The 80th anniversary of the end of the imperialist Second World War brings us closer to the realization of the possibility of a new generalized imperialist conflict.

Apart from the recent fronts in Ukraine and the Middle East, 50 others remain active, stretching from Senegal to Myanmar and from Mozambique to Kashmir, while in others the sparks of war smolder in the ruins of past conflicts. Behind the local protagonists of the regional conflicts, the US-China struggle for primacy in the imperialist system and the multifaceted involvement of the two main imperialist blocs, the Euro-Atlantic (US-NATO-EU, despite the antagonisms and rivalries between them, which have been intensifying lately) and the developing Eurasian bloc (led by Russia and China, also with antagonisms and rivalries). At the same time, the possibility of direct military engagement of the two blocs in points of concentration of military forces, such as Ukraine and the South China Sea, or in new areas of confrontation, is brooding due to their incontestable rivalry.

The risk of a generalized imperialist war is not in contradiction with the vacillations of capitalist states in their choice of an imperialist alliance or with the attempt to detach or neutralize allies from the opposing imperialist bloc (this includes attempts to strengthen bourgeois powers with a different international orientation or to destabilize bourgeois governments). Nor is it in contradiction with the antagonisms that exist within each imperialist bloc and the reshuffling of alliances. These are phenomena that accompanied the previous generalized imperialist conflicts until the opposing camps were clearly established.

 The predominance of war preparation over diplomatic negotiations contributes to the generalization of war. War preparation is not only expressed in the arms race and the promotion of the "war economy", i.e. the adaptation of the capitalist economy to war conditions. An integral part of it is also the generalized offensive of capitalist propaganda, so that the workers’-people’s forces accept the possibility of war, embrace the alliances and aims of their capitalist state and are actively mobilized to achieve these aims. 

Therefore, drawing historical conclusions about the Second World War (WWII) from the perspective of the workers’-people’s forces is not only particularly useful and crucial, but also extremely timely.

The dawn of the 20th century marked the transition of capitalism to the age of imperialism. The rapid capitalist development of the previous period led to the predominance of finance capital and monopolies. During this period, the colossal capitalist accumulation and the images of the luxurious everyday life of the bourgeoisie stand in stark contrast to the horrendous living conditions of the working class and the plundering of the colonies. Its end was accompanied by the violent confrontation between capitalist states and imperialist alliances for the divvying up of colonies, spheres of influence and markets.

World War I was a standard product and most characteristic example of the new era; it was an imperialist war. In one way or another it involved peoples from all 5 continents. In any case, a large part of the world then was incorporated into the colonial system of a powerful capitalist state. The war ended with the victory of the imperialist alliance of the Entente (Great Britain, France, Serbia, Belgium, Japan, Italy, Romania, USA and Greece) and the defeat of the Central Powers (German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ottoman Empire, Kingdom of Bulgaria).

However, during this period, out of the ruins and horror of the imperialist massacres, sprang forth the Great October Socialist Revolution, led by the Bolshevik Party. Immediately after the outbreak of the imperialist war, Lenin predicted its transformation into a socialist revolution and reoriented party activity accordingly. Adopting the goal of socialist revolution, after the overthrow of the Tsar, the Bolshevik party clashed with the bourgeois reformers who sought to continue the war at the side of the Entente, with the reformist socialists (Mensheviks, etc. a.) and the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRs) who called for the soviets to be subordinated to the bourgeois government, and even a section of the Bolsheviks who supported workers' hegemony in the bourgeois-democratic revolution. 

The revolutionary strategy of the Bolsheviks allowed them to detach themselves from the rival imperialist alliances, from the domestic bourgeois and opportunist forces and finally, under conditions of a revolutionary situation created by the war, to lead the victorious socialist revolution.

The Bolshevik victory saved the prestige of the international Socialist movement and offered a political plan for exiting the war for the benefit of the working class and its allies. It unleashed a European-wide revolutionary storm. Socialist revolution broke out in Finland (formerly part of the Czarist Empire), but also in defeated capitalist states (Germany, Hungary). Phenomena of delegitimization of capitalist power and workers' revolts also appeared in other capitalist states, such as in Italy, victorious but wronged by the divvying up of the imperialist spoils.

The formation of revolutionary conditions did not correspond to an analogous ideological-political maturity and organizational readiness of the subjective factor. In most of the cases, the revolutionary socialists delayed in breaking off from the reformist leaderships of the social-democratic parties (shortly before or during the peak of the class struggle), which played a decisively negative role in the outcome of the revolutions. The social-democratic parties, already supporting the domestic bourgeoisie against its international competitors, eventually joined with it in the repression of the revolutionary workers' movement, completing their class defection and rendering it widely obvious.

Under the weight of the previous developments, the process of founding Communist Parties was completed and the Communist International was formed (1919). At its core were Lenin's theoretical elaborations on imperialism, the tasks of communists in a period of imperialist war, the class character of the state, the necessity of socialist revolution leading to the conquest of workers' power and the beginning of socialist construction under the leadership of the CP. These elaborations were crystallized in the 21 terms of a party's membership in the CI, which were adopted at its 2nd Congress (1920).

It is impossible to understand the class struggle and the inter-imperialist conflicts of the interwar period and ultimately the Second World War detached from the aforementioned.

In the aftermath of the First World War, the victorious capitalist states, in controlling colonies, spheres of influence and markets and imposing war reparations on the defeated, conquered the top of the imperialist system and were able to subjugate their competitors economically. Even more, utilizing the surplus profits from the exploitation of the colonies, they were able to subsume the workers’-people’s forces and erode the workers' movement, creating obstacles to workers’ feeling the strength and hope represented by the young Soviet power and go the activity of the Communist Parties.

At the same time, the defeated capitalist states and those that did not reap the expected gains were faced with a double threat. On the one hand, the new intra-imperialist balances were putting obstacles in the way of their capitalist development. On the other hand, the prestige of Soviet Russia and the activities of the Communist Parties were undermining the stability of capitalist power. Their only solution was to escape, moving forward through a war revanche which would allow the world to be divvied up once again. Thus, fascism was chosen as the most appropriate political form of capitalist power to achieve two interrelated objectives, the suppression of the internal class enemy and the preparation for the confrontation of rival capitalist states.

Contrary to the eternal disorienting arguments of capitalist propaganda, the singularity of fascism-Nazism did not concern the suspension of bourgeois parliamentarism, which characterizes all dictatorships. After all, Italian fascism and German Nazism emerged from parliaments, securing the support or consent of bourgeois politicians. Nor was the pursuit of territorial expansion and the exploitation of other peoples a particular feature of it, since the competition between capitalist states to secure territories, markets and spheres of influence is inherent in imperialism, whereas at the time of the rise of fascism-Nazism, even the so-called democratic capitalist states were guilty of the crimes of colonialism. What’s more, the racist theories that characterized Nazism were earlier the focus of the propaganda justifying colonialism in the name of civilizing the colonized peoples.

Nor is the particular essence of fascism-Nazism to be found in the unprecedented repression of the workers' and communist movement, which is a common feature of every political form of capitalist power, especially in times of war or threat to its existence. Besides, as long as fascism-Nazism was directed exclusively against the enemy within, it was endorsed by important supporters of parliamentarism, such as Winston Churchill.

If there was one peculiarity of fascism-Nazism, it was the mass and active enlistment of popular forces in the plans and crimes of the bourgeoisie. It is a given that the mobilization of popular forces and the elicitation of the consent of others, especially in the case of Nazi Germany, flourished in the soil cultivated by the predatory peace agreements. In societies ravaged by the capitalist economic crisis and war reparations, by misery and unemployment, bourgeois megalomaniacal sermonizing presented itself as a way out. At the same time, the "war economy" provided not only the conditions for success in the coming war, but also the necessary material substrate for the reconfiguration and consolidation of the alliances of the bourgeoisie.

The aspirations of the fascist Axis were met in various ways. A section of the bourgeoisie, mainly in Britain and France, advocated the so-called 'appeasement policy', i.e. seeking to turn the territorial claims of the Axis to the east, triggering a German-USSR conflict. They hoped that the mutual weakening of the warring parties would then allow them to overthrow Soviet power and restore the balance of power in the imperialist system.

Similarly, American bourgeois circles initially confronted Japanese aspirations, trying to redirect them from the Pacific towards the territories of China and the USSR. In any case, Japan had invaded Manchuria since 1931 and had created the puppet state of Manchukuo on the border of the USSR.

Advocates of "appeasement" dominated in the 1930s. This explains the tolerance of the so-called democratic capitalist governments to the Axis's aggression rhetoric [re-establishment of the German army (March 1935), militarization of the Rhineland (1935), British-German naval agreement (June 1935), Italian invasion of Ethiopia (October 1935), declaration of Italian East Africa (May 1936), policy of "non-intervention" in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), annexation of Austria (March 1938), Munich Pact between Britain-France-France-Germany-Italy (September 1938), pro-Nazi coup in Slovakia and the occupation of Bohemia-Moravia by the German army (March 1939)]. Even when Germany attacked Poland (September 1939), Great Britain and France declared war on it, which became historically known as "strange", precisely because no military confrontation took place. Instead, Britain, France and the USA cooperated with Germany and Italy in supporting Finland during the Soviet-Finnish War (October 1939-March 1940).

The unleashing of the German blitzkrieg against Denmark and Norway (April 1940) and then against the Netherlands (Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg) and France (May 1940) and their rapid occupation were proof of failure and the swan song of the "appeasement policy", which brought about changes in the governance of the so-called democratic capitalist states. Thus, Churchill found himself at the helm of the British government, while General de Gaulle denounced the formation of the Vichy regime and fled to British territory to form a French government in exile and continue the fight against the Axis. The US President Franklin Roosevelt finally declared in favor of a military confrontation with the Axis. As a result, the conditions for an alliance with the USSR gradually took shape.

The perspective of the proponents of the conflict with the fascist Axis, which appeared with variations in the USA, Great Britain, France and other capitalist states, was not the product of a distinct stance against fascism-Nazism for ideological or other principled reasons, as was purported in the post-war period. Nor did it express a more tolerant attitude towards the USSR, the workers' and communist movement. Rather, it was the result of the refutation of the "appeasement policy" and was oriented and delineated by the conviction that a war conflict with the Axis would better serve the interests of their bourgeois classes.

As Churchill claimed, he was still anti-communist, but he considered that British interests were at that time threatened more by Axis ambitions than by the USSR. After the war, he called on the US to launch a nuclear attack against the USSR, while all capitalist states made use of members of the Nazi and fascist regimes in the global confrontation between capitalism and socialism.

The formulation of the foreign policy of the first socialist state was a demanding and complex task. It had to be oriented primarily to the needs of the international class struggle. At the same time, it took into account other parameters, such as the need to develop specific trade relations with capitalist states which would provide mainly machine tools and raw materials necessary for socialist industrialization, but also certain products necessary for the subsistence of the workers’-people’s forces. The coverage of the above-mentioned needs was a precondition for the development of the socialist economy and the consolidation of workers' power. With the same orientation, Soviet foreign policy was trying to prevent war.

Aiming to achieve the aforementioned objectives, the USSR exploited the intra-imperialist and intra-bourgeois contradictions. It initially prioritized the Axis and the fascist political forces in each country as its main adversary, given the continuing Japanese threat on the eastern Soviet border and the anti-Soviet positions and objectives of Nazi Germany. Moreover, after the signing of the pact against the Communist International by Germany and Japan (1936) and the subsequent accession of Italy and other capitalist states, the declared aims of overthrowing Soviet power and suppressing the activity of the working-class and communist movement were expressed as a central position of the Axis.

Thus, Soviet foreign policy attempted to promote agreements with capitalist states affected by the claims of the Axis [Pacific Ocean Pact (1933), Pact for European Collective Security (1934), Franco-Soviet and Soviet-Slovak Pact of Mutual Assistance (1935), multi-level support for the Spanish government after the Franco coup (1936), etc.], without any particular results.

To achieve its goals, Soviet foreign policy considered necessary the support of social democracy in many phases of the interwar period. The latter, however, exerted ideological-political pressure on the Communist International, directly or through the Communist Parties. In this course, the uncoupling of fascism from its capitalist base was theorized and ideologized, which brought about changes in the strategy of the International Communist Movement as constituted in the form of the Communist International.

Whereas the 6th Congress of the Communist International (1928) assessed the coming war as the result of inter-imperialist antagonisms and linked it to the outbreak of a new round of socialist revolutions, the 7th Congress (1935) assigned the role of key instigator of the anti-Soviet crusade and imperialist war to fascism-Nazism. In doing so, however, it detached the war from the intra-imperialist contradictions and from the responsibilities of the so-called democratic governments of the capitalist states. On the same basis, the dominant dilemma of the time was assessed not as the choice between bourgeois or socialist democracy, but between bourgeois democracy and fascism.

As a result, the new directions of the Communist International provided for the generalized co-operation of the Communist Parties with Social-Democratic and other bourgeois forces, even at the governmental level. In this way, conclusions about the role of social democracy in World War I were set aside. More importantly, a possible fusion of the Communist Parties with the social democratic parties was approved. Also promoted was the participation of the Communist Parties in bourgeois governments, which were seen as transitional forms of moving towards socialism.

Although the previously-mentioned directions were common to all the CPs, the formation of Popular Fronts, i.e. the cooperation of the Communist Parties with social democracy and other bourgeois parties and their emergence within government was achieved only in France and Spain, where intra-bourgeois conflicts over the international alliances of the capitalist state were particularly acute. Their formation essentially expressed the will of a section of the bourgeois forces to clash with the choices of the Axis and to win over the communists and the workers' and popular movement in order to prevail in the intra-bourgeois competition.

The Popular Front governments did not achieve their objectives. As was to be expected, they did not open the road to socialism. Nor did they constitute an effective obstacle to the rise of bourgeois fascist forces in the governmental administration of the capitalist states in question.

In the case of Spain, when a possible support of the elected government was undermined by the "appeasement policy" of Great Britain and France, the bourgeois forces that opposed the Axis either negotiated with Franco or fled abroad.

On the other hand, the participation of the French Communist Party in the government could not modify foreign policy and impose support for the Popular Front government in Spain. On the contrary, the French government refused to hand over the Spanish gold reserves and closed the border with Spain. Particularly instructive is the fact that the same parliament that had voted in favor of the Popular Front government outlawed the French Communist Party (with a law intended to deal with fascist organizations) and, after the victorious German offensive, recognized the Occupation forces and the Vichy government.

Meanwhile, the USSR, faced with the failure to form an anti-war coalition and the Japanese invasion of Mongolian territory, tried to buy some time by signing the Nonaggression Pact with Germany (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, August 1939). The Nonaggression Pact with Japan, signed later, served the same purpose. With Molotov-Ribbentrop, it secured 21 months that were particularly valuable for its war preparations. During this time it was able to significantly increase its frontline military forces and ensure that they were supplied and equipped with new resources.

The needs of Soviet defence were also translated into a new direction for the Communist International. A few days after the declaration of the “Phoney War” (September 1939), the Comintern modified its positions and its directions for the Communist Parties. It attributed responsibility for the war to both imperialist alliances and considered the distinction between democratic and fascist capitalist states obsolete. Although these positions were correct, they perpetuated the alignment of Comintern decisions with the demands of Soviet foreign policy.

The German attack against the USSR (June 1941) and the US entry into the war, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour (December 1941), formed new conditions. From the onset of the German offensive, Great Britain, left without allies in Europe and under German air and naval attack, expressed its intention to cooperate with the USSR. In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt sent a joint message to Stalin and in October the US Congress included the USSR in the Lend-Lease Act, paving the way for the strengthening of the Red Army.

The new situation was again reflected in a change in the positions of the Comintern. The Secretary of its Executive Committee, Georgi Dimitrov, argued that the Nazi attack on the USSR had changed the character of the war and that it was now of the utmost importance to help speed up the crushing of fascism. He therefore called on communists not to set the goal of socialist revolution, but to take the lead in the national liberation movements and form alliances with those who wished to fight the Axis.

But, like WW I, WW II was the continuation and the inevitable conclusion of the inter-imperialist rivalries. It was also an imperialist war and therefore as unjust as the previous one. Both on the side of the Axis, which tried to redistribute the world, and on the side of the so-called democratic governments of the capitalist states, which tried to maintain their hegemonic position in the imperialist system.

On a class basis, the only new counteracting factor in the new imperialist conflict was the Soviet socialist power. From the standpoint of the USSR, the war was just; it was a struggle to save workers’ power, which was at the same time a stronghold, a source of inspiration and a beacon of hope for the working class of the world. The Soviet people made unprecedented sacrifices in this titanic struggle, precisely because, in fighting for the socialist homeland, they were defending the first workers’ state and the socialist relations of production that were then being established – everything that had contributed to the development of socialist production with the aim of social welfare. The contribution of socialist relations to the explosion of the productive forces was also reflected in the fighting capacity of the Red Army.

The war was also just on the part of the national liberation movements, which had the Communist Parties as their lifeblood and leaders. Their struggle was necessary to defend the interests of the workers and the people in a period of imperialist war and at the same time it was a school in which the working and popular masses learnt to organize and fight with a weapon in their hands. It was also an internationalist struggle that was necessary to strengthen the struggle of the Soviet people and the Red Army. 

But this did not change the overall character of the war. The capitalist states fighting the Axis continued to wage an unjust war on behalf of the forces of class exploitation. Besides, in the course of the war, they did not cease their efforts to weaken both Germany and the Soviet Union, nor did they stop working to create postwar enclaves to undermine socialist construction. Moreover, for a long time, they avoided opening a second front in Europe, despite the persistent demands from the Soviet leadership. Basically, the USA and Great Britain wanted to support the USSR materially so that it could wear down the Axis powers.

Of course, the USSR benefited from the confrontation of the Axis with other capitalist states. Not mainly because it received crucial material support necessary to meet the demands of the war, but because the inter-imperialist contradictions also favored the Soviet objectives. For example, the conflict between the USA and Japan over control of the Pacific prevented the latter from attacking the Soviet eastern frontier, thus allowing the transfer of critical Red Army forces to the European eastern front.

However, the needs and priorities of the USSR’s foreign policy, as well as the necessary participation of communists in the national liberation struggle in their respective countries, did not justify the CP’s abandonment of the goal of overthrowing capitalist power. Similarly, the necessary struggle against the authorities of the occupying forces and their collaborators, and a certain coexistence of communists and bourgeois forces in this struggle, did not invalidate the class struggle in the occupied countries. On the contrary, in some cases, as in Greece, the mass participation of the working class and its allies in the national liberation struggle, combined with the simultaneous contempt of the bourgeois powers, created the conditions for a revolutionary situation and the conquest of revolutionary workers’ power at the time of the Axis defeat.

In general, in all countries, the anti-fascist bourgeois political forces were weakened either because they abstained from the resistance or because they organized small resistance groups staffed by former officials of the army and other state repressive mechanisms, intending to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage. They opposed the mass mobilization of the workers and the people precisely because it could be turned against the domestic capitalist power in the future. It was only after the development of the partisan armies led by the Communist Parties that the relative expansion of bourgeois organizations was put forward as an opposing force. Moreover, the anti-fascist bourgeois organizations did not hesitate to cooperate with the bourgeois forces collaborating with the Axis in a number of countries (Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania) when the escalation of the communist resistance and the imminent defeat of the occupation forces threatened the future of capitalist power. 

The above proves that the bourgeois forces opposed to Nazism acted not only in their immediate but also in their long-term interests. The unfortunate thing is that the CPs did not do the same at a time when the class struggle was de facto sharpened with the aim of “who-whom”.

When the victories of the Red Army and the partisan armies on the battlefields shifted the correlation of forces to their side and destabilized the administrations of the occupiers, the attitude of the bourgeois forces also changed. The landing of the US-British forces in Sicily took place after the victory of the Red Army at Stalingrad (February 1943), which was the great turning point in the outcome of the imperialist war, and while the Battle of Kursk (July 1943) had begun.

This was followed by the shift of the bourgeois forces in Italy, the removal of Mussolini from the Grand Council of Fascism, the appointment of General Badoglio by the Italian king, and finally the capitulation of Italy, which triggered the German invasion of northern Italy. It was now clear, however, that the tide of war was finally turning against the Axis.

Thus, they all redirected themselves to act according to the postwar context. Under these conditions, the rationale and direction behind the decision of the Communist International to dissolve itself (March 1943) did not promote linking the workers’ and people’s struggle against fascism with the struggle against the capitalist power that gave birth to it. It did not guide the CPs to prepare their counterattack in conditions of crisis of capitalist power – whether in fascist or other political form – and at a time when their influence was growing, due to their vanguard struggle and sacrifices, as well as due to the prestige of the USSR. Therefore, no other links in the imperialist chain were broken under the conditions of the revolutionary situation created by the war.

 Of course, in the context of the anti-Hitler coalition, the USSR tried to promote decisions that were favorable to the USSR itself and to the communists mainly from neighboring countries. However, the course of the war operations and the class correlation of forces within the occupied countries also had an impact on the outcome of the tug-of-war of its opposition to the countervailing plans of the capitalist states.

In the field of negotiations, the USSR tried to create conditions that would further prevent imperialist intervention against it. It tried to create a friendly environment so that its neighboring states would not be turned into an anti-Soviet base. Their liberation from the forces of the Red Army, with the greater or lesser contribution of the domestic Communist Parties, contributed to the formation of favorable postwar governments. In any case, the presence of the Red Army was a powerful factor in strengthening the domestic workers’ and people’s movement, as former Nazi collaborators were defeated, stripped of their property and expelled from the state apparatus.

However, all these were combined with the coexistence in the postwar governments of the communists with the social democrats and other anti-fascist bourgeois forces, which prevented the material bases of capitalist power – the private ownership of the means of production – from being challenged. This fact had a particularly negative impact on the development of the class struggle in these countries and on their relations with the USSR.

The capitalist states of the anti-Hitler coalition also sought to exploit the role of their armies in the liberation of their countries, for the consolidation of capitalist power. Their intentions were facilitated by the strategy of the Communist Parties, as they were participating in the postwar governments of national unity, believing that they offered the possibility for a peaceful transition to socialism. In reality, the communists remained in government because of their increased prestige among the working masses, as long as each capitalist power was not yet consolidated. They were expelled when the bourgeois forces overcame the stumbling block of the tremors of imperialist war.

The argument that the CPs could not havThe whole history of the 20th century and the period of WW II show the close connection between imperialist war and socialist revolution. The tremendous shocks that war brings to the stability of capitalist power create the objective preconditions of its overthrow; they make it the great ¨architect¨ of the socialist revolution, provided that a revolutionary strategy guides the action of the Communist Parties. Precisely for this reason, the key issue for a Communist Party under conditions of imperialist war is that its struggle should aim at a planned, organized and conscious struggle for the conquest of power.e taken a different stance because the balance of power in each country was predetermined and was dominated by the forces of the US and Great Britain is defeatist. It does not take into account the impact of the class struggle and the coordinated revolutionary action of the Communist Parties at a pan-European level.

Equally invalid is the argument that the participation of the Communist Parties in governments prevented imperialist aggression against the USSR. Not only because the Communist Parties were unable to influence the foreign policy of the capitalist states, but above all because it was the overthrow of capitalist power in more countries that could have decisively strengthened the USSR in its confrontation with international imperialism. This is also shown by the course of the revolution in China, which, by overthrowing capitalist power, created better conditions for the Soviet eastern frontier. 

The arduous study of the historical course of the workers’ and communist movement does not aim to use the luxury of historical distance and the knowledge of historical continuity to stigmatize past weaknesses or misguided choices. On the contrary, this study is motivated by the need to feed its experience, paid with sacrifices and blood, with useful conclusions for today’s class struggles, at a time when the clouds of imperialist wars are looming. In this sense, we could also briefly note the following:

1. The whole history of the 20th century and the period of WW II show the close connection between imperialist war and socialist revolution. The tremendous shocks that war brings to the stability of capitalist power create the objective preconditions of its overthrow; they make it the great ¨architect¨ of the socialist revolution, provided that a revolutionary strategy guides the action of the Communist Parties. Precisely for this reason, the key issue for a Communist Party under conditions of imperialist war is that its struggle should aim at a planned, organized and conscious struggle for the conquest of power.
2. The stance of the party of the working class towards imperialist war does not only determine the success or failure of a socialist revolution, provided that the conditions of a revolutionary situation are not created from the outset or even in all countries. Above all, it defines the future of the party itself and of the class struggle at an international level. Hence the stance of the Communist Parties in a future generalized imperialist war will either lead to the decisive regroupment of the International Communist Movement or aggravate its crisis.
3. The Communist Parties, despite their heroic struggle during WW II, could not formulate a revolutionary strategy for exiting the war. Their participation, along with the social democrats and other bourgeois forces, in anti-fascist fronts and postwar governments, as well as the ideologization of the USSR’s alliance with capitalist states, was an obstacle hindering not only military confrontation with the Axis but also the shaping of the postwar order. This prevented the outbreak and victory of socialist revolutions in conditions when capitalist power was shaken. At the same time, this also led Communist Parties in capitalist states to diverge from the revolutionary strategy. 
4. The Communist Parties can use to their advantage the vital space created by the intra-bourgeois and inter-imperialist contradictions to develop their action, as long as they clearly see the common anti-labor and anti-popular identity of all bourgeois sections and imperialist alliances, and without losing sight of their goal to overthrow capitalist power. Otherwise, they only perpetuate and deepen the division of the working class and its allies, driving them into the rival bourgeois and imperialist camps.