The Origin of the International Front Organisations, 1919–39

Abstract

The Communist front organisations owe their origin to Lenin. In January 1919 he invited left-wing groups in England, Ireland, France and the United States to attend the founding Congress of a new Third (Communist) International, the Comintern. This took place in Moscow in March, five years after Lenin had originally decided to launch it.¹ The appeal made at this First Comintern Congress to workers everywhere to rally to the support of the new Soviet régime in Russia was a successful propaganda operation which helped to stimulate industrial unrest in a disorganised Europe still suffering from the consequences of the First World War. That national Communist parties were expected to conform to Moscow’s instructions emerged from Lenin’s ‘Left-wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder’, published in April 1920, which gave details about the tactics to he followed by the new-born parties in their own countries.