perhaps soon. We should also reprint this as a pamphlet (imho). right?

“Please refer me to the text where Mao criticized the Popular Front strategy that led to fascism in Spain.”

This series on the Spanish Civil War (in its following parts) will elaborate more on Mao’s specific statements on the Spanish Civil War (and on Kang Sheng’s remarks).

But this is a criticism by MAOISTS (after the death of Mao) of the popular front strategy — part of a much larger criticism of the Comintern’s 7th Congress, and the approach of the Soviet Party toward World War 2, and its concept of a single global united front against one or another imperialist block (i.e. a main danger).

Mao himself did not articulate this critique of the popular front, though his rather substantive criticism of other aspects of the Comintern’s (and Stalin’s) politics forms an important basis.

I think you will find a great deal of what you are looking for, Bryan, in an essay called “Advancing the World Revolutionary Movement,” a work by Maoists in the 1980s greatly deepening the critique of the Comintern from a Maoist (and perhaps somewhat post-Maoist) perspective. It unravels questions regarding both Stalin and Mao. I think it is an essay worth a serious new look — and we are considering posting it here on kasama.

I’m a history graduate student and have done a lot of work detailing the Spanish Civil War (mostly centered around the POUM and its historiography). I’ve found that PCE writers and sympatheziers at that time and later (ie Hobsbawm) tend to deny that a socialist revolution took place in 1936. Some still hold to the line that the POUM was fascist (not Hobsbawm).

Among the left, there is a lot of heroism surrounding the Spanish Civil War (International Brigades for one). Admittedly, the Brigades were a great display of internationalism. However, the darker side of the war to me at least is that the pro-Soviet PCE wanted to suppress the revolution in Spain in order to not antagonize the western ‘democracies’ in order for them to provide aid to the Republic. In order to do that, the PCE (and the USSR) actively suppressed the revolution in Spain (notably Catalonia) and crushed the POUM.

I read another post on Trotskyism and was surprised this event was not mentioned. For many in the 1930s, Soviet conduct in the war was a lightening rod for Trotskyists.

Anyway just my two cents, I look forward to the other parts of the critique.