1. James W. Hulse, The Forming of the Communist International (Stanford, Calif.: 1964); Jules Humbert-Droz, L'origine de l'internationale com-muniste: de Zimmerwald à Moscou (Neuchâtel: 1968).

2. E. H. Carr's history of the Soviet Union is an encyclopedia of knowledge about the Communist International and about Bolshevik relations with the other national Communist parties. No other single work compares with it for comprehensiveness and detail: see The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923 (New York: 1950-53), vol. 3, chaps. 23, 25, 30, and 31; Socialism in One Country, 1924-1926 (New York: 1958-64), vol. 3, chaps. 27-28, 30-31, 35, 43, and 46; and, with Robert W. Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926-1929 (New York: 1969-78), vol. 3, chaps. 66-72 and 76-81. The most nuanced and coherent study is Fernando Claudin's The Communist Movement: From Comintern to Cominform (New York: 1975). The history of the Comintern was fully deployed by the followers of Trotsky in their struggle with Stalin and his supporters. The major Trotskyist work is Pierre Frank, Histoire de l'Internationale communiste, 1919-1943 (Paris: 1979). Trotsky's own account is to be found in The First Five Years of the Communist International (New York: 1945-53); and in Die Internationale Revolution und die Kommunistische Internationale (Berlin: 1929) and l'Internationale communiste après Lénine (Paris: 1930), which were published together as The Third International after Lenin (London: 1974).

3. The initial phase of the Comintern's development (1919-1928) has been the subject of several outstanding monographs, for example, the works of Hulse and Humbert-Droz, noted above; Lazitch and Drach-kovitch, Lenin and the Comintern (Stanford, Calif.: 1972); and Kermit McKenzie, Comintern and World Revolution, 1928-1943: The Shaping of Doctrine (London and New York: 1964).

4. Discussion of these contradictions has been a prominent feature of the scholarship of Euro-American critics of the Communist International. See, for example, Claudin, Communist Movement , 126. Soviet writers, including official historians of the Comintern, recognized them during perestroika . I. M. Krivoguz, in "Sud'ba i nasledie Kominterna," Novaia i noveishaia istoriia (1990:6): 9, expressed the view that the tragedy of the Comintern was to be found in the continual incongruence of its ideology and political strategies with historical reality, despite frequent attempts to adjust the former to the latter. F. I. Firsov, "Komintern: mekhanizm funktsionirovania," Novaia i noveishaia istoriia (1991:2): 37, stated that the "centralizing line'' of the Comintern did much harm at a time when there was "a decline in revolutionary activities in the capitalist countries, when the tasks of daily work were moving to the first priority, and when specific national conditions were consequently becoming more important."

5. " Left-Wing" Communism — An Infantile Disorder , April-May 1920: Lenin, CW , 31: 17-117.

6. "Theses on the Conditions of Admission to the Communist International," Alan Adler, ed., Theses, Resolutions, and Manifestos of the First Four Congresses of the Third International (London and Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: 1980), 92-97; hereafter referred to as First Four Congresses . For their authorship, see John Riddell, ed., Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples Unite! Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress, 1920 (New York: 1991), 1011-12; hereafter cited as Second Congress . Richard Lowenthal, in "The Rise and Decline of International Communism," Problems of Communism 12 (1963): 19-29, analyzes the conditions perceptively. Milorad Drachkovitch and Branko Lazitch, "The Third International," in The Revolutionary Internationals, 1864-1943 , ed. Milorad M. Drachkovitch (Stanford, Calif.: 1966), 159-202, is uncompromisingly critical of the Bolshevik stamp Lenin and Zinoviev imprinted on the international movement.

7. This stage of development began in 1921 when the Third Congress elaborated on the "Twenty-one Conditions" in a lengthy "monster resolution," a set of theses entitled "Organizational Structure of the Communist Parties, the Methods and Content of their Work": See First Four Congresses , 234-61; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution , 3: 390. The second stage began in 1924-25 when the Fifth Congress, followed by the Fifth ECCI Plenum, decided in favor of the "Bolshevization'' of the national parties. The transformation culminated in 1928 when the Sixth Congress adopted an organizational statute, long in preparation, which codified and extended the changes of the previous years: See Jane Degras, ed., The Communist International, 1919-1943: Documents (London and New York: 1956-65), 2: 464-71; hereafter cited as Communist International ; and McKenzie, Comintern and World Revolution , 31-35, 55-56.

8. As early as January 1921, Clara Zetkin, a member of the German delegation to the Second Congress, complained to Lenin regarding the authoritarian demeanor of the ECCI: "Sometimes they are overtly rude and interventionist while genuine knowledge of the situation is absent." Quoted in Firsov, "Komintern: mekhanizm funktsionirovania," 35.

9. For a list of early interventions, see Souvarine to French Communist Party, 28 September 1921, in Siegfried Bahne et al., eds., Archives de Jules Humbert-Droz (Dortrecht: 1970-81), vol. 1, no. 37. Also Branko Lazitch, "Two Instruments of Control by the Comintern: The Emissaries of the ECCI and the Party Representatives in Moscow," in The Comintern: Historical Highlights, Essays, Recollections, Documents , ed. Milorad M. Drachkovitch and Branko Lazitch (New York: 1966), 45-65.

10. Carr, Foundations , 3: 128-29.

11. Geoff Eley, in "Reviewing the Socialist Tradition," presented at the symposium "The Crisis of Socialism in Eastern and Western Europe" held in Chapel Hill, N.C., in April 1990, pointed to the complexity of revolutionary possibilities in the years 1917-1923 in an effort to reconstruct the historical significance of the October Revolution in the wake of the events of 1989 in Eastern Europe.

12. Carr, Bolshevik Revolution , 3: 446.

13. Claudin, Communist Movement , 76-77.

14. A somewhat different sequence of stages is presented in Franz Borkenau's perceptive and caustic criticism of Comintern strategies of revolution—the CI as the instrument of revolution, as the tool of factional struggles within the RCP(B), and as the instrument of Russian foreign relations: See World Communism: A History of the Communist International (Ann Arbor, Mich.: 1962), 419.

15. Carr, Bolshevik Revolution , 3: 201.

16. Jules Humbert-Droz, De Lénine à Staline. Dix ans au service de l'internationale communiste, 1921-1931 (Neuchâtel: 1971), and, even more, the memoirs of Aino Kuusinen, Before and after Stalin: A Personal Account of Soviet Russia from the 1920s to the 1960s (London: 1974), are informative on matters of Comintern organizational apparatus and personnel. So too is Carr, Socialism in One Country , 3: 898-913. Branko Lazitch's Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern (rev. ed., Stanford, Calif.: 1986) contains over 700 biographies of Comintern figures. Vilem Kahan, "The Communist International, 1919-43: The Personnel of Its Highest Bodies," International Review of Social History 21 (1976): 151-85, verifies the names of Comintern participants. (CI records often did not list first names or pseudonyms).

17. Some of the initial activities and responsibilities of the Presidium are outlined in a letter from Boris Souvarine to the French Communist Party, 28 September 1921, in Archives de Jules Humbert-Droz , vol. 1, no. 37.

18. Geoff Eley, "Some Unfinished Thoughts on the Comintern," presented at the symposium "Fifty Years of the Popular Front," University of Michigan, November 1985.

19. Carr, Bolshevik Revolution , 3: 200-204.

20. Kuusinen to Humbert-Droz, 5 February 1923, Archives de Jules Humbert-Droz , vol. 1, no. 143.

21. The reprinting of those Comintern documents that were public when they originally appeared—theses, resolutions, manifestos, published statements, and open letters to national Communist parties—has been undertaken more widely in Europe and America than in the USSR. The Communist International , ed. Degras, is the fullest general collection of Comintern documents in English, or any language. There are more exhaustive collections of materials for specific congresses, such as John Rid-dell, ed., The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power: Documents, 1918-1919. Preparing the Founding Congress (New York: 1986) and Founding the Communist International: Proceedings and Documents of the First Congress, March 1919 (New York: 1987), and of the Second Congress ; and Adler, ed., First Four Congresses . Vilem Kahan, in Bibliography of the Communist International (1919-1979) (Leiden and New York: 1990), lists more than 3,000 publications issued by the CI, including stenographic records and minutes, theses, resolutions, and manifestos of the world congresses and of plenary sessions of the ECCI. Included also are secondary publications concerning these meetings published between 1919 and 1979. The ECCI published two periodicals, Kommunisticheskii Internatsional , representing official views on current matters, and International Press Correspondence , which publicized news items of interest to the national Communist parties.

22. Some internal documents remained in national Communist party archives and in private collections, the most important being the Archives de Jules Humbert-Droz . Humbert-Droz was a founder of the Swiss Communist Party who attended the second and all subsequent congresses of the Comintern. As director of the Comintern's Latin Secretariat during the years 1921-1930, he carried out multiple confidential missions for the Comintern in France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. The documents he retained are informative regarding the work of those parties, but they tell less about the particulars of policy formulation at the center. In this regard, his memoirs, De Lénine à Staline , are more interesting and valuable. From 1926 to 1928 he was a member of the ECCI Presidium and Political Secretarat. He aligned himself with the moderate opposition to Stalin, became a confidant of Bukharin's, and—after engaging in public self-criticism and supporting the Stalinist position—lived to tell about it: De Lénine à Staline , 284-86.

23. In his speech on the seventieth anniversary of the October Revolution (November 1987), Mikhail Gorbachev stated that the "true history" of the CI had yet to be written: "We have to restore the truth about it. Despite all the fallacies and draw-backs in its actions, and however bitter could be the recalling of some of the pages of its history, the Comintern is part of the great past of our movement." See M. S. Gorbachev, Oktiabr i perestroika: revoliutsiia prodolzhaetsia (Moscow: 1987), 55.

Subsequently, the CPSU Central Committee adopted new procedures for the utilization of the Comintern archives, the purpose of which was to "help uproot Stalinism completely and restore and develop further Lenin's concept of the Communist movement." See Fridrikh J. Firsov, "What the Comintern Archives Will Reveal," World Marxist Review 32, 1 (1989): 52-57. A round-table discussion was held at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in June 1988 to undertake the reevaluation of the theoretical and political work of the Comintern and of Stalin's role in it. Much of the opinion expressed at this meeting displayed considerable professional-political discomfort regarding the task. Stalin was to be criticized fully. Zinoviev, Trotsky, and Bukharin were said to have played a somewhat positive role in the affairs of the ECCI; however, their mistakes, especially those of Trotsky, were not to be minimized. It was necessary, one contributor stated, "to keep the proper balance,'' and "Bukharin, of course, cannot be idealized." The project was to be undertaken by professional academics who knew the archives and who would produce a scientifically balanced judgment. If left to others, the rewriting of the history of the Comintern would become a witch-hunt. The Western social democratic interpretation, which condemned the Comintern completely, was to be opposed. It was, after all, the survival of social democracy as the dominant political force among the working classes of Western Europe that had "doomed Communists to the dogmatic-sectarian positions" characteristic of Stalinism: See "Nekotorye voprosy istorii Kominterna," Novaia i noveishaia istoriia (1989:2); quotations, 76-79.

With a few notable exceptions, which I discuss elsewhere in this work, the initial reevaluations of Comintern history published during perestroika did not reflect extensive "new political thinking" and are both historiographically and politically cautious. For instance, in B. N. Ponomarev, "Stranitsy deiatel'nosti Kominterna," Novaia i noveishaia istoriia (1989:2): 118-30, the famous academic historian, principal editor of some two hundred works, and a member of Brezhnev's Politburo, "share[d] his reminiscences" of the Comintern in which he had worked on the staff of the ECCI under Georgii Dimitrov in the years 1937-1943. He criticized Stalin but praised the Comintern for its "glorious past," calling it the "great school" for all Communists (119-20). In Krivoguz, "Sudba i nasledie Kominterna," 3-20, one of the official historians of the Comintern issued what was called "a newly improved, balanced view.'' He identified Bukharin as "a complex personality," who, though not without faults, was nevertheless a great Communist. He chronicled Stalin's mistakes, but praised the Comintern as the place where the masses of the world were organized for the struggle for democracy and social justice and against Fascism. I. N. Undasynov and Z. P. Iakhimovich, Kommunisticheskii Internatsional: dostizheniia, proschety, uroki (Moscow: 1990), relied on monographic literature published in the USSR in the 1960s and 1970s and was intended as a "popular short review" for a perestroika -era audience. It attempted to rescue the reputation of the Comintern by blaming Stalin, by characterizing Zinoviev, Trotsky, and Bukharin as dangerous confusionists, and by attributing the salvation of the international Communist movement to the genius of Lenin and those who faithfully followed his teaching.

24. Claudin, Communist Movement , 65-67.

25. First Four Congresses , 184-203, 274-99, 383-88.

26. Karl Radek, Der Kampf der Kommunistischen Internationale gegen Versailles und gegen die Offensive des Kapitals (Hamburg: 1923).

27. Carr, Bolshevik Revolution , 3: 449-50; Socialism in One Country , 3: 283-93, 490-95; Foundations , 3: 144-45; McKenzie, Comintern and World Revolution , 51-52.

28. "To the Fourth Congress of the Communist International," 4 November 1922, Lenin, CW , 33: 430-32.

29. Bukharin quoted in Sirotkin, "Ot grazhdanskoi voiny k grazhdanskomu miru," 380.

30. Carr, Bolshevik Revolution , 3: 443.

31. Moshe Lewin, Lenin's Last Struggle (New York: 1968), first indicated the historical importance of these writings. V. I. Startsev, "Political Leaders of the Soviet State in 1922 and Early 1923," Soviet Studies in History 28 (1989-90): 5-40, chronicles the vicissitudes of Lenin's physical condition and demonstrates their impact on the struggle for succession among the RCP(B) leadership. For Lenin's reconceptualization of the postwar international situation, see Claudin, Communist Movement , 66-71.

32. "Better Fewer, but Better," 2 March 1923, Lenin, CW , 33: 487-502.

33. The concept of "achieving genuine communism" that emerged from Lenin's final writings is that of a long transition period, an entire historical epoch of a decade or two or more, during which the prerequisites for genuine Communism would develop. Lenin called these "civilization," by which he meant industrial technology and a culturally advanced and civic-minded population. See Lenin, "Better Fewer, but Better," CW , 33: 500-501; Lewin, Lenin's Last Struggle , 108, 114; Stephen E Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938 (New York: 1975), 134-38; and Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879-1929: A Study in History and Personality (New York: 1973), 368-72.

34. "Better Fewer, but Better," Lenin, CW , 33: 500-502.

35. Report by Lenin to the Tenth Party Conference, 28 March 1921, CW , 32: 437.

36. L. N. Nezhinskii, "Vneshniaia politika sovetskogo gosudarstva v 1917-1921 godakh: kurs na 'mirovuiu revoliutsiu' ili na mirnoe sosushchestvovanie?" Istoriia SSSR (1991:6): 3-27.

37. For the incompetencies and failures of the CI, see Alexander Dallin, "The Soviet Union as a Revolutionary Power," in Perestroika: The Historical Perspective , ed. Catherine Merridale and Chris Ward (London and New York: 1991), 220-21, 224.

38. Theses and Resolutions of the Third Congress, 29 June-17 July 1921, Communist International 1: 255-56.

39. Speech by Lenin to the Fourth All-Russian Congress of Garment Workers, 6 February 1921, Lenin, CW , 32: 113-14; report by Lenin to the Ninth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, 23 December 1921, Lenin, CW , 33: 145.

40. Lazitch and Drachkovitch, Lenin and the Comintern , 529-30.

41. Helmut Gruber, International Communism in the Era of Lenin: A Documentary History (Ithaca, N.Y.: 1967), 316.

42. Werner T. Angress, Stillborn Revolution: The Communist Bid for Power in Germany, 1921-1923 (Princeton, N.J.: 1963), 109-110.

43. Theses and Resolutions of the Third Congress, 29 June-17 July 1921, Communist International , 1: 230, 238, 242-43.

44. The premises on which "united fronts" were to be based were discussed at the Third Comintern Congress in June-July 1921. The strategy was adopted by the ECCI in December 1921. The "Theses on the United Front" were published by the Fourth Comintern Congress in November-December 1922. See First Four Congresses , 400-409.

45. For Radek's reports, see Dietrich Möller, Karl Radek in Deutschland: Revolutionär, Intrigant, Diplomat (Cologne: 1976), nos. 23, 28-29; also Warren Lerner, Karl Radek: The Last Internationalist (Stanford, Calif.: 1970), 112-17.

46. For the theory and strategy of the "united front," see Claudin, Communist Movement , 145-53; Wolfgang Eichwede, Revolution und Internationale Politik: Zur kommunistischen Interpretation der kapitalistischen Welt, 1921-1925 (Cologne: 1971), 7-19; Frank, Histoire de l'Internationale Communiste , 223-29. F. I. Firsov, "K voprosu o taktike edinogo fronta v 1921-1924 gg," Voprosy Istorii KPSS (1987:10): 113-27, is based on materials in the Central Party Archives of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. It was actually written in 1964, near the end of the Khrushchev thaw, by one of the leading official party specialists on Comintern history. The tone and approach are those of the confining Brezhnev conservative orthodoxy emerging at that time, rather than those of glasnost , which was emerging when it was finally printed.

47. Lenin quoted in Carr, Foundations , 3: 157.

48. Zinoviev quoted in Carr, Bolshevik Revolution , 3: 420.

49. Theses and Resolutions of the Third Congress, 29 June-17 July, 1921, Communist International 1: 256.

50. Zinoviev and Stalin first associated social democracy with Fascism in January 1924 during the reaction against Socialist-Communist "united fronts from above" that took place in the wake of the abortive Communist revolution in Germany the previous November. Stalin stated at this time that "there had occurred a major shift of the petty bourgeois social-democratic forces to the side of counterrevolution, into the fascist camp." From this he concluded that the best tactic for the Comintern to adopt was "not a coalition with social democracy but lethal battle against it, as the pillar of fascisized power." See Firsov in ''Nekotorye voprosy istorii Kominterna," 89. At the Fifth Comintern Congress in June-July, the leadership of the Russian party led a chorus of denunciation that would last for years. Zinoviev: "The Fascists are the right hand and the Social Democrats are the left hand of the bourgeoisie." Stalin: "Social Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of Fascism. " See Claudin, Communist Movement , 152-53. The exact term social-fascism was first used in April 1929, in an editorial in Kommunisticheskii Internatsional , according to Firsov, "Nekotorye voprosy istorii Kominterna," 89.

51. Sirotkin, "Ot grazhdanskoi voiny k grazhdanskomu miru," 384; Lenin quoted in Lazitch and Drachkovitch, Lenin and the Comintern , 534.

52. Chicherin quoted in S. Iu. Vygodskii, Vneshniaia politika SSSR, 1924-1929 (Moscow: 1963), 292. A well-documented monograph, Vygodskii's work reflected the Khrushchev thaw (1956-64) and the revitalization of the doctrine of peaceful coexistence at this time. It superseded the faithful Stalinist work on this period, A. A. Troianovskii, Vneshniaia politika SSSR, 1924-1926 (Moscow: 1945). And it is a bolder and livelier work than the diplomatic history done by party scholars during the Brezhnev-Suslov period that followed, for example, A. A. Gromyko and B. N. Ponomarev (eds.), Istoriia vneshnei politiki SSSR 1917-1980 (Moscow: 1980-81); English translation, Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-1980 (Moscow: 1981). Initial discussions concerning a replacement for this work, one that would be informed by the values of glasnost , took place in 1988. See "Kompleksnaia programma 'Istoriia vneshnei politiki SSSR i mezhdunarodnykh otnoshenii,'" Novaia i noveishaia istoriia (1988:2): 63-81.