Comintern project publishing appeal

A letter from John Riddell and Mike Taber

Dear friends,

Please join us in raising funds for the ninth installment of books in the Comintern publishing series The Communist Women’s Movement, 1920-1922. To help raise $3,000 in special editorial costs, go to

https://www.gofundme.com/comintern-book-on-women

Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai at the 1921 conference of Communist women

Begun in 1983, the Comintern publication project has aimed to present the Communist International under Lenin in its own words. To this end, the proceedings and resolutions of the first four Comintern congresses have been published, as well as preparatory volumes and other material. This past June the eighth volume was published: The Communist Movement at a Crossroads: Plenums of the Communist International’s Executive Committee, 1922-1923.

We are now working on the next volume: The Communist Women’s Movement 1920-1922. This volume will tell the story of how the Communist Women’s Movement, under the leadership of Clara Zetkin and others, set out to build something new in history: an international movement to fight for women’s emancipation and to draw women into the worldwide revolutionary struggle. The volume will be co-edited by Mike Taber and Daria Dyakonova.

At the heart of the book will be the proceedings and resolutions of the Communist Women’s Movement’s 1920 and 1921 international conferences, which have never before appeared in English. The full proceedings of the 1921 meeting, never published in any language, were unearthed for this volume during a trip to the Comintern archives in Moscow. The $3,000 needed for editorial expenses relate above all to this archival work in Moscow.

If you prefer to send a check by mail, please contact John Riddell at jriddell63@gmail.com, or Mike Taber at mikestaber@yahoo.com.

Note that if you would like a GoFundMe donation to remain anonymous, click on the “hide name and comment” box. Also, keep in mind that tipping for GoFundMe is optional. Under tip amount, choose “other” and type any amount or “0”.

In solidarity, John Riddell and Mike Taber 

Published Volumes of the Communist International Publishing Project

• Lenin’s Struggle for a Revolutionary International
  Documents, 1907-1916 The Preparatory Years.
  New York: Pathfinder, 1984, 604 pages.
• The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power
  Documents, 1918-1919: Preparing the Founding Congress
  New York: Pathfinder, 1986, 687 pages.
• Founding the Communist International
  Proceedings and Documents of the First Congress, March 1919
  New York: Pathfinder, 1987, 503 pages.
• Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite! (Volume 1)
  Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress of the Communist International, 1920
  New York: Pathfinder, 1991, 632 pages.
• Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite! (Volume 2)
  Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress of the Communist International, 1920
  New York: Pathfinder, 1991, 592 pages.
• To See the Dawn!
  Baku, 1920 First Congress of the Peoples of the East
  New York: Pathfinder, 1993, 368 pages.
• Toward the United Front
  Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922
  Leiden: Brill, 2012; Chicago: Haymarket, 2013, 1310 pages.
• To the Masses
  Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921
  Leiden: Brill, 2015; Chicago: Haymarket, 2016, 1299 pages.
• The Communist Movement at a Crossroads
  Plenums of the Communist International’s Executive Committee, 1922-1923
  Leiden: Brill, 2018; Chicago: Haymarket, 2019. 796 pages.