Regarding Trotsky’s involvement, look at the contents of his two-volume “First Five Years of the Communist International.” He attended all four congresses; his most intensive engagement was at the Third Congress.

On your second and third questions, your best guide is the Third Congress proceedings, which are right now at the printer and will be available this fall. Levi’s opinions on German and Hungarian defeats are now available in “In the Steps of Rosa Luxemburg.” You also need to read Radek and Bela Kun, but that material is not yet in English. John

For a summary of how Comintern Executive Committee policy on Italy evolved, see my proceedings of the Fourth Congress, “Toward the United Front,” pp. 13-20. I will post a parallel account on this website in a week’s time.

“Members of the Comintern Executive initially adapted to the ultraleft course of the Italian Communist Party, and then, without explanation, reversed its course at the close of the congress, too late for the new approach to be recorded in congress resolutions.”

So ‘the adaption’ (by members, not the Exec as a whole) was during Congress discussion, in private, in a vote?

You say “reversed its course”, which implies the Exec, but there’s a slippage here of subject as the first clause explicitly referred to Exec members, not the Exec (be it as either a whole or the majority).

Although on re-reading, is the reversing done not by the Exec but by the PCI?

How was this reverse expressed: privately, a speech, a number of speeches, a resolution (be it voted on or not), something else?

You speak of “the new approach”, presumably of the Exec majority or unanimously (or is it by the PCI?). How was this approach arrived at: in private, at an Exec meeting during the Congress, in some other way?

My attention was drawn to this as it was surprising that on such a crucial matter, the triumph of fascism in an important European country, that time wasn’t made to move a resolution adequate to how the discussion had developed.