Profintern

The Red International of Labor Unions (Красный интернационал профсоюзов, RILU), commonly known as the Profintern ( Профинтерн), was an international body established by the Communist International (Comintern) with the aim of coordinating communist activities within trade unions. Formally established in 1921, the Profintern aimed to act as a counterweight to the influence of the so-called "Amsterdam International", the social-democratic International Federation of Trade Unions (founded in 1919), an organization which the Comintern branded as "class-collaborationist" and as an impediment to revolution. After entering a period of decline in the middle 1930s, the Profintern was finally dissolved in 1937 with the advent of Comintern's "Popular Front" policy. In July 1920, at the behest of Comintern head Grigory Zinoviev, the 2nd World Congress of the Communist International established a temporary International Trade Union Council, commonly known by its Russian acronym, Mezhsovprof. This organizing committee — including members of the Russian, Italian, British, Bulgarian, and French delegations to the Comintern Congress — was presented with the task of organizing "an international congress of Red trade unions. Soviet trade union leader Solomon Lozovsky was named president of this new council, assisted by British unionist Tom Mann and Alfred Rosmer of France. The Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) directed the new council to issue a manifesto to "all trade unions of the world", condemning the social democratic International Federation of Trade Unions based in Amsterdam as a "yellow" organization and inviting them to join a new revolutionary international union association. This decision was to mark a split of the international trade union movement that followed the recently achieved split of the international socialist political movement into revolutionary Communist and electorally-oriented Socialist camps.