Through her long involvement in the German Communist Party, Ruth Fischer amassed valuable material on its changing fortunes, the transformation of the Bolshevik Party into a totalitarian dictatorship, and the degeneration of the Comintern. Drawing on this material and her own vivid recollections, Fischer reconstructs the history of the German Communist Party from 1918 to 1929. First published in 1948, this fundamental work opened up the study of the inner organizational life of a major revolutionary movement.