Communist International Research Articles

1922 — the best year of the Comintern. Soviet Russia, German communists and the Genoa conference

The signing of the Declaration on the formation of the Soviet Union on December 30, 1922 marked a new stage in the history of international relations, and, at the same time, took stock of intense domestic and international political struggle unfolding in the previous years. The developments within the Communist International were of particular importance for both the outcomes of this struggle and the future of international labor movement. The author stresses that for the Comintern the year of 1922 was dominated by a struggle between the two opposing ideological and political trends: the inertia of the ‘storm and onslaught’ enthusiasm of the first post-revolutionary years and the rise of the ideas of peaceful coexistence. In this context, the paper assesses the role that the Bolshevik leaders envisaged for the Comintern during the preparation and conduct of the Genoa Conference and, particularly, for the policy of the united workers front. The author shows that the very idea of cooperation with socialists and social democrats received an extremely ambiguous reaction from representatives of Western communist parties. In this regard, the position of the German Communist Party (KPD) was of particular importance to the Bolshevik leaders. Indeed, the case of KPD was emblematic of those tendencies and contradictions that marked the development of the international communist movement in the period under review. The KPD leaders welcomed the Comintern’s turn towards a united workers front. However, the author notes that this support was based on a highly unstable compromise between multiple contradicting domestic and foreign policy imperatives, including opposition from the left-wing radicals within the party and continuous conflict with the government of the Weimar Republic, exacerbated by ideological and financial dependence on Moscow. As a result, the KPD’s actions were very often ad hoc and inconsistent, reflecting general issues typical to the international labor movement of that period. That became clear during the Fourth Congress of the Comintern, which took place at the end of 1922. It failed to outline a clear strategy for interaction between the Russian Bolsheviks and foreign communists. At the same time, the outcomes of the Fourth Congress were crucial for further evolution of the ideology and practical activities of the Comintern. The policy of the united workers front got a broader definition as the Communist International started to recognize the threat posed by fascism.

Маоизм в Чили в 60-е годы. Раскол в Международном коммунистическом движении и чилийские левые

The split in the International Communist Movement and the Sino-Soviet party and state conflict had serious consequences for the left movement in Latin America, and in Chile in par-ticular. In Chile, adherents of the Chinese revolutionary expe-rience, and then the theory and practice of Maoism, stood out from the traditional political parties of communists and so-cialists in the mid-60s. At the heart of their differences with their parent parties were attitudes toward violent methods of revolutionary struggle, criticism of the dominant concept of the peaceful path of the Chilean revolution and the reformist line of the left. Dissident pro-Chinese groups did not immedi-ately accept the Maoist doctrine, limiting themselves to criti-cizing the pro-Soviet position of the Communists, but over time adopted the main provisions of the Maoist doctrine, in-cluding in those of its points that clearly contradicted the characteristics of the country. Maoism's opposition to the al-liance of communists and socialists created serious problems for the latter among their social bases. The strength of Chilean Maoism was limited, which over time led its parties and groups to a marginal position in the left camp. This article of-fers a study of the process of formation and development of the Maoist movement in Chile in the 60s, on the eve of the coming to power of the Government of National Unity.

Beyond the borders. Ahmed Hassan Mattar and his activism between Africa and South America

The biography of Ahmed Hassan Mattar expressed the multiple identity lines assumed by those revolutionary cadres of the first decades of the 20th century, who emerged in a colonial and neocolonial world and developed their political activity in different settings and distant spheres of their own culture. The story of A. H. Mattar is, therefore, that of a militant and journalist of Sudanese origin who developed his political work in Africa, especially in Morocco, together with Abd el-Krim, the warlord of the Rif, as well as in European countries such as France and Germany, once incorporated into the Communist International. However, it would be in South America, in countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, where he would stand out not only in anti-imperialist struggles but also as a chronicler and community leader of communities of Arab origin, even producing original empirical and statistical research. In sum, Mattar’s course can be seen as that of an activist who understood the social reality of a certain time and who assumed politics as a commitment to fight against colonialism and imperialism.

La Revolución Rusa y América Latina: 1917 y más allá

La Revolución Rusa y América Latina: 1917 y más allá

An Anthropologist at Davos

As the triumphant power ending World War II, the United States became a global beacon for a reconstituted European political liberalism that could be exported to the world at large. During the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union (1947–1991), a nation that was led by a Boston “Brahmin” elite and guided by generic Christianity proposed a universalizing democracy to face off with international communism (see, e.g., David Halberstam’s [1993] The Best and the Brightest). American ideals of liberty, equality, freedom, and progress were widely circulated in a bid to outpace communism as a competing ideology for nation-building, regional influence, and world unity.

La masacre de Tlatelolco y los gobiernos de los Estados Unidos de América y de Gran Bretaña

The presented article analyzes the international dimension of the so-called Tlatelolco massacre of 1968. It focuses on the diplomatic reaction of two of Mexico’s neighbors, the United States of America and the United Kingdom that still held its colony of British Honduras. This topic has been neglected by historiography so far. It is based on the archival resources from British National Archives in Kew and online declassified American documents available thanks to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The reaction of both governments was minimal and relatively calm because they understood the massacre did not endanger their strong ally Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and the students’ protests were not anti-American nor anti-British. Similarly, there was a vague connection to the international communist movement, and no countries from the communist camp were directly involved. The only difference we could find was in the evaluation of the massacre. The British saw it as an opportunity for further democratization of Mexico, i.e., they took a more normative stance. The Americans approached the situation more pragmatically. They were supportive of the undemocratic regime as long as it took an anti-communist stance.

Exilic Marxisms: Lukács and Balázs in Stalin’s Moscow

This paper discusses exile and emigration as factors in the encounters of art, philosophy, cultural criticism, and political power in Soviet Russia under Stalin. While by now we possess considerable knowledge about emigration and exile from Eastern and Central Europe to the West in the 1920s and 1930s, we have tended to under-research and under-conceptualize the alternative destination. Seemingly less glamorous and lastingly tainted by the open glorification or silent acquiescence to Stalin and the purges, Moscow as a place of emigration and exile of left East-Central European intellectuals in the 1930s presents a uniquely important trajectory, the study of which contributes to enriching and refining our understanding not just of the history of international communism, but also – and perhaps more importantly – of the formation of the intellectual and political elites that were to shape life in the Eastern Bloc after 1945.

“Racial Discrimination Can in No Way Be Justified”: The Vatican and Desegregation in the South, 1946–1968

Although the Vatican pragmatically accepted the establishment of segregated Catholic institutions in the Jim Crow South during the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, its condemnation of Nazi and fascist racism and espousal of the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ rejected racial distinctions. This article argues that Rome's postwar transnational interest in countering international communism and appealing to the global South also encouraged its support for racial equality, integration and the civil rights movement, and denial of religious legitimacy to segregationists. Yet Catholic desegregation in the South was largely token and one-sided, and closed many black institutions.

Soviet-Cuban relations after the Caribbean crisis, the collapse of détente and lessons for the future

The results of the Caribbean crisis in the domestic and foreign literature have rarely been covered from the point of view of the Soviet-Cuban relations that influenced the internationalist policy of Cuba in Africa in the 1970s. The author analyzes: the degree of independence of Cuba’s policy in Africa, the participation of the USSR in it and the fairness of accusations brought by Washington. The results of the analysis show that deploying of Cuban “volunteers” in Angola and then in Ethiopia was not initiated by the USSR, which aimed at maintaining détente in relations with the West. Moreover, new deterioration of relations with Cuba amid escalating Chinese-Soviet tensions, increasing centrifugal tendencies in the “socialist commonwealth” and emergence of “Eurocommunism” threatened to further weaken the “world system of socialism” and erode the ideological foundations of Marxism-Leninism. By analyzing Cuba’s internationalist activity in Africa, the author has been able to draw some conclusions about its implications for the international communist movement and its influence on the balance of power in the world before perestroika policy began in the Soviet Union. The end of détente policy did not allow the USSR to redirect the resources released from the arms race to improving the living conditions of the Soviet people. Cuban revolutionary activity contributed to fragmentation of the formerly united “upfront antiimperialist forces.” The weakening of the ideological foundations of “real socialism” was an additional factor that prompted the Soviet leadership, represented by Mikhail Gorbachev, to begin a policy of perestroika. Cuba’s ‘progress’ in Africa contributed to consolidation of Cuban society around the policy of the Cuban Communist Party, which, in turn, helped it to withstand the difficulties of the “peculiar period of peace” in the early 1990s.

Bolshevization, Stalinization, and Party Ritual: The Congresses of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1920–1943

This paper examines the national congresses of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in the period of the Communist International (1919- 43). Both in Britain and internationally, communist party congresses in this period lost any independent decision-making role and became a mechanism activated and controlled from above. Not surprisingly, they have attracted little serious scholarly notice in their own right, but this paper identifies three themes deserving consideration: first, that of the congress as a field of tension between inherited notions of delegatory democracy and the Comintern’s top-down version of democratic centralism; second, that of its growing importance as a site of symbolic demonstration and ritualized group action; and third, that of bolshevization and Stalinization as processes that can be traced through these changing conceptions of the congress’s role. Each theme is considered here in a separate section. These employ a three-party periodization that supports an argument of the CPGB’s early but protracted bolshevization. Further watershed moments in the late 1920s and the mid-1930s can both in different ways be identified with Stalinization. These, however, did not so much resolve as displace the tensions with wider labour movement practices.

Член Президиума Исполкома Коминтерна Э. Руднянский в работах зарубежных историков

This article examines the biography of the Hungarian communist Endre Rudnyánszky, one of the leaders of the Comintern in 1919–1921 and member of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI). The paper is based on the publications of foreign historians (mainly Hungarian): György Borsányi, György Milei, Józsa Antal, Tibor Kosztolánczy, Erika Nemeskéri, Levente Sipos, Lajos Terbe, Miklós Mesterházi, Pierre Broué (France), etc. In addition, the author turned to the reminiscences of Rudnyánszky’s contemporaries, primarily his fellow party members Mátyás Rákosi and Sándor Szerényi, which shed some light on his professional qualities and certain character traits. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that these materials have not previously been used in Russian publications, although these are quite valuable sources as they fill serious gaps in Rudnyánszky’s biography. The paper dwells on the main stages in his career: life before the start of World War I; activities in Soviet Russia after his liberation from captivity, before the founding of the Comintern; work in the Comintern; disappearance, life in Romania followed by the return to the USSR, arrest, exile and release, as well as issues related to these events. The author concludes that Rudnyánszky’s biography remains one of the least studied among those of the high-ranking Comintern employees.

A Failed Attempt to Create an International Community of Communist Asian Studies in 1955

East German sinologists organized an international conference on East Asian studies in Leipzig in October 1955, bringing together scholars from most communist states and several scholars from Western Europe. This conference served to unite sinologists from both the Communist Bloc and West Germany in the early Cold War era. Since the Chinese delegation was particularly honored, this article suggests that China expanded its political influence in East Europe after the Korean War and the death of Stalin, which prompted a tension within the international communist community, especially between China and the Soviet Union. Moreover, this conference demonstrated a strong “modern turn” in the rising field of Asian studies, sinology in particular, because of the rise of the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s.

Materials of 20th-century American writers in Moscow archives 1917–1941

This analytical overview of materials located in Moscow archives is devoted to the history of American literature and the Soviet-American literary connections in the years before World War II (1917–1941). These materials document American writers’ contacts with Soviet and international communist organisations, personally with Joseph Stalin, with cultural and literary institutions. The USSR closely monitored the sentiment among American writers, as evidenced by the corpus of correspondence between Soviet literary functionaries and their informants in the USA. Archives of Soviet publishers offer insights into the process of translating and editing American literature as well as creation of theatrical and film adaptations. Readers’ letters from the 1930s demonstrate the mass audience’s enthusiasm for American literature.

‘The human ocean of the colored races’: interwar Black internationalism, Marxism, and permanent revolution

ABSTRACT In the international Communist movement after the Russian Revolution, Black radical opponents of racism, colonialism, and capitalism entered a productive dialogue with European socialist revolutionism. This tradition was itself shaped by decades of theoretical disagreement around the relationship between historical development and socialist revolution. Common to the leading figures of Europe’s revolutionary Left (Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky) was an emphasis on the uninterrupted continuity of democratic and socialist revolutions in the epoch of imperialism. ‘Permanent revolution’ became a phrase associated exclusively with Trotskyists, but many Communists in different traditions professed affiliation with a flexible and revolutionary version of Marxism. As such, though the language of uninterrupted or permanent revolution was often absent from Black Marxist writing in the 1920s and 1930s, writers such as Claude McKay, Grace Campbell, C.L.R. James, and W.E.B. Du Bois articulated Marxist perspectives on Black oppression that similarly transcended rigid and economist versions of Marxism. Their additional emphasis was on the vanguard role of anticolonial radicals in the world revolution. As Black internationalists appropriated Marxism, they deployed a logic that helps to connect revolutionary theory in Europe with the intellectual work of radical Black internationalists.

Left Transnationalism: The Communist International and the National, Colonial, and Racial Questions ed. by Oleksa Drachewych and Ian McKay

Reviewed by: Left Transnationalism: The Communist International and the National, Colonial, and Racial Questions ed. by Oleksa Drachewych and Ian McKay Matthew Galway Drachewych, Oleksa and Ian McKay, eds. – Left Transnationalism: The Communist International and the National, Colonial, and Racial Questions. Montréal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020. 448 p. In a May 26, 1943, "Report on the Dissolution of the Communist International" (關於共產國際解散問題毛澤東同志作詳盡報告/Guanyu gongchanguoji jiesan wenti Mao Zedong tongzhi zuo xiangjin baogao), Mao Zedong reflected on the Comintern's great contribution to the Chinese Communist revolution. He averred that throughout its quarter-century of existence, the Comintern "has rendered the greatest services in helping each country to organize a truly revolutionary workers' party, and it has also contributed enormously to the great cause of organizing the anti-fascist war." Mao's reflection on its past utility then segued to an explanation of why it had outlived its purpose: "It is a principle of Marxism-Leninism that the forms of revolutionary organizations must conform to the necessities of the revolutionary struggle. If a form of organization no longer suits the necessities of the struggle, then this form of organization must be abolished … To continue this organizational form would, on the contrary, hinder the development of the revolutionary struggle in each country." Mao's appraisal of the Comintern as a force behind Communist movements worldwide and as an organizational body that applied obdurately its "Moscow Line" approach instead of adapting to suit specific movements, is where Left Transnationalism breaks new ground. At its heart, as editors Oleksa Drachewych and Ian Mackay note in the Introduction, Left Transnationalism constitutes a "post-post-Cold War project" that throws overdue light on horizontal links that operated "without the direct involvement of Moscow" (pp. 6, 35). Each contributor to the volume sets about "establishing the foundation for new approaches" upon which "there might emerge new insights into the global cultural challenge constituted by the revolutionary upheaval that the Comintern sought to accelerate" (p. 33). The volume consists of four parts: "Orientations," "Transnational Personal Relationships," "Race and Colonialism," and "National Questions." In a comprehensive opening chapter of the first part, Lars Lih explores the links between the Third International and prewar revolutionary social democracy. He casts the Third International as a body that held "a global perspective from the very beginning," but one that did not necessarily deviate from "the original model of revolutionary social democracy" (pp. 56, 68). S. A. Smith tells the story of the Bolshevik Revolution's resonance in the colonized Global South in two halves. First, it asks how the Bolsheviks came to value the "twin issues" of national self-determination and anti-colonial revolution amid socialist crises at home and elsewhere on the continent. Second, it explores the propagation of the October Revolution's symbolic capital as a watershed event with global applicability through horizontal transnational connections (pp. 74, 86). The next two chapters, by John Riddell and Alastair Kocho-Williams, shift the focus to Comintern efforts to forge unity against, undermine, and openly resist European colonial and imperial domination in Asia. [End Page 192] An exceptional entry to the second part is Sandra Pujals' chapter on Latin American and Caribbean poputchiki, or "fellow travelers," such as Seki Sano, Arcady Boylter, Ángel Del Río, and James Sager. These artists and luminaries had "direct, short-lived, or even accidental" relationships with the Comintern's worldwide network, which, as Pujals demonstrates, "underscores the Comintern's presence in the region even after its period of activity" (pp. 156–157). Another excellent contribution, by Xiaofei Tu, explores two incidents of outright betrayal by Japanese Communist Party (JCP) leader Nosaka Sanzo of his comrades Yamamoto Kenzo (to the Comintern) and Ito Ritsu Sanzo (to the Chinese Communist Party). Through a critical analysis of Japanese autobiographies, media reports, and Japanese Communist Party journals, Xu concludes that Sanzo's justification for these betrayals was a mix of careerism, "self-protection," "power-hunger," and a purportedly unshakeable loyalty to global Communism (pp. 218–219). Three chapters stand out from the subsequent two parts: Chapter 10 by Marc Becker, Chapter 11 by Kankan Xie, and Chapter 15 by Anna Belogurova. Becker's contribution...

The league against imperialism, national liberation, and the economic question

AbstractThe League Against Imperialism (LAI) was an international organization active from 1927 to 1937 that brought together communists, socialists, nationalists, trade unionists, and pacifists in order to coordinate their myriad ‘assaults against empire’. Founded with the support of the Communist International, the LAI at its peak had a membership of several hundred people, from every inhabited continent, among them prominent interwar activists and future heads of state. The organization aspired both to become an international movement and to coordinate specific instances of mass struggle. Exploring both aspects shows how the LAI interwove the global and the local in interwar anti-imperialist movements. This article draws from recent work on interwar anti-imperialism and internationalism as well as work on struggles for economic sovereignty in the 1960s–70s to argue that a critical aspect of the LAI’s anti-imperial politics concerned the relationship between political independence and the world economy. Through an examination of LAI members’ writings and public addresses, we can observe this relationship through the staging of their own claims for self-rule and control over land, labour, and resources.

Building a Continental Policy: The South American Secretariat of the Communist International (1925–34)

Abstract This paper analyses the history of the South American Secretariat of the Communist International. The objective is to carry out a critical study of the policies and strategy of the Secretariat, considering how its relationship with the Comintern and the South American Communist Parties changed over time. Our hypothesis is that during its first years of existence (1925–8) the Secretariat developed a policy based on the United Front. This changed during a transition period (July 1928–July 1929) in which it developed a stagist programme of bourgeois-democratic revolution, and the implementation of its front tactics was increasingly questioned. From 1929 to 1934, the organisation abandoned all concrete alliance tactics in the workers’ movement and electoral politics while nevertheless proclaiming its advocacy of the ‘United Front from below’. This paper is based on an analysis of primary sources, including the Secretariat’s publications, correspondence, and internal documents.

The Cominternist Origins of Current Socialist Bolivarianism

Introduction. The article examines the Comintern “trace” in the formation of modern “Bolivarian socialism”, proclaimed by the leaders of Venezuela at the beginning of the 21st century. Communist postulates (in the Comintern perception) were, certainly, not the only source of the formation of the ideology of the ruling Socialist United Party of Venezuela. At the same time, a number of the postulates were formulated back in the 1920s by activists of the Venezuelan Revolutionary Party (later they became members of the country’s Communist Party) and the Socialist Party of Ecuador. A number of similar concepts were the subject of discussions between the leadership of the Comintern and the Peruvian People’s Revolutionary Alliance and were also debated during one of the congress of the Communist International. Another important aspect explored by the authors is the analogy between the processes of the formation of a united left party in Venezuela in the 1930s and in the 2000s (as a comparative example, the pattern of creating a united revolutionary party within the framework of the Castro revolution in Cuba was also used). Methods and materials. The study uses a set of methods of analysis adopted in historical and political science, namely documentary analysis, systemic and comparative analysis. Analysis and Results. The cases presented in the article prove that Socialism of the 21st century is not the exclusive creation of Hugo Chavez, but is closely related to ideological discussions in the international left-wing movement of the first half of the 20th century. The article is based primarily on archival documents, which allowed the authors to show little-known pages in the history of Latin American left-wing parties. Authors’ contribution. V.L. Jeifets and L.S. Jeifets made joint analysis of the archival documents, carried out the study of historiography, and developed the theoretical framework of the research. The conclusions also are the product of joint work.

Military Conflicts Between Communist States: Geopolitical Realities and the Realization of a Communist Peace

Despite historical perceptions of systemic communist-capitalist bipolarity in the Cold War world order, the international communist system was nevertheless affected by the same geopolitical realities that influenced the international system as a whole. By examining the seven cases of military conflicts between communist states from 1945 to 1991 – the Soviet invasion of Hungary (1956), the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968), the Sino-Soviet border conflict (1969), the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia (1978-1989), the Chinese invasion of Vietnam (1979), the Somali invasion of Ethiopia (1977-1978), and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979-1989) – this article challenges both the notions of Cold War bipolarity between communist and capitalist systems as well as the Marxist theory of peaceful coexistence between communist states.

“Warphans” and “Quiet” Heroines: Depictions of Chinese Women and Children in the Comité mondial des femmes contre la guerre et le fascisme's Campaigns during the Second Sino-Japanese War

AbstractThe Comité mondial des femmes contre la guerre et le fascisme (CMF) was an international organization formed under the direction of the Communist International in 1934 in response to the threat of Nazi fascism. However, it did not restrict its activities to tackling issues in Germany; it expanded its remit to confront many of the crises that marked the mid- to late-1930s across the globe. This article analyses the CMF's work to aid civilians and refugees during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It discusses how the predominantly European committee perpetuated some essentialist and imperialist assumptions in its work and how they utilized violent and emotive language in the “Warphans” child sponsorship fundraising scheme. However, the committee also provided spaces for Chinese women to vocalize their experiences to women in the West, creating an effective humanitarian aid strategy.