Dutschke revealed the reasons for the impossibility of socialist ideals being feasible in the 20th century, despite the heroic attempts of the Bolsheviks and Western radical socialists to realize them. The (...) revolution occurred in a country of semi-Asian stagnating capitalism and was not supported by the European anti-capitalist revolution. As a result, after the victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia, the social system was revived with the dominance of the state bureaucracy (the fused party-state apparatus) over society. There were no universal forms of social movement (Verkehr), which led to the fact that socialism became local, up to the danger of its abolition. At the same time, according to Dutschke, it is precisely an equal alliance between the progressive intelligentsia and the working masses that can open up new ways for the transition from a society of necessity to a society of freedom, provided that the intelligentsia renounces leaderism (which was the mistake the Bolsheviks fell into). Therefore, the figure of György Lukács is most important for Dutschke since studying his creative path makes it possible to realize the basic principles of such an equal union. The study shows that the creative path of Lukács before he entered the Comintern as one of the leaders of the section of the Hungarian Communists is characterized by the desire to find a way to solve the fundamental dilemma of the revolutionary, as he believed: either, like the Bolsheviks, strive for an uncompromising victory and the implementation of their program at the cost of violence; or to make compromises with the social democratic and even bourgeois parties, at the same time being in danger of defeat and the impossibility of implementing their ideas, primarily because the socialist intellectuals fail to establish strong ties with the working masses, and the latter may not be thoroughly imbued with anti-capitalist consciousness. Thus, Lukács can survey a spokesperson for the views of the intelligentsia, and through the criticism of these views, it will be possible to comprehend how educated people can better understand the actual needs and interests of the working people in order to pursue policies that would be more in line with them and learn how to lead the masses indeed. (shrink)

L’article porte sur le rapport entre communisme et féminisme dans l’entre-deux-guerres en prenant comme point de départ un débat transnational entre chercheuses d’horizons divers, débat paru dans une revue sur l’histoire des femmes et du genre dans les pays d’Europe de l’Est fondée récemment. Trois approches différentes permettent d’éclairer la position ambiguë du féminisme dans les organisations communistes et l’Internationale communiste. Dans un premier temps, ce sont les opportunités et les limites de l’égalité formelle offerte aux femmes communistes qui sont (...) abordées, puis les positions théoriques les plus innovantes et leur réception. Enfin trois cas de femmes cadres serviront d’exemples pour illustrer les négociations nécessaires, dans la pratique, pour concilier les attentes contradictoires propagées par le régime stalinien et les organisations communistes. (shrink)

Arthur Rosenberg’s remarkable essay, first published in 1934, was probably the most incisive historical analysis of the origins of fascism to emerge from the revolutionary Left in the interwar years. In contrast to the official Comintern line that fascism embodied the power of finance-capital, Rosenberg saw fascism as a descendant of the reactionary mass-movements of the late-nineteenth century. Those movements encompassed a new breed of nationalism that was ultra-patriotic, racist and violently opposed to the Left, and prefigured fascism in (...) all these ways. What was distinctive about the fascists in Italy and Germany was not so much their ideology as the use of stormtroopers to wage the struggle against democracy in more decisive and lethal ways. After the broad historical sweep of its first part, the essay looks at the factors that were peculiar to the Italian and German situations respectively, highlighting both the rôle of the existing authorities in encouraging the fascists and the wider class-appeal of the fascist parties themselves, beyond any supposed restriction to the middle-class or ‘petty bourgeoisie’. (shrink)

This article traces the steps of Mikhail Borodin, the first Comintern representative in Mexico and Spain, in 1919-20. He helped create the Mexican and the Spanish communist parties. In order to do this, he latched onto pre-existing networks of transnational activism and recruited a posse of young, committed, and cosmopolitan cadre. Through them, Borodin tried to mobilise the widespread euphoria for Bolshevism that existed among sectors of the Mexican and the Spanish left. However, the potential for vigorous communist movements (...) remained largely untapped due to the recklessness of Borodin and his aides. The Borodin mission is a telling episode in the formative months of the Communist International, pointing to the importance of contingency, individual agency, and transnational activism in the establishment of the international communist movement. (shrink)

Gramsci recognised the inestimable historical contribution of Muslim and Arab civilisations, writing on these in his newspaper articles, his pre-prison letters and the Prison Notebooks. The Islamic world contemporary with him was largely rural, with the masses heavily influenced by religion, analogous in some ways to Italy whose economy was still largely oriented towards a peasantry among whom the Vatican played a leading role. In addition to factors such as the politics-religion nexus, what Gramsci was also analysing, without saying as (...) much explicitly, was the upheaval caused by the disintegration and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, and the inter-imperialist rivalries over the spoils and the construction of new states from its ruins. Here he draws attention to the first hesitant and contradictory anticolonial stances being adopted among the traditional leaders, as well recognising the basis for more popularly-based movements. In both Catholic countries and, as Gramsci knew especially from the experience of his Comintern work, in parts of the Muslim world, these movements could at times assume a left and politically radical orientation. What emerges is a picture of conflicting hegemonies involving principally religion, class, the political ambivalence of many religious leaders, and a burgeoning nationalism contraposed to the supra-nationalist claims of religion. But the factor underlying everything is the potential of the masses who, if awakened from torpor and detached from European colonialism, were judged capable of rupturing previous imperially-determined equilibria. (shrink)

Spécialiste de l’histoire internationale des communismes, après une thèse consacrée au parti communiste suisse, Brigitte Studer offre ici un ouvrage de synthèse sur le Comintern (ou Internationale communiste) : cette organisation, créée à Moscou, en 1919, avec le but affiché de porter « l’internationalisme » dont se revendiquait le mouvement communiste, assura non seulement la liaison avec les différents partis communistes mais fut aussi à l’origine d’une soixantaine d’organisations internati...

This paper seeks to situate the idea and intellectual narrative of “world revolution” in its modern historical context, tracing it back to the age of democratic revolution in the late eighteenth century, and then developed by great revolutionary thinkers like Marx and Engels. It examines the possible limitations of Marx and Engels’s vision of world revolution with respect to the Third World as a result of their European intellectual formation in the tradition of the Enlightenment, and examines the charge of (...) “Eurocentrism” advanced by post-colonialist theorists among others against classical Marxism. It then explores the inspiration of the Russian Revolution for those fighting racism and imperialism, and how black radicals brought their revolutionary narratives of black liberation into communist narratives for the first time in its aftermath. The essay then discusses C.L.R. James’s pioneering 1937 history of the Comintern, World Revolution, among other things a theoretical intervention into the debates raging among socialist black radicals during the 1930s, and critically examines the charge of “Eurocentrism” often levelled at World Revolution. (shrink)

One of the leading representatives of a “Western” Marxism, György (Georg) Lukács was born in 1885 in Budapest. He joined the Communist Party of Hungary in 1918. During the short‐lived Hungarian Commune of 1919 he was responsible for the cultural policy of the revolutionary regime. After its collapse he lived in emigration in Vienna, Berlin, and Moscow. Following the condemnation of his political views by the Comintern in 1928 he withdrew from direct participation in politics. He returned to Hungary (...) in 1945. A new wave of official attacks in 1949 resulted in his renewed retreat from political activity. During the Hungarian revolution of 1956 he was minister of culture in the government of Imre Nagy. First interned in Romania, he worked then in the situation of an internal emigration and banishment in Hungary till 1967, when he was allowed to return to public cultural life. He died in 1971. (shrink)

This paper analyses the history of the South American Secretariat of the Communist International. The objective is to carry out a critical study of the policies and strategy of the Secretariat, considering how its relationship with the Comintern and the South American Communist Parties changed over time. Our hypothesis is that during its first years of existence (1925–8) the Secretariat developed a policy based on the United Front. This changed during a transition period (July 1928–July 1929) in which it (...) developed a stagist programme of bourgeois-democratic revolution, and the implementation of its front tactics was increasingly questioned. From 1929 to 1934, the organisation abandoned all concrete alliance tactics in the workers’ movement and electoral politics while nevertheless proclaiming its advocacy of the ‘United Front from below’. This paper is based on an analysis of primary sources, including the Secretariat’s publications, correspondence, and internal documents. (shrink)

For quite a long time, “Li Li-san Line” has been the target of criticism as being typical of wrong lines by Chinese Communist Party (CCP). However, under the subjective and objective circumstance at that time, it wasn’t by accident that CCP released this line. Regardless of its victory or defect in the history, and only considering behaviors of CCP leaders in the formulation and implementation of the entire line, this was a god-given and independent trial by CCP leaders to resolve (...) revolution in China in its infancy and under the strong controlling force of Comintern. (shrink)

Comrades, the fact that a special report on the activity of the Young Communist International is on the agenda of the Sixth Congress of the Comintern shows that the Congress pays the greatest attention to the youth movement. Nevertheless, the fact must not be passed over in silence that the Communist Parties devote insufficient direction and support to the work of the, youth organizations.

La Revolución Rusa tuvo un inmediato impacto mundial, tanto por el ejemplo que supuso para procesos revolucionarios o de intensa movilización social desatados en el período subsiguiente en varios países de Europa (Finlandia, Alemania, Austria, Hungría, Italia, etc.) como por los grandes debates que suscitó en el socialismo internacional, ya que fue una de las principales causas del “gran cisma” (en palabras del historiador Carl Schorske) dentro de la II Internacional Socialista entre las organizaciones e individuos que se volcarían hacia (...) la reconstrucción de la socialdemocracia y aquellos que apostarían a la construcción de la Internacional Comunista.El período inmediatamente posterior a la Revolución Rusa (1917-1920), hasta la consolidación de la Comintern en su II Congreso, fue un momento fluido de debate acerca de la caracterización de la Revolución Rusa y sus consecuencias políticas, teóricas y estratégicas. A través del análisis de las posiciones de Karl Kautsky y Antonio Gramsci —dos intelectuales de gran influencia teórica en el movimiento socialista internacional— pretendemos iluminar algunos aspectos principales del debate que provocó este proceso: el carácter de las fuerzas sociales involucradas, los objetivos de la revolución, el rol de la democracia y la dictadura en el proceso de transición al socialismo y la aplicabilidad internacional del balance de la Revolución Rusa. El análisis se centra en fuentes primarias de cada autor, situando las posiciones de cada uno en el contexto de su relación con el socialismo de su país y los debates que lo atravesaban. (shrink)

Similarly to other European countries, Romania faced multiple and intertwined crises during the interwar period, including successive moments of social turmoil, the activity of its hostile neighbours, the emergence of various far-right groups contesting the liberal order, and the looming spectre of the revolution. Among these threats, the fears of revolution and the intense activity of the Comintern worked both as main causes and discursive tools when the state resorted to emergency powers, which took the form of the state (...) of siege in interwar Romania. By drawing on the files created by the Romanian secret police of that time, I argue that the state-of-siege mechanisms targeted not only those “threats” the state institutions invoked as reasons to justify the resort to emergency powers, but much broader categories of citizens. Several leaders of the political opposition, such as Pantelimon Halippa, or intellectuals involved in defending the civil rights engaged in vivid debates on the risks lurking behind the abuse of emergency powers. Finally, the abusive use of the state of siege worked as a corrosive force against the liberal order of the 1923 Constitution and heavily contributed to the establishment of King Carol II’s dictatorship in 1938. (shrink)

Comrades, the fact that a special report on the activity of the Young Communist International is on the agenda of the Sixth Congress of the Comintern shows that the Congress pays the greatest attention to the youth movement. Nevertheless, the fact must not be passed over in silence that the Communist Parties devote insufficient direction and support to the work of the, youth organizations.

Chinese delegates admitted at the Sixth Comintern Congress, on several occasions, that the CCP defeat in the past was partly through its own errors, notwithstanding objective circumstances. They also argued that the lack of actual support of fraternal Parties was another factor in their disfavor. Below is a statement by one "Tschen-Kuang" at the fourteenth session of the Congress.

Rumors were afoot at the Sixth Comintern Congress that there were political differences between Bukharin and Stalin. Except for Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai's comments on the Comintern Theses, other Chinese delegates seem to have expressed no public disagreement with Bukharin. The following speech, made by one "Tschang-Bio" (Chang Kuo-t'ao?) at the fourteenth session, may serve to illustrate this tactful attitude.