The founding congress of the Communist International (“Comintern”) held in Moscow on March 2–6, 1919 began with grand ambitions. The meeting convened by Vladimir Lenin sought to unite the emerging Communist parties that had split from their Social Democratic progenitors into a powerful, centralized organization. Traumatized by the socialist movement’s failure to stop the horrors of World War I and inspired by the Bolsheviks’ decisiveness, the newly minted Communist movement believed world revolution was an immediate prospect that could lead humanity to its collective liberation.

These Communists anticipated their coming victory within the space of just months. Practically unimaginable today, in 1919 socialist revolution in the advanced-capitalist world seemed not only possible but even likely. Indeed, for a brief moment the Comintern and the parties it united stood at the forefront of a power struggle unprecedented in scale and intensity. The International’s first four years of existence witnessed multiple uprisings and revolutions, socialist and other radical organizations exploded in size, and it appeared that the world could really be on the cusp of socialist transformation.

Yet the Communists failed to realize this transformation. The Soviet Union remained isolated and grew increasingly authoritarian and stagnant. When it met its end in 1991, its failure triggered neoliberal capitalism’s truly total globalization and the collapse of the international left as a powerful force able to oppose it.