The 1920 Congress of the Peoples of the East, held in Baku, Azerbaijan, was organised by the Communist International as part of an attempt to unite the anti-imperialist movements of the oppressed with the revolutionary struggle of the working class. As the Russian Civil War raged around them, almost two thousand delegates from over thirty nations gathered to discuss the path to liberation for the colonial world.
This compilation of transcripts and other documents was first published in 1977, translated into English from the Russian report on the congress. The rise of Stalinism cut short the Bolshevik efforts to solve the question of national oppression. The debates at the Baku Congress therefore mark one of the Marxist movement's most serious engagements with the tactics and strategy of national liberation, and its role in the movement for international socialism.