School of Language Studies
Russian and East European Seminar Series
Monday 7 April 2008, 4.00 p.m. in Building 110, Room
W3.03.
Australia and the Communist International: Documents from the Russian
State Archive of Socio-Political History
The Communist International (1919-1943) was intended by its founders
to be the world party of socialist revolution. Keenly aware of its 'world-historical'
role, it collected and filed extensive records. In recent years the
custodian of those records, RGASPI, has been cooperating with libraries
and scholars around the world to disseminate them. In this talk, I will
use the Comintern Archives soon to be deposited in the ADFA Library
in Canberra to examine the relationship between Moscow and the Communist
Party of Australia during its early period to 1940. This will include
information about the Comintern agent Alexander Zuzenko and the unification
of the CPA in 1922, Comintern investigations into the state of the CPA
in the mid-1920s, and the ways the Comintern transformed loyalty into
subordination. Along the way, I will cover such issues as 'Moscow gold'
and 'orders from Moscow'.
Professor David Lovell is Head of the School of Humanities and Social
Sciences,
University of New South Wales at ADFA
Enquiries:
Dr K. M. Windle,
Reader, School of Language Studies,
Faculty of Arts,
Australian National University,
Canberra A.C.T. 0200
Australia
Telephone: (61) (02) 6125-2885
Fax: (61) (02) 6125-3252
E-mail: Kevin.Windle@anu.edu.au
