Colonial System of Imperialism, the system of antagonistic relations between imperialist powers and the peoples of the economically less developed countries enslaved by these powers. The colonial system of imperialism is a part of the world capitalist economic system. It evolved at the turn of the century, in the final stage of the territorial division of the world. It was established by violence and aggression. The largest colonial empires, those of Great Britain, France, Belgium and other countries, emerged as a result of fierce colonial wars. According to Lenin’s definition of imperialism, three forms of colonial enslavement may be identified: the colonies, or the countries exploited by a metropolis and dependent on it politically and economically; the semi-colonies, or the countries which enjoy a formal political independence but are tied up by inequitable international treaties and are exploited in the same way as the colonies (for example, several Latin American countries) ; dependent countries, or the states enslaved and exploited by economic methods of monopoly capital domination. These forms of colonial oppression provided the imperialist superpowers with markets, sources of raw materials, spheres of capital investment, military-strategic strongholds and reserves for the reinforcement of their armies. The economies of the colonial and dependent countries specialised only in producing one or two crops or products (the so-called monoculture economy) required to supply the industries of the metropolises with raw materials—usually either with agricultural products or those of the extractive industry. This accounted for the rather backward character of the colonies’ economy. Economic backwardness was manifested in the extremely low level of development of the productive forces, and a significant lag of the colonies and dependent countries behind the world levels. The penetration of the monopolies into the economy of these countries led to the establishment there of two economic sectors differing in specialisation and socio-economic structure. The so-called traditional sector served the domestic market and was characterised by the most primitive productive forces; the foreign sector was represented primarily by export industries and based on foreign capital 50 investment. This sector was characterised by much more developed productive forces, but all the surplus value extracted went to the metropolises. By exploiting the peoples of colonies and dependent countries, imperialists gained enormous profits. The persistent struggle of the peoples of the colonial and dependent countries for liberation, which began after the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, was crowned by the crisis of the colonial system of imperialism, which in the third stage of the general crisis of capitalism led to its collapse (see Collapse of the Colonial System of Imperialism).