Communist International (Comintern)

The Communist International, also called the Third International, was founded at a congress that met in the Kremlin from 2 March 1919; delegates voted to establish it on 4 March. It was built as a single centralised world party. National communist parties were its sections and were bound by its decisions. The World Congress was the supreme body, and between congresses an Executive Committee in Moscow directed the movement through a Presidium and Secretariat. The statutes gave the Soviet Communist Party five Executive Committee seats and each other major party one.

Seven World Congresses were held, the last from 25 July to 21 August 1935. An International Liaison Department, set up in 1921, ran clandestine work including funding, communications and forged documents. The Bureau’s last meeting was in April 1940.

On 15 May 1943 the Presidium, whose twelve signatories included Dimitrov, Thorez, Pieck, Kuusinen and Manuilsky, put a statement of dissolution to the national parties. The resolution, published on 22 May, said differences between countries made direction by one international centre unworkable. Wikipedia’s account is that Stalin dissolved it as a gesture to the Western Allies; the historian Jason Dawsey, writing for the National WWII Museum, says the resolution was misleading and that Stalin did not intend to give up control of the parties. A commission under Dimitrov liquidated the organs, and a U.S. embassy telegram of 11 June 1943 reported them abolished from 10 June. Later that year the Soviet party’s International Department was founded; it inherited the Comintern’s files and some of its personnel, as a department of one party with no member parties of its own. The Cominform, set up in 1947 with nine European parties, was not meant to replace the Comintern, and was closed on 17 April 1956.