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190-575: In July 1920, at the behest of Comintern head Grigory Zinoviev , the 2nd World Congress of the Communist International established a temporary International Trade Union Council , commonly known by its Russian acronym, Mezhsovprof. This organizing committee — including members of the Russian, Italian, British, Bulgarian, and French delegations to the Comintern Congress — was presented with

380-630: A blue-water navy was vital for global power projection; Tirpitz had his books translated into German, while Wilhelm made them required reading for his advisors and senior military personnel. However, it was also an emotional decision, driven by Wilhelm's simultaneous admiration for the Royal Navy and desire to surpass it. Bismarck thought that the British would not interfere in Europe, as long as its maritime supremacy remained secure, but his dismissal in 1890 led to

570-583: A grenade at the Archduke's car and injured two of his aides. The other assassins were also unsuccessful. An hour later, as Ferdinand was returning from visiting the injured officers in hospital, his car took a wrong turn into a street where Gavrilo Princip was standing. He fired two pistol shots, fatally wounding Ferdinand and his wife Sophie . According to historian Zbyněk Zeman , in Vienna "the event almost failed to make any impression whatsoever. On 28 and 29 June,

760-536: A guerrilla warfare campaign and only surrendered two weeks after the armistice took effect in Europe. Before the war, Germany had attempted to use Indian nationalism and pan-Islamism to its advantage, a policy continued post-1914 by instigating uprisings in India , while the Niedermayer–Hentig Expedition urged Afghanistan to join the war on the side of Central Powers. However, contrary to British fears of

950-435: A "yellow" organization and inviting them to join a new revolutionary international union association. This decision was to mark a split of the international trade union movement that followed the recently achieved split of the international socialist political movement into revolutionary Communist and electorally-oriented Socialist camps. This desire for a new exclusive international of explicitly "Red" union represented

1140-634: A Congress held in Moscow on 2–6 March 1919. It opened with a tribute to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg , recently executed by the Freikorps during the Spartacist Uprising , against the backdrop of the Russian Civil War . There were 52 delegates present from 34 parties. They decided to form an Executive Committee with representatives of the most important sections and that other parties joining

1330-593: A campaign of expulsions of Communist individuals and unions by the Social Democratic leadership. In October 1922 the Czech Red unions held a congress of their own, formalizing the split with the Social Democratic unions. It is worthy of mention that the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was an extremely large organization in this period, claiming 170,000 members in 1922, dwarfing all but a few Communist parties around

1520-408: A change in policy and an Anglo-German naval arms race began. Despite the vast sums spent by Tirpitz, the launch of HMS  Dreadnought in 1906 gave the British a technological advantage. Ultimately, the race diverted huge resources into creating a German navy large enough to antagonise Britain, but not defeat it; in 1911, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg acknowledged defeat, leading to

1710-790: A defense of the Soviet state. In that year, Joseph Stalin took power in Moscow and upheld the thesis of socialism in one country , detailed by Nikolai Bukharin in his brochure Can We Build Socialism in One Country in the Absence of the Victory of the West-European Proletariat? (April 1925). The position was finalized as the state policy after Stalin's January 1926 article On the Issues of Leninism . Stalin made

1900-592: A direct threat. The 1908–1909 Bosnian Crisis began when Austria annexed the former Ottoman territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina , which it had occupied since 1878. Timed to coincide with the Bulgarian Declaration of Independence from the Ottoman Empire, this unilateral action was denounced by the European powers, but accepted as there was no consensus on how to resolve the situation. Some historians see this as

2090-666: A disciplined fashion whatever decision was made. In this period, the Comintern was promoted as the general staff of the world revolution . Ahead of the Second Congress of the Communist International, held in July through August 1920, Lenin sent out a number of documents, including his Twenty-one Conditions to all socialist parties. Congress adopted the 21 conditions as prerequisites for any group wanting to become affiliated with

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2280-408: A formal international organization, they continued to maintain close relations with each other through a series of international forums. In the period directly after the Comintern's dissolution, periodical meetings of communist parties were held in Moscow. Moreover, World Marxist Review , a joint periodical of the communist parties, played an important role in coordinating the communist movement up to

2470-473: A fundamental contradiction with the Comintern's firm insistence that Communists should work within the structure of existing trade unions — an important detail noted at the time by delegate Jack Tanner of the British Shop Stewards Movement . Tanner's objection was brushed aside as Grigory Zinoviev denied him the floor, referring his complaints to committee. Historian E. H. Carr argues that

2660-467: A gap between the German armies as they closed on Paris. The French army, reinforced by the British expeditionary corps, seized this opportunity to counter-attack and pushed the German army 40 to 80 km back. Both armies were then so exhausted that no decisive move could be implemented, so they settled in trenches, with the vain hope of breaking through as soon as they could build local superiority. In 1911,

2850-867: A higher proportion of the KPD Politburo membership had died in the Soviet Union than in Nazi Germany. Weitz also noted that hundreds of German citizens, most of them Communists, were handed over to the Gestapo by Stalin's administration. The Research Institutes 100 and 205 worked for the International and later were moved to the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of

3040-580: A new international to foment revolution in Europe and around the world. During this early period (1919–1924), known as the First Period in Comintern history, with the Bolshevik Revolution under attack in the Russian Civil War and a wave of revolutions across Europe , the Comintern's priority was exporting the October Revolution. Some communist parties had secret military wings. One example is

3230-544: A policy of non-intervention , declaring on November 6 that the conflict was an imperialist war between various national ruling classes on both sides, much like World War I had been, and that the main culprits were Britain and France. This period only ended on 22 June 1941 with the invasion of the Soviet Union , when the Comintern changed its position to one of active support for the Allies . During these two years, many communists turned their backs on their Comintern sections, and

3420-569: A political organization. Among those expressing such a desire for the organizational independence of RILU from the Comintern was "Big Bill" Haywood of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) — an individual already living in Moscow after skipping bail to avoid a lengthy prison sentence under the Espionage Act . The IWW's perspective was joined by syndicalist trade unionists that were part of

3610-540: A possibility. This was accentuated by British and Russian support for France against Germany during the 1911 Agadir Crisis . German economic and industrial strength continued to expand rapidly post-1871. Backed by Wilhelm II, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz sought to use this growth to build an Imperial German Navy , that could compete with the British Royal Navy . This policy was based on the work of US naval author Alfred Thayer Mahan , who argued that possession of

3800-799: A revolt in India, the outbreak of the war saw a reduction in nationalist activity. Leaders from the Indian National Congress and other groups believed support for the British war effort would hasten Indian Home Rule , a promise allegedly made explicit in 1917 by Edwin Montagu , the Secretary of State for India . In 1914, the British Indian Army was larger than the British Army itself, and between 1914 and 1918 an estimated 1.3 million Indian soldiers and labourers served in Europe, Africa, and

3990-504: A significant escalation, ending any chance of Austria cooperating with Russia in the Balkans, while also damaging diplomatic relations between Serbia and Italy. Tensions increased after the 1911–1912 Italo-Turkish War demonstrated Ottoman weakness and led to the formation of the Balkan League , an alliance of Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro , and Greece . The League quickly overran most of

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4180-615: A sizable new contingent joining the organization's ranks in France when the Confédération Genérale du Travail (CGT) attempted to discipline and expel its syndicalist members but ended up causing a full scale organizational split in which the majority of French trade unionists affiliated with a new "Red" union. Additional headway was made in Czechoslovakia, where a majority of trade union members similarly affiliated with RILU, following

4370-448: A strike at a cotton mill was fired on by police, killing 12 protestors. A general strike was declared in the city in response and a " May 30 Movement " erupted throughout the region. On June 19 a general strike was called in Canton, followed four days later by another incident in which troops fired upon demonstrators in the streets, resulting in a new spate of casualties. The rapid growth of

4560-658: A total of 14 IPCs had been established. The Profintern's International Propaganda Committees proved ineffectual in changing the opinions of union memberships. Unions began to expel their radical dissidents and international unions began to expel those national sections which participated in the activities of the Profintern, exemplified by the October 1921 expulsion of the Dutch Transport Workers' Federation from its international trade organization. The 2nd World Congress of RILU

4750-613: A unity congress proved little more than a platitude, however, with the resolution declaring that such a gathering " might, after suitable preparation of the masses" prove appropriate. There was no firm directive instructing the Profintern Executive Board to action. With relations between the Profintern and the IFTU at the point of insoluble stalemate, Soviet trade union authorities began to concentrate on bilateral relationships with social democratic union movements. Particular attention

4940-471: A war on two fronts; the Schlieffen Plan envisaged using 80% of the army to defeat France, then switching to Russia. Since this required them to move quickly, mobilisation orders were issued that afternoon. Once the German ultimatum to Russia expired on the morning of 1 August, the two countries were at war. At a meeting on 29 July, the British cabinet had narrowly decided its obligations to Belgium under

5130-402: A weak Ottoman government, rather than an ambitious Slav power like Bulgaria . Russia had ambitions in northeastern Anatolia while its clients had overlapping claims in the Balkans. These competing interests divided Russian policy-makers and added to regional instability. Austrian statesmen viewed the Balkans as essential for the continued existence of their Empire and saw Serbian expansion as

5320-451: A whole, the Somme offensive led to an estimated 420,000 British casualties, along with 200,000 French and 500,000 Germans. The diseases that emerged in the trenches were a major killer on both sides. The living conditions led to disease and infection, such as trench foot , lice , typhus , trench fever , and the ' Spanish flu '. At the start of the war, German cruisers were scattered across

5510-713: Is drawing near when the Western powers will have to bury themselves in the grave they have dug for themselves in the East." The full-time secretariat of RILU consisted of the Spaniard, Andrés Nin , the Russian trade unionist Mikhail Tomsky and General Secretary Solomon Lozovsky . In addition to its Moscow headquarters, RILU soon established four overseas offices — Berlin ("Central European Bureau"), Paris ("Latin Bureau"), Bulgaria ("Balkan Bureau") and London ("British Bureau"). In May 1927,

5700-503: Is known, however, that from 1908 to 1913, military spending by the six major European powers increased by over 50% in real terms. The years before 1914 were marked by a series of crises in the Balkans, as other powers sought to benefit from the Ottoman decline. While Pan-Slavic and Orthodox Russia considered itself the protector of Serbia and other Slav states, they preferred the strategically vital Bosporus straits to be controlled by

5890-646: The April Theses which openly supported revolutionary defeatism , where the Bolsheviks hoped that Russia would lose the war so that they could quickly cause a socialist insurrection. The victory of the Russian Communist Party in the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 was felt throughout the world and an alternative path to power to parliamentary politics was demonstrated. With much of Europe on

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6080-558: The Schutzkorps was established, and carried out the persecution of Serbs. The assassination initiated the July Crisis, a month of diplomatic manoeuvring between Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, France and Britain. Believing that Serbian intelligence helped organise Franz Ferdinand's murder, Austrian officials wanted to use the opportunity to end their interference in Bosnia and saw war as

6270-626: The World War . In August 1914, the magazine The Independent wrote "This is the Great War. It names itself". In October 1914, the Canadian magazine Maclean's similarly wrote, "Some wars name themselves. This is the Great War". Contemporary Europeans also referred to it as " the war to end war " and it was also described as "the war to end all wars" due to their perception of its unparalleled scale, devastation, and loss of life. The first recorded use of

6460-712: The 1923 insurrection . However, this proposal was rejected by the Politburo which was controlled by Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev who decided to send a commission of lower-ranking Russian Communist party members. The dream of a world revolution was abandoned after the failures of the Spartacist uprising in Germany and of the Hungarian Soviet Republic and the failure of all revolutionary movements in Europe such as in Italy, where

6650-665: The Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force landed on the island of New Britain , then part of German New Guinea . On 28 October, the German cruiser SMS  Emden sank the Russian cruiser Zhemchug in the Battle of Penang . Japan declared war on Germany before seizing territories in the Pacific, which later became the South Seas Mandate , as well as German Treaty ports on

6840-610: The Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang were supported by the Comintern. However, after the definite break with Chiang Kai-shek in 1927, Joseph Stalin sent personal emissaries to help organize revolts which at this time failed. The Fourth World Congress was coincidentally held within days of the March on Rome by Benito Mussolini and his PNF in Italy . Karl Radek lamented

7030-536: The Communist Party of Poland in 1938). Above all, the Comintern exploited Soviet prestige in sharp contrast to the weaknesses of local parties that rarely had political power. Communist front organizations were set up to attract non-members who agreed with the party on certain specific points. Opposition to fascism was a common theme in the popular front era of the mid-1930s. The well-known names and prestige of artists, intellectuals and other fellow travelers were used to advance party positions. They often came to

7220-672: The Far Eastern Bureau of the Communist International was established in Siberia to develop their political influence in the Far East . Soon after its establishment, the bureau's manager Grigori Voitinsky arrived in Peking and established contact with local communist vanguard Li Dazhao . Li arranged for Voitinsky to meet with another Communist leader, Chen Duxiu , in Shanghai and began to establish

7410-473: The Kuomintang (KMT) were said to be communists and the disciplined and centralized party established at that time clearly drew upon the Soviet Communist model. In June 1924 Sun's KMT government in Canton established its own military academy at Whampoa , aided by 3 million rubles in Soviet aid for the purpose as well as Soviet instructors, headed by Vasily Blyukher . The working alliance forged between KMT leader Sun and Mikhail Borodin , chief representative of

7600-430: The Nazi government 's propaganda against the Soviet Union and the Comintern, a treaty of assistance was concluded between Germany and Japan in 1936, the Anti-Comintern Pact . In it, the two states agreed to fight the Comintern and assured each other that they would not sign any treaties with the Soviet Union that would contradict the anti-communist spirit of the agreement. However, this did not prevent Hitler from signing

7790-539: The Nazi-Soviet Pact with Stalin in August 1939, which in turn meant the end of the Popular Front policy and, in fact, that of the Comintern as well. The German-Soviet non-aggression treaty contained far-reaching agreements on spheres of interest , which the two totalitarian powers implemented over the next two years using military means. On 3 September 1939, France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany after its invasion of Poland , beginning World War II in Europe . The Comintern sections now found themselves in

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7980-458: The New Economic Policy in full swing in Soviet Russia, with its associated liberalization of culture and trade, the position of the Soviet trade union movement with relationship to social democratic unions in the West was secure and orderly, despite the failure of efforts to parlay with top leaders of the Amsterdam International. As was the case with the Communist International, formal World Congresses of RILU happened with decreasing frequency over

8170-489: The Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat was established in Shanghai as RILU's coordinating center for Asia and the Pacific. In 1928, RILU launched the Confederación Sindical Latino-Americana (CSLA) as the Latin American branch of RILU — the first general labor movement in Latin America . This group was the forerunner of the Confederación de los Trabajadores de América Latina (CTAL), established in 1936. The International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW)

8360-494: The Popular Front led by Manuel Azaña winning the 1936 election in Spain , and with Léon Blum 's 1936 election which led to the Popular Front government in France . Stalin's purges of the 1930s affected Comintern activists living in both the Soviet Union and overseas. At Stalin's direction, the Comintern was thoroughly infused with Soviet secret police and foreign intelligence operatives and informers working under Comintern guise. One of its leaders, Mikhail Trilisser , using

8550-591: The Rüstungswende or 'armaments turning point', when he switched expenditure from the navy to the army. This decision was not driven by a reduction in political tensions but by German concern over Russia's quick recovery from its defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and subsequent 1905 Russian Revolution . Economic reforms led to a significant post-1908 expansion of railways and transportation infrastructure, particularly in its western border regions. Since Germany and Austria-Hungary relied on faster mobilisation to compensate for their numerical inferiority compared to Russia,

8740-446: The Second International in 1916. Vladimir Lenin , Leon Trotsky , and Joseph Stalin were all honorary presidents of the Communist International. The Comintern held seven World Congresses in Moscow between 1919 and 1935. During that period, it also conducted thirteen Enlarged Plenums of its governing Executive Committee , which had much the same function as the somewhat larger and more grandiose Congresses. Joseph Stalin , leader of

8930-464: The Trade Union Educational League , succeeded in 1929 by a more radical variant which attempted to establish dual unions , the Trade Union Unity League . The Profintern was dissolved in 1937 as Stalin's foreign policy shifted towards the Popular Front . Comintern The Communist International ( Comintern ), also known as the Third International , was an international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism , and which

9120-481: The Triple Entente was formed by three. Socialists had historically been anti-war and internationalist , fighting against what they perceived as militarist exploitation of the proletariat for bourgeois states. A majority of socialists voted in favor of resolutions for the Second International to call upon the international working class to resist war if it were declared. But after the beginning of World War I, many European socialist parties announced support for

9310-403: The United States entered the war on the Allied side following Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare against Atlantic shipping. Later that year, the Bolsheviks seized power in the Russian October Revolution , and Soviet Russia signed an armistice with the Central Powers in December, followed by a separate peace in March 1918. That month, Germany launched an offensive in

9500-589: The fascist squadristi broke the strikes during the Biennio Rosso and quickly assumed power following the 1922 March on Rome . This period up to 1928 was known as the Second Period, mirroring the shift in the Soviet Union from war communism to the New Economic Policy . At the Fifth World Congress of the Comintern in July 1924, Zinoviev condemned both Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács 's History and Class Consciousness , published in 1923 after his involvement in Béla Kun 's Hungarian Soviet Republic , and Karl Korsch 's Marxism and Philosophy . Zinoviev himself

9690-423: The hydrophone and depth charges were introduced, destroyers could potentially successfully attack a submerged submarine. Convoys slowed the flow of supplies since ships had to wait as convoys were assembled; the solution was an extensive program of building new freighters. Troopships were too fast for the submarines and did not travel the North Atlantic in convoys. The U-boats sunk more than 5,000 Allied ships, at

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9880-402: The popular front against fascism . This policy argued that communist parties should seek to form a popular front with all parties that opposed fascism and not limit themselves to forming a united front with those parties based in the working class. There was no significant opposition to this policy within any of the national sections of the Comintern. It would have momentous consequences, with

10070-442: The tank . After the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, Allied and German forces unsuccessfully tried to outflank each other, a series of manoeuvres later known as the " Race to the Sea ". By the end of 1914, the opposing forces confronted each other along an uninterrupted line of entrenched positions from the Channel to the Swiss border. Since the Germans were normally able to choose where to stand, they generally held

10260-588: The 1839 Treaty of London did not require it to oppose a German invasion with military force; however, Prime Minister Asquith and his senior Cabinet ministers were already committed to supporting France, the Royal Navy had been mobilised, and public opinion was strongly in favour of intervention. On 31 July, Britain sent notes to Germany and France, asking them to respect Belgian neutrality; France pledged to do so, but Germany did not reply. Aware of German plans to attack through Belgium, French Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre asked his government for permission to cross

10450-431: The 1879 Dual Alliance , which became the Triple Alliance when Italy joined in 1882. For Bismarck, the purpose of these agreements was to isolate France by ensuring the three Empires resolve any disputes between themselves. In 1887, Bismarck set up the Reinsurance Treaty , a secret agreement between Germany and Russia to remain neutral if either were attacked by France or Austria-Hungary. For Bismarck, peace with Russia

10640-441: The 1913 Treaty of London , which had created an independent Albania while enlarging the territories of Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. However, disputes between the victors sparked the 33-day Second Balkan War , when Bulgaria attacked Serbia and Greece on 16 June 1913; it was defeated, losing most of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece, and Southern Dobruja to Romania. The result was that even countries which benefited from

10830-471: The 1919 Comintern founding congress. Trotsky, who was also marginalized and persecuted by Stalin, and other communists founded the Fourth International in 1938 as an oppositional alternative to the Stalin-dominated Comintern. In the years that followed, however, their sections rarely got beyond the status of the smallest cadre or splinter parties. Although the General Association of German Anti-Communist Associations had existed in Berlin since 1933 as part of

11020-412: The 1st Comintern congress ): the communist parties of Russia, Germany, German Austria, Hungary, Poland, Finland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Byelorussia, Estonia, Armenia, and the Volga German region; the Swedish Social Democratic Left Party (the opposition), Balkan Revolutionary People's of Russia; Zimmerwald Left Wing of France; the Czech, Bulgarian, Yugoslav, British, French, and Swiss Communist Groups;

11210-402: The AFL's ongoing refusal to affiliate with the Amsterdam International. These objections by the IFTU failed to stymie continued development of bilateral Soviet-British ties, however, as in April 1925 Tomsky returned to London as part of an effort to establish a joint committee for trade union unity between the two countries. If Tomsky had the ulterior motive of seeking to win British unionists to

11400-410: The Amsterdam International, and various unaffiliated unions — a gathering which was to echo the April 1922 meeting between the Second International , the Two-and-a-Half International , and the Comintern in Berlin "to work out parallel forms and methods of struggle against the offensive of capitalism." In retrospect, 1922 marked the high-water mark for the Profintern's size and influence in Europe, with

11590-409: The Austrians and Serbs clashed at the battles of the Cer and Kolubara ; over the next two weeks, Austrian attacks were repulsed with heavy losses. As a result, Austria had to keep sizeable forces on the Serbian front, weakening their efforts against Russia. Serbia's victory against Austria-Hungary in the 1914 invasion has been called one of the major upset victories of the twentieth century. In 1915,

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11780-593: The Austrians briefly occupied the Serbian capital, Belgrade . A Serbian counter-attack in the Battle of Kolubara succeeded in driving them from the country by the end of 1914. For the first 10 months of 1915, Austria-Hungary used most of its military reserves to fight Italy. German and Austro-Hungarian diplomats scored a coup by persuading Bulgaria to join the attack on Serbia. The Austro-Hungarian provinces of Slovenia , Croatia and Bosnia provided troops for Austria-Hungary. Montenegro allied itself with Serbia. Bulgaria declared war on Serbia on 14 October 1915 and joined in

11970-491: The Balkan Wars, such as Serbia and Greece, felt cheated of their "rightful gains", while for Austria it demonstrated the apparent indifference with which other powers viewed their concerns, including Germany. This complex mix of resentment, nationalism and insecurity helps explain why the pre-1914 Balkans became known as the " powder keg of Europe ". On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria , heir presumptive to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria , visited Sarajevo ,

12160-413: The Central Council." The 4th Session of the Central Council, held in Moscow from March 9–15, 1926, began just as the 6th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI came to a close. At both of these gatherings Solomon Lozovsky had delivered reports which identified Great Britain — where a miners' strike was in the air — and in particular the countries of Asia and the Pacific as areas presenting the greatest opportunities for

12350-404: The Central Powers. However, the pro-German King Constantine I dismissed the pro-Allied government of Eleftherios Venizelos before the Allied expeditionary force arrived. The Macedonian front was at first mostly static. French and Serbian forces retook limited areas of Macedonia by recapturing Bitola on 19 November 1916 following the costly Monastir offensive , which brought stabilisation of

12540-410: The Chinese Shandong peninsula at Tsingtao . After Vienna refused to withdraw its cruiser SMS  Kaiserin Elisabeth from Tsingtao, Japan declared war on Austria-Hungary, and the ship was sunk in November 1914. Within a few months, Allied forces had seized all German territories in the Pacific, leaving only isolated commerce raiders and a few holdouts in New Guinea. Some of the first clashes of

12730-406: The Comintern China Branch, which evolved into the Communist Party of China in 1921. The Third Congress of the Communist International was held between 22 June–12 July 1921 in Moscow. The Fourth Congress, held in November 1922, at which Trotsky played a prominent role, continued in this vein. In 1924, the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party joined the Comintern. At first, in China, both

12920-406: The Comintern in China was lost following Sun's death in Beijing on March 12, 1925. After the leader's death, jockeying began between left and right factions in the KMT; tension between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party began to build without Sun's calming influence. On May 30, 1925, a strike in Shanghai of radical students protesting the arrest of some of their fellows who had been supporting

13110-427: The Comintern labelled Social Democracy as social fascists and urged aligned parties to work to their destruction as the 'moderate wing of fascism'. Especially with the rise of the National Socialist Workers' Party in Germany after the 1930 federal election , this stance gave rise to some opposition inside. The Sixth World Congress also revised the policy of united front in the colonial (colonized) countries. China

13300-413: The Comintern. It was a network made up of the communist parties of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (led by Josip Broz Tito and expelled in June 1948). The Cominform was dissolved in 1956 following Stalin's 1953 death and the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . While the communist parties of the world no longer had

13490-459: The Dutch Social-Democratic Group; Socialist Propaganda League and the Socialist Labor Party of America; Socialist Workers' Party of China; Korean Workers' Union, Turkestan, Turkish, Georgian, Azerbaijani, and Persian Sections of the Central Bureau of the Eastern Peoples, and the Zimmerwald Commission. Zinoviev served as the first Chairman of the Comintern's executive committee from 1919 to 1926, but its dominant figure until his death in January 1924

13680-605: The French and Spanish delegations. Ultimately, however, the syndicalist elements proved a small minority and the Congress approved a resolution sponsored by Mann and Rosmer which called for "the closest possible link" between the Profintern and Comintern, including joint sessions of the organizations, as well as "real and intimate revolutionary unity" between the Red unions and the Communist parties at

13870-613: The German High Seas Fleet was confined to port. German U-boats attempted to cut the supply lines between North America and Britain. The nature of submarine warfare meant that attacks often came without warning, giving the crews of the merchant ships little hope of survival. The United States launched a protest, and Germany changed its rules of engagement. After the sinking of the passenger ship RMS Lusitania in 1915, Germany promised not to target passenger liners, while Britain armed its merchant ships, placing them beyond

14060-623: The German Army increased in size from 1908 to 1914, he changed the allocation of forces between the two wings to 70:30. He also considered Dutch neutrality essential for German trade and cancelled the incursion into the Netherlands, which meant any delays in Belgium threatened the viability of the plan. Historian Richard Holmes argues that these changes meant the right wing was not strong enough to achieve decisive success. The initial German advance in

14250-676: The German right wing would sweep through the Netherlands and Belgium , then swing south, encircling Paris and trapping the French army against the Swiss border. The plan's creator, Alfred von Schlieffen , head of the German General Staff from 1891 to 1906, estimated that this would take six weeks, after which the German army would transfer to the East and defeat the Russians. The plan was substantially modified by his successor, Helmuth von Moltke

14440-530: The Germans bled heavily as well, with anywhere from 700,000 to 975,000 casualties between the two combatants. Verdun became a symbol of French determination and self-sacrifice. The Battle of the Somme was an Anglo-French offensive from July to November 1916. The opening day on 1 July 1916 was the bloodiest single day in the history of the British Army , which suffered 57,500 casualties, including 19,200 dead. As

14630-784: The IFTC held a joint meeting in Brussels during the first week of January 1925 and emerged with a scathing denunciation of the Soviet Union and its sympathizers in the British trade union movement that were organized in a RILU-subsidized organization known as the National Minority Movement . A similar presence in the American Federation of Labor in the form of the Trade Union Educational League went without comment owing to

14820-544: The International Federation of Trade Unions." The great civil war within the world trade union movement had begun. The Founding Congress of the Red International of Trade Unions was convened in Moscow on July 3, 1921. The gathering was attended by 380 delegates from around the world, including 336 with voting rights, claiming to represent 17 million of the 40 million trade union members worldwide. The gathering

15010-547: The International would have their own representatives. The Congress decided that the executive committee would elect a five-member bureau to run the daily affairs of the International. However, such a bureau was not formed and Lenin, Leon Trotsky , and Christian Rakovsky later delegated the task of managing the International to Grigory Zinoviev as the Chairman of the Executive. Zinoviev was assisted by Angelica Balabanoff , acting as

15200-420: The International. The 21 Conditions called for the demarcation between communist parties and other socialist groups and instructed the Comintern sections not to trust the legality of the bourgeois states. They also called for the build-up of party organizations along democratic centralist lines in which the party press and parliamentary factions would be under the direct control of the party leadership. Regarding

15390-513: The Left. The British delegates probably shocked their Soviet colleagues by coming out openly in favour of the affiliation of the Russian unions to IFTU." Tomsky, although diplomatic in his reply, rejected the British suggestion out of hand as an abject surrender to the Amsterdam International akin to the 1918 forced surrender of Soviet Russia to Imperial Germany at Brest-Litovsk . Still, with

15580-586: The M-Apparat of the Communist Party of Germany . The Comintern was involved in the revolutions across Europe in this period, starting with the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. Several hundred agitators and financial aid were sent from the Soviet Union and Lenin was in regular contact with its leader Béla Kun . The next attempt was the March Action in Germany in 1921, including an attempt to dynamite

15770-641: The May 30 Movement fueled the Comintern's interest in the revolutionary ferment in China. This new perspective was emphasized by Joseph Stalin , beginning to emerge over the Comintern's Grigory Zinoviev as top leader of the USSR, who in early July 1925 agreed with a reporter for the Tokyo newspaper Nichi Nichi Shimbun that the revolutionary movement in China, India, Persia , Egypt and "other Eastern countries" were growing and that "the time

15960-675: The Middle East. In all, 140,000 soldiers served on the Western Front and nearly 700,000 in the Middle East, with 47,746 killed and 65,126 wounded. The suffering engendered by the war, as well as the failure of the British government to grant self-government to India afterward, bred disillusionment, resulting in the campaign for full independence led by Mahatma Gandhi . Pre-war military tactics that had emphasised open warfare and individual riflemen proved obsolete when confronted with conditions prevailing in 1914. Technological advances allowed

16150-869: The Ottomans joined the Central Powers in November. Germany's strategy in 1914 was to quickly defeat France, then to transfer its forces to the east, but its advance was halted in September , and by the end of the year the Western Front consisted of a continuous line of trenches stretching from the English Channel to Switzerland. The Eastern Front was more dynamic, but neither side gained a decisive advantage, despite costly offensives. Italy , Bulgaria , Romania , Greece and others joined in from 1915 onward. In April 1917,

16340-548: The Ottomans' territory in the Balkans during the 1912–1913 First Balkan War , much to the surprise of outside observers. The Serbian capture of ports on the Adriatic resulted in partial Austrian mobilisation, starting on 21 November 1912, including units along the Russian border in Galicia . The Russian government decided not to mobilise in response, unprepared to precipitate a war. The Great Powers sought to re-assert control through

16530-644: The Profintern in its attempt to construct a world revolutionary movement. Amsterdam had paid scant attention to Asia, leaving the field open to the Profintern's efforts, Lozovsky noted in his report to the Comintern Executive. RILU did make an effort to break new organizational ground outside of Europe as early as February 1922 when it established a Moscow office comparable to the Comintern's Eastern Bureau, headed by Buffalo, New York druggist Boris Reinstein , Bulgarian-American IWW member George Andreytchine , and H. Eiduss. But now, even as European prospects dimmed,

16720-432: The Profintern represented 13 million unionists against 14 or 15 million for the rival Amsterdam International. This figure is regarded by at least one serious historian of the matter as "probably exaggerated." The 3rd World Congress of the Profintern opened on July 8, 1924, having been scheduled to begin in Moscow immediately following the 5th World Congress of the Comintern (June 17 to July 8, 1924). Seventy delegates from

16910-471: The Profintern were made "consultative" (non-voting) delegates to the Comintern gathering, assuring a very close connection between the two gatherings. The 1924 Congress formally marked a hardening of the Communist attitude towards the Social Democratic labor movement, declaring that "fascism and democracy are two forms of the bourgeois dictatorship." The most contentious issue debated by the Congress related to

17100-564: The Ruhr by France to enforce the onerous reparations levied against Germany. The die had been cast, however, and no joint activities between the political or union leaders of the Social Democratic and Communist Internationals would be result from the initiative. Lozovsky reported on RILU's progress to the 12th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (b) in April 1923, at which he claimed that

17290-606: The Russian Stavka agreed with the French to attack Germany within fifteen days of mobilisation, ten days before the Germans had anticipated, although it meant the two Russian armies that entered East Prussia on 17 August did so without many of their support elements. By the end of 1914, German troops held strong defensive positions inside France, controlled the bulk of France's domestic coalfields, and inflicted 230,000 more casualties than it lost itself. However, communications problems and questionable command decisions cost Germany

17480-541: The Russian Revolution now transmuted into dependency on Moscow and belief in Soviet infallibility. Depressing cycles of "internal rectification" began, disgracing and expelling successive leaderships, so that by the later 1920s many founding Communists had gone. This process of coordination, in a hard-faced drive for uniformity, was finalized at the next Congress of the Third International in 1928. The Comintern

17670-631: The Serbian retreat toward the Adriatic coast in the Battle of Mojkovac on 6–7 January 1916, but ultimately the Austrians also conquered Montenegro. The surviving Serbian soldiers were evacuated to Greece. After the conquest, Serbia was divided between Austro-Hungary and Bulgaria. In late 1915, a Franco-British force landed at Salonica in Greece to offer assistance and to pressure its government to declare war against

17860-496: The Soviet Government had nothing to do with Comintern. I gave up co-editing a series of documents on Russo-American relations because my Russian colleague could not or would not get over that hurdle....Even today [2020], when the Russians are more liberal in their censorship of documentary publications, one has to verify where possible through other sources independent of Moscow. And although Comintern's archives are available on

18050-511: The Soviet Union , founded at roughly the same time that the Comintern was abolished in 1943, although its specific duties during the first several years of its existence are unknown. Following the June 1947 Paris Conference on Marshall Aid , Stalin gathered a grouping of key European communist parties in September and set up the Cominform , or Communist Information Bureau, often seen as a substitute to

18240-647: The Soviet Union for propaganda tours praising the future. Under the leadership of Zinoviev, the Comintern established fronts in many countries in the 1920s and after. To coordinate their activities, the Comintern set up international umbrella organizations linking groups across national borders, such as the Young Communist International (youth), Profintern (trade unions), Krestintern (peasants), International Red Aid (humanitarian aid), Sportintern (organized sports), and more. Front organizations were especially influential in France, which in 1933 became

18430-499: The Soviet Union were liquidated, and more than a thousand were handed over to Germany. Wolfgang Leonhard , who experienced this period in Moscow as a contemporary witness, wrote about it in his political autobiography, which was published in the 1950s: "The foreign communists living in the Soviet Union were particularly affected. In a few months, more functionaries of the Comintern apparatus were arrested than had been put together by all bourgeois governments in twenty years. Just listing

18620-570: The Soviet Union, dissolved the Comintern in 1943 to avoid antagonizing his allies in the later years of World War II , the United States and the United Kingdom. It was succeeded by the Cominform in 1947. Differences between the revolutionary and reformist wings of the workers' movement had been increasing for decades, but the outbreak of World War I was the catalyst for their separation. The Triple Alliance comprised two empires, while

18810-544: The Soviet situation upon their return to the UK. This month-long visit of the British trade union delegation would be the prototype for a series of similar visits of the Soviet Union by western union leaders. While the groundwork for ties between the Soviet and western trade union movement began to be successfully laid, the situation between the international organizations based in Amsterdam and Moscow festered. The Second International and

19000-678: The West was very successful. By the end of August, the Allied left, which included the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), was in full retreat , and the French offensive in Alsace-Lorraine was a disastrous failure, with casualties exceeding 260,000. German planning provided broad strategic instructions while allowing army commanders considerable freedom in carrying them out at the front, but von Kluck used this freedom to disobey orders, opening

19190-480: The Younger . Under Schlieffen, 85% of German forces in the west were assigned to the right wing, with the remainder holding along the frontier. By keeping his left-wing deliberately weak, he hoped to lure the French into an offensive into the "lost provinces" of Alsace-Lorraine , which was the strategy envisaged by their Plan XVII . However, Moltke grew concerned that the French might push too hard on his left flank and as

19380-550: The adhesion issue. The French Section of the Workers International (SFIO) thus broke away with the 1920 Tours Congress , leading to the creation of the new French Communist Party (initially called French Section of the Communist International – SFIC). The Communist Party of Spain was created in 1920, the Communist Party of Italy in 1921, the Belgian Communist Party in September 1921, and so on. In 1920,

19570-446: The aggressor, German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg delayed the commencement of war preparations until 31 July. That afternoon, the Russian government were handed a note requiring them to "cease all war measures against Germany and Austria-Hungary" within 12 hours. A further German demand for neutrality was refused by the French who ordered general mobilisation but delayed declaring war. The German General Staff had long assumed they faced

19760-466: The attack by the Austro-Hungarian army under Mackensen's army of 250,000 that was already underway. Serbia was conquered in a little more than a month, as the Central Powers, now including Bulgaria, sent in 600,000 troops in total. The Serbian army, fighting on two fronts and facing certain defeat, retreated into northern Albania . The Serbs suffered defeat in the Battle of Kosovo . Montenegro covered

19950-500: The autumn of 1923. The Red Army was mobilized, ready to come to the aid of the planned insurrection. Resolute action by the German government cancelled the plans, except due to miscommunication in Hamburg, where 200–300 communists attacked police stations, but were quickly defeated. In 1924, there was a failed coup in Estonia by the Communist Party of Estonia . The Comintern was founded at

20140-504: The base for communist front organizer Willi Münzenberg . These organizations were dissolved in the late 1930s or early 1940s. In 1928, the Ninth Plenum of the executive committee began the so-called Third Period , which was to last until 1935. The Comintern proclaimed that the capitalist system was entering the period of final collapse and therefore all communist parties were to adopt an aggressive and militant 'left' line. In particular,

20330-425: The basis of their specific industry. These groups were intended to conduct conferences and publish and distribute pamphlets and periodicals in order to propagandize for the idea of revolution and for the establishment the dictatorship of the proletariat . The IPCs were to attempt to raise funds to help sustain their efforts, with the governing Executive Bureau of Profintern subsidizing their publications. By August 1921

20520-535: The best way of achieving this. However, the Foreign Ministry had no solid proof of Serbian involvement. On 23   July, Austria delivered an ultimatum to Serbia, listing ten demands made intentionally unacceptable to provide an excuse for starting hostilities. Serbia ordered general mobilisation on 25   July, but accepted all the terms, except for those empowering Austrian representatives to suppress "subversive elements" inside Serbia, and take part in

20710-483: The border and pre-empt such a move. To avoid violating Belgian neutrality, he was told any advance could come only after a German invasion. Instead, the French cabinet ordered its Army to withdraw 10 km behind the German frontier, to avoid provoking war. On 2 August, Germany occupied Luxembourg and exchanged fire with French units when German patrols entered French territory; on 3   August, they declared war on France and demanded free passage across Belgium, which

20900-481: The break-up of the Eastern Bloc in 1989–1991. British historian Jonathan Haslam reports that even after in Moscow archives: all references to the Communist International and later the international department of the central committee, which drove the revolutionary side of foreign policy, were removed from published diplomatic documents, in order to fit in with the prevailing dogma established by Vladimir Lenin that

21090-480: The campaign saw the first use of anti-aircraft warfare after an Austrian plane was shot down with ground-to-air fire, as well as the first medical evacuation by the Serbian army. Upon mobilisation, in accordance with the Schlieffen Plan , 80% of the German Army was located on the Western Front, with the remainder acting as a screening force in the East. Rather than a direct attack across their shared frontier,

21280-636: The capital of the recently annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina . Cvjetko Popović , Gavrilo Princip , Nedeljko Čabrinović , Trifko Grabež , Vaso Čubrilović ( Bosnian Serbs ) and Muhamed Mehmedbašić (from the Bosniaks community), from the movement known as Young Bosnia , took up positions along the Archduke's motorcade route, to assassinate him. Supplied with arms by extremists within the Serbian Black Hand intelligence organisation, they hoped his death would free Bosnia from Austrian rule. Čabrinović threw

21470-568: The chance of a decisive outcome, while it had failed to achieve the primary objective of avoiding a long, two-front war. As was apparent to several German leaders, this amounted to a strategic defeat; shortly after the First Battle of the Marne , Crown Prince Wilhelm told an American reporter "We have lost the war. It will go on for a long time but lost it is already". On 30 August 1914, New Zealand occupied German Samoa (now Samoa ). On 11 September,

21660-558: The colonies. Notably, some of the delegates opposed the idea of an alliance with the bourgeoisie and preferred giving support to communist movements in these countries instead. Their criticism was shared by the Indian revolutionary M. N. Roy , who attended as a delegate of the Mexican Communist Party . The Congress removed the term bourgeois-democratic in what became the 8th condition. Many European socialist parties were divided over

21850-464: The cost of 199 submarines. World War I also saw the first use of aircraft carriers in combat, with HMS  Furious launching Sopwith Camels in a successful raid against the Zeppelin hangars at Tondern in July 1918, as well as blimps for antisubmarine patrol. Faced with Russia in the east, Austria-Hungary could spare only one-third of its army to attack Serbia. After suffering heavy losses,

22040-513: The creation of new independent states, including Poland , Finland , the Baltic states , Czechoslovakia , and Yugoslavia . The League of Nations was established to maintain world peace, but its failure to manage instability during the interwar period contributed to the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Before World War II , the events of 1914–1918 were generally known as the Great War or simply

22230-449: The creation of strong defensive systems largely impervious to massed infantry advances, such as barbed wire , machine guns and above all far more powerful artillery , which dominated the battlefield and made crossing open ground extremely difficult. Both sides struggled to develop tactics for breaching entrenched positions without heavy casualties. In time, technology enabled the production of new offensive weapons, such as gas warfare and

22420-948: The crowds listened to music and drank wine, as if nothing had happened". Nevertheless, the impact of the murder of the heir to the throne was significant, and has been described by historian Christopher Clark as a " 9/11 effect, a terrorist event charged with historic meaning, transforming the political chemistry in Vienna". Austro-Hungarian authorities encouraged subsequent anti-Serb riots in Sarajevo . Violent actions against ethnic Serbs were also organised outside Sarajevo, in other cities in Austro-Hungarian-controlled Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia. Austro-Hungarian authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina imprisoned approximately 5,500 prominent Serbs, 700 to 2,200 of whom died in prison. A further 460 Serbs were sentenced to death. A predominantly Bosniak special militia known as

22610-449: The decision to launch a Red International of Labor Unions at all was a byproduct of the era of heady revolutionary fervor that world revolution was around the corner, declaring: "It was a step taken in a moment of hot-headed enthusiasm and the firm conviction of the imminence of the European revolution; and a device designed to bridge a short transition and prepare the way for the great consummation had unexpected and fatal consequences when

22800-467: The declaration asked the member sections to approve: To dissolve the Communist International as a guiding centre of the international labor movement, releasing sections of the Communist International from the obligations ensuing from the constitution and decisions of the Congresses of the Communist International. After endorsements of the declaration were received from the member sections, the International

22990-558: The existing unions in order to disassociate the full organizations from Amsterdam and for Moscow. Such tactics insured bitter internal division as non-Communist members of the rank-and-file and their elected union leaderships sought to maintain existing affiliations. As part of its strategy for winning over the existing unions, the Profintern decided to establish a network of what it called "International Propaganda Committees" (IPCs), international associations of radical unions and organized fractional minorities in unions that were established on

23180-671: The expansion of the French colonial empire . In 1873, Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors , which included Austria-Hungary , Russia and Germany. After the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War , the League was dissolved due to Austrian concerns over the expansion of Russian influence in the Balkans , an area they considered to be of vital strategic interest. Germany and Austria-Hungary then formed

23370-645: The express train from Halle to Leipzig. After this failed, the Communist Party of Germany expelled its former chairman Paul Levi from the party for publicly criticizing the March Action in a pamphlet, which was ratified by the Executive Committee of the Communist International prior to the Third Congress. A new attempt was made at the time of the Ruhr crisis in spring and then again in selected parts of Germany in

23560-400: The first time on the Western Front. Several types of gas soon became widely used by both sides and though it never proved a decisive, battle-winning weapon, it became one of the most feared and best-remembered horrors of the war. In February 1916, the Germans attacked French defensive positions at the Battle of Verdun , lasting until December 1916. Casualties were greater for the French, but

23750-586: The front. Serbian and French troops finally made a breakthrough in September 1918 in the Vardar offensive , after most German and Austro-Hungarian troops had been withdrawn. The Bulgarians were defeated at the Battle of Dobro Pole , and by 25 September British and French troops had crossed the border into Bulgaria proper as the Bulgarian army collapsed. Bulgaria capitulated four days later, on 29 September 1918. The German high command responded by despatching troops to hold

23940-408: The globe, some of which were subsequently used to attack Allied merchant shipping . These were systematically hunted down by the Royal Navy, though not before causing considerable damage. One of the most successful was the SMS  Emden , part of the German East Asia Squadron stationed at Qingdao , which seized or sank 15 merchantmen, a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer. Most of the squadron

24130-421: The high ground, while their trenches tended to be better built; those constructed by the French and English were initially considered "temporary", only needed until an offensive would destroy the German defences. Both sides tried to break the stalemate using scientific and technological advances. On 22 April 1915, at the Second Battle of Ypres , the Germans (violating the Hague Convention ) used chlorine gas for

24320-406: The interim period dragged on into months and years." As the plan for a new labor international moved forward, Mezhsovprof established propaganda bureaus in different countries in an attempt to win the existing unions affiliated to the rival "Amsterdam International," as the International Federation of Trade Unions was commonly known, over to the forthcoming "Red International." These bureaus attracted

24510-422: The investigation and trial of Serbians linked to the assassination. Claiming this amounted to rejection, Austria broke off diplomatic relations and ordered partial mobilisation the next day; on 28 July, they declared war on Serbia and began shelling Belgrade . Russia ordered general mobilization in support of Serbia on 30 July. Anxious to ensure backing from the SPD political opposition by presenting Russia as

24700-481: The life of the organization. This stands to reason, since RILU World Congresses were scheduled in conjunction with the World Congresses of the Comintern itself, generally launching upon conclusion of the Comintern event. And just as the Comintern began making use of shorter, smaller, and less formal international conventions called "Enlarged Plenums of the Executive Committee" to handle international policy-making, similar gatherings were adopted for RILU, called "Sessions of

24890-666: The long-standing balance of power in Europe, as well as economic competition between nations triggered by industrialisation and imperialism . Growing tensions between the great powers and in the Balkans reached a breaking point on 28 June 1914, when a Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand , heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Austria-Hungary held Serbia responsible, and declared war on 28 July. After Russia mobilised in Serbia's defence, Germany declared war on Russia and France , who had an alliance . The United Kingdom entered after Germany invaded Belgium , whose neutrality it guaranteed, and

25080-406: The morning. [...] Exactly 3 o'clock the car lights began to be seen [...] we stayed near the window and waited [to find out], where the car stopped". Among those persecuted were many KPD functionaries, such as members of the KPD Central Committee, who believed they had found safe asylum in the Soviet Union after Adolf Hitler's rise to power . Among them was Hugo Eberlein , who had been present at

25270-451: The most rebellious and dissident trade unionists to their banner while at the same time alienating sometimes conservative union leaderships, already raising charges that what was actually being proffered was dual unionism and a destructive split of the existing unions. On January 9, 1921, ECCI decided that the launch of a new Red International of Trade Unions would take place at a conference to be convened on May Day of that year. An appeal

25460-444: The names would fill entire pages." Fritz Platten died in a labor camp and the leaders of the Indian ( Virendranath Chattopadhyaya or Chatto), Korean, Mexican, Iranian, and Turkish communist parties were executed. Out of 11 Mongolian Communist Party leaders, only Khorloogiin Choibalsan survived. Leopold Trepper recalled these days: "In house, where the party activists of all the countries were living, no-one slept until 3 o'clock in

25650-465: The national level. Despite the initiative of starting a new trade union international in direct competition with the previously existing Amsterdam international, the Profintern in its initial phase continued to insist that its strategy was not to "snatch out of the unions the best and most conscious workers," but rather to remain in the existing unions in order to "revolutionize" them. The founding Congress's official resolution on organization declared that

25840-484: The new organization, with Lozovsky declaring in a speech in May 1921 that already unions representing 14 million workers had proclaimed their allegiance to the forthcoming Red International. Zinoviev ferociously declared the Amsterdam International to be "the last barricade of the international bourgeoisie " — fighting words to social democratic trade unionists. For their own part, the Social Democratic trade union movement emerged from World War I relatively united, on

26030-409: The ocean, even to neutral ships. Since there was limited response to this tactic, Germany expected a similar response to its unrestricted submarine warfare. The Battle of Jutland in May/June 1916 was the only full-scale clash of battleships during the war, and one of the largest in history. The clash was indecisive, though the Germans inflicted more damage than they received; thereafter the bulk of

26220-438: The offensive, and unbowed. Even before the Profintern was launched, the line in the sand was clearly drawn, with the Amsterdam International declaring at a May 1921 executive session that it was "not permissible for trade union organizations to be affiliated to two trade union International at the same time" and adding that "every organization which affiliates to the political trade union International of Moscow places itself outside

26410-445: The organization lost its political credibility and relevance. On 15 May 1943, a declaration of the executive committee was sent out to all sections of the International, calling for the dissolution of the Comintern. The declaration read: The historical role of the Communist International, organized in 1919 as a result of the political collapse of the overwhelming majority of the old pre-war workers' parties, consisted in that it preserved

26600-548: The other, considering the latter as an unreliable ally yet not a direct enemy. The Congress called on the Indian Communist Party to utilize the contradictions between the "national bourgeoisie" and the British Empire . The Seventh and last Congress of the Comintern was held between 25 July and 20 August 1935. It was attended by representatives of 65 communist parties. The main report was delivered by Dimitrov, other reports were delivered by Palmiro Togliatti , Wilhelm Pieck , and Dmitry Manuilsky . The Congress officially endorsed

26790-451: The pamphlet Socialism and War where he called socialists collaborating with their national governments social chauvinists , i.e. socialists in word, but nationalists in deed. The Second International divided into a revolutionary left-wing , a moderate center-wing , and a more reformist right-wing . Lenin condemned much of the center as "social pacifists" for several reasons, including their vote for war credits despite publicly opposing

26980-466: The party line clear: "An internationalist is one who is ready to defend the USSR without reservation, without wavering, unconditionally; for the USSR it is the base of the world revolutionary movement, and this revolutionary movement cannot be defended and promoted without defending the USSR". According to Russian historian Vadim Rogovin , the leadership of the German Communist Party (KPD) had requested that Moscow send Leon Trotsky to Germany to direct

27170-425: The political situation in the colonized world, the Second Congress of the Communist International stipulated that a united front should be formed between the proletariat, peasantry, and national bourgeoisie in the colonial countries. Amongst the 21 conditions drafted by Lenin ahead of the congress was the 11th thesis which stipulated that all communist parties must support the bourgeois-democratic liberation movements in

27360-445: The politically suicidal situation of having to support, for example, the Soviet invasion and subsequent annexation of Eastern Poland . The Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov declared in an October 31 speech that "as far as the European great Powers are concerned, Germany is in the position of a State which is striving for the earliest termination of war and for peace, while Britain and France [...] are in favour of continuing

27550-474: The pressure for conformity. A new policy of "Bolshevization" was adopted, which dragooned the CPs toward stricter bureaucratic centralism. This flattened out the earlier diversity of radicalisms, welding them into a single approved model of Communist organization. Only then did the new parties retreat from broader Left arenas into their own belligerent world, even if many local cultures of broader cooperation persisted. Respect for Bolshevik achievements and defense of

27740-435: The proceedings in Italy as the "largest defeat suffered by socialism and communism since the beginning of the period of world revolution", and Zinoviev programmatically announced the similarities between fascism and social democracy, laying the groundwork for the later social fascism theory. Lenin died in 1924 and the next year saw a shift in the organization's focus from the immediate activity of world revolution towards

27930-681: The protection of the " cruiser rules ", which demanded warning and movement of crews to "a place of safety" (a standard that lifeboats did not meet). Finally, in early 1917, Germany adopted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare , realising the Americans would eventually enter the war. Germany sought to strangle Allied sea lanes before the United States could transport a large army overseas, but, after initial successes, eventually failed to do so. The U-boat threat lessened in 1917, when merchant ships began travelling in convoys , escorted by destroyers . This tactic made it difficult for U-boats to find targets, which significantly lessened losses; after

28120-526: The pseudonym Mikhail Aleksandrovich Moskvin, was in fact chief of the foreign department of the Soviet OGPU (later the NKVD ). Numerous Comintern officials were also targeted by the dictator and became victims of show trials and political persecution, such as Grigory Zinoviev and Nikolai Bukharin . At Stalin's orders, 133 out of 492 Comintern staff members became victims of the Great Purge . Several hundred German communists and antifascists who had either fled from Nazi Germany or were convinced to relocate in

28310-399: The ranks of the Profintern, he was met with a surprising reversal, as E.H. Carr noted in 1964: "The British leaders had little interest in Profintern, which they secretly regarded, from the experience of the British movement, either as a nuisance or as a sham, and wished, by reconciling the Soviet trade unions with the existing [Amsterdam] International. to strengthen it and give it a turn to

28500-415: The secretary of the International, Victor L. Kibaltchitch and Vladmir Ossipovich Mazin. Lenin, Trotsky, and Alexandra Kollontai presented material. The main topic of discussion was the difference between bourgeois democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat . The following parties and movements were invited to the Founding Congress: Of these, the following attended (see list of delegates of

28690-415: The situation looked brighter in Asia and the Pacific. Best of all, from the perspective of the Profintern, was the situation in China, with a young and radical worker's movement beginning to spring to life. Soviet prestige and influence had grown in China throughout the early 1920s, particularly from 1924, when diplomatic recognition by the Peking government and an agreement on the Chinese Eastern Railroad

28880-409: The strategy and tactics of seeking unity with the Amsterdam International, thereby bringing an end to the disruption suffered by the labor movement as a result of the split into two internationals. With forcing the IFTU to capitulate untenable and independent entry of the Russian trade unions into their industrial federations affiliated with the IFTU, the sole option remaining, in Solomon Lozovsky's view,

29070-481: The task of organizing "an international congress of Red trade unions. Soviet trade union leader Solomon Lozovsky was named president of this new council, assisted by British unionist Tom Mann and Alfred Rosmer of France. The Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) directed the new council to issue a manifesto to "all trade unions of the world", condemning the social democratic International Federation of Trade Unions based in Amsterdam as

29260-463: The teachings of Marxism from vulgarisation and distortion by opportunist elements of the labor movement. But long before the war it became increasingly clear that, to the extent that the internal as well as the international situation of individual countries became more complicated, the solution of the problems of the labor movement of each individual country through the medium of some international centre would meet with insuperable obstacles. Concretely,

29450-415: The term First World War was in September 1914 by German biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel who stated, "There is no doubt that the course and character of the feared 'European War' ... will become the first world war in the full sense of the word". For much of the 19th century, the major European powers maintained a tenuous balance of power , known as the Concert of Europe . After 1848, this

29640-584: The threat posed by the closing of this gap was more important than competing with the Royal Navy. After Germany expanded its standing army by 170,000 troops in 1913, France extended compulsory military service from two to three years; similar measures were taken by the Balkan powers and Italy, which led to increased expenditure by the Ottomans and Austria-Hungary. Absolute figures are difficult to calculate due to differences in categorising expenditure since they often omit civilian infrastructure projects like railways which had logistical importance and military use. It

29830-411: The trade union movement flew in all directions. The professed desire of the Profintern for a united front came to fruition of sorts in December 1922, when the organization met at a peace conference in The Hague with representatives of the rival Amsterdam International , presided over by British union leader J.H. Thomas . As was the case with the meeting of the three political Internationals earlier in

30020-407: The verge of economic and political collapse in the aftermath of the carnage of World War I, revolutionary sentiments were widespread. The Russian Bolsheviks headed by Lenin believed that unless socialist revolution swept Europe, they would be crushed by the military might of world capitalism just as the Paris Commune had been crushed by force of arms in 1871. The Bolsheviks believed that this required

30210-472: The war effort of their respective nations. Including the British Labour Party who issued a manifesto stating, "the victory of the Germans would mean the death of democracy in Europe" while making no such criticisms of the Russian Tsar. There were exceptions, such as the socialist parties of the Balkans . To Vladimir Lenin 's surprise, even the Social Democratic Party of Germany voted in favor of war. After influential anti-war French Socialist Jean Jaurès

30400-429: The war ended with the Armistice of 11 November 1918 . The Paris Peace Conference of 1919–1920 imposed settlements on the defeated powers, most notably the Treaty of Versailles , by which Germany lost significant territories, was disarmed, and was required to pay large war reparations to the Allies. The dissolution of the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires redrew national boundaries and resulted in

30590-413: The war involved British, French, and German colonial forces in Africa. On 6–7 August, French and British troops invaded the German protectorates of Togoland and Kamerun . On 10 August, German forces in South-West Africa attacked South Africa; sporadic and fierce fighting continued for the rest of the war. The German colonial forces in German East Africa , led by Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck , fought

30780-405: The war. Lenin's term "social pacifist" aimed in particular at Ramsay MacDonald , leader of the Independent Labour Party in Britain, who opposed the war on grounds of pacifism but did not actively fight against it. Discredited by its apathy towards world events, the Second International dissolved in 1916. In 1917, after the February Revolution overthrew the Romanov Dynasty , Lenin published

30970-402: The war." This position has been described as a way for the Soviet government to explain its refusal to honour proposals for economic assistance to Poland, which had been made before and at the start of the war, since "it was found impossible to determine with any degree of certainty who was the aggressor and who the victim." The weakened and decimated Comintern was then forced to officially adopt

31160-404: The web, most of it them are still closed to the reader, even though officially declassified, and much of it is in German only. One always has to ask, what has been cut out deliberately? Several international organizations were sponsored by the Comintern in this period: World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War ,

31350-418: The west , which despite initial successes left the German Army exhausted and demoralised. A successful Allied counter-offensive from August 1918 caused a collapse of the German front line. By early November, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary had each signed armistices with the Allies, leaving Germany isolated. Facing a revolution at home , Kaiser Wilhelm   II abdicated on 9 November, and

31540-533: The withdrawal from the existing mass unions and abandonment of their memberships to their often conservative leaderships "plays into the hands of the counter-revolutionary trade union bureaucracy and therefore should be sharply and categorically rejected." Still, the Profintern insisted upon a real split of the labor movement, establishing conditions for admission which included "a break with the yellow Amsterdam International." The organization effectively advocated that radicalized workers engage in " boring from within "

31730-407: The world. In Bulgaria the All-Bulgarian Federation of unions chose to affiliate with the Profintern outright, but even that movement was split when opponents established a rival organization called the Free Federation of Trade Unions. Spain, too, saw its national labor movement formally divided. The climate was acrimonious as bitter charges and counter-charges levying responsibility for the shattering

31920-500: The year, the session ended in failure, with accusations flying in both directions and Lozovsky's plea for a united front arbitrarily dismissed as a transparent tactical ploy. This failure was followed up in January 1923 by a joint appeal of the Comintern and Profintern for the creation of an "action committee against fascism ," followed in March with the establishment of a formal Action Committee Against Fascism in Berlin, headed by Clara Zetkin . An international conference of this group

32110-449: Was Lenin, whose strategy for revolution had been laid out in What Is to Be Done? (1902). The central policy of the Comintern under Lenin's leadership was that communist parties should be established across the world to aid the international proletarian revolution . The parties also shared his principle of democratic centralism (freedom of discussion, unity of action), namely that parties would make decisions democratically, but uphold in

32300-410: Was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers . Fighting took place mainly in Europe and the Middle East , as well as in parts of Africa and the Asia-Pacific , and in Europe was characterised by trench warfare ; the widespread use of artillery , machine guns, and chemical weapons (gas); and the introductions of tanks and aircraft . World War I

32490-505: Was a relatively small organization, but it devised novel ways of controlling communist parties around the world. In many places, there was a communist subculture, founded upon indigenous left-wing traditions which had never been controlled by Moscow. The Comintern attempted to establish control over party leaderships by sending agents who bolstered certain factions, by judicious use of secret funding, by expelling independent-minded activists and even by closing down entire national parties (such as

32680-403: Was achieved. A Chinese labor movement began to take shape, driven by the efforts of railway workers and seamen to organize, backed with Moscow's support. In the South, a breakaway government based in Canton led by Sun Yat-sen pursued anti-imperialist objectives in conjunction with the Communist Party of China — an estimated 40 of the 200 delegates at the January 20, 1924 founding convention of

32870-427: Was also founded in 1928 as a section of the Profintern that acted as a radical transnational platform for black workers in Africa and the Atlantic World . RILU established national sections around the world. In Britain, the Bureau worked closely with the National Minority Movement . The Communist Party of Canada established a national section called the Workers' Unity League . The American section began in 1922 as

33060-424: Was assassinated on 31 July 1914, the socialist parties hardened their support in France for their government of national unity . Socialist parties in neutral countries mostly supported neutrality, rather than totally opposing the war. On the other hand, during the 1915 Zimmerwald Conference , Lenin, then a Swiss resident refugee, organized an opposition to the " imperialist war" as the Zimmerwald Left , publishing

33250-425: Was called to be held later that same month in Frankfurt, Germany with invitations extended to the parties of the Second International and the unions of the Amsterdam International, but only a few Social Democrats attended, the overwhelming majority of the gathering being Communists. Delegates from Germany, Soviet Russia, France, and Britain united to denounce the Versailles Peace Treaty and the related Occupation of

33440-403: Was challenged by Britain's withdrawal into so-called splendid isolation , the decline of the Ottoman Empire , New Imperialism , and the rise of Prussia under Otto von Bismarck . Victory in the 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War allowed Bismarck to consolidate a German Empire . Post-1871, the primary aim of French policy was to avenge this defeat, but by the early 1890s, this had switched to

33630-401: Was considered to be one of such countries. However, in 1927, the Kuomintang turned on the Chinese Communist Party , which led to a review of the policy on forming alliances with the 'national bourgeoisie' in the 'colonizal countries'. The Congress did make a differentiation between the character of the Chinese Kuomintang on one hand and the Indian Swaraj Party and the Egyptian Wafd Party on

33820-442: Was dismissed in 1926 after falling out of favor with Stalin. Bukharin then led the Comintern for two years until 1928, when he too fell out with Stalin. Bulgarian communist leader Georgi Dimitrov headed the Comintern in 1934 and presided until its dissolution. Geoff Eley summed up the change in attitude at this time as follows: By the Fifth Comintern Congress in July 1924 [...] the collapse of Communist support in Europe tightened

34010-420: Was dissolved. The dissolution was interpreted as Stalin wishing to calm his World War II allies (particularly Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill ) and to keep them from suspecting the Soviet Union of pursuing a policy of trying to foment revolution in other countries. According to historian Eric D. Weitz , 60% of German exiles in the Soviet Union had been liquidated during the Stalinist terror and

34200-445: Was held in Moscow in November 1922, in conjunction with the 4th World Congress of the Comintern . As might be expected, the 1922 RILU Congress spent much of its time shaping the application of the Comintern's recently adopted united front policy to the trade union movement. With the prospects for imminent world revolution on the wane, RILU head Solomon Lozovsky proposed an international conference bringing together leaderships of RILU,

34390-427: Was issued to the trade unions of the world who were "opposed to the Amsterdam International" and called for their affiliation to the new organization. This conclave was ultimately postponed until July, however, so that it could be synchronized with the scheduled 3rd World Congress of the Comintern — travel to and from Soviet Russia being a difficult and dangerous process in these years. Grandiose claims were made about

34580-406: Was led and controlled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress in 1920 to "struggle by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and the creation of an international soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the state". The Comintern was preceded by the dissolution of

34770-451: Was made by Gaston Monmousseau of France calling for a World Unity Congress of the Red and Amsterdam Internationals, and a committee of 35 delegates was selected to debate the proposal and to flesh out the practical details. Following two days of debate, the commission reported back to the assembled Congress, bringing with it a unity proposal that had been accepted in the preliminary hearings with one sole dissenting vote. The final proposal for

34960-415: Was neither homogeneous nor harmonious, as it quickly became clear that a number of delegates held a syndicalist perspective that sought to avoid politics and participation in the existing trade unions altogether, in favor of direct action leading to workers' control of industry . These delegates sought the new Red International of Labor Unions to be fully independent of the Communist International, seen as

35150-415: Was one of the deadliest conflicts in history , resulting in an estimated 10 million military dead and more than 20 million wounded , plus some 10 million civilian dead from causes including genocide . The movement of large numbers of people was a major factor in the deadly Spanish flu pandemic. The causes of World War I included the rise of Germany and decline of the Ottoman Empire , which disturbed

35340-401: Was placed on the unions of Great Britain, with Russian union chief Mikhail Tomsky traveling to the UK in 1924, followed by a reciprocal visit in November of that year of a high-level delegation headed by A.A. Purcell of the Trades Union Congress . From the Soviet standpoint the British unionists were positively affected by their visit, publishing an extensive and generally favorable report of

35530-654: Was refused. Early on the morning of 4   August, the Germans invaded, and Albert I of Belgium called for assistance under the Treaty of London . Britain sent Germany an ultimatum demanding they withdraw from Belgium; when this expired at midnight, without a response, the two empires were at war. Germany promised to support Austria-Hungary's invasion of Serbia, but interpretations of what this meant differed. Previously tested deployment plans had been replaced early in 1914, but those had never been tested in exercises. Austro-Hungarian leaders believed Germany would cover its northern flank against Russia. Beginning on 12 August,

35720-600: Was returning to Germany when it sank two British armoured cruisers at the Battle of Coronel in November 1914, before being virtually destroyed at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December. The SMS Dresden escaped with a few auxiliaries, but after the Battle of Más a Tierra , these too were either destroyed or interned. Soon after the outbreak of hostilities, Britain began a naval blockade of Germany . This proved effective in cutting off vital supplies, though it violated accepted international law. Britain also mined international waters which closed off entire sections of

35910-586: Was the foundation of German foreign policy but in 1890, he was forced to retire by Wilhelm II . The latter was persuaded not to renew the Reinsurance Treaty by his new Chancellor , Leo von Caprivi . This gave France an opening to agree the Franco-Russian Alliance in 1894, which was then followed by the 1904 Entente Cordiale with Britain. The Triple Entente was completed by the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention . While not formal alliances, by settling long-standing colonial disputes in Asia and Africa, British support for France or Russia in any future conflict became

36100-421: Was to attempt to achieve some sort of fusion of the two Internationals through an international conference. Lozovsky contended that unity was not to be achieved through the sacrifice of the Profintern's program or tactics and the blind acceptance of reformism, but rather was to be accompanied by the penetration of communist ideas into the minds of the rank-and-file trade unionists of the European unions. A proposal

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