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87-966: The Young Communist International was the parallel international youth organization affiliated with the Communist International (Comintern). After failed efforts to form an international association of socialist youth organizations in 1889 and 1904, in May 1907 a conference in Stuttgart , Germany convened to form the International Union of Socialist Youth Organisations (the Internationale Verbindung Sozialistischer Jugendorganisationen , abbreviated IVSJO). IVSJO maintained its headquarters in Vienna and functioned as

174-660: 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 the most important sections and that other parties joining

261-720: A beer-hall in Berlin delegates representing many of the socialist youth organizations of Europe assembled, called together by International Secretary Willi Münzenberg. The conference decided to change the name to "Young Communist International" and was subsequently known as the First Congress of YCI. Some 19 delegates were in attendance, representing the socialist youth organizations of Russia, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Spain, as well as an opposition faction from Czechoslovakia. The First Congress established headquarters for

348-688: A close Russian lead through the close direction of the youth movement by the Comintern. Historian of the early Communist youth movement Richard Cornell notes the thinking of the Berlin-centric group: Münzenberg at this time gave expression to what was clearly the underlying sense of frustration of the young communist activists. Acknowledging the necessity for centralism in the Communist movement so as to concentrate "the greatest striking power," he pleaded almost despairingly not to so overcentalize

435-482: A critical turning point in the history of the socialist youth movement." The Bern conference decided to start a publication called Die Jugendinternationale ( German : The Youth International ) and an International Youth Bureau was established. Headquarters were established in Zurich, with Willi Münzenberg elected by the conference to fill the role of International Secretary of the reconstituted IVSJO. By 1918, all

522-829: 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

609-635: 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

696-408: 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

783-737: A head in 1921 over the scheduling of a 2nd World Congress of the Young Communist International. The Russo-centric contingent of the YCI had sought a gathering in Moscow in the summer of 1921, in conjunction with the previously scheduled 3rd World Congress of the Communist International. Head of the Comintern Grigory Zinoviev had been prevailed upon to send a letter to the ECCYI in November 1920 supporting such

870-923: 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

957-656: 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 was exporting the October Revolution. Some communist parties had secret military wings. One example is

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1044-548: 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

1131-540: A venue. Nevertheless—and over the strong objections of its Russian contingent—the Executive Committee of the YCI independently decided to convene the 2nd World Congress of the organization's deliberative body on April 6 in Jena . The Russians refused to attend this gathering, which had to be held in secrecy due to its "illegal" status in the eyes of the police. Four days after its convocation, the meeting place of

1218-677: 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 was felt throughout the world and an alternative path to power to parliamentary politics was demonstrated. With much of Europe on

1305-743: 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

1392-634: 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

1479-600: 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

1566-699: 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

1653-602: The First World War brought an end to the work of the IVSJO. The organization was founded on the premise that its task was primarily educational, rather than political, and that participation of the young socialists of all countries and all political tendencies was necessary for its continued ability to function. The coming of the European war and the support of the various national socialist parties for their governments in

1740-550: 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

1827-785: 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

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1914-659: 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

2001-616: 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 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

2088-971: 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

2175-402: 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

2262-589: The 1919 Berlin Conference, with the Russian delegate, Lazar Shatskin , advancing the position that the various national youth groups should be under the immediate direction and control of the corresponding adult parties. This position was opposed by others from the Western European socialist tradition, which envisioned an independent vanguard role for the communist youth movement. At Berlin a compromise

2349-746: 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

2436-618: 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; the Czech, Bulgarian, Yugoslav, British, French, and Swiss Communist Groups;

2523-414: The 3rd Congress of Comintern addressed the question of the communist youth movement. The YCI organization was streamlined along the structure of the Comintern and YCI member organization were obliged to adopt the name "Young Communist League" followed by their national denomination. Following the 2nd World Congress of the YCI, Münzenberg was succeeded by Voja Vujović as head of the organization. In 1943

2610-599: 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

2697-506: 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

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2784-464: 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

2871-420: The Communist International in Moscow. Splits began to take place in socialist parties around the world between electorally-oriented socialist and revolutionary-oriented communist tendencies. As Richard Cornell notes, "The young socialists were now pitched headlong into party debates. Neutrality was no longer possible." On November 20, 1919, the IVSJO held its first conference after the war. In secret conditions in

2958-414: The Communist Youth International were held in Moscow simultaneously with the congresses of the Comintern. Once more, a step had been taken which favoured the centralized discipline of Comintern at the expense of that degree of independence which was necessary for the encouragement of mass movements. It may have been a coincidence that Münzenberg was transferred after the congress to other work." For its part,

3045-459: 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 the first Chairman of the Comintern's executive committee from 1919 to 1926, but its dominant figure until his death in January 1924

3132-444: 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 the Chairman of the Executive. Zinoviev was assisted by Angelica Balabanoff , acting as

3219-420: 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

3306-413: 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 was the March Action in Germany in 1921, including an attempt to dynamite

3393-418: 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

3480-436: 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

3567-413: 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

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3654-576: 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

3741-499: 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

3828-457: 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 the outbreak of World War I was the catalyst for their separation. The Triple Alliance comprised two empires, while

3915-468: The YCI organization in Berlin. Decisions of the organization were to be made by a five-member Executive Committee of the Communist Youth International (ECCYI), and a program for the organization was adopted. Perhaps the most important issue determined during the first years of the Young Communist International dealt with the relationship of the youth movement with the emerging communist parties of various countries. This matter had been tenaciously discussed at

4002-450: The YCI was dissolved along with the Comintern. Its successor organization is the World Federation of Democratic Youth . 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 the same function as the somewhat larger and more grandiose Congresses. Joseph Stalin , leader of

4089-421: 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,

4176-400: 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 was a failed coup in Estonia by the Communist Party of Estonia . The Comintern was founded at

4263-449: 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,

4350-427: 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

4437-444: 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

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4524-476: The conflict effectively ended the possibility of international cooperation and the official IVSJO effectively ceased to exist. The radical youth movement based in the neutral nation of Switzerland attempted to unite the various national sections of the socialist movement on a new basis, however. With the charismatic head of the Swiss socialist youth movement, Willi Münzenberg , playing the leading part, an anti-militaristic conference of international youth sections

4611-414: 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

4698-426: 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 was made at the time of the Ruhr crisis in spring and then again in selected parts of Germany in

4785-406: 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

4872-412: The movement that the "revolutionary initiative" of all true communists was bound and stifled. Having struggled for so long toget out from under the bureaucracy of the German social democrats ( SPD ), Münzenberg and the young German communists had no desire to substitute a new communist bureaucracy for the old social democratic one. The division between independent and Moscow-centric young communists came to

4959-444: 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

5046-415: The official socialist youth organizations of Europe — with the exception of the German, the Dutch, and the French — had affiliated themselves with the reconstituted IVSJO. While the organization was anti-militarist, severe divisions remained as to how to bring an end to the war. The pacifist Center faction sought the establishment of binding arbitration and measures for the active limitation of armaments, while

5133-445: 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

5220-548: 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

5307-451: 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 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

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5394-466: 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

5481-425: 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

5568-445: 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

5655-474: 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

5742-435: 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

5829-526: 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

5916-403: The revolutionary Left, inspired by events in Soviet Russia , increasingly came to see international revolution as the only possible solution to the inevitability of capitalist war. This division roughly paralleled the split in the adult movement of the Zimmerwald movement between pacifist Majority and revolutionary Left factions. The decisive break came in March 1919 with the establishment of

6003-435: The secret gathering was shifted to Berlin , due to security considerations. The session was abruptly terminated at the Comintern's behest on instructions from the Executive Committee of the Communist International . A so-called "Real Second Congress" was convened in Moscow between June 9 and June 23, immediately prior to the 3rd World Congress of the Comintern .Historian E.H. Carr remarked: "That resistance and criticism

6090-415: 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 the Founding Congress: Of these, the following attended (see list of delegates of

6177-463: 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,

6264-469: 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 the Paris Commune had been crushed by force of arms in 1871. The Bolsheviks believed that this required

6351-788: 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 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

6438-741: 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, the Second International dissolved in 1916. In 1917, after the February Revolution overthrew the Romanov Dynasty , Lenin published

6525-402: 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

6612-578: 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: Lazar Shatskin Lazar Abramovich Shatskin (Russian: Лазарь Абрамович Шацкин; born in Suwałki in 1902 – died 1937)

6699-489: The youth section of the Second International . At its foundation the International Secretary of IVSJO was Hendrik de Man . De Man was succeeded by Robert Danneberg , who held the post from 1908 to 1915. The first Chairman of the IVSJO was the German anti-militarist radical Karl Liebknecht . Liebknecht served as an inspiration and "elder statesman" for radical youth throughout Europe. The coming of

6786-502: 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

6873-661: Was a Soviet and Communist International functionary and one of the founders of Komsomol . He was born to a wealthy family of Polish Jewish origin. Joining the Bolshevik party in May 1917, he took part in establishment a number of youth organizations: МК РКСМ (Russian Young Communist League by the Moscow Committee of Bolshevik Party ), Moscow Union of Working Youth, Komsomol, and the Young Communist International . First Secretary of

6960-505: 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

7047-541: 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 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

7134-552: Was called. On April 4, 1915, nine delegates from various neutral countries assembled in Bern to attempt to establish a center for a revitalized IVSJO organization. While the conference did not endorse Lenin's call for revolutionary civil war to end the European bloodbath, the conference did endorse "revolutionary socialism" and the recreation of the socialist youth movement independent of the various ( chauvinistic ) national socialist parties. As historian Richard Cornell notes, "This marked

7221-612: 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

7308-519: 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

7395-477: 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

7482-520: Was experienced is suggested by the fact that Lenin intervened in person in order to reconcile divergent opinions, and that Trotsky appeared at the congress to defend Comintern against the charge of subordinating the interests of world revolution to those of Soviet Russia. But difficulties were overcome, compliance registered, and the headquarters of the Communist Youth International transferred to Moscow. Subsequent congresses of

7569-603: Was reached, in which it was agreed that the YCI would not be considered a "sister" organization to the Communist International, but rather a "part" of the Comintern. National youth organizations were obligated to follow either the political program of "that party or faction in their country which is a member of the Third International" or the program of the Comintern itself. The YCI remained divided between adherents of an independent line, concentrated in Germany and headed by Willi Münzenberg, and those desiring to follow

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