Abstract
The foundation of the Communist International (Comintern) in March 1919, as well as its first years, have been predominantly analysed from the perspective of political and organisational history. The foundation of the Comintern in Moscow and its initiation by the Bolsheviks is the common starting point in the history of the "Bolshevisation" of international communism. In the article, the authors propose a different analytical angle on the Comintern’s foundation period. Using contemporary sources such as diaries, greeting telegrams, and the press, they attempt to reconstruct the impact of the Comintern on its host country, Soviet Russia, and its society. The authors show that the discourse of a "Third International" was older than 1919 and played a role not only in top-down agitprop, but also in the aspirations of rank and file activists, who could attach individual meanings to this vague concept. Thus, the foundation of the Comintern by the Bolsheviks was not just aimed at the international revolutionary movement, but also was an important symbolic gesture directed at their supporters within Soviet Russia. Furthermore, by looking at the rank and file Bolshevik discourse around the Comintern’s foundation in 1919, one can see how popular political rhetoric in the early Soviet state had yet to stabilize itself – which was not just a top-down process.
Albert, Gleb J