Clocking in at a mere seven hundred pages, give or take, The Communist Movement at a Crossroads: Plenums of the Communist International’s Executive Committee, 1922-1923, the eighth volume of John Riddell’s awesome edition of documents from the Comintern in Lenin’s time, will be out later this year. (As with everything in the Historical Materialism book series, it will then be issued in paperback by Haymarket; in this case, in 2018.)
While understanding and respecting the value of limiting the series to the period of the first four Congresses, I really wish someone would prepare a comparable edition of the next three. Especially the Sixth and Seventh, which still weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living (as somebody once put it). The Marxist Internet Archive makes a great many Comintern documents from all periods available, and I was especially glad when it made available a number of issues of International Press Correspondence, including most of the Sixth Congress proceedings. But Riddell’s work sets the standard, and I hope someone will emulate it to prepare a comprehensive edition of “The Communist International After Lenin’s Time.”
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