The English Party’s position in support of the imperialist war is wrong. This is in fact support for Chamberlain. In the war each Communist must fight against reaction in his own country, not against fascist reaction in a foreign country. It is not fascist Germany, which concluded an agreement with the USSR, but reactionary anti-Soviet England, with its enormous colonial empire, which is the bulwark of capitalism. Therefore the tactic of antifascist struggle is also not applicable here. By reiterating formulas about the antifascist war, the British Communists are helping the bourgeoisie drag the workers into the war. The slogan of Communists of all the belligerent capit[alist] states is: the struggle against the imperialist war. 31

31 RGASPI, f. 495, op. 184, d. 4, outgoing 1939 to France, l. 53, coded dispatch of 29 September 1939, ms.; Bayerlein, Narinski, Studer, and Wolikow, eds., Moscou-Paris-Berlin, p. 84.