The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 6, 1924, Page 7

: 98 sie Rae Fiabe qa PARES Dg ead _- T is not for the first time that the national question is on the agenda of our national congresses. At the Second World Congress we laid down the fundamental lines of the national question. How is it that we are again obliged to place it on the agenda? All those attending this Congress will ask themselves if it is not because of the events which have happened since the Second Congress. Comrades, this is not so. On the contrary, the entirq trend and development of events in Europe and in the colonies show us the correctness of the lines laid down * at the Second International Congress. Lately, we have witnessed a very rapid growth of the national and revo- lutionary movements in all colonial countries. I have only to remind you of the strike of Bombay Textile work- ers which lasted several months and, as you all know, had a very sanguin- ary ending, to give you a clear idea of the magnitude of the revolutionary movement in the colonial countries. India not so long ago was also the scene of a tremendous outburst of national indignation among the peas- ant population of the Nakhba prov- ince, where in connection with the dismissal of one of the Rajahs, bloody collisions took place between the population and the troops. If time permitted, I could go on citing you Scores of similar cases in the colonies. In £urope, in countries with power- ful national minorities, we witness a growing acuteness of national con- flicts. The Versailles Peace Treaty and the series of “peace” treaties which followed have Balkanized Cen- tral Europe. In place of large em- pires with a uniformly economic sys- tem, they created a conglomeration of national groupings -by the establish- ment of -so-called national States. Countries which formerly knew noth- ing of national opprtssion, as for in- stance, Germany, now have a national question. The occupation of the Ruhr is an example of this. This phenomenon is one of the most char- acteristic symptoms of capitalist dis- intergation. It is to this system of parcelling-out and dismembering Eu- rope that we must look for the source of the permanent economic crisis which the economic system of the world is now experiencing. The im- perialist cliques, on the ruins of Aus- tria and Germany, have created new typically polgot states which are con- . Vulsed by internal national collisions. I will substantiate my statements by giving you a few figures on the na- tional composition of these new States. Let us take for instance a “national” State like © Yugo-Slavia. Prior to the war there were 3,000,000 Serbs in Serbia. At present the popu- lation of Yugo-Slavia is 11,850,000. Out of this number only 5,000,000, 42.2 per cent, are Serbs. The remainder of the. population is international in its composition. In the present Yugo- Slavia there are about 2,800,000 Croats 23.7 per cent of the entire population; 950,000 Slovenes, 8 per cent; about 750,000 Serbo-Croat Moslems, 6.3 per cent; 600,000 Macedonians, 5 per cent; 600,000 Germans, 5 per cent; 500,000 Hungarians, 4 per cent; and 650,000 of other nationalities, 5.6 per cent. This is a typical example of a “na- tional” State. Let us take another example— Czecho-Slovakia, which presents a similar picture. The present popula- tion of Czecho-Slovakia amounts to 13,500,000 of which 6,000,000 are Czechs representing 44.4 per cent of the total population.’ The Czecho- Slovakian State has annexed indus- trial districts employed in the textile, mining, and glass-making industries with a purely German population of 3,700,000, representing 27.4 per cent of the population of the Czech State. There are also 2,000,000 Slovaks, 14.8 per cent; 800,000 Hungarians, 5.9 per cent; 400,000 Ukrainians of Carpath- ian Russia, 2.9 per cent; 300,000 Jews, 2.7 per cent; and 1.9 per cent of other Nations and Colonies - REPORT TO THE FIFTH CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL. another product of the Versaillesof the Second Congress, we must con- Treaty. The present Poland has a|sider methods for their better appli- population of 30,000,000 of which only|cation in the present concrete situa- 15,800,000, 52.7 per cent are Poles. | tion. The remainder of the population con-| Why Is the National Question on the sists of 6,300,000 Ukrainians, 21 per cent; 3,300,000 Jews, 11 per cent; Agenda of the Fifth Congress? We had three reasons for placing 2,200,000 White Russians, 7.3 per eent; the national question on the agenda 2,100,000 Germans, 7 per cent; 300,000 other nationalities, 1 per cent. All these nationalities are oppressed by the Polish landowners and bour- geoisie. Let us now take as other examples: Roumania where national minorities constitute 30 per cent, almost one-third of the population. | Greece where the purely Greek popu: | lation constitutes 68.4 per cent, Lithu: ania where Lithuanians constitute 70 per cent of the population. What is the meaning of thes fig- ures? “They mean that in Central Europe the national question is now assuming a special significance, and acuteness cannot be denied unless one is determined to ignore facts. Let us now turn our attention to the acuteness of the national question in the colonies, and let us take for an and | of the Fifth Congress. The first rea- son is, because at the Second World Congress, basing ourselves on the rich experience of the Russian Lenin- question, we put forward for the first time the idea of the united revolu- tionary front between the proletariat and the oppressed nations and colo- nies. But we did not put into a con- jcrete form (we could not do so be- {cause of lack of international experi- fence) the methods for establishing |this united revolutionary front. In ‘the course of the four years of our fight we collected enough data and come to some general conclusion. Moreover, many mistakes By P. MANUILSKY a) The first group. Lately’ we ob- serve in a number of countries a ten- dency among large masses of workers to form workers’ and peasants’ par- ties with a comparatively radical pro- gram for the fight against imperial- ism. This tendency resulted, for in- stance, ‘in the formation of such a workers’ and -peasants’ party in the Dutch Indies, and especially in Java, and in the formation of the Koumin- tang Party in China. It is also due to this tendency that purely peasant par- Stalin way of putting the national) ties are being formed, such as, for in- stance, the Republican Croatian Par- ty of Raditch in the Balkans, whose influence is felt beyond Croatia. Let us now consider the attitude which the Communist sections of the respective countries must adopt to- ward these parties, and what should be the concrete organizational forms of their common revolutionary front in the fight against imperialist oppres- sion. We know that the Comintern material on the question to be able to| qecided these questions as they arose, It allowed the Communists in Java to were/take an active part in the work of made in a number of countries by/the local workers’ and peasants’ par- ; our young Communist sections in this/ty there. It also allowed the Chinese example Great Britain, the classical} connection. It would be perhaps more! Gommunists to join the Koumingtang example of colonial domination. While to the point to say that some of our! party, and we know that it is due to A Happy Couple, the area of Great Britain itself is only 314,000 square kilometers, its colonies cover almost 400,000,000 square kilo- metres, viz. British colonies are 130 times bigger than the United King. dom. Moreover, the population of the United Kingdom is 46,000,000 while the population of the colonies is 429,000,000 which means that to every Britisher there are nine colonial slaves. Is it possible to destroy the might of the entire capitalist system of Great Britain without bringing into motion its colonial population? Will not British imperialism, which has such enormous human and material resources in the colonies, offer a suc- cessful resistance to the workers of Great Britain, if the latter do not de- prive it of these human reserves which are as boundless as the ocean? Perhaps in a lesser degree other co- lonial countries present a similar pic- ture. There is, for instance, France with an original population of 39,000 000 and a colonial population of 54,- 000,000, or little Belgium with an area 30,000 square kilometers while the colonies comprise an area of 2,420,000 square kilometers. The original popu- lation of Belgium is a little over 7,000,000 while the colonial population is 17,000,000. We have another example in Holland which has a population of with an original population of 30,000,- is 49,500,000. If you glance at the post-war map of the world, you will realize the magnitude of the enslave- ment of mankind. Of the 134,000,000 square kilometers céOmprising the area of the globe, nearly 90,000,000 square kilometers are colonial possessions. Of the 1,750,000,000 population of the globe 1,250,000,000 inhabit colonies and countries under the imperialist yoke. Under such circumstances, comrades, I think we must admit that nationalities, Let us now take Poland,far from reconsidering the decisions the Chinese Communists that this party took up a more active attitude in the fight with international impe- rialism. But we also know that at the last plenum of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party the work of the comrades in the Kouming- tang Party was severely criticized as “class collaboration.” Thus, our sec- tions are faced with a twofold danger: the danger of ignoring the phenomena which are revolutionizing the east, and the danger of losing their prole- tarian character by collaboration with the petty-bourgeoisie, we are also faced with the question not only of revolutionary collaboration in existing parties of this kind, but of the advisa- bility of Communists taking the initia- tive in organizing such parties in countries with a low standard of eco- nomic development. We notice that Communists approach this question with great timidity, with the result that we lose control over the national liberation movement, which passes [sections ignored this -question alto-lintg the hands of native nationalist gether. The second part of my report will be devoted to the analysis of the mistakes which were committed on this field. Finally, during fhe period which has elapsed since the Second Congress an event of great political importance has taken place. I mean the establish- ment in Soviet Russia of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics as an ex- periment of the solufion of the na tional question under proletarian dic tatorship in a peasant country com prising many nationalities. It is ‘with these questions that will deal in my report. ~ At the Second Congress of the Con intern we dealt with two questions Firstly, to what extent the interna tional proletariat can make use of the national movement of the awakening colonial peoples for the fulfillment of its mission of the emancipation of all the sections of mankind groaning un- der the yoke of imperialism; second- ly, to what extent the oppressed co- lonial peoples, supported by the inter- national proletariat, will be able to evade the phase of capitalist devlop- ment, profiting by the highest forms of socialist economics achieved by the proletariat in the most developed cap- italist countries. By putting the ques- tion in this form, we originated the idea of the revolutionary front, the details of which were elaborated in the subsequent decisions of our inter- national congresses. But as I have said already, at the Second Congress we were unable to recommend con- crete methods for the realization of a workers’ united front between the proletariat and the colonies. Only now can we seriously consider a num- ber of new problems on the strength of conérete experience. These new elements. To this group of questions belongs also the question of the Communist at- titude toward various kinds of com- mittees of the national-liberation movement. Imperialist oppression, which reached its culminating point in the post-war period, of course con- tributes to the growth of this kind of organization, which is bound to be- . some more numerous as time goes on. \s an example, let us take the Mace- ‘onian Committee, headed by Theo- ‘ore Alexandrov. b) The second group of questions 3 connected with the near East. At he Second Congress we determined what the attitude of the young Com- munist sections to the national libera- tion movement of the bourgeoisie which was on the way to power, should be. But since then we have been faced with a new situation in two eastern countries, namely, with the necessity of deciding what the at- titude of Communist parties should be to the national bourgeoisie, which has already assumed power. I refer to Turkey and Egypt. In Turkey, aft- er a series of revolutionary liberating war conducted by Kemal Pasha against foreign armies, the young Turkish bourgeoisie came into power with the help of a revolutionary wave from below. In Egypt the problem of power was solved by the British government by means of “reform from above,” by Zagul Pasha’s return from exile and taking over the government ot Egypt. Two different movements, but both having the same result as far as social-political changes are con- cerned. Both cases inaugurate the victory of the native bourgeoisie. And yet in this quite unequivocal situation problems can be divided into four|our Turkish comrades made serious groups of questions: (Continued on Page 6.)