1941: Communism

Although Communism has shown no real vitality outside the Soviet Union, except for its appeal to a certain number of workers in some European countries and to a small number of intellectuals everywhere, nevertheless the fear of Communism has been a powerful propaganda instrument in the hands of the Nazis, to confuse public opinion and to divert attention from the Nazi threat. Meanwhile the Communist party in the Soviet Union, under Stalin's leadership, has turned away more and more from the internationalism which was originally inherent in Communist theory, and developed more and more a local proletarian nationalism, with its main concern for the Soviet Union alone, or the Soviet Union first, and subordinating all its policy to this one aim. In agreement with this the Communist parties outside the Soviet Union, which are organized in the so-called Third or Communist International, have become more and more instruments of purely Russian policy, supporting whatever seemed in the interest of the Soviet Union, rather than what might have seemed to be in the interest of Socialist revolution in their own countries.

Change in Policy.

Through the first half of 1941 the Communists continued the line of policy which they had adopted in August 1939, when they suddenly changed from a policy of resistance to Fascist aggression toward one of connivance with it, combined with strict official neutrality in the war between the Fascist nations and the democracies, under the leadership of Nazi Germany. Communists everywhere, however, were leaders in isolationist movements, and tried to sabotage and undermine the will to resistance and the war efforts of the democracies. In Great Britain the Communists spread defeatist propaganda. In the United States they fomented the American peace mobilization, agitated against strong American armaments, and cooperated with some other American isolationists in slowing up or delaying any strong policy against Nazi aggression. In January 1941 the British Communists organized the so-called People's Convention, demanding the overthrow of the Churchill government and the establishment of a People's government to negotiate peace, not with the German leaders, but with the 'German masses.' It is interesting to note, as a sign of the immense strength of liberal democracy under Churchill, that the most violent denunciations of the British government could be made without any interference by the authorities and with not a single policeman in sight. However the British Communist newspaper called the Daily Worker, and a weekly newsletter called The Week, after having been warned several times, were banned by the government on Jan. 21 because of 'systematic publication of matter calculated to foment opposition to the prosecution of the war to a successful issue.' At the same time one of the former editors of the Daily Worker in New York, the Communist party organ in the United States, and one of the leading Communists in America, Clarence A. Hathaway, was ousted from the Communist Party, but recognized in a public statement that his expulsion was justified and that he hoped for readmittance to the party.

German Attack on Russia.

This situation in the Communist Parties was completely changed on June 22, 1941, when suddenly and without the slightest warning German armed forces crossed the Soviet frontier and began a ruthless war of extermination against Communism, proclaiming themselves as leaders in a crusade of world civilization against bolshevism — this in spite of the fact that for two years or since the astonishing Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, the Nazis had maintained the friendliest relations with Communism and had been entirely silent in their whole propaganda about the now suddenly rediscovered wicked character of Communism. Germany quickly mobilized the Fascist satellite forces of Europe, Italy, Rumania, Hungary and others, for her war against the Soviet Union, the true purpose of which was the conquest of the wide lands of Russia and their resources for the permanent exploitation by the German war machine and the German race. As a result of this situation the Communist parties everywhere declared for utmost resistance against Fascist aggression. They began suddenly to understand that the present war was not a war of 'rival imperialisms' or a war for the preservation of the British Empire, but that it was an attempt to impose the Nazi 'World Order' upon all the peoples on the world.

It should be noted that Hitler's claim of leading a 'Christian crusade' against 'godless Communism' found no echo in any responsible Christian quarters. Prime Minister Churchill, a well-known and staunch enemy of Communism, declared in his broadcast on June 22, that the present war of Germany against Communism was no crusade at all, but a step towards the subjection of the whole world to German dominion, a plan which should be resisted by the cooperation of all threatened peoples whatever their divergent political or religious philosophies might be. The Catholic bishops of Germany in a joint pastoral letter assailed the Nazis themselves for their attacks on Christianity, and His Holiness Pope Pius XII in a radio address on June 29 refused by the most obvious silence to associate the Church with Hitler's fight. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Sergei, prayed publicly for a victory of the Red Army. In a radio address to his own people, Josef Stalin, after trying to find some rather unconvincing excuses for the policy of isolationism which the Soviet Union had pursued for the last two years, and which had brought her now into a most dangerous situation, gave the new keynote by declaring that 'our war for the freedom of our country will merge with the struggle of the peoples of Europe and America for their independence, for democratic liberties.' In this speech of July 3, Stalin did not in any way emphasize Communism, but Russian patriotism, the defense of the fatherland against a 'blood-thirsty aggressor,' and thanked Great Britain and the United States for their promise of rendering assistance to the Soviet Union in her struggle against Nazi aggression.

Soviet Aims.

Already at the beginning of the year the Soviet government, in an address delivered by Alexander Sherbakoff in commemoration of the seventeenth anniversary of Lenin's death, had called for a bolstering of the Soviet defenses against the spreading flames of the war and had proclaimed that his country was advancing steadily towards its goal, 'to catch up with and pass by the leading industrial countries of Europe and the United States,' which he asserted might happen in ten or fifteen years. On Feb. 15 the eighteenth conference of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, the first for two years, met to discuss and work out a program of party control and cooperation in all branches of Soviet endeavor with the aim of making the Red Army and the industrial system more efficient. George Malenkoff, the Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the Party, delivered an address at the opening session in which he blamed the Soviet bureaucracy for a slowdown of industrial production and demanded a more efficient administration. A possible fundamental change in Communism was foreshadowed when Stalin, who so far had been only the Secretary-General of the Communist party, on May 6 made himself Prime Minister, or rather Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union, the former Chairman Vyacheslav Molotov becoming Vice-Premier.

Anti-Comintern Pact Renewed.

As an episode in the German war against the Soviet Union, it may be mentioned that the anti-Comintern Pact which had been signed on Nov. 25, 1936, between Japan and Germany for a duration of five years, was renewed in Berlin on Nov. 25, 1941, and signed — in addition to the original signers, Italy, Manchukuo, Hungary and Spain, who had all signed between 1937 and 1939 — by seven additional states, vassals of Nazi Germany or Japan: the so-called Chinese puppet government of Nanking, Finland, Denmark, Slovakia, Rumania, Croatia and Bulgaria. At the twenty-fourth commemoration of the Communist revolution on Nov. 6, Stalin delivered an address in which he described the course of the war thus far, and pledged his people 'to the complete destruction of the German invader, and to the liberation of all oppressed peoples bowing under the yoke of Hitler's tyranny.' The war has brought immense destruction to the Soviet Union and undoubtedly weakened decisively not her power of resistance to outside aggression, but any possibility of active Communist aggression or interference anywhere outside the Soviet Union.

Communism versus Nazism.

Communist parties everywhere cooperated, after June 22, 1941, in the mobilization of all forces for resistance to actual or threatened Nazi aggression. Though the democratic forces supported the struggle of the Soviet Union against Germany, as part of the common effort to stop Hitler, and to avert the danger of a Nazi invasion against their own countries, they were rather wary of the new over-zealous Communist efforts at helping the Soviet Union. The Communists were now clamoring for increased activities and armaments in those countries where before June 22 they had rather impeded all efforts in that direction. While the Communist parties and all their publications rediscovered the value of democracy in the United States and Great Britain, they made practically no increase in their membership in these countries. More doubtful was the position of the influential Communist Party and the Communist armies in China, where the growing jealousy between them and certain violently anti-Communist and even pro-Fascist elements in Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek's government brought about a severe and long-lasting crisis, and thus impeded to a certain degree the common struggle against the Japanese invading forces. In all European countries under the influence or control of Nazi Germany, the Communist Party and all its activities were strictly forbidden, and, especially after June 22, 1941, the Communists were subject to ruthless persecution. This was also the case in the German-controlled but so-called unoccupied part of France which was under the leadership of the Vichy government. Thus during the year 1941 the activities and immediate aims of Communism have changed everywhere, and this has necessitated a new 'party-line' in sharp reversal of the policy followed before the sudden attack of Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union. See also CHINA; FASCISM; U.S.S.R.