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Comintern, Communist International

See also: OSA Fonds HU OSA 381 Electronic Archives of the Communist International (Comintern)

August 2003

The words Communist International, for instance, call up a composite picture of universal brotherhood, red flags, barricades, Karl Marx and the Paris Commune. The word Comintern, on the other hand, suggests merely a tightly-knit organisation and a well-defined body of doctrine. It refers to something almost as easily recognised, and as limited in purpose, as a chair or a table. Comintern is a word that can be uttered almost without taking thought, whereas Communist International is a phrase over which one is obliged to linger at least momentarily.

George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) Nineteen Eighty-Four. (1949). Appendix - The Origins of Newspeak. pp 320-321, Penguin Books 1990 Edition

The Third or Communist International, founded by 52 representatives of 35 parties and organizations in March 1919, ruled over the international Communist movement through its 70 partner organizations for almost a quarter of a century. Over the years the "Comintern", strategist, organizer and tool of the Socialist World Revolution, gradually transformed itself into the transmission belt of Soviet great power politics (intelligence, propaganda, etc) and of the prevailing hard-line Stalinism until, in the end, it became an integral part of the NKVD (Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs, the predecessor of the KGB) supported the Moscow trials, theliquidation of the Hungarian, Polish and German communist emmigrant groups, and actively participated in organizing and controlling the Soviet contribution to the Spanish Civil War. Its influence was heavily felt even in countries where it could only operate in semi- or total illegality, through clandestine activities.

One of the most cloistered communities of the last century, the Comintern was dissolved in 1943. The documents testifying to its organizational life, to the public and secret debates, to decisions made behind closed doors and deliberately leaked, were immediately transferred to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR and later to the Central Party Archive of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. The documents were classified "Top Secret" and as such were inaccessible even to researchers.

The documents of the Communist International, written in about 90 languages, would make a line 15 km long if placed side by side in archival boxes. The entire collection is shelved in the storage rooms of the Russian State Archive for Social and Political History (RGASPI), successor to the Central Party Archive. The documents, arranged in 66 fonds and within these in 521 documentary units, comprise 220,000 files and 22 million pages in all. Without a user-friendly, electronic catalogue this mass of material, this trackless forest of documents, is unmanageable not only for researchers but even for specialist archivists. The frequent reorganizations of the Comintern headquarters in Moscow and the conspiracy-laden norms of illegal activity abroad created even more confusion within the structure.

Public access to the documents of the Communist International is imperative if we are to shape a happier 21st century. Realizing this, in 1992 Professor Weber, the well known German historian, asked the Council of Europe to intervene to save the Comintern Archive in Moscow, which was endangered by the political changes. The Council of Europe requested the help of the International Council on Archives . At the end of 1992 representatives of the International Council on Archives (headed by Mr. Charles Kecskemeti, then General Secretary), the Council of Europe and the Federal Archival Service of Russia (Rossarchiv) initiated discussions about the possibility of creating an electronic catalogue using the latest developments in computer technology, which would eventually provide easy access to this unique set of archival holdings. The idea was based on the model and technology of the Sevilla Archivo General de Indias, which was created to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America. ArchiDoc, a complex software package which can handle the catalogue, digitization and Research Room requests, was developed by the Spanish Informatica Corte Ingl�s in the early 1980s and was continually upgraded to keep pace with the rapid development of information technology.

The preliminary talks alone lasted three full years: the Framework Agreement was signed by the representatives of ICA, the Council of Europe and Rossarchiv on June 6, 1996. The Framework Agreement set as its goal the creation of an electronic database of the 220,000 Communist International files (about 20 million entries) and of a collection of 1,000,000 digitized images of the most frequently researched documents.

Perhaps nobody but the signatories themselves believed that this brave venture would reach a successful conclusion at all - let alone according to schedule. But seven years later, on June 27, 2003, RGASPI inaugurated the electronic version of the Comintern Archives. The database is freely accessible on 17 computers in the Reading Room for researchers and the interested public.

On the occasion of the Inauguration INCOMKA, the international body set up to manage the project, drew up a balance. Under the leadership of the international board (consisting of representatives of the Council of Europe, ICA, RGASPI and Rossarchiv) the eight Partner Organizations: the Federal Archives of Switzerland, the Federal Archives of Germany, the Archives of France, the State Archives of Italy, The Ministry for Education and Culture of Spain, the National Archives of Sweden, the Library of Congress, US and the Open Society Archives , Budapest, lined up not only to sponsor the project, which cost over a million US dollars, but to offer their own services and know-how in order to bring the catalogue into being. For example the Library of Congress, carried out the transliteration of 173.000 personal names into Latin script and translated into English the institutional and subject descriptors. The proof-reading of the transliterated names, alone, required half a year.

In each of the eight Partner Organizations a standalone workstation was installed, where the 20,000,000 entries and the 1,000,000 images are freely accessible. The organizations make photocopies of the images on request but under the agreement the workstation may not form part of any external network system. Organizing free on-line access to the database is under consideration.

The Open Society Archives is pleased to announce that as a result of this exemplary international project and the outstanding work of computer technologists the database, an indispensable tool for research into the history of the 20th century, is freely and publicly accessible in its Research Room.