ON THE FATE OF
THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
(Some Episodes)
By P RICHARDS
Although the foundation of the Communist extement of which great divergences of opinion truthfully set forth and concerning the historical K PD, the German Communist Party.
(Third) International goes back now to over 40 years, no well-documented or scientific record of its history has yet been published. There exist only descriptions of certain episodes of its activity, as well as attempts at overall records of the course of development of the Communist movement in individual countries. In the '30s the Executive of the Communist International itself thought of publishing a history • of the decade and a half of its activity and a highly schematic description of the activity of its most important institutions. This was to summarize the accumulated experiences and to draw conclusions for the workers' movement and its future development.
A commission was set up under the chairman. ship of G1 Executive Committee member D Z Manuilsky (recently deceased), to which were assigned also the then best-knowr leaders of the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, France, etc. In addition to the most important documents which were to be found in the archives, testimony was to be sought from many persons who • had directly participated in the movement and at various periods in the activity of the CI. But after a ew sessions of the commission entrusted - with preparing this historical work, it became evident that. though there was an abundance of materials in hand, the sifting of these materials presented difficulties which, in the then reigning political ambience of Moscow, could not be overcome. Communist International. There had already begun the period in which even the mention of the names of Trotsky, Zinoviev, et al, who had been the closest collaborators with Lenin in the foundation and leadership of the Third International, was not allowed. In the samheroic there were bound up with the first period of the Third International many names of leading communists who had later fallen into discredit. Another big difficulty was in connection with an evaluation of various actions of the Communist International, which could not be
The History had first been planned to fill one or two volumes. There soon came a circular from Manuilsky suggesting the expansion of the work to some six volumes. The sessions dragged on from month to month, and the more extensive a history could not take place in the '30s.
But even in the following years, in which hopes had been placed, the Executive of the
Cons a t Int on is al did notory. or it pab-
pened that many eminent members of the commission that was to prepare this history fell victims in the '30s to Stalin's terror.
And a few years later, in 1943, after the "selfliquidation" of the Communist International ordered by Stalin, there followed the transfer of these archives to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, where they have been under lock and key for fifteen years, and as before, their publication forbidden.
Until the publication of the documents collected in these archives, the testimony of individual participants in the Communist movement in the past can describe only certain episodes which — whether they recall periods and deeds in the history of the CI, or remember hitherto unknown details — contribute to an understanding of its fate.
Although the foundation of the Third International had become - in view of the situation created by the First World War in the workers' movement, of the new historic fact of a workstate created by the October Revolution, and of the growing revolutionary ferment in Central Europe — a historical necessity which the leaders of the Bolshevik Party recognized and carried out by their own forces, still it is worth noting that at the First Congress of the International there was no unanimous opinion about the main question. When the question of founding the new, the Third, International was put to the vote, one delegation that had tound the road to Moscow abstained. It was the delegation of the
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The delegation had been elected at the Founding Congress of the KPD at the end of 1918, and had needed two months filled with many difficulties to break its way through to Moscow. The delegates had no mandate to vote the immediate toundation of a new International, and all the efforts of the Russian comrades and of the representatives of the other parties (and they were few enough) could do nothing to change the attitude of the German communists.
This attitude was based on a proposition by Rosa Luxemburg, who had asked and obtained that the German delegation withhold its agreement to the founding of a new International as long as the state power lay in the hands of the workers of a single country — in this case, Russia. There existed the danger that such International might in time become the instrument of policy of this country rather than representing the interests of the workers of all countries.
Rosa Luxemburg herself, in the period elapsed between the departure of the delegation and the 1 March 1919 Founding Congress : International, had been murdered in Berlin. Later the opinion was expressed in the leading circles of the Communist International that, if she had been able to take part in the congress herself, she would have changed her mind. The KPD - despite its abstention at its foundation — later became an active section of the Communist International. But in the '30s, when, after the K P D's heroic struggles and its tragic defeat, the NationalSocialists came to power in Germany, the past struggles of the German working class were analyzed in the circles of German émigré Comnunists in Moscow, and thereby the "directive" that had been adopted at the suggestion of Rosa Luxemburg also came into question:
It well may be that her opinion thereon was based on the fact that it was to be expected that within a short time a second workers' state (namely, Germany) would exist. Then the K PD, as the representative of the German proletariat, would meet with the Russian Bolsheviks as an equal partner in the Third International. [...] Thus, however, Rosa's reservations - in the light of the difficult experiences of the period lying between December 1918 and Hitler's coming to power in 1933 — take on a particularly sombre prophetic tone [...]; the
International [...] as the instrument of the state interests of Russia, was not appropriate to the real representation of the interests of the world proletariat.
In the first years the workers of the Soviet Jnion not only formally considered the Comintern as the "General Staff of the World Re-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL volution," but they also held it for certain for long after the seizure of state power - essentially until Lenin's death - that the achievement of the revolution in other (and especially Western), countries would be brought about with the aid of this International. Without the proletarian revolution, the victory of socialism in a single country was for them unimaginable.
This conviction of the Soviet working class and of the first generation of Russian Bolsheviks, who had taken state power in October 1917 not as exponents of a Russian proletariat limited in its possibilities, but in its name as the vanuard of the world proletariat, was so widepread and deep-rooted that even Stalin in his speech at Lenin's funeral mentioned fidelity to the Communist International as an integral part of his pledge to Lenin's memory.
But no later than 1926 it was shown what this vow was worth in Stalin's mouth. He had, from the first minute, tried to transform the Comintern into a propaganda section of his party secretariat and to use it as a shop-sign for the international workers' (which he neither knew nor cared about), but also to reduce as much as possible its influence on questions concerning the Russian Communist Party, although the Comintern's fate depended principally upon developments in the Soviet Union.
When the struggle for power inside the CP SU, between the Old Bolshevik nucleus and the Stalin-led bureaucratic wing fighting ever more brutally for power, reached its decisive point, Trotsky made the attempt (much too late, in the opinion of many of his supporters) to appeal to the communists of other countries organized in the International, to bring before their eyes the fateful meaning of Stalin's monopoly of power not only for the Russian proletarian revolution but also for the world revolution whose leadership was the immediate task of the Communist International.
During the VIIth Plenum of the Executive of the Communist International in 1927 (in between the CI's Vth and VIth Congresses), there occurred the now historic struggle between Trotsky and Stalin, whose outcome showed the powerlessness of the communist leader in face of the perfidious tricks and the unscrupulous administrative pressure of the Stalin apparatus.
The result of the Plenum was less the removal of Trostky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, et al, leaders connected with the Communist International i that fol since its founding, than the death sentence of the whole Communist International as such.
What followed in the 17 years between 1927 and 1943 was the death-agony of the Third International, condemned to death by Stalin. directives sent by the Third International to
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL various countries - aimed sometimes at senseless adventures without perspectives, sometimes at ridiculous manoeuvres and panicky capitula-
- weigh down consciences with many bloody chapters. But it must immediately be added in the interests of truth that in all essential questions these were directives for which the apparatus of the International and the obediently listening leaders of the individual parties were only intermediaries.
These directives came from Stalin and expressed the interests of his policy, tor the consolidation of his power in the Soviet Union and the strengthening of his prestige bv international standards, without caring in the slightest degree for the interests of the world proletariat or the proletarian masses in the individual countries.
It is a whole other chapter how comrades who were extremely sincere and filled with a limitless spirit of devotion sacrifice were involved in carrying out various instructions coming from Stalin's apparatus for their own selves as for the groups, instructions that were false and treacherous to the interests of the toiling masses, but te on ta worly scale, and Statios st a great genius therein consists of sacrificing everything and everybody who stands in the way of his plan to win the battle for world power. And if thereby the Communist International is sacrificed, that is done in the interest of Stalin's 'higher plans'."
There came the moment when the Communist International, in its death-agony and long since reduced to a propaganda auxılary, again occupied Stalin's attention.
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On the one hand, during the war against the r, that had burke movement shich the revolutionary movement which placed the Communists, who had become mass parties in many countries, before the immediate task of the conquest of power after having driven out the Nazi occupants. At the head of the Communist groups in various countries there were outstanding figures who, with a revival of the International, could have begun a revolt against the pseudo-communist ukases of Stalin's appa-
On the other hand, the existence of the Comintern was a welcome bargaining point. In his deals with Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin could offer the dissolution of the Comintern as a sacritice that he would make in order to concretize his full loyalty and fidelity to the alliance.
And so it remained only for Georg Dimitrov, entrusted since 1935 with the administration of Comintern affairs, to sign the formula of selfdissolution, which was confirmed by the Executive of the Communist International.
But the ideals which, 40 years ago, at the time of the founding of the Third International, animated the leaders of the working class, who thought thereby to carry on the traditions of Marx and Engels and the First International, have survived the dissolution of the Third International in the hearts of the worker masses.
And if many years must still pass before a true history of the Third International is written, it must contain the elements of true heroism of its best fighters as well as the shame of Stalin and his petty accomplices who betrayed and strangled it.