25 July – 2 August
The Anti-Imperialist United Front
In connection with the changed international and internal situation, exceptional importance attaches in all colonial countries and semi-colonies to the question of the anti-imperialist united front.
In forming a wide anti-imperialist united front of struggle in the colonies and semi-colonies, it is necessary above all to recognise the variety of conditions in which the anti-imperialist struggle of the masses is proceeding, the varying degrees of maturity of the national-liberation movement, the role of the proletariat within it and the influence of the communist party over the broad masses.
In Brazil the problem differs from that in India, China, etc. In Brazil the Communist Party, having laid a correct foundation for the development of the united anti-imperialist front by the establishment of the National Liberation Alliance, has to make every effort to extend further this front by drawing into it first and foremost the many millions of the peasantry, leading up to the formation of units of a people’s revolutionary army, completely devoted to the revolution, and to the establishment of the rule of the National Liberation Alliance.
In India the communists have to support, extend and participate in all anti-imperialist mass activities, not excluding those which are under national-reformist leadership. While maintaining their political and organisational independence, they must carry on active work inside the organisations which take part in the Indian National Congress, facilitating the process of crystallisation of a national-revolutionary wing among them, for the purpose of further developing the national-liberation movement of the Indian people against British imperialism.
In China, where the people’s movement has already led to the formation of soviet districts over a considerable territory of the country and to the organisation of a powerful Red Army, the predatory attack of Japanese imperialism and the treason of the Nanking government have brought into jeopardy the national existence of the great Chinese people. Only the Chinese soviets can act as a unifying centre in the struggle against the enslavement and partition of China by the imperialists, as a unifying centre which will rally all anti-imperialist forces for the national defence of the Chinese people.
We therefore approve of the initiative taken by our courageous brother party of China in the creation of a most extensive anti-imperialist united front against Japanese imperialism and its Chinese agents, jointly with all those organised forces existing on the territory of China which are ready to wage a real struggle for the salvation of their country and their people. I am sure that I express the sentiments and thoughts of our entire congress if I state that we send our warmest fraternal greetings, in the name of the revolutionary proletariat of the whole world, to all the soviets of China, to the Chinese revolutionary people. We send our ardent fraternal greetings to the heroic Red Army of China, tried in a thousand battles. And we assure the Chinese people of our firm resolve to support its struggle for its complete liberation from all imperialist robbers and their Chinese henchmen.
(G. Dimitrov: Working Class Unity – Bulwark against Fascism,
PPH (1950), 51-52)
V. The Anti-Imperialist People’s Front in the Colonial Countries
In the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the most important task facing the communists consists in working to establish an anti-imperialist people’s front. For this purpose it is necessary to draw the widest masses into the national-liberation movement .against growing imperialist exploitation, against cruel enslavement, for the driving out of the imperialists, for the independence of the country; to take an active part in the mass anti-imperialist movements headed by the national-reformists and strive to bring about joint action with the national-revolutionary .and national-reformist organisations on the basis of a definite anti-imperialist platform.
In China, the extension of the Soviet movement and the strengthening of the fighting power of the Red Army must be combined with the development of the people’s anti-imperialist movement all over the country. This movement must be carried on under the slogan of the national-revolutionary struggle of the armed people against the imperialist enslavers, in the first place against Japanese imperialism and its Chinese servitors. The soviets must become the rallying centre for the entire Chinese people in its struggle for emancipation.
In the interests of its own struggle for emancipation, the proletariat of the imperialist countries must give its unstinted support to the liberation struggle of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples against the imperialist pirates.
(Ibid., 119)