ABSTRACT
The term Bolshevization mean anything the Comintern wanted it to mean, and is therefore best understood in practical rather than abstract terms. At the same time the Comintern had distinguished among three groups of parties in three stages of Bolshevization: those parties which were still predominantly propagandist in nature, those which had won considerable mass support, and those which had already conquered political power. The Comintern's Orgburo, headed by Ossip Piatnitsky, a veteran Russian Bolshevik, began to function in January 1924. At the Comintern's Fifth Congress in July, Piatnitsky called on all parties to reorganize on the basis of the Russian party's factory nuclei. The Comintern inaugurated this campaign in 1924 without getting much encouragement from the Americans. Its Presidium adopted a lengthy resolution on factory nuclei on January 21 and another on Communist fractions in February. The American and other parties were also directly affected by the Comintern's Bolshevization.
