How colonised peoples fought for liberation, the role of the socialist camp, and why the struggle against imperialism continues
Decolonisation is the process by which colonised peoples overthrow colonial rule and establish national independence. It is one of the great revolutionary movements of the twentieth century, encompassing armed liberation wars, mass uprisings, political struggles, and the complete transformation of the global order. Between 1945 and 1975, more than eighty nations achieved formal independence from European colonial empires that had subjugated hundreds of millions of people across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific.
From the Marxist-Leninist perspective, decolonisation is not simply a question of flags and anthems. It is a class struggle on a world scale. Colonialism was the product of capitalism in its imperialist stage — the division of the world among monopoly capitalist powers for the purpose of extracting super-profits from the labour and resources of subjugated peoples. Decolonisation, therefore, is inseparable from the broader struggle against imperialism and capitalism itself.
The great wave of decolonisation did not happen in a vacuum. It was made possible by the shift in the global balance of forces brought about by the October Revolution of 1917, the defeat of fascism in 1945, the emergence of the socialist camp, and the tireless solidarity of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and other socialist states with the oppressed nations. Without the material, military, and diplomatic support of the socialist world, the colonial empires would have held on far longer, and at far greater cost in human life.
"The revolutionary movement in the advanced countries would actually be nothing but a sheer fraud if, in their struggle against capital, the workers of Europe and America were not closely and completely united with the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of 'colonial' slaves who are oppressed by capital."
— V. I. Lenin, The Second Congress of the Communist International (1920)The Marxist-Leninist approach to colonialism and national liberation was developed principally by Lenin and Stalin, who recognised that the struggle of the oppressed nations was not separate from but integral to the world proletarian revolution.
In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), Lenin demonstrated that colonialism was not an accident or a moral failing but a structural necessity of monopoly capitalism. The export of capital, the partition of the world among imperialist powers, and the super-exploitation of colonial peoples were all consequences of capitalism's internal contradictions. The colonial system provided the super-profits that sustained the entire imperialist order and enabled the bribery of a privileged stratum of workers in the imperialist countries — the labour aristocracy.
Lenin insisted on the unconditional right of nations to self-determination, including the right to secession. At the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920, he set out the theses on the national and colonial question, arguing that communists must support national liberation movements in the colonies as allies of the proletarian revolution. The alliance between the working class of the imperialist nations and the oppressed peoples of the colonies was, for Lenin, a strategic necessity, not a concession to nationalism.
Stalin developed the Marxist theory of the national question in Marxism and the National Question (1913) and subsequent works. He defined the nation as a historically constituted, stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture. This scientific definition provided the theoretical basis for recognising the right of colonised peoples to nationhood and self-determination.
Under Stalin's leadership, the Soviet Union became the foremost champion of decolonisation on the world stage. The USSR consistently opposed colonialism at the United Nations, provided material support to liberation movements, and demonstrated through its own nationalities policy that peoples of different nations could live together on the basis of equality and mutual respect — the direct opposite of the colonial relationship.
The role of the Soviet Union in supporting decolonisation cannot be overstated. From its very foundation, the Soviet state declared its solidarity with the oppressed peoples of the colonies and took concrete steps to support their liberation.
The USSR used its position on the UN Security Council to champion the cause of colonial peoples. Soviet representatives consistently introduced resolutions demanding the end of colonial rule, opposing imperialist military interventions, and defending the sovereignty of newly independent states. The existence of the Soviet veto prevented the Western powers from using the UN as a rubber stamp for colonial aggression on numerous occasions.
The Soviet Union provided enormous material support to liberation movements across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This included weapons, military training, economic aid, educational scholarships, and technical assistance. Tens of thousands of students from the colonised world studied at Soviet universities, including the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University in Moscow, established in 1960 specifically to train cadres from the developing world.
Soviet military aid was decisive in numerous liberation struggles. The MPLA in Angola, FRELIMO in Mozambique, the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau, the ANC in South Africa, the PLO in Palestine, and the Vietnamese liberation forces all received substantial Soviet support. Without Soviet weapons, training, and logistical aid, many of these movements would have faced the full might of imperialist military power without adequate means of defence.
Cuba, under the leadership of Fidel Castro, played an extraordinary role in supporting African liberation. Cuban internationalist forces fought alongside the MPLA in Angola, defeating the South African apartheid army at the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988 — a turning point that hastened the end of apartheid. Cuba sent doctors, teachers, and engineers across the developing world, demonstrating that a small socialist nation could practice genuine internationalism on a scale that shamed the wealthy imperialist states.
The People's Republic of China also provided significant support to decolonisation movements, particularly in Southeast Asia and Africa. The construction of the Tanzania-Zambia railway (TAZARA) in the 1970s, built by Chinese engineers and workers, was a landmark of South-South cooperation that provided landlocked Zambia with an export route independent of the white-ruled states of southern Africa. China's support for the Vietnamese struggle against French and American imperialism was likewise indispensable.
"National liberation and social emancipation are inseparable. The struggle for national independence is at the same time a struggle for social progress."
— Amilcar Cabral, Revolution in Guinea (1969)The history of decolonisation is the history of millions of ordinary people rising against some of the most powerful military machines on earth. Each struggle had its own character, shaped by local conditions, class forces, and the balance of power between the coloniser and the colonised. Several stand out for their revolutionary significance.
The Algerian War of Independence was one of the most brutal and heroic liberation struggles of the twentieth century. France, which had colonised Algeria in 1830 and declared it an integral part of French territory, fought with extraordinary savagery to retain its control. The French army employed systematic torture, mass internment, aerial bombardment of villages, and the forced displacement of millions of Algerian peasants into concentration camps euphemistically called "regroupment centres."
The Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) waged a guerrilla war that mobilised the entire Algerian people. Despite suffering enormous casualties — estimates range from 300,000 to 1.5 million Algerian dead — the Algerian revolution prevailed. The war radicalised a generation of anti-colonial thinkers, including Frantz Fanon, whose The Wretched of the Earth became one of the foundational texts of liberation theory.
The assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Congo, remains one of the greatest crimes of the neo-colonial era. Lumumba, who sought genuine independence for the Congo and control over its vast mineral wealth, was overthrown in a CIA- and Belgian-backed coup just months after independence. He was subsequently tortured and murdered, with direct complicity from Belgian officers and the full knowledge of Western intelligence services.
Lumumba's murder was not an isolated act but a deliberate strategy. The imperialist powers could not tolerate a truly independent Congo — a country with some of the richest mineral deposits on earth. The installation of the dictator Mobutu, who served Western interests for over three decades while his people suffered in poverty, demonstrated precisely what "independence" meant under neo-colonial conditions.
The Portuguese colonies in Africa waged some of the longest and most determined liberation wars. Portugal, the poorest colonial power in Europe, clung to its African empire long after Britain and France had been forced to withdraw. The MPLA in Angola, FRELIMO in Mozambique, and the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde fought protracted people's wars against the Portuguese military, receiving crucial support from the Soviet Union, Cuba, and other socialist states.
The liberation struggle in the Portuguese colonies had a revolutionary character that went beyond mere national independence. Amilcar Cabral, the leader of the PAIGC and one of the greatest revolutionary theorists of the twentieth century, argued that national liberation must be simultaneously a social revolution — that political independence without transforming the class structure of society would lead only to neo-colonialism.
The Vietnamese struggle against French and then American imperialism is perhaps the single most significant decolonisation struggle in history. Under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese Communist Party, the Vietnamese people defeated first the French colonial army at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and then the full military might of the United States over two decades of war. The American defeat in Vietnam demonstrated that no imperialist power, however mighty, could prevail against a people united in revolutionary struggle.
The independence of India in 1947 and Indonesia in 1949 were landmark events in the dismantling of the colonial system. While the Indian independence movement is often portrayed in the West as a purely non-violent affair led by Gandhi, the reality was far more complex. The Indian Communist Party, the naval mutiny of 1946, the Telangana armed struggle, and the constant pressure of mass working-class and peasant action all played crucial roles in making British rule untenable. The British did not leave India out of goodness — they were forced out by the changing balance of forces, including the weakening of British imperialism by two world wars and the rise of the socialist camp.
Indonesia's independence was won through armed struggle against Dutch attempts at re-colonisation. The Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) played a significant role in the independence movement, though it would later be destroyed in the US-backed genocide of 1965–1966, one of the greatest mass killings of the Cold War.
The existence of the Soviet Union and socialist states shifted the global balance of forces, providing colonised peoples with diplomatic backing, military aid, and an alternative model of development.
Workers, peasants, and the urban poor formed the backbone of liberation movements. Their willingness to fight and sacrifice made colonial rule untenable.
Communist and workers' parties provided organisational discipline, ideological clarity, and links to the international communist movement in liberation struggles across the colonised world.
Two world wars devastated the European colonial powers. Britain and France emerged weakened, unable to maintain the military apparatus required to hold their empires by force.
In April 1955, representatives of twenty-nine Asian and African nations gathered in Bandung, Indonesia, for the first major conference of the colonised and formerly colonised peoples. The Bandung Conference was a watershed moment — the first time the nations of the Global South asserted their collective voice on the world stage, independent of the imperialist powers.
The conference declared support for the right of peoples and nations to self-determination, condemned colonialism in all its manifestations, and called for economic and cultural cooperation among the developing nations. It laid the groundwork for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), formally established in Belgrade in 1961, which sought to chart an independent course between the Western imperialist bloc and the socialist camp.
The Marxist-Leninist assessment of the Non-Aligned Movement is dialectical. On the one hand, Bandung and the NAM represented a progressive force insofar as they united nations against colonialism and imperialism and asserted the sovereignty of the developing world. On the other hand, the concept of "non-alignment" obscured the fundamental class character of the struggle. In practice, many NAM member states were led by national bourgeoisies whose class interests ultimately drew them back into the orbit of imperialism. Genuine non-alignment was impossible in a world divided between imperialism and socialism — neutrality, in practice, often meant capitulation to the stronger force.
Nevertheless, the spirit of Bandung — the solidarity of the oppressed nations against imperialism — remains a powerful legacy that continues to inspire anti-imperialist movements today.
Communist parties played a central role in nearly every significant decolonisation struggle, often forming the most organised, disciplined, and ideologically advanced force within the broader national liberation movement.
In Vietnam, the Communist Party led the entire liberation struggle from the resistance against Japanese occupation through the defeat of French colonialism to the final victory over American imperialism. In China, the Communist Party united the nation against Japanese invasion and then completed the national democratic revolution by overthrowing the comprador bourgeoisie and feudal landlords. In Cuba, the 26th of July Movement, which evolved into the Communist Party of Cuba, led the revolution that ended American neo-colonial domination of the island.
In Africa, communist parties and Marxist-Leninist organisations were at the forefront of liberation in Angola (MPLA), Mozambique (FRELIMO), Guinea-Bissau (PAIGC), South Africa (SACP), Ethiopia (Derg), and many other nations. The South African Communist Party, working in alliance with the African National Congress, maintained the revolutionary character of the anti-apartheid struggle through decades of repression, exile, and armed resistance.
The imperialist powers understood the threat that communist participation posed to their interests. The systematic destruction of communist parties in the colonised world — through assassinations, banning orders, military coups, and mass killings — was a central plank of imperialist strategy. The murder of hundreds of thousands of communists in Indonesia in 1965–1966, the suppression of the Communist Party of Iraq, the persecution of communists across Latin America under Operation Condor — all of these atrocities were aimed at removing the revolutionary element from national liberation movements and ensuring that independence would lead to neo-colonialism rather than genuine social transformation.
"Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. Such a definition would include what is most important, for, on the one hand, finance capital is the bank capital of a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists."
— V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916)The greatest lesson of the decolonisation era is that formal political independence, while a necessary and progressive step, was not sufficient to achieve genuine liberation. In the majority of cases, the departure of the colonial flag was followed by the arrival of the neo-colonial banker, the multinational corporation, and the IMF structural adjustment programme.
The imperialist powers prepared for this transition carefully. In many cases, independence was negotiated rather than won through revolutionary struggle, and the terms of independence were designed to protect imperialist economic interests. Colonial-era trade patterns, land ownership structures, monetary arrangements, and military agreements were preserved under new legal forms. The departing colonial administrators were replaced by a comprador bourgeoisie — a local capitalist class whose wealth and power depended on serving foreign capital.
Britain pioneered the art of controlled decolonisation. Faced with the impossibility of holding its empire by force, Britain sought to manage the transition in ways that preserved its economic interests. The Commonwealth became the framework for maintaining influence over former colonies. Sterling area arrangements, trade preferences, and military agreements ensured that formal independence did not translate into genuine economic sovereignty. Where necessary — as in Kenya, Malaya, and Cyprus — Britain waged counter-insurgency wars of extraordinary brutality to suppress revolutionary movements and install compliant successor regimes.
France's approach was even more brazen. The Françafrique system — a network of political, military, and economic control maintained through personal relationships between French officials and African heads of state — ensured that French corporations retained dominance over key sectors of the economies of francophone Africa. The CFA franc, controlled from Paris, denied monetary sovereignty to fourteen African nations. France maintained permanent military bases across the continent and intervened militarily over fifty times to protect its interests or install friendly regimes.
Neo-colonialism was not inevitable. Where liberation movements had a clear revolutionary programme, strong communist party leadership, and the support of the socialist camp, genuine progress toward economic independence was possible. Cuba, Vietnam, and the DPRK all broke decisively with imperialist domination. But in the majority of cases, the weakness of revolutionary forces, the strength of the comprador class, and the relentless pressure of imperialist economic and military power ensured that political independence was hollowed out from within.
The destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991 dealt a devastating blow to the developing world. The loss of the socialist camp as an alternative source of development aid, military support, and diplomatic backing left newly independent nations exposed to the full force of imperialist pressure. The 1990s saw a wave of structural adjustment, privatisation, and economic subjugation across Africa, Asia, and Latin America that rolled back many of the gains of the decolonisation era.
Decolonisation demonstrates the dialectical relationship between national liberation and social revolution. Political independence without transforming the economic base leads to neo-colonialism. Only when the working class and peasantry seize control of the means of production can formal independence become real independence.
Decolonisation is not a completed historical process. It is an ongoing struggle that has entered a new phase. The formal colonial empires are gone, but imperialism persists through economic domination, military intervention, and institutional control. The lessons of the decolonisation era are directly relevant to the anti-imperialist struggles of today.
The mechanisms of imperialist domination have evolved but not diminished. The IMF and World Bank continue to impose structural adjustment on developing nations. Western military bases span the globe — the United States alone maintains over 750 bases in at least 80 countries. NATO, far from being a "defensive alliance," serves as the military arm of collective imperialism, intervening to destroy any state that challenges the imperialist order, as it did in Libya in 2011 and attempted in Syria.
Britain and France, the former colonial masters, remain active imperialist powers. Britain maintains strategic bases from Cyprus to the Falklands and participates in every American military adventure. France, until recently, maintained a vast military presence across the Sahel and continues to extract enormous wealth from francophone Africa through the CFA franc system and the dominance of French corporations.
Across the Global South, new movements are challenging neo-colonial domination. The military governments in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have expelled French troops and demanded sovereignty over their resources. Latin American nations have repeatedly elected governments that challenge US hegemony. The BRICS grouping represents an attempt by developing nations to build economic relationships independent of Western-dominated institutions.
These movements, while containing contradictions and limitations, reflect the deep popular anger against decades of neo-colonial exploitation. Marxist-Leninists must engage with these movements critically, supporting their anti-imperialist content while working to strengthen the class-conscious, revolutionary elements within them.
The struggle against neo-colonialism cannot be waged by the peoples of the developing world alone. Workers in the imperialist nations have a direct interest in opposing their own ruling classes' plunder of the Global South. The super-profits extracted from neo-colonial exploitation fund the bribery of the labour aristocracy and the maintenance of the reformist institutions that hold back revolutionary struggle in the imperialist countries themselves.
Genuine proletarian internationalism means more than verbal solidarity. It means actively opposing the foreign policy of one's own imperialist government, supporting the right of nations to self-determination, demanding the cancellation of neo-colonial debt, and building organisational links between the working classes of all countries. The words of Marx remain as true today as when they were written: workers of all countries, unite.
Discuss decolonisation, anti-imperialism, and national liberation with our AI educational assistant, or explore the full theory section.