Cominform - Struggle Against the warmongers

FOR A LASTING PEACE, FOR A PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACY!

NO. 20 (80), FRIDAY, MAY 19, 1950

EDITORIAL: THE PEOPLES OF THE COLONIAL AND DEPENDENT COUNTRIES IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE WARMONGERS.

The national liberation movement in the colonial and dependent countries is steadily growing in scale and is becoming more and more organised. Hundreds of millions of people, doomed by the imperialist slave-owners to poverty, hunger and extinction, deprived of elementary human rights and liberties, are rising in resolute struggle against their oppressors. The Great October Socialist Revolution, which ushered in the era of liberating revolutions in the colonial and dependent countries, and the victorious building of Socialism in the USSR, awakened the peoples of these countries and showed to them in practice the possibility and necessity of destroying the colonial yoke. The October Socialist Revolution showed that the era of undisturbed exploitation and oppression of the colonies and dependent countries by the imperialist had passed away.

Unleashing the Second World War, the imperialists reckoned not only on strangling the national liberation movement in the colonies but also on transforming other countries into colonies and thus prolonging and strengthening their domination. But these calculations of the imperialists miscarried. The smashing of German fascism and Japanese militarism by the Soviet Army, the weakening, as a result of the Second World War, of the imperialist camp as a whole and the growth and consolidation of the camp of democracy and Socialism headed by the Soviet Union, led to an unprecedented development of the national liberation movement in the colonial and dependent countries. The complete destruction of the entire colonial system of imperialism is now on the order of the day.

One of the most devastating blows against the imperialist system since the October Revolution was that delivered by the triumph of the popular revolution in China, the hitherto one of the main rear bases of imperialism and an inexhaustible source of fabulous profits for the Wall Street and City monopolists. Neither the complete enslavement of Western Europe nor a tenfold increase in the exploitation of the peoples still under the colonial yoke, can make up for the loss of domination in China by the imperialist camp. The Chinese Communist Party, which organised the victory of the popular revolution in China, opened the way to Socialism for 475 million people. The victory of the Chinese people over home and foreign exploiters freed them from decades of wars and gave the immeasurable strength to the common front of peace and democracy throughout the world.

In Viet Nam, the National Liberation Army has wrested from the imperialist invaders 90 per cent of the country; in Burma more than half the population lives in areas liberated from imperialists; in Malaya, South Korea and in a number of districts in India, in Indonesia the armed forces of the peoples are waging heroic struggle for freedom and national independence. The liberation, anti-imperialist movement in Africa, Oceania and Asia minor is growing in intensity.

In the present conditions, as shown by the experience of China, armed resistance to the imperialist plunderers is the most effective form of the national-liberation movement in colonial countries. It seriously weakens imperialism, and, in doing so, strengthens the front of peace.

The national liberation struggle of the peoples of the colonial and dependent countries is headed by the most advanced, most revolutionary of all classes – the working class and its vanguard, the Communist Party. Around the working class there are united all classes, and above all, broad masses of peasants, all parties and groups, organisations and individuals who oppose the imperialist oppressor and their henchmen.

Without suppressing the national liberation movement in the colonies, the imperialists cannot consider themselves fully prepared for unleashing an aggressive war against the camp of peace and democracy. Hence, the Churchills and Trumans, in preparing the war, begins by suppressing the democratic movement in their own countries and the national liberation movement in the colonies. The imperialist aggressors are, in fact, already waging war on a vast territory extending from South Korea to Indonesia.

Utilising their bankrupt puppet, Chiang-Kai-shek, they are waging an undeclared war against the Chinese people. The whole world knows that Formosa been virtually transformed into a US war base, and that Shanghai is being raided by American “flying fortresses”. In South Korea, the Syngman Rhee gangs, mercenaries of Wall Street, are attempting by means of fire sword to suppress the ever-growing partisan movement. In Viet Nam, the France colonisers have been waging war for more than three years against the people who are defending their liberty and independence. In view of the obvious defeat of the France colonisers, the American imperialists are hastening to their aid. Their decision to supply arms to Bao-Dai means in fact that the US imperialists have actually declared war on the people of Viet Nam.

American tanks, aircrafts, instructors and officers of the US army are being sent to Indo-China.

For nearly two years the British imperialists have been waging war in Malaya, Burma and in other colonies. One of the initiators of these wars, Mr. Churchill, candidly declared in the House of Commons on May 9 that, during the past five years, the Labourites had “shed more blood” in suppressing the peoples of the British Empire than was shed by Britain and her armies during the war against Hitler fascism. The conferences of imperialist diplomats in Colombo, Bangkok, Sydney, the meeting in Tokyo, the tour made by Jessup, the emissary of Wall Street in the countries of South East Asia, the recent meeting of the warmongers, Bevin, Schuman and Archeson in London, persued the aim of stepping-up the colonial wars and of preparing new wars.

All these facts testify that “imperialism cannot live without violence and plunder, without bloodshed and shootings” (Stalin).

In these conditions the struggle of the colonial and dependent peoples against their imperialist oppressors is part and parcel of the common struggle of working people throughout the world against the Anglo-American instigators of a new war, for peace and the democracy. The successes of the national liberation movement strengthen the world front of peace. The victories of the national liberation struggle in the East are victories for the front of peace and democracy. All sincere partisans of peace regards it as their duty to support the national liberation struggle of the peoples in the colonial and dependent countries. In this connections, splendid examples have been given by dockers, railwaymen and seamen in France who refuse to transport arms for the colonial war in Viet Nam.

The working people of Britain, America and other countries, by actively opposing the colonial wars waged by the monopolists of Wall Street and the City in Malaya, Burma, South Korea, the Philippines and other colonies, will, in this way, render their struggle for peace more effective and concrete, and in doing so fulfill their duty of international proletarian solidarity.

Along with the unfolding and intensification of the national liberation struggle, which is the most effective contribution of the peoples in the colonial and dependent countries to the common struggle of the world peace camp, the peoples of these countries are playing an ever more active part in the campaign for signatures to the appeal of the Permanent Committee of the World Peace Congress. 

These peoples are particularly interested in the demand for the prohibition of the atomic weapon, and in denouncing as a war criminal that government which first uses this weapon, for the peoples of the colonial and dependent countries daily and hourly experience in their own lives all that imperialist war brings with it.

Despite police terror and persecution against the partisans of peace, the collection of signatures to the appeal of the Permanent Committee is underway in India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Indo-China, in Burma and Malaya. The campaign has developed in a particularly big way in those countries liberated from the imperialist yoke. Thousands of peace committees are being formed in China and North Korea.

The unanimous condemnation of the Anglo-American instigators of a new war by all peoples of the world will lead to a further weakening of the imperialist camp, will create even more favourable conditions for the victory of the peoples in the colonial and dependent countries, fighting for peace, freedom and national independence.

The criminal designs of the imperialist warmongers now waging colonial wars, sowing that and destruction among the peoples, must and shall be foiled.