Executive Committee of the Communist International
[2] The conference which ultimately declared itself the Founding Congress of the Communist International was postponed to March 2, 1919, owing to the difficulties entailed by foreign delegates in crossing the blockade of Soviet Russia established by the Allied Nations at the end of World War I.
[3] Only a comparatively few delegates did manage to make the trip, with a number of the places filled on an ad hoc basis by individuals already in Soviet Russia not bearing formal credentials from their home organizations.
[4] Similarly, Endre Rudnyánszky, a former prisoner of war stranded in Russia represented Hungary, while Christian Rakovsky, a Romanian, sat for the nearly defunct Balkan Socialist Federation.
[5] A commission (standing committee) chaired by the Swiss radical Fritz Platten was appointed by this Founding Congress to construct an organizational apparatus for the new Third International.
Karl Radek, then ensconced in a Berlin prison, was symbolically selected as Secretary of ECCI, although the actual functions fell to Angelica Balabanov, albeit only for a few weeks.
[7] Zinoviev also served as editor of the official magazine of ECCI, Kommunisticheskii Internatsional ("The Communist International"), which began appearing regularly as soon as the Founding Congress came to a close.
[8] Although no more than the nucleus of an actual organization was created, hampered by difficult communications in the isolation of the blockade, the skeleton ECCI immediately began to issues a series of declarations and manifestos to the workers and nations of the world.
Owing to poor communications and the difficulty of individuals crossing the frontier during the blockade and civil war, of those originally invited to participate only the Communist Party of Hungary was able to send its permanent representative to ECCI prior to the convocation of the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern on July 19, 1920.
[15] During this interval the Comintern, through ECCI and the permanent staff of the organization, began to fund the various communist parties of the world, attempting to add practical support to the literary fusillade which emanated from Moscow.
This bureau was enlarged in 1921 by the 3rd World Congress of the Comintern by the addition to these five of the Hungarian Béla Kun, Alfred Rosmer of France, Bernard Koenen of Germany, and the Polish-born Soviet citizen Karl Radek.
The countries exercising two votes on ECCI at the time of the 4th World Congress of the Comintern late in 1922 were Germany, France, Czechoslovakia, Finland, and the United States.
This committee controlled placement of Comintern cadres throughout the world and supervised international agitation and propaganda work, leaving political questions to ECCI.
