Evolution of Soviet Policies

Report Outline
The U. S. S. R. and the Western Democracies
The Comintern as Mirror of World Relations
Evolution of Domestic Policies
The Problem of Religious Freedom

The U. S. S. R. and the Western Democracies

The Resolution calling for dissolution of the Comintern, adopted by the Presidium of the Executive Committee of that body and proclaimed to an astonished world on May 22, was an accurate reflection of the changed situation in which the Soviet state finds itself midway in World War II. An important reason given for its action by the Presidium was the “political maturity” that had now been attained by Communist parties in various parts of the world. A more important, but unmentioned, reason for the dissolution of the Comintern is the political maturity that has now been attained by the Soviet state itself.

The change that has taken place during the last quarter century in the Soviet attitude toward other countries is strikingly shown by a comparison of the Comintern's obituary notice in 1943 with its birth announcement in 1919. The final paragraph of the resolution of May 22 read as follows:

The Presidium … calls on all supporters of the Communist International to concentrate all their energies on the wholehearted support of and active participation in the war of liberation of the peoples and the states of the anti-Hitlerite coalition for the speediest defeat of the deadly enemy of the working class and toilers—German Fascism and its associates and vassals.