Extending communist revolution

Description

Creating an organizational rallying point to support and foment communist revolution wherever appropriate and providing instruction and issuing direction and funds to non-Russian Communist parties.

Context

Founded in Petrograd in 1919 at an international communist party conference chaired by Lenin, its purpose was to extend the Communist revolution beyond Russia as an element of Soviet foreign policy. The strategy served its purpose by providing the organizational structure and activity. It was dissolved in 1943 when the former USSR became an allied power in World War II.

Implementation

Delegates forming communist parties in the US, UK, Poland, Sweden and several Balkan states attended the founding conference and later drew support for local revolutionary activity from the organization.

Claim

The strategy was useful in maintaining conformity of foreign parties with the tenets of the Soviet Communist revolution. It served as both a binding agent and a promoter of revolutionary activity.

Counter-claim

The limited range of the strategy, that is to the specifically Soviet communist form and ideology conflicted with the concept of an international political organization.

Because it was an element of Soviet foreign policy, its proponents outside the former USSR exposed themselves as subversive agents of a foreign power.

History has now given the world several denominations of Communism. To some degree, the strategy led to its own demise.