2nd World Congress of the Comintern
Encyclopedia
The 2nd World Congress of the Comintern was a gathering of approximately 220 voting and non-voting representatives of Communist
and revolutionary socialist
political parties from around the world, held in Petrograd and Moscow
from July 19 to August 7, 1920. The 2nd Congress is best remembered for formulating and implementing the 21 Conditions
for membership in the Communist International.
nature of the 1919 Founding Convention. The gathering is also significant for the level of participation of Soviet leader V.I. Lenin, who participated in the affairs of the gathering more intensely than at any other, preparing a host of key documents and actively helping to chart the gathering's course.
The 2nd World Congress took place at a time of heated world political passion, as British historian E.H. Carr later recalled:
Whereas in 1919 no mass Socialist party had participated in the activities of the Founding Convention, the 1920 gathering saw the inclusion of credentialed delegates from several large European groups, including the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany
(USPD), the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), and the Social Democratic Party of Czechoslovakia
.
It was at the 2nd World Congress that the nature of Communist parties was decided upon, the conditions for their admission to the Communist International set, and the relationship of the national organizations to their international directing center formally established for the first time.
(ECCI) voted to hold a 2nd World Congress of its member parties at some indefinite date in the near future. This was followed on June 14, 1920, by the formal publication by ECCI of a call for a 2nd World Congress to be held in Moscow one month hence. Political parties pledging allegiance to the organization were urged to send delegations at once.
During this period Soviet Russia
was subject to an armed blockade
by land and sea, making travel extremely difficult. Legal passage was possible only through the Estonian
port of Revel (known today as Tallinn
), but even this means was difficult due to the systematic denial of travel passports
to radicals intending on traveling to Central Europe
.
War between Soviet Russia and Poland raged in the summer of 1920 and wrecked locomotives and derailed freight cars lined the tracks, further complicating the transportation situation.
Some delegates were forced by circumstances to use false passports and identity documents or to travel without any legal documentation whatsoever, such as by stowing away
on a ship. Three French
delegates lost their lives in transit, when a small fishing boat setting sail from Murmansk
in an attempt to run the Allied
blockade went down in stormy weather.
, Social Democratic
, and other non-Communist political parties and 12 representatives of youth organizations. At least 30 delegates were representatives of the various nationalities of Asia
.
Delegates were housed in Moscow at the Delevoi Dvor, a hotel a short walk from the Congress's sessions held at the Kremlin
. With food in short supply, fare provided to the delegates was poor, with some delegates forced to rely to some extent upon stores brought into the country with them.
Upon arriving at their hotel rooms, delegates were provided with an assortment of written reports, draft resolutions, and copies of two recently-published books — Terrorism and Communism by Leon Trotsky
and ""Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder by V.I. Lenin.
Delegates participated a wide range of events, touring the country, attending shop meetings, watching theatrical performances, and participating in a subbotnik
loading railroad ties.
Following a meal in the Great Hall of Smolny, the delegates, accompanied by thousands of Petrograd workers, marched to the Uritsky Theater
where they heard a keynote address on the international situation and the tasks of the Comintern delivered by Lenin. Afterwards the delegates participated in a mass demonstration before gathering at the former stock exchange to see a costume drama called "Spectacle of the Two Worlds" performed by a cast of 3,000.
Following the opening festivities in Petrograd, a three day break followed, after which the Congress reconvened in Moscow in the former Vladimir Throne Room of the Kremlin. Four official languages were used at the convention — English, French, German, and Russian — with secretaries typing convention documents in each. The primary languages spoken on the floor were French and German, with simultaneous translations taking place in various corners of the room.
The Congress elected a Bureau (governing committee) to make decisions about procedure
. All delegates had the right to submit resolution proposals to the Congress and the privilege was not an empty one, as a number of such proposals were submitted.
Voting delegates were provided with red cards, non-voting "consultative" delegates blue cards, and guests green cards, with votes taken by means of counting cards. Voting strength of each delegation was based upon the relative importance of each national party to the international communist movement rather than the actual size of the membership of these groups. At no point in the Congress was a roll call vote
taken; rather, a simple counting of cards raised on the floor determined all outcomes.
The 2nd World Congress began its actual work on July 23, 1920. Two sessions were dedicated to discussion of the structure and role of Communist parties, with a summary report and theses delivered to the body by Comintern Chairman Grigorii Zinoviev. After Zinoviev's theses on the matter were unanimously adopted by the assembled delegates, debate moved to conditions for admission to the Communist International, a discussion which ultimately produced a document known as the 21 Conditions
.
Ever since the founding of the Comintern in 1919, a number of political parties in the Social Democratic tradition — including the Socialist Party of America
(SPA) and the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) — had sought admission into the ranks of the international organization. To the Comintern leadership, the electoral orientation and pacifism
of such organizations marked them as fundamentally different from the Communist movement and its orientation towards armed struggle and saw the Comintern as a mechanism for the centralized coordination of such efforts around the world.
Such so-called "Centrist" parties, with the German USPD in the first rank, sought a more inclusive and advisory role for the Comintern, in line with the model utilized by the ill-fated Second International
. The four delegates of the USPD remained united before the session of the 2nd Congress's Commission on Conditions for Admission.
On July 25, the Commission on Conditions for Admission voted 5-3 on a proposal by Lenin that only parties with a clear majority on their governing Central Committee favoring affiliation to the Comintern prior to the 2nd World Congress would be permitted membership in that organization. Subsequent debate by the Congress itself on July 29 and 30 urged against any concessions to so-called "Centrist" leaders. Following extended commission discussions, a set of 21 Conditions for admission to the Comintern was proposed.
movement and the emerging international communist movement. Left-wing communists
were scornful of the "conservative" nature of the established union movement in many counties, exemplified by the American Federation of Labor
in the United States and the reformist
International Federation of Trade Unions
, based in Amsterdam
. The limited horizons of such organizations, limited to matters of daily concern as wages, hours, and working conditions, were seen as a manifestation of class collaboration
and an impediment to the revolutionary transformation of society.
The left-wing communists argued that these unions were a by-product of capitalism
and that they, like the political parties of the Second International
, had betrayed the working class by supporting their national governments in World War I
— seen as a war of imperial
conquest. Such unions were worthy only of expeditious destruction, the left-wing communists believed.
Lenin and other Comintern leaders disagreed sharply with the demand of the left-wing communists that new explicitly revolutionary dual unions should be established and supported, arguing the 25 million workers participating in unions affiliated with the Amsterdam International had already made their basic organizational decision. Instead, Lenin and his co-thinkers argued, radical workers should remain within these established unions and to attempt to work from within to move them onto a revolutionary course.
At the same time the Comintern leadership had already been working to establish a new revolutionary international union organization to compete with the Amsterdam International — a goal which the left-wing communists saw as contradictory with the policy of remaining within the established "conservative" unions. Meetings between Comintern officials and trade union leaders in Moscow in the summer of 1920 had led to the establishment of the International Council of Trade and Industrial Unions (Mezhsovprof), forerunner of the Red International of Labor Unions (Profintern) that was established the next year.
The union question remained a matter of heated contention at the 2nd World Congress, with the representatives of the British shop stewards' movement and syndicalist
delegates from Germany and the United States refusing to abandon their hostility to the strategy of "boring from within" the established unions. Ultimately, the majority of the 2nd World Congress moved to support Lenin's policy, detailed at length in his recently-published book "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder.
of the colonies
of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Theses on colonial issues were presented to the Congress by Indian
radical M.N. Roy, formally a delegate from the fledgling Communist Party of Mexico, Ahmed Sultanzadeh of Iran
, and Pak Chin-sun of Korea
.
The final resolution of the Congress directed communists in colonial countries to support the "national-revolutionary" movement in each, without regard to the fact that non-communist and non-working class
elements such as the bourgeoisie
and the peasantry might be dominant. Particular attention was paid to formulating an alliance with the rural poor as a means of winning and holding power in a revolution.
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
and revolutionary socialist
Revolutionary socialism
The term revolutionary socialism refers to Socialist tendencies that advocate the need for fundamental social change through revolution by mass movements of the working class, as a strategy to achieve a socialist society...
political parties from around the world, held in Petrograd and Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
from July 19 to August 7, 1920. The 2nd Congress is best remembered for formulating and implementing the 21 Conditions
Twenty-one Conditions
The Twenty-one Conditions, officially the Conditions of Admission to the Communist International, refer to the conditions given by Vladimir Lenin to the adhesion of the socialists to the Third International created in 1919 after the 1917 October Revolution. The conditions were formally adopted by...
for membership in the Communist International.
Historical importance
The 2nd World Congress of the Communist International, held in the summer of 1920, has been regarded by scholars as "the first authentic international meeting of the new organization's members and supporters," owing to the ad hocAd hoc
Ad hoc is a Latin phrase meaning "for this". It generally signifies a solution designed for a specific problem or task, non-generalizable, and not intended to be able to be adapted to other purposes. Compare A priori....
nature of the 1919 Founding Convention. The gathering is also significant for the level of participation of Soviet leader V.I. Lenin, who participated in the affairs of the gathering more intensely than at any other, preparing a host of key documents and actively helping to chart the gathering's course.
The 2nd World Congress took place at a time of heated world political passion, as British historian E.H. Carr later recalled:
"The second congress marked the crowning moment in the history of the Comintern as an international force, the moment when the Russian revolution seemed most certainly on the point of transforming itself into a European revolution, with the destinies of the RSFSR merged in those of some broader European unit."
Whereas in 1919 no mass Socialist party had participated in the activities of the Founding Convention, the 1920 gathering saw the inclusion of credentialed delegates from several large European groups, including the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany
Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany was a short-lived political party in Germany during the Second Reich and the Weimar Republic. The organization was established in 1917 as the result of a split of left wing members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany...
(USPD), the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), and the Social Democratic Party of Czechoslovakia
Czech Social Democratic Party
The Czech Social Democratic Party is a social-democratic political party in the Czech Republic.-History:The Social Democratic Czechoslavonic party in Austria was founded on 7 April 1878 in Austria-Hungary representing the Kingdom of Bohemia in the Austrian parliament...
.
It was at the 2nd World Congress that the nature of Communist parties was decided upon, the conditions for their admission to the Communist International set, and the relationship of the national organizations to their international directing center formally established for the first time.
Convention call
On April 22, 1920, the Executive Committee of the Communist InternationalExecutive Committee of the Communist International
The Executive Committee of the Communist International, commonly known by its acronym, ECCI, was the governing authority of the Comintern between the World Congresses of that body...
(ECCI) voted to hold a 2nd World Congress of its member parties at some indefinite date in the near future. This was followed on June 14, 1920, by the formal publication by ECCI of a call for a 2nd World Congress to be held in Moscow one month hence. Political parties pledging allegiance to the organization were urged to send delegations at once.
During this period Soviet Russia
Soviet Russia
Soviet Russia usually refers to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union. It may also denote:* Soviet Russia , magazine of the Friends of Soviet Russia in the United States...
was subject to an armed blockade
Blockade
A blockade is an effort to cut off food, supplies, war material or communications from a particular area by force, either in part or totally. A blockade should not be confused with an embargo or sanctions, which are legal barriers to trade, and is distinct from a siege in that a blockade is usually...
by land and sea, making travel extremely difficult. Legal passage was possible only through the Estonian
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
port of Revel (known today as Tallinn
Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...
), but even this means was difficult due to the systematic denial of travel passports
Passport
A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth....
to radicals intending on traveling to Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
.
War between Soviet Russia and Poland raged in the summer of 1920 and wrecked locomotives and derailed freight cars lined the tracks, further complicating the transportation situation.
Some delegates were forced by circumstances to use false passports and identity documents or to travel without any legal documentation whatsoever, such as by stowing away
Stowaway
A stowaway is a person who secretly boards a vehicle, such as an aircraft, bus, ship, cargo truck or train, to travel without paying and without being detected....
on a ship. Three French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
delegates lost their lives in transit, when a small fishing boat setting sail from Murmansk
Murmansk
Murmansk is a city and the administrative center of Murmansk Oblast, Russia. It serves as a seaport and is located in the extreme northwest part of Russia, on the Kola Bay, from the Barents Sea on the northern shore of the Kola Peninsula, not far from Russia's borders with Norway and Finland...
in an attempt to run the Allied
Allies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...
blockade went down in stormy weather.
Delegate composition
The official records of the 2nd World Congress indicate that a total of 218 delegates participated in the proceedings, including 54 representatives of SocialistSocialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, Social Democratic
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...
, and other non-Communist political parties and 12 representatives of youth organizations. At least 30 delegates were representatives of the various nationalities of Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
.
Delegates were housed in Moscow at the Delevoi Dvor, a hotel a short walk from the Congress's sessions held at the Kremlin
Kremlin
A kremlin , same root as in kremen is a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...
. With food in short supply, fare provided to the delegates was poor, with some delegates forced to rely to some extent upon stores brought into the country with them.
Upon arriving at their hotel rooms, delegates were provided with an assortment of written reports, draft resolutions, and copies of two recently-published books — Terrorism and Communism by Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
and ""Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder by V.I. Lenin.
Delegates participated a wide range of events, touring the country, attending shop meetings, watching theatrical performances, and participating in a subbotnik
Subbotnik
For the Jewish-identifying community, see Subbotniks.Subbotnik and voskresnik were days of volunteer work following the Bolshevik seizure of power. The tradition is continued in modern Russia and some other former Soviet Republics...
loading railroad ties.
Opening of the Congress
The Congress was scheduled to open on July 15, but owing to rampant transit difficulties, many delegates had not arrived in Soviet Russia by that date. ECCI decided to postpone the first working sessions by one week.Following a meal in the Great Hall of Smolny, the delegates, accompanied by thousands of Petrograd workers, marched to the Uritsky Theater
Tauride Palace
Tauride Palace is one of the largest and most historic palaces in Saint Petersburg, Russia.- Potemkin :...
where they heard a keynote address on the international situation and the tasks of the Comintern delivered by Lenin. Afterwards the delegates participated in a mass demonstration before gathering at the former stock exchange to see a costume drama called "Spectacle of the Two Worlds" performed by a cast of 3,000.
Following the opening festivities in Petrograd, a three day break followed, after which the Congress reconvened in Moscow in the former Vladimir Throne Room of the Kremlin. Four official languages were used at the convention — English, French, German, and Russian — with secretaries typing convention documents in each. The primary languages spoken on the floor were French and German, with simultaneous translations taking place in various corners of the room.
The Congress elected a Bureau (governing committee) to make decisions about procedure
Parliamentary procedure
Parliamentary procedure is the body of rules, ethics, and customs governing meetings and other operations of clubs, organizations, legislative bodies, and other deliberative assemblies...
. All delegates had the right to submit resolution proposals to the Congress and the privilege was not an empty one, as a number of such proposals were submitted.
Voting delegates were provided with red cards, non-voting "consultative" delegates blue cards, and guests green cards, with votes taken by means of counting cards. Voting strength of each delegation was based upon the relative importance of each national party to the international communist movement rather than the actual size of the membership of these groups. At no point in the Congress was a roll call vote
Recorded vote
A recorded vote is a vote in which the names of those voting for and against a motion may be recorded.In many deliberative bodies , questions may be decided by voice vote, but the voice vote does not allow one to determine at a later date which members voted for and against the motion...
taken; rather, a simple counting of cards raised on the floor determined all outcomes.
The 21 Conditions
Twenty-one Conditions
The Twenty-one Conditions, officially the Conditions of Admission to the Communist International, refer to the conditions given by Vladimir Lenin to the adhesion of the socialists to the Third International created in 1919 after the 1917 October Revolution. The conditions were formally adopted by...
.
Ever since the founding of the Comintern in 1919, a number of political parties in the Social Democratic tradition — including the Socialist Party of America
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
(SPA) and the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) — had sought admission into the ranks of the international organization. To the Comintern leadership, the electoral orientation and pacifism
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
of such organizations marked them as fundamentally different from the Communist movement and its orientation towards armed struggle and saw the Comintern as a mechanism for the centralized coordination of such efforts around the world.
Such so-called "Centrist" parties, with the German USPD in the first rank, sought a more inclusive and advisory role for the Comintern, in line with the model utilized by the ill-fated Second International
Second International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
. The four delegates of the USPD remained united before the session of the 2nd Congress's Commission on Conditions for Admission.
On July 25, the Commission on Conditions for Admission voted 5-3 on a proposal by Lenin that only parties with a clear majority on their governing Central Committee favoring affiliation to the Comintern prior to the 2nd World Congress would be permitted membership in that organization. Subsequent debate by the Congress itself on July 29 and 30 urged against any concessions to so-called "Centrist" leaders. Following extended commission discussions, a set of 21 Conditions for admission to the Comintern was proposed.
The trade union question
The 2nd World Congress dealt extensively with the relationship between the trade unionTrade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
movement and the emerging international communist movement. Left-wing communists
Left communism
Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks at certain periods, from a position that is asserted to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Leninism held by the Communist International...
were scornful of the "conservative" nature of the established union movement in many counties, exemplified by the American Federation of Labor
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...
in the United States and the reformist
Reformism
Reformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...
International Federation of Trade Unions
International Federation of Trade Unions
The International Federation of Trade Unions was an international organization of trade unions, existing between 1919 and 1945. IFTU had its roots in the pre-war IFTU....
, based in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
. The limited horizons of such organizations, limited to matters of daily concern as wages, hours, and working conditions, were seen as a manifestation of class collaboration
Class collaboration
Class collaboration is a principle of social organization based upon the belief that the division of society into a hierarchy of social classes is a positive and essential aspect of civilization.-Class collaboration under capitalism:...
and an impediment to the revolutionary transformation of society.
The left-wing communists argued that these unions were a by-product of capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
and that they, like the political parties of the Second International
Second International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
, had betrayed the working class by supporting their national governments in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
— seen as a war of imperial
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
conquest. Such unions were worthy only of expeditious destruction, the left-wing communists believed.
Lenin and other Comintern leaders disagreed sharply with the demand of the left-wing communists that new explicitly revolutionary dual unions should be established and supported, arguing the 25 million workers participating in unions affiliated with the Amsterdam International had already made their basic organizational decision. Instead, Lenin and his co-thinkers argued, radical workers should remain within these established unions and to attempt to work from within to move them onto a revolutionary course.
At the same time the Comintern leadership had already been working to establish a new revolutionary international union organization to compete with the Amsterdam International — a goal which the left-wing communists saw as contradictory with the policy of remaining within the established "conservative" unions. Meetings between Comintern officials and trade union leaders in Moscow in the summer of 1920 had led to the establishment of the International Council of Trade and Industrial Unions (Mezhsovprof), forerunner of the Red International of Labor Unions (Profintern) that was established the next year.
The union question remained a matter of heated contention at the 2nd World Congress, with the representatives of the British shop stewards' movement and syndicalist
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
delegates from Germany and the United States refusing to abandon their hostility to the strategy of "boring from within" the established unions. Ultimately, the majority of the 2nd World Congress moved to support Lenin's policy, detailed at length in his recently-published book "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder.
The colonial question
The 2nd World Congress also for the first time paid serious attention to the national liberation movementNational Liberation Movement
A national liberation movement is an organization engaged in a war of national liberation.National Liberation Movement may also refer to:* Movement of National Liberation, a leftist party founded by former Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas...
of the colonies
Colony
In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception....
of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Theses on colonial issues were presented to the Congress by Indian
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
radical M.N. Roy, formally a delegate from the fledgling Communist Party of Mexico, Ahmed Sultanzadeh of Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, and Pak Chin-sun of Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
.
The final resolution of the Congress directed communists in colonial countries to support the "national-revolutionary" movement in each, without regard to the fact that non-communist and non-working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
elements such as the bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
and the peasantry might be dominant. Particular attention was paid to formulating an alliance with the rural poor as a means of winning and holding power in a revolution.
Legacy
Historian E.H. Carr has argued that the 2nd World Congress — to some extent unintentionally and unconsciously — was the first to "establish Russian leadership of Comintern on an impregnable basis." In addition to the esteem accorded the Russians as practitioners of the first successful Marxist revolution, Carr noted that the Russian delegation "invariably spoke with a united voice," in sharp contrast to the contentious and divided delegations from Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, and the United States. Therefore "the Communist International which would make the world revolution was created in the image of the party which had made the Russian revolution," Carr observed.Further reading
- John Riddell (editor and translator), Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite!: Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress, 1920. In two volumes. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1991.
- Alix Holt and Barbara Holland (trans.), Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congresses of the Third International. Introduction by Bertil Hessel. London: Ink Links, 1980.
- James W. Hulse, The Forming of the Communist International. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964.
- Branko Lazitch and Milorad M. Drachkovitch, Lenin and the Comintern: Volume 1. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1972.
External links
- "Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International", Marxists Internet Archive, www.marxists.org/ Retrieved April 10, 2011.
See also
- CominternCominternThe Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
- List of delegates of the 2nd Comintern congress