General Election in Britain in 1922 and Plans of Russian Bolsheviks and British Communists

Abstract

The author of this article (which was written mainly on the basis of archival data) could show that in 1922 Bolsheviks exerted the decisive influence upon the elaboration of the electoral policy of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). The main Bolshevik recommendations for the British communists were the following: to propagandize the communist ideas during the elections and to support the Labour candidates in the hope that they would demonstrate their incapability (after the formation of the government) to defend the interests of common people, and this would make it possible to strengthen the influence of communists among the workers. The official documents of the CPGB reflected readiness of the communist leadership to implement Moscow advices. But in reality the British communists could not implement all recommendations of the Bolshevik party. One of the major causes of this was the fact that majority of communist candidates relied on the support of the Labour Party and that why they tried not to stress the attention of the electorate on the communist ideas.