Paul Levi and the Turning Point of 1921: Bolshevik Emissaries and International Discipline in the Time of Lenin

Abstract

On its formation in 1919, the president of the Communist International (Comintern), Grigori Zinoviev, described it as being no more than a ‘propaganda association’.³ For its secretary, Karl Radek, it was ‘merely a symbol’, while the chairman of the German Communist Party (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands; KPD), Paul Levi, called the Comintern an ‘expression of the solidarity of the international proletariat with the Russian Revolution’.⁴ At its second congress in July—August 1920, the Comintern therefore set itself the objective of becoming ‘the fighting organ of the international proletariat’, able to provide a centralized, supra-national form of organization with the authority to intervene directly in the affairs of movements in different countries.⁵ Far from discouraging the Bolsheviks, the ebbing of the first wave of revolution in Europe — from Germany to Poland, passing through Hungary, Austria and then Bohemia and Italy — strengthened their desire to constitute a true general staff of the world revolution; a disciplined army answering to a centralized command. This was the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI).

Levi himself has no idea of the significance of the differences existing between him and the executive.¹

Karl Radek

The executive conducts itself simply as a Cheka acting beyond Russia’s borders.²

Paul Levi