The Sixth World Congress

In the twilight period before and during the congress, the foreign Communist leaders were put to the supreme test of their ability to navigate in the treacherous waters of the Russian struggle for power without receiving official storm warnings from Moscow. For the Americans, the congress quickly degenerated into an orgy of denunciation. There was no struggle of principle between clearly defined, consciously articulated Left and Right wings. The Sixth World Congress fell somewhere between the positions of Bukharin and Stalin and therefore assumed a basically transitional character. The Sixth World Congress in Moscow also contributed two new features to the American radical scene—a unique Communist policy for American Negroes and the birth of American Trotskyism. Both of these repay careful re-examination, for their own intrinsic interest and for the light they cast on the basic forces at work before, during, and after the Sixth World Congress.