popular front

popular front, any coalition of working-class and middle-class parties united for the defense of democratic forms against a presumed Fascist assault. In the mid-1930s European Communist concern over the gains of Fascism, combined with a Soviet policy shift, led Communist parties to join with Socialist, liberal, and moderate parties in popular fronts against Fascist conquest. In France and Spain, popular front governments were formed.

The early successes of Fascism in Italy and Germany had initially been regarded with equanimity by the Soviet Communist leadership. In the 1930s, when the Stalinist purges were in progress and deviations from current Stalinist orthodoxy were officially deemed more dangerous to the ultimate success of the proletarian revolution than the assaults of the far right, the Soviet attitude was shared by European Communists; in Germany, for instance, the Communists joined with the Nazis in bringing down the Weimar Republic.

In time, however, the clear Fascist determination to annihilate Communist cadres, coupled with the Communist realization that the divided state of the left had greatly facilitated the achievements of the right, aroused among European Communists considerable sentiment favouring alliance with at least the non-Communist left to combat Fascism.

For a time the Soviet leadership, consistently placing Soviet national interests above other considerations in its foreign policy, maintained cordial diplomatic relations with Fascist states, refusing in each case to let a government’s domestic persecution of Communists affect the Soviet Union’s relations with that government. Growing awareness of the danger of a German attack on the U.S.S.R., however, led the Soviets to seek allies among the Western capitalist nations. This policy shift, which saw the Soviets join the League of Nations in 1934, was a decisive factor in bringing the Soviet leadership to its advocacy of the popular front. At the same time, Joseph Stalin began to pursue a clandestine policy of seeking an alliance with Adolf Hitler—which bore fruit in August 1939.

The seventh and last congress of the Comintern (see International, Third), meeting in 1935, proclaimed the new policy, which went beyond the concept of a “united front” of Communists and Socialists to advocate the formation of popular fronts comprising not only leftists but also liberals, moderates, and even conservatives opposed to Fascism. The goal of revolution was deferred until the immediate battle at hand was won, and Communists were urged not to frighten away the non-Communists in the coalition with revolutionary rhetoric.

In France, for example, the Communist Party joined in forming a popular front in 1934. In 1936 a popular front government, led by the Socialist Léon Blum, was elected. Though the Communists refused ministerial appointments, they pledged full parliamentary support and cooperation. The regime succeeded in implementing an extensive program of social reform, including the institution of the 40-hour workweek. The financial situation deteriorated, however, and Blum was replaced in June 1937, whereupon the liberals began to exclude other coalition members, including the Communists, from the government. In 1938 Blum again tried, unsuccessfully, to establish a popular front ministry. Though it may have prevented socio-economic conditions in France from becoming fertile ground for any domestic Fascist movement, the French Popular Front did little in the international arena to stop the march of Fascism.

A broad-based popular front government was elected in Spain in February 1936. Considerable turmoil followed, however, and in July 1936 General Francisco Franco led a Fascist insurrection against the legal government. At first the Soviets, and indeed Léon Blum’s French Popular Front, advocated nonintervention. Eventually the Soviets did intervene, supplying limited military aid to the Republican forces. Soon Stalin, however, for reasons that are unclear, conducted a violent purge of the Spanish extreme left, including Anarchists, Syndicalists, and Trotskyites.

Ironically, the effect of the popular fronts in the West was the opposite of Stalin’s intention. The social changes that they tried to institute and the unrest that occurred while they held power combined to exacerbate Western capitalists’ fear and distrust of the Soviets.