Executive Committee of the Communist International

(ECCI, Russian, IKKI), the directing organ of the Communist International, active in the periods between congresses. The bylaws of the Comintern adopted at its Second (1920), Fifth (1924), and Sixth (1928) Congresses gave the ECCI the right to send directives to sections of the Communist International; to control their activity; to expel individuals, groups, or sections who had violated the program or the bylaws of the Comintern or the decisions of its congresses; to admit with a consultative voice organizations and parties sympathizing with communism; and to send its representatives to individual sections of the Comintern.

ECCI members were elected at the congresses of the Comintern, which took the wishes of the sections into consideration. The ECCI elected and created its permanent organs, which included the Presidium of the ECCI (the Narrow Bureau until September 1921); the Secretariat and Organization Bureau, whose functions were carried out by the Political Secretariat after 1926 and by the Secretariat headed by the secretary-general after the Seventh Congress; regional bureaus and secretariats; and departments and commissions on aspects of work or on problems relating to individual Communist parties. The ECCI published the central organ of the Comintern, the magazine Kommunisticheskii International.