The Break-up of the Anglo-Russian Committee¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter Digest: The Break-up of the Anglo-Russian Committee¶
The dissolution of the Anglo-Russian Committee (ARC) in 1927 exposed the catastrophic consequences of Stalin’s policy of permanent bloc with reformist trade-union leaders. The ARC was never a genuine alliance of toiling masses, but a temporary agreement with bourgeois labour politicians—Purcell, Hicks, Cook—who, after betraying the General Strike, became active agents of British imperialism. The Opposition had warned from the outset that the General Council would break with the USSR precisely when such a rupture best served British capital. Yet Stalin’s faction staked everything on preserving the bloc, claiming it would become the organising centre of the international proletariat against war and intervention. This was a policy of illusions, sowing confusion among Moscow workers and delivering the Minority Movement bound hand and foot to the traitors.
The General Council executed a carefully planned rupture from the time of the General Strike. The Russian delegation, led by Andreev, assisted this plan by refusing to break when the British leaders betrayed the miners, supported intervention in China, and broke the strike itself. Instead, the official line preserved the bloc at all costs, adapting criticism to nothing. The Opposition demanded a clean break at the moment of greatest betrayal, when the fissure between leaders and revolutionary vanguard was deepest, to give the masses clear political expression. This was refused. Andreev’s claim in April 1927 to have forced ‘clear and direct’ commitments from the British was exposed as hollow when the Trades Union Congress liquidated the ARC in September. The policy thus gave objective aid to the Chamberlains, isolated the USSR at its most difficult moment, and strengthened the right wing against the left.
The tactical axis had been wrongly shifted toward a permanent bloc with reformists, transforming a legitimate temporary agreement into a permanent institution proclaimed as the core of world proletarian unity. This created harmful political fictions. When allied treachery became evident, the ARC was falsely presented as a union of masses rather than a leadership bloc—a policy of lies exposed by events. Andreev’s report smears over this tactical lesson. The British Communist Party, insufficiently tempered, displayed a surplus of conciliatory qualities rooted in a false understanding of the united front. Its leaders long refused to print a Russian union manifesto as too sharp toward the General Council, while right-wing tendencies complained that Comintern war theses were too ‘left’. For a young party, ARC policy inevitably caused opportunistic dislocation. The truth must now be told fully to Russian and British workers alike.