ALSOBYVIJAYPRASHADFROMLEFTWORDBOOKS

NoFreeLeft:TheFuturesofIndianCommunism2015ThePoorerNations:APossibleHistoryoftheGlobalSouth.2013ArabSpring,LibyanWinter.2012TheDarkerNations:ABiographyoftheShort-LivedThirdWorld.2009NamasteSharon:HindutvaandSharonismUnderUSHegemony.2003WarAgainstthePlanet:TheFifthAfghanWar,ImperialismandOtherAssortedFundamentalisms.2002Enron Blowout: Corporate Capitalism and Theft of the Global Commons, co-authored with Prabir

Purkayastha.2002DispatchesfromtheArabSpring:UnderstandingtheNewMiddleEast,co-editedwithPaulAmar.2013DispatchesfromPakistan,co-editedwithMadihaR.TahirandQalandarBuxMemon.2012DispatchesfromLatinAmerica:ExperimentsAgainstNeoliberalism,co-editedwithTeoBalvé.2006

OTHERTITLESBYVIJAYPRASHAD

UncleSwami:SouthAsiansinAmericaToday.2012KeepingUpwiththeDowJoneses:Stocks,Jails,Welfare.2003TheAmericanScheme:ThreeEssays.2002EverybodyWasKungFuFighting:Afro-AsianConnectionsandtheMythofCulturalPurity.2002FatCatsandRunningDogs:TheEnronStageofCapitalism.2002TheKarmaofBrownFolk.2000UntouchableFreedom:ASocialHistoryofaDalitCommunity.1999

FirstpublishedinNovember2017E-bookpublishedinDecember2017

LeftWordBooks2254/2AShadiKhampurNewRanjitNagarNewDelhi110008INDIA

LeftWordBooksisthepublishingdivisionofNayaRastaPublishersPvt.Ltd.

leftword.com

©VijayPrashad,2017

Frontcover:BolshevikPosterinRussianandArabicCharactersforthePeoplesoftheEast:‘ProletariansofAllCountries,Unite!’,reproducedfromAlbertRhysWilliams,ThroughtheRussianRevolution,NewYork:BoniandLiverightPublishers,1921

Sourcesforimages,aswellasreferencesforanypartofthisbookareavailableuponrequest.Alleffortshavebeenmadetoensurethattheimagesusedareeitheroutofcopyright,ortherequisitepermissionsobtained.Anylapse,ifbroughttothenoticeofthePublisher,willberectified.

ThisbookisforBRINDAKARATwhohasguidedme

sinceforeverandcontinuestoguidemeyet.

Contents

Preface

EasternGraves

RedOctober

FollowthePathoftheRussians!

TheLungsofRussia

PeasantSoviets

SovietAsia

EnemyofImperialism

EasternMarxism

ToSeetheDawn

ColonialFascism

PolycentricCommunism

MemoriesofCommunism

NguyễnÁiQuốc,laterHồChíMinh,atthefoundingconferenceoftheCommunistPartyofFranceinTours(December1920).

Preface

TensionsranfromoneendoftheTsaristEmpiretoanotheratthestartof1917.Soldiersatthefront,fightingawarthatseemedtogonowhere,wereinthemoodtoturntheirgunsagainsttheirrulers.Workersandpeasants,strugglingtomakeendsmeet,hadtheirhammersandsicklesreadytocrashdownontheheadsoftheir bosses and landlords. The various socialist groups and their clandestineorganizations struggled to build momentum amongst the people against anincreasinglydisorientedandbrutalTsaristregime.

OnMarch8,1917,Petrogradfacedashortageoffuel.Bakeriescouldnotrun.Workingwomen,inthequeuesforbread,hadtogototheirhomesandfactoriesempty-handed.Thetextilewomen–angeredbytheconditions–wentonstrike.Itwas InternationalWorkingWomen’sDay. ‘Bread for our children’was onechant.Anotherwas ‘The returnof ourhusbands from the trenches’.Men andwomen from the factories joined them. They flooded Petrograd’s streets. TheTsarist state was paralyzed by their anger. These working women began theFebruary Revolution of 1917, which culminated in the October Revolution of1917andwiththeformationoftheUnionofSovietSocialistRepublics(USSR).

AhundredyearshavepassedsincetheOctoberRevolution.TheUSSR,whichitinaugurated,onlylastedforlittlemorethanseventyyears.Ithasbeenaquarter-century since the demise of the USSR. And yet, the marks of the OctoberRevolutionremain–notjustinterritoriesoftheUSSRbutmoresoinwhatusedtobeknownastheThirdWorld.FromCubatoVietnam,fromChinatoSouth

Africa, the October Revolution remains as an inspiration. After all, thatRevolution proved that the working class and the peasantry could not onlyoverthrowanautocraticgovernmentbutthatitcouldformitsowngovernment,initsimage.Itproveddecisivelythattheworkingclassandthepeasantrycouldbe allied. It proved aswell the necessity of a vanguard party thatwas open tospontaneous currents of unrest, but which could – in its own way – guide arevolutiontocompletion.TheselessonsreverberatedthroughMongoliaandintoChina,fromCubatoVietnam.

WhenhewasayoungémigréinParis,HồChíMinh,thenNguyễnÁiQuốc,read theCommunist International’s thesis onnational and colonial issues andwept.Itwasa‘miraculousguide’forthestruggleofthepeopleofIndo-China,hefelt. ‘Fromtheexperienceof theRussianRevolution,’HồChíMinhwrote, ‘weshouldhavepeople–boththeworkingclassandthepeasants–attherootofourstruggle.Weneedastrongparty,a strongwill,withsacrificeandunanimityatourcentre’.‘Likethebrilliantsun’,HồChíMinhwrote,‘theOctoberRevolutionshone over all five continents, awakeningmillions of oppressed and exploitedpeople around the world. There has never existed such a revolution of suchsignificanceandscaleinthehistoryofhumanity’.ThisisacommonattitudeintheThirdWorld– sincere emotions that revealhow important this revolutionwastotheanti-colonialandanti-fasciststrugglesthatbrokeoutintheaftermathof1917.

InSeptember1945,whenHồChíMinhtookthepodiumtodeclarefreedomforVietnam,hesaidsimply–‘Wearefree’.Andthen,asifanafterthought,‘Wewillneveragainbehumiliated.Never!’Thiswasthesoundoftheconfidenceofordinarypeoplewhomakeextraordinaryhistory.Theyrefusetobehumiliated.Theywanttheirdignityintact.ThiswasthelessonofOctober.

This isa littlebook toexplain thepowerof theOctoberRevolution for theThirdWorld.Itisnotacomprehensivestudy,butasmallbookwithalargehope–thatanewgenerationwillcometoseetheimportanceofthisrevolutionforthe

workingclassandpeasantryinthatpartoftheworldthatsufferedundertheheelofcolonialdomination.Therearemanystoriesthatarenothereandmanythatarenotfullydeveloped.Thatistobeexpectedinabooksuchasthis.Butthesearestoriesoffeeling,mirrorsofaspirations.Pleasereadthemgently.

The LeftWord Communist History group (Lisa Armstrong, SuchetanaChattopadhyay,Archana Prasad, SudhanvaDeshpande) put this book in gear.OurfirstvolumeincludedessaysfromthecoremembersaswellasfromFredrikPetersson,MargaretStevensandLinChun–allkeyscholarsofthelegacyoftheOctoberRevolution.Grateful for theguidanceand friendshipofAijazAhmad,Andrew Hsiao, Brinda Karat, CosmasMusumali, Githa Hariharan, Irvin Jim,Jodie Evans, Marco Fernandes, Naeem Mohaiemen, P. Sainath, Pilar Troya,Prabir Purkayastha, PrakashKarat,QalandarMemon,RobinD.G.Kelley, RoySingham,SaraGreavu,SubhashiniAli,VashnaJaganathandZaydeAntrim.ThisbookwouldnothavebeenpossiblewithoutthetheoreticalandpracticalworkofmycomradesintheCommunistPartyofIndia(Marxist).AndgratefultoZaliaMaya,RosaMaya,SoniPrashadandRosySamuelwhomadewritingmostofthisbookinKolkataatreat.

Thebookreliesuponagreatdealofsecondaryreading,butalsoonmaterialfromtheNationalArchivesofIndia,theNehruMemorialMuseumandLibrary,theBritishLibrary,theNationalArchivesoftheUK,theRussianStateArchivesforSocialandPoliticalHistoryandtheLibraryofCongress. Ihavealsoused–extensively–thecollectedworksofLenin,MarxandEngels,Maoandothers.Iamgratefultothemanyscholarswhodelvedintothearchivalrecordtoproduceimportant work on communists from Chile to Indonesia (thinking of ourCommunistHistory group and people such asAmar Farooqui,AniMukherji,Barbara Allen, Chirashree Dasgupta, Christina Heatherton, John Riddell,MarianneKamp,MichellePatterson,RakhshandaJalil,RexMortimer,Shoshana

Keller, Sinan Antoon, Winston James). The format of this book would beoverwhelmedifIhadincludedcitations.Referencesforanypartofthisbookareavailable upon request (vijay@leftword.com). Thanks to Nazeef Mollah for aclosereadingofthemanuscript.

LeninreadingPravdainhisstudyattheKremlin,Moscow(October16,1918).

EasternGraves

Soviet leaders sat inoldTsaristoffices, lushwith thearchitectureofautocracy,butnowcrowdedwiththeexcitementof theirsocialistambitions.LeninwouldtellNadezhdaKrupskayathatherarelyhadamomentofpeace.Someoneortheotherwouldrushinwithadecreetobeconsideredoracrisis tobeaverted.InJune 1920, two Japanese journalists – K. Fussa andM. Nakahira – arrived inMoscowafteralongjourneyacrosstheAsianregionofthenewUnionofSovietSocialistRepublics.TheywereeagertoseeLeninbutwerenotconfidentthathewouldhave time for them.After abriefwait inMoscow, theywereallowed tointerview him. Nakahira remembered the interview in his dispatch to theJapanese readers ofOsakaAsahi. ‘I interviewedMr. Lenin at his office in theKremlin’,hewrote. ‘Contrary tomyexpectation, thedecorationof theroomisverysimple.Mr.Lenin’smannerisverysimpleandkind–asifheweregreetinganoldfriend.Inspiteofthefactthatheholdsthehighestposition,thereisnottheslightesttraceofcondescensioninhismanner.’

LeninwasinterestedinJapan,askingNakahiraaseriesofpointedquestionsabout Japanese history and society: ‘Is there a powerful landowning class inJapan?DoestheJapanesefarmerownlandfreely?DotheJapanesepeopleliveonfoodproducedintheirowncountry,ordotheyimportmuchfoodfromforeigncountries?’ Lenin askedNakahira if Japanese parents beat their children as hehad read in a book. ‘Tellmewhether it is true or not. It is a very interestingsubject,’he said.Nakahira toldhim that theremightbeexceptions,buton thewhole ‘parents do not beat their children in Japan’. ‘On hearing my answer’,Nakahira wrote on June 6, 1920, ‘he expressed satisfaction and said that the

policy of the SovietGovernment is to abolish this condition’. The Soviets hadbanned corporal punishment in 1917.OnOctober 31, 1924, theUSSR’s penallegislation would further lay down that punishment of children, in particular,shouldnotbeforthepurposeof‘theinflictionofphysicalsuffering,humiliationorindignity’.

OtherforeignjournalistsfoundLenintobeeruditeandhonest.Heseemedtohavenothingtohide.TherewereproblemsinthenewUSSR–thewhitearmiesoftheimperialistcountrieshadrattleditsfrontiers,whiletheolderproblemsofstarvationandindignitycouldnotbeeasilyovercome.Impatiencewiththenewregime was in the air. It was to be expected. But high expectations can alsoproduce gravedisappointment.This iswhatLeninhad told theAmerican, theBritish and the French journalists who had previously come to see him.W.T.GoodeoftheManchesterGuardianfoundLenintohavea‘pleasantexpressionintalking,andindeedhismannercanbedescribedasdistinctlyprepossessing’.Theentire office where Lenin worked, Goode wrote, had ‘an atmosphere of hardworkabouteverything’.

TotheGermans,hebemoanedthefailureoftheGermanuprisingin1918-19tocreateasocialrevolution.InOctober,amillionGermanworkerswentoutonstrikeandformedRäte(Councils),theGermanequivalentoftheSoviets.Sailorsof the main German naval fleet in Wilhelmshaven refused to weigh anchor.Their mutiny threatened the German imperial monarchy to the core. Theirslogan – again an echo from the Soviets – was Frieden und Brot (Peace andBread). The unfolding of this revolution led to the abdication of the pettyGerman monarchs and, eventually, the emperor. The social democratsproclaimed a republic but halted the revolution by guile and violence. TheformationoftheCommunistPartyofGermanyinlate1918cameasaresultofthe revolutionary tempo and the betrayal of the social democrats. A massdemonstrationonJanuary5,1919,broughthundredsofthousandsofpeopletoBerlin,wheretheywantedtoproclaimarevolutionarygovernment.Thesoldiers

inGermany,unlike inRussia,didnotwalkover to themasses.TheyremainedloyaltothesocialdemocraticgovernmentofFriedrichEbert.ThetwoleadersoftheCommunistParty–RosaLuxemburgandKarlLiebknecht–werekilledtendayslater.Therevolutionfailed.

In a letter to the workers of Europe and America published in Pravda inJanuary 1919, Leninwrote that theUSSR is a ‘besieged fortress so long as thearmiesoftheworldsocialistrevolutiondonotcometoouraid’.Lenin’sproseisstronghere,ashecondemnsthe‘brutalanddastardlymurderofKarlLiebknechtandRosaLuxemburg’by thesocialdemocrats. ‘Thosebutchers’,hewrites,hadgonetothesideoftheenemy.Germanycouldhavehadarevolutionifthesocialdemocratshadnotbeencongenitalbetrayersofthecauseofthepeople.Ifonlyanother European country had broken its capitalist chains, Lenin mused toNakahiraandFussa,theUSSRwouldnotbesoisolated.

Inevitably,FussaaskedLenin,‘Wheredoescommunismhavemorechanceofsuccess–intheWestorintheEast?’Leninhadgiventhisquestionagreatdealofthought,atleastsincethe1911Chinese,IranianandMexicanrevolutions.ThesehadoverthrownformsofautocracytoproducethefragilerepublicsofSunYat-Sen,theIranianMajlisandPorfirioDíaz.TheseuprisingshadinspiredLenintowrite an article in 1913 with the provocative title, ‘Backward Europe andAdvanced Asia’. No such energy for rebellion seemed available in the UnitedStates or Great Britain (except in Ireland during the 1916 Easter Rising), inFranceorGermany.‘Sofar’,LenintoldNakahira,echoingtheoldcertaintiesofEuropeanMarxism,‘realcommunismcansucceedonlyintheWest’.But,giventhe1911uprisings fromMexicotoChina,hisown1916studiesof imperialismandoftheuseofcolonialarmiesintheGreatWarof1914-18,headded,‘itmustbe remembered that theWest lives at the expense of the East; the imperialistpowersofEuropegrowrichchieflyattheexpenseoftheeasterncolonies,butatthesametimetheyarearmingtheircoloniesandteachingthemtofight,andbysodoingtheWestisdiggingitsowngraveintheEast.’

Bolsheviks in Petrograd (1917). Support for the Bolsheviks increased exponentially in themonths betweenMarchandNovember.

RedOctober

TheRussianRevolutiontorethroughthefabricoftime.Whatshouldneverhavebeen became real – a workers’ state, a country whose dynamic was to becontrolledbytheworkingclassandpeasantry.ItwasnotenoughtooverthrowtheTsarandtoinauguratetheruleofthebourgeoisie.Toomuchsacrificeofthepeople had gone into the uprisings that produced the February 1917 uprisingagainst the Tsar’s rule. A bourgeois revolution was insufficient. It wouldsuffocatethegreatdreamsoftheworkersandpeasantsthathadbeenmadeclearin their slogans.Would the bourgeoisie bewilling to end thewar and to turnover the land to the people? Would a bourgeois state be willing to put thedesperateneedsofthepeopleattheforefrontofitsagenda?Itwasunlikely.Thatiswhy a second revolution tookplace inOctober-November of that year.TheSoviets seized power. They proclaimed to the world’s wretched that this waspossible:acountrycouldberuledbyitsworkingpeople.

Evenmoreremarkable,thenewSovietUniondeclaredthatitwasnotmerelyformed to uphold the national interests of the people of the Union of SovietSocialist Republics. ‘We claim that the interests of socialism, the interests ofworldsocialism,rankhigherthannationalinterests,higherthantheinterestsofthestate’,saidLenintotheCommunistParty’sCentralCommitteeinMay1918.ItwasthisattitudethatmovedtheRussiancommuniststocreatetheCommunistInternational(1919-43).ThisInternational–theComintern–hadasitschargetoassistandguiderevolutionaryforcesacrosstheworld,toconnectthemtoeachotherandtoamplifytheirgrievancesanddemands.TheOctoberRevolutionwascertainlyauthoredbythepopulationsruledoverbytheTsar,butitspromisewas

global.

Humanhistorygivesusfewexamplesof toilerstakingholdofgovernment.Kingsandqueenssawitastheirdivinerighttorule.TheFrenchRevolutionof1789setasidethisexpectation.Ordinarypeople–themob–pushedthemselvesoutofhungerandwartodemandtherighttorule.‘Liberty,Equality,Fraternity’wastheirbattlecry.LiketheRussianRevolutionof1917,theFrenchRevolution’ssirenwasheardfarandwide.IntheislandofHispaniola,ToussaintL’Ouverture–bornintoslavery–ledarebellionofslavesagainsttheFrenchplanters.Itwasthefirstsuccessfulslaverebelliontoformastate.Thereisadirectlinethatlinksthese late 18th-century rebellions – in France and in Haiti – to the RussianRevolutionof1917.Theseareitsprecursors.Theserebellionsbrokethespellofdivinity that surrounded the rulers. Ordinary people could rule. That was thelessonoftheFrenchandtheHaitianRevolutions.

But these revolts of the 18th century took place against early forms ofcapitalism–whenpropertywasbeingshapedintocapitalandwhenmerchantsdominated over nascent forms of industry. Through the decades after theserevolts,theadvantagesofcolonialism,slaveryandtradecametotheindustrialistsand some of the old aristocrats. These people used the profits of trade andcolonialismtoreshapeproductionofgoodsandservices.Harnessingthebestofscienceandtechnologyandtakingadvantageofworkersdisplacedfromfarming,the industrialists shaped factory-based production to accumulatemore wealthandpower.Theindustrialistsandthemerchants–thebourgeoisie,insum–tookcontrolnotonlyovertheeconomybutalsoofpolitics.WhattheordinarypeoplehaddoneintheFrenchandHaitianRevolutionwastooverthrowthemonarchy,but theywerenotable toshapehistory in their image.France’s revolutionwasdeliveredtothebourgeoisie.Haiti,likeCubaafter1959,facedaviciousembargofrom the United States. The United States government worried that a blackrepublicwouldthreatentheessenceoftheslaveorderintheUnitedStates.ThatiswhyonFebruary28,1806,USPresidentThomasJeffersonprohibitedalltrade

withHaiti.Itwasintendedtosuppressthisrepublicoffreeblacks;ahundredandfiftyyearslater,whentheUSembargoedCuba,itintendedtooverpowerthefirstsocialist republic – inspired by the October Revolution – in the Americanhemisphere.

Competitive capitalismproduced rapiddevelopments in technology and inproduction. Vast amounts of goods were created at the same time as thebourgeoisieputimmensepressureonworkerstoearnlessandworkmore.Thereemergedquiterapidlyaproblemofoverproduction(toomanygoodsproduced)andunderconsumption(toofewgoodspurchased)–workerstoiledtomaketheplethora of goods but earned far too little to buy them back. One crisis afteranother tore through the system. Karl Marx’s Capital (1867) assessed theendemic nature of the crises precisely. Marx saw that capitalism was bothdevilishly productive and dangerously unstable. It impoverished workers toproduce a grand civilization, but through this impoverishment, it undercut itsownability to survive.Solutions to thesecrisescame through theexpansionofnationalmilitariesandthroughwarsforcolonialismandformarkets.Faminefortheworkerswasmirroredinthefeastsforthebourgeoisie.Itwasinthiscontextthat the heirs of the French and Haitian Revolutions emerged – the workers’movement in the industrial belts and the anti-colonial peasant and workermovementinthecolonies.Thesetwinmovementswouldlaterformtheheartofinternationalcommunism.

It was theGreatWar of 1914-18 that set the clock faster for internationalcommunism. At a small gathering in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, in 1915, thesocialistsoffered aunique–Marxist– interpretationofWorldWar I. In theirZimmerwaldManifesto,draftedbyLenin,AlexandraKollontaiandKarlRadek,they wrote, ‘Irrespective of the truth as to the direct responsibility for theoutbreakofthewar,onethingiscertain:Thewarwhichhasproducedthischaosistheoutcomeofimperialism,oftheattemptonthepartofthecapitalistclassesof eachnation to foster their greed forprofit by exploitationofhuman labour

andof thenatural treasuresof theentireglobe.’Thiswarwasnotawarof thepeople,but awaragainst thepeople.TheZimmerwaldLefturged theworkingclasses to resist thewars, to defy their rulers and create a society in their ownimage.

The red-hot contradictions of the war provoked a serious crisis in theweakest link of the imperialist chain – in Tsarist Russia. An InternationalWorkingWomen’sDaydemonstrationonMarch8,1917,setofftheworkersofthe main cities into full-scale rebellion. The InternationalWorkingWomen’sDay march had been a staple of the world socialist movement over the pastdecade since the First InternationalConference of SocialistWomenmade thiscall in 1907. In 1917, the Petrograd Inter-district Committee released apamphlet, calling on women workers to go on strike. It is an impassioneddocument,whoseflavourcanbegleanedfromtheseparagraphs,

Comrades,workingwomen,forwhosesakeisawarwaged?DoweneedtokillmillionsofAustrianandGermanworkersandpeasants?Germanworkersdidnotwanttofighteither.Ourcloseonesdonotgowillingly to the front. They are forced to go. TheAustrian, English, andGermanworkers go just asunwillingly.Tears accompany them in their countries as in ours.War iswaged for the sake of gold,whichglittersintheeyesofcapitalists,whoprofitfromit.Ministers,millowners,andbankershopetofish in troubledwaters.Theybecomerich inwartime.After thewar, theywillnotpaymilitary taxes.Workersandpeasantswillbearallthesacrificesandpayallthecosts.

Dear women comrades, will we keep on tolerating this silently for very long, with occasionaloutburstsofboilingrageagainstsmalltimetraders?Indeed,itisnottheywhoareatfaultforthepeople’scalamities.Theyhaveruinedthemselves.Thegovernmentisguilty.Itbeganthiswarandcannotendit.Itravagesthecountry.Itisitsfaultthatyouarestarving.Thecapitalistsareguilty.Itiswagedfortheirprofit.It’swell-nightimetoshouttothem:Enough!Downwiththecriminalgovernmentanditsentiregangofthievesandmurderers.LongLivePeace!

The Committee did not expect the vital reaction that they got from theworkingwomen.Womenworkerslefttheirfactoriesinthethousands.Workingmen and slowly the peasantry came alongside them. Soldiers,who came fromtheseclasses,joinedin.Theydecidedthatthiswarwasnottheirwar.Theirrealwar was against the aristocracy and its authoritarian state. That had to beconfronteddirectly.Twodaysafter InternationalWomen’sDay, fifty thousand

workersinSt.Petersburgwereonstrike.Itwasthemostpowerfuldemonstrationofworkerpower inRussia todate.TheTsarist systemcollapsedonMarch16,justoveraweekaftertheInternationalWomen’sdaydemonstrations.

Confidencethatworkerscouldgovernhadtobebuilt.Thingsmovedslowly.Thefirstgovernmenttotakepowerwasheadedbyanaristocrat–PrinceGeorgyYevgenyevich Lvov – and then by a liberal lawyer –AlexanderKerensky. Theworkers did not go home. The energy of the revolution was quite ferocious.WhentheProvisionalGovernmentseemedtoditheronequalrightsforwomen,theBolshevik leaderAlexandraKollontaiwrote inPravda, ‘Weren’twewomenfirstoutonthestreets?Whynowdoesthefreedomwonbytheheroicproletariatofboth sexes,by the soldiers and soldiers’wives, ignorehalf thepopulationofliberated Russia?’ The League for Women’s Equal Rights – led by PoliksenaShishkina-lavein–andotherpoliticalpartiesheldamassivedemonstrationonMarch19 todemandequal rights,which theywononly through their resolutestruggle.Workers of all political parties – electrified by this energy – formedSovietsorCouncils thatdeveloped ‘dualpower’,a situationwhere theycreatedtheir own institutions that had legitimacy from popular acclamation. Leninunderstood that thisnewsituationwas themakingof theworkers. Itwas theirinnovation.‘Themosthighlyremarkablefeatureofourrevolution’,hewroteinApril1917,‘isthatithasbroughtaboutadualpower.Thisfactmustbegraspedforemost: unless it is understood, we cannot advance.Wemust know how tosupplementandamendoldformulas,forexample,thoseofBolshevism,forwhiletheyhavebeenfoundtobecorrectonthewhole, theirconcreterealizationhasturnedouttobedifferent.Nobodypreviouslythought,orcouldhavethought,ofadualpower.’

Whatwas‘dualpower’?TheworkerscouldnotmerelyaccepttheruleoftheProvisionalGovernment,thenrunbyKerenskyandthebourgeoisie.ParalleltothatGovernment,inordertosatisfytheirdeeperambitions,theworkerscreatedtheirowngovernment–theSovietofWorkers’andSoldiers’Deputies.Thiswas

a parliament of the working class and the peasantry, not a parliament of themerchants,industrialistsandtheirserviceclass.Leninsawthatthisnewform–theSoviet–hadadirectancestor intheParisCommuneof1871.Whathedidnotknowisthatthisformofrulehadotherancestors–suchasthecommunes(quilombo)createdbytheinsurrectionoftheslavesinBrazil.Theseareexamplesfromthehistoryofworkingpeoplewhocreatedtheirownformsofrule–oftendemocratic–againstthehierarchiesofthemastersofproperty.

WhatwasofgreatimportanceisthattheworkersfoundtheirintellectualinLenin,who listened carefully towhatwas goingon in the factories and in thestreets anddrove theBolsheviks close to themoodof theworkers. Leninhad,sincethe1890s,beenindirecttouchwiththeBolshevikagitators–therankandfileofhispartysuchasCeciliaBobrovskaya,ConcordiaNikolayevnaGromova-SamoilovaandIvanBabushkin–whoshowedhimthelimitationsoftheirworkandalsowhatkindofavenueshadtobeexploredtoenrichtheirpolitics.ItwasthisinteractionthatfedLeninwiththematerialfortheproductionofatheoryoftheBolsheviks,whicharmedthemfortherapid-movingeventsfromFebruarytoOctober1917.

Lenin’s study of the penetration of capitalism in Russian agriculture (TheDevelopment of Capitalism in Russia, 1899) showed the class breaks in thepeasantry,somethingnotfullygraspedbytheagrarianpopulists.Hefoundthat81 per cent of the peasantrywere poor, landless peasantswhose situationwasakintotheindustrialproletariat.Theexistenceofthissectionofthepeasantry–thevastmassoftheRussianpopulation–suggestedthattheywouldbepoliticalallies of the industrial proletariat, the working class. Here was the theoreticalbasis for the worker-peasant alliance. It would form the central politicaldimension of the Bolshevik party. Lenin would continue to update thisinformation,suchasinthelongpamphletfrom1908–TheAgrarianQuestioninRussiaTowardstheCloseof theNineteenthCentury–whichwasnotpublisheduntil1918forreasonsofcensorship.

Lenin’stwomajorpoliticaltexts–WhatIsToBeDone?(1902)andOneStepForward, Two Steps Back (The Crisis in Our Party) (1904) – provided theBolshevikswith two lessons. First, that itwas necessary to create a disciplinedpartyoftheworkingclassandagriculturalproletariatalongwiththeirclassallies.Such a party would train its cadre to be amongst the people, build theirconfidenceandpreparefortheinevitablespontaneousoutbreakofunrest.Whenpeopleprotest,aparty’sexperienceandpoliticalclarityarenecessary toensurethatthemovementisnotoverrunbytheapparatusofthestate–andbyalossofconfidence. Second, that the Social Democratic parties would be ready toswallowtheenergyoftheworkersandpeasantsfortheirownconciliatoryends.ItwasnecessarytoshowhowtheSocialDemocratsoftenspokethelanguageofthepeople,buttheywerenotgroundedintheclassinstinctsandclasspositionsoftheworkersandthepeasants.Theywould,therefore,betraytheworkersandpeasantscavalierly.Apartyoftheworkersandthepeasantshadtobereadyfortheir spontaneousuprising.When the spontaneous strikesbrokeout in theSt.Petersburgfactoriesin1896,Leninargued,the‘revolutionarieslaggedbehindthisupsurge, both in their theories and in their activity; they failed to establish aconstantandcontinuousorganizationcapableof leading thewholemovement’.Thislaghadtoberectified.ThepartyoftheBolshevikshadtobeofa‘newtype’,disciplined, centralized and armed with a strong theory of capitalism,imperialism and socialism. ‘Give us an organization of revolutionaries’, Leninwroteboldlyandseeminglyfantastically,‘andwewilloverturnRussia’.

The key text that came from Lenin was in 1916, Imperialism: the HighestStage of Capitalism. It was here that Lenin laid out the entanglement of theTsarist state in the world imperialist system. The tentacles of monopolycapitalismfromoutsidetheTsaristterritoryhadstrangledthestate.Ifaworkers’government came topower, itwouldbeunable tomoveanalternative agendaunlessitconfrontedthesetentaclesofmonopolycapitalism,themanifestationofimperialism.TheoverthrowoftheTsarwasessential,ofcourse,butitwouldbe

insufficient.Anewstate,aworkers’ state,wouldhave toconfront imperialism,detachitselffromthosetentaclesanduseitsownconsiderableresourcesforthewell-beingofitsownpeople.TheFebruaryRevolutionhadoverthrowntheTsar,but the vacillating government ofKerensky had begun to offer concessions toimperialism. This meant that the Kerensky government was suffocating theessenceof the revolutionaryprocess.The choice that laybefore theBolsheviksduring the long and confusing summer of 1917 was to either witness thedestructionof the revolutionor to act to save it from theRussianbourgeoisie,which was unwilling to confront imperialism. In April, Lenin wrote that thepointwasnottheseizureofpowerbyaminority–forthatwouldbemerelyanunpopular coup. ‘We are Marxists,’ he wrote, ‘we stand for proletarian classstruggle against petty-bourgeois intoxication, against chauvinism-defencism,phrase-mongeringanddependenceonthebourgeoisie.’ThegoaloftheMarxistsshouldbe toharness theactual experienceof theworkersanddriveanagendathatwouldmake theworker andpeasantpower into thepowerof society.Forthat,theFebruaryrevolutionhadtobesavedfromminoritypower–theseizureofpowerbythebourgeoisieintheserviceofimperialism.

On April 7, 1917, Pravda, the Bolshevik paper, published Lenin’s AprilTheses. These ten points captured the sentiments of the masses who had bystrike,mutinyanddemonstrationbroughtdowntheTsar.Itwasthetheoryputforward by the April Theses that drew thesemasses into the Bolshevik party,whichhadonly10,000membersinAprilbuthalfamillionmembersbyOctober.

Whatwerethesetheses?Hereismysummary:

• ThattheGreatWarwasanimperialistwar.• That the Revolution remained in motion and power would transfer from the bourgeoisie to the

workersandpeasants.• ThattheProvisionalGovernment,thegovernmentofcapitalists,mustnotbesupported.• That theBolsheviks, aminority in the Soviets, had to explainpatiently and systematically that the

otherpartieshadmadeerrors,andthatitwastimetotransfer‘theentirestatepower’totheSoviets.• Thatthenewordercouldnotbegroundedintheparliamentbuta‘republicofSovietsofWorkers’,

AgriculturalLabourers’andPeasants’Deputies’.Thepolice,thearmyandthebureaucracyhadtobe

abolished.• Thatallestatesmustbeconfiscatedandalllandnationalized.• Thatallbanksbeamalgamatedintoasingle,Soviet-controlledbank.• ThatallsocialproductionandthedistributionofproductsshouldbeunderthecontroloftheSoviets.• ThatthePartyholdaCongressandamenditsprogramme.• ThatanewInternationalbeconstituted.

Itwasclearandprecise.Powerhadtomovefromtherulingclasstothenewclassthathadtorule,theworkingclassandpeasantry,themajorityofhumanity.

By September 1917, there was impatience amongst the working people toseizepower.Earlythatmonth,asworkersandpeasantstooktotheirSovietsandpassed resolution after resolution for their own government, Lenin wrote,‘insurrectionisart’.ItwastimeforanuprisingtosavetheFebruaryRevolution.InJohnReed’sbracingTenDaysthatShooktheWorld,hedescribestheworking-class and peasant energy. ‘Lectures, debates, speeches – in theatres, circuses,school-houses, barracks. . . . Meetings in the trenches at the Front, in villagesquares, factories. . . . What a marvellous sight to see Putilovsky Zavod (thePutilov Factory) pour out its forty thousand to listen to Social Democrats,Socialist-Revolutionaries,Anarchists,anybody,whatevertheyhadtosay,aslongastheytalk!’Buttheyalsoseemedtowantsomethingspecific–tofoundaSovietRepublic.ItisthisspecificdemandthatledtotheOctoberRevolution.

The Congress of Soldiers’ Representatives wrote to the 2nd All-RussianCongress of Soviets, ‘The country needs a firm and democratic authorityfounded on and responsible to the popular masses. We have had enough ofwords, rhetoric and parliamentary sleight of hand!’ They demanded a secondrevolution. InOctober1917, theworkingwomenofPetrogradwhohad joinedtheBolshevikpartyheldaconference.Intheroomwerepeople likeConcordia‘Natasha’ Samoilova, Emilya Solnin from the Aivas plant, the spinner VasinafromtheNitkaFactoryandVinogradova fromtheBassily IslandPipeFactory.Thesewerehard-workingwomen–factoryworkersandmilitantrevolutionists.Theywanted to overthrow the government ofKerensky. Theymarched to see

LeninintheSmolny,wherehelivedandworked.‘Takepower,ComradeLenin:thatiswhatweworkingwomenwant’,theysaidtohim.Leninreplied,‘ItisnotI,butyou,theworkerswhomusttakepower.Returntoyourfactoriesandtelltheworkersthat.’Thisiswhattheydid.

In October, the second Russian Revolution broke out – pushed by theBolsheviks. This was a seizure of power by the Soviets, who dismissed thebourgeoisparliament(theDuma)andappointedthemselvesasthegovernorsoftheirownsociety.LeninwenttothePetrogradSoviettocelebratetheseizureofpower. What was the significance of this revolution, he asked his comradeworkers? ‘Itssignificanceis, firstofall, thatweshallhaveaSovietgovernment,ourownorganofpower,inwhichthebourgeoisiewillhavenosharewhatsoever.The oppressedmasseswill themselves create a power. The old state apparatuswillbeshatteredtoitsfoundationsandanewadministrativeapparatussetupintheformoftheSovietorganizations.’

HereisLeninputtingintoaspeechbeforetheSovietswhathehadarguedinhis text –The State and Revolution – written in August-September 1917, butpublished the following year.He had read closelyMarx’s account of the ParisCommune of 1871 as well as the essays by Engels on the state in a socialistsociety.Engelshadsuggestedthatthestatemustbeblownup(sprengung),thatitcould not be inherited in its old form by the proletariat. Old customs ofstatecraft,embeddedintheinstitutionsandpracticesoftheoldstate,wouldworklikeadiseasetodrawtheproletariatintothehabitsofbourgeoisrule.Thestatehad to be ‘smashed’, ‘blown up’, somehow transformed into institutions thatwouldconformto theclassobjectivesof theproletariatand thepeasants.Stateinstitutions were needed in the interim period, but not adopted withouttransformation.‘Theproletariatcannotsimplywinstatepowerinthesensethatthe old state apparatus passes into new hands’, wrote Lenin inThe State andRevolution.Therevolution‘mustsmashthisapparatus,mustbreakitandreplaceitbyanewone’.

‘We’ve won’, sang Mayakovsky in his poem after Lenin’s death, ‘but ourship’salldentsandholes,hull insplinters,enginesnearend,overhauloverdueforfloors,ceilings,walls.Come,hammerandrivet,repairandmend!’

‘Wedestroyedourenemieswithweapons,weearnourbreadwithlabour–Comrades,rollupyoursleevesforwork’(1920).PostermadebyNikolaiKogout(1891-1959).

FollowthePathoftheRussians!

Newstravelledslowly toEurope’scolonies in1917-18. Indiawouldonlyget itsworldnewsthroughBritain.Itsnewsservices–suchasReuters–camewiththeworldviewoftheIndiaHouse inLondon.WhattheBritish imperialistswantedknown would be allowed in the press. The small nationalist press – withreadership in thehundreds– tried toarticulateanalternativeviewpoint,but itsufferedfromlackofaccesstoinformationaboutworldevents.Gradually,wordarrived that theRussian people –mostly peasants – had overthrown themostpowerful autocracy in the world, the Tsarist Empire. There was disbelief thatmenandwomenwithdirtundertheirfingernailsandbodiesbeatenbymachineswouldbeabletocometogetherandseizepower.Howwasthisevenpossible?

Premonitionsof1917hadbeenavailablesince1905whentheRussianstriedtheir first major mass revolt against the Tsar. M.K. Gandhi, in South Africa,observedthe1905uprisingwithgreatadmiration.ThepeopleofRussia,hewroteinYoungIndia,arepatriotic liketheIndians,butunliketheIndians–hefelt–theywerewilling to sacrifice their lives for theirdignity. ‘TheRussianworkersandalltheotherservantsdeclaredageneralstrikeandstoppedallwork’,Gandhiwrote.Astheworkersandservantsputdowntheirtools, theTsarhadtomakesomeconcessions, for ‘it isnotwithin thepowerof even theTsarofRussia toforce strikers to return at the point of the bayonet. . . . For even thepowerfulcannotrulewithoutthecooperationoftheruled’.Thelessonofnon-cooperationcame fromRussia. Itwas not the politics of the elite or evenmerely of urbanareas. It was the politics – as far as Gandhi couldmake out – of themasses,includingthepeasantry.

1905 ended in failure, although the Tsar did provide some concessions –including theDuma. In India, the contemporarySwadeshimovement–whichGandhi found to be ‘much like the Russianmovement’ – was almost entirelysmothered.ButeventheSwadeshimovement,withitsepicentreinBengal,couldnotbestoppedbyBritishviolenceasitmorphedintodeeperandwiderstrugglesagainst British rule that continued some of its strategies (boycott of Britishgoods, picketing of shops that carried British goods and direct confrontationwithBritishauthority).In1908,theworkersinBombaywouldgooutonstrikeagainsttheirunbearableconditionsofworkandlife.Lenin,ontherunfromtheTsaristauthoritiesinFinlandthenSwitzerland,observedthesestrikesandwroteinAugustof1908,

InIndia,thenativeslavesofthe‘civilized’Britishcapitalistshavebeenrecentlycausingtheirmastersalotofunpleasantnessanddisquietude.ThereisnoendtotheviolenceandplunderwhichiscalledtheBritishadministrationofIndia.Nowhereintheworldistheresuchpovertyamongthemassesandsuchchronicstarvationamongthepopulation.ThemostliberalandradicalstatesmeninfreeBritainare,asrulers of India, becoming transformed into real Genghis Khans, who are capable of sanctioning allmeasuresof‘pacifying’thepopulationintheircharge,eventofloggingpoliticaldissenters.Thereisnottheslightestdoubtthattheage-longplunderofIndiabytheEnglish,thatthepresentstruggleofthese‘advanced’EuropeansagainstPersianandIndiandemocracywillhardenmillionsandtensofmillionsofproletariansofAsia,willhardenthemforthesamekindofvictoriousstruggleagainst theoppressors.Theclass-consciousworkersofEuropenowhaveAsiaticcomradeswhosenumberswillgrowfromdaytodayandhourtohour.

Europe–inAsia–had,asLeninwrotein1913,actedinthemost‘backward’fashion–allyingwiththe‘forcesofreactionandmedievalism’todrivetheiraimsofplunderandprofit.Backwardnesshereimpliedthatitmadeitsallianceswiththeforcesofthepast–thelandlordsandthemonarchs–andnottheforcesofthe future – the democratic movement of the masses. It is this Europeanbourgeoisiethatwasbackward,Leninwrote,becauseitiscommittedto‘upholddying capitalist slavery’. On the other hand – from India to Russia and fromChinatoPersia–Asiaisadvanced.‘EverywhereinAsia’,Leninwrote,‘amightydemocratic movement is growing, spreading and gaining in strength. The

bourgeoisie there isasyet sidingwith thepeopleagainst reaction.Hundredsofmillionsofpeople are awakening to life, light and freedom.Whatdelights thisworldmovement is arousing in the hearts of all class-consciousworkers, whoknowthepathofcollectivismliesthroughdemocracy!WhatsympathyforyoungAsiaimbuesallhonestdemocrats!’

Lenin was correct to say that the ‘class-conscious’ workers in the WestsupportedthestrugglesfromIrelandtoIndia.Duringthe1913DublinLockout,militant trade unionists in England supported it as part of their ownwave ofstrugglesfrom1911to1914.Twentythousandworkerscameto listentoJamesLarkinspeakinManchester,whileEnglishworkersraisedmoneyfortheirIrishcomradesacrossthesea.ButthisdidnotpreventthebureaucracyoftheEnglishworkers – in the Trades Union Congress – to refuse to back the strike. ‘Weasked’,wroteJamesConnolly, ‘forthe isolationof thecapitalistsofDublinandfor answer the leaders of the British labour movement proceeded calmly toisolate the working class of Dublin.’ This is what Lenin meant when hespecifically wrote of the ‘class-conscious workers’, as opposed to the labourbureaucrats.Suffocatedbyimperialism,Europewasnotfatedtobethecentreofworld revolution. The ‘weakest link’ had to be found, which Lenin and theBolshevikssawinTsaristRussia.Buttherewasweaknessaswellinthecolonies,where there was hope of revolutionary action to strike a blow againstimperialism.Thesewere the ‘Asiatic comrades’ needed by the ‘class-consciousworkersofEurope’.

1917would succeed.Thepeasant armiesof theTsaristEmpire– includingtheworkers and the soldiers, both a step from the countryside – couldnot bestopped.Ifthemuzhikscoulddoit,whynotthefellahin,whynotthecampesinos,whynotthekisans,whynotthenongmin?

InMexico,therevolutionaryleaderEmilianoZapatarecognizedimmediatelythatthisRevolutioninRussia–apeasantandworkersrevolution–wasrelatedtotheMexicanRevolutionof1911–largelyapeasantrevolutionledbypeasant

leaderssuchashimself.‘Wewouldgainagreatdeal,’hewrotein1918,‘humanjusticewouldgainagreatdeal,ifallpeopleofourAmericaandallthenationsinoldEuropeunderstoodthatthecauseoftheMexicanRevolution,likethecauseof unredeemed Russia, is and represents the cause of humanity, the supremeinterestoftheoppressed.’OneofthemilitarychiefsoftheMexicanRevolution,in 1919, put the linkage clearly, ‘I don’t know what Socialism is, but I am aBolshevik, like all patrioticMexicans. TheYankees do not like theBolsheviks;theyareourenemies;therefore,theBolsheviksmustbeourfriends,andwemustbetheirfriends.WeareallBolsheviks.’China’sSunYat-senwouldhaveagreed.‘IfthepeopleofChinawishtobefree’,hesaidonJuly25,1919,‘itsonlyallyandbrother in the struggle for national freedom are the Russian workers andpeasantsoftheRedArmy.’TheChineseliberalwriterHuShihwroteinhorror,‘Now that the slaves of Confucius and ChuHsi are declining in number, theslaves of Marx and Kropotkin are taking their place.’ Chinese anarchists andrevolutionaries of all kinds began to read Marx and Lenin and – after theformationoftheChineseCommunistPartyin1921–begantodriftintoitsorbit.

In December 1917, the Indian journalist K.P. Khadilkar got word of theevents in Russia. ‘In November, power in Petrograd passed into the hands ofthosesocialistswhowereledbyLeninandwhowantaseparatepeacetreatywithGermany’,hewroteinChitramaya-Jagat.KhadilkarnotedhowLenin’spartyhadsecuredthesupportofthesoldiersandhowKerenskyandhiscabinethadbeenisolated.But then,Khadilkar–asubjectof theBritishEmpire–zoomed inonthemostimportantpointfromthisvantage,‘Leninhasissuedadecreedeclaringthe rights of nations to self-determination, and freedomhas been given to theBaltic states and the Polish people to exercise that right’. In the colonies, thedeclaration of the right to self-determination was powerful. It defined therevolution.

Subramania Bharati, the revolutionary Tamil poet, sang an ode to ‘NewRussia’,

Lifeofthepeopleastheythemselvesorderit.Alawtoupliftthelifeofthecommonman.Nowtherearenobondsofslavery.Noslavesexistnow.

Some Senegalese soldiers, fighting under the flag of the French empire,decamped for the Soviet Red Army when they heard of its arrival into worldhistory.BorisKornilov,theSovietpoet,wouldlatersinginhisMoiaAfrikaofaSenegalesesoldierwhodiedleadingtheRedsagainsttheWhitesnearVoronezh‘in order to deal a blow to the African capitalists and the bourgeoisie’.WhennewsoftheOctoberRevolutioncametotheAfricancontinent,IvonJonesoftheSouthAfricanLabourPartyandtheInternationalSocialistLeaguewroteinTheInternational, ‘We must educate the people in the principles of the RussianRevolution’.JoneswouldlaterbeoneofthefoundersoftheCommunistPartyofSouth Africa. Claude McKay, the Jamaican poet who attended the FourthCongress of theComintern in 1922,wrote an essay on ‘Soviet Russia and theNegro’ in theDecember 1923 issue ofThe Crisis. HereMcKaywrote of whatSovietRussiameanttotheliberationofpeoplesofAfricandescent,

ThoughWesternEuropecanbereportedasbeingquite ignorantandapatheticoftheNegroinworldaffairs,thereisonegreatnationwithanarminEuropethatisthinkingintelligentlyontheNegroasitdoes about all international problems. When the Russian workers overturned their infamousgovernmentin1917,oneofthefirstactsofthenewPremier,Lenin,wasaproclamationgreetingalltheoppressed peoples throughout theworld, exhorting them to organize and unite against the commoninternational oppressor – Private Capitalism. Later on inMoscow, Lenin himself grappled with thequestionof theAmericanNegroesandspokeonthesubjectbefore theSecondCongressof theThirdInternational.HeconsultedwithJohnReed,theAmericanjournalist,anddweltontheurgentnecessityofpropagandaandorganizationalworkamongtheNegroesoftheSouth.Thesubjectwasnotallowedtodrop.WhenSenKatayamaofJapan,theveteranrevolutionist,wentfromtheUnitedStatestoRussiain1921 he placed theAmericanNegro problem first uponhis full agenda.And ever since he has beenworkingunceasinglyandunselfishlytopromotethecauseoftheexploitedAmericanNegroamongtheSovietcouncilsofRussia.

McKaycontinuedLenin’sagendaattheComintern’sFourthCongress,wherehearguedforthenecessityoforganizingblackworkersandpeasantsaswellas

fortheimportanceoffightingagainstracism.Inhisbrilliantpoem,IfWeMustDie,McKayhadwrittenofbeingsurroundedby‘madandhungrydogs’thatseektobrutalizehumanbeings.Butthissituationofbeing‘pressedtothewall,dying’isnottheconclusionofthestory.Theendingissimple–‘fightingback!’McKaytook inspiration from the October Revolution, from the forthright way thatLeninputforwardthedemandforalloppressedpeopletobefreeandfromthefightingspiritofpeopleofAfricandescentintheWesttodefinehisoptimism.

ClaudeMcKayattheFourthCongressoftheComintern(1922).

WithouttheOctoberRevolution,wouldthepeoplecolonizedbyEuropehaverisen up in the way that they did? Would 1919 have been peppered withuprisingsofthecolonizedagainsttheir imperialmasters–fromtheuprisinginEgyptledbySaadZaghloulPashatotheMarchFirstMovementinKoreatotheMayFourthMovement inChina; and then thenext year, to the revolt in Iraqagainst British rule, and then in 1921 theMongolian Revolution that createdthree years later the second socialist state in the world? Did they get theirconfidencefromtheOctoberRevolution?IfnotfortheclassdemandsfromtheUSSR the Indian National Congress would never have adopted in 1919 thedemands of the peasantry. It is certainly true that Gandhi’s direct entry intoIndian politics with the Champaran Satyagraha (1917) and Kheda Satyagraha(1919) as well as the deep resistance against the Rowlatt Acts and theJallianwallahBaghmassacreof1919steeledtheIndianNationalCongresswhenit met in Amritsar in December 1919. But at the Congress meeting, therepresentatives vacillated because the English King had issued a proclamationthat appeared sympathetic. The radicals at the Congress – including a youngJawaharlalNehru–pushedforthepeasantswhoworkedthelandtobegiventitleto the land and for the peasants to pay tax but no rent. ‘Although under theinfluenceofGandhiwe followedanotherpath’,wroteNehru reflectively inhisSovietRussia(1927),‘wewereinfluencedbytheexampleofLenin’.

Ghulam Rabbani Taban, a communist and member of the ProgressiveWritersAssociationinIndia,recalledreadingNehru’sSovietRussia (1927)andRabindranathTagore’s letters fromRussiawhilehewas incollege.These texts,hesaid, ‘gaveaglimpseintoafairy-taleworld’. ‘Duringtheclosingyearsofthe1920s’, he wrote, ‘while still at school, we at times heard some fragmentarystories about Russia that trickled through colonial censors. The news of theRussian revolution and its achievements thrilled us. I had no perception of arevolutionbutthetermhadbeenfamiliarizedbythefull-throatedcriesofLongLive Revolution ringing throughout the country’. Taban heard Mohammed

Iqbal’s poems on Lenin, particularly his powerful Farman-i-Khuda (God’sCommand), which starts, ‘uttho meri dunya ke gharibon ko jaga do’ – Rise,awakenthepoorofmyworld.Andthen,

Jiskhetsedehqaankomuyassirnaheinrozi,Usskhetkeharkhosha-i-gandamkojallado.Findthefieldwherethepeasantscan’tgettheirdailybread,Andburneverygrainofwheatfromthatfield!

Hereisthecadenceofrevolution,theangerattheworldasitis,thehopethatthefiresofrevoltwillsmashthestateandproduceaneworder.Thisisthevoiceof the small farmer, the landless peasant, the poor of the countrysidewho areeager to shake the world. And then the poem by Iqbal ends, ‘Adaab-i-junoonShair-i-Mashriqkosikhado(TeachthepoetoftheEastthespiritofinspiration!)’–whatnewlanguagestheartistcanlearnfromtheuprisingofthepoor!

AyoungMao,inChina,wouldlooklonginglytotheRussianexperience.Hewouldjointhemovementaftertheuprisingof1911thatoverthrewtheEmperorandhisrule.Later,afterthelongwarthatbroughtthecommuniststopowerin1949,MaowouldreflectontheRussianinspiration.‘ManythingsinChinawerethesameas,orsimilarto,thoseinRussiabeforetheOctoberRevolution.Therewas the same feudal oppression. There was similar economic and culturalbackwardness. Both countries were backward, China even more so. In bothcountries alike, for the sake of national regeneration progressives braved hardand bitter struggles in their quest for revolutionary truth. . . . The OctoberRevolutionhelpedprogressivesinChina,asthroughouttheworld,toadopttheproletarianworldoutlookastheinstrumentforstudyinganation’sdestinyandconsideringanewtheirownproblems.FollowthepathoftheRussians–thatwastheirconclusion.’

ThecoverofManuelMaplesArce’sUrbe,designedbyJeanCharlot(1922).

TheLungsofRussia

Mexico’sManuelMaples Arce and his fellowEstridentistas shrugged off theirfellow writers who wanted to emulate European modernism or its classicaltraditions. They looked elsewhere, deep into the heart of the Mexicanrevolutionarytraditionthatopenedupin1911andoutwardstowardtheSovietUnion.In1924,MaplesArcewroteasublimeandcomplexpoem–Urbe:Super-PoemaBolcheviqueenCincoCantos(City.BolshevikSuper-PoeminFiveCantos).Herewaslanguagestutteringagainsttheoldforms,lookingfornewterms,newidioms,newwaystoexpressthenewworldthattheywantedtoproduce.

LospulmonesdeRusiasoplanhacianosotroselvientodelarevoluciónsocial.Russia’slungsblowthewindofsocialrevolutiontowardus.

The poem – dedicated to the ‘workers ofMexico’ – echoed the impatientstyleofVladimirMayakovsky,whoalso felt that theold language– steeped infeudal culture – was not adequate to the revolutionary era. Old Russian wassaturatedwithfeudalimplications,justasthehierarchiesofthesystemproducedbodies that were filled with subservience, the hunched shoulders, the headdowncast. But the new Russia had a new attitude. Krupskaya recounted the‘alteredlanguage’sheheardfromwomenworkersandpeasantsatameeting.Thespeakers, she recounted, ‘spoke boldly and frankly about everything’. How tospeak boldly now as poets, as artists, as actors, as designers? People like

Mayakovsky – ‘hooligan communists’ Lenin called them affectionately –produced novel work, inventive work, work that tried to find itself in theatmosphereofradicaldemocracy.

It is what appealed to people like Maples Arce in Mexico City and theremarkablegroupinChina–DingLing,LuXun,HuYepinandShenCongwen.During theRussian-Japanesewar in1904-05,LuXunsawapictureofChineseprisoners being led by Japanese troops. ‘Physically, they were as strong andhealthyasanyonecouldask’,LuXunwroteoftheChinese,‘buttheirexpressionsrevealedalltooclearlythatspirituallytheywerecallousedandnumb’.Itwastobreakthisnumbnessthathebegantowrite.

It was to break the numbness that Nazrul Islam, the communist poet ofBengal, wrote his triumphant songBidrohi (Rebel) in December 1921. NazrulIslam,withMuzaffarAhmad,AbdulHalimandothers,went–asHalimputit–onan‘unknownpath’,frustratedwiththepresentandeagertocreatethefuture.Theseearlycommunists,asthehistorianSuchetanaChattopadhyaycalledthem,weresurroundedwithliterarymagazineswithnamesthatevokethatdesireforanew opening – Bijali (Lightning) and Dhumketu (Comet). The police readDhumketu anddescribed it quite accurately, ‘thewhirlwind energyof the styleand inflammatory character of the language had a great unsettling effect onpremature and unbalanced minds, with whom the paper was immenselypopular’.The journalwas editedby the communists, butwithNazrul Islam inthe lead.Hispoem–Bidrohi–carries theurgencyofMayakovskyandMaplesArce,ofthepoetsofrevolutionaryelectricity,

InonehandofmineisthetenderfluteWhileintheotherIholdthewarbugle!IamtheBedouin,IamtheChengis,Isalutenonebutme!...MaddenedwithanintensejoyIrushonward,Iaminsane!Iaminsane!SuddenlyIhavecometoknowmyself,

Allthefalsebarriershavecrumbledtoday!...Iamtherebeleternal,Iraisemyheadbeyondthisworld,High,evererectandalone!

Thisdesire towrite against thenumbnesswaswhatwoulddraw inwritersfromChinatoChile,eagertofindnewlanguagetokeepupwiththekindofleft-wingfuturismof theSoviets. It is thesoundthatonehears fromNazrul Islam,surely,butalsofromtheburstingimageryoftheChileanpoetPabloNeruda,the‘nervousmontage’cinemaoftheCubanfilmmakerSantiagoÁlvarezorlaterthedream-likememoirsoftheIraqicommunistwriterHaifaZangana.

MaplesArcewroteataparticularlyexcitingtimeinMexico’shistory.From1920 to 1924, powerful struggles of peasants and workers forced theMexicangovernment todeepen its revolutionarycommitment.Whenthegovernment–such as of Álvaro Obregón (1920-24) – vacillated between a revolutionaryagendaanda reformistone, theorganizedworking class andpeasantry foughtthem to conduct land reforms and to pursue cultural and educational policiesthat favoured the masses. With 90 per cent of Mexico illiterate, visual andtheatrical arts were necessary to transmit the values of the revolution. It wasduring the early 1920s that artists began to paint Mexican public spaces andactorsbegantotaketheirtheatreontheroad,wheneducatorswenttoruralareasto teach and when land reform provided thematerial basis for dignity in thecountryside. All of this was to promote the values of the 1911 MexicanRevolution despite the hesitancy of the leadership that emerged. In this timecame the murals of Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José ClementeOrozco,thepaintingsofFridaKahloandthephotographyofTinaModottiandManuelÁlvarezBravo.

Manyof these artistsweremembersof theMexicanCommunistParty andthey were members of the Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters andSculptors,whosemanifestosaidthatMexicanartisgreatbecauseit‘surgesfrom

thepeople, it iscollective’. Itwouldbreakhierarchies,straightenspines, loosentongues.MaplesArcesensedtheimportanceofthisperiod,

Lamuchedumbresonorahoyrebasalasplazascomunalesyloshurrastriunfalesdelobregonismoreverberanalsoldelasfachadas.TodaytheresoundingcrowdfloodsthepublicsquaresandthetriumphantshoutsofObregonismreflectthesunfromthefacades.

The crowd in the squaresweremainlypeasants. Itwas thesepeasantswhowould be the subject of somuch revolutionaryMexican art – andofMexicanstatepolicyintheseearlyyears.

Twentyyearslater,inMay1942,MaogaveaseriesoflecturestotheYenanForum on Literature andArt.Mao had closely read Lenin’s exhortation from1905thatthenewrevolutionaryliteraturemightserve ‘themillionsandtensofmillions of working people – the flower of the country, its strength and itsfuture’.Hewassympathetictothefactthat,likeRussiaandMexico,Chinawasacountrywithhighilliteracy.Maowasclearthattherevolutionarymovementhadtwo armies – the army of guns, which had fought to secure the base area ofYenan, and the army of pens, which would need to provide another kind ofarmourfortheworkingclassandthepeasantry.Writersandartistshavetogotothepeople,Mao said, inorder tounderstand thepeople rather than imagineafantasy population that would remain outside their imagination. ‘China’srevolutionarywritersandartists,writersandartistsofpromise,mustgoamongthemasses;theymustforalongperiodoftimeunreservedlyandwholeheartedlygoamongthemassesofworkers,peasantsandsoldiers,go into theheatof thestruggle,go to thesource, thebroadestandrichest source, inorder toobserve,experience,studyandanalyzeallthedifferentkindsofpeople,alltheclasses,all

themasses, all the vivid patterns of life and struggle, all the rawmaterials ofliteratureandart.’ Itwasamongst thepeoplethat theartistsandwriterswouldlearnnotonlyaboutthesocialcontradictionsintheheartofthemasses,buttheywould also learn the imagination of the masses and so produce art for thatimagination.

FridaKahlo,MarxismWillGiveHealthtotheSick(1954).

Thetaskoftherevolutionaryintellectualsisto‘collecttheopinionsofthesemassstatesmen’–namelythepeople–‘siftandrefinethem,andreturnthemtothemasses,who then take them and put them into practice’. This iswhat theItalianCommunistAntonioGramsci, writing in his prison cell at around thissame time, called elaboration – to take the views of themasses and elaboratethem from common sense to philosophy. Through wall newspapers andpamphlets and through theatre and songs by revolutionary troupeswould theintellectuals transfer this popular philosophy back to themasses. ‘Writers andartists concentrate such everyday phenomenon,’ lectured Mao, ‘typify thecontradictionsandstruggleswithinthemandproduceworkswhichawakenthemasses, fire them with enthusiasm and impel them to unite and struggle totransformtheirenvironment.’MaoperhapshadinmindthepoetryofTianJian,whoseIfwedidn’tfight(1938)wasalreadyagreatfavouriteinYenan,

Ifwedidn’tfight,TheenemywithhisbayonetWouldkillus,Andpointingtoourboneswouldsay:‘Look,Thesewereslaves’.

TianJianandhiscomradespioneeredthe‘streetpoetry’festivals,wherethepoetswouldgatheron thestreets toenliven thepublicspacewith theirpoetry.When morale amongst the people was low, Tian Jian, He Qifang, GuoXiaochuan,KeLan,LiJiandAiQingbelieved,itwastheroleoftheartiststoliftthe spirit of the masses. There were idioms of the villages in their poems,rhythmsfamiliartothepeoplebutnowrenderedintomoresophisticatedrhymeswithaclearpoliticalpurpose.‘Aflockofgoatsfollowsthegoatatthehead’,sangLiJi.‘ThroughoutnorthShaanxi,theCommunistsspread’.

In the crucible of revolutions –whetherRussia after 1917 orChina in the

1940s orCuba after 1959– literatureunderwent amajor transformation,withrevolutionaryartiststuggingatthestringsofreality,findingnewwaystosaynewthings.Artists andwriters tried to fan the flames of revolutionary change andunderstanding.Theiraudiencewasnottheoldaristocratsorthebourgeoisie,butit was the workers and the peasants who wanted a soundtrack for theirrevolution,ahistoryandanoveloftheiractionsonthestreets.

RussianpeasantsdemonstrateintheRedSquare,Moscow(1917).

PeasantSoviets

LeninunderstoodthelimitationsofEuropeanMarxistorthodoxy.Itassumed–fromarigidreadingofMarx–thattheagentofhistorywastobetheproletariat,seen narrowly as the industrial worker in the trade unions. Concentration onbuildingtradeunionswasseen,bysomesocialists,tobesufficient.Lenincalledthis economism. He had a broader vision. The entire working class and theagriculturalproletariatneededtobedrawnintothestrugglethrougharangeofavenues,not just through tradeunions.Unionsare essential,but theycanalsonarrow the perspective of workers, leading them into battles to increase theirwagesandimprovetheirworkingconditions.Whatwasneededwastowidentheconsciousnessof theworkersand theagrarianproletariat to see thestruggleasoneforthetotalityofhumanity.Workers,Leninwrote,shouldnotseekabetterdealwithintherestrictedconfinesofcapitalism,butseektobuildabetterworldwithinthemuchbroaderhorizonofcommunism.

Marxhadseveraltimesinhiswritingsandspeechesindicatedthathisvisionforpoliticalchangewasnotrootedonlyinthetradeunionsandintradeunionstruggles.In1865,Marxgaveaspeechwherehelaidoutthemainthemesofhispolitical economy. In that speech, he spoke directly to the trade unions – thecrucial bulwark of the class struggle. The unions, he said, ‘ought not to forgetthat theyare fightingwitheffects [and]notwith thecausesof theseeffects . . .They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidableguerrilla fights incessantly springing from the never-ceasing encroachments ofcapital.’What the unions had to do,Marx said,was to fight on the terrain ofpolitics,toabolishthewagesystemforaneworder.Buttogettothatpoint,the

strikes and the struggles operated as schools for the working class, a place todevelop confidence and learn about the structure that dominatedworkers andthepeasants.

Political change was not to be confined to reforms but expanded to arevolutionary horizon – to politics. The immense majority, Marx wouldfrequentlywrite,had to riseup tooverthrow the shacklesof thepresentworldorder.Theproletariat–theworkerswhosoldtheirlabourpower–wouldplayacrucialroleinthesocialistrevolution.Narrowpoliticaldemocracywaspossibleunder capitalism,where elections couldbe constrained to advantage the elites.Butmuchbroaderdemocracy–includingsocialandeconomicdemocracy–wasnot possible. Such wide democracy would threaten the narrow and selfishcontrolofpropertybyasmallminority,whohiredlabourtoenhancetheirownprivatepropertyratherthantodemocraticallyimprovethelivelihoodandmeettheambitionsof theworkers.Thisbarriermadethestrugglesof theproletariatcentral to the socialist revolution. The bourgeoisie – the owners of capital –wouldnotbewillingtowidendemocracy.Theypreferreditinchains.

For Lenin, the role of the peasant was crucial. His first major study –DevelopmentofCapitalisminRussia(1899)–wasrootedinthequestionofthepeasantry.Russiawas,astheysaidinthosedays,apeasantsociety.Ignoringtherole of the small peasantry and the proletarianization of the peasantry wouldmeanmissingtherevolutionarypotential thatslumberedinthecountryside.In1905,inanimportantinterventioninNovayaZhizn,Leninpointedoutthatthepeasants wanted ‘land and freedom’. This demandmust bemet in full, Leninsaid,butithadtobeextendedtoademandforsocialism.Allpeasantsdonotsidewiththeworkerswhowageadirectstruggleagainsttheruleofcapital.It is,hesaid,theroleofthepartytodrawthesmallpeasantsintoanactivealliancewiththeworkerstowardssocialism.

It was not hard to see the grief in the countryside. Lenin’s friend,MaximGorky,pointedoutthatthepeasantscalledtheirworkstrada–fromtheRussian

verbstradat, tosuffer.Buttoorganizesufferingwasnotsufficient.Thepeasantrisingin1905showedtheircapacity.Gorkywouldwrite,‘Peoplewhothinkthatthepeasantsareunabletotakeanactivepartinthesocialandpoliticallifeofthecountrydonotknowthepeasants’.

In1920,Leninlookedeastandsaid,‘Sovietsarepossiblethere.TheywillnotbeworkersbutpeasantSovietsorSovietsofthetoilers’.OnFebruary17ofthatyear, the Indian Revolutionary Association – peopled by émigrés within theUSSR such as Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh, Abdul Hafiz MohammedBarakatullah and Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi – sent a note to Lenin. ‘Indianrevolutionaries express their deep gratitude and their admiration of the greatstrugglecarriedonbySovietRussiafortheliberationofalloppressedclassesandpeoples, and especially for the liberation of India’, the Association resolved.Leninwroteareplytothisresolution,whichwasbroadcastonMay10,

Iamgladtohearthattheprinciplesofself-determinationandtheliberationofoppressednationsfromexploitationbyforeignandnativecapitalists,proclaimedbytheworkers’andPeasants’Republic,havemetwithsuchareadyresponseamongprogressiveIndians,whoarewagingaheroicfightforfreedom.The working masses of Russia are following with unflagging attention the awakening of the Indianworkersandpeasants.Theorganizationanddisciplineoftheworkingpeopleandtheirperseveranceandsolidaritywiththeworkingpeopleoftheworldareanearnestofultimatesuccess.WewelcomethecloseallianceofMuslimandnon-Muslimelements.WesincerelywanttoseethisallianceextendedtoallthetoilersoftheEast.OnlywhentheIndian,Chinese,Korean,Japanese,PersianandTurkishworkersandpeasants joinhands andmarch together in the commoncauseof liberation–only thenwill decisivevictoryovertheexploitersbeensured.LongliveafreeAsia!

The question of peasant and worker unity sat in the foreground of thismessage and in the guidance that came from the USSR to the anti-colonialmovements.Therecouldbenomotionintheir‘peasantsocieties’iftheyignoredthe vastmass of their population, the peasantry. Thosewho came from other‘peasantsocieties’,fromIndiaandChinaorfromMexicoandEgypt,sawintheRussian Revolution and its first decade of dramatic human development themirroroftheirownaspirations.

India’sJawaharlalNehru, leaderoftheCongressParty,arrivedintheUSSR

to celebrate its tenth anniversary. He marvelled at the ability of this ‘peasantsociety’ to rapidlymove frommisery to fellowship, from starvation to surfeit.Russia interested Nehru because both India and the USSR were peasantcountrieswithpoverty and illiteracy as thebarriers to freedom for thepeople.Whathesaw in1927surprisedhim, that therewas lesspoverty in thecountrythanhe imaginedandthat the leadershiphadcomefromamongst theworkersandpeasants.MikhailKalinin,whomNehrumet, came from a peasant familyand was then the head of state of the USSR. Joseph Stalin, the head ofgovernment, came from a family of cobblers and housemaids. These wereordinary people, who now ran an extraordinarily large country. Of his visit,Nehru wrote, ‘Russia thus interests us, because it may help us to find somesolution for the serious problems which the world faces today. It interests usspecially because conditions there have not been, and are not even now, verydissimilar toconditions inIndia.Botharevastagriculturalcountrieswithonlythebeginningofindustrialization,andbothhavetofacepovertyandilliteracy.IfRussiafindsasatisfactorysolutionforthese,ourworkinIndiawouldbemadeeasier.’

‘Woman, learn to read andwrite! –Oh,Mother! If youwere literate, you could helpme!’Likbez Poster

(1923) made by Elizaveta Kruglikova. Likbez, abbreviation for ‘likvidatsiya bezgramotnosti’, meaning‘eliminationofilliteracy’,wasahugelysuccessfulSovietprogrammeforspreadingliteracy.

And indeed, Nehru found that the USSR had made great gains againsthunger and poverty and towards increasing the power and dignity of thepeasantry. From great poverty and deprivation, theUSSR quit theGreatWar,fought off the invasion of the capitalist powers and struggled to build up theindustrial andagricultural capacity of the country.Within adecade, theUSSRwas able tomove from extreme backwardness to a situation of economic andsocialstability.Nehrulookedcarefullyatthestatisticsonaccesstomedicalcare,life expectancy, infant mortality and industrial growth. These showedimprovement. But these were not conclusive. What interested him, the keenobserver,werethesignsofamuchrichersociallifeforthepeasants.‘Theyhavetheirnewspapersandcountry fairsandacademiesandsanatoria; their librariesand reading rooms and women’s clubs. The Society for the Liquidation ofIlliteracyandMutualAidSocietiesare tobe foundeverywhere.Andsoare theyouthorganizations–thePioneersandtheKomsomols’–theAll-UnionPioneerOrganizationandtheYoungCommunistLeague.Thisrichness,thiswealth,wasthebestmeasureofadvance.

Without literacy, Lenin wrote, ‘there can be no politics; without [literacy]therearerumours,gossip,fairy-talesandprejudices’.In1897–inthelastTsaristcensus – less than a third of Russians counted as literate (only 13 per cent ofwomenwereliterate).In1917,athirdofmenwereliterateandlessthanafifthofwomen.ImmenseamountofthesocialsurplusintheUSSRwasturnedovertoeducationandhealth,tothebasicneedsofthepopulation.By1926,thankstotheLikbez programmes, half the population could read and write. By 1937, twodecadesintotheRevolution,theliteracylevelsroseto86percentformenand65per cent for women. It was an extraordinary achievement. It needs to bementionedthattheUSSRfollowedthepolicyofindigenization(korenizatsiya)–promotingregionallanguagessothatpeoplecoulddeveloptheirknowledgeandwisdom in theirnative tongues andnotmerely inRussian. Such advance tookplace ina ‘peasant society’. India’s literacy rate at the closeof twocenturiesof

Britishcolonialrulestood–incomparison–at12percent.

Khazirmindaazad!NowItooamfree!(1918-1920)Courtesy:BritishLibrary.

SovietAsia

The October Revolution certainly began in the cities of St. Petersburg andMoscow.InJune1916,nonetheless,unrestbrokeoutintheKazakhsteppeandTurkestanagainsttheTsar’sattempttoconscriptthepeopleofCentralAsiaintohisfutileEuropeanwar.InFerghanaValleyandintotheareasoftheKazakhandKirghiz, the people attacked Russian settlers and then fled – enmasse – intoChina’sXinjiang.Chinese secret societies– rooted inanti-monarchical ideas–hadinfiltratedCentralAsia.OnesuchsocietywastheGelaohui,whichhadbeenbroughttoXinjiangbytheHunanarmyofZuoZongtang.OneofthemembersoftheGelaohuiwasMao’smaingeneral,ZhuDe.WhenaskedaboutBolshevismanditsimpactontheorganizationoftheChineseCommunistParty,ZhuDetoldtheAmericancommunistAgnesSmedleythat‘thecellsystemwasasoldastheChinesesecretsocieties’.Hewouldknow.HewasaGreatElderoftheGelaohuilodgeinSichuantillhebecameacommunist.TheGelaohuiandtheRedSpearsmovedbetweenCentralAsiaandChina,inculcatingtheviewthattheTsarmustbe overthrown. The October Revolution had its origins, then, not only in St.PetersburgbutalsoinQaraqol(Kazakhstan).

ManyRussiansettlersinthisregion,uneasyabouttherevoltsaroundthem,joinedtheWhiteArmytooverthrowtheOctoberRevolution.TheSovietssentaCommissiontoinvestigatethesituationinTurkestan.Itrecommendedthattheold Tsarist bureaucrats be removed from the area, that colonialist attitudesamongst the Russian settlers be eliminated and that the old feudal andpatriarchal attitudes amongst the Central Asians be combatted. TensionsbetweenTurkestanandMoscowprevailed.ThecommunistsinTashkent–such

asTurarRyskulov,MirsaidSultan-Galievand laterZekiVelidiTogan– foughtfor the autonomy of their region from Moscow and for a much less hostilepositiontowardstheelitesoftheTurkmenpeople.Moscowwasnotkeenonthis.ItsrepresentativesintheCommission–noTurkmenamongstthem–wantedtointegratetheareaintotheUSSRandtomovetowardsamuchfiercerpoliticsofclass struggle. Lenin felt that the local communists had a better sense of theground thanhisowncomrades inMoscow. Inhisnote to the ‘CommunistsofTurkestan’,Leninwrote,

TheattitudeoftheSovietWorkers’andPeasants’RepublictotheweakandhithertooppressednationsisofverypracticalsignificanceforthewholeofAsiaandforallthecoloniesoftheworld,forthousandsandmillionsofpeople.Iearnestlyurgeyoutodevotetheclosestattentiontothisquestion,toexerteveryefforttosetaneffectiveexampleofcomradelyrelationswiththepeoplesofTurkestan,todemonstratetothem by your actions that we are sincere in our desire to wipe out all traces of Great-Russianimperialismandwageanimplacablestruggleagainstworldimperialism,headedbyBritishimperialism.

The ideaof ‘GreatRussian imperialism’was crucial for the territoryof theformerTsaristEmpire.CentralAsiahadtobeamodelforapost-colonialworld.SoviettroopsroutedthelocalkingsofKhivaandBukhara,puttinginplaceofthemonarchs the Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic and the Bukharan People’sSoviet Republic (both later incorporated into the Uzbek and Turkmen SovietSocialistRepublics).Theserepublics–basedonthepolicyofself-determination–neededtoguardtheirautonomycarefully.

Uneasiness remained at the heart of theCentralAsian areas.Questions ofreligious freedom and the rights of the small proprietors dogged the Sovietproject. The Young Bukharans and the Young Khivans – such as AbdulraufFitrat,FayzullaKhodzhayevandAkmalIkramov–wereimpatienttotransformthestructureandcultureoftheirsocieties.Forthem,theSovietpromisemeantthattheirsocieties–miredinfeudalism–couldbewrenchedintoanegalitarianera. The Indian writer L.G. Ardnihcas travelled through Central Asia twodecadeslaterandfoundthat‘theearlyBolsheviksmademanymistakesofpolicyandprocedure.Theywere imbuedwith a sense of superiority thatwas almost

fatal to the cause’.At theCongress of theToilers of theEast atBaku in 1920,GrigoryZinoviev came to the heart of the problem inCentralAsia.Themostimportant issue,he said,was land reform.Zinoviev felt that theCentralAsianpeasantrywas too timid to take action. ‘Centuries of stagnation’ as a result of‘manycenturiesofoppressionandslaveryonthepartofEuropeans’,hesaidinhis speech to thedelegates,hadhalted thepeasantry. ‘The solutionof the landquestionintheEast’,hesaid,‘issurroundedwithconsiderabledifficultieswhicharisepartlybecause thepeasants,beatenandterrifiedbytheiroppressors,havenotdaredtotakedecisiverevolutionaryaction’.ItisherethattheBolshevikshadtoact.

In the Azerbaijan Republic, for instance, where the Soviet system is already in force, there are stillpeasantswhofeartoseizethelandforthemselves,beingafraidoftherevengeofthebourgeoisieandthelandlords.ThesamedifficultyistobemetinTurkestanwheretherearestillRussianswhoweresentbyTsarismandthebourgeoisieespeciallytooppressthenatives.Thispartoftheinhabitants,notwishingtoabandon itsprivileges,continues toactasbefore, thoughfrequentlycovering itselfwithSovietandCommunistwatchwords.TheproblemconfrontingalltruerepresentativesoftheSovietistodenouncethesegentryandshowthenativepeoplesthatSovietRussiawillnottoleratetheformercolonialpolicyofrobbery,butisthebearerofcultureandcivilizationinthebestsenseofthewords.Thiswedo,notafterthefashionoftheoldcolonists,butaselderbrothersbringinglightandculture.

These‘elderbrothers’werenotRussianchauvinists,butCentralAsianswhohad turned toCommunism. The Soviets trained localmen andwomen at theCommunistUniversityoftheToilingEast(KUTV)inMoscow.Thesemenandwomen then returned to their homes and developed – to the extent that theyfoundpossible–aCentralAsiancommunism.TheCommunistParty,ArdnihcaswroteinTheSovietEast,‘decidedtohaveitshandsmadeoflocalfleshandbloodandtodiscardthehandthrustfromoutsideintothenationalrepublics’.

OneoftheserepublicswasthatoftheKyrgyzpeople,wholivedbetweentheUSSR and China.When the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast was created in1924,theKyrgyzpeoplehadnoalphabetfortheirlanguage(althoughsomeusedtheArabicscript,butonlyrarely).Withinafewyears,thenewSovietintroducedaLatin-basedalphabet.AsRaymondSteigerandAndrewDaviesnotedin1942

intheirbookSovietAsia,‘Untilafewyearsago,therewasnowrittenalphabetoftheKirghiz language; thegreatmajorityof thepeoplewas illiterate.Today, theKirghizhaveanalphabet,andin1939therewere20,000pupilsintherepublic’s1,500 elementary schools, 119 high schools, and three universities.More than20,000teachersgaveinstructioninthenativelanguagefrombooksprintedinthenew alphabet’. ‘It is the common people, the peasant, the labourer and thenomadshepherd,’Ardnihcaswrote,‘whohavetakentheleadintheachievementofthegreattransformation’.

Remarkableachievementsofmassivescaleimprovedthelivesofthepeoplesof Soviet Asia. The 1,500-kilometre Turkestan-Siberia (Turksib) Railway ranfrom Tashkent (Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic) to connect with the Trans-SiberianRailway.Thismammothprojectwentfrom1926to1931aspartoftheFirstFive-YearPlanoftheUSSR.Adocumentaryoftheconstruction–madebyViktor Turin and released in 1929 asTurksib – is a superb exploration of theproblemsfacedbythenomadicpeoplesoftheregionandhowtherailwaywouldliftsomeoftheirburdens.GhafurGhulam,latertheNationalPoetoftheUzbekSovietSocialistRepublic,watchedthetrainprojectcometofruitionandwroteanode to its importance (it was translated in 1933 by the African Americancommunist poet Langston Hughes and his neighbour, the Georgian sculptorNinaZorokovitz).‘Crushedbythebronzefive-pointedheartofthelocomotive’,hewrote,‘alongtheseancientroadswhichhaveseensomanythings’wouldnowcome theproletariatofAsia.Theywillnow travelona ‘steel caravan inunionandsolidarity’.

Theseancientroadsareourimmortality.AndalongtheseroadsWillpassthegaleoflibertyAndnotthesmellofblood.

Turin’s documentary and Ghulam’s poem celebrate the immense sociallabouroftheCentralAsianpeoplewhowerenowcreatingprojectsfortheirown

benefit.But this trainwasnot theonlymajorproject.The300-kilometreGreatFerghana Canal (completed in 1939) helped draw water from the Syr DaryaRivertothecottonfieldsoftheFerghanaValleyintheeasternpartoftheUzbekSoviet Socialist Republic. It would allow the expansion of agriculture in thatregion,drawinginfarmersfromacrossCentralAsiatothefertilevalley.

RedCaravan(1939),photographbyMaxPenson(1893-1959).

None of these gigantic projects could have been conceived if the variousrepublicswerenot linkedtogether into theUSSR.Inhindsight, there isagreatdeal of criticism of the environmental problems from the Soviet-era fertilizerindustryneartheAralSeaandoftheuseofindustrialchemicalsinthesoilintheFerghana Valley. This is, of course, true, but it not a problem solely of thecommunistexperiment.

Inspiration for the common people of Central Asia came from the Sovietdecreesthatechoedoffthewallsofthecolonies,theirtitlesillustrativeenough:

ToAlltheMuslimWorkersinRussiaandtheEast(November1917).DeclarationoftheRightsofthePeoplesofRussia(December1917).DeclarationoftheRightsofWorkersandExploitedPeople(January1918).

ThedeclarationofDecember1917wasmostpowerful.Itcallednotonlyfor‘theequalityandsovereigntyof thepeoplesofRussia’butalso ‘therightof thepeoplesofRussiatofreeself-determination,eventothepointofseparationandthe formationofan independent state’.Thiswasunimaginable in thecolonies.WhenUSPresidentWoodrowWilsontriedtotakecreditfortheideasofpeacewithout annexation and for self-determination, the Indian journalist andnationalistK.P.KhandilkarwroteinChitramaya-Jagat, ‘Lenindiditmorethantwoyearsago’.

Bylate1919,eventhosewhohadeitherputtheirfaithinWilson,orwhohadusedWilson’swords,foundthemselvesdisappointed.China’sMao,thenayoungman, saw the European leaders as ‘a bunch of robbers’ who ‘cynicallychampionedself-determination’.Lenin’sUSSR, inthisperiod,didnothavethesamekindofinstitutionallimitationsasWilson’sUSA.Wilson’stestcameattheLeagueofNationsmeetinginParis,wherehehelpedsquelchtheJapanesebidtohave aRacial EqualityClause at the heart of the League ofNationsCovenant.Wilson’s emissaries proceeded to bury that Clause, damaging the League ofNations and putting aside the universalism of his own proposals for self-

determination.RacismwasvitaltothecapitalistpoliciesoftheUnitedStatesandtheEuropeancountries that reliedupon ideasof racial superiority tomaintaintheir colonies and semi-colonies as places of super-exploitation of people andnature.Noquestionof giving theseplaces freedom.Wilson sent in theUnitedStatesmilitary tooccupyNicaragua in1914,Haiti in1915and theDominicanRepublic in 1916. In 1913-14, Wilson intervened militarily in Mexico toundermine its revolution. The unseemliness of Wilson’s imperialist militaryactions irked Wilson’s Secretary of State Robert Lansing, who wrote to hispresident in 1916, ‘It seems to me that we should avoid the use of the wordIntervention and deny that any invasion of Mexico is for the sake ofintervention.’Wilson’sadvisor,GeorgeLouisBeer,encouragedhimnottoallowhisownrhetorictoimplyself-determinationforAfricanstates.‘Thenegrorace’,wroteBeer,‘hashithertoshownnocapacityforprogressivedevelopmentexceptunderthetutelageofotherpeoples.’InthislistofotherpeoplesweretheBritishandFrench–whohadexperience– aswell as theScandinavians–whohadacleanreputation.ThepeopleofAfricaandAsia,however,were ‘notyetable tostand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world’.WilsonwasthecontemporaryoftheBolsheviks.Theirworldwasalientohis.

The Communist International met for the first time in March 1919; itsnubbed Versailles and Wilson. They were not relevant to it. It charted adifferentcoursethatculminatedattheBakuConferenceoftheToilersoftheEast(1920). The Bolshevik Mission in Tbilisi (Georgia) offered the followingdescriptionoftheconference,

The first sittingof theConferencewasdevoted toZinoviev’s speech,whichexplained theaimsof theConference.Thepassage inZinoviev’sspeechwherehe invitedtheEasternpeoples toaholywarwasinterrupted by the demonstrations of the delegates who in an ecstasy jumped from their seats,unsheathedtheirswordsandwavedthemintheair.Thehallwasfilledwithcheeringinall languages.Formanyminutes,tothestrainsoftheInternationale,theConferencesworetokeepfaithfultothecauseoftheworkingclasses.Thesittingwasveryenthusiastic,andwasfrequentlyinterruptedbyovations.

In the evenings, Baku wore a holiday appearance. Artistic triumphal arches and beautifuldecorations filled the streets. Throughout the day, the delegates moved about the streets. Comrade

Zinovievwastheobjectofmuchattention.Whereverhewasseeninthestreets,hewassurroundedbycheeringcrowds.

By 1922, the Soviet Foreign Ministry acknowledged that in the East theinfluence of the Soviets was ‘constantly growing’ because of its diplomaticcreativity(examplesforthemwerethe1921Soviet-Turkishtreatyandthe1921Soviet-PersianTreaty).

TheCommunistInternationalstruggledtobalancetheneedsofitsEuropeanmemberswiththemembersfromthecountriescolonizedbyEurope.Theformerrepresented the countries of the colonizers. They had to fight in their ownsocietiestobuildorganizationsoftheworkingclassandotheralliedclassesatthesame time as they were charged with driving an anti-colonial agenda. TheComintern’s attempt to get them to hold a Colonial Conference spluttered. ItwasdifficulttofindoutwhattheseEuropeancommunists–seenasapipelinetothecolonies–weredoingintermsofpracticalworktobuildalliancesbetweenworkers in their countries and in the colonies. These European communistsfound it difficult to work amongst workers in their countries who had beendominatedbyalabouraristocracythatwasoftenpro-imperialist.Itwasnoteasytopush adouble agenda– for the rights of theEuropeanworkers and for theworkers and peasants in the colonies. No such difficulty lay in the colonies –from Indo-China to the Gold Coast of Africa. But other difficulties hauntedcommunistsinthecolonies.Theyfounditdifficulttocreateapreciseframeworktoworkwiththebourgeoisnationalistswhoalsohatedcolonialrulebutwhohadno problem with capitalism. These contradictions dampened the work of theComintern.Nonetheless,itwasthroughtheCominternthattradeunionistsandrevolutionarynationalistsfromoneendoftheworldfoundoutabouttheworkof their peers on the other side. The infrastructure of global communismwascreatedbytheCominternactivists,whotravelledfromoneendofChinatotheotherendofMexicotomeetwithsocialists,anarchists,syndicalists,rebelsofallkindstourgethemtowardsunitywiththeCommunistmovement.

PaperssuchasTheNegroWorkerallowedunionistsacrossthecontinentstokeep up with each other and to experience the unity that allowed them tomagnifytheirwork.TheTrinidadianMarxistintellectualC.L.R.JamesobservedtheworkofhisTrinidadian friendGeorgePadmore,headof the InternationalTradeUnionCommitteeofNegroWorkers.‘ItmustberememberedthatmeninMombasa, in Lagos, in Fyzabad, in Port-au-Prince, in Dakar, struggling toestablish a trade union or political organization, most often under illegalconditions and under heavy persecution, read and followed with exceptionalconcern the directives which came from the revered and trusted centre inMoscow’,Jameswrote.This‘trustedcentre’wastheComintern.Itprovidedthenecessaryorganizationtohelpworkersfromoneendoftheworldtobeintouchwith others at the other end. Padmore editedThe NegroWorker, which gave‘hundreds of thousands of active Negroes and the millions whom theyrepresented’ access to the world, wrote James. It gave them insight into‘CommunismintheoryandtheconcreteideaofRussiaasagreatpower,whichwasonthesideoftheoppressed’.This,JameswroteevenashewascriticaloftheUSSR,‘iswhatTheNegroWorkergavetothesweatingandstrugglingthousandsintheWestIndies,inNigeria,inSouthAfrica,allovertheworld’.

PlatformssuchasInternationaleArbeiterhilfe(Workers’InternationalRelief–IAH)emergedinitiallytohelpdrawattentiontothestrugglesinsidetheUSSRwithhunger– to enableEuropeansmainly raise funds tohelpprevent famine.But theworkof the IAHwouldeventuallywidenoutwards,building solidaritycampaignsfromJapantoMexico,fromArgentinatoAustralia.TheIAHworkedfrom Germany, but turned its energy outwards towards the ‘oppressed andexploited’peoplesof theworld. Itenabledcommunistsandtheirallies to forgeconnectionsacrosscontinentsanddeepenedtherelationsofradicalswithintheirowncountries. It allowedwords like ‘solidarity’ to takeona tangiblemeaning.ThiswouldnothavebeenpossiblewithouttheactivesupportofMoscow.

Fromoneendoftheplanettotheother,CominternagentssuchasMikhail

Borodincarriedinstructionsandmethods,wonderinghowbesttohelpalongtherevolutions.AlongsidethemweremenandwomenofthecolonieswhocametoMoscow, studied revolutionary theoryand then found theirwaybackhome tobuild communist parties against all odds. These people led colourful lives,dangerouslives,goingfromfactorygatetoprinter’sshop,fromprisontoexile.Theirjourneyswereunpredictable–theIndianrevolutionaryM.N.Roybecomesa founder of the Mexican Communist Party, while the Chilean socialist LuisEmilio Recabarren becomes a founder of the Argentinian Communist Party.DadaAmirHaidarKhan (1900-89) leaveshis remotevillage inRawalpindi forthemerchantmarine, becomes an activist of the American Communist Partyandthengoes to theUSSRto trainat theUniversityof theToilersof theEast,whichsendshimtoIndia.YusufSalmanYusuf(1901-49)–knownasFahd–metaCominternagentPiotrVasiliwhohelpshimgototheUniversityoftheToilersoftheEast,whichsendshimbacktoIraqafterasojourninEurope.TanMalaka(1897-1949),who leaves theDutchEast Indies to study inHolland, returns tobecomeapopular educator and communist, findshimself in exile and then inMoscowfortheFourthWorldCongressoftheComintern.HồChíMinh(1890-1969),meanwhile,worksontheshipsandthehotelsinFrance,theUnitedStatesand on the AtlanticOcean.He becomes a founder of the French CommunistParty,goestotheUSSRtostudyattheUniversityoftheToilersoftheEastandthenreturnstoIndo-Chinatoleadhiscountrytorevolution.Eachofthemwasborn close to 1900 and each lead a colourful life, marked by the OctoberRevolutionwhichoccurredintheirteens.ThesewerethepeoplewholivedalongthecircuitsoftheComintern,forwhomtheUSSRwasacrucialnodetodeveloptheirownideasandtobuildtheirownrevolutionarytheoriesandnetworks.

InJune1917,MirsaidSultan-GalievofBashkiria,whohadbeensecretaryoftheAll-RussiaMuslimCouncil,describedwhyhehadjoinedtheBolshevikparty:

Onlytheyarestrivingtotransferthenationalities’fatesintotheirownhands.Onlytheyrevealedwhostartedtheworldwar.Whatdoesn’tleadmetothem?TheyalsodeclaredwaronEnglishimperialism,

whichoppressesIndia,Egypt,Afghanistan,PersiaandArabia.Theyarealsotheoneswhoraisedarmsagainst French imperialism, which enslavesMorocco, Algeria and other Arab states of Africa. HowcouldInotgowiththem?Yousee, theyutteredthewordsthathaveneverbeenutteredbefore inthehistory of the Russian state. Appealing to all Muslims of Russia and the East, they announced thatIstanbulmustbeinMuslims’hands.

Sultan-Galiev’s words resonated not only from his native Bashkiria to theouterreachesoftheUzbekhomelandsbutalsoinIndia,wheretensofthousandsofIndianMuhajirssoughttoheadouttowardsIstanbultodefendtheCaliphateof the Ottoman Empire. These pan-Islamists ran into news of the USSR. InKabul,AbdurRabPeshawaritoldthem,‘inRussia,arevolutionhadtakenplaceandifwewenttherewecouldseeandlearnmanythings’.WhenagrouparrivedinTermez(intoday’sUzbekistan),‘RedArmysoldiersandofficerscamewithaband,playingmusictowelcome’them.TheCommanderofthefortinthetowntold them to ‘seehow theSoviet countryhad changedafter the revolution’. InTashkent, these men who came to fight for pan-Islamism ‘used to refer tothemselves asCommunists’. ‘Several of these youngmuhajirs decided to go tothe SovietUnion’,writes the communist leaderMuzaffarAhmad, ‘the land ofrevolution,ratherthanTurkey’.SeventeenstudentswenttotheUniversityoftheToilers of theEast inMoscow,while others studied inTashkent at the IndianMilitary School (‘one of us was taught to fly an aeroplane’). ‘We had left ourcountry once’,wroteAhmad. ‘But after joining theCommunistPartywewereagainanxioustoreturnhome’.TheyreturnedinpairsviaIran.

The connection between communism and pan-Islamism played animportant role in this period. In 1922, Indonesia’s TanMalaka put this pointexplicitly,

Alongside the crescent, the star of the Soviets will be the great battle emblem of approximately 250millionMuslims of the Sahara,Arabia,Hindustan and our Indies. Let us realize that themillions ofproletarianMuslimsareaslittleattractedtoanimperialistpan-IslamismastoWesternimperialism.

ThiswaswritteninSeptember.Thenextmonth,TanMalakawasbusywiththe preparations for the FourthCongress of theComintern.He proposed that

the Comintern should take up the issue of closer collaboration between pan-Islamism and Communism. His proposal was struck down. There wasuneasiness for fairly obvious reasons,mostly to dowith the very conservativetonestruckbytheMuslimclericswhichresultedintheirclassalliancewiththereactionaryforcesintheirsocieties.Therewasnoroominthedebatetoconsiderthemorerobustlyanti-imperialistclergy,whichwasalsonotalwayskeenonthefeudal socialpatterns.Thesewouldbe theoldnetworksenlivenedby Jamalal-din al-Afghani, the iterant anti-imperialist activist of the 19th century. TanMalakaknewofthosepeopleandofSarekatIslam(theIslamistsTradeUnion)intheDutchEastIndies,whichwould–forawhile–beanimportantallyof theIndonesianCommunistParty.

For these revolutionaries, from India to Khiva, colonialism was anabomination. They longed for a world of freedom, where the workers andpeasantswouldbe incommandof theirdestiny.Sultan-Galievwarnedthat thenew USSR should not ‘replace one class of European society by the worlddictatorshipof its adversary– that is,byanotherclass from this same society’.Suchaswapwould‘bringnosignificantchangeinthesituationoftheoppressedpart of humanity’. TheUSSR had to properly forge an anti-colonial and anti-racistfuture.Otherwise,itwouldslipintooldhabitsofcolonialism.‘InordertopreventtheoppressionofthetoileroftheEast’,Sultan-Galievsaidin1918, ‘wemustunitetheMuslimmassesinacommunistmovementthatwillbeourownand autonomous’. Thiswas a lesson thatmanyRussians could not learn. It iswhatLeninfeared.ItiswhatbecamethebasisofdecadesofstrugglebetweenthecapitalsofSovietAsiaandSovietEurope.

CavalrydetachmentoftheRedArmyinMongolia(1919).

EnemyofImperialism

The October Revolution and the communist movement appealed to peoplebecause,astheCominternputitin1928,‘theyseeinitthemostdecisiveenemyofimperialism’.But,astheCominternworried,thecommunistmovementisnotmerelyaboutanendtocolonialdomination.Itwaspledgedtoendimperialism,which by necessity meant to end the class domination of the peoples of thecoloniesbyboththebourgeoisieinEuropeandbythetropicalbourgeoisie.

LeninandtheBolsheviksunderstoodvacillation.TheFebruaryrevolutionoftheworkersandthepeasantshadoverthrowntheTsar’sregime.ThegovernmentofAlexanderKerensky that followedwas entangled in the tentaclesofRussiancapitalism and, through them, imperialism. The Russian capitalists had asubordinate position vis-à-vis imperialism. In his history of the RussianRevolution,LeonTrotskywrotethattheRussianautocracyontheonehandandtheRussianbourgeoisieontheotherhand‘containedfeaturesofcompradorism,ever more and more clearly expressed. They lived and nourished themselvesupon their connections with foreign imperialism, served it, and without theirsupportcouldnothavesurvived’.Trotskyusedawordthatwascommonplaceinradicalcirclesatthattime–compradorism.ItcomesfromthedaysofPortugal’sdominanceintheportsofAsia.A‘comprador’wasabuyerwhocamefromanAsiansociety,livedintheport,boughtgoodsforthePortuguesetotheirbenefitandheldthesegoodstillPortugueseshipsarrivedtoloadthemfortheirtradingadvantage. Marxists in Asia drew upon this word and used it to refer to theparasiticalnativebourgeoisie,whichoperatednot for itsownbenefitalonebutforthebenefitultimatelyof imperialism.TheRussianbourgeoisie–likethatof

otherbourgeoisformationsinthecolonialandsemi-colonialworld–tendedtotheinterestsofimperialismmoreperhapsthantheinterestsofthemselves.

TheRussianbourgeoisiewasthehosttoEuropeanimperialisminsideRussia,but,at thesametime, theRussianbourgeoisiehad itsown imperialprojects inManchuria, Mongolia and Persia. Since Kerensky would not confront theRussian bourgeoisie andwaswilling to surrender toWestern imperialism, hisgovernmentwouldeventuallybetray therevolution.That it iswhy ithad tobeoverthrown inOctober 1917. It is alsowhat allowed the Bolsheviks to learn alessonwhentheywent intotheanti-colonialstruggle.Thenationalbourgeoisieof thecolonieswould instinctivelybeagainst colonial rule,but theywouldnotnecessarily be against imperialism. Their class betrayal had to be confrontedwithinthenationalmovements.

Theleadershipofthenationalistanti-colonialmovementsdidnotnecessarilyhave thewill to stay the course. ‘Many of these adherents of the Party, in thecourseoftherevolutionarystruggle,willreachaproletarianclasspointofview’,the Comintern noted, but ‘another part will find it more difficult to freethemselvestotheend,fromthemoods,waveringsandhalf-heartedideologyofthepettybourgeoisie’.Thenationalistbourgeoisiewoulddither likeKerensky’sgovernment,eagerforsomedignityasanindependentnation,butalsounwillingtofightforfullfreedomagainstthepowerfulimperialistbloc.

In the Comintern, the position against the national bourgeoisie wasarticulatedfirmlybytheIranianCommunistAvetisSultan-Zade,whohadjoinedtheBolshevikPartyin1912inSt.Petersburg,wherehewasthenstudying.Afterthe revolution, Sultan-Zade went to Persia, where he worked to build theCommunistmovement in the northern region, and to Central Asia, where heworked amongst the Persian émigré workers. He joined the Adalat Party, aPersian party influenced by Marxism, which would eventually become theCommunist Party of Persia. Sultan-Zade saw that even within his party therewerepeoplewhowerenotcommittedtoimmediatelandreformandwereeager

tocollaboratewithnationalistswhohadnoarticulatedandwell-developedsocialagenda.IntheComintern,wherehehadsomeinfluence,Sultan-Zadewarnedofthe dangers of dissolving independent communist parties into the nationalisttide.Communistsshouldcentrallybeinvolvedinthenationalistmovement,buttheyshouldalsoretaintheirorganizationalindependence.‘Theevolutionofclassstrugglewill,inthenearfuture’,Sultan-ZadesaidinNovember1920,‘forcethebourgeoisieeveninthecolonialcountriestoabandonallandeveryrevolutionaryidea’.

Sultan-Zade spoke from experience. FromMoscow,where he had gone towork at theExecutiveCommittee of theComintern, hewatched asnationalistleaders fromEgypt toTurkeyand inPersiacrackeddownon thecommunists,sendingthemtoprisonortothegallows.HehadanallyinM.N.Roy,whowasalso sceptical about the national bourgeoisie in the anti-colonial struggle. In1924, Saad Zaghloul Pasha became PrimeMinister of Egypt and arrested theentire central committee of the EgyptianCommunist Party,which had foughtalongside Zaghloul’s Wafd Party against British imperialism in the 1919uprising.WhenRezaKhancametopowerinPersiain1925,healsoarrestedtheCommunistleadershipofthePersianpartyanddestroyedtheparty.InTurkey,KemalAtaturkbenefitedfromSovietaidandCommunistbacking,butwhenheconsolidatedpowerby1922hesuppressedhisformerCommunistallies.

Nothing was as dramatic as the events in China, however, where thenationalistKuomintang(KMT)massacredtheCommunists in1927.TheKMTwanted close relations with Moscow, eagerly sending its representative HuHanmintotheCominterntobegforentry.HuHanmincleverlysuggestedthathe came from the ‘revolutionary wing of the Kuomintang’ and neededCominternhelptoholdbackthereactionaries.TheChineseCommunistParty,hetoldMoscow,wasnotnecessary.TheCominternshouldmerelybuilduptheKMT’s left flank. This the Comintern refused to do, although the USSR didprovide considerable backing to the KMT as it built up its forces. The

CommunistPartywasfartoosmall toabsorballoftheComintern’senergy.InSeptember1926,theKMTsentShaoLizi–ajournalistwhohadstudiedMarxisminthe1910swithChenDuxiu–founderoftheChineseCommunistParty.ShaoLizitriedtocurryfavourinMoscow,buthetoofailed.TheUSSRwouldhelptheKMT,butitwasnotpreparedtocallforthedissolutionoftheCommunistParty.ItwastheKMT’sbetrayalofthecommunistsinApril1927thatendedthisdancebetweentheKMTandtheComintern.

ShouldtheCominternhaveinstructedtheChinesecommuniststostayawayfromtheKMTafterthefoundingoftheChineseCommunistPartyin1921?Thebasis for united actions by all nationalist sections against imperialismwas laidout by Lenin in 1916, ‘The main thing today is to stand against the united,aligned front of the imperialist powers, the imperialist bourgeoisie and thesocial-imperialists, and for the utilization of all nationalistmovements againstimperialismforthepurposesofthesocialistrevolution.’Thegoalremainedthe‘social revolution’, but the weakness of the working class required an alliancewithallclassesinthenationalstruggle.TheSovietsunderstoodfullythepowerofimperialism.RightaftertheOctoberRevolution,everyimperialistpower–fromthe United Kingdom to the United States – sent arms, equipment andencouragementtotheWhiteArmiestogoinandoverthrowtheworkers’state.Neither of the White forces led by Admiral Alexander Kolchak nor GeneralAntonDenikin would have been able to sustain their war without imperialistassistance.Nopeasant–nowgivenlandbytheSoviets–waswillingtofightforfreetorestorethearistocratstopower.WinstonChurchill,aninfluentialpersonin the British government, said that ‘one might as well legalize sodomy asrecognizetheBolsheviks’.Hiswasafanaticalviewagainstcommunism.Othersdid not entirely oppose him. What stopped them was the exhaustion of theBritishexchequerandthatoftheotherimperialistpowersbytheGreatWar.Theimperialist invasion of the USSR was not a form of dialogue or an export ofdemocracy. This was an armed action against the new government.

Imperialism’s brutality had been on display across the continents, from thebarbarism of the Belgians in theCongo to the harsh treatment by the Italiansagainst the Libyans in 1911 and by the British, Dutch and French from theCaribbean to South-East Asia. It was against this force that Lenin cautionedunityofallnationalclasses.

Leninwarnedthatifthecommunistsdidbuildtheconfidenceofthepeople,thentheywouldonlyweakenanypopularunityagainstimperialistintervention.In the anti-colonial struggles, the communistshad tobewith thepeople.Thatwas paramount. But to be with the people did not mean to adopt a populistpolitics – to be the ventriloquists’ dummy that says whatever social views thepeoplehold.Thecommunistsmustbothholdtotheirvalues,butmustnotallowthesevaluestobetoofarfromthecommonsenseofthepeople.Thiswasatrickybusinessandrequireddeftnessandtact.ItwaswhyLeninwarnedtheMongolianPeople’sParty– inNovember1921– todesist fromchanging theirname to acommunist party. The Party, he said, could not be ahead of the generalconsciousness of the people.When the proletariat develops its confidence andbegins to shape the popular movement, only then should the People’s Partybecome a Communist Party. ‘A mere change of signboards is harmful anddangerous’, Lenin told a Mongolian delegation. The Mongolians had alreadymadetheirrevolutioninJulyof thatyear.Threeyears later, in1924, thenewlynamedMongolianPeople’sRevolutionaryPartywouldjointheComintern.Theuseofthewordrevolutionarysubstitutedforthewordcommunist.

TheMongolians wanted space to produce their own revolutionary theoryandpolicies.ButtheirrelianceontheSovietsformaterialaidwasentangledwiththeirrelianceuponSovietpolicy for theirowndevelopment–all in fearof theinterventionofimperialism,whichwasnotunfounded(astheinvasionbyBaronRoman von Ungern-Sternberg in 1921 was to show). Ulaanbaatar’s relianceupontheKremlinseriouslynarrowedtheabilityofitsrevolutionarymovementtobuildonitsownhistoryandtobuilditsowncapacityforsocialisttheoryand

practice. Narrow views of development led to a distortion of the pastoraleconomy,whichunderminedtheabilityoftheherderstotendtotheiranimals.Mass migration to China, as well as a revolt in 1931-32, was the obviousoutcome.AnotherwasthecentralizationofruleunderKhorloogiinChoibalsan,whotookhisleadfromMoscowandnotfromMongolianhistory.

Just a handful of years after theMongolians had come to see Lenin, TanMalaka wrote bitterly about the Comintern’s too firm hand on the levers ofrevolutionarypoliticsinChinaandintheDutchEastIndies,

TheMoscowleadershipisgoodonlyforRussia.WithexamplesfromGermany,ItalyandBulgaria,itisdemonstratedthattheMoscowleadershiphasfailedforothercountries.TheentireThirdInternational[Comintern]isbuiltupintheRussianinterest,andyoungEasternleaders,inparticular,willbeinclinedtogoovertoblindworshiporlosetheirindependence,withtheresultthattheywill lackcontactwiththeirownmasses,whohavedifferentimpulsesfromtheRussianpeople.

WhenTanMalakawas asked if this criticismofMoscowwouldbringhimand the Indonesian communists towards the Fourth International of LeonTrotsky, then in themiddle of a struggle against Joseph Stalin, he responded,‘The people of the Indies have enough to do without waiting around for theconclusionofthefightbetweenStalinandTrotsky.’Thiswastheattitudeinmostoftheanti-colonialcountries.IndividualscertainlyadmiredTrotskyforhisrolein theOctoberRevolutionand forhisworkbuilding theRedArmy,andsomeeven agreed with his criticism of the USSR’s tendency towards bureaucracy.However,thiswasnotenoughforthemtobreakwiththeUSSR,whichprovidedan important inspiration and necessary resources for their own movements.TrotskyismhadverylittleimpactontheThirdWorld–exceptinSriLanka,inBolivia and Argentina as well as amongst small numbers of intellectuals.Trotskyism’sdenunciationoftheanti-colonialnationalstates(thosewhoformedtheNon-AlignedMovement)andthen theCubanRevolutionalienated it fromthecommunistsintheThirdWorld.

Anti-colonialnationalismcouldnot easilybedenounced.Lenin recognized

that itwas a ‘difficult task’ to navigate the shoals of anti-colonial nationalism.Suchaproblemhadtobedealtwithcarefully.Therewas‘nocommunistbooklet’thathadtheanswersfortheradicalsintheanti-colonialmovements.Theywouldhave to throw themselves into the struggle and find their answers there.Sometimesmovementsdid.Atothertimes,theylookedforimpossibleformulas.

JoséCarlosMariátegui(1894-1930).

EasternMarxism

OnlyattheendofhislifedidKarlMarxleavetheshoresofEuropeandtraveltoacountryundercolonialdominion.ThiswaswhenhewenttoAlgeriain1882.‘ForMussalmans, there is no such thing as subordination’,Marxwrote to hisdaughter Laura Lafargue. Inequality is an abomination to ‘a trueMussalman’,butthesesentiments,Marxfelt,‘willgotorackandruinwithoutarevolutionarymovement’.Amovementofrevolutionaryunderstandingwouldeasilybeabletogrowwheretherewasthisculturalfeelingagainstinequality.MarxdidnotwritemoreaboutAlgeriaoraboutIslam.Thesewereobservationsmadebyafathertohisdaughter.ButtheydotellusagreatdealaboutMarx’ssensibility.

TherewasnoroominMarxismfortheideathatcertainpeopleneededtoberuledbecausetheywereracialorsocialinferiors.Infact,Marxism–fromMarx’searly writings onward – always understood human freedom as a universalobjective.HumanslaveryandthedegradationofhumanbeingsintowageslaveryawokeinMarxhispropheticindignation.OneofMarx’smostfamouspassagesin Capital (1867) pointed out that the ‘rosy dawn of the era of capitalistproduction’shouldnotbefoundintheantisepticbankorfactory.Theoriginofcapitalism had to be found – among other processes – in ‘the extirpation,enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, thebeginningof theconquestand lootingof theEast Indies, the turningofAfricaintoawarren for thecommercialhuntingofBlackskins’.Capitalismgrewandwas sustained by the degradation of humanity. No wonder, then, that anti-colonialismwouldplaysuchanimportantroleintheMarxistmovement.

WhenMarxismtravelledoutsidethedomainwhereMarxfirstdevelopedthetheory, it had to engage with what Lenin called ‘the most essential thing inMarxism, the living soul of Marxism, the concrete analysis of concreteconditions’.ThisformulawasvaluablefromtheDutchEastIndiestotheAndes.

In the Andes (in South America), one of the greatest (and least known)Marxistthinkers–JoséCarlosMariátegui(1894-1930)–wrotein1928,‘WedonotwishthatSocialisminAmericabeatracingandacopy.Itmustbeaheroiccreation. We must, with our own reality, in our own language, bringIndoamericansocialismtolife.’WhatdidMariáteguido?HereadhisMarxandhis Lenin – and he studied deeply in the social reality of the Andes. Lenin’stheory of the worker-peasant alliance provided a fundamental addition to hisMarxism.The‘socialistrevolutioninamainlyagrariancountrylikePeruinthe1920s’,hewrote,‘wassimplyinconceivablewithouttakingintoconsiderationtheinsurgentmobilization of indigenous rural communities thatwere challengingthepoweroflargeland-owners(latifundistas)whowereresponsibleforkeepingaliveoldformsofeconomicexploitation’.TheagentofchangeinPeruamongstthe producing classes had to include the indigenous rural communitieswhosepopulation was mainly Amerindian. To seek the insurgents amongst theminusculeindustrialsectorofLimaalonewouldbetogointobattlewithcapitalwithonehand tiedbehind theback.This is anechoofLenin’s call forworkerandpeasantunity,butwiththeindigenouscommunitiesnowintheframework.

Weretheindigenousruralcommunitiescapableofasocialistmovement?Inthe1920s,whenMariáteguiwaswriting,theprevailingintellectualfashionwithregard to the rural communities was indigenismo, or Indianness –meaning aculturalmovement that revived and celebratedAmerindian cultural forms butdidnotseektoexploretheirtransformativepotential.Indigenismodefanged theAmerindians and romantically saw them as culture producers but not historyproducers. Mariátegui reinterpreted their history in a more vibrant way –lookingbackwardsatIncaprimitivesocialismandcurrentstrugglesagainstthe

latifundistas as resources for social transformation. ‘The thesisof a communistInca tradition is’, hewrote, ‘the defence of a historical continuity between theancient Incacommunalwayof lifeand thePeruviancommunist societyof thefuture’.Mariátegui’sAndeansocialismwasnevera restorationof thepast,ofaprimitivecommunismofanancientIncaworld.‘ItisclearthatweareconcernedlesswithwhatisdeadthanwithhassurvivedoftheIncacivilization’,hewrotein1928. ‘Peru’s past interests us to the extent it can explain Peru’s present.Constructivegenerationsthinkofthepastasanorigin,neverasaprogramme’.Inotherwords,thepastisaresourcenotadestination–itremindsusofwhatispossible,anditstracesshowusthatelementsofthatoldcommunitarianismcanbe harnessed in the fight against colonial private property relations in thepresent. When Marxism came to the Third World, it had to be supple andprecise–learnfromitscontext,understandthewaycapitalismmorphsinanewvenueandexplorethewaysforsocialtransformationtodrivehistory.

The Comintern tried to be supple, but its limited knowledge of the worldmeantitendedupbeingfartoodogmatictobealwaysuseful.Bythelate1920s,theCominternsuggested thecreationofaBlackBelt in thesouthernregionoftheUnitedStates,NativeRepublicsinSouthAfricaandanIndianRepublicalongthe Andean region of South America. From Moscow, it appeared as if thenationalitiestheorycouldbeeasilytransportedtothesedistantlands.ForSouthAmerica, the theory was debated at the First Latin American CommunistConferenceheldinBuenosAiresinJune1929.Fiercedebatebrokeouthere,withthe Comintern’s preferred position being opposed by Mariátegui’s associates.‘The construction of an autonomous state from the Indian race’, Mariáteguiwrote,‘wouldnotleadtothedictatorshipoftheIndianproletariat,normuchlessthe formationofan IndianStatewithoutclasses.’Whatwouldbecreated isan‘Indian bourgeois State with all of the internal and external contradictions ofotherbourgeoisstates’.Thepreferredoptionwouldbeofthe‘revolutionaryclassmovementoftheexploitedindigenousmasses’,whichwastheonlywayforthem

to ‘open a path to the true liberation of their race’. The debate on goals andstrategy became so fierce that this was the only Latin American CommunistConferencetobeheld.‘TheindigenousproletariatawaittheirLenin’,Mariáteguiwrote.HemeantnotaLeninassuch,buta theory thatcouldemerge fromthemovementstoleadthemagainsttherigidstructuresofthepastandpresent.

Thiswasnotalwaysthelessonthatwaslearned.Butitisourlessonnow.

E.M.S. Namboodiripad (1909-98) was born a decade afterMariátegui andoutlivedhimbymanydecades.HewasnotonlyaninnovativeMarxistbutalsothe leaderof theCommunistmovement in India.Fromhis 1939 report to theMalabar Tenancy Enquiry Committee to his 1970s essays on caste and class,EMSexploredtheMarxistmethodtointerpretthehistoryandsocietyofIndia.Forhistoricalmaterialism– thehistoricalnarrative laidoutbyMarx– societymovedthroughtwostages, fromslaverytofeudalism,andthenfromfeudalismto capitalism, in anticipation of a future stage, from capitalism to socialism.NothinglikethishappenedinIndia.‘Indiaremainedtiedtothesameoldorder’,EMSwrote,‘underwhichtheoverwhelmingmajorityofthepeoplebelongedtothe oppressed and backward castes. This is the essence of what Marx calledIndia’sunchanging societywhere the villagewas not touched by thewars andupheavalsatthehigherlevels’.CastesocietyandthehegemonyofBrahmanismhadamostperniciousimpactonIndiansociety.Thecastesystemnotonlykeptthe oppressed masses in thrall, the ideological hegemony of Brahmanismresulted in a sustained stagnation of science and technology, and, therefore,ultimately,oftheproductiveforcesaswell.ThisprocessweakenedIndia,leavingthedoorwideopenforEuropeancolonialism.AsEMSputit, ‘thedefeatoftheoppressedcastesatthehandsoftheBrahmanicoverlordship,ofmaterialismbyidealism,constitutedthebeginningof thefallofIndia’scivilizationandculturewhichintheendledtothelossofnationalindependence.’

The stagnation of Indianhistory from the time ofAdi Shankara in the 8th

centurywasencapsulatedinthecaste-basedfeudalsociety.Thiscasteorderwith

itsreligiousjustificationswasabletocontainitscontradictions.ThismeantthatwhilechallengestothecasteorderbyrebelliondidoccuracrossIndianhistory,none of these rebellions were able to frontally assault caste and break castehierarchy in any substantive way. Neither British colonialism nor the Indianbourgeoisie in thepost-colonial statehadanyrealappetite tosmashcaste.Theconversion of feudal landlords into capitalist landlords and the conversion oftenantserfsintotheagrarianproletariatdidnotbreakthebackoffeudalism.Thetransformationsmerelysuperimposedcapitalist social relationsuponthecaste-basedfeudalorder.‘InIndia’,EMSwrote,‘manyoftheformsofexploitationofthe pre-capitalist system are continuing, some in the original and some inchangedforms.Thereexistsalongwiththeseanewsystemofexploitationasaresult of capitalist development’. The agrarian proletariat, because of the oldfeudal relations, experienced harsh pauperization – the poor in the fields gotpoorer–asold feudalcustomsallowed landlords to transferall theburdensofagricultureontheirworkerswhilereapingalltheprofits–littleofitre-investedtomodernizeagricultureinanyway.

Pre-capitalistsocialformationscultivatedbycolonialismandbythenationalbourgeoisiehadtobesystematicallyunderminedbythepeople’smovementsofindependent India.EMStraced thepotentialitieswithin Indiansociety, findingopportunities forsocialprogressandbrakesagainst it.Cognizantof thespecialoppression of caste and of religious majoritarianism in Indian society, EMSfought against the organizing of people based on these very lines; one cannotfightcasteoppressiononcastelines.Instead,casteoppressionhadtobefoughtby organizing people into unified class organizations that understood andemphasizedthespecialroleofcasteinIndiansociety.Asheputitinhisessayoncasteandclass,

Wehadthenandstillhavetofightatwo-frontbattle.Rangedagainstusontheonehandarethosewhodenounceusforouralleged‘departurefromtheprinciplesofnationalismandsocialism’,sincewearechampioning‘sectarian’causeslikethoseoftheoppressedcastesandreligiousminorities.Ontheotherhandarethosewho,inthenameofdefendingtheoppressedcastemasses,infact,isolatethemfromthe

mainstreamoftheunitedstruggleoftheworkingpeopleirrespectiveofcaste,communitiesandsoon.

Butthetonicofunitywasnotmeanttodissolvequestionsofsocialindignityexperienced by oppressed castes, by women, by Adivasis, by those whoexperienced the violence of class hierarchy alongside the violence of otherhierarchies. These questions had to be at the table. It took the CommunistmovementinIndiamanydecadestowrestlewiththeprecisebalancebetweentheneedforunityofallexploitedpeopleandforspecialemphasisoncertainkindsofoppressions along lines of social division. The initial organizational routeproposedbyIndiancommunismwastousetheplatformofclassorganizationsto openly attack caste oppression, religious majoritarianism and feudal malechauvinism.Butsoonitbecameclearthatthiswasinsufficient.

Theworkingclassisnotmadeupofunmarkedbodiesofworkers.Itismadeup of people with experiences of social hierarchies and indignity who requireparticular emphasis to fight thosehierarchies.This iswhy Indian communismwould eventually develop organizational platforms – such as the All-IndiaDemocratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) and the Tamil NaduUntouchability Eradication Front – that would concentrate attention on thespecifichierarchiesthatneededtobecombattedalongsidetheclassdemandsoftheLeft.ThepointismadeclearlybyBrindaKarat,aleaderoftheCPI(M)andaformerPresidentofAIDWA,

Amechanicalunderstandingofclassisoftenproblematic.WhenMarxsaid,workersoftheworldunitehe was not speaking of male workers.We are unable to integrate themultiple forms of the doubleburden that workingwomen face as an integral part of our struggle. All successful revolutions haveshownthecriticalroleofworkingwomenintherevolution.WeknowtheFebruaryrevolutioninRussiawasstartedbythehugestreetdemonstrationsofwomenworkers.Apartfromgender,inourexperienceinIndia,withintheworkingclasses,therearesectionswhichfaceaddedoppressionanddiscriminationonthebasisofcaste,withalargesectionoftheso-calleduntouchables,theDalits,relegatedtothelowestrungsofthesocialladder.Casteactsasaninstrumentfortheintensificationoftheextractionofsurplusvalue of the Dalits. Somewhat similar is the assault on the rights of Adivasi communities (tribalcommunities)withthecorporategrabofland,forests,destructionofhistories,cultures,languages,andwaysoflife.NoclassstruggleinIndiacansucceedwithoutatthesametimechallengingthebirth-basedhierarchicalcastesystemagainstDalitsorthespecificissuesthatAdivasiworkersface.Ithinkthiswould

beequallyrelevanttothequestionofrace,religious-baseddiscriminationorevenagainstimmigrantsinothercountries.Theseaspectshavegrowninthelastcenturyandworking-classstruggleswhichignorethese aspects damage and weaken themselves laying themselves open to legitimate charges of beingracist or casteist. Thus class consciousnessmust necessarily include the consciousness of the specificexploitationthatworkersmayfacebecauseoftheircasteorracialoriginsorbecauseoftheirgender.

NaciyeHanimattheCongressoftheToilersoftheEast,Baku(1920).Courtesy:LaChaux-de-FondsMétropoleHorlogère(Switzerland).

ToSeetheDawn

ItcouldnothavebeeneasyfortheTurkishcommunistNaciyeHanim,ateacherfromIstanbul,tostandupintheCongressofthePeopleoftheEastin1920.ThemeetingwasinBaku,whichhadestablisheditself–alongwithTashkent–asoneof thehubs forEasterncommunism.Hanimwasoneof the fewwomenat theCongress, despite the efforts of theComintern leadership. Therewere only 55female delegates in the room of 2,000 delegates. Nonetheless, the Cominternensuredthattwowomentooktheirseatsalongsidetwomenasjointchairsandthree women won election to the presidium. Women need to overcome the‘despotismofmen’,thedelegatesweretoldbytheCominternrepresentatives,asmuchasthedespotismofcapital.Itwasafirmmessagetoaroomofpeoplewhowerenotentirelyeagertoagree.

Hanim warned the delegates that ‘however sincere and however vigorousyourendeavoursmaybe,theywillbefruitlessunlessyousummonthewomentobecomerealhelpers inyourwork’. Shedidnotmollifyherviews. ‘Peoplewhoview the fact thatwomen aremaking upwith their labour for the shortage ofbeasts of burden as contributing to the cause of equal rights for women areunworthy of our attention.’ Many in the hall would have been stung by hercomments,iftheybotheredtolisten.

The organizers placedHanim’s speech on the last day. It was late. Peoplewere restless, eager togohome. ‘Manyviolent speechesweremade’,wrote theBritish informer, ‘but the general effect was in many cases spoiled by largenumbers of Moslem representatives going outside to say their prayers’. A

delegatewarned–alongthegrainofHanim’swarning–that‘wewerenotabletoimmediately form all our customs and conditions of life into a communistframework’.TheEast,hesaid,is‘completelydifferent,itsinterestsarecompletelydifferent,fromtheWest’.TheWestwasnotsodifferent,astheBolshevikleaderAlexandra Kollontai had been suggesting in her many writings on theimportanceofwomen’semancipation.But theEastwasnoparadise,asHanimmadeclear.

Hanim’s list of demands bears consideration, for it could very well be aradicallisteventoday:

Completeequalityofrights.Ensuringtowomenunconditionalaccesstoeducationalandvocationalinstitutionsestablishedformen.Equalityofrightsofbothpartiesinmarriage.Unconditionalabolitionofpolygamy.Unconditionaladmissionofwomentoemploymentinlegislativeandadministrativeinstitutions.Establishmentofcommitteesfortherightsandprotectionofwomeneverywhere,incities,intowns,andvillages.

Hanimwasnotanidealist.Shetooklifebythethroatanddemandedmoreofit. ‘True,wemay stumble in pathless darkness,wemay stand on the brink ofyawning chasms,’ she closed her comments lyrically, ‘but we are not afraid,becauseweknowthatinordertoseethedawnonehastopassthroughthedarknight.’

Hanim had allies in Moscow, particularly in the Zhenotdel (women’sdepartment).Theyearafter theBakuconference in1920,AlexandraKollontai,thenheadoftheZhenotdel,wantedtoconveneaCongressofEasternWomentoput demands such as Hanim’s on the table for Soviet policy. At the SecondInternationalConferenceofCommunistWomenheldinMoscowfromJune9to14,1921,thediscussionon‘Easternwomen’wasvibrant.TheConference’sfinalresolution called upon the Party and all state institutions in the Soviet East to‘wageastruggleagainstallprejudices,moralandreligiouscustomsoppressivetowomen,conductingthisagitationlikewiseamongmen’.Themaininstrumentto

raise the ‘cultural level of the populace’ would be to fight to build unions ofwomen–‘clubsofwomenworkers’,wherethe‘clubsmustbecentresofculturalenlightenment–institutionsthatdemonstratethroughexperiencewhatwomencanachievethroughtheirowninitiativefortheiremancipation(theorganizationofnurseries,kindergartens,literacyschoolsundertheauspicesoftheclubs,etc.)’.In theSovietEast, theproletarianwomenmustbeorganized into tradeunionsand unions of housewives, as well as be given the courage to fight for theimplementationofequalrightsenshrinedinSovietlegislation.‘TheparticularsofeverydaylifeofthepeoplesoftheEast’mustberespected,notedtheresolution.This meant that the struggles must not be conducted in a racist and self-righteouswaybutmustputthewomenoftheEastattheforefronttofightforarevolutionoftheirownculturalworlds.

Kollontai, as head of the Zhenotdel, along with Lenin and AlexanderShlyapnikov felt that the conclusionsof theSecondConferenceofCommunistWomensuggestedtheneedforaspecialCongressofEasternWomen.Afteranacrimonious politburomeeting in August 1921, which raised the issue of thisCongress but then voted against it, Kollontai reproached Lenin about thedisorganization of the government and the negative effect this had on theZhenotdel.Kollontaiwrote of her frustration, ‘In thewinterwe planned threetimestohaveanEasternCongress[ofWomen]andthreetimesitwascancelled,in agreement with [the Organizational Bureau], and I was not informed, andZhenotdelwasnotnotifiedofthecancellation!’Kollontaifelthemmedinbytheconservative views held by somemembers of the Soviet leadership. Stalinwasparticularly brusque. When asked about the need for a Congress of EasternWomen,Stalinsaid,‘Whatfor?Whydragwomenoftheveilhere?Wewillhavetoomanyproblemstodealwith.Thehusbandswouldprotest.It’stooearly.Whowantstheiraffairstobeexamined?’

AlexandraKollontaisurroundedbywomenfromtheSovietEast(1921).

AConferenceofEasternWomenwas,nonetheless,held.ItwasmainlyaboutwomenintheSovietEast.TheConference’ssensewasthat‘workamongTurkicwomentodatehasnotbeensufficientlydeveloped’.Localpartycommitteeswereaskedtofocustheir‘seriousattention’onworkamongstwomen.TheConferencesuggestedthatwomenoftheEastmustbeorganizedintotradeunionsandintovariousclubs.ThemainpointraisedbyKollontai,byHanifiBurnashev(aTartarleaderwhowasbythensecretaryoftheFerghanaparty)andbyMirsaidSultan-Galievwastoworkcarefullyamongstthepeople,

Communisteducationofthewomen’smassesbyusingalltypesofagitationandpropagandaoftheideaofcommunismandthepracticalparticipationofwomeninSovietconstruction:alloftheseactivitiescanbeconductedsuccessfullyifrepresentativesoftheworkingpeople’smassesthemselvesofthepeoplesofthe East are recruited for the actual work. Women’s departments must guide the work of youngfunctionaries fromamongthecommunistsof thePeoplesof theEast,while listeningcloselytoall thepracticalrecommendationstheymakeonthebasisofexperienceandknowledgeofthemilieu,aswellasbyhelpingtoimplementthem.

InCentralAsiaasaconsequence,localBolshevikssetuplocalchaptersoftheZhenotdelinBukhara(1923)andKhiva(1924)aswellassetupwomen’sclubsinFerghana (1925). In February 1925, the Presidium of the Central ExecutiveCommitteeoftheUSSRaffirmedthe‘rightsofwomenoftheSovietEast’.IntheSoviet East, the Zhenotdel’s leadership moved a rigorous agenda againsttraditional formsof oppression, such as polygyny andwomen’s seclusion.Thestrugglewasnoteasy.Thelocalpartiesandradicals–mostlycomprisingCentralAsians–werecaughtbetweendenouncingreligiousfanaticsaswellasingrainedcustoms,andfacingarebellionagainstSovietpolicyledbythetraditionalists.

Zhenotdel’sleaderSerafimaLiubimovanotedonMay19,1926,thatvarioustraditional formssuchasbrideprice,underagemarriageandseclusion,neededto be made illegal. ‘The way of life which has been preserved until now iswomen’s slavery’, she said, ‘that is in contradiction to economicsandhampersthemovementamongbroadmassesofwomentowardeconomicindependence’.LiubimovawantedthevariousrepublicsofCentralAsiatopasslawsthatwould

forbid these practices. But laws – which did eventually come – were notsufficient.Socialnormswouldnotbeentirelybrokenbynewlaws.Besides,astheZhenotdel units found,women sometimes adopted these customaryways as awaytotakecomfortandpowerinfamiliardomesticsettings.Conflictsbetweenmullahsandjadids(elitereformers)didnoteasethepassagefromolderformsofdomesticitytothenewlyavailableways.TheSovietshesitatedinthefirstdecade,unwilling to directly confront Central Asian culture for fear of a widespreadrevoltintheregion.

OnMarch8,1927,onInternationalWomen’sDay,Zhenotdelactivistscameouton thestreets in themajorUzbekcities.Thewomenmarched through thestreets tocitysquares,whichhadbeendecoratedwithredbanners thatcarriedmilitantslogansofwomen’sliberation.Musiciansgreetedthewomen,whothensat on carpets to listen to their leadership attack old customs and celebratecommunismasthepathahead.Someoftheveiledwomentoreofftheirveilandburntthem.Anewproject–hujum(storming)–wouldbeledbytheZhenotdelactivists inadirect fightagainsthierarchicalcustomsofCentralAsia.Thiswasanaggressiveassault–Knastupleniiu!(Totheattack!)–saidtheactivistsastheyconducted direct actions aswell as builtwomen’s institutions (clubs, schools).The Zhenotdel activists were now in direct confrontation with the clergy andwiththelandlords,whobenefittedfromthesocialquietimposedbytheoldways.

The reaction to the hujum was fierce but private. There were few publicprotests todefend theyashmak (veil) and illiteracy.The ‘protests’were againstthewomenwhohadspokenoutoragainstwomenwhotriedtoadoptthenewnorms.Duringthisperiodofthelate1920s,theUzbekSupremeCourtnotedthatseventy-one cases camebefore themofmen angry atwomen for their variousassertions. The Court convicted 127 people for their aggression against thewomen.TheTashkentcourtdealtwiththirty-eightcasesofthiskind;inthirteenof them, men killed women. In 1928, 270 Uzbek women were murdered forunveiling themselves.TheZhenotdelactivistspersisted.Thehujumwasnot an

easy fight nor did it succeed in fully transforming the cultural worlds of thenomadicKazakh,KyrgyzandTurkmenfamilies.Itwouldtakedecadesfortheseideastoseepintothegenerations.

The fight forwomen’s educationwas equally difficult. In 1931, the SovietssurveyedtheschoolsinSurkhan-DaryaOblast.Inonevillage,notuntypical,theyfound no girls in school. If education could be away tomove a new culturalagenda, it would not work if girls were not coming to school. Before theRevolution,theliteracyrateforwomeninCentralAsiawasnearlyzero.By1970,it would be 99 per cent. The journey between 1917 and 1970 is something tobehold. It took a great deal of effort by the local Zhenotdel activists, the localCommunist Partyworkers and the Soviet state to push this agenda. Improvedliteracy rates simultaneously meant an improvement in health indicators.Patience was necessary, but so too perseverance. It was not possible to beconciliatorytowardstheoldways.Thesehadtobedisrupted.In1964,atthe40th

anniversarycelebrationoftheUzbekSovietSocialistRepublic,FatimaKasymovatook to the stage to talk about her life. Her story gives us a sense of NaciyeHanim’shopes,

ShouldItellyouaboutmylifeastheheadoftheEngelscollectivefarmintheSamarkandregionforthepast twenty years as amotherwho, besides raising six children of her own, adopted ten children ofdifferent nationalities during World War II, that having graduated from Samarkand AgriculturalInstitute, I am now working on aMaster’s thesis on the selection of the new, very sweet variety ofSultana grapes. . . . My biography, the biography of an ordinary Uzbek woman, would be a vividexampleofwhatSovietpowerhasgiventothewomenoftheEast.

Communist women outside the USSR took great inspiration from thepositionstakenbytheSovietsandtheirstruggles.Ithadbecomecommonplaceforcommunistpartiesacrosstheworldtocreatewomen’sfrontsbythe1930stodevelopstrugglesledbywomenonwomen’sissues.Theseorganizationsandthestruggles that drew in women of all sectors shaped the issues that would bebrought to thecommunistparties,which–being rooted in theworld–wouldnot easily adopt them. Women such as Aminah Rahhal and Naziha Jawdat

Dulaymi of the Iraqi Communist Party and the League for the Defence ofWomen’s Right as well as the Venezuelan communist Argelia Laya andEcuadorean communist Tránsito Amaguaña (‘Mama Tránsito’) shaped thisworld of communist women’s activism. Many of these women would formorganizationsthatwouldbecomepartoftheWomen’sInternationalDemocraticFederation(WIDF),foundedinParisin1945.

‘TheCovenantofWhiteandBrownWillMakeHumanityFree!’LeagueAgainst ImperialismandColonialDomination(1927).Courtesy:InternationalInstituteofSocialHistory(Amsterdam).

ColonialFascism

In 1950, Aimé Césaire, the communist from Martinique, one of the clearestvoicesofthe20thcentury,lookedbackatthelonghistoryofcolonialismthatwascomingtoanend.HewantedtojudgecolonialismfromtheashesofNazism,anideology that surprised the innocent in Europe but which had been fosteredslowly in Europe’s colonial experience. After all, the instruments ofNazism –racialsuperiorityaswellasbrutal,genocidalviolence–hadbeencultivatedinthecolonialworldsofAfrica,AsiaandLatinAmerica.Césaire,theeffervescentpoetand communist, had no problem with the encounter between cultures. TheentanglementsofEurope’s culturewith thatofAfrica andAsiahad forged thebest of human history across theMediterranean Sea. But colonialismwas notculturalcontact.Itwasbrutality.

Betweencolonizationandcivilizationthereisaninfinitedistance;thatoutofallthecolonialexpeditionsthat have been undertaken, out of all the colonial statutes that have been drawn up, out of all thememorandathathavebeendispatchedbyalltheministries,therecouldnotcomeasinglehumanvalue.

Césairewasadamant:colonialismhadproducednothingthatwouldearnitrespect in the scales ofhistory.Thiswas in 1950,when a fewnationshad justemergedoutofthescarofcolonialismandwhenmanysocietiesfoughtpitchedbattles to extricate themselves from colonial power.What had come to definefascism insideEurope through theexperienceof theNazis– the jackbootsandthegaschambers–werefamiliaralreadyinthecolonies.Thiscolonialfascism,Césaire argued in Discourse on Colonialism, needed to be emphasized.Colonialismwasassertingitselfinthisperiod,pushingtoreviveitsempiresfromVietnam to Algeria, from Kenya to Malaya. It pretended to distinguish itself

from fascism, then considered essentially evil, and to resurrect itself in apaternalist and benign form. Césaire would have nothing to do with that.Colonialismandfascismsharedtoomuchatthelevelofeffects–intermsofhowtheyappearedtotheirvictims.ItwascleartoCésaire,asaMarxist,thatfascismwas a political form of bourgeois rule in times when democracy threatenedcapitalism;colonialism,ontheotherhand,wasnakedpowerjustifiedbyracismto seize resources frompeoplewhowerenotwilling tohand themover.Theirformwasdifferentbuttheirmannerswereidentical.

From the anti-colonial struggles of the Communist International and theLeagueAgainstImperialismtotheanti-fasciststruggleinSpainandthenagainsttheNaziwarmachine, the SovietUnion acquitted itselfwell. The Soviets, likeCésaire,sawthelinksbetweencolonialismandfascism–bothtiedtoeachotherinextricablybyracism.Itwasnotpossibletofightfascismandcollaboratewithcolonialism. The two emerged from the same origin, which the communistleaderR.P.Duttcalledcapitalistdecay. InhisFascismandSocialDecay (1934),Duttpointedoutthatthe‘revoltagainstscience’preparesthegroundfor‘allthequackeriesandcharlatanries,ofchauvinism,racialtheories,antisemitism,Aryangrandmothers,mystic swastikas, divinemissions, strong-man saviours, and allthe rest of the nonsense through which alone capitalism today can try tomaintain its hold a little longer’. Racism, the root of both colonialism andfascism,was not ‘insane’,Duttwrote, but ‘completely rational and calculated’.Capitalismcannotoffer a ‘rationaldefence’of itself,of themanner inwhich itcreates and sustains social inequality. It, therefore, takes refuge on ‘a wave ofobscurantism,holdingoutfantasticsymbolsandpaintedsubstitutesforideals’.

In 1917, the Soviets revealed the secret treaties of the imperialist powers.Whenhereleasedthesedocuments,LeonTrotsky–thePeople’sCommissarofForeignAffairs–noted,‘Secretdiplomacyisanecessaryweaponinthehandsofthepropertiedminoritywhich iscompelled todeceive themajority inorder tomake the latter serve its interests. Imperialism, with its worldwide plans of

annexation, its rapaciousalliancesandmachinations,hasdeveloped thesystemofsecretdiplomacytothehighestdegree’.TheSovietrecordagainstcolonialismwasclear,evenastheCominternstruggledtoproduceafirmlineinthisorthatcountry.TherewasnoinstancewheretheSovietsconsideredcolonialruletobeworthwhile. The same with fascism, which the Soviets saw as anathema tohumankind.Sovietaid toRepublicanSpainwasone testandtheotherwas theimmensesacrificeoftheUSSRinthefightagainstfascisminWorldWarII.

In 1931, the Spanish Left won the elections and inaugurated the SecondSpanish Republic. An even more radical Popular Front government came topower in 1936. Only two countries,Mexico and the USSR – the two peasantrepublics thathadbeen formedby revolutions–backed the SpanishRepublic.Progressivepoliciestoundercut landlords,thearistocratsandthecapitalistssettheRepublicagainst therulingbloc.Thatblocwouldrapidlyfindsolace inthefascistmovement aswell as in the army ofGeneral Francisco Franco that leftSpanish colonizedMorocco for themainland. FromNorthAfrica, the fascistscameintotheIberianPeninsulawiththeintentofoverthrowingtheRepublicbyforce.Awarensued,whichwas–withthefascistItalianinvasionofEthiopiain1935–anearlyfrontlineofthefascistassault.TheSovietsbackedtheRepublic,asdidCommunistpartiesfromaroundtheworld.CommunistscametotheaidoftheRepublicfromtheUnitedStatestothePhilippines,fromIndiatoIreland.TheInternationalBrigades,supportedbytheUSSR,providedabulwarkagainstthe onrush of the fascist armies, which were backed not only by the fascistpowers(ItalyandGermany)butalsobytheimperialistbloc(BritainandFrance).Fissures between the anarchists and the communists fractured the unitiesnecessary in the fight against fascism, surely, but there it is undeniable thatwithoutlogisticalhelp–OperationX–fromtheSovietstheRepublicwouldhavebeencrushedimmediatelyandnotlasteduntil1939.

When the Republic fell in March 1939, the imperialist and fascist blocsseemedfused.WhenFrancomarchedintoMadrid,theBritishAmbassadorwent

togreethim.WhenNehru,whohadbeentotheRepublicanfront-linesandwasfully behind the Republic, heard of this, he shuddered. This imperialist andfascist alliancewas against humanity. Francowould remain in power until hisdeathin1975.Heremainedheraldedbythe‘democratic’countriesofEurope.

The USSR, through the summer of 1939, faced the imminent threat ofinvasionbythefascistandimperialistpowers.Suchaninvasionhadtakenplacerightafter1917.InthewarinSpain,itbecameclearthatSovietarmamentsthatwenttherethroughOperationXwerenotofthesamequalityasthoseproducedbytheGermansandtheItalians.TheSovietssent772airmeninheavyTupolevSB bombers,which turned out to be far slower andmore vulnerable than theGermanMesserschmittBf109.TheSovietarmystafffearedthataninvasionbytheNazisandtheimperialistbloc,afterthefallofSpain,wouldbecatastrophicfortheUSSR.TheNazishadalreadyseizedAustriaintheAnschlussof1938andhadthreatenedLithuaniawithconquestinMarch1939.TheItalianshadseizedAlbaniainApril1939andthetwofascistpowers–ItalyandGermany–signedadecisivePactofSteelinMay1939.Britain’sappeasementofthefascistblocattheMunich meeting in 1938 suggested collusion between the imperialist and thefascist bloc. This was the context of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August1939,wheretheSovietshopedtogetsometimetobuilduptheircapacitybeforean inevitableNazi attack. Surely there should have been no compromise withfascism.Butthiswasintherealmofrealpolitik–awaytosalvagetimebeforethewar that was to come. Indeed, in September 1939, the USSR opened ninefactories tobuildaircraftandseven factories tobuildaircraftengines.TheRedArmygrewfrom1million(Springof1938)to5million(June1941).

But Stalin had other ideas as well. OnMarch 10, 1939, when the SpanishRepublicwasreadytofall,hesaidthattheUSSRshouldallowthe‘warmongerstosinkdeeplyintothemireofwarfare,toquietlyurgethemon’.IfGermanyandBritainwenttowar,thenitwould‘weakenandexhaust’bothallowingtheUSSR‘withfreshforces’toenterthefrayeventually‘intheinterestofpeacetodictate

terms to theweakenedbelligerents’.Thiswouldnothappen.Francewas easilydefeatedbytheNazisandBritaincouldnotfindthewaytobringtroopstotheEuropeanmainland.Thewarcame to theUSSRwithout the imperialistsbeingweakened.TheNazisattackedtheUSSRasexpected.TheSovietsfoughtvaliantlyagainst the Nazis, losing over 26 million Soviet citizens in the long war thateventuallydestroyedtheNaziwarmachine.

It was the Soviet Union that saved the world from Nazism. It was SovietarmiesthatliberatedmostoftheNaziconcentrationcamps,anditwastheSovietarmiesthatenteredBerlinandendedthewar.GeneralDwightEisenhower,theleadingAmerican soldier in the European sector, recalled his journey into theEasternfrontaftertheendofthewar,‘WhenweflewintoRussiain1945,Ididnotseeahousestandingbetweenthewesternbordersofthecountryandtheareaaround Moscow. Through this overrun region, Marshal Zhukov told me, somanynumbersofwomen,childrenandoldmenandbeenkilledthattheRussianGovernmentwouldneverbeabletoestimatethetotal.’

Fascism, to those in thecolonizedworld, shared toomuch in itsbehaviourwith colonialism: the racism surely but also the brutality and depravity, theoscillation between genocide and incarceration. Aimé Césaire did not see‘fascism’and‘colonialism’asseparateendeavours.Theywerekin.ButinEuropeafter 1945, there was a great push to see fascism as merely its Europeanexpression, an aberration of the Germans and the Italians. To suggest thatfascism was merely Nazism with no linkage to colonialism allowed theEuropeansandtheNorthAmericanstorevive–withoutembarrassment–theircolonial histories. The British used the full might of their armies to subduenationalaspirationsfromKenyatoMalaya,whiletheFrenchattemptedtoretaketheirold colonies from Indo-China toAlgeria.TheDutch sent in their armiesintoIndonesia,whiletheAmericansconductedcoupsandmarinelandingsfromGuatemalatotheDominicanRepublicandoutwardstoIran.

In 1954, the US National Security Council’s staff prepared an important

memorandum on US policy towards Africa. The two main interests of theUnitedStateswereits‘actualandpotentialUSmilitarybasesinthearea’andits‘access to, andutilizationof, the strategic rawmaterialsof the area’.To securebasesandrawmaterials theUnitedStateswouldneed to ‘support’ thecolonialpowers’ ‘presence in the area’ – namely to support the continuation ofcolonialism.USSecretaryofStateJohnFosterDullesworriedthatdecolonizationwouldmeanthedeliveryofthenewstatestothecommunistsandsothelosstotheUSofbasesandrawmaterials. ‘Zeal’towarddecolonization,hesaid, ‘needsto be balanced by patience’. Here ‘patience’ simply meant the delay ofdecolonization.ThiswasareturntothelanguageandlogicofimperialismfrombeforeWorldWarII.Therewasnosenseherethattheanti-fasciststrugglehadany unity with the anti-colonial struggle, both part of the broader humanstruggleforfreedomagainsttyranny.Fascismhadbeendefeated,butcolonialismwasgoingtobewelcomedintothepost-warage.

In1960,theUSvotedintheUNPoliticalCommitteeagainstaresolutionthatcalledforAlgerianindependence.Laterthatyear,theUSvoted–effectively–toallownooversightintothePortuguesecoloniesinAfrica.Finally,thatyear,theUSabstainedonavote in theUNGeneralAssembly for a ‘Declarationon theGrantingofIndependencetoColonialCountriesandPeoples’.ThisdeclarationwasasignificantfeintbytheUSSRonbehalfofthecolonizedworld.Duringthe15thSessionoftheGeneralAssemblyonSeptember23,1960,NikitaKhrushchevoftheUSSRsaiditwasnowtimefor‘thecompleteandfinalliberationofpeopleslanguishing in colonial bondage’. In keeping with the UN Charter, the 100millionpeoplestilllivingundercolonialismmustbefreed.Fivedayslater,duringthe discussion over the Declaration, which was sponsored by the USSR, itsrepresentativetotheUNValerianZorincalledforindependenceforallcolonialterritorieswithinayear.‘Theprocessofliberationisirresistibleandirreversible’,noted the Declaration, which passed by 89 votes to 0, with nine abstentions(includingcolonialpowerssuchasBelgium,France,Portugal,Spain,theUnited

Kingdom and the apartheid state of South Africa). It was clear that the oldcolonialpowersand theUnitedStateshad little sympathy for theanti-colonialstruggle,itselfintertwinedwiththelegacyoftheOctoberRevolution.

WhileZorinmadethecase,alongwith43countriesfromAfricaandAsia,intheUnitedNations,Cubabrokethroughitscolonialdomination into freedom.FromthemountainsoftheSierraMaestraandfromthecitiescamethetorrentialpower of the people against the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. ‘Therevolutionismadeinthemidstofdanger’,saidFidelCastroasheledhisbandofpeasant-soldiers from the hills into the cities. They had triumphed againstremarkableodds.Quickly,therevolutionariespassedaseriesofdecrees–justasthe Soviets had – to draw the key classes to their side. To draw in the urbanCubans, the revolutionaries cut rents by half – sending a strong signal to thebourgeoisiethattheyhadadifferentclassoutlook.Then,therevolutionariestookon theUnitedStates,whose governmentheld amonopolyover services to theisland.Telephoneandelectricalcompanies–allAmerican–weretoldtoreducetheirrates immediately.Then,onMay17,1959,theCubangovernmentpassedits agrarian reform– thekeystoneof the revolutionaryprocess. Landholdingswouldbe restricted so thatno large landowners coulddominate the landscapeandsothattheUSsugarindustrycouldnotstranglethehopesoftheisland.Themostradicalpartofthereformwasnotthelandceilingitself,butthelogicthatagrarianreformwouldtransformthestagnationof theCubaneconomyanditsdependenceupontheUnitedStates.Thelawclearlystatedthat,fromasocialiststandpoint,

Theagrarianreformhastwoprincipalobjectives:(a)tofacilitatetheplantingortheextensionofnewcrops with the view of furnishing rawmaterials to industry, satisfying the food requirements of thenation,increasingtheexportofagriculturalproductsand,reciprocally,theimportofforeignproductswhich are essential to use; (b) to develop the interior market (family, domestic) by raising thepurchasing power of the rural population. In otherwords, increase the national demand in order todeveloptheindustriesatrophiedbyanoverlyrestrainedconsumption,orinordertocreatethosewhich,forlackofcustomers,wereneverabletogetstartedamongus.

Therevolutionarieswantedtodiversifytheirsugarcaneisland,producefoodsecurityfortheirpeople,removepeoplefromdesperation,increasetheabilityofpeopletoconsumearangeofgoodsandengineerapeople-centredratherthananexport-centredeconomy.LongbeforeCastroannouncedhiscommitmenttocommunism,theregimehadalreadydevelopedacarefullythoughtoutsocialistplatform.

The United States of America, having overthrown the radical nationalistgovernmentinGuatemalain1954,waseagertorepeatthetaskinCubain1959.Anembargocameswiftly,asdideveryformofhumiliationpossibleagainsttheCuban people. The Cuban economy was structured around dependency toWashington,withthesugarboughtbytheUSfirmsandwiththeislandturnedinto aplayground forAmerican tourists.Now, theUSdecided to squeeze thislittleisland,onlyninetymilesfromtheUSshoreline.Gunboatswerereadied,afailed invasion tried inApril 1961at theBayofPigs.Cubawasvulnerablebutalsoprotectedby thedeeprootsof its revolution.Butwould thisprotectionbesufficient?CouldCuba,alone,beabletosurvivetheonslaughtfromtheUnitedStates?

OnFebruary5,1960,a leaderintheUSSRandanOldBolshevik–AnastasMikoyan – came to Havana to join Fidel Castro at the opening of a Sovietscientific, cultural and technical exhibition.Aweek later,Mikoyan andCastrosignedanagreementfortheUSSRtobuyCubansugarattheworldmarketprice(indollars)andprovidecreditsfortheCubanstobuyRussiangoods.TheUSSRwouldsubsequentlybuyalmostalltheCubansugarharvest,evenastheRussianconsumermarketcouldverywellhavebeensuppliedbybeetsugarfromwithinthe USSR. Prices fluctuated, but, on balance, the Cubans were able to find aregular buyer to takeover from theUnited States.TheRussians alsoprovidedover a $100 million in credits toward the construction of Cuba’s chemicalindustryaswellastrainedCubantechnicalandscientificworkers intheUSSR.Diversification ofCuba’s economy remained on the cards, although it became

clearthat itwouldnotbeaneasytask.InAugust1963,Castroannouncedthatdiversification,aswellasindustrialization,wouldbepostponed.Cubaneededtoconcentrateonitssugarcaneharvesttoearnthemeanstosurvivetheembargo.

Castrojoinsintoharvestsugarcane(1969).

On February 24, 1965, Che Guevara addressed the Second EconomicSeminarofAfro-AsianSolidarityinAlgiers,Algeria.Hehadcometotalkaboutthe economic problems for a revolution in a post-colonial country.Overthrowingtheformercolonizerwasnotenough,Chesaid,since‘arealbreak’isneededfromimperialismforthenewstatetoactuallyflourishandnotremainin dependency. How could the post-colonial state survive a hostile economicclimate?Whowouldbuyitsgoods–mainlyprimary,unprocessedgoods–atafairprice,andwhowouldlenditcapitalatfairtermstodevelop?Capitalistbanksandcountrieswouldnotprovide thepost-colonial state,particularly a socialiststate,withthemeanstobreakoutofthetrapofunderdevelopment.Bankswouldlend money to a post-colonial state at rates higher than it would lend to acolonial power. Expensive money would only put the post-colonial state intofurther difficulty, as it would find it hard to service its debt and see its debtmultiply out of hand. To prevent this situation, Che argued, the ‘socialistcountriesmusthelppay for thedevelopmentof countriesnow startingoutonthe road to liberation’. Trade between socialist countries must not take placebased on the law of value of capitalism, but through the creation of fraternalprices. ‘The real task’, Che said, ‘consists of setting prices that will permitdevelopment. A great shift in ideas will be involved in changing the order ofinternational relations. Foreign trade should not determine policy, but should,onthecontrary,besubordinatedtoafraternalpolicytowardthepeoples.’

China, in 1960, offered Cuba credit of $60 million without interest andwithouta timeline forrepayment.Thiswasanenviable loan.But thescalewasmuchsmallerthantheSovietassistance.By1964,theUSSRhadprovidedCubawith economic assistance valued at over $600 million, while the EasternEuropeancountriesofferedseveralhundredmillionmoreinaidandassistance.The USSR had also trained over 3,000 Cubans in agronomy and agriculturalmechanization as well as 900 Cubans as engineers and technicians. CherecognizedthevalueoftheSoviet‘fraternalpolicy’bothintermsofthetraining

andinthepricesoffered.‘Clearly,wecouldnotasktheSocialistworldtobuythisquantityofsugaratthispricebasedoneconomicmotives’,hehadsaidin1961,‘becausereallythereisnoreasoninworldcommerceforthispurchaseanditwassimplyapoliticalgesture’.

DipaNusantaraAidit,leaderoftheCommunistPartyofIndonesia,speakingatanelectionmeetingin1955.ThePartywouldgrowbyleapsandboundsinthedecadethatfollowed.

PolycentricCommunism

In 1956, Soviet tanks entered Hungary. Debate over this intervention spreadacross the world’s left. ‘The Polish and Hungarian people have written theircritiqueofStalinismuponthestreetsandsquares’,wrotetheBritishMarxistE.P.Thompson.TheSoviet interventioncameafewmonthsafterthe20thCongressoftheCommunistPartyoftheUSSR,whereNikitaKhrushchevhaddenouncedStalin and blamed all distortions in theUSSRon the ‘cult of personality’. TheattackonStalinandtheUSSR’sinterventioninHungarydamageditsreputationin the Third World – a reputation secured not only because it had built amodern, equitable state out of a peasant society but also because it used itsincredible prowess – built at great sacrifice – to defeat fascism. The anti-colonialism of the early Soviets was mirrored by the anti-fascism of the nextgeneration.Thiswasnowdamagedbythe20th-CongressrevelationsandbytheinvasionofHungary.

Palmiro Togliatti, the leader of the Italian Communist Party, called for areconsiderationofthecentralityofMoscowtotheworldcommunistmovement.‘National roads to socialism’ needed to be developed, Togliatti wrote, as hereiterated an older desire for ‘polycentric communism’. This was to be acommunismthatwasnotcentredaroundMoscowandSovietforeignpolicy.TheSoviet intervention in Hungary and the Khrushchev revelations produced inEurope a process that led – gradually – to the Eurocommunism of theCommunist Party of Spain’s leader SantiagoCarrillo,who said, in 1976, ‘onceMoscowwasourRome,butnomore.Nowweacknowledgenoguidingcentre,no internationaldiscipline’.Thiswasa communism thatno longerbelieved in

revolutionbutwasquitesatisfiedwithanevolutionarydynamic.TheEuropeanparties, correct in theirdesire for the right todevelop theirown strategies andtactics,nonetheless,threwthemselvesontoaself-destructivepath.Fewremainedstanding after theUSSR collapsed in 1991.They campaigned for polycentrismbut,intheend,achievedonlyareturntosocialdemocracy.

AmongsttheThirdWorldcommunistparties,adifferentorientationbecameclearafter1956.WhiletheWesternEuropeanpartiesseemedeagertodenigratetheUSSRanditscontributions,thepartiesintheThirdWorldacknowledgedtheimportanceoftheUSSRbutsoughtsomedistancefromitspoliticalorientation.During their visits toMoscow in the 1960s, champions of ‘African socialism’such as Modibo Keïta of Mali and Mamadou Dia of Senegal announced thenecessity of non-alignment and the importance of nationally developedprocesses of socialist construction. Marshal Lin Biao spoke of the need for a‘creativeapplication’ofMarxismintheChinesecontext.TheyoungleaderoftheIndonesianCommunistParty–DipaNusantaraAidit–movedhispartytowardsafirmgroundinginbothMarxism-LeninismandthepeculiaritiesofIndonesianhistory. In December 1961, Aidit told his party of the importance of‘polycentrism’. ‘No Communist Party that is dependent upon another candevelop normally’, he said. In India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)emerged out of the Communist Party of India in 1964 around a debate thatincludedtheroleoftheUSSRasarbiterofnationallines.‘WerealizethatwecanlearnverylittlefromtheexperiencesoftheSovietandtheChineserevolutions’,saidHareKrishnaKonar,apeasantleaderoftheCPIM.‘Inthepeculiarobjectiverealities of India, we have to rely on ourselves to formulate the strategies andtactics of our revolution. The Indian peasant struggle must necessarily take adifferenttackfromthatoftheCCP-ledpeasantstruggleinChina’.

In theThirdWorld,whereCommunismwas a dynamicmovement, itwasnot treated as a religion thatwas incapable of error. ‘Socialism is young’,CheGuevara wrote in 1965, ‘and has its mistakes.’ Socialism required ceaseless

criticism in order to strengthen it. Such an attitudewasmissing inColdWarEurope andNorthAmerica, where the ColdWarriors of Capitalism took anyself-criticism by the Communists for weakness and where the comradestragically fell back upon defensiveness and the construction of illusions. ‘ThehiddenhallmarkofWesternMarxismasawhole’,wrotePerryAndersonin1979,‘isthusthatitisapoliticsofdefeat.’ThiswasnottheattitudeintheThirdWorldwheretheCommunistPartyof theSovietUnionwasseenasanallybutnotasthehallmarkoftheirrevolutionarystruggles.TheydidnotlinktheirmovementsinatheologicalwaytotheUSSR.After1956,CommunismwaspenalizedbytheColdWarriorsfortheSovietinterventioninHungary.ThisplayedsomeroleintheThirdWorld,butitwasnotdecisive.InIndia,in1957theCommunistswonanelectioninKeralatobecometherulingpartyinthatstate.In1959,theCubanrevolution overthrew a dictatorship and adopted Marxism-Leninism as itsgeneraltheory.InVietnam,from1954,theCommuniststookchargeofthenorthof the country and valiantly fought to liberate the rest of their country. ThesewerecommunistvictoriesdespitetheinterventioninHungary.

InreactiontothedevelopmentsinHungary,theCommunistPartyofIndia’sleader Ajoy Ghosh wrote a letter in New Age about these developments. Headmitted that the party had been wrong in ‘idealizing the USSR’ and in nothavingbeenattentivetocriticismsofthestate.TherewasaviolentdebateintheCentralCommitteeoftheCPIoverHungaryinDecember1956,whichwasnoteasilyresolved.TheexecutionofCommunistleaderImreNagyinthesummerof1958 only turnedmore of the Indian communists against the direction beingtakenintheUSSR.WhatwashappeningwithintheUSSR?

AstruggleopenedupwithintheCPIoverwhatshouldbetheattitudeoftheparty towards theUSSR–withone section closer to the Soviet viewpoint andanothertakingapositionagainstit.InApril1957,atameetingattheCPI’sWestBengal provincial committee, the communists decided to disagree with theposition that the USSR must be followed blindly. The committee resolved to

‘interpretandapply’Marxism-Leninismfortheirownconditions.ThatJuly,CPIleaderZ.A.Ahmedsaidthat‘theUSSRisnomodelnow’.InOctober,ataclosedmeetingoftheBombaypartycommittee, thepartymembersstronglycriticizedtheCPSUand theCPI’s inability to be critical of theUSSR. In June 1958, theWest Bengal CPI unit told the party leadership that they disagreed with theparty’s position of subservience to the USSR. The execution of Nagy and thefailure of the CPI to condemn it troubled these communists as did the CPI’sbreakwithYugoslaviainconcertwiththeUSSR.WhentheCPIsplitin1964,thenew party that emerged from it – the Communist Party of India (Marxist) –respected the October Revolution and the Chinese Revolution, but took itsorders fromneither. Itwoulddevelop itsowntheory,basedon–asLeninhadsaid – ‘the most essential thing in Marxism, the living soul of Marxism, theconcreteanalysisofconcreteconditions’.

Much the same history propelled the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI)forwardfrom1951,whenithadmerely5,000members,to1964,whenithadtwomillion partymembers and an additional fifteenmillionmembers in itsmassorganizations (half of them in the IndonesianPeasants’ Front). The party haddeeprootsintheheavilypopulatedsectionsofeastandcentralJavabuthad–inthe decade after 1951 – begun to make gains in the outer islands, such asSumatra.Aviciouslyanti-communistmilitarywasunabletostopthegrowthoftheparty.Thenewleadershipfromthe1953PartyCentralCommitteemeetingwereallintheirthirties,withthenewSecretaryGeneral–Aidit–merelythirty-oneyearsold.Thesecommunistswerecommittedtomassstrugglesandtomasscampaigns, to building up the party base in rural Indonesia. The IndonesianPeasants’ Front and the Plantation Workers’ Union – both PKI massorganizations – fought against forced labour (romusha) and encouraged landseizures (aksi sepihak). These campaigns became more and more radical. InFebruary 1965, the PlantationWorkers’ Union occupied land held by the USRubberCompanyinNorthSumatra.USRubberandGoodyearTiressawthisas

a direct threat to their interests in Indonesia. Such audacity would not betolerated.Threemultinationaloilcompanies(Caltex,StanvacandShell)watchedthiswithalarm.USdiplomatGeorgeBallwrotetoUSNationalSecurityAdvisorMcGeorgeBundy that in ‘the long run’ events in Indonesia suchas these landseizures ‘may be more important than South Vietnam’. Ball would know. Heoversaw the1963coup inSouthVietnamagainst theUSallyNgôĐìnhDiệm.TheWestfeltitcouldnotstandbyasthePKIgotmoreaggressive.

By 1965, the PKI had three million party members – adding a millionmembers in the year. It had emerged as a serious political force in Indonesia,despite the anti-communist military’s attempts to squelch its growth.Membershipinitsmassorganizationswentupto18million.Astrangeincident– the killing of three generals in Jakarta – set off amassive campaign, helpedalong by the CIA and Australian intelligence, to excise the communists fromIndonesia.Massmurderwastheorderoftheday.TheworstkillingswereinEastJava and in Bali. Colonel Sarwo Edhie’s forces, for instance, trained militiasquads to kill communists. ‘We gave them two or three days’ training,’ SarwoEdhietoldjournalistJohnHughes,‘thensentthemouttokillthecommunists.’InEastJava,oneeyewitnessrecounted,theprisonerswereforcedtodigagrave,then‘onebyone,theywerebeatenwithbambooclubs,theirthroatsslit,andtheywere pushed into the mass grave’. By the end of the massacre, a millionIndonesianmenandwomenoftheleftweresenttothesegraves.Manymillionsmore were isolated, without work and friends. Aidit was arrested by ColonelYasirHadibroto,broughttoBoyolali(inCentralJava)andexecuted.Hewas42.

There was no way for the world communist movement to protect theirIndonesian comrades. TheUSSR’s reactionwas tepid. The Chinese called it a‘heinous and diabolical’ crime. But neither the USSR nor China could doanything.TheUnitedNationsstayedsilent.ThePKIhaddecidedtotakeapaththatwaswithouttheguns.Itscadrecouldnotdefendthemselves.Theywerenotabletofightthemilitaryandtheanti-communistgangs.Itwasabloodbath.

In1966,nationalliberationmovementscametoHavana,Cuba,toinauguratetheTricontinental.Thiswastobeaplatformforthosemovementsthatdidnotputdownthegun.Theirswasareactiontothebrutalityofthecolonialrefusaltoaccepthistory’sverdictanditwasareactiontothemassacreinIndonesia.CheGuevara had already left Cuba for the Congo, where he hoped to focus therebellionsacrosstheAfricancontinent.HesentalettertotheTricontinentalthatwas read by Fidel Castro. In his letter, he noted that armed action againstimperialismstretchedfromVietnamatoneendtoVenezuelaattheother.Inthemidst of this, Chewrote is ‘Indonesia, wherewe can not assume that the lastword has been said, regardless of the annihilation of theCommunist Party inthatcountrywhenthereactionariestookover’.

TherewaslittlementioninHavanaoftheSovietUnion.Ithadsloweddownitssupportfornationalliberationmovements,eagerfordetenteandconciliationwiththeWestbythemid-1960s.In1963,AidithadchastisedtheSoviets,saying,‘Socialiststatesarenotgenuineiftheyfailtoreallygiveassistancetothenationalliberationstruggle’.Thereasonwhypartiessuchas thePKIheldfast to ‘Stalin’wasnotbecausetheydefendedthepurgesorcollectivizationintheUSSR.Itwasbecause ‘Stalin’ in the debate around militancy had come to stand in forrevolutionaryidealismandfortheanti-fasciststruggle.AidithadagreedthattheSoviets could have any interpretation of Stalin in terms of domestic policy(‘criticize him, remove his remains from themausoleum, rename Stalingrad’),butotherCommunistPartieshadtherighttoassesshisroleontheinternationallevel.Hewas a ‘lighthouse’,Aidit said in1961,whoseworkwas ‘still useful toEastern countries’. This was a statement against the conciliation towardsimperialismoftheKhrushchevera.ItwasapositionsharedacrossmanyoftheCommunistPartiesoftheThirdWorld.

ManyCommunist parties, frustratedwith thepace of change andwith thebrutalityoftheattacksonthem,wouldtaketotheguninthisperiod–fromPeruto the Philippines. The massacre in Indonesia hung heavily on the world

communistmovement.Butthismovetothegunhaditslimitations,formanyofthese parties would mistake the tactics of armed revolution for a strategy ofviolence.Theviolenceworkedmosteffectively theotherway.ThecommunistsweremassacredinIndonesia–aswehaveseen–andtheywerebutcheredinIraqandSudan,inCentralAsiaandSouthAmerica.TheimageofcommunistsbeingthrownfromhelicoptersoffthecoastofChileisfarlessknownthananyclichéabouttheUSSR.

MyvolumesofCapitalfrom1981.

MemoriesofCommunism

In 1977, when I was ten, the Left Front won the elections inmy nativeWestBengal.Redflags filledKolkata, thecitywhereI lived,anddemonstrationsandprocessions became an everyday reality. Jyoti Basu, the leader of theCPI (M),becametheChiefMinister.HetooktotheradioonJune22andofferedthisashisvisionforthestate,

Thecommonpeopleofourstatefacegraveproblemsinmeetingthebasicneedsoflife.Problemshaveaccumulatedovertheyearsinallspheres–food,clothing,housing,transport,power,education,healthandevenwithregardtodrinkingwaterfacilities.Theeconomyofthestateisinamoribundconditionandthepeople’ssufferingknowsnobounds.Massiveunemployment,closedfactories,retrenchments,absence of investment, power shortage – all these problemshave assumed frightful proportions.Theconditionof the countryside beggars description.We shallmake serious and sincere efforts to tackletheseproblems.

Hesaidthatthepolicewouldnotstandonthesideofthecapitalistsandnorwould the state bureaucracy work against the popular movements. The LeftFront government would go immediately towards land reforms and for theregistrationoflandlessruralworkers.TheseimmenselypopularmeasuresearnedtheLeftpopularityinthestateandoutsideit.

Fouryears later, in1981, Iboughtmy first editionofMarx’sCapital – theProgressPublishers edition–which sits now inmymother’s flat inKolkata. Ireaditslowly,tryingtofindmywaythroughthecomplexityofMarx’sprose.Myaunthadbeeninthecommunistmovementalready.Iadmiredherfromafarforhercommitmentandherstance.IreadCapitallinebylineasIreadJohnReed’sTen Days that Shook theWorld andMarx’s writings on the Paris Commune.Thesebooks,alongsidewhatwashappeninginthecountrysideofWestBengal,

weremywindowsintotheworldofCommunismandtotheUSSR.Iwouldlaterfindmyselfatprotestsanddemonstrations,graduallyenteringtheworldof theCPI (M) and its mass organizations. My new comrades and I would discussIndianpoliticsmainly,butalso–onoccasion–thedevelopments intheworldcommunistmovement.Ourworld into theUSSR did not startwith 1917, butwithourown experiences.We looked atMoscowas a distant cousin, not as aparent.

One of the books that I was able to find at a used bookstore was LeonTrotsky’smagisterialHistoryoftheRussianRevolution.Ireadthisovermypujaholidays in 1982, sitting in the Kolkata heat, with a petromax lantern tocompensateforthe‘load-shedding’.Myoldcopyismarkedup–eachpagewithanote.Rightattheend,thereisasentencethatappealedtome,andstilldoes.Itis about how theUSSRwas never given a chance by the bourgeoisie – as onewouldexpect.Fromitsfirstdays,itwascriticizedmercilessly.Trotskywrotehisbook in 1930, sitting in Istanbul, in exile in Turkey from theUSSR. Thirteenyears had elapsed since the October Revolution. The revolution was alreadybeingderided.‘Capitalism’,Trotskywroteinhisconclusion,‘requiredahundredyearstoelevatescienceandtechniquetotheheightsandplungehumanityintothe hell of war and crisis. To socialism its enemies allow only fifteen years tocreate and furnish a terrestrial paradise. We took no such obligation uponourselves.Weneversetthesedates.Theprocessofvasttransformationmustbemeasuredbyanadequatescale.’Butitdidnothavethetimetodevelop.

TheUSSRlastedonlyseventyyears.Thisisaverysmallperiodoftimeinthescopeofworldhistory. Itsachievementshavebeenpilloried– itsdemisebeingthe greatest argument against its achievements. But merely because itdisappeared does notmean that it was withoutmerit. It provides us with theassurancethataworkers’andpeasants’statecanexist,thatitcancreatepoliciestobenefit thevastmassesof thepeoplerather thanmerely therich, that itcanhealandeducateratherthansimplystarveandkill.Thisissomethingtoholdon

to.

‘Bycreatinganew,SoviettypeofState,’Leninwrotein1918,‘wesolvedonlyasmallpartofthisdifficultproblem.Theprincipaldifficultyliesintheeconomicsphere’.Tosocializeproductionwasnotgoingtobeeasy.Anattackbytheforcesopposed to theOctoberRevolution– includingmostWesternpowers– threwthenewgovernmentintodisarray.TheRedArmyhadtobeorganizedtodefendthenewstate,whichmeantresourcesbegantobedrainedawayfromsocialuses.Atnopointduringitssevendecades,didtheSovietUnionexistwithoutmajorexternal threats. Itsentirearchitectureof socialistplanningwasconstrainedbytheimperativesofsecurity.

TheUSSRchosetopushforrapideconomicgrowthtosustaintheRedArmyand to provide sufficient social wealth to improve the livelihood of thepopulation. There was consistently a worry that the use of strategies to buildindustrialcapacityinahurryandtoincreaseruralproductivitywouldleadtofartoocentralizedastate.‘Communistshavebecomebureaucrats’,warnedLeninin1918ina lettertoGrigoriSokolnikov,oneofhisclosestcomrades. ‘Ifanythingwilldestroyus,itisthis’.Embattledbythesiege,drivenbythehurrytobuildthephysicalplantandthehumancapacityofthecountry,pushedbyclassesadversetotheirexperiments,theSovietsmovedtoweakendemocraticinstitutions.Theirchoiceswerefew.ItisinthislackofchoicesthatsomeofthemajorinstitutionalerrorscreptinfortheSovietUnion.

The small Bolshevik Party renamed the Communist Party of the SovietUniondrew in threemillionmembersby1933. Itwasadynamicparty,whichenthused popular classes into new activity – including exciting newdevelopmentsinculture,art,philosophy,technicalsciences,andsoon.Thegreatadvances in the imaginationseemedtocomefromnowhere,but,actually, theycamefromthespiritoftherevolutionandfromitsinstrument,theParty.WhenthePartybegantogoagainsttheopposition,itexcisedthepotentialrichnessofSovietpoliticsandleftthePartyinaweakenedposition.Partymembersbecame

apparatchiks in thebureaucracy,denuding thepolitical lifeof theparty for theadministrativelifeofthestate.WiththeTsar’sapparatusintheirEuropeanexile,it was necessary to staff the bureaucracy with every capable person. Partymembershadtobedragoonedfromtheirroleasorganizersoftheworkingclassandthepeasantryintobureaucrats.ThispartlyemptiedthePartyofitslife.ItdidnothelpthatsomanyvibrantPartymembers–Sokolnikovamongthem,butsotoo the linguistVoloshinov, the literary scholarMedvedev, the theatredirectorMeyerhold, the botanist Vavilov, the pianist Gayibova – were killed in thePurges.ThePartysufferedgreatlyfromthelossofthesetalentedpeopleeithertoStatejobsortothegallows.

The advances, despite the setbacks, were quite incredible. Planning as amechanism drew the admiration of capitalist state managers. It allowed theUSSRtobetterapportionthemeagreresourcestowardrapidindustrialgrowth.The physical plant is precisely what built the bulwark of the USSR againstfascism.ThereisnoquestionthatWesternliberalismwassavedbythemightoftheUSSR inWorldWar II. If theUSSRhadnotbroken throughasa resultofWar Communism, the New Economic Policy, and Stalin’s industrializationpolicy,thenWesternEuropewouldhavebeenbrokenbydecadesoffascism.Asithappened,Hitler’sambitionsdiedinthefactorytownsoftheUSSR,wherethesteelandmortaremergedtodestroytheWehrmacht.WorldWarIIdevastatedthe USSR, which had to go onto aWar Communism footing to build up itsstrength.TheWesternencirclementhadbegunagainas ithadrightafter1917.TherewasnorespitefortheSovietUnion,whichhadlostovertwenty-sixmillionpeopleinthedefenceoffreedom.NotenoughcanbesaidofthegreatsacrificesoftheSovietpeopleingeneral.Tragically,thefruitoftheirsacrificewasseizedbyliberalismandnotbyCommunism.

One of themajor limitations of theUSSRwas that it did not enhance thedemocratic aspirations of the people. In fact, by restriction of democracy, itallowed the West – only formally democratic – to claim the mantle of

democracy.FriedrichEngelswroteoftheFebruary1848uprising, ‘Ourage,theageofdemocracy,isbreaking’.HedescribedthesceneintheFrenchChamberofDeputieswhenaworkerrushedinwithapistolinhand.‘Nomoredeputies’,heshouted, ‘Weare themasters.’ Itwasnot tobe in1848.But this is theseamincommunismthatisirrepressible–thedesireforparticipationandleadership.InOctober1917,Leninaddressedthispossibilitydirectly.‘Wearenotutopians’,hewrote.‘Weknowthatanunskilledlaboureroracookcannotimmediatelygetonwithajobofstateadministration.’Thekeywordhereis‘immediately’.Trainingis essential, Lenin wrote, and once trained, every cook can govern. ‘Ourrevolution will be invincible’, he continued, ‘if it is not afraid of itself, if ittransfersallpowertotheproletariat’.Thattransferofpowerdidnoteffectivelyhappen – although the Supreme Soviet was much more representative of theworkingclassandpeasantrythananyliberaldemocracy,anditsleadershipcamefrom solid working-class (Brezhnev) and peasant (Khrushchev) backgrounds.ThefullpromiseofCommunismcouldnot,however,bemetintheconstraintsoftheUSSR.

The lack of effective democracy meant that there became a tendency tobureaucracy and to stagnation – bolstered by the diversion of an enormousamountofthesocialsurplustothesecurityestablishment.Attemptsatreformofthe system – such as Kosygin’s 1965, 1973 and 1979 reforms – would be ill-starred.Theseweretop-downinitiatives.Theydidnotemergefromthedepthsof the party and of the population. It was a similar top-down attempt in the1980sledbyGorbachevthatledtotheliquidationoftheUSSR.Gorbachevwentfor openness (Glasnost) and economic restructuring (perestroika), introducingthese Russian words into English. Similar policies had been pushed in Chinaaroundthistime,andmuchofwhathehadattemptedwasintheframeworkofKosygin’s various attempts at reform.What Gorbachev didmost dramaticallywastoinsistonmultipartyelectionsandtoessentiallyfrontallyattacktheroleoftheCommunistPartyintheUSSR.Therewasawordforthis–demokratizatsiya

– the dismantling of the state institutions, which were then left prey to theopportunisticpartyapparatchiksandprivatebusinessmenwhobecamethefirstRussianoligarchs– thosemen fedon thesocialwealthproducedby theSovietpeople. The precipitous breakup of the state allowed unscrupulous politicianssuch as Boris Yeltsin (alongwith his intellectual croniesAnatolyChubais andYegorGaidar)todrivetheUSSRoffthecliff.Infact,whatisoftennotraisedinthis connection is that Yeltsin, with the support of General Pavel Grachev,conductedacoupd’étatagainsttheUSSRinOctober1993.ThiswastheOctoberCounter-Revolution.

TheSovietUnioncollapsedin1991.Thegreatsocialwealthwasthenturnedover to an oligarchy. The social deterioration was rapid. The British medicaljournal, The Lancet, estimated that over a million Russians died ‘due to theeconomic shock of mass privatization and shock therapy’ in the decade from1991to2001.LifeexpectancyfortheRussianmalewas65inthelastdaysoftheUSSR,butitcollapsedto60adecadelater.Inequalityandsorrowreturnedtothenew republics that emerged out of the USSR. No wonder then that pollsroutinelyfindthatmorethanhalfoftheRussiancitizensdreamofareturntothedaysoftheUSSR.

All of this was clear to us in the CPI (M) and in other Third WorldCommunistmovements.AmílcarCabralhadalreadywarned from the stageoftheTricontinentalin1966,‘WemustpracticerevolutionarydemocracyineveryaspectofourPartylife.Hidenothingfromthemassesofourpeople.Tellnolies.Exposelieswhenevertheyaretold.Masknodifficulties,mistakes,failures.Claimno easy victories. . . .’ In 1990, theCPI (M)’sCentralCommitteewarned thatdevelopmentsintheUSSRwouldsooncatapultintoitsdestruction.‘Theconceptofproletariandictatorshipwasreducedtothedictatorshipofthepartyandthisattimestothedictatorshipoftheleadingcoterieoftheparty’.DemocracywithintheUSSRhadsuffered.Theworkingclassandpeasantryhadlosttheirholdonthecountry.Itwasgoingtobedeliveredtoanewclassthatwouldnotpursuea

socialistpath.WhentheUSSRcollapsed,we–intheorbitoftheCPI(M)–werenot surprised,evenaswemourned its loss for theSovietpeopleand forworldpolitics.

The USSR’s fall came at the same time as India surrendered to theInternational Monetary Fund and as India’s social and political world wasconvulsed by political violence along religious lines. On December 6, 1992,fascistic forces in India destroyed a 16th-centurymosque. InWest Bengal, theLeftFrontgaveacallforpeopletocreatea700-kilometrehumanchainfromtheBayofBengal to themountainsof theHimalayas. I remember standing at theHazra crossing in Kolkata, holding hands with other comrades in a line thatseemedtostretchoutwardsto infinity inbothdirections.Therewasanelectricfeelinghere of beingpart of amovement thatwas against fascismand againstcapitalism,thatwasforhumanfreedomatitshighest.Wewerestrangers,mostofus,butwewerelinkedtogethertomakenotjust‘anotherworld’,butasocialistworld,aworldoffellowshipandcare,ofvaluesthathadpropelledtheBolshevikstotheirrevolutionin1917.ItisafeelingthatIcarrywithmenow.

ThefalloftheUSSRhitCubaveryhard,sinceitseconomyhadcometorelyupontradewiththeEasternbloc.TheCubanleadershipwatchedwithalarmastheUSSRremoveditstroopsfromtheislandandastheUSSRbackedofffromitscommitments inNicaraguaandAngola.Itseemedthatthenewgovernment intheUSSR–ledbyGorbachev–wasrollingbackSovietpowerinanticipationofasurrendertotheWest.ThisispreciselyhowCastroarticulateditin1991.Inaninterview with theMexican journal Siempre, Castro offered his assessment ofwhat was happening to the USSR – seventy years after the revolution. It isworthwhiletoreadtheentireanswerhegavewhenaskedifthedissolutionoftheUSSRwasinevitable,

Idonot thinkthat thosechangeswerehistorically inevitable. Icannot thinkthatway.Icannotadoptthatfatalisticapproach,becauseIdonotthinkthatthereturntocapitalismandthedisappearanceofthesocialist field was inevitable. I think that subjective factors played an important role in this process.

Therewereallkindsofmistakes,forexample,thedivorcefromthemasses.Ifweweretodelvedeeplyintothissubject,wewouldsaythattherewerelargeideologicalweaknessesbecausethemassesmovedaway from the ideals of socialism, among which human solidarity is primary. The real values ofsocialismwerebeingneglected,andthematerialquestionsreceivedmoreattentionastimewentby.Theideological part of this kind of process was being neglected, while the materialistic part was beingstressed.Itsuddenlyappearedasiftheobjectiveofsocialism,accordingtothestatements,speeches,anddocuments,hadfocusedonlyonimprovingthestandardoflivingofthepopulationeveryyear:Alittlemoreclothfabric,alittlemorecheese,alittlemoremilk,alittlemoreham,morematerialstuff.Tome,socialismisatotalchangeinthelifeofthepeopleandtheestablishmentofnewvaluesandanewculturewhichshouldbebasedmainlyonsolidaritybetweenpeople,notselfishnessandindividualism.

Socialismisatotalchangeinthelifeofthepeople:thisisthemostimportantpointmadenotonlybyCastrobutbytheCubanrevolutionaryexperience.ItissomethingthatIbelieveisthemostimportantlessonfromthehistoryofsocialistexperimentation thus far. TheUSSRwill be remembered for its breakthroughagainstmonarchy, its emancipationof thepeasantry and theworking class, itswaragainstfascismanditssupportfortheanti-colonialmovements;itcannotbereduced entirely to the purges or the failure to produce a wide range ofcommodities.Butitshouldalsoberememberedforhavingfailedtodeepenourunderstanding of socialist democracy and of a socialist culture. These are thechallengesbeforeus.Wehave todevelopnew ideas todeepen themeaningofsocialism,alivingtraditionnotadeadpast.

Today,inmanypartsoftheworld,despitethecollapseoftheUSSR,theredflag remains aloft in ourmovements.Who carries this red flag?Bravewomenandmenwhobelieveinacausethatisgreaterthantheirownself-interest,whobelieve thatwhatever the errorsmade over the course of the past century, thedreamofsocialismremainsaliveandwell.Thesebravewomenandmenlookupattheskyandseetheredstarovertheirworld.

LeftWordBooksisaNewDelhi-basedpublishinghousethatseekstoreflecttheviewsoftheleftinIndiaandSouthAsia.Wepublishcriticalandanalyticalworksonarangeofsubjects,andpayspecialattentiontoworksonMarxisttheory.Weprojecttheinterestsoftheworking

peopleandmovementsforsocialtransformation.

Setupin1999,LeftWordrunsandmanagesMayDayBookstoreandCafé,whichisnextdoortoatheatrespace,StudioSafdar.

LeftWordBooksisthepublishingdivisionofNayaRastaPublishersPvtLtd.

www.leftword.com