INTERIM. – A Latin term indicating the period of time intervening between one event and another, and specifically used in the terminology of public law to refer to the exercise of a function provisionally during the vacancy of an office.
The institution of the *interim* most frequently occurs in relation to organs of government, where, in the case of the absence, resignation, or dismissal of a minister, provision may be made by appointing a minister, who is already head of another department, as *interim* minister. This institution is also applied in diplomatic offices, including those of the Holy See, where the temporary head of a diplomatic mission is called *chargé d’affaires ad interim*. The powers deriving from an *ad interim* appointment, while theoretically the same as those deriving from a definitive investiture, are normally exercised, in accordance with the provisional nature of the appointment, only in relation to urgent acts and matters of ordinary administration.
In history, the term *interim* is associated with a collection of thirty theological propositions promulgated by Charles V, with the approval of the Roman Curia, at Augsburg on 15 May 1548, to calm the religious disturbances that had arisen in Germany following the transfer of the Council of Trent to Bologna. The name of the collection alluded to its provisional character, since it was intended to remain in force until the definitive decrees of the Council.
Serio Galeotti
The Congress could not reach agreement on this point and remained divided between those who deemed it necessary “to defend the fatherland” and more extreme elements who, above the fatherland, looked to the triumph of the proletariat. While the threats of war were more keenly felt and socialist parties were committed to averting it, an extraordinary congress was held in Basel in 1912 which, recalling the efforts then being made by social democracy in favour of peace, exhorted all workers to press their respective governments to adopt a peaceful foreign policy. The tenth congress, scheduled to open in Vienna in August 1914, had on its agenda the question of peace. It never took place, and the war of 1914 brought about the complete split of the Second International, inasmuch as the working classes, against an internationalism at that moment purely ideal and abstract, gave precedence to the national exigency of defending the fatherland, deferring until after the conflict the general question of war and peace. Three tendencies thus emerged: the original, revolutionary, and communist tendency, opposed to war; the patriotic tendency, which saw the Social Revolutionaries and Right Mensheviks in Russia, the Labour Party in England, most Social Democrats in Germany and Austria, the Socialist Party in France, and in Italy a part of the Socialist Party led by Mussolini (expelled after the founding of *Il Popolo d’Italia* on 23 Nov. 1914); and finally a centrist tendency (Kautsky and Adler, Austrians) which pronounced neither for peace nor for war and constituted the International Socialist Union, which continued to bear the name of the Second International. From 1914 onward, the Second International lost part of its importance. In the face of attempts by the Italian socialist Morgari to revive it at the Zimmerwald (Sept. 1915) and Kienthal (Apr. 1916) conferences, the extremist tendency prevailed and formed the Third International (nor did the proposal of the Scandinavian committee to convene a congress in Stockholm in 1917 meet with better fortune, as it could not take place owing to the refusal of passports by the Allied powers); in 1919 it sought to reunite with the Third International but was rejected for failing to accept its conditions. Meetings followed at Lucerne (Aug. 1919) and Geneva (Aug. 1920), but without appreciable results. Meanwhile, socialist groups unwilling to adhere either to the Second or to the Third International gathered in the so-called Vienna International (International Working Union of Socialist Parties), which included the German Independent Socialists, the Austrian Social Democrats, and the British Labourites. In April 1922 these attempted to achieve unification of all proletarian organizations at a meeting in Berlin, but this attempt also failed. Between 1921 and 1922, representatives of British, French, German, Italian, and Belgian socialists met in Paris and then in Frankfurt and approved the so-called Frankfurt decisions, which demanded the cancellation of inter-Allied debts, the end of the inter-Allied occupation of former enemy territories, and the reduction of German war debts. On 27 May 1923, adherents of the Second International and of the Vienna International, meeting in Hamburg, decided to merge the two bodies, stipulating—besides the exclusion of communists—the conditions for the adhesion of other parties or political groups. The Second International thus reconstituted, known as the Amsterdam Socialist International, continued thenceforth to hold periodic meetings, addressing a wide range of issues: from the eight-hour workday to reform of social legislation, from the question of peace to that of colonial expansion and raw materials. To its influence and that of the various socialist parties composing it is partly attributed the peace movement expressed in the Locarno agreements (1925) and the Kellogg Pact (1928). For the bibliography, see below under no. IV. Angelo Tamborra
III. KOMINTERN
Abbreviation for “Communist International,” as “Third International.”1. History
The split in the international socialist movement was particularly caused by the stance taken during the First World War by the socialist parties of the various belligerent countries. When these parties voted in parliaments in favour of war credits, strong oppositions arose within the parties themselves. Delegates of these opposition groups from the belligerent countries met from 5 to 8 Sept. 1915 in Zimmerwald and from 24 to 30 Apr. 1916 in Kienthal in Switzerland. Although these conferences were in a certain sense guided by the Russian émigrés living in Switzerland—Lenin, Trotsky, and Radek—they failed to secure acceptance of their demand for the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war or to obtain consent for the formation of a new International. They had to content themselves with defining the imperialist character of the war, condemning the stance of the “social-patriots,” and demanding as a programme a peace without annexations or reparations.A decisive step in the development toward the founding of the Third International was the Russian Revolution of Nov. 1917. When the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, some time after its victory, changed its name at the Seventh Congress (1918) to that of the Russian Communist Party, the name of the Third International was also established, to be founded as the “Communist International.” The actual founding of the Communist International took place at its Congress, which was attended, from 2 to 9 Mar. 1919, by representatives from Europe, America, China, and Korea. The presence of representatives from Asia gave the Comintern, from its foundation, a distinctive aspect.
The newly founded Communist International immediately set to work, that is, it began the struggle to achieve its goal, world revolution: the uprisings of the Spartacists in Germany (1919), the founding of Soviet republics in Hungary (March 1919) and Bavaria (April 1919) were its work. Of particular importance for the internal organization of the Comintern was the Second Congress (19 July–6 August 1920), at which some tactical characteristics already manifested themselves, for example, Lenin’s tendency to avert a twofold danger: on the one hand, from “centrism” (to the left of the various social-democratic parties that wished to join the Comintern), which could represent a danger to the revolutionary spirit, and on the other hand, from “radicalism,” which Lenin defined as the “infantile disorder of communism” (for example, the German Communists, who initially showed an extremist attitude). Also of great importance were the discussions on the agrarian question and on national and colonial problems. The policy of the Comintern was fixed as a line of seeing both peasants and the “oppressed colonial peoples” as allies of the proletariat (against Trotsky, who considered peasants a “reactionary mass”) and against Rosa Luxemburg, who believed the colonial question could be ignored). The revolutionary overthrow of the colonial peoples was placed, from the very beginning, at the forefront of Comintern policy, which was all the more understandable since revolutionary attempts in Europe had not met with the hoped-for success and the absorption of the proletarian class, which in its majority was social-democratic, had made only scant progress. To attract non-Communist workers, separating them from their leaders, the Comintern began as early as the Third Congress (Moscow, 5 November–5 December 1922), the last held while Lenin was still alive, the tactic of the “united front.” The Trotskyist crisis, which broke out some time after Lenin’s death within the Russian Communist Party, was already reflected in the Fifth Congress of the Comintern (17 June–8 July 1924). The struggles that then began within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union against Trotskyism on the one hand and against the deviation to the right on the other were probably also the cause of the four-year interruption between the Fifth and Sixth Congresses of the Comintern. The Sixth Congress took place only after Stalin’s triumph over Trotsky, from 17 July to 1 September 1928 in Moscow and confirmed the decision of the Fifteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union regarding the exclusion of the Trotskyist opposition. This congress acquired special importance by accepting the definitive formulation of the programme and statutes of the Comintern. Subsequently, especially since Hitler came to power in Germany, the main interest of the Comintern turned to the struggle against fascism and National Socialism, while the tactic of the “united front” was resumed: thus at the Seventh World Congress in August 1935, which in the history of the Comintern is considered the “Congress of the victory of socialism in the U.S.S.R. and of the proletarian united front against fascism and war.”
At the time of the Seventh Congress, the Comintern comprised 76 parties (of which 26 were legal and 50 illegal). These parties had 3,141,000 members, of whom 785,000 were in “capitalist” countries, the rest in the U.S.S.R. In addition, there were 3,753,000 members of Communist youth organizations.
Against the Comintern, Germany, Italy, and Japan concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact (Rome, 6 November 1937).
2. Organization, Programme, and Tactics
The Comintern is “a single united world Communist party” composed of “the Communist parties of the various countries” (§1 of the statutes). This world party is bound by “iron revolutionary discipline” (Great Soviet Encyclopedia, XXXIII [1938], col. 717): “the resolutions of the Comintern Congress, as well as the resolutions of the Executive Committee, are binding on all parties belonging to the Comintern” (Il Congresso del Komintern, Vienna 1920, p. 114 sq.).But not only the individual sections are subject, observing the most rigorous obedience, to the direction of the Comintern; every single member of the Communist party of any country is also subject, since one of the conditions for membership precisely states that he “submits to any resolution taken by the party and by the Comintern” (Protocol of the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern, IV, Hamburg n.d., p. 101). The supreme organ of the Comintern is the World Congress and, between congresses, the Executive Committee, whose resolutions are binding on all sections and must be carried out immediately” (Statutes, §13). The individual sections may raise protests against the Executive Committee’s decisions at the next World Congress of the Comintern, but until then these decisions must be carried out. The leading section of the Comintern is the Communist Party of the Bolsheviks of the U.S.S.R., whose predominant position is ensured by the fact that the number of representatives of a section is calculated on the basis of the number of members of the section represented, and as has already been noted, the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. is by far the strongest party.
This rigid unity of the world party was sought not only through blind obedience to the central leadership but also, from the beginning, by means of an intense and obligatory intelligence service that on the one hand informed the centre from the individual sections and on the other linked the various sections reciprocally: “The sections of the Comintern, especially the sections of the metropolitan countries and their colonies, as well as the sections of two neighbouring countries, must maintain close reciprocal relations both organizational and informational” (Protocol... cited, p. 106). It is precisely this point that suggests a continuity that exists, despite all formal divergences, between the Comintern and the Cominform.
In its programme, the Comintern is completely based on the foundation of Marxism-Leninism, thus insisting on all the specific differences between Marxism-Leninism and that of the Second International. First of all, it opposes the thesis of “revisionism,” according to which Marxism as a social and economic system can be separated from its philosophical and conceptual basis: “The Comintern defends and propagates the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels and applies it, as a revolutionary method of cognizing reality, for its revolutionary transformation” (Protocol... cited, p. 147). Moreover, for the Comintern, the term Marxism essentially means the doctrine of the violent, revolutionary overturning of the social order: “Basing itself on the historical experiences of the revolutionary proletarian movement of all continents and all peoples, the Comintern in its theoretical and practical awareness unconditionally rests on revolutionary Marxism and its further evolution, Leninism, which is nothing other than Marxism at the epoch of imperialism and the proletarian revolution” (ibid.). In the concept of the Comintern, the conquest of power by the proletariat is not “at all a conquest achieved by obtaining a parliamentary majority... The power of the bourgeoisie can be broken only by the resolute application of violence by the proletariat” (Protocol... cited, p. 65 sq.).
According to Article I of the statutes, the goal of this struggle is the “establishment of the world dictatorship of the proletariat” and “the creation of a world federation of socialist Soviet republics to eliminate classes completely and realize socialism, the first stage of communist society.”
Although the formation of communist society, according to the concept of historical materialism (v.), will occur as the logical result of historical evolution, this will not be realized without the conscious contribution of man and, indeed, will require the active struggle, waged with all energies, of communists. “A communist party must, therefore, in its tendency to have only truly active members, demand from each of them that they place their strength and their time, as much as they can spare and considering the conditions in which they find themselves, at the disposal of the Party and that they dedicate all their efforts to the service of this cause” (Theses and Resolutions of the Third World Congress of the Comintern, ed. of the Communist International, 1921, p. 110).
For the strategy and tactics of the Comintern, the Leninist principle of the uneven development of capitalism in various countries was normative. According to this principle, the victory of communism should not be conceived as a single act to be realized simultaneously in all countries; rather, one should be content with the possibility that socialism might be realized in a few countries or even in a single country. But this does not mean that the leadership of the Comintern, and Zinoviev in particular, were not convinced, especially in the early years after the Russian Revolution, of the imminent advent of world revolution. Indeed, for a time, the Comintern saw world revolution as the only way out of the internal difficulties of the young Soviet Union. However, to the extent that the immediate realization of world revolution proved impossible, the possibility of the advent of socialism in a single country was admitted, and this became one of the principal points of contention between Stalin and Trotsky, who pinned his hopes directly on world revolution.
But this did not in any way signify a renunciation of world revolution, for whose realization two paths were considered: the outbreak of an imperialist war and the preparation of individual revolutions in various countries. As regards the first path, it was simply a matter of taking good advantage of the opportunity that a new war would present for communism by bringing the entire bourgeois world to collapse and complete ruin. In the second case, the main task was seen as the absorption of the proletarian masses through the destruction of social democracy. The twelfth plenary session of the Executive Committee of the Comintern declared: “Only when the main blow is struck against social democracy, this principal social pillar of the bourgeoisie, will it be possible to defeat and overthrow with success the greatest enemy of the proletarian class: the bourgeoisie” (L’Internazionale Comunista, 1932, 9-10, p. 384).
To this end—of winning over the proletarian masses by drawing them away from their social democratic leaders—two tactical means were especially employed: the tactic of the “united front built from below” and the tactic of “contingent demands.” In the tactic of the united front, it appeared only superficially to be an agreement with the leaders of social democracy, whereas in reality this united front was not to be a coalition at all; it was not to be built from above, but from below. The task consisted in the tactic of paralyzing all other leaders and excluding them by exposing them as mediocrities or presenting them as “cowards,” “ambitious,” and “social traitors.” In this sense, Molotov, at the tenth plenary session of the Executive Committee of the Comintern in July 1929, insisted on “the extraordinary importance of the tactic of the united front” in its new forms, in its exact execution “from below,” and specified: “Today more than ever the tactic of coalitions between revolutionary and reformist organizations is inadmissible and harmful. With all the more energy must we insist on the importance of the struggle for the predominance of communist parties in the actions of the masses” (Protocol of the 10th Plenary Session of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, Hamburg n.d., p. 417). At the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern, it was decided: “The intensification of the struggle against social democracy shifts the main decisive weight toward the united front organized from below, but does not absolve communists from the duty of distinguishing between misguided social democratic proletarians and the leaders of social democracy who have taken on the role of servants of imperialism” (Protocol... cited, IV, p. 30).
In the tactic of contingent demands, the communist does not address himself solely to the proletarian masses whom he seeks to radicalize, but also to non-proletarian masses, to whom he presents himself as the most energetic and effective defender of their interests; in this tactic, with great artistry, case by case, those elements of the communist program that are considered unacceptable are concealed, while a partial demand, taken from the general program, is presented as one of the essential pillars of the communist program. This system was especially employed among peasants and colonial peoples. With regard to peasants, the program of the Comintern considers the following contingent demands: “The policy of taxation, mortgage indebtedness, the struggle against usurious capital, the lack of land for poor peasants, rent, usufruct rights, etc. Starting from these partial demands, the communist party must intensify its requests until they are united under the slogan of the confiscation of large estates and that of the government of workers and peasants” (Protocol... cited, p. 98). In this way, everything is first promised to the peasant, who is told that he will receive all the land, only to be quickly collectivized, that is, expropriated in such a way that the peasant ends up losing everything. Thus, the communists always found something to offer to the various classes of the population: to socialists, Marxism and the class struggle; to democrats, “true democracy”; to radicals, the struggle against the obscurantism of the Church and the secularization of schools; to liberals, the struggle for human rights and, in particular, for civil liberties (one need only recall, for example, the liberal tones that communist press recently adopted on the occasion of the decree of the Holy Office against communism!); these liberties will later be shamelessly exploited for communist propaganda; to nationalists and patriots, the most effective representation of national interests (for example, the propaganda recently unleashed by the communists, in the context of the struggle against the Marshall Plan, against the partial renunciation of sovereignty); and even to Christian faithful, the idea of social justice and the pathos of universal “love of neighbor,” and, in recent times, to all the peoples of Europe weary of war, propaganda for peace. Thus, all, without explicitly desiring the advent of communism, will contribute to its realization.
3. Dissolution
This world party of communists, directed centrally from Moscow and bound by iron discipline toward the realization of world revolution, naturally made it more difficult for the Soviet Union to collaborate with the Allies during the Second World War. To ensure, therefore, in all the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition “a general national strengthening and the mobilization of the masses in favor of a possible victory over sovereignty,” the presidium of the Comintern, on 15 May 1943, took the resolution to dissolve itself. Stalin himself motivated the dissolution by the necessity, on the one hand, of neutralizing the anti-Comintern pact and the propaganda connected with it, and, on the other, of eliminating any appearance that the communist parties in various countries might act solely on the basis of orders received from Moscow.IV. The fourth I
It came into being following the secession from the Comintern of the extremist current, represented chiefly by Trotsky. When, after the October Revolution (1917), the communist leaders of the Third International took power in Russia, they felt the full weight and responsibility of this and were compelled to adapt ideology and revolutionary programmes, both internally and internationally, to the exigencies of practical life. To Trotsky this seemed incompatible with the original idea of Marx and Lenin, who envisaged the fulfilment of communism only in a world revolution and not, as Stalin intended, through the so-called “communism in one country” (cf. La révolution trahie, Paris 1936).Shortly before Lenin’s death, in opposition to the tendencies towards pronounced bureaucracy within the party and the Soviet State—undoubtedly imposed at that particular moment by the exigencies of reconstruction—Trotsky on 8 March 1923 addressed a letter to the party in which he demanded: “freedom of discussion of political and economic problems; implementation of democracy within the party, with elections and not appointments, free rein to the youth forces, etc.” Stalin, who was in no way inclined to subordinate the forces of the U.S.S.R. to the implementation of the idea of permanent revolution, and who bore precise governmental responsibilities, gradually, over a struggle lasting five years, excluded Trotsky and his faction from all political activity. Exiled to Kazakhstan in 1928, Trotsky found refuge abroad in 1929. In France, in 1931, he founded the “Communist International Left” (the so-called Leninist communists), whose doctrine was based on the “pure” and “authentic” interpretation of Lenin’s communism in opposition to Stalin’s adaptation. From 1934 to 1936, the operations ordered by Stalin within the Russian Communist Party and the Third International intensified the secessions of the opposition in favour of the Trotskyist Fourth International, so much so that at the Paris Congress of 1936 there were present more than 600 delegates, representing about 126 organizations. The Fourth