Second International in the context of "World communism"

Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov (Russian: Георгий Валентинович Плеханов [ɡʲɪˈorɡʲɪj vəlʲɪnʲˈtʲinəvʲɪtɕ plʲɪˈxanəf] ; 11 December [O.S. 29 November] 1856 – 30 May 1918) was a Russian Marxist theorist, philosopher, and revolutionary. After beginning his revolutionary career as a populist, in 1883 Plekhanov established the Emancipation of Labour group, the first Russian Marxist political organisation. He is widely regarded as the "father of Russian Marxism", and his theoretical works were instrumental in converting a generation of revolutionaries, including Vladimir Lenin, to the cause.

Plekhanov was a prominent leader in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) and the Second International. In 1900, he collaborated with Lenin in founding the party newspaper Iskra, and at the party's Second Congress in 1903, initially sided with Lenin's Bolshevik faction. However, he soon broke with the Bolsheviks over their organisational principles, which he criticised as overly centralist, and became a leading figure in the opposing Menshevik faction. During the 1905 Russian Revolution, Plekhanov maintained that Russia was only ready for a bourgeois-democratic revolution and argued against what he saw as premature attempts to seize power by the proletariat.

Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxist thought which emerged after the deaths of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the late 19th century, expressed in its primary form by Karl Kautsky. Kautsky's views of Marxism dominated the European Marxist movement for two decades, and orthodox Marxism was the official philosophy of the majority of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until the First World War in 1914, whose outbreak caused Kautsky's influence to wane and brought to prominence the orthodoxy of Vladimir Lenin. Orthodox Marxism aimed to simplify, codify and systematize Marxist method and theory by clarifying perceived ambiguities and contradictions in classical Marxism.

Orthodox Marxism maintained that Marx's historical materialism was a science which revealed the laws of history and proved that the collapse of capitalism and its replacement by socialism were inevitable. The implications of this deterministic view were that history could not be "hurried" and that politically workers and workers' parties must wait for the material economic conditions to be met before the revolutionary transformation of society could take place. For example, this idea saw the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) adopt a gradualist approach, taking advantage of bourgeois parliamentary democracy to improve the lives of workers until capitalism was brought down by its objective internal contradictions.

The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Armenian: Հայ Յեղափոխական Դաշնակցութիւն, romanized: Hay Heghapokhakan Dashnaktsutyun, abbr. ARF (ՀՅԴ) or ARF-D), also known as Dashnaktsutyun (Armenian: Դաշնակցություն, lit. "Federation"), is an Armenian nationalist and socialist political party founded in 1890 in Tiflis, Russian Empire by Christapor Mikaelian, Stepan Zorian, and Simon Zavarian. As of 2023, the party operates in Armenia, Lebanon, Iran and in countries where the Armenian diaspora is present. The party was also active in Artsakh until the Azerbaijani offensive in September 2023. Although it has long been the most influential political party in the Armenian diaspora, it has a comparatively smaller proportional presence in the Republic of Armenia. As of October 2023, the party was represented in two national parliaments, with ten seats in the National Assembly of Armenia and three seats in the Parliament of Lebanon as part of the March 8 Alliance.

The ARF has traditionally advocated socialist democracy and has been a full member of the Socialist International since 2003; it joined the Second International in 1907. It has the largest membership of the political parties present in the Armenian diaspora, having established affiliates in more than 20 countries. Compared to other diasporan Armenian parties which tend to primarily focus on educational or humanitarian projects, the ARF is the most politically oriented of the organizations and traditionally has been one of the staunchest supporters of Armenian nationalism. The party campaigns for the recognition of the Armenian genocide and the right to reparations. It also advocates the establishment of United Armenia, partially based on the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920.

The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second International during World War I, the Comintern was founded in March 1919 at a congress in Moscow convened by Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (RCP), which aimed to create a new international body committed to revolutionary socialism and the overthrow of capitalism worldwide.

Initially, the Comintern operated with the expectation of imminent proletarian revolutions in Europe, particularly Germany, which were seen as crucial for the survival and success of the Russian Revolution. Its early years were characterized by attempts to foment and coordinate revolutionary uprisings and the establishment of disciplined communist parties across the globe, often demanding strict adherence to the "Twenty-one Conditions" for admission. As these revolutionary hopes faded by the early 1920s, the Comintern's policies shifted, notably with the adoption of the "united workers' front" tactic, aiming to win over the working masses from reformist socialist parties. Throughout the 1920s, the Comintern underwent a process of "Bolshevisation", increasing the centralization of its structure and the dominance of the RCP within its ranks. This process intensified with the rise of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union.

Philosophy in the Soviet Union was officially confined to Marxist–Leninist thinking, which theoretically was the basis of objective and ultimate philosophical truth. During the 1920s and 1930s, other tendencies of Russian thought were repressed (many philosophers emigrated, others were expelled). Joseph Stalin enacted a decree in 1931 identifying dialectical materialism with Marxism–Leninism, making it the official philosophy which would be enforced in all communist states and, through the Comintern, in most communist parties. Following the traditional use in the Second International, opponents would be labeled as "revisionists".

From the beginning of Bolshevik regime, the aim of official Soviet philosophy (which was taught as an obligatory subject for every course), was the theoretical justification of communist ideas. For this reason, "Sovietologists", among whom the most famous were Józef Maria Bocheński, professor of philosophy at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Gustav Wetter, have often claimed Soviet philosophy was close to nothing but dogma.