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The 'Red International of Labour Unions' (RILU, Russian abbreviation Profintern) was a central instrument for the spreading of international communism during the inter-war period. This comprehensive and scholarly history of the organisation, based on extensive research in the former communist archives in Moscow and East Berlin, sheds significant light on the international trade union movement of the period.
Tosstorff shows how the RILU began as a revolutionary alliance of syndicalists and communists in defiance of the social democratic International Federation of Trade Unions. His text presents a full account of the organisation’s main stages: the decline of the revolutionary wave after World War One, after which many syndicalists left, and others were integrated into the communist parties; the continuation of the RILU as an international communist apparatus; and its dissolution in 1936–7 as part of communism's popular front policy.
First published in German as Profintern: Die Rote Gewerkschaftsinternationale 1920-1937 by Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, in 2004.
Tosstorff shows how the RILU began as a revolutionary alliance of syndicalists and communists in defiance of the social democratic International Federation of Trade Unions. His text presents a full account of the organisation’s main stages: the decline of the revolutionary wave after World War One, after which many syndicalists left, and others were integrated into the communist parties; the continuation of the RILU as an international communist apparatus; and its dissolution in 1936–7 as part of communism's popular front policy.
First published in German as Profintern: Die Rote Gewerkschaftsinternationale 1920-1937 by Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, in 2004.
Price: $408.00
Pages: 918
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Historical Materialism Book Series
Publication Date:
08 September 2016
ISBN: 9789004236646
Format: Hardcover
"Just as the Communist International found its historian in Pierre Broué, [...] the Red International of Labor Unions, commonly known as the Profintern [...] found its historian in Reiner Tosstorff... Fortunately for English readers, Reiner Tosstorff’s Profintern: Die rote Gewerkschaftsinternationale 1920–1937, originally published by Ferdinand Schoningh in 2004, has been translated from the German by Ben Fowkes." - Daniel Gaido, National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET, Argentina), in: Science & Society 85/1 (2021)
Reiner Tosstorff, Dr. phil. habil., teaches at the history department at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. He has published monographs and articles on Spanish history as well as on the international workers' movement in the twentieth century.