Profintern
Encyclopedia
The Red International of Labor Unions (RILU) (Russian: Красный интернационал профсоюзов — Krasnyi internatsional profsoyuzov), commonly known as the Profintern, was an international body established by the Communist International with the aim of coordinating Communist activities within trade unions. Formally established in 1921, the Profintern was intended to act as a counterweight to the influence of the so-called "Amsterdam International," the Social Democratic International Federation of Trade Unions
, an organization branded as class collaborationist
and an impediment to revolution
by the Comintern
. After entering a period of decline in the middle 1930s, the organization was finally terminated in 1937 with the advent of the Popular Front
.
In July 1920, at the behest of Comintern
head Grigory Zinoviev
, the 2nd World Congress
of the Communist International established a temporary International Trade Union Council, commonly known by its Russian acronym, Mezhsovprof. This organizing committee — including members of the Russian, Italian, British, Bulgarian, and French delegations to the Comintern Congress — was presented with the task of organizing "an international congress of Red trade unions.
Soviet
trade union leader Solomon Lozovsky
was named president of this new council, assisted by British unionist Tom Mann
and Alfred Rosmer
of France. The Executive Committee of the Communist International
(ECCI) directed the new council to issue a manifesto to "all trade unions of the world" exposing the social democratic
International Federation of Trade Unions
based in Amsterdam
as a "yellow" organization and inviting them to join a new revolutionary international union association.
This decision was to mark a split of the international trade union movement that followed the recently achieved split of the international socialist political movement into revolutionary
Communist
and electorally-oriented
Socialist
camps. This desire for a new exclusive international of explicitly "Red" union represented a fundamental contradiction with the Comintern's firm insistence that Communists should work within the structure of existing trade unions — an important detail noted at the time by delegate Jack Tanner
of the British Shop Stewards Movement. Tanner's objection was brushed aside as Grigory Zinoviev denied him the floor, referring his complaints to committee.
Historian E.H. Carr argues that the decision to launch a Red International of Labor Unions at all was a byproduct of the era of heady revolutionary fervor that world revolution was around the corner, declaring:
As the plan for a new labor international moved forward, Mezhsovprof established propaganda bureaus in different countries in an attempt to win the existing unions affiliated to the rival "Amsterdam International," as the International Federation of Trade Unions was commonly known, over to the forthcoming "Red International." These bureaus attracted the most rebellious and dissident trade unionists to their banner while at the same time alienating sometimes conservative union leaderships, already raising charges that what was actually being proffered was dual unionism
and a destructive split of the existing unions.
On January 9, 1921, ECCI decided that the launch of a new Red International of Trade Unions would take place at a conference to be convened on May Day
of that year. An appeal was issued to the trade unions of the world who were "opposed to the Amsterdam International" and called for their affiliation to the new organization. This conclave was ultimately postponed until July, however, so that it could be synchronized with the scheduled 3rd World Congress of the Comintern — travel to and from Soviet Russia being a difficult and dangerous process in these years.
Grandiose claims were made about the new organization, with Lozovsky declaring in a speech in May 1921 that already unions representing 14 million workers had proclaimed their allegiance to the forthcoming Red International. Zinoviev ferociously declared the Amsterdam International to be "the last barricade
of the international bourgeoisie
" — fighting words
to social democratic trade unionists.
For their own part, the Social Democratic trade union movement emerged from World War I
relatively united, on the offensive, and unbowed. Even before the Profintern was launched, the line in the sand was clearly drawn, with the Amsterdam International declaring at a May 1921 executive session that it was "not permissible for trade union organizations to be affiliated to two trade union International at the same time" and adding that "every organization which affiliates to the political trade union International of Moscow places itself outside the International Federation of Trade Unions." The great civil war within the world trade union movement had begun.
perspective that sought to avoid politics and participation in the existing trade unions altogether, in favor of direct action
leading to workers' control of industry
. These delegates sought the new Red International of Labor Unions to be fully independent of the Communist International, seen as a political organization.
Among those expressing such a desire for the organizational independence of RILU from the Comintern was "Big Bill" Haywood of the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) — an individual already living in Moscow after skipping bail
to avoid a lengthy prison sentence under the so-called Espionage Act. The IWW's perspective was joined by syndicalist trade unionists that were part of the French and Spanish delegations. Ultimately, however, the syndicalist elements proved a small minority and the Congress approved a resolution sponsored by Mann and Rosmer which called for "the closest possible link" between the Profintern and Comintern, including joint sessions of the organizations, as well as "real and intimate revolutionary unity" between the Red unions and the Communist parties
at the national level.
Despite the initiative of starting a new trade union international in direct competition with the previously existing Amsterdam international, the Profintern in its initial phase continued to insist that its strategy was not to "snatch out of the unions the best and most conscious workers," but rather to remain in the existing unions in order to "revolutionize" them. The founding Congress's official resolution on organization declared that the withdrawal from the existing mass unions and abandonment of their memberships to their often-times conservative leaderships "plays into the hands of the counter-revolutionary trade union bureaucracy and therefore should be sharply and categorically rejected."
Still, the Profintern insisted upon a real split of the labor movement, establishing conditions for admission which included "a break with the yellow Amsterdam International." The organization effectively advocated that radicalized workers engage in "boring from within" the existing unions in order to disassociate the full organizations from Amsterdam and for Moscow. Such tactics insured bitter internal division as non-Communist members of the rank-and-file and their elected union leaderships sought to maintain existing affiliations.
As part of its strategy for winning over the existing unions, the Profintern decided to establish a network of what it called "International Propaganda Committees" (IPCs), international associations of radical unions and organized fractional minorities in unions that were established on the basis of their specific industry. These groups were intended to conduct conferences and publish and distribute pamphlets and periodicals in order to propagandize for the idea of revolution and for the establishment the dictatorship of the proletariat
. The IPCs were to attempt to raise funds to help sustain their efforts, with the governing Executive Bureau of Profintern subsidizing their publications. By August 1921 a total of 14 IPCs had been established.
The Profintern's International Propaganda Committees proved ineffectual in changing the opinions of union memberships. Unions began to expel their radical dissidents and international unions began to expel those national sections which participated in the activities of the Profintern, exemplified by the October 1921 expulsion of the Dutch Transport Workers' Federation from its international trade organization.
The 2nd World Congress of RILU was held in Moscow in November 1922, in conjunction with the 4th World Congress of the Comintern.
As might be expected, the 1922 RILU Congress spent much of its time shaping the application of the Comintern's recently-adopted united front
policy to the trade union movement. With the prospects for imminent world revolution on the wane, RILU head Solomon Lozovsky proposed an international conference bringing together leaderships of RILU, the Amsterdam International, and various unaffiliated unions — a gathering which was to echo the April 1922 meeting between the Second International
, the Two-and-a-Half International
, and the Comintern in Berlin "to work out parallel forms and methods of struggle against the offensive of capitalism."
In retrospect, 1922 marked the high-water mark for the Profintern's size and influence in Europe, with a sizable new contingent joining the organization's ranks in France when the Confédération Genérale du Travail (CGT) attempted to discipline and expel its syndicalist members but ended up causing a full scale organizational split in which the majority of French trade unionists affiliated with a new "Red" union.
Additional headway was made in Czechoslovakia, where a majority of trade union members similarly affiliated with RILU, following a campaign of expulsions of Communist individuals and unions by the Social Democratic leadership. In October 1922 the Czech Red unions held a congress of their own, formalizing the split with the Social Democratic unions. It is worthy of mention that the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
was an extremely large organization in this period, claiming 170,000 members in 1922, dwarfing all but a few Communist parties around the world.
In Bulgaria the All-Bulgarian Federation of unions chose to affiliate with the Profintern outright, but even that movement was split when opponents established a rival organization called the Free Federation of Trade Unions. Spain, too, saw its national labor movement formally divided. The climate was acrimonious as bitter charges and counter-charges levying responsibility for the shattering the trade union movement flew in all directions.
The professed desire of the Profintern for a united front came to fruition of sorts in December 1922, when the organization met at a peace conference in The Hague
with representatives of the Amsterdam International, presided over by British union leader J.H. Thomas. As was the case with the meeting of the three political Internationals earlier in the year, the session ended in failure, with accusations flying in both directions and Lozovsky's plea for a united front arbitrarily dismissed as a transparent tactical ploy.
This failure was followed up in January 1923 by a joint appeal of the Comintern and Profintern for the creation of a "action committee against fascism
," followed in March with the establishment of a formal Action Committee Against Fascism in Berlin, headed by Clara Zetkin
. An international conference of this group was called to be held later that same month in Frankfurt, Germany with invitations extended to the parties of the Second International and the unions of the Amsterdam International, but only a few Social Democrats attended, the overwhelming majority of the gathering being Communists. Delegates from Germany, Soviet Russia, France, and Britain united to denounce the Versailles Peace Treaty
and the related Occupation of the Ruhr
by France to enforce the onerous reparations levied against Germany. The die had been cast, however, and no joint activities between the political or union leaders of the Social Democratic and Communist Internationals would be result from the initiative.
Lozovsky reported on RILU's progress to the 12th Congress of the Russian Communist Party in April 1923, at which he claimed that the Profintern represented 13 million unionists against 14 or 15 million for the rival Amsterdam International. This figure is regarded by at least one serious historian of the matter as "probably exaggerated."
The 1924 Congress formally marked a hardening of the Communist attitude towards the Social Democratic labor movement, declaring that "fascism and democracy are two forms of the bourgeois dictatorship."
The most contentious issue debated by the Congress related to the strategy and tactics of seeking unity with the Amsterdam International, thereby bringing an end to the disruption suffered by the labor movement as a result of the split into two internationals. With forcing the IFTU to capitulate untenable and independent entry of the Russian trade unions into their the industrial federations affiliated with the IFTU, the sole option remaining, in Solomon Lozovsky's view, was to attempt to achieve some sort of fusion of the two Internationals through an international conference. Lozovsky contended that unity was not to be achieved through the sacrifice of the Profintern's program or tactics and the blind acceptance of reformism, but rather was to be accompanied by the penetration of communist ideas into the minds of the rank-and-file trade unionists of the European unions.
A proposal was made by Monmousseau of France calling for a World Unity Congress of the Red and Amsterdam Internationals, and a committee of 35 delegates was selected to debate the proposal and to flesh out the practical details. Following two days of debate, the commission reported back to the assembled Congress, bringing with it a unity proposal that had been accepted in the preliminary hearings with one sold dissenting vote. The final proposal for a unity congress proved little more than a platitude, however, with the resolution declaring that such a gathering "might, after suitable preparation of the masses" prove appropriate. There was no firm directive instructing the Profintern Executive Board to action.
With relations between the Profintern and the IFTU at the point of insoluble stalemate, Soviet trade union authorities began to concentrate on bilateral relationships with social democratic union movements. Particular attention was placed on the unions of Great Britain, with Russian union chief Mikhail Tomsky
traveling to the UK in 1924, followed by a reciprocal visit in November of that year of a high-level delegation headed by A.A. Purcell of the Trades Union Congress
. From the Soviet standpoint the British unionists were positively affected by their visit, publishing an extensive and generally favorable report of the Soviet situation upon their return to the UK. This month-long visit of the British trade union delegation would be the prototype for a series of similar visits of the Soviet Union by western union leaders.
While the groundwork for ties between the Soviet and western trade union movement began to be successfully laid, the situation between the international organizations based in Amsterdam and Moscow festered. The Second International and the IFTC held a joint meeting in Brussels
during the first week of January 1925 and emerged with a scathing denunciation of the Soviet Union and its sympathizers in the British trade union movement that were organized in a RILU-subsidized organization known as the National Minority Movement
. A similar presence in the American Federation of Labor
in the form of the Trade Union Educational League
went without comment owing to the AFL's ongoing refusal to affiliate with the Amsterdam International. These objections by the IFTU failed to stymie continued development of bilateral Soviet-British ties, however, as in April 1925 Tomsky returned to London as part of an effort to establish a joint committee for trade union unity between the two countries.
If Tomsky had the ulterior motive of seeking to win British unionists to the ranks of the Profintern, he was met with a surprising reversal, as E.H. Carr noted in 1964:
Tomsky, although diplomatic in his reply, rejected the British suggestion out of hand as an abject surrender to the Amsterdam International akin to the 1918 forced surrender of Soviet Russia to Imperial Germany
at Brest-Litovsk. Still, with the New Economic Policy
in full swing in Soviet Russia, with its associated liberalization of culture and trade, the position of the Soviet trade union movement with relationship to social democratic unions in the West was secure and orderly, despite the failure of efforts to parlay with top leaders of the Amsterdam International.
The 4th Session of the Central Council, held in Moscow from March 9-15, 1926, began just as the 6th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI came to a close. At both of these gatherings Solomon Lozovsky had delivered reports which identified Great Britain — where a miners' strike was in the air — and in particular the countries of Asia and the Pacific as areas presenting the greatest opportunities for the Profintern in its attempt to construct a world revolutionary movement. Amsterdam had paid scant attention to Asia, leaving the field open to the Profintern's efforts, Lozovsky noted in his report to the Comintern Executive. RILU did make an effort to break new organizational ground outside of Europe as early as February 1922 when it established a Moscow office comparable to the Comintern's Eastern Bureau, headed by Buffalo, New York
druggist Boris Reinstein, Bulgarian-American IWW member George Andreychine, and H. Eiduss. But now, even as European prospects dimmed, the situation looked brighter in Asia and the Pacific.
Best of all, from the perspective of the Profintern, was the situation in China, with a young and radical worker's movement beginning to spring to life. Soviet prestige and influence had grown in China throughout the early 1920s, particularly from 1924, when diplomatic recognition by the Peking
government and an agreement on the Chinese Eastern Railroad was achieved. A Chinese labor movement began to take shape, driven by the efforts of railway workers and seamen to organize, backed with Moscow's support. In the South, a breakaway government based in Canton led by Sun Yat-sen
pursued anti-imperialist objectives in conjunction with the Communist Party of China
— an estimated 40 of the 200 delegates at the January 20, 1924 founding convention of the Kuomintang
(KMT) were said to be communists and the disciplined and centralized party established at that time clearly drew upon the Soviet Communist model. In June 1924 Sun's KMT government in Canton established its own military academy at Whampoa
, aided by 3 million rubles in Soviet aid for the purpose as well as Soviet instructors, headed by Vasily Blyukher
.
The working alliance forged between KMT leader Sun and Mikhail Borodin
, chief representative of the Comintern in China was lost following Sun's death in Beijing on March 12, 1925. After the leader's death, jockeying began between left and right factions in the KMT; tension between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party began to build without Sun's calming influence.
On May 30, 1925, a strike in Shanghai
of radical students protesting the arrest of some of their fellows who had been supporting a strike at a cotton mill was fired on by police, killing 12 protestors. A general strike
was declared in the city in response and a "May 30 Movement
" erupted throughout the region. On June 19 a general strike was called in Canton, followed four days later by another incident in which troops fired upon demonstrators in the streets, resulting in a new spate of casualties.
The rapid growth of the May 30 Movement fueled the Comintern's interest in the revolutionary ferment in China. This new perspective was emphasized by Joseph Stalin
, beginning to emerge over the Comintern's Grigory Zinoviev as top leader of the USSR, who in early July 1925 agreed with a reporter for the Tokyo newspaper Nichi Nichi Shimbun
that the revolutionary movement in China, India, Persia, Egypt and "other Eastern countries" were growing and that "the time is drawing near when the Western powers will have to bury themselves in the grave they have dug for themselves in the East."
, the Russian trade unionist Mikhail Tomsky
and General Secretary Solomon Lozovsky
.
In addition to its Moscow headquarters, RILU soon established four overseas offices — Berlin
("Central European Bureau"), Paris
("Latin Bureau"), Bulgaria
("Balkan Bureau") and London
("British Bureau").
In May 1927, the Pan Pacific Trade Union Secretariat
was established in Shanghai
as RILU's coordinating center for Asia and the Pacific.
In 1928, RILU launched the Confederación Sindical Latino-Americana (CSLA) as the Latin American branch of RILU — the first general labor movement in Latin America
. This group was the forerunner of the Confederación de los Trabajadores de América Latina (CTAL), established in 1936.
RILU established national sections around the world. In Britain, the Bureau worked closely with the National Minority Movement
. The Communist Party of Canada
established a national section called the Workers' Unity League
. The American section began in 1922 as the Trade Union Educational League
, succeeded in 1929 by a more radical variant which attempted to establish dual unions, the Trade Union Unity League
.
.
International Federation of Trade Unions
The International Federation of Trade Unions was an international organization of trade unions, existing between 1919 and 1945. IFTU had its roots in the pre-war IFTU....
, an organization branded as class collaborationist
Class collaboration
Class collaboration is a principle of social organization based upon the belief that the division of society into a hierarchy of social classes is a positive and essential aspect of civilization.-Class collaboration under capitalism:...
and an impediment to revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
by the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
. After entering a period of decline in the middle 1930s, the organization was finally terminated in 1937 with the advent of the Popular Front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
.
Preliminary organization
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
head Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev , born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky Apfelbaum , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician...
, the 2nd World Congress
2nd World Congress of the Comintern
The 2nd World Congress of the Comintern was a gathering of approximately 220 voting and non-voting representatives of Communist and revolutionary socialist political parties from around the world, held in Petrograd and Moscow from July 19 to August 7, 1920...
of the Communist International established a temporary International Trade Union Council, commonly known by its Russian acronym, Mezhsovprof. This organizing committee — including members of the Russian, Italian, British, Bulgarian, and French delegations to the Comintern Congress — was presented with the task of organizing "an international congress of Red trade unions.
Soviet
Soviet Russia
Soviet Russia usually refers to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union. It may also denote:* Soviet Russia , magazine of the Friends of Soviet Russia in the United States...
trade union leader Solomon Lozovsky
Solomon Lozovsky
Solomon Lozovsky was a prominent Bolshevik revolutionary, a high official in various parts of the Soviet government, including as a Presidium member of the All-Union Central Council of Soviet Trade Unions, a Central Committee member of the Communist Party, a member of the Supreme Soviet, a deputy...
was named president of this new council, assisted by British unionist Tom Mann
Tom Mann
Tom Mann was a noted British trade unionist. Largely self-educated, Mann became a successful organiser and a popular public speaker in the labour movement.-Early years:...
and Alfred Rosmer
Alfred Rosmer
Alfred Rosmer was a syndicalist leader before World War I and one of the few leaders of that movement to oppose the war from a revolutionary internationalist position....
of France. The Executive Committee of the Communist International
Executive Committee of the Communist International
The Executive Committee of the Communist International, commonly known by its acronym, ECCI, was the governing authority of the Comintern between the World Congresses of that body...
(ECCI) directed the new council to issue a manifesto to "all trade unions of the world" exposing the social democratic
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...
International Federation of Trade Unions
International Federation of Trade Unions
The International Federation of Trade Unions was an international organization of trade unions, existing between 1919 and 1945. IFTU had its roots in the pre-war IFTU....
based in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
as a "yellow" organization and inviting them to join a new revolutionary international union association.
This decision was to mark a split of the international trade union movement that followed the recently achieved split of the international socialist political movement into revolutionary
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
and electorally-oriented
Reformism
Reformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...
Socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
camps. This desire for a new exclusive international of explicitly "Red" union represented a fundamental contradiction with the Comintern's firm insistence that Communists should work within the structure of existing trade unions — an important detail noted at the time by delegate Jack Tanner
Jack Tanner
Jack Tanner may refer to:* Jack Tanner, a fictional presidential candidate in the mockumentary, Tanner '88* Jack Edward Tanner, United States federal judge* Jack Tanner, British trade union leader and syndicalist activist...
of the British Shop Stewards Movement. Tanner's objection was brushed aside as Grigory Zinoviev denied him the floor, referring his complaints to committee.
Historian E.H. Carr argues that the decision to launch a Red International of Labor Unions at all was a byproduct of the era of heady revolutionary fervor that world revolution was around the corner, declaring:
"It was a step taken in a moment of hot-headed enthusiasm and the firm conviction of the imminence of the European revolution; and a device designed to bridge a short transition and prepare the way for the great consummation had unexpected and fatal consequences when the interim period dragged on into months and years."
As the plan for a new labor international moved forward, Mezhsovprof established propaganda bureaus in different countries in an attempt to win the existing unions affiliated to the rival "Amsterdam International," as the International Federation of Trade Unions was commonly known, over to the forthcoming "Red International." These bureaus attracted the most rebellious and dissident trade unionists to their banner while at the same time alienating sometimes conservative union leaderships, already raising charges that what was actually being proffered was dual unionism
Dual unionism
Dual unionism is the development of a union or political organization parallel to and within an existing labor union. In some cases, the term may refer to the situation where two unions claim the right to organize the same workers....
and a destructive split of the existing unions.
On January 9, 1921, ECCI decided that the launch of a new Red International of Trade Unions would take place at a conference to be convened on May Day
May Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....
of that year. An appeal was issued to the trade unions of the world who were "opposed to the Amsterdam International" and called for their affiliation to the new organization. This conclave was ultimately postponed until July, however, so that it could be synchronized with the scheduled 3rd World Congress of the Comintern — travel to and from Soviet Russia being a difficult and dangerous process in these years.
Grandiose claims were made about the new organization, with Lozovsky declaring in a speech in May 1921 that already unions representing 14 million workers had proclaimed their allegiance to the forthcoming Red International. Zinoviev ferociously declared the Amsterdam International to be "the last barricade
Barricade
Barricade, from the French barrique , is any object or structure that creates a barrier or obstacle to control, block passage or force the flow of traffic in the desired direction...
of the international bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
" — fighting words
Fighting words
Fighting words are written or spoken words, generally expressed to incite hatred or violence from their target. Specific definitions, freedoms, and limitations of fighting words vary by jurisdiction...
to social democratic trade unionists.
For their own part, the Social Democratic trade union movement emerged from World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
relatively united, on the offensive, and unbowed. Even before the Profintern was launched, the line in the sand was clearly drawn, with the Amsterdam International declaring at a May 1921 executive session that it was "not permissible for trade union organizations to be affiliated to two trade union International at the same time" and adding that "every organization which affiliates to the political trade union International of Moscow places itself outside the International Federation of Trade Unions." The great civil war within the world trade union movement had begun.
The foundation congress of 1921
The Founding Congress of the Red International of Trade Unions was convened in Moscow on July 3, 1921. The gathering was attended by 380 delegates from around the world, including 336 with voting rights, claiming to represent 17 million of the 40 million trade union members worldwide. The gathering was neither homogeneous nor harmonious, as it quickly became clear that a number of delegates held a syndicalistSyndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
perspective that sought to avoid politics and participation in the existing trade unions altogether, in favor of direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
leading to workers' control of industry
Workers' control
Workers' control is a term meaning participation in the management of factories and other commercial enterprises by the people who work there. It has been variously advocated by anarchists, socialists, Communists, Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, and has been combined with various...
. These delegates sought the new Red International of Labor Unions to be fully independent of the Communist International, seen as a political organization.
Among those expressing such a desire for the organizational independence of RILU from the Comintern was "Big Bill" Haywood of the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
(IWW) — an individual already living in Moscow after skipping bail
Jump bail
To jump bail, or skip bail, is a legal idiom in which a person who has posted bail and been released on bail subsequently fails to appear in criminal court with the intention of avoiding prosecution, sentencing or imprisonment...
to avoid a lengthy prison sentence under the so-called Espionage Act. The IWW's perspective was joined by syndicalist trade unionists that were part of the French and Spanish delegations. Ultimately, however, the syndicalist elements proved a small minority and the Congress approved a resolution sponsored by Mann and Rosmer which called for "the closest possible link" between the Profintern and Comintern, including joint sessions of the organizations, as well as "real and intimate revolutionary unity" between the Red unions and the Communist parties
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
at the national level.
Despite the initiative of starting a new trade union international in direct competition with the previously existing Amsterdam international, the Profintern in its initial phase continued to insist that its strategy was not to "snatch out of the unions the best and most conscious workers," but rather to remain in the existing unions in order to "revolutionize" them. The founding Congress's official resolution on organization declared that the withdrawal from the existing mass unions and abandonment of their memberships to their often-times conservative leaderships "plays into the hands of the counter-revolutionary trade union bureaucracy and therefore should be sharply and categorically rejected."
Still, the Profintern insisted upon a real split of the labor movement, establishing conditions for admission which included "a break with the yellow Amsterdam International." The organization effectively advocated that radicalized workers engage in "boring from within" the existing unions in order to disassociate the full organizations from Amsterdam and for Moscow. Such tactics insured bitter internal division as non-Communist members of the rank-and-file and their elected union leaderships sought to maintain existing affiliations.
As part of its strategy for winning over the existing unions, the Profintern decided to establish a network of what it called "International Propaganda Committees" (IPCs), international associations of radical unions and organized fractional minorities in unions that were established on the basis of their specific industry. These groups were intended to conduct conferences and publish and distribute pamphlets and periodicals in order to propagandize for the idea of revolution and for the establishment the dictatorship of the proletariat
Dictatorship of the proletariat
In Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship of the proletariat refers to a socialist state in which the proletariat, or the working class, have control of political power. The term, coined by Joseph Weydemeyer, was adopted by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the...
. The IPCs were to attempt to raise funds to help sustain their efforts, with the governing Executive Bureau of Profintern subsidizing their publications. By August 1921 a total of 14 IPCs had been established.
The Profintern's International Propaganda Committees proved ineffectual in changing the opinions of union memberships. Unions began to expel their radical dissidents and international unions began to expel those national sections which participated in the activities of the Profintern, exemplified by the October 1921 expulsion of the Dutch Transport Workers' Federation from its international trade organization.
The 2nd World Congress of 1922
As might be expected, the 1922 RILU Congress spent much of its time shaping the application of the Comintern's recently-adopted united front
United front
The united front is a form of struggle that may be pursued by revolutionaries. The basic theory of the united front tactic was first developed by the Comintern, an international communist organisation created by revolutionaries in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.According to the theses of...
policy to the trade union movement. With the prospects for imminent world revolution on the wane, RILU head Solomon Lozovsky proposed an international conference bringing together leaderships of RILU, the Amsterdam International, and various unaffiliated unions — a gathering which was to echo the April 1922 meeting between the Second International
Second International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
, the Two-and-a-Half International
International Working Union of Socialist Parties
The International Working Union of Socialist Parties was a political international for the co-operation of socialist parties.-History:...
, and the Comintern in Berlin "to work out parallel forms and methods of struggle against the offensive of capitalism."
In retrospect, 1922 marked the high-water mark for the Profintern's size and influence in Europe, with a sizable new contingent joining the organization's ranks in France when the Confédération Genérale du Travail (CGT) attempted to discipline and expel its syndicalist members but ended up causing a full scale organizational split in which the majority of French trade unionists affiliated with a new "Red" union.
Additional headway was made in Czechoslovakia, where a majority of trade union members similarly affiliated with RILU, following a campaign of expulsions of Communist individuals and unions by the Social Democratic leadership. In October 1922 the Czech Red unions held a congress of their own, formalizing the split with the Social Democratic unions. It is worthy of mention that the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, in Czech and in Slovak: Komunistická strana Československa was a Communist and Marxist-Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992....
was an extremely large organization in this period, claiming 170,000 members in 1922, dwarfing all but a few Communist parties around the world.
In Bulgaria the All-Bulgarian Federation of unions chose to affiliate with the Profintern outright, but even that movement was split when opponents established a rival organization called the Free Federation of Trade Unions. Spain, too, saw its national labor movement formally divided. The climate was acrimonious as bitter charges and counter-charges levying responsibility for the shattering the trade union movement flew in all directions.
The professed desire of the Profintern for a united front came to fruition of sorts in December 1922, when the organization met at a peace conference in The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
with representatives of the Amsterdam International, presided over by British union leader J.H. Thomas. As was the case with the meeting of the three political Internationals earlier in the year, the session ended in failure, with accusations flying in both directions and Lozovsky's plea for a united front arbitrarily dismissed as a transparent tactical ploy.
This failure was followed up in January 1923 by a joint appeal of the Comintern and Profintern for the creation of a "action committee against fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
," followed in March with the establishment of a formal Action Committee Against Fascism in Berlin, headed by Clara Zetkin
Clara Zetkin
Clara Zetkin was a German Marxist theorist, activist, and fighter for women's rights. In 1910, she organized the first International Women's Day....
. An international conference of this group was called to be held later that same month in Frankfurt, Germany with invitations extended to the parties of the Second International and the unions of the Amsterdam International, but only a few Social Democrats attended, the overwhelming majority of the gathering being Communists. Delegates from Germany, Soviet Russia, France, and Britain united to denounce the Versailles Peace Treaty
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
and the related Occupation of the Ruhr
Occupation of the Ruhr
The Occupation of the Ruhr between 1923 and 1925, by troops from France and Belgium, was a response to the failure of the German Weimar Republic under Chancellor Cuno to pay reparations in the aftermath of World War I.-Background:...
by France to enforce the onerous reparations levied against Germany. The die had been cast, however, and no joint activities between the political or union leaders of the Social Democratic and Communist Internationals would be result from the initiative.
Lozovsky reported on RILU's progress to the 12th Congress of the Russian Communist Party in April 1923, at which he claimed that the Profintern represented 13 million unionists against 14 or 15 million for the rival Amsterdam International. This figure is regarded by at least one serious historian of the matter as "probably exaggerated."
The 3rd World Congress of 1924
The 3rd World Congress of the Profintern opened on July 8, 1924, having been scheduled to begin in Moscow immediately following the 5th World Congress of the Comintern (June 17 to July 8, 1924). Seventy delegates from the Profintern were made "consultative" (non-voting) delegates to the Comintern gathering, assuring a very close connection between the two gatherings.The 1924 Congress formally marked a hardening of the Communist attitude towards the Social Democratic labor movement, declaring that "fascism and democracy are two forms of the bourgeois dictatorship."
The most contentious issue debated by the Congress related to the strategy and tactics of seeking unity with the Amsterdam International, thereby bringing an end to the disruption suffered by the labor movement as a result of the split into two internationals. With forcing the IFTU to capitulate untenable and independent entry of the Russian trade unions into their the industrial federations affiliated with the IFTU, the sole option remaining, in Solomon Lozovsky's view, was to attempt to achieve some sort of fusion of the two Internationals through an international conference. Lozovsky contended that unity was not to be achieved through the sacrifice of the Profintern's program or tactics and the blind acceptance of reformism, but rather was to be accompanied by the penetration of communist ideas into the minds of the rank-and-file trade unionists of the European unions.
A proposal was made by Monmousseau of France calling for a World Unity Congress of the Red and Amsterdam Internationals, and a committee of 35 delegates was selected to debate the proposal and to flesh out the practical details. Following two days of debate, the commission reported back to the assembled Congress, bringing with it a unity proposal that had been accepted in the preliminary hearings with one sold dissenting vote. The final proposal for a unity congress proved little more than a platitude, however, with the resolution declaring that such a gathering "might, after suitable preparation of the masses" prove appropriate. There was no firm directive instructing the Profintern Executive Board to action.
With relations between the Profintern and the IFTU at the point of insoluble stalemate, Soviet trade union authorities began to concentrate on bilateral relationships with social democratic union movements. Particular attention was placed on the unions of Great Britain, with Russian union chief Mikhail Tomsky
Mikhail Tomsky
Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky was a factory worker, trade unionist and Bolshevik leader. He was the Soviet leader of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions.Tomsky attempted to form a trade union at his factory in St...
traveling to the UK in 1924, followed by a reciprocal visit in November of that year of a high-level delegation headed by A.A. Purcell of the Trades Union Congress
Trades Union Congress
The Trades Union Congress is a national trade union centre, a federation of trade unions in the United Kingdom, representing the majority of trade unions...
. From the Soviet standpoint the British unionists were positively affected by their visit, publishing an extensive and generally favorable report of the Soviet situation upon their return to the UK. This month-long visit of the British trade union delegation would be the prototype for a series of similar visits of the Soviet Union by western union leaders.
While the groundwork for ties between the Soviet and western trade union movement began to be successfully laid, the situation between the international organizations based in Amsterdam and Moscow festered. The Second International and the IFTC held a joint meeting in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
during the first week of January 1925 and emerged with a scathing denunciation of the Soviet Union and its sympathizers in the British trade union movement that were organized in a RILU-subsidized organization known as the National Minority Movement
National Minority Movement
The National Minority Movement was a British organisation, established in 1924 by the Communist Party of Great Britain, which attempted to organise a radical presence within the existing trade unions...
. A similar presence in the American Federation of Labor
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...
in the form of the Trade Union Educational League
Trade Union Educational League
The Trade Union Educational League was established by William Z. Foster in 1920 as a means of uniting radicals within various trade unions for a common plan of action. The group was subsidized by the Communist International via the Communist Party of America from 1922...
went without comment owing to the AFL's ongoing refusal to affiliate with the Amsterdam International. These objections by the IFTU failed to stymie continued development of bilateral Soviet-British ties, however, as in April 1925 Tomsky returned to London as part of an effort to establish a joint committee for trade union unity between the two countries.
If Tomsky had the ulterior motive of seeking to win British unionists to the ranks of the Profintern, he was met with a surprising reversal, as E.H. Carr noted in 1964:
"The British leaders had little interest in Profintern, which they secretly regarded, from the experience of the British movement, either as a nuisance or as a sham, and wished, by reconciling the Soviet trade unions with the existing [Amsterdam] International. to strengthen it and give it a turn to the Left. The British delegates probably shocked their Soviet colleagues by coming out openly in favour of the affiliation of the Russian unions to IFTU."
Tomsky, although diplomatic in his reply, rejected the British suggestion out of hand as an abject surrender to the Amsterdam International akin to the 1918 forced surrender of Soviet Russia to Imperial Germany
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, mediated by South African Andrik Fuller, at Brest-Litovsk between Russia and the Central Powers, headed by Germany, marking Russia's exit from World War I.While the treaty was practically obsolete before the end of the year,...
at Brest-Litovsk. Still, with the New Economic Policy
New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who called it state capitalism. Allowing some private ventures, the NEP allowed small animal businesses or smoke shops, for instance, to reopen for private profit while the state continued to control banks, foreign trade,...
in full swing in Soviet Russia, with its associated liberalization of culture and trade, the position of the Soviet trade union movement with relationship to social democratic unions in the West was secure and orderly, despite the failure of efforts to parlay with top leaders of the Amsterdam International.
RILU in the East
As was the case with the Communist International, formal World Congresses of RILU happened with decreasing frequency over the life of the organization. This stands to reason, since RILU World Congresses were scheduled in conjunction with the World Congresses of the Comintern itself, generally launching upon conclusion of the Comintern event. And just as the Comintern began making use of shorter, smaller, and less formal international conventions called "Enlarged Plenums of the Executive Committee" to handle international policy-making, similar gatherings were adopted for RILU, called "Sessions of the Central Council."The 4th Session of the Central Council, held in Moscow from March 9-15, 1926, began just as the 6th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI came to a close. At both of these gatherings Solomon Lozovsky had delivered reports which identified Great Britain — where a miners' strike was in the air — and in particular the countries of Asia and the Pacific as areas presenting the greatest opportunities for the Profintern in its attempt to construct a world revolutionary movement. Amsterdam had paid scant attention to Asia, leaving the field open to the Profintern's efforts, Lozovsky noted in his report to the Comintern Executive. RILU did make an effort to break new organizational ground outside of Europe as early as February 1922 when it established a Moscow office comparable to the Comintern's Eastern Bureau, headed by Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
druggist Boris Reinstein, Bulgarian-American IWW member George Andreychine, and H. Eiduss. But now, even as European prospects dimmed, the situation looked brighter in Asia and the Pacific.
Best of all, from the perspective of the Profintern, was the situation in China, with a young and radical worker's movement beginning to spring to life. Soviet prestige and influence had grown in China throughout the early 1920s, particularly from 1924, when diplomatic recognition by the Peking
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
government and an agreement on the Chinese Eastern Railroad was achieved. A Chinese labor movement began to take shape, driven by the efforts of railway workers and seamen to organize, backed with Moscow's support. In the South, a breakaway government based in Canton led by Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese doctor, revolutionary and political leader. As the foremost pioneer of Nationalist China, Sun is frequently referred to as the "Father of the Nation" , a view agreed upon by both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China...
pursued anti-imperialist objectives in conjunction with the Communist Party of China
Communist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
— an estimated 40 of the 200 delegates at the January 20, 1924 founding convention of the Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
(KMT) were said to be communists and the disciplined and centralized party established at that time clearly drew upon the Soviet Communist model. In June 1924 Sun's KMT government in Canton established its own military academy at Whampoa
Whampoa
Whampoa is the old English transliteration of Huangpu District, Guangzhou, in China.From there, it derives its other meanings, and can also refer to:* Relating to the Whampoa district:...
, aided by 3 million rubles in Soviet aid for the purpose as well as Soviet instructors, headed by Vasily Blyukher
Vasily Blyukher
Vasily Konstantinovich Blyukher Vasily Konstantinovich Blyukher Vasily Konstantinovich Blyukher (also spelled Bliukher, Blücher, etc., , Soviet military commander, was among the prominent victims of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of the late 1930s....
.
The working alliance forged between KMT leader Sun and Mikhail Borodin
Mikhail Borodin
Mikhail Markovich Borodin was the alias of Mikhail Gruzenberg, a Comintern agent and Soviet arms dealer....
, chief representative of the Comintern in China was lost following Sun's death in Beijing on March 12, 1925. After the leader's death, jockeying began between left and right factions in the KMT; tension between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party began to build without Sun's calming influence.
On May 30, 1925, a strike in Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
of radical students protesting the arrest of some of their fellows who had been supporting a strike at a cotton mill was fired on by police, killing 12 protestors. A general strike
General strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...
was declared in the city in response and a "May 30 Movement
May 30 Movement
The May Thirtieth Movement was a labor and anti-imperalist movement during the middle-period of the Republic of China era. It began when Shanghai Municipal Police officers opened fire on Chinese protesters in Shanghai's International Settlement...
" erupted throughout the region. On June 19 a general strike was called in Canton, followed four days later by another incident in which troops fired upon demonstrators in the streets, resulting in a new spate of casualties.
The rapid growth of the May 30 Movement fueled the Comintern's interest in the revolutionary ferment in China. This new perspective was emphasized by Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, beginning to emerge over the Comintern's Grigory Zinoviev as top leader of the USSR, who in early July 1925 agreed with a reporter for the Tokyo newspaper Nichi Nichi Shimbun
Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun
The Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun was a newspaper printed in Tokyo, Japan from 1872 to 1943.In 1875, the company began the world's first newspaper delivery service....
that the revolutionary movement in China, India, Persia, Egypt and "other Eastern countries" were growing and that "the time is drawing near when the Western powers will have to bury themselves in the grave they have dug for themselves in the East."
Personnel and branches
The full-time secretariat of RILU consisted of the Spaniard, Andrés NinAndrés Nin
Andreu Nin i Pérez was a Spanish Communist revolutionary.- Early life :...
, the Russian trade unionist Mikhail Tomsky
Mikhail Tomsky
Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky was a factory worker, trade unionist and Bolshevik leader. He was the Soviet leader of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions.Tomsky attempted to form a trade union at his factory in St...
and General Secretary Solomon Lozovsky
Solomon Lozovsky
Solomon Lozovsky was a prominent Bolshevik revolutionary, a high official in various parts of the Soviet government, including as a Presidium member of the All-Union Central Council of Soviet Trade Unions, a Central Committee member of the Communist Party, a member of the Supreme Soviet, a deputy...
.
In addition to its Moscow headquarters, RILU soon established four overseas offices — Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
("Central European Bureau"), Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
("Latin Bureau"), Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
("Balkan Bureau") and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
("British Bureau").
In May 1927, the Pan Pacific Trade Union Secretariat
Pan Pacific Trade Union Secretariat
The Pan Pacific Trade Union Secretariat was established as the Asia and Pacific branch of the Profintern at a conference in Hankou, China in May 1927. The conference set the headquarters of the PPTU in Shanghai...
was established in Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
as RILU's coordinating center for Asia and the Pacific.
In 1928, RILU launched the Confederación Sindical Latino-Americana (CSLA) as the Latin American branch of RILU — the first general labor movement in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
. This group was the forerunner of the Confederación de los Trabajadores de América Latina (CTAL), established in 1936.
RILU established national sections around the world. In Britain, the Bureau worked closely with the National Minority Movement
National Minority Movement
The National Minority Movement was a British organisation, established in 1924 by the Communist Party of Great Britain, which attempted to organise a radical presence within the existing trade unions...
. The Communist Party of Canada
Communist Party of Canada
The Communist Party of Canada is a communist political party in Canada. Although is it currently a minor or small political party without representation in the Federal Parliament or in provincial legislatures, historically the Party has elected representatives in Federal Parliament, Ontario...
established a national section called the Workers' Unity League
Workers' Unity League
The Workers' Unity League was created in 1929 as a labour central operated by the Communist Party of Canada on the instructions of the Communist International....
. The American section began in 1922 as the Trade Union Educational League
Trade Union Educational League
The Trade Union Educational League was established by William Z. Foster in 1920 as a means of uniting radicals within various trade unions for a common plan of action. The group was subsidized by the Communist International via the Communist Party of America from 1922...
, succeeded in 1929 by a more radical variant which attempted to establish dual unions, the Trade Union Unity League
Trade Union Unity League
The Trade Union Unity League was an industrial union umbrella organization of the Communist Party of the United States between 1929 and 1935...
.
Dissolution
The Profintern was dissolved in 1937 as Stalin's foreign policy shifted towards the Popular FrontPopular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
.
Conventions
| Gathering | Location | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st World Congress | Moscow Moscow Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent... |
July 3-19, 1921 | Establishes RILU. Attended by 380 delegates, 336 with voting rights. |
| 2nd World Congress | Moscow Moscow Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent... |
Nov. 19-Dec. 2, 1922 | Formally adopts "united front" policy for the trade union movement. |
| 3rd World Congress | Moscow Moscow Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent... |
July 8-XX, 1924 | Adopts weak and non-binding call for unity congress with Amsterdam International. |
| 4th Session of the Central Council | Moscow Moscow Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent... |
March 9-15, 1926 | Lozovsky identifies Britain and the East as main areas for Profintern success. |
| 4th World Congress | Moscow Moscow Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent... |
March 17 - April 3, 1928 | |
| International Conference on Strike Strategy | Strasbourg Strasbourg Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,... , Germany |
January 1929 | |
Publications
- G. Zinoviev, The Communist Internationale to the IWW: An Appeal of the Executive Committee of the Third Internationale at Moscow. Foreword by Tom Glynn. Melbourne: Proletarian Publishing Association, October 1920.
- Resolutions and Decisions of the First International Congress of Revolutionary Trade and Industrial Unions. n.c. [Chicago]: Voice of Labor, 1921.
- "Constitution of the Red International of Labor Unions, as of 2nd World Congress — Nov. 1922." Labor Herald Library no. 6. Chicago: Trade Union Educational League, 1923.
- Resolutions and Decisions of the Second World Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions: Moscow — November 1922. Chicago: Trade Union Educational League, 1923.
- M. Tomsky, The Trade Unions, the Party and the State: Extracts of Speeches by Comrade Tomsky at the III Session of the Profintern on June 29, 1923, and... Moscow: Commission for Foreign Relations of the Central Council of Trade Unions of the USSR, 1927.
- A. Lozovsky, What is the Red International of Labor Unions? Red International of Labor Unions, 1927.
- Problems of Strike Strategy: Decisions of the International Conference on Strike Strategy, held in Strassburg, Germany, January 1929 New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1929.
Further reading
- G.M. Adibekov, Krasnyi internatsional profsoiuzov: Ocherki istorii Profinterna. (The Red International of Trade Unions: Studies in the History of the Profintern.) Moscow: Profizdat, 1971. —Translated into German as Die Rote Gewerkschaftsinternationale, Berlin, 1973.
- Birchall, Ian. "Profintern: Die Rote Gewerkschaftsinternationale 1920–1937," Historical Materialism, 2009, Vol. 17 Issue 4, pp 164-176, review (in English) of a German language study by Reiner Tosstorff* Josephine Fowler, "From East to West and West to East: Ties of Solidarity in the Pan-Pacific Revolutionary Trade Union Movement, 1923–1934." International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 66 (2004), pp. 99-117.
- Earl R. Browder, "The Red Trade Union International: The First World Congress of Revolutionary Unions," The Toiler (New York), v. 4, whole no. 192 (Oct. 15, 1921), pp. 9-10.
- B.A. Karpachev, Krasnyi Internatsional profsoiuzov: Istoriia vozniknoveniia i pervye gody deiatel'nosti Profinterna, 1920-1924 gg. (The Red International of Trade Unions: History of the Origins and First Activities of the Profintern, 1920-1924). Saratov: Izdatel'stvo Saratovskogo universiteta, 1976.
- Krasnyi internatsional profsouzov v bor'be za osushchestvlenie leninskoi taktiki edinogo fronta 1921-1923. (The Red International of Trade Unions and the Struggle for Implementation of the Leninist Tactic of the United Front, 1921-1923). Saratov: Izdatel'stvo Saratovskogo universiteta, 1976.
- Kevin McDermott, The Czech Red Unions, 1918-1929: A Study in Their Relation with the Communist Party and the Moscow Internationals. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs/Columbia University Press, 1988.
- Albert Resis, The RILU: Origins to 1923. PhD dissertation. Columbia University, 1964.
- Arthur Rosenberg, "Communism and the Communist Trade Unions" (1932), Mike Jones, trans., What Next. www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/ —First published as "Kommunismus und kommunistische Gewerkschaften" in Internationales Handworterbuch des Gewerkschaftswesen, Berlin, 1932, pp. 979-984.
- Geoffrey Swain, "Was the RILU Really Necessary?," European History Quarterly, No. 1 (1987), pp. 57-77.
- Reiner Tosstorff, "Moscow or Amsterdam? The Red International of Labour Unions, 1920/21-1937." Communist History Network Newsletter, issue 8, July 2000.
- Reiner Tosstorff, Profintern: Die Rote Gewerkschaftsinternationale 1920–1937 (2004)
- Evan E. Young, "Brief Report on the 1st World Congress of RILU: Moscow, July 3-19, 1921." DoJ/BoI Investigative Files, NARA collection M-1085, reel 936, file 202600-1350-2. Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishing, 2007.
External links
- "Profintern Internet Archive," Marxists Internet Archive, www.marxists.org/ Retrieved August 17, 2011. —Links to multiple articles on RILU.
See also
- National Minority MovementNational Minority MovementThe National Minority Movement was a British organisation, established in 1924 by the Communist Party of Great Britain, which attempted to organise a radical presence within the existing trade unions...
- Revolutionäre Gewerkschafts OppositionRevolutionäre Gewerkschafts OppositionThe Revolutionäre Gewerkschafts Opposition was the communist union in Germany during the Weimar Republic. It went underground after the Nazi Party seized control of the government and continued operating until it was crushed by the Nazis in 1935.- Weimar era :The Communist International, and the...
- Trade Union Educational LeagueTrade Union Educational LeagueThe Trade Union Educational League was established by William Z. Foster in 1920 as a means of uniting radicals within various trade unions for a common plan of action. The group was subsidized by the Communist International via the Communist Party of America from 1922...
- Trade Union Unity LeagueTrade Union Unity LeagueThe Trade Union Unity League was an industrial union umbrella organization of the Communist Party of the United States between 1929 and 1935...