Exploring the Ambiguities of the Fifth Comintern Congress

Abstract More than a century on, the Fifth Congress of the Communist International in 1924 remains an enigmatic historical event. That congress is associated with the Comintern’s rightward course of the mid-1920s; yet it itself was the scene of a ‘left turn’. It marked the beginning of the world organisation’s Stalinist degeneration; yet it saw a relatively free and open debate. It reversed key Comintern positions, adopted the bureaucratic ‘Bolshevisation’ policy, and brought the anti-Trotsky campaign into the world Communist movement; yet it also included some positive elements in general continuity with earlier congresses. Based primarily on the published congress proceedings, this essay examines the ambiguities of the Fifth Congress, pointing to its lines of continuity and discontinuity with earlier Comintern policies. Such an assessment sheds light on the underlying strength of the Comintern under Lenin, and its overall trajectory in the post-Lenin period.