Cominform

The '''Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties (), commonly known as Cominform''' (), was a co-ordination body of Marxist–Leninist communist parties in Europe which existed from 1947 to 1956. Formed in the wake of the dissolution of the Communist International in 1943, it did not replace that body, but instead mainly served as an expression of solidarity and as a means of disseminating Stalinist propaganda. The Cominform initially included the communist parties of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia (expelled in 1948), France, and Italy. The organization was dissolved in 1956, during de-Stalinization, largely replaced in function by the Warsaw Pact formed in 1955 and Comecon formed in 1949.

==Overview== ===Establishment and purpose=== The Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties was unofficially founded at a conference of Marxist–Leninist communist parties from across Europe in Szklarska Poręba, People's Republic of Poland, in September 1947. Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union (USSR), called the conference in response to divergences among communist governments on whether or not to attend the Paris Conference on the Marshall Plan in July 1947. It was founded with nine members: the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Bulgarian Communist Party, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the Hungarian Communist Party, the Polish Workers' Party, the Romanian Communist Party, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, the French Communist Party, and the Italian Communist Party. The organization was commonly known as Cominform, an abbreviation of "Communist Information Bureau", itself a shortened version of the official name.