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94-458: Group of Soviet espionage agents The Great Illegals were a group of Soviet Comintern espionage agents whom MI5 counterintelligence agent Peter Wright grouped together due to their masterful espionage activities against the west. Often, they were generally foreigners but held Russian citizenship and were ideologically driven. They were trotskyist communists who believed in international communism and

188-632: A revolutionary left-wing , a moderate center-wing , and a more reformist right-wing . Lenin condemned much of the center as "social pacifists" for several reasons, including their vote for war credits despite publicly opposing the war. Lenin's term "social pacifist" aimed in particular at Ramsay MacDonald , leader of the Independent Labour Party in Britain, who opposed the war on grounds of pacifism but did not actively fight against it. Discredited by its apathy towards world events,

282-622: A 5-member Bureau , to handle day-to-day activities. The governing Executive Committee was to be headquartered in Moscow and to include representatives from the member organizations of the Communist International. The parties of Russia, Germany , Austria , Hungary, the Balkan Federation, Switzerland, and Scandinavia were each to "immediately send representatives to the first Executive Committee." All parties joining

376-638: A Section of the Communist International in that country. The decisions of the ECCI were obligatory for all the Sections of the Communist International. And although the Sections had the right to appeal against decisions of the ECCI to the World Congress, they had to execute them, pending the decision of the World Congress. On the other hand, ECCI had the right “to expel from the Communist International, entire Sections, groups and individual members who violate

470-829: A defense of the Soviet state. In that year, Joseph Stalin took power in Moscow and 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 . Stalin made

564-616: A disciplined fashion whatever decision was made. In this period, the Comintern was promoted as the general staff of the world revolution . Ahead of the Second Congress of the Communist International, held in July through August 1920, Lenin sent out a number of documents, including his Twenty-one Conditions to all socialist parties. Congress adopted the 21 conditions as prerequisites for any group wanting to become affiliated with

658-408: A formal international organization, they continued to maintain close relations with each other through a series of international forums. In the period directly after the Comintern's dissolution, periodical meetings of communist parties were 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

752-605: A former prisoner of war stranded in Russia represented Hungary , while Christian Rakovsky , a Romanian , sat for the nearly defunct Balkan Socialist Federation . A commission ( standing committee ) chaired by the Swiss radical Fritz Platten was appointed by this Founding Congress to construct an organizational apparatus for the new Third International. This commission recommended the establishment of two deliberative bodies, an Executive Committee , to handle matters of policy, and

846-923: A higher proportion of the KPD Politburo membership had died in the Soviet Union than in Nazi Germany. Weitz also noted that hundreds of German citizens, most of them Communists, were handed over to the Gestapo by Stalin's administration. The Research Institutes 100 and 205 worked for the International and later were moved to the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of

940-611: A message to the Bavarian Soviet Republic (April 1919), a May Day manifesto (April 20, 1919), a manifesto on the Versailles Peace (May 13, 1919), and a manifesto on foreign intervention in Soviet Russia (June 18, 1919). The early ECCI was, in short, to a large extent a propaganda body, aiming to stir the working class to socialist revolution . In the estimation of historian E.H. Carr ,

1034-641: A number of radicals from around the world had at various times taken part in ECCI's activities. Among this group were László Rudas of Hungary, Jacques Sadoul of France, John Reed of the Communist Labor Party of America , John Anderson (Kristap Beika) of the Communist Party of America , S.J. Rutgers of the Netherlands , in addition to others from Korea, China, Norway, Sweden, Yugoslavia, Poland, and Finland. During this interval

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1128-548: A policy of non-intervention , declaring on November 6 that the conflict was an imperialist war between various national ruling classes on both sides, much like World War I had been, and that the main culprits were Britain and France. This period only ended on 22 June 1941 with the invasion of the Soviet Union , when the Comintern changed its position to one of active support for the Allies . During these two years, many communists turned their backs on their Comintern sections, and

1222-408: A very real sense as national subdivisions of a single world party and they accepted centralization as a matter of principle and direction in revolutionary strategy and tactics from Moscow, the home of the only successful proletarian revolution as logical and natural. Although Jane Degras in an appendix to her 1956 three volume compendium of Comintern documents intimates that the 2nd World Congress of

1316-796: The 1923 insurrection . However, this proposal was rejected by the Politburo which was controlled by Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev who decided to send a commission of lower-ranking Russian Communist party members. The dream of a world revolution was abandoned after the failures of the Spartacist uprising in Germany and of the Hungarian Soviet Republic and the failure of all revolutionary movements in Europe such as in Italy, where

1410-634: The Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang were supported by the Comintern. However, after the definite break with Chiang Kai-shek in 1927, Joseph Stalin sent personal emissaries to help organize revolts which at this time failed. The Fourth World Congress was coincidentally held within days of the March on Rome by Benito Mussolini and his PNF in Italy . Karl Radek lamented

1504-599: The Communist Party of Hungary was able to send its permanent representative to ECCI prior to the convocation of the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern on July 19, 1920. This did not mean that ECCI, the Comintern's directing body, was staffed exclusively with Russians during the 1919-1920 period, however. In addition to representatives of the Russian Communist Party Angelica Balabanova , Jan Antonovich Berzin , Nikolai Bukharin , V.V. Vorovsky , Grigorii Zinoviev, and G. Klinger ,

1598-536: The Communist Party of Poland in 1938). Above all, the Comintern exploited Soviet prestige in sharp contrast to the weaknesses of local parties that rarely had political power. Communist front organizations were set up to attract non-members who agreed with the party on certain specific points. Opposition to fascism was a common theme in the popular front era of the mid-1930s. The well-known names and prestige of artists, intellectuals and other fellow travelers were used to advance party positions. They often came to

1692-699: The Far Eastern Bureau of the Communist International was established in Siberia to develop their political influence in the Far East . Soon after its establishment, the bureau's manager Grigori Voitinsky arrived in Peking and established contact with local communist vanguard Li Dazhao . Li arranged for Voitinsky to meet with another Communist leader, Chen Duxiu , in Shanghai and began to establish

1786-550: The Nazi government 's propaganda against the Soviet Union and the Comintern, a treaty of assistance was concluded between Germany and Japan in 1936, the Anti-Comintern Pact . In it, the two states agreed to fight the Comintern and assured each other that they would not sign any treaties with the Soviet Union that would contradict the anti-communist spirit of the agreement. However, this did not prevent Hitler from signing

1880-785: The Nazi-Soviet Pact with Stalin in August 1939, which in turn meant the end of the Popular Front policy and, in fact, that of the Comintern as well. The German-Soviet non-aggression treaty contained far-reaching agreements on spheres of interest , which the two totalitarian powers implemented over the next two years using military means. On 3 September 1939, France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany after its invasion of Poland , beginning World War II in Europe . The Comintern sections now found themselves in

1974-666: The Paris Commune had been crushed by force of arms in 1871. The Bolsheviks believed that this required a new international to foment revolution in Europe and around the world. During this early period (1919–1924), 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

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2068-659: The Popular Front led by Manuel Azaña winning the 1936 election in Spain , and with Léon Blum 's 1936 election which led to the Popular Front government in France . Stalin's purges of the 1930s affected Comintern activists living in both the Soviet Union and overseas. At Stalin's direction, the Comintern was thoroughly infused with Soviet secret police and foreign intelligence operatives and informers working under Comintern guise. One of its leaders, Mikhail Trilisser , using

2162-684: The Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle) in German-occupied Europe, and Richard Sorge 's espionage network in China and Japan. References [ edit ] ^ Wright, Peter (31 July 1987). Spycatcher . Stoddart. ISBN   9780773721685 . ^ Boatner, Mark (1996). Biographical dictionary of World War II . Presidio Press. p. 672. ISBN   9780891416241 . ^ Andrew, Christopher; Mitrokhin, Vasili (1999). The Sword and

2256-888: The Second International dissolved in 1916. In 1917, after the February Revolution overthrew the Romanov Dynasty , Lenin published the April Theses which openly supported revolutionary defeatism , where the Bolsheviks hoped that Russia would lose the war so that they could quickly cause a socialist insurrection. The victory of the Russian Communist Party in the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917

2350-971: The fascist squadristi broke the strikes during the Biennio Rosso 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 Soviet Union from war communism to the New Economic Policy . At the Fifth World Congress of the Comintern in July 1924, Zinoviev condemned both 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

2444-402: 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. It would have momentous consequences, with

2538-647: The "Far East" (Korea), the "Near East" (Iran), Finland, Poland, Hungary, Georgia, Java (Indonesia), plus one representative of the Young Communist International . In the aftermath of the 2nd Word Congress, a five-member "little bureau" was also chosen to coordinate the day-to-day activities of the Comintern. This group included the Russians Zinoviev, Bukharin, and Mikhail Kobetsky , the Hungarian Rudniansky, and

2632-746: The 1919 Comintern founding congress. Trotsky, who was also marginalized and persecuted by Stalin, and other communists founded the Fourth International in 1938 as an oppositional alternative to the Stalin-dominated Comintern. In the years that followed, however, their sections rarely got beyond the status of the smallest cadre or splinter parties. Although the General Association of German Anti-Communist Associations had existed in Berlin since 1933 as part of

2726-668: The British government to have been a forgery. It was the Political Secretariat of the Comintern that de facto governed the Comintern , in Stalinist era intended to be an instrument of Soviet foreign policy. Subordination of national Communist Parties to the Communist International was complete: in any given country there can be only one Communist Party affiliated to the Communist International and each represented

2820-532: The Chairman of the Executive. Zinoviev was assisted by Angelica Balabanoff , acting as the secretary of the International, Victor L. Kibaltchitch and Vladmir Ossipovich Mazin. Lenin, Trotsky, and Alexandra Kollontai presented material. The main topic of discussion was the difference between bourgeois democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat . The following parties and movements were invited to

2914-484: The Comintern , held in Moscow from June 22 through July 12, 1921, did not directly elect an executive committee of the Comintern, as did its predecessor. Instead, it decided that the four parties which had been allocated 40 votes at the congress should send two delegates to ECCI, and the 14 parties with 20 to 30 votes should send one delegate. By virtue of its size and status, the Russian Communist Party

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3008-603: The Comintern China Branch, which evolved into the Communist Party of China in 1921. The Third Congress of the Communist International was held between 22 June–12 July 1921 in Moscow. The Fourth Congress, held in November 1922, at which Trotsky played a prominent role, continued in this vein. In 1924, the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party joined the Comintern. At first, in China, both

3102-482: The Comintern before the convention of the 2nd World Congress were similarly to be allowed a representative on this body. Until the arrival of the various elected delegates, representatives of the Russian Communist Party were to perform the functions of this Executive Committee of the Communist International. This organizational plan was approved unanimously by the Congress, without debate. Selected as President of ECCI

3196-399: The Comintern directly elected the membership of ECCI, the stenographic proceedings of the congress published in 1991 indicates that this was not actually the case. At the close of the final regular session of the congress, held on August 6, 1920, a list of ECCI participants was hurriedly discussed and adopted by a vote of the delegates. Russia, by virtue of the size and importance of its party,

3290-506: The Comintern labelled Social Democracy as social fascists and urged aligned parties to work to their destruction as the 'moderate wing of fascism'. Especially with the rise of the National Socialist Workers' Party in Germany after the 1930 federal election , this stance gave rise to some opposition inside. The Sixth World Congress also revised the policy of united front in the colonial (colonized) countries. China

3384-511: The Comintern, through ECCI and the permanent staff of the organization, began to fund the various communist parties of the world, attempting to add practical support to the literary fusillade which emanated from Moscow. Over time this financial aid provided by the Comintern would help to bind the various national parties to the central body. Still, it would be facile to reduce loyalty to the Comintern and its governing body, ECCI, to mere finances. The array of national communist parties saw themselves in

3478-464: 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 Josip Broz Tito and expelled in June 1948). The Cominform was dissolved in 1956 following Stalin's 1953 death and the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . While the communist parties of the world no longer had

3572-403: 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, Azerbaijani, and Persian Sections of the Central Bureau of the Eastern Peoples, and the Zimmerwald Commission. Zinoviev served as

3666-439: The Founding Congress came to a close. Although no more than the nucleus of an actual organization was created, hampered by difficult communications in the isolation of the blockade, the skeleton ECCI immediately began to issues a series of declarations and manifestos to the workers and nations of the world. These included a manifesto of ECCI to the workers and sailors of all countries on the Hungarian Revolution (March 28, 1919),

3760-420: The Founding Congress: Of these, the following attended (see list of delegates of the 1st Comintern congress ): the communist parties of Russia, Germany, German Austria, Hungary, Poland, Finland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Byelorussia, Estonia, Armenia, and the Volga German region; the Swedish Social Democratic Left Party (the opposition), Balkan Revolutionary People's of Russia; Zimmerwald Left Wing of France;

3854-457: The German Ernst Meyer . The composition of this "little bureau" was presumably named by ECCI itself. This bureau was enlarged in 1921 by the 3rd World Congress of the Comintern by the addition to these five of the Hungarian Béla Kun , Alfred Rosmer of France, Bernard Koenen of Germany, and the Polish-born Soviet citizen Karl Radek . The Comintern also maintained an extensive staff of professional functionaries . The 3rd World Congress of

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3948-420: The International. The 21 Conditions called for the demarcation between communist parties and other socialist groups and instructed the Comintern sections not to trust the legality of the bourgeois states. They also called for the build-up of party organizations along democratic centralist lines in which the party press and parliamentary factions would be under the direct control of the party leadership. Regarding

4042-418: The Russian Revolution now transmuted into dependency on Moscow and belief in Soviet infallibility. Depressing cycles of "internal rectification" began, disgracing and expelling successive leaderships, so that by the later 1920s many founding Communists had gone. This process of coordination, in a hard-faced drive for uniformity, was finalized at the next Congress of the Third International in 1928. The Comintern

4136-480: The Russian Tsar. There were exceptions, such as the socialist parties of the Balkans . To Vladimir Lenin 's surprise, even the Social Democratic Party of Germany voted in favor of war. After influential anti-war French Socialist Jean Jaurès was assassinated on 31 July 1914, the socialist parties hardened their support in France for their government of national unity . Socialist parties in neutral countries mostly supported neutrality, rather than totally opposing

4230-424: The Second International to call upon the international working class to resist war if it were declared. But after the beginning of World War I, many European socialist parties announced support for the war effort of their respective nations. Including the British Labour Party who issued a manifesto stating, "the victory of the Germans would mean the death of democracy in Europe" while making no such criticisms of

4324-1083: The Shield - The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB . Blackstone Publishing. p. 154. ISBN   978-1470889340 . ^ Gazur, Edward P (2002). Alexander Orlov : the FBI's KGB General (1st ed.). New York: Carroll and Graf. p. 398. ISBN   9780786709717 . v t e The Great Illegals Hans Brusse Dmitri Bystrolyotov Arnold Deutsch Walter Krivitsky Theodore Maly Henri Pieck Alexander Radó Ignace Reiss Richard Sorge Leopold Trepper Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Illegals&oldid=1161897717 " Category : Soviet spies Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata Communist International The Comintern held seven World Congresses in Moscow between 1919 and 1935. During that period, it also conducted thirteen Enlarged Plenums of its governing Executive Committee , which had much

4418-436: The Soviet Government had nothing to do with Comintern. I gave up co-editing a series of documents on Russo-American relations because my Russian colleague could not or would not get over that hurdle....Even today [2020], when the Russians are more liberal in their censorship of documentary publications, one has to verify where possible through other sources independent of Moscow. And although Comintern's archives are available on

4512-413: The Soviet Union , founded at roughly the same time that the Comintern was abolished in 1943, although its specific duties during the first several years of its existence are unknown. Following the June 1947 Paris Conference on Marshall Aid , Stalin gathered a grouping of key European communist parties in September and set up the Cominform , or Communist Information Bureau, often seen as a substitute to

4606-576: The Soviet Union for propaganda tours praising the future. Under the leadership of Zinoviev, the Comintern established fronts in many countries in the 1920s and after. To coordinate their activities, the Comintern set up international umbrella organizations linking groups across national borders, such as the Young Communist International (youth), Profintern (trade unions), Krestintern (peasants), International Red Aid (humanitarian aid), Sportintern (organized sports), and more. Front organizations were especially influential in France, which in 1933 became

4700-499: The Soviet Union were liquidated, and more than a thousand were handed over to Germany. Wolfgang Leonhard , who experienced this period in Moscow as a contemporary witness, wrote about it in his political autobiography, which was published in the 1950s: "The foreign communists living in the Soviet Union were particularly affected. In a few months, more functionaries of the Comintern apparatus were arrested than had been put together by all bourgeois governments in twenty years. Just listing

4794-507: The United States. Although not originally envisioned as such, formal gatherings of the "Enlarged Executive Committee of the Communist International" rapidly came to supplant the World Congresses of the Comintern. The 4th World Congress established the Organization Bureau ("Orgburo") of the Comintern. This committee controlled placement of Comintern cadres throughout the world and supervised international agitation and propaganda work, leaving political questions to ECCI. The Comintern Orgburo

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4888-421: The adhesion issue. The French Section of the Workers International (SFIO) 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 Communist Party of Italy in 1921, the Belgian Communist Party in September 1921, and so on. In 1920,

4982-449: The base for communist front organizer Willi Münzenberg . These organizations were dissolved in the late 1930s or early 1940s. In 1928, the Ninth Plenum of the executive committee began the so-called Third Period , which was to last until 1935. The Comintern proclaimed that the capitalist system was entering the period of final collapse and therefore all communist parties were to adopt an aggressive and militant 'left' line. In particular,

5076-427: The break-up of the Eastern Bloc in 1989–1991. British historian Jonathan Haslam reports that even after in Moscow archives: all references to the Communist International and later the international department of the central committee, which drove the revolutionary side of foreign policy, were removed from published diplomatic documents, in order to fit in with the prevailing dogma established by Vladimir Lenin that

5170-444: The colonies. Notably, some of the delegates opposed the idea of an alliance with the bourgeoisie and preferred giving support to communist movements in these countries instead. Their criticism was shared by the Indian revolutionary M. N. Roy , who attended as a delegate of the Mexican Communist Party . The Congress removed the term bourgeois-democratic in what became the 8th condition. Many European socialist parties were divided over

5264-487: The comintern. Wright considered them the best recruiters and controllers (espionage directors) that Soviet intelligence ever produced. They knew each other, and together they recruited and built a number of high-grade espionage networks in hostile foreign countries, across the world. Examples of these were, Arnold Deutsch who recruited Kim Philby of the Cambridge Five in Britain the Red Three (Rote Drei) in Switzerland run by Alexander Radó or Leopold Trepper 's network

5358-446: The congress, as Degras lists by name a 26-member body that was in place over the course of the next year. Included, in addition to the five Russian delegates, were two Americans (one each from the rival Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party of America ), two delegates from the Netherlands, as well as one delegate each from Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Scandinavia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia,

5452-414: 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 were received from the member sections, the International

5546-582: The first Chairman of the Comintern's executive committee 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), namely that parties would make decisions democratically, but uphold in

5640-437: The gathering originally slated to commence in Moscow beginning on February 15. The conference which ultimately declared itself the Founding Congress of the Communist International was postponed to March 2, 1919, owing to the difficulties entailed by foreign delegates in crossing the blockade of Soviet Russia established by the Allied Nations at the end of World War I . Only a comparatively few delegates did manage to make

5734-406: 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". Among those persecuted were many KPD functionaries, such as members of the KPD Central Committee, who believed they had found safe asylum in the Soviet Union after Adolf Hitler's rise to power . Among them was Hugo Eberlein , who had been present at

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5828-414: The most important sections and that other parties joining the International would have 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 formed and Lenin, Leon Trotsky , and Christian Rakovsky later delegated the task of managing the International to Grigory Zinoviev as

5922-444: The names would fill entire pages." Fritz Platten died in a labor camp and the leaders of the Indian ( Virendranath Chattopadhyaya or Chatto), Korean, Mexican, Iranian, and Turkish communist parties were executed. Out of 11 Mongolian Communist Party leaders, only Khorloogiin Choibalsan survived. 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

6016-445: The organization lost its political credibility and relevance. On 15 May 1943, a declaration of the executive committee was sent out to all sections of the International, calling for the dissolution of the Comintern. The declaration read: The historical role of the Communist International, organized 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

6110-548: The other, considering the latter as an unreliable ally yet not a direct enemy. The Congress called on the Indian Communist Party to utilize the contradictions between the "national bourgeoisie" and the British Empire . The Seventh and last Congress of the Comintern was held between 25 July and 20 August 1935. It was attended by representatives of 65 communist parties. The main report was delivered by Dimitrov, other reports were delivered by Palmiro Togliatti , Wilhelm Pieck , and Dmitry Manuilsky . The Congress officially endorsed

6204-399: The outbreak of World War I was the catalyst for their separation. The Triple Alliance comprised two empires, while the Triple Entente was formed by three. Socialists had historically been anti-war and internationalist , fighting against what they perceived as militarist exploitation of the proletariat for bourgeois states. A majority of socialists voted in favor of resolutions for

6298-466: The party line clear: "An internationalist is one who is ready to defend the USSR without reservation, without wavering, unconditionally; for the USSR it is the base of the world revolutionary movement, and this revolutionary movement cannot be defended and promoted without defending the USSR". According to Russian historian Vadim Rogovin , the leadership of the German Communist Party (KPD) had requested that Moscow send Leon Trotsky to Germany to direct

6392-425: The political situation in the colonized world, the Second Congress of the Communist International stipulated that a united front should be formed between the proletariat, peasantry, and national bourgeoisie in the colonial countries. Amongst the 21 conditions drafted by Lenin ahead of the congress was the 11th thesis which stipulated that all communist parties must support the bourgeois-democratic liberation movements in

6486-445: The politically suicidal situation of having to support, for example, the Soviet invasion and subsequent annexation of Eastern Poland . The Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov declared in an October 31 speech that "as far as the European great Powers are concerned, Germany is in the position of a State which is striving for the earliest termination of war and for peace, while Britain and France [...] are in favour of continuing

6580-474: The pressure for conformity. A new policy of "Bolshevization" was adopted, which dragooned the CPs toward stricter bureaucratic centralism. This flattened out the earlier diversity of radicalisms, welding them into a single approved model of Communist organization. Only then did the new parties retreat from broader Left arenas into their own belligerent world, even if many local cultures of broader cooperation persisted. Respect for Bolshevik achievements and defense of

6674-435: The proceedings in Italy as the "largest defeat suffered by socialism and communism since the beginning of the period of world revolution", and Zinoviev programmatically announced the similarities between fascism and social democracy, laying the groundwork for the later social fascism theory. Lenin died in 1924 and the next year saw a shift in the organization's focus from the immediate activity of world revolution towards

6768-695: The pseudonym Mikhail Aleksandrovich Moskvin, was in fact chief of the foreign department of the Soviet OGPU (later the NKVD ). Numerous Comintern officials were also targeted by the dictator and became victims of show trials and political persecution, such as Grigory Zinoviev and Nikolai Bukharin . At Stalin's orders, 133 out of 492 Comintern staff members became victims of the Great Purge . Several hundred German communists and antifascists who had either fled from Nazi Germany or were convinced to relocate in

6862-424: The ruling party of Soviet Russia calling on "communists of all countries" to boycott any attempts of reformists to reestablish the Second International , but to instead "rally around the revolutionary Third International." The formal call for a conference of revolutionary socialist political parties and radical trade unions espousing revolutionary industrial unionism had been issued on January 24, 1919, with

6956-555: The same function as the somewhat larger and more grandiose Congresses. Joseph Stalin , leader of the Soviet Union, dissolved the Comintern in 1943 to avoid antagonizing his allies in the later years of World War II , the United States and the United Kingdom. It was succeeded by the Cominform in 1947. Differences between the revolutionary and reformist wings of the workers' movement had been increasing for decades, but

7050-415: The summer and fall of 1920 marked the high-water mark for the prestige of the Comintern and its hopes of promoting world revolution. There would be, however, other functions for the organization and the executive committee which directed it. Owing to poor communications and the difficulty of individuals crossing the frontier during the blockade and civil war , of those originally invited to participate only

7144-463: 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,

7238-512: The trip, with a number of the places filled on an ad hoc basis by individuals already in Soviet Russia not bearing formal credentials from their home organizations. For example, Boris Reinstein , a druggist from Buffalo, New York who sat ostensibly as the delegate of the Socialist Labor Party of America , had been away from home for two years and had no formal authorization to represent his party. Similarly, Endre Rudnyánszky ,

7332-478: The war. On the other hand, during the 1915 Zimmerwald Conference , Lenin, then a Swiss resident refugee, organized an opposition to the " imperialist war" as the Zimmerwald Left , publishing the pamphlet Socialism and War where he called socialists collaborating with their national governments social chauvinists , i.e. socialists in word, but nationalists in deed. The Second International divided into

7426-402: The war." This position has been described as a way for the Soviet government to explain its refusal to honour proposals for economic assistance to Poland, which had been made before and at the start of the war, since "it was found impossible to determine with any degree of certainty who was the aggressor and who the victim." The weakened and decimated Comintern was then forced to officially adopt

7520-680: The web, most of it them are still closed to the reader, even though officially declassified, and much of it is in German only. One always has to ask, what has been cut out deliberately? Several international organizations were sponsored by the Comintern in this period: Executive Committee of the Communist International The Executive Committee of the Communist International , commonly known by its acronym, ECCI (Russian acronym ИККИ - for Исполнительный комитет Коммунистического интернационала ),

7614-469: Was Grigorii Zinoviev , an old associate of V.I. Lenin and top figure in the Russian Communist Party. Karl Radek , then ensconced in a Berlin prison, was symbolically selected as Secretary of ECCI, although the actual functions fell to Angelica Balabanov , albeit only for a few weeks. Zinoviev also served as editor of the official magazine of ECCI, Kommunisticheskii Internatsional ("The Communist International"), which began appearing regularly as soon as

7708-636: Was a failed coup in Estonia by the Communist Party of Estonia . The Comintern was founded at a Congress held in Moscow on 2–6 March 1919. It opened with a tribute to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg , recently executed by the Freikorps during the Spartacist Uprising , against the backdrop of the Russian Civil War . There were 52 delegates present from 34 parties. They decided to form an Executive Committee with representatives of

7802-505: Was a relatively small organization, but it devised novel ways of controlling communist parties around the world. In many places, there was a communist subculture, founded upon indigenous left-wing traditions which had never been controlled by Moscow. The Comintern attempted to establish control over party leaderships by sending agents who bolstered certain factions, by judicious use of secret funding, by expelling independent-minded activists and even by closing down entire national parties (such as

7896-645: Was allocated five delegates on the executive committee, to be joined by one delegate each from the following nations: Great Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Poland, Finland, the Far East (Korea), and the Middle East (Iran). No specific individuals were voted upon by the assembled delegates. This decision seems to have been rapidly modified by ECCI itself after conclusion of

7990-476: Was allocated five delegates to ECCI, while all other parties were to be entitled to a consultative voice on the committee, but no decisive vote. ECCI was subsequently enlarged in 1921-22, as new Communist Parties were allotted delegates with consultative votes while other parties were allowed a second vote. The countries exercising two votes on ECCI at the time of the 4th World Congress of the Comintern late in 1922 were Germany, France, Czechoslovakia, Finland, and

8084-612: Was considered to be one of such countries. However, in 1927, the Kuomintang turned on the Chinese Communist Party , which led to a review of the policy on forming alliances with the 'national bourgeoisie' in the 'colonizal countries'. The Congress did make a differentiation between the character of the Chinese Kuomintang on one hand and the Indian Swaraj Party and the Egyptian Wafd Party on

8178-519: Was dismissed in 1926 after falling out of favor with Stalin. 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. Geoff Eley summed up the change in attitude at this time as follows: By the Fifth Comintern Congress in July 1924 [...] the collapse of Communist support in Europe tightened

8272-420: Was dissolved. The dissolution was interpreted as Stalin wishing to calm his World War II allies (particularly Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill ) and to keep them from suspecting the Soviet Union of pursuing a policy of trying to foment revolution in other countries. According to historian Eric D. Weitz , 60% of German exiles in the Soviet Union had been liquidated during the Stalinist terror and

8366-644: Was exporting the October Revolution. Some communist parties had secret military wings. One example is the M-Apparat of the Communist Party of Germany . 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 Béla Kun . The next attempt

8460-431: Was felt throughout the world and an alternative path to power to parliamentary politics was demonstrated. With much of Europe on the verge of economic and political collapse in the aftermath of the carnage of World War I, revolutionary sentiments were widespread. The Russian Bolsheviks headed by Lenin believed that unless socialist revolution swept Europe, they would be crushed by the military might of world capitalism just as

8554-505: Was made at the time of the Ruhr crisis in spring and then again in selected parts of Germany in the autumn of 1923. 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 were quickly defeated. In 1924, there

8648-544: Was patterned after a similar institution in the Russian Communist Party that had been established in March 1919. The Zinoviev letter , purporting to be instructions to British communists to begin preparations for revolution, is on its face written as a letter from the ECCI on 15 September 1924. Although validated as genuine by the Secret Intelligence Service at the time, the letter is now accepted by

8742-658: Was the March Action in Germany in 1921, including an attempt to dynamite the express train from Halle to Leipzig. After this failed, the Communist Party of Germany expelled its former chairman Paul Levi from the party for publicly criticizing the March Action in a pamphlet, which was ratified by the Executive Committee of the Communist International prior to the Third Congress. A new attempt

8836-610: Was the governing authority of the Comintern between the World Congresses of that body. The ECCI, established by the Founding Congress of the Comintern in 1919, was dissolved with the rest of the Comintern in May 1943. The Communist International was established at a gathering convened in Moscow at the behest of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) . As early as December 24, 1918, a radio appeal had been issued by

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