p The Second Congress of the Young Communist International held its official opening ceremony on July 9, 1921, but since the Third Congress of the Communist International was still in progress, it was decided to start the working sessions on July 14. The Second Congress of the YCI was attended by 150 delegates from 40 countries in Europe, America and the Far East who represented over 800,000 YCI members.

p These figures show that an enormous amount of work had been done since the First Congress of the YCI in winning over individual youth groups and organisations, which were formerly under the socialist parties’ influence, to the communist movement. In less than two years the Young Communist International grew from 14 leagues with 140,000 members to 49 leagues with 800,000 members.

p The congress had the following items on its agenda: 1) report on the Third Congress of the Communist International; 2) report by the YCI 154

p Executive Committee; 3) relations between communist youth organisations and Communist parties; 4) young people’s economic struggle; 5) work in the colonial countries, and several other items.

p Among those who spoke at the opening ceremony were S. A. Lozovsky, Y. M. Yaroslavsky, Clara Zetkin and A. V. Lunacharsky.

p The congress dealt at great length with the YCI’s general political line, the relations between the Communist parties and the young people, and the economic struggle. Resolutions were adopted on other questions without any lengthy discussion. The delegates approved the report on the results of the Third Congress of the Communist International.

p Willi Munzenberg made the report on the work of the YCI Executive Committee. He mentioned the achievements of the Young Communist International during the period under review, and underlined the growing ties between the YCI and the Communist International. The SocialDemocratic leaders’ hopes that the young people would not follow the Communist International had been shattered.

p The report said in part: “The senile SocialDemocratic guardians and leaders of the young people find it most difficult to get into their narrow skulls the close militant ties which exist between the Young Communist International and the Communist International, and between the communist youth organisations and parties. But the invaluable service which the Young Communist International and the communist youth organisations have rendered to the cause of developing the proletarian revolution, now headed in all countries by the Communist International and the 155 parties which have joined it, lies precisely in this."  [155•1 

p The speaker was obliged to admit that the Executive Committee had taken wrong stand on certain questions, including autonomy and the relations between youth leagues and the Communist parties.

p One of the mistakes of the YCI Executive Committee was that it had spread the reformist views existing in the Second International to the international communist youth movement. The congress discussed ways of putting an end to these old views. The Russian Young Communist League played the leading part in the struggle for purging the YCI of reformism. It was significant that the printed report by the YCI Executive Committee distributed to congress delegates was the exact opposite of the report made by Willi Munzenberg there. The Executive Committee’s report presented all the YCI’s activities in an unduly favourable light, which provoked some fairly strong criticism from the delegates.

p The delegates considerably expanded Willi Munzenberg’s self-critical speech. They cited examples showing the Executive Committee’s weakness in guiding youth leagues, emphasised the Executive Committee’s vacillating political line, and so on.

p The speeches made by the RYCL delegates are of particular interest. In a special report to the congress, the CC RYCL stressed that youth leagues would be able to make a close study of young people’s revolutionary education and guidance in the economic struggle, when they gave 156 up the task of political guidance as a result of the establishment of Communist parties, and that this was the best guarantee of growing youth participation in the young people’s activities.

p The report dealt with the communist youth leagues’ practical tasks in the light of the decisions which the Third Congress of the Communist International adopted on the settlement of the relations between the communist youth organisations and Communist parties.

p A heated debate ensued when the congress began to discuss the young people’s economic struggle. In another report on behalf of the Executive Committee, Willi Miinzenberg analysed the economic struggle, which had become increasingly important after the war. As the economic oppression of young workers grew, communist organisations were faced with the task of setting up trade union sections for the young people and organising resistance within the trade unions against bureaucrats who tried to prevent the young people from joining in the economic struggle. The theses which the congress adopted stressed that careful preparation had to be made for the economic struggle.

p Among the organisational questions, the congress concentrated mainly on the reorganisation of youth leagues at the factory level, that is, with the establishment of young communist league cells directly at the factories. In his report Eugen Schonhaar urged the immediate reorganisation of youth organisations, saying that only then could they become mass bodies. This question was not settled until the Third Congress of the YCI held in late 1922.

p One of the most important questions discussed by the Second Congress of the YCI was the work 157 in the colonial countries. Revolutionary ideas and workers’ mass protests in Western Europe and America were rapidly arousing the colonial peoples who had suffered centuries of oppression. Young people were actively promoting these new trends.

p The young people in the colonies were rallying round the banner of liberating their homeland from the colonisers, establishing independent national states and rejecting religion, the opium of the people. Delegates from China, Korea, India and Persia took a very active part in the discussion of these problems at the congress.

p It must be noted that apart from the Communist parties, no political party or organisation in the Socialist International attached any importance to the peoples’ struggle in the colonial and dependent countries, let alone rendered them any assistance in the cause of national liberation.

p The Marxist-Leninist parties and the organisations associated with them firmly set forth these tasks. The resolution adopted at the Second Congress of the YCI summarised the discussion at the congress and stressed for the first time ever in the history of the world youth movement that the Young Communist International “must endeavour to create in every colonial country a mass movement of the working-class youth, or it must endeavour to gain control over the already existing mass movements. Such mass movements may be organised either by non-party (at first economic) organisations or by the revolutionary unions of Young Communists".  [157•1 

p The congress elected a new Executive 158 Committee of the YCI and increased it to 11 members and four candidates. It also resolved to transfer the headquarters of the committee to Moscow with a view to establishing closer ties with the Executive Committee of the Communist International.

p The importance of the decision to transfer the headquarters of the Executive Committee of the Young Communist International from Berlin to Moscow must be emphasised. The YCI Executive Committee members were divided on this question. Its urgency was discussed at the Executive Committee of the Communist International. On June 15, 1921, one month before the Young Communist International held its second congress, YCI Executive Committee members Willi Munzenberg and Lazar Shatskin even wrote to Lenin, asking him to grant them an interview for 10 to 15 minutes on this question. The archives have no documents showing that Lenin dealt with this question, but the very fact that he was asked to solve it shows that it was of great importance to the development of the international young workers’ movement.

p The importance of the Second Congress of the Young Communist International lies above all in the fact that it mapped out concrete ways of developing the young people’s mass movement. Its decisions summed up the results of 20 months of hard work in establishing and consolidating the young communist leagues, which had received some excellent training in party work and adopted a single political programme of struggle as their basis.

p The congress completely settled the relations between the communist youth organisations and Communist parties, and recognised the need to subordinate youth organisations to the political guidance of Communist parties, which were now 159 consolidated ideologically and organisationally and were the true leaders of the working class. It was the congress which first raised the question of turning the communist youth organisations into mass organisations and of the need to draw more young workers into the struggle for a better future for mankind. The congress decisions clearly defined the YCI as a part of the youngworkers’ class organisation. The congress entrusted the YCI Executive Committee with the task of consolidating ties with the youth leagues, studying the situation more carefully in individual countries and promoting the exchange of practical experience.

p The congress decisions were aimed at completely breaking with the old ideology and reorganising the communist youth organisations’ work. As a result of this, the congress gave a strong impetus to the youth organisations’ activities.

p In its review of the international young workers’ movement, submitted to the Executive Committee of the Communist International, the YCI Executive Committee stressed that the Second Congress of communist youth organisations had played an important part in consolidating the young revolutionaries’ ranks, and had clearly defined the tasks facing the movement and its relations with the Communist parties. This was of great help to individual organisations, which, until the congress in Moscow, had not been able to devote themselves entirely to practical activities owing to endless discussions on theoretical matters.

The Second Congress of the Young Communist International opened up a new chapter in the history of the international communist youth movement.