Theses on Eastern Question.
I. The Growth of the Revolutionary Movement in the East.
The Second Congress of the Communist International, basing itself on the work of Soviet Administration in the East and the growth of the Nationalist-Revolutionary movement in the colonies, outlined the principles of the nationalist-colonial question in the period of prolonged struggle between imperialism and the proletarian dictators.
Since that time the struggle against penal! oppression in the colonies and semi-colonial countries has become considerably more acute as a consequence of the deepening post-war political and economic crises of imperialism.
Evidence of this is served by (1) the collapse of the Sevres Treaty on the partition of Turkey and the possibility of the complete restoration of the national and political independence of the latter; (2) the stormy growth of a nationalist-revolutionary movement in India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Morocco, China and Korea; (3) the hopeless internal crisis of Japanese imperialism giving rise to the rapid growth of elements of a bourgeois-democratic revolution in the country and the transition by the Japanese proletariat to independent class struggle; (4) the awakening of the labour movement in all countries of the East and the formation of Communist Parties almost in all parts of the East.
The facts enumerated above, indicate a change in the social basis of the revolutionary movement in the colonies. This change leads to the anti-militarist struggle becoming more acute; this struggle is no longer being led exclusively by the feudal classes, while the national bourgeoisie are preparing to compromise with imperialism.
The imperialist war of 1914–1918 and the prolonged crisis which followed it, particularly in Europe, has weakened the power of the Great Powers over the colonies. On the other hand, these same circumstances, in narrowing the economic bases and spheres of influences of world capitalism, has rendered imperialist rivalry for the colonies more acute, and in this way have disturbed the equilibrium of the whole world imperialist system (the fight for oil, Anglo-French conflict in Asia-Minor, the Japanese-American rivalry for the domination of the Pacific, etc.).
It is precisely this weakening of imperialist pressure in the colonies, together with the increasing rivalry between various imperialist groups, that have facilitated the development of native capitalism in the colonies and semi-colonial countries which are outgrowing the narrow and hampering framework of the domination of the imperialist Great Powers. Hitherto the capitalists of the Great Powers in maintaining their monopoly rights to secure excess profits from trade, industry and the taxation of backward countries, have striven to isolate
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