Cominform
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The Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties, commonly known as Cominform, was the official central organization of the International Communist Movement from 1947 to 1956, as an inexplicit successor to the Third International, otherwise known as Comintern. Cominform was a supranational alliance of Marxist-Leninist communist parties in Europe to coordinate their activity under the direction of the Soviet Union during the early Cold War. Cominform became de facto inactive in Soviet affairs from 1950 and dissolved during de-Stalinization in 1956.
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Overview
Establishment and purpose
The Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties was unofficially founded at a conference of Marxist-Leninist communist parties from across Europe in Szklarska Poręba, Poland in September 1947. Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, called the conference in response to divergences among communist governments on whether or not to attend the Paris Conference on the Marshall Plan in July 1947. It was founded with nine members: the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Bulgarian Communist Party, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the Hungarian Communist Party, the Polish Workers' Party, the Romanian Communist Party, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, the French Communist Party, and the Italian Communist Party. The organization was commonly known as Cominform, an abbreviated form of the Communist Information Bureau, itself a shortened version of the official name.
Cominform was officially established on 5 October 1947 with the intended purpose of coordinating actions between European communist parties under the direction of the Soviet Union. Cominform was not intended to be a replacement or successor to the Comintern, the international organization that advocated world communism and dissolved in 1943, but was considered a type of successor. Cominform was not a world communist party and did not have subordinates or power, limiting itself to its newspaper, For Lasting Peace, for People's Democracy! published in several languages, and to one goal: "to organize an exchange of experience, and where necessary to coordinate the activity of the Communist parties, on the basis of mutual agreement."
Member parties
- Party of Labour of Albania - applied to be received in 1947, but in the end did not adhere
- Bulgarian Communist Party
- Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
- French Communist Party
- Socialist Unity Party of Germany
- Hungarian Communist Party, then Hungarian Working People's Party
- Italian Communist Party
- Communist Party of the Netherlands
- Polish Workers' Party, then Polish United Workers' Party
- Romanian Workers' Party
- Communist Party of the Soviet Union
- Communist Party of Yugoslavia, until its expulsion in 1948.
- Communist Party of the Free Territory of Trieste, until Yugoslavia's expulsion of 1948.
See also
