Communist Youth International

The Young Communist International was the parallel international youth organization affiliated with the Communist International (Comintern).

After failed efforts to form an international association of socialist youth organizations in 1889 and 1904, in May 1907 a conference in Stuttgart, Germany convened to form the International Union of Socialist Youth Organisations (the Internationale Verbindung Sozialistischer Jugendorganisationen, abbreviated IVSJO). IVSJO maintained its headquarters in Vienna and functioned as the youth section of the Second International.

At its foundation the International Secretary of IVSJO was Hendrik de Man. De Man was succeeded by Robert Danneberg, who held the post from 1908 to 1915. The first Chairman of the IVSJO was the German anti-militarist radical Karl Liebknecht. Liebknecht served as an inspiration and "elder statesman" for radical youth throughout Europe.

The coming of the first World War brought an end to the work of the IVSJO. The organization was founded on the premise that its task was primarily educational, rather than political, and that participation of the young socialists of all countries and all political tendencies was necessary for its continued ability to function. The coming of the European war and the support of the various national socialist parties for their governments in the conflict effectively ended the possibility of international cooperation and the official IVSJO effectively ceased to exist.

The radical youth movement based in the neutral nation of Switzerland attempted to unite the various national sections of the socialist movement on a new basis, however. With the charismatic head of the Swiss socialist youth movement, Willi Münzenberg, playing the leading part, an anti-militaristic conference of international youth sections was called. On April 4, 1915, nine delegates from various neutral countries assembled in Bern to attempt to establish a center for a revitalized IVSJO organization. While the conference did not endorse Lenin's call for revolutionary civil war to end the European bloodbath, the conference did endorse "revolutionary socialism" and the recreation of the socialist youth movement independent of the various (chauvinistic) national socialist parties. As historian Richard Cornell notes, "This marked a critical turning point in the history of the socialist youth movement."

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