05.06.2025
Soviet strategy and class collaboration
Having declared capitalist collapse imminent, there was a 180-degree about turn. Yassamine Mather looks at the origins and defeats resulting from the popular front
The concept of the popular front was approved at the seventh and final congress of the Communist International in 1935 under Stalin’s leadership. It marked a major strategic shift. Confronted by fascism’s advance in Europe - especially after Hitler’s coming to power in 1933 - the USSR promoted the formation of broad, anti-fascist coalitions. This contrasted with previous denunciations of social democrats as “social fascists” and the practical rejection of united fronts.
Between 1928 and 1935 Comintern, under the direction of Stalin and the Soviet leadership, depicted the reformist or social democratic parties as the seeding ground for fascism, adapting to fascism and assisting fascism to power. Under the slogan of ‘class against class’ communist parties declared that capitalist collapse was imminent and revolution was around the corner. In fact, they were being fashioned into instruments of Soviet foreign policy, crucially when it came to Germany.
However, by 1935, seeking western allies and new forms of ‘security’, the USSR promoted anti-fascist unity. The popular front approach led not only to appeals for unity with social democrats, but middle class do-gooders, liberal politicians, eminent churchmen and the ‘anti-fascist’ bourgeoisie (that is the so-called less reactionary, the less counterrevolutionary sections of the bourgeoisie). So out went revolutionary slogans and in came a craving for respectability.
The popular front had three main components:
1 Class truce: Revolutionary ideas were softened or even abandoned to attract reformist and nationalist allies.
2 Stagism: In colonial settings, a national-democratic stage (often led by bourgeois forces) would precede a distant socialist revolution, it was claimed.
3 Tactical moderation: Communists entered bourgeois coalitions and adjusted their slogans to match democratic rhetoric rather than socialist transformation.
Examples of such fronts - in France and Spain in the 1930s and later the Chinese ‘Second United Front’ - illustrate how this strategy subordinated working class interests to nationalist or anti-fascist unity. In Spain, Stalinists crushed revolutionary workers and anarchists in the name of anti-fascism, while in colonial contexts like India and Vietnam, communists deferred to nationalist parties, watering down their programs to align with petty-bourgeois forces.
Of course, the 1930s were a tumultuous decade in Europe, marked by rising political polarisation, the threat of fascism and intense class struggles. The popular front strategy sought to unite communist, socialist and liberal forces against fascism. France and Spain were key battlegrounds for this approach, with not dissimilar outcomes.
France 1934-38
After the far-right riots of February 1934, sparked by the Stavisky Affair,1 many on the left in France feared a fascist takeover. The Communist Party of France (PCF) - previously committed to Stalin’s ‘class against class’ policy - shifted to a popular front strategy even before Comintern’s 1935 directive.
The PCF allied with the Socialist Party (SFIO) and the Radical Party of centre-left liberals. This coalition won the 1936 elections, making the SFIO’s Léon Blum prime minister. His popular front government passed some labour reforms (40-hour workweek, paid vacations, collective bargaining rights). However, economic pressures (capital flight, inflation) and political divisions weakened it. The popular front government fell in 1937 due to opposition from conservatives, business elites and the Senate. The Radicals later abandoned the coalition and by 1938 the popular front had collapsed.
Blum’s government had faced significant criticism from its left. This disillusionment stemmed from a belief that the government was prioritising ‘stability’ and bourgeois alliances over transformative change and working class empowerment.
The PCF fully aligned with, even prompted, Comintern’s popular front strategy, but, following its 1935 congress, it offered electoral support to, but notably refused to join, Blum’s cabinet. As the government pursued its agenda, rank-and-file members and sections of the PCF leadership grew increasingly frustrated. Their core criticism centred on Blum’s refusal to challenge capitalist structures: the absence of major bank or industrial nationalisations, and strict adherence to a ‘republican’ legal framework. The PCF feared this ‘moderation’ would ultimately demobilise the working class, while inadvertently strengthening the far right.
Exiled from the Soviet Union, Leon Trotsky was free to excoriate the popular fronts. In works such as Whither France? (1934-36), he denounced it as a dangerous exercise in class collaboration that disarmed the proletariat. Trotsky argued that such an alliance subordinated workers to bourgeois radicals, pointing to Blum’s refusal to arm them against fascist threats and, crucially, his role in defusing the revolutionary potential of the June 1936 factory occupations and mass strikes. By prioritising legality and compromise, Trotsky insisted, Blum was squandering a historic opportunity for socialist revolution - the only path he saw to defeating both fascism and capitalism.
Anarchists and various syndicalists viewed the Blum government as a betrayal of working class autonomy and direct action. They condemned the institutionalisation of class struggle, arguing that union energy was diverted into parliamentary politics. While acknowledging reforms such as paid vacations and the 40-hour workweek, anarchists and syndicalists viewed them as pacifying tools that left fundamental property relations intact. They lamented the replacement of radical self-management and factory occupations with bureaucratic trade unionism and state dependency.
But criticism was not confined to outside groups: Blum faced pressure from the left wing of his own Socialist Party and the broader socialist movement. These critics pointed to his retreat on nationalisations under pressure from capital, the controversial policy of non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War (seen as abandoning international solidarity), and an over-reliance on the bourgeois Radical Party, which obviously had no commitment to socialism.
This diverse leftwing opposition coalesced around several key accusations against the popular front. Blum was, of course, seen as settling for manageable legal reforms within the capitalist system, thus actively opposing revolutionary transformation. The essential alliance with bourgeois parties, particularly the Radicals, was viewed as compromising socialist principles and goals, thereby trapping the workers’ movement within the established order.
The massive June 1936 strikes and factory occupations were perceived as a unique revolutionary moment defused by Blum’s government through negotiated concessions, preventing deeper societal change. The non-intervention policy in Spain was widely condemned as a betrayal of anti-fascist solidarity and the international working class. It was argued that the popular front strategy ultimately demobilised and disempowered the working class, channelling its energy into state-managed processes.
Spain 1936-39
A popular front coalition (socialists, communists, republicans, left regionalists) secured a narrow victory in Spain’s February 1936 elections, heightening fears among conservatives and the military. Spain’s left was significantly more radicalised than France’s, featuring powerful anarchist (CNT-FAI) and revolutionary socialist (POUM) currents. In July 1936, general Francisco Franco initiated a nationalist rebellion, igniting civil war. The republican government, supported by the popular front, confronted Franco’s forces, which received backing from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy.
While the USSR supplied military aid and helped organise the International Brigades, it demanded significant influence over republican policy. The Spanish Communist Party (PCE) promoted a moderate stance to court western democracies, actively opposing social revolution. Following Franco’s uprising, a spontaneous revolutionary surge swept much of Spain: workers and peasants collectivised factories and land, militias supplanted the army, and dual power emerged in numerous areas. However, the Soviet Union and its PCE subordinate - crucial military and political actors - systematically worked to dismantle these revolutionary achievements, invoking ‘unity’ and the goal of a bourgeois democratic republic.
This dynamic provoked sustained leftwing critiques of the popular front as counterrevolutionary. The core accusation centred on the subordination of revolution to bourgeois democracy, justified by the front as essential for winning the war. Figures like Trotsky and POUM’s Andrés Nin argued this alliance constrained the working class and indefinitely deferred social transformation. The government reinstated capitalist property relations and reimposed republican state authority over revolutionary bodies like workers’ committees and militias, rather than empowering the masses. Trotsky insisted: “To save the revolution, it was necessary to break with the bourgeoisie - not accommodate it.”
Soviet aid came with strings attached: principally the suppression of revolutionary forces. The PCE, backed by Moscow, depicted the revolution as a perilous diversion from the anti-fascist struggle. They dissolved workers’ collectives, absorbed independent militias into a centralised army, and persecuted revolutionary groups like the anti-Stalinist POUM and anarchists. In May 1937, Stalinist forces attacked revolutionary workers during Barcelona’s ‘May Days’, crushing the revolution’s most radical phase. The repression of the POUM, including the murder of Nin by Soviet agents and Spanish Stalinists on fabricated charges of Trotskyism and sabotage, epitomised this.
The USSR’s support stemmed from Realpolitik, not internationalism: Stalin sought to appease France and Britain, viewing the revolution in Spain as a diplomatic liability. His policy aimed to stabilise bourgeois regimes and prevent revolutions beyond Soviet control. The Spanish radical left thus accused Moscow of preferring a liberal bourgeois democracy in Spain to socialist revolution, which might inspire similar revolutions elsewhere. Meanwhile, CNT-FAI ‘anarchists’ - initially pivotal to the revolution through collectivisation - later actually joined the popular front government.
Trotsky condemned the popular front as betraying revolution, even during the Spanish Civil War. He advocated independent working class organisation, rejecting unity with capitalist forces, and denounced the popular front as a Stalinist trap that disarmed the workers and prevented the seizure of power. The left critique contends that, while the Spanish working class had created revolutionary conditions and structures, the popular front immobilised them, subordinating genuine social change to liberal republicanism. Soviet intervention and Stalinist repression ended up crushing revolutionary forces to preserve a bourgeois state. This ultimately crippled the war effort, demoralised the masses and facilitated Franco’s victory.
1930s China
The popular front policy in China refers to the strategy adopted by the Communist Party of China in the mid-1930s - especially after 1935 - under the influence of the Soviet Union and Comintern, and aligning with the broader popular front turn in global ‘official communist’ strategy. It led to the ‘Second United Front’ between the CCP and the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), its former enemy, to resist the Japanese invasion. This shift had major consequences for the Chinese revolution and is subject to many debates.
Before 1935 The CCP and KMT were locked in a bloody civil war. The KMT, led by Chiang Kai-shek, carried out brutal campaigns to crush the CCP, whose base areas (like the Jiangxi Soviet) promoted radical land reform and peasant mobilisation. But after 1935, Japan’s imperialist aggression intensified, especially with the occupation of Manchuria in 1931 and growing threats to China’s heartland, and Comintern instructed the CCP to de-emphasise class struggle and instead form a ‘united patriotic front’ with Chiang’s KMT.
The ‘Second United Front’ (1937-45) was formed after the Xi’an Incident (1936), where Chiang was kidnapped by his generals and forced to agree to resist Japan. The CCP suspended land reform, toned down class agitation and presented itself as a patriotic national force. In return, it was allowed to maintain control over its base areas, such as Yan’an, and form its own military organisation, the Eighth Route Army. The ‘United Front’ (in reality a popular front) was always tense and unstable - the KMT tried to keep the CCP in check while both fought Japan.
Stalin, pushed hard for the popular front strategy - his geopolitical priority was based on defence of the USSR, not encouraging the proletarian revolution in China. The CCP was instructed to downplay its revolutionary goals and focus on being a junior partner in an anti-Japanese coalition.
Left critics argued that the CCP had subordinated working class and peasant interests to an alliance with a reactionary nationalist bourgeoisie led by the KMT. The party had abandoned radical land redistribution, instead promoting ‘unity’ and ‘national salvation’. No doubt the KMT used the ‘United Front’ to consolidate state power, suppress independent organisation and preserve landlordism in many areas.
As far as the Soviet Union was concerned, it was prioritising Realpolitik over revolution. First, there was a non-aggression pact with Japan and later wartime diplomacy with the US and the Chinese regime under Chiang Kai-shek. The USSR did not support a full revolutionary breakthrough in China during World War II, fearing it might provoke Japan or antagonise the west.
However, given the subsequent victory of the CCP, its defenders argue that the ‘Second United Front’ had marked a temporary setback, but showed strategic flexibility. They argued that the CCP used the alliance tactically in order to survive, expand and rebuild its forces - eventually enabling victory in 1949. By 1945, the CCP had dramatically expanded its base and mass support, especially in rural areas. After all, following the collapse of the ‘United Front’ following World War II, the CCP resumed the civil war and eventually defeated the KMT in 1949, establishing the People’s Republic of China.
Iran
The original Communist Party of Iran (CPI) was founded in the early 1920s by former members of the Edalat Party, inspired by the Russian Revolution. It was outlawed by the Reza Shah Pahlavi dictatorship in the 1930s. It was repressed and driven underground, with many of its members imprisoned.
Despite the repression, some Iranian communists remained active, often in exile in the USSR, where they continued to organise, but by the early 1940s things changed: Reza Shah was forced to abdicate in 1941 by the British and the Soviets during World War II. The Soviet Union, now a war ally of Britain and the US in opposition to Nazi Germany, wanted stability in Iran (which had strategic importance and lots of oil).
Rather than support the re-establishment of a radical underground Communist Party, the Soviet Union followed its popular front line. It encouraged the formation of a new, broader, more moderate party that could work legally and build mass support. This led to the formation of the Tudeh (Hezb-e Tudeh Iran) in 1941. The term ‘Tudeh’ means ‘masses’, reflecting its aim to be a broad party, not a revolutionary party. The new party included not only communists, but also reformists and nationalists, as well as intellectuals and others “open to progressive change”.
Nazi Germany had declared Iranians ‘Aryans’ and thus exempted them from the Nuremberg laws. As a result Reza Shah’s pro-German stance led to Allied intervention in 1941, splitting Iran into Soviet- and British-American-occupied zones. Reza Shah was deposed, and his son, Mohammad Reza Shah, was installed.
Research carried out by Iranian writer and human rights activist Khosrow Chaqueri shows Red Army intelligence actively engaged with the Tudeh leadership, helping to shape the new party’s programme and even discussing financial aid. Georgi Dimitrov reported to Stalin that the party would serve as a “patriotic, democratic” united front, not an openly socialist force.
In 1942, Tudeh launched its paper Siasat and rapidly grew, establishing trade unions and regional branches across Iran. According to Chaqueri, the party’s primary purpose was to serve Soviet interests - not to build socialism in Iran. Yet Iranian communists, including survivors of imprisonment or Stalin’s purges, largely supported its formation.
In late 1945, Soviet forces blocked the Iranian army from entering Kurdistan and Azerbaijan, where local groups declared independence with Soviet support. Tudeh was caught off guard, though its leadership close to the Red Army must have known what was coming. Soviet UN delegate Andrei Vishinsky argued against international intervention, and in Azerbaijan Ja’far Pishevari - an old Communist Party member - was installed as leader of the ‘People’s government’.
Tudeh - by then with over 100,000 supporters - had always proclaimed its loyalty to Iran’s national sovereignty. But it quickly fell in line with Soviet aims, supporting separatist movements and oil concessions to Moscow. This led to mass resignations and disillusionment.
Under Soviet direction, Tudeh branches in Kurdistan and Azerbaijan were dissolved, and members were ordered to join nationalist parties. Pishevari’s government implemented radical reforms - land redistribution, language rights, a new militia - but, when Soviet troops withdrew in 1946, it collapsed. Stalin later wrote to Pishevari explaining that withdrawing from Iran was necessary for broader geopolitical aims - supporting anti-colonial struggles elsewhere. Revolutionary demands in Azerbaijan were, in Stalin’s view, premature and potentially damaging to Soviet diplomacy.
The collapse of the People’s Republic of Azerbaijan and the failure of the oil deal with the Qavam government in Iran led to widespread frustration and splits in Tudeh. In 1948, Khalil Maleki led a breakaway, blaming the leadership for subordinating Iranian revolutionary goals to Soviet state interests.
In fact Tudeh’s record throughout the 20th century is one of opportunism and betrayal. It consistently sacrificed the interests of Iranian workers, socialists and oppressed minorities at the altar of foreign policy imperatives - first Moscow’s, later Tehran’s. During the 1979 revolution, it repeated the same pattern, allying with the future supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, only to be crushed like every other left force.
A popular front against the dictatorship was Tudeh’s position towards the Islamists during the struggle against the shah. They backed Ayatollah Khomeini, imagining they would have a seat at the table of the new regime. Instead, Khomeini destroyed all forms of opposition - including Tudeh itself.2
It is not surprising that it is now calling for a united front against the Islamic Republic, without even clarifying who would be included in this new popular front.
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See ‘No to war, no to the regime’ Weekly Worker January 16 2020 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1282/no-to-war-no-to-the-regime).↩︎