Henk Sneevliet

Arriving in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) in 1913, Sneevliet became a true pioneer of the colonial revolutionary movement. In 1914 he co-founded the Indies Social Democratic Association (ISDV), a strictly anti-capitalist organization in which both Dutch and Indonesian members were active. The ISDV opposed both Dutch colonial rule and the privileged Indonesian elites, and became the direct forerunner of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). Sneevliet also worked within the railway and tramway workers' union (VSTP), which uniquely organized Dutch and Indonesian workers together. Drawing on his union experience in the Netherlands, he transformed this moderate union into a more militant organization; it later formed the mass base of the Indonesian communist movement. Sneevliet's most innovative tactic was his infiltration strategy toward Sarekat Islam, a mass anti-colonial Islamic organization with millions of members. ISDV cadres joined Sarekat Islam as individuals and built a left-wing bloc from within: this 'bloc within' strategy directly anticipated the united-front conception he would later apply in China. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Sneevliet's radical influence spread not only among Indonesian workers but also among Dutch soldiers and sailors, alarming the colonial authorities. His 1 May 1918 speech aboard the Dutch naval vessel Surabaya (opening with 'Comrades, friends, Red Guards of the Indies fleet!') brought official alarm to a decisive pitch, and in December 1918 he was expelled from the colony. The ISDV reorganized as the PKI in 1920, growing into one of Asia's largest communist parties, and the Indonesian revolutionaries who worked alongside Sneevliet, including Semaun, Darsono, and Tan Malaka, became central figures in the independence and communist movements.

Arriving in Shanghai in June 1921 under the alias Maring, Sneevliet (as a Comintern Executive Committee member) took practical charge of guiding the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. He urged Li Da to convene a formal national congress and was present at the First National Congress of the CCP, held in Shanghai in July 1921. That December, he travelled to southern China to meet Sun Yat-sen personally, proposing cooperation with the Kuomintang (KMT). Sneevliet's core conception was the so-called 'bloc within' strategy: communist party members would join the KMT as individuals, build strength from within, while preserving the organizational independence of their own party. This approach grew directly out of the infiltration tactic he had pioneered in Indonesia through the Sarekat Islam. Sneevliet returned to Moscow in summer 1922 to present the strategy to the Comintern Executive, won approval, and went back to China. Formally adopted at the CCP's Third Congress in 1923, the line became the foundation of the First United Front and remained the basic framework of the Chinese revolution until the KMT's anti-communist purge of 1927. Sneevliet declined Sun Yat-sen's offer of a full-time KMT advisory post and, after his Comintern mission ended in early 1924, returned to the Netherlands. The united-front line he designed exerted a profound and lasting influence on Comintern strategy across colonial and semi-colonial countries.