What is the cardinal idea underlying our theses? It is the distinction between oppressed and oppressor nations. Unlike the Second International(1) and bourgeois democracy, we emphasize this distinction. In this age of imperialism, it is particularly important for the proletariat and the Communist International to establish the concrete economic facts and to proceed from concrete realities, not from abstract postulates, in all colonial and national problems.

The characteristic feature of imperialism consists in the whole world, as we now see, being divided into a large number of oppressed nations and an insignificant number of oppressor nations, the latter possessing colossal wealth and powerful armed forces. The vast majority of the world's population, over a billion, perhaps even 1.25 billion people, or, if we take the total population of the world as 1.75 billion, about 70 percent of the world's population, belongs to the oppressed nations, which are either in a state of direct colonial dependence or are semicolonies as, for example, Persia, Turkey, and China, or else, conquered by some big imperialist power, have become greatly dependent on that power by virtue of peace treaties. This idea of a division, of dividing the nations into oppressor and oppressed, runs through the theses, not only the first theses published earlier over my signature but also those submitted by Comrade Roy.(2) The latter were framed chiefly from the standpoint of the situation in India and other big Asian countries oppressed by Britain. Herein lies their great importance to us.

The second basic idea in our theses is that in the present world situation following the imperialist war reciprocal relations between peoples, as well as the world political system as a whole, are determined by the struggle waged by a small group of imperialist nations against the soviet movement and the soviet states headed by Soviet Russia. Unless we bear that in mind, we shall not be able to pose a single national or colonial problem correctly, even if it concerns a most outlying part of the world. Only by beginning from this standpoint can the Communist parties in civilized and backward countries alike pose and solve political problems correctly.

Are we to consider as correct the assertion that the capitalist stage of economic development is inevitable for backward nations now on the road to emancipation and among whom a certain advance toward progress is to be seen since the war? We replied in the negative. If the victorious revolutionary proletariat conducts systematic propaganda among them, and the soviet governments come to their aid with all the means at their disposal, in that event it will be a mistake to assume that the backward peoples must inevitably go through the capitalist stage of development. We should create independent contingents of fighters and party organizations in the colonies and the backward countries and at once launch propaganda for the organization of peasants' soviets(3) and strive to adapt them to the precapitalist conditions. In addition, the Communist International should advance the proposition, with the appropriate theoretical grounding, that the backward countries, aided by the proletariat of the advanced countries, can go over to the soviet system and, through certain stages of development, to communism, without having to pass through the capitalist stage.

The necessary means for this cannot be indicated in advance. These will be prompted by practical experience. It has, however, been definitely established that the idea of soviets is understood by the mass of the working people in even the most remote nations, that the soviets should be adapted to the conditions of a precapitalist social system, and that the Communist parties should immediately begin work in this direction in all parts of the world.

I would also like to emphasize the importance of revolutionary work by the Communist parties not only in their own but also in the colonial countries, and particularly among the troops employed by the exploiting nations to keep the colonial peoples in subjection.

Comrade [Thomas] Quelch of the British Socialist Party spoke of this in our commission. He said that the rank-and- file British worker would consider it treasonable to help the enslaved nations in their uprisings against British rule. True, the jingoist and chauvinist-minded labor aristocrats of Britain and America present a very great danger to socialism and are a bulwark of the Second International. Here we are confronted with the greatest treachery on the part of leaders and workers belonging to this bourgeois International. The colonial question was discussed in the Second International as well. The Basel Manifesto is quite clear on this point, too.(4) The parties of the Second International pledged themselves to revolutionary action, but they show no sign of genuine revolutionary work or of assistance to the exploited and dependent nations in their revolts against the oppressor nations. This, I think, applies also to most of the parties that have withdrawn from the Second International and wish to join the Third International. We must proclaim this publicly for all to hear, and it is irrefutable. We shall see if any attempt is made to deny it.

All these considerations have formed the basis of our resolutions, which undoubtedly are too lengthy but will nevertheless, I am sure, prove of use and will promote the development and organization of genuine revolutionary work in connection with the national and the colonial questions. And that is our principal task.

1. Founded in 1889 as an international association of social democratic workers' parties, the Second International collapsed with the outbreak of World War I when leaders of most constituent parties supported the interests of their own bourgeoisies to go to war.

2. Manabendra Nath Roy (Robert Allan-Roy Bhattacharya) was an Indian revolutionary who was active in nationalist protests against British rule in 1910 - 15, and went on to become a founding member of both the Mexican Communist Party (1919) and the Indian CP in exile (1920).

3. The soviets were councils elected by workers, peasants and soldiers formed in the Russian revolution.

4. The Second International condemned colonialism at its 1907 congress in Stuttgart, Germany, as well as at earlier gatherings. The manifesto of the International's 1912 congress in Basel, Switzerland, however, did not take up the colonial question.  
 
 
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