Chronology: Comintern Aesthetics – Between

Politics and Culture

dominick lawton
UC Berkeley

The purpose of this chronology is to provide a basic guide and reference for the pe-
riod that serves as the backbone of this volume. Many – indeed, most – of the nu-
ances of its history are inaccessible through a timeline alone, and so have been left
out; readers are encouraged to pursue this history in more detail by referring to the
individual chapters of the volume. Visually, the timeline has been separated into
two columns: one devoted to the political developments of the interwar years and
the Third International’s institutional history, from its birth as the self-­designated
vanguard of the world revolution to its collapse in the Second World War; the
other to the radical and internationalist cultural ferment that surrounded, and was
to a degree fostered by, the Comintern. However, this division is a contrivance of
presentation. Far from assuming any clean separation of politics and culture (espe-
cially in this era), our goal is for readers to perceive their intertwining trajectories
and to read the two strands of the timeline in conjunction with each other.

POLITICS CULTURE
Approx. 1912–14: Russian futurists
energetically situate themselves within the
international avant-garde, proclaiming
their artistic independence and superiority
with respect to Parisian modernism and
Italian futurism.
1914: Second International of European
socialists and social democrats breaks apart
over member parties’ support of their national
governments in the First World War. Vladimir
Lenin denounces this “social chauvinism” and
calls for a more vigorously internationalist
Third International.
xiv Chronology
POLITICS
1916: Lenin writes Imperialism, the Highest
Stage of Capitalism, which develops a Marxist
theory of empire as a product of advanced
capitalism. The text gives a foundation for
linking anti-capitalist revolutionary socialism
to anti-imperialism, arguing that revolution
may spread from peripheral colonies to the
core capitalist countries.
1917: February Revolution in Russia leads to
overthrow of the monarchy and establishment
of a bourgeois provisional government,
uneasily sharing power with the Petrograd
Soviet (Russian for “council”) of workers’
and soldiers’ deputies. Months of political
turmoil culminate in the October Revolution,
resulting in Soviet power under Bolshevik
leadership.
1918: Armistice between Allies and Central
Powers formally ends the First World War.
Civil war breaks out in Russia between the
Bolshevik Red Army and anti-Bolshevik
Whites. State-managed war communism
instituted by Bolsheviks.
1919: Revolutionary failure in Europe with
the bloody suppression of the revolutionary
Spartacist Uprising in Germany and collapse
of short-lived Soviet Republic in Hungary (in
which Georg, or György, Lukács participates
as a commissar). Third, or Communist,
International (Comintern) officially convened
at its First Congress in Moscow, chaired by
Grigory Zinoviev.
CULTURE
1917: Foundation of Proletkult (Proletarian
Culture), a mass organization with the
project of creating a new, revolutionary,
and genuinely socialist culture through
literature, agitation, and the visual and
performing arts. Key figures include
Alexander Bogdanov, a former rival
of Lenin’s for Bolshevik leadership,
and Anatoly Lunacharsky. Proletkult
combines an ideology of autonomous
proletarian culture with an ecumenical
and experimental approach in practice,
with the participation of a number of pre-
war cultural luminaries; Lenin himself is
sharply critical of the organization and the
whole concept of “proletarian culture.” On
another end of the aesthetic spectrum are
the futurists, who embrace the Revolution
as an opportunity to realize their avant-
garde aesthetic program.
1917–18: The Fine Arts Section of
the Soviet People’s Commissariat of
Enlightenment (or Narkompros, headed by
Lunacharsky) uses state funds to support
independent avant-garde organizations
in the visual arts (“Left Art” groups).
Maxim Gorky founds the publishing house
“World Literature” under the auspices of
Narkompros, showcasing literature from
around the globe translated into Russian.

1920: Second Comintern Congress held in
July and August, with delegates from thirty-
seven countries; Comintern’s institutional
structure established, including an Executive
Committee (ECCI) in Moscow. At the
congress, Indian communist (and Mexican
Communist Party founder) M.N. Roy
argues against Lenin’s support for strategic
alliances with bourgeois nationalists in the
colonial world. First Congress of the Peoples
of the East held by the Comintern in Baku
in September. The Comintern modifies
the First and Second International’s slogan
“Workers of the World, Unite!” to “Workers
and Oppressed Peoples of the World, Unite!,”
emphasizing the International’s anti-colonial
agenda. Meanwhile, end of a decade of armed
struggle in the Mexican Revolution.
1921: Red Army defeats White Armies, but
its campaign to expand into Polish territory is
repelled. Comintern begins to send emissaries
to develop communist parties worldwide,
including Europe and China. ECCI proclaims
“United Front” policy of cooperation with
reformists and social democrats, with the
aim of winning over their rank and file to
further revolutionary aims. New Economic
Policy (NEP) instituted in the Soviet Union,
a move away from war communism towards
a provisional mixed public-private economy.
Communist University of Toilers of the
East (KUTV) opened in Moscow to train
revolutionary cadre in the colonial world,
attracting students from Ho Chi Minh, M.N.
Roy, and Sen Katayama to African American
communist Harry Haywood and Turkish poet
Nâzım Hikmet.
1922: Benito Mussolini’s Fascists take power
in Italy. ECCI resolves that the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) enter a united
front with the Guomindang, Sun Yat-Sen’s
bourgeois nationalist party, and offers the
Comintern’s resources and advisers to help
build the Guomindang as well as the CCP.
Official founding of Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR).
Chronology xv
1920: At Second Comintern Congress,
establishment of short-lived Kultintern
(Cultural International) under
Lunacharsky, with mission to spread
Proletkult internationally and eventually
call a World Proletkult Congress. High
points of Civil War culture with mass
revolutionary spectacles in Petrograd and
Vladimir Tatlin’s planned Monument to
the Third International (Tatlin’s Tower).
By year’s end, Proletkult denounced by
Bolshevik Central Committee and absorbed
by Narkompros. All-Russian Association
of Proletarian Writers (VAPP) founded
in Moscow; it militates against aesthetic
modernism, futurism, and the avant-garde
and supports strictly proletarian writers,
not bourgeois sympathizers.
1921: From Berlin, Willi Münzenberg
founds Mezhrabpom, the Workers’ Aid
Organization (soon to sponsor close links
between German and Soviet filmmakers
via its Mezhrabpomfil’m studio). Ill and
disaffected, Gorky leaves Russia for Italy.
The critic Aleksandr Voronsky founds
the journal Red Virgin Soil, which will
combine a Marxist editorial line with a
tolerant attitude towards bourgeois “fellow-
travellers,” including many of the most
popular Soviet writers of the 1920s. State
support withdrawn from Left Art groups.
1922: Jamaican-American poet Claude
McKay travels to Moscow and helps
redirect Comintern’s attention towards the
struggle of African Americans, speaking at
its Fourth Congress. Association of Artists
of Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR) formed,
advocating for a strictly proletarian,
technically realist art and against the avant-
gardism of Left Art.
xvi Chronology
POLITICS
1923: After another failed uprising in
Germany, crisis of the revolutionary
movement and quashing of hopes for
European revolution.
1924: Lenin dies, exacerbating power
struggles for control over the Russian
Communist Party (RCP) and Soviet state.
Joseph Stalin begins to advocate for “socialism
in one country” and an explicit shift of
international communist priorities towards
protecting and advocating for the USSR.
1925: Power struggles continue between
Trotsky’s “Left Opposition” and Stalin.
Communist strength grows in China (with
the May Thirtieth Movement) and India (with
the Kanpur Congress of the Communist Party
of India).
CULTURE
1923: Founding of first Society of
Friends of the New Russia in Berlin to
promote cultural exchange with the
USSR. Founding of Soviet journals On
Guard, by the group October (soon to
control VAPP), expounding a militant
proletarian position with an aesthetic
opposed to formal experimentalism; and
their opponents LEF, edited by the futurist
poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, representing
the avant-garde and their heirs (the “Left
Front of the Arts” – including futurists,
constructivists, formalists, and others).
Leon Trotsky publishes Literature and
Revolution, arguing that the path to a
revolutionary socialist culture would
require assimilating the traditions of the
past, including a multiplicity of aesthetic
forms; Trotsky objects to the idea of a
single Party policy in art, and defends as
necessary the transitional role of “fellow-
travellers” (ideologically sympathetic
non-proletarians) in the cultural process.
In Moscow, the Russian poet Osip
Mandelstam publishes an interview with
Ho Chi Minh (under the name Nguyễn Ái
Quốc).
1924: At the Fifth Comintern Congress,
Lunacharsky again establishes a contact
office to call for the creation of a new
literary international.
1925: Central Committee of the RCP
officially declares non-commitment to any
one formal artistic tendency (although
the necessity of eventual proletarian class
hegemony in culture is upheld), effectively
setting back VAPP’s hopes for dominance
and supporting a degree of tolerance for
fellow-travellers. Mayakovsky tours North
America, including Cuba, Mexico (where
he is shown around by Diego Rivera), and
the United States.

1926: Zinoviev and his ally Kamenev join
Trotsky, forming the “United Opposition”;
Zinoviev is removed from Comintern
leadership and replaced by a collective
dominated by Nikolai Bukharin, at this point
Stalin’s ally. Bukharin proposes the dawn of
a new “third period” in postwar history, in
which the revolutionary force of the European
proletariat would grow and capitalist stability
would unravel.
1927: Trotsky officially expelled from the
Central Committee, RCP, and Comintern;
other members associated with Trotsky’s
opposition purged. Disastrous failure
of United Front policy in China when
Guomindang massacres communists en
masse in Shanghai, and civil war breaks out
between communists and nationalists, lasting
over two decades.
1928: Sixth Comintern Congress, where
Stalin’s doctrine of socialism in one country
emerges dominant and the German
Communist Party delegation defines
social democracy as an ally of fascism
(using the slogan “social fascism”). While
Bukharin himself is marginalized by Stalin’s
mainstream, his “Third Period” concept is
officially adopted: nationalist bourgeoisie
of China and India are now declared
counter-revolutionary.
Chronology xvii
1926: On Guard adapts to the previous
year’s Central Committee resolution
by reconstituting itself as On Literary
Guard, and debating how to improve the
craftsmanship of “proletarian literature,”
but still maintaining a hard line against
the futurists and their associates. Feuds
among Soviet literary factions and
institutions (including the On-Guardists
and proletarian culture advocates, LEF, Red
Virgin Soil, and others) continue.
1927: Lunacharsky’s efforts bear fruit
in the First International Conference of
Proletarian and Revolutionary Writers
in Moscow: writers from fourteen
countries attend. International Bureau of
Revolutionary Literature (IBRL) set up to
coordinate “proletarian and revolutionary
writers,” including fellow-travellers, in
capitalist countries. LEF reconstitutes
itself as New LEF, opposed to belletristic
forms and committing the avant-garde to a
documentary “literature of fact.”
1928: VAPP hosts first conference in
Moscow and changes its name to Russian
Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP).
“October” association founded in the
visual arts (not to be confused with the
earlier-mentioned literary group), uniting
photographers, painters, muralists, and
filmmakers from international communist
circles (including Aleksandr Rodchenko
and Diego Rivera). Inspired by previous
year’s International Conference in Moscow,
Association of Proletarian Revolutionary
Writers (BPRS) founded in Germany.
xviii Chronology
POLITICS
1929: Stalin’s “revolution from above” is
launched with accelerated collectivization of
agriculture, the industrialization drive of the
first five-year plan, and general purges of Party
membership. Bukharin and sympathizers
expelled from Comintern; intransigent theory
of “social fascism” officially adopted by ECCI,
with social democracy declared communism’s
greatest enemy. New York stock market
crash initiates the Great Depression, an event
perceived by Comintern as a vindication of
the triumphalist “Third Period” theory.
1930: Purge Commission investigates
Comintern members associated with “Left”
(Trotskyite) and “Right” (Bukharinite)
Oppositions. Continued Stalinization of
Comintern (now officially directed by Stalin’s
protégé Viacheslav Molotov). ECCI adopts
resolution defining African Americans as an
oppressed nation (the “Black Belt,” in Harry
Haywood’s formulation) within the US South.
1931: Comintern orders German communists
to collaborate with Nazis in (failed)
referendum to dissolve the Social-Democrat–
controlled Prussian government. Following
successful experiments in organizing the
Chinese peasantry, Mao Zedong elected
chairman of quasi-autonomous Jiangxi Soviet
Republic.
CULTURE
1929: John Reed Clubs founded by
Communist Party USA as American
analogue to BPRS and RAPP. In USSR,
RAPP and the movement for “proletarian
literature” (with analogous proletarian
movements in visual art – AkhRR – and
music, all taking a far harder line against
bourgeois fellow-travellers than did the
“proletarian culture” efforts of Proletkult
a decade earlier) expand steadily, fostered
by militant new atmosphere of “cultural
revolution” against bourgeois specialists
in industry, “formalism” in art, and
bourgeois influence in society; RAPP and
its associates soon become dominant in
Soviet culture.
1930: IBRL hosts Second Conference of
Proletarian and Revolutionary Writers in
Kharkov, with 100 delegates from twenty-
three countries present. IBRL reformed
as International Union of Revolutionary
Writers (Russian acronym: MORP),
explicitly conceived as Comintern’s literary
arm. Roar China, an anti-colonial play
by the former New LEF editor Sergei
Tret’iakov, tours Europe, with productions
reaching New York and Guangzhou.
Inspired by Soviet-Mexican revolutionary
contacts and funded by Upton Sinclair,
Sergei Eisenstein travels to Mexico to shoot
a film about its history, ¡Que viva México!
Lukács summoned from Budapest to
Moscow, where he largely remains until the
mid-forties, a fixture of the Germanophone
anti-fascist intellectual diaspora.
1931: Literature of the World Revolution
founded as official journal of MORP,
published in four (soon six) languages, with
a multinational editorial board. In China,
League of Left-Wing Writers and League
of Left-Wing Dramatists issue programs to
reach the masses.

1933: Adolf Hitler appointed chancellor of
Germany, quickly consolidates dictatorial
control, and begins liquidation of Social
Democratic and Communist Party
opposition. Nonetheless, Comintern’s
commitment to “social fascist” line at first
barely wavers.
1934: Socialist and communist workers in
France band together in anti-fascist strikes
and actions. Georgi Dimitrov, a Bulgarian
communist framed by the Nazis for setting
fire to the Reichstag, is released from jail and
appointed general secretary of Comintern by
Stalin; Dimitrov pushes for more cooperation
with social democrats to fight fascism,
softening the Comintern’s “social fascism”
position.
Chronology xix
1932: RAPP, by now hegemonic in Soviet
culture but never officially part of the state,
is formally disbanded when the Central
Committee of the RCP issues a resolution
“restructuring” Soviet culture by banning
independent groups; Soviet literature
reconstituted under a centralized Writers’
Union, with Gorky invited back from Italy
to serve as its head. Mezhrabpomfil’m
invites a delegation of African Americans,
including Langston Hughes, to the USSR
to shoot an anti-racist film; Hughes tours
Soviet Central Asia. Eisenstein’s ¡Que viva
México! project implodes due to political
and financial controversies. Literature of the
World Revolution renamed International
Literature.
1933: Debates in Soviet journals over
the nature of “socialist realism,” which
has been proclaimed as the generic and
programmatic essence of Soviet art. Now
unable to stay in Berlin, Lukács becomes
an editor of the heterodox Germano-Soviet
journal Literary Critic (Literaturnyi kritik)
and a Soviet literary theorist, justifying
socialist realism with respect to nineteenth-
century novelistic realism and the heritage
of German philosophical aesthetics.
1934: First Congress of the Soviet Writers’
Union in Moscow, where Gorky, Andrei
Zhdanov, and other literary luminaries
and Party figures expound on socialist
realism, firmly institutionalizing it without
clearly defining it, to an audience including
numerous well-known international
fellow-travellers. The British section of
the International Union of Revolutionary
Writers founds the journal Left Review,
which will last until 1938, publishing a
range of prominent left-wing and anti-
colonial writers.
xx Chronology
POLITICS
1935: Seventh (and final) Comintern
Congress held in Moscow, reversing positions
to officially declare a newly broad “Popular
Front” against fascism in collaboration with
peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and social
democrats (no longer maligned as fascists).
This directive also buoys Mao to engineer a
Second United Front with the Guomindang to
resist Japanese aggression.
1936: Popular Front governments elected
in France and Spain; the latter faces a right-
wing coup attempt led by Francisco Franco,
triggering the Spanish Civil War between
Republicans and Nationalists. Comintern
mobilizes International Brigades of volunteers
to aid the Republican side.
1937: In the USSR, with the Great Terror
in full swing, the Comintern is decimated
by Soviet security forces; many nations’
communist parties, in exile in Moscow, are
practically eradicated. Stalin uses the Spanish
Civil War as an opportunity to strike at left-
wing ideological foes abroad, with internecine
attacks by Spanish communists and Soviet
agents on Trotskyist and anarchist forces.
1938: Trotsky attempts to organize an anti-
Stalinist Fourth International; its founding
conference is held outside Paris with thirty
delegates attending.
1939: The Nationalists emerge victorious in
the Spanish Civil War, brutally suppressing
their opponents. The Popular Front comes
to a halt when Stalin signs the Molotov-
Ribbentrop Pact of non-aggression with the
Nazis; with the outbreak of another world war,
the Comintern resurrects Lenin’s analysis of
twenty-five years before to declare the conflict
an inter-imperialist war, like the First World
War, and urges workers to stay uninvolved.
CULTURE
1935: First Congress for the Defence of
Culture held in Paris, bankrolled by the
Comintern to redefine its internationalist
cultural activity as humanist and anti-
fascist; attendance is very high, particularly
among American, European, and
Soviet writers. MORP replaced by the
International Writers’ Association for the
Defence of Culture. Founding conference
of the CPUSA-backed League of American
Writers in New York City.
1936: All-India Progressive Writers’
Association, soon to become South Asia’s
most powerful literary force, hosts its
inaugural conference in Lucknow. Spanish
intellectuals form the Alliance of Anti-fascist
Intellectuals for the Defence of Culture.
1937: Second Writers’ Congress in
Defence of Culture takes place in Madrid,
Valencia, Barcelona, and Paris, while
numerous writers worldwide with anti-
fascist sympathies head to Spain to join the
Republican forces. Meanwhile, the Terror
begins to claim numerous victims from the
Soviet literary and artistic world.
1938: Debate between Lukács and Ernst
Bloch over the legacies of modernism
(specifically German expressionism) and
realism in Das Wort, Comintern-affiliated
journal of the exiled German intellectual
diaspora.
1939: In response to Stalin’s actions in
Spain and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,
numerous anti-fascist intellectuals drawn
into the Comintern’s orbit throughout the
1930s grow disaffected and cut ties with
communism.
 Chronology xxi

1941: In China, the anti-Japanese Second

United Front ends in January when
Guomindang troops attack Communist Party
forces. In June, Germany invades the USSR,
and the Comintern immediately changes
its line to propagandize for the Soviet war
effort; due to the Comintern’s (by now)
threadbare infrastructure and membership, its
contribution is minimal.
1942: In China, the CCP holds a Forum on
Literature and Art at Yan’an: Mao’s speech
propounds the need for a revolutionary
mass culture that addresses workers and
peasants, proclaiming literature and art as
subordinate to socialist politics.
1943: The moribund Third International is
officially dissolved. Its final resolution argues
that different nations’ working classes face
divisions that are practically irreconcilable.
1947: Founding of Cominform, or the
Information Bureau of Communist and
Workers’ Parties, to coordinate communist
parties in the Eastern bloc under Soviet
dominance. Dissolved in 1956 after
rapprochement between Nikita Khrushchev’s
USSR and Josip Broz Tito’s Federal People’s
Republic of Yugoslavia.