Stalin and the Third Period, 1928–33

Abstract

In 1928 Comintern theoreticians had detected unmistakable signs of a new revolutionary upsurge, impending imperialist wars and the danger of foreign intervention against the USSR. Capitalism was approaching its final crisis and the historic victory of socialism was at hand. The reality could not have been more devastating or unexpected: the Nazi rise to power, the brutal destruction of the mighty German labour movement and the resultant imbroglio of communist theory and practice. It is no wonder, then, that the ‘Third Period’ of Comintern history has been the subject of intense debate. Admittedly, there is a near universal consensus that the ‘ultra-leftist’ tactics of these years proved disastrous, in some cases suicidal. Nowhere was revolutionary rhetoric translated into action; the membership of most communist parties plummeted and only very slowly recovered; communist influence in national working-class organisations declined with the imposition of a sectarian ‘united front from below’ policy; and inner-party democracy and open debate, already stifled by the attack on the Trotskyite-Zinovievite United Opposition, were all but emasculated as Stalinist ‘bureaucratic centralism’ took hold.