Travellers of the World Revolution: A Global History of the Communist International

In this comprehensive survey, historian Studer (The Transnational World of the Cominternians) details “the working lives and everyday circumstances” of the “professional revolutionaries” employed by the Communist International, or Comintern, the Kremlin-funded global network of Communist parties and “front organizations” that sought to “bring about the revolutionary transformation of social and political relations,” between 1919 and 1943. Drawing on archival material, Studer sheds light on the Comintern’s inner workings, including its operations in Berlin before the 1933 Nazi takeover, which were funded by the sale of diamonds smuggled out of Russia in the soles of couriers’ shoes, and its failed efforts to overthrow the British government in India in the early 1920s. Studer also captures the chaos of the Comintern’s annual meetings in the Kremlin, contrasting organizers’ passionate debates about “the political future of humanity” with the “sense of boredom that gradually began to pervade the daily work” of Comintern officials. Describing the Comintern’s covert activities in China, Africa, and South America, Studer slashes away at half a century of stodgy, Eurocentric research to portray the Comintern as a highly organized bureaucracy and “a pioneer of a global, anti-colonial, anti-racist and anti-imperialist politics.” Expansive and impeccably researched, this is a valuable addition to scholarship on early 20th-century communism. (June)