From BORODIN : Stalin's Man in China, Dan N. Jacobs, 1981
On January 24 [1919], the Soviet government broadcast an invitation to revolutionary groups throughout the world to send delegates to an international congress. But the radius of the broadcast was limited, few listeners were in a position to respond . . . Nevertheless, on March 2, 1919, a congress was convened in the Kremlin. Only one or two delegates arrived from the West. . . . But the congress was held, and its Russian sponsors had sought delegates from many quarters to represent the international working class. Russian-born returnees from abroad were utilized to represent the countries where they had spent their exile. Prisoners of war who had joined the Bolsheviks upon release were appointed delegates of their home countries. More than one fellow traveler . . . happened to be in Moscow . . . .The chief purpose of the congress was to disseminate word of the coming worldwide revolution. But . . . propaganda . . . was not its only goal. Even at this First Congress, harbingers were present that the new Communist International . . . was destined to become primarily an agency not for spreading the revolution, but for maintaining . . . control . . . Angelica Balabanoff, the Russian-Italian revolutionary, who was the chief of the CI�s secretariat, soon realized that power was vested not in her international secretariat, but in a �secret� . . . committee . . . The Bolsheviks wanted �a docile sect, dependent for its very existence upon the Comintern.�10 Although Borodin was in Moscow during the First Congress of the CI, and his future would be affected greatly by its outcome, he was not a delegate . . . But he was attached to the secret Bolshevik party committee, which Balabanoff recognized as controlling the congress and the new organization. And G. Y. Zinoviev, the chairman of the secret committee, used him to communicate decisions to the delegates, Balabanoff, and the rest of the secretariat, and to run various errands.
Once the CI had been formed, however, there were more important uses for Borodin than as message bearer from Zinoviev. If the objective of the recent congress was to be fulfilled, its declarations and instructions had to be spread abroad and agents had to be recruited . . .
10. Angelica Balabanoff, My Life as a Rebel (New York 1938), p. 222.Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England :
Cambridge University Press, 1981, pages 56-7, note on p. 349.