Fernando Claudin was a Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 communist ideologist and historian best known for his two volume study The Communist Movement: From Comintern to Cominform.

Within the Spanish Communist Party

Initially a student of architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

 in his hometown of Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, in 1933 Claudin became so committed to the idea of political revolution that he gave up all of his own personal ambitions to join the Young Communists. Following Franco

Francisco Franco

Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...

's victory after the Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

 many of those in the Spanish Communist Party

Spanish Communist Party

Spanish Communist Party , was the first communist party in Spain, formed out of the Federación de Juventudes Socialistas . The founders of the party, that had belonged to leftwing within FJS, included Ramón Merino Gracia, Manuel Ugarte, Pedro Illescasm Luis Portela, Tiburicio Pico and Rito Estaban...

 lived in exile in Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

, including Claudin himself. From 1944 to 1964 Claudin sat on the Executive committee of the Spanish Communist Party. Following the revelatory 20th Congress of the CPSU

20th Congress of the CPSU

The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was held during 14– 25 February 1956. It is known especially for Nikita Khrushchev's "Secret Speech", which denounced the personality cult and dictatorship of Joseph Stalin....

, Claudin found himself increasingly at odds with an official party line which overwhelmingly supported Soviet policies regardless of the actions of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

itself. Despite several attempts to mend a schism in the Spanish Communist Party resulting from the fallout, Claudin was eventually expelled in 1964.

He subsequently wrote a critical Marxist history of the Soviet-aligned Communist movement La crisis del movimiento comunista. De la Komintern al Kominform (1970), which was translated into English and published as The Communist Movement: From Comintern To Cominform in 1975.