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The Long Game  'Soviet Trade Unions in the Vanguard of the World Proletarian Movement' Revolutionary expansion no longer an immediate option, the Bolsheviks divided the long-term preparation of world revolution by the Comintern from the practical diplomacy conducted by the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. It was a dual policy - the Commissariat seeking to develop foreign trade and improve relations with the capitalist states, which the Comintern continued to subvert by fostering the Communist movement. Though the Profintern (the Red International of Trade Unions) the Comintern developed links to the labour movement in the West. In the British General Strike of 1926 Moscow sent financial aid to the strikers, resulting in a worsening of Anglo-Soviet relations and the 'war scare' of 1927 which Stalin used to justify his crash course of industrialization in the Five Year Plan. Increasingly the Comintern was dominated by the Stalinists with their Russocentric policy of 'Socialism in One Country'. Because Soviet Russia was the only socialist country, the main duty of the Comintern was to follow its example and protect it from attack. The Trotskyists, with their policy of prioritizing of global revolution, were rooted out, as the Comintern was subjected to the ideological demands of Stalin's domestic political struggles. |
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