The International Front Organisations since the Second World War

Abstract

The success in the 1930s of what Münzenberg cynically called his ‘Innocents’ Club’¹ had shown the potential use of those latent forces in Western public opinion that could be mobilised to Soviet advantage. This source of support was greatly increased by Russia’s military performance after Hitler’s invasion of the USSR and by the legitimate admiration widely evoked for the major part ultimately played by the Soviet armed forces in Hitler’s defeat. There was therefore an obvious need and an opportunity, after 1945, for new permanent international front organisations adapted to post-war conditions. It was, moreover, realised that in spite of earlier successes, the front organisations of the 1930s had often been improvised, however brilliantly, and their coordination had often been haphazard. Nor was the need for new front organisations due only to their relatively elementary structure in the 1930s. During the war, the techniques of mass communication had made significant advances and these were soon harnessed to a new and more comprehensive ‘solar system’ of Soviet-controlled international front organisations, designed to match the emergence of the USSR after 1945 as the world’s second power.