PART III: THE SPEECH OF YUSUF KHATTAR AL HILW FOR THE SYRIAN COMMUNIST PARTY

(Your Voice in a World where Zionism, Steel, and Fire have

turned Justice Mute)

On The Speeches of Arab Delegates in the Seventh Congress of

the Comintern in Moscow, 1935:

PART III: THE SPEECH OF YUSUF KHATTAR

AL HILW FOR THE SYRIAN COMMUNIST PARTY

(Never before Published in Arabic or English)

Dear Readers of the Free Arab Voice,

The translation of Yusuf Khattar Al Hilw’s speech below

is the outcome of the combined efforts of two individuals:

Kevin Walsh, who translated from the original French into

English, and Muhammad Abu Nasr, who translated from Russian.

The result of cross-checking the two translations

was the piece below.  Interestingly enough, discrepancies

emerged between the Russian and French texts, especially in

certain places pertaining to Zionism.  The French piece seems

longer than the Russian piece especially since the delegates

where given only twenty minutes to deliver their addresses

and thus speakers could not have said all that they had written

down on their original speeches.  Nevertheless, scratching out

little comments about Zionism seems unrelated to considerations of

time, especially where Yusuf’s Khattar Al Hilw’s speech, already

permeated with anti-Zionism throughout, identifies Zionism as an

ideology of racial superiority.

Note especially how he viewed Zionist immigration to

Palestine as intrinsically serving imperialist goals.

In other words, he didn’tfall for the trap of speaking

about the “oppressed Jewish workers in Palestine” as some

other Arab delegates did.  In fact, these “immigrants”

were no different from an invading imperialist army. By

coming to Palestine on an imperialist bridgehead, they

have tied their lot to imperialism by definition.

Hence any real liberation is bound to make them worse

off as a matter of necessity.

Finally, note that at the time, Lebanon was still

considered part of Syria, so Yusuf Khattar Al Hilw

was speaking for the Syrian Communist Party although

originally Lebanese, while Khaled Bakdash (the Syrian)

was speaking for all Arab delegates who were present

at the Comintern  of 1935.  Such was the spirit of

camaraderie and the level of coordination between Arab

delegates then.  Thus, it is in that we can see the

travesty of forming two separate Lebanese and Syrian

Communist parties just when French imperialism found

it in its best interest to make Lebanon into a separate

state, where the division of Greater Syria into several

 states is condemned below in Yusuf Khattar Al Hilw’s

speech.  But then again, that is but one amongst many

manifestations of the original problem: the position of

Arab communists on the nationalist question.

Of course, Yusuf Khattar Al Hilw’s speech came at a time when

the Comintern was following a policy of Arabization, a policy

which Zionist elements resisted vehemently.  Very soon after

the Seventh Comintern, however, the Soviet Union began to reverse

itself on the Zionist movement, and thus on the Arab nationalist

question.  Later on, this culminated in the recognition of the

state of “Israel”.  Needless to say, we need not repeat ourselves

about how we disagree with the tendency to idolize Stalin that was

so prevalent in the speeches by many an Arab delegate at the

Comintern of 1935.  Furthermore, for an overall evaluation of the

positions of Arab communists on Arab unity and Palestine, and to

view the speeches by other Arab delegates at the Comintern of

1935, please go to:

The Official Arab Communist Line on Arab Unity

http://www.freearabvoice.org/reference/Bakdash.htm

Part I: Khaled Bakdash speaking for all Arab

Delegates http://www.freearabvoice.org/reference/Bakdash.htm#speech

Part II: The Speeches of the Palestinian and Iraqi

Delegates http://www.freearabvoice.org/reference/cominternYusufNazim.htm

THE FREE ARAB VOICE

=====================================================

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Introduction to the Speech by Yusuf Khattar Al Hilw:

by Muhammad Abu Nasr

Below you shall find Kevin Walsh’s and my translation

of the speech by Yusuf Khattar al-Hilw as representative

of the Syrian Communist Party at the 7th

Comintern Congress in 1935.  His code name at the

Congress was Nadir.

I have translated the first paragraphs and one

other paragraph from the Russian version of the

speech.  They are somewhat different from the French.

Those translated sections are in footnotes 1 and 2.

For example there is a line in the French referring to

"Zionist ideology and the chauvinism of racial

superiority" which is missing in the Russian version

of the speech.

As to the question of who made that change, one might

theoretically suspect Khalid Bakdash, since he knew

French and Russian and since he evidently saw the

Russian version (his code name, "Ramzi" is hand

written on the Russian version).

BUT Khalid Bakdash included almost an identical

expression in his own speech at the Congress (we have

translated "chauvinism of racial superiority" there as

simply "racism").  So I think Bakdash can be

eliminated as a "suspect".  (By the way, the Russian

version of Bakdash's speech oddly translated his

expression Zionist "chauvinism of racial superiority"

as "great-power chauvinism" which is strange, since

the Jews were not usually considered a "great power"

-- a term usually reserved for states.)

Other than his fairly sharp remarks about Zionist

sabotage of Arab CPs (which are important in

themselves) he also makes very interesting remarks

about the use that the Zionist elements in the Party

made of the Armenians and refers to a "false

internationalism" that ignored the role of the

Armenians in the colonial social order.  I believe

that is still a sensitive subject for the left, indeed

probably it is more sensitive now than it was then.

Yusuf Khattar al-Hilw, the man who gave this speech

here, was a Lebanese born in 1910.  His answers to the

personal questionnaire from the Congress listed his

social origin as "peasant", said he did agricultural

work, said he had only elementary education, and

joined the Communist Party in 1930.  He had worked as

the secretary of a village Party Committee and had

been arrested on several occasions.  In answer to the

question, "What languages do you know?" he answered,

"Arabic and a little French". Much later in his life

he wrote a number of books on the Lebanese CP and his

own memoires all of which were published by Dar

al-Farabi.  It seems he was still alive and a member

of the Lebanese CP as recently as 1992.

Kevin Walsh felt that al-Hilw’s French in this 1935

speech was at times not entirely correct and it's likely

that some of the editing (and there was lots of editing

on this manuscript!) was to clear up language problems.

I have left in the parts of the original that were

crossed out, however; but those passages are in square

brackets [ ].  Some of those cuts were probably due to

time constraints.  The speeches were supposed to be no

longer than 20 minutes each, and notes from the

meetings indicate that many people took up too much

time and there were frequent reminders about running

over time.

Muhammad Abu Nasr

=====================================================

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The Speech by Yusuf Khattar Al Hilw:

Fond No. 494

Opis' No. 1

Yed. Khranenia (delo) 181

Beginning 30 July 1935

In 177 pages.

Stenogramme with authors' corrections of the 10th

session of the VIIth Congress of the Comintern:

continuation of the discussion of the report of Pieck

"On the activity of the Executive Committee of the

Communist International" and of Angaretis "On the

activity of the International Control Commission".

Original.

-----------------------------------------------------

Syrian Communist Party report in French on pages

19-35. Corrected Russian translation on pages 5-18.

The corrected Russian text is also to be found in dela

182 and 186.

_____________________________________________________

AP/28/VII/1935.

Comrade Nadir, Syria

REPORT ON THE SYRIAN COMMUNIST PARTY DURING THE PERIOD

SINCE THE SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE COMINTERN

Comrades! The situation in Syria imposes heavy tasks

and a great responsibility on our party. Syria,

because of its location between Europe and Asia and on

the Mediterranean, is a strategic center of

fundamental importance for the entire system of French

imperialism. [It is in the Near East especially as it

is the supplier of its part of the petroleum from

Mosul, its naval and air base and a center of

concentration of its military forces whose strength or

weakness can in a large measure determine defeat or

victory in the Mediterranean and thus the good or poor

functioning of its colonial apparatus {that is, Syria

is the most convenient supply route for the petroleum

produced near Mosul to reach Europe. Air and naval bases

in Syria can command the Mediterranean Sea, control of

which is vital to the good functioning of colonialism –

FAV}. Our country is also the closest French military

base to our socialist homeland--the Soviet Union.]

Otherwise Syria is, as the Arabs say, the heart of the

Arab world. [The political and economic development of

this country, in general, and the development of the

national liberation movement in particular, are at the

center of attention of all the Arab countries.] Syria

is, finally, the only Arab country in which the

construction of a Communist Party has gone

successfully.

All these considerations give an importance on the

pan-Arab scale to the revolutionary movement in Syria

and to the activity of the Communist Party [especially

for the further development of the Communist movement

in this country and a great significance in case of

international armed conflict.](1)

French imperialism, understanding the importance of

Syria, has unleashed a savage terror to destroy the

revolutionary movement in the country and has directed

its most cruel blows against the working class and its

vanguard, the Communist Party, which was reduced to a

deep state of illegality.

After the armed insurrection of 1925 to 1927 in which

for two years the Arab peasants, workers, and laborers

showed how they are capable of fighting French

imperialism, these French imperialists proceeded to

carve up the country, in a new spirit, giving

different forms to its oppressive apparatus for each

different region. In the regions where feudal

exploitation dominated, where there is not yet

industrial development, where the influence of

national-reformism is very weak, they installed direct

and open dictatorship of the French military governors

(Jebel-Druze and the Alawite area). In the other

regions where industry is more or less developed,

where there is a growing proletariat, where the

influence of national-reformism is dominant,

imperialism tried, without much success, to hide

behind appearances of republican parliamentarism. So

there are at present in little Syria, five

governments, including two republics with

"constitutions, parliaments and ministers", two

independent states, and one autonomous province. This

imperialist policy strained to use the whole situation

to, on the one hand, divide the forces of the national

struggle of the Arab masses, and on the other to

strengthen its domination by hiding behind a treaty,

like the Anglo-Iraqi treaty, of alliance with the

national-reformist bourgeoisie. But this policy has

not thus far given imperialism the satisfying results

for which it has waited. The new projects of which the

French imperialist press has recently been speaking

concerning the intent to give Syria a federal

government have only emphasized these facts.

What the imperialist policy has come to achieve is to

strengthen its military and strategic base and to

exploit and starve the large mass of laboring people

in the country. French imperialism directly

monopolizes all the tariffs and indirect taxes on the

materials of mass consumption, which must, so they

say, serve to maintain the military forces to

compensate for the deficits of the foreign

monopolists. At the same time it imposes ruinous taxes

on the laboring masses to maintain the bureaucracy and

police apparatus of the five governments of Syria.

The policy of "tariff protection" has deprived Syria

of its markets, has destroyed the artisans by foreign

competition, has sharpened the struggle among the

different imperialists over the Syrian markets [and]

that has only served to deepen the economic and

agrarian crisis. The agrarian policy of French

imperialism has ruined the large mass of peasants and

Bedouins (nomads – FAV), has accelerated the loss of

the land of the poorest peasants, has increased the

servitude of the poor peasants and share-croppers and,

finally, has worsened the condition of certain large

strata of prosperous peasants. This is especially true

in the villages, where the imperialist dictatorship is

most hideous. The peasant is ruined by the taxes on the

crops, the land, the livestock, and on his person, by

the rents and the feudal despotism and suddenly also

by the inhuman oppression and humiliation by French

officers, police, and detachments of Circassian and

Armenian volunteers.

The whole burden of the imperialist policy in Syria

was increased especially in the last period, and all

signs are that it will continue to worsen. The

development of the national liberation movement pushes

imperialism to increase all possible measures of

oppression and terror. [Apart from savage laws against

freedom of the press, of speech, of assembly, of

association, and freedom to strike, apart from the law

of prevention of crimes which punishes with up to two

years in prison even the making of a gesture that

could provoke the "citizens", apart from all of that,

imperialism imposes new repressive laws especially

against the proletariat. One draft law which would

permit the lawful dissolution of trade-unions, which

were indissoluble even under Ottoman law, is being

passed in Syria.] Not even satisfied with its attempts

to turn national minorities, particularly Armenians,

against the Arab masses, French imperialism began to

open the doors of Syria to Zionist immigration which

by its force in conjunction with world Jewish capital,

must play a stronger role in the oppression of the

Arab national liberation movement.

Otherwise, the preparations for war, the offensive and

terror against the laboring population, are directly

connected with the contradictions that work for the

benefit of British, French, Italian, Japanese, and

Hitlerite imperialists struggling to extend their

influence over the Arab countries.

Italian fascist propaganda has greatly increased

in recent times. Each year Mussolini's agents organize

free trips to Italy for young Arabs. The station Radio

Bari broadcasts Arabic-language programs three times

a week about "Italian-Arab friendship" and "fascist

well-being in Italy". It is the same with German

fascism.  Hitler has purchased the largest bourgeois

newspapers in Syria which every day are full of

photographs and articles about Hitlerism, which they

represent as the "savior of the German people". Nazi

agents try to use the national hatred the Arab people

have for French imperialism to obtain their fascist

goals. As for Japan, whose dumping bankrupted the

artisans, it has recently advanced two projects to

send, at their expense, Arab intellectuals to complete

higher education at the universities of Tokyo.

[After the insurrection of 1925-1927, the promise of

the French imperialists to give to its mandate a new

spirit of liberalism has pushed not only the bourgeois

and landlords and liberals but even some strata of

bourgeois intellectuals to follow them. So the parties

of the national-reformist bourgeoisie, the

Koutla-Watanie, after the insurrection, concentrated

their efforts on the demand for a

"democratic-constitutional" regime which would assure

them a more or less large share of power and a certain

freedom of action for national capital. This party

tries to turn the anti-imperialist movement into the

struggle for parliamentarism and for the conclusion of

a Franco-Syrian treaty.]

But nevertheless no force has been able to oppose the

rapid radicalization of the laboring masses of the

country. [In Syria we are participating in the

development of a popular revolutionary movement which

includes larger and larger strata of the Arab masses

and which has often expressed itself in direct and

violent revolutionary actions against the forces of

imperialism.] If the national-reformist bourgeoisie

drew from the insurrection of 1925-1927 the

opportunistic and defeatist lesson that it is

impossible to fight French imperialism and gain

national independence by force of arms, but [only] by

"diplomatic" methods, nonetheless the Arab workers

have proved these seven years that they have inherited

the heroic heritage and traditions of this revolution,

and that they continue to march in its [revolutionary]

path.

During the large and bloody demonstrations in the

course of the parliamentary elections of 1933, some

Arab workers heroically resisted even against the

machineguns of French imperialism, which had been

fired freely upon the unarmed masses, and established

a state of siege that lasted for weeks. [During the

demonstrations of tens of thousands in Damascus against

the Franco-Syrian treaty that imperialism wanted to

impose upon Syria in 1933, and also during the

demonstrations against Zionism in the same year, the

masses had attacked the police stations and had freed

the imprisoned demonstrators after having sacrificed

many dead and wounded. In these actions our Communist

orators, having formed a united front with the

revolutionary nationalists, had managed to thwart

police attempts to transform the anti-imperialist

movement into an attack against the Jewish quarter.]

During the general strike that broke out in January

1935 in Zahle, a major agricultural centre, against

the taxes and the despotism of the administrative

authorities, more than 15,000 demonstrators were

engaged in street battles for five days and disarmed

the police and held the town and the town governor's

residence for an entire day. Our comrades were in the

front lines of battle, they led the street

demonstrations with exemplary courage, and among the

thirty arrested there were seventeen Communists. One

must add to this the peasants' struggle against taxes,

their violent resistance, sometimes in large groups,

against police and judicial confiscations; the actions

of the petit-bourgeoisie and their frequent clashes

with the police; occasional attacks by groups of

peasants with the support of whole villages against

the cars of tourists and French civil servants.  All

this testifies to the growth of an anti-imperialist

movement of the Arab masses.

The revolutionary nationalist movement in Syria is growing

rapidly and can lead decisive battles and unexpected

explosions against French imperialism, which we can

incite to prepare ourselves for the combat that is

drawing near. [One quite common characteristic of

recent anti-imperialist activity of the middle classes

is the development of illegal revolutionary groups

formed by intellectuals and petit-bourgeois elements

having terrorist or putschist goals, found in almost

every city and many villages.]

The most important stage in this popular uprising is

the development of activity of the Arab proletariat.

The strikes and the workers' actions which five years

back were rare and passed nearly unnoticed have

actually come to the center of political life in the

country because of their duration, their mass

political character, and their violence. The strikes

of advanced Syrian workers for trade-union freedom,

against the imperialist customs policy, against

terror, against the tobacco monopoly, their

participation for the first time in the Near East in

parliamentary elections in 1934, with their special

platform of national liberation, and their proletarian

candidates who obtained a good number of votes, all

this shows that the Syrian proletariat has entered

into the practical and direct struggle to assure its

hegemony in the national liberation struggle. The

actions of the advanced elements of the Syrian

proletariat have not only awakened the most backward

strata of workers and led them into the arena of

economic and political struggle, but these actions

were often the trigger of very active popular

movements. Several strikes by the thousands of taxi

drivers against the tariff policy and the privileges

of foreign monopolists leading the large masses of

shopkeepers and small businessmen to the struggle

against the taxes placed entire regions of the country

in a state of uprising and almost in a state of siege.

We see in all of this that it comes to be said, that

the imperialist domination of Syria has contributed

greatly to preparing the possibilities and conditions

necessary for the revolutionary reversal of this

domination. The objective conditions for the first

stage of the Syrian revolution, the stage of a general

revolutionary national uprising of the great masses

against imperialism, are in feverish preparation. At

the same time the subjective condition essential for

the victory of this upsurge is also preparing itself

through the rapid consolidation of the vanguard of the

proletariat, our Communist Party.

Our party, formed shortly before the Sixth Congress of

the Comintern, was obliged until 1930 to struggle

against opportunism and the club spirit, which not

only did not want to go among the masses, but did not

even want to show itself to the masses. At the time

when the march towards the masses had just begun,

party leadership came to be dominated by elements

coming from an enemy camp, from the camp of

counterrevolutionary Zionism. These elements, not

satisfied with having prevented the development of a

fraternal party in Palestine, also infiltrated into

Egypt and Syria to prevent the development of a

Communist movement there too. Gangrenous with Zionist

ideology and the chauvinism of racial superiority,

these elements introduced into our party a line that

prevented its transformation into a party of the

masses, into a party having a base in the masses of

the Arab proletariat. Their lack of confidence in the

Arab masses, in the revolutionary possibilities of the

Arab national liberation movement, prevented them from

seeing the bourgeois-democratic tasks of the Syrian

revolution and oriented them toward the Armenian

national minority.(2)  They denied, under cover of

phony internationalism, the special role of this

minority in the conditions of Syria in which this

minority opposed the Arab masses politically.  They

did not see that imperialism, aided by the Armenian

bourgeoisie and by some insignificant privileges,

tried to use this minority against the national

liberation movement of the Arab masses. These

semi-Zionist elements, supported by their Armenian

comrades, fell under a strong Dashnak [Armenian

Rightist Party– FAV] chauvinist influence and

sabotaged the Arabization of the party.  They

sabotaged the transformation of the party into a

mass party, which by its national and social

composition, by its righteous policy on

the national liberation movement and the workers'

movement would be capable of winning the confidence

of the Arab workers and of assuming a proletarian

leadership in the national revolutionary struggle.

It was only in 1933, in its fourth enlarged plenum,

that our party was able to take a correct line,

putting the line of Arabisation as the basis of its

policy. It has put forward this line in the national

movement, taken a correct line toward the national

minorities whose laboring masses have direct interests

in the national and agrarian Arab revolution. It has

liquidated anti-party groups and driven Zionist and

Dashnak elements from the leadership. Since then the

party has achieved some serious successes. It has won

some important positions in the working class and has

established for itself a solid base in the heart of

the Arab proletariat. It has won the confidence of the

large Arab masses who begin to see the Communists as

the most courageous, the most sincere, and the most

consistent in the grand cause of all the Arab peoples,

the cause of complete national independence, and the

throwing off of the hideous imperialist yoke.

It is especially in the trade-union movement, in the

strike struggle of the working class, that our party

has scored some serious gains. Having placed as the

basis of our activity the entry into the daily

struggle of the workers, we have been able to show

them by their own experience that our party is the

true fighter, even for their smallest demands. In this

manner we have been able in large measure to take into

our hands the push towards unionizing the working

class and helping it to find some forms of

organization and methods of struggle that are

effective in the conditions of increased imperialist

terror. Just during the years 1933 and 1934, in the 45

strikes which involved 50,000 strikers, we were able

entirely to lead the 15 most important strikes, while

participating in all the others through our orators,

our militants and our trade-union groups. In helping

the strikers (typographers, textile workers, cobblers,

etc.), in working out their platform, in the

organization of illegal or semi-legal meetings, in the

formation and leadership of strike picket lines, we

have gained the masses' great confidence as organizers

and leaders of their struggles. In 1933 we organized

and led the typographers' strike for trade-union

rights, which strongly reverberated in all the Arab

countries and which not only increased the authority

of the party, but also raised the morale of the whole

Arab working class. For ten days the country was

deprived of its largest daily newspapers, and in this

way all public attention was concentrated on the

strike. The destruction of the printing office of the

newspaper "L'Orient" by the strikers, a newspaper

which wanted to break the strike and which was,

because of this, unable to operate for 15 days, set a

shining example of the revolutionary manner in which

the advanced proletariat defends its actions against

strike-breakers. The sympathy strikes which broke out

among the typographers of several places, the refusal

of newspaper hawkers to distribute newspapers of

companies that were able to operate because of police

protection, the sending by the tobacco workers of

cigarettes to the strikers, the telegrams of

solidarity from several villages, all this showed

popular support which had gathered around this strike

led by our party.

During the last strike of the 10,000 taxi drivers in

April 1935, which lasted 13 days and took on such a

violent character that the country was almost in a

state of siege and in which the drivers burned and

destroyed dozens of cabs belonging to strikebreakers,

we participated very actively in the action which

unfolded nearly under our influence. In the course of

the struggle against the scabs, we had one death, a

Communist taxi driver, to whose funeral drivers from

distant places came on foot so as not to violate the

strike. The funeral turned into a major demonstration

and clashes with the police. Despite the betrayal by

the strike committee, formed mostly by garage owners

and reformist elements, which wanted to end the strike

on the eleventh day, the strike continued undiminished

for two more days under our influence and did not end

until after the reopening of the taxi drivers'

trade-union, closed by the authorities during the

strike, and the acceptance of a major part of their

demands.

During all our actions, we worked especially to

strengthen our organized base in the working class.

Our party created new cells in enterprises and trades.

It created new trade-unions there, where they had not

existed, such as those of the more or less large

oppositions in the national-reformist trade-unions,

and organized some illegal or semi-legal trade-union

groups in several professions not yet having

trade-unions and which worked for the creation of

their corresponding trade-unions. In 1934, we held a

trade-union conference in Damascus, in which the

representatives of 14 professions participated, and

then a larger one in Beirut. As a result of the work

of these two conferences, a manifesto containing the

platform of the general demands of the working class

was published and a trade-union council was elected to

lead the trade-union work in all of Syria.

In 1933 we were only established in two or three

villages and in others very weakly. During this

period, we succeeded in creating organizations in more

than 25 villages, some connections and some groups of

sympathizers in dozens of villages. We have started to

enter the life of the peasantry and to organize its

resistance to imperialist pillage and oppression. In

1934, through a lot of agitation, we organized a

delegation consisting of representatives of 14

villages, elected in meetings of 15 to 60 peasants.

This delegation presented the demands of the region to

the authorities, of which the most important were:

nullification of the tax on land and inheritance,

weekly payments to destitute peasants, and suspension

of debts for four years. If our comrades leading the

regional organizations had not committed the sectarian

error of shunning the strata of more or less wealthy

peasants who were ready for action, this campaign

could have involved dozens of villages.

In the anti-imperialist popular movement, our party

has achieved some success. It participated in all the

demonstrations and actions, including those led and

launched by the national-reformists, and it greatly

influenced the direction of these actions by the

intervention of its militants and orators. In July

1934, on the occasion of the anniversary of the armed

struggle against the French occupation, we organized a

successful action on the battlefields of 1920 and

debated the heroic traditions of the fighting with the

national-reformists.

We succeeded in organizing a party press and in

publishing a central organ whose circulation increases

every day and have created a legally sanctioned

theoretical organ which has succeeded in attracting

a growing number of revolutionary intellectuals in all

the Arab countries.

Our party has participated in the international

actions devoted to Dimitrov and Thaelman who have

became very popular among the Arab masses. We engaged

in much activity in the struggle against imperialist

war and for the defense of the Soviet Union. There was

almost no campaign led by the party that was not

conducted by these tactics. On the occasion of the

entry of the Soviet Union into the League of Nations,

the party explained by proclamations and brochures the

proletarian policy of our Soviet government and

unmasked the calumnies of the bourgeois press and of

renegades of the Communist movement in the Arab

countries who cried "Treason!" by the USSR to the

principles of the Third International.

The most important progress obtained by our resident

party is that in this last period it has placed as the

basis of all its activity and especially in the

anti-imperialist struggle the tactic of the united

front. It managed to concentrate the attention of all

its members, to orient the work of the whole

organization towards study of the basis of forms and

methods of application of this tactic and its

application in the practice of their daily work. It

has already made some small practical steps in that

domain. It participated in popular anti-imperialist

actions in alliance with the national-revolutionary

elements and groups. In different campaigns it was

able to organize some popular committees: the

committee for the struggle against Zionism, against

the war and for the defense of Abyssinia, for the

defense of the rights of the peasants. In connection

with the imperialist project to establish a tobacco

monopoly, and the popular anger which it provoked, the

Central Committee issued the directive to work on the

basis of the united front, even with the Arab

manufacturers who were unhappy with the monopoly, on

condition that they meet some of the tobacco workers'

demands. In the work among the masses of the Armenian

national minority where after Arabisation, our

influence rapidly increased, the application of the

tactic of the united front also registered some

success. Our comrades linked themselves with the

Hinchak (Armenian Social Democratic Party) and

organized with them a committee against the fascist

Dashnak Party of the Armenian bourgeoisie, which party

was active and collaborating with the imperialist

police.

All this shows that we have already taken a great step

forward by the complete abandonment of the

sectarianism of the past when similar attempts at

common action were considered to be pure opportunism

and Arab nationalism. In that period the party put

forward its slogans without concerning itself whether

or not the masses supported them. Occasionally it

tried to impose its slogans on the masses. In 1934,

the situation was very favorable for convening a

popular congress for national liberation. Instead of

basing this action on the slogans that were accepted

by the large masses, who were still subject to

national-reformist influence, we decided that it was

essential to convene a congress where all of our

platform, and especially the agrarian part, would be

accepted without taking into consideration the general

character of the mass of the congress. So we only

succeeded in gathering up in the congress a small

number of workers and intellectuals, most of whom were

our sympathizers.

In preparing the typographers' strike in 1933, we

tried to send a list of 15 demands, whereas there were

only three demands which interested the workers:

freedom for their dissolved trade-union, eight hours

of work, and regular payment of salaries. It is true

that we succeeded in submitting our list to a vote in

the strike meetings, but in practice, it was only on

the basis of the three demands that the workers

struggled for ten days. In working in the

national-reformist trade-unions, we tried to create

only red oppositions which had to have as their

primary condition for existence, the struggle to

change the national-reformist leadership or to attack

the bosses and the contractors if it concerned mixed

trade-unions. In the work for the creation of new

trade-unions, we tried to ensure that from the start

they be purely class unions and even that the entire

leadership be in the hands of our partisans. In 1933,

we tried to organize a union of the Beirut

longshoremen. The workers wanted to put a contractor

whom they highly esteemed at the head of the

organizing committee. In mobilizing our partisans

against these attempts, we provoked a sharp split, and

as a result, the failure of the organizational

attempt. This in comparison with a similar situation,

which was our last success, has a very great

importance.

At present our task is to push and enlarge our

successes to practically capture the large masses,

again under the influence of conciliators or

reactionaries, to pass rapidly to the creation of a

bloc of the proletariat with the revolutionary

bourgeoisie, this central task which has come to

confront us colonial Communists, as Comrade Stalin

said ten years ago in his speech program at the

Communist University of the East.

[Our party, as compared with 1929, after its

Arabisation, has risen by 600%, making 80% of its

members Arabs, of whom 60% are workers and 25%

peasants.] {This passage appeared only in the Russian

translation.}

We already have a cadre of proven militants and of

professional revolutionaries, armed with the

revolutionary theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and

Stalin, who have definitively given themselves to the

cause of the revolution and who will be capable of

consolidating our progress, and taking it as a solid

base for greater success, for the true Bolshevik

success. This elite of our cadre raises the banner of

Communism not only in actions and battles in the

streets, but also in the tribunals and in the

imperialist prisons. Our 35 imprisoned comrades are

now leading an heroic struggle against the horrors of

the imperialist jails and mobilizing the mass of the

prisoners in the struggle. In the prison in Damascus,

our comrades have organized a hunger-strike against

tyranny and mistreatment by the French director of the

prison, in which they have won over some of the

prisoners of the uprising of 1925 and all the 1,200

common prisoners. For three days the prison was

entirely in revolt. The placing of our comrades in

solitary confinement did not stop the action of the

prisoners, who have made the first condition for the

end of their strike the return of their companions to

the general population, and that all their demands be

met. In effect under the leadership of the Communists,

the prisoners have obtained their demands.

With a correct line and under the leadership of our

International, this cadre will be capable of

satisfying the needs of the revolutionary masses and

of accomplishing the tasks devolving upon them by the

situation of the country, to mobilise all the forces

capable of fighting the main enemy, the hideous enemy

of the Syrian people, French imperialism.

We, the Communists, are the most consistent fighters

in Syria, fighters to the very end against this enemy.

We are the most devoted fighters for the independence

of our country, for the liberation of our people from

oppression, from obscurantism, and from poverty. To

fight this enemy, to end the domination of French

imperialism, we are ready to unite our efforts with

all those who want a free and independent Syria.

We have great confidence in our forces and in the

guidance of our International. It is under its

leadership and by its effective aid that we have

attained our past successes, and it is by its

effective aid and under its leadership that we are

marching toward the decisive victory [of the

proletariat.] We hope that by a stubborn and Bolshevik

struggle, we will always hold high the banner of our

glorious Communist International.

--------------------

Footnotes.

(1) The opening paragraphs of the French text of this

report were edited by hand with considerable material

being apparently cut out.  The Russian-language

version of the report, however has restyled and

reincorporated some of that crossed out material.  The

opening of the report in Russian translation, found in

Fond 494, Opis’ 1, delo 186, page 1, where it appears

as two paragraphs, reads as follows:

"Comrades!  Syria, being the only colony of French

imperialism in the Near East, between Europe and Asia

on the road to Iraqi oil, conveniently situated on the

Mediterranean Sea, has great military-strategic

significance for the direction of offensive colonial

wars.

"On the other hand, the development of the national

liberation movement in Syria captures the attention of

all the Arab countries. Finally, Syria, alone among

all the Arab countries, is where the building of the

Communist Party has proceeded successfully.  Thus, the

development of the Communist Party of Syria possesses

great significance for the further development of the

Communist movement in all the Arab countries."

(2) The opening lines of this paragraph read slightly

differently in the Russian translation found in Fond

494, Opis’ 1, delo 186,  pages 5-6, where the phrase

about the "Zionist ideology of chauvinism and racial

superiority" has been omitted, vis:

"Our party, formed shortly before the 6th Congress of

the Comintern, was compelled until 1930 to battle

against opportunism and small circle spirit, against

an unwillingness, not only to go to the masses, but

even to expose themselves to the masses.  When this

stage was passed and we began to draw near to the

masses, the leadership was seized by elements coming

from the camp of counterrevolutionary Zionism.  Not

content with their having impeded the development of

the fraternal party in Palestine, these Zionist

elements slipped into Egypt and Syria, there to put

the brakes on the Communist parties.  These elements

carried out a line that would interfere in the

transformation of a party into a mass party having a

mass base among the Arab workers.  Their lack of faith

in the Arab masses, in the revolutionary potential of

the Arab national liberation movement, prevented them

from understanding the bourgeois democratic tasks of

the Syrian revolution, forcing them to orientate

themselves on the Armenian national minority."