The Concept of World Revolution and

the "World Party for the Revolution" (1919-1943)

By Aldo Agosti, Torino, Italy
A widely credited version of the history of the Comintem, very common especi-
ally in American historical writing, has it that the concepts of "world revolution"
and of "World Party for the Revolution", inextricably linked, are, respectively,
the strategic horizon and the organizational tools of the communist movement
between the two World Wars. In this view, the" World Party", intended as an
intemational projection of the presumed Bolshevik conception of the Party,
would be the form of organization consistent with that plan for intemational sub-
version never abandoned over the years, despite occasional tactical reverses
1
- which had been most clearly expressed in those prospects for world revoluti-
on which had given rise to the Communist Intemational (CI) in 1919. Although
this interpretation undoubtedly does reflect some aspects of the truth, it is in the
main based on a stereotyped vision, even a caricature, of the "Party", intended
as an abstract and meta historical entity2, and a less prejudiced examination of
Comintem history shows the limits of this type of interpretation. The following
article shows some important discontinuities and changes of fundamental con-
cepts of the Communist Intemational and the Soviet Communist Party.
The first point to strike one, and thfit which is most interesting here, is that the
concept of world revolution and that of the World Party for the Revolution evol-
ved, within the communist movement, along anything but linear and parallel
patlls. It is well known, and by now well documented, that, in their analysis, the
forces that founded the International Communist Movement immediately after
the October Revolution placed the accent strongly on the international nature of
the revolutionary process. It is worth stressing that this way of conceiving the
enterprise of world-wide revolution was also to be a constant factor in the ana-
lysis of the communist movement in later years, and it would long outlive the
See. for example. Kermit E. McKenzie: Comintern e rivoluzione mondiale 1928-1943. Florence
1969.
2 Thus for example Drachkovitch and Lazitch. two scholars of whom it is hard to say whether they
contributed more to the progress of studies on the communist movement or to an unacceptable
deformation of its image. wrote in their important book Lenin and the Comintern (Stanford 1972.
pp. 322-323): ,After the Second Congress [ ... ] for the communists of all the world the Party beca-
me what it was for the Russian communists: a synonym and a surrogate for History. the Army and
the Church. The Party was likened to History because it was seen as the tool of an unstoppable
process which would inexorably have led first to world revolution and then to a socialist world order
- a task .without prededent in the annals of humanity'. It was likened to the Army because to
conduct a victorious revolutionary war it was necessary to have available a General Head Quarters
(the Politbjuro of the Party and the Executive or Presidium of the Comintern). soldiers (the Party.
rank and file). officers (the Party cadres). battle plans (the revolutionary strategy and tactics). diSCi-
pline (democratic centralism) and. naturally. as in all armies. deserters (the Party renegades). It
was likened to the Church because there was need for faith and a Gospel (Marxism according to
the Bolsheviks). for Saints (Marx and Engels). for a Pope (Lenin). for canons (the deliberations.
hypotheses and resolutions of the Comintern) and. to complete the picture. for heretics and ex-
communications (the dissidents and the purges). This total concept of the Party led naturally to the
Party totalitarianism." Like a well-laid-out algebra equation. everything works out; and the solution
of the intermediate equations affords the fundamental final equation: communism totalitarianism.
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74
hope that a political and social revolution would spread to the advanced capita-
list countries. Annie Kriegel very clearly grasped this aspect: The victories
(Russia) or defeats (Germany, 1919, 1923) [ ... ] are no more than episodes of a
total process; the offensive (partial or generalized) or defensive strategic deci-
sions are nothing more than linked stages of a necessarily global outlook [ ... ] It
is this international dimension that ensures the unity of the era which began in
1917 (it is of little use at this level to distinguish between a Leninist and a
Stalinist period). And it is again this original international dimension which gua-
rantees the homogeneity, the consistency of the product of this history, that is
the communist movement as it developed between the two World Wars in its
dual expressions: State and non-State institution - the Soviet Socialist State
and the Communist International. "3
This essentially international vision of the revolutionary process had two
roots, originally of equal importance. On one hand there was the analysis of
imperialism, which despite important differences was common to the entire ra-
dical left of the Second International (to Lenin as to Pannekoek, to Rosa Lu-
xemburg as to Trockij). Having reached the monopolistic stage of its develop-
ment, it was inevitable that capitalism expand increasingly in a world dimension
and, for that very reason, its contradictory and antagonistic characteristics
would expand from the relationship between classes to the relationship bet-
ween States. During 1919 - 1920, in the effort to transform the .world revoluti-
on" from a myth to a political programme anchored to a "scientific" analysis of
the world as it stood immediately after the imperialist war', Lenin repeatedly
stated that the contradiction between forces of production and production relati-
onshtps had reached maturity: advanced capitalism had freed enormous pro-
ductive forces which were clashing against their imperialist shell, destroying the
very possibility of an international market and generating a series of conflicts
and destruction. In its turn, this contradiction had make class relations more
acute, creating the conditions for civil war in Europe and the United States, and
for the revolt of the oppressed in the colonies
5
From this analysis a dual con-
viction derives: on one hand that "only the socialist proletarian revolution can
get humanity out of the cui de sac into which imperialism and imperialist wars
have led it"6; on the other, that this revolution, to achieve its aim of liberating
humanity, should go beyond the nation state, which had become an obstacle to
the process of socializing production forces, that was taking place on an inter-
national scale, and which made the internationalization of the different state
units an immediate necessity. As Trockij wrote on May 25th 1917: "The revoluti-
on cannot begin except on a national basis, but within these limits it cannot
reach complete development because of the economic and politicomilitary in-
terdependence of European States, which this war has more than ever brought
to Iight."7 Hence the planetary nature of the revolutionary crisis triggered by the
war. Hence, too, the new dimension of the tasks awaiting proletarian internatio-
nalism: the need to link the socialist revolution in advanced capitalist countries,
3 Annie Kriegel: La Terza Internazionale. In: Storia del socialismo (various authors). Edited by Jac-
ques Droz. Vol. III. Rome 1978. pp. 81-82.
4 See Ernesto Ragionieri: Lenin e l'lnternazionale. In: Id.: La Terza Internazionale e il Partito comu-
nista italiano. Saggi e discussioni. Turin 1978. p. 61.
5 For a careful analysis of Lenin's position, see Massimo L. Salvadori: Rivoluzione e conservazione
nella crisi del 1919-1920. In: Problemi di storia del\'lnternazionale communista (1919-1939) (va-
rious authors). Edited by Aldo Agosti. Torino 1974. pp. 36-47.
6 V. Lenin: Opere. Vol. 29. p. 89.
7 L. D. Trockij: Programme de paix. In Id.: La guerre et la revolution. Paris 1974. Vol. II. p. 322.
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75
the fight of peoples oppressed by colonial domination and the defence of the
soviet regime in Russia; to join these three as different but indivisible phases of
a single process whose final aim is to install the International Soviet Republic.
The optimism over the fate of the international revolution which characteri-
zed the first steps taken by the CI and the analysis made by its leaders has
been too .widely documented to require any further illustration. But it is important
to stress that the origin of this optimism lay at least as much in a particular
psychological attitude of wishful thinking, as in the rigorous "scientific" analysis
of the economic and social crisis of the capitalist world which I have outlied
above. The Bolsheviks - and all the currents within the CI - shared the convic-
tion that the Russian revolution was the prologue to a European social revoluti-
on, and that its only guarantee of safety lay in receiving help from the victorious
revolutionary proletariat in some, at least, of the biggest Western capitalist
countries. This mirrored predictions held jointly, from 1905 on, by men in very
different positions, including Lenin, Trockij and Kautsky. This conviction fre-
quently induced the Communist movement to confuse its desires with reality,
overestimating the maturity of the potential revolution in the West (and also,
although in a different way, in the colonies), whilst at the same time underesti-
mating both the solidity of the bourgeois regimes and the specificity of the
workers' traditions in Europe and in America. This diagnosis of the relative
strength, with all the illusions it contained, lay at the base of a strategy in which
the expansion of the revolutionary process and the defence of its first outpost
were indissolubly linked. As the developments subsequent to 1921 gave sup-
port to an increasingly unconditional confidence concerning the first Socialist
State's capability of independent survival, the voluntaristic element which had
given life 'to the conception that t ~ revolutionary process was necessarily an
international one, gradually faded; this conception remained anchored only to
an analysis of imperialism which was becoming fozzilized into a model severely
tainted by economism.
, It was against the backdrop of a still-unshaken certainty of the international
dimension of the revolutionary process that the concept of the World Party for
the Revolution took shape and form. Given the planetary character of the post-
war social and pOlitical crisis, and since the way out of this crisis could only lie
in a supranational prospect, it was necessary not only to create communist
parties without delay that could lead the revolution and deliver the masses from
the influence of social democracy; the action of these parties should also be
coordinated at an international level. When the CI was founded in 1919, thou-
gh, this conviction was as vaguely expressed as it was firmly held. The letter
convening the First Congress of the CI stated: "With a view to there being a
permanent link and a methodic leadership of the movement, the Congress must
cause to be created an organ for the common struggle, the centre of the Com-
munist International, which will subordinate the interests of the movements in
each country to the common interests of the international revolution."S And the
Platform approved by the First Congress said, even more generically: "In sub-
ordinating the so-called national interests to those of the world revolution, the
International will bring about the mutual help among the workers of the various
countries, since without this help, economic and otherwise, the proletariat will
8 See Aldo Agosti: La Terza Internazionale. Storia documentaria, 6 vols (henceforth TIS D), Vol. I, 1,
Rome 1974. p. 21.
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76
not be able to organize a new society."9 Nor was Lenin, at that time, much more
precise: "Proletarian internationalism requires first of all that the interests of the
proletarian struggle in one country be subordinated to the interest of this strugg-
le in the whole world; it also requires that the nation which has defeated its
bourgeoisie be capable of immense national sacrifices and be willing to make
them in order to defeat international capital."10
Indeed, on reading through the documents and debates of the first year of
the Comintern, one has the impression that, just when confidence in the immi-
nence of world revolution was keenest, and it loomed largest on the strategic
horizon of the communist movement, the concept of the World Party for the
Revolution was at its most imprecise and indeterminate. There are a number of
reasons for this anomaly. The objective conditions (isolation of Russia through
the cordon sanitaire, inconsistency and weakness of the communist fractions or
parties in most countries, impossibility for Comintern to influence the course of
events directly in the situations which appeared as revolutionary) meant that for
the whole of 1919 the Comintern was not at all that "General Staff of the world
revolution" which it aspired to become, but the inner core of an organization
which for the most part had still to be created: a guiding idea much more than a
functioning organism.
Indeed, the decisions the First Congress took concerning the organizational
structure were professedly temporary in nature, and not only because it was
thought right to leave the definitive regulations to a be drawn up at subsequent,
larger congress. It was also because, in the eyes of many delegates and of the
Bolshevik leadership group itself, it appeared possible that the Comintern chan-
ge within a few months from driving centre for world revolution to supra-national
coordinator of the various Socialist Republics, and that ,its structure would have
needed to change in consequence.
11
More than all these factors, though,
another element contributed to explain the indeterminate nature of the concept
of World Party. It is today generally recognized by the most careful scholars of
the history of the communist movement that, for almost the whole of 1919 the
revolutionary hopes only rested on the idea that an anti-capitalist
widespread among workers and that the movement's aim might have been rea-
ched without any need for tactical plans or particular political contrivances ela-
borated from outside"12. Stressing in its debates and in its final resolutions the
search for new institutes of proletarian democracy to counter the bourgeois
institutes of parliamentary democracy, the First Congress of the CI reflected
Lenin's realization that "we have succeeded in making the word "Soviet" com-
prehensible in all languages"13. It also recognized the specific forms that the
revolutionary movement had taken in a series of key countries (Revolution are
Obleute in Germany, Arbeiterrate in Austria, Shop Stewards Committees in
Great Britain, Consigli di fabbrica in Italy) where the Bolsheviks saw a projec-
tion of their experience and an affirmation of its universal significance. Because
the accent lay on the factory councils as the expression of the pre-eminent role
of the independent initiative of the masses, the pillar on which the entire Leni-
9 Ibid. p. 30.
10 V. Lenin: Opere. Vol. 31. p. 163.
11 See John W. Hulse: The Forming of the Communist International. Stanford 1964. p. 35.
12 Leonardo Rapone: Trotskij e Ie difficili lezioni dell'Ottobre. In Rivoluzione e reazione 1917-1924
(various authors). Rome 1978. p. 31.
13 V. Lenin: Opere. Vol. 29. p. 41.
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nist conception of the revolution rested, - and that is the role of the party, was
cast into the shade, almost paradoxically, at the foundation of the CI and during
its first few months of life. The decision to create a new world organism to lead
the proletarian struggle derived from this conception of the revolution.
It was only as the immediate prospect of a world revolution gradually rece-
ded that the shape of the "world party" was better defined. The failure of these
councils as a vehicle for the rapid and unstoppable spread of the revolutionary
fire to the more advanced capitalist countries, that is as a functional strategy to
attain power rapidly, had the result of re-phrasing in pressing terms the problem
of the revolutionary party and of the political leadership of the revolutionary
thrust of the masses. In this way, the historic contradiction which was to mark
the entire experience of the communist parties between the two wars was re-
produced in the field of international organization: just as these parties, concei-
ved at their birth as the avant-guard of a revolution already under way, would
have to adapt to a situation characterized by the stabilization of capitalism and
of bourgeois-democratic institutions, or to an openly authoritarian and counter-
revolutionary context, so the CI would define itself and affirm itself as the World
Party of the Revolution in an era in which international revolution appeared to
have been postponed to an indeterminate future date. At the Second Congress,
the finalistic element was again reaffirmed strongly ("the aim of the CI is to fight
with all means, including taking up arms, to overthrow the international bour-
geoisie and to create an International Soviet Republic, the intermediate stage
towards the complete suppression of the State"14). But the total lack of organi-
zational instruments which existed previously was filled by a precise and detai-
led series of regulations, in which the concept of World Party took on a much
fuller meaning than in the past: "ThEf CI knows that to reach victory more rapidly
the association of workers which is struggling to destroy capitalism and create
communism must have a rigidly centralized organization. The CI must repre-
sent a single Communist Party of all the world, in reality and in fact. The Parties
which operate in each country are nothing more than only the single sections of
this ,Party."15
Thus the accent was transferred from the generic ideas of "subordination of
the interests of the national proletariats to those of the international proletariat"
and "mutual help" to the concept of centralization. Comintern's role was defined
as that of mother organization called upon to formulate and programme the
strategy of the entire communist movement and to assign to each party mem-
ber the necessary tasks to strengthen its national position, and the most expe-
dient role to promote the development and consolidation of the international
movement. 16 It is at this point, and not before, that the Bolshevik party model
was imposed, to the extent that the CI statute proposed the same hierarchy.17 It
was at this point, and not before, that the CI ,,[ ... ] acquired the structure of a
semi-military organization, strictly centralized with a world-wide hierarchy - an
exact copy of the characteristics of the Bolshevik party during the civil war -
because its job was to organize and lead a world revolution that, if it had mate-
rialized, would of necessity in that historical situation have taken the form of a
14 TISD. Op. cit. Vol. I. 1. p. 277.
15 Ibid. p. 278.
16 See Helmut Gruber: International Communism in the Era of Lenin. New York 1972. p. 231-232.
17 See TISD. Op. cit. Vol. I. 1. p. 277-280.
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series of revolutionary, civil and international wars."18 The frequency with which
military terms and similes recur in the organizational documents of the Second
Congress is not only due to this model, but also to the reawakening of revolutio-
nary fervour which accompanied the advance of the Red Army in Poland, and
which reached its peak just at the time of the Cl meeting. In reality, though, it is
legitimate to ask whether the centralization and the militarization of the World
Party were a consequence of an intense tremor of the revolutionary era, or
rather a presentiment of the difficult and tortuous path facing the international
revolutionary process. Whatever the answer to this question, it is certain that
the "Jacobin model" assumed by the World Party in 1920 survived, and
strengthened, even after the waning of hopes for an imminent revolutionary
wave. The call to maximize centralization, to close ranks and strengthen disci-
pline just as the wave was ebbing only became explicit and recurrent - with an
open reference to the vicissitudes of the Bolshevik fraction between 1905 and
1917 - with the official recognition of the unexpected "relative stabilization" of
capitalism. It was to become the Leitmotiv of an essentially defensive interpre-
tation of Bo/shevization.19
However, many clues indicate that, from 1920 - in a situation still troubled
by contradictory tendencies - and in any case, unequivocally, from 1921, the
"World Party" was no longer the organizational, political and ideological tool to
bring about world revolution, but rather the means to stop the communist move-
ment disintegrating, to administer and discipline it while awaiting world revoluti-
on. If this interpretation is correct, it suggests two considerations. The first is
that, while the concept of "World Party" could hardly be questioned so long as
the idea remained of an international revolution in progress, its inevitable Utopi-
an character - in a situation which was no longer revolutionary - became ac-
centuated and came into open contradiction with the .realistic analysis of the
differences between advanced capitalist nations and backward capitalist nati-
ons, based on the theory of the unequal development of capitalism, one of the
pivotal pOints of the revolutionary theory of Marxism. Perhaps no document
expresses this contradiction as clearly as the Cl programme, mainly written by
Bucharin in 1928, and approved by the Sixth Congress. The second considera-
tion involves what Ragionieri has defined as a dangerous fracture between the
orientation of the planning department and organizational structure, serious
enough to prejudice right from the start the application of whatever tactical re-
verses or changes the situation might have required: this was in a sense deli-
berate, and acted as a necessary support for whatever measures the difficult
progress of world revolution might have made necessary.20
This fracture between politics and organization was already cleary expres-
sed in the resolution concerning the organizational structure of communist par-
ties approved by the Third Congress (1921). In the preamble, this resolution
clearly rejected an unchanging form of organization, valid for all parties, and
equally explicitly denied that one should aim to express in concrete terms an
18 Femando Claudin: Crisi generate del capitalismo e rivoluzione mondiale in Lenin. In La crisi gene-
rale del capitalismo negli anni '20. Analisi economica e dibattito strategico nella Terza Internazio-
nale (various authors). Bari 1978. p. 28.
19 See Edward H. Carr: II socialismo in un paese solo. Vol. II: La pOlitico estera 1924-1926. Torino
1969. pp. 296-392. - Wolfgang Eichwede: Revolution und internationale Politik. Die Kommunisti-
sche Internationale und die kapitalistische Welt 1921-1925. K61n 1971. pp. 79 and foil.
20 Ernesto Ragionieri: Lenin e I'lnternazionale. Op. cit. quoted. p. 77.
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ideal statute. However, it ended by claiming the need for a "single guide" for
"what is the biggest fight in world history" ("the organization of the communist
party [note the singular] is the organization of the communist guide in the prole-
tariat revolution"). In the text proper this was followed by a set of very detailed
precepts which were none other than the definition of an ideal model of beha-
viour for communist parties in the various phases of the political struggle.
21
Naturally, the most important and the longest-lasting consequence of the
centralization of the "World Party" was the so-called "Russification" of the Co-
mintern. On one hand the receding prospects for world revolution and, on the
other, the Soviet Republic's unexpected ability to survive and develop in a ho-
stile world, had had the effect of overturning the relationship between the Sovi-
et Republic and the Communist International. Between 1917 and 1920, Soviet
Russia had been considered a backward country, which circumstances had
temporarily raised to the role of leader of the world revolutionary movement: it
was not at that time thinkable that the proletarian dictatorship could be consoli-
dated in that country except within a victorious revolutionary process on a Euro-
pean scale at least, and as a consequence, at least in theory, the Soviet State's
policies were subordinate to the needs of the Cl, which was seen as the highest
expression of the international proletariat cause. Over and above its result, the
debate which took place within the Bolshevik leadership at the time of the Brest-
Litovsk ultimatum shows that it was not inconceivable that the Soviet Republic
should regulate its decisions on the basis of the needs and prospects of the
international revolutionary movement. But the post-war revolutionary wave
spent itself without the proletariat conquering power in any country outside Rus-
sia, and the problem of world revolution began to be seen in a new light. Since
the analysfs of the underlying tendencies of capitalism and of its "general crisis"
was unchanged, no-one in the communist movement doubted that, sooner or
later, a r;lew revolutionary wave would have arrived: clearly, it would have had a
greater possibility of overwhelming the bourgeois system if it had been able to
count on the existence of a proletarian state, with armed forces ready to help
the revolutionary proletariat in other countries. To keep and strengthen this first
bastion was thus of crucial importance for the world revolution.
If we add to this the joint psychological effect of repeated defeats of the
revolutionary attempts in the West between 1919 and 1923, and military, social
and political victories of the Soviet regime, we can begin to see the framework
within which the affirmation of the theory of socialism in one country became
not only possible but, in a certain sense, inevitable. Although it was built on
debatable theoretical foundations, this theory possessed great force. On one
hand it expressed trust in the victorious Russian revolution itself and in its inde-
pendent ability to develop, no longer seeing it as dependent on outside help.
On the other hand, it assigned to the revolutionary movement of other countries
a role closer to its actual strength, since the conquest of power appeared to be
relegated to a distant and indeterminant future. It implied to communist parties
that, even if they did not quickly succeed in overturning the old social order,
they would in any case have fulfilled historic duty if they continued to stand as a
bastion against the imperialist design of restoring capitalism in Russia, and to
act as sentinels of the first experiment of building socialism.
21 TISD. Op. cit. Vol. I, 2. pp. 449 and foil.
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However, this conception of the tasks of the different components of the
revolutionary line-up contained, at least virtually, a very important corollary. If it
was possible to build socialism in Russia even independent of victory in the
most important capitalist countries and in the colonies, then logically, the obver-
se equally was true: relative independence - though within the framework of an
uncontested hierarchy of importance - of the world revolution from the Russian
revolution must be recognized. With this, a greater theoretical, political and or-
ganizational independence of communist parties and the need of their interna-
tional organization to be restructured had also to be admitted; all this could cast
doubt onto the very concept of "World Party".
A similar analysis of the problem was certainly not extraneous to Bucharin,
and was behind attempts to reform and decentralize the organization of the CI
that cautiously promoted in 1926. If these attempts failed it was not only becau-
se of Bucharin's defeat in the Russian party or his consequent marginalization
from the International, but also because a mechanism was inherent in the very
structure of the "World Party for the Revolution" which gave its strongest mem-
ber an enormous, decisive importance beyond any intentions. This centripetal
mechanism was neither invented nor imposed by the Russian communists: it
sprang, as we have seen, from an objective situation in which maximum centra-
lization appeared the functional answer to both the hypothesis of an imminent
world revolution and to that of phase of stale-mate and preparation. Undoub-
tedly though, it gave the Bolsheviks even wider power than they naturally de-
rived from their political and moral prestige and from the fact that all the financi-
al burden and much of the organizational burden of the Com intern machine lay
on their shoulders. The Russian communists first learned to use this power as a
tool in the internal struggle in ,their party (this procedure was used unscrupu-
lously during Zinov'ev's presidency, whereas the with which Bucharin
used it is one of the reasons why the Stalinist fraction took control of the CI
relatively rapidly and painlessly after 1928). Then, as the fusion between Party
and State in the USSR became complete, and all open conflict within the PC(b)
of the USSR ceased with the consolidation of Stalin's power they learned to
use it increasingly in the sphere of State Realpolitik, whose first aim was to
keep the USSR out of military conflicts between imperialist powers, and which
also tried to exploit the contradictions which shook those powers. In reality, this
process was neither so rapid nor so linear as it is sometimes presented; and,
as we will see, it was continually atttenuated and opposed by other tendencies
of a different nature. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that, already before
Bucharin's political defeat, a conception of world revolution had crystallized wi-
thin the CI that indicated the USSR, to use expressions from the 1928 program-
me, as "the international motor of the proletarian revolution", "the base of the
world movement of all the oppressed classes, [ ... J the greatest factor in world
history"22.
Since then, it was believed that the threat of war was "the most characteri-
stic element in the present period taken as a whole"23, not only did the defence
of the USSR become more than ever a priority, but increasingly strongly there
was a need for overall coordination, for a single leadership centre; and on the
other hand, in a line which pointed to war as the final outlet for capitalist contra-
22 TISD. Op. cit. Vol. II, 2. p. 1032.
23 Ibid. p. 956.
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81
dictions, it was difficult to deny that the leadership should fall on the only ele-
ment of effective power which the socialist field could boast, and that was, once
more, the Soviet Union.24
With 1929, the international horizon became even more favourable for the
consolidation of this strongly unilateral vision of the revolutionary process. After
the explosion of the world economic crisis, the concept of building socialism in
one country increasingly became as the global theory of world revolution "to the
extent to which the prospect of building socialism in a country of the size and
with the resources of the USSR was flanked by the reality of the stagnation and
putrefaction of capitalism, which was presumed incapable of affording further
growth of productive forces."25 The resounding contrast between the two sy-
stems, capitalism in ruins and socialism being built up, was seen as the main-
spring of international revolution; and increasingly a role as catalyst and deto-
nator of the contradictions of the capitalist world, and a function of political
radicalization of the exploited masses, was attributed to the mere existence of
the USSR.
This view was clearly reflected in the way in which the structure and tasks
of the "world party for the revolution" were conceived. And one point must be
stressed. In theory, the unprecedented depth and breath of the crisis of capita-
lism, together with the impoverishment and radicalization of the exploited mas-
ses, should have given rise to a "revolutionary situation" no less acute than the
post-war one, in which the Comintern should have taken on that function of
"General Staff" of a revolutionary army committed to an international civil war
for which it had originally been formed. In reality, though, for the entire duration
of the crisis, the CI leadership's ev,aluation of the maturity of the revolutionary
situation was extremely cautious and tempered by many reserves and di-
stinctions, and the tasks assigned to the individual communist parties were no
different than those they had done during the period of "relative stability": con-
quest of a majority of the proletariat by leading the economic struggle, unmas-
king, the reformist leaders, preparing the proletariat for the "decisive struggle",
systematic propaganda for the dictatorship of the proletariat, in particular by
illustrating the great achievements of the USSR. The revolution was more a
myth discussed with much declamation than a programme to which strategies
and tactics were finalized. Thus the concept of "World Party for the Revolution"
did not lose the prevalently defensive character, it had begun to acquire over
the previous years: rather, this was accentuated. The exasperated centralizati-
on was not justified by the need to coordinate an insurrectional design at an
international level, but became increasingly the means to ensure disciplinary
and ideological unity.
Nevertheless, behind the fixed nature of the definition which was being
communicated in official statutes and documents, the function of "World Party"
had already tacitly begun to lose its meaning. Although never explicitly theori-
zed, the need to adapt the model to the particular social, economic and cultural
characteristics of the different national situations had, right from the CI's first
years of life, had an influence on the shaping of the real substance of the
24 Ernesto Galli della Loggia: La Terza Internazionale e iI destino dal capitalismo. L'analisi di E.
Varga. In: Storia del marxismo contemporaneo (various authors). Milan 1974. p. 996.
25 F. Claudin: Crisi generate dal capitalismo. Op. cit. quoted. p. 33.
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82
communist movement. Annie Kriegel writes with great effect: "Every communist
party [is] the unique product of a specific meeting between two historically con-
crete contexts, the international communist movement on one hand and the
national political system on the other. In this sense the homogeneity of the
Communist International as an institution and as a world strategy cannot but be
continually threatened by the national diversity: unity is, therefore, both a theo-
retical affirmation of principle presiding over the undertaking, and, at the same
time, the result of a continuous action to reduce what there is of national in
each party to nothing more than an inevitable residue".26 Starting from the
1930s, this "action" began to meet with increasing difficulty, being forced to
come to terms with new and unpredictable situations, which in their turn urged
a revision of the model. The affair of the Chinese Communist Party shows this;
at least from 1931 onwards, it was the first to express a conception of revolutio-
nary strategy which had effectively been elaborated independently of the
International's directives. For the European Parties, the turning point did not
mature before 1934 (although in some sections the symptoms could be detec-
ted before this). When their antifascist commitment, which the international si-
tuation finally raised from that of a secondary front to the cornerstone of the
defence of the Soviet Union, was finally freed to some extent of restrictions and
reserves, the communist parties - or at least some of the most important ones
- suddenly found themselves in the thick of a mass struggle, which brought
them face to face with new strategies, new alliances, new organizational mo-
dels, borrowed from, or at least conditioned by traditional national policies (ex-
amples are the popular front committees in France or the Alianzas obreras in
Spain). This was perhaps the real significance of that reappropriation of a non-
abstract national identity which is rightly recognized as being on the credit side
of the popular fronts.
Even before the Seventh Congress, in the preparatory outline for his report,
Dimitrov showed he had realized the implications of the change in Comintern
policy for the structure of the "World Party". Towards the end of this outline he
hinted at the need to "modify Comintern's way of working and leadership, taking
into account that it is not possible to lead from Moscow operatively, for all que-
stions, all 65 sections of the Comintern, which operate in the most diverse con-
ditions"27. These directives seemed destined, immediately after the end of the
Congress, not to remain on paper, but to be translated into a restructuring of
the Comintern leadership machine: it appears that in October 1935 it was deci-
ded to suppress the secretariats and the departments, as well as the institute of
delegates and instructors of the Executive
28
, which would appear to confirm a
trend towards decentralization and increased responsibiliy of the single parties.
If a new phase began, it was mostly characterized by forms of control and inter-
ference in the internal life of the various parties by the Stalinist power system,
which though not regulated, were much severer than previously, and which
were destined to have tragic consequences. Nevertheless, the very fact that
they were excercised frequently, in Moscow and even abroad (for example in
Spain), through the direct intervention of the Soviet political police, is an indica-
tion of how badly the mechanism which had presided over the "world party" had
26 A. Kriegel: La Terza Internazionale. Op. cit. quoted. p. 82.
27 Dimitrov's .note" is published in Franco de Felice: Fascismo. democrazia. fronte popolare. II movi-
mento comunista alia svolta del VI Congresso. Bari 1973. pp. 270-272.
28 Die Kommunistische Internationale. Kurzer historischer Berlin 1969. p. 490. However. on
the fate of this decision. see the later observations ibid. p. 435.
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deteriorated, and it enables us to place the beginning of the credibility crisis of
that concept to around 1934-1935.
In the history of ideas and political lines, the force of inertia often plays a
role no less important than in that of economic and social processes: the decisi-
ons of the communist party in September 1939 following the Russian-German
Non-Aggression Treaty also known as Staline-Hitler-Pact were not only fruit of
the tendency towards a single structure, by now entrenched in bureaucracy,
which operated to align these parties mechanically to USSR foreign policy; the-
se decisions were also the extreme projection of a concept which made it obli-
gatory to place the interests - true or presumed - of the international move-
ment before every other consideration.
29
In reality, the beginning of the War
pointed up very clearly the political absurdity of a hypothesis by which a given
international situation was supposed to provoke the same reaction in parties in
very different areas, and stressed the need to establish a differentiated relati-
onship, no longer of simple and total identification, between the foreign policy
of the Soviet State and the position of the International. When, after the Nazi
aggression against the USSR, the call went out for battle against fascism and
to defend democratic freedom, the communist parties took on a role of the first
order in the resistance movements, and succeeded in conquering a mass di-
mension previously almost unknown - a "new dialectic which, imposing its ob-
jective laws over and beyond the ideal of Party unity, originated from the de-
velopment and advance of the movement"30, began to take shape. The relati-
onship between the Comintern and the Jugoslav Communist Party, or between
Com intern and the Chinese Communist Party, are the clearest and most signifi-
cant examples, but not the only ones. It would be naive or mystifying to consi-
der the winding up of the International, deliberated in 1943, only as
the fruit of this new situation. It was at least equally due to the needs of USSR's
foreign policy. By making a gesture which might be interpreted as a definitive
renunciation of the export of the socialist revolution to other countries, they
probably counted on avoiding that the allies, having defeated Hitler, turn their
enormous war potential to the East, and hoped even to succeed in inducing
them to collaborate in rebuilding the Soviet economy after the War.
Nevertheless, when the resolution which decreed the dissolution of the CI
(May 15th 1943) affirmed that "the form of organization and union of workers
chosen by the First Congress of the CI was increasingly obsolete as the move-
ment grew and as the complexity of its problems increased, to the extent that it
even became an impediment for the further strengthening of the national
workers' parties"31, it was not simply giving an alibi for the soviet diplomatic
decision, but recording a real situation in the relationships betwen centre and
sections: explicitly sanctioning the decline of the Utopia of the "World Party for
the Revolution", it ended by freeing energy which had been caught up and re-
pressed and, though leaving the terms of a new operative international revolu-
tionary solidarity wrapped in a darkness which thirty five years of history have
not succeeded in dissipating, laid the foundations for a new phase of develop-
ment of the communist movement.
29 E. Hobsbawm: Problemi di storia comunista. Quoted. p. 8.
30 Adriano Guerra: Gli anni del Cominform. Milan 1977. p. 43.
31 TISD. Op. cit. Vol. III. 2. p. 1214.
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