Popular front
The term was first used in the mid-1930s in Europe by communists concerned over the rapid growth of fascist movements in Italy and Germany, which they sought to combat by coalescing with non-communist political groupings they had previously attacked as enemies.
The strategy of creating or taking over organizations that would then claim to be expressions of popular will, and not manipulation by the Soviet Union or communist movement, was first suggested by Vladimir Lenin.
[1] A new, less extreme policy was called for whereby Communists would form political coalitions with non-Communist socialists and even democratic non-socialists – "liberals, moderates, and even conservatives" – in "popular fronts" against fascism.[1][2][how?]
Predecessors to the Popular Front had existed, such as in the (later-renamed) World Committee Against War and Imperialism, but they sought not to co-operate with other parties as equals but instead to draw potential sympathisers into the orbit of the communist movement, which caused them to be denounced by the leaders of other left-wing associations.
It was thus not until 1934 when Georgi Dimitrov, who had humiliated the Nazis with his defence against charges of involvement in the Reichstag fire became the general secretary of the Comintern, and its officials became more receptive to the approach.
[10] The reorientation was formalised at the Comintern's Seventh Congress in July 1935 and reached its apotheosis with the proclamation of a new policy: "The People's Front Against Fascism and War".
To resist a slippery slope of encroachment towards authoritarianism, socialists were now more inclined to operate in the street and communists to co-operate with other antifascists in Parliament.
In May 1935, France and the Soviet Union signed a defensive alliance, and in August 1935, the 7th World Congress of the Comintern officially endorsed the Popular Front strategy.
[13] The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) had been quite hostile to the New Deal until 1935, but it suddenly reversed positions and tried to form a popular front with the New Dealers.
[15] Cultural historian Michael Denning has challenged the Communist Party-centric view of the US popular front, saying that the sympathetic non-members ("fellow-travelers") in the US actually composed the majority of the movement.
Trotsky also argued that in popular fronts, working-class demands are reduced to their bare minimum, and the ability of the working class to put forward its own independent set of politics is compromised.
He argued that in Spain, despite the excesses attributable to the passions of civil war, the period of coalition government in Republican areas "contained in embryo the conception of an advance to socialism with democracy, with a multi-party system, parliament, and liberty for the opposition".
[21] After World War II, most Central and Eastern European countries were ruled by coalitions between several different political parties that voluntarily chose to work together.
By the time that the countries in what became the Eastern Bloc had developed into Marxist–Leninist states, the non-communist parties had pushed out those members not willing to do the communists' bidding and were taken over by fellow travellers.
Officially, their aim was to defend perestroika against reactionary elements within the state bureaucracy, but over time, they began to question the legitimacy of their republics' membership of the Soviet Union.
A Popular Front was established in Georgia but remained marginal, compared to the dominant dissident-led groups, since the 9 April tragedy had radicalised society and so it was unable to play the compromise role of similar movements.
