Executive Committee of the Communist International
The Executive Committee of the Communist International, commonly known by its acronym, ECCI (Russian acronym ИККИ - for Исполнительный комитет Коммунистического интернационала), was the governing authority of the
Organizational history
Establishment
The Communist International was established at a gathering convened in Moscow at the behest of the
The conference which ultimately declared itself the
A commission (
Selected as President of ECCI was
Although no more than the nucleus of an actual organization was created, hampered by difficult communications in the isolation of the blockade, the skeleton ECCI immediately began to issues a series of declarations and manifestos to the workers and nations of the world. These included a manifesto of ECCI to the workers and sailors of all countries on the
The early ECCI was, in short, to a large extent a propaganda body, aiming to stir the working class to socialist revolution. In the estimation of historian E.H. Carr, the summer and fall of 1920 marked the high-water mark for the prestige of the Comintern and its hopes of promoting world revolution.[14] There would be, however, other functions for the organization and the executive committee which directed it.
From provisional to permanent status
Owing to poor communications and the difficulty of individuals crossing the frontier during the blockade and
During this interval the Comintern, through ECCI and the permanent staff of the organization, began to fund the various communist parties of the world, attempting to add practical support to the literary fusillade which emanated from Moscow. Over time this financial aid provided by the Comintern would help to bind the various national parties to the central body. Still, it would be facile to reduce loyalty to the Comintern and its governing body, ECCI, to mere finances. The array of national communist parties saw themselves in a very real sense as national subdivisions of a single world party and they accepted centralization as a matter of principle and direction in revolutionary strategy and tactics from Moscow, the home of the only successful proletarian revolution as logical and natural.
Although Jane Degras in an appendix to her 1956 three volume compendium of Comintern documents intimates that the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern directly elected the membership of ECCI,[16] the stenographic proceedings of the congress published in 1991 indicates that this was not actually the case. At the close of the final regular session of the congress, held on August 6, 1920, a list of ECCI participants was hurriedly discussed and adopted by a vote of the delegates. Russia, by virtue of the size and importance of its party, was allocated five delegates on the executive committee, to be joined by one delegate each from the following nations: Great Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Poland, Finland, the Far East (Korea), and the Middle East (Iran).[17] No specific individuals were voted upon by the assembled delegates.
This decision seems to have been rapidly modified by ECCI itself after conclusion of the congress, as Degras lists by name a 26-member body that was in place over the course of the next year. Included, in addition to the five Russian delegates, were two Americans (one each from the rival
In the aftermath of the 2nd Word Congress, a five-member "little bureau" was also chosen to coordinate the day-to-day activities of the Comintern. This group included the Russians Zinoviev, Bukharin, and
The
ECCI was subsequently enlarged in 1921-22, as new Communist Parties were allotted delegates with consultative votes while other parties were allowed a second vote. The countries exercising two votes on ECCI at the time of the
Although not originally envisioned as such, formal gatherings of the "Enlarged Executive Committee of the Communist International" rapidly came to supplant the World Congresses of the Comintern.
The 4th World Congress established the
The
The loss of autonomy
It was the Political Secretariat of the Comintern that de facto governed the
Subordination of national Communist Parties to the Communist International was complete: in any given country there can be only one Communist Party affiliated to the Communist International and each represented a Section of the Communist International in that country. The decisions of the ECCI were obligatory for all the Sections of the Communist International. And although the Sections had the right to appeal against decisions of the ECCI to the World Congress, they had to execute them, pending the decision of the World Congress. On the other hand, ECCI had the right “to expel from the Communist International, entire Sections, groups and individual members who violate the program and rules of the Communist International or the decisions of the World Congress and of the ECCI”.[26]
Dissolution
The Communist International was dissolved by resolution of the Presidium of the ECCI, May 22, 1943.[27]
Plenums of ECCI
Event | Year held | Dates | Location | Delegates |
---|---|---|---|---|
1st Enlarged Plenum of ECCI | 1922 | Feb. 24 to March 4 | Moscow | 105 |
2nd Enlarged Plenum of ECCI | 1922 | June 7–11 | Moscow | 41 + 9 |
3rd Enlarged Plenum of ECCI | 1923 | June 12–23 | Moscow | |
4th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI | 1924 | June 12 and July 12–13 | Moscow | |
5th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI | 1925 | March 21 to April 6 | Moscow | |
6th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI | 1926 | Feb. 17 to March 15 | Moscow | 77 + 53 |
7th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI | 1926 | Nov. 22 to Dec. 16 | Moscow | |
8th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI | 1927 | May 18–30 | Moscow | |
9th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI | 1928 | February 9–25 | Moscow | 44 + 48 |
10th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI | 1929 | July 3–19 | Moscow | 36 + 72 |
Enlarged Presidium of ECCI | 1930 | February 25-?? | Moscow | |
11th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI | 1931 | March 26 to April 11 | Moscow | |
12th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI | 1932 | Aug. 27 to Sept. 15 | Moscow | 38 + 136 |
13th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI | 1933 | Nov. 28 to Dec. 12 | Moscow |
Important members of ECCI
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See also
- Communist Women's International
- Young Communist International
- Red International of Labour Unions
- Krestintern
- International Red Aid
- International Worker's Relief
Footnotes
- ^ John Riddell, "Introduction" to Founding the Communist International: Proceedings and Documents of the First Congress, March 1919. New York: Anchor Foundation/Pathfinder Press, 1987; pg. 8.
- ^ Riddell, "Introduction" to Founding the Communist International, pg. 10.
- ^ Jane Degras (ed.), The Communist International, 1919-1943: Documents. In Three Volumes. London: Oxford University Press, 1956; vol. 1, pg. 5.
- ^ James W. Hulse, The Forming of the Communist International. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964; pg. 18.
- ^ Hulse, Founding the Communist International, pg. 18.
- ^ Franz Platten, "Resolution on Organizing the International," in Riddell (ed.), Founding the Communist International, pp. 255-256.
- ^ E.H. Carr, A History of Soviet Russia. In Fourteen Volumes. London: Macmillan, 1953-78; vol. 3, pg. 124.
- ^ Carr, A History of Soviet Russia, vol. 3, pp. 131-132.
- ^ Text in Degras (ed.), The Communist International, vol. 1, pp. 48-50.
- ^ Text in Degras (ed.), The Communist International, vol. 1, pg. 50.
- ^ Extract in Degras (ed.), The Communist International, vol. 1, pp. 51-53.
- ^ Text in Degras (ed.), The Communist International, vol. 1, pp. 54-58.
- ^ Extract in Degras (ed.), The Communist International, vol. 1, pp. 48-50.
- ^ Carr, A History of Soviet Russia, vol. 3, pg. 165.
- ^ a b c Degras, The Communist International, vol. 1, pg. 453.
- ^ "The Executive Committee elected at the second congress consisted of..." See: Degras, The Communist International, vol. 1, pg. 453.
- ^ John Riddell (ed.), Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite!: Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress, 1920. In Two Volumes. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1991; vol. 2, pg. 777.
- ^ The timing and mechanism of this expansion is unclear. The full list of those elected appears in Degras, The Communist International, vol. 1, pg. 453.
- ^ Degras, The Communist International, vol. 1, pp. 453-454.
- ^ a b Degras, The Communist International, vol. 1, pg. 454.
- ^ Branko Lazitch and Milorad M. Drachkovitch, Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern: New, Revised, and Expanded Edition. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1986; pp. xxix-xxx.
- ^ Lewis Chester, Stephen Fay, Hugo Young, "The Zinoviev Letter", Heinemann, 1967, p. xi.
- ^ Keith Jeffery, "MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949", Bloomsbury, 2010, p. 216-22.
- ^ "James Ramsay MacDonald". Number Ten website. Retrieved 25 July 2012.
- ^ Erik P. Hoffmann, Soviet Foreign Policy Aims and Accomplishments from Lenin to Brezhnev, Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, Vol. 36, No. 4, Soviet Foreign Policy (1987), pp. 10-31
- ^ The Programme of the Communist International 1929. Marxists.org. Retrieved on 2013-07-26.
- ISBN 1-85043-035-7.
Further reading
- Mike Taber (ed.), The Communist Movement at a Crossroads: Plenums of the Communist International's Executive Committee, 1922-1923. [2018] John Riddell, trans. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2019.