Of Transits and Transitions: Moscow-Bound Travels of Foreign Communists as a Transformative Experience, 1919–1939

Abstract

This article focuses on travels undertaken by future students of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV). It puts the experience ‘on the road’ on the map of the transnational world of the Cominternians as a quintessential part of the interwar communist experience. The article sets the backdrop with the initial expectations of the students. Then it discusses the hardships that KUTVians had to endure in their journey and its effect. Finally, it reconstructs the travel experience as a rite of passage towards the Cominternian militant habitus and as a site of political transformation.