Congress of the Peoples of the East.

The Soviet Union's Eastern Strategy in 1920

The “First Congress of the Peoples of the East” was held in the city of Baku from September 1 to 8, 1920. The first account to become available in the West was that of H. G. Wells, who had been in Russia when the Congress was taking place.¹

"The BAKU Congress was the most decisive step taken by the early Communist International to forge an alliance with the oppressed peoples of the East. Held under siege conditions in the Red Azerbaidzhan in the midst of the Russian Civil War, it united Communist Party delegates and representatives of the liberation movements. The Congress issued a call for war to the death against British imperialism. Its proceedings contain valuable lessons for the struggle to unite the colonial struggle with the battles of the European working class today. “²

There is some evidence that the Bolshevik leaders in fact regarded the revolutionary movement in the East as calculated to embarrass the British as a useful tactical device. By increasing the level of anti-imperialist propaganda and agitation it appeared possible to bring pressure to bear on the British government, and improve the Soviet bargaining position.³ This essentially manipulative line of thinking is represented most clearly, perhaps, by Trotsky who expressed the opinion that a Soviet revolution in the East would be of advantage to them "mainly as a most important item of diplomatic exchange with England." ⁴

Out of print but available online.⁵

U.S. audiences saw a flash of the “First Congress of the Peoples of the East” in the movie Reds, ⁶ a 1981 American film about the life and career of John Reed, the journalist and writer who chronicled the October Revolution in Russia in his 1919 book Ten Days That Shook the World.

The papers of John Reed include his speech at the Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East. The John Reed papers are at the Harvard library.⁷

1. 1. H. G. Wells, Russia in. the Shadows (London, 1920), pp. 79, 82 (New York, 1921), p1). 96-97, 9.

2. This volume is out of print but the full stenographic record of Congress of the Peoples of the East BAKU, SEPTEMBER 1920 is available in English online as a pdf here.

3. White, Stephen. “Communism and the East: The Baku Congress, 1920.” Slavic Review 33, no. 3 (1974): 492–514.

4. Trotsky Papers, vol. 2 (The Hague, 1971), no. 556, p. 509.

5. This volume is out of print but the full stenographic record of Congress of the Peoples of the East BAKU, SEPTEMBER 1920 is available in English online as a pdf here.

6. Reds. Best Director. Warren Beatty. 1982.

7. John Reed Papers. Houghton Library. Harvard University.