When the Communist International Is Your Boss
- Loren Balhorn
Throughout history, it’s been hard for agitators and troublemakers to hold down a good job. In the interwar decades, tens of thousands of them were hired by the Communist International — an employer with long hours, difficult bosses, and a lot of opportunities for travel.
Delegates at the Second World Congress of the Communist International, Petrograd, 1920. (Wikimedia Commons)
Brigitte Studer is one of the most accomplished historians of socialism in the German-speaking world. Her latest book, Reisende der Weltrevolution: Eine Globalgeschichte der Kommunistischen Internationale — appearing in German last year and now slated to be published in English by Verso Books — paints a detailed portrait of a group of transnational Communists from 1920 onward. Serving as officials and agents of the Communist International, or Comintern, from Moscow to Berlin and Tashkent to Wuhan, these dedicated Communists did everything in their power to push the world revolution forward.
A century later, what remains of their struggle? And why is it worth studying the Comintern in a world that has changed so radically since the communist movement’s heyday? Marcel Bois spoke with Studer about the hopes and disappointments of these militants who found in the Comintern a force that gave them meaning in life — and a job.
Marcel Bois
Your new book, Reisende der Weltrevolution, examines the Communist International in the 1920s and 1930s as a workplace. Was the Comintern a good employer? Was it lucrative to be a professional revolutionary?
Brigitte Studer
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