The Chilean Communist Party 1922-1947

• Main Author: Barnard, A.
• Published: University College London (University of London) 1978
• Subjects: 970
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.448953

Founded in 1922 by Socialist who already exerted considerable influence in the Chilean trade union movement, the Chilean Communist Party was a communist party in name only during its early years. It was not until the later 1920s that it began to acquire the organisational forms and practices characteristic of all members of the Third Communist International and not until the early 1930s that it was led by men who gave unquestioning allegiance to Moscow. Reduced to a shadow of its former self by prolonged persecution in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the party's fortunes did not begin to revive until after 1935, when the Third International adopted policies which encouraged it to become a regular participant in Chilean coalition politics. Between 1935 and 1947, the party's fortunes fluctuated somewhat in accordance with changing national and international circumstances but coalition politics enabled it to play important roles in the election of three successive Presidents of the Republic, to extend its appeal to wider sectors of society, to expand its electoral and trade union support and, indirectly, to lay the basis for an increasingly effective and professional party machine. In 1946, the party became the first Latin American Communist Party to hold designated portfolios in cabinet but its experience of high government office was cut short by Cold War pressures - pressures which eventually forced the party into a period of clandestinity which lasted from 1947 until 1958. This, then, is the broad chronological sweep of this study. Within its context, particular attention is paid to the party's relations with the International Communist Movement, to its links with organised labour, to its organisational development, to its electoral support and to its changing relations with other Chilean parties. 0 ii