Creation of the Comintern

Author: Linda DeLaine
Website: RL Online
Department:
Page: 2   ( 3) pages

Summary: Part II of this feature

On January 15, 1919, the leaders of the German Communist Party; Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, and Wilhelm Pieck; were arrested in Berlin. The exact details of what happened are not known. We do know that Luxemburg and Liebknecht were beaten unconscious then driven outside the city where they were shot and their bodies deposited in a river. Pieck somehow managed to escape and made his way to Russia for the first meeting of the Comintern (March 2-6, 1919).

Lenin delivered the opening speech at the First Congress of the Communist International on March 2, 1919. He began by saying, On behalf of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party I declare the First Congress of the Communist International open. First I would ask all present to rise in tribute to the finest representatives of the Third International: Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg . ( All rise) Comrades, our gathering has great historic significance. It testifies to the collapse of all the illusions cherished by bourgeois democrats. Not only in Russia, but in the most developed capitalist countries of Europe, in Germany for example, civil war is a fact.

Communist and Socialist organizations with representatives in attendance:

• Communist Parties of: Russia, Germany, German Austria, Hungary, Poland, Finland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Byelorussia, Estonia, Armenia, the Volga German region
• Swedish Left Social-Democratic Party (the Opposition)
• Balkan Revolutionary People's of Russia
• Zimmerwald Left Wing of France
• Czech, Bulgarian, Yugoslav, British, French and Swiss Communist Groups
• Dutch Social-Democratic Group
• Socialist Propaganda League and the Socialist Labor Party of America
• Socialist Workers' Party of China
• Korean Workers' Union
• Turkestan, Turkish, Georgian, Azerbaijanian and Persian Sections of the Central Bureau of the Eastern People's

Agenda of the First Congress:

• constitution
• reports
• policy statement of the International Communist Conference
• bourgeois democracy and dictatorship of the proletariat
• the Berne Conference and attitude toward socialist trends
• the international situation and the Entente's policy
• Manifesto
• White terror
• elections to the bureau and other organizational issues

Main points of the concluding statement of the Congress:

• 1) replacement of the capitalist system by the Communist social system
• 2) necessity of the proletarian revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of bourgeois governments
• 3) destruction of the bourgeois state and its replacement by a proletarian state of the Soviet type, which would insure the transition to Communist society.

The Congress stressed the necessity of workers in all nations to recognize and support Soviet Russia. It was demanded that the Entente stop interference in Soviet internal affairs, pull their troops out of Russia and lift existing trade blockades.

The final action of the Congress was the establishment of the governing heiarchy for the International. An Executive Committee was elected by the entire Congress. In turn the Committee selected a Bureau of five representatives.

Next Page >Comintern Effect > Page 1, 2 , 3

The First Five Years of the Communist International
Leon Trotsky

Paperback, 374pp.
Pathfinder Press
October 1997