‘European Communism’ and the West: From Co-operation to Hostility

Abstract

9 May 1943–25 September 1947: between these two dates the formal phase of the co-operation of European Communism with the West ended, and its transition to hostility began. The first date is that cited in the resolution of the Praesidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International which announced the imminent abolition of that organization: that is of the world party instituted in response to the needs of the Communist Revolution and developed thereafter in response to the need to ensure the external security of the Soviet State. The second date, in turn, indicates the day on which the Zhdanov Report was pronounced. This provided the theoretical and political basis for the foundation of the Cominform — the Communist Information Bureau — whose aim was to co-ordinate anew the activities of part of the European Communist Parties (seven in Eastern Europe, with the understandable exclusion of the German SED, and with the less explicable exclusion of the Albanian CP, plus the French and Italian CPs). In short, the phase of co-operation, spanning the period during the latter stages of, and immediately after, the war, coincided with the absence of any centralized international organization directly dependent on Moscow and aimed at the direction of the Communist movement.