The Malayan Communist Party as Recorded in the Comintern Files

CHAPTER II
FORMATION OF THE MALAYAN COMMUNIST PARTY (MCP)
The date of the formation of the MCP has not been unanimously agreed even though the party has
officially designated it as 30 April 1930. The MCP’s official founding date relied on the memory of
Ho Chi Minh (Nguyen Ai Quoc) who presided at the party’s inaugural congress. But, this would
have been the Second Representatives’ Congress according to the brief history outlined earlier and
to the MCP’s book published after World War II. 1 Even this conference (congress) could have been
the second or the third, noted Cheah Boon Kheng. 2 Then again, C. F. Yong suggested that the MCP
was founded between early to mid-April 1930. 3
Regarding those two issues, what have the Comintern Files revealed?
1. Was the NPC Congress the Second or the Third?
In the short history of the MCP written in February 1942, the CC of the MCP was elected at the
Second Congress in 1930 (Chapter I-1.). However, a resolution adopted at that Congress stated that
it was the Third Congress of the Malay Archipelago Communist Party (meaning NPC) (Chapter I-
2.). Four other sets of documents noted that it was the Third Congress. The first set is shown in the
list of Russian-language documents, 4 the second in the list of English-language documents 5 (see
List of Documents of the RSASPH). There was also a third letter in Russian, dated 23 October
1930, which the Eastern Secretariat (ES) of the Comintern had sent to its Far Eastern Bureau
(FEB). 6 And, fourthly, there were also letters in Russian sent to Cd. Kuusinen. 7 Since the
contemporary (1930) documents were logically the most accurate sources of information, the NPC
congress was most probably the Third Congress.
2. Date of the Inaugural Congress
None of the documents available to this author explicitly and indisputably mentioned the date of
the MCP’s inaugural congress.
Among the documents with Russian contents, there is one, “Resolutions at the Third Congress of
the Communist Party of the Malay Archipelago”, which was as a whole dated September 1930 to
34