The Third International (Comintern)

In 1919, on Lenin’s initiative, the Third International was founded in Moscow as a revolutionary alternative to the “opportunism” of the Second International.

The Comintern’s political line underwent a number of transformations in the period that followed, although the “Bolshevisation” of the various national sections remained largely intact. Important milestones included the Sixth World Congress in 1928, during which the Comintern was able to gain acceptance for its theory of social fascism (the view that social democracy constitutes the “left-wing” of fascism and the main enemy). At the Seventh World Congress in 1935, the Comintern changed direction once more with its theory of the popular front: this led social democrats and other left-wing bourgeois forces once again to being viewed as potential partners. In 1943, Stalin disbanded the Comintern.