The Communist movement from Comintern to Cominform: Part two -- The zenith of Stalinism / Fernando Claudin; translated by Francis MacDonagh.

Translation of La crisis del movimiento comunista.

This part begins with page 307. Part one ends with page 304. In each part the notes (bibliographical references) follow the last page of text and pages are numbered starting with "1."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part two: the zenith of Stalinism 5. Revolution and spheres of influence -- from Cominterm to Cominform -- The revolution frustrated (France) -- The revolution frustrated (Italy) -- Revolutions without permission: criticisms of French and Italian opportunism -- From the "Grand Alliance" to the "Two Camps" -- Questions and conjectures -- 6. The Cominform -- The satellite revolutions -- The Cominform and the new tactics -- General retreat of the Communist movement in the west -- 7. The Yugoslav breech -- The setting up of the bureaucratic police dictatorship in the satellites -- The heretical revolution -- The trials -- The campaign against Titoism in the western Communist parties -- 8. The east takes over -- The Chinese revolution and the "Grand Alliance" -- Revolutionary war or "national unity" -- The bogey of Chinese "Titoism" -- The Sino-Soviet alliance -- 9. The new world balance -- The "peace fighters" -- Stalemate in the "Cold War" -- Assessment of the Cominform period.

"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