Интернациональная Ленинская школа: Подготовка кадров для мирового коммунизма

Soviet communist training school

The International Lenin School (ILS) was an official training school operated in Moscow, Soviet Union, by the Communist International from May 1926 to 1938. It was resumed after the Second World War and run by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; it continued until the end of the Soviet Union. The ILS taught both academic courses and practical underground political techniques with a view to developing a core disciplined and reliable communist political cadres for assignment in communist parties around the world.

The International Lenin School (ILS) was founded in 1926 as an instrument for the "Bolshevisation" of the Communist International (Comintern) and its national sections, following the resolutions of the Fifth World Congress of the Comintern. The school was established, in the formal language of the Comintern: <blockquote>To assist the Comintern sections in raising the qualifications of leading Party workers whose revolutionary experience must be strengthened by general theoretical Marxist–Leninist preparation on the one hand; and, on the other, by direct and active study of the organisational and political experiences of the Russian Communist Party and of the experiences and current work of the Communist Parties in the capitalist and colonial countries." A matter of major difficulty was the variety of languages spoken by participants, a situation that necessitated the extensive use of interpreters. Academic courses taught at the ILS during its first year of existence included political economy, the history of the Russian Communist Party, the history of the world labor movement, party construction, and the Russian language. About 8 hours per week were spent at such factory labor. The great majority of the students hailed from Europe and North America, and another Comintern affiliated training institution, the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, catered to the majority of students from colonial countries. The greatest number of students at the ILS came from Germany (370), followed by Czechoslovakia (320), and France, Poland, Italy, the United States, and China each supplied between 200 and 225 participants.

According to the ILS graduate Joseph Zack Kornfeder, the ILS included courses on Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Trade Union Organization, Party Organization, Military Organization, and the Agrarian Problem. Particular attention was paid to study of the History of the All Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) as well, including the policies, organizational structure, and procedures of that organization. James Larkin Jr, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

After the closure of the ILS, the Comintern operated a cadre school, camouflaged as an agricultural school, in Kushnarenkovo from 1941 to 1943. Wolfgang Leonhard described his studies there in his book Child of the Revolution. Jim Riordan, Helena Sheehan and Kevin McMahon. After the end of the Soviet Union, its premises were given to the Gorbachev Foundation for a time but were later transferred to a Financial University.