Comintern
|
Communist International
|
|
|---|---|
| Founder | Vladimir Lenin |
| Founded | March 2, 1919 |
| Dissolved | May 15, 1943 |
| Preceded by | |
| Succeeded by | Communist Information Bureau |
| Youth wing | Young Communist International |
| Ideology | |
| Colours | Red |
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International (1919–1943), was an international communist organization that advocated world communism. The International intended to fight "by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State."
The Comintern was founded after the 1915 Zimmerwald Conference in which Vladimir Lenin had organized the "Zimmerwald Left" against those who refused to approve any statement explicitly endorsing socialist revolutionary action, and after the 1916 dissolution of the Second International.
The Comintern had seven World Congresses between 1919 and 1935. It also had thirteen "Enlarged Plenums" of its governing Executive Committee, which had much the same function as the somewhat larger and more grandiose Congresses. The Comintern was officially dissolved by Joseph Stalin in 1943.
While the differences had been evident for decades, World War I proved the issue that finally divided the revolutionary and reformist wings of the workers' movement. The socialist movement had been historically antimilitarist and internationalist, and therefore opposed workers serving as "cannon fodder" for the "bourgeois" governments at war. This especially since the Triple Alliance (1882) comprised two empires, while the Triple Entente gathered France and Britain into an alliance with Russia. Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto had stated that "the working class has no country" and exclaimed "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" Massive majorities voted in favor of resolutions for the Second International to call upon the international working class to resist war if it were declared.
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