ABSTRACT
Early in 1919, Lenin decided to lay the foundations for a new, third, Communist International which would assume the leadership of the world's workers under the banner of the Soviets. The Communist International—or Comintern—had to be formed without its component parts—Communist parties. The only genuine delegate, Eberlein, came from Germany; towards the end of the conference, Steinhardt arrived with a mandate from a group of Communists in Austria. All real authority was vested in the Russian Bolsheviks, partly because they occupied the main posts and also because the foreign Communists who came to Moscow looked up to the Soviet leaders with such respect and admiration that it took little effort by Lenin and Trotsky, or even by Zinoviev and Radek, to make the Comintern follow their lead. Lenin viewed the International as the organizer of Communist revolutions all over the world.
