Lenin personally drove the Comintern’s recruitment of American Blacks

Evidence

The Communist parties did not actively recruit Blacks until 1921. This change in policy seems to be largely the responsibility of Lenin, and is even more remarkable when we recall that Lenin’s name was barely known to any of the national elements in the American movement four years earlier. Nevertheless, it was Lenin who raised the “Negro Question” at the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920. And it was Lenin who wrote to the party in America, “some time in 1921 expressing surprise that their reports to Moscow made no mention of party work among Negroes and urging that they should be recognized as a strategically important element in Communist activity. The American Communist Party then began its recruitment of Blacks, primarily, though, radical Black intellectuals and nationalist organizers. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1029

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

Related

• Lenin personally initiated Communist recruitment of American Blacks in 1921 (similarity 0.91)
• Lenin personally ordered American Communists to recruit Black radicals from 1921 onward (similarity 0.87)
• The 1922 Comintern thesis pledged support to every Negro movement undermining capitalism (similarity 0.83)
• The Comintern’s Negro program was political opportunism rationalized after the fact. (similarity 0.81)
• Soviet policy drove thousands of Blacks into the CPUSA. (similarity 0.81)
• Lenin’s rejection of left opportunism was a tactical retreat amid revolutionary defeats (similarity 0.81)
• Stalin supplied the Comintern’s flawed theoretical basis for treating Blacks as a nation. (similarity 0.81)
• Even radical European socialist traditions absorbed American slavery’s racism (similarity 0.79)
• Comintern adopted Black self-determination only in 1928 amid immigrant-worker politics (similarity 0.79)
• Early Black Marxists blamed Marxist parties’ failure on refusing to engage Black realities (similarity 0.78)
• Early American Communists dismissed Black racial consciousness as ideological backwardness (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Lenin viewed American Blacks as the vanguard of revolution in the United States #expands (0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1038
• Padmore saw the Comintern’s about-face as a betrayal of black people. #complicates (0.60) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2377
• Stalin supplied the Comintern’s flawed theoretical basis for treating Blacks as a nation. #responds-to (0.50) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1064
• The Comintern’s Negro program was political opportunism rationalized after the fact. #complicates (0.50) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1066