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The Cominform: A Five-Year Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Bernard S. Morris
Bernard S. Morris
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Five years ago the Comintern loomed once again as a spectre on the European horizon with the founding in Poland, September 1947, of the Information Bureau of the Communist Parties of the USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, Rumania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia (expelled June 1948), France, and Italy. It has since become both fashionable and convenient to identify the “Cominform” with all aspects of international Communist activity, ranging from the most general of policy directives to an isolated Communist-led strike. The indiscriminate identification of “Cominform” with international Communist activity provides the layman with a convenient stereotype which spares him the trouble of further inquiry. For the student of Communism, however, this lack of precision merely results in obscuring the actual role of the Cominform, as it is known to us, and more particularly, its function within the configuration of various covert and overt instrumentalities of the international Communist movement. To speak, for example, of a “Cominform” policy of collectivization or of a “Cominform” purge trial in the Balkans, or to suggest by “Cominform” the whole web of controls of national Communist parties maintained by the USSR is to ascribe a role and importance to the Cominform that it simply does not have. For without minimizing the importance of the function the Cominform has come to discharge, it may be said that its role is essentially that of a central, but by no means the most important, propaganda instrument of the international Communist movement, designed primarily to provide public guidance and information to the leadership of various national Communist parties. Thus Pravda and the USSR radio broadcasts furnish daily guidance to the international Communist movement, and the World Federation of Trade Unions is continuously engaged in attempting to bring trade union activity in line with Communist policy.

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Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , April 1953 , pp. 368 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1953

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References

1 This paper does not attempt to undertake an analysis of the various pronouncements made at these meetings. Such an analysis would inevitably develop into a discussion of the world outlook and policy objectives of the USSR after World War II and would not help to clarify the central inquiry of this paper—the function of the Cominform as an organizational body. The reader is referred to the following issues of For a Lasting Peace, For a People's Democracy! for the speeches and reports issued by the Cominform on the four meetings: November 10, 1947, No. 1; December 1, 1947, No. 2; December 15, 1947, No. 3; and January 1, 1948, No. 1 (4), for the resolutions and leading speeches at the founding meeting; February 1, 1948, No. 3 (6), p. 1, for the “communiqué” announcing the establishment of an editorial board; July 1, 1948, No. 13 (16), on the Yugoslav Party; and November 29, 1949, No. 28 (55), and December 2, 1949, No. 29 (56), for the meeting in Hungary.

1 Of the Communist party representatives to the four known meetings of the Cominform, V. Poptomof (Bulgaria), Giuseppe Rossi (Italy), and A. Zhdanov (USSR) have died, presumably of natural causes; T. Rostov (Bulgaria), R. Slansky and B. Geminder (Czechoslovakia) have been executed; and the following have been purged, demoted, or have disappeared: S. Bastovansky, G. Bares, and L. Kopriva (all of Czechoslovakia), J. Kadar (Hungary), W. Gomulka and Z. Kliszko (Poland), and A. Pauker and V. Luca (Rumania).

3 New York Times, September 26, 1949.

4 New York Herald Tribune, October 28, 1947.

5 New York Times, October 27, 1947, p. 11.

6 Washington Post, November 3, 1947.

7 See, e.g., the denial, by Pravda in New York Times, October 11, 1947, p. 6.Google Scholar

8 Both R. Slansky and G. Gheorghiu-Dej emphasized the initiative of the Poles in convoking the original Cominform conference in the speeches they delivered there. Slansky, Thus: “In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that we welcome the initiative of our Polish comrades who gave us the opportunity to meet here and exchange views on our political problems” (“The Activities of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia after the Liberation of the Country,” For a Lasting Peace, For a People's Democracy!, December 1, 1947, No. 2, p. 6).Google Scholar Cf. Gheorghiu-Dej, , “The Communist Party of Rumania in the Struggle for the Democratization of the Country,” For a Lasting Peace, For a People's Democracy!, December 15, 1947, No. 3, p. 5.Google Scholar

9 The editions published today are in Russian, English, French, German, Spanish, Rumanian, Japanese, Arabic, Italian, Chinese, Polish, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Albanian, Swedish, Dutch, and Korean. The first eight are published in Bucharest and the others in their respective countries.

10 New York Times, October 2, 1949, p. 47.

11 Radio Peking, April 7, 1950.

12 The composition of the editorial board was announced as follows: P. Hentges (France); D. (probably Giuliano) Pajetta (Italy); B. Voda-Peksa (Czechoslovakia); Z. Biro (Hungary); A. Buikan (Rumania); H. Halachev (Bulgaria); J. Finkelstein (Poland); M. Gorshich and B. Ziherl (Yugoslavia); Grigoryan, V., Shumilov, N., and Yudin, P., editor-in-chief (USSR), in For a Lasting Peace, For a People's Democracy!, February 1, 1948, No. 3 (6), p. 1.Google Scholar

13 Radio Sofia, June 8, 1950.

14 For a Lasting Peace, For a People's Democracy!, November 10, 1947, No. 1, p. 1.

15 For a Lasting Peace, For a People's Democracy!, No. 10 (13), May 15, 1948, p. 6. For additional response by the Rumanian Communist Party, see ibid., June 15, 1948, No. 12 (15), p. 5, and August 15, 1948, No. 16 (19), p. 6. From Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia, see ibid., September 1, 1948, No. 17 (20), p. 6, and September 15, 1948, No. 18 (21), p. 6.

16 L'Humanité, May 9, 1950, p. 5.

17 The Japanese Communist Party's revised program was published in the Cominform journal of November 23, 1951, No. 47 (159), p. 3, “Immediate Demands of Communist Party of Japan.”

18 For the sequence of events connected with the change in the Japanese Communist Party line, see Colbert, Evelyn S., The Left Wing in Japanese Politics, Institute of Pacific Relations, New York, 1952, pp. 285ff.Google Scholar

19 For a Lasting Peace, For a People's Democracy!, January 27, 1950, No. 4 (64), p. 1.