Congress of the Comintern, representatives of bourgeois nationalism, exploiting the moral and political authority of Soviet Russia, and playing to the class instincts of the workers, clothed their bourgeois democratic strivings in "socialist" and "communist" forms, in order by these means—sometimes unconsciously to divert the embryonic proletarian organisations from the direct tasks of class organisations (the Eshil-Ordu, in Turkey, which painted pan-Turkism in Communist colours, the "State Socialism" advocated by some representatives of the Kuo Min-Tan in China).
In spite of this, the trade union and political movement of the working class in the backward countries has made considerable progress in recent years. The formation of independent proletarian class parties in almost all the Eastern countries, is a remarkable fact, although the overwhelming majority of these parties must still undergo considerable internal reorganisation in order to free themselves from amateurism and the forms of close circles and other defects. The fact that the Communist International estimated the potential importance of the labour movement in the East right from the very beginning, is a fact of colossal importance, as it is a clear expression of the real international unity of the proletariat of the whole world under the banner of Communism. The Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals, to this very day, have not found support in a single backward country precisely because they play the part of "servants" to European and American imperialism.
V. The General Tasks of the Communist Parties in the East.
While the bourgeois nationalists regard the labour movement merely from the point of view of its importance as a means for securing victory for themselves, the international proletariat regards the young labour movement of the East from the point of view of its revolutionary future. Under capitalism the backward countries cannot achieve modern technique and culture without paying enormous tribute in the form of barbarous exploitation and oppression for the advantage of the capitalists of the Great Powers. Alliance with the proletariat of advanced countries is dictated not merely by the interests of a common struggle against imperialism, but also by the fact that only by a victory of the proletariat of the advanced countries can the workers of the East obtain unselfish aid in the development of their productive forces. An alliance with the proletariat in the West will lay the path towards an International Federation of Soviet Republics. The Soviet system, for the backward nations, represents the least painful form of transition from primitive conditions of existence to the highest culture of Communism, destined to take the place of the capitalist method of production and distribution all over the world. This is proved by the experience of the development of the Soviet system in the liberated
57
