Stalin, the Comintern and the Popular Front in Britain, France and Spain, 1935–1939: Some Historiographical and Political Reflections

Abstract

The Popular Front politics which governed Comintern policy 1934–1939 have been positively judged by historians of British Communism. The experience cannot be properly assessed without integration of its provenance in Soviet Stalinism and subsequent unfolding in France and Spain. This article reviews the literature, analyses the origins of the line and validates explanations which locate its roots in the search for solutions to the challenges fascism offered the Russian regime. Arguments that national parties had a significant hand in its creation and development are evaluated. The Popular Front’s break with earlier Marxism; its understanding of fascism; the class structure; alliances with the bourgeoisie; its suppression of working-class insurgency; its revival of nationalism; and the relation of its theory to legitimation of the interests and strategies of the Soviet elite, are critically discussed. The successes and failures of the policy are assessed and its afterlife sketched. A short-term, instrumental tactic, it remained part of the repertoire of Stalinism and informed national parties’ journey to reformism and Eurocommunism.