Introduction
Welcome to issue 13 of the Newsletter. This issue includes summaries provided by the three paper-givers at the 2002 Communist History Network Seminar held, in conjunction with the International Centre for Labour Studies, at the University of Manchester in November. We extend our thanks to John Callaghan, Allison Drew and Sobhanlal Datta Gupta for their papers, and to all who attended the seminar. We would like to express further thanks to Sobhanlal Datta Gupta for allowing us to republish, in this issue, an article based on his research into the relationship between the Communist Party of India and the Comintern — which will be of particular interest to historians of British communism. The Newsletter continues to be made available in three formats: a print-version; an e-version (Word PC file attachment); and a web-version. The deadline for submissions to issue 14 is 30 April 2003, and contributions are welcomed.
Editors CHNN
Department of Government
University of Manchester
Manchester
United Kingdom
M13 9PL
http://les1.man.ac.uk/chnn
Contents
Editors' introduction
Announcements
- The CPGB and Bengali Immigrants
- Communist Studies on-line
- Pathé Digital News Archive
- Comintern Colonial Politics, John Callaghan
- Bolshevizing Communist Parties — the Algerian and South African experiences, Allison Drew
- The Comintern and the Hidden History of Indian Communism, Sobhanlal Datta Gupta
- A note on James Barke, John Manson
- Schizophrenia at Sachsenhausen, Archie Potts
- The Comintern and the Indian Revolutionaries in Russia in the 1920s, Sobhanlal Datta Gupta
- British Communist Biography and Autobiography, Gidon Cohen
- Stephen Woodhams, History in the Making, reviewed by Antony Howe
- Matthew Worley Class Against Class, reviewed by, Willie Thompson
Announcements
THE CPGB AND BENGALI IMMIGRANTS: Sarah Glynn is researching ‘immigrant politics in London’s East End and would like to speak to any Bengali CPGB members of the British Communist Party and any ‘CPGB members who remember working with East Pakistani immigrants in the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s or even with Bengali lascars before the war’. This research also aims to ‘learn more about CPGB links with other black or Asian immigrants in the East End.’ If you think you could help, please e-mail SarahRGlynn@hotmail.com.
COMMUNIST STUDIES ON-LINE: Published by the European Workshop of Communist Studies, the International Newsletter of Communist Studies provides information on ‘historical studies related to history of the communist movements and ideas, for scholars and publicists, archivists and librarians.’ With contributions in a variety of European languages, the 124-page fifteenth issue of the Newsletter is now available to view on-line (in the Adobe Acrobat pdf format) at: http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/projekte/JHK-news/Newsletter/Newsletter.htm.
PATHÉ DIGITAL NEWS ARCHIVE: British Pathé News, most famous for its cinema ‘newsreels’ of the 1930s-1950s, has begun to make available on-line digital versions of some of the 3,500 hours of celluloid footage (both silent and sound) in its archives — stretching from the 1890s to the Spring of 1970. A wealth of material of interest to historians of the international communist movement is accessible. Footage of particular interest to historians of British communism includes: a 1942 speech in Glasgow by Harry Pollitt calling for the opening of a ‘second front’; and a complete 1945 CPGB election broadcast. Available soon will be film shot at the CPGB headquarters in 1948, featuring Pollitt, Willie Gallacher and Phil Piratin; and (unbroadcast) footage of Gordon McLennan and Soviet embassy officials laying wreaths at Karl Marx’s tomb in Highgate Cemetery in 1968. ‘Preview’ files may be downloaded for free, and played back using one of the many variants of Windows Media Player. Higher quality copies, for use in educational presentations, may be purchased on-line. VHS video copies of selected stories may also be ordered. All footage will carry a Pathé ‘watermark’. To search the archive and to register to download files, visit: http://www.britishpathe.com.
Seminar Summaries: ‘The Comintern and the Colonies’
A Communist History Network seminar, Manchester, November 2002
On Friday 15 November 2002, the Communist History Network — in conjunction with the Manchester University International Centre for Labour Studies — organised an afternoon seminar at around the theme ‘The Comintern and the Colonies’. The paper-givers were John Callaghan, Allison Drew and Sobhanlal Datta Gupta. Here John Callaghan summarises his paper: ‘Comintern Colonial Politics’.
Comintern Colonial Politics
The Soviet Union was still largely an isolated state in 1928. In Europe recognition was withheld by Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Luxemburg, and much of the eastern half of the continent. Relations with Britain and China were broken in 1927 and did not exist in any formal sense with most of the Americas, Mexico and Uruguay excepted. Neighbouring states such as Poland, Latvia, Esthonia, and Finland were deeply suspicious of Russia’s revanchiste ambitions, while almost all states continued to regard it as subversive in intent. The Soviet constitution of July 1923 depicted a bipolar world and provided evidence for this perception. The camps of socialism and capitalism were portrayed as fundamentally antagonistic; it was only a matter of time before renewed attempts would be made by the capitalist powers to crush socialism. Soviet diplomacy was designed to delay this for as long as possible and to play off one capitalist state against another by exploiting everything which divided them (the war settlement, the colonial division of the world, economic rivalries and so on). The USSR imagined itself, in this same constitution, if it survived for long enough, as the nucleus of a future world federation of soviet republics as these emerged around the globe. The Comintern was perceived by the foreign powers as the principal device which Russia had designed to achieve this ambition. The Comintern’s failures in Europe by 1924 simply drew attention to the growing importance of the colonial possessions of the capitalist powers in Asia in the Comintern’s calculations — particularly when Moscow concluded a treaty with China in that year. Just as the Soviet Union expected to benefit from the antagonisms of the Great Powers and from the class struggle which divided each of them, so did it expect to gain from the conflict between imperialism and the colonial peoples. In this most ideological of states, it was important that the founding genius of communism had made these connections long before 1917.
On paper at least the Second Congress of the Comintern promoted the national liberation struggle in the colonies to a position of importance it had never before attained. The discussion was continued at Baku in September 1920 where the Comintern convened a Congress of Peoples of the East. Many ambiguities were left unresolved by these early discussions. The most obvious was the question of who were the real revolutionaries? Communists could be counted only in hundreds in the whole of Africa and India in 1920, and Latin America and Asia were little better off from the Comintern’s perspective. Real revolutionaries existed among the nationalists but many of them were doubtful allies. They often preached ideologies hostile to Communism — not just religious obscurantisms but also militantly secular ideas such as those of the Kemalists in Turkey. It was unclear how the Comintern would deal with this problem. The Second Congress expressed hostility to pan-Islamism, contradicting an earlier Bolshevik tactic of seeking to make use of it in the Russian colonies of central Asia. Complaints were later voiced at the Fourth Congress of the Comintern that this belated hostility had damaged opportunities for building communist influence within the Indonesian national movement Sarekat Islam. But such complications were inevitable. The abstractions of the Comintern’s colonial theses offered very little guidance when set against the sheer range and complexity of the conditions found in the colonies. The very social categories employed by the Comintern — drawn exclusively from European experience — were often only rough approximations to the socio-economic realities it set out to comprehend, and sometimes not even that. Where was the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, or the feudal landowner in sub-Saharan Africa, for example? What constituted the nation? How were the communists to cope with the reality of numerous ethnic, religious and linguistic identities and the possible rivalries between them? Appeals to a class consciousness which did not exist would have limited value. Where would the communists stand, if there were two or three or more competing national voices — a likely outcome given the arbitrariness of colonial boundaries? How were the small groups of communists — drawn disproportionately from the educated urban minority — to penetrate the villages: 500,000 of them in India alone? Many of these questions were not even asked at the Second Congress.
But the discussion highlighted a further complication in that considerations of Soviet state interests were identified as an element in the Comintern’s calculations:
‘all events in world politics are necessarily concentrated on one central point, the struggle of the world bourgeoisie against the Russian Soviet Republic, which is rallying round itself both the soviet movements among the advanced workers in all countries and all the national liberation movements in the colonies and among oppressed peoples… our policy must be to bring into being a close alliance of all national and colonial liberation movements with Soviet Russia; the forms taken by this alliance will be determined by the stage of development reached by the communist movement among the proletariat of each country or by the revolutionary liberation movement in the underdeveloped countries and among backward nationalities’.
Though Lenin in 1920 was insistent that proletarian internationalism demanded that the Soviet state shall ‘make the greatest national sacrifices in order to overthrow international capitalism’, the opposite was also true; proletarian internationalism demanded ‘subordination of the proletarian struggle in one country to the interests of the struggle on a world scale’. Since Lenin himself had characterized world politics as being concentrated on the central point of struggle between the world bourgeoisie and the Soviet Republic, it would be an easy matter to convince Communists to support policies which the Russians demanded — on the grounds that these represented the central ‘contradiction’ of the world struggle — even if they were of dubious value to national ‘sections’ of the Comintern, or actually destructive of local political opportunities. This was no hypothetical problem.
Thus a policy already riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions was made worse when the Soviet factor was added to the mix. The myth of ‘Soviet’ development in the backward territories of the former Tsarist empire — that is, social, political and economic progress unheard of in the colonies of Western imperialism — entered the picture to further befuddle the Comintern’s analysis in 1922. Russian experience, argued the Fourth Congress, indicated another way forward for the colonies:
‘Under capitalist rule the backward countries cannot share in the achievements of modern technology and culture without paying, by savage exploitation and oppression, enormous tribute to great Power capital… For backward countries the Soviet system represents the most painless transitional form from primitive conditions of existence to the advanced communist culture…This is proved by the experience of the Soviet structure in the liberated colonies of the Russian empire’.
The many facets of the Comintern’s colonial theses thus offered numerous opportunities for changes of emphasis as circumstances dictated and we have already seen that the changing requirements of Soviet foreign policy provided one of the main motivations for so doing. This factor — what was good for Soviet Russia — grew in importance as the Soviet state survived in isolation and the European communist parties failed to meet the Comintern’s original expectations. The Russian state needed allies in the world and sometimes nationalists — particularly those with a real prospect of power — were attractive candidates for this position. By the Fifth Congress in 1924 the dominant view in Moscow was that the national bourgeoisie was the best hope the Russian state had for finding such useful friends. The colonial national bourgeoisie was, once again, also perceived as the main thorn in the side of Russia’s principal enemies — Britain and France — at a time when Russian foreign policy was also cultivating links with Germany, the other principle ‘revisionist’ power in Europe, which had lost its colonies under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Changing circumstances clearly influenced this political arithmetic and one of the most compelling was the emergence of a friendly nationalist movement in crisis-torn China which the Bolshevik leaders under Stalin perceived as a serious contender for power in that country. While the number of communists in the whole of Asia amounted to a paltry 5,000 or so, an alliance with the nationalists could move millions.
The Soviet state’s policy in China backfired badly when the Kuomintang — which Stalin had ultimately wanted to ‘squeeze like a lemon’ while subordinating the Communists to it in practice — turned on its communist allies in the massacres of April 1927. The Sixth congress of the Comintern attempted to cover up this debacle and in so doing reduced communist colonial policy to total incoherence. The ultra-leftist turn isolated the national sections nearly everywhere and the recovery of the party in China owed nothing to Comintern strategic thinking and nearly everything to the local situation. With this exception, communists could still only be counted in hundreds and thousands in the colonies when the Comintern was dissolved in 1943.
John Callaghan, University of Wolverhampton
Bolshevizing Communist Parties — the Algerian and South African experiences
On Friday 15 November 2002, the Communist History Network — in conjunction with the Manchester University International Centre for Labour Studies — organised an afternoon seminar at around the theme ‘The Comintern and the Colonies’. The paper-givers were John Callaghan, Allison Drew and Sobhanlal Datta Gupta. Here Allison Drew summarises her paper: ‘Bolshevizing Communist Parties — the Algerian and South African experiences’.
The establishment of the Communist International (Comintern) inaugurated a period in which socialism was promoted as a path of development that could be exported and implemented through a general, scientific model. This model, according to the Comintern, could be applied to all societies and was believed to be the one means of making an effective revolution. Yet, this general model was applied in a variety of social conditions and refracted through diverse perspectives, inevitably producing distinctive reactions and outcomes. This research addresses the problem of why a general policy — specifically, the policy of bolshevization propagated by the Comintern in 1924 and 1925 — had strikingly diverse consequences in two African settler societies: Algeria and South Africa.
A goal of bolshevization was the creation of mass-based communist parties. In settler societies this necessarily meant that the local communist party should aim to be demographically representative of the entire population. While the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) was successful in this goal of indigenization, becoming an overwhelmingly black organization by the end of the 1920s, in Algeria, the Communist Party remained predominantly European in composition in the 1920s and 1930s. A standard explanation for the failure of indigenization in the Algeria case refers to the paternalistic and even racist attitudes of the numerically dominant European members. Yet, by comparison with the CPSA, it is difficult to sustain this argument. A comparative analysis shows that the difficulties in indigenizing faced by the Communist Party in Algeria were more complex than this claim suggests.
How then do we explain the differential success rates in Algeria and South Africa with regards to indigenization? This research examines four variables: the patterns of working class formation; the socialist tradition of each country; the relationship between the Comintern and the two affiliates; and the level of repression against communists in both societies. The cumulative weight of the variables in the Algerian case helps to explain why communist activity — including the Communist Party’s ability to indigenize — was far more difficult in Algeria than South Africa.
In broad strokes, Algeria and South Africa show striking parallels in their political economies. Yet, they also show striking contrasts in their patterns of proletarianization and urbanization, notably, Algeria’s displaced proletariat and South Africa’s migrant labour force. Classical marxist theory, on which these early communists largely based their analyses, assumes the primacy of the urban working class in social change. Whatever the difficulties faced by South African communists in this regard, the conditions facing communists in Algeria were more difficult. Their country was less urbanized than South Africa at comparable points in time, and a critical section of the Algerian working class had migrated to France. The contrasting patterns of proletarianization and urbanization in these two cases posed constraints both on the immediate prospects for organizational development in the respective working classes and, in turn, on the perceptions and attitudes of local communists.
South Africa’s lack of a well-rooted pre-existing socialist or social-democratic tradition may well have made the tasks of early communists very difficult and also made them more open to the Comintern’s influence. Nonetheless, the two revolutionary traditions inherited by communists in Algeria — that of France and that of the Bolsheviks — were a heavy burden. The two traditions loomed large in the local communist organ, Lutte Sociale. Its pages were weighted down with their influence, leaving little space for Algerian issues. In terms of creative editorial experimentation to attract the urban indigenous working class, Lutte Sociale lagged behind its South African counterpart, South African Worker, in those years. The existence of a social-democratic alternative in the form of the Socialist Party also presented difficulties for communist organizers in Algeria. Despite its minute size, the Socialist Party presented a credible left-wing alternative for European workers in Algeria that could also lay claim to the French revolutionary tradition.
The Comintern’s relationships with communists in Algeria and South Africa also differed markedly, posing serious challenges for the uni-dimensional ‘centre-periphery’ framework that has dominated communist studies. The Comintern prioritized those countries and regions that it believed to be of international geopolitical significance. This necessarily included the French Communist Party, whose relationship with the Comintern was frequently tense. The Comintern intervened in Algeria far earlier than it did in South Africa, and the impact of its policies was felt much sooner. Although Eurocentric and paternalistic views could be found amongst both European communists in Algeria and white South African communists, the Comintern made an example of the former in no small part to criticize the French Communist Party. Moreover, the Comintern’s increasing emphasis on assisting national liberation struggles was felt first in Algeria, coinciding with the first few years of bolshevization and with an intensification of state repression against communists. The CPSA, by contrast, confronted the issue of national liberation in 1928, after the party had made significant progress with indigenization; even then, national liberation was conceived in terms of full equality and never in terms of transformation of the state’s territorial boundaries.
Communist activity in Algeria in the mid-1920s took place during a repressive climate; in turn, it undoubtedly led to an intensification of repression. By all indications, the onslaught of repression against communists in Algeria was greater than in South Africa, reflecting both French colonial control and the geopolitics of the Rif War. Certainly, the different degrees of repression experienced by communist activists in Algeria and South Africa goes some way in explaining the contrasts in the abilities of the two parties to indigenize. In sum, communists in the two countries experienced each of these four variables differently. The cumulative weight of the variables in the Algerian case helps to explain why in the middle and late 1920s communist activity — including the Communist Party’s ability to indigenize — was far more difficult in Algeria than South Africa.
Allison Drew, University of York
The Comintern and the Hidden History of Indian Communism
On Friday 15 November 2002, the Communist History Network — in conjunction with the Manchester University International Centre for Labour Studies — organised an afternoon seminar at around the theme ‘The Comintern and the Colonies’. The paper-givers were John Callaghan, Allison Drew and Sobhanlal Datta Gupta. Here Sobhanlal Datta Gupta summarises his paper: ‘The Comintern and the Hidden History of Indian Communism’.
It is an irony of history that the official versions of Indian communism as provided by the two communist parties of India and the studies made by the liberal bourgeois scholars on the history of Indian communism converge on one point regarding the relationship between the Comintern and the shaping of communism in India. Both sides basically argue that the Communist Party of India (CPI) virtually accepted uncritically the Comintern position on India throughout its life. The only difference is that while the leaders of the communist parties defend this toeing of the Comintern line and are proud of their loyalty to it, the liberal bourgeois historians ridicule this loyalty. In other words, both the viewpoints present the relationship between the Comintern and the CPI as a kind of meta narrative which recognised no dissent, difference or alternative voice in this relationship. The opening up of the Comintern archives to researchers, however, has completely blasted this myth, and it is now possible to reconstruct the secret — the untold — history of Indian communism by arguing that, during the Comintern period beneath the layer of the official version, there was an unofficial, suppressed, alternative discourse of Indian communism, unrecognised and unknown until now. To have an understanding of this alternative version, what is necessary is to periodise the history of Indian communism during the Comintern period according to the following structure :
(a) From the Second to the Sixth Congress: It is generally believed that M N Roy was the sole spokesman of Indian communism in the Comintern in this period, who primarily upheld the line of a strong opposition to the forces of nationalism in India and argued that India was ripe for a socialist revolution, since it was populated by an industrial working class, thanks to industrialisation generated by British imperialism. The documents in the Comintern archives reveal that the ‘Berlin group’ of Indian revolutionaries, represented by Virendranath Chattopadhyay, Maulana Barakatullah, Bhupendranath Datta and others, in their documents submitted to the Comintern (which, however, were never discussed) put forward an alternative unerstanding of the strategy of anti-imperialist struggle, which was sharply different from Roy’s position in the sense that they looked upon nationalism from a positive angle and considered India primarily as an agrarian country.
(b) From Sixth to the Seventh Congress: This period was marked by two features, not mentioned in the official Comintern documents. First, after M N Roy’s exit from the Comintern and his subsequent association with the Thalheimer-Brandler group of the German Communist Opposition, there was a total shift in the theoretical position of Roy which had striking similarities with the position of Bukharin and Thalheimer on the Comintern after 1927, when Bukharin came to be associated with the ‘Right’. Basically, they argued in their suppressed documents that it was wrong for the Comintern under Stalin to direct that all communist parties would have to follow one undifferentiated strategy as framed by the Comintern, since what was necessary was to allow the individual communist parties to formulate their own strategies in conformity with their local conditions. Second, this was the period which witnessed the rise of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) as virtually the mentor of Indian communism, with the consequence that the Indian communists increasingly became dependent on the CPGB’s perception of Indian communism in the formulation of their strategy and tactics. At the same time, it is now evident from a number of documents available in the Comintern as well as the CPGB archives, that within the Communist Party of India there was a section which felt that the CPGB was on many occasions acting like ‘a big boss’. At the same time within the CPGB at the leadership level it was repeatedly admitted that the CPGB as a party was not sufficiently aware of the importance of the colonial question, that the average Party member was still infected by the Empire consciousness and a kind of Eurocentrism.
(c) Between the Seventh Congress and 22 June 1941: This was a period which espoused the ‘united front’ strategy without ever admitting that the acceptance of this line meant a rejection of the sectarianism of the Third Period. This created very serious problems within the CPI. From a number of inner-party documents now available in the Comintern archives it is evident that it was extremely difficult for the leadership of the CPI to persuade its ranks to accept the new line, since in their perception the position of the Sixth Congress was still in force. The silence of the Comintern on the position of the Sixth Congress after the adoption of the Dimitrov thesis led to an absurd situation which implied that the positions of both the Sixth and the Seventh Congress were equally valid and correct. This confused and contradictory understanding very seriously affected the CPI’s united front strategy, especially its relation with the Congress Socialist Party, since the sectarianism of the Third Period continued to dominate the minds of the party ranks.
(d) The period after 22 June 1941: It is now quite clear from the documents of the Comintern archives as well as the documents in the archives of the CPGB that the Comintern had issued a clear directive to the CPGB that — as the ‘imperialist war’ had now become a ‘people’s war’ — henceforth the primary task of every communist party would be to unconditionally uphold the cause of the USSR and thereby help the Allied war effort. This line was communicated by the CPGB to the CPI which the latter accepted after acrimonious debates. During this period, when the nationalist leaders were languishing in jail, the CPI’s support of the British war efforts, following its legalisation — coupled with the fact that the CPGB leadership sharply condemned the Quit India movement (launched by the Indian National Congress in August 1942), and hailed the CPI for aiding the British government — severely compromised the position of the CPI, although the latter defended its policy in the name of the Comintern and internationalism.
This, then, is the secret history of Indian communism in a nutshell. What follows from this presentation is this: had these facts and the suppressed viewpoints been known to us, there could have been debates and controversies within the CPI itself and outside the sphere of the party. This could have perhaps fundamentally changed the destiny of communism in India.
Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, Calcutta University
Research Notes
A note on James Barke
In his review of A Weapon in the Struggle (CHNN No 9), Victor Kiernan wrote (of James Barke): ‘He joined the [Communist] Party [of Great Britain] in 1932 or 1933, and stayed in it until his death in 1958.’ Victor Kiernan relied on the information given in H. Gustav Klaus’s chapter on Barke; and I note that Andy Croft also referred to Barke as ‘…James Joyce writing about Glasgow with a Communist Party card in his pocket’ in Red Letter Days (London, 1990, 277).
My research in the Barke papers in the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, leads me to a different conclusion. In a letter to J Lennox Kerr, another novelist, dated 3 March 1936, Barke wrote:
‘I understand that you are anxious to know if I am a member of the Communist Party. The first time we met you asked me this question and I replied in the negative which was true and remains so. Now you have Max Goldberg’s reassurance. I am merely a Left writer — whatever that may be.’ (Box 4)
Max Goldberg is shown in a CP photo of the 1930s, reproduced on the cover of Scottish Labour History, Volume 31, 1996. In a letter to Hugh MacDiarmid, dated 9 February 1939, Peter Kerrigan — at that time, Secretary to the Scottish District Committee of the CP — wrote:
‘There is one thing in your letter [of 6 February] to which it is necessary to draw your attention. James Barke is not and never has been a member of the Communist Party.’ (NLS Acc. 7361-10)
In another letter to J Lennox Kerr who had written, ‘[r]umour has it that you are proceeding to America’, Barke replied, on 1 August 1946:
‘Rumour is not always a lying jade. I am also going to the USSR; but either there or America my conscience will be what it has always been: I can therefore be depended on to enjoy myself accordingly. Not having any political affiliations will not affect this in any way.’ (Box 10)
When Geoffrey Wagner, an American scholar wrote to Barke, on 12 June 1950, to ask him if he had wrotten about Lewis Grassic Gibbon in the Daily Worker, Barke noted in the margin of the letter: ‘I most definitely did not write here’. In an undated draft reply to Wagner, he wrote: ‘In so far as the Daily Worker and Our Time are concerned, I wouldn’t touch Our Time with a barge pole!’ [Our Time had ceased publication in the previous year.] (Box 1).
Notes made in a diary, on 5 and 6 August 1932, of a talk with Independent Labour Party (ILP) leader James Maxton, show that Barke indeed became disenchanted with Maxton at this time. (Box 5)
In a long letter to Grassic Gibbon, dated 5 September 1933, Barke wrote:
‘either you stand by the working class and its heroic vanguard the Communist Party or you stand (directly, indirectly or benevolently neutral — it doesn’t matter which) with Fascism…’ (Box 4).
In 1936 Barke contributed articles on ‘Lewis Grassic Gibbon’ and on ‘The Scottish National Question’ to Left Review. My conclusion is that Barke was a fellow traveller of the Communist Party in the 1930s. By 1946 he described himself as: ‘Not having any political affiliations’ (ibid). He remained in friendly correspondence with William Gallacher until his death. Gallacher and MacDiarmid both spoke at his funeral.
John Manson
Manuscripts are quoted by permission of the Mitchell Library and the National Library of Scotland.
Editorial note:
Though it is not conclusive either way, readers may be interested in Harry McShane’s description of an ‘extended’ meeting of the CPGB’s Scottish committee in the late 1930s to discuss a statement supporting the idea of a Scottish parliament, previously approved by the party’s national executive.
‘As this over-rode all previous policy and the executive had to get the endorsement of the Scottish membership, they called an “extended” Scottish Committee as a substitute for a full Scottish Conference. The extended committee had forty or fifty people instead of the normal fourteen to twenty. A lot of the people invited to the extended committee were the literary elements of the party, and when the vote was taken on the statement there were only two against: myself and Jimmy Barke, the novelist and playwright.’
Any reader able to shed any further light on this matter is invited to do so.
Features
Schizophrenia at Sachsenhausen
The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was built in the summer of 1936. It was the first new camp to be opened by Heinrich Himmler when he was appointed Chief of the German Police in addition to his position as Reichsführer-SS. Located in the Berlin suburb of Oranienburg the camp was designed by the SS’s own architects, and the central office of the Nazi concentration camp system was located there. In consequence, Sachsenhausen — with its high brick walls, concrete ‘roll call’ area, offices and lines of huts — had a more planned and permanent look than many other concentration camps of the 1930s, which were largely the outcome of improvisation following the Nazi seizure of power carried out in the wake of the Reichstag fire of 1933.
The camp has been preserved as the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum and is administered by the Brandenburg Memorial Foundation. It is open to visitors and on the day I visited the camp in September 2002 there were several parties of school children being shown around the site as part of their education in citizenship. But what was the content of the lessons they were being taught? The exhibitions of photographs, documents and other items, together with the plaques and memorials erected on the site, suggest that the message was blurred. The horrors of the camp — the execution pit, torture chambers and mass graves — were obvious enough, but because of the history of the camp the political message was schizophrenic. Let me explain.
In August 1945 the camp was taken over by Soviet forces. Nazi war criminals awaiting trial were held there, but the camp was also used to imprison enemies of the communist regime then being consolidated in, what was then called, the Soviet Zone of Germany, and which became the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1949. Over 200,000 people were imprisoned in Sachsenhausen between 1936 and 1945, and 60,000 between 1945 and 1950. In 1950 the Soviets closed the camp as a centre for war criminals and political prisoners, and for the next ten years the buildings were used as barracks by Soviet forces and the GDR’s People’s Police. In 1961, the camp was designated the Sachsenhausen National Memorial by the Government of the GDR, which built various memorials and set up exhibitions outlining the history of the camp from foundation until its liberation by the Red Army in 1945. However no mention was made of the use of the camp by Soviet special security units in the period 1945-50. After the reunification of Germany in 1990 the camp was administered by the Brandenburg Ministry of Science, Research and Culture, and three years later control was transferred to the Brandenburg Memorial Foundation. The Foundation has added exhibitions on the period 1945-50, revealing certain facts previously concealed from the public. Thus the GDR and post-GDR exhibitions now coexist on the same site, with the GDR exhibitions covering the Nazi period and the post-GDR bracketing the Nazi and Communist years as a period of unbroken dictatorship.
The Brandenburg Memorial Foundation is carrying out a review of the Sachsenhausen site and has commissioned several research projects on the history of the camp. The outcome of this work is intended to provide an established interpretation that will be presented to the public. Until then the former GDR and post-GDR interpretations will continue side by side. It has been said that history is written by the victors and, without sounding too cynical, not much of the GDR’s interpretation of events is likely to prevail. Yet, in my opinion, some aspects of the GDR interpretation do deserve to survive any revisionist versions. Over 100,000 Germans were killed by the Nazis between 1933-39. Most of these were left-wing opponents of the Nazi regime, and many of them were communists. Surely they have earned their place in history?
Relatively few Jews were killed at Sachsenhausen. It was a ‘protective custody’ and not a death camp, although some Jews were incarcerated there after the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938 and held at the camp until their dispatch to the gas chambers of Auschwitz in 1942. The Holocaust was a terrible event and is, rightly, the subject of much historical research, but those who suffered and died at Sachsenhausen at the hands of the Nazis do not deserve to be marginalised and it is to be hoped that the German historians working on the Brandenburg project do them justice.
Shortly after German reunification there was a campaign by private property developers to be allowed to bulldoze Sachsenhausen to the ground and build a housing estate and supermarket on the site. Fortunately this was rejected and whatever the outcome of the Foundation’s review the survival of Sachsenhausen concentration as a memorial seems assured. In the meantime research by individuals is encouraged: there is a library and archives office on the camp open to anyone wishing to research the history of Sachsenhausen and its place in Hitler’s Germany.
Archie Potts
The Comintern
and the Indian Revolutionaries in Russia in the 1920s
In the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917 Russia became the refuge of revolutionaries from all over the world who considered the new Russia as their hope for a brave new world of the future. The establishment of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919 on Lenin’s initiative with its avowed objective of realising the goal of a world revolution provided fresh boosters to their aspirations. The Indian revolutionaries abroad, scattered in different countries like the United States, Germany, France as well as the north Western provinces of India were also no exception to it and they began flocking to post-revolutionary Russia as representatives of various streams, especially after the formation of Comintern was announced. Sharp political and ideological differences notwithstanding they were, however, united by one common aim, namely, the overthrow of British imperialism by adopting appropriate revolutionary methods of struggle which would be distinctly at variance with the reformist methods of freedom struggle, as popularised by the Indian National Congress since its inception.
The activities of the Indian revolutionaries in Russia were, understandably, conducted clandestinely, particularly because the activity of the Comintern itself was shrouded in secrecy. Consequently, until the opening of the Comintern archives in the early 1990s, there were very few and not always very reliable authentic primary sources available to historians. Some of the accounts that we come across in, for instance, the Memoirs of M N Roy and Aprakashita Rajnaitik Itihas (Unpublished Political History) by Bhupendranath Datta appear to be quite coloured and contradictory, while the British intelligence reports of this period, [1] although quite suitable for the use of the Raj, do not serve the cause of historical objectivity. During the Soviet era, when the Russian archives dealing with the post-revolutionary historical situation were very selectively accessible only to a handful of scholars, historians such as M A Persits [2] and the late A B Reznikov [3] provided the only account of the role of the Indian revolutionaries from primary sources thanks to their access to the archives of the Comintern.
Following the opening up of the Comintern archives in recent years it has become possible to look at the whole issue afresh and in the present article four crucial historical questions are addressed: (a) what was the nature of relationship among the various Indian revolutionary groups which had assembled in Russia around the Comintern in the early 1920s? (b) What were the political and ideological differences among these groups? (c) How did the Comintern view these differences? (d) Why did the leading role of the Indian revolutionaries in Russia virtually disappear by the end of the 1920s, although the Comintern survived until 1943 and a number of prominent Indian revolutionaries continued to live in the Soviet Union well beyond the 1920s?
I
It is generally believed that in the 1920s, when the communist movement was yet to take shape on Indian soil, it was primarily M N Roy who, through the political and organisational help of the Comintern, was the architect behind the Third International’s recognition of the importance of India as key element in the strategy of revolutionary struggle in the colonies. While this is certainly true, it is now possible to arrive at a more complex understanding of the whole issue on the basis of new archival evidence. Earlier studies on the subject by Adhikari, [4] for example, generally have the inclination to suggest that among the Indian revolutionaries in Russia in the post-October period there were parallel streams with differences represented by the Indian Revolutionary Association (IRA), formed in Tashkhent in 1919; the group of M N Roy and Abani Mukherji who initiated the formation of the Communist Party of India (CPI) in 1920; and the group of activists who represented the ‘Berlin group’ of Indian revolutionaries. What can now be affirmed with certainty is that they were not just different streams but currents crossing one another’s path, leading to sharp conflicts. Eventually, however, it was Roy who emerged as the unrivalled representative of the Indian revolutionaries and the leader of the Indian communists in the Comintern. This conflict, which was marked by a feeling of distrust and suspicion, has to be studied mainly-from three angles: (a) the conflict between Roy’s group and the IRA, in which the two key figures were Abdur Rabb Barq and M B P T Acharya; (b) the conflict between M N Roy and Abani Mukherji after the initial years of co-operation; and (c) the conflict between the Berlin group, including such figures as Virendranath Chattopadhyay (Chatto), Bhupendranth Datta and Panduram Khankhoje, and Roy.
The IRA was formed in 1919 by a group of Mujahirs who had crossed over to Tashkhent from Afghanistan and India’s north-western provinces, their aim being the overthrow of British rule in India with the help of revolutionary Russia. It comprised diverse elements many of whom had a strong inclination towards nationalism and Pan-Islamism. The foundation of the Comintern and the subsequent entry of M N Roy and Abani Mukherji onto the scene led to an acrimonious debate and a kind of power struggle, especially after the formation of the CPI in 1920 at Tashkhent. As the archival evidence shows, this was basically a question of who would gain the recognition of the Comintern.
On 28 February 28, 1921 Abdur Rabb Barq, president of the IRA, in a report entitled ‘A Brief account of Comrade M N Roy’s behaviour towards the Indian Revolutionary Association’ questioned Roy’s critical attitude vis a vis the IRA [5]. This was followed by the following resolution of the IRA dated Tashkhent, 27 April 1921:
Resolved that a letter should be written. to the Communist International, Moscow asking for the reasons under which Com. Mukherjee and his other colleagues (new arrivals from Moscow} are making false statements about Abdur-Rabb, Barq, the President of the Association. If what Com. Mukarjee and others say be true the Association as a whole in a body should be arrested with its president or otherwise Com. Mukarjee should be asked for the reasons under which he is disheartening the members of the Association and spoiling the name of the Association. The Komintern is requested to give us a definite answer why our President is arrested? If such a staunch revolutionary like Abdur-Rabb Barq can be arrested only because he was against Com. Roy on principles and the latter demanded his arrest the Association in a body strongly protests about his arrest and demands the definite proof of his being a counter-revolutionary. Or otherwise Com. Mukarjee shall be called to a revolutionary tribunal with the Association for his insulting the President of the Association as well, as the Association itself. Leaving alone the President of the Association, the Association can show much more sincere revolutionaries in the Association than Mukarjee and his colleagues who are mere fortune hunters and Opportunists, A revolutionary organisation can never bear insults either for its President or for itself from a mere bourgeois revolutionary like Mukarjee whose sole business is to seek for high living.[6]
That the IRA was desperate to gain recognition by the Comintern is evident from a letter of Abdur Rabb Barq to the secretary of the Comintern dated Moscow, 10 October 1921, which also makes quite evident the Comintern’s lack of sympathy for the IRA:
It is nearly nine months that I am here. The Komintern has not yet arrived to a decision with regard to our organisation. I have absolutely no notion as to what the Komintern intends to do with us. Will you kindly let me know whether there is any prospect of speedy decision with regard to our organisation.[7]
In a long note dated Moscow, 22 July 1921, M B P T Acharya, a leading member of the IRA, analysed the conflict as a clash not of personalities but of principles: on the one side, Roy’s extreme leftism which precluded any idea of assistance to or recognition of non-communist elements among the Indian revolutionaries, and on the other the IRA’s position that such discrimination was not appropriate. It was further alleged that while the Comintern had in principle accepted the proposal of a commission comprising the representative of the IRA as well as Roy’s group, together with Russian representatives, Roy eventually subverted the whole notion to ensure his own dominant position in relation to Indian affairs within the Third International.[8]
As regards the Indian Revolutionary Association of Kabul part of which came to Tashkhent and was the officially recognised body before comrade Roy arrived from Moscow in Tashkhent, this body was neither first associated with nor later officially dealt with by Roy for voluntary liquidation and still later was disallowed its rations on various pretexts… Roy put a stop to getting the help by using his official position in the Tuerk-Buro Komintern and his influence on the President of the Tuerk Kommission as well as by misrepresenting the Association… By the deliberate violation of the principles and tactics of the 2nd Congress now confirmed by the 3rd — principles and tactics which Roy disagreed with, formerly before me and now openly before all — he has been doing everything persistently, systematically and with impunity to break up everything and disperse everybody concerned with the Indian work of the Komintern.[9]
It appears that an All-India Central Revolutionary Committee had been formed in Moscow after the formation of the CPI in 1920, initially including members of the IRA as well as the CPI. However, very soon, both Abdur Rabb Barq and Acharya were thrown out of this committee on the suspicion that they were British spies and had nothing to do with socialism or the Indian revolutionary struggle. That Roy and Abani Mukherji played a crucial role in their removal is evident from a number of documents. For example, in a letter dated Moscow, 24 January 1921, Acharya was informed that he had been removed from this committee at a meeting where in the presence of Roy and Mukherji it was accepted that his conduct had ‘harmful effect upon the Indian work, not only by obstructing, but by lowering the standard of the Indian revolutionaries here in Russia’; that he was ‘making groundless accusations against the Committee members and the condition of the Indian work as a whole’ and that he was doing ‘this in an underhanded and sneaking manner, tale-telling, back biting’ and thus ‘lowering the dignity of the Indian revolutionaries’.[10] This was followed by a second letter dated Moscow, 30 January, 1921 addressed to Acharya by the committee’s secretary and further criticising him ‘on account of actively supporting people engaged in frankly anti-communist propaganda and on account of bringing groundless accusations against all the party members’.[11] Consequently, in a meeting of Indian revolutionaries held at Tashkhent on 3 April 1921 the question of co-operation between the group represented by the IRA and other Indian revolutionaries was discussed on the initiative of Abani Mukherji. This idea was wholly rejected on the basis of allegations brought against them by Mukherji. The record of the meeting runs as follows:
He laid in the question in a very simple and revolutionary manner and asked the meeting to discuss at full length whether it was possible for the Indian Revolutionaries (Nationalist or Communist) to co-operate with the new selected Committee. He brought forth some secret reports and letters to the effect that Comrades Abdur Rab and Acharia with Company have been doing hothing else but reactionary pan-Islamic propaganda among the Indian Revolutionaries and emigrants here in Tashkhant. He threw full light over the past personal and revolutionary histories of the two Comrades and concluded that under the present facts it is absolutely impossible for him and for all the Indian Revolutionaries to co-operate with people like Abdur Rab and Acharla who sacrificed most of their life in the English service, not in ordinary service but in the British Government Secret Department to spy over the Indian Nationalist revolutionaries… In conclusion we bring before the Soviet Authorities the fact that Abdur Rab and his group are imposing themselves before the Soviet Government as Socialists where as it is a big lie.[12]
Although it may appear as an irony of history, the same Abani Mukherji, who brought these allegations against the IRA as a member of Roy’s group and very close associate of Roy in early 1921, was himself branded as an English spy by Roy before long, and the break between the two men was virtually complete by the mid-1920s. A letter of Abani Mukherji dated Tashkhent, 31 May 1921 and addressed to Kobietzky, secretary of the Comintern alleged that in a meeting of Indian revolutionaries held on the preceding day and attended by Virendranath Chattopadhyay, Bhupendranath Datta, Panduram Khankhoje, G A K Luhani and others, he had been accused of being an English spy and was therefore seeking the appointment of a commission to investigate this ‘grave charge’.[13] This however was followed by an undated circular of the Comintern executive (ECCI) which said:
The Executive Committee of the Communist International hereby notifies all its national sections as well as other parties, groups and individuals concerned that reports have been received to the effect that one Abani Mukherji, who attended the II Congress of the Communist International and sometime worked as a member of the Indian Communist Group, has been engaged in activities which make serious reflections upon his political honesty. In view of this fact it is quite impossible for him to remain in the ranks of the Communist International.
On 2 October 1922, the communist parties of Great Britain, Germany and Italy were first warned about Mukherji.[14]
Interestingly, however, Mukherji somehow appears to have been able to regain the confidence of the Comintern, as is evident from two letters from Roy, one to the presidium of the ECCI and the other to the central control commission of the CPSU, of which Mukherji was a member. The first, here translated from the German, is dated 20 May 1925:
Because of materials and informations delivered to you recently the ICC [International Control Commission] has reconsidered the ‘Case of Mukherji’. The result of this reconsideration is confirmation of the earlier Resolution on 8 December, 1924. The ICC continues to maintain there is not enough ground to expel Mukherji from the Comintern. I must lodge protest against this order, which is wrong and damaging for the Indian movement...
The material which is in the hands of the ICC can at least prove fully the following:…
3. That in two years Mukherji has, not out of political, but on pure personal grounds constantly indulged in factionalism.
4. That Mukherji is not only no communist but has no political honesty.
5. That circumstantial evidences certify that Mukherji even though involuntarily maintains relations with the British informers...In case the Resolution of the ICC remains in force, I reserve to myself, so long as I find it necessary in the interest of the Party and the revolutionary movement the right to request that I be relieved of all responsibilities concerning India.[15]
The second letter, dated 4 August 1926, contains the following observations about Mukherji:
He was not permitted to have any connection with the Comintern work... Mukherji used the apparatus... to carry on his campaign of calumny against myself and the Indian comrades connected with me... Failing to gain his purpose in another way he again resorted to forgery; he tried to smuggle out an article written by himself, but meant to be published in India as written by a number of Indian revolutionaries in Russia. The purport of this article was that I had been thoroughly discredited in the Comintern and nobody trusted me, while Mukherji had at last succeeded in his struggle against me and the crowd of adventurers connected with me.[16]
The ill-feeling, distrust and acrimony that characterised the relations among the Indian revolutionaries was also evident in the somewhat tense relationship between Roy and the Berlin group of Indian revolutionaries. For example, in a letter dated Berlin, 30 July, but without indicating the year, Roy wrote to the Comintern’s Eastern secretariat as following:
There are several factors which are very harmful for our work here, and something must be done to eliminate these factors. First of all intellectual anarchism is the predominant characteristic of the Indian emigrants. Discipline is a thing absolutely unknown to them. They have never worked as parts of a political party. Then while I was trying to impress the idea of discipline and organisation on a few most hopeful people, appeared Mukherji with his subversive activities...Then the propaganda and intrigues of Chatta Group and Dutta Group (there are several groups among the emigrants here) are ever busy in creating a vicious atmosphere. Caught in these unwholesome influences anybody loses his head unless he possesses a very strong sense of discipline.[17]
Apparently Roy maintained good relations with Chatto who, incidentally, was never very active in the Comintern itself but primarily, through his German connections, in the League of Struggle against Imperialism. Roy, it appears, was not very enthusiastic about working with Chatto closely in the Comintern and kept him at bay, considering him perhaps as a possible rival in relation to the management of Indian affairs. Thus, in a letter addressed to Roy, following his return from China, dated 28 August 1927 Chatto expressed very categorically his desire to join the Communist Party of India [18] and also work for the Communist Party of Germany and sent a formal application for membership of the CPI to Moscow.[19] However, there were serious misgivings in the Comintern about his credentials, particularly in the mind of Roy whose opinion in such matters was quite decisive. An earlier letter addressed to Roy by Virendranath and dated 3 January 1927 reads as follows:
I think too that it would be a pity to waste time in unnecessary ‘suspicions’. I want to work — and have no ambitions regarding the Comintern... Let us obliterate the past. On my side you have nothing to hesitate about. I make this appeal in the interests of the work and have no hesitation in asserting that I committed a serious blunder by remaining inactive from 1921 until last year. Let me know if there is anything further you wish me to do so as to get rid of any hostile feelings that may still be lurking in your mind or anyone else’s.[20]
Roy, interestingly, in his reply dated September 14 1927, suggested that although there should be no problem for Chatto in joining the CPI, thanks to his German connection it would be easier for him to join the Communist Party of Germany.[21]
To sum up, the Indian revolutionaries in Russia were organised among several groups and they were locked in rivalry and internecine conflict despite their common aim of liberation of India from British rule. Ultimately, however, it became a power struggle between Roy and the remaining groups which ended in his victory in the early years of the Comintern.
II
The factional conflicts centring around power rivalry that marked the relations among the Indian revolutionary groups, however, constitute only one dimension of this issue. More significant is the question concerning the programmatic — that is, political and ideological — differences that characterised them. On this score it is now possible to identify three major viewpoints. One position may generally be described as broadly anti-imperialist and harbouring somewhat nationalistic sentiments, yet sympathetic towards socialism. This was reflected in the outlook of the IRA, broadly represented by Abdur Rabb Barq and M B P T Acharya. Another viewpoint refers to the ideas of the Berlin group, who despite different shades of opinion generally opted for a revolutionary strategy, aiming at close co-operation between the communists and nationalist revolutionaries with support from the Comintern. A third position may be described as left-extremist, as espoused by M N Roy till the time of the Comintern’s Sixth Congress in 1928,and by Abani Mukherji. These were rather sceptical of the idea of co-operation between the nationalist revolutionaries and communists and believed in the leadership of the Communist Party in the anti-imperialist struggle.
As regards the position of the IRA, two documents deserve attention. Abdur Rabb Barq, in a letter dated 29 July 1921 and addressed to Chicherin at the Soviet People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, alleged that the Comintern was pursuing a sectarian line in relation to non-communist revolutionaries and that this strategy was self-defeating for colonies like India where nationalism had a major role to play:
The Komintern has provided no programme which could combine both Communist & non-Communist revolutionaries together and make them to work harmoniously without giving rise to conflicts... Komintern being a purely Communist institution whose chief business is to carry on Communistic propaganda, create Communist parties in each country, affiliate them to itself and infuse discipline in their ranks, has its hands more than sufficiently full... It has neither time nor inclination to devote attention to the non-Communist revolutionary organisations. Through long association with Communistic work & propaganda it has a fair excuse if it develops a little fanaticism in this respect & intolerance of other points of views & other organisations... To ask the Komintern, the high-priest of communism, to co-operate with nationalistic bourgeois movement is to ask the pope to co-operate with the anti-Christ.[22]
Equally significant is a letter from Acharya dated Moscow, 30 August 1921, which was addressed to the Comintern secretariat and which put forward the idea of a commission for supervision of Indian work that would comprise communist as well as nationalist elements.
2. A mixed Commission of Indian Communists and pro-Communist Indian ‘nationalists’ as well as one or two Russian comrades representing the Comintern — or only one Russian comrade and another representing the French, German or any other strongly revolutionary party interested in the immediate destruction of the British Empire — such a commission must be nominated to make plans for organising, acting and controlling all activities with regard to India.
3. Until a successful political revolution is made in India, all the activities of Communist and non-Communist revolutionary organisations must be strictly subordinated to the decisions of this commission.
As Indian comrades are nor experienced in labour organisation and Communist propaganda and activity — this applies to Roy himself first and as the Indian political, social and revolutionary situation is very complicated and different unlike Europe, I am firmly convinced that any encouragement to ‘left communism’ in countries like India is an encouragement to counter-revolution in those countries is now, even if it is not in Europe.[23]
Now let us take a look at the documents of the Berlin group. These refer to a number of unknown theses and notes submitted to the Comintern by Chatto, Bhupendranath Datta and Maulana Barakatullah in the 1920s which throw an interesting light on their perception of anti-imperialist struggle in India. Thus, on the occasion of the Comintern’s Third Congress in 1921, Virendranath, together with G A K Luhani, Panduram Khankhoje and others submitted a document which, however, was not discussed by the Comintern. The document had two parts: the first was entitled ‘Organization and Scheme of Indian Work’ in which a detailed plan had been outlined concerning communist propaganda in labour organisations, work among emigrant Indian labourers outside India, special propaganda among Indian soldiers outside India, production of special communist literature for India, organisation for the arrangement of technical training of Indian revolutionaries, propaganda in Great Britain; etc [24] The second part of the document was entitled ‘Theses on India and the World Revolution’. This long document highlighted three distinct issues: (a) India was described basically as an agrarian country with a feudal structure — a position that contested Roy’s viewpoint at the Second Comintern Congress (1920) which considered India as so far an industrialised country that a proletarian revolution was on the agenda; (b) in India the society was divided not only vertically along class lines but also horizontally along the lines of religion and caste; (c) without mentioning the name of Roy it was stated that the argument advanced from certain quarters that the Comintern’s assistance to bourgeois-democratic and national revolutionary movements would be counterproductive was hardly tenable, since once British imperialism was overthrown, imperialism would be shattered and this would signal the total collapse of the native bourgeoisie and the onward march of the proletariat.[25] This outlook was reflected in the concluding section of the document, which read:
Meanwhile the destruction of British Imperialism remains the first charge on the Communist International, and to that end it is incumbent on the Communist International to exploit to the utmost extent every available revolutionary tendency in and outside India. Mere academic objections on rigid communist grounds to giving assistance to and collaborating with bourgeois democratic and nationalist revolutionary movements of political liberation in the East show a pathetic and stupid detachment from the realpolitik of the World-situation.[26]
On behalf of the Berlin group another document entitled ‘The Statement and Memorandum In regard to the Works to be carried on in India’ was submitted to the Third World Congress by Bhupendranath Datta, Surendra Kar and others in the name The New India Revolutionary League. This too was not considered for discussion. The document had a striking similarity to Chatto’s ‘Theses’ in the sense that here, while the necessity of organising a communist nucleus under the Comintern’s leadership for initiating the formation of a Communist Party in India was stressed, simultaneously it was emphasised that the Comintern should extend all help to nationalists and other revolutionary forces:
The overthrow of the British rule in India, the strongest and best organised capitalist rule in the world, which stands on the way to the free development of the social forces will be first step towards the revolution. The Comintern should therefore help and support the nationalists and other revolutionary forces in India without encouraging any nationalist or chauvinist aspirations. The nucleus of the communist Party will form a part of the revolutionary council consisting of well known revolutionaries which should specially be created to overthrow the British rule in India, and the relation of this revolutionary council to the Comintern should be realised through the Indian Commission and not through the medium of the communist nucleus alone.[27]
No less significant was the outlook of Maulana Barakatullah, who was not a communist but a staunch revolutionary, an old leader of the Gadhar Party in the United States and, subsequently, a prominent figure in the Berlin Committee in the early 1920s. Shortly before his death in September 1927, he had sent to the Comintern two documents outlining a secret plan for establishing a link between the Comintern and the Indian national revolutionaries through Jawahar Lal Nehru. He had the impression that while the Comintern’s work in India was welcome to the Indian nationalists, what was necessary was the reformulation of certain tactics which were damaging the cause of anti-imperialist struggle. In a letter to the Comintern dated Berlin, 6 May 1926, Barakatullah wrote:
It was only lately that I saw the famous Indian revolutionary, Jawhar Lal Nehru, in Switzerland, who has been especially delegated to me from India in order to explain to me the diametrically opposite effect of the propaganda of Comintern in India to the intentions of the said association, and to ask me to communicate the standpoint of the Indian revolutionaries to the Comintern. If necessary, Mr. Nehru is himself willing to come over to Berlin and explain to you the whole situation of the propaganda of the Comintern in India himself.[28]
Decrying the Comintern’s practice of sending literature and money, presumably through Roy, clandestinely ‘to the so-called secret persons’, Barakatullah continued:
...the whole thing falls into the hands of the English agents with the only result that the true Indian revolutionaries are being exposed and put to all sorts of troubles by the police... I, therefore, propose that a meeting should be convened to take place at Berlin with the participation of Mr. Nehru and the representatives of Comintern including Mr. Roy and other comrades concerned in this propaganda. In this case we shall be able to find out the proper way of crushing our mutual enemy, which can only be done if we work hand in hand and not against each other.[29]
This was followed by a note of Barakatullah’s to the Comintern, dated Berlin 2 February 1927, concerning the improvement of organisation and communication channels by involving the Comintern more closely in the activities of India’s nationalist revolutionaries, adding: ‘M. Barakatullah Maulavie and Jawahar Lal Nehru will be the only Indian representatives to come into personal contract with the representatives of the Comintern, in order to maintain secrecy’.[30] There is, however, no evidence that these plans were eventually followed up, one possible reason being Barakatullah’s death a few months later.
Quite different from these positions was the viewpoint of M N Roy and Abani Mukherji. It is well-known that Roy’s original Draft Supplementary Theses on the colonial question submitted to the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920 were extremely sectarian vis-a-vis nationalism and even after the adoption of this document, consequent to Lenin’s substantive modification, the Theses maintained the slant of left-extremism.[31] It is interesting in this connection to look at the hitherto unpublished ‘Draft Theses on the Oriental Question’ presented by Roy to the Third Congress of Comintern in 1921. In this document the role of the East was strongly highlighted and, while acknowledging the limited anti-imperialist potential of the liberal bourgeoisie in its contradiction with imperialism. the following argument was stressed:
But this revolutionary character of the bourgeoisie is temporary; since as soon as the foreign political domination will be overthrown by a mass revolt, it will turn against the working class and will use all violent measures in order to thwart further march of the revolution in the name of representative government and national defence. It is also possible that the weak native bourgeoisie will find it more profitable to sell itself out to its imperialist peer in return for such change in the political administration of the country as will provide it with wider scope and opportunity for developing as a class. Thus, the rapidly growing proletariat including the masses of landless peasantry is the principal social class which constitutes the foundation of the revolution in an Oriental country like India. Therefore the activities of the Communist International in the economically and industrially advanced countries of the East should consist of the formation of such political parties as are capable of developing and directing the revolutionary movement according to the objective conditions. Such parties will be the apparatus of the Communist International — through them the peoples of the East will be unified in their respective countries to fight against the foreign imperialism, and they will lead the fight further on for economic and social emancipation of the working class against the native bourgeoisie as soon as it takes the place of the foreign exploiter.[32]
This was an argument which in a way precluded the Comintern’s support to non-communist forces or parties — a position which was almost identical with his stance at the Second Congress. In fact, Roy’s position in the 1920s remained in general quite sharply sceptical of nationalism although since the mid-1920s, especially after his experience in Central Asia, [33] he gradually began to modify his position as shown in his espousal of a Workers’ and Peasants’ Party through which the communists would operate in India. Roy’s position, however, underwent a radical change after the Comintern’s Sixth Congress in 1928 when the Third International opted for a left-extremist shift in regard to its strategy, so that Roy was now rapidly moving towards a positive attitude towards nationalism, while the Comintern was moving in precisely the opposite direction, leading to an inevitable confrontation.[34]
Available evidences, however, indicate that while Roy’s position underwent a gradual modification, Abani Mukherji remained uncompromisingly critical of nationalism throughout the 1920s. All along he championed the cause of the Communist Party, was highly critical of the idea of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party and stood for a left-extremist line in regard to India. Thus, in a letter to the secretary of the Comintern’s Oriental section, dated Berlin 20 June 1922, Mukherji wrote disapprovingly of rumours of opposition to the formation of a communist party in India.[35] Subsequently, criticising the Comintern’s strategy of a united anti-imperialist front against imperialism in countries like India, in a speech before the Indian commission on 4 May 1928 Mukherji said:
The basis of the Comintern’s political line in India, was that the revolutionary spirit of the subject countries is expressed only through the educated middle classes. This was the basis of the Comintern line in 1922. Then it developed, from the end of 1920 it developed into a programme of radicalisation of the intelligentsia. The Working class, the proletariat went on the side. In 1924 it came a step further, that bourgeois development is necessary to bring proletarian revolution. In 1926, a step still further — that is, people’s movement for India. In 1927 it came to its climax in July, that is for a Kuomintang Party [Workers’ and Peasants’ Party] for India. What does this show? The main current is that the same Trotskyist theory as, or Radek theory in the beginning of the Chinese Revolution — that the fight in the orient is not a class fight but a fight of all classes against imperialism. The result is this that the entire energy of the Comintern was devoted not for the proletariat, not for agitational propaganda amongst the proletariat but amongst the intelligentisia.[36]
Subsequently, in a letter dated August 14 1928, addressed to Otto Kuusinen, president of the colonial commission at the Sixth World Congress, Mukherji described the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party as ‘the party that is accumulating by itself the elements of future Indian Fascism.’ [37]
III
The question thus arises of how the Comintern viewed these sharply contrasting viewpoints concerning the strategy for anti-imperialist struggle in India? From all available evidence it is now quite clear that for the Comintern, while it was no easy task to resolve these differences, M N Roy was looked upon as the key figure to be relied upon. This was evident in his elevation to the highest offices of the ECCI in following years.[38] This does not mean that Roy and the Comintern necessarily agreed upon all issues, especially where the colonial question was concerned. Roy, in fact, crossed swords with others in the Comintern on a number of occasions and given his scepticism regarding the question of nationalism, his ‘leftist’ outlook did not always square with the Comintern’s strategy of an anti-imperialist united front, at least in the early 1920s. Despite these tensions between Roy and the Comintern, Roy’s opinions concerning the activities of other Indian revolutionary groups carried enormous weight and he was considered the most effective spokesman so far as the Indian question was concerned.
Thus, on 14 March 1921 in a telegram sent by Carl Steinhardt and D Zetkin (with copies to Lenin and Zinoviev) to the Small Bureau of Comintern, the following observation was made concerning the discord between Roy’s group and the IRA:
The group of the Mukherji-Roy group exactly corresponds to the directions of the 2nd Congress of the Third International. The impressions we have gained from conversations held with interested and non-interested persons (instructors of Indian Military School and of sources of secret information, representatives of the O O Cheka) may be summarized to the effect that the group of Abdur Rabb is at the least, very liable to suspicion of making secret Pan-lslamist propaganda. We were able to be informed of a secret meeting held by the group of Abdur Rabb. The fact that the group denies this, strengthens our suspicions. Pan-lslamist propaganda is a great danger in this country and must be vigorously opposed.[39]
That the Comintern was reluctant to lend support to the Berlin group of Indian revolutionaries is also evident from a letter sent to the Small Bureau of Comintern by Chatto, Agnes Smedley, Nalini Gupta, Panduram Khankhoje, Bhupendranath Datta and others, dated Moscow 8 July 1921, while the Third World Congress was in session:
In accordance with the arrangement originally made with Comrade Karkahn and subsequently confirmed by the Comintern, we, the undersigned, arrived in Moscow about eight weeks ago in order to discuss Indian questions. As all our attempts at direct negotiations with the Male Bureau [Small Bureau] have proved futile and as there seems to be no immediate prospect of arriving at any arrangement with the Comintern regarding Indian work we think it is absolutely necessary for us to return without delay to our fields of activity in Europe and India.[40]
That Roy himself was very critical of the other Indian revolutionary groups and informed the Comintern accordingly is revealed in a letter dated Berlin 11 September (probably 1922), and addressed to the secretary of the Comintern’s Eastern section:
The circle of Indian emigrants here is positively vicious. There is not one who can be trusted or relied upon for any revolutionary work. Intrigues and obstructive activities are increasing every day. Now our ex-comrade Mukherji has joined it openly. The worst of it is that the effects of the situation here are being felt in India and England to a certain extent… There is no end to the dirty intrigues. Suren Kerr, whom I sent for from America, demanded the formation of a comittee composed of all those who went to Moscow last year. He refused to do any work until this was done. He is acting as an agent of the Berlin group… This is only to give you an idea of the vicious circle we are in.[41]
Available evidences further suggest that it was the Indian Communist Party, the brainchild of Roy, which was considered by the Comintern as the nucleus of revolutionary struggle and that the Berlin group was desperately trying to gain recognition by the Comintern as a parallel organisation of Indian revolutionaries independent of Roy’s party in the early 1920s. An undated ‘Report about the Indian Nationalist Group in Moscow’ records how from the beginning it had ‘maintained its independence of the Indian Communist Party’:
It desired to be treated as a Revolutionary Group although many of its individual members claimed to be communists. The Indian Communist Party on its part had no objection to the Com. Intern’s giving direct help to any other nationalist revolutionary elements. It simply maintain that such a method is not practical and brings confusion in our activities…
Lately, two members of the group (Das Gupta and — ) have been carrying on negotiation with the Communist Party. According to them the majority of the Group is communist and therefore has no reason for not working with the Party. The Party has repeatedly declared that it would welcome all those who agree with the communist principle and are ready to work accordingly. But for some reason or other this communist element of the group has not yet succeeded in arriving at a decision about its intention of joining the party. It appears that in case the Com[munist] Intern[ational] recognises this group as an independent body and extends to it help, the group, including those who call themselves communists, would prefer not to join the Party.[42]
While the Comintern rated highly Roy’s leadership in organising the Communist Party of India on Russian soil as well as in in India through his coordination of different communist groups in the British Indian territory, almost from the very beginning it also aimed at building up a kind of parallel centre of power by vesting gradually more and more power in the hands of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB or BCP). This certainly was a challenge to Roy’s position notwithstanding his enormous prestige and authority within the Comintern. That the CPGB was destined to play a key role in organising Indian revolutionary work is evident from the following undated document entitled ‘Report of the Work and Organization of the Indian Communist Party’ and presumably dating from sometime in 1921:
...the Indian Communists held a series of meetings with the delegates from Great Britain, in order to formulate a concrete programme for cooperation and mutual help… lt was decided to organize an Indian Section of the BCP from among the Indian Communists resident in Great Britain to work specifically on the colonial aspect of the Movement, and a special Indian Bureau was to be created to carry out the necessary work. In addition to this, a Committee of two was appointed in the same meeting, consisting of Comrades Sylvia Pankhurst and Beach, who would themselves appoint a third member, an Indian, in Great Britain, to arrange for a communication through the Indian lascars that sail to and from Great Britain to India, sending of literature for Indians and for the English soldiers stationed in India, to create disaffection among them... [T]he project was placed before the Small Bureau of the Third International, and a sum of money requested for the execution of work, but so far no action has been taken... Probably, for lack of funds, the work in England has not proceeded as agreed upon, but if the money be appropriated, it can be started at any time.[43]
IV
It is now possible to provide at least some kind of plausible explanation of the eclipse of the Indian revolutionary groups in Russia by the end of the 1920s. Two factors can be identified, the first being the rise and extent of the CPGB’s control over Indian affairs as a countervailing force vis-a-vis Roy, but also contributing largely to the demise of the role of the Indian revolutionaries as a whole. This was evident, first, from the formation of an Indian Foreign Bureau sometime in the mid-1920s, which for all practical purposes became an organ effectively controlling Indian affairs on which C P Dutt of the CPGB was a key player. According to an undated document entitled ‘The Indian Foreign Bureau’ it was to consist of Dutt, Roy and Mohammed Ali and provide the organ through which the Comintern’s organisation and direction of both the Indian Communist Party and ‘Nationalist Revolutionary Movement’ would be effected.[44] In a 1etter dated 30 December (probably 1924), Roy wrote to Petrov at the Comintern a letter that possibly refers to the functioning of the Indian Foreign Bureau:
Our Bureau is not working well. Particularly the British part of the work is very unsatisfactory. Contrary to the letter received from you, we are informed by the British party that the representative there has come back from Moscow with new instructions which reject entirely the new line we have been following till now. According to these new instructions, the Colonial Commission of the British Party assumes the supreme political responsibility for the work in India, Egypt and other colonies. This has already given rise to duplication of efforts and work in the wrong direction. The British party starts with the assumption that since they have not done anything in India, nothing whatsoever exists there, and that they must begin the whole thing. Not desiring to raise a conflict, I have handed over to the British party the entire sum sanctioned for the work of our Bureau in the British Colonies.[45]
While the ascendancy of the CPGB may be regarded as one explanation for the eclipse of the Indian revolutionary groups, a second explanation probably lies in the Comintern’s critical and negative attitude towards Chatto and Mukherji, who remained in Soviet Russia after Roy’s exit from the Comintern by 1929. Though the vacuum created by Roy’s departure might have been filled by either of them, considering their Comintern connections and intellectual abilities, this did not happen. Following the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933, on the advice of Georgi Dimitrov, with whom he was quite closely acquainted, Chatto moved to the Soviet Union and worked in a Comintern section in Moscow but subsequently came under suspicion and had his case investigated by the Comintern Control Commission. Interestingly, there is a document stamped secret in Chatto’s personal papers dated 10 November 1932 stating that the Commission investigating his case ‘found no evidence for accusing him of political dishonesty’.[46] That he nevertheless continued to be treated as a suspect is evident from a letter sent by him to Dimitrov, dated Moscow 9 April 1935, and translated from the original German:
Unfortunately, for three years I have been kept away from active work in Comintern. Had there been a serious desire to know the reasons behind it, I would have the occasion to submit certain facts. I am not giving up the hope that the ECCI can and will use me, especially now. I request you, concerning the reorganisation of the Indian Department, to take into consideration the question of my use for organisational or other work in an appropriate colony… [47]
As regards Mukherji, after quite actively participating in the Indian commission at the Sixth World Congress in 1928, he was thereafter ignored. According to information from the KGB Archives provided by Mitrokhin, both he and Chatto were liquidated in 1937 on ‘suspicion of espionage’.[48] The death of Barakatulah in 1927, Roy’s exit from the Comintern in 1929 and the neutralisation of Chatto and Mukherji in the following years thus created a situation where it was no longer possible for any Indian leader to provide any direction to hundreds of Indian revolutionary cadres in Russia who were receiving political and military training for revolutionary work in India under the Comintern’s guidance.
What made the Comintem critical of Chatto and Mukherji and eventually led to their liquidation remains a mystery, though it is beyond question that it provided a very big booster to the CPGB to establish its hold over Indian communist affairs. Supplementing the late Vilem Kahan’s meticulous research with more recent archival findings we can now establish that — whereas from some time prior to the Comintern’s Fourth Congress in 1922 till the Ninth ECCI Plenum of 1928 Roy was in charge of Indian affairs — at the Sixth World Congress in 1928 ‘Chatterji’ and ‘Naoradji’ were put in charge of India.[49] After the Seventh World Congress in 1935 it was the CPGB’s Ben Bradley who took on the same responsibilities until the time of the war. That the CPGB would have the real say in affairs concerning India in the Comintern was already made clear by Manuilsky in his speech at the Tenth ECCI Plenum in July 1929 (here translated from the German) — a period in which the communist movement in India was in complete disarray in the wake of the Sixth Congress and the Meerut arrests:
If the British Party does not help the splintered unorganised Indian communists now, who will then help them? Other than the British Communist Party, the Communist International possesses no lever which might act upon the Indian revolutionary movement. The Plenum now has to demand of the British Party that it has to guide the emergent Indian Communist Party by providing active support through labour, spread of agitation and application of all remaining methods.[50]
Thus, the eclipse of all the major leaders, coupled with the rapid ascendancy of the CPGB with the Comintern’s active support, permanently sealed the fate of the Indian revolutionary groups in Russia with the onset of the 1930s.
Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, University of Calcutta.
This is a slightly edited version of an article which first appeared in The Calcutta Historical Journal, Vol XVIII, No 2, 1996, pp151-170.
All archival documents cited are located in the Russian State Archives of Socio-Political History, Moscow (RGASPI). Italicised emphases and misprints in the quoted documents are given as in the original.
 | |
1. | See the report prepared by Horace Williamson covering the period until January 1935, published in Ashoke Mukhopadhyay (ed), India and Communism. Secret British Documents (Calcutta: National Book Agency, 1997). |
2. | M A Persits, Revolutionaries of India in Soviet Russia. Mainsprings of the Communist Movement in the East (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1983) and ‘The Formation of the Communist Movement in Asia and Revolutionary Democracy in the East’, in R A Ulyanovsky (ed), Revolutionary Democracy and Communists in the East (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1990). |
3. | See for example A B Reznikov, ‘The Strategy and Tactics of the Communist International in the National and Colonial Question’ in R A Ulyanovsky (ed), The Comintern and the East. The Struggle for the Leninist Strategy and Tactics in National Liberation Movements (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1979) and ‘The Comintern and Eastern Sections’ in A Reznikov, The Comintern and the East. Strategy and Tactics (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1984). |
4. | See, for example the general introduction in G Adhikari, (ed), Documents of the History of the Communist Party of India. Vol. I: 1917-1922 (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1971), pp1-75. |
5. | RGASPI, 495-68-9. |
6. | RGASPI, 495-68-9. |
7. | RGASPI, 485-68-19. |
8. | RGASPI, 495-68-45. |
9. | RGASPI, 495-68-45. |
10. | RGASPI, 495-68-21. |
11. | RGASPI,495-68-21. |
12. | RGASPI, 495-68-46. |
13. | RGASPI, 495-68-37. |
14. | RGASPI, 495-68-91. |
15. | RGASPI, 495-68-172. |
16. | RGASPI, 495-68-165. |
17. | RGASPI, 495-68-69. |
18. | RGASPI, 495-68-203. |
19. | RGASPI, 495-68-205. |
20. | RGASPI, 495-68-207. |
21. | RGASPI, 495-68-205. |
22. | RGASPI, 495-68-31. |
23. | RGASPI, 495-68-45. |
24. | RGASPI, 495-68-37. |
25. | RGASPI, 495-68-37. |
26. | RGASPI, 495-68-37. |
27. | RGASPI, 495-68-64. |
28. | RGASPI, 495-68-186.
|
29. | RGASPI, 495-68-186. |
30. | RGASPI, 495-68-207. |
31. | For Roy's Original Draft Supplementary Theses and the version, adopted with Lenin's amendment, see Adhikari, Documents, pp156-205. |
32. | RGASPI, 490-1-6. |
33. | In M N Roy, Memoirs (Bombay: Allied, 1964, p529) he observed that his experience in Central Asia in the early 1920s gave him the opportunity to come into contact with a cross section of the Indian masses and 'dispelled some of (his) earlier illusions and gave (him) a realistic view of the latter'- that the Indian revolution was a long way off, that arms and money would not make revolution and that the army of revolution should be trained politically'. |
34. | I have examined this question in 'M N Roy's Critique of the Comintern: an Exercise in Bukharinism?', Calcutta Historical Journal, 16, 1 (January-June, 1994). |
35. | RGASPI, 495-68-64. |
36. | RGASPI, 495-68-260. |
37. | RGASPI, 493-1-550. |
38. | For details of all the positions that Roy enjoyed in the Comintern's Executive, see Vilem Kahan 'The Communist International, 1919-1943: the Personnel of its Highest Bodies', International Review of Social History, Vol. 21, 1976. |
39. | RGASPI, 495-68-19. |
40. | RGASPI, 495-68-37. |
41. | RGASPI, 495-68-69. |
42. | RGASPI, 495-68-37. |
43. | RGASPI, 495-68-12. |
44. | RGASPI, 495-68-31. |
45. | RGASPI, 495-68-162. |
46. | See Leonid Mitrokhin, 'A Triple Trap. Story of Three Indian Comintern Activists in the Years of Stalinist Terror' (part 2), Soviet Land, 44, 5 (May, 1991), p22. |
47. | RGASPI,495-16-41. |
48. | Mitrokhin, 'A Triple Trap'(part 1), Soviet Land, 44, 4 (April, 1991), p30. |
49. | RGASPI, 493-2-1. This secret document, partly in English and partly in German, shows that B.N. Chatterji was the pseudonym of S V Ghate and D A Naoroji (not Naoradji) was the code name of Sikander which, again, was the pseudonym of Shaukat Usmani. It is intriguing that although Usmani attended the Sixth Congress there is no evidence that S V Ghate, one of the secretaries of the CPI in its early years, was ever involved in the Comintern's work in Moscow. |
50. | Protokoll. 10 Plenum des Exekutivkomitees der Kommunistischen Internationale, Moskau, 3 Juli 1929 bis 19. Juli, 1929 (Hamburg-Berlin : C.H. Nachf, 1929) p592. |
Book Reviews
British communist biography and autobiography
Vida Henning, Woman in a Shabby Brown Coat: Ellen May Cooper 1907-1974, Green Cottage Publishing: Havant, 2000; Len Goldman, Brighton Beach to Bengal Bay: The Adventures of a Young Man in Thirties London and Wartime India, Leonard Goldman: Brighton, 1999; Len Goldman, Back To Brighton: Return to That Lovely Shore, Leonard Goldman: Brighton, 2002; Ralph Russell, Findings, Keepings: Life, Communism and Everything, Shola Books: London, 2001; Helen Tomkins, Mr Lewisham: A Life of Les Stannard, Lewisham Pensioners Forum: London, 2001.
Helen Tomkins, an activist in the Lewisham Pensioners’ Forum, has written Mr Lewisham, a biography of one of the leading members of that forum, Les Stannard, who was earlier an ETU (the electricians’ union) and Communist Party activist. Vida Henning, herself a lifelong communist, records the experience of growing up with communist parents in Woman in a Shabby Brown Coat, a biography of her mother Ellen May Cooper. In Brighton Beach to Bengal Bay and Back to Brighton, two volumes of autobiography by Leonard Goldman, we hear of communism, time in London, India, Leipzig and of course Brighton. The final volume under review here is Findings, Keepings Life, Communism and Everything, the autobiography of Ralph Russell — another communist who from the 1950s taught Urdu at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Russell, is by his own admission only well know amongst Urdu scholars. Given his perceived unimportance he begins by explicitly posing the question of why he was writing his autobiography. He responds in part with the suggestion that ‘every human being is important.’ Perhaps more substantially he suggests that for those who have ‘thought seriously about how they want to live’ can learn by sharing their experiences with others. To an extent, these suggestions provide a guide to reading all these biographies and autobiographies.
What we learn from these varied lives depends on how we view them. With this in mind each individual may appear to be a representative of a wider population. Les Stannard comes across as a hard-working trade union communist who joined the CPGB at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Len Goldman’s story is that of a Jewish communist who emigrated to communist East Germany. Ellen Cooper appears in many way the archetypal communist woman — married to a fellow communist, working steadily and largely in the background for the Communist Party at local level, and taking exclusive responsibility for bringing up five children. The Cambridge and public school educated Russell, by way of contrast, may seem a typical member of the 1930s student generation. In describing these generic characteristics, in some of the books, the individual becomes subsumed in a collective narrative. To take only one example amongst many, in some places, the history of the ETU becomes synonymous with the life of Les Stannard.
Yet those features which appear to mark off individuals as ‘typical’ are undercut at every turn by the distinctive character of each person’s life. It is these unique and deeply personal elements that appear much more instructive. Ellen Cooper comes across as a powerful person who joined the Communist Party in spite of — rather than because of — her communist husband. Indeed, she had to stand up to domestic violence, which belies the rather cosy image often given of communist families. Despite her humble background she was engaged as an equal in political activity with Oxford academics. Cooper was also prepared to stand up and have her views counted in public, even at the risk of public scorn. She also attempted to transform her political surroundings, organising, for example, an afternoon sub-group in Oxford which, because of when it met, acted as an effective forum for women’s discussion. Len Goldman carefully presents a picture of his life which is far from one-dimensional. Politics plays its due part, but stress is placed not only on politics, work and family, but also on friends and a social life which sometimes had a non-political theme, but which often, as with his activity in the Unity Theatre, overlapped with political interests. Les Stannard, although clearly in the mould of a trade union communist, born and brought up in inauspicious surroundings, was also committed to his family — idolising his mother and grandmother — and also to his locality. In addition to his political activity in East London, he was a devoted supporter of Milwall Football Club. As Helen Tomkin’s testimony indicates he had the presence and integrity to change the way that others understood the world. Ralph Russell, also presents a rounded portrait of his life. There is nothing, he declares at the outset, which he regards as too ‘private’ to have written about. The text bristles with fascinating details about locations, feelings and especially the music which he remembers accompanying events. Of particular interest, both in itself and because of the impact it had of Russell’s later life, is his account of his time in India from 1942, his relationship with the Indian army, with Indian communists and his increasing mastery of Urdu.
Asking why these biographies are worth reading returns the reader to Russell’s initial questions. His first answer — that every life is important — does not indicate what, if anything, we have to gain from these specific life stories. Russell also suggests the importance of the ‘reflective life’ as a motivation for both the reading and writing of biography. Inevitably, in these narratives there are a number of different ‘reflections’ on the nature of communism. The authors show the difficulties in approaching this subject, but in most cases the discussion seems peculiarly disengaged from the rest of the individual’s life. A little more can be said in defence of reading these books as an insight into the historical events in which the individuals participated. However, it is not the shapers or even the participants in the events of some grander historical narrative which makes these lives particularly interesting. The key to these books’ interest is that they are part of the important process of recreating the lives of rank-and-file political activists without reducing those lives to one-dimensional stereotypes — indeed without always placing activism at the centre of the life.
Gidon Cohen, University of Northumbria
Ordering Details: Mr Lewisham may be purchased by sending a cheque for Ł4.99 (payable to ‘Lewisham Pensioners’ Forum’) to: The Co-ordinator, LPF, 120 Rushey Green, Catford, London SE6 4HQ. Findings, Keepings is distributed by: Shola Books, 33 Theatre Street, Battersea, London. Woman in a Shabby Brown Coat, is published by: Green Cottage Publishing, 23 Park Lane, Bedhampton, Havant, Hampshire PO9 3HG. Leonard Goldman’s books may be ordered directly from him at: 26 Westfield Crescent, Brighton BN1 8JB.
‘History in the Making’
Stephen Woodhams, History In The Making: Raymond Williams, Edward Thompson and Radical Intellectuals: 1936-1956, London: Merlin Press, 2001, 221 pp.
There is some interesting material in this book, based mainly on secondary sources but with some minimal some archival work. However, its scope does not match the ambition of its title. One thread that runs through the work is Raymond Williams and the debates about the relation of his early work to the formation of a New Left after 1956. However, this theme is not dealt with as clearly as it needs to be, since Williams drifts completely out of focus in too many places. The title also suggests a concern with the emergence of a ‘collective’ of historians — with E.P. Thompson and Williams acting as the catalysts for this new radical, intellectual milieu. However, this is another theme that is not consistently pursued in the pages that follow. Also I automatically associated the main title History In The Making with the collection of documents edited by Dona Torr, mentor of the Communist Party Historians’ Group. She is ignored, and those four books are not even mentioned. For any book purporting to be, at least in part, about Thompson, the lack of analysis of his relation with the avowed ‘co-author’ of his major book from this period, William Morris (1955) is a problem. But when we delve into it, this study is not really about Thompson at all.
Williams is a more central figure, and it here that the book’s most significant contribution may lie. The assumption is made of a considerable background knowledge of Williams and his times. However, some details remain unclear. Since Williams had ‘not applied’ (p. 82) for a Cambridge job, the means by which he secured one is left as a mystery. Though both were at Cambridge (at different times), Williams’s very brief sojourn in the Communist Party (CP) provides only a tenuous connection to Thompson, who unlike Williams was a dedicated activist in the Communist Party Writers’ Group and an official in his party district. Their being linked in the title seems teleological: they were in the New Left, so despite their having such diverse paths to that destination they constitute ‘a pair’.
Detracting from any focus is a real tendency to drift. Indeed almost the whole of chapter three, focusing on the Second World War, is a lengthy digression. It was obviously a shared (if separate) experience for Williams and Thompson, but — apart from that generational experience — how this is relevant for the purpose of the book is never made clear. Several parts of other chapters are similarly unfocussed: for example, George Orwell pops in here and there (pp44ff & 88ff), but why is unclear. . Likewise, the section on Welsh and Cypriot activists in the chapter on the internal culture of the Communist Party, is an interesting summary, but again seems unrelated to the book’s central themes. For the rest, much of the material presented is not new and seems overly reliant on Raphael Samuel’s ‘Lost world of British communism’ essays from New Left Review. The problem with this is that several former party members have said to me that they thought Samuel’s experiences were so at odds with theirs that they felt they had been in a different party. Samuel’s claims about ‘non-conformity’ as some sort of key to the inner life of the party is too easily relied on as a given. Although it may have some merits, there were a great many other party members with Jewish, Catholic, or even atheist backgrounds. Indeed, perhaps Samuel’s experiences and observations are partly formed by his Jewish background, but he is not used as a source for London’s Jewish members. The idea of party branch meetings being marked by ‘civility’ (p103) ignores the many members who were grilled in nightmarish ‘self-criticism’ sessions. These are vividly described by Bob Darke in The Communist Technique in Britain (1952). Similarly, the account presented in Joe Jacobs’s memoir Out of the Ghetto (1978) does not altogether fit the claim of ‘decorum’ (p104) as he details street riots, and the Battle of Cable Street.
The sections on the Left Book Club are very reliant on John Lewis’ 1970 book. Other studies which have appeared since, such as Ruth Dudley Edwards’ biography of Victor Gollancz (1987) might have been consulted. The discussion of the issue of why a sense of community faded away in the later 1940s is weakened by the failure to even mention the impact of television. Indeed the BBC — radio or TV — is not dealt with at all. Doris Lessing’s autobiography gives a vivid sense of how TV killed much social life — even if Lessing exaggerates her case it is too important an argument to ignore in this debate.
Certain factual errors should be noted. For example, Victor Kiernan went to Trinity in 1931, not in 1934 as suggested here (p37). I would also like a source for the claim that Eric Hobsbawm was in the CPGB Writers’ Group (p40). Of an article by Henry Collins, Woodhams finds it ‘suggestive’ of a ‘party intellectual’ (p89), but we know that Collins was in the Historians’ Group. More importantly, the typesetting and proof reading is amongst the most careless I have seen in a book. There is some sort of mistake every few pages. Some may be minor, but others are confusing or leave ambiguities. For an academic text the referencing is also inadequate — just a perfunctory reference provided for quotations. There are many instances where a source is really needed, but not even hinted at. Even the bibliography is weak: archival material is listed with all the secondary materials, and it is not always clear that some items are drawn from the archives. Despite some interesting material on Williams, it cannot really be said that this book lives up to its ambitions.
Antony Howe, University of Sydney
‘Class Against Class’
Matthew Worley, Class Against Class: The Communist Party in Britain between the Wars, London: I B Tauris, 2002, ISBN 1-86064-747-2, pp352, hbk, Ł39.50.
This is a volume that not only specialists in the history of the British Communist Party (CPGB) but anyone interested in the twentieth century communist movement is obliged to read; it brings fresh illumination not only to the career of the CPGB during this period but to the operating methods of the Communist International as well. Although it does not quite overthrow the received interpretation of the party’s strategy and actions between 1928 and 1933, summarised by the author as, ‘...Stalin moulded communist policy, the CPGB did as it was told; the party became alienated from the British working class’ (p13), this volume certainly modifies that interpretation very substantially.
As that quote emphasises, the consensus, shared by both hostile and sympathetic historians (including myself) held that the ‘Third Period’ or ‘Class against Class’ or the ‘New Line’ was an unmitigated disaster for the Comintern and all its constituent parties, including the British — where membership collapsed, positions of strength in the labour movement were lost, the party was torn with internal division, and antagonisms were created with other left-wingers that were never subsequently forgiven. With the deployment of massive documentary evidence drawn from the local, national and international spheres, Worley demonstrates that matters were rather more complex and nuanced. The standard interpretation, as indicated, also holds that the ‘Class against Class’ strategy was forced upon a reluctant CPGB by Comintern (ie, Soviet) diktat — this volume demonstrates that that, too, is at least an oversimplification.
It becomes perfectly evident that if the ‘New Line’ was a disaster (and the eventual judgement, however modified, must be that this was the case) then it was a disaster waiting to happen and most certainly did not fall out of a clear sky. Even the most notorious aspect of Class against Class — the accusation of ‘social fascism’ levelled against any left winger not wholly compliant with the CP — though wholly unforgivable, was not quite what it seemed, for among British communists at any rate, a sharp distinction was made between ‘social fascists’ and real ones (p260).
The evidence leaves no doubt that there was in the CPGB by 1928 a very strong current which enthusiastically welcomed the New Line and viewed it as a confirmation of their experience on the ground. While it is impossible to know, these might even have constituted a majority of the then existing members. Party membership had fallen severely in the aftermath of its surge during the General Strike and miners’ lockout, (from 7,909 at the beginning of 1927 to 2,350 in mid-1930) and while much of this was down to decline in the industries where its strength was concentrated, some of it was also due to the intensifying persecution the party met with from the official labour movement in both its political and trade union forms. When Class against Class was launched, only the most determined and committed were left and they were increasingly anxious to confront uncompromisingly their TUC and Labour Party enemies. Similar points have already been made by other historians of the Party, especially Noreen Branson and Mike Squires, but Matthew Worley produces the detailed chapter and verse. Without any doubt the CP leadership had much more trouble from British members who accused them of dragging their feet than from those who doubted the applicability of the New Line, and Pollitt and his colleagues frequently had to call the Comintern leadership to justify their interpretations and applications of the strategy against vociferous demands for more intense sectarianism. Worley concludes, ‘In such a context, we must regard the CPGB’s adoption of “class against class” as and understandable, if evidently unsuccessful, attempt to adapt itself to the changing conditions in which it sought to forge the revolution.’(p44).
This last issue leads on to a further consideration. There was plenty of scope for interpretation in how Class against Class should actually operate — it was not a monolithic, inflexible requirement that dotted every ‘i’ and crossed every ‘t’ like a set of military orders. It was combined with a programme of establishing united fronts ‘from below’ — though no doubt it increased the difficulty of achieving such ambitions. The party appears to have been genuinely convinced of the correctness of the strategy and was puzzled and dismayed when the presumed upsurge of revolutionary sentiment — in whose reality it had every confidence — failed to produce the concrete results that were expected. Certainly its attempts to lead industrial struggles were failures at best (Scotland), more often fiascos (London, Lancashire, North-East England) and this record was compounded by the constant barrage of criticism to which it subjected its one considerable trade union leader of the time, Arthur Horner of the Welsh miners, on account of his barely concealed scepticism regarding the policy — even going so far as to invent an ideology of ‘Hornerism’.
Yet even here there are ambiguities. Worley suggests that these failures, like the more general ones of evaporating membership, the decline of the Minority Movement into insignificance, the extinction of the National Left Wing Movement (which united communists and dissident Labour Party members) were due as much to circumstances over which the party had no control — such as that seventy per cent of its membership was unemployed — as to its own errors. He argues this persuasively, though in this instance perhaps a little less convincingly than elsewhere. Nevertheless the record was far from one of total failure. The CP’s great success was its leadership of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, (pp281-6) though this might have been greater but for the sniping at its leader Wal Hannington because of his suspicious coolness towards the New Line.
Moreover, the attempt arising from the analysis of Class Against Class to establish class alternatives to forms of bourgeois popular culture, while it did not achieve any great breakthroughs, attained modest successes, with theatre and film groups, ramblers, and sporting leagues. ‘While not forging a conspicuous alternative to “professional” or “capitalist” sport the BWSF [British Workers Sports Federation] represented a remarkable expression of British communist initiative and dedication.’ (p213). The party’s own intensive political and theoretical education of its members must also stand on the credit side. Most unanswerably no doubt, membership (5,400 in early 1933) was rising again by 1932 and passed that of the highest figures previous to 1926, and the party by then had, in the teeth of immense difficulties, successfully established a daily newspaper.
Indeed by 1932 there was a growing appreciation within the party and its leadership of the sectarian errors which had been committed and their invidious results:
a world poised for revolution had been proclaimed, class enemies had been delineated and abused, and a dwindling membership had displayed a militancy that alarmed even those, such as Rust and Dutt, who sought to guide the CPGB towards the ‘correct interpretation’ (p143).
Consequently greater emphasis began to be laid upon the ‘left danger’, the enthusiasm of the hottest partisans of the New Line both local and national to be curbed, and those leaders who had been censured for insufficient zeal to be regarded more favourably. It is interesting to note that the Balham Group, the original nucleus of British trotskyism, split away from the party because of its passionate attachment to Class against Class — which Trotsky at the time was denouncing with all his might. Certainly it is important to realise that, ‘Taken as a whole, the Third Period passed through a series of stages and should not be considered as an unchanging era of untrammelled sectarianism’ (p314, emphasis added).
Nevertheless he emphasises that he ‘does not propose to turn history on its head’ (p17), and that ‘The Comintern did insist on the CPGB’s adoption of “class against class” and the CP functioned within strict theoretical and practical guidelines sanctioned within the Comintern in Moscow’ (ibid). However the conclusion which seems to emerge from this meticulously researched account — though Worley does not quite say so — is that the foundations for the acclaimed era of the Popular Front in the later thirties were laid during the despised years of Class against Class. That remains contentious; would the CP not have done better, despite all the objective difficulties if it had pursued a less sectarian and isolationist strategy? I continue to think so, and also think that the role of Stalin and the situation in the USSR is somewhat underplayed here; but what is indisputable is that after the publication of this volume our traditional conceptions will have to be substantially revised and that Class against Class, at least so far as the CPGB was concerned will now have to be understood in a very different light from formerly.
It is regrettable that Matthew Worley has not been well served by his publishers on this occasion. It has emerged that in a number of the published copies fifteen pages (pp103-118) are missing. The index is a name index only and not a subject one, and is not always accurate. In addition, the blurb on the back cover is seriously misleading in its claim that this is ‘the first major study of the Communist Party of Great Britain between the wars’ — something that L J Macfarlane and Kevin Morgan would be astonished to discover. None of that, however, should detract from the excellence of the text itself
Willie Thompson
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