The initiative grew out of the failure of a group of social democratic parties to hold a conference in Stockholm in 1917.
Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein urged the conference to condemn the Bolsheviks and their seizure of power in Russia.
Branting moved a resolution which supported the ideology of bourgeois democracy and greeted the revolution in Soviet Russia, but which also denounced the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Whilst this gained much support, a group of delegates led by Friedrich Adler and Jean Longuet proposed a resolution calling on the conference to avoid taking a definite stand on Soviet Russia, as there was a lack of information about the situation there.
To remedy this they proposed that a commission should be sent to Russia to study the economic and political situation there so that the question of Bolshevism could be discussed at the next Congress.