ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an argument for the sheer institutional continuity of the Krestintern and International Agrarian Institute (IAI) for nearly two decades after having lost its initial political priority and mission. It takes a closer look at the archival witnesses of the Krestintern's correspondence with Latvian and Romanian collocutors in the 1920s. The chapter explores correspondence from the Comintern archives between the Red Peasant International's offices in Moscow and communist or peasant leaders in two neighboring European countries. The Krestintern demonstrated remarkable similarities to liberal international organizations for peasant and rural affairs, such as the International Institute of Agriculture (IIA) and the agricultural service of the International Labour Organization (ILO), as well as to the peasantist Green Peasant International in Prague. In contrast to the Cold War paradigm of totalitarianism, the Red Peasant International ought to be perceived instead as institutions in their own right, despite the hegemonic constraints of Stalin's Russia.
