The International Lenin School: A Response to Cohen and Morgan

This paper challenges the methods and conclusions of an articleon British students at the International Lenin School by GidonCohen and Kevin Morgan published in a recent issue of TwentiethCentury British History. It questions their model of relationsbetween the Comintern and its national affiliates, and theirassertion of the prominence and total nature of the Lenin Schoolas a control mechanism of the former over the latter. Afterdemonstrating the inadequacy of their data and methodology,it indicates significant deficiencies and omissions in theirhandling of qualitative evidence relevant to the influence ofthe school on its students. It concludes by showing that theauthors underestimate the scale and duration of the impact ofthe school's graduates upon the apparatus of the Communist Partyof Great Britain.     

British Students at the International Lenin School: The Vindication of a Critique

This paper is a response to the rejoinder by Gidon Cohen andKevin Morgan to a critique of their article on British studentsat the International Lenin School (ILS) in Moscow which appearedin a recent issue of Twentieth Century British History. It developsthe criticism of their data and research methods, and the revisedresults and conclusions they derive from them, while takingissue with their approach to historical argument. It demonstratesthat the presence of ILS graduates in leading positions in theCommunist Party of Great Britain and in the apparatus of theparty did not, as they insist, disappear after 1943, but persistedinto the 1950s.     

列宁邓小平关于克服官僚主义法律思想的比较研究

列宁在第一个无产阶级政权初创时期,提出了一系列克服官僚主义的法律思想,邓小平官僚主义的法律思考则是建立在数十年社会主义实践基础之上。比较两位历史巨人依靠法制克服官僚主义的基本思想,有助于更好地把握克服官僚主义的思想武器。     

Stalin's Sausage Machine. British Students at the International Lenin School, 1926-37

Between 1926 and 1937 at least 160 British communists attendedthe Communist International's International Lenin School (ILS)in Moscow. The aims of the school were to produce a new stratumof leading communist party cadres, young, proletarian, disciplined,and free of the taint of reformism. Using materials from theComintem archives in Moscow, this article assesses the degreeto which the school was successful in meeting these objectives.It shows that among the difficulties it encountered were thereluctance of the British Communist Party (CPGB) to lose theservices of large numbers of its best activists and the uncertainapplication of the lessons inculcated by the school when studentsreturned to Britain. In the short term, ILS alumni played acrucial role in the leadership of the CPGB at both nationaland district levels, and some were also drawn into work forthe Comintern or Soviet state organs. However, by the late 1930sattendance at the school played a reduced role in appointmentsto key party positions, and as early as 1943 there was onlyone former student on the CPGB's executive committee. Set ina comparative context, it is argued that the school's significancein Britain was largely confined to the ‘long’ ThirdPeriod of 1927–35 and rapidly diminished thereafter.