Towards a Comparative History of Communism: The British and German Communist Parties to 1933

Abstract

The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 inspired the formation of communist parties across the world. These, in turn, affiliated to the Communist International founded by the Bolsheviks in 1919, through which the national parties adopted a uniform organization, policy and theory. This article seeks to survey the development of the German and British communist parties between 1918 and 1933, examining the extent to which their experiences can be compared and contrasted within the increasingly uniform paradigm established by the Communist International under pressure from Stalin's Soviet Union. By so doing, it rejects traditional monocausal arguments based exclusively on the machinations of Soviet power politics, suggesting instead that to understand the history of communism both nationally and internationally, it is necessary to consider a complex interaction of indigenous and external factors.