Stalinist tactic proclaimed at the 7th Congress of the Comintern. It presented the formation of electoral alliances with the democratic parties and, eventually, the formation of a government by them, as the way to defeat the counter-revolution in its fascist form.

The Popular Front was first tried out in France as a coalition with the socialists and the radical-socialists, while the theory of the Sixth Congress on the "third period" -the idea that social democracy had become an "appendage of fascism" and "the main enemy"- formally remained in force.

The Popular Front is a direct consequence of the fusion of "socialism in one country" and the slogan of anti-fascism. In the first place, because it definitively separates the Comintern from the goal of a proletarian revolution, associating it with republicanism and social democracy in the defense of the democratic state. In the second place, because in doing so it confesses the definitive divorce of the Russian bureaucracy from the world revolution, first announced with "socialism in one country". The point was to install "friendly" governments, with the participation of the parties controlled by Moscow. As an inevitable coda, the Popular Front will gradually change the dominant social background in the Stalinist parties.

Whether the debates are substantial or empty, the congress represents a stage in the evolution of a certain sector of the working class. It is important, if only because, by legalizing the opportunist turn in France, it immediately transplants it to the rest of the world. We are faced with a curious specimen of bureaucratic thought: while it grants, at least on paper, a certain liberal autonomy to the sections, even ordering them to think for themselves and adapt to their respective national circumstances, its congress proclaims at the same time that all the countries of the world, from fascist Germany to democratic Norway, from Great Britain to India, from Greece to China, have the same need for a "Popular Front" and, where possible, a Popular Front government. The congress is important because it marks the definitive entry of the Comintern -after a series of hesitations and false steps- into its "fourth period", whose slogan is "all power to Daladier" [French republican minister], whose flag is the tricolor, and whose anthem is the Marseillaise, which drowns out the strains of the Internationale. [...]

We would be making a fatal mistake if we believed that the "self-criticism" of the leaders was enough to liquidate the theory and practice of the "third period" totally and painlessly, and that the opportunist and patriotic turn is already assured of a future free of difficulties. Although the bureaucracy was able to throw into the flames, with scandalous ease, everything it had worshipped, the same does not happen with the masses. Their attitude towards slogans is more serious and genuine. The spirit of the "third period" is still alive in the consciousness of the workers who follow the Communist International. And this spirit became evident among the French communists in Toulon and Brest. The leaders were able to hold back the opposition of the rank and file only for a time, swearing to them "in secret" that this was a clever maneuver designed to deceive the radicals and the socialists, to separate them from the masses, and then, "then we'll show them what we really are". On the other hand, the coalitionist and patriotic turn of the Communist Party wins it the sympathy of new layers quite far removed from the working class, very patriotic and very dissatisfied with the financial decrees, for whom the Communist Party is merely the most energetic wing of the Popular Front.

“The Stalinist Turn”. Leon Trotsky, 1935

During the Spanish Revolution, from July 1936 and, without any pretense, from 1937, the Popular Front will become the embryo from which the PCE will lead and organize the counter-revolution, disarming the militias, retaking control of the factories and reorganizing the government and its repressive bodies, dismantled by the proletarian insurrection of July 19. The Popular Front materializes the real meaning of anti-fascism. It is its clearest nationalist and patriotic expression, the battering ram of the counter-revolution, the last resort of the bourgeois state and the one truly responsible for Franco's victory.

When the bourgeoisie, through the Popular Front, had succeeded in subjecting to its discipline the CNT, the FAI and the POUM, the organizations most likely to help the government-Committees seize political power, the march against the revolution began brazenly, starting with the destruction of the Committees. Stalinism played the role of conductor of the counter-revolutionary orchestra. As long as the proletariat was armed and the remnants of the bourgeois coercive bodies were in pieces, neither Stalinism nor social democracy dared open their mouths to say that the Committees had to be destroyed, the dying State strengthened, the expropriations halted and, in general, all the revolutionary measures that gave the lie to the theory of the "new type of democracy" combated.

The first concern of the "Government of Victory" had to be to procure the armed force necessary to disarm the workers. Goaded by Stalinism, Largo Caballero began new recruitment for the Civil Guard, the Assault Guard and the Carabineros, made up under the name of National Security Guard. When the Government believed itself strong enough, it began the offensive to disarm the proletarians and peasants and liquidate the socialist conquests. In reality, the Stalinist and socialist counter-revolutionaries were strong only in the certainty that anarchism and the POUM would take no measures to prevent their attempt. Had either of them, or both, after publicly denouncing what was being prepared, called on the masses to destroy the remnants of the State and the bourgeois institutions and take all political power, the encircling maneuver of the Government of Victory would have failed and the revolution would have followed the course that history set for it. But the Stalino-socialist maneuver succeeded thanks to the collaboration of anarchism and POUMism. The bourgeois State had weapons with which to defeat the workers and disarm them.

Then, at the end of 1936, it publicly showed its hand. Our war was not a civil war but a "war of national independence"; in our zone the aim was not social revolution but a "new type of democracy", that is, bourgeois society. The Unified Socialist Youth gathered under the Stalinist aegis to assure the millionaires of Paris, London and Washington that they were neither a class party nor a party of social revolution. The vile Carrillo confirmed it: let it be known that we are not making a maneuver; while Comorera described the workers who had defeated the fascist insurrection as tribes, and the Committees that expropriated the bourgeoisie as thieves. Shortly afterwards the prisons were filling up with revolutionaries, and hundreds of them died murdered by Stalinism or by the GPU.

“Historical significance of July 19”. G. Munis, 1938

Interestingly, the PCE also transmutes in its social composition. As the PCE leader Fernando Claudín reports:

Numerous petty-bourgeois elements flock to the ranks of the PCE, attracted by the reputation the party acquires as defender of order, legality and small property. And above all there flows into the PCE -or places itself under its leadership through the JSI- a large contingent of youth not yet formed in the traditional trade unions and workers' organizations.

José Díaz's report to the Central Committee in May 1937 shows that, alongside the 150,000 wage earners the party regiments (who include, besides agricultural and industrial workers, civil servants and company managers), there are already more than 100,000 small proprietors (professionals and farmers), together with 20,000 women whose social background is not recorded. Outside witnesses, linked to the PCE at the time, reinforce these figures in their testimonies.

The CP is today, in the first place, the party of the administrative and military personnel, in the second place the party of the petty bourgeoisie and of certain well-off peasant groups, in the third place the party of the public employees, and only in the fourth place the party of the workers.

Franz Borkenau. The Spanish Cockpit, 1937.

The sociological analysis of the membership reflects the extent to which Popular Front politics and the transmission-belt party had succeeded in attracting social sectors whose aim was to save the democratic republican state from the workers' revolution under way.