The Communist International was formed by revolutionaries to support the struggle for socialism across the entire world. In its early years, there were vibrant debates about the relationship between anti-colonialism and revolutionary socialism in various contexts: China, India, Turkey and elsewhere. As the rise of Stalinism radically transformed the Comintern into an instrument of Stalinist foreign policy, these debates were profoundly distorted. This talk will explore the debates over anti-colonial nationalism in both the early years of the Comintern and the later Stalinist period.