[1] Few expected the Comintern to outlast the crushed Bolshevik revolution but Solomon Lozovsky, one of the few senior Bolsheviks left alive, would bear the torch for the coming World Revolution. With the German and Russian proletariat crushed the Communist movements of the globe would retreat to lick their wounds and bid their time. Surely it would only be a matter of time until the contradictions inherent within Capitalism would present them with another opportunity, but could the movement hold itself together until then?
[2] After the downfall of the Russian and German Revolution, the Communist movement initially tried to reform in its traditional locations of exile in Great Britain and Switzerland. However, due to the Britain's steadfast support of the White movement and the Army of the Rhine's active role in crushing the Spartacist uprising, the movements remaining supporters found England to inhospitable, and continued across the Atlantic. The United States as a whole was no less intolerant of the International than the Great Britain, but within the SPA and Progressives movements there was some sympathy to be found that would make the move bearable. Bill Haywood and other's rise through the movement soon showed the swing away from Europe to its new home in the new power structure, but Communist thought had begun to swing away from the Leninist vision of a Socialist Vanguard leading the Proletariat to Revolution to something increasingly different.
[3] "Nela os proletários nada têm a perder a não ser as suas cadeias - têm um mundo a ganhar." The global Communist movement had seemingly been dealt a death blow with the world-historic defeat of the Bolshevik forces by the Whites during the Russian Civil War. In the years, leftists of all stripes moved further and further westward, finding the United States to be less openly repressive than Franz Seldte's Stahlstaat and the other fascist states of Europe, trying to reorganize the remnants of the International under the leadership of moderating American socialists, who looked not to the Leninist vanguard party but the union as the foci of revolutionary activity. While the theoretical battles between the Wobblies and Russian exiles dominated the socialist presses of their day, change was coming in the sertão of Bahia and the flatlands of São Paulo. It was not the West that would turn red, but the South. The radical Lieutenants of Brazil's army, after various failed revolts earlier in the decade and forced into guerrilla warfare in Brazil's rural west, had capitalized on the run on blue-chip stocks on the New York Stock Exchange and the resulting market shock to move rapidly into the nations heartland. As demand for coffee plummeted and the government was forced into devaluation, crowds met the returning Prestes Column and the handsome barbudos leading it with parades and mass celebrations in the street. The takeover was (relatively) nonviolent, and to outside observers unfamiliar with Brazil's idiosyncratic politics and used to stories of the great and terrible caudillos of the continent, saw the Revolution of '27 as another Latin American country sliding into a backwards dictatorship.
Luís Carlos Prestes would have none of that. After a public trial (or purge) of "counter-revolutionary" elements in the new Revolutionary Army, Prestes declared that Brazil's national liberation and development could only come through the emancipation of its workers, the collectivization of its land, faith in the masses and its representatives (i.e., the Army) and through struggle against the imperialist forces that forced Brazil into a state of dependency. In short, communism, tropical style. The romanticism of Prestes' revolution - years of exile and hunger in the hinterlands rewarded with a triumphant victory over the forces of Reaction - captured the imaginations of radicals the world over, leading to Prestes' honorary nomination and selection as General Secretary of the International and the migration of various leftists to 'Red Rio.' Gregório Lourenço Bezerra and German exile Otto Braun would function as Prestes' representatives in the organization (in Braun's case, up until 1933 - he resigned after finding out Prestes had been carrying out an affair with his wife, Olga), fostering ties with radical groups ranging from Mao's Guangdong "base area" to J.T. Gumede and David Patrovsky's revitalized 'frontist' ANC. The Brazilian Model, it was called, could be exported across the globe: waiting for the right material conditions not required. Through guerrilla warfare in the countryside, a sufficiently radicalized peasantry and crucially, a power-base within a given nation's armed forces, revolution was possible. Some took issue with this heterodox read of Marx, others with what they viewed as Prestes' "militarism and national chauvinism," but for the time being, Brazil was the Red Star that would light the world.
[4] The Brazilian Model found a natural home in China, though it would be more fair to say that Mao Zedong Thought was a parallel development to the revolutionary movement forming in South America. A focus on the peasantry and guerrilla warfare was the CPCs bread and butter throughout the 1920s and the damaging warlord period was beginning to radicalise members of the armed forces, especially with Russia and Japan both circling hungrily.
Prestes had been a good figurehead Chairman of the Comintern but actually day to day running of the organisation had been left to functionaries. Understanding that with the global Communist movement beginning to successfully rebuild more vigorous leadership was needed Prestes announced at the opening of the 7th conference that he would be standing down as chair. This lead to a frantic round of politicking as the various members tried to have their candidate selected.
The winner would be China, who nominated founding CPC member Zhang Guotao as General Secretary. On the surface this was somewhat of a surprise as Mao and Zhang had previously fallen out over strategy, with Zhang the loser. However those with a deeper intuition of the Chinese Communist politics situation understood this was an easy way for Mao to sideline his rival as the internationalist aspect of the role would remove him from China and further erode his remaining powerbase in the party.
If Zhang saw his elevation to General Secretary as a punishment he did not show it, instead throwing himself into the role with gusto. Zhang saw the cause of World Communism as intrinsically linked to anti-colonialism and worked to forge links with groups involved in struggles with their foreign masters, helping to funnel both arms, advisors and political materials to groups such as M.N. Roy's Communist Party of India and various burgeoning movements in Africa.
Zhang was criticised by older Communist figures concerned that he was overly embracing chauvinistic bourgeois concepts and focusing on the national questions at the expense of Marxism. Zhang would bat away these criticisms, insisting that only through national self-determination and the destruction of the old colonial empires could the people be free to move towards Socialism.
Zhang's moves would come to fruition in later years but he would not live to see it. Stuck down by an assassin's bullet while disembarking at Shanghai for a clandestine return to China, he would slip into a coma and die two weeks later. Blame was placed on numerous suspects, the KMT, Japan and Britain but the suspicion always remained that the true culprit was Mao, finally settling accounts with his old nemesis.
