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.

For a party to join the Comintern it had to accept 21 conditions. Some of these were:

To carry out propaganda in the countryside and cities in favour of proletarian revolution
To remove reformists and centrists from positions in the working class movement
To combine legal and illegal methods of working
To supervise the activities of any members in parliament
To denounce pacifism
To support colonial liberation movements
To ensure trade unions join the 'red' trade union international rather than the 'yellow' Amersterdam one.
To organise on the basis of democratic centralism and to have regular purges of membership
To support all existing soviet republics
To revise its party programme with policies of the international
To accept all decisions of the comintern as binding
To take the name 'communist party'
To expel all members who voted against the 21 conditions

In 1938 Leon Trotsky formed the Fourth International.