The Comintern and Asia : ideas and realities

Abstract

The 'April Theses' submitted by Lenin to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party early in 1917 included a call for the foundation of a new international socialist movement to guide and coordinate world communism.'*' In Lenin's opinion there were two main imperatives for such an organisation: the need to provide an alternative to the reformist (as opposed to revolutionary) Second International; and the perceived imminence of socialist revolution throughout Europe. The First Congress of the Communist International subsequently convened in Moscow in March 1919, by which time the Bolsheviks had seized state power in Russia and revolutionary prospects elsewhere still appeared favourable. Under Lenin's forceful patronage, the Comintern seemed set to play a leading role in the attempt to realise those prospects.