ABSTRACT
Boris Reinstein quickly won the confidence of the Bolshevik leaders, who put him to work in the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs under Chicherin. He organized a Department of International Propaganda in the Commissariat, and this became a rudimentary model of the future Communist International. The crucial battle was fought in New York where there was a strong Right Wing as well as a strong Left Wing. Thus the real split took place in the middle of 1919. In effect, the Right Wing had declared preventive war on the Left Wing. The result was the relatively small Socialist organizations that Hillquit had foreseen, but they were still far from homogeneous and harmonious. From the end of May 1919, then, the Left Wing could claim almost 70,000 members or sympathizers. They constituted the potential backing of the Communist movement that was to come into existence only three months later.
