From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) is the common name for what was officially referred to as the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties. It was the first official forum of the international communist movement since the dissolution of the Comintern, and confirmed the new realities after World War II - including the creation of an Eastern Bloc.

The Cominform was a Soviet-dominated organization of Communist parties founded in September, 1947 at a conference of Communist party leaders in Szklarska Poręba, Poland. The Soviet leader Joseph Stalin called the conference in response to divergences among the eastern European governments on whether or not to attend the Paris Conference on Marshall Aid in July 1947.

The initial seat of the Cominform was located in Belgrade (then the capital of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. After the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the group in June 1948, the seat was moved to Bucharest, Romania. The expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform for Titoism initiated the Informbiro period in that nation's history.

The intended purpose of the Cominform was to coordinate actions between Communist parties under Soviet direction. As a result, the Cominform acted as a tool of Soviet foreign policy and Stalinism. It had its own newspaper (titled For Lasting Peace, for People's Democracy!), and it encouraged unity of Communist parties under Soviet direction.

The Cominform was dissolved in 1956 after Soviet rapprochement with Yugoslavia and the process of De-Stalinization.

• Bulgarian Communist Party
• Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
• French Communist Party
• Hungarian Workers Party
• Communist Party of Italy
• Polish United Workers' Party
• Romanian Workers' Party
• Communist Party of the Soviet Union
• Communist Party of Yugoslavia (until its expulsion in June of 1948)

• Comintern
• Comecon
• Warsaw Pact

• P. M. H. Bell, The World Since 1945, London, Arnold, 2001, pp.89