Congress of the Toilers of the Far East

The Congress of the Toilers of the Far East is a lesser known congress held by the Comintern. It was a follow-up of the Baku Conference (also known as the Congress of the Peoples of the East) and the Second Congress of the Communist International, but it was also specifically created in response to the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-1922.

The Four-Power Treaty of 1921 was signed at the Washington Naval Conference between United States, Great Britain, France, and Japan. This treaty meant that Korea had been abandoned by western powers, left to be consumed by Imperial Japan.

This Congress was organized in 1922. It was much smaller than the Baku Congress and was attended mostly by members of East Asian countries, with Koreans being the majority attendants. The delegates from Korea were almost all from the Irkutsk faction and its branches in Shanghai and Korea. The other countries that attended were China, Japan, Indonesia, India, France, Germany, and America.

The first and only congress was held in Moscow from January 21 until February 2, 1922.

Regarding Korea, it was decided that the Korean revolutionary movement should be conducted by supporting the Provisional Government in Shanghai, encouraging and modifying it, and that since Korea was largely an agrarian nation without theoretical knowledge of communism, that the independence movement largely emphasize revolutionary nationalism.

For additional reading on this congress, please check out the following: