Marshall Plan for the recovery of Europe.
In the summer of 1947, largely in response to these western initiatives, Stalin had Wladyslaw
301
Gomulka, head of the Polish Workers Party, invite the representatives of Communist parties of nine European countries (USSR, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, France, and Italy) to the Polish resort of Szklarska Poreba for a “private conference . . . to exchange information on the situation in the various countries” and perhaps to create a journal. Actually, as documents made available in the 1990s show, Stalin intended to create a mechanism for subordinating the activities of the other parties to Soviet aims.
The main speech at the conference, which convened on September 22, was made by Andrei Zhdanov, second only to Stalin in the Soviet hierarchy. In an aggressive and strongly-worded talk, Zhdanov restated the “two-camp” notion, but this time with the democratic camp (the USSR and its allies) consisting of those “antifascist” countries that had “broken with imperialism and have firmly set foot on the path of democratic development,” and the imperialist camp (the U.S. and its allies) consisting of countries that relied on “reactionary, anti-democratic forces.” Zhdanov characterized “America’s aspirations to world supremacy” as “highly reminiscent of the reckless program . . . of the fascist aggressors,” the Hitlerites. Stalin gave the Yugoslav party pride of place at the conference by permitting its representatives to be the harshest critics of the other parties, particularly the French and Italian, which recently had been dropped from their coalition governments. He added to Yugoslavia’s prestige by making Belgrade the location of the editorial offices of the new Com-inform monthly (later biweekly) publication entitled For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy!
It is not clear whether Stalin was rewarding the Yugoslavs at Sklarska Poreba or setting them up. But in the winter and spring of 1948, a serious controversy arose between the Yugoslav party and Stalin that led to an exchange of messages. At one point the Yugoslavs stated that “no matter how much each of us loves the land of socialism, the USSR, he can, in no case, love his own country less.” This was exactly what Stalin could not abide. The second meeting of the Cominform, which took place in Bucharest in June 1948, therefore expelled Yugoslavia from the fraternal brotherhood of socialist states (i.e., the Soviet bloc). Because the events leading up to this expulsion had been strictly secret, this expulsion produced a great sensation in Europe and the world. It put a shocked Yugoslavia on a path toward an independent style of self-managed socialism, while at the same time opening a vicious campaign against alleged “Titoism” in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe.
The Cominform, now excluding Yugoslavia, met only one more time, in November 1949 in Hungary. This meeting was devoted primarily to the “anti-Titoist” campaign. Stalin’s death in 1953 and the changes in Soviet policy that ensued made the organization increasingly obsolete. Khrushchev decided in 1956 to restore good relations with Yugoslavia, and the Cominform was dissolved on April 17 of that year. See also: STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH; YUGOSLAVIA, RELATIONS WITH; ZHDANOV, ANDREI ALEXANDROVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bass, Robert Hugo, ed. (1959). The Soviet-Yugoslav Controversy, 1948-1958: A Documentary Record. New York: Prospect Books for the East European Institute. Procacci, Giuliano, ed. (1994). The Cominform: Minutes of the Three Conferences, 1947/1948/1949. Milan: Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.
Communist International was an organization of communist parties devoted to hastening socialist revolution. During World War I, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin condemned the Second International, a loose coalition of socialist parties, because most of its leaders had voted for war credits and supported the war. He dubbed them traitors to Marxism and the proletariat, and thereafter urged creating a new international, a Third or Communist International, which would lead the world’s workers to socialism.
The founding Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919 was the first step toward realizing Lenin’s dream. That Congress did little more than announce the birth of the Com-intern-“a unified world Communist Party, specific sections of which were parties active in each coun-try”-and its basic principles. Delegates to the Second Congress in 1920 adopted the Twenty-One Points, which defined membership rules. Certain points deserve note. Each party seeking Comintern affiliation had to remove reformists from its ranks, purge its membership periodically, and adhere to the principles of democratic centralism. Those prinCOMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL
General Staff of the Communist International, July 1917. © UNDERWOOD amp;UNDERWOOD/CORBIS ciples applied within member parties as well as to each party’s relation to the Comintern. All decisions made by Comintern congresses and the Comintern Executive Committee (ECCI) were binding on member parties.
The Comintern’s primary function was to identify and enact the proper strategies and tactics to promote international socialist revolution. During its existence, it enacted several policies to achieve that goal. Until 1921, it advocated the united front policy, the goals of which were to win workers away from Social Democratic and radical parties and to seize power in their respective countries. A belief in inevitable revolution drove this policy. But in 1921 the prospects for revolution ebbed, and the Comintern adopted a more flexible set of united front tactics, which allowed for conditional cooperation with Social Democratic parties, preserving the goal of extending Communist Party influence among workers. At its Sixth Congress in 1928, the Comintern adopted a hard-line policy when it dubbed Social Democrats and reform socialists the main enemy and “social fascists.” Any collaboration with “social fascists” became unthinkable. The Comintern urged workers and unions to reject and destroy Social Democrats. Known as the Third Period, this policy proved disastrous.
The Seventh Congress in 1935 rejected this policy and resolved that fascism was the primary enemy. It required member parties to drop their attacks on reformists and to forge broad antifascist coalitions. This policy, the Popular Front, lifted the Comintern’s fortunes. Its call for a broad- based, antifascist struggle won many supporters worldwide. Popular Front coalition governments came to power in France and Spain in 1936. The Popular Front’s victory in Spain triggered the Spanish Civil War, during which the Comintern organized the International Brigades, a ragtag
COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL
army of international volunteers who flocked there to fight fascism.
Following the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939, the Comintern abandoned its antifascist policy and announced that communists should not support the imperialist war in Europe. After the Nazi invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, Comintern policy changed again, calling for antifascist activities to defend the USSR. In 1943, on Josef Stalin’s orders, the Comintern disbanded.
Although the Comintern was a collective of fraternal communist parties, the Communist Party (CPSU) wielded unrivalled influence. It did so because it was the only communist party to have seized power, it had organized the Comintern, and it provided the Comintern and member parties with political, organizational, and financial assistance. The Twenty-One Points reflected the CPSU’s organizational and operative principles. Party leaders prepared many of the Comintern’s major decisions and often decided which tactics and strategies the Comintern would pursue and whom to remove from and appoint to the leadership bodies of the Comintern and fraternal parties.
By the late 1920s the CPSU’s values and behaviors had infused the Comintern. A variety of factors accounted for this. Within the ECCI apparatus there were CPSU committees. The removal of those who opposed the party or Comintern line hastened the process. In the 1920s the ECCI removed the followers of Leon Trotsky and Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern from 1919 to 1926, and later the followers of Nikolai Bukharin, Zinoviev’s successor, for their opposition to party policy.
Nonetheless, the Comintern was an international political institution and therefore possessed some distinctive characteristics. Most members of the ECCI and its apparatus were foreigners; representatives from abroad routinely participated in Comintern activities. The ECCI was responsible for fraternal parties, each of which was assigned to a national or regional section in the ECCI; many members of these parties lived in the USSR.
The Comintern, therefore, existed in two worlds: in the USSR, the socialist world; and in the international arena, the capitalist world. Within the USSR, its roles were to elaborate policies to strengthen the international communist movement, to defend Soviet foreign and domestic policies, and to cooperate with the appropriate party
