Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers Parties

[often known in the USA as the Cominform], an international center of a number of Communist and workers’ parties during its existence from 1947 to 1956. It consisted of members of the central committees of the Bulgarian Communist Party, the Hungarian Workers’ Party, the Italian Communist Party, the Polish United Workers’ Party, the Rumanian Workers’ Party, the CPSU, the French Communist Party, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (until 1948). Its purpose was to organize the exchange of experience between Communist parties and, where necessary, to coordinate their activities.

The Information Bureau was founded at a conference of Communist and workers’ parties held in Poland in late September 1947. Subsequent conferences were held in mid-January 1948, in the latter half of June 1948 in Rumania, and in the latter half of November 1949 in Hungary. A number of papers were adopted at these conferences, including the Declaration on the International Situation (1947), the resolution On the Exchange of Information and Coordination of the Activities of the Parties (1947), the resolution On the Defense of Peace and the Struggle Against the Instigators of War, and the resolution On the Unity of the Working Class and the Tasks of the Communist and Workers’ Parties (both 1949). These papers characterized the distribution of basic political forces in the international arena after World War II. The Information Bureau also adopted two resolutions (1948, 1949) on the situation in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, in which a number of unfounded accusations were directed against the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party.

The headquarters of the bureau were in Belgrade (1947–48) and subsequently in Bucharest (1948–56). In April 1956, by a joint resolution of the central committees belonging to the bureau, its activities, including the publication of its official organ, Za prochnyi mir, za narodnuiu demokratiiu! (For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy), were terminated.