The Comintern Is Back

That old Sleeping Beauty, the Communist International,* came back to life last week. At a secret meeting "somewhere in Poland," delegates from nine European Communist Parties met to reorganize "the general staff of the world revolution." The importance of the move was highlighted by the presence of Andrei A. Zhdanov and Georgi M. Malenkov, both members of Russia's ruling Politburo and close advisers of Joseph Stalin. Other top Communist brass who attended: Rumania's Ana Pauker; Yugoslavia's Vice Premier Edward Kardelj; Poland's Vice Premier Wladyslaw Gomulka and Minister of Industry Hilary Mine; Jacques Duclos, secretary of the French Communist Party; Italy's Luigi Longo and Eugenio Reale, and delegates from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

Purpose of the meeting, as reported in full by Moscow's Pravda: to coordinate Communist forces against U.S. imperialism and wreck the Marshall Plan, which the congress called a U.S. device for the economic and political control of the world. They charged that the U.S. and Britain had fought World War II purely for imperialist reasons. Specifically named as "imperialist toadies" and traitors to the working class were Britain's Prime Minister Attlee and Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin; France's Premier Ramadier and Socialist Leader Leon Blum, Italy's Giuseppe Saragat, and Dr. Kurt Schumacher, German Social Democratic leader.

Most important act of the new Comintern: a proposal to organize an "Information Bureau," composed of two representatives from each of the central committees of the Communist Parties at the congress. Official purpose: "To organize and exchange experience and, in case of necessity, coordinate the activity of Communist parties on foundations of mutual agreement." Headquarters: Belgrade, conveniently close to the seething situations on the frontiers of Greece and Trieste.

What did the revival of the Comintern mean? It meant: 1) all-out Communist concentration against U.S. efforts to achieve economic and political peace in Europe, a new era of Communist power politics; 2) Russia's open reassumption of her place (dropped for tactical reasons during World War II) as leader of the world revolution; 3) intensifying of the battle of ideologies (Communism v. democracy), as a prelude to the battle of systems (Communism v. capitalism). The Comintern revival might also mean that Russia was tightening Communist organization for a series of imminent political (and perhaps military) actions in Greece, Italy, France, Yugoslavia, Austria, and eventually Germany.

In Moscow, the news sent a chill through many average Russians who have no way of controlling their Government. Said one: "If this doesn't mean war, what does?"

* The Communist International was founded (in 1919) by delegates from twelve European countries, "to overthrow [the bourgeois world] order and to erect in its place the structure of the Socialist world order."

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