International Association of Communist Opposition
The International Union of Communist Opposition ( IVKO ) was an international union of communist organizations that stood in opposition to the Stalinist- dominated Comintern and existed from 1930 to 1939.
The organizations united in the IVKO usually consisted of former members of the communist parties who had been excluded because of their criticism of the ultra-left turn of the Comintern after 1928 on charges of “deviating from the law” and the support of the parliamentary group around Nikolai Bukharin . The IVKO saw itself as an external faction of the Comintern, which sought to reform it and return to it. In addition to withdrawing the exclusions and not interfering in internal affairs, the Comintern called for an end to the RGO policy , which is viewed as ultra -left, and the assessment of social democratic parties as social-fascist . In contrast to Trotskyist or Council Communist groups, for example , the IVKO largely abstained from criticizing the internal conditions in the Soviet Union and the CPSU as part of its “policy of non-interference” until the trial of Bukharin in 1938 .
By far the strongest group in the IVKO was the wing of the Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti around Nils Flyg and Karl Kilbom , which was also represented in parliament (5.7% in the 1932 elections) ; the Communist Party Opposition (KPO ) in Germany around August Thalheimer and Heinrich Brandler . Other important groups were the Independent Communist Labor League (ICLL) around Jay Lovestone in the USA and the locally strong, also KPO -called groups in Schaffhausen (Switzerland) around Walther Bringolf , Aš (Czechoslovakia) and Strasbourg (France) A number of small circles in different countries also included the group around the well-known Indian Marxist Manabendra Nath Roy for the IVKO at times. The Bloque Obrero y Campesino around Julián Gorkin and Joaquín Maurín in Catalonia cooperated for a long time without being a member with the IVKO until it was included in the POUM in 1935 .
In 1935, after most of the groups had left the IVKO for the London office (with which the IVKO worked closely at times) or had left Social Democracy , the association consisted only of the German KPO, the American ICLL, and small ones, which operated under difficult conditions in exile and underground Circles in India, Czechoslovakia and France. After internal disagreements, etc. a. around the assessment of the Soviet Union and the question of dissolving the IVKO in favor of the London office, the IVKO in fact no longer existed in the spring of 1939.
The IVKO gave as the central body in 1930, the International News Communist opposition (INKOPP), and later from 1936 to 1939 the theory magazine International class struggle out.
literature
- Theodor Bergmann : »Against the Current«. The history of the KPD (opposition). 2nd Edition. Hamburg 2001, v. a. Pp. 330-341.
- International class struggle. Complete reprint. Bremen 1983 ( PDF ).