of the 20th Century." The
Communist International (Comintern), the international organization created by the
Soviet Communist Party in the wake of the 1917
Bolshevik Revolution, went through a number of ideological strategies to advance
proletarian revolution. Its
1922 congress called for a "
United Front" (the "Second Period") after it became clear that proletarian revolution would not imminently sweep aside
capitalism in the rest of the world: the minority of
communist revolutionary workers would join with workers outside the communist parties against the bourgeoisie. This was followed by the "
Third Period" starting in mid-1928, which called for militant policies to take advantage of the economic crises of capitalism, with no need for coalitions with non-communists. As the
Nazi Party came to power in 1933 in
Germany and eliminated the powerful German communist movement, it became clear that
fascism was the main enemy, and that opposition to it was disorganized and divided. The reorientation was formalised at the Comintern's Seventh Congress in July 1935 and consummated with the proclamation of a "People's Front Against Fascism and War". Communist parties were now instructed to form broad alliances with all antifascist parties with the aim of securing social advance at home as well as a military alliance with the Soviet Union to isolate the fascist dictatorships. The resulting "popular fronts" succeeded in forming governments in France, Spain, and Chile, but not elsewhere.
France French politics saw the collapse of a leftist government coalition
of social-democrats and left-liberal republicans, followed by
far-right riots which brought to power an
autocratic right-wing government. With a slide toward
authoritarianism looming, previously peaceful socialists were now more inclined to street protests, and previously doctrinaire communists more willing to co-operate with other antifascists in Parliament. In June 1934,
Léon Blum's socialist
French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) signed a pact of united action with the
French Communist Party. By October, the Communist Party began to suggest that republican parties opposed to the nationalist government might also be included, and strengthened this the next July after the French government
tilted even further to the right. In May 1935, France and the Soviet Union signed a
defensive military alliance, and in August 1935, the
7th World Congress of the Comintern officially endorsed the Popular Front strategy. In the
elections of May 1936, the Popular Front won a majority of parliamentary seats (378 deputies against 220), and Blum formed a government.
United States campaign headquarters in
the Bronx, New York during the
1937 elections, displaying candidates of the CPUSA and
American Labor Party side by side The
Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) had been quite hostile to the New Deal until 1935, but it suddenly reversed its position. After attempting a joint Socialist-Communist ticket with
Norman Thomas's
Socialist Party of America in the
1936 presidential election, which the Socialists rejected, the communists also then offered support to
Franklin D. Roosevelt's
New Deal. The Popular Front saw the Communist Party taking a very patriotic and populist line, later called
Browderism. The Popular Front has been summarized by historian Kermit McKenzie as: McKenzie characterized this as a mere tactical expedient, without changing the ultimate goal of overthrowing capitalism through revolution under the Communist Party.
End of popular fronts The period suddenly came to an end with another abrupt reversal of Soviet and Communist policy, when the Soviet Union signed the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany in August 1939, dividing
Central and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, and leading to the
Soviet takeover of the Baltic Republics and
Finland. Comintern parties then turned from a policy of
anti-fascism to one of advocating peace with Germany, maintaining that
World War II was not a fight against Nazi aggression, but "the Second Imperialist War" in which workers had no stake. Many party members quit the party in disgust, but many communists in France and other countries refused to enlist in their countries' forces until June 1941, when
Germany invaded the Soviet Union and the Communist line reversed yet again.
Critics and defenders of policy Leon Trotsky and his far-left supporters roundly criticised the coalition strategy. Trotsky believed that only
united fronts could ultimately be progressive, and that popular fronts were useless because they included fundamentally hostile liberal bourgeois forces. Trotsky argued that in popular fronts, working-class independence is compromised and their demands are reduced to a bare minimum. That view is still common to most
Trotskyist groups.
Left communist groups came to oppose popular fronts as well as united fronts. In 1977, the
eurocommunist leader
Santiago Carrillo offered a positive assessment of the Popular Front. He argued that in Spain, despite the passionate excesses of civil war, the period of coalition government in Republican areas "contained in embryo the conception of an advance to socialism with democracy, with a multi-party system, parliament, and liberty for the opposition". Carrillo, however criticised the Communist International for not taking the Popular Front strategy far enough, especially since French communists were restricted to supporting Blum's government from without, rather than becoming full coalition partners. ==Soviet bloc==