Communist Party of Switzerland
스위스 공산당
A Comintern-affiliated communist party founded in 1921 by the left wing that split from the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland. It was strongest in German-speaking Switzerland, especially Zurich, Schaffhausen and Basel. The Federal Council banned its activity and declared it dissolved in 1940, and most of its members joined the Socialist Federation of Switzerland in 1943.
In depth
When the Social Democratic Party refused in 1919 and 1920 to join the Comintern, its left wing under Franz Welti split away. At a unification congress of the socialist left in Zurich on 5–6 March 1921, Welti's group merged with the 'old communists', a first communist party founded by Jakob Herzog in 1918, and the founding of the KPS was resolved; it then had about 6,000 members. Its first president was Welti.
As a member of the Comintern the party adopted its positions and in the course of 'Bolshevisation' came under the influence of the Soviet Communist Party. In the canton of Schaffhausen it almost displaced the Social Democrats, reaching 26 percent in 1928, and in Basel it won 25 seats in the Grand Council with 19.7 percent in 1929. Factional struggles between Stalinists and Trotskyists, however, cost it members, and in 1928 it adopted an aggressive line accusing the SP of 'social fascism'. In 1929 Welti's leadership was replaced, and in 1930 the Schaffhausen labour leader Walther Bringolf was expelled.
After Hitler came to power the party dropped the social-fascism thesis and in 1935 offered the SP a popular front, which did not come about. Following the Comintern's turn after the Hitler–Stalin Pact it lost heavily in German-speaking Switzerland. On 6 August 1940 the Federal Council banned all its activity and on 26 November declared it dissolved. Most members joined Léon Nicole's Socialist Federation of Switzerland on 30 May 1943, and after merger talks with the SP failed the Party of Labour (PdA) was founded in 1944.