he Global Left-Radical Internationalism and the Formation of the Communist International: Bolsheviks and a Motley Crew of ‘Marginal Groups’?

Date: October 24, 2023 - Tuesday

Time: 12:00-14:00

Place: santralistanbul Campus, ÇSM-405

Organized as part of the ‘HISTORY TALKS’ series, the event is organized by BİLGİ Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities Department of History.

Guest speaker: Ali Yağız Yıldız

Despite the global character of its ambitions, goals and organizational structure, until recently and especially during the Cold War, Communist International historiography tended to explain the origins of the organization by narrowly focusing on specific Russia conditions, the politics of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party-Bolsheviks (RSDLP-B) and the Soviet foreign policy. However, the Communist International was not merely a product of the 1917 Russian Revolution(s) or the RSDLP-B. Several other pivotal European and north American left-radical internationalist groups contributed vitally to the formation of the Communist International. Based on archival documents and published sources, his dissertation research revealed that the decisive impetus for the formation of the Communist International came from Western and Central Europe, not from Russia, and its intellectual origins were in vivacious international debates around the decline and fall of the Second International dating back to 1910s. This talk will present some of his key findings by introducing most prominent groups that contributed to the formation of the Communist International with a specific emphasis on the Dutch, German, Polish ‘left-radical internationalist’ groups that included some prominent figures like Anton Pannekoek, Karl Radek and Herman Görter.

This event will be conducted in Turkish.