This article tackles a question which frequently comes up: namely, how Stalin’s appraisal of February 9th 1946 that the Second World War was a war of liberation from the very beginning squares with the characterisation of the period from September 1939 to June 1941 as a period of inter-imperialist war. R.P. Dutt convincingly argues that the question of fascism and imperialist war had come to the fore from the early 1930s onwards so that Stalin’s characterisation of 1946 had to be seen in that context. The interview below on this question emerged from a wide-ranging discussion with party workers during the visit of R.P. Dutt to the CPI headquarters in Mumbai in 1946 during the course of his visit to India.