The policy of the Comintern in Latin America in the assessments of contemporary English-speaking historians
https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-6339-2025-2-184-197
Abstract
The article analyzes the modern English-language historiography of the policy of the Communist International regarding the Latin American region. The choice of the English-speaking countries is due to the fact that a significant number of studies on the tactics of the Comintern in relation to Latin America and the activities of its sections have been published there. Historians are mainly interested in what influence the Comintern exerted on the tactics of the Latin American Communist Parties and what the nature of that influence was. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that, despite the relevance of studying the policies of the Third International, there have never been any publications to analyze the views of contemporary foreign historians on the activities of that international organization in Latin America. It is stated that the traditionalist approach to the analysis of the activities of the Comintern, which took shape before and during the Cold War, is still significantly represented in English-language historiography. However, with the new approach (the “revisionist” one) finally gaining ground, it contributed to a certain revision of the existing trends: the article contains the assessments of both the negative and the positive influence of the Comintern on the separately taken Communist parties, on the political situation in a country or region.
About the Author
I. A. Suzdaltsev
School no. 1381
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Ilya A. Suzdaltsev, Cand. of Sci. (History)
52, Komintern St., Moscow, 129346
References
1. Alexander, R. (1957), Communism in Latin America, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, USA.
2. Alexander, R. and Parker, E. (2009), International labor organizations and organized labor in Latin America and the Caribbean: a history, Praeger, California, USA.
3. Bain, M.J. (2012), “Revolution to revolution: Moscow and Havana from 1917 to 1959”, Diplomacy & Statecraft, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 1–22.
4. Becker, M. (1993), Mariátegui and Latin American Marxist theory, Ohio University Press, Ohio, USA.
5. Becker, M., ed. (2023), The Latin American revolutionary movement: Proceedings of the First Latin American Communist Conference, June 1929, Brill, Boston, USA.
6. Blanc, J. (2023), “A relationship forged in exile. Luís Carlos Prestes and the Brazilian communist party, 1927–1935”, in Becker, M., Power, M., Wood, T. and Zumoff, J.A., eds., Transnational communism across the Americas, University of Illinois Press, Champaign, USA, pp. 101–121.
7. Bourgois, P. (1989), Ethnicity at work: Divided labor on a Central American banana plantation, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, USA.
8. Carr, B. (1992), Marxism and communism in 20th-century Mexico, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, USA.
9. Carr, B. (1996), “Mill occupation and Soviets: The mobilization of sugar workers in Cuba, 1917–1933”, Journal of Latin American Studies, no. 28, pp. 129–158.
10. Carr, B. (1998), “From Caribbean backwaters to revolutionary opportunity: Cuba’s evolving relationship with the Comintern, 1925–1934”, in Rees, T. and Thorpe, A., eds., International communism and the Communist International: 1919–1943, Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK, pp. 254–253.
11. Carr, B. (2014), “Pioneering transnational solidarity in the Americas: The movement in support of Augusto C. Sandino: 1927–1934”, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 141–152.
12. Ching, E. (1998), “In search of the party: The Communist party, the Comintern, and the peasant rebellion of 1932 in El Salvador”, The Americas, vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 204–239.
13. Drachewych, O. (2019), The Communist International, anti-imperialism and racial equality in British dominions, Routledge, New York, USA.
14. Dulles, J.W.F. (1973), Anarchists and communists in Brazil, 1900–1935, University of Texas Press, Austin, USA.
15. Dulles, J.W.F. (1983), Brazilian communism, 1935–1945: Repression during world upheaval, University of Texas Press, Austin, USA.
16. Gonzalez, M. (2014), “Communism in Latin America”, in Smith, S.A., ed., The Oxford handbook of the history of communism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, pp. 253–272.
17. Kheifets, V.L. (2022), “From growth to marginalization: the Mexican Communist Party and trade unions in the second half of the 1930s”, Latinoamerikanskii istoricheskii al’manakh, no. 33, pp. 170–205.
18. La Botz, D. (2017), “The Communist International, the Soviet Union, and their impact on the Latin America workers’ movement”, Tensões Mundiais, vol. 13, no. 24, pp. 67–106.
19. Leibner, G. and Green, J.N. (2008), “New views on the history of Latin American communism”, Latin American Perspectives, no. 35, pp. 3–8.
20. Mahler, A.G. (2024), “Against Latin American regionalisms: The 1927 Brussels Congress and the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas”, Latin American Research Review, 7 March, available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/latinamerican-research-review/article/against-latin-american-regionalisms-the1927-brussels-congress-and-the-antiimperialist-league-of-the-americas/0AA0071F6B35671BF6D1580F3144D31C (Accessed 15 Dec. 2024).
21. Miller, N. (1989), Soviet relations with Latin America, 1959–1987, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
22. Morgan, K. (2017), International Communism and the cult of the individual. Leaders, tribunes and martyrs under Lenin and Stalin, Palgrave Macmillan, London, UK.
23. Poppino, R.E. (1964), International Communism in Latin America: A history of the movement, 1917–1963, The Free Press of Glencoe, London, UK.
24. Pujals, S. (2014), “A ‘Soviet Caribbean’: The Comintern, New York’s immigrant community, and the forging of Caribbean visions, 1931–1936”, Russian History, no. 41, pp. 255–268.
25. Smith, J. (2019), Communism in Latin America. Vol. 2: Kindle edition, USA, available at: https://z-library.co/book/13812795 (Accessed 15 Dec. 2024).
26. Spenser, D. (2007), “Emissaries of the Communist International in Mexico”, American Communist History, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 151–170.
27. Spenser, D. (2011), Stumbling its way through Mexico: The early years of the Communist International, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, USA. Stevens, M. (2016), “Cuba and the Red International, 1934”, in Prashad, V., ed., Communist Histories, vol. 1, LeftWord Books, New Delhi, India.
28. Stevens, M. (2017), Red International and Black Caribbean. Communists in New York City, Mexico and the West Indies, 1919–1939, Pluto Press, London, UK.
29. Sullivan, F.P. (2023), “The ‘Negro Question’ in Cuba, 1928–1936”, in Becker, M., Power, M., Wood, T. and Zumoff, J.A., eds., Transnational communism across the Americas, University of Illinois Press, Champaign, USA, pp. 55–78.
30. Suzdaltsev, I.A. (2021), “Modern English-language historiography of the Communist International”, Novaya i noveishaya istoriya, no. 4, pp. 18–30.
31. Tennant, G. (1999), Dissident Cuban communism: Trotskyism in Cuba (1932– 1965), Ph.D. Thesis, University of Bradford, UK, available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20050503074748/http://www.cubantrotskyism.net/PhD/chap4.html#sec41 (Accessed 15 Dec. 2024).
32. Wells, S. (2020), “The panorama and the pilgrimage: Brazilian modernism, the masses, and the Soviet Union in the 1930s”, in Glazer, A.M. and Lee, S.S., eds., Comintern aesthetics, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Canada, pp. 170–198.
33. Wood, T. (2023), “Semicolonials and Soviets. Latin American communists in the USSR, 1927–1936”, in Becker, M., Power, M., Wood, T. and Zumoff, J.A., eds., Transnational communism across the Americas, University of Illinois Press, Champaign, USA, pp. 79–100.
34. Zumoff, J. (2011), “Ojos que no ven. The Communist party, Caribbean migrants and the Communist International in Costa Rica in the 1920s and 1930s”, The Journal of Caribbean History, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 212–247.
35. Zumoff, J. (2017), “The 1925 Tenants’ strike in Panama: West Indians, the Left, and the labor movement”, The Americas, vol. 74, no. 4, pp. 513–546.
36. Zumoff, J. (2023), “Black Caribbean migrants and the labor movement and communists in the Greater Caribbean in the 1920s and 1930s”, in Becker, M., Power, M., Wood, T. and Zumoff, J.A., eds., Transnational communism across the Americas, University of Illinois Press, Champaign, USA, pp. 31–54.
Review
For citations:
Suzdaltsev I.A. The policy of the Comintern in Latin America in the assessments of contemporary English-speaking historians. RSUH/RGGU Bulletin Series "Political Science. History. International Relations". 2025;(2):184-197. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.28995/2073-6339-2025-2-184-197
Views:
8
Email this article 