The Communist movement from Comintern to Cominform: Part one -- The crisis of the Communist International / Fernando Claudin ; translated by Brian Pearce

Translation of La crisis del movimiento comunista.

This is the first of a two part set. The index to the set is included in the second part.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 1 - 91, beginning after page 304)

Part one: The crisis of the Communist International. 1. The dissolution -- The last episode of the long crisis -- The irony of history -- An admission of bankruptcy -- 2. The crisis of theory -- Lenin's theoretical schema -- Moribund capitalism? -- Lenin's last questionings -- Stalin as revisionist: complete socialism in a single country -- Causes of the paralysis of theory -- 3. Monolithicity -- The Soviet model transplanted -- Ultra-centralism and Russification -- The itinerary of monolithicity -- 4. The crisis of policy -- The German experience -- The people's front experience -- The colonial experience -- The Chinese revolution -- The last act.

"Modern history, the history of Europe and much of the rest of the world since World War I, cannot be understood apart from the role of the Communist movement. And the world Communist movement is know almost exclusively from the woefully inaccurate accounts and interpretations of orthodox, anti-Communist scholars on the one side and Communist scholars on the other. In these contrasting interpretations the element of agreement often outweighs the points of conflict: this element of agreement is a mythology that describes world Communism, throughout its existence, as a dedicated insurgent phenomenon, "revolutionary" in its own eyes, "subversive" in those of its opponents. Fernando Claudin's exhaustive and masterful history, the first adequate study from the Marxist viewpoint, will finally destroy all such tottering mythologies. The author here combines, in this massive work, the disciplines of historical scholarship with the revolutionary standpoint from which alone it is possible to develop a critique of the theory and practice of the world Communist movement. His meticulous documentation offers to the reader a guarantee of historical accuracy, while the revolutionary convictions with which the work is suffused bring to life the issues and battles it interprets and relives. The first volume opens with the dissolution of the Communist International in 1943, during World War II, and then turns back to discover the causes of the dissolution in the policies, preconceptions, and defeats of the International leading up to that event. Thus, in addition to the discussion of the fundamental approaches to problems of internationalism by both Lenin and Stalin, and of the monolithic structure that emerged under the latter, the author here deals wit the grand tragedies of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, of Spain between 1936 and 1939, and with the shaping of policy for the colonial countries and the defeat of the fist stage of the Chinese Revolution. The second volume deals in absorbing detail with the frustration of the revolution in France, Italy, and elsewhere, the forms taken by the revolution in Eastern Europe, the Yugoslav breakaway, the Soviet Union and the Cold War, the Chinese Revolution, and the new world balance of power. The author is completing a third volume dealing with developments following the death of Stalin." - from the dust jacket

"Fernando Claudin was elected a member of the Central Committee of the Spanish Communist Party in 1937, and was a member of its Political Committee from 1947 until his expulsion from the party in 1965." -- from the dust jacket

Translated from Spanish into English.