Until now, the Communist movement has been studied more from the national perspective than the international. This scholarly tradition seems to be at odds with the organisatorial interconnection even subjugation of the national communist parties ("sections") to the Communist International, or Comintern (1919/1943), but it is understandable from the point of view of the historian who has only national sources at his disposal (newspapers, brochures, interviews).
Nowadays, the tendency is for the international component of the Communist movement to participate in research. The archives of the Comintern are gradually being released by the Soviet Union, and an enormous number of official publications is emerging, and being made available in libraries by reprints.
Here, Vilém Kahan's bibliography is an indispensable tool in listing nearly all reference works and publications by and on the Comintern, and in giving a list of aliases of speakers on Comintern meetings and an overview of all agendas of the meetings. These lists are based on research in 14 specialised Western libraries and on the knowledge of a dozen European languages.
The second volume will deal with the front organisations, a third and last volume with the national sections.