The Communist Internationals

Second World Congress of the Comintern - 1920

Second World Congress of the Comintern – 1920

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The Communist Internationals

If the principles of socialism have not international application and if the socialist movement is not an international movement then its whole philosophy is false and the movement has no reason for existence.

The International Working Men’s Association (The First International)

In the history of the world emancipation movement of the working class a special place is held by the International Working Men’s Association – the First International. Founded on September 28, 1864, at an international meeting held in St. Martin’s Hall, London, this first international proletarian mass organisation paved the way for the world communist movement of today. In the ranks of the International Working Men’s Association the advanced workers of Europe and America got a schooling in proletarian internationalism, imbibed the ideas of Marxism, and finally discarded petty-bourgeois sectarianism for the proletarian party principle. ‘For ten years the International dominated one side of European history – the side on which the future lies.’ Engels wrote in 1874.

Documents of the First International, Volume 1, 1864-1866, Minutes, The London Conference 1865, FLPH, Moscow, 1964, 483 pages.

Documents of the First International, Volume 2, 1866-1868, Minutes, Progress, Moscow, 1964, 444 pages.

Documents of the First International, Volume 3, 1868-1870, Minutes, Progress, Moscow, 1964, 534 pages.

Documents of the First International, Volume 4, 1870-1871, Minutes, Progress, Moscow, 1964, 617 pages,

Documents of the First International, Volume 5, 1871-1872, Minutes, Progress, Moscow, 1964, 626 pages.

Documents of the First International, Volume 6, The Hague Congress, September 2-7 1872, Minutes and Documents, Progress, Moscow, 1976, 758 pages.

Documents of the First International, Volume 7, The Hague Congress, September 2-7 1872, Reports and Letters, Progress, Moscow, 1978, 701 pages.

The International Working Men’s association and the Working Class Movement in Manchester 1865-85, Edmond and Ruth Frow, Manchester, 1979, 18 pages.

The Second International

‘By social-chauvinism we mean acceptance of the idea of the defence of the fatherland in the present imperialist war, justification of an alliance between socialists and the bourgeoisie and the governments of their ‘own’ countries in this war, a refusal to propagate and support proletarian revolutionary action against one’s ‘own’ bourgeoisie, etc.’ VI Lenin, The Collapse of the Second International in Lenin Collected Works, Volume 21, pp 205-259.

The War and the Second International, VI Lenin, (London, Martin Lawrence, 1931), Little Lenin Library, Volume Two, 63 pages. Two documents written in 1914, ‘The Collapse of the Second International’ and ‘The War and Russian Social-Democracy’.

The rise and fall of the Second International, J Lenz, International Publishers, New York, 1932, 285 pages.

A History of Socialist Thought, Volume 3, Part 1, 2nd International 1889-1914, GDH Cole, Macmillan, London, 1963, 519 pages.

A History of Socialist Thought, Volume 3, Part 2, 2nd International 1889-1914, GDH Cole, Macmillan, London, 1963, 1043 pages.

Resolution of the International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart, August 18-24 1907 and the Manifesto of the Extraordinary International Socialist Congress, Basel, November 24-25 1912.

The Second International, 1889-1914, Igor Krivoguz, Progress, Moscow, 1989, 393 pages.

The Communist International (The Third International – Comintern)

‘The Third International has gathered the fruits of the work of the Second International, discarded its opportunist, social-chauvinist, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois dross, and has begun to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat.’ VI Lenin, The Third International and its place in history, in Lenin Collected Works, Volume 29, pp 305-313.

The Manifesto of the Moscow International, Educational Press Association, Montreal, 1919, 12 pages.

Theses presented to 2nd World Congress of the Communist International, Petrograd-Moscow, July 1920, Editions of the Communist International, Petrograd, 1920, 121 pages.

Manifesto of the Communist International, adopted at the Congress of the Communist International at Moscow, march 2-6 1919, and signed by Comrades C Rakovsky, N Lenin, M Zinoviev, L Trotzky, and Fritz Platten, Arbeiter Zeitung, Chicago, n.d., 14 pages.

The Third (Communist) International, its aims and methods, James Clunie, Socialist Labour Press, Glasgow, 1921, 74 pages.

Resolutions and Theses of the 4th Congress of the Communist International, held in Moscow November 7 to December 3 1922, CPGB, London, 1923, 130 pages.

The Communist International between the 5th and 6th World Congresses, 1924-28, a report on the position of all sections of the World Communist Party, CPGB, London, 1928, 508 pages.

On the Road to Bolshevization, Workers Library Publishers, New York, 1929, 42 pages.

For Unity of the Wold Communist Movement, a letter to the Independent Labor Party of Great Britain from the Communist Party USA (Opposition), Communist Party USA, New York, 1934, 32 pages.

Program of the Communist International, together with its Constitution, adopted at the 46th Session of the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International, September 1 1928, Workers Library, New York, 1936, 94 pages.

The Spanish Revolution, M Ercoli (Togliatti), Workers Library Publishers, New York, 1937, 29 pages.

VII Congress of the Communist International, abridged stenographic report of proceedings, FLPH, Moscow, 1939, 604 pages.

The Communist International, No 4, 1940, Modern Books, London, 34 pages.

The Communist International, No 6, 1940, Modern Books, London, 34 pages.

The Communist International, No 12, 1940, Modern Books, London, 44 pages.

Workers of the world, Unite!, declaration on the dissolution of the Communist International, adopted May 27 1943, Labour News Co., New York, 1943, 28 pages.

The Third International and its place in history, VI Lenin, (Moscow, Progress, 1971) 51 pages.

Principles of Party Organization, JV Stalin, (Calcutta, Mass Publications, 1975), 47 pages. Thesis on the Organization and Structure of Communist Parties, adopted at the Third Congress of the Communist International in 1921. It was on this basis of this thesis that JV Stalin based his lectures reproduced in ‘The Foundations of Leninism’.

Communist International Documents, 1919-1943, Volume 3, 1929-1943, Jane Degras, Routledge, London, 2007, 494 pages.

Toward the united front, Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922, edited by John Riddell, Brill, Leiden, 2012, 1323 pages.

To the Masses, Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921, edited by John Riddell, Brill, Leiden, 2015, 1309 pages.

The Communist Movement at a Crossroads, Plenums of the Communist International’s Executive Committee, 1922-1923, edited by Michael Taber, Brill, Leiden, 2018, 808 pages.

History and analysis

The Communist Movement, from Comintern to Cominform, Part 1, the crisis of the Communist International, Fernando Claudin, Monthly Review, New York, 1975, 410 pages. From Marx to Mao digital reprint, 2017.

The Communist Movement, from Comintern to Cominform, Part 2, the zenith of Stalinism, Fernando Claudin, Monthly Review, New York, 1975, 450 pages. From Marx to Mao digital reprint, 2017.

The World Communist Movement, outline of strategy and tactics, edited by VV Zagladin, Progress, Moscow, 1973, 480 pages.

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The struggle against saboteurs, traitors and Trotskyites

We will eradicate the spies and saboteurs - agents of fascism

We will eradicate the spies and saboteurs – agents of fascism

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The struggle against saboteurs, traitors and trotskyites

From the days following the victory of the October Revolution on 7th November 1917 (new style) the young workers’ state, which was declared the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics a few years later, was under attack from the aggrieved and vicious capitalist and imperialist states who couldn’t countenance the workers and peasants of any country taking matters into their own hands.

In many ways the documents below share much in common with those posted on the Foreign Intervention page. Although there’s very much a crossover the documents presented here concentrate on how the Soviet Union sought to deal with this very, existential problem.

Even though the socialist revolution was for the majority of the population that didn’t mean to say all those who were the ‘beneficiaries’ of such a revolution would choose to go with the revolutionary workers and peasants. Some have been, are and will always be sycophants and forelock-tuggers and will follow whatever the ruling class (in whatever historical epoch) decide and will do their bidding even though it goes against their class.

Within pre-revolution Russian society there were many hundreds of thousands (if not millions) who would have seen the old Tsarist, feudal society as more to their liking than the new society based upon equality and justice. These included the old aristocracy (of an infinite number of levels on Romanov society), the kulaks (the richer peasants) as well as merchants and the petty bourgeoisie involved in an innumerable number of self employed activities.

In this issue the petty bourgeoisie play a particularly significant part. They will sit on their bitterness and hated and will bide their time to take vengeance upon any who they consider have robbed them of their potential. They are especially dangerous to a socialist society because, as Lenin said, they everyday, in every way, engender capitalism. The socialist state, therefore, by curtailing their activity produces for itself even more enemies.

And then we have the Communist Party itself. It is an unfortunate (and almost integral) aspect of the development of parties of the left (especially those who claim a revolutionary strategy) that there will be splits at some time. The First and Second Internationals are littered with such examples. However, it was the Russian Revolutionaries who were the first to actually attain (and retain) state power and put their theory into practice.

Therefore, there were, within the Party, those who had joined long before the opportunity for the taking of state power was on the cards. In such a situation many of them would have had different attitudes towards what the strategy should have been in the building of this new society. It cannot be stressed enough this was entirely new territory and if there had not been serious disagreements then that would have been a surprise. The problem in a socialist state surrounded by hostile forces is that such dissatisfaction could be – and was – used by the enemies of socialism and hence the eventually arrest and trial of some of those who had been ‘revolutionaries’ for decades. But past achievements don’t guarantee they will continue to follow the same revolutionary road.

When we consider this period of Soviet history we should remember the worlds of Chairman Mao Tse-tung from 1927, ‘a revolution is not a dinner party’.

Wreckers on trial, a record of the trial of the Industrial Party held in Moscow, November/December 1930, edited with a foreword by Andrew Rothstein, Workers’ library, New York, 1931, 214 pages.

The Moscow Trial – April 1933, the trial of British engineers involved in sabotage in the Soviet Union, Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee, London, 1933, 165 pages.

Bolshevik Party’s struggle against Trotskyism, 1903-February 1917, Progress, Moscow, 1969, 239 pages.

Trotskyism – Counter-Revolution in disguise, MJ Olgin, Moscow, 1935, reprint Proletarian Publishers, San Francisco, 1976?, 160 pages.

Report of court proceedings in the case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre, heard before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Moscow, August 19-24, 1936, People’s Commissariat of Justice of the USSR, Moscow, 1936, Red Star reprint 1976, 180 pages.

Trotskyism in the service of fascism against Socialism and Peace, from the court proceedings in the case of the Trotsky-Zinoviev Terrorist Center, Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky, Workers Library Publishers, New York, 1936, 67 pages.

Report of the court proceedings in the case of Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Centre, heard before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Moscow, January 23-30 1937, People’s Commissariat of Justice of the USSR, Moscow, 1937, Red Star reprint 1983, 580 pages.

The recent Russian ‘Trotskyite Centre’ trial, William Renwick Riddle, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Volume 28, No 3, September-October 1937, pp335-339, 5 pages.

Soviet justice and the trial of Radek and others, Dudley Collard, Left Book Club, Gollanz, London, 1937, 208 pages.

Report of Court Proceedings in the case of the ‘Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites’, heard before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, Moscow, March 2-13 1938, People’s Commissariat of Justice of the USSR, Moscow, 1938, Red Star reprint 1983, 800 pages.

Mission to Moscow, Joseph E Davies, United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1936-1938, a record of confidential dispatches to the State Department, official and personal correspondence, current diary and journal entries, including notes and comment up to October 1941, Victor Gollanz, London, 1945, 472 pages.

Against Trotskyism, The Struggle of Lenin and the CPSU against Trotskyism, a collection of documents, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, 271 pages.

History of the struggle against Trotskyism, Sergei Dmitriev and Vsevolod Ivanov, Novosti, Moscow, 1974, 119 pages.

The Murder of Sergei Kirov, History, Scholarship and the Anti-Stalin Paradigm, Grover Furr, Erythros Press and Media, Kettering, corrected edition November 2013, 435 pages. [too big for blog]

Trotsky’s Amalgams, (Trotsky’s Lies, The Moscow Trials As Evidence, The Dewey Commission), Trotsky’s Conspiracies of the 1930s, Volume One, Grover Furr, Erythros Press and Media, Kettering, corrected edition March 2016, 536 pages.

Yezhov vs. Stalin, the truth about mass repressions and the so-called ‘Great Terror’ in the USSR, Grover Furr, Erythros Press and Media, Kettering, corrected edition April 2017, 250 pages.

Leon Trotsky’s collaboration with Germany and Japan, Trotsky’s Conspiracies of the 1930s, Volume Two, Grover Furr, Erythros Press and Media, Kettering, 2017, 386 pages. [too bog for blog]

The Fraud of the Dewey Commission, Leon Trotsky’s Lies, Grover Furr, Red Star Press, New York, July 2018, 99 pages.

The Moscow Trials as evidence, Grover Furr, Red Star Press, New York, July 2018, 169 pages.

Trotsky’s Lies, Grover Furr, corrected edition, August 2019, Erythros Press and Media, Kettering, 2019, 196 pages.

Stalin, waiting for … the truth, exposing the falsehoods in Stephen Kotkins ‘Stalin, waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941’, Grover Furr, Red Star Publishers, New York, corrected edition April 2019, 393 pages.

New evidence of Trotsky’s conspiracy, Grover Furr, Erythros Press and Media, Kettering, 2020, 196 pages.

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The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) – CPSU(B)

Leader, teach, friend

Leader, teach, friend

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The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) – CPSU(B)

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) – CPSU(B) was a Party of a new kind. Based upon the principals of Marxism-Leninism it led the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union in the struggle to build a Socialist society in a sixth of the world’s land mass.

Further speeches and reports from other CPSU(B) (and its predecessors) conferences and congresses can be found in the collected works of VI Lenin and JV Stalin.

Report of the XV Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, CPGB, London, 1928, 415 pages.

From the First to the Second Five-Year Plan, a Symposium, J Stalin, V Molotov, L Kaganovich, K Voroshilov and others, Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, Moscow, 1933, 490 pages.

The Revolutionary Crisis is Maturing, DZ Manuilsky, report to the Seventeenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on behalf of the Delegation of the CPSU in the Communist International, Workers Library Publishers, New York, 1934, 48 pages.

On the Organization of Party Propaganda in connection with the publication of the History of the CPSU(B) Short Course, FLPH, Moscow, 1939, 1976 reprint, 23 pages.

On the Organisation of Party Propaganda, CPSU(B), 1939, e-format, 22 pages.

The Land of Socialism Today and Tomorrow, Reports and speeches at the 18th Congress of the CPSU(B), March 10-21 1939, FLPH, Moscow, 1939, 488 pages.

Report to the Eighteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.) on the Work of the Central Committee, JV Stalin, March 10, 1939, FLPH, Moscow, 1951, 108 pages.

The Growing Prosperity of the Soviet Union, N Voznesensky, Chairman of the State Planning Commission, USSR, delivered at the 18th All Union Conference of the Soviet Union February 18 1941, Workers Library Publishers, New York, 1941, 48 pages.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Syllabus for six lectures on the history of the CPSU, with notes on reading, CPGB, London, 1942, 31 pages.

History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) – short course, edited by a commission of the CC of the CPSU(B), Cobbett Publishing, London, 1943, 345 pages.

History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course, FLPH, Moscow, 1945, 364 pages.

Report to the Nineteenth Party Congress of the work of the Central Committee of the CPSU(B), G Malenkov, FLPH, Moscow,1952, 147 pages.

Reports to the Nineteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Soviet Leaders Speak for Communism and Peace, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lavrenty Beria, Nikolai Bulganin, Lazar Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov, New Century Publishers, New York, 1952, 49 pages.

Speech at the 19th Party Congress, JV Stalin, October 14, 1952, FLPH, Moscow, 1952, 20 pages. One of the last public speeches and appearances before his death in March 1953.

Report on the directives of the XIXth Party Congress relating to the Fifth Five-year Plan for the development of the USSR in 1951-1955, M Saburov, FLPH, Moscow, 1952, 72 pages.

50th anniversary of the CPSU, 1903-1953, FLPH, Moscow, 1953, 18 pages.

Resolutions and Decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Volume 1, The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1974, 338 pages.

Resolutions and Decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Volume 2, The Early Soviet Period, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1974, 396 pages.

Resolutions and Decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Volume 3, The Stalin years 1929-1953, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1974, 339 pages.

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