Communist International

Comintern is the commonly given name for the Third International. It was formed at the behest of Lenin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as they felt the Second International had become devalued.

Lenin had previously written of his disappointment in the way in which many European Social-Democrats had failed to speak out against World War I and was particularly critical of individuals such as Kautsky and Ramsay MacDonald, disparigingly describing them as Social-Chauvinists.

This failure of the Second International Social-Democrats prompted the Bolsheviks to adopt the name Communist in place of Social-Democrat and the convocation of the Third International.

Central to the policy of Comintern was that Communist Parties should be established across the world to aid the international Proletarian Revolution, and the idea of democratic centralism, which involved rigid control of the Communist Party from the centre.

Whilst Comintern was supposedly an international organisation it was in effect controlled from the Soviet Union.

In 1938 Leon Trotsky formed the Fourth International.