Dogma on Democracy

After sneering openly at Democratic governments since the Russian Revolution of 1917. the Comintern or World Union of Communist Parties executed in Moscow last week a sudden about-face. Hitherto the duty outside Russia of every Communist has been to cripple his country's war-time forces and if possible foment a revolution while fighting men are at the front. Joseph Stalin created a sensation this spring by a statement to French Premier Laval which seemed to mean that French Communists should support the French Army, an unprecedented heresy from the Old Bolshevik point of view (TIME, May 27). This heresy was enshrined at Moscow last week as Communist dogma. In the former Hall of Nobles, some 600 Communist Party delegates from nearly every country in the world met as the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, cheered Dictator Stalin for 15 minutes as "the Leader of the World Proletariat," and got their orders.

Proceedings were dead secret, but the official Moscow paper Pravda laid down the new lines of action: 1) Communists will subordinate everything to resisting the forces of Fascism which are admitted to have seized the offensive. 2) Consequently in a war with Germany, Japan, Italy or other "Fascist" States, Communists will aid the opposing forces. 3) Explicitly the Democratic regimes of France and "small nations" are slated for aid.

The Congress, seething with hate of Adolf Hitler, elected as its Honorary Chairman the onetime German Presidential candidate Comrade Ernst Thalmann, whom Der Fuhrer has locked up in a Nazi jail. The keynote speech, symptomatic of World Communism's present mood of doubt and frustration, was made by one Herr Wilhelm Pieck, introduced as the Leader of the German Communist Party which has been so harried that today it scarcely exists. Said Comrade Pieck:

"In those countries where remnants of parliamentary government and Demo- cratic freedom remain the proletariat still has a chance, though a pitiful and trifling one, to organize and openly defend its class interests, despite the heavy oppression of the Capitalist system.

"Where there is a Fascist dictatorship the proletariat is deprived even of the most insignificant rights and opportunity legally to defend its class interests. Therefore, we Communists will fight wholeheartedly to retain every ounce of Democratic freedom.

"We are ready to defend the remnants of parliamentarianism and Democracy together with the real adherents of bourgeois Democracy against Fascism in order to fight for proletarian Democracy.

"If German Fascism attacks the national independence and unity of small independent States in Europe, a war waged by the national bourgeoisie of these States will be a just war. in which proletarians and Communists cannot avoid taking part."

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