LECTURE NO. 5
The Red International of Labor Unions
(Profintern)
The Roots of the Red Profintern[1]
LET us pass over now to the other ideological-political trend in the international labor movement.
The organization which is competing with the Amsterdam International, is the Red International of Labor Unions, which was organized in 1920. What are the roots of this International? No doubt the roots of this revolutionary organization should be sought in the war period when the sobering of the workers began, and the creation of revolutionary neuclei within the labor organizations, political as well as trade union took place. The idea of creating a new international appeared at that time.
It is true that all during the war the idea of creating a new trade union international did not appear. At the time of the Zimmerwald conference, and even before, the Bolsheviks declared the necessity of treating the Third International, but the idea of creating a new international within the trade union movement had not yet appeared. No doubt at the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences in which some separate trade unions participated, the political antecedents were laid for the formation of the left wing of the trade union movement and for an independent international organization.
This idea sprung up after the war. The necessity, the reasons which forced the creation of this new international, this new power which might give opportunity of better alignment of the militant trade union movement—is connected with the later period, mainly with the Russian revolution and the creation of the Third International.
The Russian revolution was the outstanding feature which brought about the formation of the Third International and also stimulated the creation of the revolutionary international of trade unions. Nevertheless the idea of creating a revolutionary trade union international was absent even directly after the October revolution. More than that, the idea appeared much later than the organization of the Comintern.
The crucial moments which brought a distinction into the labor movement were the following: The appearance of the Russian trade union movement and the creation of the Third International. With
- ↑ The word "Profintern" is a contraction of the Russian term "Professionalnye Soyuz Internationalnye" or, literally, "Occupational Union International."
