Ruth Nhere
The Communist International
These struggles were being waged under new conditions which made possible the beginnings of anti-imperialist unity. The Communist International (Comintern) founded in March 1919 was to provide the organisational framework for gigantic strides in both the theory and practice of national and social revolution. The Comintern’s Theses on the National and Colonial Question, drafted by Lenin, broke new ground in this respect. The revisionist and social chauvinist ideology that had infected the social-democratic parties of Europe and had reached its peak during the First World War was emphatically condemned:
“The Communist International breaks once and for all with the traditions of the Second International, for which in fact only white-skinned people existed. The task of the Communist International is to liberate the working people of the entire world. In its ranks the white, the yellow, and the black-skinned peoples – the working people of the entire world – are fraternally connected.” – V.I. Lenin
The conception of the development of the world revolution against imperialism was set out on the basis of the close alliance of the Soviet Republic and the working class in the advanced countries with the national liberation movement of the oppressed peoples. The opening of a new epoch, one of the transition of capitalism to socialism, had been immeasurably advanced by the world’s first socialist revolution. Lenin, with hi
