WORLD WAR II  

The Comintern was disbanded in 1943 at the height of World War II in order to assuage the USSR's Western allies. Its record was singularly unsuccessful. An organization whose aim was the co-ordination of world revolution had failed to establish a single new Communist state. Nevertheless, by the time the war was over, the popularity of Communism was at its height. This was due to a number of factors. In the first place most of the fighting against Hitler's Germany had been conducted by the USSR. The Red Army, through its victories at Stalingrad and Kursk, had turned the tide of the war in Europe. It had liberated Berlin and forced the Nazis to withdraw from Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, part of Austria, and a small area of Yugoslavia. In the second place the Communists had appeared to be the most intransigent and daring fighters in the Resistance against the Nazis and the fascists in the countries of occupied Europe. In the third place the Great Depression of the 1930s had shown how unstable capitalism was, while Soviet industrialization was perceived as a model of a rationally planned economy. In the fourth place, the requirements of the international alliance against the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) had led western governments to tone down anti-Communist propaganda. Finally the Communist parties had dropped their sectarian attitude towards other parties and had become active proponents of the continuation of the coalition governments of national unity which had sprung up throughout Europe. Similar demands were also advanced by Japanese and Chinese Communists. Internationally, the USSR hoped that an entente with the Western powers, especially the United States, could provide the space for its own reconstruction after the huge bloodletting of the war years. Communism's immediate goals in the advanced countries now appeared to be anti-fascist "progressive governments" whose aim was not dissimilar from that of socialist parties. In colonial and semi-colonial countries they propounded a policy of anti-imperialist collaboration with the local bourgeoisie. In Europe Communist parties had become powerful not only where Soviet occupation had favoured their success�as in Eastern and Central Europe�but also where they had contributed decisively to the Resistance�as in Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, Italy, and France. Communists also made progress where they had not been a significant force between the wars. In the first post-war elections the Communists obtained 12.7 per cent of the vote in Belgium, 12.5 per cent in Denmark, 23.5 per cent in Finland, 11.9 per cent in Norway, and 10.3 per cent in Sweden. In France and Italy they became the main party of the Left, overtaking their socialist rivals.

The Cold War completely changed the international situation and, with it, the pattern of Communist power. Instead of moderate "progressive democracies", the "People's Republics" established in Central and Eastern Europe turned into proletarian dictatorships following the Soviet model. By the end of 1948 the Communist movement had three components: the USSR, whose prestige as the directing centre of the movement had been greatly enhanced by the war, a system of socialist states in Eastern and Central Europe more or less overlapping with the areas liberated by the Red Army, and a network of Communist parties operating in capitalist countries or involved in anti-colonial struggles. In 1947 a coordinating organization, the Cominform, was established, less centralized than the old Comintern. It included all the European Communist states and the two major Communist parties of capitalist Europe, the French and the Italian.