National Democratic Revolution, Part 2a
First international anti-Imperialist congress, 1920
The 2CCI
was followed within two months by the famous “Congress of the Peoples of
the East”, in Baku, convened by the Communist International in
what is now the Republic of Azerbaijan [Picture: delegates to the Congress of
the Peoples of the East]. Its manifesto (click the link below) makes very clear
the strategic confrontation that existed following the end of First World War hostilities,
and the effective and menacing British Imperial victory, as they saw it.
This was
the first international congress of oppressed nations against colonialism. It
effectively launched the anti-colonial struggle on a new basis that bore major
fruit less than thirty years later in the 1940s, with the independence
of India and the victory of the communist revolutionaries
in China.
In 1920,
the Inter-Imperialist World War had only recently come to an end. The congress
said:
“Peoples of the East! Six years ago there broke out in Europe a
colossal, monstrous slaughter…
“It was fought for the partition of the world, and chiefly for the
partition of Asia, of the East. It was fought to decide who was to rule over
the countries of Asia and whose slaves the peoples of the East should be. It
was fought to decide whether the British or the German capitalists should skin
the peasants and workers of Turkey, Persia and Egypt.”
The
conference manifesto goes on to detail the threat that the victorious British
posed towards the Peoples of the East in their many countries, large and small.
We know by now that this manifesto was not mistaken. It concludes:
“Long live the unity of all the peasants and workers of the East and of
the West, the unity of all the toilers, all the oppressed and exploited. Long
live the battle headquarters of this united movement — the Communist
International! May the holy war of the peoples of the East and of the toilers
of the whole world against imperialist Britain burn with unquenchable fire!”
The Soviet
Union is no more, yet the profound change in the entire world that is the
consequence of the anti-colonial movement for independence and sovereignty of
nations is still with us, in the form of nearly 200 independent nations, most
of which did not exist, as such, at the time of the 2CCI and the Congress of
the Peoples of the East in 1920, and most of which are by now
national-democratic republics.
For one
example of how quickly the anti-colonial movement took hold, and how close to
our home this movement quickly came, the Red Trade Union International
(Profintern) of the Comintern, founded one year after the 2CCI, in 1921, had by
1930 organised (in Berlin) an International
Conference of Negro Workers that included Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya
as well as Moses Kotane, W. Thibedi and Albert Nzula of South Africa.
We should
also not forget to mention the founding of the Communist Party of South Africa
under the auspices of the Comintern in 1921 in this connection, because the
admittance of the CPSA was conditional upon its acceptance of the Comintern’s
agreed policies, which included the NDR. Therefore the CPSA’s support of class
alliance for national liberation and national democracy was not something that
was added on later, but was fully present at the birth of the CPSA.
Another
example of the swift, strong effect of the Russian Revolution and the Comintern
on South Africa is the Black Republic Thesis of 1928 and all that
went with it. We will come to it in the next part of this NDR Generic Course.
The important thing to note here is that the CPSA’s basic commitment to the NDR
had already existed for years prior to the Black Republic Thesis.
- The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Manifesto,
Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East.
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