Vol. XIII (2007), no 20 - The International Newsletter of Communist ...

The International Newletter of Communist Studies Online XIII (2007), no 20 133
- The 2nd Congress of IWA p.630
- The IWA between the 2nd. and the 3rd. Congresses (1925-1928) p.653
- The Idea discussions in the anarcho-syndicalist movement at the end of 1920s p.686
- The 3rd Congress of IWA (1928) p.698
- The International after the Congress of Liège p.719
Afterword p.763
Footnotes p.769
List of Names p. 865
List of Illustrations p.892
Datta Gupta, Sobhanlal: Comintern and the Destiny of Communism in India.
1919-1943. Dialectics of Real and a Possible History, Calcutta, Seribaan,
2006. XXI + 329 p.
The book is the culmination of the author's research for more than a decade on one of the
most debatable and sensitive issues concerning the history of the Left and communist
movement in India. The opening up of the Comintern archives in Moscow in the 90s has now
made it possible for the scholars to have the first glimpse of how the destiny of the
Communist Parties of' the world in the inter-war period was defined by politics inside the
Comintern which, in turn, were predominantly shaped by the struggle for power inside the
Soviet Communist Party after Lenin's death. With the accessibility of the Comintern archives,
a massive literature has emerged in the West (primarily in Russian and German, besides
English), leading to a reinterpretation of the understanding of the Comintern as a
historiographical problem in the light of these new sources. The book, based on these
materials (archival and non-archival), provides for the first time an entirely new analysis of
Comintern's impact on the shaping of Indian communism and argues about the alternative
possibilities of the Left and communist movement in India in the light of documents which
were suppressed or unknown till now. This reinterpretation of the role of Comintern (1919-
1943), which masterminded the beginning and shaping of communism in India, will contribute
to a refreshingly new understanding of the problems, complexities and crises that communism
in India has encountered in its long history.
Besides the Comintern archives, the book is based on materials from the archives of the
Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), which include the papers of Rajani Palme Dutt,
Harry Pollitt, Ben Bradley, the stenographic records of the Central Committee, the
Politbureau and the Party Congresses of the CPGB, all relating to the links between the CPGB,
India and Comintern, papers from the Public Records Office, UK and the Private Papers of
Horst Krueger in Berlin.
The book has the following chapters.
Chapter I: Comintern: the new historiography. Chapter II: The colonial question and India in
the Lenin era: 1919-1923. Chapter III: India and the East in the period of' „Bolshevization" and