The Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties (), commonly known as Cominform (), was a co-ordination body of Marxist-Leninist communist parties in Europe during the early Cold War that was formed in part as a replacement of the Communist International. The Cominform was dissolved during de-Stalinization in 1956.
Overview
Establishment and purpose
The Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties was unofficially founded at a conference of Marxist–Leninist communist parties from across Europe in Szklarska Poręba, Poland in September 1947. Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, called the conference in response to divergences among communist governments on whether or not to attend the Paris Conference on the Marshall Plan in July 1947. It was founded with nine members: the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Bulgarian Communist Party, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the Hungarian Communist Party, the Polish Workers' Party, the Romanian Communist Party, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, the French Communist Party, and the Italian Communist Party. The organization was commonly known as Cominform, an abbreviated form of the Communist Information Bureau, itself a shortened version of the official name.
Cominform was officially established on 5 October 1947 with the intended purpose of coordinating actions between European communist parties under the direction of the Soviet Union. Cominform was not intended to be a replacement or successor to the Comintern, the international organization that advocated world communism and dissolved in 1943, but was considered a type of successor. However starting in 1950, Stalin started to push for the Cominform's functions to be expanded greatly, almost to the scale of the Comintern. This push ceased after his death. Cominform was not a world communist party and did not have subordinates or power, limiting itself to its newspaper, For Lasting Peace, for People's Democracy! published in several languages, and to one goal: "to organize an exchange of experience, and where necessary to coordinate the activity of the Communist parties, on the basis of mutual agreement." A vast array of articles was published, including some not published by members such as the Canadian Communist Party. Cominform was to organize the propagation of communist interests and repel the expansion of anti-communism in the aftermath of World War II and the subsequent Cold War, dividing the world (per the Zhdanov Doctrine) into imperialist and anti-imperialist factions. The French and Italian communist parties were specifically tasked by Cominform with the obstruction of the implementation of the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine in Western Europe. From a global standpoint the Cominform strived/ventured to unite the Communist parties against the copious policies which threatened to empower Western Europe to oppose communism, mainly through pinpointing/underlining the importance of national independence and peace. More important though was that the Cominform had to remain small in size (Eurocentric Organization), in order to preserve its maneuverability and efficient centralisation, mainly due to the fact that it operated as a propaganda tool controlled by the International Communist movement to instruct and inform the leading members of the different national parties. Its members were communist parties and as such, would guarantee the safeguard the monolith of the communist movement. The primary reason for the Communist Party of Greece not being a member was fears of western powers using this to paint the KKE as foreign insurgents. Although they did contribute to Cominform publications. Because of the Chinese Civil War, the Communist Party of China was also not invited for a similar reason as Greece. The Communist Party of China nonetheless adhered to Cominform policy. In a conversation with Liu Shaoqi, Stalin indicated that he was not opposed to China joining the Cominform, only that it was unnecessary at the present time. There were plans for China to lead an Asian Cominform of some sort, but this idea was seemingly forgotten with the death of Stalin and weakening of the Cominform.