Contribution to the 15th International Communist Seminar Intern

Contribution to the 15^th International Communist Seminar
"Present and past experiences in the international communist movement".
Brussels, 5- 7 May 2006
www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org

Flexible Tactics and Revolutionary Strategy arming Comintern

Union of Communists of Ukraine

by Tamila Y. Yabrova, Chairperson of the Union of Communists of Ukraine

It is not only theory that contributed much to the remarkable experience of Comintern. Still more important were its strategy and tactics. According to V. Lenin, they were based on, the «lit with the profound philosophical world outlook as well as comprehensive knowledge of history summing up of practical experience », transformation of the well-established ideas and developing of more suitable ones under the then situation as well as forms and methods of struggle. Comintern considered the elaboration of the communists’ policy in the changing world to be one of its major tasks.

In the time of revolutionary upsurge, Comintern helped to the shaping communist parties, which were the major instruments for the proletarian struggle. It called on the parties to stand to the victory in their battles against capitalist order in a number of countries. When things went the other way round Comintern set up new tasks. They involved: to make the majority of the working class as well as all labour the supporters of communist parties; to form a concerted labour front able of resisting the attacking capital. Under stabilised capitalism, the tasks of preparatory nature came into forth. Those were: expanded struggle of the Comintern, with all their revolutionary struggle, was striving to show to the working people the way out of the crisis and to get ready to the socialist revolutions prior to the imperialistic and fascist attack.

Since the mid 30^th Comintern transferred to the antifascist strategy (though it was somewhat late, which is testified by the fact that the 1^st of May Appeal dated April 23d 1941 didn’t mention the word "fascism". It named England, France and their social-democratic servants "the war lighters"). At all stages of its struggle Comintern was trying to build up its strategy and tactics both as a science and an art, taking into account the actual state-of-affairs with all social and political forces. They examined thoroughly whether the masses were ready and whether communist parties were able to lead them. Such attempts were far from being always perfect. From time to time Comintern proceeded from too optimistic and too revolutionary prognoses and estimations. So they appeared to be too much in a hurry with their political directions. It was not always that they were guided by Lenin's directive according to which for the revolutionary struggle to be effective "the masses need their one political experience and the party has to be able to lead the masses based on their own experiences". Nevertheless it was a continuous fight with all its victories and failures as well as with its sometimes-unexpected dynamics.

The political strategy of Comintern at the beginning of the 30th was aimed at working to the socialist revolution in the developed capitalist countries. They defined dictatorship both in the form of fascism and in the form of bourgeois parliamentary republics as their major enemy. Hence, Comintern led the communist attack against both imperialistic reaction and fascist parties and against social democrats whose anti-fascist potential was not recognised at that time. Such strategy ignored contradictions between fascism and bourgeois bureaucracy and didn't allow organising defence against fiercely attacking fascist reaction. (It was socialist democrats themselves who were to blame of such state of affairs. Thus, while WSI and its leadership were absolutely against getting united with the communist parties, its rank-and-file members, on the contrary, strived for concerted action with communists as it was in France in 1934 when the People's Front was formed and prevented fascists from coming into power. It should be mentioned that some Comintern activists in there turn rejected the very possibility of any union with the socialist democratic parties. To illustrate, Bela Kun who signed an answer for the Executive Committee of the Communist International wrote: "to unite with servants of our enemies means to unite with an enemy").

Due to a number of qualitative changes in the world arena, a new strategy was the matter of living. The fascist attack (Hitler's coming into power in Germany in January 1933 – an so on) threatened and ,in a number of countries, eliminated democratic freedoms and social gainings of the working people which they had been fighting for many decades. Under such a situation anti-fascist and democratic demands came into force. The 7^th Congress of Comintern was basically devoted to the above problems. "Nowadays the working people in a number of capitalist countries are facing a particular choice of the day, the alternatives being not proletarian dictatorship or bourgeois democracy but bourgeois democracy or fascism" .

Obviously, communists were aware of the fact that social economic prerequisites of the socialist revolution hadn't extinguished, nor did the class contradiction between bourgeois and proletariat. It was a new contradiction that came to the forefront and overlapped the majority of population: a contradiction between the anti-fascist democratic camp and the forces of imperialist reaction - fascism. It required Comintern's transition to the anti-fascist strategy.Such strategy fit with subjective factor, which was the readiness of the vast masses of people to defend democratic freedoms from fascism. This new strategy of Comintern was transitive. It was not limited only to the defence of bourgeois democratic freedoms but connected such defence with proceeding toward anti-fascist democracy, a new type of democracy, which would solve the problem of rooting fascism out. Comintern formulated the ways of solving the above problem as the necessity of a concerted working and wide anti-fascist People's Front and the work for establishing the government of the People's Front. The Executive Committee of Comintern based on successful struggle for the People's Front in Spain and in France formulated the regulations on the anti-fascist democratic regime and government. In September 1936 Dimitrov characterised them as follows: "It should be a special state with a really people's democracy. It is not a Soviet state yet, rather an anti-fascist, left state with the participation of a truly left part of the bourgeoisie.This definition led to the concept of people democracy which in its turn laid the foundation of the Programme of " National Front " in Bulgaria and in a number of other countries in and after the end of the World War II. These states with all their activities prepared coming of socialist changes.

Attempts to establish the regime of the People's Front contributed a lot to the political experiences of the communist parties. They overcame sectarian isolation tendencies and learnt how to cooperate with other anti-fascist forces, organisations and parties in terms of formulating the platform of changes to meet interests of all the participants of the People's Front. It allowed mobilizing wide masses of people and extended social bases of influence of communist parties. (From exclusively Workers Front involving some social democratic working masses – to the People's Front implying participation of the petite bourgeoisie, and further on at the beginning of WW II - to the National Front or the Patriotic Front which had a task to organise a defence from fascist aggression and secure national independence covering broad masses of population).

This policy was a major linkage of the communist party and masses of people. Earlier the majority of communist parties had their memberships of a thousand to dozen thousand people and within a short period of time hundred thousand to millions of people joined the parties. Thus, the communist party of France for the three-year term of the National Front (1934 – 1937) increased from 30.000 to 340.000 members, that was eleven times as much. The same can be reported concerning China and other countries. The Comintern policy of the national front was the policy for the broad unions of all those interested in the defeat of fascism. This policy was continuously enriched with new ideas and lessons learned and adapted to the changed situation, in particular opinions concerning the composition of the People's Front.

The 7^th Congress of Comintern (July -august 1935) didn't say anything about any groups of bourgeoisie as of would-be members of the People's Front. Nevertheless, some months later when the Executive Committee of Comintern discussed the developments in Germany and France, they spoke in favour of not only petite bourgeoisie but some parts of the middle and even liberal bourgeois to be involved in the National Front to combat fascism.

In 1938-1939 Hitler threatened a number of European countries. Comintern and the communist parties came to the conclusion that the policy of the People's Front had to be transferred into the policy of the National Front which had to unite all patriotic groups notwithstanding their class status. Moris Tores and George Dimitrov following Lenin made an allowance to the would-be national liberation wars in Europe in connection with the aggression on part of powerful capitalist carnivores against weaker countries.