Comrade Husto Amutio,
Editor Adelanta-Verdad, Valencia.

    MANY thanks for your friendly letter. The fact that the Socialist youth and the entire fighting proletariat of Spain -- as you say in your letter -- followed the work of the Seventh Congress of the Comintern with extreme interest, and read the report on working class unity in the struggle against the bourgeoisie and fascism with tremendous satisfaction, is a new proof of the fact that in its decisions this historic Congress really expressed the common interests and common desires and longings of the working class of all countries.

    I am extremely glad that you, advanced Spanish proletarians, Socialists and Communists, are seriously getting down to fulfillment of the great task of uniting the working class and all working people for the struggle against fascism, war and the capitalist offensive. I am sure that the toilers of Spain, who have, on more than one occasion, displayed brilliant examples of revolutionary heroism, will succeed in barring fascism's path by establishing a firm united fighting front of the working class and the people.

    The road to victory over fascism and over the forces of reaction and counter-revolution in Spain lies through the unity of the Socialist and Communist youth, through the realization of unity of action of the Socialist and Communist Parties, through the liquidation of the split in the trade union movement, and the extension and consolidation of workers' and peasants' alliances throughout the country.

    Only a united struggle of Communists, Socialists and Anarcho-Syndicalist workers, marching shoulder to shoulder in

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the front ranks of all the toilers of town and countryside, will secure the victory of the working class over the common class enemy. The successes of the movement for unity in Spain constitute a big step forward along the road toward the establishment of international unity of the proletariat.

    I wish you success, dear comrades, Socialists, Communists and Anarcho-Syndicalist workers, in boldly, shoulder to shoulder, overcoming all obstacles to the establishment of unity raised by the splitters of the working class, whether conscious agents of the bourgeoisie or misled opponents of the united front.

    I wish you every success in achieving this militant unity, so that the Spanish people will not have to experience the horrors which the German people are now undergoing under the yoke of the barbarian fascist regime, and so that, in the long run, the victory of socialism will be assured in Spain.

    Fraternal Bolshevik greetings.

G. DIMITROFF  

    November 26, 1935.

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[In the fascist newspaper, Voelkischer Beobachter of December 18, 1935, Von Ribbentrop, Hitler's "special plenipotentiary" on questions of foreign policy, published a letter to Lord Allen of Hartwood, in reply to the request of certain English lawyers -- addressed through Lord Allen personally to Hitler -- that Hans Luetten, a German lawyer, be released.

    [In this letter Ribbentrop puts forward a number of theses. First, that the present regime in Germany constitutes a special legal system which corresponds to the "spirit" and "natural feelings" of the German people. Second, that the advent of the German fascists to power on January 30, 1933, was a "revolution." Third, that the historic mission of German fascism is to save civilization. Fourth and last, that he, Ribbentrop, helped to obtain the release of Dimitroff, a fact which he now bitterly regrets.

    [Ribbentrop regrets the "magnanimity" of the German government in releasing Dimitroff.

    [Referring to the report delivered by Dimitroff at the Seventh Congress of the Communist International,* which he foully distorts, Herr Ribbentrop writes: "This carefully elaborated program is the result of the release of Dimitroff, i.e., the result of the liberal British outlook and German good nature and magnanimity!"

    [Below we publish Dimitroff's reply to questions put to him by representatives of the press on this subject. -- Ed.]

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lished in the official organ of the German government, Voelkischer Beobachter, on December 18, in answer to the demand for the liberation of the German lawyer Luetten, addressed by English lawyers to Hitler?

    DIMITROFF: Herr Ribbentrop is not giving his own individual opinion. Indeed, his personal opinions are of very little value. His letter constitutes an official statement of the German government attempting to justify the monstrous crimes which have given rise to a wave of protest throughout the civilized world. Ribbentrop writes as the mouthpiece of unbridled German fascism, which is attempting to win the support of public opinion in England both for punishing its political opponents and for the war adventures that it is planning. It is not accidental that this letter has appeared at a time when the dastardly execution of the German Communist Claus has aroused the indignation of all honest people throughout the world, at a time when, faced with the catastrophe of starvation into which fascism has driven the masses of working people in Germany, the German fascists are greatly intensifying the terror throughout the country. In speaking openly in defense of those who wield the executioner's ax, their accomplice in the kid gloves of a diplomat, by his letter, virtually challenges the whole of world public opinion.

    QUESTION: What do you think of Ribbentrop's assertion that the present German regime represents a special legal system corresponding to the "spirit" and "natural feelings of the German people"?

    DIMITROFF: Ribbentrop's assertion is a gross insult to the great German people. What cynicism one must possess, and with what "Nietzschean" contempt one must regard the people to whom Ribbentrop's letter is directly addressed, to make such a statement! Fascism and a legal system are two absolutely incompatible things. Fascism is the negation of any kind of legal system. In essence fascism is arbitrary rule. It is the arbitrary rule of an armed gang of hirelings of big capital who enslave the vast majority of the people in the interests

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not only of the exploiting minority in general, but particularly in the interests of the most rapacious exploiters.

    What kind of legal system is it -- apart from its alleged conformity to the "spirit" and "natural feelings" of the German people that has deprived nine-tenths of this people of elementary political rights? What kind of a legal system is it that is destroying the ~lower of the German people in prisons and concentration camps? What kind of a legal system is it that, as Ribbentrop himself says, keeps incarcerated people like Luetten, who are absolutely innocent, simply because they have a different "spiritual viewpoint" from that of Herr Ribbentrop?

    Ribbentrop's justification for the abolition of the old legal system in Germany is, as he says, that "Adolf Hitler could also be tried under the same clauses of the criminal code as other mortals." But a system under which no fascist murderer is held responsible for his criminal acts before any court and under any clause of the law is an arbitrary system. It is a regime of criminals in power.

    It would be no exaggeration to say that the "special legal system" of Ribbentrop stands closer to the "system" of the American gangsters who terrorize the population of the U.S.A. than to any other existing legal system. Under what legal system, for example, can we include the provocative burning of the Reichstag by the German fascists? Let the "coordinated" German Academy of Law, whose materials Herr Ribbentrop so obligingly promises to send to Lord Allen, try from the viewpoint of a legal system to justify this provocative act which served, as its initiators planned, as a pretext for a whole number of St. Bartholomew's nights. By no "legal system" will the Ribbentrops be able to justify such a step as the arrest of people who had nothing whatever to do with the affair, and their trial on the charge of setting fire to the Reichstag, when the whole world knows that the Reichstag was set on fire at the orders and under the leadership of the fascist rulers.

    Let the German Academy of Law try to give a legal justification of the assassinations so frequently perpetrated by the

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fascists, or the numerous cases of murder during so-called "attempts to escape," or the death sentences passed on anti-fascists on the basis of forged documents and suborned witnesses. Let it try to justify the system of tortures and inquisition to which the fascist hangmen subject imprisoned Communists, Social-Democrats and other anti-fascists. Let Herr Ribbentrop explain what standards of a legal system embrace such actions as the murder by a fascist of the German Professor Lessing on Czechoslovakian territory, the bloody slaughter of June 30, the murder of General Schleicher and his wife, the shooting of scores of Storm Troopers. And what about the anti-Semitic pogroms and the persecution of Catholics, which recall the worst pages of the times of the Inquisition, of the times of the Huguenots? And sterilization? Under what legal system are such vile acts permissible? And the Bacchanalia of the public burning of the immortal productions of human thought and genius?

    Yes, such a "special legal system" has had precedents in history, in the dark days of the Middle Ages. It still arouses horror among those who study the history of tortures, the stake, the burning of "heretics," the execution of Giordano Bruno, the brutal "racks" upon which unfortunate people were stretched during the days of Ivan the Terrible. At that time also there were executioners striking off heads at the place of execution, at that time also there were Ribbentrops who lauded this "special legal system." But we know that the peoples utterly destroyed this system, and without regret drove out those who were the bearers of it. And it requires the spiritual degeneration of bourgeois society and all the rottenness of decaying capitalism to revive this system once more, and to bring shame on the country which has given the world Marx and Engels, Goethe, Schiller, Wagner and Heine. The court of history will not be gentler with those who have raised the ax and the block as the symbol of modern medievalism in an epoch when the five-pointed star with the emblem of the hammer and sickle is already blazing over one-sixth of the globe.

    QUESTION: What is your estimate of Ribbentrop's statement

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that "revolutions are not decided in court rooms and in accordance with ordinary legal standards"?

    DIMITROFF: It is quite true that revolutions are not decided in court rooms and on the basis of ordinary legal standards. But Herr Ribbentrop, in thinking that he has here found the key to the justification of the crimes of German fascism, has overlooked a "trifle." The whole point is that the advent of the German fascists to power on January 30, 1933, was not a revolution at all. It is well known that every genuine revolution means the passing of power from one class into the hands of another class. But in Germany the bourgeoisie as a class were in power and have remained in power. The capitalist system has remained untouched. All that has changed is that the most reactionary, the most chauvinistic and most imperialistic circles of finance capital have become the complete masters and have extremely intensified capitalist exploitation and oppression. Political forgery will not help Ribbentrop. He thinks that by sticking the verbal label "National-Socialist revolution" onto the reactionary frenzy of the fascists, he thereby justifies the fascist terror. It never occurs to the fascist diplomat that real revolutions, however harsh they may be, do not need justification, because they lift the people that brings about the revolution, and the whole of mankind as a consequence, to a higher stage of human civilization. But the reason why the bloody orgy of the fascists cannot be justified in any way is that it reduces the great German people to the level of barbarism.

    The fascist legend of a National-Socialist revolution has hitherto been an article primarily for home consumption, intended to lead the masses astray and to take the place of the fats, meat and eggs that are not forthcoming. Ribbentrop, Hitler's traveling salesman, is now attempting to throw these rotten wares onto the European market. He quite seriously recommends the raging fascist frenzy as a "model of revolution" for all other nations.

    It is impossible not to smile when reading such a statement by Ribbentrop as that the notorious methods of the National-

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Socialist revolution "have no precedent in history" and "are in crying contradiction to the cruel and barbarous methods by which revolutions were carried out among other peoples of the cultured world," and that, finally, they serve to "preserve the ethical and moral principles of the people." All this represents such record-making in shameless lying that it does not even need a reply. It is a truly fascist "model" of boundless insolence.

    QUESTION: What is your attitude to the statement of Ribbentrop that it is the historic mission of German fascism to save civilization?

    DIMITROFF: The same as it would be to a statement of American gangsters if they were to attribute to themselves the mission of saving mankind from banditry. It is well known that the German fascists aim their blows at everything which bears the imprint of human progress, free thought, independent creation, at all who are not fascists. It could not be otherwise, because fascism is the most merciless enemy of human progress and civilization. It is the embodiment of the most savage and unbridled obscurantism. It directs its blows first and foremost against the working class movement and particularly against Communism, because Communism represents the vanguard of the world working class movement and the bearer of a new civilization.

    And this role of Communism stands out with particular clearness in the light of those great achievements of socialist construction which have been brought about in the U.S.S.R. under the wise direction of the greatest man of our era -- Stalin. Millions of people workers, peasants, intellectuals, scientists, engineers and technicians -- in the capitalist world are becoming more and more convinced that socialism in the U.S.S.R. means a mighty growth of the productive forces, the continuously growing well-being of the broadest masses of the people, an unprecedented rise in their cultural level, the all-round development of human personality, the birth of a new man, a new life, a new psychology. Socialism means peace and fraternity among the peoples. And for this very reason

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all that is honest, independent and free among mankind is despite all difficulties rallying with the working class to the united front against fascism, against this plague of modern humanity.

    QUESTION: What have you to say about Ribbentrop's claim that he assisted in securing your liberation?

    DIMITROFF: In making such a statement Ribbentrop, to put it mildly, exaggerates the role played in history by his own personality. As everybody knows, my Bulgarian comrades and I were liberated from prison because even a fascist court could not do other than acquit us. It acquitted us because it was proved up to the hilt at the Leipzig trial that the Reichstag was fired, not by the Communists, but by the German fascists. We were liberated because the wave of indignation against the crimes of German fascism rose so high throughout the world, and fascism so disgraced itself and made itself such a laughing stock at Leipzig, that nothing was left for it but to expel us from the country. But where does Ribbentrop come in here? If the Ribbentrops could have torn me to pieces at Leipzig, they would have done so with the greatest of pleasure, but they were powerless. The bandit who lets his victim go because his hands are held down by people who rush to the aid of his victim is the last one to be able to boast of his own magnanimity.

    Ribbentrop tries to depict the program of the united fighting front against the capitalist offensive, fascism and war, which was developed at the Seventh Congress openly before the whole world, as a world terrorist plot not only against fascist Germany but against the whole of Europe and especially against the British Empire. And it would seem that this terrible calamity took place as a result of the "British liberal outlook and German complacency and magnanimity," which, as Ribbentrop assures us, led to my liberation. Ribbentrop needs all this lying balderdash to persuade British public opinion not to repeat such a "mistake" as my liberation, and in order to set the hands of German fascism free to wreak vengeance on Thaelmann and the other prisoners in German dungeons. He deliberately distorts the decisions of the Seventh

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Congress so as to distract attention from the real plotters and terrorists who are trying to drag the world into the catastrophe of a new imperialist war. The stenographic record of my speech has been published. It has been read by the workers of all countries, and English lords can also read it. In my report, in conformity with the program and the tactics of the Communist International, not only did I not speak as a supporter of individual terror, but I fought with all the passion of a fighter for Communism against those who have made the weapon of political individual terror the basic method of achieving their anti-popular aims. I have in view first and foremost the German fascists.

    There is no doubt that more than ever before serious danger threatens the life of Thaelmann and tens of thousands of Communists, Social-Democrats and other anti-fascists imprisoned in German jails and concentration camps. New crimes of fascism are pending. The hand of the fascist butchers must be turned aside. It is for the millions of workers and all honest people to have their say.

Reply to Herr Ribbentrop ; Interview of G. Dimitroff With Representatives of the Press, February, 1936.

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THE terrorist attack by the fascist gangs on the French Socialist deputy, Leon Blum, is arousing great indignation. No fighter in the labor movement, on whatever flank he stands, to whatever workers' organization he belongs, whatever may be his differences with the Socialist Party, can pass over this vile deed.

    Leon Blum is one of the leading figures of the People's Front, set up by the best part of the French people against the fascist hirelings of finance capital, which is striving to establish a fascist regime in France. The attack on Leon Blum is not only a blow against Leon Blum personally; it is a blow against the entire working class of France, a blow against the People's Front, which embraces wide masses of the working people in the fight against fascism, war and the capitalist offensive.

    It is not the first time that we raise our voice in defense of Socialist leaders who have fallen victims to fascist reaction. It is not so long since we Communists fought for the release of Largo Caballero from his prison in Spain with the same determination with which we have defended and are now defending our friend and fellow-Communist, Comrade Thaelmann. Likewise we considered it our duty to come forward in defense of the Social-Democratic workers and their organizations in Austria, Germany and everywhere that they have been subjected to attacks from the fascists. And when in Spain thousands of Socialist workers together with their Communist brethren were subjected to a bestial extermination in the Asturias, we did not hesitate for a single moment to stretch out our hand to the Socialist International and to propose joint action in defense of the heroic Spanish fighters.

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    The terrorist attack on Leon Blum in France, where fascism has only just begun its surreptitious moves towards power, shows clearly what all French workers, including the Social-Democratic workers, have to expect on the morrow, were fascism to win. Every day reports arrive of arrests, torture, murder, beatings, execution of anti-fascists and especially of Communists in Germany, Hungary, Japan, Poland, Italy and the Balkan States. In these countries things have come to such a pass that any Communist, any Left fighter of the labor movement can be secretly murdered and his corpse thrown into the street; that any provocation, like that of setting fire to the Reichstag, can be framed; that any trade union official can, with the aid of a venal press, be branded as a terrorist and conspirator; that anybody serving the cause of the working class can be accused of the most horrible crimes and be thrown into prison or concentration camp.

    The fascist potentates condemn the masses of the people to hunger, poverty and ruin. While employing a system of the most refined and mocking cruelty in their respective acts against the foremost fighters from the toiling masses, they have the effrontery to declare any discontent called forth by the hard conditions of the masses, any movement of the people resulting from the unbearable fascist regime, to be the work of the "hand of Moscow" and the consequences of Bolshevism "penetrating from abroad."

    To remain silent in face of this bloody orgy of fascism -- as is the case in the ranks of the Socialist International on the argument that it is primarily Communists who are being beaten and exterminated, that here and there Social-Democratic Parties still enjoy comparative legality in countries where the Communist Parties have been driven underground, such as Poland, Hungary and Finland -- this means in fact to encourage the executioners of the working class.

    Now, for every man of sound and honest mind it is clear that what is meted out today to the Communist fighters of the labor movement, tomorrow will be done to both the Social-Democratic workers and to the entire labor movement by the unbridled

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fascist gangs, if the working class does not repel fascism in time by united organized mass action and deal it a crushing blow. The experience of the labor movement in Italy, Germany and Austria on this speaks eloquently enough.

    And the first lesson that the workers not only of France but also of all capitalist countries will draw from the terrorist attack on Leon Blum is the following: the parties and organizations of the Communist and Socialist Internationals must unite their forces as speedily as possible on a national and international scale for a most stubborn, systematic struggle against fascism, against the terrorist gangs, yesterday the assassins of Minister Barthou, today the kidnapers of anti-fascists on the territory of foreign powers; yesterday the assailants of Blum, today the accusers of Kisch, fighter of the Hungarian labor movement, as a spy of a foreign power; yesterday the murderers of the Italian Communist, Sozzi, today the butchers of the peaceful Ethiopian population by aerial bombardment; who yesterday seized hold of Manchuria, and today of Northern China, preparing to attack the Mongolian People's Republic and insolently provoking the great land of Soviets on its Eastern borders.

    In the struggle against this fascist plague which menaces the working class, all working people, the whole of mankind, those active in the labor movement cannot but address the question to all honest people considering themselves to be democrats, supporters of liberty and peace, as to where they stand? Whether with those who have made methods of individual terror their chief weapon of struggle, who now roam various parts of the globe armed with bomb and revolver, with the lighted torch of war or with those fighters of the labor movement who, defending the rights of the masses, fighting for their open organization, strive by organized mass action to bar the way to fascist barbarism and war? Whether with those who trample human culture under foot, who burn the works of human genius in bonfires, who rule with the aid of the dictatorship of a terrorist gang -- or with the new civilization coming into being in the land of victorious Socialism, with the new proletarian democ-

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racy, the real multi-national people's democracy that is being realized in the Soviet Union?

    Only a wide anti-fascist front that unites the efforts of the international working class will win the sympathy and active support of all working people, will prove to be a sufficiently effective means of putting a straightjacket on the gangs of fascist violators. And the sooner this international united working class action is achieved, the less difficult, the less agonizing and the less drawn out will be the struggle of the masses of the people against fascism. Every day of delay places an awful responsibility on those who reject this unity. The German working class is paying with its blood to this day for the capitulatory policy of German Social-Democracy.

    The attack on Blum is a warning primarily to those who now continue to apply the same capitulatory policy as German Social-Democracy. The attack on Leon Blum shows how wrong are those leading figures of the Socialist International who on the basis of the first successes of the People's Front in France and in face of the growing difficulties of fascism, are lulling the masses with the notion that the fascist danger is on the decline. It shows how profoundly correct are the Communists when they unceasingly summon the masses to unremitting vigilance towards the fascist danger and to united action so as to carry through to the end the struggle against fascism.

    It would be a fatal error to consider, after the adoption by the French Chamber of decrees against the fascist leagues, that the fascist danger in France has been overcome. And if the fascist movement is undergoing difficulties in France under the pressure of the mass struggle, if its mass basis is really beginning to slip away, this by no means implies that the French fascists have decided to lay down their arms. No, exactly the contrary is true: the more violently will they rage, the more frequently will they resort to acts of individual terror, the more desperately will they organize plots and attempt to prepare fascist coups d'état. Decrees in themselves are not yet a guarantee against fascism. For the Weimar Republic in its day also

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adopted "decrees" against the open activity of the fascists. But this in no way prevented the German fascists from arming themselves further and seizing power. The real guarantee against fascism is the action of the masses themselves, keeping a proper check upon the disarming of the fascist gangs and their real disbandment. Only by a united struggle, carried on step by step, day by day, only by tirelessly extending the anti-fascist movement of the masses and thoroughly strengthening the People's Front on the basis of organs elected by the masses in the enterprises, will the working people in town and country cut the claws of the fascist beast and carry the struggle against fascism to a victorious conclusion. Such is the second lesson which the working class will draw from the attack on Leon Blum.

    And these lessons the working class will firmly master. They will well remember that it is their duty to defend every working class fighter, every supporter of the People's Front, to defend the entire labor movement, its organizations, its press, etc., against the criminal hands of the fascists. There is nothing surprising in the fact that those who fight against Communism and not against fascism, against the U.S.S.R., and not against the fascist regime, who kindle the flames of war and do not defend the cause of peace, do not fall under the blows of fascist reaction. More than this, Doriot, the insidious fascist agent who daily slanders the Communist Party and the Communist International, is lauded to the skies by the fascist press. Trotsky, purveyor of ideological material for war against the Land of the Soviets, wrecker of the labor movement, is made one of the chief contributors of the American fascist Hearst press-combine. The fascists sing the praises of the opponents of the united front among the leading figures of the Socialist International, for these people assist not the working class, not the masses, but the worst enemies of the people. But all the more justified is the working class in undertaking the defense of those fighting in the ranks of the People's Front, of those helping its cause.

    Let the bonds between those associating in the united front

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become still stronger and closer, let the Communist and Social-Democratic workers feel themselves drawn still closer together in their joint struggle against the common enemy, since the most important task of the proletariat is in the shortest possible time to achieve complete victory over fascism. The defenders of the position of the People's Front are not to be scared by the fascist terrorists. The just cause of the People's Front must and shall be victorious.

    P. S.  These lines had already been written when a telegraphic report was received of the huge, unparalleled anti-fascist demonstration now taking place of the working people of the French capital. This crushing reply to the fascist gangs is the guarantee that the anti-fascist People's Front, basing itself on the united action, the solidarity, revolutionary energy and discipline of the French proletariat will in the near future really carry the struggle against fascism to a victorious conclusion.

    February 16, 1936.

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THE international solidarity of the proletariat, if energetically put into effect, is a powerful factor. We can never forget that the active solidarity displayed in deeds by the international proletariat at critical moments in the existence of the Soviet Union -- the first proletarian state in the world and the fatherland of all working people -- during the military intervention, the civil war and famine, considerably helped our heroic Russian brothers to smash the counter-revolution, to drive out the brazen interventionists, to ease the position of those who were starving and to make possible peaceful socialist construction.

    Thanks to the energetic display of international solidarity, the workers of various countries have on several occasions been able successfully to ward off the blows of the enemy. Many thousands of working class fighters have been saved through international solidarity campaigns. The fact that the fascist butchers have not dared, as has long been their design, to murder the leader of the German workers, Comrade Thaelmann, whose life is under perpetual menace, the fact that the leader of the Hungarian workers, Comrade Rakosi, has not been condemned to death, as previously decided by the Hungarian fascists, and that numerous proletarian revolutionaries and anti-fascists who were doomed to death have remained -- alive all this we undoubtedly owe to effective international solidarity.

    The powerful wave of international solidarity on the part of industrial workers, working people generally and progressive intellectuals, regardless of what party or organization they belonged to, was the force which at the Leipzig trial made it possible to gain a victory over German fascism, and which

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not only saved our lives from the ax of the executioners in the service of the fascist gang ruling in Germany, but also hindered the fulfillment of Goering's foul plan of physically exterminating, with the aid of a new provocation and Bartholomew's Eve, the numerous cadres of the German proletariat in the hands of the fascists, in fascist jails and concentration camps.

    If, nevertheless, the international solidarity of the working people has not succeeded in displaying all its power and in achieving still greater successes in the struggle against economic, social, political and cultural reaction, in the struggle against fascism and for the interests and rights of the working people, this is mainly due to the fact that reactionary elements still play a decisive role in the leadership of the Second and Amsterdam Internationals, as well as in the leadership of the majority of the Socialist Parties and trade union organizations in the various countries; and they prefer the united front with their own national bourgeoisie to the united front of the workers in their own countries and on an international scale, continuing systematically to hinder the consolidation and energetic putting into effect of international solidarity.

    All the proposals of the Communist International and the Red International of Labor Unions for jointly rendering aid to the Spanish revolutionaries, and for a joint struggle against the common enemy, have, as is well known, been turned down by these reactionary Social-Democratic and trade union leaders, regardless of the fact that along with the Communist workers the Social-Democratic workers and progressive intellectuals also suffer and bear incalculable sacrifices owing to fascism, political reaction and the capitalist offensive.

    However, never before have the all-round consolidation and organized putting into effect of proletarian solidarity been 80 essential as just now when the capitalist offensive against the standard of living of the working people is growing without a break; when fascism is already raging in a number of capitalist countries, while in others it is striving irrepressibly for power; when the instigators of a new imperialist war, and first and

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foremost German fascism, are feverishly arming themselves, preparing a horrible slaughter for laboring mankind.

    May International Solidarity Day in 1936 be yet another decisive step along the path of the further development and consolidation of ever necessary international solidarity, and of the attraction of new millions of men, women and children from among the working people and intellectuals to the cause of international solidarity!

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NEVER since 1914 has the menace of a world war been so great as it is now. And never has it been so necessary to mobilize all forces to avert this calamity which threatens all mankind. But to do this, one must first of all realize from where the danger is arising, who are responsible for it, and against which countries the attack is being directed.

    It would not be correct to think that the war which is approaching threatens the Soviet Union alone or even the Soviet Union in the first place. As a matter of fact the occupation of the Rhineland by Hitler's armies is a direct threat to France, Belgium and other European countries. It is also a fact that Hitler's immediate plans of conquest are directed toward the seizure of territories in neighboring countries where there is a German population.

    Whereas Hitler talks today about the "sovereignty of Germany" he will talk tomorrow about the "sovereignty of all the Germans." Under this slogan he will try to carry out the annexation of Austria, the destruction of Czechoslovakia as an independent state, the occupation of Alsace-Lorraine, Danzig, the southern part of Denmark, Memel, etc. And this is quite easy to understand. It is much easier for German fascism to send an army first of all to seize the territory of neighboring countries under the slogan of the "national unity of all the Germans," and only later to fight against the powerful land of the Soviets. German fascism, in strengthening its positions on the Rhine, also threatens the independence of the Polish people, in spite of the fact that the present rulers of Poland are its allies.

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    As far as the Far East is concerned, there can be no doubt that a direct blow is aimed at the Chinese people, although the fascist military clique of Japan are preparing for war against the Soviet Union and have an agreement with Berlin for this eventuality. Japan has already occupied Manchuria and is now occupying one province of China after another. Japanese imperialism is striving by this means to subject all the peoples of Asia, including India, and to seize the Philippines and Australia. It is preparing for a decisive encounter with the United States and Great Britain.

    Hence it is clear that the peoples of the West would commit a fatal error if they allowed themselves to be lulled by the illusion that the fascist war-mongers in Europe and the Far East do not threaten them. In particular, the people of the countries neighboring on Germany have food for serious thought regarding the defense of their independence and liberty.

    As is well known, the fundamental cause of imperialist wars lies in capitalism itself, in its predatory efforts. But in the existing international situation, the instigator of the approaching war is fascism, this mailed fist of the most aggressive and warlike forces of imperialism.

    The war danger has become so immediately threatening because the road to power was not barred against German fascism at the proper moment. Having obtained power by means of an internal war against the mass of the people of its own country, fascism has grown a direct war menace to the countries of the whole world. Having enslaved its own people, it is advancing with the torch of war in its hand to attack other peoples.

    The war danger has become extremely menacing for the further reason that the fascist aggressor has been allowed to enjoy a position of impunity. The war preparations of German fascism (the introduction of universal military service, the air and naval armaments) were carried out with the systematic connivance of capitalist powers and the direct assistance of British ruling circles. The passivity and wavering of the League of Nations in regard to the Japanese attack on China

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and the Italian aggression in Ethiopia encouraged the impudence of the aggressor.

    But the growth in the aggressiveness of German fascism and of the Japanese military clique is first and foremost the result of the fact that the international proletariat did not succeed in acting unanimously with all the power of its gigantic forces, did not rally around itself all the working people and all the friends of peace into a mighty front against war. The resistence of the reactionary section of the leaders of the Labor and Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions to the united front of struggle has not yet been broken. But the refusal of these reactionary leaders (supporting the imperialist policy of their own bourgeoisie) to undertake united independent proletarian action against war, lulling the masses to sleep with the illusion that the League of Nations would do everything necessary for the maintenance of peace this has hindered the struggle of the proletariat against war and paralyzed its pressure on the capitalist governments.

    In addition to the openly reactionary leaders who disrupt the unity of action of the international proletariat in defense of peace there are also "Left" phrasemongers who propagate fatalistic views to the effect that war is inevitable and the maintenance of peace impossible. Since the fundamental cause of war is capitalism, then, they say, so long as the latter exists, it is impossible to avoid war, and it is hopeless and useless to fight for the maintenance of peace. Such people are out-and-out doctrinaires, if not simply impostors. They see everywhere around them the raging forces of war, but they do not at all notice the mighty factors for peace.

    The Soviet Union, the country of the victorious proletariat, with its consistent and resolute peace policy, is such a factor for peace. Another factor for peace is the proletariat of the capitalist countries. These are the leading forces in defending peace against the war-mongers. The mass of the peasants, all working people, and the mass of the people in all capitalist countries, are also for the maintenance of peace. A number of

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capitalist countries at present are interested in the maintenance of peace. In the countries where fascism rules, as well as in the countries where the rulers abet the instigators of a new slaughter, the peoples do not want war.

    Phrasemongering doctrinaires, such as those from the British Independent Labor Party, depict matters as if the question of war and peace depends only on the capitalist governments. Yes, this would be the case if the mass of the people were simply pawns in the hands of the governments and did not fight to maintain peace in spite of their governments. But that is just the point; it is radically wrong to regard the mass of the people as puppets in the hands of the government. If these masses, without whom war could not be carried on, were to act resolutely and promptly against the war plans of the governments, they could force these governments to renounce war and the abetting of war plotters. The whole thing is to organize the struggle of the peoples for the maintenance of peace in good time and to carry it on continually and everywhere against the fascist war-mongers and their backers.

    A united peace front is required which would include not only the working class, the peasants, the intellectuals and other working people, but also the oppressed nations and the peoples of countries whose independence is threatened by the war-mongers. A peace front is required extending to all parts of the world, from Tokyo to London, from New York to Berlin, acting in coordination against the war-mongers, against German fascism in Europe, against the Japanese military clique in the Far East. And this peace front will become powerful and invincible if it organizes practical mass action, not restricting itself to protests, resolutions and declarations.

    By economic and political measures, the war-mongers should be put absolutely in a state of siege. They should be cornered in such a way that they are incapable of carrying out their criminal plans. The globe should be encircled with such a network of organizations of the friends of peace, such a mighty movement of international solidarity and such effective measures of a united international policy of the proletariat for the

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maintenance of peace, as will effectively tie the dastardly hands of the war-mongers.

    The fascist aggressor must be made to feel most emphatically that his every step is vigilantly watched by millions of people and that any attempt to attack other peoples will meet with the determined resistance of the proletariat and working people of the whole world.

    Only the proletariat, uniting its ranks, can be the organizer of such a peace front, can be its driving force, its backbone. This is now the central task of the international proletariat as a whole. The success of the fight against fascism itself also depends on its successful solution.

    To want peace is not enough. It is necessary to fight for peace. It is absolutely inadequate to carry on general propaganda against war. Propaganda against war "in general" does not in the slightest degree hinder the conspirators sitting in Berlin or Tokyo from carrying out their dastardly work. They would be quite satisfied if the working class were to go no further than such general propaganda.

    A successful struggle to maintain peace absolutely requires that the joint activity of the proletariat and the widest masses of the people be directed against the specific instigators of war and against those forces inside the country which help them directly or indirectly. From this point of view it is extremely important in every country to work out a definite and correct tactical line in the struggle for the maintenance of peace, taking into account the situation of the Party and the working class movement of the given country and also its internal and international situation.

    In the countries where fascism is in power, the working class, putting in the forefront of its struggle against the fascist dictatorship exposure of chauvinist demagogy and war preparations, unites all forces to avert the catastrophe into which fascism is preparing to hurl the people. When the proletariat

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and the masses of the people of Germany, Italy and other fascist countries fight against the power of fascism and its military aggression, they are acting not only for their own salvation, but in the interests of peace, in the interests of all peoples, of all mankind.

    A particularly important question now in the tactics of the working class, especially in the countries which are directly in danger of an attack, is the attitude which should be adopted toward the foreign policy of the government and the defense of the country. To the working class and all working people it is by no means a matter of indifference what foreign policy the government carries on toward the fascist enemies of peace; whether this policy helps to strengthen collective security or to hinder it; whether the government protects the agents of the fascist aggressor or takes effective steps against them; how it treats sons of the people in the ranks of the army, in what spirit they are trained, what elements the officers of the army are composed of, whether these are reliable in the fight against the fascist enemy or whether they are fascist reactionary elements; how the population is to be protected against the horrors of war, etc.

    To adopt an attitude of indifference to the question of the defense of the country, to leave this question without control in the hands of a bourgeois government, will not in any case assist the cause of defending peace. It is no accident that the ruling section of the bourgeoisie has always looked upon this sphere as its monopoly, regarding it as a kind of "holy of holies." This monopoly of the bourgeoisie must be demolished once and for all.

    The proletariat cannot get along without its own independent policy on these questions. Without on any condition permitting itself to slip into adopting the position of the bourgeoisie, the Party of the proletariat must actively interfere in foreign policy and in questions of national defense, advancing its own platform and its own demands.

    As the supreme supporter of the active defense of its own people and country from fascist enslavement, the working

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class must closely link up the question of the defense of the country with the demands for the extension of the democratic rights of the workers and peasants and the defense of their vital interests, taking as its starting point the fact that only the democratization of the regime, the democratization of the army, its cleansing from fascist and other reactionary elements, and the satisfaction of the urgent demands of the workers and peasants, can strengthen the defensive capacity of the people against a fascist attack. In every concrete situation, the representatives of the working class will support such proposals and will seek to secure the carrying out of such measures as open up the greatest possibility for bringing to bear on the widest scale the pressure of the masses of the people upon the foreign policy of the government, as well as for their effective control over the activity of the government in questions of national defense. They will also support all those measures which hinder the capitulation of the bourgeois governments to the fascist aggressor and the betrayal of the independence and liberty of the people by these governments.

    In case of a direct threat of war by a fascist aggressor, the Communists emphasizing that only the proletarian power is able to ensure the reliable defense of the country and its independence, as is plainly shown by the example of the Soviet Union -- will seek to bring about the formation of a People's Front government. Such a government, taking determined steps against fascism and the reactionary elements in the country, against the agents and backers of the enemies of peace, and ensuring the control of the organized masses over the defense of the country, will assist in raising the capacity of the people for defense against a fascist aggressor.

    Since today the power is in the hands of bourgeois governments which are no guarantee for the genuine defense of the country and which use the armed forces of the state against the working people, the party of the working class cannot take any political responsibility for the defensive measure of these governments, and therefore opposes the war policy of the government and the military budget as a whole. This does not

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exclude abstention from voting in particular cases, giving the reason for doing so, on those various measures of a defensive character which are necessary to hinder the attack of a fascist aggressor (e.g., the fortification of frontiers), of voting and speaking for measures dictated by the interests of the defense of the population against the horrors of war (gas shelters, gas masks, Red Cross work, etc.)

    The time has gone by when the working class did not participate independently and actively in deciding such vital questions as war and peace. The difference between Communists and reformists, between revolutionary and reactionary leaders of the working class movement, is not at all that the latter participate in deciding these questions while we revolutionaries remain aloof. No ! The difference is that on these questions, as on other questions, reformists defend the interests of the capitalists, while revolutionaries defend the interests of working people, the interests of the people as a whole.

    These flexible Bolshevik tactics, which are the application of the general tactical line of the Seventh Congress of the Communist International to a specific question, arise of necessity from the whole present-day international situation, particularly from the existence of definite fascist aggressors.

    It is really ridiculous when "Left" phrasemongers of various kinds oppose these tactics, adopting the pose of irreconcilable revolutionaries. If we are to believe them, all governments are aggressors. They even quote Lenin, who, during the imperialist war of 1914-18, correctly rejected the argument of the social chauvinists that "we were attacked and we are defending ourselves." But the world at that time was divided into two military-imperialist coalitions which were equally striving to establish their world hegemony, and which had equally prepared and provoked the imperialist war. At that time there were neither countries where the proletariat had conquered nor countries with a fascist dictatorship.

    But now the situation is different. Now we have: (1) a proletarian state which is the greatest bulwark of peace; (2) definite fascist aggressors; (3) a number of countries which are

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in direct danger of attack by fascist aggressors and in danger of losing their state and national independence; (4) other capitalist governments which are interested at the present moment in the maintenance of peace. It is, therefore, completely wrong now to depict all countries as aggressors. Only people who are trying to conceal the real aggressors could so distort the facts.

    The peace which exists at present is a bad peace. But in any case this bad peace is better than war. And every consistent supporter of peace will understand at once the need to support all measures which assist in maintaining it, including the measures of the League of Nations, particularly sanctions. Sanctions can be made into an effective means against an aggressor.

    If the sanctions undertaken by the League of Nations did not prevent Italy continuing the war against Ethiopia, this is not an argument against sanctions but against the powers which frustrated their application.

    And if German fascism today is throwing out a challenge to the peoples of the whole world, this is precisely because it reckons on freedom from punishment, because sanctions were not applied to Japan, because the sanctions against Italy were frustrated by the capitalist states, because, finally, when Hitler sent his troops to the frontiers of France and Belgium he was convinced in advance that sanctions against him would be frustrated by the British bourgeoisie.

    It is said that the application of sanctions increases the war danger and will lead to war. This is not true. It is just the opposite, the impunity of the aggressor increases the danger of war. The more resolutely sanctions of an economic and financial character are applied to a fascist aggressor (complete refusal of credits, stopping commerce and the supply of raw material), the less will German fascism be inclined to begin a war, because the greater will be the risk to it.

    The League of Nations must be ruthlessly criticized for its

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irresoluteness, passivity, inconsistency. The working class wages an irreconcilable struggle against the governments of those imperialist countries, members of the League of Nations, which help the aggressor for the sake of their own selfish interests, disrupt measures for preserving peace and sacrifice the interests of small nations to the interests of the big imperialist powers. But it does not follow that we should in general take up a negative position toward the League of Nations. What interest has the proletariat in playing into the hands of the war-mongers, all of whom are at present against the League of Nations? The League of Nations has been deserted by the chief instigators of war, Germany and Japan. The League of Nations includes the Soviet Union, which throws all its international weight into the scales on the side of peace and collective security. In the League of Nations there are also other states that do not want to give the fascist aggressors an opportunity to attack other peoples. Those who cannot distinguish between the League of Nations in the past and the League of Nations at present, those who cannot vary their approach to the different members of the League of Nations, those who refuse to bring mass pressure to bear on the League of Nations and the various capitalist governments to secure the adoption of measures to maintain peace, such people are windbags and not revolutionaries or proletarian politicians.

    The working class must support those measures of the League of Nations and various states which are really directed toward the maintenance of peace (non-aggression pacts, pacts of mutual aid against the aggressor, pacts of collective security, financial and economic sanctions). And not only must it support these measures, but by a mighty mass anti-war movement it must force the League of Nations and the governments of the various capitalist states to take serious steps in defense of peace.

    It is not true that the policy of constantly yielding to the demands of the fascist war-mongers by the League of Nations

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and by various countries (Great Britain, France, Belgium, etc.) can help to maintain peace. The workers have not forgotten that previously in the internal policy of Germany, it was precisely the concessions and capitulation to attacking fascism which paved the latter's way to power. In the international arena, a similar capitulatory policy frees the hands of militant fascism for attack.

    It is also not true that the cause of peace will gain from attempting at the present moment to raise the question of a redistribution of the sources of raw material, colonies and mandated territories, as the reactionary Social-Democratic leaders are doing. In reality this is done with the aim of distracting the attention of the masses from a concrete struggle against the war-mongers. On the other hand, such proposals conceal the desire to give colonies to German fascism, which is bound to strengthen still more the military position of German fascism. It is not the business of the proletariat to advocate any particular division of colonies and mandates among the imperialists. Its task is to support the struggle of the colonial peoples for their interests and their rights and for their final liberation from the imperialist yoke.

    While demanding effective measures from the League of Nations and the bourgeois governments against the aggressiveness of the fascist firebrands, the proletariat must not overlook for a moment that the chief, fundamental and decisive thing in the maintenance of peace is the independent action of the masses in defense of peace against the actual war incendiaries.

    There cannot be the slightest doubt that if the international proletariat, with its mass organizations, especially the trade unions, had acted in unison and by strikes and other measures had prevented a single ship or a single train going to or from Italy, Italian fascism would long since have been forced to stop its war of plunder against the Ethiopian people.

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    But the formation of a really wide People's Front for peace, strong enough to carry on such a struggle against military fascism, is possible only if there exists unity of action of the proletariat itself. It was precisely the establishment of the unity of action of the working class which made it possible for the French and Spanish proletariat to build up a mighty anti-fascist People's Front.

    Torn by internal contradictions, the London conference of the Labor and Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions, under the pressure of the reactionary wing, evaded the question of the necessity for immediately bringing about unity of action of the proletariat on a national and international scale. This conference did not call upon the working masses for independent action, but limited itself to an appeal to rely wholly on the League of Nations. It did not take a stand in defense of the Chinese people, who are being attacked by Japan. It did not condemn in the slightest degree those labor leaders and Social-Democratic leaders who defend the aggressive policy of German fascism, masking this by phrases about the "maintenance of peace."

    But, simultaneously, a movement for the united front of the working class is rapidly developing of late in the ranks of the Labor and Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions. The basic interests of the whole international proletariat require that these forces gain the upper hand and overcome the resistance of the opponents to the united front.

    The fact that fascism, taking advantage of the discord in the parties and organizations of the working class in various countries, has gone over to a military offensive, insistently demands a single international policy of the working class for the purpose of maintaining peace.

    To sum up, this single international policy of the proletariat can be brought about on the following basis:

    1.  The restoration and strengthening of real international proletarian solidarity to defend the interests of the widest

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masses of working people; the Social-Democratic Parties must make a decisive break with the imperialist interests of their bourgeoisie.

    2.  Every possible support for the peace policy of the Soviet Union, the proletarian state that stands unswervingly in defense of peace among peoples. And this presupposes in the first place a determined struggle by the working class parties against the counter-revolutionary attempts to depict the foreign policy of the Soviet Union as identical with the policy of the imperialist states and to represent the Red Army, that bulwark of peace, as being the same as the armies of imperialist states attempts which play into the hands of the fascist war-mongers.

    3.  The blow against the fascist aggressor must be directed with definite purpose and with concentrated force at every moment; the attitude taken toward the aggressor must be different from that taken toward the victims of his attack; any attempt to gloss over the difference between fascist and non-fascist countries must be exposed.

    4.  An independent struggle by the proletariat for the maintenance of peace, independent of the capitalist governments and the League of Nations, making it impossible for the working class movement to be subordinated to the behind-the-scenes designs of the imperialist governments in the League of Nations.

    Under present conditions, the fight to maintain peace is a fight against fascism, and this fight is in essence revolutionary.

    The maintenance of peace is a deadly danger for fascism, because, by increasing its internal difficulties, it leads to the undermining of the fascist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The maintenance of peace helps the growth of the forces of the proletariat, the forces of revolution, helps to heal the split in the ranks of the working class movement. It helps the proletariat to become the leading class in the struggle of all working people against capitalism. It undermines the foundations of the capitalist system and hastens the victory of socialism.

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    "War may break out unexpectedly. Wars are not declared nowadays. They just start." (Stalin.) But this demands first and foremost that Communists have a clear understanding of the extent and nature of the war danger and the ways and means of overcoming it.

    A decisive step at present toward establishment of unity of action of the international proletariat against the war-mongers is for the Communist Parties of each separate country to develop in all fields of social and political life the most active, persistent and extensive campaign for the maintenance of peace. The Communists will carry on this campaign, not postponing it until pacts for joint activity have been signed with the leaders of the Social-Democratic Parties, but they will unfailingly carry it on from the point of view of the struggle for the establishment of unity of action between the Communist Party and the Social-Democratic Party. Communists will exert every effort to overcome the resistance of the reactionary Social-Democratic leaders to the united front and to strengthen in every way the bonds of joint struggle against the common enemy between the Communist and Social-Democratic workers.

    Such a campaign, helping to draw the Communist and Social-Democratic workers closer together, will help to activize and rally all the forces of the proletariat, not only on a national but on an international scale. This will greatly assist setting into motion other strata of the working people of town and country, the masses of the petty bourgeoisie, peasants and intellectuals, all friends of peace. All this will hasten the formation of an invincible front of struggle of the international proletariat, of all toiling people, of all peoples, for the maintenance of peace.

    The struggle for peace is a struggle against fascism, a struggle against capitalism, a struggle for the victory of socialism throughout the world!

    May 1, 1936.

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IT IS impossible without a feeling of deep indignation to read the telegram about the trial of the terrorist Trotsky-Zinoviev center, sent in such haste to the Soviet government by the official representatives of the Labor and Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions, signed by de Brouckere, Adler, Citrine and Schevenels.

    Did these reactionary leaders act with the same alacrity when the Communist International proposed to the Labor and Socialist International that joint assistance be given to the Asturian miners when they were fighting, with weapons in hand, in October 1934? Did they hasten to reply to the repeated appeals for joint action made by the Communist International for the protection of the Ethiopian people when it was attacked by Italian fascism? Not at all. One recalls that they stated at that time that they were not competent to enter into negotiations on this question, and that it was necessary to wait for a session of the Executive of the Labor and Socialist International. But at that time it was a question of a really just and honest matter, the defense of the vital interests not only of the Spanish but of the international proletariat, and of the fight against a most unjust, disgraceful war of conquest.

    But now they show themselves fully competent, on their own account -- without consulting their organizations -- to take under their protection the accused terrorists who had raised their criminal hands against the leader of the Soviet power.

    It has always been so. When the proletarian court in the Soviet Union wielded its avenging sword against saboteurs

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who scattered glass splinters in the workers' food, poisoned collective farm cattle and spoilt machines, or against spies and military saboteurs, agents of fascism who destroyed railway tracks, and caused explosions, such reactionary leaders as Citrine and Adler invariably came forward to protect and intercede for this counter-revolutionary gang of ruffians. And it often happened that when the apparatus of the proletarian dictatorship caught agents of foreign fascism in the act of preparing attacks on the leaders of the land of socialism, the sympathy of the reactionary leaders of the Labor and Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions was not on the side of the workers and collective farmers of the Soviet Union, but on the side of their bitterest enemies.

    The leaders of the Labor and Socialist International sent no telegram of sympathy, whether to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or to the Soviet government, when Comrade Kirov, one of the best sons of the people, selfless fighter for the cause of the liberation of the international working class, was treacherously murdered. On the contrary, at that time also, they hastened to take under their wing those against whom the people's wrath was directed. It is all the more scandalous that, just at this time, when around the heroically fighting Spanish people a real, international united front of struggle is being created against the rebel generals, and against German and Italian fascism, for the protection of the republic and of democracy, Citrine and Co. come forward with their hostile demonstration against the land of socialism, the most solid and unshakable bulwark of the liberties of the people.

    What can these advocates of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev say, in view of the irrefutable facts?

    Has it not been proved that Trotsky, whom reactionary Socialist leaders made a great song about at one time, is the organizer of individual terrorism in the Soviet Union? It has been proved.

    Has it not been proved that his accomplices, Zinoviev, Kamenev and others, prepared terroristic attempts in the course

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of a number of years on Comrade Stalin, the greatest leader and organizer of triumph of socialism, and against his best companions in the fight, leaders of the Party and the Soviet power? It has been proved.

    Has it not been proved that this terrorist gang murdered Kirov? It has been proved.

    Has it not been proved that these despicable terrorists worked in league with the Gestapo, that is, with the secret police of German fascism, the most savage enemy of the working class, the bestial persecutor and torturer of Communist, Socialist and non-party workers? It has been proved.

    Has it not been proved that the counter-revolutionary terrorists, in their foul underground existence, cultivated the habits and customs of the fascist executioners who set the Reichstag on fire, and later destroyed persons who took part in that outrage? It has been proved.

    All this was proved in an open session of the Soviet court, in the presence of representatives of the international press. It was confirmed by the categorical admissions of the defendants themselves. Driven into a corner by the facts and the irrefutable evidence, they fully admitted having committed the crimes with which they were charged and did not deny their political and organizational connection with fascism. Is it not a fact that in their last speeches the accused, one after the other, admitted the heinousness of their crimes against the working class?

    But Citrine, Adler and the others come forward in their defense! Ridiculous and pitiable are the statements of these leaders about granting the accused their due rights. They were given every possibility of saying whatever they liked. They were given the right to choose their defending counsel, to call witnesses, to demand examination of the evidence, etc. But they renounced the right of choosing defending counsel, to call any witnesses and to deliver speeches in their defense, for the chain of their crimes was too obvious and indisputably proved. Their crimes were proved before the whole world in public trial by documents, facts, material evidence.

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    The criminal conspirators were caught red-handed, weapons in hand, with passports in their possession obtained from the agents of the Hitler Gestapo, with explosives. The court was given documentary proof of the personal leadership of the terrorists by Trotsky, who had sent them to the Soviet Union to murder Stalin and to organize terroristic acts against the leaders of the socialist state. Overwhelming proof of the guilt of the Trotsky-Zinoviev terrorists was produced at an open trial.

    It was clearly proved that Trotsky, Zinoviev and their gang stood on the other side of the barricades, in the same camp as those who are fighting against the Spanish people, sending airplanes, weapons and munitions to the rebel generals, and carrying on counter-revolutionary intervention in Spain.

    Citrine and the rest are trying to justify their intervention on behalf of the terrorists -- the enemies of the Soviet power -- by pointing to the necessity of maintaining proletarian solidarity with the fighting working class in Spain. They try to create the impression that the trial of the counter-revolutionary terrorists in the Soviet Union endangers the fulfillment of this proletarian solidarity with the Spanish people. But that is an obvious lie.

    The trial of the terrorists, agents of fascism, is an integral part of the anti-fascist struggle of the international working class. True solidarity with the Spanish people is not compatible with the protection of the agents of fascism in other countries. One cannot sincerely support the Spanish people, which is fighting against fascism, and at the same time play the part of protector of the terrorist rabble in the Soviet Union which is helping fascism. Whoever supports counter-revolutionary terrorists in the U.S.S.R., directly or indirectly, is, at bottom, serving the ends of Spanish fascism, disrupting the fight of the Spanish people and facilitating the latter's defeat.

    This action of the leaders of the Labor and Socialist International and of the International Federation of Trade Unions tends to undermine the solidarity of the international prole-

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tariat with the proletariat of the Soviet Union. It is a blow at the movement toward unity of the working class of the world. It is directed toward shattering the united front of the working people against fascism in Spain, France and other countries. This action of Citrine and the others is a direct blow against the heroic fight of the Spanish people, for if the Spanish people were to follow the foul advice which the reactionary Socialist leaders permit themselves to offer to the peoples of the Soviet Union, the Spanish Republic would be doomed to defeat.

    It is just because the counter-revolutionary generals too long went unpunished that the Spanish people is having to make such sacrifices -- because measures were not taken in good time against the fascists, who were secretly preparing a conspiracy against the people.

    There is no reason to doubt that Hitler and Mussolini, Generals Franco and Mola, the fascists of France and other countries, all sworn enemies of the unity of the working class and the People's Front, all enemies of democracy, of socialism and of the Soviet Union, will welcome this scandalous act, for the step taken by Citrine and Adler tends to deepen the split in the ranks of the world working class movement and plays into the hands of international reaction.

    It would be wrong to put the responsibility for this action on all the parties and organizations which belong to the Labor and Socialist International and to the International Federation of Trade Unions.

    They certainly did not empower Citrine and Schevenels, de Brouckere and Adler to come forward in defense of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev, who organized terrorist acts against the leaders of the great Soviet country. They did not empower these leaders to take the accused, the allies of German fascism and the Gestapo agents, under their protection. They did not instruct them to make use of the trial of the terrorist gang for a new slander campaign against the Soviet Union and for a rupture of the united front against fascism.

    It is the bounden duty of the millions of supporters of unity

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in the ranks of the Labor and Socialist International and of the I.F.T.U., in connection with the disgraceful intervention of Citrine and the others, to administer a rebuff to the saboteurs of the united front. It is high time to put an end to their coming forward in the name of the workers' organizations to the detriment of the united struggle against the common enemy.

    The example of the accused degenerates plainly reveals to everybody how renegades, double-dealers, who, like Trotsky, make play with radical phrases, act as wreckers in the ranks of the labor movement and carry out the villainous work of fascism. Now even the most short-sighted people can see for what purpose Trotsky needed the formation of a Fourth International, and whom this dirty crowd of crazed, petty-bourgeois individualists, self-centered careerists, agents of the Gestapo and of the secret police of other countries are serving.

    To be able to display keen class vigilance at every step, to learn how to expose concealed enemies, to know how to expose double-dealers and agents of the class enemy and to remove them ruthlessly and in good time from the ranks of the proletarian organizations -- this is one of the most important lessons of the trial for the workers' movement in all countries.

    We do not doubt that all organizations of the working class will administer a well-merited rebuff to the anti-Soviet efforts of the Citrines; that they will strengthen and develop the united front movement and rally millions of working people around the just, national war of the Spanish people against the rebel generals, who are supported by the Italian and German fascists; that they will rally the working class against fascism and its contemptible accomplices, the Trotskyist plotters.

    October, 1936.

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DURING the fifteen years of its existence, the Communist Party of China has grown into a powerful revolutionary Party, steeled in the fire of the Chinese revolution. One of the best sections of the Comintern, it has succeeded in establishing Soviet districts and building the armed forces of the revolution -- the Red Army, which is displaying miracles of heroism, and which the seven campaigns of the enemy have not succeeded in breaking.

    The Communist Party of China achieved these successes in exceptionally difficult circumstances. It is distinguished from the Communist Parties in other countries by a double task that has fallen to its lot, viz., that of acting as the ruling party in the Soviet districts, in a situation of uninterrupted armed struggle against the internal enemies of the Chinese people, and at the same time in the remaining parts of China having, under illegal conditions, to organize the masses and lead their struggle against the ruling militarist regime. Three-quarters of the members of the Party have been under arms for a number of years and have been at the front all the time. Tens of thousands of the best sons of the Chinese people, and first and foremost Communists and Young Communists, have fallen in the struggle for the great cause of its liberation. A very large number of Chinese Communists have been thrown into jails by the reactionary generals.

    If, in spite of these difficult conditions and great sacrifices, the Communist Party of China has grown into a powerful political force, this is due to the fact that it has deeply-rooted connections with the Chinese people, that it untiringly defends

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their interests, armed with the revolutionary theory of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin, that it protects their unity as the apple of its eye, that it does not fear to reveal its own mistakes in Bolshevik fashion, that it learns from these mistakes and opportunely corrects them, and that it does not allow alien elements to make their way into its ranks, sweeping away all kinds of capitulators and those who support the class enemy.

    But as a real Bolshevik Party, the Communist Party of China realizes that, however great the successes it has achieved, they are only the first serious steps on the road to the liberation of the Chinese people. And now it is making every effort to solve its most important historic task at the present stage, that of becoming the pioneer in establishing a united national front against the Japanese plunderers, and of uniting the now divided forces of the Chinese people for saving China from dismemberment and enslavement.

    The efforts of the Communist Party -- directed toward ending the civil war in the country and establishing collaboration with the Kuomintang and all other political groupings and armed forces of China in the organization of resistance to the Japanese marauders have the sympathy, endorsement and support of the friends of the Chinese people throughout the world. The declaration of the Communist Party in favor of a united all-China democratic republic, as the best means in the present circumstances of uniting all the forces of the Chinese people against their worst enemy, the Japanese fascist military clique, testifies to the fact that the Communist Party is taking account of the actual situation, and is soberly outlining the tasks that correspond to the present stage of the liberation struggle in China.

    The firmness and consistency of this line for the unification of all the forces of the Chinese people, the line pursued by the Communist Party, are also proved by the fact that the Party, with a view to facilitating the establishment of a united national front, is introducing the necessary alterations into its policy in the Soviet districts, while at the same time continuing to strengthen the Soviets as the on]y center of democracy in

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the country at the present time, and as the reliable support of the struggle of the Chinese people against the Japanese imperialists.

    Tremendous difficulties face the Chinese Communist Party. The struggle against heavily armed Japanese imperialism -- a crafty enemy which is cleverly dispersing the forces of China and using every internal struggle there for its own robber ends -- requires tremendous efforts by the whole Chinese people, and first and foremost by the Communist Party.

    The Communist Party has to expose the machinations of the Japanese provocateurs, to expose the dense network of Japanese intrigues to the whole of the Chinese people, and to isolate the agents of imperialism from the honest Chinese patriots, who sincerely desire to protect the independence and liberty of their native land.

    The Party, basing itself on the will of the masses, has the task of carrying on a systematic struggle to establish a united national front with the Kuomintang. This is no light task, for many of the leaders of the Kuomintang, and many of its military men and political workers, blinded with hatred of the Communists, give way to Japanese provocation, and instead of organizing resistance to the usurper, jointly with the Communist Party and Red Army, are wiping out the armed forces of China in a criminal war against the Red Army, and in internal conflicts among the generals. The Communist Party has the task of mobilizing the public opinion of China, and of securing that all real Chinese patriots give up this policy, which is ruinous for the national interests of China.

    The Party has the task of still further strengthening its connections with the masses of workers and peasants, with all toilers, with the working intellectuals, by coming forward as the consistent defender of their elementary rights and urgent interests, and by mobilizing them for the struggle under the slogan, "Clear the Japanese usurpers out of China."

    The Party has the task of unceasingly strengthening the Red Army and raising its fighting power, for the stronger the Red Army the quicker will a united Chinese National Army

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be set up, and the more successfully will the Chinese people be able to carry on the struggle against the offensive of the Japanese military clique, which is armed with the most advanced technique.

    But there are also internal difficulties in the path of the Communist Party of China. It has to overcome the resistance of sectarian elements, who do not understand that in the present conditions the only way to secure the liberation of the Chinese people is by establishing a united national front against the Japanese violators. It also has to carry on a struggle against the opportunist capitulators who are ready to sacrifice the political and organizational independence of the Party and the Red Army, and to dissolve them in other organizations and armies. The Communist Party of China, while loyally and honestly fulfilling its obligations according to the agreement undertaken by it regarding the struggle against the usurper, does not intend to take either the path of blind faith in its allies, or the path of capitulation.

    The Chinese Bolsheviks perfectly well understand that the basic condition for overcoming these difficulties is to strengthen the Party itself, its unity and iron discipline, all the more so since the enemies of the Party are, in the present situation, increasing their efforts tenfold so as to penetrate into the Party, to do it harm and to hinder the cause of the liberation of the Chinese people.

    There can be no doubt that the Communist Party, which during fifteen years has proved its loyalty to the masses of the people of China, and its ability to fight for the interests and liberation of the people, will overcome all difficulties and obstacles in its path and will bring into being the united national front of the Chinese people against the Japanese fascist military clique.

    The international proletariat is following the events in China with unflagging interest. It has repeatedly demonstrated its solidarity with the fighting Chinese people and the Communist Party of China. But at the moment when the direct menace of complete enslavement hangs over China, these usual

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manifestations of solidarity are insufficient. What is needed is to surround the Chinese people, who are fighting for their liberty, with live sympathy and love, and with real moral and political support. It is necessary that energetic measures be taken to influence public opinion and the governments, first and foremost in England, France and the U.S.A., and to secure that all direct and indirect support of the robber plans and deeds of the Japanese fascist military clique is really abandoned. We must unceasingly brand -- as a foul plot against peace, culture and democracy -- the alliance between German fascism and the Japanese military clique, directed toward the dismemberment and enslavement of China and toward unloosing a new imperialist world war.

    Let the celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of the Communist Party of China become a real impulse for mobilizing the forces of the entire international proletariat to render help to the Chinese people, for this great people is fighting for its independent national existence on one of the most important sectors of the world front of struggle against fascism and war.

    October, 1936.

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THE policy of the People's Front of struggle against fascism and war, proclaimed by the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, has aroused a mighty echo among the working masses of all countries. The practical realization of this policy in France and Spain has provided clear proof that the People's Front is actually possible and has enhanced its popularity.

    There is not a single country, at the present time, where the idea of the People's Front does not daily find more and more adherents among all those who cherish democracy and freedom, among all those who advocate peace among nations. The effort to form a People's Front is growing as well in countries where the bourgeois-democratic revolution has still by no means had its last say; in Japan, for instance, where the fascist-feudal military clique, with its rapacious military adventures on Chinese territory and on the frontiers of the great Soviet Union, is thrusting the Japanese people into an abyss of most terrible calamities. And it is growing also in the so-called classic countries of bourgeois democracy, in Great Britain, for instance, where the destinies of nations have been traditionally decided by the two parties of monopoly capital -- the Tory and the Liberal -- which, by their reactionary policy both nationally and internationally, pave the way for the burial of democracy and peace.

    The tremendous historical significance, the correctness nnd timeliness of the People's Front policy, are perhaps particularly clearly expressed in the attitude toward this policy shown by the enemies of the proletariat, the enemies of de-

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mocracy and peace, the fascist war-incendiaries, and the reactionary forces throughout the world. The governments of capitalist countries, bourgeois parties, statesmen and politicians, bourgeois newspapers, have all become seriously alarmed by the decisions of the Congress. The reactionaries of all countries have raised an unparalleled campaign of slander and calumny against the Communist International and against all adherents of the People's Front. In fascist Germany they have even formed a special organization, called the "Anti-Comintern," to carry on propaganda on an international scale against the Communist International and to combat the policy of the People's Front. At the National-Socialist Congress in Nuremberg, Hitler, Goebbels and Rosenberg opened a particularly furious cannonade against the danger of the People's Front, which is menacing the fascist dictatorship, and against democracy in general. While directing the most vehement outbursts against the already existing People's Front in France and Spain, they at the same time thus expressed their alarm and fear of the People's Front movement which is taking shape in Germany itself. The Pope at Rome and their "graces" the bishops in different countries hastened with epistles and sermons, to shield their flock from that "frightful Bolshevik danger," the People's Front. The question of the People's Front is always in the columns of the press in the capitalist countries and is the subject of the most lively discussion.

    The workers' class enemy quickly sensed and understood what a tremendous danger the People's Front, the unity of all anti-fascist forces, constitutes for him. As long as the proletariat is disunited, as long as it is isolated from the other strata of toilers, the working people in town and country, as long as it has not established proper relationships and collaboration with the other democratic forces in the country, it is not so difficult, as the examples of Italy, Germany and Austria have shown, for the handful of financial and industrial magnates, for the fascist bourgeoisie, to crush the working class movement, to defeat the various strata of the people one by one,

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and destroy democracy. The fascists have successfully applied the well-known crafty motto -- "divide and rule?"

    But when the scattered proletarian detachments, at the initiative of the Communists, join hands for the struggle against the common enemy, when the working class, marching as a unit, begins to act together with the peasantry, the lower middle classes and all democratic elements, on the basis of the People's Front program, then the offensive of the fascist bourgeoisie is confronted with an insurmountable barrier. A force arises which can offer determined resistance to fascism, prevent it from coming to power in countries of bourgeois democracy and overthrow its barbarous rule where it is already established.

    As the examples of France and Spain have shown, the establishment of the People's Front signifies a turning point in the relation of forces between the proletariat on the one hand, and the fascist bourgeoisie on the other, to the advantage of millions of the working masses. The People's Front makes it possible for the lower middle classes, the peasantry and the democratic intelligentsia, not only to resist the tutelage and oppression of the clique of finance capital, but also to rise up against it in defense of their vital interests and rights, relying for support on the militant collaboration of the working class nationally and on an international scale. The People's Front offers a way out of the situation which seemed so hopeless to the sections of the lower middle classes, who considered themselves doomed to submission to fascist domination. The People's Front helps the working class to avoid the political isolation toward which the bourgeoisie purposely impels it; it creates the most favorable conditions for the working class to accomplish its historic role, to head the struggle of their people against the small clique of financial magnates, big capitalists and landlords, to be in the vanguard in the uncompleted democratic revolution and in all movements for progress and culture. The class struggle between exploited and exploiters thus receives an immeasurably wider base and a mighty scope.

    While the split in the ranks of the working class, the absence

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of unity between them and the other strata of the working people, pave the way to power for fascism, the unity of the proletarian ranks and the formation of the People's Front ensure victory for democracy over fascism, defend peace against fascist incendiaries of war, and in the long run pave the way for the victory of labor over capital.

    It is difficult to imagine a higher degree of political short-sightedness and absurdity than to contrast the principles of the class struggle with the policy of the People's Front, as some of our overzealous critics "from the Left" do in regard to the decisions of the Seventh Congress of the Communist International. We frequently observe the characteristic phenomenon that not a few Left Socialists, who have become disillusioned with the Social-Democratic policy of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and are moving away from reformism, are frequently inclined to go to the other extreme and become the victims of sectarianism and Leftist excesses. They make the mistake of identifying the policy of the People's Front with the policy of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and demand "a pure working-class policy," declaring that the joint struggle of the working class and the democratic sections of the lower middle classes, the peasantry and intelligentsia against fascism constitutes a retreat from the position of the class struggle. But this does not at all mean that the People's Front policy is identical with the policy of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie; it only shows that we must patiently explain the class meaning of the People's Front policy to the sincere Left Socialists and help them to get rid of their own political shortsightedness, which can only play into the hands of fascism and reaction in general.

    As was stated at the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, the People's Front will be formed in a different way in different countries, depending on the historical, social and political peculiarities of each country, and the concrete

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situation existing therein. To imitate uncritically and transfer mechanically the methods and forms of the People's Front in one country to another can only complicate its formation, expansion and consolidation.

    However, as experience has shown, it is equally true for the majority of the capitalist countries, that:

    First, the formation of the People's Front is possible in the actual struggle today against fascism;

    Second, the People's Front will be realized the more rapidly, and the sections of the working masses joining it will be the greater, the more determinedly the working class itself acts as one unit, the more quickly its organizations, and in the first place the mass trade unions and the Communist and Social-Democratic Parties, bring about unity of action in the struggle against fascism;

    Third, the People's Front will spread and strengthen as its program for the defense of the interests of the working people, for the defense of democracy and peace against fascism and the fascist war-mongers, is carried out;

    Fourth, the success of the People's Front is entirely dependent upon the extent to which its ranks are consolidated, and upon the extent to which the masses and organizations which take part in it have undergone political and organizational preparation so as to be ready promptly to repulse every blow aimed by fascism, without waiting for its general offensive.

    Today, when the Spanish people is engaged in a deadly struggle against the fascist rebels, when fascism is raising its head everywhere in the capitalist countries and, in the first place, in France, Czechoslovakia and Belgium, it is the supreme duty of the working class to hasten in every way the formation and consolidation of the People's Front by establishing united action nationally and on an international scale. It is the duty of Communists to do everything necessary, taking into consideration the conditions in their own countries, to help the working class to fulfill this its historic task.

    If we are briefly to formulate the most important, immedi-

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ate tasks which the whole situation today places before the world proletariat, they may be reduced to the following:

    To exert every effort to help the Spanish people to crush the fascist rebels;

    Not to allow the People's Front in France to be discredited or disrupted;

    To hasten by every means the establishment of a World People's Front of struggle against fascism, and war.

    All these tasks are closely linked. The most urgent, though, of these tasks, the very first at the present moment, is that of organizing international aid to the Spanish people for their victory over fascism.

    The historic importance of the struggle against fascism in Spain has been expressed concisely and at the same time most clearly in the words of the leader of the working people of the world, Comrade Stalin, in his telegram in reply to the greetings of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain:

    The liberation of Spain from the yoke of the fascist reactionaries is not the private affair of Spaniards, but the common cause of all advanced and progressive mankind.

    The course of development in all the capitalist countries in the near future will depend a great deal upon the outcome of the struggle of the Spanish people against the fascist brigands. The action undertaken by the fascists in Spain has shown once more that fascism is not only the bitterest enemy of the proletariat, the enemy of the Soviet Socialist Republics, but the enemy of every form of liberty, of every democratic country, even if its political and economic regime does not go beyond the bounds of bourgeois society.

    Fascism means the destruction of all the democratic rights won by the people, the establishment of a kingdom of darkness and ignorance and the destruction of culture; it means nonsensical race theories and the preaching of hatred of man for man, for the purpose of kindling wars of conquest. Death and destruction are being spread today in Spain by the rabble

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who form the Foreign Legion, by the duped Moroccan troops led by fascist generals, and by the ammunition and military units sent to Spain by the fascist rulers of Germany, Italy and Portugal. The combatants of the Republican army fighting at the walls of Madrid, in Catalonia, in the mountains of Asturias, all over the peninsula, are laving down their lives to defend not only the liberty and independence of Republican Spain, but also the democratic gains of all nations, and the cause of peace against the fascist war incendiaries.

    The special significance of the Spanish events consists in the fact that they have demonstrated the mighty power of united proletarian action, the power of the People's Front in the struggle against fascism. For it is now quite clear to everybody that if united action had not been achieved between the Communist, Socialist and Anarchist workers in Spain, if a broad fighting front of the Spanish people -- from the Communists to the Left Republicans -- had not been formed, the fascist generals would long ago have established their dictatorship. They would have wreaked bloody vengeance upon the workers and other toilers and upon all democratic elements all over the whole of Spanish territory. They would have doomed the country to nn orgy of medieval reaction and inquisition, would have placed it under the heel of German and Italian fascism, would have handed over to them the most important strategic points in the Mediterranean, and have turned Spain into a military base for carrying out their robber uar plans.

    But in Spain the fascist rebels and their inspirers from Berlin and Rome have encountered that force which is barring their way. They have encountered the armed resistance of the People's Front. The Spanish people by their heroic struggle are today demonstrating how democracy is to be defended against fascism. The victory of the Spanish people is the interest of all who do not want to suffer fascist barbarism in their country. The victory of the Spanish people will be the victory of the whole of world democracy, the victory of progress and culture over fascist reaction, the victory of the peace

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front over the fascist instigators of war. It will strengthen the People's Front in France and strike a heavy blow at fascism in all countries.

    The heroic struggle of the Spanish people serves as a striking and convincing warning to the fascist forces of darkness in those countries where they are feverishly preparing for fascist coups d'état, that the time has passed when fascism can make use of disunity in the ranks of the working class and other toilers, when it can catch the people unawares, when it can deceive the politically backward sections of the population and seize state power. It shows that where there are a firm People's Front and international solidarity of action among the working class, it will be impossible to establish fascist rule over a people prepared to defend their freedom and independence. Thus, the cause of democracy and peace in Europe, the struggle against fascism and war in all countries, is linked in a thousand ways with the interests of the People's Front in Spain, whose courageous fighters have taken up arms to defend the Republic and ensure the victory of the Spanish revolution.

    Everything that has happened during the recent period, and primarily the lessons of the Spanish events, point to the fact that the time has come when we must defend democracy by every means, including the force of arms. These are the lessons that must be learned and well remembered by all workers and other toilers, by all those who do not want to become victims of fascist bondage and savage violence.

    It is not at all that the supporters of democracy and peace are in general advocates of armed struggle, but that fascism kindles the flames of civil war against the democratic regime of the country, brings about destruction and death, and compels the people to defend their lives, their freedom and independence by taking up arms.

    It must be understood that it is not a case now of some far distant menace of fascism, but that fascism, which has already

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set up its terroristic dictatorship in such big countries as Germany and Italy, and is seeking to do the same in Spain, is preparing to crush the working class movement and to destroy democracy in other countries, and that it kindles the flames of world imperialist war.

    The war undertaken by fascism against the Spanish people cannot be considered as a casual isolated act. No, this war is a link to the chain of the fascist offensive on the international arena. No illusions must be harbored that the war undertaken by fascism against the Spanish people will be the last of its kind. Fascism is preparing to strike at democracy in France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, at the democracy of England, Switzerland, Scandinavia and other countries. Everywhere the fascist reactionaries are feverishly working, from within and without, to prepare, organize and, at a convenient moment, to carry out fascist rebellions and coups d'état. In order to prepare for a new imperialist war, to seize foreign territories and to subject other nations, in order to ensure the unbridled rule of the most reactionary, rapacious elements of finance capital and to organize a crusade against the Soviet Union, fascism needs to smash the working class movement and destroy European democracy.

    All adherents of democracy must bear in mind that the fate of anti-fascist democracy in Europe is indissolubly bound up with the fate of the working class, with the establishment of the People's Front. Democracy will inevitably perish under the blows of the fascist offensive, if it does not rely for support on the working class and the broad masses of the working people, if it is not prepared to defend itself against fascism by every means at its disposal.

    The policy of retreating before fascism, both nationally and on an international scale, brings grist to the mill of fascism; it brings destruction to the nations, it means the end of democracy. This policy is equally harmful for those who retreat before fascism inside the country and those states which retreat before it on the international arena.

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    The fascist rulers of Germany are systematically blackmailing the countries of bourgeois democracy, and the present rulers of those countries succumb to the influence of this blackmail. But it must be realized that the brazen fascists are becoming the more insolent the more concessions are ceded to them, and the less the resistance they meet. The fascists are using their well-tried method of provocation. In Germany they fired the Reichstag and then shouted that the Communists had done it. In Spain they started a rebellion against the parliamentary regime, against the lawful republican government, and then shouted that the People's Front was to blame for the civil war. The fascists put fear into the hearts of the spineless liberals and flabby democrats; while the democratic jobbers fearing for their profits and the ministers, politicians and leaders from the ranks of various liberal and democratic parties who cling to their soft seats, as well as not a few people from the Socialist and Amsterdam Internationals, give way to this intimidation and do their utmost to find means of conciliation with fascism. They try to persuade us that such a "middle" policy can be adopted whereby "the wolves would be satisfied and the sheep go unharmed." But concessions will not sate the fascist wolves. This kind of policy will not check them. Actually it only leads to demobilizing the forces and the will of the working masses.

    The Spanish events provide a particularly vivid example in this respect, too. It is now clear to all that the fascists, and first and foremost the fascists of Germany and Italy who have raised the revolt, with the Spanish generals as their cat's-paws, counted upon the young Spanish Republican government not offering them any serious resistance; they expected that it would not be difficult for them to subject the country and take over its natural wealth and the islands having strategic importance. In resorting to military action in Spain the fascists had before them the examples of the recent past, when their criminal acts had been allowed to go unpunished. The introduction of compulsory military service in Germany, the militarization of the Rhineland, the seizure of Ethiopia by Italy

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and the earlier seizure of parts of China by Japan, which took place with the connivance of the bourgeois democratic countries and the League of Nations, have whetted the appetites of the fascist bullies and encouraged them to attempt a new robber raid. The fascists would never have dared to kindle the flames of civil war in other countries, to send arms, airplanes, tanks, flotillas of warships and, lastly, army units, had they been promptly and firmly checked. They would have been compelled to retreat if, at the very beginning of the fascist rebellion in Spain, they had encountered the mighty force of the international working class movement marching in a united front, if they had encountered resistance on the part of the bourgeois democratic governments, if these governments had not supported the blockade of the Spanish Republic by their fraudulent policy of non-intervention.

    We often hear the argument advanced by people who pretend to be adherents of democracy, that the establishment of the People's Front only leads to increased fascist aggression, that it hastens the armed action of fascism. From this they draw the conclusion that if you want to avoid the barbarous rule of fascism, do not form a People's Front, but try to come to terms peacefully with Hitler and Mussolini and your own Hitlers and Mussolinis in each country. But nothing could be more misguiding and harmful for the proletariat and the people in the bourgeois democratic countries than to follow the sheepish wisdom of these woe-begone democrats. It amounts to the absurd, stupid, foul moral: "Don't annoy the beast if you don't want it to attack you." And this monstrous moral is being taught to the Social-Democratic workers precisely after the cruel defeat of the working people of Germany and Austria!

    For in Germany and Austria, as is well known, the leaders of Social-Democracy and the trade unions had absolutely refused to undertake any joint action with the Communists, their excuse being that the united front with the Communist Party would alienate the middle strata from the working class, would strengthen the position and the aggression of fascism, would

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hasten on its general offensive and lead to fascist victory and the annihilation of democracy. It was as a result of this policy that the German and Austrian people suffered heavy defeats, followed by countless horrors and calamities.

    On the other hand, we see that the People's Front in France has barred the way against fascism, while it is precisely owing to the People's Front that for five months now the Spanish people have been heroically defending their liberty and independence. In this grave struggle the chances for victory will be the greater the more the Spanish working class is able to maintain to the end the firm unity of the People's Front, the more it is able to subordinate the historically formed differences between the Communists, Socialists and Anarchists, to the greater interests of the people, to the cause of suppressing the fascist rebellion, the more determinedly it resists the attempts at taking dangerous leaps over the inevitable stages of the revolution advocated by certain short-sighted sectarians, light-minded visionaries and Trotskyite provocateurs. Finally, the quicker and more resolute the support afforded to the Spanish people by the world proletariat and the whole of progressive mankind, the sooner will the Spanish people finish with the fascist rebels.

    An analogy, it is true, is not always proof, but frequently it throws a clearer light on a given situation. We can definitely assert that if, at the time of the Leipzig trial when the sword of brutal Hitler fascism hung over the heads of the accused Communists, the anti-fascists of all countries, and we in court, had adhered to this wiseacre policy of "Don't annoy the beast," German fascism would not then have suffered such a moral and political defeat, the heads of the falsely accused Communists would not have remained on their shoulders, and the "St. Bartholomew Night" prepared by the bloodthirsty fascists for the thousands of prisoners of fascism in the jails and concentration camps would not have been averted.

    No, the policy of "Don't annoy the beast," is an unworthy policy! It is a policy which under all circumstances is fatal for the working class, for democracy and peace. On the con-

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trary, the fascist beast must be muzzled. It must be confronted by the mighty organized fist of the People's Front. It must be muzzled in iron so as to prevent it from biting. It must be struck at and finished once and for all, in order to save the democratic gains won by the people and safeguard peace.

    This, of course, does not mean that we should fall prey to the provocations of the fascists, who, while using all means to kindle the flames of civil war inside the country and imperialist war abroad, seek to deceive the masses of the people and create the impression that it is precisely the parties of the People's Front and the states which support peace that lead to civil war and military complications.

    In the contemporary political history of Europe we have two most important and instructive examples showing different attitudes toward fascism that led to diametrically opposite results.

    While in Germany the Social-Democratic leaders refused to establish united working class action and, precisely because of this, facilitated the advent of the fascists to power, we have a different example in France. The French proletariat, thanks to the joint action of the Communist and Socialist Parties and the policy of unswerving struggle on the basis of the People's Front against the fascist danger, caused fascism to be effectively repulsed and prevented the fascists from establishing their rule. This is the greatest victory of the proletariat and democracy in Europe after the coming of fascism to power in Germany. And the working people of other capitalist countries can and must learn much from the French proletariat.

    But these successes in France are only the first successes. They must be consolidated; they demand that the offensive against fascism proceed further. Every attempt to discredit and break up the People's Front must meet with the most resolute resistance on the part of all workers, all anti-fascists. The mustering of the fascist forces within the country, the growing fascist aggression in neighboring countries, the Spanish events, which are fraught with lessons to be learned, indicate clearly to the workers and all anti-fascists that they

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must increase their efforts tenfold in the struggle against fascism, that they must forge an even stronger and more stable united People's Front.

    There is no ground to doubt that this line will be followed persistently and firmly, as the only correct line in the struggle against growing fascist aggression. But maintaining the People's Front in France does not mean by far that the working class will support the present government at any price. The composition of the government may change, but the People's Front must remain and grow stronger all the time. If for some reason or other the existing government should turn out to be unable to put through the program of the People's Front, if it takes the line of retreat before the enemy at home and abroad, if its policy leads to the discrediting of the People's Front and thus weakens the resistance to the fascist offensive, then the working class, while still further strengthening the bonds of the People's Front, will strive to bring about the substitution of another government for the present one, of a government which will firmly carry out the program of the People's Front, will be capable of dealing with the fascist danger, will safeguard the democratic liberties of the French people and ensure its defense against foreign fascist aggression.

    Alongside with maintaining and strengthening the People's Front in France, the unfolding of united action among all sections of the English working class against fascism and war deserves special attention. England plays a tremendous role in the whole of the political life of the world. Her position most definitely influences a number of bourgeois democratic countries and the international situation in general. The whole situation today raises with particular force the question of the role of the working class of England nationally and on an international scale. This fact imposes on it particularly important obligations with regard to the struggle against fascism and for the preservation of peace, and also with regard to the task of establishing international unity of the working class movement. The English working class won democratic rights

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earlier than the working people of other countries. The democratic regime they won has made it possible for them to influence the policies of their country to a greater extent than is the case with the proletariat of a number of other countries. The English workers possess powerful means for the struggle for democracy, to safeguard peace against fascism and, in particular, against the fascist brigands in Spain and the German, Italian and Portuguese interventionists.

    There is no doubt that the working class of England, with the glorious traditions of the Chartist movement behind it, the proletariat in whose midst the First International of Marx and Engels was established, and which possesses powerful, united trade union organizations, will find in itself sufficient strength and will power to overcome all obstacles on the way to creating a united People's Front of struggle against fascism and war, and to fulfill with honor its international obligations in defense of democracy, culture and peace.

    The decisive role in the task of establishing a mighty People's Front belongs to the working class. It can and must rally around itself all working people, all the forces of democracy, all anti-fascists. At the present juncture, when we are faced with furious fascist aggression directed, as was particularly clearly demonstrated by the Nuremberg Congress of the bestial German fascists, against every kind of democracy, when everything must be done to save the Spanish democratic republic, when over the world hangs the ominous threat of a new world imperialist war, it is not only impermissible to allow the forces of the proletariat to be divided, but it is impermissible and criminal to allow any slackening in the work of establishing the united front. This slackening only plays into the hands of fascism. It may cause the proletariat and democracy to suffer new heavy blows.

    The working class must no longer tolerate a situation where, at a time when in Spain the Socialist and Communist workers

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are fighting and dying together at the front, defending not only the liberty and democracy of the Spanish people but the democracy and culture of the whole of Europe against fascist barbarism, there are to be found leaders of the Second Socialist International who bring all their influence to bear to widen the split in the proletarian ranks.

    At a time when the fascist rebels in Spain are slaughtering Socialist and Communist workers who are fighting shoulder to shoulder at the front, when they are spreading death and destruction throughout the country, the leadership of the Socialist International persistently refuses to organize aid for the Spanish people jointly with the Communist International. The Secretary of the Socialist International, F. Adler, finds nothing better to do than to write long articles in defense of the counter-revolutionary Trotskyite-Zinovievite terrorists, who have been aiming at the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union. The trial of these foul murderers and traitors to the land of socialism, who had established direct connections with the German fascist secret police, was made use of by some of the leaders of the Socialist International in an attempt to break up the united front.

    There are a number of countries with Social-Democratic governments or coalition governments in which Social-Democratic ministers, leaders of the Social-Democratic Parties and of the Socialist International, are taking part. But not only do these governments not make common cause with the Soviet Union in its position on the Spanish question, the only position which is in accord with the interests of the Spanish people and with the cause of the defense of democracy and peace, but by the manner in which they act they lend support to the hypocritical policy of non-intervention and actually hinder the cause of effective resistance to the fascist interventionists and murderers of the Spanish people.

    Of course, the responsibility for this policy, which is most detrimental to the interests of the world proletariat, lies with the Socialist leaders who are carrying it out. But it would be against the historical truth if we were to keep silent concerning

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that share of responsibility which falls upon all leaders and members of the Socialist and Amsterdam Internationals. For the leaders speak and act on their behalf, as their representatives. Inasmuch as they allow such a policy to be pursued, they cannot disclaim responsibility for it. They must become cognizant of the common duty history places upon them, together with the Communists, to do everything to bar the way against fascism and to safeguard peace.

    In the formation and extension of the People's Front of struggle against fascism and war, the greatest significance is attached to the united front of the working class itself in the main capitalist countries, to united action on the part of the Communist and Social-Democratic Parties, as well as the trade unions of different political tendencies and, on the international arena, to joint action of the Communist and Socialist and Amsterdam International. All obstacles in the way of this united action must be removed as rapidly as possible. To this end the Communist Parties and all supporters of proletarian unity and the People's Front in the ranks of the Socialist and Amsterdam Internationals have a tremendous amount of intensive daily activity ahead of them.

    The Seventh Congress of the Communist International was fully aware of the fact that it is no simple task to put an end to the split in the ranks of the working class. All that the enemies of the working class, their agents and henchmen have done over the course of long decades for the purpose of dividing the forces of the working people cannot be eliminated with a wave of the hand and by mere wishes.

    Our whole experience since the congress has shown still more clearly that the road to united action on the part of the working class nationally and on an international scale is far from being a straight, smooth, paved road. It is a pretty hard, zig-zag road, often thorny and steep. Open and covert enemies of unity never cease to throw up different kinds of obstacles and barriers along that road. Every step has to be taken after great effort, by stubborn work and struggle. There are the misguided ones who must have things explained to them pa-

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tiently, so that they may become convinced. There are the waverers and those of little faith who have to be urged on all the time. There are saboteurs and double-dealers who must be ruthlessly exposed. There is a persistent struggle to be waged against the cunning sophists, the crafty politicians and practiced demagogues, who do their utmost to persuade the rank and file, the politically inexperienced workers, that two times two are not four, but three, that the united front of the working class does not increase their power, but only leads to increased fascist aggression.

    And at the same time it is necessary to be on guard against falling prey to the provocative maneuvers of the enemies of unity, but untiringly to extend a brotherly hand to all organizations of the working people, inviting them to joint struggle even when they have avowed opponents of unity at their head. For every Communist, every class-conscious worker, must not forget for a minute that the opponents of unity of the international proletariat, the Citrines or whatever else they call themselves, would be extremely gratified if, in the face of their sabotage and provocation, the Communists themselves would give up the struggle for unity and refrain from consistently carrying out the People's Front policy. This would only make it easier for these leaders to carry on in their role as splitters and would save them for the time being from the severe verdict of the proletariat and of history. We must know how to carry on an unabated, ideological struggle against reformism and other anti-Marxist tendencies in the ranks of the working class movement, and at the same time fight persistently for the establishment of the united People's Front, and carefully avoid any disruption of united action in the daily struggle against fascism and war.

    Twenty-two years ago, on the eve of the world imperialist war, when he was gathering together the forces of the working class for the coming struggle for socialism, the great Lenin spoke of the tremendous importance of unity in the ranks of the proletariat:

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    In the struggle against fascism and war, not empty words, not platonic wishes, but action is needed. To achieve this action it is necessary to bring about the unification of all the forces of the working class and to carry out unswervingly the policy of the People's Front.

    December, 1936.

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AMONG all the happenings of the past year, two historic events, on which the attention of the world is deservedly concentrated, stand out particularly clearly.

    First, the Stalin Constitution of the U.S.S.R., which embodies what was won in the great country of socialism -- the victory of socialist society in which there is no place for exploitation of man by man -- a victory of genuine, completely consistent Soviet democracy.

    Second, the heroic struggle of the Spanish people defending, arms in hand, their elementary democratic rights, their liberty and independence against fascist rebellion in their country and against fascist intervention from without.

    Naturally, the historic significance of these two events and their effect on the further fate of the peoples of the world is not alike.

    Nevertheless, from the viewpoint of their direct influence on the development of the People's Front in the struggle against fascism and war, these events have an inner relationship.

    At the moment when the special Eighth All-Union Congress of Soviets* raised high over the world the banner of the Stalin Constitution, the banner of developed socialist democracy in the U.S.S.R., at the other end of Europe, in Spain, the mass of the people were heroically defending and are continuing to defend a democratic republic from attacks by Spanish fascists and German and Italian fascist interventionists who are trying by fire and sword to enslave the Spanish people, to destroy its elementary democratic rights and liberties, to plunder Spain and convert it into a military base for robber wars

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against the democratic countries of Europe, first and foremost against France.

    The Stalin Constitution demonstrates to the whole world the victory of socialism, giving legislative form to the socialist society which is already built in the U.S.S.R., a society without antagonistic classes, without exploitation, without crises or unemployment. The Stalin Constitution does not limit itself to a formal proclamation of democratic liberties, the equality of all citizens of the U.S.S.R., equality of rights for all races and nations and the right to work, rest and education, but actually assures the necessary material conditions and means for giving effect to these rights and liberties.

    The Stalin Constitution is an attractive mobilizing force for the masses of the people in the capitalist countries.

    The heroic struggle of the Spanish people against fascist barbarism also arouses an echo in the ranks of the world working class, and engenders a mighty movement of solidarity and aid from the peoples of other countries, and first of all from the free and happy peoples of the U.S.S.R.

    This is an extremely vivid demonstration of the real possibility of the genuine democratic forces of capitalist countries rallying still more closely and effectively along with the mighty Soviet democracy against fascist barbarism and against the fascist interventionists and aggressors who are trying to disrupt the cause of peace and kindle a new world war.

    The liberation of Spain from the yoke of the fascist reactionaries is not the private affair of Spaniards, but the common cause of all advanced and progressive mankind.

    This revealing estimate of the historic significance of the struggle against fascism in Spain, given by Comrade Stalin, is closely connected with his words on the international significance of the new Constitution of the U.S.S.R.:

    Today, when the turbid wave of fascism is bespattering the socialist movement of the working class and besmirching the democratic strivings of the best people of the civilized world, the new Constitution of the U.S.S.R. will be an indictment of fascism, declaring that social-

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ism and democracy are invincible. The new Constitution of the U.S.S.R. will serve as moral assistance and real support for all those who today are fighting fascist barbarism.

    The victory of the Spanish people over fascist reactionaries and fascist intervention, and the establishment of a strong republican parliamentary democratic regime, based on a People's Front, will decisively undermine the material political basis of fascism in Spain, and lead to further consolidation of the democratic forces in France, England and other countries, where fascism threatens to destroy the democratic rights and liberties won by the peoples.

    The victory of the People's Front in Spain will be a palpable blow to the aggressive war plans of Hitler and Mussolini. It will assist the maintenance of international peace and serve as a powerful impulse for unleashing and strengthening the democratic movements of the mass of the people within Germany itself, within Italy itself, and everywhere that bloody fascism dominates.

    The Spanish people are marching confidently to victory despite the tremendous trials and difficulties which they have to go through and overcome. The guarantee of this victory does not consist only in the courage and self-sacrifice which the Spanish people have already exhibited in this struggle, nor only in the wide solidarity of the working class and all advanced and progressive sections of society.

    The guarantee of victory is more especially a most remarkable weapon formed and tested in battle -- the People's Front.

    Not only the Communists, but also the other parties and organizations of the People's Front in Spain understand better and better that this weapon needs to be guarded, strengthened and perfected, and that it must be used with ever greater skill, displaying the maximum vigilance and determination regarding all those who, at the behest of the enemy, would try to split or shake the People's Front from within. The maximum fighting unity of all those taking part in and supporting the People's Front, the greatest solidarity and unity in action

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against the common enemy -- this, above all, is the guarantee of victory over fascism in Spain.

    At the same time it must not be forgotten that still greater strengthening of actions of solidarity by the international proletariat and all democratic forces is necessary for hastening and facilitating the victory of the Spanish people, who are defending with their blood not only their own freedom and independence but also the democratic liberties of other peoples and the cause of peace.

    Platonic, passive sympathy for the Spanish people is far from being real aid, while the policy of systematic retreat before fascist intervention, which is becoming ever more insolent, only makes more difficult the struggle of the Spanish people and increases the number of its sacrifices.

    On the threshold of the New Year, one can say without exaggeration, there is just now no higher duty for the international proletariat, for the people of all countries, for all honest elements of mankind, than that of increasing in every way the aid to the Spanish people so as to ensure their victory.

    There is no more imperative duty than that of influencing public opinion and governments with the aim of ending the ostrich-like policy of hiding the head in the sand when confronted with unbridled fascist intervention. There is no more vital task than that of supporting by deeds the peace policy of Soviet democracy which aims at stopping fascist intervention, curbing the aggressors and defending the independence of the democratic rights and liberties of the people.

    December, 1936.

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Stato Operaio, the theoretical organ of the Communist Party of Italy, began to appear ten years ago at a time of exceptionally great difficulty for the working class and Communist movements of Italy, at a time when fascism had driven the Communist Party deeply underground, organized the most ferocious terror against it and destroyed all the independent organizations and remnants of the liberties of the Italian working people.

    At that time the Italian Communists were faced with very difficult and complicated tasks. These did not only consist in holding high the banner of the Party before the working class and all working people in Italy, while courageously facing persecution, exile, prison, torture and death. The tasks facing the Communist Party at that time consisted first and foremost in preventing fascism from isolating the Communist vanguard from the working people, in preserving, extending and strengthening the connections between the Communist organizations and the urban and rural workers and the peasants. The Party had to exert all its efforts so as to march at the head of the daily struggle of the working people for bread and their rights, so as to direct this struggle toward the overthrow of the bloody dictatorship of fascism. The Party had to bar the way to the extension of the ideological influence of fascism among the working people, whom the fascists had forcibly driven into their own organizations.

    The Communist Party as a whole did not immediately understand all these tasks. It failed to change its slogans, its methods of work and forms of organization with the necessary

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rapidity. This tardiness was utilized by fascism and cost the Party heavy losses.

    But the merit of the Italian Communists, who were the first to have to work and fight under conditions of fascist dictatorship, lies in the fact that in a situation fraught with the greatest difficulties, and in spite of losses sustained and mistakes committed, they never lost courage in the face of the brutality of fascism, but conducted an incessant struggle under the leadership of the Communist International to convert their Party into a true Bolshevik Party, striving bravely to correct their mistakes, to do away with sectarianism and Right opportunism, and to master the great principles of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin.

    Stato Operaio was one of the chief weapons of this struggle. Striving to educate the Party's cadres in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism, the magazine helped to provide the whole of the working class of Italy with this education and revolutionary orientation. While conducting an incessant ideological struggle against fascism, the magazine at the same time became one of the factors in rallying all the anti-fascist forces in the country. Herein lies the tremendous importance of the work performed by your magazine, to which, on behalf of the Communist International, I now send fraternal militant greetings.

    The policy of Italian fascism today is a criminal policy of aggression and war. Having destroyed the independence of the Ethiopian people in blood and flame, Mussolini is now engaged in armed intervention against the Spanish people, which is unwilling to submit to fascist dictatorship, and is conducting a heroic struggle in defense of its liberty and national independence. This policy of furious military aggression pursued by Italian fascism, which is resulting in a continuous decline in the economic position of Italy and the impoverishment of the Italian working people, is in contradiction to the vital interests not only of the working class, but of the whole Italian people. This policy, which is being pursued in close alliance with German fascism, is actually making the destiny of the

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Italian people dependent upon the fascist rulers of Germany, who are thrusting the peoples of Europe into a bloody catastrophe. This policy is in glaring contradiction to the democratic revolutionary traditions embodied in the immortal figure of Garibaldi, hero of the Italian people, to the traditions which are the inalienable inheritance of the Italian people. This has been understood by the Italian soldiers sent by the fascists to Spain who have now gone over to the ranks of the Republican troops.

    The Italian workers and peasants who have contributed glorious pages to the history of the international working class movement, to the history of the struggle for bread, freedom and peace among the peoples, today have the primary task of putting an end to the criminal intervention of Italian fascism in Spain, of putting an end to Mussolini's military aggression, which is a menace to the peoples of the whole world. The example set by the volunteers of the Garibaldi Battalion, who are heroically fighting in the ranks of the People's Republican Army of Spain, should call forth in Italy a wave of enthusiasm and the will to struggle. It is precisely in Italy itself that the chains of fascist oppression must and will be broken once and for all by the daily struggle of the workers and farm laborers, peasants, artisans, young people, progressive intellectuals and all working people.

    One of the necessary conditions for bringing this about is the task of unmasking, holding up to shame and driving out of the ranks of the working people the Trotskyite agents of fascism -- this gang, without ideals or principles, of diversionists, spies and terrorists, who organize terrorist acts against the leaders of the great land of socialism, and do their utmost to prevent the establishment of working class unity and the development of the People's Front movement against fascism and war.

    There is not the slightest doubt that the Italian Communists understand all the seriousness of the tasks which confront them today, and that they will make every effort to solve these tasks.

    On the tenth anniversary of the founding of the militant

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organ of the Italian Communist Party, I send special greetings to the glorious fighters of the Italian Party -- to Gramsci, Terraccini, Parodi, to all comrades, prisoners of fascism, to all those who remain unbroken by persecution or by being deprived of their liberty. The Communist International is proud of these comrades. The Communists and working people of the whole world will never forget that the struggle for the release of these foremost proletarian fighters is the duty of all who hate fascism, of all who love liberty and peace.

    From the bottom of my heart I wish Stato Operaio to continue in the future to fulfill its role successfully as the theoretical organ of the Communist Party of Italy, the leader of the ideological struggle against fascism, the educator of real Marxist cadres of the working class and tireless fighters for the establishment of a mighty anti-fascist People's Front in Italy.

    May, 1937.

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THE entire international situation at the present moment is marked by fascism's feverish preparations for a new division of the world by a war of conquest, and at the same time by the establishment of international working class unity and the gathering of the forces of the workers, the supporters of democracy and of peace, for the struggle against fascism and war.

    Fascist aggressors in the West and in the East are making all possible haste to come to an agreement on the ways, means and objects of their aggression.

    Berlin, Rome and Tokyo are linking up their forces by various pacts and military agreements.

    The intervention of Hitler and Mussolini in Spain, their war against the Spanish people, as well as the acts of aggression of the Japanese militarists in China, are without doubt stages in the preparation of a big war.

    In spite of the difference of interest existing between these war incendiaries, they have joined forces to carry on undermining work in the non-fascist countries which stand for the maintenance of peace; they are in every way supporting the reactionary parties and groups in these countries, organizing coups d'état against governments and regimes which are inconvenient to them and their aims, and everywhere sowing counter-revolutionary anarchy.

    Their criminal hand may be seen in the treacherous activity of de la Rocque and Doriot in France, Degrelle in Belgium, Henlein in Czechoslovakia, in the machinations of the fascists

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in the Scandinavian and Balkan countries, in Hungary and Austria, in Poland and the Baltic States, and in the policy of the pro-Japanese elements in China, as well as in the Hearst circles of the United States of America.

    Vitally interested in weakening to the maximum degree the capacity of peoples to defend themselves against fascist aggression, in disorganizing the labor movement and disrupting the People's Front that is being built up, the fascist aggressors, with this end in view, utilize the Trotskyites everywhere as their agents.

    They give their patronage to the Fourth International, this medley of secret service agents and renegades and traitors to the working class.

    The fury of the fascists is directed especially against the Soviet Union, against the great land of socialism, as being the most powerful bulwark of peace, liberty and the progress of the whole of mankind, as being the biggest obstacle in the way of fascist aggression.

    There can be no doubt that the fascist rulers of Germany and Italy, and the fascist military clique of Japan, would already have kindled the flames of a world war had there been wanting so mighty a sentinel of peace as the Soviet Union, had not serious advances taken place in the ranks of the international proletariat in the direction of strengthening the struggle against fascism and establishing the united People's Front, had the Spanish people not so heroically succeeded in beating off the attacks of fascism, had the French proletariat not established the anti-fascist People's Front, and had the Chinese people not taken the path of uniting their forces in a nationwide front against the Japanese marauders.

    But all this has only hindered the fulfillment of the insidious plans of the fascist warmakers.

    They have not given up their plans, and never will do so voluntarily.

    After the rout of Mussolini's fascist hordes at Guadalajara, the foreign interventionists are hurling new armed forces against the Spanish people.

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    While making peaceable declarations to Lansbury, a labor leader suffering from childish naïveté and political blindness, Hitler is intensifying his preparations for dealing a blow at Czechoslovakia, the destruction of which as an independent state is necessary, according to the fascist view, to "pacify Europe."

    The German fascists are preparing to engulf Austria, preparing fascist coups d'état in Belgium and a number of other countries.

    The Japanese militarists in their turn are trying in every way to smash up the democratic opposition in Japan itself, so as the more aggressively to hurl themselves against the Chinese people.

    The experience of many years has gone to prove that the fascist instigators of war are not to be held back by persuasion or arguments. There is only one effective means of curbing them, and that is the united and unbroken struggle of the masses of the people against fascism in the different countries and on an international scale. Only united action of the international proletariat rallying around itself all sections of the workers, all progressive and democratic elements, all genuine supporters of peace, can succeed in curbing the impudently brazen fascists and putting an end to their robber plans once and for all.

    All recent events go to show that in those places where the working class takes action against fascism with unanimity and determination, where the workers rally in a united anti-fascist front, fascism is unable to enslave the working class, or to subjugate a nation which has decided to defend to the utmost, and by all possible means, its rights, liberty and independence.

    The nine months' struggle of the Spanish people, who are sturdily beating off the armed attacks of fascism, the successes of the People's Front in France, and the growing anti-Japanese movement in China, have already led to results which undoubtedly go to confirm this truth, as well as the entire historical significance of the united People's Front for the strug-

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gle against fascism and war. Living examples now exist in a number of countries for everyone to convince himself that in those places where the People's Front has been established, where the masses resist fascism and do not follow the rotten theory of "Don't tease the fascist beast," there fascism meets with defeat. The successes of the People's Front in the non-fascist countries not only bar fascism's path in those countries, but also exert an irresistible influence over the mass of the people in the countries of fascist dictatorship, and undermine the basis of this dictatorship.

    The first serious defeats which the fascist interventionists have met with in Spain, notably at Guadalajara, have already raised the curtain which covers up the internal rottenness, contradictions and instability of the fascist regime, and have led to an increase of anti-fascist feeling in Italy and Germany.

    At the present period, history is allocating a great mission to the world's working class, namely, that of saving mankind from the barbarism of fascism and from the horrors of the new imperialist bloodbath being prepared by it.

    At the present stage, the specific way of fulfilling the historical mission of the international proletariat is as follows:

    To help the Spanish people to rid themselves of fascist violators and interventionists.

    To help the people of Germany and Italy to smash the chains of the fascist regime.

    To help the Chinese people in their struggle against the Japanese marauders.

    To help the small nations to defend their liberty and independence.

    To establish an impregnable barrier against fascist aggression in the West and in the East.

    And the fulfillment of this mission is quite within the powers of the international proletariat, if they act in unison and in an organized fashion. The very foremost detachment of the inter-

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national proletariat, the working class of the Soviet Union, is a force which is organized as a state. It stands at the head of a mighty state, which is on guard for the peace and liberty of all peoples. The working class of the U.S.S.R., under the guidance of the great Party of Lenin and Stalin, overthrew the landowners and capitalists on one-sixth of the earth's surface, established the proletarian dictatorship, achieved the triumph of socialism, and are realizing genuine democracy as consolidated in the new Constitution of the U.S.S.R.

    When speaking of the tremendous international significance of this Constitution in his report at the Eighth Congress of Soviets, Comrade Stalin said:

    Today, when the turbid wave of fascism is bespattering the socialist movement of the working class and besmirching the democratic strivings of the best people in the civilized world, the new Constitution of the U.S.S.R. will be an indictment against fascism, declaring that socialism and democracy are invincible. The new Constitution of the U.S.S.R. will serve as moral assistance and real support to all those who are today fighting fascist barbarism.

    Another heroic detachment of the international proletariat, the working class of Spain, is in the front line fighting against fascism and is drawing its ranks and those of the Spanish people ever more closely together in the anti-fascist People's Front. The Spanish working class, headed by the People's Front government, is the leading force of the armed people, and is defending not only the liberty and independence of its own country, but also the interests of the entire working class of the world and the general cause of democracy and peace. The working class of France, which began by establishing the united front in its own ranks, has linked its trade unions into a single Confederation of Labor, which now embraces more than 5,000,000 workers, and has established a People's Front against which the dark intrigues of French fascism are being shattered. The successes of the People's Front in France are giving a powerful impulse to the movement of the People's Front in other countries.

    For the first time in the history of America, the working

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class of the United States is displaying its independence as a class, uniting its forces into mass trade unions and actively taking the lead of the democratic and progressive forces in the country against reaction and fascism.

    In Britain the working class, which constitutes the overwhelming majority of the population and possesses a powerful organization, constitutes a tremendous force, whose relative weight in the international working class movement is increased by the special position occupied by Britain in world politics.

    Were militant unity of action between all the forces of the labor and Communist movement brought about, the British working class would be in a position not only to drive back reaction of all kinds in their own country, but also to play an important role in the international struggle against fascism and war.

    Without indicating all other countries in detail, it may be remarked without any exaggeration that the movement for working class unity is growing, even if not at the same pace everywhere, not only in the countries which are menaced by fascism and the aggression of the fascist states, but also in the countries of fascist dictatorship.

    The establishment of unity of action by the international working class against fascism, the common enemy, the mortal enemy of the whole of mankind, is the basic urgent task facing the working class organizations throughout the world, the supreme demand of the moment.

    This is a difficult and big task, one going beyond the bounds of the ordinary current tasks of the labor movement. But if this task is solved, it will bring about a fundamental change in the course of political events, will give them a new direction in the interests of the workers, and will make of the working class and its organizations a force exerting tremendous influence over the fate of their own people and also over the fate of the whole of mankind.

    What is required, first and foremost, to fulfill this task of such tremendous historic importance?

    First, what is required is that all working class organizations

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should recognize the need for concentrating the struggle against the main enemy, against the clenched fist of the most reactionary section of the big bourgeoisie, against fascism. What is required is that, in determining their policy, all working class organizations should make their starting point the defense of the interests of their own class, and should not act to the advantage of the interests of the bourgeoisie. By making their starting point their own class interests, the working class and its organizations thereby defend the interests of all the exploited, of the entire people. An end must be put to the policy of reconciling the interests of the exploited and the exploiters. One cannot be at one and the same time on the side of the financial magnates and on the side of the working people. One cannot, as is said, serve at one and the same time both God and Mammon. One cannot be for the rebel generals and for the Spanish people. One cannot be in favor of a victory of the Spanish people, and seek a compromise with General Franco. One cannot pledge one's sympathies for the Spanish Republic in words, and in deeds refuse it the means of defense in order to oblige the British Conservatives. One cannot declare one's readiness to carry on a struggle against fascism and at the same time intrigue against the Communists, the most consistent fighters against the fascist violators.

    Second, what is needed is to defeat the enemies of the united front in the ranks of the labor movement. The mass of the workers are thirsting for united action, but a non-critical attitude toward "authoritative people" and a badly understood loyalty to their organization frequently prevent workers from opposing those leaders who are frustrating the establishment of a united front by their dishonest maneuvers. Since these leaders have no desire to subordinate themselves to the general and supreme will of the working class, since they prefer to serve the bourgeoisie and place their personal careerist interests above the interests of the working class, it is the elementary duty of every working class organization to find within itself sufficient courage, to find ways and means to fulfill its will to unity despite all obstacles.

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    Third, it is necessary that all those who are carrying on a campaign of slander against the U.S.S.R. be given the most determined rebuff. The struggle against the U.S.S.R. is a struggle against socialism, the great aim of the working class recorded in the program of the overwhelming majority of working class organizations throughout the world. The struggle against the U.S.S.R. is a struggle against the greatest victory of the working class in the history of mankind, a victory which multiplies by many times the forces of the entire international proletariat and working people. The struggle against the U.S.S.R. is a most important part of the insidious plan of the fascists aiming at splitting up the forces of the international proletariat so as the more easily to attack them separately, to destroy the labor movement, and to place the working class and all the working people in the capitalist countries under the yoke of the fascist dictatorship.

    One cannot be an enemy of fascism and at the same time carry on a struggle against the U.S.S.R. -- the vanguard of the international anti-fascist movement. One cannot be a Socialist or even an honest democrat if one is not resolutely and entirely on the side of the Soviet Union, the great land of socialism and real democracy for the whole of the people. The attitude toward the Soviet Union is in essence the touchstone of the devotion of every individual active in the working class movement and of every working class organization, to the interests of the working class and their loyalty to socialism.

    Fourth, what is needed is, while carrying on the struggle against fascism, to be absolutely merciless in dealing blows at its Trotskyite agents, who are a gang of spies, diversionists, terrorists and police provocateurs in the service of German fascism and the Japanese militarists. The Trotskyite degenerates, on instructions from the fascist intelligence services, are carrying on subversive work against the land of socialism, are doing everything possible to deepen the split in the working class movement and to prevent its unity, and are striving to disintegrate the People's Front movement from within. Everywhere their actions are those of wreckers of the working class move-

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ment and disorganizers of the struggle of the masses of the people against fascism. International proletarian unity against fascism and war is unthinkable and impossible unless a struggle is carried on against the Trotskyite agents of fascism.

    Such are the most elementary conditions necessary to bring about unity of action of the international proletariat against fascism and war. But it is precisely the activity of those leaders who have the decisive word in determining the policy of the Second and Amsterdam Internationals that runs counter to the fulfillment of even these elementary conditions. Not only do they systematically reject the proposals of the Communist Parties and the Communist International for joint action in defense of the Spanish people, but they suppress the initiative of those organizations of the Second International which take part in a common front with the Communists against fascism and the German and Italian interventionists in Spain. In vain did the delegates of the Socialist Party and the General Workers' Union of Spain endeavor, at the London Conference of the Second and Amsterdam Internationals, to break through the wall of cold indifference to the heroic struggle of the Spanish people. In vain did they appeal to these Internationals for support of the struggle of Republican Spain by means of joint action by all organizations of the working class. The Spanish delegates left the conference profoundly disillusioned. Both Internationals in the decisions they adopted did not go beyond the bounds of declarations and decisions acceptable to the British Conservatives.

    The enemies of working class unity, the reactionary leaders in the ranks of these Internationals, not only sabotage decisive, all-round support for the Spanish people, but they go further. They are adopting all measures to split the People's Front in Spain itself, carry on intrigues, sow mistrust, set the Socialist leaders against the Communist Party, thereby weakening the stronghold of the People's Front and the defensive capacity of the Spanish Republic. In addition, at the present time, when the example of the French proletariat, which has established unity of action and on the basis of the People's Front has

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driven fascism back, is raising the spirit of the workers of all countries, the reactionary leaders are weaving a network of intrigues directed toward sowing mistrust between the Socialist and Communist Parties of France, toward undermining the People's Front and preparing the conditions for the establishment of a coalition government of the bourgeoisie and Socialist Party, directed against the Communists and the People's Front movement. In this way they sacrifice the interests of the working class for the benefit of the most reactionary sections of the bourgeoisie. As far as these leaders are concerned, the main enemy is not fascism, but Communism. As far as the Citrines, Bevins and Adlers are concerned, the main enemy is not Franco, but Dolores Ibarruri, heroine of the Spanish people; not de la Rocque and Hitler, but Thorez and Thaelmann.

    It would be naïve to think that working class unity of action could be achieved by exhorting, persuading or casting a spell over the reactionary leaders. International proletarian unity cannot be achieved without a stubborn struggle of all the adherents of unity against the overt and covert enemies of unity.

    Voices are sometimes raised in the Socialist ranks to the effect that the Communists, by their open and clearcut criticism of the conduct of the leaders of the Socialist and Amsterdam Internationals, render difficult the establishment of a united front. But is it possible to achieve the establishment of the united front without engaging in resolute criticism of those who hinder it by all possible means? What sort of militant members of the labor movement could we be, if we did not openly state the full truth on a question of such great importance to the whole working class?

    He who is silent about or attempts to cover up the harmful actions of the reactionary leaders in the ranks of the working class is doing no service to the cause of working class unity. He who supposedly in the interests of the united proletarian front gives up the struggle against the enemies of this united front

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and gives up criticizing reformism, which subordinates the working class movement to the interests of the bourgeoisie, is doing a bad service to the working class.

    The Seventh Congress of the Communist International, in proclaiming the policy of the united proletarian and People's Front, especially pointed out that:

    Joint action with the Social-Democratic Parties and organizations not only does not preclude, but, on the contrary, renders still more necessary the serious and well-founded criticism of reformism, of Social-Democracy as the ideology and practice of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and the patient exposition of the principles and program of Communism to the Social-Democratic workers.

    He who does not follow these directions of the Seventh Congress is a poor fighter for the working class unity and for the People's Front against fascism and war. He who thinks that the existence of the People's Front frees us from the necessity of waging a struggle for the basic principles and fundamental interests of the working class movement against theories and viewpoints hostile to the working class is deeply mistaken. The cause of the united front will not suffer from such a struggle; it only stands to gain from it. Moreover, such a struggle is a necessary condition for the real development and consolidation of the united People's Front of struggle against fascism and war.

    It should never be forgotten that in carrying on a consistent and stubborn struggle for the establishment of a united People's Front the Communists are not pursuing a policy of establishing an unprincipled bloc; they are pursuing a policy based on principle.

    When we carry on a resolute struggle for the defense of democratic rights and liberties against reaction and fascism, we do so as Marxists, as consistent proletarian revolutionaries, and not as bourgeois democrats and reformists. Where we come forward in defense of the national interests of our own people, in defense of their independence and liberty, we do not become nationalists or bourgeois patriots; we do so as proletarian revolutionaries and true sons of our people. When we come forward

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in defense of religious freedom, against the fascist persecution of Catholics and Protestants, we do not retreat from our Marxist outlook, which is free of all religious superstitions.

    When carrying out the policy of the People's Front against fascism and war, when participating in joint action with other parties and organizations of the working people against the common enemy, and fighting for the vital interests and democratic rights of the working people, and for peace and liberty, the Communists do not lose sight of the historic need for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, which has outlived its day, and for the achievement of socialism, which brings emancipation to the working class and the whole of mankind.

    Correctly to combine the operation of the policy of the People's Front with the propaganda of Marxism, with the raising of the theoretical level of the cadres of the working class movement, with the mastery of the great teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as a guide to action -- all this we must learn and teach our cadres and the masses day after day. We must not allow a situation where "you cannot see the wood for the trees." We must not allow practice to become divorced from theory, a gap to develop between the fulfillment of the urgent tasks of today, and the further perspectives and aims of the working class struggle. It must not be forgotten that the further the People's Front movement develops, and the more complicated the tactical problems of the movement, the more necessary does it become to make a genuine Marxist analysis of the situation and of the relation of the opposing forces, the more necessary does it become to retain the reliable compass of Marxist-Leninist theory.

    The proletariat is the most consistent fighter for the establishment and consolidation of the united People's Front against fascism, both on a national and international scale. Without the proletariat, the People's Front is altogether impossible. The proletariat is the main driving force of any anti-fascist people's movement, of any mass movement in defense of democracy and peace. The proletariat fights jointly with the

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democratic petty bourgeoisie, the peasantry and intellectuals against their common enemy. But the proletariat must rely primarily on its own forces, on the unity of the ranks of the working class movement in each country and on the unity of the international working class movement. For the more united and organized the proletariat is, the more truly will it be able to defend its class interests and the better will it be able to fulfill its leading role in the ranks of the united People's Front.

    Hence the Communists and all class-conscious workers are faced with the task of sparing no efforts, of stopping before no difficulties, of not leaving even the smallest possibilities unused in order to advance the cause of united working class action on a national and international scale. This must be developed until trade union unity is fully achieved and a united mass party of the proletariat is established. And here it must be clearly stated that the sooner proletarian unity is achieved, the greater will be the successes in establishing and consolidating the united People's Front, the stronger the Communist Parties themselves become numerically, organizationally and ideologically, and the more they will enjoy the confidence and support of the best and most advanced elements of the working class and of the working people generally. For the Communists are the most resolute and consistent fighters for the achievement of working class unity on a national and international scale.

THE unparalleled act of provocation by German warships in the Spanish ports of Ibiza and Almeria, accompanied by the bombardment of the port of Almeria on May 31,1937, can only be regarded as an open and brazen act of war of the Hitler government against the Spanish Republic.

    On the same day the German and Italian governments announced their withdrawal from the so-called Non-Intervention Committee, issued the order for the dispatch of further warships to Spanish waters, and declared that henceforth they would act "according to their own discretion" in relation to the Spanish Republic. In this connection Blomberg, German War Minister, flew to Rome. The provocative character of the whole behavior of the German and Italian fascists is obvious.

    During the last few months, especially since the debacle of the Italian troops at Guadalajara, it has become clear that, in spite of the help given to General Franco by fascist Germany and Italy, he cannot avoid defeat. But the defeat of Franco would mean the collapse of the whole fascist intervention in Spain. To avoid this defeat and its serious consequences for fascism, the notorious heroes of the burning of the Reichstag are resorting to new acts of provocation in the efforts to free their hands completely for further military action against the Spanish people, and for the seizure and plunder of Spain. No inventions and evasions of the fascists can hide this fact.

    The allegation of the Hitler government that Spanish Republican airplanes attacked a German warship engaged in performing "control duties" is an out-and-out lie. First, as clearly shown by authentic information, the fascist cruiser Deutschland was not attacked, but itself attacked airplanes of Republican

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Spain. It was only after this that it was bombarded by the Republican airplanes. Second, the German warship had no business at all in a port occupied by the rebels. As is well known, the control in this sector devolved on French ships, and consequently the Deutschland could not perform any international control functions in these waters. That, nonetheless, the cruiser was there only goes to prove that it was helping the rebels. It is, therefore, the height of fascist cynicism that fascist warships, which are supposed to ensure non-intervention, should themselves bombard a Spanish town, and that the fascists should now represent themselves as victims who have been subjected to attack and insult.

    As is well known, the attack on Almeria is not the first case of barbarous behavior by the fascists. The last few weeks have continually brought to light new facts of fascist sadism, ferocity and extermination of thousands of peaceful citizens, as well as the destruction of peaceful towns. Not so long ago the ancient town of Guernica, the place traditionally held sacred by the freedom-loving Basque people, was destroyed by fascist aviators. For months, the fascist rebels and interventionists have been attempting the destruction of heroic Madrid, and they wish to raze Bilbao to the ground.

    By bombarding Almeria and taking further war measures, the Hitler government desires once more to confront public opinion with a "fait accompli." Those in power in Berlin and Rome are again speculating on the non-fascist states and progressive public opinion allowing themselves to be intimidated and giving way to fascist extortion.

    It is no secret that the helplessness of the League of Nations in the face of the seizure of Ethiopia, and the continual concessions made by the biggest Western states to the German and Italian interventionists in Spain, encouraged and still encourage the brazen aggressiveness of the governments of Berlin and Rome. And what the fascist bosses in Berlin and Rome are counting on is that the international working class movement will not be in a position to muster its scattered forces for a victorious struggle against fascist aggression. It

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is well known that the fascist beasts, cowardly and hysterical as they actually are, fear nothing so much as that their aggression and acts of provocation should meet with courageous and resolute resistance from the united working class and the whole of progressive mankind.

    The destruction of Almeria and the murder of peaceful inhabitants, women and children, by the fascist interventionists has aroused a storm of popular indignation in all countries. Public opinion is rising, millions of working people are being set in motion. But what has to be done is to organize these forces for effective resistance to the fascist violators.

    In connection with the situation created by the bombardment of Almeria, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the General Confederation of Labor in Spain have appealed to the Labor and Socialist International, the Communist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions to take measures to organize joint action in defense of the Spanish people. The fullest support should be given to this initiative of the Spanish workers' organizations, which corresponds to the feelings, thoughts and interests of millions of working people, and which should be put into effect in all countries. Never before was it so essential as just now. The Spanish workers' organizations are absolutely correct in calling on the world proletariat "to take the most energetic joint action in order to mobilize proletarian solidarity of all peoples who are determined to frustrate the realization of the plans of fascism."

    The many million forces of the international labor movement must be immediately mobilized against the bandit military action of German and Italian fascism.

    Everybody understands that there must be no delay in this matter. In such a serious situation, it is absolutely clear that the Socialist, Communist and Trade Union Internationals ought to call a joint conference, establish a permanent contact committee, outline all the necessary measures and immediately proceed to put them into operation, i.e., do what is being demanded by the Spanish Socialists, Communists and trade

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union members who are fighting side by side and shedding their blood in the struggle against the fascist violators.

    The brazen attack on Almeria may become the beginning of events pregnant with serious consequences for all peoples if forces are not mobilized in time to curb the fascist interventionists. The Spanish comrades are perfectly correct in stressing, in their appeal to the international proletariat, that in this struggle against German and Italian intervention it is not only the liberty and independence of Spain that are at stake, but also the maintenance of universal peace, the struggle against fascism, "the intention of which is to kindle a world conflagration."

    This is a fact about which there can be no doubt whatsoever. Therefore, all the more urgent is the duty of all working class organizations immediately to declare for the establishment of international unity of action, and also for united action by the working people in the various countries. Only the united forces of the whole international labor movement and of all sincere friends of peace can ensure that the criminal designs of the fascist barbarians and instigators of war are finally frustrated.

    One must really be politically blind not to see the tremendous significance and consequences of coordinated action by the working class and its organizations in each country and throughout the world. By such action it would be possible to rouse and mobilize the widest masses of the people. The British Conservatives who are sponsoring the machinations of Hitler and Mussolini would be driven into a corner. The British and French governments would be compelled to adopt energetic measures against the intervention of German and Italian fascism. It would be possible to achieve the withdrawal of the armed forces of Germany and Italy from Spain, and the recall of the warships of the interventionists from Spanish waters. It would be possible to secure the operation of international law in relation to the Spanish Republic. It would be possible to ensure that the fascist interventionists and conquerors should be regarded, as they deserve to be regarded, as

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aggressors, bandits and pirates. Joint action of the working class throughout the world would provide the Spanish Republic and its heroic fighters not only with immeasurable moral aid, but also with colossal material aid. All this would undoubtedly hasten the victory of the Spanish people. Finally, a joint offensive by the progressive forces of the whole world would make it possible to curb the instigators of war.

    A tremendous, historic responsibility rests with those upon whom the decision of the Labor and Socialist International and of the International Federation of Trade Unions now depends. Nothing can justify the fact that up to now attempts at organizing joint action by the international proletariat in defense of the Spanish people have been nullified. This must not and cannot continue. The whole situation is such as to demand that an absolutely clear position be taken up by every working class organization, by every leader of the workers' movement, on the questions of united action by the world proletariat in defense of the Spanish people.

    One cannot sit between two stools. Every worker, every honest Socialist, is necessarily faced with the question: what sort of a labor international is one that turns down united front proposals when millions of workers affiliated to it imperatively demand united action? What sort of a Socialist international is one that turns down demands which come from its own sections, and even from such a section of it as the Socialist Party of Spain, which stands together with the Communist Party in the front line of the struggle against fascism? What sort of labor and Socialist leaders are those who would disrupt the united action of the international proletariat, when it is just this unity that is the decisive means of curbing the fascist violators? What sort of bearers of international working class solidarity are those who, by disrupting united action of the international proletariat, help fascism to crush the working class movement and enslave the peoples one after another?

    The fate of the Spanish people and the cause of universal peace urgently demand unity of action on the part of all international working class organizations. The bombardment of

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Almeria is a serious lesson to all working people, irrespective of their political views or the organizations to which they belong. It is a serious warning against further disunity of the forces of the labor movement.

    Unity of action of the international proletariat must and shall be established.

    July, 1937.

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Georgi Dimitroff, General Secretary,
Communist International, Moscow.

A NATIONAL-SOCIALIST naval squadron, fulfilling control functions in waters near Almeria, has just perpetrated on our town an act of base aggression which surpasses all the crimes committed by German and Italian fascism in its invasion of our country. Violating all rules of international law, trampling upon international treaties, German naval guns have bombarded the civil population of Almeria and inflicted loss of life.

    In face of this military action which is an outrageous expression of the war intentions of fascism, we workers and peasants of Spain, the masses of working people who are fighting in the front ranks of the struggle against national and international fascism and who are defending our freedom -- and thereby also defending the proletariat of the world from the horrors of a monstrous war -- appeal to you. We appeal to you, comrades of the Socialist and Labor International, the Communist International, the International Federation of Trade Unions, and the entire active proletariat in the ranks of the workers' parties and trade union organizations, and urge you to strengthen your solidarity with the Spanish people whose homes and unarmed children are once again subjected to criminal attack.

    We call upon you to resist the fascist governments which, with unprecedented brutality, attack our civil population, men-

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acing the lives of the aged, of women and children. We once again appeal to you, the vanguard of the world proletariat, to the glorious standard bearers of the struggle of the proletariat, to take the most energetic joint action in order to mobilize proletarian solidarity of all peoples who are determined to frustrate the realization of the plans of fascism, the intention of which is to kindle a world conflagration.

    Long live international solidarity of the proletariat in the struggle against fascism.

    Forward, together with the people of Spain.

    Forward for peace and freedom throughout the world.

    On behalf of the Workers' Socialist Party of Spain, RAMON LAMONEDA, Secretary.

    On behalf of the Communist Party of Spain, JOSE DIAZ, General Secretary.

    On behalf of the Executive Committee of the General Workers' Union of Spain, FELIPE PRETEL, Acting General Secretary.

    June 1, 1937.

    To Ramon Lamoneda, Secretary of the Workers' Socialist Party of Spain; to Jose Diaz, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain; to Felipe Pretel, Acting General Secretary of the General Workers' Union of Spain, Valencia.

    In reply to your radiogram of June 1 we draw your attention to the fact that the Executive Committee of the Communist International fully supports your proposal as to the organization of joint action by the Labor and Socialist International, the Communist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions in defense of the Spanish people who have been subjected to an onslaught by German and Italian fascism.

    Steadfastly pursuing the policy of establishing united action by the international proletariat in the struggle against fascism

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and war, standing unreservedly on the side of the Spanish people, engaged in a heroic struggle against the fascist rebels and interventionists, the Communist International has on several occasions proposed to the Labor and Socialist International the organization of joint action by the international workers' organizations as the most decisive means in the struggle against fascism, in the defense of democracy and peace. Unfortunately these proposals have not up till now produced any positive results by reason of the fact that they have been turned down by the leadership of the Labor and Socialist International.

    Taking account of the seriousness of the position that has arisen after the bombardment of Almeria, and on the basis of your appeal, we are taking steps to establish contact with the Labor and Socialist International.

Georgi Dimitroff, General Secretary,
Communist International, Moscow.

    Have received similar appeal from Valencia. Fully realize necessity of energetic action and more determined than ever to undertake it. We informed our Spanish friends of our intentions even before receipt of their message. Our International will do its duty fully under its own responsibility. As you know, neither the chairman nor the secretary of our International has the necessary powers to participate on its behalf in the committee which you propose.

DE BROUCKERE.  

    June 4, 1937.

Georgi Dimitroff, General Secretary,
Communist International, Moscow.

    To de Brouckere, Chairman of the Labor and Socialist International, Brussels.

    Received your reply to the telegram of the Executive Com-

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mittee of the Communist International in which, on the basis of the appeal of the Spanish workers' organizations, we proposed the creation of a contact committee of the three Internationals with the aim of establishing united action in defense of the Spanish people.

    Unfortunately your telegram does not give a clear answer to the concrete proposal made by us. Your reference to the fact that neither the chairman nor the secretary of the Labor and Socialist International has the power to decide the question of creating a contact committee does not seem convincing to us, if only because you could request such powers from the corresponding authorities of your International.

    Nor can it be assumed that the absence of formal powers is decisive when it is a question of the life and independence of the Spanish people subjected to the attack by German and Italian interventionists.

    Nor can we share your opinion that the Labor and Socialist International is fully carrying out its duty, inasmuch as it continues to reject the unification of all the forces of the international proletariat in defense of the Spanish people.

    The solidarity movement in favor of the Spanish people is as yet far from being adequate, chiefly because the actions of the international organizations are disunited. This movement would acquire a tenfold greater force if, in spite of all the difficulties, international unity of action could be established.

    It is precisely with this object in view that we propose the creation of a contact committee of the three Internationals. If, however, for one reason or another, you consider the form of contact proposed by us to be inacceptable, the interests of the common cause of aiding the Spanish people nevertheless demand that you, on your part, make other concrete proposals for the achievement of this aim.

    The chief thing for us is not the form but the essence. The Communist International, which is doing all in its power to ensure the victory of the Spanish people over the fascist rebels and interventionists as speedily as possible, is ready, without

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delay, as we stated previously, to discuss any proposals you may make.

    Together with the Spanish workers' organizations we have the right to expect your concrete proposals on this vitally important question. We should also consider it advisable, with a view to speeding up the realization of the necessary joint action, to have a preliminary exchange of opinions between representatives of the Communist International and of the Labor and Socialist International.

    In the event of your agreement, we await information from you as to the time and place of such a meeting.

    On behalf of the Executive Committee of the Communist International,

GEORGI DIMITROFF, General Secretary.  

    June 8, 1937.

To Ramon Lamoneda, Secretary of the Workers' Socialist Party of Spain; to Jose Diaz, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain; to Felipe Pretel, Acting General Secretary of the General Workers' Union of Spain, Valencia.

    From the chairman of the Labor and Socialist International we received the following reply to our proposal regarding the establishment of international united action in defense of the Spanish people.*

    Alluding to the motives of a formal character -- the absence of the corresponding powers -- the chairman of the Labor and Socialist International has evaded giving a straightforward reply to our proposal regarding the establishment of a contact committee for joint action of the three Internationals in defense of the Spanish people.

    We continue to insist on concrete proposals on the part of the leadership of the Labor and Socialist International directed

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toward the establishment of international unity of action.

    With this aim in view, we have also proposed a meeting of representatives of the Communist International and of the Labor and Socialist International. Upon receipt of a reply we shall inform you.

    On behalf of the Executive Committee of the Communist International,

GEORGI DIMITROFF, General Secretary.  

    June 8, 1937.

G. Dimitroff, General Secretary,
Communist International, Moscow.

    We, too, think that what is important is the essence, and the essence is agreed action in favor of Spain. We are always ready to meet your representatives for information purposes snd to exchange views on the best way of pursuing this action, by common agreement where possible, at all times without needless friction. We can meet your delegates in any place you may select in Geneva or its environs. We ask you to give us 48 hours' notice. We shall come to an arrangement as to the time of the meeting.

DE BROUCKERE.  

    June 10, 1937.

    To de Brouckere, Chairman, Labor and Socialist International, Brussels.

    In reply to your telegram we wish to inform you that the presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International has appointed the following delegation to negotiate with representatives of the Labor and Socialist International on the question of aid for the Spanish people: Maurice Thorez, Marcel Cachin, Jose Diaz, Franz Dahlem (members of the

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Executive Committee of the Communist International) and Luigi Gallo (member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Italy). Comrade Thorez has been commissioned to communicate with you directly regarding the place and date of meeting.

    On behalf of the Executive Committee of the Communist International,

GEORGI DIMITROFF, General Secretary.  

    June 15, 1937.

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FOR a whole year now the Spanish people, in the front line of the struggle against world reaction and fascism, have been manfully defending their liberty and independence and thereby safeguarding the interests of democracy, culture and peace against the fascist barbarians and war-mongers. It may be asserted without any exaggeration that after the great October Revolution this heroic struggle is one of the most considerable events of the post-war political history of Europe.

    When on July 18 of last year the telegraph announced the rebellion of the fascist generals against the Spanish Republic, nobody could think that the civil war which was stirred up by the fascist scoundrels would continue so long. Both the friends and the enemies of the Spanish people, each in their own way, counted on a very rapid conclusion of the war.

    In a few days the fascist rebellion was crushed by the Spanish workers and the people's militia in the most important centers of the country. Madrid and Valencia, Barcelona and Bilbao, Toledo, Malaga, Alicante and Almeria, almost all the important cities in Spain, were in the hands of the Republican government.

    In launching a struggle against the democratic conquests of the Spanish revolution and basing themselves at the beginning of the rebellion mainly on the counter-revolutionary officers whom the people hated, on the Moroccan troops and Foreign Legionnaires, the rebel generals met with the armed resistance of all the forces of the Spanish revolution, of the entire Spanish people, united in the ranks of the People's Front around the Republican government.

    There can be no doubt whatsoever that had there been no

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intervention by the fascist states, had Hitler and Mussolini not placed their arms, air forces and regular troops at the disposal of the rebel generals against Republican Spain, the Spanish people would long ago have cleared their country of the fascist aggressors. The now well known facts go to prove that the rebel generals would never have dared to undertake a war against the Spanish Republic at all had they not been inspired to do so by the fascist states. Actually, this bloody plot against the Spanish people was hatched and organized in Berlin and Rome. The fascist war-mongers made use of the counter-revolutionary generals so as to lay their hands on Spain, on its wealth, on its raw materials for the war industry, and so as to establish themselves in the Mediterranean Sea for the new imperialist war they are preparing. Hitler and Mussolini apparently calculated that Generals Franco and Mola, who acted as their tools, would be able in a few days to seize Madrid, to dissolve the Republican regime and to present them with rich booty in the shape of so-called "national" Spain. There can be no doubt that they were also strengthened in this conviction by the fact that despite the repeated and insistent warnings of the Spanish Communist Party the Republican government of that time did not take any radical measures against the plot that was being prepared by the counter-revolutionary generals, and could have been taken unawares. Mussolini and Hitler hoped that fascism could achieve victory in Spain without meeting with any serious armed resistance on the part of the masses of the people, as was the case in Italy in 1922 and in Germany in 1933.

    All these calculations, however, turned out to be radically false. Spain proved to be too hard a nut for the teeth of fascism. The Spain of 1936 was not the Italy of 1922, nor the Germany of 1933. The fascist rebellion in Spain broke out after the first victory of the democratic revolution of the Spanish people, after the Spanish proletariat and the masses of the people had drawn the lessons from the events in Italy, Germany and Austria, after the foundations of the anti-fascist People's Front had already been laid. By overthrowing the medieval monarchy and establishing the parliamentary-democratic republic, the

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Spanish revolution gave rise to an inexhaustible source of the forces of the Spanish people in the struggle against the counter-revolution, which wants to bring back the old regime of the landlords and financial oligarchy so hateful to the people. In view of this, for the Spanish people the struggle against the fascist rebellion is indissolubly bound up with the maintenance and development of the democratic conquest of their revolution against the regime of medievalism and obscurantism, against the landowners, against the thoroughly decayed aristocracy and the counter-revolutionary officers.

    Having become convinced of the inability of Franco to secure victory for fascism with the aid of the Moroccans and the Foreign Legion, the fascist states themselves took over the conduct of the war against the Spanish Republic. There are actually units of the German and Italian armies, their artillery, tanks and planes around Madrid and Guadalajara, on the southern and northern fronts, pitted against the valiant Republican army and engaged in demolishing cities, destroying villages and deluging the land of the Spanish people in rivers of blood. The fleets of the fascist states blockade Spanish ports, bombard and demolish sea towns. Madrid, Guernica and Almeria will forever remain in the minds of progressive mankind as ill-omened memorials of fascist barbarism.

    And the greater the confidence in the righteousness of their cause, the greater the energy and enthusiasm with which the Spanish people carry on the struggle, the more they strengthen the Republican army, close their ranks and eliminate weaknesses and defects in the conduct of the war after each new act of provocation by the fascist interventionists -- the more cynically do Hitler and Mussolini increase their intervention, openly declaring that they will not permit the existence of a Republican Spain. In plain talk the recent articles of Mussolini amount to the unbridled and cynical thesis that: Spain must be a fascist colony, otherwise it will be transformed into ruins.

    In the light of these facts it is difficult to find pages in modern political history recording behavior more shameful than the behavior of the decisive Western capitalist states, which proudly

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call themselves democratic, in relation to the Spanish people and their struggle for liberty and independence. At the very time when before the eyes of the whole world the fascist interventionists are openly engaged in a predatory war in Spain, these countries, and primarily Great Britain, have been en gaged for practically a year in the farce of "non-intervention" in Spanish affairs. Even after Hitler and Mussolini have rejected the so-called international control, those who guide British foreign policy still continue to seek compromise formulas of agreement with the brazen fascist interventionists.

    The League of Nations, the statutes of which contain a special clause regarding sanctions against the aggressor, providing specifically for cases analogous to the present armed intervention of Germany and Italy against the Spanish people, maintains an obstinate silence.

    Although it is clear that should the fascist interventionists succeed in enslaving Spain they will not hesitate to instigate rebellions like that of Franco in Czechoslovakia, Austria, Denmark, Belgium and other countries, the League of Nations, chiefly under the pressure of Great Britain, studiously avoids taking any decision on the Spanish question which would guarantee the international rights of the constitutional government of Spain. Thereby it actually spurs on the fascist interventionists and aggressors. The democratic United States of America, headed by Roosevelt, maintains the position of an unperturbed "observer." The efforts of the Soviet Union, which stands resolutely and consistently on the side of the Spanish people, to induce the non-fascist states to pursue a firm and insistent policy in relation to the fascist interventionists, so as to secure to Republican Spain its lawful rights and the opportunities of defending itself against onslaught and of being sovereign master in its own country, have not as yet led to positive results. The selfish interests of the big capitalists and the financial cliques in Great Britain, France and the U.S.A. still continue to dominate not only over the interests of the Spanish people and of the maintenance of peace, but also over the real interests and future of their own peoples.

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    Thus a strange picture is presented which should compel every worker and every supporter of democracy and peace to think things over seriously. At the very moment when the fascist states are acting in agreement against the Spanish Republic, when Berlin, Rome and Tokyo are planfully, step by step, preparing a new predatory world war, when the increasing intervention by Mussolini and Hitler in Spain is accompanied by the provocation of the Japanese militarists on the Amur, and by military operations in North China, the governments of the big Western states are engaged in endless discussions regarding the bankrupt "non-intervention" and "control" plans and are pursuing an ostrich policy in relation to the frenzied interventionists and war-mongers who recognize no limits.

    One must not think that the policy of the ruling circles of Great Britain, France and the U.S.A. on the Spanish question and on the question of the maintenance of peace corresponds to the sentiments, feelings and will of the overwhelming majority of the peoples of these countries. It is precisely for this reason, in order to justify their policy, that they are constantly attempting to frighten their peoples with the thought of the war which they allege will be precipitated by the fascist states if the non-fascist states and the League of Nations take resolute action against the interventionists.

    But it is quite clear to everyone who knows the actual international situation, the situation in the fascist countries themselves and the relation of forces between the supporters of peace and the war-mongers, that this is nothing but cheap playing on the anti-war sentiments of the broad masses. For in so far as the fascist states are concerned, the conquest of Spain is one of the most important prerequisites for the world war which they are preparing. Giving them the opportunity of entrenching themselves in Spain means helping them to increase their preparations for war, helping them to transform that country into a base for an attack on France, helping them to strengthen their military strategic positions in the Mediterranean.

    The real truth of the matter is that a defeat of the Spanish people would increase the threat of war a hundredfold and

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considerably hasten the precipitation of a war on the part of the fascist aggressors. A victory for the Spanish people, on the contrary, would raise a new barrier in the way of the precipitation of war. Everyone who is seriously desirous of maintaining peace must do all in his power to ensure that the fascist interventionists are driven out of Spain as rapidly as possible and that the Spanish people are able to secure their liberty and independence.

    Even such an admirer of Hitler as Lloyd George could not deny this truth. Speaking recently on the Spanish question in the House of Commons he declared: "It is said that if we display firmness in relation to Berlin and Rome, there will be war. I say to you that if we do not display such firmness, war will surely take place."

    One of the most important reasons that makes it possible for the non-fascist Western states to occupy such a position of toleration toward the fascist interventionists, and Pilate-wise to wash their hands, is undoubtedly the circumstance that the international proletariat has not as yet succeeded in acting unitedly and preparedly for the fulfillment of the main demands of the Spanish people, namely, the immediate withdrawal of the interventionist armed forces of Italy and Germany from Spain ; the lifting of the blockade from the Spanish Republic ; the recognition of all the international rights of the lawful Spanish government ; the application of the statutes of the League of Nations against the fascist aggressors who have attacked the Spanish people.

    These demands, which in the main were advanced by the Communist International soon after the fascist rebellion in Spain, were also proclaimed later by the Labor and Socialist International, and undoubtedly are the demands of every class-conscious worker and every honest supporter of peace. The international proletariat is without a doubt on the side of the Spanish people, against the fascist rebels and interventionists. It has displayed and continues to display its solidarity with the Spanish fighters not only by rendering material aid and by supplying food and medical assistance, but by giving a number

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of its best sons, who are fighting in the Republican army around Madrid, Guadalajara and at the other fronts.

    However, all this is far from sufficient. The international labor movement, its political and trade union organizations, cannot consider its duty toward the Spanish people and the defense of peace fulfilled until it has seen to it that international rights are secured to the Spanish Republic and the fascist intervention in Spain is stopped. To achieve this it is necessary to intensify the solidarity campaign on behalf of the Spanish people in all countries. It is necessary to mobilize all forces so as to render impossible the policy of toleration in relation to the fascist interventionists.

    It is essential to realize that in this connection the main role in Europe is being played by Great Britain, and therefore a special responsibility for the fate of the Spanish people, for the maintenance of peace, rests with the working class of Great Britain, with the people of Great Britain. It is impossible to tolerate the scandalous situation wherein the Labor leader Lansbury makes his obeisances to Hitler and Mussolini with an "olive branch" in his hand, while Citrine, General Secretary of the Trade Union Council, echoes the songs of Chamberlain and Eden, designed to lull public opinion in Great Britain, at the very time when the fascist hordes of Italy and Germany are shedding the blood of the Spanish people and demolishing Spanish cities and villages.

    If the Spanish people and international peace are to be effectively protected, joint and concerted action on the part of all the international organizations of the working class is absolutely essential. Let it not be said that such concerted action is impossible. True, there are a number of obstacles in the way. There are leaders and groups in the Labor and Socialist International and in the International Federation of Trade Unions that, out of considerations which have nothing in common with the interests of the international proletariat and the Spanish people, oppose joint action by the international working class organizations, and even threaten to leave the Socialist Inter-

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national if an agreement regarding joint action with the Communist International is adopted.

    But can such a situation be regarded as something fixed once and for all and not subject to alteration? It is necessary to overcome obstacles and not to capitulate before them. The interests of the international proletariat and the cause of the defense of peace, which coincide absolutely with the interests of the Spanish people, must be placed above all personal and group considerations.

    The meetings between the representatives of the Communist International and the Labor and Socialist International in Annemasse and Paris have shown that both sides are at one in the main demands for the defense of the Spanish people and the maintenance of peace. Why, then, not do the only thing that can rapidly and surely lead to the fulfillment of these demands -- organize united action by the international working class organizations and proceed to the joint utilization of all the reserve forces at the disposal of the world labor movement?

    On the anniversary of the heroic struggle of the Spanish people, in face of the ominously increasing fascist intervention in Spain and the new Japanese aggression in North China, this question rises most acutely before each working class organization, before every person who is active in the labor movement, before all supporters of democracy and peace, and demands a practical solution.

    During a year of uninterrupted and tense fighting the Spanish proletariat has succeeded in defending the conquests of the democratic revolution, in strengthening unity in the ranks of the People's Front, and in securing the establishment of a heroic people's republican army, half a million strong. It is clearing the way for its united political party and for the unification of its trade unions, and working steadily for all the domestic conditions necessary for final victory over fascism.

    The Spanish proletariat, headed by the Communist Party and marching in the front ranks of its people, is honorably fulfilling its duty in the front line of the struggle against world reaction and fascism. The international proletariat on its part

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must fulfill its duty in relation to its glorious Spanish detachment in full.

    The Communists, while intensifying their own action in defense of the Spanish people and of peace in every way, will not therefore cease to point still more persistently to the imperative need for establishing united action on the part of the international labor movement, nor will they cease to fight with all their energy to bring it about as rapidly as possible.

    July, 1937.

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TWO years ago, in August, 1935, the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, in analyzing the international situation and seeking ways and means whereby the working class could carry on the struggle against the offensive of fascism, pointed to the indissoluble connection between the struggle against fascism and the struggle for peace.

    Fascism is war, declared the Congress. Coming to power against the will and interests of its own countrymen, fascism seeks a way out of its growing domestic difficulties in aggression against other countries and peoples, in a new redivision of the globe by unleashing world war.

    As far as fascism is concerned, peace is certain ruin. The preservation of international peace renders it possible for the enslaved masses in the fascist countries to gather their forces together and to prepare for the overthrow of the hated fascist dictatorship, and to enable the international proletariat to win time for the establishment of unity in its ranks, to rally together the supporters of peace, and to establish an insurmountable barrier in the way of the outbreak of war.

    When the Seventh Congress characterized fascism as the firebrand of war, when it pointed to the growing danger of a new imperialist war and to the need for establishing a powerful united fighting front against fascism, there were very few people even in the labor movement who did not hesitate to accuse us Communists of deliberately and for purely propagandist purposes ascribing this role to fascism, and of exaggerating the war danger.

    Some people did this consciously, in the interests of the ruling classes, while others did so out of their political short-

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sightedness. The past two years, however, have provided a sufficiently clear demonstration of the complete absurdity of such accusations.

    Now both the friends and foes of peace are openly speaking of the menace of a new world war which has come upon us. And it would also be difficult to find serious-minded people who at all doubt that it is precisely the fascist governments that are foremost in the desire for war.

    In actual fact, war is already going on in various countries. For one year already, both the Italian and the German interventionists have been carrying on a war against the Spanish people before the eyes of the whole world.

    After having accomplished the seizure of Manchuria, the Japanese fascist militarists are now again attacking the Chinese people and are carrying on a new war in North China. Manchuria, Ethiopia, Spain, North China -- these are stages toward the new great robber war of fascism. These are not isolated acts.

    There exists a bloc of fascist aggressors and war-mongers -- Berlin, Rome, Tokyo. The German-Japanese agreement "against the Communist International," an agreement which, as is well known, is of a military nature and to which Mussolini has in fact also linked himself, is already being applied in practice.

    Under the flag of struggle against the Communist International, against the "Red menace," the German, Italian and Japanese aggressors are trying by means of partial wars to seize military-strategic positions, key positions on land and naval routes, and sources of raw materials for their war supplies with a view to unleashing further imperialist war.

    There is no need to be under any illusions, there is no need to wait for a formal declaration of war, to see that war is now on. As far back as March, 1936, Comrade Stalin, in his interview with Roy Howard [head of Scripps-Howard newspaper chain], said:

    War may break out unexpectedly. Nowadays wars are not declared. They simply begin.

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    All events of recent years serve as a glaring confirmation of this thesis. Without officially declaring war, Japan opened military operations against China and seized Manchuria, Italy attacked the Ethiopian people and seized Ethiopia, and Germany and Italy are waging a war against the Spanish Republic. It is well known that the people have no desire for war, and that a number of non-fascist states are, in the present conditions, interested in maintaining peace. On what, then, do the fascist war-makers base their calculations?

    The entire experience following the robber drive by the Japanese imperialists into Manchuria and by Italian fascism into Ethiopia shows unquestionably that the bandit bloc of the rulers of Germany, Japan and Italy, in order to carry out their military plans in practice, are striving first of all to hinder united action by the states interested in the maintenance of peace; secondly, to prevent unity of action by the international labor movement, the establishment of a mighty united world front against fascism and war; thirdly, to carry on undermining diversionist and espionage work in the Soviet Union, which is the most important buttress of peace.

    It is on this chiefly that the fascists base their calculations. And in actual fact the fascist aggressors and warmongers are working strenuously and jointly in these three directions. They are blackmailing the Western European states by threatening their territorial interests. They are preparing an onslaught on the U.S.S.R. They are making extensive use of the toleration of the ruling circles of Britain, France and the United States.

    While making proposals for an agreement on the plundering of the small countries, Spain and China, they are striving in every possible way to win the good graces of the British Conservatives and a number of Liberal and Labor leaders, so as to win Britain away from France and other democratic countries. Holding out a similar lure, the fascists are exerting unbelievable efforts to come to an agreement with the French reactionaries in regard to French resignation from the Franco-Soviet pact, thus isolating France from the Soviet Union.

    The fascist states left the League of Nations to get a free

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hand for their aggression. They terrorize the weak states by threatening attacks from outside, and by organizing conspiracies and rebellions within these countries.

    The fascist warmongers make use of traitors, and particularly of the Trotskyists, to carry on disruptive, disorganizing work in the ranks of the labor movement, to disrupt the People's Front in Spain and France. The recent putsch in Barcelona gave a particularly clear demonstration of how the fascists make use of Trotskyist organizations to stab the People's Front in the back.

    The fascists also make splendid use of the work of the opponents of international proletarian unity in the ranks of the Second International and the International Federation of Trade Unions, and assiduously recruit their agents everywhere.

    But, as was disclosed at the recent trials of Trotskyists and spies, the fascist aggressors have put forth special efforts to send Trotskyist agents into the great land of socialist victories to carry on disruptive work there. The fascists calculated that if they succeeded in undermining the power of the Soviet Union, the most loyal guardian of peace, then the success of their military plans of aggression would in the main be assured.

    Hence one can understand the furious howl set up by the fascists and their tools at the merciless wiping out of the traitors to the great land of socialism by the organs of the dictatorship of the working class, supported by the entire Soviet people. The exposure and wiping out of the fascist agents, terrorist wreckers and spies in the land of socialism strengthen its economic, political and military might, break up the sinister plans of the fascist scoundrels, and thereby help to strengthen peace.

    This has been the most powerful and crushing blow dealt to the warmongers in recent times. It is an exceptionally important contribution to the struggle to maintain peace throughout the world. On more than one occasion the Soviet Union has upset the war plans of the fascist aggressors by its consistent and resolute peace policy. It can be asserted without any exaggeration that mankind would long ago have been hurled into

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the most terrible war in history had not the Soviet Union been insistent and unswerving in carrying through its peace policy, had there been no glorious Red Army in existence.

    But while the fascist aggressors meet with necessary rebuffs from the Soviet Union, which is acting in the interests not only of the Soviet people but also of the whole of toiling mankind, this cannot be said of the countries of bourgeois democracy. Here, as is being demonstrated with particular clearness by the examples of Spain and China, we meet with the overt and concealed assistance being given to the fascist bloc by the ruling circles of the most important Western non-fascist states. Was it not support for the fascists when the seizure of Manchuria by the Japanese militarists was met with toleration? Was not the lack of resolute resistance to the bloody campaign of Mussolini against the people of Ethiopia encouragement to the fascist aggressor?

    Take the entire farce of non-intervention in Spanish affairs, which has already been carried on for a year under the leadership of the British government, and the negotiations going on regarding the recognition of Franco as a "belligerent" -- are they not in fact an encouragement to the war being waged by the fascist states against the Spanish Republic?

    Is not the present complacent attitude toward the brazen marauders in North China the most scandalous encouragement to the unbridled Japanese militarists, who wish to enslave the great Chinese people?

    How can the peoples of Great Britain, France, the United States and the people of other non-fascist countries look on calmly at these things? How can they put up with this systematic toleration and encouragement of fascist aggression, which facilitates the foul work of the fascist firebrands of a new world war?

    In the face of these things, it becomes still clearer how great is the historic responsibility which lies on those circles and leaders of the Labor and Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions which are stubbornly resisting the establishment of united action by the international

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proletariat, of action by its organization on the basis of a united, agreed-upon policy against the fascist warmakers, of the establishment of a mighty international front of peace.

    When the Japanese militarists seized Manchuria, there were people claiming to be leading lights in the labor movement who assured the workers in their organizations that Manchuria was a long way off and the Japanese invasion did not touch on the interests of the international labor movement.

    When Mussolini's fascist hordes crushed the Ethiopian people, these individuals asserted that the events in Ethiopia were a local colonial conflict and that the international proletariat ought not to interfere. When later on the fascist aggressors brazenly attacked the Spanish Republic and began a war within Europe itself, it was only after many months of tormenting vacillations that the leaders of the Second International agreed to a joint conference with the delegation of the Communist International at Annemasse, and yet not for the purpose of actually bringing about united action between the international workers' organizations, but only to recognize the advisability of joint action "where it is possible."

    Since then the fascist intervention in Spain has been considerably intensified. And now there has been added the new aggression of the Japanese militarists in North China, which, according to Japanese plans, is to become a second Manchukuo and the basis for a further seizure of China.

    Is it not clear that at this moment, when the Spanish people are exerting all their efforts to beat off the onslaught of the fascist interventionists, when the Chinese people are rising up against the Japanese militarists who have attacked them, the international workers' organizations should at least unite their efforts and come to the defense of international peace, resolutely and fully prepared for action?

    The situation is now developing in such a way that to maintain peace throughout the world means first and foremost to bring about the defeat of the fascist invaders of Spain and China.

    They must be taught a good lesson, they must be really made

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to feel that the international proletariat and all progressive and civilized mankind will not tolerate their military aggression and acts of robbery, and are ready to do everything to prevent them from fulfilling their plans of igniting the flames of a new world war.

    Can it be that the Labor and Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions will rest content now with general, wordy declarations and incantations in favor of peace, while in deeds they shun joint action by all organizations of the international labor movement, which is so vitally needed?

    Surely it is clear that joint action by the international workers' organizations in each separate country and on an international scale is alone capable of mobilizing the forces of progressive mankind for a struggle against war, to bar the road to the war-mongers, and also to exert pressure on the official policy of the most important non-fascist states to curb the fascist aggressors who have thrown off all restraint.

    It is impossible to carry on a serious struggle for the maintenance of international peace unless first and foremost all necessary steps are taken to establish a united front of the working class in each country and united action by the international workers' organizations. It is impossible to carry on a serious fight for peace unless the forces of the labor movement and of the wide masses of the people are mobilized to drive the fascist usurpers out of Spain and China as rapidly as possible.

    The relation between the forces of war and the forces of peace is not what it was in 1914. Tremendous world historical changes have taken place since that time. The imperialists succeeded in casting millions of people into the inferno of a world slaughter when circumstances were such that neither a powerful proletarian state nor its Red Army existed, when there was no People's Front in France and Spain, when the Chinese people were not in a position to defend their national independence, when the masses of the people had not had the experience of the imperialist war and the great proletarian revolution, when the international working class did not as yet

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possess such a world organization as the Communist International.

    The international labor movement has sufficient forces and means at its disposal to bring about the cessation of the intervention of German and Italian fascism in Spain, the onslaught of the Japanese militarists in China, and to secure international peace.

    This, however, requires that the tremendous forces and means at the disposal of the international labor movement be united and directed toward an effective and unyielding struggle against fascism and war.

    August, 1937.

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UNBOUNDED are the joy and enthusiasm with which the millions of working people throughout the world, all fighters against capitalist spoliation, fascist barbarism and imperialist war, greet the twentieth anniversary of the great October Socialist Revolution. Honest supporters of democracy, progress and peace, the best people of science, culture and art in all countries greet the twentieth anniversary of the existence of the first socialist state in the world as an event of world-historic importance.

    No other event in the history of mankind has had such tremendous influence over the entire course of social development, over the fate of all the peoples of the earth, as the victory of the great October Socialist Revolution. There has not been hitherto such a state as the U.S.S.R., which millions of people in all corners of the globe, regardless of nationality or race, love as their very own fatherland, and with which they feel themselves, their lives, their fate and their hopes vitally bound up.

    As a result of the bourgeois revolutions, capitalism defeated the feudal system and won a dominating position. It encircled the entire world in its system of economy, overcame feudal particularism and established big national states. But capitalism merely replaced one form of exploitation by another, class antagonisms of one kind by another. It could not unite the peoples in peaceful fraternity. It deepened the gulf be-

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tween them, creating new international contradictions and new causes of destructive wars of conquest.

    As a result of the great October Socialist Revolution, socialism was victorious over capitalism on one-sixth of the globe. A powerful socialist state rose up in a tremendous territory covering half of Europe and Asia, in the heart of the world, a state based on the abolition of the exploitation of man by man and on a fraternal alliance among the peoples, and showing the way to the liberation of mankind from the bondage of capitalism, to the unification of all the peoples of the earth in a supreme fraternity of free and happy working people.

    In the course of twenty years of severe struggle, in the face of the furious resistance of the defeated exploited classes within the country and counter-revolutionary intervention from without, in conditions of encirclement by the hostile capitalist powers, the working people of the U.S.S.R., led by their glorious Party of Bolsheviks headed by the brilliant leaders of working mankind, Lenin and Stalin, transformed a backward, wretched country into a foremost, powerful socialist state.

    Whereas in 1913 Lenin, in characterizing the unbelievable backwardness of tsarist Russia, pointed out that as regards modern means of production the country's economy was four times behind England, five times behind Germany and ten times behind America; today the Soviet Union occupies first place in Europe and second place in the world as an industrial country as regards the output of industrial production. No one can now deny the enormous achievements of socialist construction, the tremendous growth of industry and the record harvests of collectivized agriculture. It is a fact, is it not, that such a stormy advance of economic development has taken place in the U.S.S.R. as has never been known by capitalist society? Whereas the development of industry of the capitalist countries during the period 1890-1913 showed an average growth in production of 5.8 per cent a year, and during the period 1913-1936 only 1 1/2 per cent, in the Soviet Union in 1936 alone the growth in industrial output totaled 28 per cent. Whereas in 1936 the industrial output of capitalist coun-

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tries exceeded the 1913 level by one-third, in the Soviet Union it increased by more than seven times.

    In the sphere of agriculture a great historical victory has been achieved. At the time when the agriculture of capitalist countries is not emerging from the protracted agrarian crisis as the result of which the sown area is decreasing, a great number of products being destroyed and the level of all production steadily lowering, -- in the Soviet Union, in place of a backward, scattered economy there has been created the most advanced and biggest socialist agriculture with 99 per cent of the area sown by the peasants collectivized. Thanks to the collective farm order, poverty in the village has been destroyed and there are no longer peasants who have no land, no horses, no implements. More than 20,000,000 poor peasants who formerly lived a poverty-stricken existence have joined the collective farms and are today leading a well-to-do cultured life. Socialist agriculture is yielding record harvests unprecedented in the history of the country. In 1937 there was harvested nearly 7,000,000,000 poods of grain while the best years before the revolution gave four to five billion poods.

    Under capitalism, wherever there is an increase of the wealth of the few, there is an increase, at the other end of the pole, of poverty and misery for millions of working people; the boom periods are inevitably followed by severe crises which destroy the productive forces and bring in their train unemployment, hunger and poverty. The socialist system, on the other hand, does not know of crises, does not know of unemployment and poverty.

    Irrefutable facts clearly testify to the superiority of the socialist system over the capitalist system, not only in the sphere of economics, but also in the sphere of everyday life and culture, science and art, in the sphere of the relations between the peoples. Only the bought apologists of capitalism can dispute this superiority. And only hopeless cretins who not infrequently call themselves Socialists, and political charlatans who distort Marxism, venture still to prove that the working class is incapable of undertaking the historic respon-

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sibility of guiding the fate of its own people and of the organization of the national economy; that the proletariat, which is "inexperienced" in the state and economic affairs, cannot get on without the bourgeoisie, who are "experienced" in these affairs.

    Twenty years of the existence of the Soviet Union provide splendid confirmation of the words of Comrade Stalin uttered in 1927 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution:

    The undoubted successes of socialism in the U.S.S.R. on the front of construction have clearly shown that the proletariat can successfully govern the country without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie, that it can successfully build up industry without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie, that it can successfully guide the whole of the national economy without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie, that it can successfully build socialism despite the encirclement of the capitalist state. (Joseph Stalin, Problems of Leninism, pp. 204-5, Russian edition.)

    Herein lies one of the most important lessons of principle of the great October Socialist Revolution for the working class of the capitalist countries, a lesson which needs to be particularly underlined on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary.

    Much has been done by the proletariat of the capitalist countries in supporting the first proletarian revolution in the history of mankind. Had it not been for this support the Soviet workers and peasants would have shed their blood to a still greater degree and would have had to sacrifice still more in order to defend the gains of the socialist revolution. Nonetheless, however, it must be said outright that the working classes of the capitalist countries have not succeeded in thoroughly fulfilling either their duty toward the first socialist revolution, or toward their own liberation. Not only have they remained under the power of capital, and in Italy and Germany have fallen victims to the barbarous bondage of fascism,

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but they have involuntarily assisted in increasing the difficulties, privations, sufferings and sacrifices of the vanguard unit of the international proletariat.

    But what would the world have looked like, if the proletariat of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, after the October Socialist Revolution, in the period of 1918-1920, had not stopped half way in their revolutionary advance? What would the world have looked like had the German and Austrian revolutions of 1918 been carried through to the end, and had the dictatorship of the proletariat been established in the heart of Europe, in highly developed industrial countries, as a result of the victory of the revolution? A revolutionary bloc of the West-European proletariat and the working class of the Soviet Union would not only have facilitated a hundredfold the liquidation of the counter-revolutionary intervention and civil war, but would have immeasurably hastened on the building of socialism in the land of the Soviets. The fascist dictatorship would not have existed either in Italy, Germany, Austria or other countries. There would have been no offensive of fascism upon the working class and the democratic peoples There would not have been the present difficult trials of the Spanish and Chinese peoples. Mankind would not now be faced with the ominous menace of a new world slaughter.

    At the time when the Russian workers and peasants overthrew the landlords and capitalists, all the necessary objective conditions were at hand in central Europe for the European and particularly the German proletariat taking the path of the Soviet workers and peasants. But this did not take place. It did not take place mainly because the decisive word at that time in the leadership of the mass organizations of the proletariat belonged to the leaders of the Social Democratic Parties, who had been in coalition with their own imperialist bourgeoisie from the outbreak of the war.

    In their effort at all costs to preserve the shattered foundations of bourgeois society, they widely utilized the influence of the ideology and policy of Social-Democratism, reformism, in order to deceive the majority of the working class, by

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spreading the conviction among them that the workers would be led to socialism not by the further development of the revolution, but by its rapid liquidation. By their coalition with the bourgeoisie they split the working class movement, weakened the proletariat, isolated it from the peasantry and the small townspeople, and thus helped the bourgeoisie to gather their forces and to undertake the offensive against the revolutionary workers and peasants. The political cowards and deceivers of the proletariat who were at the head of the mass organizations of the working class alarmed the workers with the prospect of sacrifices, privation and economic ruin. They assured them that they would be led to socialism not by the path of Bolshevism, by the revolutionary practical application of the teachings of Marx and Engels, not by the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, but that a peaceful and painless transition to socialism would be ensured by the path of Social-Democratism -- the path of coalition with the bourgeoisie and the preservation of the bourgeois system.

    Now the results of the twenty years are before us. Who will deny that the sacrifices and privations borne, for instance, by the working class and working masses of Germany throughout the whole of the post-war period and, particularly, in the conditions of the savage regime of the fascist dictatorship~ are a thousand times greater than all the possible sacrifices and privations that would have been demanded by the victory of the proletarian revolution in 1918?

    Instead of the promised peaceful, painless transition to socialism, Social-Democratism, by its entire capitulatory and splitting policy, cleared the way for the victory of fascism.

    Had it not been for the Social-Democratism of Turatti and Daragona in Italy the victory of the fascism of Mussolini would not have been possible. Had it not been for the Social-Democratism of Ebert and Noske in Germany the victory of the fascism of Hitler would not have been possible. Had it not been for the Social-Democratism of Renner and Bauer in Austria the victory of the fascism of Schuschnigg would not have been possible. Nothing can now conceal this truth, which is

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also irrefutably confirmed by numerous now well-known documents from the post-war political history of Europe.

    In the conditions of the unparalleled revolutionary crisis at the end of the imperialist war, the reactionary Social-Democratic leaders split the working class, disarmed it ideologically and politically, hindered the development of the proletarian revolutions that had matured, saved the domination of capitalism and thereby made the working people a target for fascism. At the same time Bolshevism, true Marxism, united the working class, created an inviolable alliance of the workers and peasants, destroyed capitalism, ensured the victory of the socialist revolution, and led to the building of socialist society on one-sixth of the globe.

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geoisie, and of the transition to the position of struggle jointly with the Communist Party against fascism, to the position of united action of the working class and of the anti-fascist People's Front. This process has already found clear expression in the establishment of the united front between the Communists and Socialists in France, Spain and Italy, and partly in a number of other countries.

    The further development of this process is being facilitated and speeded up by the entire course of the events of recent years, which imperatively faces the working class with the most important shock task of at all costs barring the road to fascism in the bourgeois-democratic countries, of overthrowing fascism in the countries where it is in power, and of defending world peace against the fascist warmakers. This process of the departure from Social-Democratism is being speeded up by the correct application by the Communist Parties of the main lines laid down by the Seventh Congress of the Communist International.

    As a result of the influence of the victory of socialism in the U.S.S.R., as the result of the development of the People's Front movement, of the growing influence of Communism in the ranks of the working class movement, there will, without doubt, be an increase in the number of Socialist Parties and organizations which give up bankrupt Social-Democratism, which wage a struggle together with the Communist Parties against the common class enemy and which stand for unity with the Communists in a single mass party of the proletariat.

    Such a unification has already taken place between the Socialists and Communists of Catalonia. It is being prepared jointly by the Communist and Socialist Parties of Spain. The necessary preconditions for it are also maturing in France as a result of the joint struggle of the Communists and Socialists in the United Confederation of Labor, and in the ranks of the anti-fascist People's Front, and also thanks to the beneficent influence exerted by the establishment of a United Confederation of Labor over the whole process of the consolidation of the forces of the French proletariat. The new pact between

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the Italian Communists and Socialists is still further strengthening their fraternal relations and the bonds of their joint struggle against the fascist dictatorship of Mussolini. Mutual understanding and accord are increasing between the Communists and Socialists in Germany in the struggle against the fascist dictatorship of Hitler, despite all the machinations and intrigues of the diehard leaders of the foreign executive of the Social-Democratic Party.

    It may be said with confidence that by the twentieth anniversary of the great October Socialist Revolution, the working class of the capitalist countries is closely approaching the liquidation of the split in the world working class movement which was brought into being by Social-Democratism. There are still many difficulties and obstacles of an ideological, political and organizational character in the way of liquidating this split. There are difficulties connected with the very history and traditions of the working class movement in the different countries, difficulties which are not so easy to overcome. But the main thing is that the ruling classes of the capitalist countries, which are profoundly interested in the division of the forces of the working class movement, are doing and will continue to do everything possible to prevent the unity of the working class movement being established. For their benefit, the reactionary leaders of the Socialist International are expending furious energy in order to turn back the wheel of history. Even in the fact of the monstrous Germano-Italian intervention in Spain, the ferocious onslaught by the Japanese fascist militarists on China and the exceptionally acute menace of a new world imperialist war, these leaders are doing everything possible to wreck every attempt at joint action by the international organizations of the workers in defense of the Spanish and Chinese people, in defense of peace.

    But there are no such difficulties and obstacles on the path to unity in the struggle against fascism and war as the working classes cannot overcome, if they are filled with the firm determination to unite their forces and fulfill their historic mission.

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    The existence of the land of socialism, that powerful buttress of the struggle of the international proletariat, the buttress of peace, liberty and progress, is a tremendous factor in the liquidation of the split in the ranks of the world working class movement. By their example, their labor heroism, their Stakhanov movement, their devotion to their socialist fatherland, their merciless struggle against the enemies of the people, Trotsky-Bukharinite spies, diversionists and agents of fascism, the working people of the Soviet Union exert enormous influence on the bringing together of the split forces of the world working class movement. The sympathy and love of the working people of the capitalist world for the Soviet Union, the land of victorious socialism, are steadily on the increase. And this fact acts as a most powerful antidote against the splitting work carried on in the ranks of the working class by the open and masked agents of the class enemy.

    The land of victorious socialism, which is playing such an outstanding part in uniting the international proletariat, is rallying all sincere supporters of the workers' cause still more closely around the U.S.S.R. In the present international situation there is not, nor can there be any other, more certain criterion, than one's attitude toward the Soviet Union, in determining who is the friend and who the enemy of the cause of the working class and socialism, of determining who is a supporter and who an opponent of democracy and peace. The touchstone in checking the sincerity and honesty of every individual active in the working class movement, of every working class party and organization of the working people, and of every democrat in the capitalist countries, is their attitude toward the great land of socialism. You cannot carry on a real struggle against fascism if you do not render all possible assistance in strengthening the most important buttress of this struggle, the Soviet Union. You cannot carry on a serious struggle against the fascist instigators of a new world blood bath, if you do not render undivided support to the U.S.S.R., a most important factor in the maintenance of international peace. You cannot carry on a real struggle for socialism in

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your own country, if you do not oppose the enemies of the Soviet State, where this socialism is being fulfilled by the heroic efforts of the working people. You cannot be a real friend of the U.S.S.R., if you do not condemn its enemies -- the Trotsky-Bukharinite agents of fascism.

    The historical dividing line between the forces of fascism, war and capitalism, on the one hand, and the forces of peace, democracy and socialism on the other hand, is in fact becoming the attitude toward the Soviet Union, and not the formal attitude toward Soviet power and socialism in general, but the attitude to the Soviet Union, which has been carrying on a real existence for twenty years already, with its untiring struggle against enemies, with its dictatorship of the working class and the Stalin Constitution, with the leading role of the Party of Lenin and Stalin.

    Herein lies the third most important lesson of principle for the proletariat of the capitalist countries in connection with the twentieth anniversary of the great October Socialist Revolution.

    November, 1937.