Communist international – Congress of the Comintern: “A particularly important task …”

The majority of the 510 delegates from 65 communist and workers’ parties from all over the world, which gathered on July 25, 1935 in the Moscow trade union house to ceremonize the VII. World Congress of the Communist International (AI), had come to the Soviet capital with great expectations and hopes. Two and a half years after its world -historical defeat – the transfer of political power in Germany to Hitler and the NSDAP and the almost complete breakdown of the traditional German labor movement – the international communist movement led by Moscow faced a huge challenge. It was important to finally uncover the causes of this defeat with relentless and above all self -critical and – based on the knowledge gained in this way – to develop an effective strategy against Hitler fascism and its varieties all over the world.

The VII World Congress was originally supposed to take place in the second half of 1934, but its beginning had to be postponed several times. For the time being, there were massive and persistent resistance from our own ranks: relevant forces within the AI and the member parties were not ready to finally give up the policy of struggle against the social democracy that has failed as “social fascism” and to recognize and recognize the struggle against fascism as the most urgent and priority in every respect. So the XIII. Extensive plenary of the Executive Committee, which had come together in December 1933 in Moscow, expressly confirmed a decision on the tasks of the KPD of April 1933, in which it was said: “The communists were right when they described the Social Democrats as social fascists.” In other words: the communist international in their entirety was “revolutionary” and “intellectual” and “intellectual” As a basis, ”(Pierre Frank).

There were two developments that contributed significantly to overcome the failed policy of the past few years and to develop a new, contemporary strategy of the anti -fascist struggle and to enforce them for all member parties of the AI – the creation of a broad anti -fascist folk front, i.e. an alliance of communists and socialists, social democrats and other anti -fascist forces, also from the bourgeois camp.

Since the mid -1920s, the Soviet leadership under Stalin had carried out a strategic change in its foreign policy with its “Socialism” policy and in the interests of good neighborhood with the capitalist states to want to trigger “revolutions” in other countries. Now she went one step further: In view of Hitler’s risk of power, she has been based on the creation of an international system of collective security, which was inconceivable without a partner in the bourgeois camp.

The realization that the fight against all forms of fascism requires the creation of broadest alliances, including all willing people, has survived the decades and is more relevant than ever.

At the same time, fundamental developments in different countries in the direction of a new unity and folk front policy towards social democracy and other anti-fascist forces. Even if these developments were inconsistent and even contradictory in many aspects, they could not remain without consequences for the membership parties of the AI all over the world. The events in France were particularly important, where the struggle for the folk front in the best sense was a movement from below.

Therefore, Georgi Dimitroff, the Secretary General of the AI, was able to determine in his presentation at the VII. World Congress: “When mobilizing the working masses to fight fascism, creating a broad anti -fascist folk front on the basis of the proletarian unit front is a particularly important task.”

However, the course and results of the world congress also made it clear that the AI did not succeed in developing a really profound understanding of the special character of fascism as a form of rule of capital. The “classic” definition of the XIII cited by Dimitroff. Extended plenary of the Ekki, according to the “fascism in power (…) the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most reactionary, most imperialist elements of finance capital”, specified the previously only generally named connection between capitalism and fascism, but by the exclusively economic perspective Ignorated the “Dimitroff’s formula” the ideological and cultural dimension and thus the special character of fascism as a mass movement. Due to the mechanical equation of economic and political power, it implicitly declared any form of exercising the power of capital into a “dictatorship”. It was therefore not really suitable to overcome the “traditional” rejection of bourgeois democracy through the communist movement.

Despite all the inadequacies, the findings made in the documents of the VII World Congress were a significant contribution to the development of a contemporary strategy and tactics of the communist movement. The creation of a broad anti -fascist folk front was declared a binding task for all member parties. In France, Republican Spain and in Chile, this new policy was temporarily bearing fruit. With the “Lutetia” circle around the writer Heinrich Mann and the “Appeal to all people of good will” from February 1936, there was also an important initiative inspired by the Moscow resolutions.

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The VII. World Congress and his commitment to the popular front policy gave the Communist international a delay of a few months before the agony of the “World Party” used. Because the Moscow show processes from 1936 to 1938 withdrawn the necessary basis for the popular front policy. The so-called Hitler-Stalin pact from late summer 1939 gave her the death blow. This inevitably became the end of the communist international through the “self -resolution” of Stalin in the summer of 1943.

But the realization that the fight against all forms of fascism requires the creation of broadest alliances, including all willing people, has survived the decades and is more relevant than ever.

From the Berlin historian Dr. Ronald Friedmann, an expert in the communist movement, appears a new biography of Ernst Thälmann: “If Moscow wants it …” (Trafo, 517 p., Born, € 44.80).