Abstract
Relations between the Bolsheviks, the Communist International (Comintern) and the national communist parties from 1919 onwards have always been the subject of controversy. In Germany, for example, there has long been a dispute over the existence of a kind of early ‘Luxemburgism’ or ‘democratic communism’, the collapse of which was followed after 1924 by the forced ‘Stalinization’ postulated by Hermann Weber.1 Alternatively, should one speak of an early ’Bolshevization’, which had started in 1920–21 to take away the freedom of manoeuvre possessed initially by independent forces within each national party? This was how many contemporaries perceived the situation, and Richard Lowenthal gave solid evidential backing to this view in 1960.2
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