Comintern summary

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Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Third International.

Comintern, or Communist International or Third International, Association of national communist parties founded in 1919. Vladimir Ilich Lenin called the first congress of the Comintern to undermine efforts to revive the Second International. To join, parties were required to model their structure in conformity with the Soviet pattern and to expel moderate socialists and pacifists. Though the Comintern’s stated purpose was the promotion of world revolution, it functioned chiefly as an organ of Soviet control over the international communist movement. In 1943, during World War II, Joseph Stalin dissolved the Comintern to allay fears of communist subversion among his allies.

communism Summary

Communism, political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society. Communism is thus a form of

international organization Summary

International organization, institution drawing membership from at least three states, having activities in several states, and whose members are held together by a formal agreement. The Union of International Associations, a coordinating body, differentiates between the more than 250 international

Communist Party of the Soviet Union Summary

Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the major political party of Russia and the Soviet Union from the Russian Revolution of October 1917 to 1991. (Read Leon Trotsky’s 1926 Britannica essay on Lenin.) The Communist Party of the Soviet Union arose from the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social