Another zone, which was hardly less accessible to Moscow than the innermost of the three zones above mentioned, consisted of the civilized Oriental peoples of the Islamic World, India, the East Indies and the Far East, among whom a movement of unrest against alien government, which had become noticeable during the years preceding the War of 1914, had been quickened and accentuated by the sudden spectacle of falling Empires and unexpectedly liberated subject nationalities. The Third International solicited the support of these Oriental peoples as victims of the same forces as were oppressing the Western 'labouring masses', but there were considerable tactical difficulties in the way of building up this common front. Western 'Imperialism', not Western Capitalism', was the yoke which the Orientals were seeking to shake off, and most of the Nationalist leaders in these countries were drawn from the ranks of the new professional and industrial Bourgeoisie which had been coming into existence as the Western economic system took root in Oriental soil. Thus, they were far from being enemies of the Capitalist System, which, in India, China, and Japan, was at this time creating social conditions at least as appalling as those which had accompanied the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain a century earlier.2 In these countries the Third International would eventually have to choose between supporting the native workers in their economic struggle against the native employers or assisting the latter in their political campaign against foreign rule. For the moment the Third International had chosen the latter alternative, and had declared war against 'Imperialism' on behalf of national liberty in the East, but this policy had one grave drawback. If Western Powers like Great Britain, France, and Holland stood for Imperialism' in India,, the Islamic World and the East Indies, in China and Korea the arch-enemy was Japan, and therefore the Third International could hardly commit itself to the cause of Nationalism in the East without driving the only Oriental Great Power into the opposite camp. The acute hostility of the relations between the Bolsheviks and Japan from the Revolution of 1917 down to the close of the year 1923 has been described in the preceding

1 The only Oriental leader at this time who attacked Westernism at the root by attacking it on economic ground was Mr. Gandhi; and although his movement resembled the mission of the Third International in being essentially religious, his cardinal doctrine of Non-violence' was at the opposite pole from the World Revolution' and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat '.

2 For the conditions in China see the British Blue Book, Papers respecting Labour Conditions in China (Cmd. 2442 of 1925).

volume,1 and M. Zinoviev's Oriental policy might have broken down over Japan if the Congress of the United States had not played into his hands by inserting an Oriental Exclusion Clause in the Ia-mmigr tion Act of 1924.2 The racial issue which was thus brought to a head, and which touched Japanese pride to the quick, transcended the issues between Japan and China or between Oriental Capital and Labour, and created a common cause in which Orientals of all classes and nationalities might be enlisted. Nothing could have served M. Zinoviev's turn better than this, and the firstfruits of the Oriental Exclusion Act on the other side of the Pacific was the Russo-Japanese Treaty of the 20th January, 1925.3

The sixth and last zone in the Communist map of the world was Tropical Africa. Here, too, there was abundant inflammable material, and the dangers of a conflagration had been increased by the political and economic consequences of the War; but Tropical Africa was geographically remote from Moscow, and, even if the situation were to be handled so badly by the dominant Europeans that the native peoples were alienated from Western civilization, these peoples were less likely to turn to Communism than to Islam, or else to some form of Christianity inspired by the vision of a God who put down the mighty from their seat and who came as a saviour to the despised and rejected.

(b) THE METHODS OF COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA

When Lenin and his companions set out, from their new citadel in Moscow, to convert the proletariat of the world to Communism, they had first to reckon with the existing organizations-likewise professing the Marxian doctrine but affiliated to the Second International and committed to non-revolutionary methods of action— which commanded a wide allegiance among the Western workers. Their problem was not unlike that which confronted the Indian Extremists vis-à-vis the Indian Moderates who were prepared to co-operate with the British Government in working the MontaguChelmsford Scheme of constitutional reform; and, like the Indian Extremists, they had a choice between two policies. They could either boycott the constitutional organizations in the hope that these would then break down and, with them, the last bulwark against revolution; or else they could undermine these organizations 1 Survey, 1920-3, pp. 432-45.

2 See the present volume, I. B. (vi) above.
3 See the Survey for 1925.

by a process of peaceful penetration', with the intention of cap-
turing them, sooner or later, for Communist ends. In the Russian
Revolution, the tactics of 'non-co-operation (unhampered by
'non-violence') had been pursued with triumphant success. From
the outset Lenin had refused all compromise either with the Liberal
Bourgeois parties or with the Menshevik Socialists, and by 1920 the
last vestiges in Russia of any non-Communist organization had been
swept away. What happened in Russia, however, was little guide
to what might be expected to happen elsewhere. The docility,
'suggestibility,' and illiteracy of the population and the suffering
inflicted on them by the War had no parallel among the European
belligerents; and the thrice-repeated failure of the attempt at mass-
revolution in Germany, the European country which had suffered
the most, was a lesson which could not be disregarded. Thus, by
the beginning of the year 1924, the organizers of the Third Inter-
national appear to have abandoned the hope of revolution by massed
frontal attack-except perhaps, in some of the border states recently
detached from Russia-and to have concentrated their efforts on
peaceful penetration' through the introduction of Communist
'nuclei' or cells' into alien organisms.

In a speech to the Congress of the Third International which was held in Moscow on the 17th June-8th July, 1924, M. Zinoviev analysed the tactics of a single front' as follows:

There are three methods of putting into practice the tactics of a single front. The first, from below, consists in intermingling with the rank and file of the Labour movement, in permeating the trade unions and shop committees with Communist influences, and in supporting every Labour movement directed against Capitalism. Such tactics should be applied in all cases. In the second place the policy may be applied from above-i. e. by agreement with Labour leaders. The third method, that of agreement only with the top strata' without reference to the masses, should be completely banned, as leading to shameful compromise. . . . We must adopt catchwords easily understood by the masses. That of a Labour Government' is the most alluring and popular formula for enlisting the masses in favour of a dictatorship of the proletariat. We must make the most of opportunities offered by such Labour' Governments as, for instance, MacDonald's. . . . The worker, peasant and railwayman will first do their revolutionary bit', and only afterwards realize that this actually is 'the dictatorship of the proletariat '.1

The Communists, apparently, were to be in the law-abiding organizations but not of them, for in the same speech M. Zinoviev

1 Quoted from The Times, 7th July, 1924.

^ 5th

rebuked the leanings to the left' of certain British comrades who were opposed to entering the Labour Party and who only gave way under considerable pressure', while he censured others for not standing openly as Communists in the Parliamentary General Election of December 1923 and for hesitating to speak against the Parliamentary Labour Party in the House of Commons. The tactics thus analysed by Zinoviev appear to have been prescribed officially by the Third International in the ninth of their twenty-one conditions of affiliation.1

Every party which wishes to belong to the C.I. must develop a systematic and persistent Communist activity within the trade unions, works committees, co-operative societies, and other mass organizations of workmen. Within these organizations it is necessary to organize cells, which by continuous and persistent work must win the unions, &c., to the cause of Communism. The cells are bound to expose everywhere in their daily work the treason of the social-patriots and the vacillation of the Centre. The Communist cells must be completely subordinated to the party as a whole.

Apparently the last of these conditions was by no means a dead letter. For example, in the evidence laid by the State Department at Washington before a sub-committee of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, which sat on the 21st-23rd January, 1924, to consider the question of recognizing the Government of the U.S.S.R., it was stated that when a split had arisen among the members of the American Communist Party over a difference of opinion regarding the organization of The Workers' Party of America'a screen to cover their operations, which the Third Congress of the Third International had instructed them to set up— the Central Committee in Moscow had intervened; and that, when a minority of the American Party had refused to submit, the Central Committee, in a further decree of the 11th March, 1922, had sent them an ultimatum, with the choice of complying within two months or being expelled from both the International and the American Group. An emissary was then dispatched to America from Moscow to settle the controversy, and the incident ended in the capitulation of the minority.

1 An English translation of these conditions, as reported to have been published in the official journal of the Third International (The Communist International, No. 13, pp. 92-6, Moscow) is to be found in The Times of the 6th November, 1924.

2 See the United States official publication: Recognition of Russia. Hear ings before subcommittee pursuant to S. Res. 50, declaring that Senate favors recognition of present Soviet Government in Russia; letter from Secretary of State transmitting information relative to propaganda carried on in United States, direct from Russia. (Washington, 1924, Government Printing Office.)

Even when there was no overt revolt, one of the conditions of affiliation apparently prescribed that the local organizations should undergo periodical purges.

The Communist parties of those countries in which they carry on their work legally must from time to time undertake cleansings (new registrations) of the composition of their party organizations in order to purge the party systematically of petty Bourgeois (lower middle class) elements that have crept in.

Another way in which Moscow asserted its authority over the Communist Groups in partibus infidelium was by writing them pastoral letters of encouragement and exhortation on critical occasions. One such letter purporting to come from M. Kolarov, the General Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Third International in Moscow, was received by The Workers' Party of America' on the 31st December, 1923, during their third annual convention at Chicago.1 Another, signed by M. Kuusinen, the Secretary of the Third International, was received by the Norwegian Communists during the labour troubles in Norway in the spring of 1924, and when the text was published in a Bourgeois newspaper in the following October its authenticity was admitted by the Communist organ, the Norges Communistblad.2 Again, in anticipation of the general elections to the Reichstag, there was publishedon the 26th October in the Moscow Pravda, and on the 28th in the Rote Fahne, the official organ of the German Communist Partya similar letter bearing the signature of M. Zinoviev.3 Another 'Zinoviev letter' was reported to have been intercepted by the United States Government a few days later, on the eve of the presidential elections. In view of these parallels, of which the German case, at least, appears to be sufficiently attested, there can be no presumption a priori against the authenticity of the more celebrated letter-bearing the date of the 15th September, 1924, and the signatures of MM. Zinoviev, Kuusinen, and McManus-of which an English text was made public by the London Foreign Office on the 25th October, 5

1 The Times, 2nd January, 1924.

2 Ibid., 30th October, 1924.

3 Ibid., 4th November, 1924; and the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 2nd November, 1924. It is to be noted that, in the case of this document, there were discrepancies between the Russian and the German text.

See Le Temps, 10th November, 1924.

5 For the effect of its publication on the Anglo-Russian negotiations see Section (iv) below. The texts of the document itself, and of the covering letter from the Foreign Office, in which it was brought to the notice of M. Rakovski, are reprinted in the Appendix to the present volume from The Times of the 25th October, 1924.