The Comintern’s call to meet in Baku on September 1, 1920. Nothing exemplifies the change in strategic orientation of the revolutionary workers’ movement after October more than the Congress of the Peoples of the East held in Baku as the new Third International embraced the colonial revolt against imperialism. A revolt, as this summons makes remarks, whose victory required common cause with workers in the imperial centers; just as the success of workers in the metropoles demanded their identification and active support for colonial liberation.

‘Summons by the Third International to the Peoples of Asia to Congress at Baku’ from Truth (Duluth). Vol. 4 No. 35. August 27, 1920.

July 20, 1920

A manifesto by the Third International to the Peoples of Asia!

The Executive Committee of the Communist International calls a conference of workers of Persia Armenia and Turkey for Sept. 1 in Baku.

What does the Communist International represent? The Communist International is the organization of millions of revolutionary workers in Russia, Poland, Germany, France, England and America, who awakened by the thunders of the war and driven by hunger, have risen in order no longer to work for the rich, but to work for themselves; in order no longer to lift their arms against their own fellow citizens against the suffering and hungering brother peoples, but to use them in their own defense against the exploiters.

These workers have recognized the fact that they can only triumph through unity, through the binding together of their forces, and they organized last year the organization that they needed, the Communist International, which, despite all the persecutions by the capitalist Governments, in the year and a half of its existence has become the very soul of the struggle for liberation carried on by the workers and revolutionary peasants in the whole world.

Why Call Was Issued

Why does the Communist International call a congress of the Persian, Armenian and Turkish peasants and workers? What has it to offer to them? What does it demand of them? The fighting workers and peasants of Europe and America turn to you because you, like them, are suffering under the yoke of world capitalism because you, like them, are obliged to fight against the International exploiters, and because the union of the Persian, Armenian and Turkish peasants and workers with the great army of the European and American proletariat will make this army stronger and will speed the death of capitalism, thus ringing about the liberation of the workers and peasants of the whole world.

Peasants and workers of Persia! The Teheran Government of the Kadars and its retinue of provincial Khans have plundered and exploited you through many centuries. The land, which, according to the laws of the Sheriat, was your common property, has been taken possession of by the Teheran Government, they trade it away at their pleasure, they lay what taxes please them upon you, and when, through their mismanagement, they got the country into such a condition that they were unable to squeeze enough juice out of it themselves, they sold Persia last year to English capitalists for £2,000,000, so that the latter will organize an army in Persia that will oppress you still more than formerly and so the latter can collect taxes for the Khans and the Teheran Government. They have sold the naptha sources in South Persia and thus helped plunder the country.

Peasants of Mesopotamia! The English lave declared your country to be independent, but 80,000 English soldiers are stationed in your country, are robbing and plundering, are killing you and are violating your women.

Peasants of Anatolia! The English, French and Italian Governments hold Constantinople under the mouths of their cannon. They have made the Sultan their prisoner, they are obliging him to consent to the dismemberment of what is purely Turkish territory, they are forcing him to turn the country’s finances over to foreign capitalists in order to make it possible for them better to exploit the Turkish people, already reduced to a state of beggary by the six-year war. They have occupied the coal mines of Hercules, they are holding your ports, they are sending their troops into your country and are trampling down your fields.

Appeal to the Armenians

Peasants and workers of Armenia! Decades ago you became the victims of the intrigues of foreign capital, which launched heavy verbal attacks against the massacres of the Armenians by the Kurds and incited you to fight against the Sultan in order to obtain through your blood new concessions and fresh profits daily from the bloody Sultan. During the war they not only promised you independence, but they incited your merchants, your teachers and your priests to demand the land of the Turkish peasants in order to keep up an eternal conflict between the Armenian and Turkish peoples, so that they could eternally derive profits out of this conflict, for as long as strife prevails between you and the Turks, just so long will the English, French and American capitalists be able to hold Turkey in check through the menace of an Armenian uprising and to use the Armenians as cannon fodder through the menace of a pogrom by Kurds.

Peasants of Syria and Arabia! Independence was promised to you by the English and by the French, and now they hold your country, occupied by their armies, now the English and the French dictate your laws, and you, who have freed yourselves from the Turkish Sultan, from the Constantinople Government, are now slaves of the Paris and London Governments, which merely differ from the Sultan’s Government in being stronger and better able to exploit you

You all understand this yourselves. The Persian peasants and workers have risen against their traitorous Teheran Government. The peasants in Mesopotamia are in revolt against the English troops, and the English newspaper are reporting losses suffered in fighting against the masses of the people near Bagdad. You peasants in Anatolia have rushed to the banner of Kemal Pasha in order to fight against the foreign invasion, but at the same time we hear that you are trying to organize your own party of people, a genuine peasants’ party that will be willing to fight even if the Pashas are to make their peace with the Entente exploiters. Syria has no peace, and you, Armenian peasants whom the Entente, despite its promises, allows to die from hunger in order to keep you under better control, you are understanding more and more that it is silly to hope for salvation by the Entente capitalists. Even your bourgeois Government of the Dashnakists, the lackeys of the Entente, is compelled to turn to the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government of Russia with an appeal for peace and help.

To Defy Foreign Capitalists.

Peasants and workers of the Near East! If you organize yourselves, if you form your own Workers’ and Peasants’ Government, if you arm yourselves, if you unite with the Red Russian Workers’ and Peasants’ Army, then you will be able to defy the English, French and American capitalists, then you will settle accounts with your own exploiters, then you will find it possible, in a free alliance with the workers’ republics of the world, to look after your own interests; then you will know how to exploit the resources of your country in your own interest and in the interest of the working people of the whole world, that will honestly exchange the products of their labor and mutually help each other.

We want to talk over all these questions with you at the congress in Baku. Spare no effort to appear in Baku on Sept. 1 in as large numbers as possible. You march year in and year out through the deserts to the holy place where you show your respect for your past and for your God–now march through deserts, over mountains and across rivers in order to come together to discuss how you can escape from the bonds of slavery, how you can unite as brothers, so as to live as men, free and equal.

On Sept. 1 thousands of Persian, Turkish and Armenian peasants and workers must meet in peaceful reunion in Baku for the great liberation council of the peoples of the Near East.

For the Executive Committee of the Communist International: G. Zinovief, Chairman; Karl Radek, Secretary.

For the Central Executive Committee of the Russian Communist Party: K. Bukharin, W. Worovsky, A. Balabanova, G. Klinger.

For the All Russian Central Committee of the Trade Union Associations: A. Sonovsky.

For the English Socialist Party: W. MacLaine, Tom Quelch. For the Factory and Shop Councils of England: Jacques Tanner, J.M. Murphy.

For the French Delegation to the Congress of the Communist international: Jacques Sadoul, A. Rosmer, K. Delinieres.

For the Italian Delegation to the Congress of the Communist International: D. Seratti, W. Vacirca, N. Bombacci, A. Graziadei.

For the Communist Party of Poland: J. Marchlevski (Karski.)

Truth emerged from the The Duluth Labor Leader, a weekly English language publication of the Scandinavian local of the Socialist Party in Duluth, Minnesota and began on May Day, 1917 as a Left Wing alternative to the Duluth Labor World. The paper was aligned to both the SP and the IWW leading to the paper being closed down in the first big anti-IWW raids in September, 1917. The paper was reborn as Truth, with the Duluth Scandinavian Socialists joining the Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. Shortly after the editor, Jack Carney, was arrested and convicted of espionage in 1920. Truth continued to publish with a new editor JO Bentall until 1923 as an unofficial paper of the CP.

Access to full issue: https://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/lccn/sn89081142/1920-08-27/ed-1/seq-3