ABSTRACT
From the first Congresses of the Comintern in 1919–20 to the very end of the Stalinist years, the Western communist parties were used as parallel and obedient tools of Soviet diplomacy. During that time, Soviets could indeed rely on a double structure unique in the world: an official apparatus—the governmental one, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—and an unofficial one, the communist structure which, through the Western European parties, was supposed to influence public opinion in a favourable direction and, possibly, to facilitate the establishment of communist regimes in Western Europe. In 1956 and the following years, de-Stalinization introduced new concepts into the diplomatic field, such as ‘peaceful coexistence’. In this new context of de-Stalinization, do we observe essential changes in the relation between the Soviet leadership and the Western European communist parties or not? Did de-Stalinization and peaceful coexistence bring some freedom to the Western communist parties or did the Western European parties remain obedient tools of Soviet diplomacy?
