Between global aspirations and local realities: the global dimensions of interwar communism

Abstract

This article explores the global dimension of communism during the interwar period. It criticizes a literature that either depicts communist parties as small ‘red armies’ obeying any order from Moscow, or focuses exclusively on the local level and ignores any international aspects. The article first discusses attempts of communist leaders to create a ‘world party’ based in Moscow. It next analyses the conflicts between a globally acting communist leadership and rank-and-file members concerned about their local circumstances. Finally, it highlights the role that internationalism played on the local level. Such an approach – which locates ‘the global’ on the local level, both in terms of how internationalist ideas informed people's behaviour in local contexts and in terms of how they resisted forms of globalism – might provide a means for bridging the gap between global and local histories.

Gigantes. Biografía heroica y cultura transnacional comunista en los años treinta

“…Más bien ha revitalizado unas coordenadas temáticas y metodológicas subyacentes en la tradición de los estudios sobre comunismo, habitualmente atentos a su alcance internacional. Pero, sobre todo, se ha interesado por ciertas escalas de compresión: por las mecánicas de trabajo y las claves político-culturales manejadas en las instancias supranacionales, comenzando por la propia IC, o por las dinámicas de retroalimentación establecidas entre los planos de lo global y las múltiples realidades locales (Häberlen, 2012). El cambio de perspectiva queda ilustrado si contrastamos los temas a debate presentes en la agenda historiográfica de los años noventa -tras la apertura de los archivos soviéticos-y los más recientes: antes volcados en la obsesiva cuestión de la sujeción a Moscú y después en intentar desenmarañar la complejidad de las relaciones centro/periferia .…”

“…Joachim Häberlen (2012) ha subrayado la percepción de la URSS no como centro impositivo, sino como lugar donde parecía que «los sueños se habían hecho realidad». Esa fue la visión entre los afiliados o simpatizantes comunistas europeos o americanos de los años treinta.…”

Anti-fascism in the Nordic Countries

“…Also, as Peter Cole and David Featherstone have underlined, apart from the Marine Transport Workers' Industrial Union, the official maritime trade unions in the USA, Britain and elsewhere where preominantly exclusionary and segregationist (Cole 2007;Featherstone 2008). Similar calls for multiracial spaces and organisations by ISH activists faced similar problems in the early 1930s (Featherstone 2015; for a general discussion, see Häberlein 2012).…”

The Communist Transnational? Transnational studies and the history of the Comintern

“…One additional benefit could be in “locating the global” in the local, finding areas where rank‐and‐file communists were part of a global community, further moving away from focusing on the Comintern bureaucracy or the leadership of communist parties. This position is one for which Joachim Haberlen has advocated (Haberlen, ).…”