Henk Sneevliet - Working For The Comintern

Working For The Comintern

Back in the Netherlands, Sneevliet was somewhat marginalised by the leadership of the CPH, who criticised his tactics in the Indies. He therefore spent more time in the union movement, where he helped organise the 1920 transport strike. The same year he was also present at the second congress of the Comintern in Moscow, as a representative of the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI), which was the successor to Sneevliet's ISDV. Vladimir Lenin was impressed enough by him to send him as a Comintern representative to China, to help the formation of Communist Party of China, and he was present at the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in July 1921 together with Vladimir Neumann of the Russian Communist Party when the Communist Party of China was formally established.

Sneevliet was not impressed by the party and argued for cooperation with the Kuomintang and Sun Yat-sen, with whom he had established contacts personally. Although this policy seemed reasonable at the time, it proved to be disastrously wrong a few years later when Chiang Kai-shek became the head of the Kuomintang after Sun Yat-sen's death (see Chinese Civil War). Things came to a head in 1924, largely due to the worsening political climate in the Soviet Union.