The International

International, The, common name of a number of socialist-communist revolutionary organizations. Three of these have had historical significance. The First International, officially the International Working Men's Association, was formed under the leadership of Karl Marx in London in 1864 with the aim of uniting workers of all nations to realize the ideals of the Communist Manifesto. Divisions grew between reformers and violent revolutionaries; these became increasingly bitter, culminating in the expulsion of the faction led by Mikhail Bakunin after a leadership struggle in 1872. The association broke up in 1876. The Second, commonly called the Socialist International, was founded in Paris in 1889 by a group of socialist parties that later made their headquarters in Brussels. The leading social democratic parties, including those of Germany and Russia, were represented. Among the representatives were Jean Jaurés, Ramsay MacDonald, Lenin, and Trotsky. The Second International influenced international labor affairs until World War I, when it broke up. The Third or Communist International, generally known as the Comintern, was founded by Lenin in 1919 in an attempt to win the leadership of world socialism; Zionview was its first president. Soviet-dominated from the outset, it aimed, in the 1920s, to foment world revolution. In the 1930s, under Stalin, it sought contacts with less extreme left-wing groups abroad, to assuage foreign hostility. Stalin dissolved it in 1943 as a wartime conciliatory gesture to the Allies.